. Parties of
young men, at table in the fashionable restaurateurs' rooms on the
mezzanine floor, ran to the windows, napkin in hand, and howled:

"Cannibals, man-eaters, vampires!"

The cart having plunged into a heap of refuse that had not been removed
during the two days of civil disorder, the gilded youth screamed with
delight:

"The waggon's mired.... Hurrah! The Jacobins in the jakes!"

Gamelin was thinking, and truth seemed to dawn on him.

"I die justly," he reflected. "It is just we should receive these
outrages cast at the Republic, for we should have safeguarded her
against them. We have been weak; we have been guilty of supineness. We
have betrayed the Republic. We have earned our fate. Robespierre
himself, the immaculate, the saint, has sinned from mildness,
mercifulness; his faults are wiped out by his martyrdom. He was my
exemplar, and I, too, have betrayed the Republic; the Republic perishes;
it is just and fair that I die with her. I have been over sparing of
blood; let my blood flow! Let me perish! I have deserved ..."

Such were his reflections when suddenly he caught sight of the signboard
of the _Amour peintre_, and a torrent of bitter-sweet emotions swept
tumultuously over his heart.

The shop was shut, the sun-blinds of the three windows on the mezzanine
floor were drawn right down. As the cart passed in front of the window
of the blue chamber, a woman's hand, wearing a silver ring on the
ring-finger, pushed aside the edge of the blind and threw towards
Gamelin a red carnation which his bound hands prevented him from
catching, but which he adored as the token and likeness of those red and
fragrant lips that had refreshed his mouth. His eyes filled with
bursting tears, and his whole being was still entranced with the glamour
of this farewell when he saw the blood-stained knife rise into view in
the Place de la Revolution.

XXIX

It was Nivose. Masses of floating ice encumbered the Seine; the basins
in the Tuileries garden, the kennels, the public fountains were frozen.
The North wind swept clouds of hoar frost before it in the streets. A
white steam breathed from the horses' noses, and the city folk would
glance in passing at the thermometer at the opticians' doors. A shop-boy
was wiping the fog from the window-panes of the _Amour peintre_, while
curious passers-by threw a look at the prints in vogue,--Robespierre
squeezing into a cup a heart like a pumpkin to drink the blood, and