life, as you would sell a sheep's, for a few pieces of
silver!"

The wretched peasant's knees trembled under him; the perspiration stood
upon his brow. He heard the voice as the voice of a judge or an
executioner. He looked in the stern eyes of the Girondins, and read only
anger, doom, vengeance. Then he caught in the silence the sound of his
wife weeping, for at Pierre's appearance she had broken into wild
sobbing; and on that he spoke out of the base instincts of his heart.
"He was her lover," he muttered. "I swear it, citizens."

"He lies!" the man at the barrier cried, his face transfigured with
rage. "I loved her once, it is true, but it was before her old father
sold her to this Judas. For what he would have you believe now, my
friends, it is false. I, too, swear it."

A murmur of execration broke from the group of Girondins. Barbaroux
repressed it by a gesture. "What do you say of this man?" he asked,
turning to them, his tone deep and solemn.

"He is not fit to live!" they answered with one voice.

The poor coward screamed as he heard the words, and, flinging himself on
the ground, he embraced Barbaroux's knees in a paroxysm of terror. But
the judge did not look at him. Barbaroux turned, instead, to Pierre
Bounat. "What do you say of him?" he asked.

"He is not fit to live," the young man answered solemnly, his breath
coming quick and fast.

"And you?" Barbaroux continued, turning and looking with eyes of fire at
the wife. And his voice was still more solemn.

A moment before she had ceased to weep, and had stood up listening and
gazing, awe and wonder in her face. Barbaroux had to repeat his question
before she answered. Then she said, "He is not fit to die."

There was silence for a moment, broken only by the entreaties, the
prayers, of the wretch on the floor. At last Barbaroux spoke. "She has
said rightly," he pronounced. "He shall live. They have put us out of
the law and set a price on our heads; but we will keep the law. He shall
live. Yet, hark you," the great orator continued, in tones which Michel
never forgot, "if a whisper escape you as to our presence here, or as to
our names, or if you wrong your wife from this time forth by word or
deed, the life she has saved shall pay for it.

"Remember!" he added, shaking Michel to and fro with a finger, "the arm
of Barbaroux of Marseilles is long, and though I be a hundred leagues
away, I shall know and I shall punish. So, beware! Now rise, and liv