Title: The Trampling of the Lilies
Author: Sabatini, Rafael
Language: English
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THE TRAMPLING OF THE LILIES

By Rafael Sabatini



CONTENTS



     PART I

     THE OLD RULE


     CHAPTER

         I.  MONSIEUR THE SECRETARY

        II.  LORDS OF LIFE AND DEATH

       III.  THE WORD OF BELLECOUR

        IV.  THE DISCIPLES OF ROUSSEAU



     PART II

     THE NEW RULE


         V.  THE SHEEP TURNED WOLVES

        VI.  THE CITIZEN COMMISSIONER

       VII.  LA BOULAYE DISCHARGES A DEBT

      VIII.  THE INVALIDS AT BOISVERT

        IX.  THE CAPTIVES

         X.  THE BAISER LAMOURETTE

        XI.  THE ESCAPE

       XII.  THE AWAKENING

      XIII.  THE ROAD TO LIEGE

       XIV.  THE COURIER

        XV.  LA BOULAYE BAITS HIS HOOK



     PART III

     THE EVERLASTING RULE


       XVI.  CECILE DESHAIX

      XVII.  LA BOULAYE’S PROMISE

     XVIII.  THE INCORRUPTIBLE

       XIX.  THE THEFT

        XX.  THE GRATITUDE OF OMBREVAL

       XXI.  THE ARREST

      XXII.  THE TRIBUNAL

     XXIII.  THE CONCIERGERIE



PART I. THE OLD RULE

     These are they
     Who ride on the court gale, control its tides;

     ***

     Whose frown abases and whose smile exalts.
     They shine like any rainbow--and, perchance,
     Their colours are as transient.

        Old Play



CHAPTER I. MONSIEUR THE SECRETARY


It was spring at Bellecour--the spring of 1789, a short three months
before the fall of the Bastille came to give the nobles pause, and
make them realise that these new philosophies, which so long they have
derided, were by no means the idle vapours they had deemed them.

By the brook, plashing its glittering course through the park of
Bellecour, wandered La Boulaye, his long, lean, figure clad with a
sombreness that was out of harmony in that sunlit, vernal landscape.
But the sad-hued coat belied that morning a heart that sang within his
breast as joyously as any linnet of the woods through which he strayed.
That he was garbed in black was but the outward indication of his
clerkly office, for he was secretary to the most noble the Marquis de
Fresnoy de Bellecour, and so clothed in the livery of the ink by which
he lived. His face was pale and lean and thoughtful, but within his
great, intelligent eyes there shone a light of new-born happiness. Under
his arm he carried a volume of the new philosophies which Rousseau had
lately given to the world, and which was contributing so vastly to the
mighty change that was impending. But within his soul there dwelt
in that hour no such musty subject as the metaphysical dreams of old
Rousseau. His mood inclined little to the “Discourses upon the Origin of
Inequality” which his elbow hugged to his side. Rather was it a mood of
song and joy and things of light, and his mind was running on a string
of rhymes which mentally he offered up to his divinity. A high-born
lady was she, daughter to his lordly employer, the most noble Marquis
of Bellecour. And he a secretary, a clerk! Aye, but a clerk with a great
soul, a secretary with a great belief in the things to come, which in
that musty tome beneath his arm were dimly prophesied.

And as he roamed beside the brook, his feet treading the elastic,
velvety turf, and crushing heedlessly late primrose and stray violet,
his blood quickened by the soft spring breeze, fragrant with hawthorn
and the smell of the moist brown earth, La Boulaye’s happiness gathered
strength from the joy that on that day of spring seemed to invest all
Nature. An old-world song stole from his firm lips-at first timidly,
like a thing abashed in new surroundings, then in bolder tones that
echoed faintly through the trees

  “Si le roi m’avait donne
   Paris, sa grande ville,
   Et qui’il me fallut quitter
   L’amour de ma mie,
   Je dirais au roi Louis
   Reprenez votre Paris.
   J’aime mieux ma mie, O gai!
   J’aime mieux ma mie!”

How mercurial a thing is a lover’s heart! Here was one whose habits were
of solemnity and gloomy thought turned, so joyous that he could sing
aloud, alone in the midst of sunny Nature, for no better reason than
that Suzanne de Bellecour had yesternight smiled as--for some two
minutes by the clock--she had stood speaking with him.

“Presumptuous that I am,” said he to the rivulet, to contradict himself
the next moment. “But no; the times are changing. Soon we shall be
equals all, as the good God made us, and--”

He paused, and smiled pensively. And as again the memory of her
yesternight’s kindness rose before him, his smile broadened; it became
a laugh that went ringing down the glade, scaring a noisy thrush into
silence and sending it flying in affright across the scintillant waters
of the brook. Then that hearty laugh broke sharply off, as, behind
him, the sweetest voice in all the world demanded the reason of this
mad-sounding mirth.

La Boulaye’s breath seemed in that instant to forsake him and he grew
paler than Nature and the writer’s desk had fashioned him. Awkwardly he
turned and made her a deep bow.

“Mademoiselle! You--you see that you surprised me!” he faltered, like a
fool. For how should he, whose only comrades had been books, have
learnt to bear himself in the company of a woman, particularly when she
belonged to the ranks of those whom--despite Rousseau and his other
dear philosophers--he had been for years in the habit of accounting his
betters?

“Why, then, I am glad, Monsieur, that I surprised you in so gay a
humour--for, my faith, it is a rare enough thing.”

“True, lady,” said he foolishly, yet politely agreeing with her, “it is
a rare thing.” And he sighed--“Helas!”

At that the laughter leapt from her young lips, and turned him hot and
cold as he stood awkwardly before her.

“I see that we shall have you sad at the thought of how rare is
happiness, you that but a moment back were--or so it seemed--so joyous.
Or is it that my coming has overcast the sky of your good humour?” she
demanded archly.

He blushed like a school-girl, and strenuously protested that it was not
so. In his haste he fell headlong into the sin of hastiness--as was but
natural--and said perhaps too much.

“Your coming, Mademoiselle?” he echoed. “Nay but even had I been sad,
your coming must have dispelled my melancholy as the coming of the sun
dispels the mist upon the mountains.”

“A poet?” She mocked him playfully, with a toss of black curls and a
distracting glance of eyes blue as the heavens above them. “A poet,
Monsieur, and I never suspected it, for all that I held you a great
scholar. My father says you are.”

“Are we not all poets at some season of our lives?” quoth he, for
growing accustomed to her presence--ravished by it, indeed--his courage
was returning fast and urging him beyond the limits of discretion.

“And in what season may this rhyming fancy touch us?” she asked.
“Enlighten me, Monsieur.”

He smiled, responsive to her merry mood, and his courage ever swelling
under the suasion of it, he answered her in a fearless, daring fashion
that was oddly unlike his wont. But then, he was that day a man
transformed.

“It comes, Mademoiselle, upon some spring morning such as this--for is
not spring the mating season, and have not poets sung of it, inspired
and conquered by it? It comes in the April of life, when in our hearts
we bear the first fragrant bud of what shall anon blossom into a
glorious summer bloom red as is Love’s livery and perfumed beyond all
else that God has set on earth for man’s delight and thankfulness.”

The intensity with which he spoke, and the essence of the speech
itself, left her a moment dumb with wonder and with an incomprehensible
consternation, born of some intuition not yet understood.

“And so, Monsieur, the Secretary,” said she at last, a nervous laugh
quivering in her first words, “from all this wondrous verbiage I am to
take it that you love?”

“Aye, that I love, dear lady,” he cried, his eyes so intent upon her
that her glance grew timid and fell before them. And then, a second
later, she could have screamed aloud in apprehension, for the book of
Jean Jacques Rousseau lay tumbled in the grass where he had flung it,
even as he flung himself upon his knees before her. “You may take it
indeed that I love--that I love you, Mademoiselle.”

The audacious words being spoken, his courage oozed away and
anti-climax, followed. He paled and trembled, yet he knelt on until
she should bid him rise, and furtively he watched her face. He saw it
darken; he saw the brows knit; he noted the quickening breath, and in
all these signs he read his doom before she uttered it.

“Monsieur, monsieur,” she answered him, and sad was her tone, “to what
lengths do you urge this springtime folly? Have you forgotten so your
station--yes, and mine--that because I talk with you and laugh with you,
and am kind to you, you must presume to speak to me in this fashion?
What answer shall I make you, Monsieur--for I am not so cruel that I can
answer you as you deserve.”

An odd thing indeed was La Boulaye’s courage. An instant ago he had felt
a very coward, and had quivered, appalled by the audacity of his own
words. Now that she assailed him thus, and taxed him with that same
audacity, the blood of anger rushed to his face--anger of the quality
that has its source in shame. In a second he was on his feet before her,
towering to the full of his lean height. The words came from him in
a hot stream, which for reckless passion by far outvied his erstwhile
amatory address.

“My station?” he cried, throwing wide his arms. “What fault lies in
my station? I am a secretary, a scholar, and so, by academic right, a
gentleman. Nay, Mademoiselle, never laugh; do not mock me yet. In what
do you find me less a man than any of the vapid caperers that fill your
father’s salon? Is not my shape as good? Are not my arms as strong, my
hands as deft, my wits as keen, and my soul as true? Aye,” he pursued
with another wild wave of his long arms, “my attributes have all these
virtues, and yet you scorn me--you scorn me because of my station, so
you say!”

How she had angered him! All the pent-up gall of years against the
supercilia of the class from which she sprang surged in that moment to
his lips. He bethought him now of the thousand humiliations his proud
spirit had suffered at their hands when he noted the disdain with which
they addressed him, speaking to him--because he was compelled to carve
his living with a quill--as though he were less than mire. It was not so
much against her scorn of him that he voiced his bitter grievance, but
against the entire noblesse of France, which denied him the right to
carry a high head because he had not been born of Madame la Duchesse,
Madame la Marquise, or Madame la Comtesse. All the great thoughts of a
wondrous transformation, which had been sown in him by the revolutionary
philosophers he had devoured with such appreciation, welled up now, and
such scraps of that infinity of thought as could find utterance he cast
before the woman who had scorned him for his station. Presumptuous he
had accounted himself--but only until she had found him so. By that the
presumption, it seemed, had been lifted from him, and he held that what
he had said to her of the love he bore her was no more than by virtue of
his manhood he had the right to say.

She drew back before him, and shrank in some measure of fear, for he
looked very fierce. Moreover, he had said things which professed him a
revolutionist, and the revolutionists, whilst being a class which she
had been taught to despise and scorn, dealt, she knew, in a violence
which it might be ill to excite.

“Monsieur,” she faltered, and with her hand she clutched at her
riding-habit of green velvet, as if preparing to depart, “you are not
yourself. I am beyond measure desolated that you should have so spoken
to me. We have been good friends, M. La Boulaye. Let us forget this
scene. Shall we?” Her tones grew seductively conciliatory.

