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The parched earth was thirsting for rain. They alighted just outside Villejuif. On their way through the little town, Desmahis went into a fruiterer's to buy cherries for the overheated citoyennes. The shop-keeper was a pretty woman, and Desmahis showed no signs of reappearing. Philippe Dubois shouted to him, using the nickname his friends constantly gave him: "Ho there! Barbaroux!... Barbaroux!"
With an oath he turned abruptly, and pulled the casement open. "Guyot!" he called, and a voice from below made answer to him. "You will make my compliments to the citoyennes in the coach, Guyot, and tell them that the Citizen-captain Tardivet requests the honour of their company to supper."
Baring teeth and nails, the citoyennes devoted the culprit to condign punishment; deeming the guillotine too merciful a death, they demanded this monster of iniquity should be scourged, broken on the wheel, torn limb from limb, and racked their brains to invent new tortures. An armed body of National Guards was haling to the Section headquarters a man of determined mien.
That to the left, the better of the two, boasted a flowered paper and a looking-glass the size of a man's hand, the gilt frame of which had been blackened by generations of flies since the days when Louis XIV was a child. In it, under sprigged muslin curtains, stood two beds with down pillows, coverlets and counterpanes. This room was reserved for the three citoyennes.
The Revolution swept them all away. He made his living by painting portraits under the archways of doors, making pancakes and fritters on the Quai de la Mégisserie, composing speeches for the representatives of the people and giving dancing lessons to the young citoyennes.
Outside of the prison were but citoyens and citoyennes; inside of the prison were yet dukes and duchesses, counts and countesses, viscounts and viscountesses; there, behind locks and bars, the aristocracy was represented in its most glorious and high-sounding names.
Charlot returned to the window to learn from Guyot that the citoyennes thanked the Citizen-captain, but that they were tired and sought to be excused, asking nothing better than to be allowed to remain at peace in their carriage. "Sacred name of a name!" he croaked, a trifle thickly, for the wine he had taken was mastering him more and more. "Are they defying us?
The reason for this step was probably the fact that it was not safe for her to continue in Paris alone and unprotected. The robbers in the woods at Neuilly might be laughed at; but the red-capped citoyens and citoyennes, drunk from the first draught of aristocratic blood, were no old man's dangers.
When the time came to retire, Desmahis and the citoyenne Hasard, each holding a bedroom candlestick, wished each other good-night on the landing. The amorous engraver quickly passed a note to the colourman's daughter, beseeching her to come to him, when everybody was asleep, in the garret, which was over the citoyennes' chamber.
But whenever I have a vision of prisoners bound on tumbrels that jolt slowly to the scaffold, of heads carried on pikes, of groups of heated citoyennes shaking their fists at closed coach-windows, I see in the background the well-ordered features of the architecture of the period the clear grey stone, the high pilasters, the arching lines of the entresol, the classic pediment, the slate-covered attic.