Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team
It was not, Heaven help us all! a very uncommon occurrence these days: awoman almost unsexed by misery, starvation, and the abnormal excitementengendered by daily spectacles of revenge and of cruelty. They were tobe met with every day, round every street corner, these harridans, moreterrible far than were the men.
This one was still comparatively young, thirty at most; would have beengood-looking too, for the features were really delicate, the nosechiselled, the brow straight, the chin round and small. But the mouth!Heavens, what a mouth! Hard and cruel and thin-lipped; and those eyes!sunken and rimmed with purple; eyes that told tales of sorrow and, yes!of degradation. The crowd stood round her, sullen and apathetic; poor,miserable wretches like herself, staring at her antics with lack-lustreeyes and an ever-recurrent contemptuous shrug of the shoulders.
The woman was dancing, contorting her body in the small circle of lightformed by a flickering lanthorn which was hung across the street fromhouse to house, striking the muddy pavement with her shoeless feet, allto the sound of a be-ribboned tambourine which she struck now and againwith her small, grimy hand. From time to time she paused, held out thetambourine at arm's length, and went the round of the spectators, askingfor alms. But at her approach the crowd at once seemed to disintegrate,to melt into the humid evening air; it was but rarely that a greasytoken fell into the outstretched tambourine. Then as the woman startedagain to dance the crowd gradually reassembled, and stood, hands inpockets, lips still sullen and contemptuous, but eyes watchful of thespectacle. There were such few spectacles these days, other than themonotonous processions of tumbrils with their load of aristocrats forthe guillotine!
So the crowd watched, and the woman danced. The lanthorn overhead threwa weird light on red caps and tricolour cockades, on the sullen faces ofthe men and the shoulders of the women, on the dancer's weird antics andher flying, tattered skirts. She was obviously tired, as a poor,performing cur might be, or a bear prodded along to uncongenialbuffoonery. Every time that she paused and solicited alms with hertambourine the crowd dispersed, and some of them laughed because sheinsisted.
"Voyons," she said with a weird attempt at gaiety, "a couple of sous forthe entertainment, citizen! You have stood here half an hour. You can'thave it all for nothing, what?"
The man—young, square-shouldered, thick-lipped, with the look of abully about his well-clad person—retorted with a coarse insult, whichthe woman resented. There were high words; the crowd for the most partrang