La Boulaye half turned from her, and his smouldering eye fell upon “The
Discourses” lying on the grass. He stooped and picked up the volume.
The act might have seemed symbolical. For a moment he had cast aside
his creed to woo a woman, and now that she had denied him he returned to
Rousseau, and gathered up the tome almost in penitence at his momentary
defection.

“I am quite myself, Mademoiselle,” he answered quietly. His cheeks were
flushed, but beyond that, his excitement seemed to have withered. “It
is you who yesternight, for one brief moment and again to-day--were not
yourself, and to that you owe it that I have spoken to you as I have
done.”

Between these two it would seem as the humour of the one waned, that of
the other waxed. Her glance kindled anew at his last words.

“I?” she echoed. “I was not myself? What are you saying, Monsieur the
Secretary?”

“Last night, and again just now, you were so kind, you--you smiled so
sweetly--”

“Mon Dieu!” she exclaimed, angrily interrupting him. “See what you are
for all your high-sounding vaunts of yourself and your attributes! A
woman may not smile upon you, may not say one kind word to you, but
you must imagine you have made a conquest. Ma foi, you and yours do
not deserve to be treated as anything but vassals. When we show you a
kindness, see how you abuse it. We extend to you our little finger and
you instantly lay claim to the whole arm. Because last night I permitted
myself to exchange a jest with you, because I chance to be kind to you
again to-day, you repay me with insults!”

“Stop!” he cried, rousing himself once more. “That is too much to say,
Mademoiselle. To tell a woman that you love her is never to insult her.
To be loved is never to be slighted. Upon the meanest of His creatures
it is enjoined to love the same God whom the King loves, and there is
no insult to God in professing love for Him. Would you make a woman more
than that?”

“Monsieur, you put questions I have no mind to answer; you suggest
a discussion I have no inclination to pursue. For you and me let it
suffice that I account myself affronted by your words, your tone, and
your manner. You drive me to say these things; by your insistence you
compel me to be harsh. We will end this matter here and now, Monsieur,
and I will ask you to understand that I never wish it reopened, else
shall I be forced to seek protection at the hands of my father or my
brother.”

“You may seek it now, Suzanne,” quoth a voice from the thicket at her
back, a voice which came to startle both of them though in different
ways. Before they had recovered from their surprise the Marquis de
Bellecour stood before them. He was a tall man of some fifty years of
age, but so powerful of frame and so scrupulous in dress that he might
have conveyed an impression of more youth. His face, though handsome
in a high-bred way, was puffed and of an unhealthy yellow. But the eyes
were as keen as the mouth was voluptuous, and in his carefully dressed
black hair there were few strands of grey.

He came slowly forward, and his lowering glance wandered from his
daughter to his secretary in inquiry. At last--

“Well?” he demanded. “What is the matter?”

“It is nothing, Monsieur,” his daughter answered him. “A trifling affair
‘twixt M. la Boulaye and me, with which I will not trouble you.”

“It is not nothing, my lord,” cried La Boulaye, his voice vibrating
oddly. “It is that I love your daughter and that I have told her of it.”
 He was in a very daring mood that morning.

The Marquis glanced at him in dull amazement. Then a flush crept into
his sallow cheeks and mounted to his brow. An inarticulate grunt came
from his thick lips.

“Canaille!” he exclaimed, through set teeth. “Can you have presumed so
far?”

He carried a riding-switch, and he seemed to grasp it now in a manner
peculiarly menacing. But La Boulaye was nothing daunted. Lost he already
accounted himself, and on the strength of the logic that if a man must
hang, a sheep as well as a lamb may be the cause of it, he took what
chances the time afforded him to pile up his debt.

“There is neither insolence nor presumption in what I have done,” he
answered, giving back the Marquis look for look and scowl for scowl.
“You deem it so because I am the secretary to the Marquis de Bellecour
and she is the daughter of that same Marquis. But these are no more than
the fortuitous circumstances in which we chance to find ourselves. That
she is a woman must take rank before the fact that she is your daughter,
and that I am a man must take rank before the fact that I am your
secretary. Not, then, as your secretary speaking to your daughter have
I told this lady that I love her, but as a man speaking to a woman. To
utter that should be--nay, is--the right of every man; to hear it
should be honouring to every woman worthy of the name. In a primitive
condition--”

“A thousand devils!” blazed the Marquis, unable longer to contain
himself. “Am I to have my ears offended by this braying? Miserable scum,
you shall be taught what is due to your betters.”

His whip cracked suddenly, and the lash leapt serpentlike into the air,
to descend and coil itself about La Boulaye’s head and face. A cry broke
from the young man, as much of pain as of surprise, and as the lash was
drawn back, he clapped his hands to his seared face. But again he felt
it, cutting him now across the hand with which he had masked himself.
With a maddened roar he sprang upon his aggressor. In height he was the
equal of the Marquis, but in weight he seemed to be scarce more than
the half of his opponent’s. Yet a nervous strength dwelt unsuspected in
those lean arms and steely wrists.

Mademoiselle stood by looking on, with parted lips and eyes that were
intent and anxious. She saw that figure, spare and lithe as a greyhound,
leap suddenly upon her father, and the next instant the whip was in the
secretary’s hands, and he sprang back from the nobleman, who stood white
and quivering with rage, and perhaps, too, with some dismay.

“That I do not break it across your back, M. le Marquis, said the young
man,” as he snapped the whip on his knee, “you may thank your years.”
 With that he flung the two pieces wide into the sunlit waters of the
brook. “But I will have satisfaction, Monsieur. I will take payment for
this.” And he pointed to the weal that disfigured his face.

“Satisfaction?” roared the Marquis, hoarse in his passion. “Would you
demand satisfaction of me, animal?”

“No,” answered the young man, with a wry smile. “Your years again
protect you. But you have a son, and if by to-morrow it should come
to pass that you have a son no more, you may account yourself, through
this”--and again he pointed to the weal--“his murderer.”

“Do you mean that you would seek to cross swords with the Vicomte?”
 gasped the nobleman, in an unbelief so great that it gained the
ascendency over his anger.

“That is what I mean, Monsieur. In practice he has often done so. He
shall do so for once in actual earnest.”

“Fool!” was the contemptuous answer, more coldly delivered now, for the
Marquis was getting himself in hand. “If you come near Bellecour again,
if you are so much as found within the grounds of the park, I’ll have
you beaten to death by my grooms for your presumption. Keep you the
memory of that promise in mind, Sir Secretary, and let it warn you to
avoid Bellecour, as you would a plague-house. Come, Suzanne,” he said,
turning abruptly to his daughter, “Enough of this delightful morning
have we already wasted on this canaille.”

With that he offered her his wrist, and so, without so much as another
glance at La Boulaye, she took her departure.

The secretary remained where they had left him, pale of face--saving the
fortuitous crimson mark which the whip had cut--and very sick at heart.
The heat of the moment being spent, he had leisure to contemplate his
plight. A scorned lover, a beaten man, a dismissed secretary! He looked
sorrowfully upon his volume of “The Discourses,” and for the first time
a doubt crossed his mind touching the wisdom of old Jean Jacques. Was
there would there ever be any remedy for such a condition of things as
now prevailed?

Already the trees had hidden the Marquis and his daughter from La
Boulaye’s sight. The young revolutionist felt weary and lonely--dear
God, how lonely! neither kith nor kin had he, and of late all the
interest of his life--saving always that absorbed by Jean Jacques--had
lain in watching Suzanne de Bellecour, and in loving her silently and
distantly. Now that little crumb of comfort was to be his no more, he
was to go away from Bellecour, away from the sight of her for all time.
And he loved her, loved her, loved her!

He tossed his arms to Heaven with a great sigh that was a sob almost,
then he passed his hands over his face, and as they came in contact
with the swollen ridge that scored it, love faded from his mind, and
vindictiveness came to fill its room.

“But for this,” he cried aloud. “I shall take payment--aye, as there is
a God!”

Then turning, and with “The Discourses” held tightly to his side, he
moved slowly away, following the course of the gleaming waters.



CHAPTER II. LORDS OF LIFE AND DEATH


One friend did La Boulaye count in the village of Bellecour. This
was old Duhamel, the schoolmaster, an eccentric pedant and a
fellow-worshipper of the immortal Jean Jacques. It was to him that La
Boulaye now repaired intent upon seeking counsel touching a future that
wore that morning a singularly gloomy outlook.

He found Duhamel’s door open, and he stepped across the threshold into
the chief room of the house. But there he paused, and hesitated. The
chamber was crowded with people in holiday attire, and the centre of
attraction was a well-set-up peasant with a happy, sun-tanned face,
whose golden locks were covered by a huge round hat decked with a score
of gaily-coloured ribbons.

At sight of him La Boulaye remembered that it was Charlot’s wedding-day.
Popular amongst the women by virtue of his comeliness, and respected
by the men by virtue of his strength, Charlot Tardivet was a general
favourite of the countryside, and here, in the room of old Duhamel, the
schoolmaster, was half the village gathered to do him honour upon his
wedding morn. It was like Duhamel, who, in fatherliness towards the
villagers, went near out-rivalling M. le Cure, to throw open his house
for the assembling of Charlot’s friends, and La Boulaye was touched by
this fresh sign of kindliness from a man whose good heart he had not
lacked occasion to observe and appreciate. But it came to the secretary
that there was no place for him in this happy assemblage. His advent
would, probably, but serve to cast a gloom upon them, considering the
conditions under which he came, with the signs of violence upon his face
to remind them of the lords of life and death who dwelt at the Chateau
up yonder. And such a reminder must fall upon them as does the reminder
of some overhanging evil clutch suddenly at our hearts in happy moments
of forgetfulness. To let them be happy that day, to leave their feasts
free of a death’s head, La Boulaye would have withdrawn had he not
already been too late. Duhamel had espied him, and the little, wizened
old man came hurrying forward, his horn-rimmed spectacles perched on
the very end of his nose, his keen little eyes beaming with delight and
welcome.

“Ah, Caron, you are very choicely come,” he cried, holding out both
hands to La Boulaye. “You shall embrace our happy Hercules yonder, and
wish him joy of the wedded life he has the audacity to exploit.” Then,
as he espied the crimson ridge across the secretary’s countenance, “Mon
Dieu!” he exclaimed, “what have you done to yourself, Caron?”

“Pish! It is nothing,” answered La Boulaye hurriedly, and would have had
the subject dismissed, but that one of the onlooking peasants swore
by the memory of some long-dead saint that it was the cut of a whip.
Duhamel’s eyes kindled and his parchment-like skin was puckered into a
hundred evil wrinkles.

“Who did it, Caron?” he demanded.

