"To wear these badges and shout for him," replied Jude, displaying the contents of his parcel, a couple of dozen red woollen tuques.
"No objection," the Admiral answered; "no objection in the world, but what is the object?"
"Well, Monsieur Admiral——"
"Shut up with your 'Monsieurs', spy," called Hache. "Do you want us hunted for aristocrats?"
"Well, Citizen Admiral then, you know how things have been going since last spring. In May there was the holding of States-General; in June the National Assembly confront the nobles and swear never to disperse; in July the Court menaces to suppress the Parisians by the army; on the eleventh the people slaughtered by the Dragoons; on the fourteenth——"
"The Bastille taken—I was there."
Exultation lit the ring of faces.
"Ragmen, we have had good times since the 14th of July," said the Admiral. "It is now becoming our turn. I always told you it was coming, but I am going to give you better still. You are going to learn to love the sight of red blood better than red wine."
"The aristocrats," Jude continued, "have been skipping over the frontiers; the people starving and rising to their rights; we hung Councillor Foulon to the lantern——"
"And put grass in his mouth, the old animal!" exclaimed Wife Gougeon with vicious hate.