They got near the dismal scene, and obtained entrance into a wagon already crowded with eager spectators.
And now they heard at a distance the harsh and lumbering roll of the tumbril that bore the victims, and the tramp of the horses which guarded the procession of death.

The boy's whole attention was absorbed in expectation of the spectacle, and his ear was perhaps less accustomed to French, though born and reared in France, than to the language of his mother's lips,--and she was English; thus he did not hear or heed certain observations of the bystanders, which made his father's pale cheek grow paler.
"What is the batch to-day ?" quoth a butcher in the wagon.

"Scarce worth the baking,--only two; but one, they say, is an aristocrat,--a ci-devant marquis," answered a carpenter.

"Ah, a marquis! Bon! And the other ?" "Only a dancer, but a pretty one, it is true; I could pity her, but she is English." And as he pronounced the last word, with a tone of inexpressible contempt, the butcher spat, as if in nausea.
"Mort diable! a spy of Pitt's, no doubt.

What did they discover ?" A man, better dressed than the rest, turned round with a smile, and answered: "Nothing worse than a lover, I believe; but that lover was a proscrit.