t know if I shall be at
my usual place."

"Ah! how is that, la mere?" asked Bibot, who, hardened soldier that
he was, could not help shuddering at the awful loathsomeness of this
semblance of a woman, with her ghastly trophy on the handle of her whip.

"My grandson has got the small-pox," she said with a jerk of her thumb
towards the inside of her cart, "some say it's the plague! If it is, I
sha'n't be allowed to come into Paris to-morrow." At the first mention
of the word small-pox, Bibot had stepped hastily backwards, and when the
old hag spoke of the plague, he retreated from her as fast as he could.

"Curse you!" he muttered, whilst the whole crowd hastily avoided the
cart, leaving it standing all alone in the midst of the place.

The old hag laughed.

"Curse you, citoyen, for being a coward," she said. "Bah! what a man to
be afraid of sickness."

"MORBLEU! the plague!"

Everyone was awe-struck and silent, filled with horror for the loathsome
malady, the one thing which still had the power to arouse terror and
disgust in these savage, brutalised creatures.

"Get out with you and with your plague-stricken brood!" shouted Bibot,
hoarsely.

And with another rough laugh and coarse jest, the old hag whipped up her
lean nag and drove her cart out of the gate.

This incident had spoilt the afternoon. The people were terrified of
these two horrible curses, the two maladies which nothing could cure,
and which were the precursors of an awful and lonely death. They hung
about the barricades, silent and sullen for a while, eyeing one another
suspiciously, avoiding each other as if by instinct, lest the plague
lurked already in their midst. Presently, as in the case of Grospierre,
a captain of the guard appeared suddenly. But he was known to Bibot, and
there was no fear of his turning out to be a sly Englishman in disguise.

"A cart, . . ." he shouted breathlessly, even before he had reached the
gates.

"What cart?" asked Bibot, roughly.

"Driven by an old hag. . . . A covered cart . . ."

"There were a dozen . . ."

"An old hag who said her son had the plague?"

"Yes . . ."

"You have not let them go?"

"MORBLEU!" said Bibot, whose purple cheeks had suddenly become white
with fear.

"The cart contained the CI-DEVANT Comtesse de Tourney and her two
children, all of them traitors and condemned to death." "And their
driver?" muttered Bibot, as a superstitious shudder ran down his spine.

"SACRE TONNERRE,