In the Name of the Sacred Tree

In the month of August of the year 1792 the Rue Maugout was a distorted cleft in the gray mass of the Faubourg St. Antoine, apart from the ceaseless cry of life of the thoroughfare, but animated by a sprinkling of shops and taverns. No. 38, like its neighbors, was a twisted, settled mass of stone and timber that had somehow held together from the time of Henry II. The entrance was low, pinched, and dank. On one side a twisted staircase zig-zagged into the gloom.

On the other a squat door with a grating in the center, like a blind eye, led into the cellar which la Mère Corniche, the concierge, let out at two sous a night to travelers in search of an economical resting-place. Beyond this rat-hole a murky glass served as a peep-hole, whence her flattened nose and little eyes could dimly be distinguished at all hours of the day. This tenebrous entrance, after plunging onward some forty feet, fell against a wall of gray light, where the visitor, making an abrupt angle, passed into the purer air of a narrow court. Opposite, the passage took up its interrupted way to a farther court, more spacious, where a dirt-colored maple offered a ragged shelter and a few parched vines gripped the yellow walls. The tiled roofs were shrunk, the ridges warped, the walls cracking and bulging about the distorted windows. Along the roofs the dust and dirt had gradually accumulated and given birth to a few blades of gray-green plants. Nature had slipped in and assimilated the work of man, until the building, yielding to the weight of time and the elements, appeared as a hollow sunk in fantastic cliffs, where, from narrow, misshapen slits, the dwellers peered forth. About the maple swarmed a troop of children, grimy, bare, and voluble. In the branches and in the ivy a horde of sparrows shrilled and fought, keeping warily out of reach of the lank cats that slunk in ambush.

In front of No. 38, each morning, prompt as the sun, which she often anticipated, la Mère Corniche appeared with her broom. She was one of those strange old women in whom the appearances of youth and age are incongruously blended. Seen from behind, her short, erect stature (she was an equal four feet), her skirt stopping half-way below the knees to reveal a pair of man's boots, gave the effect of a child of twelve. When she turned, the shock of the empty gums, the skin hanging in pockets on the cheeks, the eyes showing from their pouches like cold lanterns, caused her to seem like a being who had never known youth.

She had thrown open the doors on this August morning and was conducting a resolute campaign with her broom when she perceived a young man, who even at that early hour, from the evidence of dust, had just completed an arduous journey. A bulging handkerchief swinging from a staff across his shoulder evidently contained all his baggage, and proclaimed the definite purpose of the immigrant. The concierge regarded him with some curiosity. He was too old to be a truant scholar, and too much at ease to be of the far provinces. Besides, his dress showed familiarity with the city modes. He seemed rather the young adventurer running to Paris in the first flush of that enthusiasm and attraction which the Revolution in its influx had awakened.

The dress itself proclaimed, not without a touch of humor, the preparation of the zealous devotee approaching the Mecca of his ambitions. His cocked hat, of a largeness which suggested another owner, was new and worn jauntily, with the gay assurance of youth in its destiny. A brilliant red neck-cloth was arranged with the abandon of pardonable vanity. A clear blue redingote, a cloth-of-gold vest, and a pair of drab knickerbockers completed a costume that had drawn many a smile. For while the coat was so long that the sleeves hid the wrist, the vest was bursting its buttons, and though the knickerbockers pinched, the hat continued to wobble in dumb accusation; so that two generations at least must have contributed to the wardrobe of the young buccaneer.

At the moment the concierge discovered the youthful adventurer, he was engrossed in the task of slapping the dust from his garments, while his eyes, wandering along the streets, were searching to some purpose.

Curiosity being stronger than need, it was la Mère Corniche who put the first question.

"Well, citoyen, you seek some one in this street?"

"The answer should be apparent," the young fellow answered frankly. "I seek a lodging. Have you a room to let?"

"H'm!" La Mère Corniche eyed him unfavorably. "Maybe I have, and maybe I haven't; I take no aristocrats."

The young man, seeing that his clothes were in disfavor, began to laugh.

"In as far, citoyenne," he said, with a sweep of his hand, "as it concerns these, I plead guilty: my clothes are aristocrats. But hear me," as his listener began to scowl. "They were; but aristocrats being traitors, I confiscated them; and," he added slyly, "I come to deliver them to the State."

"And to denounce the traitors, citoyen," the concierge exclaimed fiercely, "even were they your father and mother."

"Even that-if I had a family," he added cautiously. "And now, citoyenne, what can you do for me?"

With this direct question, the fanatic light in her face died away. The little woman withdrew a step and ran her eyes over the prospective tenant. She made him repeat the question, and finally said, with a sigh, as though regretting the price she had fixed in her mind, "How long?"

"A year-two years-indefinitely."

"There are two rooms and a parlor on the second," she began tentatively.

"That suits me."

"The price will be for you-" la Mère Corniche hastened to increase the sum, "thirty francs a month."

"Good."

"Payable in advance."

The young fellow shrugged his shoulders, and with a comical grin turned his pockets inside out.

"What!" la Mère Corniche shrieked in her astonishment. "You swindler! You have taken an apartment at thirty francs a month without a sou in your pocket."

"At present."

"Get off, you, who'd rob a poor old woman."

"We'll renounce the apartment, then," he cried, with a laugh. "One room, citoyenne; give me one room if you are a patriot."

"Patriot-robber! Be off or I'll denounce you!"

The young fellow, seeing his case hopeless, prepared to depart.

"Good-by, then, mother," he said. "And thanks for your patriotic reception. Only direct me to the house of Marat and I'm done with you."

"What have you to do with the Citoyen Marat?" cried the old woman, startled into speech at that name.