ar Revolution song,
keeping a ferocious time that was like a gnashing of teeth in unison.
Men and women danced together, women danced together, men danced
together, as hazard had brought them together. At first, they were a
mere storm of coarse red caps and coarse woollen rags; but, as they
filled the place, and stopped to dance about Lucie, some ghastly
apparition of a dance-figure gone raving mad arose among them. They
advanced, retreated, struck at one another's hands, clutched at one
another's heads, spun round alone, caught one another and spun round
in pairs, until many of them dropped. While those were down, the rest
linked hand in hand, and all spun round together: then the ring broke,
and in separate rings of two and four they turned and turned until they
all stopped at once, began again, struck, clutched, and tore, and then
reversed the spin, and all spun round another way. Suddenly they stopped
again, paused, struck out the time afresh, formed into lines the width
of the public way, and, with their heads low down and their hands high
up, swooped screaming off. No fight could have been half so terrible
as this dance. It was so emphatically a fallen sport--a something, once
innocent, delivered over to all devilry--a healthy pastime changed into
a means of angering the blood, bewildering the senses, and steeling the
heart. Such grace as was visible in it, made it the uglier, showing how
warped and perverted all things good by nature were become. The maidenly
bosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child's head thus distracted, the
delicate foot mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, were types of
the disjointed time.

This was the Carmagnole. As it passed, leaving Lucie frightened and
bewildered in the doorway of the wood-sawyer's house, the feathery snow
fell as quietly and lay as white and soft, as if it had never been.

"O my father!" for he stood before her when she lifted up the eyes she
had momentarily darkened with her hand; "such a cruel, bad sight."

"I know, my dear, I know. I have seen it many times. Don't be
frightened! Not one of them would harm you."

"I am not frightened for myself, my father. But when I think of my
husband, and the mercies of these people--"

"We will set him above their mercies very soon. I left him climbing to
the window, and I came to tell you. There is no one here to see. You may
kiss your hand towards that highest shelving roof."

"I do so, father, and I send him my