Children and war -- Juvenile fiction; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Juvenile fiction
The shepherd laid his hand on the lad’s arm. “Let us come away from all
this. I do not want to see them. I cannot help them by seeing them.”
“Do you want to help them?” the boy asked.
“I want to help everyone,” Dian answered.
They walked down a side street, away from the rue Saint Honoré, but the
roar of the tumbrils followed them for a long time. Dian was sad at
heart. He knew too well that for long centuries the people of France had
been kept down and abused and embittered by the tyranny and injustice of
the nobles, but he knew also that every day many innocent people were
going to their death in the great square, that the revolution no longer
had any dignity, no longer was a striving for justice and equal rights
for all. It had grown to be a nightmare of wild, undisciplined horror.
Dian was in earnest when he said that he wanted to help everyone—Grigge
as well as Lisle. He wanted it more than anything else in all the world.
As they walked, the boy told Dian that his name was Raoul, and that he
came into the city once a week with his master. He said that they always
stayed over night, at lodgings above a seed shop near the west barrier,
and returned to the country the following day. They walked on until they
came in sight of the Bois, a dark blur against the winter sky. The Bois
is a wood in the heart of Paris. It had the same charm and mystery about
it then that it has to-day. Dian stood looking at it, thinking of what
Neville had told him of the gay coaching parties and promenades and
daily drives in their gilded coaches of the Saint Frères and other
families of the nobility. They were all gone now, these same families,
hiding for their lives.
Dian knew the Saint Frère house as soon as he saw it, not so much by the
plan he had, which would help him more in finding his way about inside,
as by an engraving which he had seen in the study of the old Comte Saint
Frère at Les Vignes. It was not difficult to distinguish it from the
other great houses near it. There was something medieval and different
about it. Indeed, there was no house in all of Paris quite so old.
He did not speak of the house to Raoul, as they passed by it. They had a
modest meal of coffee and bread for a few sous at a stand near the
farmer boy’s lodgings. Then Dian went with him as far as the seed shop
and there they bid each other good-by. Raoul said that he was glad to
have met him, for he was timid about going alone in the streets while
the city was in such a turmoil, and it was good to have the company of
one who, like himself, knew the country and farm ways. Dian answered
that he would know how to find him at his lodgings. The boy assured him
that he could always be found there on Thursdays, unless the weather was
so bad that his master gave up coming into Paris.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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