"Yes, they are still sitting outside upon the landing, and the Austrian woman is at this time alone unwatched with her brood, and she will be alone for two hours yet, for there is no change of guard till then."
"That is true, yes, that is true," cried the knitter, and her nostrils expanded like those of the hyena when on the scent of blood. "They will sit up there two hours longer, playing cards and singing stupid songs, and wheedling my monkey of a husband with their flatteries, making him believe that they love him, love him boundlessly, and they let themselves be locked into the Temple for his sake, and--oh! if I had them here, I would strangle them with my own hands! I would make a dagger of every one of my knitting-needles and thrust it into their hearts! But quiet, quiet," she continued in a grumbling tone, "every thing must go on in a regular way. Will you take my place here for half an hour and guard the door? I have something important to do, something very important."
"It will be a very great honor," replied Madame Tison, "a very great honor to be the substitute of one so well known and respected as you are, of whom every one knows that she is the best patriot and the most courageous knitter, whose eyelashes never quiver, and who can calmly go on with her stitches when the heads fall from the guillotine into the basket."
"If I did tremble, and my eyelashes did quiver, I would dash my own fists into my eyes!" said Madame Simon, with her hard coarse voice, rising and throwing her thin, threadbare cloak over her shoulders.
"If I found a spark of sympathy in my heart, I would inundate it with the blood of aristocrats till it should be extinguished, and till that should be, I would despise and hate myself, for I should be not only a bad patriot, but a bad daughter of my unfortunate father. The cursed aristocrats have not only brought misery on our country and people, but they murdered my dear good father. Yes, murdered I say. They said he was a high traitor. And do you know why? Because he told aloud the nice stories about the Austrian woman, who was then our queen, which, had been whispered into his ear, and because he said that the king was a mere tool in the hands of his wife. They shot my good, brave father for what he had said, and which they called treason, although it was only the naked truth.
Yet I will not work myself into a passion about it, and I will only thank God that that time is past, and I will do my part that it shall not come back. And that is why we must be awake and on our guard, that no aristocrat and no loyalist tie left, but that they all be guillotined, all! There, take your place on my chair, and take my knitting-work. Ah! if it could speak to you as it does to me--if it could tell you what heads we two have seen fall, young and old, handsome, distinguished--it would be fine sport for you and make you laugh. But good-by just now! Keep a strict lookout! I shall come back soon."
And she did come back soon, this worthy woman, with triumphant bearing and flashing eyes, looking as the cat looks when it has a mouse in its soft velvety paws, and is going to push its poisonous claws into the quivering flesh. She took her knitting-work up and bade Tison to go up again to her post.
"And when you can," she said, "just touch the Austrian woman a little, and pay her off for being so many hours unwatched. In that way you will merit a reward from the people, and that is as well as deserving one of God. Provoke her--provoke the proud Austrian!"
"It is very hard to do it," said Tison, sighing--"very hard, I assure you, for the Austrian is very cold and moderate of late.
Since Louis Capet died, the widow is very much changed, and now she is so uniform in her temper that it seems as if nothing would provoke or excite her."
"What weak and tender creatures you all are!" said Simon's wife, with a shrug. "It is very plain that they fed you on milk when you were young. But my mother nursed me with hate. I was scarcely ten years when they shot my father, and not a day passed after that without my mother's telling me that we must avenge his murder on the whole lineage of the king. I had to swear that I would do it. She gave me, for my daily food, hatred against the aristocrats; it was the meat to my sauce, the sugar to my coffee, the butter to my bread! I lived and throve upon it. Look at me, and see what such fare has made of me! Look at me! I am not yet twenty-four years old, and yet I have the appearance of an old woman, and I have the feeling and the experience of an old woman! Nothing moves me now, and the only thing that lives and burns in my heart is revenge.
Believe me, were I in your place I should know how to exasperate the Austrian; I should succeed in drawing out her tears."
"Well, and how would you begin? Really, I should like to know how to bring this incarnation of pride to weeping."
"Has not she children?" asked Madame Simon, with a horrible calmness. "I would torture and provoke the children, and that would soon make the heart of the woman humble and pliable. Oh, she may count herself happy that I am not in your place, and that her children are not under my tender hands. But if it ever happens that I can lay my fingers upon the shoulders of the little wolves, I will give them something that will make them cry out, and make the old wolf howl with rage. I will show her as little favor then as she showed when my poor mother and I were begging for my dear father! Go up, go up and try at once. Plague the children, and you will see that that will make the Austrian pliable."