3*B*tf*£'-J-' 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Nixon Griffis 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013585108 
 
THE 
 GIRONDIN 
 
 " Girondin : a native of, or deputy from, the 
 Department of the Gironde, France " (Dictionary) 
 
 By HILAIRE BELLOC 
 
 ^ 
 
 THOMAS NELSON AND SONS 
 
 LONDON, EDINBURGH, DUBLIN 
 
 LEEDS, AND NEW YORK 
 
 LEIPZIG : 35-37 Konigstrasse. PARIS : 61, rue des Saints-Peres 
 
First published in 1911 
 
TO 
 
 THE HORSES 
 
 PACTE and BASILIQUE 
 
 NOW WITH THEIR FATHER JOVE 
 
 Ov p.\v yd.p ri 7rou bjtJv 6'C{i)pdmpov avSpbs 
 IIovtuv, ocnra re yaiav cirwrceiet rt xal Ipwei. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. In which the Girondin finishes Dinner . 7 
 II. In which the Girondin talks Politics . . 21 
 
 III. In which the Sovereign People play the Fool 39 
 
 IV. In which the Girondin fences too hard and 
 
 too long 59 
 
 V. In which several Lies are told in an Inn . 82 
 VI. In which a Postilion goes Mad . . .104 
 VII. In which a Sack of Charcoal is taken and 
 
 a Girl is left 122 
 
 VIII. In which a Sack of Charcoal is left and a 
 
 Girl is taken 137 
 
 IX. In which a Lover finds himself in the Dark 150 
 X. In which two Lovers find themselves in the 
 
 Daylight 164 
 
 XI. Showing how Men become Soldiers . .180 
 XII. Showing how Soldiers are not always so . 203 
 XIII. In which the Girondin, though by no means 
 yet a Soldier, becomes very certainly a Ser- 
 geant ; and in which a Chivalrous Fellow 
 strikes a Blow for the Crown . . 219 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 XIV. Showing the Advantage there is for a German, 
 in the Profession of Arms, that he should 
 know the French Tongue . . . 239 
 XV. In which an Ostler is too Political . . 258 
 XVI. In which the Brethren of Equality and Fra- 
 ternity are led to behave in a Manner 
 most Unfraternal and Inequitable; and 
 in which the Children of Light are un- 
 mercifully Bamboozled .... 268 
 XVII. In which an Old Gentleman shows the Way 
 
 to an Old Lady 281 
 
 XVIII. In which an Old Lady shows the Way to a 
 
 Young Gentleman . . . .291 
 
 XIX. In which it Rains 307 
 
 XX In which it goes on Raining . . .321 
 
 XXI. Valmy 332 
 
 XXII. Which shows the Disagreeables attendant 
 
 upon the Use of Amateur Drivers in the 
 
 Conduct of Artillery; especially when 
 
 they are pressed for Time . . 353 
 
 XXIII. In which the Girondin complains of the 
 
 Weather 363 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 In which the Girondin finishes Dinner. 
 
 TN the year 1792 and in the month of August, 
 in the early days of that month (to be 
 accurate, upon the eighth), M. Boutroux, a wine 
 merchant of some substance and of a singularly 
 settled demeanour, sat at table in the town of 
 Bordeaux, which was the seat of his extensive 
 business. 
 
 The house in which the table was served was 
 one of the old merchant houses overlooking the 
 central quays of the city ; the windows of the 
 room where he sat at meat (without lights, for 
 the hour was early and the summer sky still 
 bright) looked up and down stream over some 
 miles of the noble river which nourishes the 
 town. 
 
8 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 M. Boutroux sat at dinner. The table was of 
 chestnut wood ; there was no cloth upon it : it 
 was polished, and reflected good massive silver, 
 the tints of early fruits, and the glistening of 
 a decanter of dessert wine. At the end of the 
 table his wife, a little, thin woman, erect and 
 intensely prim, sat gingerly. The only other 
 person seated there was his nephew, by name 
 Georges, in age but twenty years, large in build, 
 long in leg, dressed foppishly but rather negli- 
 gently, and sitting in his carved chair, which 
 faced the windows and the cool air of the river, 
 more at ease and with less dignity than did 
 his relatives. 
 
 He was not sullen, but he was bored, and 
 the reason of his boredom was that M. Boutroux, 
 his uncle, had for now more than twenty-five 
 minutes very carefully detailed to him his lapses 
 from right conduct, and the grievous burden 
 that he had made himself to the household. 
 His brown Gascon face with its crisped and curled 
 black hair was half framed in his right hand 
 as he leaned his head upon it, listening to the 
 interminable harangue. 
 
 That speech had begun, as usual, with family 
 history. The old gentleman had sighed over the 
 unbusiness-like ways of the boy's dead father ; 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 9 
 
 he had discreetly deplored the poverty of Georges' 
 dead mother ; he had further deplored his own 
 childlessness — for Georges was now his only heir. 
 Next he had proceeded to his regular catalogue 
 of the various social ranks of the town, and 
 had introduced into that history, by way of re- 
 frain, a comparison between himself, the solid 
 merchant, and that very vile class of young, 
 town nobility who, having next to nothing, and' 
 never working, spent continually and were for* 
 ever in debt — lacking probity and the proper 
 virtues for which the Boutroux had now since 
 the sixteenth century been renowned. He was 
 careful to mention several names which he knew 
 to be those of Georges' companions. 
 
 M. Boutroux the elder, stiff in a sky-blue 
 coat with silver buttons, gorgeous at the neck 
 with puffed lace, and a very handsome old man 
 under his plain white tie-wig (which he thought 
 the proper and dignified head-dress of a roturier), 
 was willing to admit that the extravagances of 
 his nephew had not yet bitten into the capital 
 of the family fortune. Had he thought it useful 
 to tell the truth (and Georges well knew it) 
 it had not bitten into a month of the family 
 income nor into a week of it. But M. Boutroux 
 
 the elder thought it necessary to enlarge. It 
 
 la 
 
io THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 had of late become something of an amusement 
 with him, and the indifference of his nephew to 
 these remonstrances — an indifference only diver- 
 sified by occasional respectful epigrams — exasper- 
 ated him. 
 
 When he had done with the debts he turned 
 to a more serious matter, and with a change of 
 tone informed his heir that the shocking alliance 
 which he had heard of from others must be 
 at once and finally dismissed from his mind ; 
 to which decisive sentence, uttered now perhaps 
 for the fifteenth time upon as many successive 
 days, Madame Boutroux added a singularly de- 
 cisive assent. 
 
 "I require you, Georges," said his uncle in 
 the tone of a judge delivering sentence, "to 
 put the matter wholly out of your thoughts." 
 
 "I have never entertained it," said Georges, 
 gazing out before him upon the shipping at the 
 quays, and replying as he had already replied as 
 often as his uncle had thus spoken. 
 
 " If you have entertained it," said M. Boutroux, 
 senior, " dismiss it for ever from your mind." 
 
 "It has been entertained," said Georges, as 
 wearily as youth would permit him to speak, 
 "to my certain knowledge by .the young lady's 
 mother and brother and by her sister who keeps 
 
THE GIRONDIN. u 
 
 the little coffee-stall near the bridge, I have 
 lately learned that, her confessor entertains it 
 also ; and from what I can make out, my dear 
 uncle, you entertain it more fixedly than any 
 of them. Though why you should do so, since 
 it is not to your advantage but to theirs, I can- 
 not for a moment conceive." 
 
 " Georges," said his aunt, "you are lacking 
 in respect to your uncle." 
 
 " Yes, dear aunt," said Georges, " but still more 
 do I lack respect and even tolerance for the sister 
 who keeps the coffee-stall by the bridge, the mother, 
 the brother, and the confessors—against whom I 
 have a very special grievance." 
 
 " You must not reply thus to your aunt," said 
 M. Boutrpux with severity. 
 
 "I would not, my uncle," said Georges in a 
 submissive tone, " had I not already so replied to 
 the brother, to the sister who keeps the coffee-stall 
 by the bridge, and more particularly to that very 
 odious man the confessor, whom I verily believe 
 to be in expectation of a commission upon the 
 settlements." 
 
 M These are not the times, Georges," said his fj 
 aunt, " in which to ridicule the priesthood." ' 
 
 "I admit," said Georges penitently, "that it 
 was not very chivalrous of me, since the poor man 
 
12 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 has now for some weeks been hiding in a cellar 
 which is the property of the mother ; but you 
 must set against this my considerable courage in 
 speaking so frankly against the mother, who is no 
 better than she should be, the young lady who 
 keeps the coffee-stall, who is no better than she 
 can be, and above all the brother, who I am very 
 sorry to say is a patriot." 
 
 "We do not want you, Georges," said his 
 uncle, " to introduce politics into what is a purely 
 family matter." 
 
 " No," said Georges, " nor need they be intro- 
 duced if we can only keep the brother out of it. 
 A more ardent politician I never met ! " 
 
 After this reply there was a short silence. 
 Georges occupied it in watching a large pilot 
 cutter set out down the tide for the bar under the 
 evening light. He was amused to see the halyard 
 block jam as they put her down stream, and he 
 remarked to himself half aloud, so that his uncle 
 might hear it, that from the way the people on 
 board were handling the sails they appeared to be 
 patriots also. 
 
 "You will not," said old Monsieur Boutroux 
 sternly, " divert my attention from this matter by 
 your jests. Where is the unfortunate girl ? " 
 
 " Alas ! " said Georges with a sigh, " it is my 
 
THE GIROND1N. 13 
 
 perpetual concern that I do not know. From the 
 gaiety and attractions of the place, Libourne has 
 often occurred to me as being the probable 
 sanctuary of her refuge ; or possibly Barsac, for, 
 young as she was, she was always a little too fond 
 of wine." 
 
 " You do not know her direction ? " asked his 
 aunt a little suspiciously. 
 
 "Not for the moment, dear aunt," answered 
 Georges with respect, cutting an apple upon his 
 plate into four quarters, and leaning over it 
 thoughtfully as though the task engrossed him. 
 "Not for the moment. . . . But, oddly enough, 
 she knows mine. I could wish that our responsi- 
 bilities were more equally divided." 
 
 Having said this he pursed his lips, compressed 
 them, firmly enclosed the four quarters of the 
 apple in the pressure of his left hand, and with a 
 silver knife of nice workmanship, the handle of 
 which terminated in a delicately chiselled faun's 
 head, he cut the apple transversely and let the 
 eight parts fall upon his plate. At these he gazed 
 with open and rather sad eyes as upon a ruined 
 world. 
 
 His uncle could bear no more. Whatever 
 entertainment he received from these daily excur- 
 sions, he would not tolerate further impertinence. 
 
i 4 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 " You will find," he said a little grimly, rising 
 up stiffly from his chair and pushing it back from 
 him, while the family etiquette demanded that his 
 wife and nephew should rise at the same time, 
 "that this flippant habit of yours will ruin you 
 with men less indulgent than myself." 
 
 He took the napkin from his neck, folded it 
 carefully, and watched his nephew do the same, 
 while Madame Boutroux made the sign of the 
 cross discreetly upon her black silk bodice, and 
 having done so, smoothed her thin black hair 
 from her forehead upon either side of the parting 
 thereof. Georges was silent. He made for the 
 door. 
 
 " Are you going out again, Georges ? " said his 
 uncle threateningly. 
 
 " My dear uncle," said Georges, looking at the 
 ground, "yes. I am determined to settle 
 matters once for all with the young lady of the 
 coffee-stall, though I confess I dare not meet her 
 mother nor the clerical gentleman whom she 
 harbours in the cellar, which is the property of the 
 family." 
 
 "You know that our friends from Laborde 
 come this evening ? " said his aunt. 
 
 As she spoke there came up from the darkening 
 quays outside a sound of many feet hurrying, an 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 15 
 
 increasing sound, as though a gathering throng 
 had business further on beside the river. 
 
 The foreign war, the prospect of invasion in the 
 distant north, the imminence of some vague but 
 enormous trouble in Paris — these and the rising 
 fever of the Revolution during the past three 
 years entered the minds of all three as that sound 
 reached them, and as the young man stood with 
 his hand upon the door and his aunt and uncle 
 watching him. 
 
 The old man called to mind his nephew's con- 
 nection with the localjaeohins. He had heard in 
 a confused way that some disreputable fellow in 
 connection with that trull — her brother was it ? — 
 spoke too often at their club ... he felt rather 
 than knew that the noise of the R evoluti onjBas 
 notjanlyjsongs and_yisions but must have food to 
 feed it, and, that the rich would furnish the food. 
 He was liberal — he trusJsdJie^ was liberal. He 
 had no superstitions, he hoped ; he was for the 
 nation. He was not an old-fashioned fool : not 
 he ! He was for the King — if the King did his, 
 duty; but he rftmgmhprftH __" rarefiilly (and hadj 
 remembered for three years) that_he was__o£jhfi 
 Third Estate. In his mind, which was so clear for 
 businesT'"anci so confused where passions had to 
 be judged, he mixed up the impoverished young 
 
1 6 THE GlRONDIN. 
 
 Jiobles, the bawling young lawyers with their scum 
 .of a following at the Jacobin Club, Georges' low 
 ! amour — and Georges' going out that night. This 
 \ last was nearest him. On that at least he could 
 decide ; and he believed it connected with all 
 three — anarchy, the nasty acquaintance, and spend- 
 thrift youth. 
 
 " Georges," he said, " if you go out to-night 
 you will never see me again." 
 
 "Yet if I do not go, my dear uncle," said 
 Georges with due deference, "you will have 
 the advantage of my society for but a very 
 short time longer. Events will separate us into 
 various prisons ; for the brother of whom I 
 spoke — her brother, my dear uncle — has certain 
 designs." 
 
 Madame Boutroux gave a terrified look at her 
 husband, but he refused to meet her eyes. 
 
 "In these times," said the old man, his voice 
 rising, "threats of that sort are common. Men 
 use," he continued still louder, "young men 
 especially, the disasters of the State for their own 
 purposes. I forbid you to go." 
 
 " Madame," said Georges, turning to Madame 
 Boutroux, and thus addressing her by a term 
 unusually solemn and not common in French 
 families of his rank, " I do assure you that the 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 17 
 
 Club meets to-night, ... so far as I know, the 
 young lady of the coffee-stall upon whom I was 
 jesting just now is not admitted, . . . she has 
 not suffered the Illumination of the Seventh 
 House, . . . she has presumably no acquaintance 
 with the Sacred Triangle, the two Pillars, or the 
 Thirty-third Degree, yet her brother intends to be 
 present. Madame, he will suggest certain action 
 against this house ; he has heard that you have 
 friends to-night." 
 
 "What are my few friends or my party to 
 him ? " interrupted poor Madame Boutroux. 
 
 "Madame," continued Georges quietly, "these 
 people have the oddest ideas about comfortable 
 houses. He will bring others against this house 
 to-night ; and it is my business," he continued 
 firmly and rather sadly, " to interrupt him." He 
 still held the handle of the door and gazed at the 
 ground. " I propose to do it by persuasion ; but 
 if that fails, then in company with two friendsj, 
 and with my little sword." 
 
 M. Boutroux, senior, was so incensed by the 
 speech thus addressed to his wife rather than to 
 himself— for his tall, straight nephew had turned 
 his back upon him to speak to his wife — that 
 his last answer was in a tone of constrained 
 passion. 
 
1 8 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 "Georges," he said, when the young man 
 had done, "if you go out you go under my 
 curse ; and if you return you will not be re- 
 admitted." 
 
 Georges weighed the matter, and made irre- 
 solutely as though to sit down again. 
 
 "Let him go," said Madame Boutroux, quite 
 white, for she feared the Jacobins. 
 
 M. Boutroux, senior, did not answer, and 
 Georges, without turning to meet his uncle's eye, 
 slipped out of the room, down the broad stone 
 staircase with its gilded balustrade, and when he 
 came to the porter's lodge at the basement asked 
 that the wicket in the big carved oaken doors 
 which gave on to the street might be slipped 
 open for him. Old Nicholas, the porter, who 
 had held him on the day of his birth, smiled at 
 him indulgently. 
 
 " O Master Georges, must you be out againj 
 along the quays on such an evening as this ? 
 The whole place is in a fume ! It is no time 
 for amusement ! " 
 
 "I'm not going to amuse myself, Nicholas," 
 said the young man quizzically. "At least I'm 
 only going to amuse myself by interrupting the 
 amusements of others. Good Nicholas, I'll be 
 back, I hope, within two hours." 
 
THE G1RONDIN. 19 
 
 Nicholas hesitated a moment, waiting for some 
 thundering interjection from the first floor — for 
 the whole household of domestics knew of the 
 quarrel between the uncle and the nephew — but 
 none came. He pulled the latch, and the young 
 man stepped out with his little toy dress-sword 
 at his side, in the full finery of his wealth, walk- 
 ing high in his dark silk and his gold chain at 
 the pocket and his shoe-buckles of silver ; he 
 went as erect as though he were on some 
 military errand. 
 
 The little wicket as it shut behind him seemed 
 to make a louder echo than he cared to hear. 
 He did what he had never done before on 
 leaving that familiar door, he stepped out into 
 the midst of the paved way where now in the 
 quieted evening no traffic ran or passers hurried : 
 he forgot the distant clamour of the crowd, and 
 looked up at the front of the house. It was 
 silent to him. He saw no face and no gesture 
 from any domestic. His people were not watch- 
 ing at the panes. 
 
 He sighed gently to himself and turned to the 
 right to reach the great and noble bridge that 
 spanned the very broad Garonne and formed a 
 sort of triumphal entry on to the crescent quays 
 of the city. He noted that the air was cooler, 
 
20 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 and also that the big clouds of a storm that 
 must have passed far up the valley were drifting 
 eastward majestically across the last light in 
 the sky towards the distant Dordogne and 
 Libourne. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 In which the Girondin talks Politics. 
 
 AT this crisis in the Revolution the bridge that 
 crosses the Garonne had, on the city end of 
 it, two large poles set one on either side of the 
 way ; from these long tricoloured streamers de- 
 pended. Passers-by had attached, in the manner 
 of votive offerings, coins, little handfuls of wheat, 
 and faded bouquets of flowers ; for the Republican 
 attempt — and the masses_ofriie populace were 
 akead^£fipxiblican„,.in feeling — was "Becoming a 
 religion, and was blossoming out in shrines. , 
 
 Georges Boutroux gazed at the poles and their 
 offerings curiously and a little wearily. At the 
 foot of one, in the evening light, he saw a woman 
 wheeling up a gaudily painted stall upon which 
 were glasses and appliances for the making of 
 coffee and the serving of other drinks. 
 
 She was a young woman of the mountain sort, 
 from a hundred miles to the south, very bold and 
 
22 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 careless in expression, with dishevelled, handsome 
 hair ; her eyes were as fixed, as purposeful, and as 
 rapid as a sailor's. They were brown eyes, and 
 Boutroux, remarking them as he approached more 
 closely, remembered that her sister's were less 
 intense and perhaps a trifle more generous. He 
 saluted her in the gravest manner, and she 
 treated him in return much as a bargainer in 
 the market treats a man whom he could quarrel 
 with but hopes before quarrelling to make a 
 profit upon. 
 
 "If you are coming to ask me a question, 
 M. Georges," she said, "I shall not answer it 
 you." As she said this, however, she smiled in 
 a forced but ready manner. 
 
 "That," said Georges Boutroux gravely, "will 
 depend upon the question. I want to ask where 
 I may find your brother." 
 
 " Oh, my brother ! " said the mountain lady with 
 something like humour in her fixed eyes, which 
 were set far apart in her head, and were strong in 
 aspect. " All the world knows where my brother 
 will be to-night." 
 
 "Yes," said Georges gently, "and I shall be 
 there too, but I want to know where I may first 
 find him." 
 
 "Really, M. Georges," she said with the 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 23 
 
 mercantile laugh which hundreds heard every day 
 as they came to the little barrow to drink at 
 evening, "you seem now as you seemed before, 
 more intent upon the conversation of his ladies 
 than on finding him. If he were really angry with 
 you," she added a little menacingly, " you would 
 soon find out where he is." And as she said this 
 her eyes glanced at a spot somewhat to his own 
 right. 
 
 He turned sharply round and saw the young 
 man whom he was seeking. 
 
 The lady's brother was a curious figure. In 
 quieter times one would have said that he had 
 dressed up for the occasion or was on his way to 
 a pageant ; but in moments of violent civil tumult ^ 
 and of foreign war, when the State is invaded, and 
 the most intense of political passions are in peril 
 of final defeat, much may be excused. 
 
 He wore his own hair, not because he had been 1 
 born a pauper (for recent political advancement 
 had given him several francs a day), but because 
 it seemed to him Republican to do so. In his 
 right hand he carried carelessly — as a man to-day 
 carries a pair of gloves — a bright red worsted cap 
 imported from England, and of the sort that was 
 then worn in England by brewers' journeymen, 
 but was used in Bordeaux at that moment for a 
 
24 THE GIROND1N. 
 
 cap of Liberty. Round his neck was hung, as one 
 might hang a locket, a large leaden token upon a 
 leathern string. This token was stamped in 
 strong relief with a triangle, wherein was further 
 stamped the figure of a seated woman. This figure 
 represented Liberty, and it was holding in one hand 
 an axe and in the other a sheaf of corn. His 
 great cloth coat was open at the throat and showed 
 some inches of his hairy chest ; the cuffs of it 
 were turned up as though he had but recently left 
 work, though as a fact he had hardly worked with 
 his hands in the whole of his young life, and had 
 not even pretended to do so since the time of 
 the last National Federation which he had attended 
 the year before in Paris. He was browner than 
 Georges, shorter, but quite as Gascon. His hair 
 also was black, his eyes resolute and determined, 
 and his carriage betrayed that exceptional and 
 virile courage which we associate with the valley 
 of the Gironde — a military race. He wore knee- 
 breeches of common stuff; his calves and shins 
 were, by a curious affectation, bare. Over his feet 
 he had drawn a pair of military boots, and he 
 was foolish enough to carry girt on to him, by 
 way of parade, a great curved light cavalry sword, 
 ■to which indeed he had a sort of right; for he 
 (was one of those irregular bodies of volunteers 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 25 
 
 which the anarchic politics of the time toleratedl/ 
 and even sanctioned. / 
 
 This personage — Henri Sorrel by name, or at 
 least by baptism, but latterly Aristogeiton by 
 democratic adoption, and yet more lately, by a 
 change of judgment, Miltiades — looked at Georges 
 Boutroux without anger but with considerable 
 valour. He asked him what he wanted, calling 
 him "Georges" and using the familiar thou of 
 the French, in a manner which, only two years 
 before, would have seemed to a young man of 
 the wealthier classes of the city, coming from 
 such a person, like a blow in the face. 
 
 Georges saluted with an excessive courtesy, and 
 " thouing " in return, and giving his companion 
 his Greek name with a sonorous accent, said that 
 he wanted nothing more than to accompany him, 
 and to speak with him, as they both walked 
 towards the meeting of the Section — to the Club. 
 
 The plebeian was willing enough, and they 
 went off. As they went, the sister at the coffee- 
 stall called after them with the loud, harsh, and 
 shrill cry that women of the people use. 
 Miltiades looked over his shoulder towards her, 
 but Georges at that moment pulled at his dirty 
 sleeve, so that he turned round again and did 
 not hear. She had wished to warn him. 
 
26 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 "Miltiades," said Georges Boutroux gravely, 
 "do you know I nearly called you Aristogeiton ? 
 It used to be your name." 
 
 "I changed it," said Miltiades nervously, and 
 a little sullenly — they were many together in the 
 body that had turned towards the Club, and he 
 did not wish to be made ridiculous. " I changed 
 it." 
 
 " But why ? " said Boutroux innocently. 
 
 "Well, it began with," Aristo-Miltiades was 
 answering, when Georges interrupted him with 
 reserved sympathy. " Of course," he said ; " I 
 see." 
 
 As the two young men went through the 
 streets towards the meeting-place, others and 
 others again joined them, as disparate as could be. 
 
 A little shuffling old gentleman of the local 
 nobility came up last of all ; he never by any 
 chance met Georges without linking an arm in 
 his and borrowing a little silver — and so he did 
 to-night. 
 
 Two big stevedores from the docks were with 
 him, silly and good-natured, delighted (but a 
 little shy) to be mixing with the wealthy. One 
 of them dug the aged noble in the ribs and hurt 
 him. A pale young Jew who sold books and 
 had keen, rather furtive, and very rapidly moving 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 27 
 
 eyes joined in ; he was a man who really expected 
 something of the new world, and something apoca- 
 lyptical, unnatural, and to his own advantage. He 
 was full of things lurid and dramatic, but he 
 was not sure the war would not be dangerous. 
 A broken lawyer on the make was there also, with 
 a fixed face and a determination to become a 
 master of men — a thing which in his thirty-two 
 most unsuccessful years he had not yet become. 
 A grave young officer of guns was with them too, 
 proud and somewhat sullen. They were a group 
 of nearly a hundred when they reached the 
 hall. 
 
 At the door there was no password ; for though 
 they were all of the Brethren, the meeting was not 
 secret. The Sections were duly constituted ; this 
 was a meeting of the Section, and any citizen might 
 come in. Yet several chose to give a password, 
 flauntingly enough, to a little haggard man that 
 stood at the door, for all the world like a man 
 taking tickets at an entertainment ; and apparently 
 the password that night was " The Human 
 Race." 
 
 Boutrbux, as he passed in, put his hand for a 
 moment on the shoulder of the little haggard 
 man, who looked scared as he did so, and said, 
 " Is the password to-night c The Human Race ' ? " 
 
28 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 "Yes — there is no password — certainly," said 
 the little man, startled out of all knowledge. 
 
 " I'm glad to hear it," said Boutroux. "I thought 
 it might be ' equality ' or ( brotherhood ' or some- 
 thing of that sort. I get mixed." He looked 
 the little haggard man deeply in the eyes. " The 
 human race," he said, "and be damned to it. 
 But bear it in mind. We both belong to it." 
 And with that he went in. 
 
 Several of the group looked at him suspiciously, 
 but he turned to the one who seemed the most 
 intelligent (and also the most suspicious) and said, 
 " Believe me, gentlemen ; it is profoundly true." 
 He went in and took his place on a rough bench 
 beside the others. 
 
 The room was long, low, and narrow : it had 
 served in turn for a small wine-market, for a 
 dancing-hall, and for a place of public meeting. 
 It had latterly been acquired by the city for the 
 regular meeting of this Section. Five dirty oil 
 lamps hung from the apex of its ridgeboard, 
 above the gangway that separated the seats upon 
 either side ; and they swung but little higher than 
 a man's head. Some three hundred men were 
 present, of whom perhaps half a dozen were a 
 little drunk ; the rest were sober. Half of the 
 audience were smoking tobacco in pipes, as was 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 29 
 
 the custom of the populace. One or two of the 
 wealthier people took snuff from time to time. 
 On the platform at the end six solemn men 
 were grouped : three in the careful dress of the 
 middle class, one military and singularly dishev- 
 elled, one a constitutional priest — a country 
 parish priest with a heavy, careless look — the last 
 a tall, fine fanatical figure whose glance and gesture 
 immediately arrested the eye, for they seemed to 
 carry the whole spirit of the Revolution. 
 
 This last one rose, struck the table with 
 a hammer, and asked for the minutes of the 
 last meeting. The old and decrepit noble at 
 Boutroux's side protested. It was a meeting of 
 the Section, he urged, not of the Jacobin Club. 
 He was there as a member of the Section, not 
 of the Club. 
 
 Grumblings began to arise ; several citizens cast 
 doubts upon the interrupter's private morals, while 
 one deep-voiced man in his immediate neighbour- 
 hood compared him successively to a number of 
 insignificant animals. Boutroux pulled the old 
 noble down sharply by the tail of his laced coat ; 
 he tore it, and then, to apologise for an unworthy 
 action, whispered in his ear with something of the 
 license that is permitted to a creditor. 
 
 "I am here for something really important, 
 
3 o THE GIROND1N. 
 
 M. de Riserac. You will do me a favour by 
 not angering them." 
 
 The old man's interruption was neglected. 
 Every man there was of the Club, and the 
 meeting soon proved itself not a gathering of 
 the Section nor a debate between electors, but 
 a strict meeting of that organisation which within 
 two days was to raise Paris in arms, to storm 
 the palace, and conquer the executive power 
 throughout the whole country. 
 
 The minutes were read briefly, passed by a 
 show of hands only interrupted by a drunken 
 man who tried to speak and failed and was 
 treated by the President to a short lecture on the 
 civic virtue of sobriety. Then without speeches 
 and without delay the bureau upon the platform 
 proceeded to business, and the first item read 
 was a list ; it was a list of " men to respond 
 to the call in case of necessity." Name after 
 name was droned out, and approved. Nearly 
 every name was known either by its attachment 
 to the new revolutionary militia forces or the 
 public rhetoric of the town, or by a recommen- 
 dation from the mother society in Paris. The 
 list was approved in its entirety, and every man 
 present knew who could be depended upon 
 when — for every man now knew that fighting 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 31 
 
 was not far off — the people might be called upon 
 to rise. 
 
 ""When that was over, speeches were made, 
 simple and violent enough. They concluded 
 with a short and very fine piece of measured 
 prose which that presiding fanatic had prepared 
 — and worthily prepared. 
 
 As he spoke the audience saw the invaders 
 already upon the march, the treason of the King 
 and of the Executive Government, the garrisoning 
 of the palace, and the necessity for national action 
 and for the destruction of all that impeded it. 
 The careful, classical sentences suited the long 
 tradition of those minds. The rhythm of those 
 phrases sobered the drunkards : they filled the 
 rest with that cold enthusiasm which, in the 
 Latin tradition, is the precursor both of heroic 
 deeds and of crimes. 
 
 The President's speech over, there succeeded 
 short violent interjections rather than harangues, 
 each raising the heat of the gathering in some 
 degree until at last emotion was exhausted, and 
 at a signal from the chair the evening ended. 
 
 Miltiades rose in his place. "I have urgent 
 news before we separate," he cried, and he 
 looked at Georges sideways, but Georges sat 
 tight. 
 
32 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 " Is it information for the Executive ? " asked 
 the President. 
 
 " Yes, information of a plot." 
 
 As Miltiades shouted the word, many stopped 
 on their way out, and several turned as though 
 to stay. 
 
 The President called to them all in his clear 
 tones, " The sitting is over, citizens ; there is 
 no need for any to remain save the Executive. 
 We shall do our duty." 
 
 At this they moved outward again, but slowly, 
 towards the door. 
 
 It was about half-past nine o'clock. The room 
 had emptied. 
 
 Boutroux put his hand a little heavily upon 
 Miltiades' shoulder, shook off the aged noble who 
 tried to cling to him, and said to the plebeian, — 
 
 " Miltiades, I will come up to the table with 
 you and help you. I may be of use." 
 
 The plebeian was not without sentiment. He 
 had always thought it hard to hide from Boutroux 
 where his sister might for the moment be : he felt 
 himself under a sort of obligation mixed, as it 
 must always be with men of peasant blood, with 
 the hope of future gain. Anyhow he felt awk- 
 ward to have Boutroux there. 
 
 "It's secret," he muttered; "you can't help." 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 33 
 
 " Who knows ? " replied Georges pensively ; " a 
 friend is always useful. For instance, you might 
 be wrong and so get suspected. ... I had better 
 come." 
 
 They went up to the table together. The men 
 on the platform were engaged upon another list 
 in a smaller book ; it was closed rapidly over the 
 finger of the President as they approached. 
 
 " What have you to say, Citizen ? " he asked sol- 
 emnly of Miltiades, ignoring Georges altogether. 
 
 Mikiades mumbled a few words sullenly. 
 
 " We know the house," answered the President ; 
 " we have marked it." 
 
 Here Boutroux intervened. 
 
 "I ought to know against whom action may 
 be taken," he said, " if action becomes necessary." 
 
 "Action will be necessary," said the President, 
 speaking fixedly like a statue. 
 
 "Yes," answered Boutroux as easily as ever, 
 "and we must all know against whom it will 
 be taken, or there will be confusion." Then as 
 though he were mentioning a taste in wine, he 
 added, "I have several reasons for saying that 
 I would much rather it were not taken, among 
 other places, against my uncle's house. For 
 instance, I live there." 
 
 The President, looking at him with a complete 
 
34 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 sincerity, said, "If I call on you, Citizen, you 
 must do your duty." 
 
 "Certainly, Citizen," said Boutroux ritually. 
 (He had made young ladies laugh often enough 
 at the absurd term " Citizen ; " he had a killing 
 trick of using it suddenly in drawing-rooms.) 
 
 "Citizen, no just man will suffer," the Presi- 
 dent intoned, "and the property of all, just or 
 unjust, will be spared by the majesty of the 
 People." 
 
 "That is it," said Boutroux gently, smiling 
 at that member of the six directors who seemed 
 to him the coarsest and most human. " I took 
 the trouble of coming up here, before getting 
 into the much fresher air outside, to tell you 
 that my uncle is among the just, and that it will 
 be singularly convenient to me if his property 
 should be quite particularly secure in trusting 
 to the majesty of the People." 
 
 Miltiades looked awkward for a moment, and 
 Boutroux waited for his answer. 
 
 " No one threatens your uncle," said the fanatic 
 President gravely, but he was imprudent enough 
 to add, " Wealth is indifferent to the high indig- 
 nation of the people ; but if traitors. . . ." 
 
 " You have furnished me with the very word," 
 interrupted Boutroux. " The very word ! I had 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 35 
 
 it on the tip of my tongue, and now you remind 
 me of it ! President, the whole point is, that 
 my uncle does not happen to be a traitor ; it is 
 a most important point both to him and to the 
 jusdy indignant populace. It is a major point ; 
 on such a night as this a really capital point," 
 and Boutroux shot a glance at the coarse man 
 in whom he hoped to find an ally. 
 
 The coarse man, who was also good-humoured 
 and loose, burst into a loud guffaw. " Citizen ! " 
 said he, "Citizen ! I verily believe you are a Gaul ! " 
 
 The Cure, who had been to school thirty years 
 before, took a pinch of snuff" and said "Attic 
 salt," twice, but no one understood him nor 
 cared for what he said. The coarse man sud- 
 denly began to laugh and could not cease from 
 laughing ; he laughed until the tears came into 
 his eyes. The fanatic was indignant, but the 
 virility of the coarse man conquered. 
 
 "Citizen Boutroux," he coughed between his 
 gasps, " you will be the death of me ! Ho ! 
 you will be the death of me ! 1 like you as 
 much in a revolution as I did in the wine- 
 cellars before revolutions were dreamed of, and 
 when you were a silly lad of seventeen. Lord ! 
 boy, patriotism can go bail and give security 
 like anything else ! " 
 
36 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 "Exactly," said Boutroux. "The shame and 
 the disgrace that I should feel if my family 
 should prove in any way lacking to the popular 
 cause would make me forget a paltry loss of 
 cash. Still, since we are speaking of cash " — he 
 looked round him — " I am willing to call it a 
 thousand. Will the Section accept such a 
 guarantee ? Shall I sign ? " 
 
 "We are better without signatures," said the 
 President calmly, "and there is no price for treason." 
 
 " Precisely," said Boutroux. " I wanted to add 
 that at the first hint of treason — nay, of cooling 
 enthusiasm — escheat the money. But there is 
 something I should warn you against. My 
 uncle sometimes suffers from delusions, and 
 when he is not himself he talks at random. 
 Would you only remember that on the guar- 
 antee of yet another thousand 1 guarantee him — 
 if he say anything uncivic — to be suffering from 
 delusions ? " 
 
 " Do you warrant his words ? " said the 
 President, turning to Miltiades. 
 
 "I've given true information," grumbled the 
 man. "I might have shown favour, and I did 
 not." He wished that thousand had come his 
 way ; he suspected that if he held firm another 
 sum might find its way to him. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 37 
 
 " A thousand livres," said the President, fall- 
 ing into the old vocabulary and talking stiffly, 
 " is but the wages of an honest labouring citizen 
 for one year ; and to men like you," he added 
 sternly to Boutroux, " it is but the price of a 
 debauch — and Liberty is not to be bought, nor 
 is the Nation. Nevertheless we will accept your 
 guarantee." 
 
 "Especially about the delusions," said the fat 
 man who kept the wine-cellar, laughing again 
 uproariously. 
 
 "Yes," answered Boutroux quietly, "that is 
 the point I most particularly wish to make. 
 My uncle sometimes puts things in such an 
 exasperating way ! " And he sighed. " But I 
 am guaranteeing in that amount that he means 
 well. And here," said he, suddenly pulling out 
 a bunch of dirty notes, " is half of it. And the 
 other half," he said, sighing again as though he 
 were intolerably bored, "on the day after you 
 may have had occasion to visit him." 
 
 The President locked the money into a metal 
 box, wherein he also put a minute of the name 
 and time. Then they went out all in company. 
 
 Miltiades, walking beside Boutroux, looked 
 at him now and again in the darkness with 
 curiosity, with fear, and with some respect. 
 
38 THE G1RONDIN. 
 
 " I had to do my duty," he said. . . . 
 
 Boutroux did not answer, but strode on. 
 
 " I had to do my duty," said Miltiades again ; 
 there was swagger in his tone, and at the same 
 time a hint of bargaining. "My sister . . ." 
 he continued. 
 
 "There now," caught up Boutroux pleasantly, 
 "that fatal topic. . . ! Do you know, Aristo- 
 geiton — Miltiades, I mean — if there is one sub- 
 ject on which my uncle and you might differ 
 (should you do him the honour to visit him 
 with the deputation) ..." 
 
 "You are your own master, and it's all in 
 your own hands," answered Miltiades savagely. 
 "Your house and your uncle and all he has . . . 
 you may keep it or lose it." 
 
 " Precisely," answered Georges. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 In which the Sovereign People play the Fool. 
 
 "tj^OR the next few minutes they strode side 
 by side in silence, the others at their heels. 
 
 The street upon that August night was oppres- 
 sive with a heavier air than Boutroux had expected 
 upon leaving that closed, packed, and heated 
 lamp -lit hall. A complete stillness presaged 
 thunder, and one could just see to the north- 
 ward, above the broad river, high banks of cloud 
 making a black emptiness against the few stars 
 of the zenith. 
 
 They all went on together through another 
 hundred yards of narrow ways, to where an old 
 arch spanned a lane — on the way to the broad 
 quays ; there the little group would disperse, but on 
 their way it was their business to cross through 
 the courtyard of an inn which, in the labyrinth 
 of the old town, the thoroughfare skirted from 
 one arched house to another, and the courtyard 
 
4 o THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 was a rectangle of uneven pavement lying to 
 one side of the kennel. As they came to this 
 through the tunnel of the arch, they heard voices 
 and movement in the recessed courtyard beyond : 
 they saw the glare of great lamps contrasting 
 with the tiny glimmer of the oil lantern which 
 the Corporation maintained slung above that open 
 way, and Boutroux heard Miltiades call over 
 his shoulder to his companions that it must be 
 the Paris courier with news. 
 
 Two or three score men, not more, of every 
 age and dress, were gathered in a little group 
 round the high carriage with its tarpaulin already 
 cast over it and its stack of unlowered luggage 
 strapped upon the roof. The shafts were leaning 
 upright and back against the body of the vehicle, 
 for the horses had been taken out of it. Up 
 on the box-seat, holding a carriage lamp close 
 to a printed sheet, stood one of the postilions 
 familiar to the little crowd under the name of 
 Arnan, and they encouraged him to read with 
 jests and occasional applause. 
 
 The head ostler came out in the midst of this 
 as the men from the Section joined the rest, 
 Boutroux and Miltiades with them ; he called to 
 the postilion angrily to come down, and received 
 for his pains a mixed volley from the crowd : 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 41 
 
 some asking him why he was not in Conde's 
 army, some why he was not with the Prussians, 
 some bidding him go and garrison the King's 
 Palace in Paris. The man was old, grim-faced, 
 and brave ; he answered, as though he were a 
 crowd himself instead of one man against so 
 many, that rather than be a traitor to his King 
 he would drown himself in the Gironde. 
 
 A large fat boy standing near him said : " Perhaps 
 you will be saved the trouble." The ostler threw 
 him to the ground. There was the beginning 
 of a scuffle, when the high voice of the postilion, 
 continuing to read, withdrew the rioters from 
 the beginning of their riot, and the old ostler, 
 muttering a native curse and signing the cross 
 upon himself, went back into the darkness of 
 his stables until it should please his subordinate 
 to finish his patriotic work. 
 
 The postilion continued to read : " There were 
 
 rumours ; the invaders were upon the march ; 
 
 they had not -crossed the frontier ; La Fayette 
 
 had certainly betrayed the State." .... At 
 
 the mere name of La Fayette a dozen of them 
 
 booed so loudly that the renewed assertion of 
 
 that man's betrayal was lost in the noise. The 
 
 postilion held up his hand and continued to read : — 
 
 "It is certain that the Erecutive power will 
 2a 
 
42 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 arm the Tuileries. His guard of foreign mer- 
 cenaries has already received orders to march 
 from Rueil ; several of the Sections in Paris 
 have taken Austrian gold and have betrayed 
 the State and are marching to aid the King." 
 
 At this point in the postilion's reading a very 
 large foolish man, with a face inordinately red, 
 said thickly : " That is a lie ! " 
 
 The postilion showed some pride of bearing. 
 " Gentlemen," he said, " the citizen is drunk ! " 
 
 " That is quite true," said the citizen in question, 
 " and also you are a liar." 
 
 Two of his neighbours fell upon the interrupter 
 and began to hit him rather gently with their 
 fists, saying, " Hold your tongue, fool ; we want 
 to hear the news." 
 
 He was drunkenly gentle with them in turn, 
 but continued to mutter : " It is a lie ! All the 
 Sections are loyal to the Revolution." Then he 
 added a little inconsequently, " and the King 
 is a pig ! " But he did not interrupt again. 
 
 The postilion continued his reading : "The 
 volunteers enlisted already number eleven thou- 
 sand. The Federals from Marseilles rival in zeal 
 for Liberty the Federals from Bordeaux." . . . 
 This sentence he had made up, and it sounded 
 well. There were murmurs of approval. "It 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 43 
 
 is the general opinion," read on the postilion 
 sententiously, "of those best informed in the 
 capital, that events cannot be long delayed." 
 
 " You hear that ? " said Miltiades, in a feverish 
 whisper to Boutroux, as the postilion went on 
 with his news. 
 
 "I do," said Boutroux gravely, smiling to 
 himself in the darkness and watching calmly 
 the mobile, uncontrolled face of the postilion 
 as the light of the carriage lamp picked it out 
 against the darkness. "It is very pregnant. 
 Events ! If that were all, it would be no great 
 matter ; but the devil of it is," he added thought- 
 fully and as though weighing his words, "the 
 devil of it is they will not be long delayed." 
 
 All this while the crowd was increasing. Young 
 lads had run from its outskirts to summon new- 
 comers, until the throng had grown to be many 
 hundreds strong, and filled up the whole of the 
 courtyard, making a packed and rather ill-tempered 
 mass in its darker corners. These late comers 
 only heard the last words — they were a pro- 
 clamation that the "country was in danger," 
 and an appeal to the revolutionary party for 
 volunteers. 
 
 The night with all, and wine with many, had 
 led to exaltation, when — at that most ill-timed 
 
44 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 occasion — a great gilt coach, lumbering, drawn 
 by four fat horses, the two near mounts ridden 
 by postilions in antiquated livery, tried to force 
 its way from the one arch to the other along 
 the thoroughfare. The crowd was too dense, 
 for its passage, and a rumour rose about it. 
 The rumour grew to a loud quarrel ; a bare- 
 armed blacksmith in his leathern apron tore at 
 the hinged door until it gave way. A moment 
 more and the two postilions were dragged from 
 their saddles, there were cries, and after the cries 
 blows. 
 
 The interest of the mob turned from the 
 reader of the dispatch on the box-seat of the 
 diligence to this new adventure. Some said it 
 was the Mayor, others mentioned the name of 
 an unpopular squire who had stuck out for the 
 old wages in the vineyards. Others of simpler 
 mind said that any one travelling in such a 
 splendid coach must necessarily be an Austrian 
 
 spy- 
 Meanwhile, within the coach, women's voices 
 
 shrilly protested against the indignity and the 
 
 danger ; and Boutroux, edging through the crowd, 
 
 observed (and sighed as he observed them) two 
 
 friends of his aunt's, decayed gentry of Laborde, 
 
 down river, whom she affected for their noble 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 45 
 
 name. They must have come that moment 
 from his uncle's house, and Georges smelt danger. 
 
 Round the coach one of those spontaneous' 
 committees which the Revolution had the genius 
 to form at a moment's notice was already chosen ^ 
 its leader was naturally the man who had pre- 
 sided at the meeting of the Section from which 
 they had all just come. 
 
 The two ladies were on foot at the step of 
 their carriage, still protesting in a torrent of 
 complaint : he was gravely putting questions in 
 the manner of a judge, deciding what the proper 
 action of The People should be, and he was re- 
 iterating with quiet insistence, — 
 
 "We must know, ladies, otherwise how can 
 we form a reasoned judgment ? " 
 
 Since they would not answer, but continually 
 threatened and implored by turns, the evidence 
 of one of the riders was taken ; and to the formal 
 question whence they had come and whither they 
 were going, this man answered that they had 
 come from a social evening at the house of M. 
 Boutroux, the merchant, and as for their destina- 
 tion, it was no further than the Hotel of the 
 Shield, in that same city. 
 
 The President gravely told them that that 
 was enough, and that it would have saved much 
 
46 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 trouble had answers been given earlier. He 
 named two men who happened to be roughly 
 armed, one with a sort of crowbar, the other 
 with an old sword, and told them off to hold 
 the horses' bridles and to lead them to that hotel, 
 so that there should be no misunderstanding. 
 
 The coach thus escorted went off, pitifully 
 enough, the packed crowd pressing upon itself 
 with a sort of spontaneous discipline to make 
 way for the vehicle ; the door of the carriage 
 with its dingy coat of arms, torn off its hinges, 
 lay smashed upon the ground ; a man lifted a 
 painted portion of it and denounced the sign of 
 nobility ; the old ladies re-entered their gaping 
 vehicle, and with such dignity as they could 
 command resumed their way. 
 
 When they had passed and the crowd had 
 closed again behind them, it was as Boutroux 
 feared : the President, stepping up on to the 
 three stones which served as a mount to the 
 inn, very gravely announced to the mob that 
 there had plainly been held — or was perhaps 
 still holding — a meeting at the house of Citizen 
 Boutroux, a man suspected by some and marked 
 for a deputation ; that it was the duty of all 
 patriots to see whether the local Austrian Com- 
 mittee had not held one of its political meetings 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 47 
 
 there that night. He said he would not dwell 
 upon the armorials of the carriage, nor upon the 
 unusual hour of its appearance, nor upon the 
 insolence displayed by the occupants of it to- 
 wards the people. He begged them, in their 
 approaching visit to the Boutroux town-house, 
 to respect the rights of a Citizen, but at the 
 same time to remember those of the State and 
 of the Revolution. 
 
 For five minutes more he indulged in the 
 rhetoric proper to the time, and when he got 
 down from his eminence the thousand or so 
 that had now gathered in that small space were 
 already marshalled for an attack. A woman of 
 the market-place who had stopped casually upon 
 her way home to see why so many had been 
 drawn together, thought it proper to strike up 
 the new hymn of the Marseilles men, which, 
 three weeks before, had reached the city. And 
 the whole company of them took in a lurching 
 way the shortest line for the quays and the 
 wealthy houses — and with them went Georges 
 Boutroux, cursing their betrayal, heartily wishing 
 his money back in his pocket, communing with 
 himself and deciding that the best plan in a critical 
 moment was to have no plan. 
 
 As he went, Miltiades, who still stuck close 
 
48 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 to him, nudged him maliciously in the ribs and 
 said : "You will do your duty, Citizen ?" 
 
 "Certainly, Citizen," said Boutroux gravely. 
 "It is the only trade I know." He made it 
 his business, as they went through the narrow 
 paved lanes between the tall old houses, to edge 
 a little to the left on the outer side of the 
 throng. At last, just as the head of the noisy 
 procession debouched upon the quays, he got 
 his opportunity. 
 
 He lurched away from Miltiades' side into the 
 shadow of a small alley, swiftly ran down it, 
 doubled through a yet narrower courtyard that 
 ran at right angles, and continuing his pace and 
 knowing every inch of the surroundings, came 
 out by the broad riverside at the very corner of 
 his uncle's house. He stood near the door of it 
 and saw the company which he had just left 
 approach, swirling and singing, up the quays. 
 He stood where he hoped to be unnoticed, in the 
 corner of the heavy carven porch ; the lamp hung 
 from its gilded and delicate metal ornament above 
 his uncle's doorway, throwing a complete and 
 blinding shadow over the spot where he hid. 
 There was yet another coach standing ready at 
 the door : the last guests entering it were making 
 their profuse farewells and handing their vales to 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 49 
 
 the porter and his wife. The mob was approach- 
 ing rapidly, and Boutroux dared not step out into 
 the light to warn the household lest the first rank 
 of the rioters should note his action and burst in. 
 The great oaken doors were clapped to just in 
 time, the postilions cracked their whips, the coach 
 rattled off swiftly northward along the river. A 
 few larrikins pursued it, barefooted, shouting 
 insults, but there was nothing worse. The mass 
 of the mob as it arrived swarmed round; the lodge 
 window and clamoured for the master of the house 
 and for his remaining guests. 
 
 Georges still lay hid, and watched them. He 
 knew his uncle's temper ; he knew also, what his 
 uncle did not, the temper of these men ; and he 
 knew that his moment had not yet come. 
 
 For some moments the confused noise of the 
 crowd, the song from Marseilles which the heavy 
 market woman continued singing too loudly, too 
 high, and too flat (though many begged her to 
 be silent), the disputes of several as to what 
 should be done, were all at last quieted, and the 
 President stepped out of the half circle of their 
 front in a manner somewhat theatrical but not 
 undignified ; he knocked heavily at the door. 
 
 Through a tiny iron grating, perhaps six inches 
 square, which was worked in the wicket of that 
 
50 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 massive oak, Nicholas the porter asked what 
 they wanted. 
 
 Georges Boutroux, hiding there round the corner 
 of the porch, his nerves all at tension in the 
 shadow, had an odd feeling of familiarity and of 
 home ; he knew that voice so well ! He had 
 known it every hour of his life up to this last 
 hour, and to hear it under such a circumstance 
 seemed so like the odd and inexplicable grotesque 
 of a dream ! 
 
 A man in the mob shouted out : " We want 
 to get in ! " 
 
 The President, more courteously, and in a low 
 tone, reassured the servant. "Believe me," he 
 said, "no such uncivic act is intended." Then 
 in his clear chiselled voice, which could be heard, 
 and which he intended to be heard, by all the 
 nearest of his followers, he added : " We desire 
 to know in the name of The People who is in 
 this house and what their business may be." 
 
 The porter said he would convey the gentle- 
 man's message to his master. He snapped the 
 shutter behind the little grating, and for perhaps 
 two minutes the mob amused itself by most un- 
 civic threats to burn down the house, and by 
 other less congruous proposals, half of which 
 were directed against the personal appearance of 
 
THE GlRONDIN. $t 
 
 its master, and half against that exceedingly un- 
 popular character, the King of France and of 
 Navarre. The intempestive market woman had 
 again begun her loud Marseillian song — and 
 (from the honour borne to her sex) no one of 
 the Sovereign People had yet clapped his hand 
 upon her mouth — when a hush fell even upon 
 her at the sound of windows opening, the grind- 
 ing of the iron fastening that held them, and the 
 sight of M. Boutroux the merchant, coming out 
 into the summer night and standing upon his own 
 balcony, looking down upon the angry crowd. 
 
 I should be doing M. Boutroux, senior, a 
 wrong were I to deny that he felt the dignity of 
 the situation : he was a single figure, the lights 
 were behind him, he was on a fine isolated 
 balcony ; the Sovereign People were below. He 
 had read of such situations. 
 
 The fine and nicely poised figure of the old 
 man, its careful black silk dress, the more par- 
 ticular for such an occasion of ceremony as that 
 which he had just concluded, his obvious courage, 
 and perhaps the secret pleasure he took in so 
 dramatic an occasion, moved his fellow country- 
 men below ; and a lad who threw a tomato at him 
 and missed, was for this act cuffed about the head 
 by his attendant father until he wept with pain 
 
52 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 and mortification — but he should have known the 
 value of the unities in all affairs of the stage. 
 
 M. Boutroux, senior, spoke. 
 
 "I desire first," said he in Very clear and precise 
 tones, which unpleasantly reminded some of the 
 audience of the tones of a magistrate upon the 
 bench — "I desire to know, first, who is your 
 spokesman and under whose order you are 
 acting." 
 
 Above the confused noise of many the Pre- 
 sident, who knew his place, at once replied, and 
 was at once heard, — 
 
 "There is no time for a vote, Citizen Bou- 
 troux, and I speak for those present and for the 
 Section." 
 
 M. Boutroux, senior, looked at them for a 
 moment in the calm dignity of his sixty-eight 
 years and without replying. " I take it," said he 
 solidly, "you are the Section." 
 
 Upon which reply the political lady from the 
 market once more began her interpretation of the 
 Marseillaise ; but this time the respect borne to her 
 sex was of no avail, and an onion dealer put his 
 hand over her mouth so that no sound came from 
 it but a sort of low moaning, and after that two 
 gasps. 
 
