"I was sure," said the carpenter and magistrate, "I was sure you would come and give in your name, _citoyen_ Gamelin. You are the real thing. But the Section is lukewarm; it is lacking in virtue. I have proposed to the Committee of Surveillance to deliver no certificate of citizenship to any one who has failed to sign the petition." "I am ready to sign with my blood," said Gamelin, "for the proscription of these federalists, these traitors. They have desired the death of Marat: let them perish." "What ruins us," replied Dupont senior, "is indifferentism. In a Section which contains nine hundred citizens with the right to vote there are not fifty attend the assembly. Yesterday we were eight and twenty." "Well then," said Gamelin, "citizens must be obliged to come under penalty of a fine." "Oh, ho!" exclaimed the joiner frowning, "but if they all came, the patriots would be in a minority.... _Citoyen_ Gamelin, will you drink a glass of wine to the health of all good sansculottes?..." On the wall of the church, on the Gospel side, could be read the words, accompanied by a black hand, the forefinger pointing to the passage leading to the cloisters: "_Comite civil, Comite de surveillance, Comite de bienfaisance._" A few yards further on, you came to the door of the erstwhile sacristy, over which was inscribed: _Comite militaire_. Gamelin pushed this door open and found the Secretary of the Committee within; he was writing at a large table loaded with books, papers, steel ingots, cartridges and samples of saltpetre-bearing soils. "Greeting, _citoyen_ Trubert. How are you?" "I?... I am perfectly well." The Secretary of the Military Committee, Fortune Trubert, invariably made this same reply to all who troubled about his health, less by way of informing them of his welfare than to cut short any discussion on the subject. At twenty-eight, he had a parched skin, thin hair, hectic cheeks and bent shoulders. He was an optician on the Quai des Orfevres, and owned a very old house which he had given up in '91 to a superannuated clerk in order to devote his energies to the discharge of his municipal duties. His mother, a charming woman, whose memory a few old men of the neighbourhood still cherished fondly, had died at twenty; she had left him her fine eyes, full of gentleness and passion, her pallor and timidity. From his father, optician and mathematical instrument maker to the King, carried off by the same complaint before his thirtieth year, he inherited an upright character and an industrious temperament. Without stopping his writing: "And you, _citoyen_," he asked, "how are you?" "Very well. Anything new?" "Nothing, nothing. You can see,--we are all quiet here." "And the situation?" "The situation is just the same."