“In the name of the law!” panted the mayor. “Why did you not—” Then he stopped abruptly, his mouth remaining open. He found himself surrounded by a group of grim, silent mutes, with arms in their hands, and in a twinkling it flashed into his mind that these were the eleven chiefs of the Girondins, whom he had been warned to keep watch for. He had come to catch a pigeon and had caught a crow. He turned pale and his eyes dropped. “Who are—who are these gentlemen?” he stammered, in a ludicrously altered tone.
“Some volunteers of Quumpen, returning home,” replied Barbaroux, with ironical smoothness.
“You have your papers, citizens?” the mayor asked, mechanically; and he took a step back towards the door, and looked over his shoulder.
“Here they are!” said Pétion rudely, thrusting a packet into his hands. “They are in order.”
The mayor took them, and longing only to see the outside of the door, pretended to look through them, his little heart going pit-a-pat within him. “They seem to be in order,” he assented, feebly. “I need not trouble you further, citizens. I came here under a misapprehension, I find, and I wish you a good journey.”
He knew, as he backed out, that he was cutting a poor figure. He would fain have made a more dignified retreat. But before these men, fugitives and outlaws as they were, he felt, though he was Mayor of Carbaix, almost as small a man as did Michel Tellier. These were the men of the Revolution. They had bearded nobles and pulled down kings. There was Barbaroux, who had grappled with Marat; and Pétion, the Mayor of the Bastille. The little Mayor of Carbaix knew greatness when he saw it. He turned tail, and hurried back 118 to his fireside, his body-guard not a whit behind him.