 " You are the Section," said M. Boutroux again, 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 53 
 
 as though upon reflection. "Then I must cer- 
 tainly reply to your constituted authority." 
 
 There was no irony in his tone, and, though his 
 mouth was set, there was none apparent in his 
 expression either. This last, indeed, they could 
 but dimly discern, for the light that singled him 
 out in that conspicuous position shone from the 
 room within. 
 
 "May I first ask what the Section requires of 
 me?" ' 
 
 " We wish to know," said the President, stand- 
 ing and looking upward in a manner that he felt 
 to be a little undignified and somewhat at a strain, 
 " who is meeting in your house to-night, and for 
 what purpose ? " 
 
 "The answer is simple enough," said M. 
 Boutroux with grave courtesy, and in a loud 
 voice that rang over all the crowd. "There are 
 present in my house to-night, and at this moment, 
 myself, my wife, my six domestics, my porter, 
 and his wife." 
 
 " Others have been here," said the President, a 
 little menacingly. 
 
 " You are quite right," answered M. Boutroux 
 imperturbably, and still in the manner of the quiet 
 orator ; " there have been in numbers, if I recollect 
 aright, seventeen. In quality, five families of the 
 
54 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 neighbourhood, my friends. We have drunk 
 lemonade and eaten fruit, and we have listened 
 to a little music." 
 
 "We shall require their names," said the Presi- 
 dent, conscious that this dialogue was becoming 
 ridiculous. 
 
 "The names shall be furnished you at once," 
 said M. Boutroux ; " a list shall be given to my 
 porter and shall be handed to you. Have you 
 anything further to ask ? " 
 
 / The President was in a quandary. He had 
 /nothing further to ask, but the mob had some- 
 thing further to do. The President was a leader 
 of democracies, and he managed the thing well. 
 He stepped back a few paces so as not to crane 
 his neck ridiculously, as he had been doing; he 
 turned a little so that he seemed to be addressing 
 the crowd as well as this most unpopular and 
 wealthy man, and then said with due solemnity, 
 but in a loud and vigorous tone, — 
 
 "When we have received your report, Citizen 
 Boutroux, we shall take the document (I beg 
 you to execute it upon stamped paper) back to 
 the Section — which 1 may tell you sits perma- 
 nently to-night after the news from Paris— and 
 we shall there debate upon your evidence. I 
 think we are agreed ? " said the President to the 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 55 
 
 Sovereign People, some of whom made a shuffling 
 noise with their feet, most of whom were silent, 
 and one only of whom, the political lady, shouted 
 a wild approbation, adding the epithet "Pig," 
 addressed to whatever in her mind stood for 
 those social forces which did not meet with her 
 approval. 
 
 There was a silence as though the Sovereign 
 People were ruminating upon the wisdom of the 
 lady's judgment. Then the President continued, 
 in a manner matter of fact and absolute, — 
 
 "We shall leave guards at your door, and to- 
 morrow, at our convenience, we will summon 
 you for further examination. We hope you will 
 be agreeable." 
 
 "You are very good," said M. Boutroux, 
 senior ; " my action will depend upon the cir- 
 cumstances that may arise." Then raising his 
 voice a little, he said: "Citizens of the Section 
 and your Mr. President, I wish you a very 
 good night." He stepped back briskly, turned 
 the iron catch of the tall windows, pulled the 
 curtain across them, and so signified that the 
 political interview was at an end. A large stone 
 came crashing through a pane, and Madame 
 Boutroux within that room, paling with fear as 
 she did with every emotion, jumped. 
 
$6 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 "It is nothing," said M. Boutroux, raising his 
 hand in a majestic calm. "These things are 
 inevitable in revolutions." 
 
 There was no further demonstration. Indeed, 
 had Madame Boutroux known it, she would 
 have been pleased to see that the boy who 
 threw the stone was reproved for his lack of 
 civic sense by the President on the quays with- 
 out ; though that boy was little to blame, for he 
 was but thirteen years old, and loved to throw 
 a stone. 
 
 The noise of their feet was heard tramping 
 off down the quays towards the bridge. There 
 came a rhythm into that tramp, and a deep, 
 robust voice started a marching song. 
 
 M. Boutroux, senior, meanwhile rang a little 
 copper bell upon the table, and one of his ser- 
 vants appeared. He ordered writing materials 
 and sand, and began deliberately to make out his 
 list of those who had been present that evening 
 at his little party. 
 
 Madame Boutroux, with fixed, angry lips and 
 folded hands, watched him, and would neither 
 interfere nor help. Once when a name escaped 
 him, he asked her for it. She told him with a 
 thin majesty that she would have nothing to do 
 with it, and went upstairs to pray at her little 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 57 
 
 chair. She prayed for the saintly Madame Elisa- 
 beth, for the Queen and the Royal Family, for 
 the Bishop and the Clergy, the Pope, the Altar 
 and the Throne, and she found in her book a 
 special prayer for Times of Tumult, which she 
 was careful to recite both in the French and in 
 the Latin, for it had a virtue of its own. 
 
 As for her husband, he sat up quite half an 
 hour longer, adding to the list of names a careful 
 annotation showing how each possessor of such 
 a name was legally entitled to travel, had taken 
 no part in any movement offensive to the Depart- 
 ment, to the Sections, to the Municipality, to the 
 Assembly, or to the Crown. And this was not 
 difficult, for, of all his guests, one only had been 
 a male under the age of forty, and he was a very 
 simple young man engaged in the commerce of 
 wine, and chiefly occupied in learning the English 
 tongue. 
 
 When M. Boutroux had completed his list and 
 his annotation thereupon, he wrote at the bottom a 
 formal sentence of protest against the interruption 
 of his evening, a claim upon certain constituted 
 authorities against the Section, his adherence to 
 the constituted power of the Section, and then he 
 signed the whole, sloping uphill from left to 
 right in a firm, delicate handwriting, " Boutroux," 
 
58 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 and added his civic qualifications, his academic 
 degrees, and the rest. This done, he sanded the 
 whole over carefully, folded it into a neat cachet, 
 and went down himself to the echoing basement 
 porch, where he found Nicholas the porter very- 
 much perturbed, but very sleepy. 
 
 "Give this," he said, "through the grating — 
 do not open the wicket — to whoever remains 
 outside for its reception. Then go to bed. And, 
 Nicholas," he added severely, "admit no one at 
 all. Above all, you shall not admit my unhappy 
 nephew, who is the author of all our troubles." 
 
 His face sterner than it had yet been during 
 the excitement of this passage, the old man 
 turned, erect and almost vivacious, neglecting the 
 good-night which for so many years he had 
 invariably extended to his dependants, and went 
 firmly up the stairs. 
 
 When he reached his room he did not undress. 
 He saw the light in his wife's oratory : it filled 
 him with contempt ; he locked his door, lay 
 down (dressed as he was in his gala clothes) 
 upon his curtained bed, lit a candle, and set 
 himself to pass the few hours of darkness, until 
 the danger might be renewed, in reading his 
 favourite story from Voltaire, which was "The 
 Huron." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 In which the Girondin fences too hard 
 and too long. 
 
 "IV/rEANWHILE, in his dark corner, hidden 
 outside the doors of the house, Georges 
 Boutroux had listened to all that his uncle had 
 said, and to all that the President had replied, and 
 throughout the scene had remained so hidden. 
 
 He did not disclose himself when the President 
 chose two men out of the thousand or so present 
 to mount guard before those doors during the 
 night, and he waited with crossed arms in his 
 dark corner until the mob with its noise and its 
 occasional cheering, and its songs and its growing 
 rhythm and military tramp, had disappeared into 
 the night. 
 
 When they were quite lost, and the sound of 
 them no longer reached him, he strolled along 
 the neighbouring houses, crossed the broad quay 
 to the riverside, leant against the stone parapet 
 
60 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 there overhanging the water, and with his hands 
 in his pockets watched the blank window panes. 
 
 He thought it must be midnight. He had 
 heard a chime a few moments before ; but whether 
 it were the half-hour or the three-quarters he 
 could not recall. All the casements of the house 
 were dark. There was not even a ray shining 
 outward from the usual watch-lamp in the porter's 
 room in the ground floor to the side of the door, 
 so closely were the curtains pulled ; and, pacing 
 up and down before those doors with the regularity 
 of soldiers, two men full of the importance of their 
 mission, occupied and irritated his mind. An 
 oil lamp was swung across the broad street at 
 this point ; its light was just sufficient to show 
 their figures. 
 
 The night was very dark indeed and perfectly 
 still. The thunder clouds that had been rising 
 ever since he had left the hall with his companions 
 of the Sections now occupied the greater part of 
 the sky, and already far off up river one or two 
 vague flashes had announced the approach of 
 the storm. 
 
 Georges strolled across the large paved way, 
 sauntered in his fine dress, with his little sword 
 tilted at his side, and his tall figure taller in the 
 darkness, till he came quite close to those two 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 61 
 
 sentinels whom the populace had set outside his 
 uncle's portal. He stood not ten feet off, watching 
 them for some moments ; they knew who he was, 
 and they therefore neither challenged him nor 
 noticed his presence. Their regular pacing back 
 and forth continued to exasperate his mood. He 
 had paid his money to the Section ; he had bought 
 off such insults ; he felt himself tricked and 
 betrayed. 
 
 Each of the sentinels was armed after the rough 
 fashion of the populace in the Sections : one with 
 a pike, the other with a large old-fashioned sword, 
 a curved, light cavalry sword ; and peering closer 
 Georges saw that this one was — of all men — 
 Miltiades ! 
 
 Georges hailed him, but Miltiades did not 
 answer ; he maintained his solemn pacing to 
 and fro, and disdained all interruption. 
 
 There stood before the house, a few feet from 
 the door, a rounded post of stone, convenient for 
 a man to hoist himself up on if he were willing to 
 sit and dangle his feet at some inches from the 
 ground. Georges Boutroux scrambled up upon 
 it, sat there and fixed Miltiades with his eyes, 
 slowly swinging his glance, pendulum-like, as that 
 amateur sentry stolidly paced to the end of his 
 beat ; swinging it back again as Miltiades crossed 
 
62 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 to the other end of the measure ; and so for half 
 a dozen times. 
 
 Georges again broke the silence. It was as 
 Miltiades was crossing him for the seventh time 
 that he asked him "at what hour he would be 
 relieved." 
 
 The Jacobin did not reply ; he continued his 
 pacing. Georges continued his taunt, raising and 
 lowering his voice as the other distanced and 
 neared. 
 
 "It was a mistake to give money down," he 
 said ; " wages are best paid to the unskilled 
 labourer after his work is done — one can trust 
 him better so. And, by the way, is it not an 
 error to trust common men with arms ? They 
 might misuse them — nay, they might wound 
 themselves. Miltiades, my great commander, I 
 have a mind to sleep in my bed to-night, and I 
 paid for the convenience, did I not ? . . . I seem to 
 remember it that I bespoke an expensive inn. . . . 
 I did not pay with the object that any foreman 
 might pick men from the gutter to play at soldiers 
 outside my window. ... I have a whim about my 
 house, Miltiades — I have a point of honour in the 
 matter of my sleeping-places, Miltiades, as some 
 men have of other more human possessions — 
 I like it to be left alone at night. . . ." 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 63 
 
 Here the sentry was crossing just before him 
 again, and Georges added in a tone that was soft 
 and exceedingly provocative : " When are you 
 relieved ? Must I wait here to discover, or will 
 you let me go indoors first ? " 
 
 Miltiades answered for the first time. 
 
 " I have orders," said he shortly, not so much 
 as looking round on his interlocutor — " I have 
 orders to speak to no one. I am on sentry- 
 
 "Well," said Georges, yawning and stretching 
 his arms, " there's the devil of it ! If I knew 
 at what hour you were to be relieved, I would 
 go off" and have a glass, and come back to speak 
 when you were more at leisure, and perhaps to 
 share your wages . . . (though it is true I have 
 mounted no guard) . . . and then I might slip in — 
 who knows ? " 
 
 Miltiades said nothing, but continued his solemn 
 pace. He was almost out of sight in the darkness 
 and back again for the twentieth time before he 
 was addressed again. 
 
 "Miltiades," said the tall young gentleman, 
 " do you happen to have about you another 
 sword ? " 
 
 "No," said Miltiades shordy, and passed. 
 
 "That is awkward," said Georges, raising his 
 
64 THE G1RQNDIN. 
 
 voice a little with every step by which the other 
 removed. " That is awkward, because I am 
 getting cold in spite of the warmth of the 
 night . . . and I must take some exercise. 1 have 
 heard it said," he continued in a monologue 
 which he modulated for the other to hear as 
 he approached and passed again — "I have heard 
 it said that it is quite easy to fence with a rapier 
 against a cavalry sword. . . . I've even seen it 
 done ! " 
 
 The swart Miltiades was stubborn and continued 
 his pacing, crossing once more before that stone 
 pillar on which Georges sat. 
 
 "And I believe," continued Georges, a little 
 more vivaciously, "that it can be done quite 
 easily ... it would be fun to try." He slipped 
 down from the stone pillar to the ground. 
 
 Miltiades had turned again, when he saw 
 Georges Boutraux, standing in his path, suddenly 
 draw his rapier — the little toy rapier of his 
 evening dress— and put himself upon his guard 
 Miltiades halted. "I have orders," he said 
 plainly, "to cut any one down who tries to 
 enter this house." He looked squarely into 
 Georges' eyes as he had done earlier in the 
 night ; it was evident that he liked playing at 
 soldiers. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 65 
 
 "That is what I want to test," said Georges. 
 "When you cut down a man you cut in carte. 
 If you thrust, it is another matter ; but if you 
 cut in carte I can parry." 
 
 " Don't be a fool ! " answered Miltiades. 
 
 He began his pacing again and turned his back 
 to Boutroux ; he was thinking, as he moved away, 
 what he should do if his adversary proved stub- 
 born, when he felt in the fat of the left shoulder, 
 just below the shoulder blade, a sharp sting such 
 as a man may feel when a hot coal touches 
 him or the flick of a whip. He turned round 
 furiously. Georges Boutroux had pricked him 
 with the rapier. He cut violently at him with 
 a downward stroke, awkwardly enough, and his 
 cavalry sword slipped and spent itself along the 
 other's easy guard ; he almost over-reached. 
 
 "I told you how it would be," said Georges. 
 " I am determined to see whether it is true or 
 not that a rapier can fence with a cavalry sword, 
 for I have always heard that it can." He put 
 up his left hand for a balance, threw himself into 
 the posture his fencing school had taught him, 
 and played with the point of the weapon as 
 though he were seeking some other mark wherein 
 to worry the bull. 
 
 Miltiades growled. "I can kill you," he said. 
 
66 THE GIROND1N. 
 
 As he said it he clenched his left arm behind his 
 back and put his cavalry sword up to the guard. 
 
 "That's just what I wanted to see," said 
 Georges, in the tone of a man who is playing 
 chess. "I don't believe you can. I have a 
 mind to stick you in the gizzard, wherever that 
 may be : it is an organ I have often heard of 
 but never seen. Meanwhile, lest I should murder 
 a brother-in-law before the wedding, or a claimant 
 in blackmail before due payment, or anyhow a 
 good companion though one a trifle importunate 
 for cash, I beseech you to settle it with me here 
 whether a rapier can or can not hold its own 
 against a cavalry sword. If you only knew how 
 often I have heard that issue discussed ! " 
 
 Miltiades was not ready at repartees ; he said 
 suddenly : " I . . ." and lifted his blade. 
 
 "I, on the other hand . . ." said Boutroux, 
 and he lunged suddenly. . . . 
 
 Miltiades parried : he was too strictly occupied 
 to think of calling the other sentry to his aid ; 
 he parried, and immediately after he had parried 
 he thrust too low, and all his weight went after 
 the heavy blade. Georges stepped to the right 
 sharply, the cavalry sword just shaved his hip ; 
 he pointed and lunged home. Georges felt "his 
 blade bend hard, and the cloth give and the 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 67 
 
 flesh. Then the steel went suddenly in — too 
 easily. Miltiades' big body seemed to stumble 
 up against the handle of the rapier and to lean 
 on it ; for a doubtful, suspended moment in the 
 half darkness Georges Boutroux could just see a 
 puzzled look in the fellow's eyes. 
 
 Then the cavalry sword swiped vaguely and 
 angrily in the air, and caught Boutroux a great 
 crack in the rib ; but that sword did not pierce 
 a wound. Boutroux withdrew his blade with a 
 sharp gesture from the cloth and the flesh ; and the 
 hilt pulled away from the other's body, Mil- 
 tiades doubled forward like a man who would 
 vomit. The cavalry sword fell from his hand, 
 held to his wrist only by its leather thong. 
 Then down he went, collapsing into a heap of 
 clothes. 
 
 " I told you how it would be," said Georges to 
 that heap of clothes which still moved a little — 
 he said it sternly. " You ought to thrust with 
 the sword. . . ." 
 
 But from Miltiades there was no answer, except 
 the low noise of a man not in pain, but so weak 
 from something that he could no more : after 
 that there was no sound. 
 
 Georges breathed deeply and went upon one knee 
 to look closely into the dead man's face. The 
 
68 THE G1RONDIN. 
 
 other sentry came up at a run from his thirty 
 yards away in the darkness. 
 
 " What have you done ? " he cried. He was 
 a blond, rather inept young man, frightened at the 
 circumstance, and his tall pike shook in his hand. 
 
 " Don't argue," said Georges shortly. He 
 slipped the leathern thong of the sword from 
 Miltiades' wrist and over the dead man's still 
 limp right hand. He strung it across his own 
 right, grasped the sword, stood at his full height, 
 and said : " I'm a little blown, my friend ! " 
 
 " What has happened ? " asked the young man 
 with the pike again. 
 
 " It is an accident," said Georges, " a very 
 deplorable accident. You see, I belong to this 
 house . . . and . . . and he knew it." 
 
 The young man with the pike looked down at 
 the heap of clothes from which no moan pro- 
 ceeded. He turned the fallen man's face up 
 into the glimmer of the light of the lantern 
 where it swung high above them, from its cord 
 across the street. " Is he dead ? " said the young 
 man with the pike, scared and worried. 
 
 " 1 hope not," said Georges, " I sincerely hope 
 not. . . . But I tell you I belong to this house, 
 and I want to get in." 
 
 The young man with the pike turned sullen. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 69 
 
 " You'll have to answer for this to-morrow ! " he 
 said angrily. 
 
 " No doubt," said Georges ; " but meanwhile 1 
 want to get into my uncle's house." 
 
 He hoisted himself clumsily upon the stone 
 pillar again, his dress rapier lying useless on the 
 pavement, with a few marks of blood upon it 
 still ; and he faced that other adversary. 
 
 "To tell you the truth, Citizen," he said 
 nervously, "I am full of prejudices, and the ',' 
 thundery weather or something else has heated j 
 my blood." 
 
 The man with the pike edged nearer to the 
 door and set his weapon forward doggedly. "You 
 have killed my companion," he said, "and you 
 shall answer for it. But I have my orders." 
 
 "You are not certain that he is dead," said 
 Georges gently, "and I should doubt it. A 
 man does not die so easily . . . but I do fancy 
 he is grievously the weaker for his wound . . . 
 he must have lost blood, my friend, or in that 
 swipe of his he would have broken a rib of 
 mine. As it is, I have a terrible great stitch 
 in my side. I don't know what it is," he 
 added, swinging his feet against the stone pillar, 
 "but there is something I can't stomach in 
 seeing two men mounting guard before my own 
 
70 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 door — or for the matter of that, one man." He 
 felt recovered, and his voice was easy and strong. 
 
 "1 have my orders," said the young fellow 
 with the pike again sullenly. 
 
 "Now the problem," continued Boutroux in 
 the same tone, scratching his nose the while 
 with the forefinger of his left hand, "the pro- 
 blem of the cavalry sword against the pike is 
 quite another matter. . . . There you stand 
 with your great pike, and you have a reach, I 
 suppose " (and he put his head on one side 
 thoughtfully), "of a good six feet from your 
 body, counting to the tip of the unpleasant 
 thing you hold . . . it is certainly awkward ! " 
 
 He slid from the stone pillar, stood up, 
 shook his legs into stiffness, clenched his left 
 fist behind his back, and put the sword on 
 guard. 
 
 "You would be wiser to go before there is 
 trouble," said his opponent as methodically as 
 he could. 
 
 "That," acquiesced Boutroux heartily, "is 
 undoubtedly true ; but it applies to us both. 
 It is always unwise to meddle with edged 
 tools." And he tapped the head of the pike 
 aggressively with the flat of the great sword. 
 
 The other lunged at him with his long, 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 71 
 
 clumsy weapon rather half-heartedly and as 
 though by way of empty menace only ; he was 
 evidently doubtful in the use of arms. "Get 
 out ! " he said. 
 
 " No," said Boutroux, " that is against my 
 inclinations. I want to get in. If you would 
 but go home quietly like a sensible man, carry- 
 ing your pike slantways across your shoulder 
 (if you feel more grandly so), or balanced level 
 (which I believe is the more orthodox drill), 
 nay, if you would but drop it where it is (for 
 it is a heavy thing to carry about) and walk 
 away like a good fellow, what a mountain of 
 trouble would be saved ! " 
 
 " If you do not cease . . ." said the other, 
 raising his voice. 
 
 "Hush," begged Boutroux soothingly, "hush! 
 no shouting, I pray ! My people are old folk, and 
 they detest brawling at night outside their doors. 
 Why, they have reproved me for no more than 
 having myself seen home by one or two jovial 
 companions ! Come, there are only us two, and 
 no one to see. Which is it to be ? Will you 
 cover yourself with glory and be hurt, or will 
 you be off? For it is getting late, and only 
 just now I felt the first drop of rain fall on 
 me, and I fear there's going to be a storm." 
 
72 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 The other did not move. A patter of rain, 
 big, slow, and heavy, began to sound. 
 
 "If only," continued Boutroux, "you had a 
 sword as I have, how simple it would be ! We 
 would waltz round and round each other in the 
 prettiest fashion, and clash and parry and make 
 all the music that butchers make when they 
 sharpen their knives on their steels outside their 
 shops. But that ugly great pike of yours is 
 such an intolerable clumsy thing that I know 
 not how to deal with it." He advanced to- 
 wards the door in one sharp step, and as he 
 did so, the other plunged the pike awkwardly 
 against him, caught the cloth of his sword arm, 
 the shirt beneath it, and the skin, and grazed 
 the surface of the flesh. 
 
 Boutroux was hurt sharply, and intolerably 
 vexed. He swore, not loudly. He cut once 
 and thrust twice, edging round his opponent, 
 then he closed well in ; but that irresolute man, 
 finding his heavy pike in his way at close 
 quarters, had dropped his weapon and was 
 clawing out desperately with his hands as 
 though he would hold the sword. The blunt 
 sword did no work save strike and bruise. 
 Boutroux, more angry as he pressed the man 
 back, struck at his head. The man weakly put 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 73 
 
 up one arm to guard it. Boutroux struck 
 again ; and he felt, or thought he felt, the fore- 
 arm break at the blow. But even as he felt it 
 his own arm weakened — it was bleeding badly 
 at the new surface wound in his arm — and that 
 curious, acrid, sinking feeling which goes with 
 the loss of blood pervaded him in the darkness. 
 Still he pressed upon that other, striking away 
 with his iron, too close and too cramped, and 
 more and more weakly. 
 
 The irresolute, disarmed, and tall young sentry, 
 beaten like a beefsteak for cooking, bewildered, 
 dazed with bangs about the head, and vaguely 
 imagining that war must be a damnable thing, 
 broke suddenly away and ran. 
 
 Boutroux ran after — and was surprised to find 
 how stumblingly and ill he ran. He fell prone 
 in the first few yards ; and as he lay sprawling, 
 and wondering why it was so difficult to rise, 
 he heard the echoing and rapid scamper of his 
 late opponent diminishing further and further 
 off down the empty stoneway of the quays. 
 
 He lay on there stupidly, listening to the 
 
 flying feet with a sort of pleasure, hearing the 
 
 tiny tap, tap, tap grow less and less, but still 
 
 just catching it. He knew, as his bewildered 
 
 mind received pain, wet, and silence all at 
 
 3a 
 
74 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 once, that things were changing. The earth 
 seemed to be moving. He thought for a 
 moment that he was on a ship : he felt woefully 
 sick. He tried to vomit, and failed ; and dur- 
 ing that confusion he was aware that a violent 
 rain was falling. With one doubtful, unfocussed 
 eye he could see the splashing of the drops in 
 the lamplight. Then, for he did not know 
 how long, his mind was filled with nothing but 
 the perpetual crashing of thunder. . . . 
 
 ****** 
 
 He emerged from such a stupor as a man 
 may emerge from an ill-conditioned and unhealthy 
 sleep. The rumbling of the thunder, now more 
 distant, was the sensation to which he first attended. 
 Then he noted that it was lighter, that it was 
 dawn. The storm had washed the streets and 
 the air ; the trees far off beyond the river stood 
 out quite still, and wonderfully sharp. His brain 
 cleared as he watched them, lying there upon 
 the pavement. He shivered, and found that it 
 was cold. 
 
 He tried to raise himself upon his right elbow, 
 and suffered so acute a spasm of pain as he 
 had not yet felt in his life ; and when he raised 
 his head he saw the cause of the extreme weak- 
 ness which had made him swoon. 
 
THE GTRONDIN. 75 
 
 All round his right hand, as it lay limp on 
 the pavement, was a mass of dirty, rainwashed 
 blood ; it was from his wound. He looked at 
 the blood curiously for a moment, tangled in 
 the cut of the cloth ; he had never been wounded 
 before, and he did not like it. 
 
 He turned his head weakly. On the wall 
 above him was a ring, an iron ring set in a 
 staple, such as men tie the bridles of their horses 
 to when they stop and call at a house ; he 
 could just reach it with his left hand. He did 
 so, pulled himself up with an incredible effort, 
 and staggered to his feet. 
 
 " I have read a good deal about fighting," 
 he said to himself. "It is quite, quite different 
 from what I had imagined from my reading." 
 
 He took his right forearm in his open left 
 hand gently and tenderly as though it had been 
 a baby. He dandled it a bit, and moved it until 
 it was somewhat more easy. 
 
 Then he remembered what he had read about 
 the danger of dirt in wounds. 
 
 He very methodically took out his toy-penknife, 
 and with the tiny blade of it he cut off all the 
 cloth that lay above the wound. Then with the 
 same instrument he cut the shirt wrist off as well 
 and flung it from him. He bethought him what 
 
76 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 to do for a bandage. He cut a long strip from 
 the upper part of the shirt sleeve, he staggered 
 across the quay to the riverside, dipped the 
 stiffening wound in the water by way of washing 
 it — and wondered as he did so whether the water 
 were clean enough to satisfy a surgeon — then 
 he wound his strip of linen round and round 
 by way of bandage, and having so done, quenched 
 an intolerable thirst which he suddenly felt, and 
 quenched it most unwisely in the brackish water 
 of the Garonne. But wise or no, the draught 
 revived him. 
 
 He remembered what he had next to do, and 
 he went feebly, haltingly, very unready but 
 determined, towards his uncle's door on the 
 far side of the street some hundred yards away. 
 
 Even in such a dire circumstance Boutroux 
 could not neglect the beauty of that morning. It 
 seemed as though the politics and the violence and 
 the bloodshed of the night belonged to some nasty 
 drunken play-acting which he had seen upon a 
 stage and had followed a thought too vividly. 
 
 The beautiful sweep of the city, the long and 
 lovely crescent of the quays, stood lonely and 
 clean in the early light ; the air was quite lucid 
 since the storm that had purged it, and every 
 mast and yard, and the very details of the rope- 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 77 
 
 work upon the ships, showed like things deliber- 
 ately drawn by some strong and decided hand. 
 
 He felt an odd peace ; he remembered how 
 quarrels even between an old man and his heir 
 belonged to the night. He felt how very differ- 
 ent was every new morning from the fevers of 
 its preceding darkness ; he even began a sort 
 of little comedy with himself: how he would 
 speak to his aunt and uncle of what he had 
 done ; how they would welcome him — for they 
 could not mistake his courage or his devotion 
 to their roof and their door. 
 
 He came up to that door — he was careful 
 not to note under the dawn the body of a dead 
 man. He knocked at the door gently, then 
 louder ; there was no answer. 
 
 He tapped at the porter's window gently again, 
 and again louder. He saw the curtain drawn 
 aside, and old Nicholas' head appearing, a dirty 
 cotton nightcap on his poll, a frightened look 
 in his eyes. Old Nicholas shook his head. 
 
 Georges Boutroux beckoned towards the wicket, 
 and that faithful servant hobbled out to speak 
 to him. Georges did not hear the familiar 
 drawing of the bolt : all he heard was the 
 unfastening of the little shutter behind the iron 
 grating, and old Nicholas whispering to him, — 
 
78 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 " Oh, Master Georges, I have orders ! " 
 
 Weak as he was, the mood of the night was 
 still strong upon Georges Boutroux wounded, 
 and he said, in a voice which was less than his 
 own, and sadly : " What ! Have you also got 
 orders ? Every one seems to have orders ! And 
 you, Nicholas, what are your orders ? " 
 
 " Oh, sir," said Nicholas in a frightened whisper, 
 " I am to hold the door ! " 
 
 "Why," said Georges in his weak voice, and 
 with the sickness coming back upon him, "that 
 was what he said," and he motioned back with 
 his head to the heap of clothes which had been 
 Miltiades. 
 
 The old porter caught a glimpse through the 
 little iron grating and shuddered. 
 
 "Master Georges," he muttered in another 
 voice, "we heard a scuffle, but oh, we never 
 dreamt ! Master Georges, I would give my life 
 for you, I would indeed ! " 
 
 "And damn it all," said Master Georges, 
 mastering his sickness, "I pretty nearly did give 
 it for you ! " 
 
 " Master Georges, I know the master — I knew 
 him before you were born. He will not let you 
 in this day." 
 
 " Old Nicholas, if you do not let me in before 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 79 
 
 the city awakens, and these things are discovered, 
 they will take me and kill me. Do you know 
 that ? " 
 
 " Master Georges, I could not make him under- 
 stand. Master Georges, he said, 'Whoever you 
 let in, even if you let in some one who would 
 parliament from the mob, do not let in my 
 nephew ; for I will never see him again.' Master 
 Georges, he said that you were a traitor and the 
 cause of all his misfortunes." 
 
 " My uncle," said Georges Boutroux in a sudden 
 voice and with a weakening gesture, " is too fond 
 of generalisation. We must respect this frailty 
 in the aged." His mind rapidly surveyed his 
 lessening chances. " Nicholas," he said, " I have 
 no money." 
 
 "Oh, Master Georges," said the old man, "all 
 I have is yours." 
 
 "Why then," said Georges, smiling at him, 
 "let me have it. You shall not in the long 
 run be a loser." 
 
 "And, Master Georges," said the old porter 
 eagerly, " you should have wine if you are to go 
 into hiding, and a little bread." 
 
 " Bread I can buy later," said Georges, " but 
 a crust will do me no harm — and some sausage. 
 As for wine, one can never have enough of it, 
 
80 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 for it makes blood ; and that, you see, my poor 
 Nicholas, I have been uncorking rather recklessly. 
 . . . Only, dear Nicholas, be quick ! " And even 
 as he spoke a company of workmen half a mile 
 away were gathering at one of the barges and 
 beginning to unload. "The moment they see 
 that," nodding with his head backwards towards 
 the body at which he would not look, " the dance 
 will begin. And I was never fond of dancing." 
 
 Old Nicholas hobbled the step to his room 
 with fond tears all over his face. He came back, 
 and through the lifted grating passed a bottle 
 of wine which the young man hid in his coat 
 pocket, the end of a loaf of bread, a hunk of 
 sausage, and a pathetic bunch of assignats worth 
 on their face value two hundred livres. 
 
 " If you'll put your hand through the grating, 
 Nicholas," said Georges, " I will kiss it." 
 
 "Oh, Master Georges, it is I who should 
 kiss your hand ! " said Nicholas. 
 
 "I will remember to give you an opportunity 
 of doing that," said Georges, " upon some later 
 occasion — but whatever you do, do not break 
 your orders. The passion for obeying orders 
 is very strong in Bordeaux just now, and the 
 reputation of the family must be maintained." 
 
 The old man put out a hand like wrinkled, 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 81 
 
 brown, and carven wood through the opening. 
 Boutroux held it and kissed it gently. He turned 
 his back upon the front of the house which was 
 the only home he had known, and went off, not 
 toward the bridge,, where he feared the traffic 
 and recognition, but rapidly to the quayside. 
 
 The many boats that lay there he surveyed 
 critically, though with a drooping and a wearied 
 eye ; he saw one hitched by a looser knot than 
 the rest, and with his unwounded left hand and 
 arm unmoored it. He stepped in, and sculling 
 at the stern with that same whole left arm, his 
 wounded right arm supported in his fob, he 
 gained the further shore. Without turning to 
 see his city or his home again, Georges plunged 
 through the growing grass of the aftermath 
 towards the vineyards upon the low slopes half 
 a mile away. 
 
 In this way did Boutroux begin his adventures. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 In which several Lies are told in an Inn. 
 
 I ""HERE was long grass — not the grass of the 
 aftermath, but the wild, self-sown grass of 
 centuries — in the empty flats just under the spring 
 of the vineyard hills. 
 
 Boutroux lay in the depth of it, contented in 
 spite of the throbbing of his wound. He drank 
 a portion of his wine, and said to himself, " The 
 best of wine will taste sour of a morning." And 
 he wondered what vintage it was, knowing that 
 old Nicholas would have given him the best ; 
 but he could not decide. 
 
 He ate his sausage and his bread. He 
 ceased to care very much, as drowsiness came 
 upon him, either for that through which he had 
 passed, or for the memory of his home, or for 
 whatever might lie before him. He yawned in 
 comfort, looked drowsily with half- closed eyes 
 at the city beyond the river and the tall masts. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 83 
 
 The confused recollection of the night, with its 
 violence and its quarrel and its bloodshed, fatigued 
 him, and at last fatigued him pleasantly, so that 
 he fell into a profound sleep. 
 
 When he woke from this it was already after- 
 noon. The sun was still high, but its light was 
 mellow, and Boutroux woke to feel a mixture 
 of two things : the content that comes from a 
 deep and satisfying slumber, and the angry in- 
 flammation of his arm. 
 
 Then he began to remember. The light told 
 him that many hours had passed, and that it 
 was late in the afternoon ; and he clearly con- 
 ceived what must be happening in the city 
 beyond the broad stream upon that Thursday, 
 the 9th of August. 
 
 He sat up in the grass and peered with close 
 eyes at the very distant houses, as though he 
 hoped over such a stretch of land and water 
 to make out what was happening there. He 
 thought how, long before this, that which had 
 been Miltiades would have been discovered. The 
 Section would have met ; the Club was not slow 
 to action ; the city authorities would have had 
 to take cognizance of the death ; and the police 
 would be moving, too. 
 
 He wondered what witnesses they had found; 
 
84 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 where they would think that he had taken his 
 flight ; whether the boat would be missed — he 
 had had the sense to cast it adrift. He only 
 hoped it had gone far down the stream, and 
 had not caught near by in the reeds of the river 
 bank. He wondered whether the Section or the 
 authorities had entered that house to take the 
 depositions ; whether old Nicholas would lie or 
 be silent, or would blurt out the story of his 
 escape. He could see his uncle, whom the city 
 respected and feared for his wealth, sitting digni- 
 fied at his table and answering with disdain 
 whatever questions might be put to him, and 
 repudiating him, Georges, and leaving him to 
 his fate ; he had no doubt of that. Then he 
 began wondering where news would be sent, 
 and by whom. One thing grew clearer and 
 clearer to him as these appreciations of danger 
 succeeded each other in his mind : he must get 
 off northward by the by-paths. And he only 
 wished he knew more of the countryside. 
 
 As he so planned his wound began to pain 
 him again and to throb. He attempted to re- 
 move the bandage upon it. It had dried, and 
 he found the pain of tearing it off excruciating. 
 He set his teeth, pulled hard, and partly opened 
 the wound again. He was interested as well as 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 85 
 
 suffering: he thought it rather grand to have a 
 wound. It was evident to him that he must 
 get it bandaged by some one who understood 
 such things, and he reflected a little grimly that 
 he might understand them himself before he 
 had ended his adventures, for wounds were 
 becoming common, and times were worsening. 
 
 "I will wait," he murmured to himself, "until 
 I come across some more of this civilian fighting, 
 and nose out the doctor of it. But meanwhile, 
 wounds make one look a trifle too partisan." 
 
 As he was so thinking and speaking to him- 
 self, he heard behind him the creaking of a 
 country cart, drawn by two stout, slow oxen, 
 their heads bent beneath a heavy yoke. He 
 saw seated in the cart a very small, weazened 
 old man, with thin, grey hair under an extremely 
 dirty felt hat, shaven cheeks and chin, and little 
 eyes as sharp and bright as augers. 
 
 The cart stopped, and its driver asked Bou- 
 troux, guessing by his fine dress that he must 
 have a watch upon him, what was the time 
 of day. 
 
 Boutroux had almost pulled out the little 
 gold watch with his name engraved on it, when 
 he thought better of the matter. 
 
 " I cannot tell you," he said, shaking his head. 
 
86 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 " I have had a most unfortunate adventure, and 
 my valuables have been taken from me." With 
 that he sighed, and continued to nurse his 
 wounded arm. 
 
 The old man looked at him keenly. "Where 
 did this happen to you ? " he said. 
 
 " On the river," said Boutroux readily. " My 
 people are already many miles up-stream. We 
 \ were passengers from Nantes. My father and 
 his family were still aboard and the ship anchored 
 in the stream, when I offered two fellows some- 
 thing to row me along in the early morning to 
 see the city from the water. They set upon 
 me, and in the struggle I was wounded, as you 
 see. They stunned me, and put me ashore here 
 upon the country side of the stream." 
 
 The old peasant continued to gaze at him. 
 "Where does your father's ship lie?" he asked. 
 
 "It is not my father's ship," corrected Bou- 
 troux gently. " He is only a passenger upon it ; 
 and I think," he added doubtfully, shading his 
 eyes from the declining sun with his left hand 
 and gazing up-stream to see if there were any- 
 thing there in the semblance of a vessel — "yes, 
 I think that is her moored nearest to the 
 bridge." 
 
 " What is her name ? " said the peasant. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 87 
 
 " The Helene," answered Boutroux briskly, " the 
 Helene of Nantes — it is on her stern. If you 
 are going that way you shall take me there, and 
 I will see that you are rewarded." 
 
 The old peasant shook his head. " I'm not 
 going to the city to-day," he said, " money or 
 no money. There's been fighting. . . ." He 
 looked doubtfully at the young man, and added, 
 " I will take you for one livre, if you can promise 
 me that sum, to the nearest village upon the 
 highroad, and there you can fend for yourself." 
 
 Boutroux remembered his tale. " My valu- 
 ables, as I told you, have been taken from me, 
 but I am good for more than a few livres 
 anywhere on the highroad," he said. " The 
 master of the post-house will know me, for 
 one. 
 
 The old peasant communed with himself and 
 risked it, and Boutroux clambered up by his 
 side. 
 
 The jolting of the cart over the rough vine- 
 yard way caused him no little pain in his swollen 
 arm. He found the very slow progress of the 
 vehicle and the silence of the old peasant, still 
 gazing over his oxen's heads and uttering an 
 occasional rustic cry to encourage them, exas- 
 perating. The ride was not six miles, but it 
 
88 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 consumed three hours, and it was already evening 
 and the sun had set when they saw before them 
 the low- tiled roofs of a village. Their strict 
 alignment told Boutroux that they stood along 
 the great highroad. It was dark by the time 
 the ox -cart had paced its humble way to the 
 old peasant's barn in the main street. 
 
 Boutroux stepped down in the half-light, and 
 the little old man, fixing him steadily and by 
 no means politely with his gaze, said, — 
 
 " What about that livre ? What about that 
 franc?" 
 
 " Old man," said Boutroux, " will you give me 
 half an hour to find it in ? " 
 
 " No," said the old man. 
 
 " Yet you will get it so and in no other way, 
 for I know a man in this village." 
 
 "I will come with you," said the old man 
 simply. 
 
 The necessity of hiding his name and progress, 
 and yet the necessity of paying off so impor- 
 tunate a hanger-on, and the necessity of main- 
 taining his first story of a robbery, between them 
 troubled Boutroux not a little. An idea struck 
 him. 
 
 "Will you let me find it if I promise you 
 two?" 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 89 
 
 The peasant shook his head. 
 
 " Will you let me find it if I promise you one 
 silver scutcheon ? " 
 
 " No," said the peasant, " I must follow you 
 and get my livre." 
 
 " Very well," said Boutroux triumphantly, " you 
 shall learn now that all this was to test you. For 
 I have the money upon me, as you shall see." 
 And fishing out the assignat, he paid it in the 
 other's palm, trusting to an argument which should 
 cover his tracks. 
 
 But the old peasant did not budge. He looked 
 carefully at the inscription in the light of a neigh- 
 bouring window, stretched the paper, pocketed it, 
 and said steadily, — 
 
 " Then what you told me was a lie ? " 
 
 " It was," said Boutroux cheerfully. 
 
 " How did you come by your wound ? " asked 
 the old man. 
 
 "Father," replied Boutroux, with something 
 threatening in his voice, "if you ask me how I 
 came by my wound or catechise me further, or by 
 so much as half an inch show that curiosity in my 
 movements which I do not choose to gratify, I will 
 indeed show you how I came by my wound, and 
 that in such a manner as to give you what I gave 
 the man who gave it me. Believe me, father, 
 
9 o THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 when I have argued the matter out with you so, 
 you will understand it more thoroughly." 
 
 The little old man was silent. He said, — 
 
 " I believe you are a bad son ; I believe you are 
 a wastrel. This matter shall be looked into." 
 
 He went to his oxen's heads and began backing 
 them into the barn, and Boutroux, not allowing 
 himself to exaggerate his pace, though he would 
 have given much to run off and be free from this 
 chance enemy, sauntered up the great road which 
 the village lined on either side ; as he went he 
 raged in his heart. It seemed as though every 
 one were the enemy of the unfortunate, and so 
 raging inwardly he went on till he came to the 
 extreme end of the street and saw there the sign 
 and lights and heard the noises of an inn. 
 
 " In an inn," he thought, " one may always find 
 diversion and sometimes refuge. An innkeeper 
 is an important man in such a place : he will be 
 the postmaster as well, and if I make it worth his 
 while he will protect me from any insolence." 
 
 With that in his mind Boutroux sauntered into 
 the main room of the inn, lifted his hat — crumpled 
 with the night's adventure and with his sleep in 
 the grass — and called for a mug of wine. 
 
 He was seated in a dark corner, some feet away 
 from the half-dozen or so who were gathered in 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 91 
 
 the room. He leant his head on his hand to shade 
 his face from the distant lamp. Soon the wine 
 was brought him by the postmaster himself, and 
 Boutroux, watching that man's not kindly face, 
 beneath the shadow of his hand, asked if there 
 were any news of the city. 
 
 " Oh yes, news of a sort," said the postmaster, 
 eyeing him and his torn, muddy finery, his tousled 
 head, and his tired face suspiciously, but at the 
 same time hoping to entertain a customer who, 
 however bedraggled by weather or accident, was 
 by his dress apparently wealthy. "There was 
 trouble last night . . . it's led to more to-day." 
 
 " What happened ?" asked Boutroux, sick within 
 himself in his anxiety for the reply. 
 
 "I don't take sides," said the postmaster, hesi- 
 tating ; " I'm a public servant ; I keep this inn, 
 and I trust I serve my customers faithfully. And 
 the King also." 
 
 At the word "King," several in the company 
 laughed. The postmaster reproved them. 
 
 " I know my duty," he said ; and then he added 
 in a lower tone to Boutroux, "You mustn't mind 
 my questions ; the authorities have sent a list of 
 them from the city ; they're looking for a man 
 who's wanted ; and I've had to get every one to 
 sign as a matter of form since the coach came in." 
 
92 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 He was silent for a moment as he drew from his 
 pocket a sheet of paper — a printed form half filled 
 in with writing. He looked at it, and then closely 
 at the young man again. " What is your name ?" 
 he asked. 
 
 " Marchand," answered Boutroux readily, "Mar- 
 chand, Victor. I was coming from Saintes, where 
 my father is Procurator. He sent me in our 
 carriage to reach Bordeaux this evening, but we 
 had a spill. I walked on here to get a relay, 
 but I shan't go further to-night ; I shall sleep 
 here." 
 
 " Oh ! " answered the postmaster ; he was re- 
 lieved that this suspicious guest should sleep at 
 the inn ; it gave him time to decide about some- 
 thing. Meanwhile he reached down a great book, 
 opened it at a dirty page full of scrawls, and 
 pushed it towards Georges. " Sign here," he said. 
 
 Georges, mastering the pain in his forearm, 
 signed with his uncertain right hand, " Marchand, 
 Victor." And the book was replaced. 
 
 " What was the trouble in the city ? " he said 
 quietly to the postmaster. 
 
 " I tell you I don't take sides," said that func- 
 tionary again. 
 
 A short, good-natured, low-browed young fellow 
 in a rough cotton shirt, with a dirty stuff jacket 
 
THE G1RONDIN. 93 
 
 tied round his neck, his arms out of the sleeves, 
 broke into a loud laugh. 
 
 " You are too squeamish," he said. " You 
 were ready enough before the gentleman came 
 in. Fact is," he went on, looking partly in envy 
 and partly in jest and partly with a sort of spite 
 at Boutroux's ruined smart clothes, " they've been 
 un-nesting some aristo's in the city." 
 
 " When ? " said Boutroux gently. 
 
 "Last night," sneered the young man. . . . 
 " And to-day, good work ! " 
 
 "That's not honest business," broke in the 
 postmaster hurriedly, "and I won't have politics 
 in my house. There's been too much already ! " 
 
 A wealthy-looking peasant, elderly and solid, 
 contributed his view. " It is our business to 
 get the murderer," he said. 
 
 " Of course," said the innkeeper nervously. 
 
 " Oh ! the Club'U see to that," said the young 
 man who had spoken first. " It's their man was 
 killed — the man who- killed him was a spy — and 
 the old devil who sent him was at the back 
 of it." 
 
 "We've no proof of that," said the peasant 
 judicially. 
 
 " Well," said the young man, " the * authorities ' 
 you're so keen on may catch the assassin first ; 
 
94 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 but I'll put my money on the Club — they're all 
 over the country for him." 
 
 Two grooms who were present nodded in 
 assent, and a gentleman in rather subdued clothing 
 and with a worried face — a lawyer, one would say 
 by his appearance — who was eating an omelette 
 and drinking a glass of wine at a more distant 
 table, looked up furtively. 
 
 The young man added : " And I hope they 
 scrag the old devil too ! " 
 
 One of the grooms spat on the ground to 
 relieve the pipe which he was smoking, puffed 
 at it twice, and said, — 
 
 " Old Boutroux, to hell ! " 
 
 The other nodded again, and said : " Yes, 
 and his wife." 
 
 " Do you know them ? " said the young, 
 low-browed man in the shirt, glancing suspiciously 
 at Georges. 
 
 " Yes," said Georges frankly, " I do. I know 
 them well. It was only quite a short time ago 
 that I was in their house. I should be sorry 
 if anything happened to them." 
 
 " Monsieur knows perfectly well," said the 
 innkeeper and postmaster rapidly, " that these 
 men who are speaking are worthless. Pay no 
 attention to what they say, sir. They speak and 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 95 
 
 imagine horrors. Monsieur Boutroux is a good 
 Patriot ; he has repudiated his nephew, sir. It 
 was his nephew who did it ... a spy, sir, a man 
 in pay of the Austrians." 
 
 "He killed an honest working man worth ten 
 of him," said the elderly peasant. 
 
 Boutroux smiled serenely at them all. 
 
 " Your opinions are various, gentlemen ! " he 
 said. " It seems," he added, turning to the 
 innkeeper, "that there's been a murder, and the 
 police want the murderer ? " 
 
 The innkeeper nodded. 
 
 " Aye ! " broke in the young labourer savagely, 
 "but the Club want him now, and they'll get 
 him — he was one of their own — the dirty traitor ! " 
 
 " He was a spy," repeated the groom. " So 
 was his old devil of an aunt ; and she hid priests, 
 and he was a Jesuit himself ! " 
 
 Again the innkeeper begged for peace. " Don't 
 hear them, sir ! " he said to Georges. " They're 
 scum — ignorant scum ! At least I can answer 
 for it in the case of my two grooms. As for that 
 third fellow," he said contemptuously, jerking his 
 thumb at the young workman in the shirt, " I can 
 tell you less, for he has only been a journeyman 
 with me now for a week. We all respect 
 Monsieur Boutroux here — we are most concerned 
 
96 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 for him in his affliction for the worthless 
 heir." 
 
 " Go easy, master," said the young workman 
 good-humouredly. " The gentleman wants to 
 . learn." 
 
 " Exactly," said Boutroux. " I have not been 
 to Bordeaux since six weeks ago, and I should 
 be sorry if anything had happened to my old 
 friends." 
 
 "Oh, nothing has happened to them," said 
 the groom, spitting again. "What ever does 
 happen to the rich ? " 
 
 " You might be more gracious to the gentleman," 
 said the postmaster. "One would think he had 
 done you an injury ! " 
 
 The groom then added a little more civilly : 
 "It's what they did to the People, that's what 
 puts our backs up." 
 
 " But hang it all," said Boutroux with an 
 easy laugh, " what did they do ? What's it all 
 about?" 
 
 " Only killed one honest man by treachery, 
 and would have killed a dozen others," sneered 
 the groom. 
 
 " Oh, nonsense," said Georges easily ; " I know 
 the Boutroux well. Why, the old gentleman and 
 his wife don't go about killing people." 
 
THE GIROND1N. 97 
 
 "Do not believe what they say, sir," said the 
 postmaster for the third time, in an agony lest he 
 should lose wealthy custom. " They are worthless 
 hangers-on and corner boys, these loafers of mine ; 
 they repeat anything they hear." 
 
 "Well, there was a man dead anyhow," said 
 the groom, leaning his face forward angrily and 
 showing his teeth, " because I saw him." 
 
 "Yes," said his companion, "and I saw him 
 too, and 1 saw what he was killed with." 
 
 The postmaster was again about to intervene, 
 but Georges put up his hand. 
 
 "Pray, sir," he said, "let me hear the story 
 out. It is of a natural interest to me. Madame 
 Boutroux was one of my own aunt's few friends, 
 and my own uncle has spoken most highly to 
 me of M. Boutroux since 1 was quite a child. 
 I think it true to say that my uncle thought 
 M. Boutroux not only a good but a great man." 
 
 Said the groom : " It doesn't take long to 
 tell. They live in the Section of the Great Bridge ; 
 the Section heard that they were in a conspiracy, 
 and that the committee were meeting in their 
 rooms only last night, and that arms were stacked 
 in their cellars. They sent a deputation to see 
 the old traitor ; he refused to see them or to 
 speak to them. Just as the deputation was 
 
98 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 leaving the door, he appeared on the balcony and 
 shot at them, hitting a large number, including 
 a woman, a Patriot. I have seen her myself, and 
 she told me of it. When they had gone, one 
 man was missed. In the morning they sent 
 to fetch him, and found him lying dead outside 
 the door. That is the news." 
 
 " Dear me ! " said Georges, betraying an in- 
 creasing interest. " So the man was shot ? " 
 
 The groom nodded. 
 
 " No, he wasn't," said his companion ; " he was 
 stabbed." 
 
 "He was shot, I tell you," said the first man 
 angrily. 
 
 "And I tell you," said the other equally 
 positively, " that he was stabbed" 
 
 " And I tell you both," said the young artisan, 
 "that you are fools : he was stuck with a rapier. 
 I saw the wound, and so did many of the crowd." 
 
 "There was a crowd, then, when you left the 
 city ? " said Georges, indifferently. 
 
 "Aye," said the young workman, "it was 
 about two hours ago when I left. There was 
 a large crowd roaring round the house. Don't 
 listen to what they say," he added, shaking his 
 head over his shoulder towards the grooms. 
 "They've got hold of this morning's nonsense. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 99 
 
 I'm telling you what happened. It was a porter 
 at the quays. His sister keeps a coffee-stall 
 there, and he's got another sister dancing at 
 Libourne in the theatre there." 
 
 " I thought so," murmured Georges. 
 
 "You thought what ?" asked the artisan sharply. 
 
 "Why, I thought," said Georges quickly, "it 
 would be some poor fellow of the People who 
 had suffered. It is always so." 
 
 " It is," said the young workman, to whom 
 they were all now listening as the latest bearer 
 of the most authentic news. " But it wasn't 
 old Boutroux' s own act, nor his wife's. Some in 
 the Section went and apologised to them to-day 
 at three o'clock, and they're going to give old 
 Boutroux a civic crown. He's subscribed for 
 the volunteers. He's all right. He's got a dirty 
 dog of a nephew who used to go about with 
 the Austrian party ; got above himself — had 
 himself called * de ' Boutroux ; and then he would 
 pretend to be hand and glove with the Section. 
 Oh, he was rare ! That's the man that killed 
 the poor fellow. . . ." The workman pursed 
 his lips and added the syllable, " Poz' ! " 
 
 " Yes, that'll be him," said the grooms. 
 
