“Well, my Jeanne,” he said, in his gibing tone, “are you longing for my news?”
The hand she stretched out towards the pitcher of cider, which, with black bread and onions, formed their meal, shook, but she answered simply: “If you please, Michel.”
“Well, the Girondins have been beaten, my girl, and are flying all over the country. That is the news. Master Pierre is among them, I do not doubt, if he has not been killed already. I wish he would come this way.”
“Why?” she asked, suddenly looking up at last, a flash of light in her gray eyes.
“Why?” he repeated, grinning across the table at her, “because he would be worth five crowns to me. There is five crowns, I am told, on the head of every Girondin who has been in arms, my girl.”
The French Revolution, it will be understood, was at its height. The more moderate and constitutional Republicans—the Girondins, as they were called—worsted in Paris by the Jacobins and the mob, had lately tried to raise the provinces against the capital, and to this end had drawn together at Caen, near the border of Brittany. They had been defeated, however, and the Jacobins, in this month of August, were preparing to take a fearful vengeance at once on them and the Royalists. The Reign of Terror had begun. Even to such a boor as this, sitting over his black bread, the Revolution had come home, and, in common with many a thousand others, he wondered what he could make of it.
The girl did not answer, even by the look of contempt to which he had become accustomed, and for which he hated her; and he repeated, “Five crowns! Ah, it is money, that is! Mon Dieu!” Then, with a sudden exclamation, he sprang up. “What is that?” he cried.