“It took only a few, and he saved my life.” Dame Doudel nodded her head, and waved her hand, thus signifying her approbation, and followed the young man down stairs, while Marguerite stood gazing after him in wistful silence. CHAPTER LXXVIII. THE MARKET WOMAN. “Ah, citoyen,” said the widow, pausing on the stair-case, “how shall I ever thank you for that kind attempt to save him?” “I deserve no thanks, dame, so give me none. I but hurled half a dozen ruffians back as they seized upon that poor girl, but was altogether too late, so far as your husband was concerned. He died at her feet, poor fellow!” “Poor fellow! You may well say that, monsieur. A better man never lived; had he been spared, Marguerite would want no better protector.” “Why, surely, a creature like that, innocent and lovely as a child, can have no enemies.” “I cannot tell that. More than one person saw her face that day; and heard her cry out that my poor husband was her friend.” “But in all that tumult who could recognize her?” “One person did, I know; Marguerite heard a voice call out ‘Strangle her! Shoot her! Strike her! And you bring that tall guard down from his post.’ It was a woman’s voice.” “A woman!” repeated the young man, and his fine lips curved with disdain. “Say a fiend. I wish we had no such aids in our great cause.” The vicious power which a few talented and infamous women had begun to wield in the revolution, had inspired others with a reckless idea of their own importance; and, spite of her sorrow, Dame Doudel grew angry that any one should doubt the power of her sex to wrestle with national wrongs, or step from a market-stall into the duties of statesmanship. “Monsieur, then, does not think the women of France worthy to work for him?” she said. “I think,” said the young man, who seemed rather amused than offended by the lofty air which the market woman assumed, “I think that when the men of a great nation cannot redress its wrongs, and protect its women, that nation is hardly worth saving.” “Indeed!” answered the dame, sniffing the air like a war-horse, and breaking at once into the language of the clubs. “Who was it that urged on the attack, and led the way, when that huge monster, the Bastille was taken?—the women. Who cheered the state’s general on to tear down the king from his high horse?—the women. Who surrounded Santerre, and forced him to lead them to Versailles, to confront the king and his Austrian wife, but the women of Paris? Who brought the royal family out from their palace, and forced them through the storm and mud into the city? The women—the women, I tell you. Ah, monsieur! I have suffered—I am a widow. They tell me a woman did it. Still women have done brave work for France.” “But it was also a woman, as you have just told me, who urged on a pack of brutal men to assail mademoiselle whom you seem to love.”