 " I don't like to believe it ; I knew the little 
 cuss," said Georges. " He used to borrow money, 
 
ioo THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 and he drank a little, but I don't think he'd kill 
 a man." 
 
 " That's the one," repeated the young workman, 
 striking his hand on his knee conclusively ; " that's 
 him ! " 
 
 The two grooms nodded. The postmaster said 
 sententiously, — 
 
 " Well, one hears many different stories from 
 different people, sir, doesn't one ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Georges, as though he only half 
 heard ; he was thinking rapidly and hard — but 
 as yet he had no plan. 
 
 The postmaster leant over to Georges and 
 whispered : "The fact is, sir (since you know 
 the family, I may as well tell you), it's the 
 King's party who are hottest ! They don't believe 
 the young man did it — but they're down on 
 him. They say he was a dirty fellow to join 
 the Jacobins, seeing his birth and all, and they're 
 keener on him than any ! We've got one here, 
 sir, in the town : an old colonel, retired — says 
 he knows him. He won't let him go if he 
 sees him ! " 
 
 " No ?" said Georges indifferently — and suddenly 
 alive to a new peril. 
 
 But even as he said it the old man of the ox- 
 cart came shuffling in and asked for wine. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 101 
 
 The old man's glance was furtive. He touched 
 his hair as ritual bade, and bowed, as ritual also 
 bade, to each of the company, rheumatically ; he 
 had not yet seen Georges. The innkeeper moved 
 to greet the newcomer. Georges Boutroux rose 
 stealthily in his corner, and muttering to himself, 
 " It never rains but it pours ! " he began to creep 
 by inches towards the neighbouring door. 
 
 The young workman was looking down at 
 the floor, swinging his hands between his knees ; 
 the two grooms were gazing at the small cooking 
 fire in the great open chimney — small as it was, 
 it was oppressive in that weather ; the lawyer- 
 looking man was untying the napkin from his 
 neck, having finished his meal : for the moment 
 no one was looking at Georges. 
 
 He was up ; he was out of the door quite 
 silently, like a ghost, slipping behind his host's 
 back ; he was out the room in the winking of 
 an eye, and already he had formed his plan. 
 
 He had seen outside the inn a chaise with lamps 
 lit and hood up, and an ostler hooking the two 
 horses' traces to the car. He divined that the 
 lonely lawyer-like gentleman who had just com- 
 pleted his meal and seemed in some terror of 
 democracy was on his way north. Georges' 
 plan matured as he crept into the passage. He 
 
102 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 marvelled to find his mind working so quickly. 
 He thought to himself, " It is a pity my uncle 
 did not make me a solicitor or a thief, or some- 
 thing of that kind ; but I myself did not know 
 my own aptitudes." 
 
 He slipped up the shadow of the house towards 
 the stables. 
 
 It was as he imagined ; in a little harness-room, 
 under the light of a swinging lamp, a postilion 
 in shirt and drawers was drawing on his riding- 
 breeches ; his yellow jockey cap and smart blue 
 coat lay ready by him, as did his whip and gloves 
 and his two jack-boots. 
 
 Boutroux came into that little room displaying 
 in his outstretched fist a bunch of notes, and as 
 he did so, said to the astonished fellow who 
 stood ready to curse or cry out, — 
 
 " One hundred livres ; do you see ? If you 
 will listen to me you will in a few moments be 
 worth one hundred livres. If you interrupt me 
 you will not have one." He pulled the assignats 
 forth in a wad, got the man right in the eye with 
 a steady look, and continued, " You are rider to 
 the chaise to-night, and your post is Mirambeau." 
 
 The postilion, full of mystery and tasting 
 adventure, said yes. He was a blue-eyed, tow- 
 headed boy of perhaps eighteen years. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 103 
 
 " Would you put your foot out that I may 
 measure it with mine ? " said Georges rapidly. 
 The postilion did so. Georges' foot was a little 
 the smaller. "I will keep my own boots," he 
 said. 
 
 "I will dress in your clothes," said Georges 
 in a rapid measure, " and you will dress in mine. 
 See, in this coat of mine, I put this hundred 
 livres. I will put on your clothes and cap, and 
 walk out to the chaise in your clothes and mount. 
 You shall follow me to see fair play. You shall 
 follow in your shirt sleeves. I shall be holding 
 my own coat with the hundred livres in it. You 
 will hold the two horses' heads. In your own 
 interests, you will not let them go until I hand 
 you that coat, and also in your interests, and as 
 you desire to keep what is in it when you have 
 it, you will let the horses go. Do you under- 
 stand ? It is a check on either of us cheating — 
 my family are in commerce, and I have learned 
 such ways." 
 
 The postilion nodded. He did not understand, 
 and he did not care. A hundred livres was an 
 overwhelming sum, and he saw it there with his 
 own eyes, staring him in the face. 
 
 The machinery of the transfer was perfected. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 In which a Postilion goes Mad. 
 
 AT the door of the stable where it gave upon 
 the street, Boutroux, dressed in the pos- 
 tilion's clothes, with the postilion's large, peaked 
 hunter's cap drawn low over his eyes, and affect- 
 ing the postilion's swagger, advanced towards his 
 mount. The nervous professional man who had 
 been so silent during the altercation at the inn 
 was already hidden in the depths of the chaise, 
 for the showery thundery weather which still 
 threatened had caused his host to put up the 
 hood of it. 
 
 Boutroux mounted, with his discarded coat in 
 his hand. The fellow he had looted was standing 
 in his shirt sleeves holding the horses. He took 
 the coat, and let the horses go. 
 
 Boutroux caught the reins of the led horse 
 in his right hand, holding that hand gingerly 
 against his side, and wondering how the wound 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 105 
 
 would fare if the led horse pulled. But these 
 old hack horses were like circus horses for 
 training, he reflected, and like feather beds for 
 slackness ; and as soon as he was out in the 
 darkness he would take the reins of both in his 
 left hand. 
 
 He was supposed to know the road; at least, 
 no instructions were given him. Georges had 
 come from the north some half-dozen times in 
 his young life, and he knew that his next stage 
 would not be further than Mirambeau, and that 
 there his fare would sleep. But he also knew 
 that at Mirambeau there would be lights, and 
 men acquainted with the work, and a dozen 
 stable - fellows, perhaps, too much inclined to 
 question a postilion. He had no intention of 
 reaching Mirambeau. 
 
 It was perhaps half-past nine when he heard 
 
 the order to start. Hardly was it given when 
 
 the master of the house shouted after him an 
 
 order to stop for some further directions or 
 
 other which he had forgotten. Boutroux suddenly 
 
 spurred the horse he was riding, the old thing 
 
 bolted forward, and the light and rather rickety 
 
 chaise was ofF at top speed, rolling dangerously 
 
 upon the paved highroad. 
 
 To play the postilion is not an easy thing. 
 ia 
 
106 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 It is a trade by itself — half a gunner's and half 
 a groom's. It has to do with horses — that is bad 
 enough ; but also it involves some knowledge 
 of the road. To play it as Boutroux desired 
 to play it needed much more ; it needed a 
 knowledge of things off the road as well, for 
 on that main road he was determined he would 
 not remain. He knew too well what might soon 
 be behind him ! Once or twice as he sped on 
 he thought that he heard some cry from his 
 fare. He still spurred steadily forward, not 
 sparing his cattle at the hills ; and he thought 
 to himself, " What fare ever yet complained of 
 a round speed ? " So he pressed forward. 
 
 The deluge of rain which had been threaten- 
 ing as they started broke upon them before 
 Etaudiers. They clattered through the village 
 — every light of the place out, and no witnesses 
 to the drive — under a pouring and deafening 
 shower ; and at Etaudiers it was — or, rather, just 
 outside the village — that Boutroux's determination 
 was taken. 
 
 Cross-roads may lead anywhere : they may end 
 in ploughed fields, in dead walls, or in quarries ; 
 and cross-roads at night may lead one straight 
 to the devil. But Boutroux was going to 
 risk it. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 107 
 
 The barest glimmer of a road in the darkness 
 leading to the right just outside Etaudiers deter- 
 mined him. N 
 
 He spurred again, suddenly, so that with a 
 heavy jolt the chaise lurched forward, and he 
 found himself and it off the highway on a 
 drenched earthen road, heavy going and almost 
 impassable. He could feel the strain on the traces 
 against his calves, but he urged the animals on, 
 and somehow they stumbled through. 
 
 He had turned so sharp a corner that the 
 rain beat now from the right side of the carriage 
 and on the right flanks of the beasts, upon the 
 right cheek of his face. The sudden passage 
 from the paved highroad into the muddy land 
 made a curious silence, in which one could hear 
 the sough of the tired hoofs in the mud, even 
 the very pattering of the rain. Boutroux was 
 so intent upon his escape that he had almost 
 forgotten the existence of the chaise behind him. 
 He had quite forgotten the existence of his 
 passenger, when he felt a very violent dig in 
 the small of his back, and loud but inchoate 
 sounds about " the wrong road " reached him 
 through the roaring of the storm. 
 
 He set his teeth, shouted to his horses, and, 
 as the going got a little drier at the top of a 
 
108 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 rise, compelled them to one further effort. The 
 rain was gradually ceasing, the wind falling with 
 it, and save the continual beat of his mounts' 
 feet there was nothing to interrupt the protests 
 now rising in violence from the unhappy man 
 between the wheels, and he heard first a series 
 of oaths, then two or three reasoned protests, 
 then after a short silence a really frenzied appeal. 
 But Etaudiers was not yet far enough away, and 
 Boutroux still pressed on. 
 
 He had covered all but another league, in 
 which he must have received some hundreds of 
 heavy thrusts in the back unheeded, before the 
 condition of his horses upon such a road gave 
 him some reason to pause. He had gone from 
 his starting-place at full speed for at least twelve 
 miles. Hills which by the strict regulation of 
 the law he was bound to walk he had taken at 
 a canter on the highroad ; for now some miles 
 he had left that highroad for a country track 
 on which no post - horse was warranted ; and 
 there were very evident signs in his own mount, 
 and even in the led horse, that they had come 
 to the end of their tether. He let them fall 
 to a walk, and then at last the words of the 
 gentleman who had commanded his services 
 could be consecutively made out. Boutroux 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 109 
 
 turned round with a pleasant smile, his young, 
 handsome face lit strongly by the carriage lamps, 
 pulled his beasts to a halt, and asked what might 
 be the matter. 
 
 " The matter ! " said the unfortunate lawyer. 
 " The matter is, you dirty fool, that you will 
 find yourself in jail with the break of day ! " 
 
 Boutroux shook his head gently, and his smile 
 was really beautiful in the lamp-light, had the 
 exasperated traveller's mood only permitted him 
 to appreciate its beauty. " Oh no," he said in 
 a gentle manner, but (as he hoped) a little oddly. 
 " Oh no ; I shall not be in jail — I shall be in 
 the Kingdom of my Father. It lies," he added 
 ecstatically, " a little beyond the Hills of Gold." 
 
 " Good God ! " cried the lawyer loudly. Then 
 he muttered to himself, " I have to deal with 
 a madman." 
 
 " Very far away," continued Boutroux, fixing 
 him with large eyes in the lamplight as he turned 
 half round, continuing his harangue and touching 
 his horses to an easy walk — " very far beyond 
 the Hills of Gold is the Kingdom of my Father 
 — and it is there we ride, dear friend ! " 
 
 His fare made but a dark mass against the 
 hood of the carriage, and Boutroux, reflecting 
 how pale and conspicuous his own face must 
 
no THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 be in the lamplight seen from the darkness, 
 deliberately affected a most ecstatic air : his eyes 
 turned upward under the heavy peak of his cap 
 and sought his native skies as the tired horses 
 plodded forward. 
 
 "Beyond the Hills of Gold," he said, "you 
 will see these mortal beasts transformed, for my 
 Father when He gave them to me gave them 
 also wings, which they spread with the first rays 
 of the morning; then shall your chariot also be 
 turned into pure fire, and we will mount the 
 skies." 
 
 The lawyer prided himself upon his knowledge 
 of men and his rapidity of decision. He had 
 seen things like this in the courts. It was really 
 most unfortunate in the middle of the night . . . 
 but there were ways of dealing with it. 
 
 " Monsieur the Prince-Postilion," he said, with 
 profound deference in his tone, " I knew very 
 well when I watched you mounting that you 
 were not of earthly kind. I might have guessed 
 that such as you would take me to the Blessed 
 Realms. But since you did not tell me so in 
 plain terms, why, I have come quite ill-accoutred 
 and unprovided for that signal honour and for 
 the Palace of the Skies. My clothes are drenched ; 
 I am fatigued ; I have no change to speak of. I 
 
THE GIRONDIN. m 
 
 would not dare to enter the glories you propose 
 to me until I am a little better groomed. Will 
 you not, therefore, of your courtesy reach me 
 the highroad again by the next turning? When 
 we make Mirambeau, I have friends there who 
 will put me into a proper suit of clothes, that 
 I may continue my journey with you on to 
 glory. There is a road," he added tentatively, 
 "whereby we can reach the Land of the Blessed 
 through Mirambeau ; it is a shorter road." 
 
 "The Mirambeau to which we go," said Bou- 
 troux very gravely, " is another and a better 
 Mirambeau, where the Bright Ones walk in 
 peace that serve my Father." The horses went 
 dumbly forward. 
 
 " I have always heard," answered the lawyer 
 patiently, and with a mild, intelligent look, very 
 sympathetic, and as though he quite understood 
 the business — "I have always heard that the road 
 to the Celestial City branches off about half a 
 league from Mirambeau, beyond the square at the 
 sign of The Pig That Spins." 
 
 Boutroux shook his head decisively. " You 
 are quite wrong," he said with quiet firmness. 
 "That is one road, but it is a long way round. 
 I have promised," said he, "this very night to 
 carry you into the Kingdom." Then changing 
 
ii2 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 his tone suddenly to one of the utmost ferocity, 
 he added in a scream : " Bound and delivered ! 
 Do you understand? Fast bound!" He mut- 
 tered fiercely, " And delivered — gagged." 
 
 He glared at his wretched fare as he said 
 this, dropped his eyes again, and changing 
 as suddenly back again to an extreme gentle- 
 ness, he almost whispered, "Are you a lawyer, 
 sir?" 
 
 The passenger bethought him of a method 
 which he had found very useful in a past crisis 
 with a client whom he tamed. 
 
 "Yes, I am," he answered loudly and firmly, 
 " and I can make you answer for your foolery ! " 
 
 "A lawyer!" crooned the young man in a 
 happy and inspired voice — "a lawyer ! The 
 Man of Sin ! " Then he looked up and nodded 
 affirmatively and gaily : " It's what I wanted ! 
 You're the one " — his voice rose — "and you must 
 get there bound and delivered: sealed, bound, and 
 delivered ! " 
 
 For a quarter of an hour nothing further was 
 said upon either side. Boutroux from time to 
 time roared, laughed, and cursed to himself. The 
 horses, too fatigued to canter or even to trot, 
 wearily pulled the chaise along the now sandy 
 road of the upland ; there was nothing but black 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 113 
 
 and wholly silent night all round. Then the 
 lawyer tried another ruse. 
 
 " Monsieur the Postilion," he said severely, " I 
 am not worthy to enter that Kingdom. There is 
 in Mirambeau a priest who will absolve me, and 
 when I am shrived I will continue the journey 
 with you." 
 
 Boutroux shouted to him without turning 
 round, — 
 
 " Do not talk to me of Priests ; we will not 
 hear of them in my Kingdom. A great fate is 
 offered you, and you must take it whether or 
 no. Besides which " — and here his voice suddenly 
 rose again — " you are to be bound and delivered : 
 I promised that ! Oh ! " he ended, smacking his 
 lips, "you will be all the choicer served up in 
 the midst of your sins." 
 
 "Monsieur the Postilion," said the lawyer, 
 saying this time what was undoubtedly true, " I 
 am in your hands." 
 
 He rapidly began to cast about for safety. 
 There was, no escape by wheedling or coaxing: 
 he must get help from outside. He held his 
 tongue, therefore, and as the chaise slowly rolled 
 forward he waited for the dawn. 
 
 From early youth Boutroux had known how 
 great an aid it was to the fatigue of travel to 
 
1 1 4 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 indulge in song ; during the next league and 
 more of that slow progress, therefore, he sang. 
 
 Into snatches of tavern songs which were famil- 
 iar to him, and some of which his unhappy fare 
 recognised, he interpolated glorious gusts of pro- 
 phecy — fierce, chaunted denunciations of the rich, 
 little dancing refrains and visions of a world to 
 come. From these in turn he would relieve 
 himself by a loud whistling and occasionally by 
 a well-chosen burst of maniacal laughter. After 
 each of these he did not neglect to turn his 
 face fiercely over his right shoulder, unlip a row 
 of white teeth, and mutter at the man of law, 
 " Bound and delivered ; mind that ! Trussed 
 like a fowl, — and the choicer for your sins ! " 
 
 So he continued, working his instrument of 
 fear, until at last far off upon the plain a very 
 distant twinkling light threatened human habita- 
 tion and danger. He drew rein and halted. 
 
 The wretched beasts shook and shivered though 
 the damp night was warm ; a low and eerie wind 
 blew in the scant trees which were here planted 
 in a group by the roadside. Boutroux stiffly and 
 deliberately dismounted. 
 
 " It is here," he said simply, " that I am to wait 
 until the Messengers of the Kingdom meet us 
 with the dawn." He lowered his head as he 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 115 
 
 spoke thus, but kept his eyes lifted, fixed with 
 a dreadful glare upon his victim, and made with 
 his hands the firm gesture of a man who ties knots 
 in cords and binds a prisoner. 
 
 "You are right," said the lawyer patiently; "I 
 see the lights of their advance. I believe they are 
 coming towards us. It might be wiser to go 
 forward perhaps ; it would be more courteous 
 to greet them so." 
 
 " You are wrong ! " said Boutroux decidedly, 
 standing at his horses' heads, stiffly and in an 
 expectant attitude. " It is against the rules. We 
 have no rule or custom more observed in our 
 society," he added in a louder voice, "than to 
 wait at this sacred spot for orders ; it is the gate 
 of the Kingdom." 
 
 " I see," said the lawyer ; " I understand." 
 
 For a good half-hour the pair remained there 
 facing each other, the lawyer seated in his chaise 
 with folded arms, flattering himself that with the 
 day he would know how to deal even with such 
 a case as this, Boutroux humming occasionally 
 little snatches of songs, and then falling into 
 silence or crooning happy prophecies of a delight- 
 ful land, or describing in awful phrases the tortures 
 that await wicked men. 
 
 In the east, to which the horses' bowed and 
 
n6 THE GIRONDlN. 
 
 weary heads were turned, a faint glimmer of 
 day began to be apparent. At first you could 
 not tell whether it were not a mere paling of 
 the stars or a glimmer of mist that was drifting 
 before them ; but the light rose and grew, it smelt 
 of morning, and very soon they were both of 
 them aware of the dawn. They lapsed into a 
 complete silence and watched it, each in his 
 different mood. 
 
 When it was light enough for Boutroux to see 
 the face of his companion he watched it narrowly, 
 and perceived him to be exceedingly afraid. 
 
 The lawyer had got down from the chaise and 
 was pacing backwards and forwards, slapping his 
 hands upon his shoulders to keep warm in the 
 chill of the dawning, and waiting until a some- 
 what broader day should enable him to take 
 his measures. Had he been but a trifle more 
 courageous, he would have closed with the lunatic ; 
 but he was just not courageous enough, and that 
 madman kept him steadily fixed with his eyes. 
 
 Under the growing light the landscape was now 
 clear. Hedgeless fields, of stubble and crop alter- 
 nately, stretched out infinitely upon every side. 
 The lawyer stood apart with folded arms and 
 glanced anxiously over those fields. The dis- 
 tant single light still glowed, a yellow patch, in 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 117 
 
 the window of a farmhouse a mile away, and 
 sure enough, two men and a woman, with the 
 implements of labour carried over their shoulders, 
 were proceeding from it towards the harvest 
 land. 
 
 " I think," said the lawyer tentatively, watching 
 the effect of his words — " I think these are the 
 messengers of your Father ? " 
 
 " I have no doubt," answered Boutroux in a 
 low, grave, and reverent voice ; " 1 know them, 
 and they will soon be here." 
 
 " It is only reasonable," said the lawyer, " that 
 I should meet them." He began the first few 
 steps towards the fields, tremulously, not know- 
 ing how the move might strike the cunning of 
 his ravisher. He was overjoyed to find that 
 his escape was approved. And just as he got 
 out of earshot he heard Boutroux's loud tone 
 telling him with decision to announce the ad- 
 vent of the young Heir with his Winged 
 Horses, his Man of Sin, and his Chariot of Fire. 
 
 The lawyer was not accustomed to damp 
 fields even upon a light soul ; he was not in a 
 mood to negotiate them easily. He pressed forward 
 feverishly over the six or seven hundred yards 
 that separated him from succour : he did not 
 dare cry out until many minutes had passed, 
 
n8 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 and until he was not only within hail of the 
 peasants, but nearer to them than to his very 
 formidable postilion. When he judged that 
 such action was safe, he cried out at the top of 
 his voice for help. 
 
 The group of peasants stopped ; they saw 
 the post-chaise, the official uniform of the 
 postilion's distant figure ; they remembered that 
 the law compelled them to lend re-mounts for 
 a breakdown, and without a moment's hesita- 
 tion they turned and ran in an opposite direc- 
 tion, lest such a sacrifice should be required of 
 them. After them ran the lawyer, and as a 
 stern chase is a long one, it was perhaps an- 
 other quarter of an hour before his frenzied 
 appeals reached them in any understandable 
 shape. When they saw that something more 
 than an ordinary breakdown was toward, they 
 turned and awaited him. He came up with 
 them. He was haggard with the experience of 
 that dreadful night, drenched, most unhappy, 
 and almost breaking down with physical fatigue; 
 the clods were heavy on his thin, buckled shoes, 
 and in general he presented that lamentable 
 spectacle of a well-to-do man in distress — a 
 spectacle always intensely agreeable to the poorer 
 classes, but more especially delightful when they 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 119 
 
 see a chance to profit by it. As he came up to 
 them, he panted out, — 
 
 " Gentlemen, I implore you ! Madame, I 
 implore you ! A dreadful thing has happened : 
 a man has gone mad ! " 
 
 They looked at him stolidly, and did not 
 answer. 
 
 "Gentlemen," he said again, "I implore you 
 in Christian charity ! Madame, a man has gone 
 mad ! It is but your duty to help me bind him 
 and to restore him to his people ! " 
 
 " What man ? " said the leading peasant sus- 
 piciously. The lawyer had now come up with 
 them, and was standing face to face. 
 
 " My driver ! " he continued, gasping. " He 
 has gone mad, and calls himself a son of 
 heaven ; and he has landed me in this dreadful 
 place ! 1 must require your help. I must 
 require it in the name of the law. People of 
 importance await me to-day in Niort." 
 
 " Oh, there's nothing dreadful about our place," 
 said the woman shrewishly ; " you must be a 
 little more civil in your speech. We are not 
 in the time of the lords, remember7^~~She 
 looTced "at. fum suspiciously. "What brought 
 you here ? " 
 
 "That chaise," the lawyer answered foolishly 
 
120 THE G1ROND1N. 
 
 enough, "that accursed chaise, and its devil of 
 a driver." 
 
 The peasant whom he had first addressed watched 
 him for a moment in silence. " I see nothing in 
 your story," he said brusquely, and noting with 
 suspicion the crumpled broadcloth of the wealthier 
 man. " It's you that seems a little unsettled. If 
 there has been a breakdown your postilion will 
 know how to find help : it is his business." 
 
 " You do not understand," said the lawyer ; 
 " he is mad ! he is unfortunately run mad ! 
 He called me the Man of Sin." 
 
 "Well, there is a method in his madness," 
 said the peasant with a grin, " and he seems to 
 be taking a better course than you for finding 
 proper succour." He pointed with his finger 
 over his interlocutor's shoulder. The lawyer 
 turned round, and at once began waving his 
 arms in frenzy and shouting, for what he saw 
 was this : the chaise standing, horseless and 
 alone upon the way, and very far off upon 
 the edge of the countryside, just turning into 
 a wood that fringed the horizon, the postilion 
 upon his mount, with the led horse following. 
 Even at that distance he could see that the led 
 horse went reluctantly, wearied beyond measure 
 with such a series of madcap adventures. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 121 
 
 A moment later, the unhappy lawyer had no 
 occasion now to continue his shouting and his 
 gestures. The insane postilion had disappeared 
 into the woods, and he was there with the 
 peasants in the bare plain alone. 
 
 How he bargained with them for a mount 
 to take him to the nearest post upon the high- 
 road, how they fleeced him, how he threatened 
 vengeance, how upon that account other men, 
 labouring in the fields, surrounded him and 
 showed the new temper of democracy, how he t 
 was comp elled to jaesac, that —he—had, no title, 
 but was an honest patriot, and how at las£— at r 
 the cost of all the ready"money upon him — he 
 obtained a very stubborn old she-donkey and 
 a cow to pull his vehicle back to Etaudiers, 
 would be of entertainment to any history con- 
 cerning his adventures, but they have nothing to 
 do with Boutroux, who was by this time in 
 the depths of the high wood, and for the 
 moment saved. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 In which a Sack of Charcoal is taken 
 and a Girl is left. 
 
 "DOUTROUX'S vague knowledge of the country 
 told him that he might not be far from 
 Chiersac. Once well into the high wood (for the 
 earthen country road soon became a wandering 
 track therein) he dismounted and patted his poor 
 mount upon the neck. 
 
 " It is a thousand pities," he said, fondling him, 
 " that you should have to suffer so much for me ! 
 But what would you ? Men in necessity ill-use 
 their own kind, let alone d umb brutes. I have no 
 oats for you," he added sadly, as the two patient 
 beasts stretched out their heads towards him, and 
 one of them took a gentle bite at his sleeve, " but 
 there's plenty of grass." 
 
 He mercifully took the bits from their mouths 
 and strapped them by the buckle to the rings 
 of the harness. He saw that the loops of the 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 123 
 
 traces were tied up high, so that the leather should 
 not drag and hamper the animals in their going ; 
 he loosened the girth of the saddle on the near 
 horse to give him ease ; he slipped the irons up, 
 so that if he felt inclined to roll he should do 
 himself no harm. And having done these things 
 he made his horses a little speech, saying, — 
 
 " Good horses, I am an exile ; and I must 
 confess it to you who have never told lies in your 
 life, that within the last twenty-four hours 1 have 
 told some hundreds of lies : but," he added, 
 sighing, " it was fate ! " And as he said it one 
 of the horses neighed. 
 
 " Precisely," continued Boutroux ; " that is the 
 way I feel about it too. There are times when a 
 man must lie. And now, horses, I must dismiss 
 you. Do not follow me. You may have observed 
 from my actions perhaps (though you horses are 
 stupid beasts) that I was not keen on being followed 
 during these last few hours of my life. Go," he 
 concluded gently, "find your way home. Even 
 if you cannot do it you will be stolen by some 
 other of my human sort ; and since horses are 
 always serviceable, you will be more sure of food 
 than 1." 
 
 He strode into the underwood. For a yard or 
 two the poor brutes made as though to follow him. 
 
i2 4 THE GiRONDiN. 
 
 " I hate to do it, but with sheer stupidity genius 
 itself cannot argue ! " he thought, and lifting a 
 piece of dead wood that lay there he threw it at 
 his former friends. Both looked astonished, one 
 a little hurt. They turned from him, and browsing 
 the coarser grass beneath the trees, made vaguely 
 for home. 
 
 The sun had risen, the heat was increasing. 
 The insects of ; August buzzed drowsily in the 
 wood, and content came upon the young man 
 again as it had come upon him when he had landed 
 from the boat upon the northern shore of the 
 Gironde twenty-four hours before. His fatigue 
 also came upon him so strongly that he fell, 
 stupidly happy, under the low branch of a short 
 oak, and dropped at once into a profound and 
 satisfying sleep. 
 
 As Boutroux slept he dreamed. He dreamed a 
 curious dream — vivid and yet mixed with memory. 
 
 It seemed to him in his dream that he was still 
 in that wood, but that the wood was home ; and 
 that in some way it was upon the fringe of a 
 kingdom, and that the kingdom belonged to his 
 people and his line. He thought he saw himself 
 going through the wood for hours and hours, and 
 as he went he spoke to beasts that passed him — 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 125 
 
 wild deer and the birds of the greenwood, and 
 little rabbits that were not afraid, and squirrels in 
 the branches, and now and then a horse grazing 
 at random. And it seemed to him that these 
 answered him in various manners — pleased or 
 unpleased, shy, pert, grave, humorous, angered, 
 or loving — as might men. It seemed to him that 
 he was conscious as he walked — that he divined 
 very well — how every step he took he was taking 
 deeper and deeper into some kingdom of his own, 
 and yet farther and farther away from a dear home 
 and things he knew. He felt like an exile who 
 happened also to be upon a pilgrimage. 
 
 Just as he was coming out of that wood of his 
 dream and half saw, or thought he saw, a very 
 glorious landscape beyond, in which, in some odd 
 way, was resumed all that he had lost and all that 
 he should find, he stirred, his mind lost ease ; that 
 landscape resolved itself into a mist and confusion 
 of sunlight shining through green boughs. The 
 outlines of those boughs grew precise, and he 
 woke suddenly to this world. He sat bolt upright 
 and stared with seeing eyes, first at the real things 
 about him, then inwards at his fate. He began to 
 revolve the same. 
 
 "Boutroux," said he gravely, "in the next lie 
 you tell you must either lie freely as should a 
 
126 THE G1RONDIN. 
 
 citizen in the third year of Liberty, or con- 
 strainedly : for if you are dressed anyhow — even 
 as a pauper — you will be free to lie freely ; but 
 if you are dressed as a postilion you will be 
 constrained to lie constrainedly, having to lie up 
 to your clothes as it were, as do dukes and politi- 
 cians and patriots, and scum of that kind. 
 Boutroux, since lie you mus.t, I prefer you should 
 lie as a free man ; therefore you must get rid 
 of this postilion's garb. Boutroux," he added, 
 " there are some who would be puzzled what to 
 do, well knowing that men naked are fallen upon 
 by the guard and thrust into prison, knowing 
 also that men must see their fellow men in villages 
 or towns if they are to live, and knowing that in 
 such places are guards especially to be found — 
 game-keepers and police, and chance patrols and 
 authorities. A foolish man, Boutroux, might 
 think it impossible to get out of such a dilemma, 
 either to go as a postilion or to go naked — and 
 either is fatal. But you, Boutroux, have more 
 mastery, I hope, over your fate ! " 
 
 He first took off his coat and carefully turned 
 it inside out. He was delighted to note that the 
 lining was black. He next pulled off his postilion's 
 knee-breeches, turned them inside out, and found 
 the lining of those to be black also. " That," he 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 127 
 
 said gravely, "is as it should be." The black coat 
 and the black knee-breeches (as they now were) 
 he carefully donned again, and began to consider 
 his next act. He bethought him of his cap. 
 
 " To wear no headgear is eccentric, but no man 
 is imprisoned for it," he said, "while to wear a 
 postilion's cap is to be a postilion." 
 
 From the pocket of his coat, now turned inside 
 out against his shirt, he drew a matchbox and 
 tinder. With these he lit a little fire of dry twigs, 
 whereon most thoughtfully he burned his cap ; 
 and as it burned he said to it, — 
 
 " Not because you are a heretic, my cap, do I 
 burn you — for the Rights of Man have done away 
 with all that — but because, you will not conform 
 with the rest of your society. Who can wear a 
 yellow postilion's cap with black clothes ? Burn, 
 and may God have mercy on your soul ! " 
 
 His spurs he unbuckled, and put them into 
 that inner pocket. Then taking the ash of the 
 little fire whereon he had immolated his head- 
 gear, he deliberately smeared it upon his face and 
 hands, and quenching a coal of it in a puddle 
 of dirty water hard by, he rubbed the black 
 streaks of the char upon his forehead and round 
 his mouth. " If I had a mirror," he murmured, 
 "I would make it as it should be, and every 
 
128 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 stroke would tell. But as it is I must do what 
 bad artists do, and must trust to blur." With 
 these words he rubbed hard at the streaks he 
 had drawn, so as to mix them with the remaining 
 ashes on his face ; he was careful to blacken 
 round the eyes especially, that the whites might 
 show clear, and round the lips that the teeth 
 might be equally apparent. 
 
 "In this way," he said, "men know a char- 
 coal burner." And where a speck of white 
 thread appeared upon the seams of the black 
 lining which he now wore inside out, he rubbed 
 it with the same charred stick to darken it. 
 
 Having done all these things it occurred to 
 him that the old proverb "Who sleeps dines" 
 was especially true in this, that he who wakes 
 is hungry. He had not eaten since his snack 
 of the evening before, and he was a little puzzled 
 to know how a charcoal-burner could earn a 
 living where, for all he could see, no charcoal 
 had ever been made since the beginning of the 
 world ; but he noted that the wood about him 
 had beech trees in it, and as he sniffed the air 
 he thought he caught a smell of smouldering. 
 So he went forward in hope and faith for charcoal- 
 burners' heaps. 
 
 " It is one thing," thought Boutroux, " to cover 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 129 
 
 one's tracks, and it is another thing to earn one's 
 living ; but to do the two together is well-nigh 
 impossible." 
 
 So musing he pushed through the undergrowth, 
 following the ancient rule that one should on 
 a high land always go down-hill if one would 
 seek man, till in half an hour or so he came 
 suddenly out of that dense growth on to a sunlit 
 meadow where a stream trickled from the damp- 
 ness of the wood which he had just left. 
 
 Hardly was he twenty yards on, over the 
 pleasant grass, when a young girl, fresh, beautiful, 
 and strong, with her pail balanced in her right 
 hand and her left arm akimbo, called to him 
 from a gate far off, — 
 
 " Charcoal-burner, we shall need a sack ! " 
 
 "God is in it," said Boutroux piously. "I 
 thought as much : they do make charcoal in 
 this wood. It will go hard if I make none with 
 them." He shouted roughly back, " When, 
 Beauty ? " 
 
 " Never if you talk like that," she said ; " but 
 before night if you would wish to see my father's 
 money, you may tell your dirty gang." 
 
 He smiled at her with the whiteness of his 
 teeth upon his blackened face ; she smiled at 
 him, and he went back into the forest. 
 
i 3 o THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 "Heaven," said he as he got into the high 
 wood again, "who has provided charcoal-burners 
 unexpectedly, and a wench and her father for 
 customers, will not allow this sparrow to fall 
 unnoticed to the ground. But from what I 
 know of Heaven it will not teach me how to 
 burn charcoal ; and even if it did, for all I know 
 the process may be one of weeks — and though 
 I am willing to steal, yet, God help me ! I have 
 no sack." 
 
 It is related of Ulysses that the extremity 
 of evil was but a spur to him, and opportunity a 
 gate of delivery. It shall be related of Boutroux 
 that whether it was his youth or his good fortune 
 or the gods that smile on exiles, something would 
 always suggest to him what a man should do ; 
 and so it was upon that day and in that hour, 
 for he said to himself, " Since there are charcoal- 
 burners, how should they be found ? By their 
 folly and the folly of other men, as human things 
 are always found ! " And having come to that 
 conclusion, and seeing that the girl had gone 
 indoors again, he crept carefully under the cover 
 of the wood towards a more distant farm which 
 lay upon the edge of the greenery, and when 
 he got there he saw a young man digging with 
 a spade in the garden-patch, and he said to him, — 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 131 
 
 "I've come for the money for that sack of 
 charcoal." 
 
 "We've had no sack of charcoal," said the 
 lad roughly. "Who sent you ? " 
 
 " My mates," said Boutroux as roughly. 
 
 "You can go back and tell your fools of 
 mates that they have mistaken the house, or 
 that you have." And the boy went on digging. 
 But as he plunged his spade vigorously into the 
 earth he was inspired to add, "Besides which, 
 they have no right to be burning at the White 
 Cross, for that is village land." 
 
 "It is not," said Boutroux in the challenging 
 tone of one who had studied the ground and 
 known the spot for years. 
 
 "It is," said the young man, looking up and 
 sweating in that heat, his eyes angry under his 
 wet brows, " It's village land two hundred toises 
 from the edge of the wood all round. The 
 White Cross marks it, and they're on this side 
 of it I " 
 
 "In a manner of speaking," said Boutroux 
 cautiously, " they are." 
 
 "Well," said the other triumphantly, "there 
 you are ! Pace the path and see if it's not within 
 the two hundred toises ! I'll come with you." 
 And as he said it he came through the wicket 
 
1 32 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 of the hedge across which they had been talking 
 and began measuring strides along a widening 
 path through the underwood. 
 
 " I was only joking," said Boutroux hurriedly. 
 " I know it's village land. I didn't mean to rile 
 you," he added good-humouredly, " but I did 
 think it was here I was to come for the money." 
 
 "Well, it isn't," said the young man a little 
 mollified and turning back to his digging. "It's 
 in hell for all I know, but it isn't here." 
 
 "It must be somewhere about," muttered 
 Boutroux, and he disappeared down the path. 
 
 It led him, as he had expected, to an open 
 clearing, and in that clearing he saw the stack 
 of faggots, the little hut of turf, the cut stumps, 
 and the signs of past dead fires which mark the 
 burning of charcoal in a wood. 
 
 How often in another day, as a child walking 
 with his nurse in the woods of home near the 
 city, he had seen such camps, but never had 
 he wondered till now exactly how the trade was 
 run. Nor did he continue to wonder about 
 that or to care about it when once his eyes had 
 fallen upon a large sack full of that which was 
 to him at the moment more precious than gold, 
 but unfortunately it served as a pillow for a 
 huge and sleeping man. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 133 
 
 This giant was snoring in the noonday rest : 
 one arm was under his head to shield his face 
 from the rough edges of the charcoal in the 
 sack, the other lay listless along his side. Beside 
 him a leathern bottle of wine half emptied, and 
 a loaf which had formed his meal, lay at random. 
 
 "My dear grandmother," said Boutroux in his 
 heart, "who died three years ago, used always 
 to tell me that I should choose business before 
 pleasure, and she would add, 'where you think 
 you have an equal choice so far as duty is con- 
 cerned, take the more difficult course and you 
 will be right.' It is therefore," he sighed, "my 
 business first to shift that sack, and only if I 
 accomplish that successfully shall I have any right 
 to steal this wine and bread. It is by attention to 
 things in their right order that men prosper." 
 
 There is a game called spillikins, in which 
 a man wins by moving a number of delicate 
 ivory spills intertwined one with another, and by 
 moving them in such a manner that he separates 
 them without shaking any one by the movement 
 of its neighbour. This, on a larger scale, was 
 Boutroux's task. 
 
 He began wisely enough by giving the charcoal 
 sack a vigorous kick so that the sleeper's head 
 bumped heavily against the ground. His snore 
 
134 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 was suddenly interrupted and caught in a violent 
 spasm within the convolutions of his head ; he 
 gasped, squirmed as though he would wrestle 
 with the ground, then oddly sighed again, rolled 
 on his back, and let his great arms spread out 
 in the shape of a cross ; his head fell back 
 stark against the earth, and in a moment was 
 snoring again. 
 
 Boutroux looked at him with wonderment. 
 " If you had woken," he said, " you would have 
 compelled me to yet another lie. ... I have 
 carried nothing heavy, though I have often 
 boasted of it and lied in clubs. But you, my 
 charcoal sack, be light to me. I should imagine 
 from what I know of the stuff that it wasn't 
 a patch upon wheat for weight." 
 
 Saying this he very silently and gingerly 
 crouched down, slung the burden upon his 
 shoulder, and finding it bearable began to stagger 
 off, when suddenly he remembered something. 
 
 "A man does not live by charcoal alone," he 
 muttered. 
 
 He crept back in that noontide heat and over 
 the coarse grass without a sound, avoiding every 
 twig, and holding his very breath for silence : 
 he lifted the huge round loaf and the gourd of 
 wine most tenderly as though they were young 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 135 
 
 children whom he loved, got his sack upon his 
 back again, with his free left hand, and made 
 down the path towards the hamlet and the two 
 farms. He had heard that labouring men slept 
 at noon for but a short while : nevertheless he 
 halted upon the edge of the wood, hastily ate 
 a slice of the bread and drank a gulp of the 
 wine, recognised when he had satisfied himself 
 that it was wiser to restore them, went back 
 and laid them where he had found them ; re- 
 turned, took up his charcoal sack again, and 
 bore it across the meadow towards the gate 
 where he had seen the young girl in her beauty 
 and her strength, holding the pail balanced with 
 her arm akimbo. 
 
 " Now I could have drawn that," said Boutroux, 
 looking at the now empty landscape, the gate, 
 the wall, the small white farmhouse, and the 
 falling open valley below. "I could have drawn 
 it, but if I had, what good would that have 
 been to me ? It is my business to deliver this 
 sack of charcoal to the farmer. He needs the 
 sack and I the money. Nay, he has positively 
 ordered the sack, and I have been at very great 
 pains to obtain it. This is commerce : this is 
 as it should be : this is exchange. Here are 
 two citizens satisfied." 
 
136 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 With this he had come up to the house, and 
 he knocked at the door of it, slipped down his 
 sack upon the big threshold stone, leant negli- 
 gently against the door-post and waited until 
 they should open from within. While he so 
 waited he considered to himself how excellent 
 had been his meal ; and he made a rule which 
 he then determined firmly to keep the whole 
 of his life, which was this : never to take wine 
 if he could help it without bread, and still more 
 surely never to take bread if he could possibly 
 help it without wine. 
 
 He heard steps within : the door opened, and 
 in the cool dark room which it disclosed he saw 
 the girl who had been the cause of all this 
 labour, and from whom he hoped to receive its 
 corresponding reward. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 In which a Sack of Charcoal is left 
 and a Girl is taken. 
 
 ~f~*HE girl came forward from within the house 
 to the door ; her beauty was veiled by the 
 darkness of the room, her upstanding figure was 
 free, and Boutroux said within his heart that 
 the circumstance of man was unworthy to the 
 dignity of love. He regretted for a moment 
 the charcoal with which he had rubbed his face, 
 and the work upon which he chanced by fate 
 to be engaged. He stood looking at her with a 
 smile which under other circumstances would have 
 been half ironical and half adventurous, but which 
 appearing as a white row of teeth framed in that 
 new black face of his was startling rather than subtle. 
 "Why the devil can't you carry the sack on 
 your shoulders ? " she said by way of greeting. 
 "Have I cleaned that threshold stone for no- 
 thing ? Great brute ! " 
 
 5a 
 
138 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 Boutroux did not understand, but he under- 
 stood when she put into his hand a silver piece 
 in earnest of payment. 
 
 " Pick it up ! " she shouted like a young 
 commander ; " pick it up, and go round to the 
 back." 
 
 He hoisted the sack upon his shoulder again, 
 making as though it were a great burden, and 
 awaited her orders, bent beneath his burden. 
 But he affected strength by looking up brightly 
 as he did so, his white teeth gleaming again 
 against the darkness of his dirty skin, and his 
 eyes the brighter for such a background. 
 
 "You're not one of those who brought it 
 before," she said. 
 
 "Not I," he answered richly. "I am plying 
 three trades just now : to the one I am fast 
 becoming used, which is wandering ; to the 
 second, which is charcoal-burning, I am but a 
 very new hand ; the third I have known and 
 practised most thoroughly for now three years, 
 and I thought myself a master at it," he con- 
 tinued, swinging the bag over his other shoulder 
 by way of a rest, and drawing himself up so 
 that she marvelled how he could bear the weight 
 of it in such an attitude. " I thought myself a 
 master at it ; but as one lives one learns. . . ." 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 139 
 
 " What is that third trade of yours ? " she said. 
 
 " It is a form of hunting," he answered ; " it 
 is a kind of hunting in which the hunter him- 
 self is always wounded, and even the hare does 
 not usually escape a wound." 
 
 "That," said the girl as she strode by his 
 side, short - kilted, and already amused, "is a 
 proverb of your village. We do not know it 
 here." 
 
 " I shall be happy to expound its full meaning in 
 good time," said Boutroux from beneath his sack. 
 
 The girl said nothing in reply, but abruptly : 
 " My father keeps his charcoal in a barn he 
 has. I will take you to that barn." And she 
 did so, but not by the shortest road. 
 
 " It is a proverb of my village," he answered, 
 after thinking a little while, "and 1 myself have 
 never quite understood it ; we have it in another 
 form. We say that in that hunting the joy is 
 all at the beginning, before the chase is up, 
 and the sadness all at the end, and the worse 
 for successful ending. But we say that either 
 way there is no weariness in that hunting." 
 
 "You learnt that proverb also, I think," she 
 said with a good laugh, "in your own country. 
 We have no such proverb here." 
 
 " Well then," said he, forgetting the path and 
 
i 4 o THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 everything but her, " have you this proverb, 'In 
 that hunting the quarry knows the hunter better 
 than the hunter knows the quarry ' ? " 
 
 " No," said she. 
 
 " Or have you this : ' The quarry fears the 
 huntsman, but the huntsman fears the quarry 
 more ' ? " 
 
 " No," said she again stubbornly, " this would 
 seem to be spoken of the hunting of wolves 
 and of wild boars, which doubtless swarm in 
 that wild bad land of yours. For no other 
 beast turns upon him that hunts or tries to 
 rend him." 
 
 "Young lady," said Boutroux with great 
 courtesy, as he shifted his sack again to the 
 other shoulder a little more wearily, "first let 
 me tell you that the path is getting long ; and 
 secondly, let me tell you that the quarry of 
 which I speak does turn and rend the hunter. 
 It is its nature so to do." 
 
 " But is the chase not wounded too ? " she said. 
 
 " Oh, child," he answered, sighing, " have I 
 not told you that both are wounded ? Hunter 
 and hunted too ! " 
 
 "Never yet," she said in a lower tone, "has 
 any charcoal-burner called me a child." 
 
 "And never yet," he answered in a tone yet 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 141 
 
 lower than hers, "has any child, however beauti- 
 ful, called me a charcoal-burner." 
 
 They had come to the end of a field, where 
 a slovenly gate led the path round and through 
 to other paddocks of the croft. The moment 
 was propitious for a halt in their little journey. 
 The sun in its early afternoon decline was at 
 once hot and beneficent. She looked at him 
 under the shade of her great hair, and asked 
 him whether the burden were not heavy, and 
 whether he would not rest a moment. 
 
 " It is very heavy ! " he said, and slipped it 
 to the ground as if it were indeed of a great 
 weight ; and then he sat down beside it, his 
 legs stretched out, his back resting upon the 
 burden, and his eyes looking up at hers as she 
 stood above him. 
 
 " Charcoal-burner," she said, " I have known 
 no charcoal-burners come to my father's house, 
 though they come so often during the charcoal- 
 burning days, who seemed so little fitted to 
 their trade as you. Now, if you have some- 
 thing that you are not saying and that you 
 would wish to say, say it, and 1 will keep 
 faith ; for I know very well that this forest is 
 sometimes a refuge in days like ours." 
 
 When she had said this she watched him 
 
i 4 a THE G1RONDIN. 
 
 with a little smile, looking for a new look in 
 his eyes ; and he, putting on an appearance of 
 due sadness, said, — 
 
 "Young lady, it is not one hour since I met 
 you, and yet the thing 1 have to say is very 
 near my heart." 
 
 She went a little further off, and leaned against 
 the gatepost, still looking down at him. 
 
 "Charcoal-burner," she said, "you are not a 
 charcoal-burner at all, for you speak like the 
 men in the cities." 
 
 " Will you hear what I have to say ? " 
 
 " Certainly," said she, half humbly. 
 
 " It is this," he answered. " I have now been 
 loose and flying, not without fear, for a day 
 and for half a day, and in all that time and in 
 all this heat I have had but three hours of 
 sleep, and one bottle of good and two sub- 
 sequent gulps of raw wine ; and I do most 
 earnestly beseech you by my patron Saint, St. 
 George as he once was — for God knows his 
 status nowadays — that you will bring me that 
 cool refreshment and drink which your kind 
 face should promise me." 
 
 When she had gazed at him for a little while, 
 smiling less strongly, but not wholly ceasing to 
 smile, she said at last : " I will bring it you, 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 143 
 
 though you have burned no charcoal — no, nor 
 anything, I think, in all your life but things you 
 had no right to burn." 
 
 She turned her back upon him and strode off 
 resolutely across the meadows in a direction she 
 knew, while Boutroux lay there, not unhappily, 
 and considered the largeness of the world. 
 
 " It is evident," he murmured to himself, " that 
 proper adventure and a change in things, large 
 acquaintance and refreshment of every kind, lie 
 open before the feet of any man whatsoever that 
 chooses to travel. I could have wished," he 
 added silently in his heart, " that my occasion for 
 travel had been a little more genial, for every man 
 has roots to him, and mine are all dragged out of 
 the earth to-day, for ever. But Lord, the large- 
 ness of the world ! " 
 
 As he so pondered in that happy and mellowing 
 sunlight, he glanced drowsily here and there, 
 through half-shut lids, at the meadows and the 
 highland hedges and the more distant woods. It 
 was very still, a crowd of midges was buzzing over 
 the brookland below, and already the grasshoppers 
 had begun their loud chirping in the roots of the 
 aftermath. Nature was full and pleased ; he was 
 content to fix those drowsy, half-shut eyes of his 
 upon an edge of the near woodland where a bird 
 
i 4 4 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 and its mate walked and hopped oddly together, 
 picking for sustenance in the leaf mast, and helping 
 one another. The one walked proudly, the other 
 with seduction ; the one was brave, he thought, in 
 the eyes of its mate, and its mate, he imagined, in 
 the eyes of the brave one, beautiful. Nay, the 
 beauty of the one and the courage of the other, in 
 some way communicated themselves to his mind : 
 he blessed the two birds and wished them happi- 
 ness. But even as he did so, some movement of 
 his, or some approach of another animal in the 
 underwood, frightened them, and first the male, 
 glancing round by way of guard, gave a little cry, 
 then his mate rose, and both together took the 
 broad heaven and flew. 
 
 " It was a pretty sight," thought Boutroux, 
 "and now they are off to the sky." He would 
 have carried his thought further had not that girl 
 with whose conversation he had so lately been 
 filled, appeared near by with a flagon in either 
 hand. She had come through some opening in 
 the hedge and he had not noticed her. 
 
 He rose to his feet with some gallantry, though 
 a little stiffly after such adventures, and tried to 
 take her burden from her. She put both flagons 
 resolutely behind her back, and said : " How dp 
 you know that they are yours ? " 
 
THE G1RONDIN. 145 
 
 "I do not know," he said, "but I am very 
 thirsty." 
 
 " Why, then," she answered pleasantly, " you 
 shall be satisfied. Have you no mug or glass ? " 
 
 " I have none," he replied with great courtesy of 
 inclination and of gesture, "and if you will not 
 drink first I will not drink at all." 
 
 " My mother told me once," said the girl, " that 
 women must not drink wine." 
 
 " There is something in that," said Boutroux ; 
 "your mother was a wise woman. And what did 
 she say of water ? " 
 
 " Oh, one may drink water ; but I am not thirsty. 
 Nevertheless, since you need companionship, I will 
 drink both wine and water with you." 
 
 When she had said this, she looked in his face, 
 and in her soul she felt that the lines of it, and the 
 strength of the eyes, and the laughter in the mouth 
 were something that she would know and need. 
 She drank from the one flagon and from the 
 other in the Spanish fashion, and handed them 
 to him. 
 
 " From which did you drink last ? " he asked. 
 
 " From the water," said she. 
 
 " Then I will drink from that first," he answered, 
 taking a long draught therefrom. " And now " — 
 catching the wine from her before she was aware 
 
146 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 — " 1 will drink the wine in order to remember 
 your name by it." 
 
 "But 1 have not told you my name," she 
 said. 
 
 " Nor need you," he answered, " for I know it 
 already, and from now onwards I shall know it all 
 my life." 
 
 When they had so drunk wine and water 
 together in a sort of sacramental way, they said 
 nothing more. He lifted his sack again, caring 
 nothing whether it seemed light or heavy, nor 
 willing to make believe before her or to deceive 
 her any longer. But he went forward through 
 the further small paddock along the path towards 
 a rude strong hut of hewn logs that stood there, 
 wherein was a store of charcoal, and in the dark 
 recesses of it a sort of pen where a beast might 
 stand, and in the pen dry fern litter that smelled 
 well, and a little straw scattered over it, clean and 
 good. He opened the sack and poured out its 
 contents upon the charcoal heap. 
 
 " There," said he, " is the end of my tale." 
 
 " You shall be further paid for it," she said. 
 
 " You can pay me best," he answered, " with a 
 little lodging, if it is safe that I should lodge here. 
 The weather is warm, and, if you will believe me, 
 I need concealment." 
 
THE G1R0NDIN. 147 
 
 She asked him suddenly : " What is your 
 name ? " 
 
 " It is odd that you should ask me my name," 
 he answered at once, and in quite another tone, 
 " for your name I should never have asked. Have 
 I not told you that I should never forget your 
 name for all my life ? " 
 
 " But you do not know it," she answered again 
 in a low voice, and very troubled. 
 
