Marie Josephine thought of all that Dian had said, a little later, as she sat on a secluded bench in the great entrance hall of Great-aunt Hortense's house. All about her were emblems of the revolution. She would have laughed out loud at the thought of Great-aunt Hortense's horror if she had not been too excited and tremulous to laugh at anything. A tri-color banner was draped over the entrance to the grand salon. At the carved oak table in the center of the hall sat three men wearing red caps, and all down the dusky corridors other red caps bobbed up and down as citizens walked to and fro debating and wrangling. From an anteroom, a cold, gilded apartment, came a jangle of voices. A meeting of one of the sections was taking place there. All through the city were clubs or sections, each composed of men with different ideas from the others, no two ever agreeing on anything except to advocate bloodshed and to show no mercy.
Marie had put her tray with its jug of licorice water and its jangling cups on the floor beside her. Vivi had left it for her at the stand of a nut seller near the Marquise du Ganne's house. All sorts of booths and stands had sprung up overnight in the once fashionable parts of Paris.
Dian would be waiting for Madame Saint Frère, in her disguise as Henri's sister, in the Place de la Bastille. Henri had already been gone some hours with his regiment. Marie Josephine was to seize her opportunity to slide through the shadowy halls, up the back stairs to the room at the end of the hall. Her heart beat so fast that it seemed as though some one must hear it. She saw that it was not going to be an easy thing to slip away, and she made up her mind that she must not, under any circumstance, let any chance go by. Some men came up to her and demanded a drink. She stooped over for her tray and stood up.
She did not feel as though it were herself at all who poured the sickish-looking, grey mixture into the tin cups and received in exchange coins which she put in the pocket of her torn skirt. She was careful not to speak any more than she could help, for fear that her voice would betray her. She could look like Vivi, and instinct seemed to tell her how to be like her, but she was afraid of her voice.