“Since you insist, old master,” answered the secretary, still
endeavouring to make light of it, “learn that is the lord Marquis’s
signature to his order of my dismissal from his service.”

“The dog!” ejaculated the school-master.

“Sh! let it be. Perhaps I braved him overmuch. I will tell you of it
when these good folks have gone. Do not let us cast a gloom over their
happiness, old master. And now to embrace this good Charlot.”

Though inwardly burning with curiosity and boiling with indignation,
Duhamel permitted himself to be guided by La Boulaye, and for the moment
allowed the matter to rest. La Boulaye himself laughingly set aside the
many questions with which they pressed him. He drank the health of the
bride-elect--who was not yet of the party--and he pledged the happiness
of the pair. He embraced Charlot, and even went so far as to urge upon
him, out of his own scanty store, a louis d’or with which to buy Marie a
trinket in memory of him.

Then presently came one with the announcement that M. le Cure was
waiting, and in answer to that reminder that there was a ceremony to be
gone through, Charlot and his friends flung out of the house in joyous
confusion, and went their way with laughter and jest to the little
church of St. Ildefonse.

“We will follow presently--M. la Boulaye and I--Charlot,” Duhamel had
said, as the sturdy bridegroom was departing. “We shall be there to
shake Madame by the hand and wish her joy of you.”

When at last they were alone in the schoolmaster’s room, the old man
turned to La Boulaye, the very embodiment of a note of interrogation.
The secretary told him all that had passed. He reddened slightly when
it came to speaking of his love for Mlle. de Bellecour, but he realised
that if he would have guidance he must withhold nothing from his friend.

Duhamel’s face grew dark as the young man spoke, and his eyes became sad
and very thoughtful.

“Alas!” he sighed, when La Boulaye had ended. “What shall I say to you,
my friend? The time is not yet for such as we--you and I--to speak of
love for a daughter of the Seigneurie. It is coming, I doubt it not. All
things have their climax, and France is tending swiftly to the climax
of her serfdom. Very soon we shall have the crisis, this fire that is
already smouldering, will leap into a great blaze, that shall lick the
old regime as completely from the face of history as though it had never
been. A new condition of things will spring up, of that I am convinced.
Does not history afford us many instances? And what is history but the
repetition of events under similar circumstances with different peoples.
It will come in France, and it will come soon, for it is very direly
needed.”

“I know, I know, old master,” broke in La Boulaye; “but how shall all
this help me? For all that I have the welfare of France at heart, it
weighs little with me at the moment by comparison with my own affairs.
What am I to do, Duhamel? How am I to take payment for this?” And he
pressed his finger to his seared cheek.

“Wait,” said the old man impressively. “That is the moral you might have
drawn from what I have said. Be patient. I promise you your patience
shall not be overtaxed. To-day they say that you presume; that you are
not one of them--although, by my soul, you have as good an air as any
nobleman in France.” And he eyed the lean height of the secretary with a
glance of such pride as a father might take in a well-grown son.

Elegant of figure, La Boulaye was no less elegant in dress, for all
that, from head to foot--saving the silver buckles on his shoes and the
unpretentious lace at throat and wrists--he was dressed in the black
that his office demanded. His countenance, too, though cast in a mould
of thoughtfulness that bordered on the melancholy, bore a lofty stamp
that might have passed for birth and breeding, and this was enhanced by
the careful dressing of his black unpowdered hair, gathered into a club
by a broad ribbon of black silk.

“But what shall waiting avail me?” cried the young man, with some
impatience. “What am I to do in the meantime?”

“Go to Amiens,” said the other. “You have learning, you have eloquence,
you have a presence and an excellent address. For success no
better attributes could be yours.” He approached the secretary, and
instinctively lowered his voice. “We have a little club there--a sort of
succursal to the Jacobins. We are numerous, but we have no very shining
member yet. Come with me, and I will nominate you. Beginning thus,
I promise you that you shall presently become a man of prominence
in Picardy. Anon we may send you to Paris to represent us in the
States-General. Then, when the change comes, who shall say to what
heights it may not be yours to leap?”

“I will think of it,” answered La Boulaye cordially, “and not a doubt of
it but that I will come. I did not know that you had gone so far--”

“Sh! You know now. Let that suffice. It is not good to talk of these
things just yet.”

“But in the meantime,” La Boulaye persisted, “what of this?” And again
he pointed to his cheek.

“Why, let it heal, boy.”

“I promised the Marquis that I would demand satisfaction of his son, and
I am tempted to do so and risk the consequences.”

“I am afraid the consequences will be the only satisfaction that you
will get. In fact, they will be anticipations rather than consequences,
for they’ll never let you near the boy.”

“I know not that,” he answered. “The lad is more generous than his sire,
and if I were to send him word that I have been affronted, he might
consent to meet me. For the rest, I could kill him blindfolded,” he
added, with a shrug.

“Bloodthirsty animal!” rejoined Duhamel. “Unnatural tutor! Do you forget
that you were the boy’s preceptor?”

With that Duhamel carried the argument into new fields, and showed La
Boulaye that to avenge upon the young Vicomte the insults received
at the hands of the old Marquis was hardly a worthy method of taking
vengeance. At last he won him to his way, and it was settled that on the
morrow La Boulaye should journey with him to Amiens.

“But, Caron, we are forgetting our friend Charlot and his bride,” he
broke off suddenly. “Come, boy; the ceremony will be at an end by this.”

He took La Boulaye by the arm, and led him out and down the street to
the open space opposite St. Ildefonse. The wedding-party was streaming
out through the door of the little church into the warm sunshine of that
April morning. In the churchyard they formed into a procession of happy
be-ribboned and nosegayed men and women--the young preceding, the old
following, the bridal couple. Two by two they came, and the air rang
with their laughter and joyous chatter. Then another sound arose, and if
the secretary and the pedagogue could have guessed of what that beating
of hoofs was to be the prelude, they had scarce smiled so easily as they
watched the approaching cortege.

From a side street there now emerged a gaily apparelled cavalcade. At
its head rode the Marquis de Bellecour, the Vicomte, and a half-dozen
other gentlemen, followed by, perhaps, a dozen lacqueys. It was a
hunting party that was making its way across the village to the open
country beyond. The bridal procession crossing their path caused them to
draw rein, and to wait until it should have passed--which argued a very
condescending humour, for it would not have been out of keeping with
their habits to have ridden headlong through it. Their presence cast
a restraint upon the peasants. The jests were silenced, the laughter
hushed, and like a flight of pigeons under the eye of the hawk, they
scurried past the Seigneurie, and some of them prayed God that they
might be suffered to pass indeed.

Bellecour eyed them in cold disdain, until presently Charlot and his
bride were abreast of him. Then his eye seemed to take life and his
sallow face to kindle into expression. He leant lightly from the saddle.

“Stay!” he commanded coldly, and as they came to a halt, daring not to
disobey him--“approach, girl,” he added.

Charlot’s brows grew black. He looked up at the Marquis, but if his
glance was sullen and threatening, it was also not free from fear. Marie
obeyed, with eyes downcast and a heightened colour. If she conjectured
at all why they had been stopped, it was but to conclude that M. le
Marquis was about to offer her some mark of appreciation. Uneasiness, in
her dear innocence, she knew none.

“What is your name, child?” inquired the Marquis more gently.

“It was Marie Michelin, Monseigneur,” she made answer timidly. “But it
has just been changed to Marie Tardivet.”

“You have just been wed, eh?”

“We are on our way from church, Monseigneur.”

“C’est ca,” he murmured, as if to himself, and his eyes taking such
stock of her as made Charlot burn to tear him from his horse. Then, in a
kindly, fatherly voice, he added: “My felicitations, Marie; may you be a
happy wife and a happier mother.”

“Merci, Monseigneur,” she murmured, with crimson cheeks, whilst Charlot
breathed once more, and from his heart gave thanks to Heaven, believing
the interview at an end. But he went too fast.

“Do you know, Marie, that you are a very comely child?” quoth the
Marquis, in tones which made the bridegroom’s blood run cold.

Some in that noble company nudged one another, and one there was who
burst into a loud guffaw.

“Charlot has often told me so,” she laughed, all unsuspicious.

The Marquis moved on his horse that he might bend lower. With his
forefinger he uptilted her chin, and now, as she met his glance thus at
close quarters, an unaccountable fear took possession of her, and the
colour died out of her plump cheeks.

“Yes,” said Bellecour, with a smile, “this Tardivet has good taste. My
congratulations, to him. We must find you a wedding gift, little woman,”
 he continued more briskly. “It is an ancient and honoured custom that is
falling somewhat into neglect. Go up to the Chateau with Blaise and Jean
there. This good Tardivet must curb his impatience until to-morrow.”

He turned in his saddle, and beckoning the two servants he had named, he
bade Marie to mount behind Blaise.

She drew back now, her cheeks white as those of the dead. With a wild
terror in her eyes she turned to Charlot, who stood the very picture of
anguish and impotent rage. In the cortege, where but a few moments ago
all had been laughter, a sob or two sounded now from some of the women.

“By my faith,” laughed Bellecour contemptuously eyeing their dejection,
“you have more the air of a burial than a bridal party.”

“Mercy my lord!” cried the agonised voice of Charlot, as, distraught
with grief, he flung himself before the Marquis.

“Who seeks to harm you, fool?” was Bellecour’s half-derisive rejoinder.

“Do not take her from me, my lord,” the young man pleaded piteously.

“She shall return to-morrow, booby,” answered the noble. “Out of the
way!”

But Charlot was obstinate. The Marquis might be claiming no more than
by ancient law was the due of the Seigneur, but Charlot was by no means
minded to submit in craven acquiescence to that brutal, barbarous law.

“My lord,” he cried, “you shall not take her. She is my wife. She
belongs to me. You shall not take her!”

He caught hold of the Marquis’s bridle with such a strength and angry
will that the horse was forced to back before him.

“Insolent clod!” exclaimed Bellecour, with an angry laugh and a sharp,
downward blow of the butt of his whip upon the peasant’s head. Charlot’s
hand grew nerveless and released the bridle as he sank stunned to the
ground. Bellecour touched his horse with the spur and rode over the
prostrate fellow with no more concern than had he been a dog’s carcase.
“Blaise, see to the girl,” he called over his shoulder, adding to his
company: “Come, messieurs, we have wasted time enough.”

Not a hand was raised to stay him, not a word of protest uttered, as the
nobles rode by, laughing, and chatting among themselves, with the utmost
unconcern of the tragedy that was being enacted.

Like a flock of frightened sheep the peasants stood huddled together and
watched them go. In the same inaction--for all that not a little grief
was blent with the terror on their countenances--they stood by and
allowed Blaise to lift the half-swooning girl to the withers of his
horse. No reply had they to the coarse jest with which he and his
fellow-servant rode off. But La Boulaye, who, from the point where he
and Duhamel had halted, had observed the whole scene from its inception,
turned now a livid face upon his companion.

