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The two prisoners offered him a share of their straw, and this, rotten and swarming with vermin as it was, was better than having to lie on the earth, which was befouled with excrement. Brotteaux sank down on a bench in the pestiferous darkness and sat there, his head against the wall, speechless and motionless.
The tall tricoteuse, pointing her finger at an old man, strongly suspected of being an unfrocked monk, swore it was the "Capuchin" yonder who was the cut-purse. The crowd believed her without further evidence and raised a shout of "Death! death!" The old man so unexpectedly exposed to the public vengeance was standing very quietly and soberly just in front of the citoyen Brotteaux.
Thereupon everyone tried to think of some hiding place in which to secure whatever he held most precious. The Père Longuemare carried away his defence in armfuls to a rain-gutter, while Brotteaux slipped his Lucretius among the ashes on the hearth.
The game went on, and one after the other Blaise, Élodie, Brotteaux and Rose Thévenin failed to touch a heart; each paid a forfeit in turn a ring, a reticule, a little morocco-bound book, a bracelet. Then the forfeits were raffled on Élodie's lap, and each player had to redeem his property by showing his society accomplishments singing a song or reciting a poem.
The binding of red morocco was chafed by hard wear, and the citoyen Brotteaux had judiciously erased the coat of arms that once embellished it, three islets or, which his father the financier had bought for good money down.
It may be Robespierre will marry Madame Royale and have himself proclaimed Protector of the Kingdom during the minority of Louis XVII." "You think so!" exclaimed the citoyenne, agog to have a hand in so promising an intrigue. "Again it may be," Brotteaux went on, "that La Vendée will win the day and the rule of the priests be set up again over heaps of ruins and piles of corpses.
Élodie made the actress sit on the right, took the left-hand place herself and put the slim Julienne between the two of them. Brotteaux settled himself, back to the horses, facing the citoyenne Thévenin; Philippe Dubois, opposite the citoyenne Hasard; Évariste opposite Élodie.
"There," she said, pointing to a clump of firs, "I should like to raise a cenotaph to the memory of the unfortunate Brotteaux des Ilettes. I was not indifferent to him; he was a lovable man. The monsters slaughtered him; I bewailed his fate. Desmahis, you shall design me an urn on a column."
It was the citoyen Brotteaux, once farmer of taxes and ci-devant noble; his father, having made a fortune in these transactions, had bought himself an office conferring a title on the possessor.
But God pays no heed to what is not done for his glory and is merely the outcome of purely natural virtue. Wherefore I beseech you, sir, to do for Him what you were led to do for me." "Father," answered Brotteaux, "never trouble yourself on this head and do not think of gratitude.
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