“Ah, you enjoy that, don’t you, you great stupid?” exclaimed Cadine.  “How comical those pigeons look when they bury their heads in their shoulders to hide their necks!  They’re horrid things, you know, and would give one nasty bites if they got the chance.”  Then she laughed more loudly at Marjolin’s increasing, feverish haste; and added:  “I’ve killed them sometimes myself, but I can’t get on as quickly as he does.  One day he killed a hundred in ten minutes.”

The wooden frame was nearly full; the blood could be heard falling into the zinc trough; and as Claude happened to turn round he saw Florent looking so pale that he hurriedly led him away.  When they got above-ground again he made him sit down on a step.

“Why, what’s the matter with you?” he exclaimed, tapping him on the shoulder.  “You’re fainting away like a woman!”

“It’s the smell of the cellar,” murmured Florent, feeling a little ashamed of himself.

The truth was, however, that those pigeons, which were forced to swallow tares and salt water, and then had their skulls broken and their throats slit, had reminded him of the wood-pigeons of the Tuileries gardens, strutting over the green turf, with their satiny plumage flashing iridescently in the sunlight.  He again heard them cooing on the arm of the marble wrestler amidst the hushed silence of the garden, while children trundled their hoops in the deep gloom of the chestnuts.  And then, on seeing that big fair-haired animal massacring his boxful of birds, stunning them with the handle of his knife and driving its point into their throats, in the depths of that foul-smelling cellar, he had felt sick and faint, his legs had almost given way beneath him, while his eyelids quivered tremulously.

“Well, you’d never do for a soldier!” Claude said to him when he recovered from his faintness.  “Those who sent you to Cayenne must have been very simple-minded folks to fear such a man as you!  Why, my good fellow, if ever you do put yourself at the head of a rising, you won’t dare to fire a shot.  You’ll be too much afraid of killing somebody.”

Florent got up without making any reply.  He had become very gloomy, his face was furrowed by deep wrinkles; and he walked off, leaving Claude to go back to the cellar alone.  As he made his way towards the fish market his thoughts returned to his plan of attack, to the levies of armed men who were to invade the Palais Bourbon.  Cannon would roar from the Champs Elysees; the gates would be burst open; blood would stain the steps, and men’s brains would bespatter the pillars.  A vision of the fight passed rapidly before him; and he beheld himself in the midst of it, deadly pale, and hiding his face in his hands, not daring to look around him.

As he was crossing the Rue du Pont Neuf he fancied he espied Auguste’s pale face peering round the corner of the fruit pavilion.  The assistant seemed to be watching for someone, and his eyes were starting from his head with an expression of intense excitement.  Suddenly, however, he vanished and hastened back to the pork shop.