“Good day, citizen.”

This mode of address was now prescribed by decree. It had

been established voluntarily some time ago, among the more

thorough patriots; but, was now law for everybody.

“Walking here again, citizeness?”

“You see me, citizen!”

The wood-sawyer, who was a little man with a redundancy of

gesture (he had once been a mender of roads), cast a glance at the

prison, pointed at the prison, and putting his ten fingers before his

face to represent bars, peeped through them jocosely.

“But it’s not my business,” said he. And went on sawing his

wood.

Next day he was looking out for her, and accosted her the

moment she appeared.

“What! Walking here again, citizeness?”

“Yes, citizen.”

“Ah! A child too! Your mother, is it not, my little citizeness?”

“Do I say yes, mamma?” whispered little Lucie, drawing close

to her.

“Yes, dearest.”

“Yes, citizen.”

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“Ah, But it’s not my business. My work is my business. See my

saw! I call it my Little Guillotine. La, la, la; La, la, la! And off his

head comes!”

The billet fell as he spoke, and he threw it into a basket.

“I call myself the Samson of the firewood guillotine. See here

again! Loo, loo, loo; Loo, loo, loo! And off her head comes! Now, a

child. Tickle, tickle; Pickle, pickle! And off its head comes. All the

family!”

Lucie shuddered as he threw two more billets into his basket,

but it was impossible to be there while the wood-sawyer was at

work, and not be in his sight. Thenceforth, to secure his good will,

she always spoke to him first, and often gave him drink-money,

which he readily received.

He was an inquisitive fellow, and sometimes when she had

quite forgotten him in gazing at the prison roof and grates, and in

lifting her heart up to her husband, she would come to herself to

find him looking at her, with his knee on his bench and his saw

stopped in its work. “But it’s not my business!” he would generally

say at those times, and would briskly fall to his sawing again.

In all weathers, in the snow and frost of winter, in the bitter

winds of spring, in the hot sunshine of summer, in the rains of

autumn, and again in the snow and frost of winter, Lucie passed

two hours of every day at this place; and every day on leaving it,

she kissed the prison wall. Her husband saw her (so she learned

from her father) it might be once in five or six times: it might be

twice or thrice running: it might be, not for a week or a fortnight

together. It was enough that he could and did see her when the

chances served, and on that possibility she would have waited out