had nothing to feed their
little ones with. The distress is sore among poor folks. And it will go
on the same till things are put back on a proper footing."

"Mother," broke in Gamelin with a frown, "the scarcity we suffer from is
due to the unprincipled buyers and speculators who starve the people and
connive with our foes over the border to render the Republic odious to
the citizens and to destroy liberty. This comes of the Brissotins' plots
and the traitorous dealings of your Petions and Rolands. It is well if
the federalists in arms do not march on Paris and massacre the patriot
remnant whom famine is too slow in killing! There is no time to lose;
we must tax the price of flour and guillotine every man who speculates
in the food of the people, foments insurrection or palters with the
foreigner. The Convention has set up an extraordinary tribunal to try
conspirators. Patriots form the court; but will its members have energy
enough to defend the fatherland against our foes? There is hope in
Robespierre; he is virtuous. There is hope above all in Marat. He loves
the people, discerns its true interests and promotes them. He was ever
the first to unmask traitors, to baffle plots. He is incorruptible and
fearless. He, and he alone, can save the imperilled Republic."

The _citoyenne_ Gamelin shook her head, paying no heed to the cockade
that fell out of her cap at the gesture.

"Have done, Evariste; your Marat is a man like another and no better
than the rest. You are young and your head is full of fancies. What you
say to-day of Marat, you said before of Mirabeau, of La Fayette, of
Petion, of Brissot."

"Never!" cried Gamelin, who was genuinely oblivious.

After clearing one end of the deal table of the papers and books,
brushes and chalks that littered it, the _citoyenne_ laid out on it the
earthenware soup-bowl, two tin porringers, two iron forks, the loaf of
brown bread and a jug of thin wine.

Mother and son ate the soup in silence and finished their meal with a
small scrap of bacon. The _citoyenne_, putting _her_ titbit on her
bread, used the point of her pocket knife to convey the pieces one by
one slowly and solemnly to her toothless jaws and masticated with a
proper reverence the victuals that had cost so dear.

She had left the best part on the dish for her son, who sat lost in a
brown study.

"Eat, Evariste," she repeated at regular intervals, "eat,"--and on her
lips the word had all the solemnity of a