 " Oh yes," said he, speaking in the manner of 
 the river Garonne when it runs at night with so 
 sincere and so profound a noise, a noise so slight 
 and yet proclaiming so great a depth and volume ; 
 " I know your name. After a few moments I 
 knew it for ever and ever." 
 
 This young woman, full of health and of the 
 woods, in her eighteenth year as I have heard, a 
 companion to the lads of the village, and an 
 exchanger of taunts with the charcoal-burners of 
 the forest, the stay of her father's house (for he 
 was a widower), and the nurse and the upbringer 
 of children younger than herself, had a face 
 designed for some great moment. 
 
 She had never known how swiftly the gods may 
 descend and strike, nor in what manner revelations 
 come ; nor could she tell how little these great 
 things may have to do with a complexion or an 
 
i 4 8 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 accident of feature, or with vesture, or with any- 
 thing at all but the body that men bear and the 
 soul that makes it all. From that moment in her 
 poverty she knew as much as ever has been known, 
 and when she left him she said to him, — 
 
 " Whatever you may be, lie there close in con- 
 cealment ; for I alone of all the household fetch 
 and carry, and I will feed you, and I will preserve 
 you. And God deal with me as I deal with you. 
 You say that you know my name : I do not know 
 your name, nor will I ask it, friend." 
 
 When she had said this she hurriedly left that 
 hut and took the meadows back towards her home ; 
 but though she had said that while he knew her 
 name, she did not know his, yet in her eyes now 
 was something sprung from him which no length 
 of years would quite extinguish. 
 
 When she had gone, Georges Boutroux in the 
 hut again considered, but in a very different mood, 
 the vastness of this world. The place seemed a 
 prison to him, and, as is the nature of prisons, he 
 dared not break it. It called for companionship, 
 as prisons will ; but again, as prisons do, it 
 suggested only one companionship. 
 
 He was very greatly fatigued, he had done more 
 than a man should do in every way ; he considered 
 first what relief might be before him, and what 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 149 
 
 opportunity for getting clean away. Next, and 
 more drowsily as he fell back upon the fern litter 
 and the straw, whether his trick with the char- 
 coal had yet angered the charcoal-burners' camp, 
 and whether they also were perhaps upon him. 
 Lastly, as the good, sleep came down upon him 
 like a happy mist, he wandered confusedly among 
 the inward parts of his soul, counting that last 
 hour and dwelling in it, and forgetting all the wild 
 dance of the two days. He knew that it was 
 something newer than ever he had known before. 
 Then he saw the face and heard the voice so that 
 it was already the beginning of a dream : he heard 
 the low voice and he saw the sunburned face that 
 was the woods and the spirit of them, and he saw 
 the small hands holding from such arms the 
 promise of refreshment and of peace. But after 
 this even the beginnings of his dream left him, and 
 he fell contentedly into his sleep. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 In "which a Lover finds himself in the Dark. 
 
 ' I S HE summer night upon the uplands and on 
 the borders of the woods is cold : there 
 is dew upon the grass, and in the open sky a 
 chilliness which even the cattle feel in their byres, 
 so that they crouch down upon the litter, or, if 
 they are folded in the open, gather together for 
 warmth. 
 
 But Boutroux was not cold : in that long sleep 
 of his he knew a great contentment with which 
 warmth was mingled, and his sleeping and half- 
 dreaming brain imagined permanent satisfaction. 
 For many hours he lay thus upon the straw above 
 the fern litter in the dark refuge of the hut : 
 when he woke, he woke so refreshed that he 
 seemed for a moment in a new life ; he re- 
 membered nothing — but bit by bit the rapid story 
 of his quarrel, his exile, and his flight returned to 
 him. He drew himself up upon his soft bed ; he 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 151 
 
 found above him a rough and thick but good 
 covering of wool which some one while he slept 
 had gently laid there, and new straw heaped 
 about his feet and knees. It was very early 
 morning. 
 
 Everything smelt of morning, and the grey 
 quiet light which came through the door of the 
 shed and through the chinks of its woodwork 
 proclaimed the hour before the sun. The little 
 beasts of the woodland and the grass were already 
 astir ; save for their movement there was no noise. 
 He raised himself yet further, he found his arm 
 less stiff; he unfastened the bandage, it came off 
 easily and the surface of the wound was healed. 
 
 "It is wonderful," said Boutroux to himself, 
 "what contentment and good novelty will do 
 to a man ! They will close up his very flesh, 
 and certainly they restore his soul." 
 
 Having so thought on the matter, he rose 
 sharply from the fern litter and the straw, shaking 
 them about him with a small noise. He coughed 
 to clear his throat, and he had begun some sort of 
 little song to cheer him, when he heard a low 
 " Hush ! " and peering into the darker corner of 
 the shed before him, he saw there the figure of 
 his sleeping and his dreams. 
 
 She was leaning blotted out in the shadow 
 
152 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 against the wooden wall. Her arms were crossed 
 upon her firm young breast. Her milking-pails 
 and the yoke to which they were fastened stood 
 upon the ground at her feet. The very faint 
 light, reflected from the bright straw on to her 
 visage, just barely showed its lineaments ; but 
 he divined her eyes. She did not speak, but 
 whispered, — 
 
 " Speak low. I have been here waiting for near 
 an hour, lest you should be betrayed." 
 
 Boutroux approached her without any noise. 
 She uncrossed her arms as he came and clasped 
 her hands before her. He took her left hand 
 and kissed it gently, and he thought, even in that 
 half light, that her colour rose as he lifted his face 
 to hers. 
 
 " There are several who would find you," she 
 said again in a whisper, "but they cannot guess 
 where you are, for they have been told nothing 
 and they believe you to have fled. Only I warn 
 you : and for that reason I rose while it was yet 
 dark and came to watch until you were awake. 
 But I would not waken you, for you suffered from 
 a great fatigue ; and in your sleep, both in the 
 night and now, you laughed and were taken with 
 fever." 
 
 " It was you," he said, " who came in the night 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 153 
 
 and put this cloth over me against the dampness 
 and the cold, and it was you who put the straw 
 about my feet and knees." 
 
 " It was I," she answered. " Here we keep 
 much of the husbandry, and often my pails are 
 left here for the milking, — so none could wonder." 
 
 " Nor do I wonder," he answered, " and I have 
 better reason than they to understand." 
 
 As he said this to her, she lifted one arm a 
 moment as though to lay it on his shoulder, but 
 she let it fall again and would not. " Very soon," 
 she said, " they will be all astir." 
 
 A cock crowed somewhere in the hamlet below ; 
 he crowed a deep, gay note, full-hearted in his 
 pride and challenging. In the high farm that was 
 her father's he was answered shrilly by some young 
 adventurous rival ; a third in the neighbouring 
 croft took up the call. As those two heard these 
 sounds, they heard also the hoofs of horses 
 moving over the pavement of a stable far off, and 
 the chink of iron ; and there came the whistling 
 of a lad on his way to the fields and labour. 
 
 "You will stay here," she said. "You must 
 not move, and you must trust me. I will bring 
 you food." 
 
 "There will never be a time," he said, "that 
 you may come, whether you bring me food or no, 
 
154 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 but I shall feed. And even when you are not 
 here, I shall feed in a fashion upon a shade." 
 
 She would not answer him. She put the yoke 
 upon her graceful shoulders so that they were 
 bent to her labour, she straightened herself and 
 swung the pails and went out to the field, short- 
 kilted, walking strongly and with the morning 
 upon her. He saw her for but a moment as she 
 passed the door, but almost immediately, as she 
 left him, there came palely through that same 
 entry the first ray of the sun ; it bore with it a 
 sort of miraculous enlivenment and a changing of 
 all things as it came. And Boutroux thought to 
 himself again : — 
 
 " Undoubtedly these are great days ! " Then 
 he considered all that she had told him — how she 
 had told him to lie close and to speak to none, 
 and how she would visit him again. 
 
 An hour later she re-entered, calling carelessly 
 over her shoulder to companions far off, and saying 
 that when she had left her pails in the shed she 
 would rejoin their company. She put down her 
 burdens swiftly, and came to him where he in- 
 habited his lonely place, and set before him in a 
 hurried way a paper wherein there was cold meat 
 and household bread, dark in colour, and a little 
 salt. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 155 
 
 " I have no wine," she said in a low voice. 
 
 "Be pleased to hear," he answered more de- 
 liberately, but in a voice as low, "that I cannot 
 drink wine of a morning, having in my time 
 drunk more than should be drunk at night ; but 
 since it is you have brought this meat to me, 
 there will be wine enough in it, I think, and in the 
 bread as well." 
 
 She was gone immediately, so that none outside 
 could have wondered at her delay ; and as she 
 went out she called again to her companions, 
 saying that the shed was too far a place to 
 leave the pails in, and for the future she would 
 borrow a neighbour's barn nearer to their own 
 byres. 
 
 Meanwhile, Boutroux in his hiding all day long 
 waited for the evening, and was as patient as his 
 strength permitted him to be. 
 
 The sun had fallen to its afternoon : he was 
 feeling drowsy with such enforced indolence and 
 secrecy, when, before he was aware of it, she was 
 at his side again, bringing this time wine with the 
 bread and meat. She spoke with less content and 
 more hurriedly than before ; she begged him not 
 to move nor to make one sound until it should be 
 dark, for he was in danger ; she promised him 
 when it was dark to return and to tell him the 
 
156 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 story of his danger. And once more he obeyed 
 her. 
 
 The evening of that day fell : the sounds of 
 labour retired and were silenced, the grasshoppers 
 after their loud evening chirping reposed, for the 
 night chilled them. And Boutroux waited until 
 it seemed to him that sleep had come down upon 
 the hamlet and the charcoal-burners, and all the 
 living things of the woodland and the clearing. 
 As he so waited, he heard again the step which he 
 now knew like his own name, and she was by him ; 
 but she bore nothing save her message. 
 
 Her voice, which had been hurried and troubled 
 when she had last brought him succour, was now 
 more troubled and more hurried ; the tale she 
 had to tell him was the tale he knew — for she, too, 
 knew it now. And as she began to tell him his own 
 story, coming slowly to it, and hesitating, she held 
 him once involuntarily, and held him close, to com- 
 plete her telling of it, and she spoke to him in a 
 terror which was a great and a proud thing for him 
 to hear ; for as he felt its source he himself could 
 not be at all afraid — no, not even of those things 
 that pursue a soul in darkness. And as for the 
 pursuit of men — hearing her low voice and 
 considering her care, he gloried in that peril. 
 
 Her speech was halting : she told him the 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 157 
 
 last things first, so that he must question her 
 gently, almost as by caresses. He thought she 
 trembled, though she was so strong and well- 
 poised. 
 
 " They neither know me nor where I am," he 
 said. 
 
 " Friend," she whispered to him, " you said in 
 that first speech of ours — which, oh my God, is 
 surely all my life ago ! — that you were a hunter 
 at times." 
 
 " All men are hunters at times," he said. 
 
 " Friend," she said, " when some brave thing is 
 hunted and the hounds come upon it, not only in 
 chase but on flank and flank, it goes hard with 
 that quarry." 
 
 "It is the end of it," he answered tenderly, 
 "or, at any rate, it is the end of that hunting." 
 
 " But," she said, with a little sob and laugh at 
 his perpetually turning her phrase, " this hunting 
 is no hunting of lovers, and they have you in 
 chase and on either flank as well, for I will tell 
 you : — This morning as I left you with the pails 
 to go milking, I met no one, for the hour was 
 early, only Peter in the hollow, the son of the 
 man they call Rich Hamard, who has the main 
 croft and farms the taxes here. And they say he 
 has God's curse on him, with which the old 
 
158 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 woman cursed him ten years ago when he bade 
 the sergeants distrain." 
 
 " All that is news to me," said Boutroux, hold- 
 ing her in the darkness, " and whatever news you 
 have is as pleasant as the noise of a brook. But 
 1 learn nothing of my fate." 
 
 "He did but salute me then," she continued 
 in her whispered, halting anxiety, " but when an 
 hour later I left you, having given you food in 
 that brief moment, he was waiting with my 
 companions at the well ; and he said, ' Jolse ' 
 (which is their nickname for my name Joyeuse; 
 and that is a nickname, for my true name is 
 Isabel) — c Jo'ise, there are men in this country look- 
 ing for coin.' " 
 
 "That is a thing, my dear," said Boutroux 
 gently, "that twenty men to my own knowledge 
 have looked for in their time, and only one or 
 two now and then have found it." 
 
 "Oh, let me tell you," she said, and sighed. 
 " He said to me threateningly, ' They are looking 
 for coin.' ' For what coin ? ' said I, roughly. It is 
 he who comes with a set wooing every Sunday 
 eve before the Mass and on the eve of the feast 
 days to sit by the fire ; and he claims to sit 
 next me, and my father will have it so. Since 
 it is so, I must treat him lovingly or roughly • 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 159 
 
 I treat him roughly, for I will treat him in no 
 other way." 
 
 "You do well," said Boutroux, "to treat all 
 men roughly ; they are rough, and rough treat- 
 ment is in the nature of roughness. Friend, 
 rough on ! " 
 
 " Friend," she said, " when he spoke about that 
 coin I knew what he meant. He meant the 
 money paid you for the sack of charcoal." 
 
 " And why ? . . . And if they do ? . . . It was not 
 marked," said Boutroux ; " and even if it were 
 marked, I have it here, and I can bury it — none 
 can know of that sack or of me, save you 
 only." 
 
 "Friend," she said, "listen. The charcoal- 
 burners say, and have said it to the Justice, that 
 they had been robbed of their charcoal. They 
 missed but that one sack ; of that they complain 
 less. But they complain most about a purse 
 in which they kept their common earnings, and 
 of a fine roll of cloth which one of them had 
 bought at the Fair. They will have it that a 
 wandering man deprived them of these things. 
 One says that he has seen him." 
 
 " Then he lies," said Boutroux ; " and that 
 wandering man took nothing but the charcoal 
 sack, and took it at a great risk, which paid for 
 
160 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 it. No — wait — he did also take good wine and 
 doubtful bread. I remember his taking it, for 
 it was I. But as for the purse, he never heard 
 of it ; and for the roll of cloth, he would as soon 
 steal a beech tree or a wolf trap to burden him 
 upon his going." 
 
 "Then," she went on still fevered, "in the 
 village one and another complains to the Justice 
 during the day that they have lost this or 
 that ; and, friend, in a word, they are hunting 
 for a man." 
 
 " See how a hunter can be hunted ! " said 
 Boutroux. " It is a double world." 
 
 "I would have you out by night," she said, 
 " here and now, although your going would 
 leave me so that after these few hours all the 
 rest of my life would be ringing like a steeple 
 at a dying, with nothing else but the dying of 
 these few hours. But I cannot have it so, because 
 there is another thing." 
 
 " And what is that ? " 
 
 " If I tell you, you will be angry," she answered, 
 and was silent ; and though he questioned her 
 and pressed her, she would tell him nothing at 
 all, nor speak to him for a little while. Then 
 she said, — 
 
 "In the great city there was some one who 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 161 
 
 killed a man, and he did it against The People. 
 They say that they -have traced him to our woods, 
 and the Commune has been advised by the 
 Commune of the city, and the Commune of the 
 city has sent armed men. Now, though you 
 should go by night, they know you, friend (for 
 you I think it was that killed the man) ; you 
 would not traverse this country, which is unknown 
 to you, at the first dawning, without falling into 
 some village without disguise, and you would 
 be caught and held." 
 
 "It was I," said Boutroux, "who killed the 
 man." 
 
 He felt the form that he held shrink at those 
 few words, and for a moment something lifted 
 in his mind, letting in a light, as it were, upon 
 his reason, and making him afraid of his own 
 self. He heard again the first engagement of 
 steel, and it seemed to him in a sort of lightning 
 vision something so evil that he would have 
 no more to do with it than with venom or with 
 treason. He smelt sulphur in the sparks of the 
 steel ; but, as rapid as the flash of those sparks 
 in his memory, the impression faded, and he was 
 back in his old security. 
 
 "I fought,", said he a little sullenly. "If it 
 
 had been he that had had the better of me. my 
 
 6 
 
1 62 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 ghost would never have complained — least of 
 all to a woman." 
 
 " Friend," she said softly, " I am not blaming 
 you." 
 
 " Did they tell you more ? " he added ; " did 
 they speak of a house or of friends ? Or did they 
 give you any name or description ? " 
 
 " No," she said in a bold whisper, and lied ; 
 for in the gossip and the offered reward, in the 
 speech of his pursuers, and from his own manner, 
 she had easily made out the truth, and she knew 
 him for what he was : his name, his house, and 
 all his story. 
 
 " I am tired to hear so much of these perils," 
 he said to her in another tone. " I can see, 
 through the door of this open prison, that the 
 moon is up. I dare not go out with you, for 
 you tell me that everything is watched, and yet 
 you tell me also that this place cannot be 
 suspected." 
 
 She grasped his wrists with her hands, and 
 he wondered at their sudden strength in the 
 darkness. 
 
 "Oh," she said, "try no more adventures, 
 but wait until 1 show you a way ; for in that 
 moonlight, if they should see from any window 
 any form coming hence it would go very ill ; 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 163 
 
 and if they should see two together, two would 
 suffer, friend, for how would my people bear 
 to see me with a stranger ? " 
 
 " I will not go out," he said. ..." How clear 
 are these nights, from the midnight onward, when 
 the moon has risen ! " 
 
 " You shall stay here," she said, " and I will 
 come always at night-fall, and I will be with 
 you all the unknown hours, and leave you a 
 little before the dawning, and there shall be 
 our farewells. For in a little time, when seven 
 days have passed, and we have the dark of 
 the moon, and I have found some tale to tell, 
 and some wrong scent to put them on, then, 
 oh my friend, you will go out, and I will go 
 with you. But I shall not follow you beyond 
 some place of safety, which I shall have prepared." 
 
 "If I so desire," he said, "you will follow me." 
 
 She answered nothing at all. For all that 
 night, until just before the dawning, they were 
 together in the hiding-place. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 In which Two Lovers find themselves 
 in the Daylight. 
 
 CO one day passed, and another, and twice in 
 every daylight she brought him food ; and 
 after the fall of night he would sometimes creep 
 out a little and breathe the air and look furtively 
 from the shadow of the low wooden wall at the 
 lights in the houses far off, and wait until, when 
 all those lights were darkened, before the rising 
 of the moon, she would come to him where he 
 awaited her. And it seemed to him during those 
 •days as though many years were passing, and it 
 seemed to him also as though two lives had been 
 appointed for him — one the life before he knew 
 such vigils, but the other the life after them. 
 
 Never in all those long secret companionships 
 did he hear her voice aloud, nor she his ; nor did 
 they dare go out alone together beyond the walls 
 of his hiding-place or breathe the air outside, until, 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 165 
 
 upon the evening of the seventh day, while the 
 lights were still shining in the windows, and long 
 before he had expected her, he heard footsteps, 
 not at the door, but behind the hut, and through 
 the chinks of it a voice that called him gently, 
 not by any name, but calling him friend. 
 
 " You must rise," she said, " friend, if you are 
 sleeping ; and if you are not sleeping you must 
 rise. You must come crouching round swiftly to 
 the back here where I am and where is a deep 
 shadow, and then we will go together to a place 
 I know." 
 
 Even as she spoke in whispers, those whispers 
 were so lamentable that his heart broke for her. 
 And when he came to her in that shadow, he 
 said, "What does it matter to me, Joyeuse, whether 
 I escape or no ? " 
 
 " Ah," said she, " friend, shall we be longer one 
 with the other if they make you a prisoner ? I 
 think not ! You are caught every way if you 
 remain ; and if you do what I shall tell you, 
 though we never see each other any more, you 
 shall be free ; and if you are free it is with God 
 and His holy ones whether we meet again." 
 When she had said this she went quickly before 
 him along the darkness of the hedge towards the 
 brook and the line of the woodland, and he 
 
1 66 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 followed. Then she went by a path she knew 
 into the underwood, and he still went after. 
 
 As they went the last sounds of the village were 
 lost behind them, and sleep came upon it and upon 
 the wild wood ; and as it was the dark of the moon, 
 they went secure from men. Twice he called to 
 her, and twice he would have halted ; but she 
 answered only by commands and still went forward, 
 until they came after many hours to an open place 
 in the wild wood. Here there was a pond, and 
 near the pond a lonely farmhouse, quite dumb and 
 sleeping and silent. But the dogs heard them and 
 barked, and Joyeuse was afraid. 
 
 " Come quickly with me," she said ; " we are 
 not yet at the end. There is a place of safety for 
 you beyond." 
 
 The wood closed upon them again beyond the 
 clearing ; she still led forward. It seemed at last 
 that the branches against the sky were somewhat 
 more clearly marked, and again they came to a 
 standing water. Boutroux thought that it looked 
 paler and deader than does water in the dim of the 
 night, and more staring. And then in a few 
 moments more it was evidently day, though but 
 the beginning of the day ; and with that light it 
 came upon him that he was not fit to be in such 
 company, and that all that business with her which 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 167 
 
 he must carry with him till his death was a business 
 of darkness which in the light would turn ridic- 
 ulous ; for he was unshaven, his turned clothes 
 were in rags, and he was a vagabond. 
 
 As he so thought, and as the day rose until it 
 was broad light, she hurried forward leading his 
 way. Her skirt was of a russet brown, she had a 
 shawl about her shoulders, its corner hanging to 
 her waist, her head was bare. He saw once more 
 the colour of her hair, and when he considered 
 himself for a moment he could not bear it. She 
 would turn round and see him, and he did not 
 wish it so. Even as he was so thinking within 
 himself that he was not fit company for men at 
 large, and much worse company for this one 
 woman whom he knew, she turned and faced him, 
 and as she faced him she laughed in a manner so 
 young and so contented that he was for himself 
 very desperately ashamed ; but for her, never had 
 he gloried in her more. 
 
 "Ah," said he, "Joyeuse, you turned in time !" 
 And as he said it, he knew his tired and broken 
 face with its week's stubble upon it. "Ah, 
 Joyeuse, you turned in time ! And at last you 
 have seen your lover ! " 
 
 The day was now broad upon them, though the 
 sun was not up by half an hour. The mists were 
 
1 68 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 rising under the low trees. They were upon the 
 edge of a bank which ran down steeply for some 
 two hundred feet, with high beeches in a forest all 
 the way. She came and took his left hand, holding 
 it in her right as though they were children, and 
 led him, still laughing at him with her eyes, to 
 where upon a fallen tree they could sit together 
 and see below them a great, white, royal road. 
 
 " Friend," she said, laughing again, " I have 
 been out all night, and walking, have I not ? " 
 
 " You have, very joyously, Joyeuse." 
 
 " And am 1 the less fresh for it ? " 
 
 " Oh no," said he ; " but then you have no 
 beard." 
 
 " And is my hair too tousled ? " 
 
 " Why, no," said he, and as he said it he saw 
 not her face but her hair. " It is neat enough for 
 the great wealth of it. But then before you started 
 you had a comb, I hope, in your father's house." 
 
 " Friend," said she, " are my clothes ragged or 
 made absurd with hay and straw and the litter 
 of fern, or do these boots of mine show my feet?" 
 
 " I would to God they did ! " said he. 
 
 " But they do not, friend," she answered. 
 
 " No, they do not, Joyeuse." 
 
 " Very well then. If I still seem good to you, 
 do not be displeased with me, and do not foolishly 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 169 
 
 go away. I have a place of safety for you and 
 a plan." 
 
 As she said this the beauty of her young eyes 
 filled with tears, and she watched him in a manner 
 which he suddenly remembered he had seen in the 
 face of his mother when she had watched him as 
 a little child. And once again Boutroux within 
 the depths of his heart marvelled at the complexity 
 of this world. 
 
 "Of all things," he thought to himself, "I 
 should have imagined that at least they cared for 
 shaving. But there are three things no man can 
 quite understand, and one of them I have always 
 heard is horses, and the other is the sea, and it 
 would seem that the third is Joyeuse." 
 
 They had left their seat and they had come to 
 the great royal road. But without proceeding 
 along it Joyeuse led him straight to a cottage by 
 its side, at the door of which a woman, neat — too 
 neat — severe, aged, and expectant, changed from an 
 expression of suspicion at their coming to an 
 expression somewhat more genial as she saw the 
 girl and knew her again. 
 
 " Well, Jo'lse," she said — " or since you are now 
 so old, shall I call you Isabel ? " She looked with 
 a mixture of disapproval and of command upon 
 
 Boutroux's wretched externals, but he was holding 
 
 Co 
 
170 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 himself very well, and there was a gallant strength 
 about his going with which she should not have 
 been displeased. " Sir," she said in a formal 
 manner, " since you have suffered for the King — 
 and I have heard the whole story from my foster- 
 child — you may claim from me anything you will." 
 
 " I claim nothing," he said. 
 
 " You shall have your life at any rate," said the 
 old woman. She said it in the peasants' manner, 
 and Boutroux heard in her tone the false kindness 
 of peasants bargaining. He looked full in her 
 hard eyes and wondered what the price of his 
 safety would be — and whether he would choose to 
 pay it. 
 
 The old woman, standing before the pair of them 
 at her threshold in the cool morning, was making 
 a plan. She said, — 
 
 "Come into my house, sir, for the roads. are 
 not always safe these times for every one, even 
 though the sun be not yet risen." 
 
 The girl was not asked, but she followed. 
 Boutroux, as he passed that cottage door, felt a 
 separation and a changing. He felt a plot in the 
 place. Better be flying and hiding, he thought, 
 and no one's will but my own to guide me, than 
 be subject to the calculations of others — and the 
 interest of this Hag of the Years. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 171 
 
 He watched the old woman leave the room on 
 her errand for him. Her very walk seemed too 
 secret and determined ; he mistrusted her absence 
 as he mistrusted her presence. 
 
 "Joyeuse," he said, "what is this old woman 
 into whose hands you have delivered me ? " 
 
 " Her name is Perrin," said Joyeuse : her lovely 
 eyes were more anxious than her lover's ; she 
 looked at him and pleaded, divining his suspicion 
 and his fears. 
 
 " What is her plan with me ? " he asked. 
 
 "I cannot tell — I dare not know. . . . Before 
 her substance grew, in old days, when my mother 
 died, my father hired her to his farm, and she 
 fostered me. In her second marriage she came 
 to this place. Oh ! do as she bids you. She 
 has power in this countryside." 
 
 "Joyeuse," he whispered, with his laughing 
 eyes full upon her, " how did you speak of me to 
 her ? What have I suffered for the King ? For 
 God's sake brief me in the lie." 
 
 " You got the wound from some Jacobin," she 
 said, "and you are a fugitive. And, friend," she 
 added, putting her mouth close to his ear, "I 
 thought I would give you some name or other ; 
 but I did not. - 1 thought of saying that your 
 name was Boutroux." 
 
172 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 " Lie for lie, Joyeuse," said Boutroux ; " and 
 since you love them so much, let me tell you, 
 upon my side, a little lie of my own. I will say 
 I was in a hut hidden for some days, but much 
 more especially for some nights, by a woman 
 from a hamlet the name of which I do not 
 know. But she had three names — Joise for 
 her betrothed, and for her father Isabel, but for 
 me Joyeuse. Then we went through a wood 
 together, and the day dawned. When jthe day 
 dawned I understood why I had dreamed of her 
 beauty." 
 
 "The one tale may be as false as the other," 
 said Joyeuse. 
 
 They were standing in the bare, clean kitchen 
 of that place. The old woman had not yet 
 come back from her errand ; they still faced each 
 other, alone. 
 
 "Joyeuse," he said, "when 1 went to school 
 I heard a fairy tale, and I will tell it you now, 
 that you may always remember it." 
 
 " Tell on," she said. 
 
 "Joyeuse," he said, "the fairy tale was this: 
 That once there was the daughter of a king 
 whom Love himself made love to. And they 
 were to watch together all night until the dawn, 
 and they were to possess each other for ever ; 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 173 
 
 but upon this condition, that she should never 
 see his face. Joyeuse, it so happened that 
 she saw his face, and then she lost him for 
 good and all." 
 
 " She would not so have lost him had he kept 
 about him some charm," answered the girl slowly. 
 " Have you no charm ? " 
 
 "I have," said he, "as you should know. It 
 is a gold medal of Rocamadour which my mother 
 gave me when I was a child. I have it on the 
 chain at my neck, a silver chain, and till I lose 
 it no great harm will befall my body. . . ." 
 
 As he said this the old woman returned, and 
 said to him, — 
 
 " Follow me. In what I have planned for 
 you you must be dressed in a certain fashion, 
 and you must clean yourself and be shaven. 
 There is a plan laid for you whereby you shall 
 be safe." 
 
 " In what you have planned for me ! " he 
 muttered, wondering, as he followed her. " In 
 what you have planned . . ." 
 
 He followed her into a little room, where were 
 soap and a razor and water prepared. There 
 was a suit of good woollen cloth upon the bed, 
 which suit was in the fashion of those hills : a 
 young farmer's Sunday suit, or one for feast- 
 
174 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 days. There was a rough shirt to go with it, 
 and a pair of laced shoes well greased ; and 
 Boutroux with all these made himself once more 
 a man, but this time a peasant of substance. 
 
 A small square of looking-glass, unframed, 
 hung from a nail. There were black patches 
 on it, due to age, but in it he saw that the 
 disgrace of his hiding had disappeared. He 
 felt less free. It was not his own disguise. 
 He felt himself a comedian at another's bidding, 
 and he loathed and dreaded the change. He was 
 like a man who is led blindfold with a strong 
 hand upon his wrist, and led, perhaps, on pur- 
 poses not his own. Moreover, the sleeplessness 
 of the night fell upon him, and he suddenly felt 
 fatigued. 
 
 He came back to the little low kitchen with 
 that fatigue apparent upon him, and eager for the 
 refreshment of her face. . . . The room was stark 
 bare. Its emptiness of her struck him like a chill of 
 presentiment. There was no one there, only the 
 old peasant woman, standing strict and forbidding, 
 who watched him hardly ; she was ready with 
 orders rather than with counsel. She so eyed 
 him, waiting for him to speak. 
 
 " Madame," he said, " where is that foster- 
 daughter of yours with whom I came?" 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 175 
 
 "She has gone out, I think," said the peasant 
 woman steadily; "but it is no matter, for your 
 business now is with my son." 
 
 " Madame," said Boutroux courteously, " you 
 are invaluable to me! And, pray, what else do 
 you command ? My purse is at your service 
 . . . true, it is empty. Or would you rather 
 that I should forswear myself, or perhaps steal 
 or kill to your advantage ? What have you 
 told Joyeuse ? " he added suddenly, in a more 
 brutal voice. " Where have you sent her ? " 
 
 "Sir," said the old woman as steadily as ever, 
 "I may tell you that I respect any man who 
 has been wounded in the right cause, and I 
 know that you were wounded. I know by 
 whom — and I know whom you wounded also 
 — and where." 
 
 " Oh, Madame," said Boutroux elaborately, "you 
 have the advantage of me ! . . . you have hold 
 of some romance that is new to me. Nay, it 
 is indifferent to me — profoundly. But where is 
 Joyeuse ? " 
 
 " Young man, you understand me clearly," 
 continued the peasant woman, with fixed thin 
 lips, " and you will understand me further. 
 Nothing is given for nothing. If you will lose 
 your head, lose it. If you would end safe, you 
 
176 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 will obey and be tame. Climb up into the cart 
 that is now at my door and sit beside my son, 
 who is to drive it. Go where he shall drive 
 you, and accept what I choose to offer you. 
 It is not a pastime, nor what you might have 
 chosen. . . . But it is pleasanter than a short 
 imprisonment and a public death." 
 
 " Where is Joyeuse, old hag ? " said Boutroux 
 again. " You will excuse mej Madame, if my 
 words touch upon the picturesque ; but I think 
 I have been tricked in some way." 
 
 The old lady was quite unmoved. " I am 
 bound to tell you nothing, young man," she 
 said. " I offer you safety, and you reply in a 
 way that gives me a good right to do with 
 you what I choose. She is not here. Do you 
 know what is here, within call? Ten of my 
 men in a barn, my son, whom you can hear 
 calling from his cart, and there are arms. There 
 is something else. There are, round the turning 
 of the road, still sleeping in the inn, officers of 
 the police from Bordeaux. Do you understand 
 
 "Old woman," said Boutroux insolently, and 
 swaggering up a little towards her, " you have 
 heard the saying that one may as well be hanged 
 for a sheep as for a lamb ; and I take it that 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 177 
 
 of the two you are less a lamb than a sheep. 
 You have heard it said that I killed a man ? " 
 
 "Yes," said the old woman; "and I believe 
 it." She did not shrink from him ; she fixed 
 her small eyes on him like needle points. 
 
 " And if Joyeuse was where those armed men 
 are with their writs and their warrants, do you 
 think " — and he came a step nearer — " that, to 
 see her again for a moment or> two, I would 
 hesitate to put another item into the indictment ? " 
 
 As he so spoke he stepped back suddenly. A 
 man had lumbered in through the doorway, and 
 stood at his shoulder. 
 
 "You're quarrelling with mother," he grinned. 
 " They mainly do . . . but she beats un. Don't 
 'ee, Dame ? " 
 
 The mother said nothing ; for the first time 
 that morning she smiled, and it was a drawn 
 smile. 
 
 " I were to give 'ee this," went on the yokel, 
 " and to tell 'ee . . ." He grinned again. 
 
 As the young man said this he showed Bou- 
 troux in the midst of his enormous palm a very 
 small medal lying ; and Boutroux, rapidly and 
 instinctively feeling through his shirt at his 
 chest, found the chain there alone and no 
 medal attached to it. He picked the medal 
 
178 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 gently from that big hand : it was his medal 
 right enough ; it was his medal of gold. On 
 the one side was the figure, on the other the 
 legend. He hoicked out from his bosom the 
 end of the chain, as though he would fasten 
 the charm on again ; then, thinking better of 
 it, he put the chain back in his bosom and 
 the medal in his pocket. He asked himself in 
 what moment the lover's theft was done, and 
 he thought he remembered ; and as he so re- 
 membered, he smiled. 
 
 " You should have kept it for proof and a 
 clue when you betray me," he said. 
 
 "You are a mad fool," answered the old lady. 
 "You have done harm enough in the place. If 
 I had kept your medal I would have kept it 
 for the gold. There's no clue wanted for a 
 face like yours. If my son did not need you 
 to feed the rebels in his place, I had rather the 
 hangman had you. . . . But you are to go to 
 the armies, and go you will. It falls well for 
 us. Go and sell your flesh." 
 
 The sun had risen. He must go, or find 
 himself a prisoner. He considered the chances 
 of life and a possible vengeance. He decided, 
 and followed the young farmer out to the cart 
 that waited. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 179 
 
 " You are right, Madame," said he over his 
 shoulder ; " I am a fool, and passably mad. And 
 you, Madame, are an accursed old Royalist witch 
 whom my honest friends the Jacobins will do 
 well to burn. I will send them, never fear, 
 and you and your house above you and your 
 damned traitor serfs will be roasted and pass in 
 smoke." 
 
 The old lady did not fail. 
 
 " Go and replace my son : you are fitter meat 
 for Brunswick," she called after him. " We have 
 a use for your carrion." 
 
 "But I have no use for you," shouted Bou- 
 troux from the road. "Go and join your father 
 the devil — my friends shall send you there." 
 
 He climbed up into the cart. The big peasant, 
 overjoyed at the completion of the business, gave 
 a little click with his tongue and a flick with 
 his whip ; the horse jerked, pulled itself into a 
 slow trot, and they lumbered heavily up the 
 road. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Showing how £Men become Soldiers. 
 
 ^|~^HE road was hollow and rising on a sharp 
 incline, paved as a royal road should be, 
 and wide. 
 
 In a matter of half a mile they came to the 
 summit of the hill ; here was a turn and a clump 
 of wood which, when they had passed it, hid from 
 Boutroux the hut and all his memories. 
 
 Before them from that height was to be seen 
 under the newly-risen sun a broad and excellent 
 champaign, woodlands and vineyards, a wide river 
 running through, which surely, he thought, must 
 be a stretch of the Dordogne. Far beyond, fram- 
 ing this delightful prospect and hazy against the 
 sky, stood noble and exalted distant hills. With 
 all that sight the thought of what he had lost was 
 mingled. The peasant had halted his lumbering 
 great horse and his rough cart : he was waiting for 
 some appointment. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 181 
 
 " Why do you not go on ? " said Boutroux. 
 
 " Maybe I've a friend," said the other young 
 man, grinning his broadest. "We've all a right 
 to our appointments." 
 
 Boutroux constrained himself, and within his 
 mind did no more than to add, by way of codicil, 
 a special curse upon the son, to follow that good 
 larger curse which he had laid upon his mother 
 and her home. But even as this passed through 
 his imaginings he saw standing by the step of the 
 cart a labouring man, old, grizzled, and thin, 
 who saluted them in a clumsy fashion and climbed 
 up on to the board at the back of the cart behind 
 them. With the fall of the road the horse was 
 urged to a sharp trot. Boutroux was ill content. 
 
 " Who is that man ? " he asked. 
 
 " One o' the hands," said his companion, with no 
 further explanation. 
 
 " Do you need him ? " 
 
 " I hopes not ! ... But 'tis alias useful to find 
 another along wi' un." 
 
 The cart halted to take a piece of rise at a walk, 
 and as it halted the old labourer behind slid to the 
 ground and walked behind it, like one watching 
 and guarding. 
 
 Boutroux leaped down from the cart and came 
 close up to the old man, who recoiled much more 
 
1 82 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 than that woman in the hut had done. He said to 
 him, — 
 
 " I shall track you, and I shall follow you : you 
 shall pay the price for this plot, whatever it is. . . . 
 Where am I being taken to ? " 
 
 The old man winced and still backed away ; he 
 would not answer ; he half cowered. 
 
 "Doan you be a fool," said the driver, looking 
 back at the scene as he halted. " Come up 'long- 
 side me." 
 
 "Old man," said Boutroux, as he got up into 
 the cart again, " it will be ill for you at the end 
 of this journey, and worse for you later on. Be 
 wise and go home." But the old man clambered 
 on again to his back-board ; Boutroux said no 
 more. The road fell again in a straight fall of a 
 mile and more before them, and he sat silently 
 beside the yokel mile after mile. 
 
 Once in that long stretch of downward road he 
 pulled the medal from his pocket and looked at 
 it. He put it back. At last, after a long and 
 rustic silence, he again asked the fellow at his side 
 where he was being driven, and what was all this 
 plan. 
 
 The peasant looked at him with sidelong eyes 
 and smirked to himself, whipped up the horse 
 (which shambled not much the faster for it), then 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 183 
 
 looked again with another such glance, and said : 
 " What might your name be ? " 
 
 A false name was on the tip of Boutroux's 
 tongue, but he was too angry for prudence. He 
 said : " It's none of your business what my name 
 may be ! " 
 
 " My business more 'n most," chuckled the 
 rustic, " my business more 'n most, seeing your 
 name's to be my name in an hour or so, and 
 mine yours. . . . My name is Perrin." 
 
 " How is your name to be my name ? " said 
 Boutroux, falling with an ease that surprised him 
 into that conversation of parables and hints which 
 is the very expression of a peasantry. 
 
 His companion nudged him suddenly and un- 
 pleasantly in the ribs. " Who goes a-soldiering ? " 
 he said, and winked. 
 
 "God knows ! " said Boutroux : but he put 
 this with what the old cat had said of selling his 
 flesh to the rebels, and he began to understand. 
 
 The cart was half-way down the long slow 
 descent, the glory of the landscape had diminished, 
 the distant hills were masked by nearer folds of 
 land ; the day, now that the sun had risen, began 
 even thus early to show signs of heat ; a sort of 
 sleepiness was on him mixed with ill-temper, and 
 for a good ten minutes he said nothing more, but 
 
1 84 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 he was determined to know what was before him. 
 He could not bear to resign his freedom to the 
 army, yet he knew that he would have to do so 
 lest a worse constraint should fall upon him. 
 
 Just as he had determined to speak again he saw 
 far down the road before them three mounted men 
 in uniform. As the cart approached them, he 
 made out a sergeant, old and grizzled, and with 
 him two quite young men of some cavalry 
 regiment with whose facings he was unfamiliar, 
 and which he could not name. 
 
 BoUtroux and his driver came up to that small 
 patrol, and even as they reached it the peasant, 
 sitting at Boutroux's right, put up a hand as though 
 warning the sergeant to make no sign. He 
 beckoned to the soldier, got him to his side, and 
 began whispering to him in the confidential way 
 of peasants ; when the whispering was over the 
 soldier looked up doubtfully into Boutroux's face, 
 and Boutroux looked ironically into his. * 
 
 " Perrin ? " he said. 
 
 Boutroux winked slightly, and was silent. 
 
 " Perrin is your name ? " said the soldier again, 
 asking the question in full. 
 
 " Very possibly," said Boutroux. " It is a 
 matter upon which I should wish to know more 
 before I committed myself." 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 185 
 
 The old sergeant smiled grimly. " You are not 
 the only one," said he, " who in these days must 
 be decently careful. Come, I will not bother you 
 as to whether your name is Perrin. What the 
 regiment needs, my lad, is a Perrin's two legs and 
 two arms and some sort of a head, the duller the 
 better. Have you a dull head, Perrin ? " 
 
 " Oh yes," said Boutroux, " my head is dull 
 enough for the Militia, or for the Ministry of 
 War." 
 
 " You can't shirk," said the sergeant ; " and the 
 less you answer the better." 
 
 " I don't want to shirk," said Boutroux, " but I 
 do want to thresh out that question of my name. 
 Note you, Sergeant, a name is an important thing : 
 not in itself but in the repetition of it ; for if a 
 man's name goes on changing like a marquis's son's, 
 it is a disturbance to all the world." 
 
 " Oh, give yourself any name you like, lad, only 
 get down and follow." 
 
 "How far?" 
 
 "Why," said the sergeant, with a laugh that 
 was hoarse with the life he had led, "my orders 
 are as far as Angouleme . . . but the enemy are 
 nearer the Rhine." 
 
 " Angouleme ? " said Boutroux, fixing his eyes 
 upon a distant tree. "... That's lucky . . ." 
 
1 86 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 He sighed. "That's one of the luckiest things 
 I've ever heard. In Angouleme, Sergeant, it so 
 precisely happens, there lives the only man in all 
 this country who may know my name. I shall 
 forget it myself until I find him." 
 
 "There are many like you," muttered the 
 sergeant; and Boutroux climbed down from the 
 cart and stood by the side of the soldier's horse. 
 
 " Now, you will follow quietly ? " said the grey 
 old fellow, looking down. 
 
 "Not if you trot," said Boutroux carelessly. 
 " No man can follow a trotting horse quietly." 
 
 "We'll mount you in the town," said the 
 sergeant ; and as he said it the rustic, immensely 
 relieved, turned his cart round, gave them all the 
 blessing of God, and was for returning in peace to 
 his home. But Boutroux, as he turned, spoke a 
 word to the sergeant, and said, — 
 
 " Sergeant, I am a man of honour." 
 
 "They all say that," said the sergeant suspi- 
 ciously. 
 
 " Not only am I a man of honour, Sergeant, but 
 you are mounted and we are in the midst of open 
 fields, where there is no cover for a hunted man. 
 Come, let me say a word privately to the driver of 
 this cart : to tell you the truth, I have a message 
 for my friend — from the Jacobins." 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 187 
 
 The sergeant did not answer, but he did nothing 
 to prevent the movement. He was used to such 
 scenes in the pressing of men. Boutroux strolled 
 up to the driver just as that rustic was trying to 
 get some pace out of his old jade ; he came up by 
 his side and said, — 
 
 " Halt a minute ! " 
 
 The yokel pulled up, cursing. 
 
 " We must make an arrangement — for both our 
 sakes. I think you said my name was Perrin, did 
 you not ? " 
 
 " That's what I said," answered the youth, and 
 grinned. 
 
 "I think you said that your name was my 
 
 " That's it," said the peasant, and grinned more 
 broadly. 
 
 "Very well, Perrin," said Boutroux — and he 
 said " Very well " with a decision that unpleasantly 
 reminded the peasant of his lord. "Very well, 
 Perrin, listen ! Your crops this year will fail you : 
 you will not pay your taxes. The men-at-arms 
 will come to distrain upon your filthy hovel, but 
 before they take your sticks the men of my society 
 will find you ; they will bind and beat that old hag 
 of a mother of yours ; " — the peasant did not dare 
 to strike him — "and when they have done so, 
 
1 88 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 a worse thing will happen to you all. They will 
 sack your place, they will kill you as they choose, 
 and you perhaps will be burned upon the wood of 
 your own woodpile. They have more power than 
 you know." 
 
 "Oh, we care nothing for prophecies in my 
 village," said the rustic, a little pale. " Go your 
 way ; you are a soldier man now : better for you 
 than for me ! " 
 
 " I only wanted you to look forward to it," said 
 Boutroux, " because it will make you surfer more 
 until the time shall come. Meanwhile ..." He 
 leapt suddenly on to the step of the cart, threw 
 the old labourer to the ground, half stunning him, 
 and in the same moment struck the driver with 
 his fist full drive in the mouth. 
 
 Blood poured from it ; the victim of the blow 
 beat the air with his hands, and roared for an 
 arrest. He had clambered down, the blood still 
 streaming from his broken teeth — he was mumbling 
 and cursing for an arrest ; the old labourer had 
 picked himself up and was tearing away down the 
 road. The sergeant would offer no redress. 
 
 " Yours to catch the birds," he said, " and theirs 
 to curse you. The hussars are not your police- 
 men ! get you home ! " 
 
 The fellow limped painfully to his seat ; he 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 189 
 
 moved off promising pursuit, and Boutroux turned 
 back to the sergeant's side. 
 
 " I have given my message," he said, " and now 
 we can all go forward." 
 
 The two privates were laughing. They were 
 used to the impotent anger of pressed men, and 
 they liked to see them game. They drew up their 
 horses behind him, and Boutroux walked beside 
 the sergeant's bridle, now and then exchanging a 
 word, the sergeant at one remark of his or another 
 smiling down under his grey old moustaches, 
 amused at such a recruit, until they came to the 
 gate of a little walled town, and there a guard 
 was standing. 
 
 The old sergeant dismounted stiffly, and Boutroux 
 most politely held his bridle ; but the sergeant 
 turned his horse to one of the two men, and 
 beckoned Boutroux into the guard-room. 
 
 There was a rough table in it with pen and ink, 
 and a dirty fold of paper upon which was printed 
 the regimental arms and the King's regulations. 
 The sergeant summoned two witnesses and ran 
 through the formula of the oath. When he came 
 to the recruit's name he muttered aside to Boutroux : 
 " Come, you must give a name — any name." 
 
 "But," said Boutroux calmly, "how am I to 
 know my name until I get to Angouleme ? " 
 
190 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 "I must fill in something," said the sergeant 
 fiercely. 
 
 "I would give the name of Perrin," said 
 Boutroux thoughtfully, " were it not so unlucky ! 
 Such damnable things are to happen to a gentle- 
 man of that family ! " 
 
 " Put down Perrin," said the sergeant ; and 
 Boutroux signed " G. B. Perrin " in a sharp and 
 educated hand, with a rapidity of the pen that 
 was suspicious ; but in those days of August and 
 the invasion, questions were not too closely 
 pressed. 
 
 "Perrin," said the sergeant, finishing the 
 formula, " you do here swear on your conscience, 
 and with this oath, to the Nation, that you will 
 loyally and duly, etc., etc. . . . and that's all 
 over ! 
 
 " Is that the oath ? " said Perrin. 
 
 "Yes," said the sergeant, beginning to show 
 signs of sharpness. "We've done with joking 
 now, my boy." 
 
 " Well, then, there it is ; and what's the new 
 way of swearing ? " 
 
 I The sergeant looked up puzzled. "I for- 
 get," he said. "There used to be God in it, 
 |eh?" 
 
 A man of the guards said respectfully : " They 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 191 
 
 swear with the right hand spread outward now, 
 Sergeant." 
 
 " Do they ? " said the old sergeant surlily. 
 He was a Tory. 
 
 Boutroux spread out his right hand. The 
 sergeant put his hand in the pocket of his leather 
 breeches for a coin, and found none there. " We 
 must have the coin," he said stupidly. "It's in 
 the essence of the contract." 
 
 " And what is the least coin necessary ? " said 
 Boutroux. 
 
 " One livre," said the sergeant ; " it's the law, 
 and has been ever since I first knew the service, 
 God curse it ! " 
 
 " Why, then," said Boutroux genially, " let me 
 lend you the coin." He pulled out a handful of 
 silver and put down the franc. 
 
 The sergeant took it and pushed it back across 
 the table towards him ; in so doing, he spoke the 
 last words of the ritual, "And as you take this 
 coin, so you are engaged." 
 
 "Precisely," said Boutroux. 
 
 The sergeant picked the franc up, rang it to 
 test its value, and quietly slipped it into his own 
 breeches pocket. "It is a custom of the regi- 
 ment," he said. "We do not return the earnest 
 money." 
 
192 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 "Naturally," said Boutroux, "naturally. But 
 have you spat upon it for luck ? " 
 
 "You have shown more money than is good 
 for you," was the sergeant's only answer. " You'll 
 have to stand wine." He handed the coin to one 
 of the guard, Boutroux reluctantly added two 
 more, and the man came back with some very 
 good wine of Chardac, little enough for three 
 whole livres of silver — but soldiers are always 
 cheated. They drank together to the new 
 recruit. 
 
 " It is against the King's regulations," said the 
 sergeant stiffly, "for superiors to drink with in- 
 feriors ! Hum ! Therefore, Private Perrin, you 
 will drink first and I after, and in that way we 
 shall not drink together ! . . . Has any one a 
 little gunpowder ? " he added more genially. 
 
 The private soldier standing by shook his head. 
 " We are allowed no service cartridges," he said. 
 
 " 1 thought as much," said the sergeant thought- 
 fully ; " we shall have to make it up in snuff." 
 He took a pinch from a box which he had about 
 him and carefully peppered Boutroux's wine there- 
 with. " Now, my boy," he said kindly, " drink 
 that ; it will make a man of you." 
 
 Boutroux drank the wine. 
 
 " It is this kind of wine," said the private 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 193 
 
 soldier sententiously, "that makes a man sneeze, 
 not in his nose but in his stomach." 
 
 " It is good wine," said Boutroux, " but the 
 snuff seemed somehow to spoil it. How does it 
 taste without snuff, Sergeant ? " 
 
 " It is better," said the sergeant, smacking his 
 lips and speaking slowly — " it is better without 
 snuff." 
 
 " Why, then," said Perrin, " pour me some out 
 unseasoned." 
 
 This they did ; and when Perrin had drunk it, 
 the sergeant looking at him gravely the while, 
 that old soldier said, — 
 
 " Perrin, my poor lad, let me give you some 
 advice, and if you take it you will be a wise man. 
 In the service we love boldness and sauce, but we 
 treat them hardly ; and if they go too far we treat 
 them ill." 
 
 " Sergeant," said Perrin, with deference, " it was 
 the snuff that went to my head ; by now I am 
 quite cured." 
 
 "Take him away," said the old chap. As he 
 said it, he sat down to fill up certain papers, 
 establishing the new recruit in his corps ; and 
 Boutroux was led away by two of his new com- 
 panions, looking and feeling odd between them in 
 
 his civilian dress. 
 
 7 
 
194 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 As they went, one of them said, " What roped 
 you in ? " 
 
 " Debt," answered Boutroux promptly. 
 
 " Ah ! " said his guard, sighing, " and no 
 wonder ! " He knew that gate of entry into 
 the service. 
 
 "Yes," said Boutroux, "debt. I cut a man's 
 coat with a long knife, and the damages were 
 more than I could pay. But the Perrins are an 
 unlucky family, and there's worse coming on those 
 who stayed behind." 
 
 They said nothing more to him for a hundred 
 yards or so ; but as they approached the town 
 hall of the place, one of them, nodding towards 
 it, said, "There's a pack of others like you in 
 there ! " 
 
 Boutroux did not answer. They led him into 
 a great basement hall vaulted in stone, and there 
 he found a score or so of every kind and con- 
 dition : young volunteers from the place, two or 
 three gentlemen's sons, a fellow plainly out of 
 jail who later boasted of it, and one, a Basque, 
 who had come northward leading a bear and who 
 could not make out what in the world had 
 happened to him, but who, with all these others, 
 had been caught_jmd was to be made into a 
 soldier. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 195 
 
 Overlooking this crowd was a young, mild-eyed 
 man, in the same uniform of the cavalry as had 
 been worn by Boutroux's first captors. The stripes 
 upon his arm were of cloth and not of gold ; he 
 was apparently inferior in some way, but he seemed 
 to have a command. 
 
 His voice was gentle, low, and deep, and he 
 was kind to them all. He formed them in that 
 basement hall into a sort of rough column with a 
 front of four ; and when he had them so formed 
 he looked anxiously at the little squad, and said 
 mildly, like a man asking the time of day or 
 passing some remark upon the weather, " March ! " 
 Having so said, he went out of that hall, through 
 the great door, into the garden of the town hall, 
 and the little column shambled after him. 
 
 "There is a lack of parade about all this," 
 thought Boutroux. 
 
 In the garden they found a person of great 
 splendour, a little effeminate in speech, well 
 clothed and beautifully armed. 
 
