"That is so," Michel answered. "But I had nothing to do with hiding him, citizen. It was my wife hid him in the straw there."
"And you gave notice of his presence to the authorities?" the stranger continued, raising his hand to repress some movement among his followers.
"Certainly, or you would not be here," replied Michel, better satisfied with himself.
The answer struck him, prostrated him, with an awful terror. "That does not follow," the tall man rejoined coolly, "for we, we, also, are Girondins!"
"You are? You?"
"Without doubt," the other answered, with majestic simplicity; "or there are no such persons. This is Pétion of Paris, and this citizen Buzot. Have you heard of Louvet? There he stands. For me, I am Barbaroux."
Michel's tongue remained glued to the roof of his mouth. He could not utter a word. But another could. On the far side of the barrier a rustling was heard, and while all turned to look—but with what different feelings—the pale face of the youth over whom Michel had bent in the afternoon appeared above the partition. A smile of joyful recognition effaced for the time the lines of exhaustion. The young man, clinging for support to the planks, uttered a cry of thankfulness. "It is you! It is really you! You are safe!" he exclaimed. Love beamed in his eyes.
"We are safe, all of us, Pierre," Barbaroux answered. "And now"—he turned to Michel Tellier with thunder in his voice—"know that this man whom you would have betrayed is our guide, whom we lost last night. Speak, then, in your defence, if you can. Say what you have to say why justice should not be done upon you, miserable caitiff, who would have sold a man's life, as you would sell a sheep's, for a few pieces of silver!"
The wretched peasant's knees trembled under him; the perspiration stood upon his brow. He heard the voice as the voice of a judge or an executioner. He looked in the stern eyes of the Girondins, and read only anger, doom, vengeance. Then he caught in the silence the sound of his wife weeping, for at Pierre's appearance she had broken into wild sobbing; and on that he spoke out of the base instincts of his heart. "He was her lover," he muttered. "I swear it, citizens."
"He lies!" the man at the barrier cried, his face transfigured with rage. "I loved her once, it is true, but it was before her old father sold her to this Judas. For what he would have you believe now, my friends, it is false. I, too, swear it."