"No; but it soon will be," answered the man who confronted the soldier.
These, and similar observations, were uttered aloud, in the open street, at broad day, by hundreds of starved, oppressed, and insulted framework-knitters, who thus gave vent to their despair. Such conversations were customary sounds in John's ears, and, having recovered his son, he took him by the arm, after this brief delay, and, walking slowly back towards the Roman milestone, the two bent their steps down the narrow street called Barkby Lane.
After threading an alley, they reached a small wretchedly furnished habitation; and the lad burst into tears, as his mother sprung from her laborious employ at the wash-tub, and threw her arms round his neck, and kissed him. Two or three neighbours came in, in another minute, and congratulating the father and mother, on their having found their son, a conversation followed on the hatefulness of becoming "a paid cut-throat for tyrants," the substance of which would have been as unpleasing to "the powers that be" as the conversation in the street, had they heard the two. The entry, into the squalid-looking house, of another neighbour, pale and dejected beyond description, gave a new turn to the homely discourse.
"Your son has come back, I see, John," said the new-comer, in a very faint voice: "I wish my husband would come home."
"Thy husband, Mary!" said John; "why, where's he gone? Bless me, woman, how ill you look!—What's the matter?"
The woman's infant had begun to cry while she spoke; and she had bared her breast, and given it to the child: but—Nature was exhausted! there was no milk;—and, while the infant struggled and screamed, the woman fainted.
She recovered, under the kindly and sympathetic attention of the neighbours; and the scanty resources of the group were laid under contribution for restoring some degree of strength, by means of food, to the woman and her child. One furnished a cup of milk, another a few spoonfuls of oatmeal, another brought a little bread; and when the child was quieted, and the mother was able, she commenced her sad narrative. She had not, she said, tasted food of any kind for a day and two nights: she had pawned or sold every article of clothing, except what she had on, and she was without a bonnet entirely: nor had her husband any other clothes than the rags in which he had gone out, two hours before, with the intent to try the relieving officer, once more, for a loaf, or a trifle of money: to complete their misery, they owed six weeks' rent for the room in which lay the bag of shavings that formed their bed; and, if they could not pay the next week's rent, they must turn out into the street, or go into the Bastile.
Her recital was scarcely concluded, when the sorrowful husband returned. He had been driven away by the relieving officer, and threatened with the gaol, if he came again, unless it was to bring his wife and child with him to enter the Union Bastile!—and the man sat down, and wept.
And then the children of misery mingled their consolations,—if reflections drawn from despair could be so called,—and endeavoured to fortify the heart of the yielding man, by reminding him that they would not have to starve long, for life, with all its miseries, would soon be over.
"I wonder why it ever begun!" exclaimed the man who had been yielding to tears, but now suddenly burst out into bitter language: "I think it's a pity but that God had found something better to do than to make such poor miserable wretches as we are!"