"Citoyen, one thing at a time. Let us depose Capet first."
They arose amid laughter, Javogues's protests lost in the confusion. Barabant, impelled to enthusiasm by the ardor of these laborers, opened his arms and exclaimed:
"Comrades, when Frenchmen are united, we fear no foreigner. What nation has ever fraternized as we? We all are brothers, all working for the great end. When we grumble at delays, let us not forget what the Revolution has made us!"
"Brothers, before we separate, let us embrace!"
With one impulse, such as countless times animated the populace in these days of exaltation, the group fell into one another's arms. Javogues, extending his hands covered with soot, exclaimed:
Barabant echoed the cry, but as they moved off he surreptitiously brushed away the stains, asking, to distract his companion's attention:
"Are you sure it was he? Did you see him again?"
"What difference does it make whether I saw him or not?" Javogues answered impatiently. "I know he was there."
"By the look in his eyes the day I met him. That is all I need to tell an aristocrat!"
Barabant, seeing the impossibility of swaying the fanatic by reason, kept silent until they parted.
In the Rue Maugout, la Mère Corniche cried to him from her tenebrous sentry-box:
"One moment, citoyen." The window-hinges spoke and a shadowy head appeared. "There's a tall fellow above in your room."
Barabant, who had left Javogues too recently to derive any pleasure from a visit of Dossonville, was hastening away when again the querulous voice halted him.
"What! you've not presented your letter?"
"Oh, my letter!" Barabant cried, and hastily covering his mistake, said: "But that was days ago."
"Come, now, la Mère Corniche, I'm not an ingrate!"
Barabant, on the staircase, congratulated himself on his escape from a bad position, little realizing the danger of the present one, and excusing the subterfuge on the light pretext of giving pleasure to the old woman. He hurriedly determined to say nothing to Dossonville of his danger, preferring first to question him.
Dossonville, the greetings over, announced his purpose with the question:
"Well, young pamphleteer, what have you ready?"
Barabant, noticing the equivocation, pressed him.