On the bed lay a man, half-dressed, his eyes wide open, fixed upon the ceiling, his head bound with a cloth, blood-stained.  Very sunken was the head in the pillows, very thin looked the form stretched under the coarse blanket.  Sabatier touched him and then looked swiftly round the room.  A coat was thrown across a chair.  He took this up, and there was a cut in the lining of it, high up near the collar.

“Who did this?” he asked.

The landlord did not know.

“Who did it, I say!” and he struck him in the face with the back of his hand, a heavy enough blow to send the old man to the wall.

“I do not know, sir, it’s true I do not know,” whined the landlord.  “They brought him here half dead; had found him on the road, they said.  He seemed to get better when one of them bound him up.  When they came to look at him after you had gone he was dead.  I left them alone with him, and in a few minutes they called me and said they must leave for Paris at once.”

Sabatier flung the coat aside with an oath.

“This is Citizen Latour’s business,” he said to his companions.

“And he’s been helping aristocrats,” said one man, pointing to the landlord still leaning by the wall.

“What else?” said Sabatier, shortly, as he strode out of the room and down the stairs.

A cry followed him, but he did not stop.

“Mercy!  I know nothing.”

A wilder cry, half drowned by savage curses and the sound of blows.  Still Sabatier paid no heed.  He went into the room below, knocked the neck off a wine bottle and poured the contents into a mug and drank, smacking his lips.

A woman, half dressed, rushed down the stairs and into the street.

“Let her go,” Sabatier cried, as a man was starting after her.  “Maybe she’s not too old to find another husband.”

Laughing, and cursing, the men came tumbling down the stairs, ripe for deviltry; but for the moment here was wine to be had for the taking, everything else could wait.

When later they left, a woman came rushing toward them.

“Let me in!  Let me in!” she cried.  “He’s not dead.”

“Out of it,” said one, pushing her roughly aside so that she stumbled and fell upon the road.  “He’s dead, or will be soon enough.  Our work is thorough, and this might be a chateau instead of a wine shop by the way we’ve treated it.  You watch a while.  You’ll understand,” and he laughed as he closed the door.

The poor soul may have understood his meaning, or she may not, as she rocked herself to and fro in the roadway.  The ribald songs of these patriots, these apostles of freedom, had not died as they marched and danced out of Tremont when there was a smell of burning in the air, and first smoke, then flame burst from the tavern, quickly reducing it to a heap of ashes.  It was a strange grave for the charred remains of two men who yesterday had been full of life.  This was a time when things moved apace and there was no prophesying from day to day.