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“And so love of the Nation alone

Smothers in you the voice of blood.

One man prays, the other moans:

Duty calls just the same.…

“Tison, old boy, if you think of a word that rhymes with ‘blood,’ let me know. Damned if I can think of one for the moment.”

“And you, citizen sergeant, when my daughter comes to see her poor mother who’s missing her like mad, you’ll let her through, won’t you?”

“The order is in order,” quipped the sergeant, whom the reader will already have recognized, no doubt, as our friend Lorin. “So I have nothing to say. When your daughter comes, your daughter will go through.”

“Thank you, brave Thermopyle, thank you,” said Tison. And off he went to make his report to the Commune, muttering, “Ah! My poor wife, won’t she be happy!”

“You know, Sergeant,” said one of the National Guards, watching Tison disappear and hearing him muttering as he did so, “you know it makes you tremble inside, that sort of thing!”

“What sort of thing, citizen Devaux?” asked Lorin.

“What do you think?” said the compassionate National Guard. “Seeing that man, with his hard face, that man with his heart of steel, that merciless guardian of the Queen, go off with a tear in his eye, half out of joy and half out of sorrow, thinking that his wife will see her daughter and he won’t! Doesn’t do to think about it too much, Sergeant, because, truth to tell, it makes you sad.…”

“No doubt, which is why he himself doesn’t think about it, this man who is going off with a tear in his eye, as you say.”

“And what should he think about, then?”

“Well, that it’s also three months since the woman he brutalizes without pity has seen her child. Does he ever think of her sorrow? He thinks only of his own. That’s all. It’s true the woman was once the Queen,” the sergeant went on in the same ironic tone, whose meaning would have been difficult to interpret, “and one isn’t forced to have the same regard for a queen as for the wife of the odd-jobs man.”

“Say what you like, it’s all still pretty sad,” said Devaux.

“Sad, but necessary,” said Lorin. “So the best thing, as you say, is not to think about it.…”

And Lorin began to hum:

“Yesterday Nicette

Walked alone-ette

In the deep

Dark woods.”

Lorin had only gotten that far in his bucolic ditty when, all of a sudden, a great clamor was heard coming from the left side of the post. It was composed of swearing, threats, and sobs.

“What the hell’s that?” asked Devaux.

“Sounds like a child’s voice,” Lorin replied, listening intently.

“Right,” said the National Guard. “Some poor kid having the daylights thrashed out of him. Honestly, they should only send guards here who don’t have children.”

“Are you going to sing now?” came a raucous, drunken voice, which then began to sing, as though setting an example:

Madame Veto1 promised

To cut the throats of all Paris.…

“No,” said the child. “I will not sing.”

“Are you going to sing?” And the voice began again: “Madame Veto promised …”

“No,” wailed the child. “No, no, no.”

“Oh! You little bastard!” cried the raucous voice.

And the noise of a whistling strap rent the air. The child uttered a cry of pain.

“Good grief!” said Lorin. “It’s that odious Simon thrashing little Capet.”

Some of the National Guards merely shrugged their shoulders; two or three tried to smile. Devaux got up and moved away.

“As I was saying,” he muttered, “they should never send us fathers here.”

Suddenly a low door opened and the royal infant, chased by his guardian’s whip, took several steps into the courtyard in a bid to get away. But something heavy crashed onto the cobblestones behind him and struck his leg.

“Ahhh!” the child shrieked as he stumbled and fell on his knees.

“Bring me my cobbler’s last, you little monster, or I’ll …”

The child picked himself up and shook his head in refusal.

“Ah! It’s like that, is it?” cried the same voice. “Just you wait, just you wait, I’ll show you.…”

And with that Simon the cobbler came out of his lodge like a wild beast out of its lair.

“Hold it right there!” said