Drumming heels greeted this opinion.

“Very like,” Mercier answered.  “Shouldn’t wonder if I could throw this bottle and hit one or two at this moment, but I’m thinking of emigres.”

A savage growl was the answer.

“They’re safe over the frontier, aren’t they?” laughed Mercier.  “They won’t bring their heads to Paris to pleasure Madame Guillotine, will they?  No,” cried Mercier, clasping a bottle by the neck and striking the table with it so that it smashed and the red wine ran like blood.  “No, they think they’re safer where they are.  The only way is to fetch them back.  Lie to them, cheat them until we get them in France.  Then—­”

He slapped his hands onto the table, into the spilled wine, then held them up and laughed as the drops fell from his finger ends.  His meaning was clear.

“Bring them back, Citizen Mercier, and you’ll be the first man in Paris,” said one.

“That’s what I am doing.  I’ve been to Beauvais, playing the aristocrat, and doing it so well that one cursed head is already being carried to Paris by its owner, and others will follow.”

Jeanne crouched on the stairs, holding her breath.

“Long live Mercier!” came the cry.

There was an instant’s silence, then a thud as a man jumped from a cask, overturning it as he did so.

“The woman upstairs!  The peasant woman!  There are plenty of heads in Paris.  Why not to-night, here, outside the Lion d’Or?  Madame Guillotine is not the only method for aristocrats.”

There was a shout of acclamation, a sudden rush to the room door.  A man staggering with the drink in him, fell upon the threshold, bringing two or three companions down with him.

“Stop!” Mercier cried, suddenly sober, it seemed.  “She’s a peasant, my witness against an aristocrat.  I’ll shoot the first man who goes to her.”

This was dangerous acting surely.

Jeanne had started back as the rush was made.  Should she make an attempt to reach the inn door and flee into the night, or rush to her room and lock herself in?  Her room, it was safer.  They would fight among themselves, whether she was to be disturbed or not.  Locked in her room she would at least have a moment for thought.  The decision came too late.  She had not seen any one reach the stairs, but even as she turned a man was beside her—­touching her.

CHAPTER IX

THE MAN ON THE STAIRS

For those wishing to leave Paris in a hurry, the Lion d’Or was a dangerous place of call.  The inn and its vigilant frequenters had achieved a name in these days.  An orator, waxing enthusiastic on patriotism, had made mention of its doings in the Convention, and in villages remote from the capital they were talked of.  The King and Queen would never have got as far as Varennes, it was said, had they been obliged to travel by the Soisy road.