“Shall such things be?” he cried passionately. “Merciful God! Are we
men, Duhamel, and do we permit such things to take place?”

The old pedagogue shrugged his shoulders in despair. His face was
heavily scored by sorrow.

“Helas!” he sighed. “Are they not masters of all that they may take? The
Marquis goes no further than is by ancient law allowed his class. It
is the law needs altering, my friend, and then the men will alter.
Meanwhile, behold them--lords of life and death.”

“Lords of hell are they!” blazed the young revolutionist. “That is
where they belong, whence they are come, and whither they shall return.
Poltroons!” he cried, shaking his fist at the group of cowed peasants
that surrounded the prostrate Charlot “Sheep! Worthless clods! The
nobles do well to despise you, for, by my faith, you invite nothing but
contempt, you that will suffer rape and murder to be done under your
eyes, and never do more than look scared encouragement upon your
ravishers!”

“Blame not these poor wretches, Caron,” sighed the old man. “They dare
not raise a hand.”

“Then, pardieu! here, at least, is one who does dare,” he cried
furiously, as from the breast pocket of his coat he drew a pistol.

Blaise, with the girl across the withers of his horse, was approaching
them, followed by Jean.

“What would you do?” cried the old man fearfully, setting a restraining
hand upon La Boulaye’s sleeve. But Caron shook himself free.

“This,” was all he answered, and simultaneously, he levelled his pistol
and fired at Blaise.

Shot through the head, the servant collapsed forward; then, as the horse
reared and started off at a gallop, he toppled sideways and fell. The
girl went down with him and lay in the road whilst he was dragged along,
his head bumping horribly on the stones as faster and faster went the
frightened horse.

With a shout that may have been either anger or dismay Jean reined
in his horse, and sat for a second hesitating whether to begin by
recovering the girl, or avenging his comrade. But his doubts were solved
for him by La Boulaye, who took a deliberate aim at him.

“Begone!” cried the secretary, “unless you prefer to go by the road I’ve
sent your fellow.” And being a discreet youth, Jean made off in silence
by the street down which poor Blaise had been dragged.

“Carom” cried Duhamel, in a frenzy of apprehension. “I tremble for you,
my son. Fly from Bellecour at once--now, this very instant. Go to my
friends at Amiens; they will--”

But Caron had already left his side to repair to the spot where Marie
was lying. The peasantry followed him, though leisurely, in their timid
hesitation. They were asking themselves whether, even so remotely as by
tending the girl, they dared participate in the violence La Boulaye had
committed. That a swift vengeance would be the Seigneur’s answer
they were well assured, and a great fear possessed them that in that
vengeance those of the Chateau might lack discrimination. Charlot was
amongst them, and on his feet, but still too dazed to have a clear
knowledge of the circumstances. Presently, however, his faculties
awakening and taking in the situation, he staggered forward, and came
lurching towards La Boulaye, who was assisting the frightened Marie to
rise. With a great sob the girl flung herself into her husband’s arms.

“Charlot, mon Charlot!” she cried, and added a moment later: “It was
he--this brave gentleman--who rescued me.”

“Monsieur,” said Charlot, “I shall remember it to my dying day.”

He would have said more, but the peasants, stirred by fear, now roused
themselves and plucked at his coat.

“Get you gone, Charlot, Get you gone quickly,” they advised him. “And if
you are wise you will leave Bellecour without delay. It is not safe for
you here.”

“It is not safe for any of us,” exclaimed one. “I have no mind to be
caught when the Seigneur returns. There will be a vengeance. Ah Dieu!
what a vengeance!”

The warning acted magically. There were hurried leave-takings, and then,
like a parcel of scuttling rabbits, they made for their burrows to hide
from the huntsman that would not be long in coming. And ere the last of
them was out of sight there arose a stamping of hoofs and a chorus
of angry voices. Down tine street thundered the Marquis’s cavalcade,
brought back by the servant who had escaped and who had ridden after
them. Some anger there was--particularly in the heart of the Lord of
Bellecour--but greater than their anger was their excitement at the
prospect of a man-hunt, with which the chase on which they had been
originally bent made but a poor comparison.

“There he is, Monseigneur” cried Jean, as he pointed to La Boulaye. “And
yonder are the girl and her husband.”

“Ah! The secretary again, eh?” laughed the nobleman, grimly, as he
came nearer. “Ma foi, life must have grown wearisome to him. Secure the
woman, Jean.”

Caron stood before him, pale in his impotent rage, which was directed
as much against the peasants who had fled as against the nobles who
approached. Had these clods but stood there, and defended themselves and
their manhood with sticks and stones and such weapons as came to their
hands, they might have taken pride in being trampled beneath the hoofs
of the Seigneurie. Thus, at least, might they have proved themselves
men. But to fly thus--some fifty of them from the approach of less than
a score--was to confess unworthiness of a better fate than that of which
their seigneurs rendered themselves the instruments.

Himself he could do no more than the single shot in his pistol would
allow. That much, however, he would do, and like him whose resources
are reduced, and yet who desires to spend the little that he has to best
advantage, he levelled the weapon boldly at the advancing Marquis, and
pulled the trigger. But Bellecour was an old campaigner, and by an old
campaigner’s trick he saved himself at the last moment. At sight of that
levelled barrel he pulled his horse suddenly on to its haunches, and
received the charge in the animal’s belly. With a shriek of pain the
horse sought to recover its feet, then tumbled forward hurling the
Marquis from the saddle. La Boulaye had an inspiration to fling himself
upon the old roue and seek with his hands to kill him before they
made an end of himself. But ere he could move to execute his design a
horseman was almost on top of him. He received a stunning blow on the
head. The daylight faded in his eyes, he felt a sensation of sinking,
and a reverberating darkness engulfed him.



CHAPTER III. THE WORD OF BELLECOUR


When La Boulaye recovered consciousness he was lying on his back in the
middle of the courtyard of the Chateau de Bellecour. From a great stone
balcony above, a little group, of which Mademoiselle de Bellecour
was the centre, observed the scene about the captive, who was being
resuscitated that he might fittingly experience the Seigneur’s
vengeance.

She had returned from the morning’s affair in the park with a conscience
not altogether easy. To have stood by whilst her father had struck
Caron, and moreover, to have done so without any sense of horror, or
even of regret, was a matter in which she asked herself whether she had
done well. Certainly La Boulaye had presumed unpardonably in speaking
to her as he had spoken, and for his presumption it was fitting that
he should be punished. Had she interfered she must have seemed to
sympathise, and thus the lesson might have suffered in salutariness.
And yet Caron La Boulaye was a man of most excellent exterior, and, when
passion had roused him out of his restraint and awkwardness, of most
ardent and eloquent address. The very sombreness that--be it from his
mournful garments or from a mind of thoughtful habit--seemed to envelop
him was but an additional note of poetry in a personality which struck
her now as eminently poetical. In the seclusion of her own chamber, as
she recalled the burning words and the fall of her father’s whip upon
the young man’s pale face, she even permitted herself to sigh. Had he
but been of her own station, he had been such a man as she would have
taken pride in being wooed by. As it was--she halted there and laughed
disdainfully, yet with never so faint a note of regret. It was absurd!
She was Mademoiselle de Bellecour, and he her father’s secretary;
educated, if you will--aye, and beyond his station--but a vassal withal,
and very humbly born. Yes, it was absurd, she told herself again: the
eagle may not mate with the sparrow.

And when presently she had come from her chamber, she had been
greeted with the story of a rebellion in the village, and an attempted
assassination of her father. The ringleader, she was told, had been
brought to the Chateau, and he was even then in the courtyard and about
to be hanged by the Marquis. Curious to behold this unfortunate, she had
stepped out on to the balcony where already an idle group had formed.
Inexpressible had been her shock upon seeing him that lay below, his
white face upturned to the heavens, his eyes closed.

“Is he dead?” she asked, when presently she had overcome her feelings.

“Not yet Mademoiselle,” answered the graceful Chevalier de Jacquelin,
toying with his solitaire. “Your father is bringing him to life that he
may send him back to death.”

And then she heard her father’s voice behind her. The Marquis had
stepped out on to the balcony to ascertain whether La Boulaye had yet
regained consciousness.

“He seems to be even now recovering,” said someone.

“Ah, you are there, Suzanne,” cried Bellecour. “You see your friend the
secretary there. He has chosen to present himself in a new role to-day.
From being my servant, it seems that he would constitute himself my
murderer.”

However unfilial it might be, she could not stifle a certain sympathy
for this young man. She imagined that his rebellion, whatever shape it
had assumed, had been provoked by that weal upon his face; and it seemed
to her then that he had been less than a man had he not attempted to
exact some reparation for the hurt the whip had inflicted at once upon
his body and his soul.

“But what is it that he has done, Monsieur?” she asked, seeking more
than the scant information which so far she had received.

“Enough, at least, to justify my hanging him,” answered Bellecour
grimly. “He sought to withstand my authority; he incited the peasants
of Bellecour to withstand it; he has killed Blaise, and he would have
killed me but that I preferred to let him kill my horse.”

“In what way did he seek to withstand your authority!” she persisted.

He stared at her, half surprised, half angry.

“What doers the manner of it signify?” he asked impatiently. “Is not the
fact enough? Is it not enough that Blaise is dead, and that I have had a
narrow escape, at his hands?”

“Insolent hound that he is!” put in Madame la Marquise--a fleshly lady
monstrously coiffed. “If we allow such men as thus to live in France our
days are numbered.”

“They say that you are going to hang him,” said Suzanne, heedless of her
mother’s words, and there was the faintest note of horror in her voice.

“They are mistaken. I am not.”

“You are not?” cried the Marquise. “But what, then, do you intend to
do?”

“To keep my word, madame,” he answered her. “I promised that canaille
that if he ever came within the grounds of Bellecour I would have him
flogged to death. That is what I propose.”

“Father,” gasped Suzanne, in horror, a horror that was echoed by the
other three or four ladies present. But the Marquise only laughed.

“He will be; richly served,” she approved, with a sage nod of her
pumpkin-like head-dress--“most richly served.”

A great pity arose now in the heart of Mademoiselle, as her father went
below that he might carry out his barbarous design. She was deaf to
the dainty trifles which the most elegant Chevalier de Jacquelin was
murmuring into her ear. She stood, a tall, queenly figure, at the
balcony’s parapet and watched the preparations that were being made.

She heard her father’s harshly-voiced commands. She saw them literally
tear the clothes from the unfortunate secretary’s back, and lash
him--naked to the waist--to the pump that stood by the horse-trough at
the far end of the yard. His body was now hidden from her sight, but his
head appeared surmounting the pillar of the pump, his chin seeming to
rest upon its summit, and his face was towards her. At his side stood a
powerful knave armed with a stout, leather-thonged whip.

