The Argosy for May — page 80: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE CRIMSON masses over her shoulders, framing a dead-white face, whose huge gray eyes glowed with an unearthly light that seemed to illumine her whole counte- nance. She was plainly clad. Not as a serv- ant, but as perhaps a small shop-keeper’s daughter might be dressed. Her step had the grace, and her bearing the glad fearlessness of a pagan priestess. Four deep around her marched the guard, while other soldiers, with bayonet and musket-butts, sought to batter back the surging throng. But the mob threw itself madly on the opposing weapons, shrieking, cursing, mouthing horrible threats, shaking fists and clubs at the barely protected maiden, who, as though unconscious of their presence, strode on amid her encircling captors. The crowd was made up of the scum of Paris. Frowzy-haired fishwives, pur- ple of face and streaming-haired ; raga- muffins that looked as if they had been hurled from some filthy underworld by an upheaval of Mother Earth. These, and a score of other types of the day, bred of the hideously satiric slogan “Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!” There was nothing new in the rabble to hold my attention. But I marveled none the less at their presence. A single prisoner, or even a group of such, haled to the nearest jail, was no novelty in those days. Scarce enough so to evoke a stray glance, a handful of mud, or the cry “A bas les Aristocrats!” Yet here were close upon a thousand riffraff, not only accompanying a pris- oner’s trip to the cells, but trying to tear her to pieces on the way thither. What did it mean? A larger, more rabid assemblage could scarce have gath- ered to escort Queen Marie Antoinette herself to the guillotine. The soldiers, on their route to L’Ab- baye, passed close by the base of the ‘“ Equality ” statue, on whose tall pedes- tal Shadrach and I were standing. The pressure of the throng, eddying about the base, caused, by sheer weight of numbers, a momentary halt in the pro- cession’s march. In that brief rest, before the outlying guards could beat a passage for their fellows through the press, the girl seemed to become aware, for the first HARVEST. 267 time, of the mob’s presence. Lifting her head proudly, she faced that yelling, seething crowd, and, in a voice like a silver trumpet’s, cried aloud: “My friends! My brothers! What I have done was done for the Father- land! For France! I—” She got no further. A mingled howl and roar from the rabble drowned her clarion shout. At the same instant the guards clove a way through the press, and the ghastly procession took up its march again at faster pace. A crippled beggar, who had been left behind in the increased rate of speed, paused for breath at the statue base. I leaned over and accosted him. “Citizen,” I asked, tossing him a franc, “ who is the prisoner? And what has she done? ” “7 don’t know,” he answered impa- tiently over his shoulder, as he hobbled off, yelling “ Down with her!” But my gift of a coin had excited the cupidity of one of the street gamin who hung to the outskirts of the mob. Noticing my action, he dashed back to where we stood, and held his cap up- ward for a similar offering. “JT know what it’s all about!” he squawked in pride. “ For a franc [ll tell you.” I held the silver piece in my hand above his head, but did not drop it into his waiting, ragged cap. “Speak first,” I ordered. ‘Citizen Marat,” he announced, fair- ly bursting with the joy of being first to tell any one the great news. Marat—the liberator, the friend of the people, the—’ ‘What of him?” I inquired, shud- dering inwardly at mention of the fa- natic demagogue’s name. ‘“ What of him?” “He is dead! Murdered in his bath. She,” jerking his thumb toward the van- ishing procession, “she killed him. Her name is Corday, curse her! Charlotte Corday!” ee CHAPTER XII. SHADRACH’S IDEAS, Tue fanatic, glorified face of Char- lotte Corday still fresh in my memory, MICLOOOKS (C ‘* Citizen. (CO)