The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel | Page 9

she presently vanished behind the portière.
"Are you going to the Fraternal Supper to-night, citizen Langlois?" the
giant said, after the woman had gone. His tone was rasping and harsh
and his voice came with a wheeze and an obviously painful effort from
his broad, doubled-up chest.
"Not I!" Langlois replied. "I must speak with Mother Théot. My wife
made me promise. She is too ill to come herself, and the poor
unfortunate believes in the Théot's incantations."
"Come out and get some fresh air, then," the other rejoined. "It is
stifling in here!"
It was indeed stuffy in the dark, smoke-laden room. The man put his
bony hand up to his chest, as if to quell a spasm of pain. A horrible,
rasping cough shook his big body and brought a sweat to his brow.
Langlois, a wizened little figure of a man, who looked himself as if he
had one foot in the grave, waited patiently until the spasm was over,
then, with the indifference peculiar to these turbulent times, he said
lightly:

"I would just as soon sit here as wear out shoe-leather on the
cobblestones of this God-forsaken hole. And I don't want to miss my
turn with mother Théot."
"You'll have another four hours mayhap to wait in this filthy
atmosphere."
"What an aristo you are, citizen Rateau!" the other retorted drily.
"Always talking about the atmosphere!"
"So would you, if you had only one lung wherewith to inhale this filth,"
growled the giant through a wheeze.
"Then don't wait for me, my friend," Langlois concluded with a
careless shrug of his narrow shoulders. "And, if you don't mind missing
your turn...."
"I do not," was Rateau's curt reply. "I would as soon be last as not. But
I'll come back presently. I am the third from now. If I'm not back you
can have my turn, and I'll follow you in. But I can't-"
His next words were smothered in a terrible fit of coughing, as he
struggled to his feet. Langlois swore at him for making such a noise,
and the women, roused from their somnolence, sigh with impatience or
resignation. But all those who remained seated on the benches watched
with a kind of dull curiosity the ungainly figure of the asthmatic giant
as he made his way across the room and anon went out through the
door.
His heavy footsteps were heard descending the stone stairs with a
shuffling sound, and the clatter of his wooden shoes. The women once
more settled themselves against the dank walls, with feet stretched out
before them and arms folded over their breasts, and in that highly
uncomfortable position prepared once more to go to sleep.
Langlois buried his hands in the pockets of his breeches, spat
contentedly upon the floor, and continued to wait.

3
In the meanwhile, the girl who, with tear-filled eyes, had come out of
the inner mysterious room in Mother Théot's apartments, had, after a
slow descent down the interminable stone stairs, at last reached the
open air.
The Rue de la Planchette is only a street in name, for the houses in it
are few and far between. One side of it is taken up for the major portion
of its length by the dry moat which at this point forms the boundary of
the Arsenal and of the military ground around the Bastille. The house
wherein lodged Mother Théot is one of a small group situated behind
the Bastille, the grim ruins of which can be distinctly seen from the
upper windows. Immediately facing those houses is the Porte St.
Antoine, through which the wayfarer in this remote quarter of Paris has
to pass in order to reach the more populous parts of the city. This is just
a lonely and squalid backwater, broken up by undeveloped land and
timber yards. One end of the street abuts on the river, the other
becomes merged in the equally remote suburb of Popincourt.
But, for the girl who had just come out of the heavy, fetid atmosphere
of Mother Théot's lodgings, the air which reached her nostrils as she
came out of the wicket-gate, was positive manna to her lungs. She
stood for awhile quite still, drinking in the balmy spring air, almost
dizzy with the sensation of purity and of freedom which came to her
from over the vast stretch of open ground occupied by the Arsenal. For
a minute or two she stood there, then walked deliberately in the
direction of the Porte St. Antoine.
She was very tired, for she had come to the Rue de la Planchette on
foot all the way from the small apartment in the St. Germain quarter,
where she lodged with her mother and sister and a young brother; she
had become weary and