n his head. "I feel quite in the
mood this morning for a dish of aristocrat's lights and liver, washed
down with a glass of white wine."

Beauvisage suggested to the delegates going to the Place Dauphine to see
if his colleague Dupont senior was at his shop there; he would be sure
to know this man, des Ilettes.

So they set off in the keen morning air, accompanied by four grenadiers
of the Section.

"Have you seen '_The Last Judgment of Kings_' played?" Delourmel asked
his companions; "the piece is worth seeing. The author shows you all the
Kings of Europe on a desert island where they have taken refuge, at the
foot of a volcano which swallows them up. It is a patriotic work."

At the corner of the Rue du Harlay Delourmel's eye was caught by a
little cart, as brilliantly painted as a reliquary, which an old woman
was pushing, wearing over her coif a hat of waxed cloth.

"What is that old woman selling?" he asked.

The old dame answered for herself:

"Look, gentlemen, make your choice. I have beads and rosaries, crosses,
St. Anthonys, holy cerecloths, St. Veronica handkerchiefs, _Ecce homos_,
_Agnus Deis_, hunting-horns and rings of St. Hubert, and articles of
devotion of every sort and kind."

"Why, it is the very arsenal of fanaticism!" cried Delourmel in
horror,--and he proceeded to a summary examination of the poor woman,
who made the same answer to every question:

"My son, it's forty years I have been selling articles of devotion."

Another Delegate of the Committee of General Security, noticing a
blue-coated National Guard passing, directed him to convey the
astonished old woman to the Conciergerie.

The _citoyen_ Beauvisage pointed out to Delourmel that it would have
been more in the competence of the Committee of Surveillance to arrest
the woman and bring her before the Section; that in any case, one never
knew nowadays what attitude to take up towards the old religion so as to
act up to the views of the Government, and whether it was best to allow
everything or forbid everything.

On nearing the joiner's shop, the delegates and the commissary could
hear angry shouts mingling with the hissing of the saw and the grinding
of the plane. A quarrel had broken out between the joiner, Dupont
senior, and his neighbour Remacle, the porter, because of the
_citoyenne_ Remacle, whom an irresistible attraction was for ever
drawing into the recesses of the workshop, whence she would return to
the porter's lodge