With sorrowful recollection she saw again her good friend, Hélène de Merecourt, and her own sister Jeanne, disappear out of life.
There was that terrible day when the King was beheaded, and that other when the Queen followed him; Bellecour, d'Amoreau, the Canoness, Vaudreuil, the Guiches, the Polignacs, were in exile. Others were concealed, scattered, outlawed, some perhaps included in the massacres; some perhaps lost among the immense number crowded into the seventy prisons of the City. When would her turn arrive? When Germain's?
A distant sound made her lips part in alarm. It was the too well-known surging murmur of a mob approaching. She hastily rose and closed the window. The Rue Honoré was one of the highways particularly exposed to persecution, for its chief portion was lined with mansions where dwelt many of the "aristocrats." The great porte cochère and street wall of one were in full view of her window, coated with insulting placards and painted in huge letters, "NATIONAL PROPERTY—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." How far the property had become national may be inferred from the fact that the patriot commissioner who took its chattels into his charge, and whose name was signed with a mark at the bottom of the placard, was—Gougeon.
In this quiet part of the street, however, the smaller houses usually passed unscathed, and the neighbourhood had the advantage of its residents not being so prying as in quarters still poorer. So that by aid of some bribery of patriots of the section, discreetly done by Dominique, their slender stores of money had thus far seemed to suffice to obtain them immunity. We say seemed to suffice, because there was something very remarkable, after all, in the escape of a Montmorency, and particularly one so intimate with the obnoxious Maréchale de Noailles.
The mob of women and red-capped men swarmed up the street, led by a drum, and singing "Ça ira"—
"Ah, on it goes, and on it goes, and on it goes!—
The aristocrats to the lantern!
Ah, on it goes, and on it goes, and on it goes!—
The aristocrats, we'll hang them."
In front of the confiscated hotel the Sans-culottes stopped, and, joining hands in a circle, whirled around in the wild Revolutionary dance, "the Carmagnole," singing the words—
"Madame Veto had pledged her word,
Madame Veto had pledged her word
To put all Paris to the sword,
To put all Paris to the sword,
Thanks to our canoneers.
Dance, dance the Carmagnole,
Hurrah for the sound,
Hurrah for the sound,
Dance, dance the Carmagnole,
Hurrah for the sound of the cannon!"
She watched the dancers, involuntarily fascinated. All at once an object tapped against the window, and she noticed many eyes turned up to her in malicious amusement. The object was pushed up to her on a long pole and again tapped on the window; she dropped her sewing and sprang back with a scream. It was a human hand. A shout of coarse laughter met her ears, and the hand was withdrawn. She sank back in her chair and burst into tears.
"Wretches!" cried a woman, darting forward from behind her and shaking a fist at the window.