my dear gossips, they will easily enough console
themselves. Women are like cats. As often as they fall, they fall upon
their feet!"

It was a strange Paris which they passed through that day--these four.
The Professor of Eloquence went first, wearing the great green cloak of
his learned faculty, with its official golden collar and cuffs of dark
fur.

That day Paris was not only making the history of the present, but was
unconsciously prophesying the future--her own future. Whenever, after
that, the executive grew weak and the people strong, up came the
paving-stones, and down in a heap went the barrels, _charettes_,
scaffoldings, street-doors. It was not only the Day of the Barricades,
but the first day of many barricades. Indeed, Paris learned the lesson
of power so well, that it became her settled conviction that what she
did to-day France would homologate to-morrow. It was only the victory of
the "rurals" in the late May of 1871 which taught Paris her due place,
as indeed the capital of France, but not France itself.

Dr. Anatole's cloak was certainly a protection to them as they went.
Caps were doffed as to one of the Sixteen--that great council of nine
from each of the sixteen districts of Paris, whose power over the people
made the real Catholic League.

Dr. Anatole explained matters to Claire as they went.

"They have long wanted a figure-head, these shop-keepers and
booth-hucksters," he said bitterly. "The Cardinal leads them cunningly,
and between guile and noise they have so intoxicated Guise that he will
put his head in the noose, jump off, and hang himself. This King Henry
of Valois is a contemptible dog enough, as all the world knows. But he
is a dog which bites without barking, and that is a dangerous breed. If
I were Guise, instead of promenading Paris between the Queen-Mother's
chamber and the King's palace of the Louvre, I would get me to my castle
of Soissons with all speed, and there arm and drill all the
gentlemen-varlets and varlet-gentlemen that ever came out of Lorraine.
There would I wait, with twenty eyes looking out every way across the
meadows, and a hundred at least in the direction of Paris. I would have
cannons primed and matches burning. I would lay in provisions to serve
a year in case of siege. That is what I should do, were I Duke of Guise
and Henry of Valois' enemy!"

At the Orleans gate Jean-aux-Choux, in waiting with the horses (bought,
stolen, or strayed), heard the conclus