prevent your loyal friendship for these royal ones, only you must keep it very secret. Heaven help us should it be discovered! I pray God that the royalty may be left in peace, or at least be allowed to depart from the country unharmed when the time comes. We may not desire their sway, but we should not menace their personal safety."

"Well, at least," answered Jean, "it will do no harm for me to keep posted as to what the popular intention toward them may be. And for this, I could learn best what I wish at one of the political clubs,—the Cordeliers or the Jacobins. But none except the initiated are allowed to enter. However, I'm going to watch my chance and try!" True to this resolve, he informed Mère Clouet one evening:

"I shall go to the Rue St. Honoré to-night and linger near the Jacobin Club. We shall see what we shall see!" And he was off before she could even protest at the lateness of the hour.

The way from the Rue de Lille to the Rue St. Honoré was not long, but it was varied by sights and sounds only to be witnessed in Paris during one of her revolutions. More than once Jean caught the infection from some shouting group, and snatching outstretched hands, joined in the wild dance of the Carmagnole. Then again he would pause before a gesticulating orator madly haranguing his audience from a bench or improvised platform. The air was filled with shouts of "Vive la Nation!" "Vive Danton!" "A bas le Roi!" Jean drank it all in, his boyish bosom filled with pride at the thought of this strange, new liberty. Yet at the cry, "Down with the King!" his heart would grow sick with the menace that it carried for his benefactors.

At last he reached the Rue St. Honoré and stood before the great stone building, so long the peaceful retreat of the Dominican Monks, now given over to the strongest political society of the day,—the Jacobin Club. Men were passing through its well-guarded doorway, each separately interviewed for a moment by a crabbed, ill-disposed doorkeeper. Each as he passed this watchful sentinel, exhibited a card or murmured some magic password. Jean possessed neither a card nor the knowledge of the proper watchword, but he was not to be daunted by either lack. Boldly he marched up the steps, and would have walked straight into the hall, had not the doorkeeper seized him wrathfully by the collar. No one else was passing in at that moment.

"Impudent! What is your business here?" he shouted.

"I am a good citizen who loves liberty, and I demand to be admitted to this meeting!" replied Jean, hopefully.

"Well, of all outrages!" gasped the astounded doorkeeper. "Begone, you young scamp! The Nation has little use for such as you!" He released the boy's collar, and pursued him down the steps with a thick cane he had snatched up. Jean, deeming flight his wisest course, took to his heels and was speedily beyond the premises. But so rapid was his retreat that before he was aware of it, he had butted plumply into someone who was coming in the opposite direction, and the concussion knocked the stranger flat on his back!

"Oh, I beg your pardon!" entreated Jean, breathlessly, assisting his victim to rise.

"You would make a splendid catapult on a field of artillery!" answered the stranger who proved to be a short and exceedingly thin young man. He was wrapped in an old grey great-coat, though the weather was May, and warm. A round, shabby black hat was pulled over his eyes. His hair was arranged in a slovenly manner, and hung about his ears. In the lamplight his face was sallow, with high cheek-bones and a very prominent chin. But he had, so Jean thought, the most extraordinary eyes in the world. They were deepset, grey and piercing, and fixed one with a look as sharp as a sword. Jean felt that, had the man's lips commanded him to throw himself into the fire, those eyes would have compelled him to obey!

"Perhaps you will explain the cause for this unwarrantable attack on a peaceful citizen!" said the stranger as he brushed his coat.

"Indeed I meant no harm, nor even knew what I was about, since I was occupied in being forcibly put out of the Jacobin Club!" laughed the boy.

"And why should you want to be in the Jacobin Club!" demanded the stranger. Jean was on his guard at once.

"All good citizens must wish to be present at meetings so important," he replied airily. "I merely had a curiosity to know what was going on!" The young man fixed him with his brilliant eyes, and Jean felt the blood mount guiltily to his cheeks.

"There's something deeper than that!" he remarked coolly. "I can see it! What are your real reasons? Are you a royalist?"

"Indeed, I'm not!" asserted Jean vehemently.

"Well, it doesn't make a sou's difference to me!" his new companion declared. "I'm neither a royalist, nor am I a republican, nor, for that matter, even a Frenchman. But I happen to have a ticket for the Jacobins myself to-night, and since you're so interested, and have even graciously condescended to knock me down, I'll take you in with me!" Here was a stroke of luck indeed! Jean was instant in expressing his delight, and the two climbed together the steps down which he had so lately fled in ignominy. The gatekeeper scolded and muttered, but there was nothing to do but let him pass, since a man with a card vouched for him.

The boy never forgot that night. He reached home and the Rue de Lille long after midnight, encountering Mère Clouet at the door. She had been very uneasy, and was inclined to be somewhat wrathful at the lateness of the hour. But Jean was too excited to care.

"Don't scold, Mère Clouet!" he entreated. "I've gotten into the Jacobin Club at last!"

"You young rascal!" she exclaimed incredulously, "are you telling the truth?"

"Every bit!" he answered. "Give me a bite to eat, good mother, and I'll tell you all about it."

"Always hungry!" she muttered, but nevertheless she gave him a generous slice of bread and jam. Between great mouthfuls, he told the story of his forcible encounter with the thin young man and its sequel,—his admission to the club.

"Ah, but it was a wonderful night for me!" he continued. "Such speeches did I hear from Citizen Marat who is its president, and from one, Robespierre, whose voice, they say, has greater weight than any, and also from Citizen Danton, the president of the Cordeliers, who came this evening with many more of his own club! Much of what they said was hard for me to understand, but one thing I learned that it is well to know.

"The citizens of the Faubourg St. Antoine are planning a fête for the twentieth of June (that's the day after to-morrow), in which they will form a procession and march to the palace to present a petition to the King. That, of course, is all very well, but let me tell you what I heard whispered about by Santerre, the brewer, who is to lead them. Each sans-culotte is to carry a pike, and he thinks that when the King sees forty thousand pikes assembled about his door that he will become alarmed. Then will be the time to lead a general insurrection and demand that he resign his throne and crown or else force him to it. Is it not outrageous thus to take advantage of him unfairly?" Mère Clouet was alarmed and indignant.

"It is indeed!" she declared. "I believe the King means to do the right thing by his people, but the country is becoming mob-ruled. It is only the scum of Paris, of which that Santerre is a good sample, who would sanction such plans! But sadly do I fear that they will do the royal family