r's wife informed Gamelin
that the _citoyen_ Desmahis was not in, a fact that in no wise surprised
the painter, who knew his friend was of a vagabond and dissipated humour
and who marvelled that a man could engrave so much and so well as he did
while showing so little perseverance. Gamelin made up his mind to wait a
while for his return and the woman offered him a chair. She was in a
black mood and began to grumble at the badness of trade, though she had
always been told that the Revolution, by breaking windows, was making
the glaziers' fortunes.

Night was falling; so abandoning his idea of waiting for his comrade,
Gamelin took his leave of his hostess of the moment. As he was crossing
the Pont-Neuf, he saw a detachment of National Guards debouch from the
Quai des Morfondus. They were mounted and carried torches. They were
driving back the crowd, and amid a mighty clatter of sabres escorting a
cart driving slowly on its way to the guillotine with a man whose name
no one knew, a _ci-devant_ noble, the first prisoner condemned by the
newly constituted Revolutionary Tribunal. He could be seen by glimpses
between the guardsmen's hats, sitting with hands tied behind his back,
his head bared and swaying from side to side, his face to the cart's
tail. The headsman stood beside him lolling against the rail. The
passers-by had stopped to look and were telling each other it was likely
one of the fellows who starved the people, and staring with eyes of
indifference. Gamelin, coming closer, caught sight of Desmahis among the
spectators; he was struggling to push a way through the press and cut
across the line of march. He called out to him and clapped a hand on his
shoulder,--and Desmahis turned his head. He was a young man with a
handsome face and a stalwart person. In former days, at the Academy,
they used to say he had the head of Bacchus on the torso of Hercules.
His friends nicknamed him "Barbaroux" because of his likeness to that
representative of the people.

"Come here," Gamelin said to him, "I have something of importance to say
to you, Desmahis."

"Leave me alone," the latter answered peevishly, muttering some
half-heard explanation, looking out as he spoke for a chance of darting
across:

"I was following a divine creature, in a straw hat, a milliner's wench,
with her flaxen hair down her back; that cursed cart has blocked my
way.... She has gone on ahead, she is at the other end of the bridge by
now!"

Gamelin e