 "And this," said Boutroux to himself, "is an 
 officer ! " 
 
 This being gave orders to the young soldier 
 who had marched them into the garden, and the 
 lot of them were led away to a barn where deep 
 and clean straw was laid. The young soldier 
 
196 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 who had brought them spoke again in his mild, 
 monotonous voice, as though he were repeating a 
 lesson, — 
 
 " Those of you who wish to sleep, may sleep ; 
 any who desire to go into the town may do so. 
 But it is forbidden to send any letter or to 
 approach the postmaster or his stables. At noon 
 I will come for those who can ride ; the others 
 will remain here. Arrange it among yourselves." 
 
 He left them, and the dispirited band began 
 discussing which of them could ride. Two 
 opinions arose in their debate : one was that all 
 of them could ride, the other that none could 
 ride. For there were some who thought that 
 those who could not ride would be discharged ; 
 but there were others who thought that, on the 
 contrary, all would be kept, and those who could 
 ride would have a better and earlier chance of 
 easy treatment. In the end, it was decided to 
 decide nothing. One boy who wept continually 
 and asserted that horses terrified him, was marked 
 out as a butt by his fellows. 
 
 " If they desire," said a large, bold young man, 
 whose trade it had been to sell cheese, " some 
 one of us who certainly cannot ride, we will hand 
 over this friend," and he pointed to the weeping 
 figure. When he had so spoken they disposed 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 197 
 
 themselves upon the straw. Those who, like 
 Boutroux, had had no repose during the whole 
 night (and they were many), fell at once into a 
 deep and exhausted sleep : the remainder talked, 
 some despairingly, some eagerly, one with another ; 
 not a few were curious and pleased to find them- 
 selves upon the edge of soldiering. The little 
 man who had cried wandered about by himself; 
 if he had dared, he would have run away, but 
 he had no friends and he did not know the 
 country. 
 
 Boutroux, being of those who slept, saw nothing 
 of this. What woke him at noon was the tearing 
 noise of a trumpet in the very door of the barn ; 
 and as he sat up in the straw, exhausted and 
 bewildered, he saw before him again that mild 
 young man in uniform and sword, who tapped 
 him on the shoulder and said, — 
 
 " Come ! I cannot afford to have any one 
 late ! " 
 
 In a field outside the barn there were twenty 
 horses of every sort and kind, most of them old, 
 all of them unenthusiastic, waiting saddled with 
 the heavy campaign saddle of the service. The 
 young uniformed man, as gently as ever, put 
 a man to each horse, and then said dolefully, 
 " Mount." Those of the twenty who did not 
 
1 98 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 know how this was done were taken away : 
 some punishment was in store for them. Of 
 the ten who at least could mount, eight wished 
 they had not, as did their horses too. And of 
 these eighty six were told in that same quiet 
 voice to come off again, and went to join their 
 unfortunate companions. Of the remaining four 
 was Boutroux. The young, quiet man went up 
 to Boutroux and said, — 
 
 "Look here, my friend, it will save time and 
 trouble if you will tell me frankly, since there 
 are only four of you, do you or do you not 
 ride?" 
 
 "I can ride this beast," said Boutroux. "As 
 for the other three, you can find out by touching 
 up their mounts with any stick that comes handy ; 
 and mind you, when I say I can ride this brute, 
 I only judge by his ears, which seem to be made 
 of soft cloth." 
 
 The young soldier smiled a gentle smile. 
 "Yes," he said, sighing, "I ought to have put 
 you upon a more vicious beast ; but our mounts 
 are worn. Have you ridden ? " 
 
 "Oh yes," said Boutroux, "I have ridden." 
 He was on the point of saying, " I was a postilion 
 for a night," but he checked himself. 
 
 " It is a pity," sighed the young man ; " we can 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 199 
 
 never make a good hussar out of a man who has 
 ridden as a civilian." 
 
 The four were trotted round and round. Three 
 could sit their beasts, Boutroux among them. One 
 fell off at the first sign of motion ; he was dis- 
 missed into an outer darkness, and the young 
 soldier, left with the three, said : " That decides 
 it ; three out of ten ! " 
 
 He went back to make his report. The three 
 found themselves set apart in the stables, sweeping 
 up, cleaning and baiting, and later carrying pails of 
 water. As they did so the young soldier gently 
 reminded them that these advantages they owed 
 to their power over the brute creation. 
 
 " We make three classes of recruits," he said : 
 "some must march behind, to be drilled and 
 catch us up as they can ; others we can mount, 
 and they ride with us to where we join and are 
 drilled on the march ; others we incorporate 
 if they can ride at all. Such are the times we 
 live in, and they are evil. Of the twenty who 
 were netted here, ten said they rode ; of these 
 you three can for your sins remain seated with 
 difficulty upon a jaded horse — on which account," 
 he added, sighing again, "there is attributed to 
 you the very noble service of stable duty." He 
 appointed a sort of bully from among the older 
 
loo THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 soldiers to look after them, and went off to take 
 his orders. 
 
 At five o'clock the three found themselves 
 mounted, with the young, sad soldier by their 
 side, following at the tail of a long train of cavalry 
 that was filing out of the town. As they passed 
 the further gate the trumpets sounded again in 
 a grand and challenging manner. 
 
 " It is a wonderful thing," said Boutroux to the 
 sad young soldier, "but these trumpets do not 
 frighten my horse at all." 
 
 " The inferior," answered the young soldier po- 
 litely, quoting as from a book — "the inferior 
 does not address his superior until his superior 
 has addressed him." 
 
 " I'm sure I'm very sorry," said Boutroux. 
 
 " Had you been longer in the service," said the 
 young soldier quietly, by way of answer, "I 
 would for that last remark have, reported you 
 for punishment." 
 
 This said, they rode side by side for some two 
 miles in complete silence. 
 
 The road went on monotonous and meaning- 
 less, and Boutroux thought as he went that the 
 life of a soldier was something quite utterly 
 different from anything that he had conceived. 
 Then he got a new light upon it. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 201 
 
 Far off a voice gave a loud, long-drawn cry that 
 sounded like no word he had ever heard, and 
 at once right down the line there passed a sort 
 of wave of trotting. It reached him and his 
 two companions, and the young soldier who 
 looked after them. They also broke into a 
 shambling trot. He had heard that a soldier 
 must not rise in his stirrups, and as he was 
 wondering what alternative a soldier had, he 
 was surprised to find his leader turn to him and 
 say,— 
 
 " Now that we are trotting and there is a noise, 
 we can talk." 
 
 " I'm delighted to hear you say so," Boutroux 
 gasped between the jolts of the saddle. "Did 
 you notice the poor child among us who was 
 crying ? " 
 
 "Oh yes," said the young soldier, with even 
 more than his accustomed sadness. 
 
 "Has he found the service too hard in these 
 few hours ? " asked Boutroux pitifully. 
 
 " No," said the young soldier, musing ; " he was 
 
 not capable of anything, so we made him a servant 
 
 to the captain of Troop B. The captain's wife 
 
 thought he would make a good servant ... he 
 
 will have an easy time. Better for him than 
 
 for us ! " 
 
 7a 
 
202 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 " And will he make a good servant ? " said 
 Boutroux. 
 
 " No," said the other, " but he will not have to 
 ride now or at any other time. And, oh Lord ! 
 he will get more money than we do." 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Showing how Soldiers are not always so. 
 
 TT was two days later when the trumpet sounded 
 before dawn in the streets of a straggling 
 village, and the men woke grumbling from the 
 straw in the barns and took their horses from 
 the stables to saddle them, and mustered at 
 last in the market square. 
 
 The march was to be a short one : they were 
 within eight miles of Angouleme. 
 
 The odd procession with its civilians and its 
 uniformed troops, its veterans, its young recruits 
 as yet undrilled, moved out along the great 
 highway. They had not gone a mile in that 
 summer morning when there came up at a gallop 
 a man on horseback from far away down the 
 road. He rode as men ride in action, and as 
 though he bore news of immediate consequence. 
 He was an orderly. He spoke to the head of 
 the detachment, saluting, and he handed him 
 
2o 4 THE G1RONDIN. 
 
 the paper that he bore. The officer read the 
 paper, looked puzzled, and exchanged some words 
 with the orderly ; then bade him go down the 
 column and explain in detail to the non-com- 
 missioned officers, especially to the fourriers. That 
 orderly came down the column to where the gentle- 
 faced young man rode, as was his place, by 
 Boutroux's side at the tail of the line. The 
 orderly had something smart about him as of 
 the old service, before the Revolution and the 
 invasion, but he was very tired. He was sitting 
 his horse anyhow, as though he had ridden too 
 long, and the first thing that the gentle-faced 
 young man said to him was, "Who shortened 
 your stirrups ? " He said it familiarly, for they 
 were of equal rank. 
 
 "It is your eyes that deceive you, Hamard," 
 said the other, mocking him ; " no man in the 
 hussars ever shortens his stirrups. I opportunely 
 changed the length of my legs by quite six inches 
 a mile up the road. You must see that my 
 legs are beyond the regulation length." 
 
 " That explains it," said the other gravely, 
 and Boutroux wondered whether this were the 
 wit of the regiment, "for if so," thought he, 
 " I must prepare myself to make jests of the 
 kind." 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 205 
 
 " What have you there, Hamard ? " said the 
 newcomer, jerking with his chin at Boutroux as 
 he sat in his peasant clothes upon the horse. 
 
 "Why," said the sad-faced young sergeant 
 whose name Boutroux thus heard, "that object 
 explains itself." 
 
 " It does," said the newcomer. " Are you 
 quite sure of him ? " 
 
 " We're not s ure- of . anybody^' ' „said Sergeant 
 Hamard. "You, for instance. How did you 
 leave things in Angouleme ? " 
 
 "There were," said the messenger, looking 
 at the sky as though he would find his words r 
 there ; " there were two officers left with the 
 regiment when it reached Angouleme — a captain 
 and a lieutenant. The others had preferred to 
 serve the enemy ; they had gone away." 
 
 " Two, that's short rations ! Two, and not 
 a major among them ! " 
 
 "No," said the messenger slowly, "nor a 
 captain now. He is no longer there." 
 
 " No wonder," said the young sergeant ; " the 
 service is a hole from which a man will escape 
 if he can." 
 
 " True," said the other ; " the lieutenant,^ 
 liowever, after some hesitation, has declared for ft 
 the Nation." 
 
206 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 " Has he indeed ? " said the sergeant, and 
 he sighed — as he always ,did. "It is a pity 
 that the subaltern ranks should feel themselves 
 so tied ! Did any one try to kill the captain 
 when he bolted ? " 
 
 "Oh yes," said the messenger, "the usual 
 thing ; the guard wasted a few shots, but it was 
 dark, and he got away." 
 
 " It's a long way to the frontier," said Boutroux, 
 mixing in this cryptic conversation for the first 
 time. 
 
 " You'll find it so, young man," said Sergeant 
 Hamard dryly. 
 
 " That captain has gone before us into Galilee," 
 said Boutroux. 
 
 The sergeant glanced at him slyly. " When you 
 have been in the regiment a little longer," he said, 
 "you will be a little more careful of your tongue." 
 ,' To which the messenger added, " My wretched 
 fellow, it is true, and remember it : treason and 
 even desertion are most strictly forbidden in 
 all below the rank of captain." 
 
 "And who is left in Angouleme," asked 
 Hamard, " to look after us all ? " 
 
 "The lieutenant, as I told you," said the 
 other shortly ; " but some one else has come : 
 a Parliament man." 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 207 
 
 " A civilian ? " said the sergeant, wondering. 
 
 "You may call him a civilian now," said the 
 messenger in a musing tone, " but he has tremen- 
 dous go, and it seems he commanded a regiment 
 in his time. He drinks heavily at night ; he 
 sleeps well ; and he is like a tornado in the 
 morning." 
 
 " It's all Greek to me," said Hamard. 
 
 "You will understand well enough when we 
 get to the town," answered the other, "and 
 meanwhile I was to tell you this, only the charm 
 of your conversation distracted me — when we 
 get into Angoul6me we obe y order s, do you 
 understand ? " 
 
 " I've found it exceedingly difficult to do any- 
 thing else during the last few months ; show 
 me my superior and I'll obey orders," answered 
 the sergeant. 
 
 "Well, but that's the hitch ; your superiors 
 aren't there . . . and there may be some 
 argument." 
 - 1 " That's what I feared." 
 
 "Now when you hear argument," continued 
 the new-comer, " take my tip : I've been watching. 
 If one tells you one thing, being a soldier, and 
 the other tells you another, being a civilian to 
 the eye, and a shouting and a swearing one, 
 
208 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 why, you will do well to o bey the shouting 
 and the swearing Parliament man. IF you obey" 
 contrariwise, you're shot. Friend," he added, 
 putting up a hand and laying it on the sergeant's 
 bridle arm gently, " for God's sake tell everybody 
 to be sensible." 
 
 " I have only three to tell," said the gentle-faced 
 young sergeant. 
 
 " Then tell all the three and tell them in time," 
 said the messenger brusquely, looking him full in 
 the face. " For it will be a matter of shooting be- 
 fore noon ; and the people who shoot, wound, worse 
 luck ! They have all the guns. It's the Parliament 
 man that has the magazine." 
 
 When he had said this he proceeded to tell the 
 whole tale. The news had come down five days 
 before. The King was imprisoned ; there was God 
 knew what government in Paris, but it was some- 
 thing fierce. The hussars had gone to pieces. 
 The ranks were there, for the most part. The 
 sergeants had held. There had been a few deser- 
 tions, but the men were kept by pay and food and 
 had not where to go. In all the squadrons not 
 twenty privates had decamped, but the officers were 
 gone, all but one — a lieutenant, a ranker. The 
 rest had got off" across country ; they were for the 
 invader now the King had fallen. A man was 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 209 
 
 there from the Parliament in Paris, and this man 
 had full powers. The time had come, he repeated, 
 for every one to do what he was told. 
 
 " Perrin," said the gentle Hamard to Boutroux, 
 " do you ever pray ?" 
 
 " Never ! " said Boutroux decidedly. 
 
 " Do you ever toss a coin ? " 
 
 "No, but when others do it I often cry heads 
 or tails as the case may be." 
 
 "Why then, shall we pray or shall we toss a 
 coin ? for I fear that orders will be contradictory in 
 Angouleme." 
 
 " If I were you," said Boutroux, " I would await 
 the event, and after that I should pray, or at any 
 rate I would offer up prayer or curses according to 
 the result." 
 
 "There is not much comfort in that," said the 
 sergeant, and for some time after both were silent. 
 
 The messenger from Angouleme trotted away 
 again up the column on his wearied mount, and 
 soon they saw before them the hill and the packed 
 houses and the domes of the town. 
 
 The guard, as they came up to the gate of 
 Angouleme, sent forward two men who quietly 
 asked for a password and were given it. As the 
 detachment came in they noted that the guard did 
 not salute, and it seemed to them that there were 
 
210 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 very few men at the gate. The column was halted 
 and bidden to dismount. All obeyed, including 
 the officer who led them. And when this had 
 been done, a short, swarthy man, nearly sixty 
 years of age, with an animal determination in 
 his face, his eyes bloodshot (from drink or from 
 lack of sleep), but very fixed in their glance, came 
 out suddenly from the guardroom at the gate. 
 
 There was an odd mixture of fear, respect, and 
 annoyance in the way in which the soldiers re- 
 ceived this figure. 
 
 He was dressed in knee-breeches, he wore no 
 sword, he had a great riding-coat about him, of a 
 dark green colour with brass buttons, on which 
 were stamped the Fasces and the Axe. He had 
 neither wig nor hat upon his head, but a mass of 
 his own dark curling hair; and around his waist, 
 making a mass of silken colour, was a tricolour 
 scarf. . It was tied in a huge bow above the sword 
 hip — where was no sword — and the two tails of it 
 hung down almost to his feet. 
 
 " In the name of the Nation," he said huskily, 
 staring at the commander of the detachment, who 
 stood before him without insolence or curiosity, 
 awaiting what remained to be said. "I bring 
 commands for whom 1 choose," he said brutally, 
 " and I break what commissions I choose." 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 211 
 
 "There is no need for you to speak to me 
 thus," said the commander of the detachment in 
 an easy tone. "These with me are for the most part 
 lads recruited during my mission to the south of 
 this town ; the rest are of the old regiment. I 
 Only await orders." 
 
 The scarfed politician in the riding-coat, the 
 tricoloured, was a little mollified, but he still 
 spoke brutally. 
 
 "This captain who has bolted was one of 
 yours ? " 
 
 " I don't even know which one it was," answered 
 the lieutenant quietly. 
 
 The politician gave the name. 
 
 " Oh yes ! He was one of ours," said the 
 lieutenant. 
 
 " And who else is going to bolt ? " asked the 
 politician angrily. 
 
 "None that I know of, sir," said the officer 
 gravely. " As for my men, they have come here 
 bringing in the recruits to drill . . . and we 
 take orders from Paris," he concluded. 
 
 "Ah," said the politician with a big breath, 
 "you take orders from Paris?" He looked the 
 soldier up and down. "I know what soldiering 
 is, mind you ! " 
 
 "So I should have thought," said the cavalry 
 
212 THE G1RONDIN. 
 
 officer in answer. " In the line, I should say ? " 
 he added. 
 
 " No damned insolence ! " shouted the other, 
 suddenly firing up. " In the guns ! " 
 
 " Well, then, in the guns." 
 
 "Well, then, in the guns," mimicked the 
 politician, mocking him, "and in the guns we 
 stood no nonsense. . . . Do you know that you 
 have no colonel ? " 
 
 " Since when ? " said the chief of the detach- 
 ment. 
 
 "The devil knows," answered the politician 
 with an unpleasant laugh. "But the regiment 
 and you others were to concentrate at Poitiers." 
 
 The cavalry-man nodded. 
 
 "Well," said the other with a sniff, "he had 
 gone — bolted — by the time I came through." 
 
 The cavalry-man nodded again. 
 
 The politician grew exasperated. " I don't know 
 whether you know more of it than you care to 
 say, but do you "know what strength there is in 
 Poitiers ? " 
 
 "There are not quite six hundred sabres to 
 command, when all the detachments have come in, 
 counting the recruits. I have the count correctly 
 enough." 
 
 "You know what I mean," said the politician 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 213 
 
 surlily, but with a flash in his eye. <{ Who is to 
 command your six hundred sabres ? " 
 
 " If the colonel is gone," said the other calmly, 
 "the senior officer." 
 
 "Well, my lad," answered the deputy coarsely, 
 " that's you." 
 
 They looked at each other in mutual anger, 
 with disgust and contempt upon the side of the 
 soldier, and a little hidden fear of consequences 
 upon the side of the civilian ; for that civilian was 
 there alone unguarded, with nothing but the 
 authority of the Parliament behind him. ..." You 
 understand me ? " he asked. " I have the commis- 
 sions in my pocket, and I can make and unmake. 
 Will you take it on ? " 
 
 " I do what I am told," said the soldier shortly. 
 " Who are there here in Angouleme ? " 
 
 "Three more detachments and perhaps a hun- 
 dred recruits," said the other. " You must drill 
 them on the way. You have heard what has 
 happened in Paris ? " 
 
 The cavalry-man answered that he had heard. 
 
 " How long will it take you to go to 
 Poitiers?" 
 
 " Can I have remounts ? " asked the officer. 
 
 " Can your recruits ride them ? " retorted the 
 politician. 
 
2i 4 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 "They will have to," said the officer patiently. 
 " If you get me remounts I can be there upon the 
 evening of the second day. But once there I must 
 be able to fill my stables again and to pick and 
 choose." 
 
 "Oh, you'll do that all right," said the other 
 
 roughly. " We can gather horses by the hundred 
 
 [from the lujaa.tics.who have Jjeja^^dsiag^u nder the 
 
 jjpriests thereabouts. Oh ! " he went on, laughing 
 
 'hoarsely, " every man that comes out with his nag 
 
 for the Pope is a beast for us, and sometimes a 
 
 jrecruit as well. . . . We turn 'em in ! There's 
 
 /some use in rebels ! " At this point he jerked his 
 
 thumb for the officer to follow him, and they went 
 
 together into the guard-room. A little while after 
 
 the soldier came out with the expression of a man 
 
 who has eaten bitter fruit and has made up his 
 
 mind. 
 
 He mounted and gave orders that all his com- 
 mand should mount. He dispatched two soldiers 
 with orders, and in a few minutes there were 
 gathered in the great place of the town quite three 
 hundred mounted men ; a hundred of them were 
 still in their civilian clothes, sitting awkwardly in 
 their knee-breeches or with trousers tied with 
 string at the knee. 
 Boutroux filed in with the rest. There was 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 215 
 
 plenty of jostling and cursing and orders both 
 whispered and shouted ; but in the long run some 
 sort of formation was got together. The two 
 trumpeters sat their horses before the line in the 
 square. The crowd of the town had begun to 
 gather in the corners of the big open space to 
 watch what might be toward; they laughed at 
 the fellows in the civilian rags and they derided 
 such a show. The officer who had commanded 
 Boutroux's detachment and the recruits on the 
 march from the south, and who had just held his 
 conversation with the commissioner from the 
 Parliament, rode up to where the trumpets were 
 and faced the men. He had one lieutenant at 
 his side ; the sole remaining one was at the head 
 of the formation. He gave the order. 
 
 "Now that the men are assembled," said he 
 to a sergeant, "you can tell them to sound the 
 assembly." 
 
 " Yes, my Captain," said the man. 
 
 "Colonel!" said the other, looking at him and 
 very nearly forgetting discipline so far as to smile. 
 
 " Yes, my Colonel," stammered the man again 
 with wide eyes. He rode up to the trumpets. 
 
 " The assembly and the regimental call," he said. 
 
 "Without the colonel?" asked the trumpet 
 sergeant-major sullenly. 
 
216 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 The sergeant moved his head imperceptibly 
 towards the young officer still in his lieutenant's 
 uniform, who sat his horse alone and looked down 
 that long line. "That's the new colonel," he 
 whispered. 
 
 "God help us all in the hussars !" answered the 
 trumpet sergeant-major, and he gave the order. 
 
 The two men lifted their trumpets and sounded 
 the assembly and the regimental call, giving that 
 flourish at the end with their instruments which 
 was due to a colonel's command. 
 
 As this ceremony — which was symbolic and 
 decisive of the regiment's adhesion to the Revolu- 
 tion in Paris — took place, the Parliamentarian came 
 up towards the new young colonel at the head of 
 this command. He was swaggering and rolling on 
 his feet, his tricoloured sash was still about him, 
 and his way was marked by long rolls of popular 
 cheers. Two cavalry-men on foot, with drawn 
 swords, went with him. He came across the broad, 
 open empty space, still swaggering, stopped near 
 the officer, set his feet wide apart, and said, — 
 
 u Colonel, that is but half your command ; the 
 other half awaits you at Poitiers." 
 
 The officer gravely saluted. 
 
 "I will ask you, when the men are dismissed 
 and quartered, to help me draw up a list of pro- 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 217 
 
 motions. We must have a cadre. The com- 
 missions must be filled." 
 
 " It is simple enough," said the officer in a low 
 voice. " I know the best of the non-commissioned 
 officers here, and you can fill the list from no 
 other source." 
 
 " We don't only want the best soldiers," growled 
 the politician. 
 
 " I will talk to you of the rest," said the other 
 guardedly. 
 
 " And what of making sergeants in the place of 
 those we take for commissions ? " 
 
 "I would have the new commissioned officers 
 decide on the recommendations," said the colonel 
 of half an hour's standing. 
 
 He sent another order ; the trumpets rang out 
 again, and confusedly jumbled at first, but at last 
 disentangled, the whole line of veterans, of young 
 soldiers, and of recruits — a few volunteers as well 
 — broke up into their separate troops and sought 
 the various streets of the city in which they were 
 quartered. 
 
 The politician and the new-made colonel went 
 off together to the chief hotel of the place, right 
 on the big square ; the one was still swaying on 
 foot, with his great three-coloured scarf about him,j 
 the other soldierly upon his horse. There was anf 
 
2i8 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 I omen in that sight, and many who saw it knew 
 [that at last the army would rule the Republic. 
 $But for the moment the army took orders from 
 JParliament as an army should ; and this new chief 
 of the regiment went in to draw up his list of 
 subordinates. Save for him and two bewildered 
 lieutenants, there was not as yet a single man of 
 commissioned rank to deal with all those hundreds. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 In which the Girondin, though by no means yet 
 a Soldier, becomes very certainly a Sergeant; 
 and in which a Chivalrous Fellow strikes a 
 Blow for the Crown. 
 
 TDOUTROUX'S mount was quartered in a stable 
 belonging to a corn merchant. The corn 
 merchant had come into that stable to see the horse 
 groomed, and also to see that nothing should be 
 stolen. Boutroux groomed with precision and 
 care, and as he groomed a sullen, swarthy sort 
 of fellow, quite thirty years of age, in the uniform 
 of the regiment — and a dirty uniform at that — said 
 to him, — 
 
 "You're wanted — you're wanted at the White 
 Pheasant." 
 
 " Where's that ? " said Boutroux pleasantly. 
 
 " It's an inn," said the other more sullenly than 
 ever, " and be damned to you ! " 
 
 " Friend," said Boutroux, " you are senior in 
 
220 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 the service to me, but it will give me great pleasure 
 to touch you up with something pointed, and 
 perhaps my host will lend me a crowbar or, at the 
 worst, a kitchen knife." 
 
 " Go to hell ! " said the other ; " you'll have 
 more power than you want before morning to 
 prod poor devils like me." 
 
 He went up to the horse and stroked it gently. 
 
 " I knew this beast before ever you were in the 
 regiment," he added, lachrymose ; and then, " Go 
 on to the White Pheasant, and don't remember my 
 words." So saying, he took over the grooming. 
 
 Boutroux asked of the corn merchant where the 
 White Pheasant might be. The dirty little inn was 
 pointed out to him on the other side of the road. 
 He went in, still dressed in his peasant clothes, 
 hopelessly travel -stained after the long march. 
 There he saw six sergeants who, when he came 
 in, made a loud and confused noise, and shouted 
 at him words the meaning of which he could not 
 guess at all. One of them made as though to 
 throw wine over him, another half drew his sword 
 and was repressed by a friend, but the rest laughed, 
 all save one — and that one (Boutroux was very 
 pleased to see) was his gentle friend of the march- 
 ing days. 
 
 " Well, Perrin," he said, " I have nominated you." 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 221 
 
 " I don't understand," said Boutroux, bewildered, 
 standing up at a sort of attention, for he already 
 had the fear of rank upon him. 
 
 "You will understand right enough," said one 
 of them sullenly, "when you have to fight the 
 whole mess, one after the other." 
 
 "Hold your drunken tongues," said the gentle 
 sergeant ; " if he has only you to fight it will 
 be as easy as carving a pie. I have nomi- 
 nated you, Perrin. Do you know what has 
 happened ? " 
 
 " More or less," said Boutroux. 
 
 " Less than more," said his friend. " There are 
 just three officers left for this accursed crowd. Do 
 you know what I am by now ? " 
 
 At this the drunken sergeant interrupted again, 
 "God knows you're a peacock." 
 
 " I'm a lieutenant," said the gentle-faced sergeant 
 quietly ; " I've just got my commission." 
 
 " Right ! He's a lieutenant. Odd. True. Lieu- 
 tenant Hamard," said a large, black -haired man 
 at the end of the table with a deep bass voice. He 
 said it as though there was something of doom 
 in the news, but, having said it, he roared with 
 laughter, so odd the familiar name coupled with 
 the new title sounded. "He a lieutenant! and 
 
222 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 "And so am I," piped a little shrill fellow in the 
 midst ; " we're three lieutenants, we are." 
 
 "Yes," roared the man with the bass voice, 
 "and when it comes to making captains the day 
 after to-morrow, you'll be a lieutenant still." 
 
 Those who had not been so favoured laughed 
 uneasily. The sullen man wanted to speak again, 
 but he was silent. Then Hamard, Boutroux's 
 friend of the march, said again, — 
 
 " Well, Perrin, and you are a sergeant ! " 
 
 "And many an older man," said the sullen 
 fellow, " will do you a bad turn for it." 
 
 "They'll have time enough to think as the 
 promotions go up," said another. 
 
 The gentle-faced man continued, — 
 
 " You'll have your two companions in the mess 
 here within an hour, and then we've got to go 
 off to quarters." 
 
 Boutroux said, " May I speak to you for a 
 moment?" 
 
 They bowed at him mockingly, and the gentle- 
 faced lad took him aside and said, " I know what 
 you're going to say : you're going to say that you 
 know nothing of the service. You must do as the 
 others do ; you'll soon fall into it." 
 
 " But what on earth is the point ? " asked Bou- 
 troux, still bewildered. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 223 
 
 "My friend," said the other, smiling his sad 
 smile, " I presume that you can read and write ? " 
 
 " Certainly," said Boutroux. 
 
 " Well, Perrin, if you will believe me, in the '; 
 whole troop there is not one who can write a cleary 
 hand, and only eight that can read ; and in your j 
 sergeants' mess you will find that you will be the J 
 only one who can copy a dispatch or keep accounts.^: 1 
 That's the reason." 
 
 " It's all very odd ! " said Boutroux. 
 
 " Revolutions always are ! " said the other, andi 
 went out. 
 
 That night, though the quarrel had begun be- 
 tween the disappointed members of the mess and 
 their new comrade, there was no time for quarrel- 
 ling. At the moment when their drinking and 
 quarrelling should have begun they were ordered 
 to the town hall, and found there, in a new medley 
 of uniforms, freshly -commissioned officers who 
 were their former comrades, and whom now they 
 must salute — men of the people unused to any 
 command save that of gentlemen ; and in the 
 presence of these new and strange officers re- 
 fraining with difficulty from incongruous laughter 
 and the still more incongruous oaths of the barrack 
 room. 
 
 They found the new sergeants of every sort 
 
224 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 drawn suddenly from the ranks, and files of the 
 new recruits who, all night long, were being 
 passed through for accoutrement, and dressed as 
 best they could be. 
 
 In the morning, after a night during which not 
 one-third of the force had slept, the whole body — 
 the new commissioned ranks, the accoutrement 
 staff, the recruits, and the guards — were drawn 
 up again in the market-place of Angouleme, 
 all dressed as they should be, and very deceptive 
 to the eye :_a civilian might have taken them all 
 for soldiers^ For the remounts had been put under 
 the most experienced men, and the recruits sat 
 those old, tame, sleepy beasts which were called 
 in the regiment " the Circus." 
 
 These scratch troops filed out, therefore, in some 
 order in that early morning. There were few of the 
 civilians about ; the Commissioner from the Parlia- 
 ment was sleeping out his excess of the night before. 
 
 The hussars took the great northern road, 
 halted at Mansle, but pushed on all that day to the 
 place called White Houses, seeing the haste there 
 was to reach Poitiers; and during the mid -day 
 halt, and at the great halt at night, steadily the 
 recruits were drilled. That force was moulded as 
 were all the pressed forces of the Revolution in 
 their thousands, swept up from countrysides, and 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 225 
 
 drilling on the march ; and so it was to be for 
 twenty years. 
 
 But Boutroux (invaluable for his reading and 
 writing) was at the accounts of the foraging and 
 with the books ; and in Poitiers, where there was 
 to be a concentration and a waiting for two days, he 
 had his room in barracks, and had already begun 
 to learn the trade. 
 
 The cavalry barracks in Poitiers were roomy, 
 and the more roomy for the draining of men to the 
 frontier. Counting the detachment which had thus 
 come in from the south there were not eight 
 hundred sabres in the whole place, although the 
 buildings were designed for a full brigade. 
 
 All the regiment was there, and a maimed troop 
 of Royal Allemand as well ; there were fifty 
 or sixty of these puzzled foreign mercenaries with 
 silly empty flaxen heads, a little terrified at the 
 Storm that raged all around them, but knowing 
 too well how the People had come to hate such 
 hired fellows as they were. These poor lads kept 
 to barracks for safety amid the taunts, and worse, of 
 the French regiment. Their oflicers had gone over 
 to the enemy months ago ; nearly all their body 
 had been dissolved by revolt, by emigration, or by 
 disease far ofF upon the frontier, and they, alone, 
 who had been dispatched upon a local mission, 
 
226 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 remained isolated here, in the centre of the country 
 at Poitiers, terribly afraid. They were glad even 
 to do the heavy work which their French fellow- 
 soldiers forced upon them, making them a sort of 
 slaves. They dared not go into the town, for the 
 j town was in a ferment : lying upon the very edge 
 J of the Royalist districts, its municipality and its 
 i more active citizens exhibited an exaggerated zeal 
 iTor the Revolution and for the New World. 
 
 Here, in Poitiers, the men who had just come up 
 from the south heard, for the first time, the whole 
 story in detail : how the Tyrant and the Austrian 
 woman, his wife, and the little Wolf-cub, their son, 
 were held prisoners in the Temple ; how the traitors 
 and the aristocrats had been arrested in Paris ; how 
 the People were now supreme. They heard that 
 the armies on the frontier were crowded with 
 volunteers ; they heard the suspicions of treason 
 and the general officers' names cursed upon 
 every side — Lafayette's in particular, an arch 
 traitor — and there was more than one pri vate of 
 long standing who suggested to his fellows that the 
 time had come for getting rid of officers altogether, 
 especially of those new fellows dragged out of the 
 ranks, whom all the cavalry detested ; but, oddly 
 enough, the privates found that with such an access 
 of liberty discipline was stronger than ever, and one 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 227 
 
 drunken fellow, who had said a word too much, 
 having been tied up all day, for a show, at the 
 barrack gates, the rest grumbled less loudly. 
 
 Meanwhile Boutroux, under the name of Perrin, 
 in the Chiefs room, worked at his books, and every 
 hour that he could he followed drill. Boutroux 
 was Sergeant Perrin, and Sergeant Perrin worked 
 much harder than any of the sleepy-eyed horses 
 of "the Circus," and twenty times as much as 
 any of the new horses of the remounts. He was 
 assiduous. But, steeped in his work as he was, the 
 huge fantasy of the thing struck him more and 
 more with each new day ; and at night, when he 
 had done drinking with the others, he would, in 
 spite of his fatigue, lie awake sometimes, wondering 
 at this makeshift for an army : educated men — and 
 he had read, if anything, too much — could not 
 believe in it. 
 
 A colonel who had been a captain not a week 
 before ! Subalterns lifted up at a moment's 
 notice from all manner of places, most of them 
 still thick with the speech of the barrack room, 
 and still heavy with the slouch of the ranks !; 
 Ranks weakened by a third at least, and that third 
 filled up anyhow, with pressed peasants, foolish! 
 jingo clerks, runaway boys, and tramps who asked* 
 for nothing but food ; — all these grotesquely 
 
228 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 enough dressed in the true uniform of soldiers, 
 and a desperate haste and energy, hours and hours 
 {of riding-school and drilling, trying to make 
 ^something of the hotch-potch ! He couldn't 
 believe in it. 
 
 The enthusiasm of the town helped his cynicism, 
 for aU^thisRevolution talk, which he had played 
 with in Bordeaux, seemed to him, at close quarters 
 with the populace, a hopeless thing. 
 
 There were black flags hung out to symbolise 
 the national danger ; long tricoloured streamers 
 pendent from the roofs and windows to symbolise 
 the national resolve. Now and again there would 
 go through the streets half-maniacal processions of 
 women and boys shouting against the invasion ; 
 and twice during the few hours he had been in 
 the place the house of one or another who had 
 been marked for vengeance had been wrecked as a 
 sympathiser with the King and with the Austrian. 
 It was a madness. 
 
 He was so much a soldier already, was Sergeant 
 Perrin, that he could not bear to see the two guns 
 stationed stupidly and permanently in the square 
 of the town, with theatrical civilian gunners 
 (volunteers dressed up for a show) standing by 
 them, two hours at a time, and matches in their 
 hands. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 229 
 
 But especially the Clubs vexed him. Oh, he 
 knew what it was, the spouting in the Clubs ! 
 He had been through it all at Bordeaux ! And 
 that ceaseless rhodomontade and those perpetual 
 great words of Humanity, though he only heard 
 them reported or sounding through the open 
 windows of the summer meetings in the halls of 
 inns or dancing-places, disgusted him. He went 
 on with his work : they would be sent to the 
 frontier at last, they would be there within a 
 month ; and when they got there, well, they 
 would be broken up and torn to pieces as 
 " troops " of such a kind must be whenever they 
 were met by true soldiers. 
 
 One thing was real to him and a friend in this 
 hurried march of exile and of concealment. He 
 had a horse, a horse of his own — a white horse by 
 name Pascal. 
 
 They had given it him on his promotion — and 
 it was worth nothing, it was old. Where it came 
 from, whether a peasant in Vendee had bred him, 
 or whether he was pressed or bought, or old in 
 the service, Boutroux did not know. 
 
 This horse he made a friend and grew familiar 
 with. At everything else in that hurried way 
 north he wondered. 
 
 He marvelled that the Royalists made less 
 
2 3 o THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 show. He had been brought up in a house 
 philosophical upon the man's side, hard clerical 
 upon the woman's, but all its friendships and 
 connections respectable. He had imagined — as 
 wealthy men, and young wealthy men especially, 
 will do — that such an atmosphere was the atmos- 
 phere of the whole world ; and here, now in 
 Poitiers at least, it seemed to have vanished 
 altogether. Where were they, the men who, 
 before the revolt, had been ready to die for the 
 King and for religion, and for all that the French 
 had been ? On the second night after his arrival 
 in Poitiers he got some idea of where they were. 
 
 There was a coffee-house on the summit of that 
 hill town close to the wide open space called the 
 Place d'Armes ; it stood between the cathedral 
 and the town hall, and here, even in that time, 
 a little rest and seclusion could be found. 
 
 Few frequented it ; old clients and regular 
 customers, snuffy men for the most part. Bou- 
 troux took refuge there, not without precaution. 
 He did not like to leave his comrades for as much 
 as an hour in the day, and his need for learning 
 his trade took all his time. But to sit in that 
 coffee-house for a few moments at evening when 
 he was at leisure was a benediction to him. So 
 sitting there upon that second evening, reading 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 231 
 
 vaguely a news-sheet come from Paris — a news- 
 sheet very bitterly opposed to the new state of 
 things and putting its opposition very plainly — 
 so sitting and drinking wine, he was aware of a 
 figure that had taken a chair opposite him and 
 was watching him closely. 
 
 Boutroux's sword was hanging upon a hook 
 behind him, he had his shako on his head, he had 
 even kept his gloves upon his hands : he was in 
 regulation dress, and had nothing to fear even if 
 the stranger was some authority in mufti ; but he 
 soon learnt that he had other things to deal with 
 than the regiment alone. 
 
 The stranger put his right hand closed upon 
 the table, called for wine himself, and when he 
 had done so, giving a rapid glance at Boutroux, 
 he said, — 
 
 " You are reading the news from Paris, sir ? " 
 
 Boutroux looked up, and as he did so he saw 
 the clenched hand of the stranger open very 
 rapidly and disclose a locket with a portrait upon 
 it. It was the portrait of a fat, rather silly, goggle- 
 eyed man in a blue coat, and there was a fleur- 
 de-lis stamped across it. The hand shut again 
 quickly. The stranger looked up at a corner 
 of the ceiling unconcernedly and murmured, 
 " You understand ? " 
 
232 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 "Perfectly," said Boutroux, who understood 
 nothing ; but he had learnt for now a fort- 
 night not to be off his guard. He judged the 
 stranger skilfully with imperceptible glances, darted 
 momentarily at him while he pretended to continue 
 his reading. The stranger was dressed in a long, 
 dark cloak fastened at the neck with a pin. He 
 wore trousers strapped .under the heel and tight 
 fitting, and under them one could see the shape 
 of riding -boots. His face was thin, long, and 
 hatchet-like, his eyes deep-set, arched, and sad. 
 Upon his head he wore a rather shabby old felt 
 hat set at a challenging angle. He might have 
 been a man off the stage or from the fair, but 
 Boutroux judged him right : mad or sane, he was 
 a rebel. ' 
 
 He opened his hand again with the same abrupt 
 gesture and left it open a little longer this time, 
 so that Boutroux could see the miniature which it 
 held. As he did so, his face had about it a 
 religious look : it was not quite sane. 
 
 In an awkwardness of this kind one must make 
 up one's mind quickly, and Boutroux did so. 
 
 " You have a portrait of the King," he said 
 simply. 
 
 "Yes," said the stranger with reverence and in 
 a lower voice. " You are worthy of us ; you call 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 233 
 
 him by his name. Sergeant, by what you are 
 reading you should be trusted." 
 
 "I have always been trusted," said Boutroux 
 pleasantly, laying down the paper and looking full 
 at his companion. " I have never been suspected, 
 thank God, by any one in my life. I have done 
 my plain duty as a soldier since, in my childhood, 
 I was adopted by this regiment, in which my 
 father served. But I am always willing to 
 hear." 
 
 The stranger looked troubled. "I would not 
 compromise any man," he said slowly, " but there 
 are some of us who are determined to inflict a 
 just punishment upon one who has committed 
 treason." 
 
 Boutroux looked very grave. " Not of ours ? " 
 he said. 
 
 "Yes, of yours," said the stranger firmly. 
 "The news has been sent us from Bordeaux by 
 the Central Association. They have traced him, 
 I am very, very sorry to say, to your corps." 
 
 " Who is c him ' ? " said Boutroux with wide 
 eyes. " What have I to do with this ? " 
 
 "Nothing," said the stranger shortly, "except 
 
 to do your duty as you boast to do. Your King 
 
 is a prisoner, but he may yet be avenged. ... In 
 
 Bordeaux," continued the stranger, crossing his 
 
 8 a 
 
234 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 legs and looking more indifferently than ever at 
 the corner of the ceiling, "a man upon whom 
 many of ours depended — at any rate, the friend of 
 many of ours — betrayed the cause. He joined the 
 Jacobins secretly, he raised them against his 
 own household (it is a damnable thing to have to 
 say, but he did so) ; his uncle and guardian, who 
 had befriended him, was arrested and now lies in 
 prison. He had already fled, by the ioth of 
 August, wisely, but the rabble had been warned by 
 him. ... It is due to his treason that the Rebels 
 had time to hold the quays in Bordeaux, and that, 
 when the news of the rebellion came from Paris, 
 they had the shipping in their hands. That man," 
 he ended simply and decisively, " must suffer 
 death." 
 
 " A man of such power," murmured Boutroux, 
 "could hardly remain hidden. He must be a 
 very master of men ! Was he young or old ? " 
 
 "Quite young," said the stranger pathetically, 
 " a mere boy — barely of age." 
 
 "Tut, tut," said Boutroux, "what powers do 
 not revolutions reveal ! " 
 
 "At any rate," said the stranger, cutting him 
 short, " he is in your regiment." 
 
 " I'm sorry to hear that," said Boutroux ; " he 
 will get promotion ; men of that sort always do." 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 235 
 
 "We may stop it first," said the other firmly. 
 "I've said it before and I say it again, if we 
 cannot save the Altar or the Crown, we can avenge/ 
 them." 7 
 
 " By all means ! " said Boutroux genially, calling 
 for some more wine and offering it to the stranger. 
 " What was his name ? " 
 
 The man in the cloak pulled out a notebook 
 and read as follows, — 
 
 " ' Name, Boutroux, Georges. Probably adopted 
 an alias. Of an offensive carriage ; high, affected 
 voice. Talkative. Can ride ; if enlisted, prob- 
 ably in a cavalry regiment. Further traced 
 beyond Chiersac, then lost. Reported by Mel- 
 chior in cavalry barracks at Poitiers.' That was 
 yesterday," said the stranger dolefully. " Poor 
 Melchior was taken off to Paris yesterday upon 
 some charge by these wolves." 
 
 Boutroux nodded and thanked God within his 
 heart. 
 
 " 1 wish he were here, for he knew the traitor's 
 face." 
 
 Boutroux rapidly sought in his mind for the 
 name of any Royalist companion of his from 
 Bordeaux who might conceivably know Poitiers. 
 He suddenly remembered one. 
 
 "This Melchior," he said, looking steadily at 
 
236 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 the other, "was Sarrant by his family name, I 
 think ? " 
 
 The stranger looked back as steadily. 
 
 " I shall not tell you," he said. 
 
 "You need not," said Boutroux lightly, "but 
 he came round to quarters and he spotted your 
 man. He told me his own name in case I ought 
 to communicate with him." 
 
 "He did!" said the stranger delightedly. 
 " Poor Melchior ! You saw him ? You grasped 
 him by the hand ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir," said Boutroux, with a choke in his 
 voice. " I held him by both hands ; he was an 
 honest man ! " 
 
 " Now I know that you will serve us J " said 
 the tall, hatchet-faced one radiantly. "Can you 
 take me to your barracks now ? At once ? " 
 
 Boutroux pondered within his mind. " You 
 had better wait," he said, " until to-morrow morn- 
 ing at ten, about an hour before we relieve the 
 guard. If you will come then, I will leave orders 
 that the man shall be brought out to meet you 
 as to meet a relative. You can take him away, 
 and after that it is in your hands." He leaned 
 over and whispered in the stranger's ear, " Many 
 of us are with you." Then he wrote upon a piece 
 of paper, "The person with the order from the 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 237 
 
 colonel asks to see his nephew." " That is all you 
 will have to say," he said, " but say it exactly so." 
 
 The stranger nodded mysteriously, and they 
 parted friends. 
 
 Boutroux, as he went back to barracks, con- 
 sidered. "You are a more important man, 
 Georges," he thought, " than I had imagined. It 
 seems that you have become a legend in Bordeaux. 
 The Royalists are after you in earnest ; and if the 
 Royalists, then, probably, also the Jacobins. ... It 
 was your fault, Boutroux, for being born the 
 nephew of so wealthy a man. . . . And now I 
 hear that he is in prison. I am sorry for that, 
 though I should be glad if my aunt were there 
 too ! You are an important man, Boutroux," he 
 mused as he went across the great open Place 
 d'Armes, with his sword-hilt caught in his arm to 
 prevent the scabbard from trailing, and as he went 
 he gazed at the ground. 
 
 " You have fame, Boutroux," he continued to 
 himself, "and you can see for yourself whether 
 you like it or no. The Royalists are after you, 
 and certainly the Jacobins. And as for the 
 authorities, for the police, for the official fellows, 
 if they still survive after the explosion of the last 
 few days, why, they must in common decency be 
 after you, for you killed a man. . . . Then there 
 
a 3 8 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 is her family," he remembered as he got near the 
 gates of the barracks ; "there is the lady of the 
 coffee-stall, there is her mother, there is the cleric 
 in the cellar, and there is she who is dancing or 
 was dancing in Libourne. But," said he, looking 
 up to the stars as he neared the gate, " there is no 
 longer Miltiades : at least, not within hail." 
 
 And having so considered the situation, he 
 saluted the guard at the gate and went in, to lie 
 upon his bed as he was, booted and spurred. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Showing the Advantage there is for a German, 
 in the Profession of Arms, that he should 
 know the French Tongue. 
 
 "^["EXT morning at dawn, when the roll had 
 been called and the horses fed, Boutroux 
 sent from his room for the corporal of the 
 guard. 
 
 "A gentleman will come an hour before the 
 guard is relieved," he said, "and will say that 
 he has an order from the colonel to see a man 
 in the regiment." 
 
 " Yes, Sergeant," said the corporal. 
 
 "The man he wishes to see," said Boutroux 
 quietly, " is Meister of the Royal Allemand." 
 
 " He is in the cells, Sergeant," said the corporal 
 stiffly. 
 
 "Then," said Boutroux without turning a 
 hair, "the man he wants to see is not Meister, 
 but Fritz." 
 
2 4 o THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 "Yes, Sergeant," said the corporal with an 
 impassive face. He went back across the court- 
 yard to the guard-house, but Boutroux threw 
 open the window and called after him, — 
 
 "And if Fritz is dead, some other of the 
 Germans. And if that other is in hospital, then 
 any other one. Only give him a German." 
 
 "Yes, Sergeant," sajd the corporal, saluting, 
 for it is the custom in that service for each rank 
 to salute the rank above it, and not officers only. 
 
 Next morning, just before ten o'clock struck, 
 Boutroux, his arms crossed upon a window sill, 
 watched with huge delight the advent of the 
 cloaked stranger. His tall figure came across 
 the Place d'Armes, stalking grandly ; his thin 
 fanatic face was determined and full of mission. 
 He came up to the guard. 
 
 "The gentleman who has leave from the 
 colonel to see one of the soldiers," he said stiffly. 
 
 Boutroux was out at once, and with the corporal 
 of the guard he fetched the German. The 
 German was frightened ; he knew little French ; 
 he thought that yet another practical joke was 
 to be played upon him, and he was right. But 
 Boutroux sustained him with kindness. 
 
 "That gentleman," he said, pointing to the 
 cloaked figure outside, " will have a word with 
 
THE GIRQND1N. 241 
 
 you. Whatever happens maintain the honour 
 of your regiment, for there is not much of it 
 left — I mean of your regiment." And he handed 
 over Fritz, whom the stranger looked up and 
 down with a terrible eye. Boutroux sauntered 
 out toward them. 
 
 " Here is your friend, sir," he said, " but his 
 work begins again in half an hour, and we should 
 like him back." 
 
 "Leave him to me," said the stranger with 
 an exaggerated courtesy, "leave him to me, 
 Sergeant " — and they walked off together ; the 
 German infinitely pleased to. be out of quarters, 
 and to be going on an errand with so fine a 
 gentleman. 
 
 As the two went together across the market 
 square, Boutroux summoned a little Parisian 
 fellow, short and extraordinarily swagger, and, 
 calling him by the vilest name he could think 
 of for the moment, asked him whether he would 
 like an hour in town. 
 
 The man's eyes brightened. " I am in the 
 stables from now till five, Sergeant." 
 
 "I'll let you off," said Boutroux. 
 
 The man, still standing stiff, answered with a 
 little hesitation : " But, Sergeant, it was Serge ant 
 Maurat whq told me." 
 
242 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 " Never mind Sergeant Maurat," said Boutroux ; 
 "I'll make it all right with him. There's a 
 regimental service on," he said mysteriously, " and 
 I've picked you out because of your intelligence." 
 
 The Parisian was pleased. 
 
 "And I may also tell you," he added, "that 
 intelligent or not you will be no use in another 
 sixty seconds, and if you are later than that you 
 will very probably be lost in the enterprise on 
 which you are to be sent." 
 
 The Parisian wondered, but only answered : 
 " I'm not dressed to pass the guard." 
 
 "I'll do that," said Boutroux quietly. He 
 walked with the man past the guard into the 
 open square, nodding at the sergeant of the 
 guard as much as to say, "This is a message," 
 and they were not challenged. 
 
 The German and his tall romantic captor had 
 by this time nearly reached the further end of 
 the Place d'Armes, and were at the mouth of a 
 narrow street which leads out of it towards the 
 steep northern escarpment of the town. 
 
 " You see those two ? " asked Boutroux. 
 
 "Yes, Sergeant," said the Parisian. 
 
 ''Well, all you have to do is to find out where 
 they go. Once you have seen them into a house, 
 don't leave it ; and if the Royal AUemand doesn't 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 443 
 
 come out in half an hour, run back and report 
 to me." 
 
 The Parisian was going to ask whether there 
 were written orders ; but being a Parisian he 
 thought better of it, and he went off smartly 
 across the square, catching his sword under his 
 arm and putting some pace into his walking. 
 He was soon but a few yards behind his chase : 
 he could slacken his pace and watch their move- 
 ments more discreetly. 
 
 Meanwhile the tall Royalist, who had sworn 
 to avenge his cause, and the German, with the 
 happy smile of release and of an hour's liberty 
 upon his face, had begun to misunderstand each 
 other. 
 
 While they were still crossing the Place d'Armes 
 the elder man, the civilian, said nothing, and 
 the young German had done no more than to 
 express in broken French, and in three or four 
 words continually repeated, how glad he was 
 to be picked out for town service, and how ready 
 he was to accomplish it, whatever it might be. 
 His honest, dull eyes and fat, fair face were full 
 of pleasure. The other answered nothing except 
 once in a murmur to the effect that disguises 
 were useless. And the German, a little worried 
 by such a rebuke, stumped on to the opening 
 
244 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 of the narrow street. Once they were within 
 it his guide said to him, — 
 
 " I warn you of one thing ; it will be best 
 to reply simply and truthfully, for whatever our 
 determination may be, truth will save you and 
 untruth will undo yt»u." 
 
 His companion, who understood no more of 
 this than of so much Greek, smiled largely and 
 said "Zo," adding the title "Captain," which 
 conveyed to him an expression of the highest 
 compliment. The Royalist quickly looked at him 
 again. 
 
 " You are beginning badly ! " he said sharply. 
 
 The German nodded cheerfully. " Zo ! " said 
 he again. 
 
 "Well," said his companion, setting his mouth, 
 "you may mock me now and 1 must bear with 
 it ; but it will not last long ! " 
 
 They turned off the narrow street into a still 
 narrower court, at the end of which was a green 
 wooden door with elaborate old hinges of beaten 
 iron, and above the coping of the high wall on 
 either side of which appeared garden trees. Some 
 fifteen yards within the garden a small house 
 stood. The faded green shutters were closed 
 against the August sun, and there was no sound 
 of movement within. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 245 
 
 The Parisian, when the two of them had turned 
 down this courtyard, peeped carefully round the 
 corner of it and saw them enter ; he saw the 
 elder man open the garden door with a key 
 and motion his companion in. The door shut 
 behind them and there was no further sound. 
 