“How many strokes, Monseigneur?” she heard the man inquire.

“How many?” echoed the Marquise. “Do I know how many it will take to
make an end of him? Beat him to death, man. Allons! Set about it.”

She saw the man uncoil his lash and step forward. In that instant
Caron’s eyes were raised, and they met hers across the intervening
space. He smiled a valedictory smile that seemed to make her heart stand
still. She and her mother were now the only women on the balcony.
The others had made haste to withdraw as soon as La Boulaye had
been pilloried. The Marquise remained because she seemed to find
entertainment in the spectacle. Suzanne remained because horror rooted
her to the spot--horror and a great pity for this unfortunate who had
looked so strong and brave that morning, when he had had the audacity to
tell her that he loved her.

The lash sang through the air, quivered, hummed, and cut with a
sickening crackle into the young man’s flesh.

The hideous sound roused her. She shuddered from head to foot, and
turning she put her hands to her face and rushed within, followed by the
Marquise’s derisive laughter.

“Mon Dieu! It is horrible! Horrible!” she cried as she sank into the
nearest chair, and clapped her hands to her ears. But she could not shut
it out. Still she heard the humming of the whip and the cruel sound of
the falling blows. Mechanically she counted them, unconsciously almost,
and at twenty she heard them cease. Was it over? Was he dead, this poor
unfortunate? Moved by a curiosity that was greater than her loathing,
she rose and went to the threshold of the balcony.

“Is it ended?” she asked.

“Ended?” echoed Monsieur de Jacquelin, with a shrug. “It is scarce
begun, it seems. The executioner is pausing for breath, that is all. The
fellow has not uttered a sound. He is as obstinate as a mule.”

“As enduring as a Spartan,” more generously put in the Vicomte, her
brother. “Look at him, Suzanne.”

Almost involuntarily she obeyed, and moved forward a step that she
might behold him. A face, deathly pale, she saw, which in the sunshine
glistened with the sweat of agony that bedewed it; but the lips were
tightly closed and the countenance grimly expressionless. Even as she
looked she heard her father command the man to lay on anew. Then, as
before, his eyes met hers; but this time no smile did she see investing
them.

Again the whip cracked and fell. She drew back, but his glance seemed
to haunt her even when she no longer saw his face. A sudden resolution
moved her, and in a frenzy of anger and compassion she flung out of
the room. A moment later she burst like a beautiful virago into the
courtyard.

“Stop!” she commanded shrilly, causing both her father and the
executioner to turn, and the latter pausing in his hideous work. But a
glance from the Marquis bade him resume, and resume he did, as though
there had been no interruption.

“What is this?” demanded Bellecour, half amused, half vexed, whilst a
sudden new light leapt to the eyes of La Boulaye, which but a moment
back had been so full of agony.

But Mademoiselle never paused to answer her father. Seeing the
executioner proceeding, despite her call to cease, she sprang upon him,
caught him by the arms and wrested the whip from hands that dared not
resist her.

“Did I not bid you stop?” she blazed, her face white, her eyes on fire;
and raising the whip she brought it down upon his head and shoulders,
not once but half-a-dozen times in quick succession, until he fled,
howling, to the other side of the horse trough for shelter. “It stings
you, does it” she cried, whilst the Marquis, from angered that at first
he had been, now burst into a laugh at her fury and at this turning of
tables upon the executioner. She made shift to pursue the fellow to his
place of refuge, but coming of a sudden upon the ghastly sight presented
by La Boulaye’s lacerated back, she drew back in horror. Then, mastering
herself--for girl though she was, her courage was of a high order--she
turned to her father.

“Give this man to me, Monsieur,” she begged.

“To you!” he exclaimed. “What will you do with him?”

“I will see that you are rid of him,” she promised. “What more can you
desire? You have tortured him enough.”

“Maybe. But am I to blame that he dies so hard?”

She answered him with renewed insistence, and unexpectedly she received
an ally in M. des Cadoux--an elderly gentleman who had been observing
the flogging with disapproval, and who had followed her into the
courtyard.

“He is too brave a man to die like this, Bellecour,” put in the
newcomer. “I doubt if he can survive the punishment he has already
received. Yet I would ask you, in the name of courage, to give him the
slender chance he may have.”

“I promised him he should be flogged to death--” began the Marquis,
when Des Cadoux and Mademoiselle jointly interrupted him to renew their
intercessions.

“But, sangdieu,” the Marquis protested “you seem to forget that he has
killed one of my servants.”

“Why, then, you should have hanged him out of hand, not tortured him
thus,” answered Des Cadoux shortly.

For a moment it almost seemed as if the pair of them would have fallen
a-quarrelling. Their words grew more heated, and then, while they were
still wrangling, the executioner came forward to solve matters with the
news that the secretary had expired. To Bellecour this proved a very
welcome conclusion.

“Most opportunely!” he laughed “Had the rascal lived another minute I
think we had quarrelled, Cadoux.” He turned to the servant, “You are
certain that it is so?” he asked.

“Look, Monsieur,” said the fellow, as he pointed with his whip to the
pilloried figure of La Boulaye. The Marquis looked, and saw that the
secretary had collapsed, and hung limp in his bonds, his head fallen
back upon his shoulders and his eyes closed.

With a shrug and a short laugh Bellecour turned to his daughter.

“You may take the carrion, if you want to. But I think you can do no
more than order it to be flung into a ditch and buried there.”

But she had no mind to be advised by him. She had the young man’s body
cut down from the pump, and she bade a couple of servants convey it to
the house of Master Duhamel, she for remembered that La Boulaye and the
old pedagogue were friends.

“An odd thing is a woman’s heart,” grumbled the Marquis, who begrudged
La Boulaye even his last act of mercy. “She may care never a fig for a
man, and yet, if he has but told her that he loves her, be he never
so mean and she never so exalted, he seems thereby to establish some
measure of claim to her.”



CHAPTER IV. THE DISCIPLES OF ROUSSEAU


The Marquis of Bellecour would, perhaps have philosophised less
complacently had he known that the secretary was far from dead, and that
what the executioner had, genuinely enough, mistaken for death was no
more than a passing swoon. Under ordinary circumstances he might not
have been satisfied to have taken the fellow’s word; he would himself
have ascertained the truth of the statement by a close inspection of the
victim. But, as we have seen, the news came as so desirable a solution
to the altercation that was waxing ‘twixt himself and Des Cadoux that he
was more than glad to avail himself of it.

The discovery that Caron lived was made while they were cutting him down
from his pillory, and just as the Marquis was turning to go within. A
flutter of the eyelids and a gasp for breath announced the fact, and
the executioner was on the point of crying out his discovery when
Mademoiselle’s eyes flashed him a glance of warning, and her voice
whispered feverishly:

“Hush! There are ten louis for each of you if you but keep silent and
carry him to Master Duhamel as I told you.”

The secretary opened his eyes but saw nothing, and a low moan escaped
him. She shot a fearful glance at the retreating figure of her father,
whilst Gilles--the executioner--hissed sharply into his ear:

“Mille diables! be still, man. You are dead.”

Thus did he escape, and thus was he borne--a limp, agonised, and
bleeding mass, to the house of Duhamel. The old schoolmaster received
them with tears in his eyes--nor were they altogether tears of sorrow,
for all that poor Caron’s mangled condition grieved him sorely; they
were in a measure tears of thankfulness; for Duhamel had not dared hope
to see the young man alive again.

At the pedagogue’s door stood a berline, and within his house there was
a visitor. This was a slight young man of medium stature, who had not
the appearance of more than twenty-five years of age, for all that, as
a matter of fact, he was just over thirty. He was dressed with so
scrupulous a neatness as to convey, in spite of the dark colour of his
garments, an impression almost of foppishness. There was an amplitude
about his cravat, an air of extreme care about the dressing of his wig
and the powdering of it, and a shining brightness about his buttons and
the buckles of his shoes which seemed to proclaim the dandy, just as
the sombreness of the colour chosen seemed to deny it. In his singularly
pale countenance a similar contradiction was observable. The weak,
kindly eyes almost appeared to give the lie to the astute prominence of
his cheekbones; the sensitiveness of the mouth seemed neutralised by the
thinness of the lips, whilst the oddly tip-tilted nose made a mock of
the austerity of the brow.

He was perfectly at ease in his surroundings, and as La Boulaye was
carried into the schoolmaster’s study and laid on a couch, he came
forward and peered curiously at the secretary’s figure, voicing an
inquiry concerning him.

“It is the young man of whom I was telling you, Maximilien,” answered
Duhamel. “I give thanks to God that they have not killed him outright.
It is a mercy I had not expected from those wolves, and one which, on my
soul, I cannot understand.”

“Monsieur,” said Gilles, “will understand it better perhaps if I tell
you that the Marquis believes him to be dead. He was cut down for dead,
and when we discovered that he still lived it was Mademoiselle who
prevailed upon us to save him. She is paying us to keep the secret, but
not a fortune would tempt me if I thought the Seigneur were ever likely
to hear of it. He must be got away from Bellecour; indeed, he must be
got out of Picardy at once, Monsieur. And you must promise me that this
shall be done or we will carry him back to the Chateau and tell the
Marquis that he has suddenly revived. I must insist, Monsieur; for if
ever it should transpire that he was not dead the Seigneur would hang
us.”

The stranger’s weak eyes seemed to kindle in anger, and his lips curled
until they exaggerated the already preposterous tilt of his nose.

“He would hang you, eh?” said he. “Ma foi, Duhamel, we shall change all
this very soon, I promise you.”

“God knows it needs changing,” growled Duhamel. “It seems that it was
only in the Old Testament that Heaven interfered with human iniquity.
Why it does not rain fire and brimstone on the Chateau de Bellecour
passes the understanding of a good Christian. I’ll swear that in neither
Sodom nor Gomorrah was villainy more rampant.”

The stranger plucked at his sleeve to remind him of the presence of the
servants from the Chateau. Duhamel turned to them.

“I will keep him concealed here until he is able to get about,” he
assured them. “Then I shall find him the means to leave the province.”

But Gilles shook his head, and his companion grunted an echo of his
disapproval.

“That will not serve, master,” he answered sullenly. “What if the
Seigneur should have word of his presence here? It is over-dangerous.
Someone may see him. No, no, Either he leaves Bellecour this very night,
and you swear that he shall, or else we carry him back to the Chateau.”

“But how can I swear this?” cried Duhamel impatiently.

“Why, easily enough,” put in the stranger. “Let me take him in my
berline. I can leave him at Amiens or at Beauvais, or any one of the
convenient places that I pass. Or I can even carry him on to Paris with
me.”

“You are very good, Maximilien,” answered the old man, to which the
other returned a gesture of deprecation.

