“Twenty apiece?”
“Twenty apiece, every man of you!”
They stopped their work, and looked from one to another.
“Ma foi, I'd take it, and leave it alone!” said one.
“Pardie! we've had enough of it, and, as the citoyen says, it's beggarly pay for the work,” said another.
“Done!” said the sapeur.[113]
He pulled out a leathern purse from his breast-pocket, and counted out one hundred francs in five gold pieces to the five communists.
“Une poignée de main, citoyen!” said the first spokesmen. The others followed suit, and the sapeur, after heartily wringing the five rascally hands, sent them on their way rejoicing to the cabaret round the corner. This is how No. 13 was saved. No. 11 was burnt to the ground, and then the fire stopped.
But to return to Aline and her friends. They got on well till they came to the Rue d'Alger, where they were caught in a panic, men, and women, and children struggling to get out of reach of the flames, and threatening to crush each other to death in their terror. Our friends got clear of it, but, on coming out of the mélée at separate points, the sisters found they had lost each other. Mme. de Chanoir had held fast by Mme. Cléry, and was satisfied that Aline was safe under the wing of citoyen Varlay. But she was mistaken. He had indeed lifted her off the ground, holding her like a child above the heads of the crowd, and so saved her from being trampled under foot, most likely; but when he set her down, and Aline turned to speak to him, he was gone. It would have been madness to attempt to look for him in the mélée, so she determined to wait at the nearest point of shelter, and then when the crowd dispersed they would be sure to meet. She made for the door-way of a mourning house at the corner of the Rue St. Honoré. But she had not been many minutes there when she heard a hue and cry from the Tuileries end of the street, and a troop of men and women came flying along, driving some people before them, and firing at random as they went. The sensible thing for Aline to do was, of course, to flatten herself against the wall, and stay where she was, and of course she did not do it. She saw a flock of people running, and she started from her hiding-place, and turned and ran with them. They tore along the Rue St. Honoré till they came to the Rue Rohan; here the band broke up, and many disappeared at opposite points; but one little group unluckily kept together, and, though diminished to a third its size at the starting point, it still held in view, and gave chase to the pursuers. Mlle. de Lemaque kept with this. On they flew like hares before the hounds, till, turning the corner of the Place du Palais Royal, they were stopped by two Federals, who levelled their chassepots and bade them stand. The fugitives turned, not like hares at bay to face the hunters and die, but to rush into an open shop, and fall on their knees, and cry, “Mercy!”
The Federals were after them in a second. Instead of shooting them right off, however, they set to discussing the propriety of taking them out and standing them in regulation order, with their backs to the wall, and doing the thing in a proper business-like manner. While this parley was going on, Aline de Lemaque cast a glance round her, and saw that her fellow-victims were two young lads and half a dozen women, all of them of the lower class apparently; most of them wore caps. The men who were making ready to shoot them without rhyme or reason, as if they were so many rats, were evidently of the very dregs of the Commune, and looked half-drunk with blood or wine, or both—it was hard to say—but there was no trace of manhood left upon the faces that gave a hope that mercy had still a lurking-place in their hearts. One of the women suddenly started to her feet. “What!” she cried, “you call [pg 238] yourselves men, and you are going in cold blood to shoot unarmed women and boys? Shame on you for cowards! There is not a man amongst you!”