It will be remembered that Charny had said to the queen:—
“Madame, there will be really much to apprehend when the women begin to stir themselves.”
This was also the opinion of Gilbert.
Therefore, on seeing that the women were actually bestirring themselves, he turned to Billot, uttering only these five words:—
“To the Hôtel de Ville!”
Since the conversation which had taken place between Billot, Gilbert, and Pitou,—and in consequence of which Pitou had returned to Villers-Cotterets with young Sebastien Gilbert,—Billot obeyed Gilbert upon a single word, a gesture, a sign; for he had fully comprehended that if he was strength, Gilbert was intelligence.
They both rushed out of the coffee-house, crossed the garden of the Palais Royal diagonally, and then through the Cour des Fontaines reached the Rue St. Honored.
When they were near the corn-market, they met a young girl coming out of the Rue Bourdonnais, who was beating a drum.
Gilbert stopped astonished.
“What can this mean?” said he.
“Zounds! Doctor, don’t you see,” said Billot, “it is a pretty girl who is beating a drum,—and really, not badly, on my faith.”
“She must have lost something,” said a passer-by.
“She is very pale,” rejoined Billot.
“Ask her what she wants,” said Gilbert.
“Ho, my pretty girl!” cried Billot, “what are you beating that drum for?”
“I am hungry,” she replied in a weak but shrill voice.
And she continued on her way beating the drum.
Gilbert had waited.
“Oh, oh!” cried he, “this is becoming terrible.”
And he looked more attentively at the women who were following the young girl with the drum.
They were haggard, staggering, despairing.
Among these women there were some who had not tasted food for thirty hours.
From among these women, every now and then, would break forth a cry which was threatening even from its very feebleness, for it could be divined that it issued from famished mouths.
“To Versailles!” they cried, “to Versailles!”
And on their way they made signs to all the women Whom they perceived in the houses, and they called to all the women who were at their windows.
A carriage drove by; two ladies were in that carriage. They put their heads out of the windows and began to laugh.
The escort of the drum-beater stopped. About twenty women seized the horses, and then, rushing to the coach-doors, made the two ladies alight and join their group, in spite of their recriminations and a resistance which two or three hard knocks on the head soon terminated.
Behind these women, who proceeded but slowly, on account of their stopping to recruit as they went along, walked a man with his hands in his pockets.
This man, whose face was thin and pale, of tall, lank stature, was dressed in an iron-gray coat, black waistcoat, and small-clothes; he wore a small shabby three-cornered hat, placed obliquely over his forehead.
A long sword beat against his thin but muscular legs.
He followed, looking, listening, devouring everything with his piercing eyes, which rolled beneath his black-eyelids.
“Hey! why, yes,” cried Billot, “I certainly know that face; I have seen it at every riot.”
“It is Maillard, the usher,” said Gilbert.
“Ah, yes! that’s he,—the man who walked over the plank after me at the Bastille; he was more skilful than I was, for he did not fall into the ditch.”
Maillard disappeared with the women at the corner of a street.
Billot felt a great desire to do as Maillard had done; but Gilbert dragged him on to the Hôtel deVille.
It was very certain that the gathering would go there, whether it was a gathering of men or of women. Instead of following the course of the river, he went straight to its mouth.
They knew at the Hôtel de Ville what was going on in Paris; but they scarcely noticed it. Of what importance was it, in fact, to the phlegmatic Bailly, or to the aristocrat Lafayette, that a woman had taken it into her head to beat a drum? It was anticipating the carnival, and that was all.
But when at the heels of this woman who was beating the drum, they saw two or three thousand women; when at the sides of this crowd which was increasing. every minute, they saw advancing a no less considerable troop of men, smiling in a sinister manner, and carrying their hideous weapons; when they understood that these men were smiling at the anticipation of the evil which these women were about to commit, an evil the more irremediable from their knowing that the public forces would not attempt to stop the evil before it was committed, and that the legal powers would not punish afterwards,—they began to comprehend the serious nature of the circumstances.