Pierre, on being left alone with his wife, advised her not to make the mistake of barricading herself indoors, but to reply, if anybody came to question her, that he, Pierre, had simply gone on a short journey.

And as she acted the simpleton, feigning terror and asking what all this was coming to, he replied abruptly: "It's nothing to do with you.

Let me manage our affairs alone.
They'll get on all the better." A few minutes later he was rapidly threading his way along the Rue de la Banne.

On reaching the Cours Sauvaire, he saw a band of armed workmen coming out of the old quarter and singing the "Marseillaise." "The devil!" he thought.

"It was quite time, indeed; here's the town itself in revolt now!" He quickened his steps in the direction of the Porte de Rome.