"Oh, but they are good fighters; and there is to be fighting pretty soon," observed the artist.

"Vive l'armee!" cried Mlle. Fouchette, flourishing a salad-spoon. Mlle. Fouchette had a martial spirit.

"Whenever a student is arrested he turns out to be one of the roughs of Place Maubert or a hoodlum of Rue Monge, or a cutthroat of Rue Mouffetard. It is disgraceful!"

"But it shows the discretion of our police, Monsieur Marot," said the artist, with his sweet smile. "You see the police are with us. We must not be too particular who fights on our side, my friend. We can't afford to quarrel with anybody just now going in our direction. They are but means to an end, let us remember, and that end the ancient prestige and glory of France."

"A bas les Juifs!" exclaimed Mlle. Fouchette, without looking up.

The godlike face of the painter glowed with the enthusiasm that consumed his soul. He now turned his grand eyes upon the girl with inexpressible sadness.

"That is a question that does not concern us," said he, "except as another means to an end. Innocent or guilty, shall the pleasure or pain of one man stand between the millions of our countrymen and the welfare and perpetuity of France?"

"Never!" cried Mlle. Fouchette, in her excitement bringing down the salad-bowl with a crash that sent the pieces flying about the room.

"Parbleu!" exclaimed Jean, laughing heartily; "there goes my salad!"

"No; the salad is here. There goes my pretty bowl!"

"Very well, then, let us turn out to-morrow, Monsieur Marot, and do our duty. Au revoir."

In parting the artist nodded his head in cold recognition of the existence of Mlle. Fouchette. The latter turned on her dainty heel with a glance at Jean that spoke volumes. But she began arranging the little table slowly, absent-mindedly, without a word. He thought she was lamenting the loss of the salad-bowl.

"I'll buy you a pretty one," he said.

"A pretty—er—a what?"

"Salad-bowl."

"Oh, dame! I was not thinking of the salad-bowl."

"Something more serious?"

"Yes. Don't go to-morrow, Monsieur Jean!"

Her voice was earnest, but sunk to a whisper. He regarded her with astonishment.

"Don't go, Monsieur Jean!" she repeated. "Have nothing to do with them! There will be two thousand hired roughs from La Villette, the killers from the abattoirs, and——" She stopped short.

"How now, mon enfant? How——"

But she had clapped her small hand over his mouth in a half-vexed, half-frightened way, with a definite gesture towards the next room.

"Have a care, monsieur," she whispered in his ear, then laughingly resumed her bantering tone. "How do you like my salad? Is it not capital?"



CHAPTER XI

Jean Marot found Mlle. Fouchette interesting but incomprehensible.

Jean believed himself to be a sincere and true republican,—and he was, in fact, quite as logical in this as were many of the so-called republicans of the French Parliament, who, like their familiar political prototypes in the United States, talked one way and voted another. He had participated in the street disturbances as a protest against the Ministry and for the pure love of excitement, not against the republic.

As to the Dreyfus case, he had been satisfied, with most of his countrymen, upon the statement of five successive ministers of war.

After all, in a country where so many have always stood ready to sell their national liberty for the gold of the stranger, it came easy to believe in one Judas more.

The United States has had but one Benedict Arnold; France counts her traitors by the thousands. They spring from every rank and are incidental to every age. The word Treachery is the most important word in French domestic history.

And when honest men doubted the justice of a council of war, they were silenced by the specious reasoning of men like M. de Beauchamp. Had Jean been invited to assist in overturning the republic and to put Philippe d'Orleans on the throne, he would have revolted. His political ideals would have been outraged. Yet every act committed by him and by his blind partisans tended directly, and were secretly engineered by others, to that end.

Jean Marot in this was but a fair type of tens of thousands of his intelligent but headstrong and misguided countrymen.

"In the street!"

Once in the street the following day, Jean forgot his serious reflections of the previous night. It was Sunday, the chosen day of battle by sea and land,—a day consecrated to violence and bloodshed by the Paris mob. The students gathered at the divided rendezvous of the Place Pantheon and the Place de l'Odeon. Many of them wore the white boutonniere of the Jeunesse Royalistes, the tricolor, the red rose of communism, or other badge of particular political belief, and all carried canes, some of which were loaded and some of the sword variety. Their leaders excitedly harangued them while the heavy squads of police agents distributed in the vicinity watched the proceedings without interference.

Indeed, the royalists and their allies had abundant reason to believe the police force of Paris, officers and men, civil and military, in sympathy with their movement against the republic. Not one of the many street disturbances of the year past had been the spontaneous outburst of popular anger that is the forerunner of revolution. On every occasion they had been, as they were in this instance, the publicly prearranged breaches of the peace in which the worst elements of the Paris world were invited or hired to join. This was well known to the government. It would have been easy and perfectly legal and wise to have anticipated them by governmental authority. Acting under that authority, a score or two of police agents could have dispersed all preliminary gatherings. Under the eye of such a police force as we have in New York any one of the numerous riots which disgraced the streets of Paris during the pendency of the "Affaire" would have been impossible.

The police of Paris, however, are French,—which is to say that they are incapable of seeing their duty from a strictly impersonal point of view, but are lax to the utmost indifference and partiality or brutal to the extreme of cruelty and fiendishness.

But perhaps the severest censure of the Paris police agent lies in the fact that no just magistrate accepts his unsupported testimony, and that at least two-thirds of his riot arrests are nullified at once by setting the victims at liberty. As the police agent is the creature of the general government and is not responsible to the municipality, he can only be brought to book when he makes the mistake of offending some high personage. To the complaint of an ordinary citizen he would probably reply by drawing his cloak around him and expectorating viciously.

"Qu'est-ce que ca me fiche?"

The students assembled at the Place du Pantheon easily avoided the shadowy blue barrier drawn up across the Rue Soufflot. They howled a good deal in unison, then suddenly disappeared down Rue Cujas, and, pouring into Boulevard St. Michel, joined forces at the foot of Rue Racine with their comrades from the Place de l'Odeon. Like all student manifestations of any sort, the procession made a great noise, sticks were brandished, and the air rent with cries of "Vive l'armee! A bas les traitres!"

The peaceful shopkeepers came to their doors and regarded the young men indulgently. "Ah! la jeunesse n'a q'un temps!"

Some four hundred young men from the great schools were joined at the Place St. Michel by numerous hoodlums and roughs from the purlieus of Rue St. Severin, Place Maubert, and the equally delectable region of Rue de la Hutchette. These patriot soldiers of fortune "emeuted" for the low rate of forty sous per day, and were mostly armed with bludgeons, wherewith to earn their meagre salary. It mattered little whom they served, though it was just now the noble Duc d'Orleans.

The police saw this addition with a knowing eye. They barred the entrance to the Pont St. Michel. It was a half-hearted effort, and with cries of "Vive la liberte!" "En avant!" the mob of young men swept the thin files out of the way and gained the bridge. Not, however, without some kicks and blows, broken canes, and bleeding faces. A lusty gold-laced brigadier rolled in the dust, desperately clinging to two coat-collars, and won the coveted cross by allowing himself to be kicked and stamped almost out of human resemblance by the infuriated mob of rescuers.

By this time the head of the mob had reached the other end of the bridge, where a double barrier of agents was drawn up across the street. A gray-haired commissaire of long and distinguished police service walked calmly forward alone to meet them. His resolute step, his pose, bespoke his dignity and courage. He raised his left hand with the air of authority accustomed to being obeyed.

His keen eyes at once sought and found and held the eyes of the leaders.

"You must go back,—you cannot cross here,—you must disperse——"

"Sacre!" growled the crowd, moving forward threateningly. "We have a right to cross anywhere! We are citizens of Paris and have the rights of any other citizen,—the same as you, Monsieur le Commissaire!"

A dozen such protests on the instant. But the wily veteran was ready. He knew that when a mob stops to parley the battle is half won.

"Oh, yes, messieurs,—singly, or as other good citizens, you are right; but not as——"

A young man reached over his comrades' shoulders and struck the old commissaire in the face with his cane.

"For shame!" cried Jean Marot, indignantly. "What foolishness!" And he broke the cane across his knee and threw the fragments to the ground.

In the same moment the old commissaire dashed into the crowd and single-handed dragged his youthful assailant to the front and clear of his companions.

"The guard! the guard! Look out, comrades! here comes the guard!"

The cry ran along the line and through the ranks hushed by the wanton blow delivered unnecessarily upon a respected official. A company of the Garde Republicaine a pied had filed out across the Boulevard du Palais from behind the Prefecture; another company a cheval debouched into the quai from the other corner, and now rode slowly down towards the bridge.

"Bayonets in front and sabres on the flank!" said Jean to those around him. "It were wise to get out of this."

"Good advice, young man,—get out! It won't do, you see. You must cross singly, or as other citizens. Never mind your hot-headed young friend," added the old man, kindly, as he wiped the blood from his face. "We won't be hard on him. Only, you must go back at once!"

He talked to them as if they were little children. But they needed no further urging. The rear-guard had already turned tail at the sight of the troops and were in full retreat. Before the last man had cleared the bridge the only one who had been arrested was set at liberty, though he had richly earned six months in jail.

And thus terminated the harebrained attempt to march five hundred riotous men through the city directly in front of the Prefecture, where lay unlimited reserves, civil and military, under arms. The royalists had somewhat overstrained the complaisance of the authorities.

Acting at once on the hint of the police official, the crowd broke up into small groups. "A la Concorde! A la Concorde! Concorde!" they cried.

This revolutionary rendezvous was prearranged to mean Place du Carrousel, conditional on police interference. It was to deceive the authorities, the main object being to form a junction with the anticipated hordes from Montmartre and La Villette.

But a mob broken into scattered groups is no longer a mob, and being no longer a mob, there is no longer courage or cohesion of purpose. Instead of some four hundred students and about a hundred roughs, not more than fifty of the former responded at the foot of the Gambetta monument, while the latter class had gathered strength by the way.