In this fashion, then, was the matter settled to the satisfaction of the
Seigneur’s retainers, and upon having received Duhamel’s solemn promise
that Caron should be carried out of Bellecour, and, for that matter, out
of Picardy, before the night was spent, they withdrew.

Within the schoolmaster’s study he whom Duhamel called Maximilien strode
to and fro, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bent, his chin
thrust forward, denouncing the seigneurial system, of whose atrocity he
had received that evening instances enough--for he had heard the whole
story of La Boulaye’s rebellion against the power of Bellecour and the
causes that had led to it.

“We will mend all this, I promise you, Duhamel,” he was repeating. “But
not until we have united to shield the weak from oppression, to restrain
the arrogant and to secure to each the possession of what belongs to
him; not until all men are free and started upon equal terms in the race
of life; not until we shall have set up rules of justice and of peace,
to which all--rich and poor, noble and simple alike--shall be obliged
to conform. Thus only can we repair the evil done by the caprice of
fortune, which causes the one to be born into silk and the other into
fustian. We must subject the weak and the mighty alike to mutual
duties, collecting our forces into the supreme power to govern us
all impartially by the same laws, to protect alike all members of the
community, to repel our common foes and preserve us in never-ending
concord. How many crimes, murders, wars, miseries, horrors shall thus be
spared us, Duhamel? And it will come; it will come soon, never fear.”

Caron stirred on the couch where Duhamel was tending him, and raised his
head to glance at the man who was voicing the doctrines that for years
had dwelt in his heart.

“Dear Jean Jacques,” he murmured.

The stranger turned sharply and stepped to the young man’s side.

“You have read the master?” he inquired, with a sudden, new-born
interest in the secretary.

“Read him?” cried Carom forgetting for the moment the sore condition of
his body in the delight of discovering one who was bound to him by such
bonds of sympathy as old Rousseau established.

“Read him, Monsieur? There is scarce a line in all his ‘Discourses’ that
I do not know by heart, and that I do not treasure, vaguely hoping
and praying that some day such a state as he dreamt of may find itself
established, and may sweep aside these corrupt, tyrannical conditions.”

Maximilien’s eyes kindled.

“Boy,” he answered impressively, “Your hopes are on the eve of fruition,
your prayers are about to be heard. Yes--even though it should entail
trampling the Lilies of France into the very dust.

“Who are you, Monsieur?” asked La Boulaye, eyeing this prophet with
growing interest.

“Robespierre is my name,” was the answer, and to La Boulaye it
conveyed no enlightenment, for the name of Maximilien Marie Isidore de
Robespierre, which within so very short a time was to mean so much in
France, as yet meant nothing.

La Boulaye inclined his head as if acknowledging an introduction, then
turned his attention to Duhamel who was offering him a cup of wine.
He drank gratefully, and the invigorating effects were almost
instantaneous.

“Now let us see to your hurts,” said the schoolmaster, who had taken
some linen and a pot of unguents from a cupboard. La Boulaye sat up, and
what time Duhamel was busy dressing his lacerated back, the young man
talked with Robespierre.

“You are going to Paris, you say, Monsieur?”

“Yes, to the States-General,” answered Maximilien.

“As a deputy?” inquired Caron, with ever-heightening interest.

“As a deputy, Monsieur. My friends of Arras have elected me to the Third
Estate of Artois.”

“Dieu! How I envy you!” exclaimed La Boulaye, to cry out a moment
later in the pain to which Duhamel’s well-intentioned operations were
subjecting him. “I would it might be mine,” he added presently, “to
take a hand in legislation, and the mending of it; for as it stands at
present it is inferior far to the lawless anarchy of the aborigines.
Among them, at least, the conditions are more normal, they offer better
balance between faculty and execution; they are by far more propitious
to happiness and order than is this broken wreck of civilisation that
we call France. It is to equality alone,” he continued, warming to
his subject, “that Nature has attached the preservation of our social
faculties, and all legislation that aims at being efficient should
be directed to the establishment of equality. As it is, the rich will
always prefer their own fortune to that of the State, whilst the poor
will never love--nor can love--a condition of laws that leaves them in
misery.”

Robespierre eyed the young man in some surprise. His delivery was
impassioned, and although in what he said there was perhaps nothing that
was fresh to the lawyer of Arras, yet the manner in which he said it was
impressive to a degree.

“But Duhamel,” he cried to the schoolmaster, “you did not tell me this
young patriot was an orator.”

“Nor am I, Monsieur,” smiled La Boulaye. “I am but the mouthpiece of the
great Rousseau. I have so assimilated his thoughts that they come from
me as spontaneously as if they were my own, and often I go so far as to
delude myself into believing that they are.”

No better recommendation than this could he have had to the attention
of Robespierre, who was himself much in the same case, imbued with
and inspired by those doctrines, so ideal in theory, but, alas! so
difficult, so impossible in practice. For fully an hour they sat and
talked, and each improved in his liking of the other, until at last,
bethinking him of the flight of time, Robespierre announced that he must
start.

“You will take him to Paris with you, Maximilien?” quoth the old
pedagogue.

“Ma foi, yes; and if with such gifts as Nature appears to have given
him, and such cultivation of them as, through the teachings of Rousseau,
he has effected, I do not make something of him, why, then, I am
unworthy of the confidence my good friends of Arras repose in me.”

They made their adieux, and the schoolmaster, opening his door, peered
out. The street was deserted save for de Robespierre’s berline and his
impatient postillion. Between them Duhamel and Maximilien assisted Caron
to the door of the carriage. The moving subjected him to an excruciating
agony, but he caught his nether lip in his teeth, and never allowed them
to suspect it. As they raised him into the berline, however, he toppled
forward, fainting. Duhamel hastened indoors for a cordial, and brought
also some pillows with which to promote the young man’s comfort on the
journey that was before him--or, rather, to lessen the discomfort which
the jolting was likely to occasion him.

Caron recovered before they started, and with tears in his eyes he
thanked old Duhamel and voiced a hope that they might meet again ere
long.

Then Robespierre jumped nimbly into the berline. The door closed, the
postillion’s whip cracked briskly, and they set out upon a journey which
to La Boulaye was to be as the passing from one life to another.



PART II. THE NEW RULE

     Allons!  Marchons!
     Qu’un sang impur
     Abreuve nos sillons!
        La Marseillaise.



CHAPTER V. THE SHEEP TURNED WOLVES


There were roars of anger and screams of terror in the night, and above
the Chateau de Bellecour the inky blackness of the heavens was broken by
a dull red glow, which the distant wayfarer might have mistaken for the
roseate tint of dawn, were it possible for the dawn to restrict itself
to so narrow an area.

Ever and anon a tongue of flame would lick up into the night towards
that russet patch of sky, betraying the cause of it and proclaiming
that incendiaries were at work. Above the ominous din that told of
the business afoot there came now and again the crack of a musket,
and dominating all other sounds was the sullen roar of the revolted
peasants, the risen serfs, the rebellious vassals of the Siegneur de
Bellecour.

For time has sped and has much altered in the speeding. Four years have
gone by since the night on which the lacerated Caron la Boulaye was
smuggled out of Bellecour in Robespierre’s berline and in that four
years much of the things that were prophesied have come to pass
--aye, and much more besides that was undreamt of at the outset by the
revolutionaries. A gruesome engine that they facetiously called
the National Razor--invented and designed some years ago by one Dr.
Guillotin--is but an item in the changes that have been, yet an item
that in its way has become a very factor. It stands not over-high, yet
the shadow of it has fallen athwart the whole length and breadth of
France, and in that shadow the tyrants have trembled, shaken to the very
souls of them by the rude hand of fear; in that shadow the spurned and
downtrodden children of the soil have taken heart of grace. The bonds
of servile cowardice that for centuries had trammelled them have been
shaken off like cobwebs, and they that were as sheep are now become the
wolves that prey on those that preyed on them for generations.

There is, in the whole of France, no corner so remote but that, sooner
or later, this great upheaval has penetrated to it. Louis XVI.--or
Louis Capet, as he is now more generally spoken of--has been arraigned,
condemned and executed. The aristocrats are in full emigratory flight
across the frontiers--those that have not been rent by the vassals they
had brought to bay, the people they had outraged. The Lilies of France
lie trampled under foot in the shambles they have made of that fair
land, whilst overhead the tricolour--that symbol of the new trinity,
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity--is flaunted in the breeze.

A few of the more proud and obstinate--so proud and obstinate as to find
it a thing incredible that the order should indeed change and the old
regime pass away--still remain, and by their vain endeavours to lord
it in their castles provoke such scenes as that enacted at Bellecour in
February of ‘93 (by the style of slaves) or Pluviose of the year One
of the French Republic, as it shall presently come to be known in the
annals of the Revolution.

Bellecour, the most arrogant of arrogants, had stood firm, and
desperately contrived through all these months of revolution to maintain
his dominion in his corner of Picardy. But even he was beginning to
realise that the end was at hand, and he made his preparations to
emigrate. Too proud, however, to permit his emigration to savour of a
flight, he carried the leisureliness of his going to dangerous extremes.
And now, on the eve of departure, he must needs pause to give a fete
at once of farewell and in honour of his daughter’s betrothal to the
Vicomte Anatole d’Ombreval. This very betrothal at so unpropitious a
season was partly no more than contrived by the Marquis that he might
mark his ignoring and his serene contempt of the upheaval and the new
rule which it had brought.

All that was left of the noblesse in Picardy had flocked that day to the
Chateau de Bellecour, and the company there assembled numbered perhaps
some thirty gallants and some twenty ladies. A banquet there had been,
which in the main was a gloomy function, for the King’s death was too
recent a matter to be utterly lost sight of. Later, however, as the
generous supply of wine did its work and so far thawed the ice of
apprehension that bound their souls as to dispose them to enjoy, at
least, the present hour in forgetfulness, there was a better humour in
the air. This developed, and so far indeed did it go that in the evening
a Pavane was suggested, and, the musicians being found, it was held in
the great salon of the Chateau.

It was then that the first alarm had penetrated to their midst. It had
found them a recklessly merry crew, good to behold in their silks and
satins, powder and patches, gold lace and red heels, moving with waving
fans, or hand on sword, and laced beaver under elbow, through the
stately figures of the gavotte.

Scared, white-faced lackeys had brought the news, dashing wildly in
upon that courtly assembly. The peasants had risen and were marching on
Bellecour.

Some of his sudden rage the Marquis vented by striking the servants’
spokesman in the face.

“Dare you bring me such a message?” he cried furiously.

“But, my lord, what are we to do?” gasped the frightened lackey.

“Do, fool?” returned Bellecour. “Why, close the gates and bid them
return home as they value their lives. For if they give me trouble I’ll
hang a round dozen of them.”

