Then, as the mob closed about the fallen, moaning shape, I turned with an instinct of horror to view of my neighbours. The old gourmet had flung himself back in his chair, his face twisted from the sight; but mademoiselle still picked daintily at her partridge. CHAPTER III. THE FOOTPAD. Early in June of the year ’93 I left Paris in company with M. Crépin. At that time in the flower of his, somewhat mediocre, fortunes, he had been intrusted with a mission which was entirely after his own heart. He was to represent the Executive, in fact, in a “sequestrating” tour through Limosin and Guienne,--or rather through the new-found departments that had deposed those ancient territories,--and his interest had procured me a post as his clerk or assistant. What duties this embraced perhaps the Government would have found it as difficult to specify as their sub-agent; but, after all, Jacques Bonhomme emancipated was excessively conservative in the matter of his retention of the system of complimentary sinecures. For myself, I looked upon my appointment as the simple means to postpone an inevitable denunciation. Crépin and I had by then ceased to fraternise. I could never quite learn to adapt my sympathies to a certain _mauvais ton_ that underlay in him all the sensitiveness of the voluptuary. Also, perhaps, I was beginning a little to resent the humourless methods of a destiny that had not the wit, it seemed, to rebuke my innate luxuriousness but by affecting a concern to accommodate me with house-fellows of my own kidney. We parted on the best of terms; and he none the less attended to my interests and, as far as possible, to my safety. To the end, I think, he retained an admiration for the superior quality of my epigastrium; and when his opportunity came to do me a service, he never failed to remind me of his indebtedness to my fastidious _gourmandise_. We left the city, travelling _en roi_, on a fine blowing afternoon. We had our roomy carriage, with four well-blooded horses, and a postilion to each pair. An escort of four patriots, moreover, mounted, armed, and generally drunk, accompanied us to enforce the letter of the law. We went out by the suburb of Passy, starting from the Pavillon-Liberté, close by the Thuilleries,--where Crépin received his papers of administration--and whipping along the river-bank by way of the Port aux Pierres. Close by the gates the carriage gave a thudding jolt, and drew up suddenly to an accompaniment of noise like the screaming of a swollen axle. I started up in my corner.