This discrepancy, though painfully apparent to Jean Marot and his friends, in no wise dampened their ardor. Their chosen speakers lashed them into fresh furors of patriotism while they waited. The eloquent young man who quoted the words of Gambetta engraved on his monument wrung tears from his sympathetic auditors. These words of wisdom and patriotism had no pertinence whatever to the work in hand,—which was to break up a meeting organized by some distinguished philanthropists, scholars, and their friends in the interests of civil liberty and the perpetuity of human rights,—but everything serves as fuel to a flame well started.

Carried away by the spirit of exaltation, Jean Marot clambered upon the monument itself, and ascending the heroic figure of Gambetta amid the wild plaudits of the mob, kissed the mute stone lips. His hat had fallen to the ground, and now the hysterical crowd tore it into bits and scrambled for the pieces, which they pinned on their breasts as precious souvenirs of the occasion.

When Jean reached the earth it was to be frantically embraced on every side. A great, broad-shouldered, big-bearded man in a cap and the blouse of the artisan crowned this exciting ceremony by kissing the young student full on the mouth.

A score of hats were tendered, but Jean accepted the cap of the stalwart workman, who immediately brandished his club and shouted "En avant!" He unwound his soiled red sash as he started, and, making it deftly into a sort of turban, constituted himself Jean's special body-guard for the day.

The strong force of police posted in the neighborhood of the Louvre had regarded this street drama with stoical indifference. When the noisy crowd surged into the Rue de Rivoli it passed between the mounted videttes of the Garde Republicaine. Farther on, in the Rue St. Honore, a squad of dismounted cuirassiers stood listlessly holding the bridles of their horses. The afternoon sun flashed electric rays from the plates of burnished steel.

"Vive l'armee!" burst from the mob.

A subaltern on the curb touched his glittering casque in military salute without stirring a muscle of his armored body.

Now recognized leader, Jean directed the march up the narrow Rue de Richelieu, observing to his bearded aide that it was more direct and safe, though shouts of "Avenue de l'Opera! l'Opera!" rose from his followers. Jean paid no attention to these cries.

"You are right, my boy!" said the man in the blouse, patting Jean on the shoulder approvingly. "The broad streets are to the agents and military. The cuirassiers can there trample men like flies! Ah! with a regiment of cavalry and a battery of three quick-firers one could hold Paris at the Place de l'Opera against the world!"

"Yes, my friend," answered Jean, with a smile, "always provided the world agreed not to drop thousand-pound melinite shells on one from Mont Valerien or Montmartre, or from some other place."

"Yes, yes, yes,—you are right, my boy," admitted the other. "En avant!"

This man had the voice of a Stentor. He was also a Hercules of strength. Here and there the narrow street seemed blocked with vehicles; but when he did not terrorize the drivers into immediate flight at the sound of his voice and the sight of his club he would calmly lift the encumbrance and set it to one side.

"En avant!" he would then roar.

Where possible, however, all vehicles promptly fled the street save the omnibuses. From the imperiale of one of these came the cry,—

"Vive la republique!"

"Vive l'armee!" yelled the mob.

"Vive la republique!" came the response.

A dash was made for the omnibus. While four or five men held the horses a dozen or more clambered over the wheels and up the narrow steps behind. There were sixteen persons on top, seven of whom were women. The latter shrieked. Two fainted away. The assailants sprang upon the men and demanded the one who had dared to consider the health of the republic without the army. No one could or would point him out. On the apparently well established French principle that it is better that ten innocent should suffer punishment rather than that one guilty person should escape the patriotic young men assaulted everybody. A white-haired old man who protested was slapped in the face, another man was quieted by a brutal kick in the abdomen that doubled him up, a couple of foreigners who could neither understand the language nor comprehend what it was all about were roughly handled, a half-grown boy was cuffed,—everybody but the driver came in for blows and insults; and this driver of the omnibus was in all probability the real villain.

"En avant!"

This lesson was administered en route, and without stopping the main body of manifestants pressed on into the grand boulevard, to be swallowed up in the resistless human current that now flowed down upon the Place de l'Opera.



CHAPTER XII

A formidable proportion of the grand concourse which filled the fashionable boulevards from curb to curb this beautiful Sunday afternoon was composed of the so-called "boulevardiers," "flaneurs," and "badauds," who invariably appear on occasion offering excitement. For the Parisian world loves to be amused, and to have the pulse quickened by riot and bloodshed is to very many the highest form of amusement. It is better than a bull-fight.

To most of this very large class of Parisians it is immaterial what form of government they live under, provided that in some way or another it furnish plenty of excitement. No other country in the civilized world, unless Spain is to be included under this head, produces this peculiar class, the unseen influence of which seems to have escaped the brilliant French writers who have recorded the turbulent history of France.

The cardinal characteristic of the French individually and as a people is love of and admiration for theatrical display. This finds such ample illustration in all of their known domestic as well as international affairs that even the mere statement seems unnecessary. It permeates every social rank, and it enters into the performance of the simplest private as well as public duties. In higher governmental affairs it was accurately represented by the late President of the republic, Felix Faure, who went among his countrymen in a coach and four preceded by trumpeters and accompanied by a regiment of cuirassiers, and who required of his entourage all of the formalities of royalty. The hundreds of thousands who enjoyed his kingly funeral would have been equally entertained by a public execution.

In the French nature, as has been said, is implanted a keen zest for excitement. The Frenchman is ravenous for the theatrical situation,—a perfect gormandizer of the dramatic event. Whatever or whoever lacks this gilded framework is neither remembered nor noted. The supply invariably follows the demand; without spectators there would be no spectacle,—just as there is no sound where there are no ears.

Any Frenchman, therefore, who has any theatrical novelty to offer, whether as a political mountebank, or a bogus hero, or a peculiarly atrocious crime, is sure of a large audience. For there is a wide range of appreciation in that mercurial nature which, according to Voltaire, is half monkey and half tiger.

The evident pleasure with which vast Parisian crowds view riots and revolution and the various phases of alternate anarchy and absolutism may be easily and naturally accepted by the actors in these living dramas as tacit if not positive approval. The professional patriot does not perform to empty seats, and the few hundred hired assassins of the public peace and private liberty would be out of a job but for the hundred thousand passive and more or less amused spectators who scramble for the best places to witness and make merry over the show.

That this curious crowd is greatly swelled by what in other lands is recognized as the gentler or softer sex increases its responsibility. The civilization which has produced so many women of the heroic type, so many of the nobler masculine brain and hand, has also generated a vast brood which poisons the germs of human life and hands down bigotry, intolerance, revengefulness, cruelty, and love of turbulence and bloodshed from generation to generation.

Of the performers before this audience Jean Marot and his stalwart companion found themselves particularly observed from their debut. The red turban was conspicuous enough, and gave a theatrical aspect to the man who wore it. There was that in his ensemble which recalled the great Revolution and the scarcely less sanguinary conflicts of '71. By his side and contrasting strangely with the coarse brute features of this muscular humanity was the finely chiselled face of the student under the rough cap of the workman. A picturesque pair, they were greeted on all sides with all sorts of cries and comments:

"That red cap is very appropriate."

"It is the head-dress of the barricades."

"Sure!"

"Of la Villette, hein?"

"The man is mad!"

"Ah! look at that!"

"There goes a good rascal."

"A young man and his father perhaps."

"No!"

"Long live the students!"

"En avant!" roared the man in the red turban.

"Vive l'anarchie!" shouted an individual on the curb whose eyes were glazed from absinthe.

The crowd laughed. Some applauded,—not so much the sentiment as the drunken wit. The people were being entertained.

"We certainly have the street this day," observed Jean to his companion.

"Right you are, my boy!"

Both noted the squadron of cuirassiers drawn up in front of the Opera, the police agents massed on either side, and the regiment of the line under arms in the Rue 4 Septembre close at hand. In the middle distance a squadron of the Garde de Paris came leisurely up the Avenue de l'Opera.

"You see, my friend," said Jean, smiling, "the government is looking sharply after its strategic position."

"Vive l'armee!"

The man in the red turban swung his baton, and his resounding cry was caught up by the manifestants. It was the voice of flattery and conciliation extended to the army, through which the royalist party hoped to win a throne.

But they were not alone there. From several quarters came sharp rejoinders of "Vive la justice!" "Vive la republique!" "Vive la France!"

While these cries seemed harmless if not proper, they were judged seditious by the police, who made a dash for those who uttered them. In another instant the man with the red turban would have saved the agents the trouble of arresting the nearest person had not Jean grasped the baton. The brute face had taken on a flush of red ferocity. His blow restrained, the man spat in the face of his intended victim and strode on.

"Not yet, my friend!" exclaimed the student leader. "What! precipitate a fight here! Madness! We should be ridden down within three minutes! The government will be sure to protect the Opera."

"Yes; you are always right, mon enfant," growled the man.

Meanwhile, the unfortunate Parisian who wanted "justice" got it; being dragged off by two police agents, who took turns in kicking and cuffing their prisoner on the way to the depot. There he was charged with uttering seditious cries calculated to lead to a breach of the peace.

Gathering confidence from immunity, however, the manifestants soon ceased to observe this respect for public opinion. In Boulevard Haussmann they got out from the eye of the military. They began to hustle those who happened to get in their way. Those who were not sufficiently explicit in their views were compelled to cry "Vive l'armee;" whoever refused was promptly knocked on the head.

"Monsieur Front de Boeuf," said Jean Marot to his companion, who had narrowly missed spattering the young leader with the brains of a misguided Dreyfusarde, "if you will strike less heavily you will longer remain with us, and possibly for a time escape the guillotine. Let us do no murder, mon ami. Your stick is heavy."

"That's so; but it is a lovely stick all the same," replied the man, with a satisfied air, as he wiped the blood from his hands upon his blouse.

Then for the first time Jean noticed that this blouse bore many old stains of the same sanguinary color. Undoubtedly it was blood. Human? Faugh!

Jean saw around him other men of the same type, red-faced and strong-limbed, mentally as well as physically saturated with the brutality of their calling. He thought of Mlle. Fouchette. It was true, then, that these human brutes from the abattoirs were here. That other type, the "camelot,"—he of the callous, cadaverous face, thinly clad body, cunning eyes, husky lungs,—was more familiar.