Still was there that same big talk of hanging men. Still did it seem
that the Marquis of Bellecour accounted himself the same lord of life
and death that he and his forbears had been for generations. But there
were others who thought differently. The music had ceased abruptly, and
a little knot of gentlemen now gathered about the host, and urged him to
take some measures of precaution. In particular they desired to ensure
the safety of the ladies who were being thrown into a great state of
alarm, so that of some of these were the screams that were heard in that
night of terror. Bellecour’s temper was fast gaining, and as he
lost control of himself the inherent brutality of his character came
uppermost.

“Mesdames,” he cried rudely, “this screeching will profit us nothing.
Even if we must die, let us die becomingly, not shrieking like butchered
geese.”

A dozen men raised their voices angrily against him in defence of the
women he had slighted. But he waved them impatiently away.

“Is this an hour in which to fall a-quarrelling among ourselves?” he
exclaimed. “Or do you think it one in which a man can stop to choose his
words? Sang-dieu! That screaming is a more serious matter than at first
may seem. If these rebellious dogs should chance to hear it, it will be
but so much encouragement to them. A fearless front, a cold contempt,
are weapons unrivalled if you would prevail against these mutinous
cravens.”

But his guests were insistent that something more than fearless fronts
and cold contempts should be set up as barriers between themselves and
the advancing peasantry. And in the end Bellecour impatiently quitted
the room to give orders for the barricading of the gates and the
defending of the Chateau, leaving behind him in the salon the very
wildest of confusions.

From the windows the peasantry could now be seen, by the light of their
torches, marching up the long avenue that fronted the Chateau, and
headed by a single drum on which the bearer did no more than beat the
step. They were a fierce, unkempt band, rudely armed--some with scythes,
some with sickles, some with hedge-knives, and some with hangers; whilst
here and there was one who carried a gun, and perhaps a bayonet as well.
Nor were there men only in the rebellious ranks. There were an almost
equal number of women in crimson caps, their bosoms bare, their heads
dishevelled, their garments filthy and in rags--for the tooth of poverty
had bitten deeply into them during the past months.

As they swung along to the rhythmical thud of the drum, their voices
were raised in a fearful chorus that must have made one think of the
choirs of hell, and the song they sang was the song of Rouget de l’Isle,
which all France had been singing these twelve months past:

   “Aux armes, citoyens!
    Formez vos bataillons.
    Allons, marchons!
    Qu’un sang inpur
    Abreuve nos sillons!”

Ever swelling as they drew nearer came the sound of that terrible
hymn to the ears of the elegant, bejewelled, bepowdered company in the
Chateau. The gates were reached and found barred. An angry roar went up
to Heaven, followed by a hail of blows upon the stout, ironbound oak,
and an imperious call to open.

In the courtyard below the Marquis had posted the handful of servants
that remained faithful--for reasons that Heaven alone may discern--to
the fortunes of the house. He had armed them with carbines and supplied
them with ammunition. He had left them orders to hold off the mob from
the outer gates as long as possible; but should these be carried, they
were to fall back into the Chateau itself, and make fast the doors.
Meanwhile, he was haranguing the gentlemen--some thirty of them, as we
have seen--in the salon and urging them to arm themselves so that they
might render assistance.

His instances were met with a certain coldness, which at last was given
expression by the most elegant Vicomte d’Ombreval--the man who was about
to become his son-in-law.

“My dear Marquis,” protested the young man, his habitually supercilious
mouth looking even more supercilious than usual as he now spoke, “I beg
that you will consider what you are proposing. We are your guests, we
others, and you ask us to defend your gates against your own people
for you! Surely, surely, sir, your first duty should have been to have
ensured our safety against such mutinies on the part of the rabble of
Bellecour.”

The Seigneur angrily stamped his foot. In his choler he was within
an ace of striking Ombreval, and might have done so had not the
broad-minded and ever-reasonable old Des Cadoux interposed at that
moment to make clear to the Marquis’s guests a situation than which
nothing could have been clearer. He put it to them that the times
were changed, and that France was no longer what France had been; that
allowances must be made for M. de Bellecour, who was in no better case
than any other gentleman in that unhappy country! and finally, that
either they must look to arming and defending themselves or they must
say their prayers and submit to being butchered with the ladies.

“For ourselves,” he concluded calmly, tapping his gold snuffbox and
holding it out to Bellecour, for all the world with the air of one
who was discussing the latest fashion in wigs, “I can understand your
repugnance at coming to blows with this obscene canaille. It is doing
them an honour of which they are not worthy. But we have these ladies
to think of, Messieurs, and--” he paused to apply the rappee to
his nostrils--“and we must exert ourselves to save them, however
disagreeable the course we may be compelled to pursue. Messieurs, I am
the oldest here; permit that I show you the way.”

His words were not without effect; they kindled chivalry in hearts that,
after all, were nothing if not prone to chivalry--according to their own
lights--and presently something very near enthusiasm prevailed. But the
supercilious and very noble Ombreval still grumbled.

“To ask me to fight this scum!” he ejaculated in horror “Pardi! It is
too much. Ask me to beat them off with a whip like a pack of curs, and
I’ll do it readily. But fight them--!”

“Nothing could delight us more, Vicomte, than to see you beat them off
with a whip,” Des Cadoux assured him. “Arm yourself with a whip, by all
means, my friend, and let us witness the prodigies you can perform with
it.”

“See what valour inflames the Vicomte, Suzanne,” sneered a handsome
woman into Mademoiselle’s ear. “With what alacrity he flies to arms that
he may defend you, even with his life.”

“M. d’Ombreval is behaving according to his lights,” answered Suzanne
coldly.

“Ma foi, then his lights are unspeakably dim,” was the contemptuous
answer.

Mademoiselle gave no outward sign of the deep wound her pride
was receiving. The girl of nineteen, who had scorned the young
secretary-lover in the park of Bellecour that morning four years ago,
was developed into a handsome lady of three-and-twenty.

“It would be beneath the dignity of his station to soil his hands in
such a conflict as my father has suggested,” she said at last.

“I wonder would it be beneath the dignity of his courage,” mused the
same caustic friend. “But surely not, for nothing could be beneath
that.”

“Madame!” exclaimed Suzanne, her cheeks reddening; for as of old, and
like her father, she was quickly moved to anger. “Will it please you to
remember that M. d’Ombreval is my affianced husband?”

“True,” confessed the lady, no whit abashed. “But had I not been told so
I had accounted him your rejected suitor, who, broken-hearted, gives no
thought either to his own life or to yours.”

In a pet, Mademoiselle gave her shoulder to the speaker and turned
away. In spite of the words with which she had defended him, Suzanne
was disappointed in her betrothed, and yet, in a way, she understood his
bearing to be the natural fruit of that indomitable pride of which she
had observed the outward signs, and for which, indeed as much as for the
beauty of his person, she had consented to become his wife. After all,
it was the outward man she knew. The marriage had been arranged, and
this was but their third meeting, whilst never for an instant had they
been alone together. By her mother she had been educated up to the
idea that it was eminently desirable she should become the Vicomtesse
d’Ombreval. At first she had endured dismay at the fact that she had
never beheld the Vicomte, and because she imagined that he would be,
most probably, some elderly roue, as did so often fall to the lot of
maidens in her station. But upon finding him so very handsome to behold,
so very noble of bearing, so lofty and disdainful that as he walked he
seemed to spurn the very earth, she fell enamoured of him out of very
relief, as well as because he was the most superb specimen of the other
sex that it had ever been hers to observe.

And now that she had caught a glimpse of the soul that dwelt
beneath that mass of outward perfections it had cost her a pang of
disappointment, and the poisonous reflection cast upon his courage by
that sardonic lady with whom she had talked was having its effect.

But the time was too full of other trouble to permit her to indulge her
thoughts overlong upon such a matter. A volley of musketry from below
came to warn them of the happenings there. The air was charged with the
hideous howls of the besieging mob, and presently there was a cry
from one of the ladies, as a sudden glare of light crimsoned the
window-panes.

“What is that?” asked Madame de Bellecour of her husband.

“They have fired the stables,” he answered, through set teeth. “I
suppose they need light to guide them in their hell’s work.”

He strode to the glass doors opening to the balcony the same balcony
from which four years ago his guests had watched the flogging of La
Boulaye--and, opening them, he passed out. His appearance was greeted by
a storm of execration. A sudden shot rang out, and the bullet, striking
the wall immediately above him, brought down a shower of plaster on his
head. It had been fired by a demoniac who sat astride the great gates
waving his discharged carbine and yelling such ordures of speech as it
had never been the most noble Marquis’s lot to have stood listening to.
Bellecour never flinched. As calmly as if nothing had happened, he leant
over the parapet and called to his men below.

“Hold, there! Of what are you dreaming slumberers. Shoot me that fellow
down.”

Their guns had been discharged, but one of them, who had now completed
his reloading, levelled the carbine and fired. The figure on the gates
seemed to leap up from his sitting posture, and then with a scream he
went over, back to his friends without.

The fired stables were burning gaily by now, and the cheeriest bonfire
man could have desired on a dark night, and in the courtyard it was
become as light as day.

The Marquis on the balcony was taking stock of his defences and making
rapid calculations in his mind. He saw no reason why, so well
protected by those stout oaken gates they should not--if they were but
resolute--eventually beat back the mob. And then, even as his courage
was rising at the thought, a deafening explosion seemed to shake the
entire Chateau, and the gates--their sole buckler, upon whose shelter he
had been so confidently building--crashed open, half blown away by the
gunpowder keg that had been fired against it.

He had a fleeting glimpse of a stream of black fiends pouring through
the dark gap and dashing with deafening yells into the crimson light
of the courtyard. He saw his little handful of servants retreat
precipitately within the Chateau. He heard the clang of the doors
that were swung to just as the foremost of the rabble reached the
threshold--With all this clearly stamped upon his mind, he turned, and
springing into the salon he drew his sword.

“To the stairs, Messieurs!” he cried “To the stairs!”

And to the stairs they went. The extremity was now too great for
argument. They dared not so much as look at their women-folk, lest they
should be unmanned by the sight of those huddled creatures--their finery
but serving to render them the more pitiable in their sickly affright.
In a body the whole thirty of them swept from the room, and with
Bellecour at their head and Ombreval somewhere in the rearmost rank,
they made their way to the great staircase.

Here, armed with their swords and a brace of pistols to each man, whilst
for a few the Marquis had even found carbines, they waited, with faces
set and lips tight pressed for the end that they knew approached.

Nor was their waiting long. As the peasants had blown down the gates so
now did they blow down the doors of the Chateau, and in the explosion
three of Bellecour’s servants--who had stood too near--were killed. Over
the threshold they swarmed into the dark gulf of the great hall to the
foot of the staircase. But here they were at a disadvantage. The light
of the burning stables, shining through the open doorway, revealed them
to the defenders, whilst they themselves looked up into the dark. There
was a sudden cracking of pistols and a few louder reports from the guns,
and the mob fled, screaming, back into the yard, leaving a score of dead
and wounded on the polished floor of the hall.

