But the sound was too common in revolutionary Paris to arrest attention, and he wrote on, heeding it as little as he did the gruff voice of a pastry-cook crying his wares, the shriller call of a milkman, or the occasional rumblings of passing vehicles.

But of a sudden one of those rumblings ceased abruptly at his door.

He heard the rattle of hoofs and the grind of the wheel against the pavement, and looking up, he glanced across at the ormolu timepiece on his overmantel.
It was not yet four o'clock.
Wondering whether the visitor might be for him or for the tenant of the floor above, he sat listening until his door opened and his official--the euphemism of "servant" in the revolutionary lexicon--came to announce that a woman was below, asking to see him.
Now for all that he believed himself to have become above emotions where Mademoiselle de Bellecour was concerned, he felt his pulses quicken at the very thought that this might be she at last.
"What manner of woman, Brutus ?" he asked.
"A pretty woman, Citizen," answered Brutus, with a grin.

"It is the Citoyenne Deshaix." La Boulaye made an impatient gesture.
"Fool, why did you not say so," he cried sharply.
"Fool, you did not ask me," answered the servant, with that touching, fraternal frankness adopted by all true patriots.

He was a thin, under-sized man of perhaps thirty years of age, and dressed in black, with a decency--under La Boulaye's suasion--that was rather at variance with his extreme democracy.