But these butchers of La Villette, why were they royalists? What special interest had the killers of cattle in the restoration of the monarchy? They had emphasized their devotion to the Duc d'Orleans by re-electing his parliamentary leader, the Comte de Sabran, by an overwhelming vote. From the rich and influential wholesaler to the low hind whose twelve hours a day were passed in knocking bullocks on the head or in slitting throats with precision the butchers stood three to one for the royal regime. Men may be hired for certain services, but in such a case as this there must exist some natural sentiment at bottom. This sentiment was perhaps only the common French intolerance of existing things.

Jean Marot's train of thought had not reached that far, owing to fresh differences of opinion between some of his followers and the spectators, in which it became necessary for a dozen men to kick one helpless fellow-man into insensibility.

They were now nearing the proposed place of meeting, and the hitherto scattered cries of "Vive la justice!" "Vive la liberte!" "Vive la France!" and "Vive la republique!" had developed into well-defined opposition. Personal collisions, blows, objurgations, came thicker and faster.

Finally, from the "terrasse" of a fashionable cafe in the Boulevard Malesherbes came very decided expressions of dissent. They were followed by a general assault on the place. Not less than thirty of the usual respectable Sunday afternoon "consommateurs" occupied the chairs, and, though not more than half a dozen of these could have offended, the mob came down upon them like a living avalanche, throwing the entire Sunday party of both sexes promiscuously among the debris of tables, chairs, glasses, and drinks.

The women shrieked, the men cursed loudly, and everybody struggled in the general wreck. While the male portion were kicked and stamped where they lay, the feminine part of the cafe crowd fought tooth and nail to escape in any direction.

There were three dissatisfied beings, however, who objected to this summary treatment, and who, having regained a footing, courageously defended themselves with the nearest weapons at hand. These were empty beer-glasses, which, being fraudulently double thick at the bottom, were admirably designed for that particular use. But when three beer-glasses conflict with twenty loaded canes the former, however valiantly wielded, must succumb to the rule of the majority. Among the latter, too, was the particularly heavy stick of the patriot from the abattoirs of La Villette. He had received a blow from a glass that laid his cheek open and had jumped upon his assailant.

"Death!" he roared.

The man sank without a groan amid the broken glass, beer, and blood. The savage aimed a terrific blow of the boot at the upturned face, but was jostled out of his aim. Again, and with the snarl of a wild beast; but a woman had thrown herself across the prostrate figure and encircled the still form with her protecting arm. The butcher would have planted his iron-shod heel upon her, but at this critical juncture another woman—a slender, pale, weak-looking thing whose blonde hair fell loosely over her rouged cheeks—flew at him with a scream half human, half feline,—such as chills the blood in the midnight of the forest. With one hand she tore out great bunches of beard by the roots, with the other she left red furrows on his face like the paths of a garden-rake. Quick as lightning-flashes, again and again, and with each successive stroke of her claws came the low, hysterical whine of the wild beast.

It was Mlle. Fouchette.

Her catlike jaws were distended and quivering,—the white teeth glistened,—the eyes of steel seemed to emit sparks of fire,—the small, lithe body swayed and undulated like that of an angry puma.

"Yes!—so!—death!—yes!—death!—you!—beast!—you devil!"

With each energetic word went a wild sweep of the claws or came a wisp of beard.

The man bellowed with pain. The unexpected fury of her onslaught, the general melee of close quarters, the instinct of protection, contributed to prevent the man from simply braining her with his "casse-tete." He was a lion against a hornet, powerless to punish his puny assailant. As he finally broke away, she suddenly whirled and delivered beneath the arm that shielded his eyes a kick that half choked him with his own teeth.

Blinded with blood and howling with pain, the wretch plunged headlong through the cafe front amid a crash of falling glass.

In the mean time, while this little curtain-raiser had been getting under way, there was still another and more important drama in active preparation.

The police, as if to lend such material aid to the royalist cause as lay in their power, and to assist in the punishment of those misguided Frenchmen who took the words "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite," inscribed over the doors of the public hall, in a too literal sense, had violently closed those doors against the latter and by cunningly arranged barriers driven the unsuspecting Dreyfusardes down upon their armed enemies. It was a most admirably arranged plot to destroy the public peace, and reflected credit upon the clerico-royalist-military council that had planned it.

Before the indignant republicans had begun to realize the character of the trap set for them they found themselves hemmed in on three sides by the police and attacked by the combination of hostile forces on the other side.

The latter had been quietly assembled in the vicinity in anticipation of this denouement. They were led by Senators and Deputies wearing the official scarf of their high legislative function. This at once afforded the latter reasonable immunity from arrest, and served to encourage and assure those accustomed to look for some shadow of authority to conceal or excuse the evil of their deeds.

The French Senator or Deputy who leads street rioters against a peaceable assemblage of his fellow-citizens one day and serenely sits in national legislative deliberation the next day is the faithful representative of a constituency as far removed from the American type of citizenship as the French legislator is from our national legislator.

With shouts of "Vive l'armee!" "A bas les vendus!" "Vive France aux Francais!" "A bas les Juifs!" the waiting combination, or "nationalistes," fell upon their victims with fist, heel, and club. This was not as a body, the assailants being cleverly scattered everywhere through the crowd, and assaulting individually and supporting each other where resistance was encountered. As many were mere spectators, they were compelled to declare themselves or come in for a share of the drubbing, though this opportunity for escape was not always offered or accepted.

The pure love of fighting is strong in the French as in the Irish breast, and once roused the Frenchman is not too particular whose head comes beneath his baton.

It naturally happened, therefore, that on this occasion the innocent curious of all opinions received impartial treatment, often without knowing to which side they were indebted for their thumping. Every man thus assaulted at once became a rioter and began the work on his own particular account. Within a brief period not less than a hundred personal combats were going on at the same moment. As far as the eye could reach the broad boulevard was a surging sea of scuffling humanity, above which rose a cloud of dust and a continuous roar of angry voices. To the distant ear this was as one voice,—that of terrible imprecation.

Having thus ingeniously united the conflicting currents in one tempest, the police precipitated themselves on the whole.

Had any additional element been required to bring things to the highest stage of combativeness this would have answered quite well. As interference in family affairs almost invariably brings the wrath of both parties down on the peacemaker, so now the police began to receive their share of the public attention.

The Parisian population have not that docile disposition and submissive respect for authority characteristic of our Americans. The absence of the night-stick and ready revolver must be supplied by overwhelming physical force. Even escaping criminals cannot be shot down in France with impunity.

Though deprived of both clubs and sabres and not trusted with revolvers, these police agents make good use of hands and feet. Not being bound by the rules of the ring, their favorite blow is the blow below the belt. It is viciously administered by both foot and knee. Next to that is the kick on the shins, which, delivered by a heavy, iron-shod cowhide boot, is pretty apt to render the recipient hors de combat. Supplemented by a quick fist and directed by a quicker temper, the French police agent is no mean antagonist in a general row. In brutality and impulsive cruelty he is but the flesh and blood of those with whom he has mostly to deal.

The battle now raged with increasing violence, the combatants being slowly driven down upon the approaching manifestants from the Quartier Latin, Montmartre, and La Villette. It had become everybody's fight, the original Dreyfusardes having been largely eliminated by nationaliste clubs and police arrests. The ambulances and cellular vans, playfully termed "salad-baskets," thoughtfully stationed in the side streets, were being rapidly filled, and as fast as filled were driven to hospital and prison respectively.

The reverberating roar of human voices beat against the tall buildings, rising and falling in frightful diapason, as if it were the echo from a thousand savage creatures of the jungle clashing their fangs in deadly combat.

Jean Marot and his immediate followers had scarcely turned from the scene at the cafe before they were swallowed up in the vortex that now met them. Indeed, Jean had not witnessed either the horrible brutality of the butcher or his punishment. The cries of "Les agents! a bas les agents!" had suddenly carried him elsewhere on the field of battle. He found himself, fired by the fever of conflict, in the middle of the broad street so closely surrounded by friends and foes that sticks were encumbrances. A short arm blow only was now and then effective. A dozen police agents were underfoot somewhere, being pitilessly stamped and trampled by the frantic mob. The platoon that had charged was wiped out as a platoon. Those who were hemmed in fought like demons. Men throttled each other and swayed back and forth and yelled imprecations and fell in struggling masses and got upon their feet again and twisted and squirmed and panted, like so many monsters, half serpent and half beast, seeking to bury their fangs in some vital part or tear each other limb from limb.

Suddenly Jean saw rise before him a face that drove everything else from his mind. It was that of one who saw him at the same instant. And when these bloodshot eyes of passion met a fierce yell of wrath burst from the two men.

It was Henri Lerouge.

He was hatless and his clothes were in shreds and covered with the grime of the street. His hair was matted with coagulated blood,—his lips were swollen hideously. A police agent in about the same condition held him by the throat.

When Henri Lerouge saw Jean Marot he seemed imbued with the strength of a giant and the agility of a cat. He shook off the grip of the agent as if it were that of a child and at a bound cleared the struggling group that separated him from his former friend.

They grappled without a word and without a blow, and, linked in the embrace of mortal hatred, rolled together in the dust.

The cruel human waves broke over them and rolled on and receded, and went and came again, and eddied and seethed and roared above them.

These two rose no more.



CHAPTER XIII

When the police, supported by the Garde de Paris, had finally swept the boulevard clear of the mob, they found among the human debris two men locked in each other's grasp, insensible. The imprint on two throats showed with what desperate ferocity they had clung to each other. Indeed, their hands were scarcely yet relaxed from exhaustion. Their faces were black and their tongues protruded.

In the nearest pharmacy, where ambulances were being awaited by a dozen others, Jean Marot quickly revived under treatment. The case of Henri Lerouge, however, was more serious. He had received a severe cut in the head early in the row and the young surgeon in charge feared internal injuries. Artificial means were required to induce respiration. This was restored slowly and laboriously. At the first sign of life he murmured,—

"Andree! Sister! Ah! my poor little sister!"

