CHAPTER CIV.

A THEFT AND AN INSULT.

That night there was a wild, riotous ball at the site of the Bastille. The Cour de Government had been cleared and garnished by a thousand busy hands. Temporary draw-bridges, arched with lighted garlands, were thrown over the half-drained ditch, dimly reflected in its sluggish waters. Around the court nine pyramids of light represented the nine awful towers, which had frowned on Paris more than four hundred years. These pyramids shed their radiance on a circle of tri-colored tents, each surmounted by a streaming banner, all chained together by great garlands of flowers, gorgeous flags, and lights that kindled them like stars. On each side the draw-bridge two noble pyramids rose forty feet from the ground, from which thousands of colored lamps ran downward in rivers of light, quivering, glowing, flinging more than the radiance of noonday on the gorgeous arena, and kindling up the broken ruins beyond, till their shadows grew darker than midnight. Between these noble pillars rose an arch, on which eighty-three flags of the departments of France fluttered to the night wind, and from the centre fell a mat of flowers, on which was written in characters of glowing fire, “Here we dance!”

The tents were full; groups stood on the draw-bridges, looking upon the brilliant scene, with the ruins of the old prison lying blackly behind them. The arena was thronged with merry dancers; men and women of all grades and every possible costume mingled in that strange scene. From a great central tent came bursts of music, wild, riotous, and revolutionary as the people who danced to it. Rude, half-clothed men, crowned with laurel and oak-leaves, reeled through the dancers; women, whose very presence there was odious, crowned each other with laurel, and wheeled in bacchanalian groups around the blazing pillars of fire.

Late at night, when the revel was at its highest, an old man came through that radiant arch of flowers and flame, and stood for a moment dazzled by the scene that eddied around him. The crowd outside had seized him in its current, and breaking at the entrance, left him stranded there, with the light pouring down upon his broad forehead and silvery beard with the force of an August sun.

Some women, who were chanting the Marseillaise in the nearest tent, flocked out at the sight of this august head, shouting, “The prisoner! The prisoner of the Bastille!” surrounded him in triple rows, and hedged him in with a chain of wreathing arms.

“Bring us flowers! Bring us wine, laurel, and oak-leaves! Let us crown the martyr of the Bastille, and pour a libation to liberty. Liberty and fraternity!”

They forced this old man into the center of the arena, arresting the dancers with their shouts, and crowding them back with remorseless enthusiasm. Some leaped up and tore flowers from the swinging festoons; others snatched laurel from the bacchanalian crowns of their companions. Almost instantaneously a garland was fastened on the old man’s head, and a goblet of wine was held to his lips, while the crowd whirled, a human maelstrom, around him, shouting, singing, and tossing their arms upward in a tempest of insane delight.

The prisoner stood a moment bewildered. He put aside the wine-cup, which one of the women held to his lips, but so unsteadily that it reddened his beard, and taking the laurel wreath from his head, flung it from him.

“Let me go,” he said, with gentle impatience; “I do not like this.”

They would have kept him by force, but some among the crowd saw that he was feeble and grew deadly pale; so they forced a passage for him out of that ring of unsexed women, and allowed the old man to make his own way through the crowd, across one of the draw-bridges, and into the black ruins beyond.

After the first impulse no one cared to follow the old man, and, thinking himself quite unobserved, he crept down into the darkness of his cell, and called in a soft, broken voice for his little companion, to which he began whispering something in rapturous haste, as if he really thought the tiny creature could understand him.

Notwithstanding the old man thought himself alone, there was something hidden there among the shadows, far more crafty and keen of wit than the poor little mouse, faithful as it had been.

Close down by the cell, hidden behind a fragment of rock, crouched Zamara, the dwarf. Hour after hour he had followed the old man with the vigilance of a hound and the cunning of a fox. At last he had tracked him to his lair, and heard the low, pathetic words with which he told his happiness to the little companion, whose sympathy always seemed ready for him.

