"Wert thou in jail, sir?" said the Pearl.
"Did I say so? Life is a jail, my good Margaret; we are all prisoners." The girl understood, and asked no more. Crossing the Potter's Field, now Washington Square, they leaped over the brook that ran through it from the northwest.
"Here below us lie the dead prisoners of your war, Pearl. The jail was safe, but now they are free. God rest their souls! There's room for more." Scarcely was there room in that summer of '93. Passing the Bettering House on Spruce Street Road, and so on and out to the Schuylkill, they crossed the floating bridge, and from the deep cutting where Gray's Lane descended to the river, climbed the slope, and sat down and waited.
Very soon across the river thousands of men gathered and a few women. The bridge was lined with people and some collected on the bank and in the lane below them, on the west side of the stream.
Hauterive, the French consul at New York, and Mr. Duponceau and Alexander Dallas of the Democratic Club, stood near the water on the west end of the bridge, waiting to welcome Genêt. "I like it very well," said Schmidt; "but the play will not run long."
"Oh, they are coming!" cried Margaret. This was interesting. She was curious, excited and with her bonnet off, as De Courval saw, bright-eyed, eager, and with isles of color mysteriously passing over her face, like rose clouds at evening.
A group of horsemen appeared on the top of the hill above them, one in front. "Genêt, I suppose," said De Courval. A good-looking man, florid, smiling, the tricolor on the hat in his hand, he bowed to right and left, and honored with a special salute mademoiselle, near-by on the bank. He had the triumphant air of a very self-conscious conqueror. Cheers greeted him. "Vive la république! D—— George Washington! Hurrah for Citizen Genêt!" with waving of French flags. He stopped below them in the lane. A boy in the long pantaloons of protest, with the red cap of the republic on his head, was lifted up to present a bouquet of three colors made of paper flowers. Citizen Genêt gave him the fraternal kiss of liberty, and again the crowd cheered. "Are these people crazy?" asked the Quaker maiden, used to Friends' control of emotion.
"Mad? Yes, a little." Genêt had paused at the bridge. Mr. Dallas was making him welcome to the capital. David Rittenhouse stood by, silent in adoration, his attention divided between Genêt and a big bun, for he had missed his dinner.
"It is all real," said the German. "The bun doth equally well convince. Oh, David, didst thou but dream how comic thou art!" Meanwhile De Courval by turns considered the fair face and the crowd, too tragically reminded to be, like Schmidt, altogether amused.
But surely here indeed was comedy, and for many of this careless multitude a sad ending of politics in the near summer months.