Jean roused himself. The sounds of voices and wheels came to him indistinctly. Everything merged in these words,—

"Andree! Sister!"

Then again all was blank.

When he revived he was first of all conscious of a gentle feminine touch,—that subtle something which cools the fevered veins and softens the pangs of suffering, mind and body.

He felt it rather as if it were a dream, and kept his eyes closed for fear the dream would vanish. The hand softly bathed his head, which consciously lay in a woman's lap. He remembered but one hand—his mother's—that had soothed him thus, and the sweet souvenir provoked a deep sigh.

"Ah! mon Dieu!" murmured the voice of Mlle. Fouchette.

"L'hopital ou depot?" inquired the nearest agent.

"Depot," said the sous-brigadier.

"Oh! no! no!" exclaimed the girl, indignantly. "See, messieurs; he is wounded and weak, and——"

"One moment!"

A young surgeon knelt and applied his ear to the heaving breast, while the police agents whispered among each other.

Mlle. Fouchette caught the words, "It is La Savatiere," and smiled faintly, but was at once recalled to the situation by a pair of open eyes through which Jean Marot regarded her intently.

"So! It—it is only Mademoiselle Fouchette. I——"

He saw the cloud that rose upon her face and heard the gentle humility of her reply,—

"Yes, monsieur, it is only Fouchette. How do you find yourself, Monsieur Jean?"

She put a flask of brandy to his lips and saw him swallow a mouthful mechanically. Suddenly he raised himself to a sitting posture and looked anxiously about.

"Where is he?"

"Who? Where is who, monsieur?"

"Lerouge. Why, he was here but now. Where is he?"

"Lerouge! That wretch!" cried the girl, with passion. "I could strangle him!"

"Oh! no, no, no!" he interposed. "It is a mistake. His sister, Fouchette——"

His glance was more than she could bear. She would have drawn him back to her as a mother protects a sick child, only a rough hand interposed.

"See! he raves, messieurs."

"Let him rave some more," said the sous-brigadier. "This is our affair. So it was Monsieur Lerouge, was it? Very good! Henri Lerouge, medical student, Quartier Latin, anarchist, turbulent fellow, rascal,—well cracked this time!"

Jean looked from the girl to the man and laid himself back in her arms without a word.

"Make a note," continued the police official,—"bad characters, both. This man goes to depot!"

"For shame!" cried Mlle. Fouchette.

"And hear this!" added the sous-brigadier in an angry voice,—"if this grisette of Rue St. Jacques gives you any of her guff run her in!"

"But—no, monsieur, that you will not! My business is here,—my authority above your authority,—and here I will remain!"

"Show it!" demanded the official.

She regarded him wrathfully.

"Very well, mademoiselle," said he, choking back his anger. "I know my duty and will not be interfered with by——"

"Gare a vous!" she interrupted, threateningly.

"Don't!" whispered Jean. "It is nothing. But tell me quickly,—has Lerouge gone to prison?"

"Hotel Dieu," she replied.

"Good! Go to his place, 7 Rue Dareau, you know,—tell her,—Mademoiselle Remy,—his sister, Fouchette——"

She bent lower over his head, hiding her face from his sight.

"Ah! what a fool I have been, Fouchette! Tell her gently—that he is injured—slightly, mind—and where he is. That's a good girl, Fouchette,—good girl that you are!"

He could not see her face for the hair that fell over the bowed head,—the living picture of the repentant Magdalen. But he felt her warm breath upon his cheek, and, was it a tear that splashed hotly on his neck?

But she merely pressed his hand for a reply and, disengaging her dress, darted from the place.

Threading her way rapidly among the arriving and departing vans and ambulances, the scattered remnants of the mob and the swarms of shifting police agents, Mlle. Fouchette finally reached a street open to traffic.

It was only at rare intervals that she indulged herself in a cab. This was one of the times. Hailing the first-comer, she jumped in and called out to the fat cabby, "Place Monge."

He drove thoughtfully as far as the next corner and then inquired over his shoulder where Place Monge was. She stood up behind him and fairly screamed in his ear,—

"Square Monge, espece de melon! Quartier Latin!"

The bony horse started up at the sound of her voice as from the lash. Evidently, Mlle. Fouchette was not in good temper. She had no relish for the work of good-will cut out for her. She was disgusted at the weakness of man. If she had been driver at that moment she would have run down a few of them en route. Still, her cocher did his best.

At Place du Parvis Notre Dame she called out to him to stop. Getting out, she bade him wait near by, and started down along the quai in front of the Prefecture de Police. The man seemed suspicious and kept a sharp eye on his fare. Just as he was about to follow the girl he saw her start back, as if she had changed her mind.

She began to walk very rapidly towards him, looking neither to the right nor to the left. A man in a soft hat who had just left the Prefecture crossed the street in the opposite direction and, curiously enough, though there was an empty desert of space in the vicinity, the two jostled each other almost rudely and exchanged angry words.

After which the girl retook her place in the fiacre and said "Allons!" in a subdued tone that strongly contrasted with her former acerbity.

"Sure!" said the cabby to himself,—"she's drunk." And he looked forward to the near future rather gloomily.

His suspicion seemed more than justified when she again said Place Monge instead of Square Monge, the former being nearly half a mile farther. He almost collapsed when she finally got down and not only handed him the legal fare without dispute but double the usual pourboire.

"Toujours de meme ces femmes-la!" he growled, philosophically. Which meant that women were pretty much alike,—you never could tell what one of them would do.

Mlle. Fouchette, quite indifferent at any time to the private judgment of the cab-driving world, now silently and swiftly pursued the uneven tenor of her thoughts, not yet manifest. She hurried along the sombre walls of the giant caserne de la garde on the Rue Ortolan, plunged across the crowded Rue Mouffetard, and entered the picturesque little wine-shop on the corner.

It was a low, grim, two-story affair in time-worn stone, the door and windows heavily grilled in the elaborate and artistic wrought-iron work of the middle ages. A heavy oaken door supplemented the big barred gate and added to the ancient prison-like appearance of the place. Against the grilles of the Rue Mouffetard hung specimens of the filthy illustrated Paris papers, either the pictures or text of which would debar them from any respectable English-speaking community. Over the door opening into the Rue du Pot de Fer and below a lamp of that exquisite iron-work which is now one of the lost arts was displayed a small bush, intimating that, in spite of the strong improbability, good wine was to be had inside.

While a casual glance showed that the rooms above could not be high enough of ceiling for an ordinary individual to stand upright, the flowers in the little square recessed and grilled windows showed that this upper portion was inhabited. It was connected with the wine-shop below by a narrow and very much worn stone staircase, which ascended "a tire-bouchon," or corkscrew fashion, like the steep steps of a light-house.

As to the general reputation of the neighborhood, Mlle. Fouchette knew it to be "assez mauvaise,"—tolerably bad,—though it was not this knowledge that induced her to complete her journey on foot.

Her entrance caused a subdued but perceptible flutter among the occupants of the resort. These were, at the moment, four respectable-looking men in blouses, an old gentleman in the last stage of genteel rustiness, and a couple of camelots in the second stage of drunkenness,—that of undying friendship. The four, who appeared to be worthy tradesmen of the neighborhood, occupied a far table in the small and time-begrimed room, where they played at cards for small stakes; the rusty old gentleman sat alone with a half-emptied beer-glass and an evening newspaper before him; the street-hawkers were standing at the zinc, which in Paris represents our American bar, discussing the events of the day in the hoarse-lunged, insolent tone of their class.

Presiding over the establishment was—yes, it was Madame Podvin. Somewhat stouter, redder of face, more piggy of eye, with more decided whiskers, but still Madame Podvin.

She busied herself behind the zinc washing glasses, occasionally glancing at the men in the corner, smiling upon the inebriated camelots, and now and then casting a suspicious eye upon the quiet old gentleman behind his beer.

Madame Podvin had retired from the Rendez-Vous pour Cochers upon the retirement of Monsieur Podvin from public life by the State, and had found this congenial city resort vacant by reason of death,—the proprietor having been stabbed by one of his friendly customers over the question of pay for a drink of four sous.

Upon the entrance of Mlle. Fouchette Madame Podvin tapped the zinc sharply with the glass as if to knock something out of it, then greeted the new-comer effusively.

The four men hastily gathered up their stakes and began talking about the weather; the subdued camelots sipped their absinthe in silence; the old gentleman fell to reading his paper with renewed interest.

"Bonjour, madame," said Mlle. Fouchette, smilingly ignoring the private signal, though inwardly vexed.

"Mademoiselle Fouchette! Ah! how charming of you!" exclaimed Madame Podvin, hastily wiping her hands and coming around the open end of the bar to embrace her visitor.

Beneath the most elaborate politeness the Parisian conceals the bitterest hatred. French politeness is mostly superficial at best,—it often scarcely hides a cynicism that stings without words, a satire that bites to the verge of insult. The more Frenchwomen dislike each other the more formal and overpowering their compliments—if they do not come to blows.

"Thank you very much, madame," Mlle. Fouchette replied, as Madame Podvin kissed her cheeks. "Ah! you are always so gay and delightful, madame!"

"And how lovely you have grown to be!" exclaimed the Podvin, with a good show of enthusiasm, holding the girl off at arm's length for inspection. "It seems impossible that you should have come out of a rag-heap! And your sweet disposition——"

Madame Podvin elevated her hands in sheer despair of being able to describe it.

"It must go well with you, madame, you are always so amiable and cheerful," retorted Mlle. Fouchette.

"But you are more lovely every day you grow older," said Madame Podvin.

"Ah! Madame does not grow older!"

"Fouchette, cherie, I'm sure you must belong to a good family, you are so naturally winning and well-bred. The clothes you had on when I found you——"

"Madame?"

