Sergeant Bibot was a favorite of the crowd. He had a macabre sense of theatre, which he applied with great panache to his duties at the city gate. Keenly observant and well familiar with the faces of many aristocrats, Bibot was proud of the fact that he had personally sent over fifty Royalists to the guillotine. He basked in the attention of the onlookers, playing to his audience as he conducted his inspections prior to passing people through the gate. He was a showman with a sadistic sense of humor. If he spotted a disguised aristo, he would draw the process out, teasing his victim, allowing him to think that he would be passed through before dashing all his hopes in a flamboyant unmasking. The crowd loved every bit of it. Sometimes, if he was in an especially playful mood, Sergeant Bibot would actually pass an aristo through the gate, giving him a short head start before sending some of his men to catch him and bring him back, dragged kicking and screaming through the city gate and to his doom. On such occasions, the crowd would always cheer him and he could climb up on his ever-present empty cask of wine, remove his hat, and take a bow.
Each night, after the gates were closed, Sergeant Bibot would remain to smoke his clay pipe and drink the wine that his admirers brought him as he regaled them with anecdotes concerning his illustrious career. He was particularly fond of telling them the story of the day that Citizen Danton had personally come to watch him discharge his duties. He had unmasked six ci-devant aristocrats that day and the Minister of Justice had personally commended him for the zeal with which he served the people.
Corderro found himself propelled along by the crowd until he was standing by the West Barricade, where a sizable throng had already gathered to watch Sergeant Bibot put on his show. A large and heavy man with a florid face and bristling moustaches, Bibot was squeezed into his ill-fitting uniform like ten pounds of flour packed into a five-pound sack. A long line of carts and pedestrians was already cued up, held back by Bibot’s men until such time as the audience was built up to a suitable size. There was a great feeling of camaraderie and anticipation in the air as Sergeant Bibot strutted to his post taking time to pause so that he could exchange pleasantries with some of his regular observers, be slapped upon the back and, he hoped, admired by the young women m the crowd, whom he greeted with exaggerated winks and blown kisses. Corderro thought that he was going to be sick. He felt all wound up inside and his skin was clammy. He looked down at his hands and saw that they were shaking.
Sergeant Bibot began to have the people brought up, one at a time, so that he could examine them and pass them through. The people in the crowd called out encouragement and suggestions.
“There, that one! That beard looks false! Give it a good, hard yank, Sergeant Bibot!”
“Why don’t you come here and yank it, you miserable son of a Royalist bootlicker!” shouted the owner of the beard, a burly farmer.
“I’ll do more than yank your phony beard, you bastard!” yelled the first man as he ran forward and tried to climb up on the cart, only to be pulled away at the last minute by Bibot’s soldiers.
“Peace, Citizen!” cried Sergeant Bibot, melodramatically holding up his hand. “All will be settled momentarily!” Turning to the farmer, Sergeant Bibot smiled pleasantly, wished him a good day and asked him to excuse the zeal of the good citizen who was only anxious that ci-devant aristocrats be brought to justice. “Purely as a matter of form,” said Sergeant Bibot, “would you consent to showing me your hands?”
The farmer grunted and held out his hands, turning them from palms down to palms up.
“ Merci,” said Sergeant Bibot. “These are the roughened, calloused hands of a working man,” he said to the crowd. “No aristo would have hands such as these. And the beard appears to be quite genuine,” he added for good measure. “A fine, luxuriant growth it is, to boot!”
He clapped the grinning farmer on the back and passed him through as the crowd applauded. The process continued as Bibot intently examined everyone who sought egress through the gate, making a show of it and striving to entertain those he examined as well as the people in the crowd.
A large and heavy wagon filled with wine casks came up next and Bibot made a great show of opening each cask and checking to see if anyone was concealed inside. His examination revealed no concealed aristocrats and Bibot passed the wagon through. Several others he allowed to pass with only the most cursory inspection, as the drivers were known to him having regularly passed through his gate twice a day on their way to and from the city. An undercurrent of hostility swept through the crowd as an elegant coach drew up and stopped at Sergeant Bibot’s post.
Surely, no aristocrat would be so great a fool as to attempt leaving Paris so conspicuously. Several of the people in the crowd, close enough to see inside the coach, recognized one of its occupants and word soon spread throughout the mob that this was no person worthy of derision, but the very beautiful and famous Marguerite St. Just, that celebrated actress of the Comedie Francaise, whose brother, Armand St. Just, was a leading figure of the Revolution and a member of the Committee of Public Safety.
Citoyenne St. Just had recently caused a bit of a scandal when she married that wealthy English baronet, Sir Percy Blakeney, thus becoming Lady Blakeney, but no one could accuse her of being an aristocrat, much less a Royalist. The popular actress was well known as an ardent Republican and a believer in equality of birth. “Inequality of fortune,” she was fond of saying, “is merely an untoward accident. The only inequality I recognize and will admit to is inequality of talent.” As a result of this belief, her charming salon in the Rue Richelieu had been reserved for originality and intellect, for wit and brilliance. She had entertained members of the theatrical profession, well-known writers and famous philosophes, and the occasional foreign dignitary, which was how she had met Sir Percy Blakeney.
It came as quite a shock to those within her circle when she married Blakeney. They all thought that he was quite beneath her, intellectually speaking. A prominent figure in fashionable European society, he was the son of the late Sir Algernon Blakeney, whose wife had succumbed to imbecility. The elder Blakeney took his stricken wife abroad and there his son was raised and educated. When Algernon Blakeney died, shortly following the death of his wife, Percy inherited a considerable fortune, which allowed him to travel abroad extensively before returning to his native England. He had cultivated his tastes for fashion and the finer, more expensive things in life. A pleasant fellow with a sophomoric sense of humor, Blakeney was a fashion plate and a bon vivant, but he made no pretense to being an intellectual. It would have been ludicrous, since he was hopelessly dull and generally thought to be a fool. He was totally enraptured with his wife and seemed perfectly content with remaining in the background and basking in her glow. Marguerite’s friends were all at a loss to understand why she had married him, unless his slavish devotion pleased her. However, though Marguerite St. Just might have been found wanting in her abilities to select a fitting husband, she could not be faulted for her politics. While the sight of Blakeney at the window of the coach provoked some unfavorable comments and some jeers, the appearance of his wife beside him was greeted with a scattering of applause.