 The Parisian bethought him that a man standing 
 still in uniform and watching one particular door 
 from down the length of a courtyard would, 
 in such a town and at such a moment, be very 
 much at a loss to explain himself if any one 
 of half a dozen interests had cause to suspect 
 him. He might be asked a question by a spy 
 of the police, by a chance member of the Jacobin 
 Club, by a plain citizen out for adventure and 
 suspicious of all men-^-as plain citizens at that 
 moment were. Being a Parisian, the Parisian 
 thought quickly, and his decision was soon taken. 
 He compared the risk of a row with his captain 
 in barracks — or even with his sergeant---and the 
 risk of a row with civilians now that all the world 
 was at war, and he very rightly decided in favour 
 of a row (if need be) with civilians. One was 
 hardly safe anywhere except in the Army. He 
 had burned his boats, or rather Sergeant Boutroux 
 had burned them for him, by going out of quarters 
 without due leave. 
 
246 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 He pulled down the jugular strap of his shako, 
 which is the sign of service ; he fastened it tightly 
 under his chin ; he pulled his face into an ex- 
 pression of official determination and solemnity ; 
 he drew his sword, sloped it at the regulation 
 angle, and began very solemnly to pace the 
 courtyard to and fro, up to the garden gate ten 
 yards, and back again ten yards, with the method 
 and regularity of a sentry. 
 
 " God knows," he thought, " what I am watch- 
 ing, but this kind of thing guarantees a man." 
 
 So regular a performance produced its effect. 
 His methodical and ringing steps had not accom- 
 plished their third turn when a window opened 
 from one of the three houses above the narrow 
 courtyard, and a fat man in his shirt-sleeves, a 
 butcher, looked out and hailed him. 
 
 " Who's under arrest ? " he asked. 
 
 The cavalry-man did not answer. He continued 
 to pace solemnly as before. 
 
 " I don't mean to ask any awkward questions," 
 added the butcher sullenly, and then for a space 
 was silent, watching the pacing figure quite three 
 minutes without a word. At last he continued, 
 "Look here, Citizen, it's no good playing the 
 mummy ; we know who lives in that house better 
 than you do, and if the colonel in command has 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 247 
 
 put them under arrest, the People will be with you. 
 They're suspect. You understand ? " He winked 
 beefily. 
 
 The Parisian, if he understood, gave no sign of 
 it. He did not so much as look at his interlocutor, 
 but continued to pace up and down. And every 
 time he arrived at the green garden door, with its 
 beaten iron hinges, he halted theatrically, turned 
 right about face, settled his hand again within the 
 hilt of his sabre, readjusted its angle, and took on 
 again his stiff but military performance. 
 
 " Oh, we know you ! " said the butcher as he 
 came up again, " but you needn't make a mystery 
 of it. I tell you the People are with you ; and 
 they're with your colonel. But if you do make a 
 mystery of it," he added a little threateningly, 
 " the People may have reason to ask questions." 
 
 The self-appointed sentry turned away without 
 a movement of recognition and began pacing again 
 towards the door. 
 
 Another window opened, and this time a woman's 
 head appeared : she was shrill, but her shrillness 
 was addressed not to the sentry but to the butcher. 
 
 " Put your head in, fat Thomas ! " she screamed. 
 "If there are scandals in our street, it will be the 
 worse for you ! You are drunk ! " 
 
 " I am not drunk ! " said the butcher. 
 
248 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 " You are drunk ! " repeated the woman, her 
 voice rising ; " you always are by noon ! Put your 
 head in ! " 
 
 " Put your head in yourself, old Sacristy Candle 
 Eater," said the butcher, conveying in that 
 epithet a contempt at once for women and for 
 religion. " Put your head in and mumble prayers, 
 or better still go and draw more wine for the priest 
 you are hiding." 
 
 " He lies ! " shr felted the woman to the sentry ; 
 " do not believe him." 
 
 The Parisian paced on as methodically as ever. 
 
 " There is no priest in this house ! And as for 
 wine, he knows more of it than We do ! He is a 
 butcher," she added by way of explanation, " and 
 a drunkard." 
 
 " A drunkard ! " shouted the butcher, his atten- 
 tion now withdrawn from the first object of his 
 curiosity, " a drunkard, did you , say ? Wait a 
 moment ! " His head disappeared. 
 
 The woman, without waiting for the onslaught 
 that might possibly follow, had begun to shout for 
 aid, other windows opened over that courtyard, 
 there was all the prospect of the noise and the 
 inquiry which the cavalry-man had particularly 
 wished to avoid— and which he met by continuing 
 his stolid pacing — when from within the little 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 249 
 
 house behind the garden other and more sig- 
 nificant noises arose : mixed with loud protests in 
 broken French, and in a German accent, protests 
 intermingled with plain German oaths, came sharp 
 commands to be silent. The occupants of the 
 houses had come down into the courtyard. There 
 were a dozen of them ; the butcher in the excite- 
 ment forgot his quarrel with the old lady next 
 door ; a man who protested above the din that he 
 was a printer and needed sleep ; a companion who 
 told him that night was the time for sleep and day 
 the time for revolution, and with them the whole 
 company had begun an intolerable hubbub— when 
 the Parisian, seeing that things were looking ugly, 
 turned popular attention in what was, for him, the 
 right direction. 
 
 " Citizens," he said, speaking for the first time, 
 " I'm on duty before this door. I shall go through 
 it, and the safety of the Army is in the hands of 
 the People." 
 
 They applauded without any more notion of 
 what he meant than had he himself. He went to 
 the door, tried it, found it shut, and banged at it 
 with the hilt of his sabre. From within, the loud 
 protests of the German, who seemed from the 
 sound of his voice to be near some door or 
 window of the house, and half outside it, and who 
 
250 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 was scuffling desperately, reached them. Then 
 did the Parisian rise to the height of his genius. 
 
 " Open ! " he bawled. 
 
 " Who's there ? " asked a low voice within, 
 while at the same time the keyhole was occupied by 
 a human eye. 
 
 " The Army ! " said the Parisian, as though he 
 had behind him all the battalions of the defence. 
 
 By way of answer the eye retreated from the 
 keyhole, two bolts were shut, and something heavy 
 was heard being dragged up against the door. 
 
 Meanwhile the protests of the German had sunk 
 into a muffled bawling, the noise of a violent 
 struggle drew further and further within the house, 
 and the cavalry-man, forgetting all prudence, or 
 rather deciding instinctively which was the safer 
 side, took a plunge. He turned round upon the 
 excited gathering, which was swollen now by new- 
 comers running up from every side and pouring 
 into the courtyard, and he shouted, — 
 
 " Citizens, Austrian conspirators are at work 
 within, and I must summon you against them ! " 
 
 With these words half a dozen of the younger 
 men began to help him in his efforts against the 
 door : it would not yield, but with the rapid instinct 
 which was the note of that time three formed a 
 platform, lowering their heads against their crossed 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 251 
 
 and linked arms against the wall ; two others 
 climbed upon their shoulders ; the cavalry-man, 
 sheathing his sword (he being much the lightest 
 of them), climbed up upon these again, and 
 bidding others follow, he dropped into the garden 
 beyond. 
 
 Those outside heard the noise of an assault, the 
 cries of the soldier as he struck with his sword 
 against not metal but wood, and one young man 
 after another, scrambling over the human ladder, 
 dropped into the garden after him to his aid. 
 
 What they saw was what they had expected : 
 the Parisian was standing with his back to one of 
 the garden trees, a table was kicked over before 
 him, and a chair broken ; he was swinging 
 his sword in circles to preserve an open 
 space ; half a dozen civilians were attempting to 
 close with him, all known to the crowd for 
 Royalists ; a man in another uniform (with which 
 the populace were unfamiliar) was held close by 
 two captors and was struggling hard ; at the bolts 
 of the door stood a man-servant more than a little 
 flurried. 
 
 One of the last to drop over the wall grasped 
 with a rapidity which any general officer might 
 have envied the key of the position : he hit the 
 servant in the stomach, hard, and while that 
 
252 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 domestic was recovering, he unbolted the door and 
 let in the flood. 
 
 The populace poured in roaring ; every man 
 fought with his neighbour, but on the whole the 
 direction of the fighting was against the inmates of 
 the house, and after ten seconds of rough and 
 tumble the two soldiers were standing apart, the 
 Royalist occupants of the garden were upon the 
 ground, handkerchiefs and shreds of clothing 
 were binding their hands — and the position was 
 taken. 
 
 Once more the Parisian rose to the height of his 
 mission ; he told the German rapidly in barrack 
 slang to fall in, and as there was nothing to fall 
 in to, the German stood behind him, hoping for 
 deliverance. He begged the noble and enthu- 
 siastic populace to bring their prisoners behind 
 him, and at the head of a procession which 
 dragged those unwilling Royalists captive, not 
 without blows, across the Place d'Armes, he led 
 them to quarters. 
 
 Arrived at the gate he was ready to deliver 
 another speech, for his success had slightly inflamed 
 him, when the guard turned out and with a fine 
 impartiality arrested the whole populace, Royalists, 
 and German. The fifty or so who had accom- 
 panied the prisoners, the prisoners themselves, the 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 253 
 
 German in a vast confusion, and all save the 
 cavalry-man, to whom the movement was due, were 
 hurried pell-mell into the guard-room, lined on 
 the benches, and a guard set over them, while the 
 sergeant went for orders, beckoning the cavalry- 
 man to follow him. 
 
 The Parisian set his sabre stiffly again and 
 marched by the side of the sergeant with all the 
 strength of martial authority displayed. 
 
 "You will have to answer for this," said the 
 sergeant shortly. 
 
 " I'm ready," said the Parisian. 
 In the orderly room they found the young and 
 recently promoted lieutenant, Hamard, Boutroux's 
 companion in the early march. 
 
 " We have prisoners, Lieutenant," said the 
 sergeant. 
 
 The young lieutenant rose and proceeded with 
 them to the guard-room. He found there a 
 number of townsmen protesting against their 
 arrest ; two old gentlemen very nicely dressed but 
 tumbled all to pieces, one with blood upon his 
 hatchet face, and both bound ; their servant also 
 bound ; and looking more foolish than ever, the 
 German. 
 
 "What is all this?" asked the lieutenant, 
 smiling. 
 
254 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 " I do not know, sir," said the sergeant of the 
 guard. 
 
 " You don't know ? " said the lieutenant. 
 
 " No, sir ; they came tumbling in with this 
 man " (he pointed to the Parisian, who kept 
 his jugular under his chin and still had his 
 sword strictly to his shoulder) ; " he can tell 
 you. 
 
 And the Parisian told. 
 
 " My Lieutenant," he said, " Sergeant Perrin will 
 explain. As for me I only watched, and I guarded 
 a door that I was told to guard. As I guarded it 
 I heard proposals against the State which shall be 
 answered later. I know neither the rights nor the 
 wrongs of it, but I thought it my duty to bring 
 them all here." 
 
 " You thought it your duty," said the lieutenant, 
 musing, and with all the appearance of understand- 
 ing the thing from top to bottom, " to bring them 
 all here. You did well." 
 
 " They are of the faction," said the butcher ; 
 " they were conspiring against the People." 
 
 " They were suborning the Army," said a lad 
 
 not yet of age for arms. " It was I who captured 
 
 him," and he jerked his thumb at one of the old 
 
 Royalist gentlemen, who told him that he was a liar. 
 
 The lieutenant turned to the German, and the 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 255 
 
 German attempted an explanation, but his French 
 failed him. 
 
 The lieutenant sent the sergeant of the guard 
 for the chief of the detachment of Royal Allemand, 
 and the chief of the detachment of the Royal 
 Allemand came. He was an enormous man from 
 Alsace, German in figure, French in bearing, 
 already sober, but recently arisen from sleep. He 
 had a voice that rolled like thunder, and his 
 examination consisted in a harangue. 
 
 " So you've been meddling with one of my 
 men," he said as he strode in. He shouted it 
 indifferently at the assembled civilians. 
 
 « We've rescued him," said the butcher. 
 
 " Hold your tongue ! " shouted the German, 
 his French glib and perfect, but his German 
 accent very strong. " You've been meddling with 
 one of my men because he's a foreigner ! It's 
 happened before, and it will be the worse for 
 you ! We won't stand it ! We won't have it ! 
 We did for ten of you who acted thus a week 
 ago!" 
 
 The German humbly put in a word in his 
 native tongue to the effect that the honest fellows 
 had rescued him from sudden death. 
 
 "You shall suffer with the rest," roared the 
 officer ; " you were out of quarters without leave ! " 
 
256 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 Hamard slipped off and came back again in a 
 few moments. 
 
 " Sergeant Perrin has gone to explain matters to 
 the colonel," he said ; " we must wait till he 
 returns with authority." The prisoners swung 
 their heels, the guards guarded, the two officers 
 stalked up and down outside. 
 
 To these a private came running : " A corporal 
 and four men to the colonel, and the prisoners 
 with them." 
 
 Ten minutes later the corporal and the four men 
 were leading their prisoners across the square to 
 the town hall, there to guard them till the 
 magistrate should come. The populace had no 
 doubt that the Royalists whose house they had 
 stormed would be referred to Paris, for such was 
 the mood of that time. 
 
 Quarters were quiet again. The lieutenant 
 went up towards stables ; he saw Sergeant Perrin 
 standing vaguely and biting a straw. As he came 
 up, the sergeant came to attention and saluted. 
 
 " What did the colonel say, Sergeant ? " 
 
 "My Lieutenant, he said the Royalists were 
 fools ! " 
 
 " Right ! And what did he say of the mob ? " 
 
 " My Lieutenant, he said the mob were 
 fools ! " 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 257 
 
 " Right ! And what did he say of Fritz and 
 your hussar — for you were seen to send that 
 hussar ? " 
 
 " My Lieutenant, he said they were both great 
 fools." 
 
 " Right ! And what did he say of you ? " 
 
 " He suspended his judgment, sir. Those 
 were his very words." 
 
 " I am glad of it," said Lieutenant Hamard 
 thoughtfully ; " he might have suspended you. 
 Dismiss ! " 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 In which an Ostler is too Political. 
 
 "^TEXT day by the relief of the guard it was 
 known that the conspirators, the Austrians, 
 were off to Paris, to the High Court under 
 guard ; the mob that had captured them congratu- 
 lated and recompensed ; and the Army formally 
 thanked for its zeal. A little after noon the 
 news went round quarters that on the morrow 
 they would march for the east, and it was good 
 news for all of them. The force was beginning 
 to get some shape into it, hugger-mugger though 
 it was, and Poitiers was getting too political ; 
 if there was one thing the army hated it was 
 politics. To be seized round the neck by 
 market-women and told that you were adored 
 for opinions you never held ; or, when what 
 you most needed was sleep after a long day 
 and drinking, to be cheered before a company 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 259 
 
 of singers and told that you were the bulwark 
 of the country ; or worse still, to receive a 
 violent blow in a dark passage and to have 
 yourself called a traitor by some one whose views 
 upon the State you did not know and who 
 might very well be in agreement with you — 
 these were the things the young soldiers could 
 not bear. 
 
 The prospect of active service drew them 
 together and lifted their hearts, and they were 
 glad to be off again to the east, whither they 
 were bound by their trade of fighting ; and 
 Boutroux — to whom every march away from the 
 south was so much added safety — welcomed it 
 most ; but he had another hedge before him. 
 
 That same afternoon, as he was looking to 
 the grooming of the horses in the barrack square, 
 a civilian, an ostler, had sauntered by. He was 
 a man with a strong, very unpleasant face, one 
 who seemed moreover to take strange liberties 
 with quarters and yet whom no one seemed 
 to dare reprove ; he had come in on some 
 pretext and passed Sergeant Boutroux a certain 
 word in an undertone ; it was a word Boutroux 
 had known exceedingly well — once, weeks or 
 days ago, in Bordeaux — too well. It struck 
 him like a sentence of law when he heard it. 
 
260 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 It was the password of the Club on the night 
 when that little affair in Bordeaux had occupied 
 his former wealthy leisure. 
 
 Boutroux, as he heard that word, had no time 
 for plan or forethought. He replied with the 
 counter password : he murmured to the ostler, 
 as that impudent fellow lounged away, " The 
 Human 1(ace" a simple enough phrase and big 
 enough in all conscience, but it did its work ; 
 the ostler lounged back again. The nearer he 
 got, and the better Boutroux could look at him, 
 the less he liked his face. 
 
 The men were grooming the horses in a long 
 line ; Boutroux stood there overlooking them, 
 now calling out to one or another whom he 
 thought was slacking in his work, or to a recruit 
 who did not seem yet to have learned it. The 
 civilian ostler had little business there ; but 
 Boutroux, having heard the password and having 
 given the countersign, would not ask questions. 
 The ostler said in a low tone, — 
 
 " Sergeant Perrin, we know who you are." 
 
 " That is not difficult," said Boutroux, keeping 
 his temper and his colour too. 
 
 " Shall I tell you the story in case you do 
 not want to help us ? " continued the ostler in 
 that same undertone, so that no one else could 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 261 
 
 hear, and gazing, as the sergeant did, at the 
 men's work and the line of horses. 
 
 " I am quite indifferent," said Boutroux, pulling 
 from his trousers pocket a little leaden medal 
 on which was stamped the triangle and the two 
 pillars of the Society. The ostler as rapidly 
 showed in his hand, open for a moment, a similar 
 symbol, pocketed it again, and continued, — 
 
 " These trinkets are not only useful to protect 
 a man : sometimes they damn him ! " 
 
 "If he betrays the Brethren," said Boutroux, 
 using the old ritual reply. 
 
 The ostler was silent, but in a moment or 
 two he said : " When do the men water the 
 beasts ? " 
 
 "They've pretty well done their grooming 
 now," said Boutroux. " I shall be giving the 
 order soon. Why ? " 
 
 " Because I can say what I have to say better 
 when the clatter of hoofs begins." 
 
 " Oh, 1 understand . . ." said Boutroux, and 
 in a moment he had given the order. The men 
 put down their curry-combs and their brushes, 
 one and another gave a lingering pat to his 
 animal ; then at the second order every man 
 had scrambled or vaulted on to his mount, and 
 was taking it off in file to the drinking-troughs. 
 
262 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 The clatter of the horse-shoes upon the paving 
 of the barrack-yard was loud, and the ostler 
 could say what he had to say at his ease ; he 
 said it shortly. 
 
 " Sergeant Perrin," said the ostler, watching 
 the receding line of horses with a critical eye, 
 and walking side by side with Boutroux as he 
 strolled behind the cavalcade to see that the 
 watering was in order, " Sergeant Perrin, I have 
 told you that we know who you are." 
 
 "I . . ." began Boutroux. 
 
 The ostler gave an impatient shake of the 
 head. " When I have done you will see whether 
 there is any need for you to talk," he said 
 brutally. "Your mother lives in the long farm- 
 house upon the highroad on the Bordeaux side 
 of Chiersac. She is an old witch of the King's 
 and she hobnobs with the priests." 
 
 " She is not my mother," said Boutroux shortly. 
 
 "Well then, your step-mother," said the ostler 
 impatiently. 
 
 " That's more like it, damn her ! " answered 
 Boutroux quietly. 
 
 "Just after the Tyrant was taken and the 
 Tuileries stormed by the People, a man who 
 had been hiding in the wood came to your house, 
 and your mother harboured him." 
 
THE G1RONDIN. 263 
 
 "That's right," said Boutroux, beginning to 
 see daylight. 
 
 "You, Sergeant Perrin, were down for enlist- 
 ment, but you wanted some one to drive the 
 horse back, and that some one was the man your 
 step-mother harboured." 
 
 " It's perfectly true," said Boutroux stolidly. 
 
 "He drove back with the cart, and you took 
 the oath that evening." 
 
 " I did," said Boutroux. 
 
 "The Brethren in Bordeaux," continued the 
 ostler in a lower and rather graver voice, "have 
 sent us the report, and what you are required 
 upon your oath to answer is this : Where that 
 man is and how he may be taken." 
 
 Boutroux thought a moment. The rustic Perrin 
 who had driven him was a member of the 
 Society. So much was clear. He was affiliated 
 in spite of his mother, and the Society believed 
 him to be that rustic. So much else was clear. 
 That the Society wanted Boutroux, to kill him, 
 Boutroux knew. The last of the horses was 
 watered in its turn ; the file was clattering back 
 towards the stables. He swung slowly after 
 them, the ostler by his side looking at him 
 fixedly with his eyes and eagerly with his mind. 
 
 " I don't mind what happens to the man," 
 
264 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 said Boutroux at last, a bitter note in his voice. 
 " I'll give every help." 
 
 " You're bound to," said the ostler gravely ; 
 "but you'll be the more willing when I tell you 
 what he did." 
 
 " What did he do ? " asked Boutroux. 
 
 " He betrayed the Club in Bordeaux, and he 
 killed a man on faction — one of his Brothers 
 in the Society." 
 
 " Did he, by God ! " said Boutroux. 
 
 " He did, by God ! " answered the ostler. 
 "There were plenty of things that night which 
 no man could understand. The man's name 
 was Boutroux. He went to a meeting of the 
 Society ; he was with the Brethren and the Section 
 — it's all one there — and he tried to buy orF his 
 old uncle." 
 
 " Did they take his money ? " said Boutroux 
 gently. 
 
 The ostler spat. " I don't know, and I don't 
 care," he said, " but anyhow the Executive ordered 
 the uncle's house to be guarded ; he'd had a 
 meeting of the traitors there that night. When 
 Boutroux found that that was known, he killed 
 the man on guard. At first we thought he 
 was hiding in his uncle's house, but he wasn't. 
 We've made sure of that, Sergeant." 
 
 to 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 265 
 
 " How ? " said Boutroux. 
 
 "Oh well," said the ostler, laughing, "the 
 report says that the old chap's in jail ; the 
 People went through the house, you may lay 
 to it. It's as empty as a barn to-day." 
 
 Boutroux was on the point of saying, "And 
 where's the old lady ? " but he caught the 
 words on his lips, and turned them. "And 
 where's what you want me to do ? " he said, 
 and as he said it he thought of that familiar 
 house, stripped, ransacked, looted, old Nicholas 
 dead perhaps, or more probably flying ; fire per- 
 haps upon the walls of his own room, and the 
 great stone halls deserted altogether ; the tall 
 panes of the windows broken, the ironwork of 
 the gilt lantern twisted, and the carved oaken 
 doors broken in. He tasted the taste of his 1 
 exile, and he did not love that old hag of the jj 
 roadside or her son any better as he thought \ 
 of it. 
 
 "1 told you," said the ostler shortly, "that 
 you've got to tell us where the fellow is ; for 
 you know . . ." he added, his voice becoming 
 threatening. 
 
 The horses were in the stables ; the men had 
 
 gone back to their barrack rooms, their work 
 
 accomplished ; the stable guard were going their 
 
 9o 
 
266 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 rounds, tossing the hay into the mangers. 
 Boutroux laid a hand upon the ostler's shoulder 
 more firmly than that civilian liked. 
 
 "Brother What's-your-name," he said, "1 am 
 not answerable to you : I am answerable to the 
 Society. Do they meet to-night ? If so, tell me 
 where, or take me there." 
 
 " Have you got night leave ? " said the ostler, 
 " for you will need it." 
 
 " I will try to get it," Boutroux replied. " I 
 shall probably have to be back by midnight." 
 
 He made an appointment with the Jacobin 
 to meet him at the gate that evening, and with 
 that appointment in mind he went off to ask 
 for leave. 
 
 It fell to the duty of Lieutenant Hamard to 
 grant leave for the troop. 
 
 " Friend Perrin," he said gently as Boutroux 
 came in, " I would have you stand at attention : 
 it is more respectful." 
 
 And Boutroux, who was already standing at 
 attention, stiffened himself. The lieutenant looked 
 him up and down. 
 
 " Your shako is on one side," he said. 
 
 The sergeant straightened it. 
 
 "And now," said the lieutenant, "it is on 
 the other." 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 267 
 
 The sergeant put it back again. 
 
 " Who cleaned the hilt of your sword ? " 
 
 " I did, my Lieutenant," said Sergeant Perrin. 
 
 "When I was a sergeant," murmured the 
 lieutenant, "I always made a soldier do that. 
 Times are changing. What do you want ? " 
 
 " Night leave, sir." 
 
 " You can't have it : they will call the roll 
 before dawn." 
 
 " Midnight leave, sir." 
 
 "If the captain will give you midnight leave, 
 I will have it sent to you. Dismiss ! " he con- 
 cluded gently. It was his favourite word. 
 
 Boutroux swivelled round and left the room. 
 He knew he should find the leave on his table 
 within an hour, and he did. The ostler, the 
 Brother, came up to the gate of quarters at the 
 fall of evening, and they went off through the 
 town together. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 In which the Brethren of Equality and Frater- 
 nity are led to behave in a Manner most 
 Unfraternal and Inequitable; and in which 
 the Children of Light are unmercifully 
 Bamboozled. 
 
 HP HE Brethren within Poitiers (their lodge 
 had a name I forget) had met in the hall 
 once dedicated for a thousand years to St. Hilary, 
 that ancient bishop of the town, but for the 
 moment called after virtue pure and simple: it 
 was the Hall of Virtue. 
 
 It was packed with some three hundred of 
 the Brethren of every rank and kind, but for 
 the most part men of the middle_class of the 
 town — one or two women among them — and 
 on the raised platform at one end the bureau, 
 the President and the secretaries, under whom 
 these public gatherings were organised. The 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 269 
 
 ostler asked Boutroux what he should tell the 
 President. 
 
 " Tell him," said Boutroux, " that when he 
 comes to my business, if he will call upon me 
 I will speak of the Bordeaux business. My 
 speech will do all that is wanted of me." 
 
 The ostler looked at him a little doubtfully, 
 and went off to convey that message to the 
 officials upon the platform. Boutroux took a 
 chair, sitting there in his uniform, his hands 
 upon the hilt of his sword and his scabbard 
 between his knees. His mouth was firm ; he 
 felt moved to take his revenge. 
 
 The President was a little nervous man, bald 
 and spectacled, a doctor; he opened the proceed- 
 ings with such a speech as Boutroux was now 
 familiar with, a speech like any one of dozens 
 of others which he had heard in the Society at 
 Bordeaux. But there was something more fierce j 
 about it and more secure, for in the interval; 
 Liberty had conquered. \ 
 
 The plaster busts which, in imitation of the 
 mother -society in Paris, the Jacobins of Poitiers 
 had set round their hall wore, every one of 
 them, the red Phrygian cap which the worthy 
 spinners of the North of England turned out by 
 the thousand, indifferently, for brewers' draymen in 
 
270 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 their own country, for Republicans in Gaul, and 
 indeed for any one who cared to buy that type 
 of headgear. 
 
 I There was the bust of Mirabeau, the bust of 
 Priestley, the bust of Rousseau, the bust of 
 Brutus, and the busts of other of the Jacobin 
 saints, each wearing in a gallant fashion the red 
 cap cocked over its left ear, and listening to the 
 rhetoric of Freedom. 
 
 Boutroux himself heard in the ten minutes 
 of that speech more of what had happened in 
 Paris than all the gossip of the march and the 
 villagers and the mobs in the towns told him. 
 He heard how the palace had been stormed, he 
 understood what Government now held the 
 country. He heard the great name of Danton 
 cheered as a .minister and a man in power, and 
 he heard — as violent as ever, but with a note 
 of authority Trhich hitherto such harangues had 
 not possessed — the denunciation of treason?? 
 
 Another speech followed, and another ; there 
 were questions from the Brethren, answered to 
 the best of the officials' knowledge, wild suspicions 
 expressed and calmed, wilder proposals listened 
 to and ignored. 
 
 At last his turn came. 
 
 The President told the assembly that the plot 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 271 
 
 in Bordeaux for the murder of the patriots upon 
 the very eve of the People's victory in Paris 
 had been discovered, and that among them that 
 night was a true Friend of the People, a man 
 of that region, who would unmask the principal 
 traitor, who would speak to them upon the 
 nature of his treason, and who would later give 
 the Executive all the evidence that was needed 
 for finding the miscreant and giving him his 
 just deserts. As he concluded he looked at the 
 young soldier and called him to the platform. 
 
 " Sergeant Perrin ! " he said, introducing him 
 nervously. " Sergeant Perrin ... of the hussars 
 now passing through this town and on their way 
 to chastise the kings who have dared to invade 
 the territory of freemen." 
 
 There was loud, foolish, and violent applause. 
 The sight of the uniform as the young man 
 stepped up above them, with the swagger he 
 had so soon learned, and his sword caught 
 under his left arm, frenzied the Brethren ; the 
 rare sisters of the Brethren were more frenzied 
 still. 
 
 As Boutroux waited for that storm of cheer- 
 ing to lessen he wondered whether he had the 
 capacity to speak as he desired to speak. He 
 soon found, as he measured his first words, that 
 
272 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 the task was not beyond him. The night helped 
 him, and the enthusiasm, and the numbers : the 
 whole atmosphere of the place. He forgot his 
 family in the prisons of Bordeaux, he forgot 
 the ruined home; he suddenly recalled his clear 
 enthusiasms of two years before, when he had 
 saluted the new Liberty as a boy and had thrown 
 himself largely into the current of the New 
 World and let it sweep him along : and he 
 spoke extremely well. 
 
 It was a speech worthy of the Gironde, modu- 
 lated in the deep and rising tones which the 
 great river was to make famous in Paris, but 
 more ardent and more convinced in its creed 
 than anything the Parliament men of the Gironde 
 had given or could give. It was almost as 
 though the battalion from Marseilles, the volun- 
 teers who had just done the work and stormed 
 the palace, had found a voice as the young 
 man threw himself into the ardour of that 
 charge. 
 
 The Brethren stared at him, three hundred 
 fixed pairs of eyes : the Executive wondered 
 what manner of Jacobin this Bordeaux Jacobin 
 might be ; they envied the advantages of his 
 uniform, and his sword, and his youth. Later, 
 men remembering that speech, wondered whether 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 273 
 
 Saint-Just had not perhaps come among them in 
 disguise. His vision of the society that was to 
 be had nearly carried Boutroux beyond his pur- 
 pose, but he remembered to present that purpose 
 as he closed. 
 
 The flame of his speech died down to a hot- 
 ember ; he let his voice sink and yet gather 
 clarity when he told them of what had happened 
 in his native city. 
 
 For some minutes he detailed to them, point 
 by point, picking one from the other with the 
 gestures of his hands, the plot against the 
 patriots, hatched in old Boutroux's house ; the 
 butchery of the common people that was just 
 discovered in time, and just failed ; how its 
 failure was only just accomplished by the news 
 of the popular success in Paris. He had not 
 been in the Jacobins of Bordeaux for nothing, 
 this young man from Chiersac, and all he said 
 wai a hammered gospel to his hearers. 
 
 Old Boutroux, he told them (and they believed 
 it), was a fool. If they made him suffer for 
 what had happened they would but be doing 
 what so many of the societies had done — an 
 injustice, and a wasted injustice, upon the wrong 
 man. They had best let him go after fining 
 him for the purposes of the nation . . . and 
 
274 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 let them bleed him well, he said, for the firm 
 could stand it. Madame Boutroux could no 
 more conspire than could an old hen : they 
 would be wise and merciful and humorous in 
 letting her go free. Many laughed and ap- 
 plauded as he spoke thus generously of his 
 enemies. 
 
 " But," he added, " there were others. . . . 
 First " — he raised his hand to deprecate a possible 
 interruption — "whether they would believe it or 
 no, the President of the Society of Bordeaux was 
 the least trustworthy of men. He had taken 
 money from young Boutroux ; there were wit- 
 nesses to prove it. He named the witnesses, 
 and as he did so he saw the ostler gravely 
 nodding. "That President," he said, "must be 
 destroyed." 
 
 The general movement that ran through the 
 crowd as he said this was one of surprise and 
 of awe, but not of contradiction. 
 
 "There are witnesses," he said again, and he 
 told their names again. "I am telling you no 
 untrue thing. The money was paid — a whole 
 thousand livres on the very night of the plot." 
 He was there and he had seen the thing done. 
 " Next as to Boutroux himself," and as he men- 
 tioned the traitor's name his eyes grew stern. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 275 
 
 " That man," he said, " I can discover to you, and 
 if you are wise you will advise those of our Society 
 who are so deputed to approach him without 
 warning and to take a full vengeance. He is even 
 now in my step-mother's house." He hesitated 
 a moment. "Do the brethren think I lack in 
 filial virtue since I so love the State ? " 
 
 The three hundred of them shouted, " No ! " 
 
 " Then I will be a Brutus and pursue my duty 
 to the end. Were she my own mother," he 
 added, with a catch in his voice, " I could not bear 
 to do it, but she is not. She married my father," 
 his voice solemnly fell, " when I was a child ; she 
 devoured his substance ; he died cursing her with 
 his latest breath ; she has been nothing but evil to 
 me and to my commune and to the poor. And as 
 such vile things will, within her small measure she 
 would deliberately betray the State." 
 
 The audience sat with their mouths open. 
 
 " She was a go-between ; she took in the letters 
 that came secretly from the Tyrant's friends ; she 
 helped the escape of the traitors from this very 
 regiment in which I serve. I tell you she was the 
 soul of treason in all that part, and you must deal 
 with her ancj/ hers according to it. And as to the 
 man himself," he concluded, his voice alive with 
 hatred, "he sits in that house dressed in my 
 
276 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 clothes, calling himself her son, taking my name 
 of Perrin — my father's name — and thinks himself 
 secure. Hawks of the People ! fall suddenly upon 
 that nest and tear it ! " 
 
 And having said this Boutroux had done. 
 
 Never since the Society had been formed in 
 Poitiers had the Brethren had anything to do but 
 talk. Now, when first they had to act, what a 
 godsend was here in this young soldier ! They 
 pressed round him when his speech was done ; 
 some of the elder men took and would not loose 
 his hands ; they told him that he was of the kind 
 that saved a State ; that he was a Leader ! that he 
 should suffer nothing for his boldness. 
 
 When he was free from his admirers, the Exec- 
 utive, still jealous of so much power proceeding 
 from a stranger, and a speech that would eclipse all 
 their own, took down his exact instructions : where 
 the house was to be found, at what hours the man 
 might best be caught, how he would affect his 
 alias and call paid witnesses (they all knew the 
 wealth of the Boutroux) to swear to him, while 
 he, Sergeant Perrin, the true heir of that house- 
 hold, was slaving away as a soldier and perhaps 
 lying dead in the cause of the People. 
 
 Having so concluded his business, Boutroux 
 went out. The ostler, who had treated him with 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 277 
 
 not too much respect some hours before, was 
 looking at him now almost with dread. He 
 begged to accompany him back to barracks. 
 
 " If you will," said Boutroux. 
 
 " The deputation will start to-morrow," he said, 
 " by the coach for Angouleme and Bordeaux, and 
 I shall be upon it." 
 
 " Well," said Boutroux simply, "do your duty ! " 
 
 " The young man shall have his due," said the 
 ostler ominously. 
 
 " It is well," said Boutroux simply again, " and 
 let the old woman have it also. But that other 
 traitor in Bordeaux who was President, surely you 
 can deal with him also summarily ? " 
 
 " We shall see," said the ostler. " He is Pres- 
 ident of a Society and must speak for himself, but 
 Boutroux we will destroy," and they parted at the 
 barrack gates. 
 
 Even as he came in, at the guard there were 
 orders and a lieutenant waiting unexpectedly. 
 
 Boutroux saluted and showed his night-leave. 
 
 "That's all right," said the lieutenant, im- 
 patiently glancing at it ; " are you not from 
 Chiersac ? " 
 
 Thought Boutroux to himself, " How curiously 
 these things group themselves ! . . . Yes, my 
 Lieutenant," he answered aloud. 
 
278 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 " The authorities would speak to you," said the 
 other, nodding at the orderly room. "They are 
 from the police, and they have just come." 
 
 "Anything I can do," said Boutroux grimly. 
 He went into the orderly room and found there 
 an official of Bordeaux with his legal secretary. 
 They were apologetic ; they would not detain him ; 
 they had no great business with him ; but was he 
 not from Chiersac ? They were on the track of a 
 common murderer who had escaped through that 
 district. A man nick-named Miltiades had been 
 murdered in Bordeaux, and the murderer had got 
 off next morning. He had been traced to Chiersac. 
 They had heard that Sergeant Perrin had enlisted 
 from near by. Could he inform justice ? 
 
 Sergeant Perrin could not at first recall the 
 murder ; but as the details were given him he got 
 it clearer, and he began to nod emphatically. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " I heard the whole story ; I 
 heard it from a man of Blaye. But," he added, a 
 little confusedly, " I feel it rather treasonable to 
 tell you." 
 
 "You'd better tell all you know," said the 
 lawyer, while the official pulled out a little book 
 for his notes and sharpened his pencil. 
 
 " Oh, I'm not bound in any way," said Boutroux 
 shamefacedly, "but I think an old man at Blaye 
 
THE GIROND1N. 279 
 
 must have known more than he cared to say, for 
 when the people in the inn there pressed him he 
 grew silent and sulky, and at last he went out." 
 
 " The name of that witness ? " murmured the 
 lawyer, ready to take it down. 
 
 " I don't know his name," said Boutroux 
 frankly ; " I know he was from Blaye, because he 
 said so and everybody else talked of him as coming 
 from that place. I can describe him to you." 
 
 " Go on," said the lawyer. 
 
 Then did Boutroux very carefully and minutely 
 describe the old man of the ox-cart. When he 
 had done he said significantly, " If you cannot get 
 a clue from him, I ' doubt if you can get it from 
 any one." 
 
 " Will you be prepared to give depositions ? " 
 asked the lawyer. 
 
 " Well, I'm with the army," said Boutroux. 
 
 "But we may take your signed and sworn 
 evidence when we ha/e got the old man ? " 
 
 " Certainly," said Boutroux, " certainly. I will 
 do all I can to help." 
 
 They thanked him, and he was dismissed. 
 
 " It is a pity," said Boutroux to himself by way 
 of prayers that night as he fell asleep, " that one 
 cannot do the right thing without involving so 
 many other people beside one's self. But what 
 
280 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 would you have ? " he thought, as he gave his last 
 deep sigh before slumber. "One's own good is 
 almost always some one else's bane. And God 
 knows I have never hurt any that acted justly 
 by me." 
 
 With which meditation he fell into a very 
 healthy and contented sleep, and woke from it in 
 the first hours just before dawn to the clangour 
 of the trumpets and the rumour of all the quarters 
 for the march. 
 
CHAPTER XV11. 
 
 In which an Old Gentleman shows the Way to 
 an Old Lady. 
 
 if^HE regiment marched day upon day, a long 
 
 train of straggling horses in the late summer 
 
 weather ; the new recruits were drilled evening 
 
 after evening in the market-squares of the little 
 
 towns. 
 
 Twice, at Loches and at Blois, there were 
 desertions ; and in the early mornings, after 
 summary courts, firing platoons and the shoot- 
 ing of men. 
 
 At Blois, also, a few more recruits came in, toe 
 late, one would have thought, to be used — but 
 in those days everything was used. The re-, 
 mounts were dragged from the stables of peasants, 
 by force and under order of -the Government, as J 
 they went along, not without squabbles, nor, once 
 or twice, without bloodshed. 
 
 They reached Orleans, and stayed for forty- 
 
282 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 eight hours in the cavalry barracks of the town. 
 The dull place was even fuller of rumour than 
 had been Poitiers ; the breath of Paris was UD£n_ 
 it, and the colonel was anxious to be away, for 
 even in that short delay he lost ten men, and he 
 dared not recover them as he might have done 
 further down country. They left Orleans before 
 dawn for Chateauneuf, a short day, and one 
 undertaken only to get away from the constriction 
 of the populace and the Clubs and the turmoil 
 of a great town that ruined the order of the 
 regiment. But at Chateauneuf the rumour spread 
 among the men that the march would now be 
 direct for the frontier, and even in the little 
 villages of the valley the news from the frontier 
 had come : the armies of the kings were over the 
 frontier ; the invaders were on the soil of the 
 Nation — and Verdun had fallen. 
 
 Soldiers are not concerned with news ; but in 
 the minds of soldiers, even though they be 
 soldiers but recently civilian, every soldierly place 
 and stronghold has a meaning. For armies have 
 a sort of consciousness running through them : 
 the chance words of officers overheard by their 
 servants, the politicians of the barrack room 
 discussing affairs, a mere vague comprehension 
 of the map — all this inhabits the mind of the men 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 283 
 
 whose trade it is to go forward by the great roads 
 to battle, and whose nourishment is the open air. 
 
 Verdun had fallen ; and the little town and 
 the hussars that had just ridden in were abuzz 
 with the news. 
 
 Late that night, when, with half a dozen of the 
 sergeants who had midnight leave, Boutroux sat, 
 wearied to death, in a tiny inn, he heard opinion 
 on fire. The men from the street mixed with 
 the soldiery, and one man urged another on to 
 violence. As he so sat — it was past ten o'clock, 
 and he was about to sacrifice his leave and sleep — 
 a man came in from quarters with an order. The 
 regiment was pressed to march, and the sergeants 
 were sent for. 
 
 They rose, grumbling ; they found in quarters 
 the lights and the movement of a disturbed 
 evening and of sudden commands. A captain, 
 tall, and cloaked against the night, stood at the 
 gate of the guard checking a paper in his hand 
 which one of the men on guard lit from a lantern 
 held above it. He murmured names and the 
 business of each to his non-commissioned officers ; 
 one after another saluted and went off about the 
 thing he was bidden to do. The captain's pencil 
 zig-zagged down the sheet, scratching out this, 
 adding that. He came to the name Perrin. 
 
284 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 " Sergeant Perrin," he said. 
 
 Boutroux saluted. 
 
 " I think you are trustworthy ? " 
 
 " I hope so," said Boutroux. 
 
 " My lad," said the captain in a totally different 
 tone — as he looked up under the lantern light 
 Boutroux saw the face of one long broken to the 
 service — "when you have been in the career as 
 long as I have, you will learn never to answer a 
 superior." 
 
 The refrain sounded familiar, and Boutroux 
 saluted again. 
 
 " Sergeant Perrin," continued the captain, 
 falling again into the kindly and simple tone of 
 a man who is ordering something very difficult, 
 "you will get five horses from a house which is 
 marked suspect." He fumbled a little with his 
 paper, peered at it closely with his keen eyes, and 
 added, " The Spinster de La Roche. Dismiss ! " 
 
 Then it was that Boutroux wished one were 
 allowed to ask questions in the service ; but he 
 knew better by now, and with the ridiculous stiff 
 movement which the service requires, he turned 
 sharply round and walked away. The captain 
 called after him, — 
 
 " You will take five men." 
 
 He turned round stifHy again from about 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 285 
 
 thirty yards away, saluted, and said, " Yes, my 
 Captain." 
 
 He went back to the barrack room, took five 
 men at random ; one of them had been his equal 
 as a recruit in the first days of the march and 
 pretended to familiarity with him ; he silenced 
 the man, made the five fall in with this old 
 comrade as a sort of corporal to embrigade 
 them, and marched out of quarters into the 
 night. 
 
 The street was empty ; there were no lights ; 
 he had no conception of where the Spinster de La 
 Roche might live, still less did he know how he 
 would be received. 
 
 "The service," thought Boutroux, "makes of 
 men naturally polite a very nasty set of beings." 
 
 He knocked at a door at random : there was 
 no answer. He bade the men force it, and it was 
 forced. From the top of the rude stair within 
 came first a grumble as of a man half awake ; 
 there was the clicking of a tinder-box being 
 struck ; at last a light glimmered, and an old man 
 of surprising energy put his head over a landing 
 above and cursed them for a cartload of devils, 
 asking whether he lived in a free country or not, 
 and whether it was thus that a citizen should be 
 disturbed at midnight, and who was safe when 
 
286 THE GIROND1N. 
 
 such things could be. To whom Boutroux 
 called up sharply, — 
 
 "You are required to give us direction to the 
 house of the Spinster de La Roche, and, if 
 necessary, to lead us there." 
 
 " If necessary, to lead you there ! " snarled the 
 old man in his nightgown, holding the candle high 
 above his head : " if necessary, to lead you there ! 
 I'll lead you to hell first ! " 
 
 "No," said Boutroux, "you will do that just 
 afterwards." 
 
 For a moment it seemed that the old man 
 would give trouble : he was on the point of turn- 
 ing from them, and Boutroux foresaw questions 
 in quarters and a very bad time next morning. 
 But the citizen thought better of it. He re- 
 appeared with peasant trousers slipped over his 
 legs, a rough coat upon his shoulders, still wearing 
 his nightgown by way of a shirt, and his absurd 
 cotton nightcap by way of a hat, and so came 
 down. 
 
 " You can find it for yourself," he grumbled, 
 " if you will follow my instructions — the 
 woman's known enough in all conscience ! " 
 Then he chuckled. 
 
 " If your instructions are clear, Citizen," said 
 Boutroux, "you need not come." 
 
THE GIROND1N. 287 
 
 The old man was a little mollified by that. He 
 was weak upon the grades of an army ; he did 
 not understand the stripes. 
 
 " Captain," he said more humbly — and the 
 private soldier leading the others grinned — " I 
 am willing enough to come, but you understand 
 one lives in the same town, and though the lady's 
 reputation ..." 
 
 " Oh yes, I understand," said Boutroux ; " but 
 where is it ? " 
 
 " I'll come with you," sighed the old fellow. 
 He fetched a ramshackle lantern, wasting an in- 
 tolerable time about it, and came hobbling back 
 with it. " Now," he said, " let us go out. It is 
 not half a mile." 
 
 They left the town ; they passed along a sandy 
 lane through a little wood to the north of it ; they 
 came to a high wall, pierced by a green wooden 
 door ; the door was moss-grown and dilapidated. 
 
 "The Chateau is through there," said the old 
 man. 
 
 " The Chateau ! " said Boutroux. 
 
 " She is a person of consequence," said the old 
 man. " I have no quarrels ; 1 am no .pojiririan ; 
 1 live and let live. She is a person of consequence 
 ... of the rest I say nothing. And let me tell/ 
 you, from what I know of the old cat, she dis-j 
 
288 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 likes to be disturbed, and her doors are always 
 locked." 
 
 " Doors give way so easily," said Boutroux, 
 "and it's always work for the locksmith." He 
 beckoned two men forward. Their shoulders 
 took the old green door : it did not open, but the 
 rotten wood of it broke, and they forced their 
 way through into a venerable and dilapidated 
 garden. A grass-grown path, once gravelled, was 
 before them ; the lantern light shone high into the 
 thick foliage of ancient trees. 
 
 " I need not go further, Major ? " said the old 
 man anxiously. 
 
 " Up to the house ! " said Boutroux firmly, " up 
 to the house ! You must remember we are 
 strangers here and need an introduction." 
 
 The old man went up to Boutroux's side and 
 spoke in a low voice, that he might not be over- 
 heard by the men. 
 
 "You will be kind to me," he whispered, 
 " Colonel ? After all, we have to live and let 
 live : it is a small town." 
 
 " Come along, Citizen," said Boutroux, " come 
 along ! " — and the old man came along. 
 
 In fifty yards they were at the moat of the old 
 great place. It stood awfully tall and sombre in 
 the night, like a huge square tower with its high 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 289 
 
 slate roofs, solemn chimneys of two hundred years 
 among the stars ; the big doors were shut fast, 
 but a light glimmered within, and through the 
 glass above the entry they could see the reflection 
 of that light upon a carved and ancient ceiling. 
 Outside these closed doors swung a great bell. 
 They would not have found its chain in the 
 darkness, but the old man showed them where 
 to find it. Boutroux pulled it, and its loud 
 clangour rang through the park and the trees, 
 and woke echoes within the old house itself. 
 There was a shuffling of feet within, and (how 
 it reminded him of home !) a little square wicket, 
 grated, pierced in the door, was opened cautiously. 
 They were asked their business. 
 
 Boutroux gave it. "The hussars," he said. 
 " We are sent on requisition." 
 
 A quavering woman's voice answered, — 
 
 " I have orders to admit no one." 
 
 "Tell your mistress," said Boutroux, with his 
 eye to the little iron opening, and seeing within a 
 small, thin, trembling woman, white-haired and 
 capped in the manner of the district, "tell your 
 mistress that we are here to do no harm — but there 
 is urgent business from the Army." 
 
 She bade him wait. She kept them waiting 
 there a good quarter of an hour, and when she 
 
290 THE G1RONDIN. 
 
 came back said, as pompously as her thin cracked 
 voice would allow, — 
 
 " My lady will receive you." 
 
 " Give her my best regards," said Boutroux, 
 "and bid her have no fear at all. It is the 
 business of the Nation." 
 
 The great doors were opened, creaking ; the 
 light from within poured upon the park. 
 
 The old man said anxiously, whispering again, 
 "Need I stay?" 
 
 " No, Citizen," said Boutroux, " you are free 
 of these things." 
 
 " You will not give my name to her ? She has 
 many friends — too many ! " said the man anxiously. 
 
 " I would, of course, betray your name if I 
 knew it," said Boutroux doubtfully ; " but I do 
 not know it. However, I will guess at it." 
 \ The old man eyed him misunderstandingly, and 
 made off. He had no love for the politics of his 
 time, and as he went back through the darkness to 
 his disturbed repose he loved them less than ever: 
 
 "The world," said he to himself, "is coming 
 to an end ... so it was foretold ... so it was 
 fpretold. Old Stephen's niece, whom he forced 
 to be a nun in Orleans, foretold it. . . . She was 
 right, it is the end of the world ! " And so 
 muttering, he went back homewards. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 In which an Old Lady shows the Way to a 
 Toung Gentleman. 
 
 "DOUTROUX entered the hall out of the night 
 with his five men. He heard behind him 
 a joke that did not please him, and he turned 
 round sharply. 
 
 " Fixe ! " he shouted. 
 
 They shurHed into a sort of line ; he bade them 
 put up their arms and take their places upon the 
 oak bench with its fine carved end, that ran 
 along the stone wall. 
 
 " If anything goes amiss to-night, I shall make 
 it the worse for you," he said ; and as he said it, he 
 looked at the man who had presumed upon his 
 ancient comradeship, and the man was afraid. 
 
 As he turned round from saying this, he saw 
 coming towards him the mistress of the place, and 
 he heard a very pleasant, gentle, somewhat ironical 
 voice saying to him, — 
 
292 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 " To what do I owe your visit, Lieutenant ? " 
 
 " The number of ranks," thought Boutroux, 
 " through which a man may pass in time of revolu- 
 tion and of war is infinite ! . . . Madame," he 
 answered her aloud, "it is a very small matter. 
 Five horses were requisitioned, and they have not 
 come." 
 
 " They were requisitioned, Lieutenant," said the 
 lady, speaking like fine metal, like silver tempered 
 to steel, "a month ago. I have since held them 
 ready ; no one has asked for them . . . and now you 
 come for them at midnight and in arms ! " 
 
 Boutroux, standing straight, with his sword in 
 its scabbard, respectfully held and low, as might be 
 that of a gentleman with some message to give, 
 took her in. He remembered the term " suspect " 
 in his orders, and he watched her well. 
 
 She was not tall nor large in body, and yet she 
 was not frail : there was something of self-posses- 
 sion, if not in her soul, at least in her carriage, and 
 a pretty dignity of movement. She was dressed 
 all in black, with white lace at her throat and her 
 wrists ; her hands, he thought as he watched her, 
 were singularly small and strong. They were 
 clasped before her. Her hair was grey, with 
 touches of a whiter grey in it ; it was her own 
 hair. Her face still wore that light ironic smile, 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 293 
 
 and her eyes were very pleasing : they were black, 
 and they had in them, as she watched him, an 
 expression which provoked him not a little to 
 know more of her. 
 
 " Madame, I have no written order," said 
 Boutroux, seriously moved. " I intend no dis- 
 courtesy — but the Army is in urgent need. If I 
 had a written order it would be easier." 
 
 " There is no need for that, Lieutenant," she 
 answered in a lower tone, and with a charm- 
 ing submission. "The Army may do what it 
 wills." 
 
 " But I will give you the receipt and the claim, 
 and all that you may ask for verification," con- 
 tinued Boutroux eagerly. " I really regret, I very 
 greatly regret . . ." 
 
 " You need not regret, Lieutenant," she said. 
 " We must all do our duty. And now let me 
 tell you. . . . But wait a moment : I will call a 
 man." 
 
 She left the hall : her light steps sounded fainter 
 and fainter as she traversed the house to her 
 offices. She came back with one of her grooms, 
 low-browed, solemn, and resentful. 
 
 "Louis," she said, "you will accompany these 
 gentlemen : they have come for West Wind, 
 Pericles, Queen, Furtive, and Basilisk." 
 
294 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 The groom touched his head. " Basilisk can't 
 go out, my lady," he said. 
 
 " Why not ? " she asked. 
 
 " He's lame, my lady," said the groom. 
 
 " Is it bad, Louis ? Does it prevent his work- 
 ing? 
 
 " Yes, my lady," said the man more stubbornly 
 than ever. 
 