"I gave them away—for twenty—yes, it was twenty francs—they were not worth as many sous—to a gentleman——"

Madame Podvin stopped at the sight of Mlle. Fouchette's face; but, uncertain whether the subject pained, interested, or irritated the latter, she continued,——

"It was shortly after you left. He was very curious,—one of these government spies, you know, Fouchette——"

"Madame, I would see Mademoiselle Madeleine," interrupted the other.

Madame Podvin frowned.

"Not sick, I hope," added Fouchette.

"Oh! no; only——"

"Drinking?"

"Like a fish!"

"Poor Madeleine!"

"She's a beast!" cried Madame Podvin.

Madame Podvin sold vile liquor but despised the fools who drank it, and in this she was not singular.

"Is she——" Mlle. Fouchette raised her eyes heavenward inquiringly.

"No,—she's in the street. Ever since she got out of the hospital she has been going from bad to worse every day. And she owes me two weeks' lodging. If she doesn't pay up soon I'll——"

Whatever the Podvin intended to do with Madeleine she left it unsaid, for the latter stood in the doorway.

Great, indeed, was the change which had come over this unfortunate girl. Stout to repulsiveness, shabby of attire, fiery of face, unsteady of pose, with one bright beautiful eye burning with the supernatural fire of absinthe, the other sealed in internal darkness.

"Oh! Madeleine——" began Mlle. Fouchette, painfully impressed and hesitating.

"What! No! Fouchette? Mon ange!"

The drunken woman staggered forward to embrace her friend.

"Why, Madeleine——"

"Hold! And first tell me your bad news. You know you always bring me bad news, deary. You hunt me up when you have bad news. Come, now!"

"La, la, la, la!" trilled Mlle. Fouchette, passing her arm around the other's thick waist to gain time.

"Come! mon ange,—we'll have a drink anyhow. Mere! some absinthe,—we have thirst."

"No, no; not now, Madeleine."

"Not a drop here!" said Madame Podvin, seeing that Mlle. Fouchette was not disposed to pay.

"Not now," interposed the latter,—"a little later. I want a word or two with you, Madeleine, first. Just two minutes!"

The one brilliant orb regarded the girl intently, as if it would dive into her soul; but the habitual good-nature yielded.

"Very well. Come then, cherie,—a l'imperiale!"

And, indeed, the narrow, spiral stair more closely resembled that which leads to the imperiale of the Paris omnibus than anything found in the modern house.

The space above was divided in four, the first part being the small antechamber, dimly lighted from the roof, which they now entered. Through a door to the right they were in a room one-third of which was already occupied by an iron camp-bed. The rest of the furniture consisted of a little iron washstand, a chair, and some sort of a box covered with very much soiled chintz that was once pretty. Above this latter article of furniture was a small shelf, on which were coquettishly arranged a folding mirror and other cheap articles of toilet. A few fans of the cheap Japanesque variety were pinned here and there in painful regularity. A cheap holiday skirt and other feminine belongings hung on the wall over the cot. In the small, square, recessed window opening on Rue Mouffetard were pots of flowering plants that gave an air of refinement and comfort to a place otherwise cheerless and miserable.

And over all of this poverty and wretchedness hung a blackened ceiling so low that the feather of Mlle. Fouchette swept it,—so low and dark and heavy and lugubrious that it seemed to threaten momentarily to crush out what little human life and happiness remained there.

Madeleine silently motioned her visitor to the chair and threw herself on the creaking bed. She waited, suspiciously.

"The riots, you know, Madeleine," began Mlle. Fouchette.

"Dame! There is always rioting. One hears, but one doesn't mind."

"Unless one has friends, Madeleine——"

The maimed and half-drunken woman tried to straighten up.

"Well? Out with it, Fouchette. If one has friends in the row——"

"Why, then we feel an interest in our friends, n'est-ce pas?"

"It is about Lerouge!"

"Yes, Madeleine, I want——"

"Is he hurt?"

"Yes,—badly,—and is at the Hotel Dieu. I want his address. He has moved from 7 Rue Dareau since the police—since——"

"You want his address for the police," said the girl.

"Oh! no! no! not for that, dear!"

"Not for that; then what for? Tell me why you want it."

This was exactly what Mlle. Fouchette evidently did not desire to do. Madeleine saw it, and added firmly,—

"Tell me first, then—well, then I'll see."

"I will, then," rejoined the other, savagely.

"Speak!"

"I wish to notify his sister."

Madeleine looked at the speaker fixedly, as if still waiting for her to begin; stupidly, for her poor muddled brain refused to comprehend.

Mlle. Fouchette continued,—

"I say I wish to go to his place," she said, with great deliberation, "and notify his sister that her brother is injured and is lying at Hotel Dieu. I promised. It is important. Believing you knew the address I have come to you. You will help me, for his sister's sake,—for his sake, Madeleine? You know his sister lives with him——"

"You—you said his sister——"

But the voice choked. The words came huskily, like a death-rattle in her throat.

"Yes, sister," began again Mlle. Fouchette. But she was almost afraid now. The aspect of her listener's face was enough to touch even a harder heart than possessed this not too tender bearer of ill news.

However, Madeleine would have heard nothing more. She gazed vacantly at the opposite wall, a knee between her hands, and swaying slightly to and fro. Her face, bloated with drink, had become almost pale, and was the picture of long-settled grief. It was as if she were in fresh mourning for the long ago.

Presently a solitary tear from the unseen and unseeing eye stole out of its dark retreat and rolled slowly and reluctantly down upon the cheek and stopped and dried there.

Mlle. Fouchette saw it as the weather observer sees the moisture on the glass and speculated on the character of the coming storm.

She was disappointed. For instead of an explosion Madeleine suddenly rose and began fumbling among the garments on the wall without a word. She selected the best from her humble wardrobe and laid the pieces out one by one on the bed, then began rapidly to divest herself of what she wore.

When interrogated by the wondering Fouchette she never replied. Indeed, she no longer appeared to notice that her visitor was there. She bathed her face, and washed her hands, and scrubbed her white teeth, and carefully rearranged her hair. All of this with a calmness and precision of a perfectly sober woman,—as she now undoubtedly was. She then resumed her hat.

"How!" exclaimed Mlle. Fouchette, noting this quiet preparation with growing astonishment,—"not going out?"

"Yes," replied the girl.

"But, dear, you have not yet given me the address."

"It is unnecessary."

"But, Madeleine!"

"It is unnecessary, Fouchette. I will go and see his—his sister and lead her to him."

"But, deary!"

"And I will go alone," she added, looking at the other for the first time.

Unmindful of the wheedling voice of remonstrance, without another word, and leaving her door wide open and Mlle. Fouchette to follow or not at her pleasure, the miserable girl gained the street and swiftly sped away through the falling shadows of the night.



CHAPTER XIV

Jean Marot occupied a cell in a "panier a salade" en route for the depot, not so much the worse for his recent exciting experience as at first seemed probable he might be.

There were eight other occupants of the prison-van besides himself, one of whom was a soldier guard. Five narrow cells ranged along either side of a central aisle. Each had a solitary small, closely shuttered breathing-hole opening outside. The guard occupied a seat in the aisle near the rear door, from which he could survey the door of every cell. By this arrangement prisoners were kept separate from each other, were not subjected to a gaping crowd, and ten persons could be safely escorted by a single guard.

From the half-suppressed murmurs and objurgations that followed every severe jolt of the wagon, Jean rightly judged that most of the prisoners were more or less injured. And as the driver drove furiously, having the fight of way and being pressed with business this particular Sunday afternoon, there were still louder and more exhaustive remarks from those who narrowly escaped being run over by the cellular van.

Jean Marot, however, was too much engrossed with his own miserable reflections to pay any more than mechanical attention to all of this. Physically resuscitated and momentarily inflating his glad lungs anew, he still felt that terrible vice-like grip upon his throat,—the compression of the fingers of steel that seemed to squeeze the last drop of blood from his heart.

But it was mental suffocation now. For they were the fingers of her brother,—the flesh and sinew of the woman he loved! And it was this love that was being cruelly crushed and strangled.

It was more terrible than the late physical struggle. The latter had invoked the energy, the courage, and the superhuman strength and endurance to meet it,—had roused the fire of conscious manhood. Now the sick soul revolted at its own folly. The props of self-respect had been knocked away, and he lay prone, humiliated, deprived of the initial courage to rise and hope.

The chief cause of this self-degradation lay in the fact that he had grievously wronged the only one in the world he had found worth loving,—the one sweet being for whom he would have willingly sacrificed life. The fact that this wrong was by and in thought alone did not lessen the horrible injustice of it.

The more Jean thought of these things the more sick at heart he was, the more hopeless his love became, the more desperately dark the future appeared. There seemed to be nothing left but misery and death.

This train of bitterness was interrupted by a violent wrangle between the occupants of neighboring cells. A prisoner across the way had shouted "Vive l'armee!" Another responded by the gay chanson,—

"Entre nous, l'armee du salut, Elle n'a jamais eu d'autre but Que d'amasser d' la bonne galette."

It came from his next-door neighbor, and was the familiar voice of the saturnine George Villeroy.

"Shut your mouth, rascal!" yelled the guard, rapping the cell door with his sword bayonet.

A few minutes later the van was stopped, the rear door opened, and one by one the prisoners, bloody, torn, and bedraggled, were handed out and hustled not very gently by two police agents through a heavily grilled doorway into a room already crowded with victims of law and order. All of these were yet to be called before the commissaire and interrogated in turn, and by him either held or discharged. A good many were both hatless and coatless, and altogether they certainly bore a riotous and suspicious look.

In the crowd near the desk where they were led to be registered Jean met his old friend Villeroy.

"Oho!" exclaimed the latter, laughingly.

"Oh, yes; it is I, my friend."

"Pinched this time, hein?"

"So it seems."

"And in what company?"

"Yours, I suppose," retorted Jean.

"Good company!" said Villeroy. "Kill any—any agents?"

"No,—no!" said Jean, who did not relish this subject.

"See Lerouge?"

"N—that is——"

"The miserable!"

"Oh, as for that——"

"Well, he's done for, anyhow."

"Wha-at?"

