"I made friends with Madame Guillotine's lover," she said with
a coarse laugh, "he cut these off for me from the heads as they rolled
down. He has promised me some more to-morrow, but I don't know if I
shall be at my usual place."
"Ah! how is that, la mere?" asked Bibot, who, hardened soldier that
he was, could not help shuddering at the awful loathsomeness of this
semblance of a woman, with her ghastly trophy on the handle of her whip.
"My grandson has got the small-pox," she said with a jerk of
her thumb towards the inside of her cart, "some say it's the plague!
If it is, I sha'n't be allowed to come into Paris to-morrow."
At the first mention of the word small-pox, Bibot had stepped
hastily backwards, and when the old hag spoke of the plague,
he retreated from her as fast as he could.
"Curse you!" he muttered, whilst the whole crowd hastily
avoided the cart, leaving it standing all alone in the midst of the
place.
The old hag laughed.
"Curse you, citoyen, for being a coward," she said. "Bah!
what a man to be afraid of sickness."
"MORBLEU! the plague!"
Everyone was awe-struck and silent, filled with horror for the
loathsome malady, the one thing which still had the power to arouse
terror and disgust in these savage, brutalised creatures.
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