III
The Rue de la Planchette was as usual lonely and deserted. It was a second or two before Chauvelin spied a passerby. That minute he spent in calling for help with all his might. The passerby he quickly dispatched across to the Arsenal for assistance.
“In the name of the Republic!” he said solemnly.
But already his cries had attracted the attention of the sentries. Within two or three minutes, half a dozen men of the National Guard were speeding down the street. Soon they had reached the house, the door where Chauvelin, still breathless but with his habitual official manner that brooked of no argument, gave them hasty instructions.
“The man lying on the ground in there,” he commanded. “Seize him and raise him. Then one of you find some cord and bind him securely.”
The men flung the double doors wide open. A flood of light illumined the storeroom. There lay the huge figure on the floor, no longer motionless, but trying to scramble to his feet, once more torn by a fit of coughing. The man ran up to him; one of them laughed.
“Why, if it isn’t old Rateau!”
They lifted him up by his arms. He was helpless as a child, and his face was of a dull purple colour.
“He will die!” another man said, with an indifferent shrug of the shoulders.
But, in a way, they were sorry for him. He was one of themselves. Nothing of the aristo about asthmatic old Rateau!
They had succeeded in propping him up and sitting him down upon a barrel. His fit of coughing was subsiding. He had breath enough now to swear. He raised his head and encountered the pale eyes of citizen Chauvelin fixed as if sightlessly upon him.
“Name of a dog!” he began; but got no farther. Giddiness seized him, for he was weak from coughing and from that strangling grip round his throat, after he had been attacked in the darkness and thrown violently to the ground.
The men around him recoiled at sight of citizen Chauvelin. His appearance was almost deathlike. His cheeks and lips were livid; his hair dishevelled; his eyes of an unearthly paleness. One hand, clawlike and shaking, he held out before him, as if to ward off some horrible apparition.
This trance-like state made up of a ghastly fear and a sense of the most hideous, most unearthly impotence, lasted for several seconds. The men themselves were frightened. Unable to understand what had happened, they thought that citizen Chauvelin, whom they all knew by sight, had suddenly lost his reason or was possessed of a devil. For in truth there was nothing about poor old Rateau to frighten a child!
Fortunately the tension was over before real panic had seized on any of them. The next moment Chauvelin had pulled himself together with one of those mighty efforts of will of which strong natures are always capable. With an impatient gesture he passed his hand across his brow, then backwards and forwards in front of his face, as if to chase away the demon of terror that obsessed him. He gazed on Rateau for a moment or two, his eyes travelling over the uncouth, semiconscious figure of the coalheaver with a searching, undefinable glance. Then, as if suddenly struck with an idea, he spoke to the man nearest him:
“Sergeant Chazot? Is he at the Arsenal?”
“Yes, citizen,” the man replied.
“Run across quickly then,” Chauvelin continued; “and bring him hither at once.”
The soldier obeyed, and a few more minutes—ten, perhaps—went by in silence. Rateau, weary, cursing, not altogether in full possession of his faculties, sat huddled up on the barrel, his bleary eyes following every movement of citizen Chauvelin with an anxious, furtive gaze. The latter was pacing up and down the stone floor, like a caged, impatient animal. From time to time he paused, either to peer out into the open in the direction of the Arsenal, or to search the dark angles of the storeroom, kicking the piles of rubbish about with his foot.