"His goose is cooked!"

"How is that? Not——"

"Dead."

"Dead!"

"As a mackerel!"

Jean paled perceptibly and almost staggered against his friend.

"Impossible!" he murmured. "It can't be! How——"

"Oh, easy enough," interrupted the other, lightly. "Some ruffian choked him to death, they say. Liable to occur, is it not? Sorry, of course, but——"

Fortunately for Jean's self-control, they were rudely separated by two angry opponents who wanted to fight it out then and there. He would have betrayed himself in another moment. And, wrought up to the present tension, it seemed as if he must go mad and shriek his guilt to all the world.

He sought an obscure corner and sat down on the floor with his back to the wall, his chin upon his knees.

In his own soul he was condemned already. He only awaited the guillotine.

When he was aroused the room was almost cleared. A couple of agents roughly hustled him before the busy commissaire. It was the old official the student had struck that morning. The red welt across his face gave it a sinister appearance. He glanced at the arraigned, then read from the blotter,—

"Jean Marot, student,—um, um, um!—charged with—with—let's see—with uttering seditious cries calculated to lead to a breach of the peace. What have you got to say for yourself, young man?"

The prisoner had nothing to say for himself,—at least, nothing better than that,—so he was speechless.

"Ah! evidently never been here before," said the old commissaire. "Go! and never come here again. Discharged. Call the next."

"Monsieur le Commissaire," began a police agent who had here risen to his feet with an air of remonstrance,—"monsieur——"

"Call the next!" said the commissaire, waving the agent down peremptorily.

And thus Jean Marot, before he had recovered from his surprise, or could even realize what had happened, was again hustled through the corridor, this time to be unceremoniously thrust into the street—a free man.

"Hold, Monsieur Jean!" said the lively voice of Mlle. Fouchette. "What a precious long time you have been!"

"It might have been longer," he remarked, vaguely accepting her presence as not unnatural, and suffering himself to be led down the block.

"Oh, here it is," said she, going straight to a cab in waiting. "Now, don't stop to ask questions or I'll be wicked. Get in! Dinner is——"

"Dinner is, is it?" he repeated, almost hysterically.

He felt exhausted physically and mentally, indifferent as to what now befell him, prepared to accept anything. Nothing could be worse. He felt as if everything was crumbling beneath his feet. There was nobody to lean against, nobody to sympathize with him, nobody to care one way or the other, or——

Only this girl at his side.

He looked at her wonderingly, now that he came to think of her. The thin, insignificant figure, the pale face, the drooping blonde hair lying demurely on the cheeks, the bright steel-blue eyes, the pussycat purr——

"How absurd you are, Monsieur Jean, with that awful face! One would think it was because of the prospect of my dinner!"

"I am thinking of you," he said.

"Oh, thanks, monsieur! And so savagely—I have fear!"

She laughed gleefully, and affected to move away from him, only, at that instant, the hind wheel of the voiture struck a stray bowlder, and the shock threw her bodily back against him.

Both laughed now.

"It is provoking," she said.

"It is the fatality," said he.

And he put his arm about her slender form and held her there without protest.

"I was thinking of you, mon enfant," he continued, "and of what a dear, good little thing you are. Mademoiselle, you are an angel!"

"Ah! no, monsieur!" she answered, in a voice that trembled a little,—"do not believe it! I'm a devil!"

It is easy for a man in deep trouble to accept the first sympathetic woman as something angelic. And now, in his gratitude, it was perhaps natural that Jean should unhesitatingly supply Mlle. Fouchette with wings. He had humbled himself in the dust, from which point of view all virtues look beautiful and all good actions partake of heaven. His response to her self-depreciation was a human one. He drew her closer and kissed her lips.

In this he deceived neither himself nor the girl. She knew quite as well as he where his heart was. It was a kiss of gratitude and of good-will, and was received as such without affectation. In his masculine egotism, however, he quite overlooked any possible good or ill to her in the matter,—his consideration began and ended in the gratification of her conduct towards him. And he would have been cold indeed not to feel the friendly glow which answers so eloquently the touch of womanly gentleness and sympathy.

As for Mlle. Fouchette, it must be admitted that this platonic caress created in her maidenly bosom a nervous thrill of pleasure not quite consistent in a young woman known to give the "savate" to young gentlemen who approached such familiarity, and who plumed herself on her invulnerability to the masculine wiles that beset her sex. And what might have been deemed still more foreign to her nature, she never said a word from that moment until the voiture drew up in front of her place of residence in the venerable but not venerated Rue St. Jacques.

"Voila!" she then exclaimed, though it had not the tone of entire satisfaction.

"Hold on, little one, I will pay——"

But he discovered that those who had cared for him had also benevolently relieved him of his valuables. He had not a sou.

"The wretches!" cried the girl.

"They might have left me my keys, at least," he muttered.

"And your watch, monsieur?" she asked, apprehensively.

"Gone, of course!"

"Oh, the miserable cowards!"

He was less moved than she at the loss. It seemed trifling by the side of his other misfortunes.

But the coachman was interested. He carefully noted the number of the house again, and when she passed up his fare looked into her face with a knowing leer.

"If monsieur wishes to go back to the Prefecture," he said to her, tentatively.

"Oh, no!" said Jean.

The girl, however, understood the significance of this inquiry, and coldly demanded the man's number.

"If Mademoiselle Fouchette should need you again," she added, putting the slip in her pocket, "she will know where to find you."

And to the manifest astonishment of the cabman, who could not divine what a woman of Rue St. Jacques would want with a man without money, or at least valuables, she slipped her arm through Jean's and entered the house.

The shaded lamp turned low threw a dim light over a little table simply but neatly set for two in Mlle. Fouchette's chamber. A cold cut of beef, some delicate slices of boiled tongue, an open box of sardines, a plate heaped with cold red cabbage, a lemon, olives, etc.,—all fresh from the rotisserie and charcuterie below,—were flanked by a metre of bread and a litre of Bordeaux. The spread looked quite appetizing and formidable.

Absorbed as he was in himself, Jean could not but note the certainty implied in all of this preparation. Mlle. Fouchette could not have known that he would be at liberty, yet she had arranged things exactly as if she had possessed this foreknowledge. If they had not made a mistake and let him off so easily——

"You were, then, sure I would come?"

"Very sure," said she, without turning from the small mirror where she readjusted her hair.

"Now, Monsieur Jean," she began, in a nervous, business-like way, suiting the action to the word, "I'm the doctor. You are to do just as I tell you. First you take this good American whiskey, then you lie down—here—there—that way,—voila!"

"But——"

"No!" putting her delicate hand over his mouth gently,—"you are not to talk, you know."

He stretched himself at full length on the low couch without another protest. She brought a towel and basin and, removing the collar which had been twisted into a dirty rope, bathed his face and neck. She saw the red imprint of fingers on his throat with mingled hatred and commiseration; but she said nothing, only pressing the wet towel to the spot tenderly. In the place of the collar she put a piece of soft flannel saturated with cologne, and passed a silk scarf around the neck to hold it there. With comb and brush she softly smoothed out his hair, half toying with the locks about the temples, and perching her little head this way and that, as if to more accurately study the effect.

"Ah! now that looks better. Monsieur is beginning to look civilized."

She carefully pinned the ends of the scarf down over the shirt-front to hide the blood that was there.

All of this with a hundred exclamations and little comments and questions that required no answers, and broken sentences of pity, of raillery, of pleasure, that had no beginning and no ending as grammatical constructions.

Purr, purr, purr.

Finally she rubbed his shoes till they shone, and flecked the dust from his clothes,—to complete which operation it was necessary for him to get up.

A slight noise on the landing caused him to start nervously.

He was still thinking of one thing,—of a man lying cold and stiff at the Hotel Dieu.

Both carefully avoided the subject uppermost in either mind,—Henri Lerouge and his sister.

First, she was astonished that he had not questioned her; next, she sought to escape questioning altogether. She was secretive by nature. And now, like a contrite and wretched woman conscious of her share of responsibility for a great wrong, she could only humble herself before him and await his will.

"Now, Monsieur Jean," she concluded, "we will eat. Come! You must be hungry,—come! A table, monsieur!"

"Au contraire, I feel as if I could never eat again," he said, desperately.

"What nonsense! Come, monsieur,—sit down here and eat something! You will feel better at once."

"Oh, you do not know! you cannot know!" he groaned, reseating himself and taking his head between his hands. "It is too horrible! horrible!"

"Why, monsieur! What is it? Are you, then, hurt within? Say! Do you suffer? How foolish I have been! I should have brought a doctor!"

She was kneeling in front of him in her genuine alarm. "Where is it, Monsieur Jean? Where is the pain? Tell me! Tell me, then, monsieur!"

"No! no! it is not that, my child! It is here! here! here!" He struck his breast at every word, and bowed his head with abject grief.

She was silent, thinking only of his hapless love. There was no word for that!

"Ah! if it were only that! If it had been me instead of him!"

"Monsieur! My poor Monsieur Jean! You must not give way thus!"

"I am not fit to sit at the table with you, mademoiselle! My hands are red with blood! Do not touch them! Understand? Red!"

"But you are crazy, monsieur!"

"No! I am—I am simply a murderer! Do you hear? A MURDERER!"

He whispered it with awful solemnity. Mlle. Fouchette, now thoroughly frightened, recoiled from him. He was mad!

"That's right!" he cried. "That's right, mademoiselle! I'm not fit to touch you! No wonder you shrink from me! For I have blood on my hands,—his blood,—understand?—my friend's! Lerouge dead! dead! And by me!"

"What's that?" she demanded. "Lerouge dead? Nonsense! It is not so! Who told you that? I say it is not true!"

He seized her almost fiercely,—

"Not dead? Her brother not dead? Say it again! Give me some hope!" he pleaded, pitifully.

"I tell you again it is not so! I saw one who knows but a few minutes before I met you!"

He sank on his knees at her feet and kissed her hands, now trembling with excitement.

"Again!" he exclaimed.

"It is as true as God!" said she. "And he is doing well!"

