all covered with shavings and saw-dust. The injured
porter bestowed a kick on Mouton, the carpenter's dog, which at that
very moment his own little daughter Josephine was nursing lovingly in
her arms. Josephine was furious and burst into a torrent of imprecations
against her father, while the carpenter shouted in a voice of
exasperation:

"Wretch! I tell you you shall not beat my dog."

"And I," retorted the porter brandishing his broom, "I tell you you
shall _not_...."

He did not finish the sentence; the joiner's plane had hurtled close
past his head.

The instant he caught sight of the _citoyen_ Beauvisage and the
attendant delegates, he rushed up to him and cried:

"_Citoyen_ Commissary you are my witness, this villain has just tried to
murder me."

The _citoyen_ Beauvisage, in his red cap, the badge of his office, put
out his long arms in the attitude of a peacemaker, and addressing the
porter and the joiner:

"A hundred _sols_," he announced, "to whichever of you will inform us
where to find a suspect, wanted by the Committee of General Security, a
_ci-devant_ named des Ilettes, a maker of dancing-dolls."

With one accord porter and carpenter designated Brotteaux's lodging, the
only quarrel now between them being who should have the assignat for a
hundred _sols_ promised the informer.

Delourmel, Guenot, and Beauvisage, followed by the four grenadiers,
Remacle the porter, Dupont the carpenter, and a dozen little scamps of
the neighbourhood filed up the stairs which shook under their tread, and
finally mounted the ladder to the attics.

Brotteaux was in his garret busy cutting out his dancing figures, while
the Pere Longuemare sat facing him, stringing their scattered limbs on
threads, smiling to himself to see rhythm and harmony thus growing under
his fingers.

At the sound of muskets being grounded on the landing, the monk trembled
in every limb, not that he was a whit less courageous than Brotteaux,
who never moved a muscle, but the habit of respect for human conventions
had never disciplined him to assume an attitude of self-composure.
Brotteaux gathered from the _citoyen_ Delourmel's questions the quarter
from which the blow had come and saw too late how unwise it is to
confide in women. He obeyed the _citoyen_ Commissary's order to go with
him, first picking up his Lucretius and his three shirts.

"The _citoyen_," he said, pointing to the Pere Longuemare, "is an
assistant I have taken to help