Children and war -- Juvenile fiction; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Juvenile fiction
Dian nodded assent. “Well enough then, if you like. I, too, would not
mind a glimpse at some of them. You know the way, so I’ll follow your
lead,” he said.
They walked up the great wide avenue, turning on to it from the rue
Royale. Raoul looked back over his shoulder. At the end of the avenue
the great giant guillotine showed black against a blue spring sky.
“I’ll tell you something I saw, Shepherd, if you’ll keep a quiet tongue
in your head. There is a boy shut up in the bakery shop, the big, smart
one on the rue Saint Honoré. I saw him quite by accident. I’ve not told
any one. He’s an aristocrat, I’m sure; he had on a velvet suit.”
Raoul then told Dian everything he knew as they walked toward the
Framande house. It was natural enough that the shepherd should question
him, and he found out that, as far as Raoul could tell, the prisoner had
looked well, had been dressed in his usual way, and had had a tray of
milk and cakes carried up to him by a woman whom Raoul declared to be
kind.
“He could have worse than her looking after him, whoever he is. She’s
given me many a cup of hot coffee and a cake on cold days. She’s good
enough; but the boy’s in bad hands if he’s a prisoner of her husband!
He’ll have him up before the Tribunal for trial when the time is ripe.
You mark my words, he’s going to get some sort of plum for himself out
of this pudding!” Dian listened to Raoul in silence, making no comment
except to ask a few questions. Since he had found the note in the cake
he had waited quietly for the next development. He trusted that he would
be shown the right way and he had spoken confidently to Humphrey Trail
when that impetuous soul longed for action.
He was thinking of Humphrey and of Rosanne as he walked with Raoul along
the Champs Élysées. He saw Humphrey every day and he knew that Rosanne
was safe with Vivi, but he realized, as did also the Yorkshire man, that
Rosanne must not remain longer in the alley. Vivi was out now playing
about the gates and plying her father’s trade of selling licorice water.
She was the best little soul in the world, and she loved Rosanne, but
she was very young and she had never learned to keep things to herself.
She might, without meaning to, say something which would cause suspicion
and bring an investigating body of citizen soldiers to the alley. There
was only one place where Rosanne could be safe until the opportunity
came to take her out of Paris, and that was in the hidden cellar.
They found a noisy mob about the Framande house and sights that were bad
to see, for the crowds were out looting and robbing and killing. They
turned away, glad to be on a quiet street, and walked on in silence a
few minutes. Then Dian said:
“There were other houses. There was one on the rue du Paradis, the Du
Ganne place, was it not? Let us see what is going on there.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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