Despite all her resolutions Yvonne was terribly frightened. While the hideous old hag talked and screamed and waved her coa.r.s.e, red arms about, the unfortunate young girl with a great effort of will, kept repeating to herself: "I am not frightened--I must not be frightened. He a.s.sured me that these people would do me no harm...." But now when the woman had ceased speaking there was a general murmur of:
"Throw her out! Spy or aristo we don"t want her here!" whilst some of the men added significantly: "I am sure that she is one of Carrier"s spies and in league with his Marats! We shall have those devils in here in a moment if we don"t look out! Throw her out before she can signal to the Marats!"
Ugly faces charged with hatred and virulence were thrust threateningly forward--one or two of the women were obviously looking forward to joining in the scramble, when this "stuck-up wench" would presently be hurled out into the street.
"Now then, my girl, out you get," concluded the woman Lemoine, as with an expressive gesture she proceeded to roll her sleeves higher up her arm. She was about to lay her dirty hands on Yvonne, and the poor girl was nearly sick with horror, when one of the men--a huge, coa.r.s.e giant, whose muscular torso, covered with grease and grime showed almost naked through a ragged shirt which hung from his shoulders in strips--seized the woman Lemoine by the arm and dragged her back a step or two away from Yvonne.
"Don"t be a fool, _pet.i.te mere_," he said, accompanying this admonition with a blasphemous oath. "s.l.u.t or no, the wench may as well pay you something for the privilege of staying here. Look at that cloak she"s wearing--the shoe-leather on her feet. Aren"t they worth a bottle of your sour wine?"
"What"s that to you, Paul Friche?" retorted the woman roughly, as with a vigorous gesture she freed her arm from the man"s grasp. "Is this my house or yours?"
"Yours, of course," replied the man with a coa.r.s.e laugh and a still coa.r.s.er jest, "but this won"t be the first time that I have saved you from impulsive folly. Yesterday you were for harbouring a couple of rogues who were Marats in disguise: if I hadn"t given you warning, you would now have swallowed more water from the Loire than you would care to hold. But for me two days ago you would have received the goods pinched by Ferte out of Balaze"s shop, and been thrown to the fishes in consequence for the entertainment of the proconsul and his friends. You must admit that I"ve been a good friend to you before now."
"And if you have, Paul Friche," retorted the hag obstinately, "I paid you well for your friendship, both yesterday and the day before, didn"t I?"
"You did," a.s.sented Friche imperturbably. "That"s why I want to serve you again to-night."
"Don"t listen to him, _pet.i.te mere_," interposed one of two out of the crowd. "He is a white-livered skunk to talk to you like that."
"Very well! Very well!" quoth Paul Friche, and he spat vigorously on the ground in token that henceforth he divested himself from any responsibility in this matter, "don"t listen to me. Lose a benefit of twenty, perhaps forty francs for the sake of a bit of fun. Very well!
Very well!" he continued as he turned and slouched out of the group to the further end of the room, where he sat down on a barrel. He drew the stump of a clay pipe out of the pocket of his breeches, stuffed it into his mouth, stretched his long legs out before him and sucked away at his pipe with complacent detachment. "I didn"t know," he added with biting sarcasm by way of a parting shot, "that you and Lemoine had come into a fortune recently and that forty or fifty francs are nothing to you now."
"Forty or fifty? Come! come!" protested Lemoine feebly.
II
Yvonne"s fate was hanging in the balance. The att.i.tude of the small crowd was no less threatening than before, but immediate action was withheld while the Lemoines obviously debated in their minds what was best to be done. The instinct to "have at" an aristo with all the acc.u.mulated hatred of many generations was warring with the innate rapacity of the Breton peasant.
"Forty or fifty?" reiterated Paul Friche emphatically. "Can"t you see that the wench is an aristo escaped out of Le Bouffay or the entrepot?"
he added contemptuously.
"I know that she is an aristo," said the woman, "that"s why I want to throw her out."
"And get nothing for your pains," retorted Friche roughly. "If you wait for her friends we may all of us get as much as twenty francs each to hold our tongues."
"Twenty francs each...." The murmur was repeated with many a sigh of savage gluttony, by every one in the room--and repeated again and again--especially by the women.
"You are a fool, Paul Friche ..." commented Lemoine.
"A fool am I?" retorted the giant. "Then let me tell you, that "tis you who are a fool and worse. I happen to know," he added, as he once more rose and rejoined the group in the centre of the room, "I happen to know that you and every one here is heading straight for a trap arranged by the Committee of Public Safety, whose chief emissary came into Nantes awhile ago and is named Chauvelin. It is a trap which will land you all in the criminal dock first and on the way to Cayenne or the guillotine afterwards. This place is surrounded with Marats, and orders have been issued to them to make a descent on this place, as soon as papa Lemoine"s customers are a.s.sembled. There are two members of the accursed company amongst us at the present moment...."