 " Why, all the better," said she cheerfully, this 
 unexpected lady of the night. " I could wish they 
 all had such a complaint. I could wish they had 
 each but three legs a-piece," and she smiled at 
 Boutroux, who gravely and slightly smiled in 
 return. " Horses which are needed by the Nation, 
 Lieutenant, are at the disposal of the Nation >-and 
 these are the five that were requisitioned, name 
 for name. I regret that one of them should be 
 lame." 
 
 " Madame," answered Boutroux solemnly, " I 
 have had stiff legs in the saddle myself, but I have 
 not been excused from marching." 
 
 "Louis," said the lady, turning to the groom, 
 ■"take these gentlemen with you." She pointed 
 to the five soldiers. " Do you requisition saddles 
 also, Lieutenant ? " 
 
 " Well, Madame," said Boutroux, " it is not in 
 my orders, but I confess that horses without 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 295 
 
 saddles, though the easier to ride, are impossible 
 for the service. There is this and that and the 
 rest . . ." 
 
 " But you cannot expect me to have campaign 
 saddles ? " she said. 
 
 " Madame," he said, " no doubt we shall find 
 them when we join the main body." 
 
 " No doubt," she said, " no doubt. . . . Come, 
 Louis, take these gentlemen away ! " 
 
 The groom, with the worst of wills, led off the 
 lumpish soldiers. 
 
 " And you, sir," she said, turning to Boutroux, 
 " pray come in and take wine : it will not be a 
 short business, only two of the horses are in the 
 stable here. Two others are at the farm at the 
 end of the park, and one will have to be caught. 
 He is out at grass." 
 
 " I am at your orders, Madame," said Bou- 
 troux. 
 
 She led him through two great pikes where 
 tapestry hung, and of which the floors were of 
 uneven chestnut, glazed to a polish by many 
 generations of coming and going. In one of these,, 
 which was her dining-room, she picked up a flask 
 of wine and a glass for him. She stooped to find 
 bread in a sideboard : it was too low for her, and 
 she went down upon one knee. 
 
296 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 Said Boutroux to himself : " What queens one 
 finds upon the march ! " 
 
 She brought out the bread and the flask ; he 
 took them from her. 
 
 " Really, Madame," he said, " I cannot allow . . ." 
 
 "Oh, be silent ! " said the lady lightly, "we 
 know the Army here ! " And then she added : 
 " Lieutenant — Verdun has fallen ! " 
 
 " Yes," said Boutroux, to whom that news was 
 of no great weight at such a moment. 
 
 ' They went together into a little room through 
 the door, a room with a tall ebony bookcase in it, 
 a little marble chimney-piece, and the conventional 
 sham gold clock of the time, with a looking-glass 
 behind it. The little room was full of the scent 
 of late roses, of which a glorious group stood in a 
 jar upon her table. Upon that table also there 
 was a book laid open, as though she had but just 
 left reading it. He did not see the title of the 
 book, and he wondered what it might be. Two 
 candles stood upon that table, still and unflickering 
 in the dark summer air. Their light shone on a 
 terrace without. 
 
 " The night is warm, Lieutenant ; we will take 
 this wine for you, and this bread, outside and put 
 them upon a little iron table that is there, and 
 sit there until your men have returned." 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 297 
 
 Boutroux was willing enough. She followed 
 him out to the terrace, and as she followed she 
 blew the candles out. 
 
 That small enclosed park was fragrant in the 
 August night — it was secluded. One might 
 dream in it, in such a night, that there were no 
 such things as grooming and marching and arms. 
 
 There came from time to time a country noise 
 from the distant village, the sharp bark of a dog, 
 or the lowing of a beast in a stable : the faintest 
 and most distant of those sounds could be heard 
 through the clear summer air ; and above them, 
 shining through warm heaven, was a wilderness of 
 stars. 
 
 " Lieutenant," said the lady, " are you for the 
 frontier ? " 
 
 " Yes, Madame," he said, " and all the regiment." 
 
 For a few moments she kept silence, and then 
 she said, — 
 
 " I envy you, Lieutenant." 
 
 "It is plain .truth, Madame," he said, "that 
 people told me your house was suspect ; but I do 
 assure you, by my lack of a beard, that I will keep 
 faith with anything you say, for I am neither with 
 one set of the dogs nor with the other." 
 
 She laughed gently in the darkness. 
 
 " When you are my age, Lieutenant," she said, 
 10 a 
 
298 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 " you will be more certain of that than ever, and 
 you will only take sides in the things to which your 
 heart moves you. . . . No, the house is not 
 suspect . . . but I regret the better times." She 
 drew her shoulders together ; he could just see 
 the movement : he thought she was cold, in spite 
 of the warmth of the hour, or that she felt the 
 dampness of the moat. He went in without her 
 bidding, fumbled in the dark room, and at last 
 brought out through the open window a shawl 
 that he had noticed cast across the arm of a chair ; 
 he put it round her, not hastily. 
 
 "I have heard," thought Boutroux to himself, 
 as he lingered upon this gesture, " that a woman 
 is not a woman until she is forty : now this lady 
 is certainly a woman." 
 
 She thanked him, and she said, — 
 
 " Lieutenant . . . ? When do you march ? " 
 
 " I do not know, Madame ; too soon, whatever 
 the hour may be." 
 
 "But to-morrow ?" she said. 
 
 " Yes, certainly, Madame, and more probably this 
 very night." 
 
 "You soldiers never sleep," she replied to 
 him, in such a tone of pity that he was moved 
 again. 
 
 " But when we sleep, Madame, we sleep sound." 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 299 
 
 "Yes," she said, "you sleep sound." 
 
 He wondered what the Army was to her, and 
 why she spoke so of the Army. She went on, — 
 
 " Lieutenant, will you do me a favour ? " 
 
 " Madame," said Boutroux with singular alert- 
 ness, " I will do you any favour that is within my 
 power, and most of those that are not." 
 
 "You have spoken as a man of the trade 
 should," she answered nobly. "Do you know, 
 Lieutenant, we women who stay behind love men 
 who will do what is asked of them by the Nation 
 ... or by any other dame." 
 
 "Aye, Madame," he said, "and we soldiers love 
 to be asked it . . ." 
 
 She asked what he did not expect. 
 
 "Why then, Lieutenant, tell me, I pray you, 
 while those clodhoppers are stealing my cattle, 
 tell me how you came to be in the service, and 
 to be marching thus. Had you ever the King's 
 commission ? " 
 
 His eyes were used to the darkness, the haunt- 
 ing light of the summer stars glimmered upon 
 the gracious curves of her grey and silvering 
 hair, but her eyes were quite in shadow. Her 
 face was turned towards him, and he could 
 imagine many things. 
 
 I will tell you the truth," he said gravely, 
 
 u 
 
300 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 pausing a little before he answered, " I never 
 held a commission of the King's." 
 
 "Then why are you here?" she said. "Was 
 it the invasion that stirred you ? " 
 
 " No, Madame," said Boutroux more gravely 
 still, " not even the invasion, though I trust I 
 should have done my duty. Shall I tell you 
 the whole story ? " 
 
 "Why," she said, with a little laugh, "that 
 is just what I have asked you to do." 
 
 Boutroux let his head fall back in the darkness, 
 and stared up at the great stars. 
 
 "I am by birth," he said slowly, and thinking 
 at large, "I am by birth the son of a lawyer in 
 Paris, a Judge of the High Court. My father 
 was, and is, the kindest and tenderest of fathers. 
 He designed me in marriage — it was before the 
 troubles, Madame ; it was before these worries that 
 I hate, and do not understand — he designed me 
 in marriage for a young lady against whom I 
 have nothing to say. She had every grace and 
 quality and charm, and a dowry, as I was given 
 to believe, of three hundred thousand livres." 
 
 " It is a large sum," said the lady gently. 
 
 " It is a large sum, Madame," agreed Boutroux, 
 shrugging his shoulders, " but it was destined never 
 to be mine." 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 301 
 
 " Indeed ! Pray tell me more, for I am inter- 
 ested." 
 
 " It is a simple story, Madame." He drew a 
 deep breath, which is a kind of inspiration, and 
 continued, — 
 
 "The lady who brought me up, you must 
 know, was neither a nurse nor a governess, but 
 something between the two. With her daughter 
 I played as a sister, and we grew up together." 
 
 " Boy," said the lady here, " I see what is 
 coming." 
 
 "Ah, Madame," said Boutroux, "then you are 
 far wiser than I. . . . Sht died." 
 
 " She died ? " said the lady, surprised. 
 
 "Yes," said Boutroux, leaning forward, and 
 holding his scabbard between his knees, and 
 letting his voice sink profoundly, " she died : a 
 purer, nobler, more. . . ." 
 
 " Yes, yes," said the lady. (Far ofF at the end 
 of the little park lights were coming, and time 
 was short.) " I understand," she ended rapidly. 
 
 " You understand, Madame," said Boutroux 
 with a sob. 
 
 "And so you are here ? " 
 
 " And so I am here ! " said Boutroux simply. 
 
 " Did you enlist, since you say you have not 
 the King's commission ? " 
 
302 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 " I enlisted, Madame ; I enlisted at St. Denis 
 at the cavalry depot. I was in the ranks for 
 two years." 
 
 The lady leaned towards him, and consented 
 to put a hand for one moment upon his hand. 
 Boutroux was willing ; no movement of his 
 condemned the gesture. The lights from the 
 end of the park were approaching, and they 
 could just begin to hear the loud banter of the 
 five soldiers quizzing the groom. 
 
 " Men do not often rise as you have risen," 
 she said. " Tell me before we part how you 
 obtained your grade." 
 
 " It is a curious story, Madame. An old 
 gentleman whose name I did not know, but 
 who had evidently great authority, was for 
 promoting me with an indecent rapidity. I 
 had already been named a sergeant for some 
 weeks, when he urged me successively up the 
 ranks of lieutenant, captain, major, and even 
 colonel." 
 
 " It is incredible ! " said the lady, staring at him 
 with wide eyes. 
 
 "Yes, Madame, incredible, and, as I thought 
 at the time, ill-judged, and even ignorant ; but 
 so it was. I paid but little attention to his 
 patronage ; I did not believe that he had any 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 303 
 
 real power. What gave me my commission, 
 and that to which I owe my lieutenancy, was the 
 very generous act of a woman." 
 
 " Really, Lieutenant," said the lady, " women 
 seem to have played a part in your life ! " 
 
 " Ah, Madame," said Boutroux solemnly, " 1 
 never knew how much until to-night." 
 
 " And so," went on the lady, a little too rapidly, 
 "it is to a woman that you owe your title of 
 lieutenant, you very young man ? " 
 
 " It is, Madame," said Boutroux. 
 
 cc Did she know you well ? " 
 
 " No, Madame, nor I her ; but for a brief 
 moment upon a summer night I loved her well 
 enough." 
 
 "What power had she to give you such 
 advancement ? " 
 
 " Nothing, Madame, but her word ; yet her 
 words were of a sort and spoken in a tone 
 which I will long remember." 
 
 The horses moving up the drive, their pace 
 upon the stones of it, the men leading them, 
 and the grumbling of the groom, were now close 
 at hand. She rose unwillingly. 
 
 They went into the darkened room together, 
 and as she passed before him through the open 
 windows she said, in the lowest of voices but 
 
30 4 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 one as clearly heard as a summons, "We are in 
 no haste to join the others." It was some little 
 time before either spoke again. When that 
 silence broke, she broke it first in a changed 
 voice, still holding him in the darkness. 
 
 " You march before dawn ? " she asked. 
 
 " Madame," he said, standing before her in 
 the night, " I have told you : we go when we 
 are ordered, and I believe that the orders will 
 come by daybreak or before." 
 
 "Well," she said, catching at her words, "I 
 shall ask from you a receipt . . . and a due note . . . 
 I can give you nothing more in exchange." 
 
 She lit the candles again in that little room ; 
 he seemed to remember a room which he had 
 known, not for a few moments, but for some 
 days. She wrote in a delicate and clear hand 
 the note of the horses' names, the description 
 which she had afforded of them to the officials, 
 and she put the paper before him to sign. He 
 signed it. Neither had looked at the other's 
 eyes. She sanded the ink and dried it ; she 
 folded the paper with his signature upon it, and 
 put it into her bosom. 
 
 "And now," she said, "Lieutenant, Lieutenant, 
 I can give you nothing more ! " 
 
 " Why, Madame," said he, " your good wishes." 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 305 
 
 "Well, you have had more than that," she 
 whispered, and Boutroux followed her into the 
 hall. . . . Before the great door of it were the 
 five horses and the men, and the groom stand- 
 ing sullen ; they had waited too long. 
 
 Boutroux once outside her door, and standing 
 at a horse's head, turned to the lady of the house 
 as she stood with the light upon her watching him 
 go. " Have I your leave to mount ? " he said. 
 
 " All my leave to all you will," she answered. 
 
 " Then," said Boutroux to the groom, " which 
 horse did you say was lame ? " 
 
 But the groom muttered : " I take no orders 
 from you." 
 
 One of his men said, " This one, Sergeant," 
 leading up a brown mare of no capacity. Boutroux 
 took the stirrup iron in his right hand, and meas- 
 ured the stirrup leather against his left arm. " It 
 is my length," he said, and he mounted. With 
 the first movement of his mount he thought, " No 
 more lame than I — less ! " He drew his sword 
 and saluted as he left that house, then he sheathed 
 it again. 
 
 "Louis," said the lady — it was the last time 
 he heard her voice — " show the lieutenant to 
 the great gate and bid them open it. Lead the 
 lieutenant ! " she added sharply. 
 
306 THE GIROND1N. 
 
 " Sergeant ! " muttered the groom to himself. 
 
 The doors shut again upon her, and the little 
 troop went up to the great stone pillars and the 
 wrought-iron gate, where a light in the lodge 
 was already awaiting them, and some figure was 
 moving in the darkness to open. 
 
 Riding behind his men Boutroux could not 
 forbear to look over his shoulder ; he saw, or 
 thought he saw, near a light upon the first story 
 the head, and the inclination of the body, and 
 the gesture with which an hour's acquaintance 
 had too much accustomed him. But he turned 
 and went through the gate, and he said to the 
 groom as he did so, — 
 
 ft When they press you for the wars, my man, 
 try to be under my command ; and if I am colonel 
 by that time — for my promotion is rapid — I will 
 see that you have an easy time — in prison." 
 
 The man answered him with a fine curse, and 
 they parted. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 In which it Rains. 
 
 TT was broad daylight of the next morning 
 when the long column of cavalry on its 
 eastward way out from Chateauneuf filed along 
 the highroad past those same gates again. 
 
 Boutroux saw the wrought-iron gates and the 
 stone pillars, which had stood so strangely out 
 under the lanterns in the night, now much older 
 under the freshness of the new day ; dead leaves 
 were beginning to fall from the avenue of trees, 
 for that tragic autumn had come early ; the 
 statued edge of the moat, and the ancient house 
 behind it, carried upon them in the daylight 
 every mark of ^ecay . 
 
 The shutters of it were closed fast ; there was 
 moss, and here and there a growth of yellow 
 flowers upon the stonework of the walls. It 
 was but a glimpse down the avenue as the 
 regiment trotted past ; in a moment the trees 
 
308 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 and the high park, wall had cut off the sight. 
 But in that moment there occurred to the young 
 man's mind a phrase : that things differ within 
 and without, and that what they seem at night 
 they seem not in the morning. He carried 
 the phrase and the picture of that deserted and 
 ancient place ; he carried it within him for miles 
 of hard going. 
 
 From that day the march proceeded with an 
 increased anxiety about it and an increased haste : 
 the work was harder night after night, the leisure 
 less, the tests for sickness or for leave more 
 severe. And still as they went eastward they 
 came nearer to the flavour of the war. 
 
 The emptiness of the land after the harvest, 
 the stubble and the lack of men in the fields, 
 increased that impression of doom. September 
 was entered, the first week of it was half gone ; 
 they were still urged forward. 
 
 The men understood nothing of all this save 
 that the crisis had come, and that these pressed 
 marches, the saddle sores, the horses left behind, 
 the remounts of every sort and kind, the haste 
 and anarchy of the whole business, was a race 
 to join the front. 
 
 Such of them as could form some idea of 
 the map ot the country understood where the 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 309 
 
 march was leading, and wondered when they 
 should find the main body. But for the most 
 part the non-commissioned ranks had no con- 
 ception beyond their daily task, which they cursed 
 and hated. The progress eastward was becoming 
 for every one a sort of despairing thing. 
 
 At Sens they met a regiment of the line and' 
 saw mixed with it the volunteers, and witnessed, in 
 spite of the care of their colonel to keep the cav- 
 alry apart, the complete breakdown of authority. 
 
 At Troyes Boutroux sickened, in the evening 
 after the horses had been groomed and fed, 
 to see a mob hurrying some wretch or other, 
 a priest it seemed, to his death. 
 
 Through such scenes, like ghosts or men 
 apart, not understanding, broken by fatigue and 
 by the pressure of their going, went this hotch- 
 potch of cavalry, until, when it was already 
 mid-September, they drooped, under a pouring 
 rain, sodden, bewildered, meaningless, into Bar- 
 le-Duc. 
 
 The high town upon its hill, old, dark, and 
 inhospitable, was, they had heard for days past, 
 to be their point of junction with the main 
 army. Even the private soldiers, to whom such 
 marches are dull, incomprehensible things, were 
 alive to that ; the names of Kellermann and Bar- 
 
310 THE G1RONDIN. 
 
 le-Duc were mingled in their minds : each stood 
 for order and a regular provisionment, and in 
 the drizzle of that unhappy month every one 
 hoped for fires and warmth and companionship, 
 and for some rest from such intolerable fatigues. 
 But no one of them save here and there a 
 broken veteran of earlier campaigns, promoted 
 to a commission and prepared for any mis- 
 fortune, could expect what awaited them. When 
 they reached the guard at the gate, they found 
 formal orders : they were not to enter the town. 
 
 For hour after hour, until the dark had fallen, 
 they stood dismounted, waiting emptily before 
 the western gate. They had eaten last at noon 
 in St. Dizier. A few begged bread of the guard ; 
 the rest fasted. There came orders to the 
 officer in command — orders which, until far into 
 the night, took no effect ; and at last the broken 
 men must mount again and turn, back through 
 a blinding rain that was now in their faces, 
 back upon the way by which they had come. 
 
 The private soldier, who never understands, 
 grumbles as a part of his trade ; that night 
 he would have rebelled had not the insufficient 
 handling of the long march and the insufficient 
 training of the men so far sufficed as to preserve 
 in this critical moment some sort of unity. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 311 
 
 Boutroux rode by the side of his wretched 
 lot. He communed with his old white horse 
 Pascal, and called it his friend, and begged it to 
 be cheered. He bade it note that never was 
 a thing so bad but soon it would probably be 
 worse. He conjured it in the name of their fast 
 friendship not to fall down in that night and die. 
 
 Pascal went forward ; the rain streamed down 
 the soaked hair of his scraggy neck. He had his 
 fill of soldiering. His poor horse-soul was ready 
 for the end. 
 
 Hamard the lieutenant was in command of 
 that troop : captain they had none. The young 
 officer knew the ranks and how to deal with 
 them : he was not six weeks commissioned, it 
 was not two years since he had groomed his own 
 horse as a private, and of such stuff the best 
 subaltern command in these armies was made. 
 The open complaints of the men were nothing 
 to him ; he left the rough to his sergeant. 
 Boutroux did the work with his own few, 
 cursing and jeering by turns, over-looking, 
 accountable for his number. There was the 
 worst of example around. 
 
 In the troop before them was disorder. One 
 young fellow of a brutish sort had let his jaded 
 mount fall in the later hours of that bad night ; 
 
312 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 he had stepped out of the saddle as one might 
 step out of a chair, and had said, — 
 
 "The beast will die there, and I shall lie 
 down too " — saying which he had thrown him- 
 self at full length upon the mud by the road- 
 side, and no one had disturbed him : the regiment 
 rode on. 
 
 Another, half an hour later, took the occasion 
 of a driving gust which blinded them all, to 
 veer off as they passed through trees and to 
 be lost to the service. It was three in the 
 morning when the miserable column, not seven 
 hundred sabres, huddled into the town of St. 
 Dizier, through which they had passed fifteen 
 hours before on their way eastward at noon ; 
 there at last they were told by sections that 
 they might rest. 
 
 The foragers had gone before ; the house,* 
 were numbered in which the few privileged 
 might sleep, and the barns in which the many 
 must throw themselves, drenched as they were, 
 upon the straw. There was no provision. A 
 butcher's shop, with the iron shutters tight 
 fastened, and the gilded ox's head which was 
 its sign dripping rain in the darkness, stood 
 upon the street where Boutroux's troop were 
 gathered huddled, a-foot, holding their unhappy 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 313 
 
 beasts in the pouring darkness, and waiting for the 
 appointment to shelter. 
 
 Boutroux, not yet dismounted, went up to the 
 lieutenant and said : " My Lieutenant, the men 
 must eat." 
 
 The officer answered : " I have not eaten." 
 
 " My Lieutenant," said Boutroux, " may I ask 
 the people in this house for food ? " 
 
 " It is my place," said the lieutenant. 
 
 All ranks were confused, and all order and 
 discipline in peril, save that a score of bedraggled 
 and wretched men in their utter fatigue looked , 
 upon these two for succour. 
 
 Boutroux struck heavily at the door of the 
 house ; there was no answer, and the only noise 
 he heard when the echo of his scabbard against 
 the wood had died was the sedulous drumming 
 of the rain. He dismounted, holding his own 
 horse, led it, and going himself close to the door, 
 at the length of his bridle he charged it with the 
 full strength of his shoulder ; it broke open, and 
 a tiny night light showed a flight of dirty stairs 
 and a gaping passage-way within. 
 
 The lieutenant held out his hand and took 
 Boutroux's bridle to leave him free. He said 
 " Thank you, my Lieutenant," and went within. 
 
 Those who dwelt in the house above lay low ; 
 
3H THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 they either did not hear or would not hear. Bou- 
 troux picked up a piece of paper that lay greasy 
 and long upon the foul steps, twisted it, lit it 
 at the night light, and held it above his head in 
 the shop. A great piece of meat hung with 
 twenty others upon their hooks near to hand ; 
 it was heavy and he was very weak with the 
 march and fasting ; he slung it off somehow 
 and staggered with it outside. The men, who 
 saw him in the darkness and under the rain 
 carrying some burden, smelled and knew that 
 it was meat. Two of them laughed, and another 
 called out to him with praise and affection, calling 
 him by the nickname that his men had chosen. 
 
 The little pack of them went off to a barn near 
 by, took the dry straw, made a clear space upon 
 the flags so that the fire should not catch ; they 
 lit the straw, they broke off projecting ends of 
 planks and weather boardings, and one way and 
 another they made a smoky fire. The poor beasts 
 that had carried them were tied up as best they 
 could be, to the rings and pillars of the high dark 
 place : outside the rain fell soddenly. 
 
 One man had found a lantern and had lit it. 
 No one concerned himself for guard or sentry, 
 but Boutroux and the lieutenant saw to it that 
 before anything else was done, two men should 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 315 
 
 take pails that were there and find water, which 
 they did from the pump of the market square, 
 and taking it in turns, and each as he was so 
 ordered, upon the point of rebellion, they came 
 back and forth until all the horses were watered. 
 Until this was done the men might not eat. 
 There was no corn under that great wooden 
 roof, but there was a little scattered hay which 
 was seized for the horses, and straw in abundance ; 
 this also they ate eagerly. Boutroux came round 
 in the darkness to his old beast Pascal, where 
 its white coat glimmered like a long ghost in a 
 corner of the barn. He told it that things of 
 this sort lasted but a little time for horse or 
 man ; he hoped his horse was as proud as he 
 was to serve the State, and he stroked its nose 
 to cheer it. He thought he felt the foolish 
 brute lean its head towards him for companion- 
 ship. 
 
 Before the fire Boutroux could smell the toast- 
 ing of the meat upon jack-knives and bits of 
 pointed wood sharpened for spits. One of the 
 men, under some influence of habit, had asked 
 the lieutenant to distribute the rations. There 
 was plenty for all. Not a few in their desperate 
 need were sucking the raw meat before they 
 toasted it, and no one asked for bread. But 
 
316 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 in an extreme thirst several plunged their faces 
 into the buckets from which the horses had 
 drunk, full of the slime of them, and drank as 
 beasts drink. . . . And that is the way in which 
 twenty of the regiment passed the night in St. 
 Dizier in mid-September of 1 792. 
 
 A cannon-sound away, not more, the great army 
 of the invaders had forced the line of the Argonne 
 hills . . . and these men, in such a plight and 
 under such a discipline, were a grain, a drop, 
 in the many thousands such, who were to attempt 
 battle against Europe — such scenes, such ignorance 
 in the dark, such despair in the rain, are for 
 soldiers the chief part of war. 
 
 When they had finished their eating, some 
 upon the raw, some upon the toasted meat, and 
 had lain in their drenched clothes in a stupor 
 for perhaps two hours, a trumpet called, cracked 
 and pitiful, in the street without : daylight had 
 come through the great doors of the barn, and 
 the lieutenant and Boutroux, first rising, aroused 
 their men. 
 
 There was no grooming done in that morning ; 
 the steady, drenching pour of the rain outside 
 still broke their hearts ; one man, a young man 
 not long from his cottage in the South, could 
 not move : he moaned to himself, and they left 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 317 
 
 him there, but his horse they took with them, 
 seeing that there were more men than horses 
 left in the last night end of the march. The 
 beasts were given a few more wisps of the hay, 
 a few more broken and cut handfuls of the straw. 
 They were all still serviceable : that is, their lean 
 bodies, their raw sores, their matted and uncleaned 
 coats, had not yet brought them to death ; but 
 as cavalry goes, those hussars were not models 
 of cavalry to see. 
 
 All that night only the girths had been loos- 
 ened, for accoutrement that morning the girths 
 were tightened only. Scabbards and stirrup irons, 
 curb-chains and bridle rings, were a mass of rust as 
 they came out into the daylight. Some of the 
 men were so stiff they could not mount, but 
 had to swing painfully into the saddle from low 
 walls ; others had taken the night more easily, 
 and were ready even to crack jokes in a low 
 tone with their neighbours : as they mounted 
 and proceeded up the main street of St. Dizier, 
 trumpets continued to sound the assembly in 
 cracked and mournful and unfinished notes. The 
 rain still steadily poured, and they set out for their 
 last twenty miles to where, as all the townsfolk 
 told them, Kellermann and his army now did 
 really lie in mass at Vitry. 
 
318 THE G1ROND1N. 
 
 Such is the life of soldiers that to ride so 
 upon broken beasts in the rain, a straggling 
 mass of hundreds, with no end before them and 
 no knowledge of their goal, yet raised their 
 hearts because through the dull rain it was yet 
 daylight, and the hell of the hours before their 
 sleep had been the dark hours of a hopeless 
 night. 
 
 At Longchamp their spirits further rose, for 
 there all the marks of a regular advance were 
 apparent, the chalked numbers were on the doors 
 of the houses and sheds and stables, even the 
 sick who had been left behind were a proof 
 of the great army that lay before ; and best of 
 all, some sort of provision had been organised. 
 They ate and drank human food and drink ; 
 there was wine for the few that could buy it 
 and the many that could steal ; there were 
 detachments of the soldiery already apparent ; 
 there was bread, and, for the first time in how 
 many days, hot coffee in tins. 
 
 They left Longchamp by noon for the last 
 stretch of the road, expecting the Army. 
 
 At three o'clock in the afternoon the rain 
 ceased, the skies lifted somewhat, the landscape 
 for a few miles could be discerned, and a great 
 town of canvas, the tents of the line, lay apparent 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 319 
 
 far off upon the sloping flank of a high land 
 beyond ; they heard the distant bugles. They 
 came to pickets, they saw moving over fields 
 in the distance large ordered bodies of men, 
 and when the column halted and was given its 
 orders for stabling and for quartering, it had 
 already mixed in spirit and largely in body with 
 the twenty thousand and more which Kellermann 
 was leading to join Dumouriez. 
 
 Just before those thousands in their drenched 
 clothes, with their hobbling horses, their limping, 
 footsore men, their torn and lost accoutrements,! 
 their insufficient and haphazard guns, lay, one; 
 long day's march away, the roll of empty land,j 
 the great marshy plains, where they were called 
 to meet the strict and brilliant army of the 
 invasion. 
 
 Had any one man seen and appreciated those 
 two — the huddled regiments at Vitry, and the 
 noble parade of the successful invasion which 
 had just turned the line of the Argonne, and 
 had now nothing between itself and Paris — he 
 could not for one moment have hesitated in 
 his decision. If indeed there was material for 
 contest, that contest would be swiftly decided. 
 For here was a mob unbroken to the trade, all in 
 disorder, hopeless with fatigue and lack of food 
 
320 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 and sleep and ceaseless rain ; and there was 
 the last and the best of the instructed armies 
 of Europe. 
 
 But no man so saw the contrast : only Fate. 
 
 The men that were thus massed and huddled 
 under Kellermann, after the storms of rain and 
 the mud and the hunger and the death of that 
 marching, were not trusted to accomplish any 
 achievement. They had but to go forward ; and 
 they must perish. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 In which it goes on Raining. 
 
 TT was on the 15th of September that the 
 regiment, if it could still be called a regiment 
 at all, so joined the main army. 
 
 When the morning of the 16th dawned, the 
 stable guards, the pickets, and the long line of 
 bivouacs in the fields beyond the houses were 
 content to remark that once again it was raining. 
 Far off, up the valley under the rain, a long 
 line of men already moving was Kellermann's 
 advance upon Sampigny, where lay the workshops. 
 No sound yet heard of distant firing reached 
 the hollow of the Marne, no rumours of an 
 enemy's approach ; there was nothing but the 
 rain veiling the landscape, the low sodden hills 
 under it, and the swollen river running turbulent 
 and brown. 
 
 With the early morning yet another great 
 
 bulk of the army broke off for the march on 
 
 11 
 
322 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 Pogny ; but the hussars, and Boutroux with 
 them, had received no orders. The horses 
 were more important than the men, now that 
 they had come to a country too thickly occupied 
 for the gathering of remounts ; the beasts were 
 tended therefore, all that morning, under cover, 
 cleaned more or less, and restored after the bad 
 business of the countermarch from Bar-le-Duc 
 and the days and the nights of weather. There 
 was even a trifle of leisure in the force, and men, 
 after the grooming, got into the taverns together, 
 watching the pelt of the rain outside, but at least 
 comforted by wine. 
 
 / The townsfolk loved the soldiers less and 
 
 /less, and these last comers were given nothing 
 
 (for the sake of their trade. There was a sullen 
 
 \truce and no more between the civilians and the 
 
 Army. 
 
 The noon meal had been eaten ; no one had 
 yet seen orders, and even the subalterns in each 
 troop could guess at nothing, when about one 
 o'clock came the news : the regiment saddled, 
 mounted, and began to take an abominable country 
 road northward out of the valley. For all that 
 afternoon it dragged, a long line of men and 
 beasts, over the mud of Champagne, through 
 little plantations of stunted trees, and then again 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 323 
 
 across the bare rolling fields, mile after mile after 
 mile, under the steady fall of the rain. 
 
 It was again almost dark, the third day of 
 such an inconvenience, when a tiny hamlet at 
 the edge of a wood appeared before the head 
 of the column, the lights already showing in the 
 windows. A peasant boy was standing out in 
 the downpour huddled under a great blanket, 
 and herding half a hundred sheep. As one of 
 the sergeants who had been sent out to interro- 
 gate him approached him, he pounded off in 
 terror : he was caught in a moment, shaken, 
 and dragged back. At first he would not speak ; 
 he did not know whether he was dealing with 
 the enemy or with what monstrous forces ; but 
 all they wanted of him was the name of the 
 place. It was Cense. 
 
 The news reassured the command : the men 
 were glad to perceive in so small a place such 
 great barns for the reception of them and their 
 beasts ; and the next day, still under that same 
 weather, leaving behind them twenty men, of 
 whom ten would not see their homes again, the 
 column went forward. 
 
 Hamard the lieutenant, riding by Boutroux, 
 said to him suddenly in the middle of that 
 morning, in a gentle ironical voice, — 
 
324 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 "Sergeant Perrin, have you studied the art 
 of war?" 
 
 " No, sir," said Boutroux. 
 
 The lieutenant sighed. "I am sorry for that. 
 Had you studied it in your youth, when, as you 
 tell me, you attended the best classes, you might 
 have told me what we are at, and why we are 
 all alone like this upon filthy country lanes. 
 Short of your information I should have to ask 
 the colonel, and he would put me under arrest, 
 and, when we reached a town, in prison." 
 
 " Undoubtedly, sir," said Boutroux with respect. 
 
 " Well, but, Sergeant Perrin, since you are an 
 instructed man, pray tell me what all this is." 
 
 " I think, sir," said Boutroux grimly, " that 
 we must be a rearguard. I understand that 
 such detachments suffer as we are suffering." 
 
 " It is very probable," answered the lieutenant 
 solemnly, and without smiling. " It is a valuable 
 suggestion. If the men need heartening, supposing 
 it still rains to-morrow, I shall let the troop know 
 that we are a rearguard." 
 
 The guess was right enough ; that afternoon, 
 as the regiment trailed wearily into Fresne, they 
 found all^he evidences of a recent passage by 
 a great force. One man showed them the house 
 where Kellermann had slept the night before ; 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 325 
 
 several complained of the sick left behind and 
 quartered upon them. The floor of the town 
 hall was littered with the wastage of such an 
 army upon such a march ; there were dead and 
 dying, lost and broken articles of accoutrement, 
 and a pile of saddles — the saddles of horses which 
 had fallen out and could not be replaced. 
 
 The next day the clouds lowered but shed 
 no rain ; the march over the crest to the valley 
 of the Yevre beyond was just more tolerable 
 than the whole past week had been. There was 
 a rising talk in the ranks, and now and then the 
 beginning of a song, and the French laughter 
 could be heard. Even the poor beasts felt the 
 change, and the knowledge of being in touch 
 with the army seemed to put some energy into 
 their going. 
 
 At Dommartin, the first town since Vitry, 
 the regiment reposed, entering the place fairly 
 early in the day, and under orders, or the rumours 
 of orders, to rest there for many hours of the 
 next. 
 
 And there it was that Boutroux for the first 
 time saw that his mount Pascal, who had carried 
 him so faithfully through such weathers, all these 
 leagues from the centre and from Poitiers, was 
 in a different mood. Pascal, that elderly beast, 
 
326 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 long ago broken to the necessities of this world, 
 and accustomed in the stable to let his head 
 hang as though in perpetual contemplation of 
 some fate beneath the world, upon this day at 
 Dommartin stood more pathetically and less 
 stolidly despairing ; it had fear in its old eyes, 
 and Boutroux asked the veterinary's orderly to 
 come and see. 
 
 The veterinary's orderly came and saw, and 
 said that the horse was fitter to be with God 
 than with men. He squeezed and touched this 
 place and that as his art taught him, the old 
 mount turning round and giving him reproachful 
 looks, and now and then trying to whisk its tail. 
 The veterinary's orderly shook his head. 
 
 " Can you get another mount ? " he asked. 
 
 "Only by dismounting a man," said Boutroux. 
 " We have done enough of that already." 
 
 "Then," said the veterinary's orderly, "ride 
 him till he drops." And with that he went 
 out. 
 
 But Boutroux, coming near to his horse and 
 looking at him fondly in the face, said, — 
 
 " Horse Pascal, you and I have seen much 
 weather together, and 1 will call you my constant 
 friend. I have known you for now five weeks, 
 and no other friend I can recall who has been 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 327 
 
 my friend so long, or has remained tolerable 
 at the end of such a space of time. Nor has 
 any friend whom I can recall, and whom I could 
 have wished to stay with me, stayed half so long. 
 I will go and get you something pleasant." 
 
 He swaggered round the barn, picking his 
 way in among the legs of the men who were 
 sleeping off their moment of freedom in that 
 afternoon ; for no man knew what the night 
 might be. He found upon a shelf at one end 
 of the barn a pile of carrots ; he stole three of 
 the largest and came back to the horse. 
 
 "Now eat," he said, and the horse bit at the 
 carrots greedily. " Eat, horse, eat : a soldier's 
 life has few pleasures ; it is glorious no doubt, 
 but it is weak in pleasures. Eat ! A soldier's 
 life is sometimes wet, but now you are in the 
 dry. Eat, my good Pascal ; God knows what 
 will come to-morrow." 
 
 And even as he said it there were noises in 
 the street without — women's voices shrill and 
 exasperated or in panic, men moving quickly, 
 and immediately afterwards the double sound 
 of the trumpets calling for the heads of troops 
 to come to the colonel. 
 
 Boutroux went out : it was the fall of the 
 day ; not yet so dark but that a man could read. 
 
328 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 The street was full of folk, each giving his 
 version of what had happened ; and from one 
 end of it, the northern end, which leads out 
 towards Auve and the Paris road, numbers came 
 in to swell the crowd. 
 
 The enemy had been seen upon the height 
 above Herpont, said one. No, said another, 
 beyond the great road. A third, who said he 
 had seen them himself, and was a liar, swore 
 that the main forces had occupied the line of 
 the great road. A fourth, who was cautious and 
 an atheist by trade, said that these panics came 
 regularly every three days, and that for his part 
 he did not believe a word of it. One of the older 
 sergeant-majors was looking up the street as 
 though expecting something. Boutroux went up 
 to him and asked what the true news was. The 
 old fellow shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "Their cavalry has sent a few scouts forward, 
 that's all." 
 
 " How far ? " asked Boutroux. 
 
 " No one seems to know," said the old chap. 
 
 The captain of the third troop, a man of the 
 recent promotions, rough and full of movement, 
 came up upon his horse, swearing indiscriminately. 
 He called out as he passed that the order was 
 Boot-and-Saddle, and that whoever started first 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 329 
 
 would have the advantage, for there would be 
 damned little time after the trumpets. 
 
 Boutroux ran back to his own people in the 
 barn, wakening them, and just as he had done 
 so the Boot-and-Saddle sounded in the streets 
 of the little town. But after it, and on the heels 
 of it, came special orders for haste ; and as the 
 evening lowered the intolerable business began 
 again. They were up again, all but the half 
 dozen or so who had broken down at the end 
 of this last halt ; some few, lacking mounts from 
 the collapse of their horses, were left with orders 
 to follow on foot along the Voilement road. 
 And as the night fell the regiment was off, 
 still trailing northward down the valley of the 
 Yevre. 
 
 Why northward or whither, no one but the 
 
 command could tell, save that every mile of 
 
 the way showed more clearly where the great 
 
 army had just passed, and they knew that they 
 
 were on the heels of Kellermann. How long 
 
 they must march, whether, as most of them 
 
 imagined, through the whole night, where they 
 
 would come out from their journey, at what place 
 
 the junction would be effected, what the chances 
 
 of action might be — no one knew. But just when 
 
 the darkness was complete, by nine o'clock or so, 
 
 11a 
 
330 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 one man and then another felt the coming of a 
 dreadful and familiar thing : it was the rain ! 
 
 They had had but a day's respite, and it would 
 not leave them now. They bent their shoulders 
 beneath it, and the poor horses their heads, and 
 all night long it fell, cold and continuous, with 
 no wind driving it ; and all night long the column 
 went forward. The going was worse and worse, 
 the mud splashing from the clay lanes thicker and 
 more foul. 
 
 It seemed in the small hours to more than 
 one of the men as though something would snap 
 and go, as though such a strain could not be 
 continued. Boutroux, like many another, slum- 
 bered in the saddle, jolting on half conscious ; 
 the saddle bags and his stirrups (secretly shortened, 
 against all the traditions of the cavalry) held him 
 in his place. , 
 
 As he so jolted he thought himself for some 
 moments a postilion before a chaise, upon a dark 
 night in a lonely lane upon an upland ; he felt 
 the rain upon his face. Then he would waken 
 suddenly as the old horse stumbled, or as some 
 neighbour in the darkness banged up against him. 
 Then he would jolt to sleep again, and dream 
 that he was in a cart driving off from the first 
 of his adventures ; and then again he would half 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 331 
 
 remember in his drowsy head that he was a 
 soldier and that this was the Army, and he would 
 wonder how long it might be before they would 
 reach Poitiers or Bourges, or Orleans or Troyes. 
 The weeks of marching were fuddled together 
 in his head as sleep oppressed it. Once and 
 only once he did completely lose all sense of 
 motion in the depth of sleep, and then for five 
 good minutes he dreamt that he smelt the smell 
 of dried ferns, and that he was well sheltered 
 in a hiding-place, and that no trouble weighed 
 on him, because a friend of his would soon come 
 in and find him there. Of her voice, which in 
 that moment of dream he clearly remembered, 
 his mind was still full when he half awoke with 
 a start that saved his balance. He settled him- 
 self into the saddle again, and the remaining 
 hours of the darkness he still imperfectly, heavily, 
 and drowsily dreamed. 
 
CHAPTER XXL 
 
 Valmy. 
 
 f I ""HE day dawned after that night of pitiless 
 rain and mud; the drowned and miserable 
 light, the half-light of the hopeless morning, 
 showed nothing but bare fields in which small 
 stunted trees shivered under the steady drizzle. 
 The column was checked somewhere ahead, the 
 old white horse halted abruptly ; Boutroux, lolling 
 in his saddle, was jolted out of his sleep. He 
 straightened himself and was awake. 
 
 "The longer I live," he muttered to his 
 wretched mount, "the more I learn! Get up, 
 my poor beast. A man can sleep in the saddle 
 fasting and under a shower-bath. It would astonish 
 them at home ! " 
 
 As the word crossed his lips he had a sharp 
 vision within him — too sharp, the illusion of 
 fasting and fatigue. He saw the Gironde under 
 the sunlight,- the quay, the old and noble houses; 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 333 
 
 his room and his books returned to him — it was 
 sleep returning. But the old horse stumbled, and 
 the picture disappeared. He had a friend and a 
 reality to hand. Here was a horse who got on 
 with him well enough. . . . But what a crock ! 
 
 With that reflection he patted his unfortunate 
 beast upon its sodden, steaming neck. But the 
 poor victim was beyond comfort, and put one hoof 
 before the other mechanically and with weight of 
 despair. 
 
 Boutroux looked round him under the dawn 
 and saw a miserable sight : 
 
 Two miles and more of men stretched strag- 
 gling along the road before him. In his own troop 
 there was no semblance of order. The men at his 
 side and those immediately before him were more 
 or less his companions, yet not all of the same 
 troop. Mixed up with them in a hopeless con- 
 fusion limped a few boys, their uniforms torn, one 
 of them with a boot cracked to the sole, another 
 with his face tied up in a chance rag which some 
 kindly woman had lent him in a farm. He had 
 the toothache and his cheek was swollen. 
 
 Others of the line were jumbled with the 
 hussars ; two gunners also, come from God knows 
 where, their dark clothes plastered with mud as 
 though they had rolled in it, their head-gear too 
 
334 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 large for them, squashed down over their ears and 
 foreheads. 
 
 Far ahead a confusion of carts struggled on 
 through the weather, and in the marshy fields to 
 the right a ludicrous attempt at a flanking party, a 
 dozen horses or so, splashed and sucked as best 
 they could through the drowned clay. Very far off 
 forward came from time to time a loud, cursing 
 order ; and in one place near by Boutroux could see 
 a man collapsed upon the roadside, and a sergeant 
 striking him with the butt end of a musket to 
 make him move. But the man would not move, 
 for he was dead. And even as Boutroux saw such 
 a sight, after all that night and all that fatigue, he 
 smiled, for in the sight there was something 
 political; the sergeant was an aged man, and his 
 regiment was a regiment with traditions, a regiment 
 that was proud to call itself Artois. The white 
 facings of it were dingy enough now. The ser- 
 geant of Artois abandoned his task, and Boutroux 
 turned away his eyes. He was not used to the 
 death of men. 
 
 So the dawn rose through and beyond the steady 
 rain upon that large and hopeless force, making its 
 last few miles and nearing, as it thought, its end. 
 
 As the light broadened a deep mist enveloped 
 them all around. It was a mist through which 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 335 
 
 the fine, almost imperceptible rain settled into 
 the already sodden clothes. It mercifully shut 
 out from those discouraged and broken men all 
 sights save their immediate duty. They passed 
 through the streets of a village, the long weary 
 line of them, and more than one of the line took 
 advantage of the fog and of a break in the hustle 
 to hide himself in a side lane in the hope of 
 escaping what was to come. They approached a 
 narrow tumble-down bridge at the head of which, 
 by dint of violence, some sort of order was ar- 
 ranged. The men on foot were thrust back, the 
 cavalry sent forward first, and among the first 
 hundreds Boutroux's troop of hussars, mounted 
 anyhow and wishing they were dead. Even in 
 that fatigue and as he passed it, Boutroux, to whom 
 the things of the eyes were very precious, noticed 
 that the little stream ran milk-white, and he 
 thought it curious. 
 
 "Everything," he said to himself, "in this 
 accursed North country is strange 1 " 
 
 A quarter of an hour after, at the head of the 
 rising lane, as the hussars struggled forward, fet- 
 lock deep in mud, there loomed through the fog a 
 line of high trees, and it was some slight comfort, 
 after such a march, for the cavalry to find them- 
 selves on the great highroad. They were filed off 
 
336 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 by the left along it, and it was passed along from one 
 man to another that the main camp was close by. 
 
 Seven strokes sounded from the cracked old bell 
 of the village below : the sound came harsh and 
 tinny yet muffled through the mist, and when the 
 last stroke sounded the whole mysterious and 
 obscure surroundings were shrouded again in misty 
 silence save for the shuffling of damp feet upon 
 damper earth as the line crawled and tumbled up 
 pell-mell from the brook below on to the height 
 of the road. 
 
 Suddenly all their minds and all the imagined 
 landscape beyond the fog was transformed for them 
 by a sound which very few of those huddled thou- 
 sands had ever heard. It was the sound which, all 
 who^v£dJW€Fe-toJiearJbr twenty years_^the unan- 
 nounced, unbugled boom oTguns. Far up to the left 
 along the great highway — upon a height it seemed, 
 from the noise — they were firing. It came and it 
 came again — a. mile away perhaps — perhaps more. 
 
 Thud ! ... it was the earth that carried the 
 sound. Half a minute's silence, then again — 
 Thud ! . . . One could have sworn the dripping 
 leaves upon the high, road-side trees had trembled. 
 The less weary and the younger of the long line 
 of horses stirred at the sound and sniffed the 
 air. . . . Thud ! . . . It came again. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 337 
 
 What guns and whose had thus opened the 
 game none but the staff could tell — but they were 
 firing, and there was action. For some few 
 moments an alertness and almost a gaiety came 
 into the eyes of these young men, broken with 
 fatigue though they were and with the ceaseless 
 marching of the night. 
 
 Boutroux's old horse lifted its head with a faint 
 gesture that years ago might have betrayed a recog- 
 nition of that sound ; but that head drooped again, 
 and the beast stood as weary as ever in the long 
 line of the cavalry drawn up beside the road . . . 
 
 A fainter, less certain, a more distant noise 
 began to answer : the enemy had opened his reply. 
 Thud ! Thud ! . . . the nearer pieces were firing 
 faster and faster, the further batteries opposed 
 followed pace for pace ; for an hour it grew from 
 a measured beat to a broken roar, at last a furious 
 cannonade. 
 
 But all that business and momentous sound was 
 veiled ; and those cannon seemed to be part of 
 ghostly and unseen things. 
 
 No shadow of a man approached down the road 
 through the grey murk ; only now and then a 
 slight breath of wind, rising as though lifted by the 
 anger of the far artillery, blew a clear space before 
 the eyes of the cavalry. In such a moment could 
 
338 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 be seen half a mile of the long road : the infantry 
 in their ranks waiting ; the wagons drawn up by 
 the kerb ; a chance group of officers with maps, 
 watching and straining towards the sound of the 
 firing. Then the lane, so opened for a moment, as 
 quickly closed again with new rolls of cloud, and 
 swallowed up in it the countryside : bare rolling 
 land ; miserable wet stubble ; the white bare 
 patches of the famine-fields, where not even rye 
 could grow. All the while the rumble and the 
 thunder continued. 
 
 A brigade of cavalry passed before them, and 
 the hussars, dismounted, watched them go by with 
 envy. They could understand no more of the 
 welter than their fellows left behind, but at least 
 they were going to act, and this mere halting in 
 the rain was one more weight of despair to their 
 less fortunate fellows. 
 
 The clatter of their shoes died away in the fog : 
 the cannonade had dropped to a fitful exchange of 
 shots, which at last came only from the further and 
 more distant guns. The young men were talking 
 to each other aimlessly ; certain of the infantry, at 
 the end of the long straggling roadside line, were 
 too free. They had sauntered up and were speak- 
 ing with their dismounted comrades of the hussars, 
 when, as sudden and as unexpected as that first 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 339 
 
 cannonade, but twenty times more violent, crashing 
 like the fall of some titanic plate of metal, or the 
 clapping to of some vast door, rang another nearer 
 and intolerable firing. It ceased abruptly: two 
 minutes later a novel sound came through the 
 fog ; it was like the noise of flood waters, or of a 
 hurricane in trees at night ; it was the approach of 
 broken men. 
 
 First a few, flying in a complete disorder, pierced 
 through out of the fog, stopped, and tried to form 
 again as they came upon the infantry and the cavalry 
 lining the road. Then, as more and yet more 
 poured upon them in the panic, they broke yet 
 again. 
 
 So scattered, so pouring by, rallied here and 
 there in confused groups by desperate superiors, x 
 whirling in eddies, streaming away in curses and 
 blows and adjurations, half a brigade and more of 
 the stampede fled down the great highway and 
 were swallowed up in the mist again. 
 
 The hussars had barely time to note them — 
 one officer was heard saying to another that the 
 wreckage was from Dumouriez's lot — when yet 
 another body came retreating down the great 
 road, in somewhat better plight but heavily 
 mauled. 
 
 It was followed by a maimed and jumbled pack 
 
3+0 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 of wagons, with limbers here and there, and here 
 and there the carriage of a broken gun. The 
 horses of the teams had blood upon their flanks, 
 and more than one limber was dragged by a team 
 from which a leader or a wheeler had been cut 
 away, so that the end of the trace hung knotted 
 and severed. Confused and scrambling, that 
 deafening jostle and jolt of wheels went past in 
 its turn : following it, the last of the broken 
 position, and a covering for its flying defenders, 
 walked past with more dignity and in far better 
 order a mounted force. These also passed, and 
 were lost in the mist beyond. The noise of the 
 flight grew less, and ceased altogether. There came 
 up the now empty road two orderlies galloping 
 hard : the officers in command of the waiting 
 roadside line received them. In a quarter of an 
 hour the infantry and the hussars had formed into 
 column and were off eastward again upon their 
 endless business of unexplained advance and 
 fatigue. 
 
 The young men had heard cannon, and had 
 seen the beginning of war : they were bewildered, 
 and for the most part they remembered best, of 
 that confused morning hour with its cries of panic 
 and flood of fugitives rolling before them, the 
 coffee hot and ample. There had been coffee and 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 341 
 
 bread by the gallon. They all remembered it for 
 many days. 
 
 Within a mile they saw through the rising mist, 
 dimly, the spire and the houses of another village 
 upon the great highroad ; behind it a whole field 
 of tents where the main force of Kellermann had 
 waited through that sodden night. But the tents 
 were striking even as they approached, and a vast 
 mass of equipage and train was moving off on to 
 the empty uplands above, while the heads of the 
 columns were being wheeled each in turn off the 
 great road towards the fields above ; the hussars 
 with the rest. The horses dragged as best they 
 could through the morass of those ploughlands, 
 men riding in front picked out the hardest going, 
 and every few moments the whole winding trail of 
 them would halt as the head of it was checked at a 
 soft patch. 
 
 The mist shredded and grew thinner ; the wind 
 had risen. The far field line along the sky was 
 plainer, and the soldiers began to tell one another 
 that they were nearing a main position. Far off 
 in the mist, behind them at first, but on their left 
 as the long line of men wheeled northward, 
 sounded fitfully and unseen and muffled the 
 distant guns of the invaders. 
 
 The head of the hussars had reached a crest, 
 
342 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 the infantry had already occupied its further side, 
 when there came down the irregular mass shouted 
 orders that struck and halted the joints of the 
 column : the two miles of men were to stand. 
 
 It was ten o'clock when the halt came. Till 
 noon there was no further movement. The 
 hussars had dismounted again ; the fog rose 
 lighter and lighter yet ; the wind strengthened and 
 scattered it over great patches of dull landscape ; 
 here and there a mass of distant men, the enemy, 
 appeared westward from the height on which the 
 cavalry stood. 
 
 Boutroux and his troop were holding their 
 mounts to the leeward of a great windmill which 
 stood up, sheltering them somewhat from the 
 weather ; into the depth of that weather the ill- 
 formed thousands of the army extended, all at 
 haphazard. Beside the mill and along the crest 
 before it were drawn up the foot in every 
 form. Boutroux, from behind his shelter of the 
 mill, saw with a complete indifference battery after 
 battery, six batteries in all, get slowly through the 
 press, and have a way made for them to positions 
 on the ridge of the hill. 
 
 All behind the mill and on either side was a 
 confusion of men, chiefly of the mounted forces, 
 scattered pell-mell. On the same sheltered side 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 343 
 
 of the hill lay little packs of men who had fallen 
 out, and the few wounded, and there were groups 
 of sappers as well. Here and there a bunch of 
 the Grenadiers in their tall bearskins ; the mass of 
 cavalry waiting dismounted, and the whole of this 
 reserve without due form or order. 
 
