ese Jacobins, these patriots, all Evariste's crew. They will
kill him. Mother, little mother, darling mother, I cannot have them kill
him. I love him! I love him! He has been so good to me, and we have been
so unhappy together. Look, this box-coat is one of his coats. I had
never a shift left. A friend of Fortune's lent me a jacket and I got a
post with an eating-house keeper at Dover, while he worked at a
barber's. We knew quite well that to return to France was to risk our
lives; but we were asked if we would go to Paris to carry out an
important mission.... We agreed,--we would have accepted a mission to
hell! Our travelling expenses were paid and we were given a letter of
exchange on a Paris banker. We found the offices closed; the banker is
in prison and going to be guillotined. We had not a brass farthing. All
the individuals with whom we were in correspondence and to whom we could
appeal are fled or imprisoned. Not a door to knock at. We slept in a
stable in the Rue de la Femme-sans-tete. A charitable bootblack, who
slept on the same straw with us there, lent my lover one of his boxes, a
brush and a pot of blacking three quarters empty. For a fortnight
Fortune made his living and mine by blacking shoes in the Place de
Greve.

"But on Monday a Member of the Commune put his foot on the box to have
his boots polished. He had been a butcher once, a man Fortune had before
now given a kick behind to for selling meat of short weight. When
Fortune raised his head to ask for his two sous, the rascal recognized
him, called him aristocrat, and threatened to have him arrested. A crowd
collected, made up of honest folks and a few blackguards, who began to
shout "_Death to the emigre!_" and called for the gendarmes. At that
moment I came up with Fortune's bowl of soup. I saw him taken off to the
Section and shut up in the church of Saint-Jean. I tried to kiss him,
but they hustled me away. I spent the night like a dog on the church
steps.... They took him away this morning...."

Julie could not finish, her sobs choked her.

She threw her hat on the floor and fell on her knees at her mother's
feet.

"They took him away this morning to the Luxembourg prison. Mother,
mother, help me to save him; have pity on your child!"

Drowned in her tears, she threw open her box-coat and, the better to
prove herself a woman and a wife, bared her bosom; seizing her mother's
hands, she held them close over her throbbing breasts.

"My dar