He took her in his arms passionately, pouring out the thankfulness of his soul in kisses and loving caresses, sobbing like a child. They mingled their tears,—the blessed tears of joy and sympathy!

For a long time they rested thus, immobile, with thoughts too deep for expression,—in a sacred silence broken only by sighs. Then when the calm was complete she softly disengaged herself in saying, "And she is there, Jean," as if completing the sentence long before begun. But it required an effort.

He answered by a pressure of the hand. That was all.

"And now, then, monsieur," she observed, abruptly and with playful satire, "I'm going to eat. I'm sorry you are not hungry, but——"

"Eat? Little one," he joyously cried, "I can eat a house and lot!" He took her bodily between his hands, he who a moment before had been so weak, and tossed her as one plays with a child.

"For shame! There is no house here for you, but I've got a lot to eat! There! No more of that, Monsieur Jean, or you shall have no supper!"

As he threatened her again with his exuberant spirits, she wisely but laughingly put the table between them. But she looked a world of happiness from her eyes.

From the extreme of mental depression Jean Marot was thus suddenly transported to the extreme of happiness and hopefulness. Simply because the life of the man whom he would have done to death, in his insane jealousy of a successful rival, had become precious, priceless, as that of the brother of his beloved. The conditions were desperate enough as they were. To have slain her brother would not only have rendered them hopeless, it would have condemned the survivor to a lifetime of remorse, unless, indeed, that life had not been happily shortened by the guillotine.

So they laughed, talked, ate, drank, and made merry, these two, taking no thought of the morrow until both the supper and the time necessary to dispose of it were consumed.

Jean lighted a cigarette that she gave him, and threw himself on the couch. Meanwhile, the girl, with the assistance of Poupon, got some hot water and washed the dishes, putting them one by one carefully back on the shelves in the wall. Finally the empty bottle found its place under the couch.

Then she discovered that Jean was sleeping soundly. He had succumbed in spite of rattling dishes and her talk, and slept the heavy sleep of physical exhaustion. The cigarette had fallen from his fingers half finished. His throat was still muffled in her silken scarf, but she tried to see if the marks were still there. For fully a minute she remained standing over him, buried in thought. The old clock in the Henri IV. tower behind the Pantheon chimed eleven. She sighed.

"Very well!" she murmured. "Monsieur is right. He has no money, no keys, and he is weary. He shall rest where he is. C'est egal!"

With this philosophical reflection she immediately began preparation for retiring on her own account, completing this as if the monsieur snoring on the couch had no material existence.

"Voila!" said she, when she had drawn her curtains.

And in two minutes more she was as oblivious to the world as was Jean Marot.



CHAPTER XV

It would not be easy to define the sentiments or state the expectations of Mlle. Fouchette. Whatever they were, she would have been unable to formulate them herself.

Mlle. Fouchette was simply and insensibly conforming to her manner of life. She was drifting. She did not know where. She never thought of towards what end or to what purpose.

Those who know woman best never assume to reduce her to the logical rules which govern the mathematical mind, but are always prepared for the little eccentricities which render her at once so charming and uncertain. The Frenchwoman perhaps carries this uncertainty to a higher state of perfection than her sex of any other nationality.

That Mlle. Fouchette was the possessor of that indefinable something people call heart had never been so much as suspected by those with whom she had come in intimate contact. It had certainly never inconvenienced her up to this time. To have gone to her for sympathy would have been deemed absurd. Even in her intense enjoyment of "la vie joyeuse" her natural coldness did not endear her to those who shared her society for the moment. As a reigning favorite of the Bohemian set she would have earned the dislike of her sex; but this was greatly accentuated by her repute as an honest girl. The worst of these "filles du quartier" observed the proprieties, were sticklers for the forms of respectability. And Mlle. Fouchette, who was really good, trampled upon everything and everybody that stood in her way.

As to her income from the studios, bah! and again bah!

Then what was Mlle. Fouchette?

That was the universal feminine inquiry.

Mlle. Fouchette appeared to Jean Marot in a vaguely kaleidoscopic way as a woman of no account possessing good points. Sometimes she appeared to be cold, sly, vicious, and wholly unconscionable; again, good-hearted, self-sacrificing, sympathetic. But he did not bother about her particularly, though he covertly watched her this morning preparing breakfast. It was true, her blonde hair did not look as if it had been touched by comb or brush, that she wore pantoufles that exposed holes in the heels of her stockings, that her wrapper was soiled and gaped horribly between buttons on and off its frontage; but, then, what woman is perfect before breakfast?

All this did not seriously detract from the fact that she had gone out of her way to look after him the day before. Nor did it explain that she had this morning invested herself with these slovenly belongings, taken in the demi-litre of milk that ornamented her door-knob, gone down into the street for additional "petits pains," added a couple of eggs "a la coque" to the usual morning menu, set Poupon to work on the cafe-au-lait, and was now putting the finishing touches to her little table in anticipation of the appetite of her awaking guest.

"Bonjour, my little housekeeper."

"Ah! bonjour, Monsieur Jean. Have you rested well? What a lazy man! You look well this morning, monsieur."

"Oh, yes; and why not, mon enfant?" said he, straightening up somewhat stiffly.

"And your poor bones?" she laughingly inquired, referring to the improvised couch. "It is not a comfortable bed for one like monsieur."

"It is luxury unspeakable compared to the bed I had anticipated early last evening. I never slept better in all my life."

"Good!" said she.

"And I'm hungry."

"Better!" said she. "Here is a clean towel and here is water," showing him her modest toilet arrangement, "and here is petite Poupon scolding——"

"'Poupon'? 'scolding'?"

"Yes, monsieur. Have you, then, forgotten poor little Poupon? For shame!" With mock indignation.

She took the small blue teakettle, which had already begun to "scold," and, stooping over the hearth, made the coffee. She then dropped the two eggs in the same teakettle and consulted the clock.

"Hard or soft?" she asked.

"Minute and a half," he replied in the folds of the towel.

She was pouring the coffee back through the strainer in order to get the full strength of it, though it already looked as black as tar and strong enough to float an iron wedge. At the same time she saw him before her glass attentively examining the marks on his throat, now even more distinctly red than on the night before. But she knew instinctively that his thoughts were not of his own, but of another neck.

Breakfast was not the lively repast of the previous evening. In the best of circumstances breakfast is a pessimistic meal. The world never looks the same as it appeared at yesterday's dinner.

Jean had risen to a falling barometer. The first ebullition of joy at having been spared the slaughter of his friend and the brother of the girl he loved had passed and the real future stared him in the face. He began to entertain doubts as to whether a single glance from a pair of blue eyes was a solid foundation for the magnificent edifice he had erected thereon. But Jean Marot was intensely egoist and was prone to regard that which he wanted as already his.

Mlle. Fouchette was facing the same question on her own account,—a fact which she concealed from both as far as possible by making herself believe it was his affair exclusively. As it is always easier to grapple with the difficulties of others than with our own, she soon found means to encourage her illusion.

"Mademoiselle?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"You are not at all a woman——"

"What, then, monsieur, if I am not——"

"Wait! I mean not at all like other women," he hastily interposed.

"Par exemple?"

"Because, first, you have not once said 'I told you so,'—not reproached me for disregarding your advice."

"No? But that would be unnecessary. You are punished. Next?"

"Well, you let me remain here."

"Why not?"

She opened the steel-blue eyes on him sharply,—so sharply, in fact, that Jean Marot either could not just then remember why not or that he did not care to say. But she relieved him of that embarrassment very quickly.

"If you mean that I should be afraid of you, monsieur, or that I would have thought for a moment——"

"Oh! no, no, no! I do not mean that, of course. It was the fear women have of others——"

"What do I care for 'others'!" she snapped, scornfully. "Pray, Monsieur Jean, are there, then, 'others' who care anything about me? No! Ask them. No! I do what I please. And I account to nobody. Understand? Nobody!"

Mlle. Fouchette brought the small, thin white hand down upon the table with a slap that gave sufficient assurance of her sincerity, at the same time giving a happy idea of her immeasurable contempt for society.

"But, my dear Mademoiselle Fouchette, I, at least, care for you,—only——"

"La, la, la! Only you don't care quite enough, Monsieur Jean, to take my advice," she interrupted. "Is not that it?"

"If I don't I shall be the loser, I'm afraid," he replied, lugubriously.

"And then I should be sorry."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"Because I am not worthy of it. Now answer me."

"Well, because it pleases me," she responded, with a smile. "You know what I said but a moment ago? I do what I please and account to nobody."

"Very well. Now, does it please your Supreme Highness to continue to shower the blessing of your royal favor upon me?"

"For to-day, perhaps; if you obey my imperious will, monsieur."

He prolonged the comedy by kneeling on one knee and saying humbly, "I am your most obedient subject. Command!"

"Bring me my clothes, monsieur."

"Er—wha-at? clothes?" he stammered.

"I said clothes,—on the bed there. Lay them out on the couch, please."

He found her simple wardrobe of the previous day on the bed—the skirt, the little bolero, the hat with the feather—and laid them out on the couch one by one with mock care and ceremony.

"There!"

"Shake them out, monsieur."

"Yes, your Highness."

She was putting away the last breakfast things when she heard an exclamation.

"Red!" said he. "And beard, too, as I'm a sinner!"

He had found a tuft of red beard twisted in the fastening of the bolero. The expression on his face would have defied words. As for Mlle. Fouchette, she was for a moment of the same color of the telltale hair. For some reason she did not wish Jean to know of her part in the riot. At the same time she was angry with herself for the womanly feeling of delicacy that surged into her cheeks.

"Where did you get it?" he asked, quizzically.

"Monsieur! Go away!"

"I didn't know you'd been decorated, mademoiselle,—really,—Legion of Honor, too!"

"Bah! I must have given some man a good pull in the crowd," said she. "How provoking!"

"For him, doubtless, yes."

"To return to your affairs, Monsieur Jean," she said, grabbing the garments and proceeding to put them on with that insouciance begotten of studio life. "Have you any money?"

