“Nonsense,” retorted the Marquis, throwing him a kindly glance. “Lucienne will be delighted to see you; she is rather anxious about you, I fancy. Come, or we shall miss her.” But the Vicomte still seemed in two minds about accepting this invitation. “Well, don’t at any rate tell her that I refused . . . that I could not take her. Oh, I suppose you have already told her, perhaps, that you were going to ask me? Have you?” The Marquis, who had turned to go, turned round again surprised for the second time at something in his cousin’s tone, and especially at the emphasis laid upon the last two words. “Yes, I did tell her,” he replied, staring. “But what of that? The matter is easily explained. My idea was a foolish one. Why, any one would think, my dear Louis, that you were afraid of Mademoiselle Lucienne d’Aucourt!” “Oh, sooner than be suspected of that!” retorted Louis gaily, and, tossing an assignat on to the little table, he followed Gilbert out into the garden. And to Château-Foix, immediately after he had spoken, came the remembrance that Lucienne too had not seemed to wish for Louis’ company. She too had said that he could not leave the King. As soon as they turned out of the Palais-Royal into the Rue de Richelieu they could see that the Rue Saint-Honoré was blocked by a crowd. Against the wall a figure with gesticulating arms could be seen above the mass of upturned faces. “More speechifying,” said Louis disgustedly. “Hang it! we shall have to go back and get out the other side. . . . No, here are some National Guards turning out of the Rue du Rempart.” They went up to the outskirts of the crowd. The orator could be heard only intermittently; as far as could be gathered he was emitting a spouting stream of abuse directed, like a firehose, against the Tuileries, towards whose roofs, distinguishable across the Rue Saint-Honoré, he shook his fist. Such phrases as “Austrian Committee,” “_chevaliers du poignard_,” were indistinctly audible. Louis looked at the Marquis and silently shrugged his shoulders, but as the half-dozen National Guards began to cleave a way through the mob after their usual fashion, their muskets held horizontally at arms’ length above their heads, he beckoned to him and slipped into their wake. In the passage thus formed they ploughed a difficult way through the indignant crowd, a dirty member of which, suddenly shaking his fist under Gilbert’s nose with some passion, called him a swine of an aristocrat. The incident plainly afforded Louis a certain amount of pleasure, for, as he explained to his kinsman on their way down the Rue Nicaise, the Marquis would not be appreciated by the lower orders of Paris as greatly as he was at home.