And it was Bibi who was to be her judge. Well then obviously she had nothing to fear. One of some fifteen of her fellow-prisoners, she was bustled with them across the room to a wooden bench where they were roughly ordered to sit down. As they crossed the room boos and hisses, and one or two louder cries of execration, greeted them. A few remarks, all of them malevolent, rose above the murmurs.
“That old man there, I knew him once. Old tyrant. He’s getting his deserts at last.”
“Do you see the woman next to him? Five freeborn Frenchwomen she had at a time once, to wait on her and do her hair. Aristo, va! It won’t take long to do thy hair tomorrow. One snick with the scissors, what?”
“That young wench too. Not much more than eighteen, I warrant.”
“I hear she is a thief as well as a traitor.”
“Pity they should have abolished the whipping-post. That would have done the young traitors a world of good.”
“Me, I prefer the guillotine; quickest work, eh?”
Fleurette had blushed with shame to the roots of her hair. She tried not to look in the direction whence these voices, harsh and coarse, had come. She tried to think of all the prayers which M. le Curé had taught her long ago. She tried to think of M’sieu’ Amédé and of the joy she would have when she saw him again. But she could not shut the gates of her consciousness against all these people who had gathered here for the sole purpose of seeing their fellow-creatures suffer. Men and women and even little children. The women for the most part had brought their knitting, for everyone was knitting socks these days for the brave soldiers who were fighting against the enemies of France, and through the murmur of voices, the monotonous click-click of the needles acted as an irritant upon the nerves.
All around there appeared to be a sea of faces. And eyes. Innumerable eyes that glared, and mouths that grinned and derided. And above the faces, a sea of red caps with tricolour cockades. Fleurette tried hard not to look. She closed her eyes and tried to murmur the prayers she and M’sieu’ Amédé used to say together when M. le Curé prepared them for their first communion.
Bibi wore a hat with feathers. He had a bell in front of him, and this he often tinkled, when the noise from the crowd all around became too great. Once or twice he was addressed as “Citizen President.” Fleurette had never seen him look so stern. The words which he spoke to the accused were not only bitter but terribly cruel. He seemed so unlike her real chéri Bibi, that she caught herself marvelling whether her fancy was not playing her aching eyes some strange and horrible trick.
One after the other the names of her fellow-prisoners were called, and one by one they were made to stand up and then walk to the centre of the room and up a couple of shallow steps to a small raised platform round which there was a wooden railing. In every instance as soon as the prisoner mounted this platform, and became as it were the centre of attraction for all these innumerable eyes, he or she would be greeted with groans and hisses and cat’s calls, until Bibi tinkled his bell and loudly demanded silence.
A man in a red cap who sat just below Bibi’s desk then stood up and read something out aloud, which Fleurette never understood, but which the crowd apparently did, for the reader was frequently interrupted by more boos and hisses and often cries of execration. After this reading Bibi, or one of the two men who sat beside him, asked the prisoner questions. These were sometimes replied to, but not always. The crowd invariably threw in loud comments on both questions and answers, and Bibi was then forced to tinkle his bell in order to demand silence. And through the noise, the cries and the hisses, the questions and answers, the one sound that was never drowned, and never was still, was the click-click of hundreds of knitting needles.
The first batch of prisoners to face the Tribunal, were men and women almost unknown to Fleurette. They had not long been brought into the Caristie house, had replaced others who had been Fleurette’s early companions in prison. She had seen them in the common room, acting in the grim farces that were the fashion there, but she had not made friends with them as she had done with Claire de Châtelard or Madame de Mornas. But when came the turn of a woman who had actually been her roommate, who had sat next to her on the bench of the accused, and squeezed her hand ere she was led up to the raised platform with the wooden railing, then, Fleurette felt all her resolution of bravery and trust in Bibi, giving way.
The heat in the room had become unbearable. The stench of dank and grimy clothes, of perspiring humanity, of hot breaths charged with hate, acted as a pungent soporific. Fleurette’s head fell forward once or twice, her eyes involuntarily closed. For a time she lost consciousness. It was her own name spoken in a stentorian voice that brought her back to reality.
“Fleur Chauvelin, nommée Armand.”
Someone nudged her elbow. An impatient voice rasped out a sharp: “Allons! allons!” and she found herself dragged to her feet and led by the arm to the raised platform, amidst a din which fortunately was
