“There’s no sign of him now, anyway.”

The owner of the shop was standing on his own doorstep, his legs wide apart, one arm on his wide hip, the other still brandishing the knife wherewith he had been carving for his customers.

“He can’t have gone far,” he said, as he smacked his thick lips.

“The impudent rascal, flaunting such fine clothes—­like the aristo that he is.”

“Bah! these cursed English!  They are aristos all of them!  And this one with his followers is no better than a spy!”

“Paid by that damned English Government to murder all our patriots and to rob the guillotine of her just dues.”

“They say he had a hand in the escape of the ci-devant Due de Sermeuse and all his brats from the very tumbril which was taking them to execution.”

A cry of loathing and execration followed this statement.  There was vigorous shaking of clenched fists and then a groan of baffled rage.

“We almost had him this time.  If it had not been for these confounded, ill-lighted streets—­”

“I would give something,” concluded the shopkeeper, “if we could lay him by the heels.”

“What would you give, citizen Dompierre?” queried a woman in the crowd, with a ribald laugh, “one of your roast capons?”

“Aye, little mother,” he replied jovially, “and a bottle of my best Burgundy to boot, to drink confusion to that meddlesome Englishman and his crowd and a speedy promenade up the steps of the guillotine.”

Monsieur, I assure you that at that moment my heart absolutely stood still.  The tempter stood at my elbow and whispered, and I deliberately smothered the call of my conscience.  I did what Joseph’s brethren did, what brought Judas Iscariot to hopeless remorse.  There was no doubt that the hue and cry was after the two elegantly dressed gentlemen whom I had seen enter the dilapidated house in the Rue Blanche.  For a second or two I closed my eyes and deliberately conjured up the vision of Mme. la Marquise fainting for lack of food, and of M. le Vicomte dying for want of sustenance; then I worked my way to the door of the shop and accosted the burly proprietor with as much boldness as I could muster.

“The two Englishmen passed by me at the top of the Rue Blanche,” I said to him.  “They went into a house ...I can show you which it is—–­”

In a moment I was surrounded by a screeching, gesticulating crowd.  I told my story as best I could; there was no turning back now from the path of cowardice and of crime.  I saw that brute Dompierre pick up the largest roast capon from the front of his shop, together with a bottle of that wine which I had coveted; then he thrust both these treasures into my trembling hands and said: 

“En avant!”

And we all started to run up the street, shouting:  “Death to the English spies!” I was the hero of the expedition.  Dompierre and another man carried me, for I was too weak to go as fast as they wished.  I was hugging the capon and the bottle of wine to my heart; I had need to do that, so as to still the insistent call of my conscience, for I felt a coward—­a mean, treacherous, abominable coward!