"With me? Not a sou!"

She slipped her hand down her neck and drew forth a small bag held there by a string and took from it a coin, which she tendered him.

"Here is a louis,—you may repay it when you can."

"Thank you, my child. But it is not necessary. I can get some money at the Credit Lyonnais."

"But, monsieur, you can't walk there! And we will be busy to-day."

"Oh, we will be busy, will we?"

"Yes,—unless you rebel," she replied, significantly.

"At least, your Highness will let me know——"

"First, we must go and find out how Lerouge is——"

"Good!"

"Next, see an agent about your place. You are to sell your lease, you know, and furniture——"

"And furniture,—very well. After?"

"And then we must find you a new place,—cheaper, don't you know?"

"A good deal cheaper," he said.

"In this quarter they are cheapest."

"Then let it be in the quarter."

"Voila! Now that's all right." A remark which may have equally applied to his affairs or to the putting on of her shoes.

"A very simple appartement will serve," he observed, when she sounded him on his idea of cheapness.

"There is a lovely one de garcon next door to me, but it is dear. It is a little parlor, bedroom, and kitchen. And this is a quiet house, monsieur."

"Good! I like quietude, and——"

"Oh, it is a very quiet place," she assured him.

"This appartement,—dining-room?"

"No! What does a man alone want with a dining-room? Let him eat in the parlor."

"Yes, that would be luxury," he admitted.

"One doesn't need the earth in order to eat and sleep."

"N-no; but how much is this luxury of the Rue St. Jacques?" he inquired.

"It is four hundred francs, I believe." She heaved a sigh of regret. It seemed a large sum of money to Mlle. Fouchette.

"Four hundred a year? Only four hundred a year! Parbleu! And now what can one get for four hundred a year, ma petite Fouchette?"

"S-sh! monsieur,—a good deal!" she exclaimed, smiling at his naivete. With all his patronizing airs she instinctively felt that this man who treated her as if she were a child was really a provincial who needed both mother and business agent.

"I'd like to see it, anyhow," said he.

"At once, monsieur,—so you shall; but it is dear, four hundred francs, when you might get the same at Montrouge for two hundred and fifty francs. Here,—I have the key,—le voila!"

It was the appartement of three rooms next door to her chamber, which seemed to have been cut off from it as something superfluous in the Rue St. Jacques.

"Why—and Monsieur de Beauchamp is——"

"Gone."

"Yesterday?"

"Yesterday afternoon,—yes. Quite sudden, was it not?"

She said this as though it was of no importance.

"The huissier?" he suggested, official ejectment being the most common cause of student troubles.

She laughed secretively.

"The police?"

Then she laughed openly—her pretty little silvery tinkle—and drew his attention to the kitchen.

It was a small dark place with a much-worn tile floor and a charcoal range of two pockets faced and covered with blue and white tiles; an immense hood above yawning like the flat open jaws of a gigantic cobra, which might not only consume all the smoke and smells but gobble up the little tile-covered range itself upon gastronomical provocation.

"Isn't it just lovely!" exclaimed Mlle. Fouchette, delightedly. "And see! here is a stone sink, and there's water and gas."

Water and gas are still deemed luxuries in the more ancient quarters of Paris. As for baths, they are for the rich,—even the more modern structures are parsimonious of baths. You realize all this when in a close omnibus, or smell some well-dressed Parisienne ten feet away. When one of the dwellers of Rue St. Jacques takes a bath a battered old tub is brought around on a wagon and unloaded in the court with a noise and ceremony that arouses the entire neighborhood, which puts its head out of the window and wonders who is going to be married.

"And here's a private closet, too," continued Mlle. Fouchette,—"everything! But that sweet little stove! I could cook a course dinner on that!"

"Oh, you could, eh?" inquired Jean. "Then you shall."

"Surely!" said the girl, as if it were settled from the first. "Besides, it is so much more economical for two than one."

"Oh, is it?" he replied, doubtfully.

"Of course, if one lives at expensive restaurants. And in bad weather or when one feels grumpy——"

They looked at the large bedroom and small anteroom, or toilet-room adjoining, which Mlle. Fouchette declared was good enough for a lord, inspected the closets, commented on the excellent condition of the polished floors and newly papered walls, and finally decided that it really was a good deal for the money.

"It could be made a little paradise," said she, enthusiastically.

"Needing the angels," he suggested.

"Possibly; but one can get along very comfortably without them."

"But I wonder why M. de Beauchamp, installed here so comfortably day before yesterday, should be missing to-day. There must be some drawback here——"

"Oh, no. The truth is, M. de Beauchamp thought he saw—in fact, M. de Beauchamp did see visions. In one of these he was foretold of a possible difference of opinion between himself and the government; about something that was to have happened yesterday and didn't happen——"

"Did not happen. Go on."

"There, Monsieur Jean," she concluded, "that is all. Only, you see, M. de Beauchamp's arrangements having been made, he probably thought he might as well disappear——"

"And his studio with him."

"Precisely. Look what a nice big closet in the wall!"

"Yes,—funny. But, I say, mon enfant, was this handsome M. de Beauchamp really an artist?"

"Bah! how do I know? He made pictures. Certainly, he made pictures."

Jean Marot laughed so heartily at this subtle distinction that he lost the mental note of her disinclination to gossip about her late neighbor,—a reluctance that is decidedly foreign to the French female character.

"Now, Monsieur Jean,"—when he had made up his mind,—"if you will let me manage the concierge," she went on, "it may save you fifty francs, don't you know? Very likely the term has been paid,—he will make you pay it again. I know Monsieur Benoit,—he'd rob you like saying a prayer."

"It is a novelty to be looked after by a female agent, anyhow," mused the young man, when she had disappeared on this mission. "If she picks up the fifty francs instead of that surly rascal Benoit I'm satisfied. It is a quiet place, sure, and dog cheap. Now, I wonder what her game is, for women don't do all of these things for nothing."

Jean was of the great pessimistic school of Frenchmen who never give a woman credit for disinterestedness or honesty, but who regard them good-naturedly as inferior beings, amusing, weak, selfish creatures, placed on earth to gratify masculine vanity and passion,—to be admired or pitied, as the case might be, but never trusted, and always fair game. The married Frenchman never trusts his wife or daughter alone with his best male friend. No young girl alone in the streets of Paris is free from insult, day or night; and such a girl in such a case would appeal to the honor of Frenchmen in vain.

Jean Marot would have never dreamed that Mlle. Fouchette had saved him from imprisonment. Even in his magnanimous moments he would have listened to the accusation that this girl had robbed him of his money and watch quite as readily as to the statement that she had already taken measures to insure the recovery of that personal property. Yet, while his estimate of woman was low, it did not prevent him from loving one whom he had believed another man's mistress; it did not now steel his heart against the sympathy of mutual isolation.

"All goes well!" cried Mlle. Fouchette, skipping into the room.

"All goes well, eh?" he repeated.

"Yes, Monsieur Jean. Think then! it is a bargain. Oh, yes, one hundred francs——"

"What?"

"I say one hundred francs saved! The semestre was paid and you get it less a term's rent, thus you save one hundred francs. Isn't that nice? One can live two months on one hundred francs."

"Oh! oh! oh! not I," he laughingly exclaimed. "But I guess I'd better let you manage, little one; you have begun so well."

Her face almost flushed with pleasure and her eyes sparkled.

"And you shall have fifty of that hundred francs saved. It is only fair, petite," he hastily added, seeing the brightness extinguished by clouds.

But she turned abruptly towards the window. He mistook this gesture and said to himself, "She would like to have it all, I suppose. I'd better make a square bargain with her right here." Then aloud,—

"Mademoiselle Fouchette!"

"Yes, monsieur,"—coldly.

"What is your idea?"

"As to what, Monsieur Jean?"

"Well, say about our domestic affairs, if you will."

"Well, monsieur, very simply this: I will care for the place if you wish,—somebody must care for it——"

"Yes, that is evident, and I wish you to help me, if you will."

"Then I'll serve the breakfasts and any other meal you wish to pay for. In other words, if you prefer it in terms, I will be your housekeeper. I can cook, and I'm a good buyer and——"

"No doubt of that, mon enfant; but I am a poor man now, you know, and the pay——"

"Pay! And who has asked you to pay anything? Do you suppose—ah! Monsieur Jean, you don't think me that!"

"But one can't be expected to work for nothing," protested the young man, humbly.

"Work? It would be pleasure. And then you would be paying for what we ate, wouldn't you? I have to make my coffee,—it would be just as easy for two. And you would be perfectly free to dine at the restaurant when you chose,—we'd be as free as we are now,—and I would not intrude——"

"Oh, I never thought of that!" he declared.

"Do not spoil my pleasure by suggesting money!" Her voice was growing low and the lips trembled a little, but only for a second or two, when she recovered her ordinary tone.

"As a rich man's son living in the Faubourg St. Honore you might have suspected that motive, but as a medical student chasse, and deserted by his parents and with no prospects to speak of——"

His lugubrious smile checked her.

"Pardon! Monsieur Jean, I did not wish to remind you of your misfortunes. Let us put it on purely selfish grounds. I am poor. I am alone. I am lonely. I should at least earn my coffee and rolls. I would see you every day. My time would be pleasantly occupied. I will be a sister,—bonne camarade,—nothing more, nothing less——"

He had taken her hands impulsively, but her eyes were veiled by the heavy lashes.

"Voila! It is then understood?" she asked, venturing to look up into his face.

"Certes! But your terms are too generous,—and—and, you know the object of my heart, mademoiselle."

"Toujours! And I will help you attain that object if possible," she said, warmly, pressing his hand.

"You are too good, mademoiselle," he responded. "Next to one woman I think you are the best woman I ever knew!"

He took her in his strong arms and kissed her tenderly, though she struggled faintly.

"Enough! enough! You must not do that, monsieur! I do not like it. Remember how I hate men, spoony men,—they disgust me! As a woman I can be nothing to you; as a friend I may be much. Save your caresses, monsieur, for the woman you love! You understand?"