"Vive la République!" cried the man.
"Vive la République!" quickly echoed Hermione.
"C'est bien! c'est bien!" cried another, raising his lantern to her blanched and beautiful face.
"You will let us all pass, monsieur?" she said persuasively: "you will even be our escort a little way. We will pay handsomely for your protection."
Before he could answer her two or three fellows, more drunk than the rest, burst out with a proposition: "She says they are not aristos, but republicans. Let her prove it. She cannot, if she be a true republican, refuse to kiss her fellow-patriots."
I started and was about to knock the rascal down with the bag of diamonds.
But Hermione laid a restraining hand upon my arm. "Gentlemen," she said in clear tones and perfect French, "it is quite true that we are Americans and republicans. We wish you well, and if it be for the good of France to be free under a republican form of government, no one can wish her prosperity more than ourselves. But in our free country, messieurs, a woman is held free to give her kiss to whom she will, and according to our custom she gives it only to her betrothed or to her husband." Here stooping she picked up a little boy who had worked himself into the forefront of the crowd, and before I knew what she was about to do she had lifted him upon the cart beside her. She looked a moment steadily at the men around her, holding the boy's hand in both her own, then turning toward him and pressing her lips upon his face, she said, "Messieurs, I kiss your representative: I cannot embrace a multitude;" and placed a piece of money in the gamin's hand.
For a moment there was some doubt what view the crowd might take of this, but her beauty, her fearlessness, and, above all, the awe inspired by her womanliness, prevailed. They shouted "Vive la République!"
"With all my heart," replied Hermione. "Now shout for me, gentlemen: Vive la République des États Unis!"
They were completely won. A French crowd is never dangerous or unmanageable till it has tasted blood, and besides it has—or at least in those days it used to have—sentiments, to which it was possible with a little tact to appeal successfully.