The woods were near the farm. They quickly made a litter with branches and ferns, and placing the woman, still motionless, upon it, they started towards the grove, the two peasants bearing the litter, one at the head, the other at the foot, while Tellmarch supported the woman's arm and constantly felt her pulse. On the way the two peasants talked; and over the body of the bleeding woman, whose pale face was lighted by the moon, they exchanged their frightened exclamations. "To kill all!" "To burn all!" "Oh, my Lord! Is that the way they are going to do now?" "It was that tall old man who ordered it." "Yes; he was the commander." "I did not see him while the shooting went on. Was he there?" "No, he was gone. But it was done by his order, all the same." "Then it was he who did this." "He said, 'Kill, burn! No quarter!'" "Is he a marquis?" "Yes, of course; he is our marquis." "What is his name?" "It is Monsieur de Lantenac." Tellmarch raised his eyes to heaven, murmuring between his teeth,-- "Had I but known!" [Footnote 1: A head.--TR.] [Footnote 2: Watchword of the Commune.] [Footnote 3: Watchword of the Princes.] [Illustration: At Paris. 035] PART II. AT PARIS. BOOK I. CIMOURDAIN. [Illustration: Cimourdain. 036] I. THE STREETS OF PARIS AT THAT TIME. People lived in public; they ate at tables spread outside the doors; women sat on the church steps, making lint to the accompaniment of the Marseillaise; the park of Monceaux and the Luxembourg were turned into parade-grounds; at every street-corner there was a gun-maker's shop, where muskets were manufactured before the eyes of the passers-by, to their great admiration. "Patience: this is revolution" was on every lip. People smiled heroically. They went to the theatre as in Athens during the Peloponnesian war. At street-corners were seen such playbills as these, advertising: "The Siege of Thionville;" "A Mother saved from the Flames;" "The Club of Sans-Soucis;" "The oldest of the Popes Joan;" "The Military Philosophers;" "The Art of Love-making in the Village." The Germans were at the gates; it was rumored that the King of Prussia had secured boxes for the opera. Everything was terrible, yet no one was frightened. The grewsome law against the suspected, which was the crime of Merlin de Douai, held a vision of the guillotine suspended over every head. A lawyer, Séran by name, learning that he had been denounced, calmly awaited his arrest, arrayed in his dressing-gown and slippers, playing the flute at his window. No one seemed to have any spare time, every one was in a hurry; all the hats bore their cockades, and the women cried, "Are not red caps becoming to us?" All Paris seemed in the act of changing its abode. The curiosity shops were filled with crowns, mitres, gilded sceptres, and fleur-de-lis, spoils from royal dwellings,--the signs of the destruction of monarchy. Copes and surplices might be seen hanging on