“Ah, my little friend! I have such news to tell you; that is right, creep close into my bosom. It is a warm heart, you will sleep against to-night. Did I tell you, little one, a great work has been done since morning? Feel the ring on my finger; do not be afraid, it will not hurt you. To you and me it is a blessing always. Years and years ago it was taken from me and put on the hand of a beautiful, good woman, born to great misfortunes without deserving them. But for this, they could not have kept me here till the old towers were torn down over our heads; but for this her bitter enemies would never have prevailed. But I have it once more, and am strong again—young and strong. See, my hand trembles no longer. You can sit firmly upon it and look into my face. Is it not that of a powerful man? Tell me if the blood does not mount into my cheek? I think so—I think so, for it feels like wine about my heart. To-morrow, sweetheart, we will set about the great work. It is for us to save the daughter of my dear old mistress, how I cannot yet see; but my strength lies here: with this on my finger, I feel it in me to heave mountains from their base. What, restless, sweetheart? Do you hear some one? Be quiet, none of those rude people will come here—with all their floods of light they cannot find us out. What, again? It may be that our Marguerite is coming—but then how could she get through the revel out yonder? Hush now: do not attempt to get away. Surely, you are not afraid of _her_? We must find all this out to-morrow. Now that God has given us back a great power, no one shall be unhappy. We will make sure of that!”

The old man paused here and seemed to listen; then he spoke again, but with soft sleepiness, as if the great fatigue of the day were settling gently down upon his faculties.

“It was nothing. She could not have come to-night, the crowd is so great. That is well; creep into my bosom—happiness makes me sleepy.”

There was a faint, hushing whisper after this, followed by the regular breathing of a man in his first sleep.

Full half an hour Zamara sat in the shadows, waiting for a certainty that the slumber of that old man was profound. Then he arose to his hands and knees, paused, listened, and crept forward stealthily, like a fox upon its prey.

The old man was lying upon his back, with one hand folded over his bosom, the other lay supinely upon the stone floor, just where a gleam of moonlight cut across it, revealing the golden serpent coiled around one finger. Zamara touched the ring. It circled the delicate finger loosely—age and suffering had shrunken that hand almost to a shadow. The fingers were bent downward: another touch and the ring slipped to the floor, with a faint click that took away the dwarf’s breath; for an instant, it disturbed the sleeper, who moved a little, leaving the ring entirely exposed.

Softly as a cat stretches out its claw, Zamara’s fingers crept toward his prize and fastened upon it. Then he groveled backward out of the cell, drew a sharp breath, leaped to his feet, and fled across the ruins.

A woman sat in one of the tents drinking wine from a horn cup, which one of the _sans culottes_ had just filled for her from a cask which stood on one end in front of the tent. A hole had been torn in the top, through which he thrust the cup, and drew it forth dripping. Three times he had filled the cup, yet the woman was thirsty, and held it out for more, with a rollicking laugh, which the dwarf recognized and hated. But the tent was near the entrance and he was obliged to pass her. In his confusion he ran against Mirabeau, whose policy it was to show himself at such popular gatherings, where he usually made great capital by his familiarity with the lower classes. He was talking to a group of workmen, who gathered around him, with some earnestness, though his face bore an expression of intense fatigue, when Zamara was hustled violently against him by the crowd.

Impatient and suffering from the absolute pain of a disease, which was making rapid inroads on him, he seized the dwarf with one hand, lifted him up, pitched him into the crowd, and, turning his back, went on with what he had been saying.

It happened that the dwarf fell just within the tent where Louison Brisot sat, and his sudden advent shook the cup in her hand, spilling the wine upon her; the rest she dashed over him with a rude laugh. The dwarf struggled to his feet, livid with rage. A word, bitter with coarse insult, broke from him, and clenching his tiny fist, he shook it viciously.

“He has not had enough,” cried Louison, addressing the _sans culottes_. “Do you know who he is, citoyen? Well, you have heard of Madame Du Berry and her _famillier_? This is her imp.”

The man thus appealed to seized Zamara, without a word dashed his foot against the head of the wine-cask, and plunged the dwarf in, roaring with laughter as the red liquid surged over the edges, and crimsoned his own legs and feet.

A storm of coarse merriment followed this act. The cask was not large enough to drown the poor wretch, but he was drawn out frenzied with rage, and dripping from head to foot with the wine some in the crowd coveted.

Louison went up to him, laughing till she could hardly speak.

“Go back to your mistress,” she said, “and tell her if she lets her imp loose again among the patriots of France, he will be found the next morning hung up at some lantern, like a spider caught in its own web.”

Zamara only answered by a look that checked her laughter on the instant.

“The venomous snake,” she muttered, “and I have trodden on him.”

Yes, she had trodden on him, and so had the proud man whose ambition it was to rule France.