He was standing right in the middle of the room, immediately beneath the hanging lamp. At his words--spoken with such firm confidence, as one who knows and is therefore empowered to speak--a sudden change came over the spirit of the whole a.s.sembly. Everything was forgotten in the face of this new danger--two Marats, the sleuth-hounds of the proconsul--here present, as spies and as informants! Every face became more haggard--every cheek more livid. There was a quick and furtive scurrying toward the front door.
"Two Marats here?" shouted one man, who was bolder than the rest. "Where are they?"
Paul Friche, who towered above his friends, stood at this moment quite close to a small man, dressed like the others in ragged breeches and shirt, and wearing the broad-brimmed hat usually affected by the Breton peasantry.
"Two Marats? Two spies?" screeched a woman. "Where are they?"
"Here is one," replied Paul Friche with a loud laugh: and with his large grimy hand he lifted the hat from his neighbour"s head and threw it on the ground; "and there," he added as with long, bony finger he pointed to the front door, where another man--a square-built youngster with tow-coloured hair somewhat resembling a s.h.a.ggy dog--was endeavouring to effect a surrept.i.tious exit, "there is the other; and he is on the point of slipping quietly away in order to report to his captain what he has seen and heard at the Rat Mort. One moment, citizen," he added, and with a couple of giant strides he too had reached the door; his large rough hand had come down heavily on the shoulder of the youth with the tow-coloured hair, and had forced him to veer round and to face the angry, gesticulating crowd.
"Two Marats! Two spies!" shouted the men. "Now we"ll soon settle their little business for them!"
"Marat yourself," cried the small man who had first been denounced by Friche. "I am no Marat, as a good many of you here know. Maman Lemoine,"
he added pleading, "you know me. Am I a Marat?"
But the Lemoines--man and wife--at the first suggestion of police had turned a deaf ear to all their customers. Their own safety being in jeopardy they cared little what happened to anybody else. They had retired behind their counter and were in close consultation together, no doubt as to the best means of escape if indeed the man Paul Friche spoke the truth.
"I know nothing about him," the woman was saying, "but he certainly was right last night about those two men who came ferreting in here--and last week too...."
"Am I a Marat, maman Lemoine?" shouted the small man as he hammered his fists upon the counter. "For ten years and more I have been a customer in this place and...."
"Am I a Marat?" shouted the youth with the tow-coloured hair addressing the a.s.sembly indiscriminately. "Some of you here know me well enough.
Jean Paul, you know--Ledouble, you too...."
"Of course! Of course I know you well enough, Jacques Leroux," came with a loud laugh from one of the crowd. "Who said you were a Marat?"
"Am I a Marat, maman Lemoine?" reiterated the small man at the counter.
"Oh! leave me alone with your quarrels," shouted the woman Lemoine in reply. "Settle them among yourselves."
"Then if Jacques Leroux is not a Marat," now came in a bibulous voice from a distant comer of the room, "and this compeer here is known to maman Lemoine, where are the real Marats who according to this fellow Friche, whom we none of us know, are spying upon us?"
"Yes! where are they?" suggested another. "Show "em to us, Paul Friche, or whatever your accursed name happens to be."
"Tell us where you come from yourself," screamed the woman with the shrill treble, "it seems to me quite possible that you"re a Marat yourself."
This suggestion was at once taken up.
"Marat yourself!" shouted the crowd, and the two men who a moment ago had been accused of being spies in disguise shouted louder than the rest: "Marat yourself!"
III
After that, pandemonium reigned.
The words "police" and "Marats" had aroused the terror of all these night-hawks, who were wont to think themselves immune inside their lair: and terror is at all times an evil counsellor. In the s.p.a.ce of a few seconds confusion held undisputed sway. Every one screamed, waved arms, stamped feet, struck out with heavy bare fists at his nearest neighbour.
Every one"s hand was against every one else.
"Spy! Marat! Informer!" were the three words that detached themselves most clearly from out the babel of vituperations freely hurled from end to end of the room.
The children screamed, the women"s shrill or hoa.r.s.e treble mingled with the cries and imprecations of the men.
Paul Friche had noted that the turn of the tide was against him, long before the first naked fist had been brandished in his face. Agile as a monkey he had pushed his way through to the bar, and placing his two hands upon it, with a swift leap he had taken up a sitting position in the very middle of the table amongst the jugs and bottles, which he promptly seized and used as missiles and weapons, whilst with his dangling feet encased in heavy sabots he kicked out vigorously and unceasingly against the shins of his foremost a.s.sailants.
He had the advantage of position and used it cleverly. In his right hand he held a pewter mug by the handle and used it as a swivel against his aggressors with great effect.
"The Loire for you--you blackmailer! liar! traitor!" shouted some of the women who, bolder than the men, thrust shaking fists at Paul Friche as closely as that pewter mug would allow.