 It was noon, and there was nothing forward. 
 Boutroux considered within himself how strange 
 a thing was active service, and how incompre- 
 hensible a thing a battle — if indeed this was battle, 
 and battle it surely was, to judge by the perpetual 
 distant cannonade. He guessed vaguely what 
 might be the plan ; abandoned the muddled riddle, 
 and did not even ask his old white horse for aid 
 in such a problem. He crouched there in the lee 
 of the mill, watching the haggard and empty faces 
 of the idle groups about him, wondering what 
 might be doing on the edge of the crest beyond 
 his shelter, watching a barrel of wine slowly 
 dragged up upon two wheels by a donkey, which 
 a most hideous canteen woman of the 98 th was 
 leading with difficulty, and blows, through the 
 mud. 
 
 All the while the distant guns kept up their 
 ceaseless and repeated booming, and now and then 
 a shell fell wide over the heads of them all, to 
 drop in the further valley and be lost in the mist 
 
344 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 of it, and now and then a luckier aim dropped 
 a solid shot not far from the mill walls, so that 
 the ground shook with it. Sometimes, much 
 more rarely, some stroke of even better fortune 
 for the enemy, or of better aim at a moment when 
 the wind was steady, would make a dance near by : 
 a clatter of breakage and a slamming blow, followed 
 by a scuffle and cries. 
 
 But still — there was very little doing. Boutroux 
 munched his bread, and gazed on the reserves 
 before him. He saw only a lot of most un- 
 fortunate men, drenched as though they had 
 swum through a pond ; a great welter of horses 
 also, of wagons, and here and there of provision- 
 ment ; the smoke of a fire where some one had 
 lit it for the warming of his coffee in spite of the 
 weather, and the occasional whistle and thud of 
 projectiles falling near at hand, set to the irregular, 
 distant, and sullen boom of the enemy's guns. 
 
 Then, as noon turned, the guns of his own forces 
 took it up — they were not a hundred yards behind 
 him ; they shook the air, and the ground, and all 
 his bones. He thought the noise intolerable — it 
 was just beyond the mill, blasting him to pieces 
 every quarter of a minute, and drowning all his 
 senses. But he had to bear it, had Boutroux — 
 and as for the old white horse, he cared as little 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 345 
 
 for the nearer as he had cared for the further 
 noise. 
 
 The wind was rising, the mist had turned into 
 low clouds that scurried before it. There was 
 now neither mist nor drizzle, though the air was 
 very cold ; the intervals of open sky grew larger 
 and more frequent, and sunlight — for the first 
 time in all those dreadful days — broke upon the 
 tarnished colours of the force. A man strolled 
 up to Boutroux and told him it was worth seeing. 
 
 " Worth seeing — what ? " said Boutroux. 
 
 " They're beginning to advance," he said. He 
 told Boutroux that from a place a little way back, 
 where there was a gap, one could see everything. 
 But Boutroux didn't want to see : he would stick 
 it out where he was with his horse, in the lee of 
 the mill. The whole thing was quite beyond him. 
 
 All the while that damaging and rocking noise 
 of the French guns tormented and bewildered the 
 air. He heard loud shouts of command — the 
 staggering line beyond the mill was suffering some 
 sort of order ; it was massing into three columns. 
 He could see linesmen called up from scattered 
 groups and hurriedly shifting their packs on to 
 their shoulders. He could see men running up to 
 take their places in the tail of companies. Then, 
 during a pause in that incessant firing, he heard a 
 
346 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 great volley of cheers, and the confused political 
 cries, enthusiastic and young, which reminded him 
 of the street rows at home. 
 
 His curiosity got the better of him. He hooked 
 his bridle to the mill door staple, peeped round 
 the corner of the brickwork — and saw nothing. . . . 
 At least only those three great masses of men, all 
 solemnly drawn up together. 
 
 They hid from Boutroux the guns that were 
 massed in front, on the edge of the hill, but he 
 did see for one moment Kellermann and his staff 
 mounted and showing high above the line. And 
 as the general rode down the front, just before the 
 sight of him was lost in the press beyond, Boutroux 
 saw him leading and answering the cheers, the 
 three-coloured plume of his hat waved on the 
 point of his sword. 
 
 Having so seen, Boutroux went back to his 
 shelter and tried to bear the noise. He was about 
 to soften its terrors by further gentle conversation 
 with his mount, when a crash so very much more 
 abominable than all he had yet heard drove from 
 him the memory of name and place and time. 
 The whole fabric of the mill shivered, the air was 
 a moment stunned and dead . . . the dreadful 
 pause of a second, no more, was followed by a 
 dense cloud of black and pungent smoke blowing 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 347 
 
 before the high wind past either side of the 
 building, and in the same moment came up that 
 terrible unnumbered cry of many wounded men, 
 shrieking and rising pointed upon a background 
 of yet more terrible moans. He heard articulate 
 appeals for death, and next, immediately, he saw 
 great lumps of the linesmen crouching, turning, 
 hiding, in every attitude ; a moment later and a 
 whole brigade was flying past him, with officers 
 and sergeants cursing in German, striking and 
 wounding and turning the cattle back with 
 the sword — it was the German mercenaries 
 maddened by the explosion of the limbers, and 
 roaring for safety from such hells. Boutroux 
 was like a man moored to the pier of a bridge 
 during the swell of a flood ; he was protected 
 from that flood of war by the brickwork of the 
 mill, but he was enclosed with swirls of panic on 
 every side. 
 
 It was soon over. They got the paid men 
 under control as one gets a fire under control. 
 The mass was beaten and salved into shape : it 
 shuffled back into some sort of order again, and 
 one troop after another of cavalry were got together 
 and sent forward. The hussars were still left 
 alone, and empty of business in the shelter of the 
 hill. No orders came for them. A fatigue came 
 
348 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 up (on the crest beyond, the guns still hammered 
 and banged) ; it came staggering under a great 
 measure of oats. It was high time, and Boutroux 
 very contentedly filled his poor beast's nose-bag, 
 and tied it on. At first the old white horse 
 would not eat, but Boutroux coaxed : 
 
 " I have no wine for you," he said ; " but if you 
 will eat, like a good beast, I will steal water for 
 you from the gunners." 
 
 The guns went on with their dance more furi- 
 ously than ever. Now and then an isolated cheer 
 broke out, recalling to Boutroux that first storm of 
 cheers when Kellermann had rallied the line two 
 hours before. Now and then the sharp break of a 
 shell, the noise and cries of it, or the ground far 
 before him caught by a chance shot, startled him. 
 The guns went on. Boutroux was almost grown 
 part of the deafening on the other side of his mill ; 
 he had almost forgotten what a day was like in 
 which there were no guns . . . yet these were the first 
 guns he had ever known. The thing comes quickly. 
 
 Hour after hour throughout the afternoon that 
 noise occupied the sky, until at last, at about five 
 (at any rate his stomach, though shaken by the fire, 
 told him it was the time for soup), the slow 
 dropping of the cannonade became more and more 
 marked to the listener. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 349 
 
 As the fitful and rarer shots succeeded one 
 another, the mist, now wholly blown away, the 
 open sky which had followed it, were in turn 
 succeeded, perhaps as a sequence to so terrible 
 a duel, by a black ceiling of storm ; the last venge- 
 ance of that fortnight's weather poured angrily 
 upon the thousands massed and huddled round the 
 mill, passed, and it was clear again. No further 
 battery fired, save, very far off to the northward, 
 one stray shot and then another. The cannonade 
 was done. 
 
 Then, for perhaps half an hour, a curious silence 
 fell. Boutroux, behind the mill, could not but 
 notice it. It was so silent that the creaking of 
 the mill sails on their pivot .in the slight but 
 persistent wind occupied his imagination. It was 
 so silent that the whispered conversation of men as 
 awed as himself sounded loud, as it would sound 
 in a room. The scud went slowly and noiselessly 
 on eastward across the heaven, and so low it seemed 
 like a reef above them. One shot broke the 
 silence at last solemnly. The smoke of it rose 
 from the Mont Yvron, a mile away. It was 
 fired as a signal is fired. There was no reply. 
 
 For yet another half-hour this strange silence 
 endured. It was suddenly broken by the sharp 
 clangour of bronze ; a bugler too aged for a 
 
3 so THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 soldier, some unlettered peasant of the old time 
 broken in many wars, was sounding the assembly 
 not a hundred yards away from the mill. By 
 his side a little drummer with the facings of a royal 
 regiment, very strict and (for such an army 1) al- 
 most tidy, recalled the traditions of the King and 
 of less fatiguing days. 
 
 The men came flocking up from every side as 
 to a town crier, for they saw with these two a third 
 who, from a horse, had an order to read. Boutroux 
 stood where he was, too careless to move, yet 
 interested in that sight. 
 
 " Horse," said he wisely, " this is a battle. Do 
 not forget it. Things are not in manhood what 
 boyhood imagines them ! . . . This has been a battle. 
 We shall have to boast of it by and by." 
 
 The loud high voice of the man who read the 
 order sounded clear, though too far to be followed 
 through the rain-washed air ; mounted as he was, 
 he showed against the declining light of that soaked 
 September evening in a manner prophetic and 
 wonderful enough. But Boutroux thought to 
 himself: " It will be time enough to learn the 
 news in a moment when he shall have done." He 
 had not long to wait. The reading was soon over, 
 the little drummer drummed a smart and lengthy 
 roll, the bugle sang out again, and the three of 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 351 
 
 them went on to another group. The crowd 
 of torn uniforms and broken faces which had 
 gathered to hear the order dispersed, each man to 
 his food and to his place. Those who had been 
 next Boutroux under the mill sauntered back again. 
 
 " You have missed something, Sergeant," said 
 one. 
 
 " What is that ? " said Boutroux. 
 
 " It has been a great victory . . . and there's a 
 Republic," said the other. 
 
 "What is a Republic ?" asked Boutroux. 
 
 " I don't know," said the soldier, " but it sounds 
 bloody good ! " 
 
 So he said, and he swore that he would go and 
 drink to the Republic ; and as he so swore he 
 shambled off to where the canteen woman dis- 
 pensed at an immoderate price small cups of wine 
 from her travelling barrel on wheels. 
 
 As for Boutroux, sitting on the wet ground with 
 his back leaning upon the foundation of the mill, 
 he looked up at his horse and murmured, — 
 
 "Dear friend, do you hear that? . . . But I 
 forgot : you never answer me. Well, then, I will 
 tell you of my own accord. We have won a great 
 victory . . . and there's a Republic." 
 
 For the first time in so many days the old horse, 
 full of oats, at last neighed. He wanted water. 
 
3 52 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 Boutroux slowly lifted himself from his crampe 
 position, not without a twinge in the joints afte 
 such weather. He lounged up to a gun near b 
 and collared the pail. 
 
 "Orders not to lend that pail," grumbled th 
 man left with the gun. 
 
 " Sorry," said Boutroux. He walked off wit 
 it, and begged the old white horse to drink th 
 dirty stuff. "It tastes of powder, I know," h 
 said, " but so does all this cursed trade." The oli 
 horse drank at last. 
 
 Boutroux pushed open the mill door, helpe< 
 himself to a nice wisp of straw, and very slowl; 
 and methodically began to groom his beast, tellinj 
 it as he did so all manner of entertaining things. 
 
CHAPTER XXIL 
 
 Which shows the Disagreeables attendant upon 
 the Use of zAmateur Drivers in the Conduct 
 of Artillery ; especially when they are 
 pressed for Time. 
 
 ' I ""HE September dark had fallen ; through the 
 thick air the stronger stars could just be 
 palely seen. Away along the Prussian lines a few 
 smoky fires began to burn, notably in front of a 
 small inn which lay upon the great Paris road, with- 
 in which inn the King of Prussia, and Brunswick, 
 and the princes of the French blood — and, for that 
 matter, near by, young Goethe the poet — were 
 assembled. But what did the Army know of such 
 things ? 
 
 Those who still cared to look over what had 
 been the field of that day's cannonade saw nothing 
 save the vague line which a roll of land makes 
 darker against the dark sky of a cloudy evening, 
 
 and here and there those smoky blotches of dull 
 
 12 
 
354 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 red light coming and going with the drift of the 
 murk, and marking the line of the allies. A young 
 soldier — a volunteer caught in during the march — 
 came up with a lantern in his hand and peered into 
 the door of the mill ; his face was full of joy, for 
 he was still three-quarters civilian, and he had 
 education, and the literary side of the thing appealed 
 to him. He said, — 
 
 "A great day, Sergeant." 
 
 To which Boutroux replied, with as little brutality 
 as he could manage, — 
 
 " I don't suppose that was your message." 
 
 "No, Sergeant," said the lad, "but 1 couldn't 
 help saying it ; " and he sighed contentedly. 
 
 Boutroux continued to rub down the old horse 
 with a wisp of straw, and as he did so he noted 
 painfully that the beast shivered. 
 
 " Sergeant," said the lad, " I've come with 
 orders." 
 
 " Well, what are they ? " said Boutroux, grooming 
 away, and not looking round. 
 
 " We sleep on the ground^ Sergeant." 
 
 "Naturally," said Boutroux ; "and I hope you 
 will not find it too damp. I sleep in the mill. 
 Dismiss." 
 
 " Sergeant, they're calling all the sergeants round 
 in the regiment." 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 25 S 
 
 a You should have said that at first, you hoofed 
 and horned fool ! " answered Boutroux, with the 
 politeness of the service. "I'll be back soon," 
 he said to his horse as he shut the mill door behind 
 him, and followed the boy to where a number of 
 the non-commissioned rank were running up to 
 receive the regimental orders. The subalterns 
 were there, each delivering the message for his troop ; 
 and in the darkness, on a mount that still held 
 itself well after all these days, Boutroux saw 
 the figure of his colonel ; and as he saw it he 
 remembered vividly those hot hours in the south, 
 and the young officer meeting the Commissioner 
 to the Armies, the sudden promotion, and all the 
 bewildering jumble of the eastward march under this 
 man's growing command. The order was read to 
 them by the light of a lantern ; they were told 
 that the operations had been completely successful; 
 the cannonade was made to seem to those young 
 men and old, huddled together, a national and 
 a determining victory. They were told that the 
 invaders were routed. 
 
 Meanwhile, a mile away, the invaders lay in 
 occupation of the crest that they had held all 
 day long, and the issue, as men knew better in 
 proportion to their rank, was only a little less 
 doubtful than the day before : a little less doubtful 
 
356 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 in this, that the great unformed mass of the French 
 levies had just barely stood; they had not been 
 driven and broken into the forest of the hills. 
 
 But the soldiers were content to accept the new 
 l egend, and for the first time in all those days 
 gaiety ran through the regiment. Even the pros- 
 pect of a night upon that drenched soil did not 
 disturb them, and Kellermann had wisely seen to it 
 that wine should come up from the village : men 
 were filled with wine before they slept. In the line 
 the companies, in the cavalry the troops, clubbed 
 for the purchase of the liquor ; the canteen made 
 its enormous profits, and for the first time since 
 the beginning of the wars the peasants were doing 
 business too. 
 
 To one of these, bringing his barrels in upon an 
 open cart, Boutroux went up and spoke. 
 
 " Friend," said he, " will you not sell me some 
 of your wine ? " 
 
 The man shook his head. He was under orders 
 to sell to no one but to the canteen. "Written 
 orders," he said, "and signed by the colonel upon 
 the paper of the Republic." He spoke that last 
 word with so much dignity that Boutroux looked 
 at him curiously. 
 
 " I have heard already that the Republic is crawl- 
 ing on ; but if only you would give me some 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 357 
 
 wine, since you are not allowed to sell it, we might 
 discuss the matter." 
 
 " I have no wish to discuss it," said the peasant, 
 "and I certainly will not give you wine. We 
 have been a Republic these twenty-four hours." 
 
 " See how stingy Republics are ! " said Boutroux. 
 " Why, in the old days such as yesterday and the 
 day before, when there was no Republic, men could 
 have wine for the asking, and sometimes for the 
 taking. It has not mended things, your Republic ; 
 but I will go and tell the news to my horse. 1 do 
 not need your wine. Only tell me something I 
 do not quite understand. What is the name of 
 this place ? " 
 
 "This place ?" said the man clumsily ; "it has 
 no name." 
 
 "1 thought as much," said Boutroux, "by the 
 look of it during the daylight. But 1 suppose you 
 live somewhere : there is some sort of a village 
 with pigs in it and more mud ? " 
 
 "Down below," said the man, jerking his. 
 thumb, "is my village." 
 
 "What do you call it ? " said Boutroux. 
 
 " Valmy," said the man. 
 
 "I must remember that name," said Boutroux. 
 " When one gets out of active service it is a great 
 thing to remember the names of battles. I can 
 
358 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 see myself sitting in an inn with a great scar upon 
 my face (got from a cart-whip) ; the yokels shall 
 stand me drinks while I tell them the dreadful 
 things I did round and about the mill at Valmy, 
 and what wounds I had, and how bewildered a 
 man is and yet how exalted under fire." 
 
 With this he sauntered off; the main force drew 
 off through the darkness, but the hussars held on ; 
 and all night long until the bugles under the dull 
 and misty dawn he slept by his horse in the mill, 
 and with the morning they assembled for the 
 march again. 
 
 The line was formed, the regiment was in 
 column and began picking its way through such 
 huddled groups of the soldiery as were left on the 
 height, past broken limbers, here and there the 
 body of a man, cases of food and of powder, scraps 
 of the bread brought up at the end of the day 
 before- — all the litter of position which has been 
 held by many thousands. 
 
 " I thought as much," murmured Boutroux to 
 himself, as the column very gradually wound its 
 way out of the confusion of men and things and 
 headed eastward down the great empty rolls of 
 chalky land, " I thought as' much. They never 
 say it in the history books, but it is what I always 
 imagined to be true. After a great victory one 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 359 
 
 heads away from the enemy. But we must not 
 make too sure, my dear," he continued to the old 
 horse, patting its neck ; " we may be outflanking, 
 or enveloping, or doing some other monstrous 
 thing. Or we may be concentrating ; but it does 
 look uncommonly like a peaceable and well-ordered 
 retreat so far as the Lambs are concerned." 
 
 As for the Lambs, they went forward easily 
 enough. There was nothing in the attitude of 
 those spent boys with their sprinkling of veterans, 
 and their young colonel at the head, to suggest 
 any emotion of retreat or of victory. They were 
 still maundering on whithersoever they might be 
 led, which is the whole trade of soldiers. The 
 grooming had been very imperfect, the horses were 
 badly splashed, but after the cannonade the respite 
 had given ample time for provision, and at least 
 the poor beasts had been well fed and had drunk 
 their fill of the white chalky water of the Champagne 
 Pouilleuse. 
 
 A few miles off Argonne stood up, a long low 
 wall against the eastern sky, dark with its miles 
 and miles of trees ; and beneath it, at the foot of a 
 gap, a spire and a confusion of little buildings 
 marked Ste Menehould. 
 
 They went on thus two hours, parallel bodies 
 beginning to move with the advance of the day ; 
 
360 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 they reached the gates of the market-town, and as 
 they reached them Boutroux noticed that his mount 
 was done. Horses, especially the trained horses 
 of cavalry, will so work up to the last moment, 
 and then, without excuse or complaint, their end 
 comes upon them. The old white horse stumbled 
 twice, and Boutroux checked it, pulling it up and 
 cheering it as he had done now for so many days. 
 But the horse did not respond and did not lift its 
 head. It had not many hundred yards to go. 
 His horse so failing filled him with a superstition. 
 He put his hand in his tunic to his chain and his 
 medal. The medal was gone. 
 
 Just as they got within the streets of the town 
 Boutroux, with the last troop of the long column 
 of the regiment, heard a clatter and a crashing 
 of wheels coming down the slope of a side street. 
 It was the hired local drivers — peasants bringing 
 in a battery. There was a complete confusion ; 
 the weight of the pieces and of the limbers on 
 the steep incline had been just too much for the 
 wretched teams, and the whole weight of the busi- 
 ness was pouring down unchecked on to the high- 
 street. The horses stumbled and slid together, 
 some had already caught in their traces, one or 
 two thrown, and the most of them sliding upon 
 the wet paving. 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 36 r 
 
 The troop had barely turned their eyes to notice 
 the danger, when Boutroux, appreciating it more 
 rapidly than any other of his equals, shouted, as 
 men do in accidents, forgetting rank, — 
 
 " Lieutenant, wheel them to the right, and bring 
 up alongside the next file ! " 
 
 The lieutenant looked round, startled, began to 
 see what was happening, and had the sense to obey 
 the suggestion. He shouted the order, the men 
 urged their mounts, the whole half-hundred were 
 pulling away quickly from the shock of the battery 
 just as its ungoverned impetus came upon the high- 
 street. Boutroux, rounding up at the end, was 
 watching his men to see that they should just 
 escape the peril, when the old white horse could do 
 no more. The attempt at speed which its rider 
 had conveyed to it was the point which determined 
 its end. It stumbled — a pole of the near limbers 
 was within a foot of its flank. Boutroux, forgetting 
 friendship and forgetting ties, pulled at the curb 
 brutally. The poor beast lifted its head and jerked 
 it in an attempt to rise, failed, and fell. 
 
 It fell right upon the sergeant's left leg before 
 
 he had time to drag it from the stirrup ; and as it 
 
 fell, the pole, the wheels of the limber, and the 
 
 teams came in a mass over the fallen horse and 
 
 rider. . . . 
 
 12 a 
 
362 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 Before Boutroux's eyes was a mad confusion 
 of plunging horses, men's feet in the stirrup 
 irons, and the thongs of whips ; Pascal's old head 
 tossing twice in a convulsive movement. But the 
 sight was conditioned and controlled by an intoler- 
 able and increasing pain. This vision of pain, 
 noise, and wild movement, all mixed and kneaded 
 together, lasted not a moment. The sergeant was 
 soon alone with pain, and with pain only. The 
 air about him grew dark ; he saw, heard, knew, 
 felt nothing but the pain, nor did anything else 
 remain with him. The pain extended and became 
 a part of his being. 
 
 Less conscious than a man in a drunken sleep, 
 he knew that they were moving him, but he knew 
 it only by newer and sharper experiences of pain : 
 he was conscious of that so fully that there was 
 room for nothing else. It was as though the 
 colour upon which his closed eyes dully gazed, 
 the dark red colour which was round him somehow 
 like a cloak, was the very colour of pain. Then, 
 by God's mercy, this awful form of consciousness 
 grew dull ; his spirit and his body ached, but only 
 ached. He had sunk into a sort of use and custom 
 of dull agony, and soon this also passed, and 
 without repose and without refreshment he sank 
 into something deeper than his deepest sleep. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 In "Which the Girondin complains of the Weather. 
 
 TX7"HEN consciousness returned to Boutroux, 
 f it returned two-fold : he was clear of him- 
 self, of his name, of his regiment, he was especially 
 clear of every tiny detail of light and shade and 
 colour at the moment before he fell ; and he 
 was conscious again of pain — of pain now not 
 only mudding all the rest or overspreading it, 
 but of the pain as a separate thing. And the pain 
 had location : it was his thigh and his right 
 groin. 
 
 He groaned and opened his eyes. He was in 
 a little bed, the last of twenty or thirty that lay 
 in a line along the wall of a room so lengthy that 
 it seemed almost a corridor. The opposite wall 
 which faced the foot of his bed was a line of gaunt 
 and dirty windows against which the rain still 
 drove and poured ; the distempered walls were 
 splashed and grey, cracked in parts and caught 
 
364 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 with dust at the corners. At the far end, to 
 which his eyes could just turn (for he could move 
 no part of his body nor lay his head to one side), 
 a large white mark, showing against the duller 
 background of the wall, was the place where a 
 crucifix had hung for many years and had shielded 
 the surface from the effect of the light. He was 
 in one of those hospitals which the forces had 
 hurriedly arranged in the public buildings of 
 Ste Menehould : it was a convent, dissolved these 
 two years ; a day or two before it had been the 
 quarters of some of Dumouriez's men. Their 
 obscenities and their jests were scribbled on the 
 walls, and intermixed with them the name of the 
 regiment which had occupied the building. So 
 much he gathered and no more. He could hear 
 on the paved street without the rattle of passing 
 wheels, and he distinguished the clank of cannon. 
 . . . The occasional cries of command reached 
 him also ; but with these familiar sounds, there 
 were others in that room less familiar and most 
 distressing to the broken man. From four beds 
 away came a continual monotonous groaning as 
 regular as the breathing of sleep, and at the far 
 end of the room a man in attendance was roughly 
 quieting or attempting to quiet some boy whom a 
 wound had driven light-headed, and who broke 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 365 
 
 out time and again into shrieking snatches of 
 marching songs. 
 
 As Boutroux so lay, he saw coming up the 
 room at the foot of the bed a doctor attached to 
 the armies, a civilian bearing pinned to his sleeve 
 the badge of his temporary duty. With him was 
 one of the men told off for this fatigue, one of 
 the few men that could be spared for such a duty, 
 himself ill enough, white and miserable, and only 
 spared to walk the hospital because he would have 
 been unable to march. 
 
 The doctor came up to the bed ; the attendant 
 recited the case, the name, and the regiment, from 
 notes he held in his hand. Boutroux, wondering 
 what they would do with him, lying helpless and 
 gazing at them without much friendship, saw that 
 the doctor was a settled bearded man, a surgeon, 
 perhaps, one of deliberate movements and of fixed 
 manner. He pulled back the bed-clothes and put 
 his hand upon the hip of the sergeant, who gave 
 a loud cry of pain. He pressed his hand, careless 
 of such an effect, and of other cries that followed 
 it, upon the groin and upon the thigh ; he passed 
 it up to the lowest of the ribs ; he found there that 
 the pain ceased ; with a fixed pressure of the 
 fingers that maddened his patient — but his patient 
 could not move — he quickly discovered for himself 
 
366 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 the main part of the business, and, having done 
 so, he put the bed-clothes back and moved off 
 again. 
 
 Boutroux lay alone, staring at the ceiling and 
 suffering beyond all measure at having to lie there 
 unfriended and uncompanioned, with no interest 
 but perpetual pain. He thought : " If something 
 had hit me during that battle of theirs — for I 
 understand it was a battle — they would have put 
 me on the straw and I should have had some one 
 of the regiment by me ; there would have been 
 an open wind upon my face. But here I am in 
 prison, with a sickly linesman to visit me, perhaps 
 every three hours, and a townsman doctor to 
 maul me in silence only to decide whether or no 
 I am to die." 
 
 Hour after hour passed and he lay thus, know- 
 ing nothing and able to learn nothing. The bed 
 next him was empty, and he had spoken to the 
 form in the bed beyond, but he had got no answer, 
 and that form had lain all these hours unpleasandy 
 still : the face was turned away from him ; he 
 could see but the hair of the head above the 
 clothes. He wondered when some one, any one, 
 would come to exchange a human word with him. 
 
 That longing was no longer bearable, he thought, 
 when the attendant reappeared in that long room 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 367 
 
 of suffering and death, and Boutroux called to 
 him. He marvelled to find his voice so thin and 
 bodiless. The man came up and stood over him. 
 The man's paleness, his unshaven chin, a cough 
 into which he fell from time to time, showed how 
 he had been invalided for this service upon the 
 wounded. 
 
 " What is it, Sergeant ? " he said, and gave a 
 cough again, his thin and narrow chest torn and 
 racked by it. " What is it, Sergeant ? " 
 
 " Am I to eat ? " said Boutroux. He found 
 as he said it that his voice was not only thin, and 
 himself, as it were, without will and bloodless, but 
 that he had to modulate his every tone lest the 
 vibration of the sound, conveyed to his broken 
 tissues, should add to his pain. 
 
 The man shook his head. " Not till you take 
 a draught the doctor wrote for you," said he. 
 
 " Then give it me," said Boutroux. 
 
 "The doctor said that if you were suffering 
 great pain I was to give you the draught. Are 
 you suffering great pain ? " 
 
 " Yes," whispered Boutroux. 
 
 " You are sure ? " said the man. " Mind you, 
 I was not to give you the draught unless you 
 were suffering great pain ! " 
 
 " Oh, I am suffering enough," he sighed ; 
 
368 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 "give it me. Then afterwards, perhaps, I may 
 eat." 
 
 The man went off; he was gone, as it seemed, 
 an intolerable time ; he came back with a bottle 
 of thick syrup and a broken cup. 
 
 " The doctor did not tell me how much water 
 I should mix it with," he said doubtfully, as 
 though Boutroux could have helped him in such 
 a dilemma. 
 
 " Give it me neat," said the sick man ; " I have 
 found things do more good that way." And he 
 drank a measure of the sweet, thick, and dark 
 stuff — a thing that in health he could not have 
 done. 
 
 The attendant bore off the bottle and the cup, 
 and Boutroux, as he lay — even before that other 
 had reached the door at the further end of the 
 room — felt a change. He still suffered pain : in 
 a way it was the same pain ; then his mind grew 
 somewhat freer of it. He suffered it still, but 
 he did notice it less and less, until, in rapid phases, 
 each a better phase than the last, his pain occupied 
 him no more. But something inward began to 
 see matters extremely clear. He was constrained 
 to shut his eyes, so much clearer was that inward 
 sight than the dull walls of the room and the dull 
 windows of it. The colours of what he saw were 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 369 
 
 especially plain : there was a tarred log wall and 
 fern litter, and his white horse old and absurd, 
 the horse Pascal. The horse was splashed and 
 steaming from the weather ; he looked round for 
 something to groom it with : there was not even 
 straw. But as he looked, the door of the place 
 opened and the bright sunlight came dancing in. 
 It shone upon a face and body that seemed to him 
 immortal, and the girl's arms, as she smiled and 
 laughed at him, held a great load of shining straw ; 
 she cast it at his feet and said she had brought it 
 because she knew he needed it, and that she would 
 bring him what he needed, no matter where, and 
 from no matter what far places, for ever, and for 
 ever, and for ever. And he, laughing back at her, 
 said : " Joyeuse ! No one would believe it outside 
 the regiment, but there is nothing like straw and 
 plenty of it for the grooming of a beast." 
 
 " Good bright straw," she answered, " from the 
 fields where it ripens in the sun." 
 
 He was taking it by a handful to groom his 
 beast, when, even as he groomed it, he found 
 himself walking with it, leading it by the bridle, and 
 he found himself alone. He found himself alone 
 with it, leading it through a woodland way, and he 
 talked to it and asked it a question, saying : " Pascal, 
 have we lost the regiment and the service ? " 
 
370 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 And the horse answered him naturally enough : 
 ;< Yes, Sergeant, we have lost the service, and the 
 service us. And I am glad of it for evermore ! " 
 
 He answered : " You are right. It is the service 
 that makes this dullness and this pain." 
 
 For as he walked beside the old horse in the 
 woodland way, he felt that the walking hurt him 
 more and more : in the groin . . . dully, then 
 more sharply, the pain increasing upon him : the 
 horse and the woods were part of the pain : every- 
 thing was a part of it, and everything was growing 
 grey, and the woodland colours about him were 
 fading. They faded into greys and dull reds, 
 through which his eyes, opening slowly, saw again 
 the walls of the room and the long line of windows 
 streaming still with rain. At his side and near 
 his head he distinguished the doctor standing. 
 The doctor was speaking not to him but to the 
 attendant. 
 
 " The opiate," he said, " has had but little effect 
 upon him, and that is the sign I feared. Next 
 time, if he needs it, it will have less." He 
 shrugged his shoulders and moved off to the 
 other beds. 
 
 Boutroux was broad awake. The light seemed 
 to be the dull light of a wet evening, but he could 
 not be sure whether it was his eyes that failed him 
 
THE GIRONDIN. 371 
 
 or the light outside that was falling. He called in 
 his feeble voice, and the attendant came again. 
 
 " What is it, Sergeant ? " he asked. 
 
 "What is the time ? " said Boutroux in the low 
 voice of a man hoarse and tired. 
 
 " I will go and see," said the man. 
 
 "No, no, don't go and see. I want to speak 
 to a man. ... Sit down gently upon the bed." 
 
 The attendant sat down and looked at him 
 stupidly enough, and not very patiently. 
 
 " What did the doctor say ? " whispered Bou- 
 troux. 
 
 The other looked awkward. " He said he 
 couldn't do much good," he answered at last. 
 
 " For how long ? " 
 
 " Oh, it might be any time," replied the other 
 dully. 
 
 Over the young sergeant's face there passed for 
 the first time in those hours an expression of pain 
 which was not physical. 
 
 "What did they do," he said, and he was 
 whispering with difficulty now, "... to the old 
 horse ? " 
 
 " He was all broken in the leg and side, so they 
 shot him," said the man. 
 
 " And am I not so broken ? " said Boutroux. \sk 
 
 The man had nothing to answer : he got up 
 
372 THE GIRONDIN. 
 
 to go away. Then he heard, or thought he heard, 
 an odd thing from Boutroux's bed : the words, — 
 
 " I should like to see a priest." 
 
 The man turned and stared. The sergeant 
 might as well have asked for the stars or for fairy 
 gold. Then he laughed stupidly, as he often did 
 when he heard wounded men raving, and he 
 began moving off again : he could just hear the 
 voice feebler, hoarser, and lower than ever begging 
 him to halt. 
 
 " Is it still raining ? " it said. 
 
 " Yes," he answered. 
 
 " What weather ! " sank the voice. And after 
 that it spoke no more. 
 
 The attendant waited a moment curiously half- 
 way down the room ; he called out to the bed : 
 " Are you suffering pain ? " 
 
 But there was no answer. 
 
 THE END. 
 
Established 1798 
 
 T. NELSON 
 
 AND SONS 
 
 PRINTERS AND 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
NELSON'S 
 
 NEW NOVELS 
 
 Uniform with this Volume and 
 same Price. 
 
 ALREADY PUBLISHED. 
 Second String. Anthony Hope. 
 
 This brilliant social comedy contains all the qualities which have 
 given Anthony Hope his unique reputation as a historian of modern 
 life. He introduces us to the society of the little country town of 
 Meriton, the tradespeople, the loungers in the inn parlour, the 
 neighbouring farmers and squires, and especially to Harry Belfield, 
 the mirror of fashion in the county and candidate for its represen- 
 tation in Parliament. We see also his former school friend, Andy 
 Hayes, who has returned from lumbering in Canada to make a 
 living at home. The motif of the tale is the unconscious com- 
 petition of the two friends, of whom Andy is very willing to play 
 "second fiddle," did not character and brains force him to the 
 front. The young squire of Halton is too selfish and capricious to 
 succeed, and in spite of his loyalty to friendship, Andy finds himself 
 driven to take his place both in love and in politics. A host of 
 characters cross the stage, and the scene flits between Meriton and 
 London. The book is so light in touch, so shrewd in its obser- 
 vation, so robust and yet so kindly in its humour, that it must be 
 accorded the highest rank among Anthony Hope's works — which 
 is to say, the first place among modern social comedies. 
 Ill 
 
Fortune. J. C. Snaith. 
 
 Mr. J. C. Snaith is already known to fame by his historical novels, 
 his admirable cricketing story, his essay in Meredithan subtlety 
 "Brooke of Covenden," and his most successful Victorian comedy 
 " Araminta." In his new novel he breaks ground which has never 
 before been touched by an English novelist. He follows no less 
 a leader than Cervantes. His hero, Sir Richard Pendragon, is Sir 
 John Falstaff grown athletic and courageous, with his imagination 
 fired by much adventure in for countries and some converse with 
 the knight of La Mancha. The doings of this monstrous English- 
 man are narrated by a young and scandalized Spanish squire, full 
 of all the pedantry of chivalry. Sir Richard is a new type in 
 literature — the Rabelaisian Paladin, whose foes flee not only from 
 his sword but from his Gargantuan laughter. In Mr. Snaith's 
 romance there are many delightful characters — a Spanish lady who 
 dictates to armies, a French prince of the blood who has forsaken 
 his birthright for the highroad. But all are dominated by the 
 immense Sir Richard, who rights wrongs like an unruly Providence, 
 and then rides away. 
 
 The History of Mr. Polly. H. G. Wells. 
 
 If the true aim of romance is to find beauty and laughter and 
 heroism in odd places, then Mr. Wells is a great romantic His 
 heroes are not knights and adventurers, not even members of the 
 quasi-romantic professions, but the ordinary small tradesmen, whom 
 the world has hitherto neglected. The hero of the new book, Mr. 
 Alfred Polly, is of the same school, but he is nearer Hoopdriver 
 than Kipps. He is in the last resort the master of his fate, and 
 squares himself defiantly against the Destinies. Unlike the others, 
 he has a literary sense, and has a. strange fantastic culture of his 
 own. Mr. Wells has never written anything more human or more 
 truly humorous than the adventures of Mr. Polly as haberdasher's 
 apprentice, haberdasher, incendiary, and tramp. Mr. Polly dis- 
 covers the great truth that, however black things may be, there is 
 always a way out for a man if he is bold enough to take it, even 
 though that way leads through fire and revolution. The last part 
 of the book, where the hero discovers his courage, is a kind of saga. 
 We leave him in the end at peace with his own soul, wondering 
 dimly about the hereafter, having proved his manhood, and found 
 his niche in life. 
 
 IV 
 
Daisy's Aunt. E. F. Benson. 
 
 It is Mr. Benson's chief merit that, without losing the lightness of 
 touch which makes good comedy, he keeps a firm hold upon the 
 graver matters which make good fiction. The present book is a 
 tale of conspiracy — the plot of a beautiful woman to save her young 
 niece from a man whom she regards as a blackguard. None of 
 Mr. Benson's women are more attractive than these two, who fight 
 for long at cross-purposes, and end as all honest natures must, with 
 a truer understanding. 
 
 The Other Side. H. A. Vachell. 
 
 In this remarkable book Mr. Vachell leaves the beaten highway 
 of romance, and grapples with the deepest problems of human 
 personality and the unseen. It is a story of a musical genius, in 
 whose soul worldliness conquers spirituality. When he is at the 
 height of his apparent success, there comes an accident, and for 
 a little soul and body seem to separate. On his return to ordinary 
 life he sees the world with other eyes, but his clearness of vision 
 has come too late to save his art. He pays for his earlier folly in 
 artistic impotence. The book is a profound moral allegory, and 
 none the less a brilliant romance. 
 
 Sir George's Objection. Mrs. W. K. Clifford. 
 
 Mrs. Clifford raises the old problem of heredity, and gives it a very 
 modern and scientific answer. It is the story of a woman who, 
 after her husband's disgrace and death, settles with her only 
 daughter upon the shore of one of the Italian lakes. The girl 
 grows up in ignorance of her family history, but when the inevitable 
 young man appears complications begin. As it happens, Sir George, 
 the father of the lover, holds the old-fashioned cast-iron doctrine 
 of heredity, and the story shows the conflict between his pedantry 
 and the compulsion of fact. It is a book full of serious interest for 
 all readers, and gives us in addition a charming love story. 
 
 Prester John. John Buchan. 
 
 This is a story which, in opposition to all accepted canons of 
 romance, possesses no kind of heroine. There is no woman from 
 beginning to end in the book, unless we include a little Kaffir 
 serving-girl. The hero is a Scottish lad, who goes as assistant to 
 v 
 
a store in the far north of the Transvaal. By a series of accidents 
 he discovers a plot for a great Kaffir rising, and by a combination 
 of luck and courage manages to frustrate it. From beginning to 
 end it is a book of stark adventure. The leader of the rising is a 
 black missionary, who believes himself the incarnation of the 
 mediaeval Abyssinian emperor Prester John. By means of a per- 
 verted Christianity, and the possession of the ruby collar which for 
 centuries has been the Kaffir fetish, he organizes the natives of 
 Southern Africa into a great army. But a revolution depends upon 
 small things, and by frustrating the leader in these small things, the 
 young storekeeper wins his way to fame and fortune. It is a book 
 for all who are young enough in heart to enjoy a record of straight- 
 forward adventure. 
 
 Lost Endeavour. John Masefield. 
 
 Mr. Masefield has already won high reputation as poet and 
 dramatist, and his novel "Captain Margaret" showed him to be 
 a romancer of a higher order. "Lost Endeavour" is a story of 
 adventure in Virginia and the Spanish Main. A Kentish boy is 
 trepanned and carried off to sea, and finds his fill of adventure 
 among Indians and buccaneers. The central episode of the book 
 is a quest for the sacred Aztec temple. The swift drama of the 
 narrative, and the poetry and imagination of the style, make the 
 book in the highest sense literature. It should appeal not only to 
 all lovers of good writing, but to all who care for the record of 
 stirring deeds. 
 
 Panther's Cub. Agnes and Egerton Castle. 
 
 This is the story of a world -famed prima donna, whose only daughter 
 has been brought up in a very different world from that in which 
 her mother lives. When the child grows to womanhood she joins 
 her mother, and the problem of the book is the conflict of the two 
 temperaments — the one sophisticated and undisciplined, and the 
 other simple and sincere. The scenes are laid in Vienna and 
 London, amid all types of society — smart, artistic, and diplomatic. 
 Against the Bohemian background the authors have worked out a 
 very beautiful love story of a young diplomatist and the singer's 
 daughter. The book is full of brilliant character-sketches and 
 dramatic moments. 
 
Lady Good-for-Nothing. "Q." 
 
 Sir Oliver Vyell, a. descendant of Oliver Cromwell, is the British 
 Collector of Customs at the port of Boston, in the days before the 
 American Revolution. While there he runs his head against New 
 England Puritanism, rescues a poor girl who has been put in the 
 stocks for Sabbath-breaking, carries her off, and has her educated. 
 The story deals with the development of Ruth Josselin from a half- 
 starved castaway to a beautiful and subtle woman. Sir Oliver falls 
 in love with his ward, and she becomes my Lady and the mistress 
 of a great house ; but to the New Englanders she remains a Sabbath- 
 breaker and "Lady Good-for-Nothing." The scene moves to 
 Lisbon, whither Sir Oliver goes on Government service, and there 
 is a wonderful picture of the famous earthquake. The book is a 
 story of an act of folly, and its heavy penalties, and also the record 
 of the growth of two characters — one from atheism to reverence, 
 and the other from a bitter revolt against the world to a wiser 
 philosophy. The tale is original in scheme and setting, and the 
 atmosphere and thought of another age are brilliantly reproduced. 
 No better historical romance has been written in our times. 
 
 The Simpkins Plot. George A. Birmingham. 
 
 The story tells how a red-haired curate discovers in a harmless lady 
 novelist, seeking quiet for her 1 work, a murderess whose trial had 
 been a cause cilibre. He forms a scheme of marrying the lady to 
 the local bore, in the hope that she may end his career. Once 
 started on the wrong tack, he works out his evidence with con- 
 vincing logic, and ties up the whole neighbourhood in the toils of 
 his misconception. The book is full of the wittiest dialogue and the 
 most farcical situations. It will be as certain to please all lovers of 
 Irish humour as the immortal " Experiences of an Irish R. M." 
 
 Sampson Rideout, Quaker. Una L. Silberrad. 
 
 Miss Silberrad's work has of recent years grown rapidly in reputa- 
 tion, and her new novel is one of the best historical romances of the 
 day. It is the story of the love of a Quaker manufacturer for a 
 great lady. The scene is laid in the Wiltshire downs, in Stuart 
 times, and the atmosphere of the age and place is reproduced with 
 extraordinary fidelity and charm. The book is primarily a study of 
 a man and a woman both exceptionally endowed in mind and 
 character, who, starting from the opposite sides of life, meet on 
 the ground of a common goodness. 
 VII 
 
Adventure. Jack London. 
 
 This novel is the fruit of Mr. Jack London's recent experiences in 
 the South Seas — experiences more full of wonder and peril than any 
 romance. It is the story of a young English planter on a lonely 
 island, and an American girl who appears suddenly from nowhere 
 and becomes his business partner. The book does not belie its 
 name : adventure is of the very essence of the lives of this man and 
 woman, and the love story which crowns the tale is no less adven- 
 turous and original than the rest. Mr. London writes of strange 
 places with the vividness and realism of one who himself has dared 
 and seen most things. 
 
 "&§ 
 
 *§* 
 
 THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, 
 London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and New York. 
 
THE 
 
 NELSON LIBRARY 
 
 OF COPYRIGHT FICTION. 
 
 Price Sevenpence net. 
 
 FORTHCOMING VOLUMES. 
 THE GOOD COMRADE. Una L. Silberrad. 
 
 In this charming story Miss Silberrad breaks fresh 
 ground. It is a tale of the bulb-growers of Holland 
 and of English provincial life. It is, above all, the 
 study of a heroic woman, done with all Miss Silberrad's 
 subtlety and truth. (April 19.) 
 
 MULTITUDE AND SOLITUDE. John Masefield. 
 It is the story of a man of letters who is disappointed 
 with his craft and yearns for some more active career. 
 He finds it in a campaign against sleeping sickness in 
 Africa. The grimness and realism of the African chap- 
 ters have not been surpassed in modern literature. 
 " Multitude and Solitude " is a type of the new romance, 
 which is at once philosophical and dramatic. (May 3.) 
 
 THE GIFT. S. Macnaughtan. 
 
 (Author of " The Fortune of Christina M'Nab.") 
 In this story, as in " Selah Harrison," Miss Macnaughtan 
 gives us a study in religious temperament. In "The 
 Gift," however, she is concerned with the development 
 of a woman's soul. The delicacy and subtlety of the 
 treatment is as remarkable as the touches of delightful 
 comedy which no work by Miss Macnaughtan can 
 ever lack. (May 17.) 
 
ALREADY ISSUED. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF A THOUSAND CANDLES. 
 
 Meredith Nicholson. 
 This novel, which has had an enormous vogue in the 
 United States, is a good example of a new school of 
 American fiction, in which the wildest romance is 
 brought into commonplace modern life. The hero, 
 by an uncle's will, succeeds to a strange house in the 
 Western States, where he is bound to live for a certain 
 period of time. The meaning of this condition, and 
 the surprising adventures which befall him, are told in 
 the book. It is a story to which the term " breathless " 
 may well be applied; but rapid and startling as the 
 incidents are, they are never crude or unconvincing. 
 Taken along with "The War of the Carolinas," in 
 Nelson's Sevenpenny Library, it gives an excellent 
 example of the two sides of Mr. Nicholson's talent. 
 
 VIXEN. Miss Braddon. 
 
 " Vixen " is probably the second most famous of Miss 
 Braddon's works, and the publishers are glad to be 
 able to give it as a successor to " Lady Audley's Secret." 
 Miss Braddon has had many imitators, but none have 
 excelled her in her power of vivid and straightforward 
 narrative. 
 
 GOTTY AND THE GUVNOR. A. Copping. 
 Mr. Copping's book is the story of a Southend fisher- 
 man, who acts as skipper of the writer's little yacht. 
 Gotty is a great creation — simple, humorous, practical, 
 and loyal — with a hint of Mr. W. W. Jacobs's heroes, 
 but emphatically a type by himself. The story of the 
 cruise of the yacht will delight all lovers of the sea, and 
 the final return voyage from Devonshire in a furious gale 
 is as dramatic an episode as modern sea fiction can show. 
 x 
 
THE DOLLY DIALOGUES. Anthony Hope. 
 
 This is the book which, when first published, made 
 Mr. Anthony Hope's reputation as a writer of social 
 comedies. Dolly, Lady Mickleham, is the first of the 
 witty and irresponsible ladies who for the last decade 
 have enlivened English fiction. She is also by far the 
 best, and the gravest reader is captivated by the grace 
 and humour of the Dialogues. 
 
 WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC. 
 
 Sir Gilbert Parker. 
 In this charming story Sir Gilbert Parker tells of the 
 fortunes of a young adventurer in Canada in the early 
 nineteenth century who claimed to be the son of the 
 great Napoleon. The mystery of his life and his tragic 
 death make up one of the most original and moving of 
 recent romances. The author does for Quebec what in 
 other works he has done for the Western and Northern 
 wilds — he interprets to the world its essential romance. 
 
 THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA. 
 
 Booth Tarkington. 
 In this book the author of " Monsieur Beaucaire " tells 
 a story of his own country. "The Gentleman from 
 Indiana " is a tale of a young university graduate who 
 becomes a newspaper owner and editor in a Western 
 town, and wages war against "graft" and corruption. 
 His crusade brings him into relations with the girl who 
 had captured his heart at college, and their love story 
 is subtly interwoven with his political campaign. It is 
 one of the best of modern American novels, and readers 
 will delight not only in the stirring drama of the plot, 
 but in the fresh and sympathetic pictures given of the 
 young townships of the West. 
 
THE NELSON LIBRARY. 
 
 Price Sevenpence net. 
 
 CONDENSED LIST. 
 Arranged alphabetically under Authors' Names. 
 
 BAILEY, H. C.— Springtime ; Beaujeu. 
 BELLOC, H.— Mr. Clutterbuck's Elec- 
 tion. 
 BENSON, E. F.— The Princess Sophia. 
 BRADDON, Miss. — Lady Audley's 
 
 Secret ; Vixen. 
 BRAMAH, E.— Secret of the League. 
 BURNETT, Mrs. F. H.— Making of a 
 
 Marchioness. 
 
 CAINE, HALI A Son of Hagar. 
 
 CASTLE, A. and E.— French Nan ; If 
 
 Youth but Knew ; Incomparable 
 
 Bellairs. 
 CHILDERS, E.— Riddle of the Sands. 
 CLIFFORD, Mrs. W. K. — Woodside 
 
 Farm. 
 CONRAD, J., and F. M. HUEFFER.— 
 
 Romance. 
 COPPING, A.-Gottyand the Guv'nor. 
 DOUGLAS, G.— House with the Green 
 
 Shutters. 
 DUNCAN, S. J.— His Honor and a 
 
 Lady ; Set in Authority. 
 FALKNER, J, M.— Moonfleet. 
 FORREST, R. E.— Eight Days. 
 FRANCIS, M. E.— Duenna of a Genius. 
 FUTRELLE, J.— Lady in the Case; 
 
 Professor on the Case. 
 GISSING, G.— Born in Exile; Odd 
 
 Women. 
 HARRADEN, B.— Katharine Frensham. 
 HOBBES, J. O.— Love and the Soul 
 
 Hunters. 
 HOPE, A.— Count Antonio ; God in the 
 
 Car ; Intrusions of Peggy ; King's 
 
 Mirror; Quisante; The Dolly 
 
 Dialogues. 
 HORNUNG. E. W— Raffles. 
 HYNE, C. J. CUTCLIFFE.— Recipe for 
 
 Diamonds ; Thompson's Progress. 
 JACOBS, W. W.— Lady of the Barge ; 
 
 Skipper's Wooing. 
 JAMES, H.— The American. 
 LONDON, J. -White Fang. 
 LORIMER, G. H.— Old Gorgon Graham. 
 MACNAUGHTAN, S.— Expensive Miss 
 
 Du Cane ; Fortune of Christina 
 
 M'Nab; A Lame Dog's Diary; 
 
 Selah Harrison. 
 
 MALET, L.— Gateless Barrier ; Wages of 
 
 Sin. 
 MASEFIELD, J.— Captain Margaret. 
 MASON, A. E. W.— Clementina. 
 MERRICK, I Call from the Past; 
 
 House of Lynch. 
 NICHOLSON.M.— WaroftheCarolinas; 
 
 House of a Thousand Candles. 
 NORRIS, F.— The Octopus ; The Pit ; 
 
 Shanghaied. 
 NORRIS, W. E.— Clarissa Furiosa ; His 
 
 Grace ; Matthew Austen. 
 OLIPHANT, Mrs.— Primrose Path. 
 OLLIVANT, A.— Owd Bob. 
 PAIN, B.— The One Before. 
 PARKER, Sir G.— An Adventurer of 
 
 the North ; Battle of the Strong ; 
 
 Translation of a Savage ; When 
 
 Valmond came to Pontiac. 
 PASTURE, Mrs. H. DE LA.— Grey 
 
 Knight ; Lonely Lady of Grosvenor 
 
 Square ; Man from America. 
 PHILL POTTS, E.— American Prisoner ; 
 
 Farm of the Dagger. 
 "Q." — Major Vigoureux; Shining Ferry; 
 
 Sir John Constantine. 
 RIDGE, PETT.— Mrs. Galer's Business. 
 SEDGWICK, Miss A. D.-Valerie Upion. 
 SIDGWICK, Mrs. A.— Cousin Ivo ; 
 
 Cynthia's Way. 
 STEEL, F. A.— Hosts of the Lord. 
 TARKINGTON, B.— Gentleman from 
 
 Indiana ; Monsieur Beaucaire, and 
 
 The Beautiful Lady. 
 VACHELL, H. A.— John Charity ; The 
 
 Waters of Jordan. 
 WARD, Mrs. H— History of David 
 
 Grieve; Lady Rose's Daughter; 
 
 Marcella; Marriage of William 
 
 Ashe ; Robert Elsmere ; Sir George 
 
 Tressady. 
 WELLS, H. G.— First Men in the Moon; 
 
 Food of the Gods ; Invisible Man ; 
 
 Kipps; Love and Mr. Lewisham; 
 
 Sleeper Awakes. 
 WHITE, S. E.— Biased Trail. 
 WHITEING, R.— No. 5 John Street. 
 WILLIAMSON, C. N. and A. M.— Love 
 
 and the Spy ; Princess Passes. 
 
 T. NELSON & SONS, London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and New York.