The Reaping by Rafael Sabatini

Angèle made her way briskly through the by-streets of the Section -- the Section called of Mutius Scaevola by those noisome patriots who dreamt of implanting the departed glories of old Rome on the bloody dunghill they had made of Paris.

She came out into the more spacious Rue Vaugirard, and picked her way daintily through the unscavengered filth of it past the old Seminary of St. Louis and the Luxembourg. The ancient and stately palace roared and clanged and clattered now as if the forge of old Vulcan himself were at work within it. To this she paid little heed, accustomed to it as she was, since she lived day and night within the radius of its unceasing and deafening activity. It happened, however, that the wind was blowing from the south, so that the fumes of those four-and-fifty furnaces wherein cannon was being forged for the army of the Republic swept, acrid and stifling, across the street. They caught her in the throat and set her coughing and quickening her steps. Thus she drew the attention and excited the mockery of a group of forgerons who lounged about the gate-posts. They were brawny, shaggy men, unspeakably evil and savage of appearance, their bare and hairy arms and chests black with the grime of the forges, their garments foul, their matted heads crowned with the red bonnet of liberty. One who pulled at a pipe, seeing her fastidious haste, deliberately blew a cloud of tobacco smoke in her face to increase her discomfort. His apish fellows chuckled with malicious mirth. Sudden terror of them seemed to turn her feet to lead, and it was only by an effort of will that she conquered the nightmare sensation and held at unslackened pace upon her way.