Old M. des Cadoux laughed in the dark, as with his sword hanging from
his wrist he tapped his snuff-box.

“Ma foi,” said he to his neighbour, “they are discovering that it is
not to be the triumphal march they had expected. A pinch of rappee,
Stanislas?”

But the respite was brief. In a moment they saw the glare increase at
the door, and presently a half-dozen of the rabble entered with torches,
followed by some scores of their comrades. They paused at sight of
that company ranged upon the stairs, as well they might, for a more
incongruous sight could scarcely be imagined. Across the bodies of the
slain, and revealed by the lifting powder smoke, stood that little band
of thirty men, a blaze of gay colours, a sheen of silken hose, their
wigs curled and powdered, their costly ruffles scintillant with jewels;
calm, and supercilious, mocking to a man. There was a momentary gasp
of awe, and then the spell was broken by the aristocrats themselves. A
pistol spoke, and a volley followed. In the hall some stumbled forward,
some hurtled backward, and some sank down in nerveless heaps. But those
that remained did not again retreat. Reinforced by others, that crowded
in behind, they charged boldly up the stairs, headed by a ragged,
red capped giant named Souvestre--a man whom the Marquis had once
irreparably wronged.

The sight of him was a revelation to Bellecour. This assault was
Souvestre’s work; the fellow had been inciting the people of Bellecour
for the past twelve months, long indeed before the outbreak of the
revolution proper, and at last he had roused them to the pitch of
accompanying him upon his errand of tardy but relentless vengeance.

With a growl the Marquis raised his pistol. But Souvestre saw the
movement, and with a laugh he did the like. Simultaneously there were
two reports, and Bellecour’s arm fell shattered to his side. Souvestre
continued to advance, his smoking pistol in one hand and brandishing
a huge sabre with the other. Behind him, howling and roaring like the
beasts of prey they were become, surged the tenantry of Bellecour to pay
the long-standing debt of hate to their seigneur.

“Here,” said Des Cadoux, with a grimace, “endeth the chapter of our
lives. I wonder, do they keep rappee in heaven?” He snapped down the lid
of his gold snuffbox--that faithful companion and consoler of so
many years--and cast it viciously at the head of one of the oncoming
peasants. Then tossing back the lace from his wrist he brought his sword
into guard and turned aside a murderous stroke which an assailant aimed
at him.

“Animal,” he snapped viciously, as he set to work, “it is the first time
that my chaste blade has been crossed with such dirty steel as yours. I
hope, for the honour of Cadoux, that it may not be quite the last.”

Up, and ever up, swept that murderous tide. The half of those that
had held the stairs lay weltering upon them as if in a last attempt to
barricade with their bodies what they could no longer defend with their
hands. A bare half-score remained standing, and amongst these
that gallant old Cadoux, who had by now accounted for a half-dozen
sans-culottes, and was hence in high glee, a man rejuvenesced. His
sallies grew livelier and more barbed as the death-tide rose higher
about him. His one regret was that he had been so hasty in casting his
snuff box from him, for he was missing its familiar stimulus. At his
side the Marquis was fighting desperately, fencing with his left arm,
and in the hot excitement seeming oblivious of the pain his broken right
must be occasioning.

“It is ended, old friend,” he groaned at last, to Des Cadoux. “I am
losing strength, and I shall be done for in a moment. The women,” he
almost sobbed, “mon Dieu, the women!”

Des Cadoux felt his old eyes grow moist, and the odd, fierce mirth that
seemed to have hitherto infected him went out like a candle that
is snuffed. But suddenly before he could make any answer, a new and
unexpected sound, which dominated the din of combat, and seemed to cause
all--assailants and defenders alike--to pause that they might listen,
was wafted to their ears.

It was the roll of the drum. Not the mere thudding that had beaten the
step for the mob, but the steady and vigorous tattoo of many sticks upon
many skins.

“What is it? Who comes?” were the questions that men asked one another,
as both aristocrats and sansculottes paused in their bloody labours. It
was close at hand. So close at hand that they could discern the tramp
of marching feet. In the infernal din of that fight upon the stairs
they had not caught the sound of this approach until now that the
new-comers--whoever they might be--were at the very gates of Bellecour.

From the mob in the yard there came a sudden outcry. Men sprang to the
door of the Chateau and shouted to those within.

“Aux Armes,” was the cry. “A nous, d nous!”

And in response to it the assailants turned tail, and dashed down the
stairs, overleaping the dead bodies that were piled upon them, and many
a man slipping in that shambles and ending the descent on his back. Out
into the courtyard they swept: leaving that handful of gentlemen, their
fine clothes disordered, splashed with blood and grimed with powder,
to question one another touching this portent, this miracle that seemed
wrought by Heaven for their salvation.



CHAPTER VI. THE CITIZEN COMMISSIONER


It was, after all, no miracle, unless the very timely arrival upon
the scene of a regiment of the line might be accepted in the light of
Heaven-directed. As a matter of fact, a rumour of the assault that was
to be made that night upon the Chateau de Bellecour had travelled as far
as Amiens, and there, that evening, it had reached the ears of a certain
Commissioner of the National Convention, who was accompanying this
regiment to the army of Dumouriez, then in Belgium.

Now it so happened that this Commissioner had meditated making a descent
upon the Chateau on his own account, and he was not minded that any
peasantry should forestall or baulk him in the business which he
proposed to carry out there. Accordingly, he issued certain orders
to the commandant, from which it resulted that a company, two hundred
strong, was immediately despatched to Bellecour, to either defend or
rescue it from the mob, and thereafter to await the arrival of the
Commissioner himself.

This was the company that had reached Bellecour in the eleventh hour,
to claim the attention of the assailants. But the peasants, as we have
seen, were by no means disposed to submit to interference, and this they
signified by the menacing front they showed the military, abandoning
their attack upon the Chateau until they should be clear concerning the
intentions of the newcomers. Of these intentions the Captain did not
leave them long in doubt. A brisk word of command brought his men into a
bristling line of attack, which in itself should have proved sufficient
to ensure the peasantry’s respect.

“Citizens” cried the officer, stepping forward, “in the name of the
French Republic I charge you to withdraw and to leave us unhampered in
the business we are here to discharge.”

“Citizen-captain,” answered the giant Souvestre, constituting himself
the spokesman of his fellows, “we demand to know by what right you
interfere with honest patriots of France in the act of ridding it of
some of the aristocratic vermin that yet lingers on its soil?”

The officer stared at his interlocutor, amazed by the tone of the man as
much as by the sudden growls that chorused it, but nowise intimidated by
either the one or the other.

“I proclaimed my right when I issued my charge in the name of the
Republic,” he answered shortly.

“We are the Republic,” Souvestre retorted, with a wave of the hand
towards the ferocious crowd of men and women behind him. “We are the
Nation--the sacred people of France. In our own name, Citizen-soldier,
we charge you to withdraw and leave us undisturbed.”

Here lay the basis of an argument into which, however, the Captain,
being neither politician nor dialectician, was not minded to be drawn.
He shrugged his shoulders and turned to his men.

“Present arms!” was the answer he delivered, in a voice of supreme
unconcern.

“Citizen-captain, this is an outrage,” screamed a voice in the mob. “If
blood is shed, upon your own head be it.”

“Will you withdraw?” inquired the Captain coldly.

“To me, my children,” cried Souvestre, brandishing his sabre, and
seeking to encourage his followers. “Down with these traitors who
dishonour the uniform of France! Death to the blue-coats!”

He leapt forward towards the military, and with a sudden roar his
followers, a full hundred strong sprang after him to the charge.

“Fire!” commanded the Captain, and from the front line of his company
fifty sheets of flame flashed from fifty carbines.

The mob paused; for a second it wavered; then before the smoke had
lifted it broke, and shrieking in terror, it fled for cover, leaving the
valorous Souvestre alone, to revile them for a swarm of cowardly rats.

The Captain put his hands to his sides and laughed till the tears
coursed down his cheeks. Checking his mirth at last, he called to
Souvestre, who was retreating in disgust and anger.

“Hi! My friend the patriot! Are you still of the same mind or will you
withdraw your people?”

“We will not withdraw,” answered the giant sullenly. “You dare not fire
upon free citizens of the French Republic.”

“Dare I not? Do you delude yourself with that, nor think that because
this time I fired over your heads I dare not fire into your ranks. I
give you my word that if I have to command my men to fire a second time
it shall not be mere make-believe, and I also give you my word that if
at the end of a minute I have not your reply and you are not moving out
of this--every rogue of you shall have a very bitter knowledge of how
much I dare.”

Souvestre was headstrong and angry. But what can one man, however
headstrong and however angry, do against two hundred, when his own
followers refuse to support him. The valour of the peasants was
distinctly of that quality whose better part is discretion. The thunder
of that fusillade had been enough to shatter their nerve, and to
Souvestre’s exhortations that they should become martyrs in the noble
cause, of the people against tyranny, in whatsoever guise it came, they
answered with the unanswerable logic of caution.

The end was that a very few moments later saw them in full retreat,
leaving the military in sole and undisputed possession of Bellecour.

The officer’s first thought was for the blazing stables, and he at once
ordered a detachment of his company to set about quenching the fire, a
matter in which they succeeded after some two hours of arduous labour.

Meanwhile, leaving the main body bivouacked in the courtyard, he entered
the Chateau with a score of men, and came upon the ten gentlemen still
standing in the shambles that the grand staircase presented. With the
Marquis de Bellecour the Captain had a brief and not over courteous
interview. He informed the nobleman that he was acting under the orders
of a Commissioner, who had heard at Amiens, that evening, of the attack
that was to be made upon Bellecour. Not unnaturally the Marquis was
mistrustful of the ends which that Commissioner, whoever he might be,
looked to serve by so unusual an act. Far better did it sort with
the methods of the National Convention and its members to leave the
butchering of aristocrats to take its course. He sought information
at the Captain’s hands, but the officer was reticent to the point of
curtness, and so, their anxiety but little relieved, since it might seem
that they had but escaped from Scylla to be engulfed in Charbydis, the
aristocrats at Bellecour spent the night in odious suspense. Those that
were tending the wounded had perhaps the best of it, since thus their
minds were occupied and saved the torture of speculation.

The proportion of slain was mercifully small: of twenty that had fallen
it was found that but six were dead, the others being more or less
severely hurt. Conspicuous among the men that remained, and perhaps the
bravest of them all was old Des Cadoux. He had recovered his snuff-box,
than which there seemed to be nothing of greater importance in the
world, and he moved from group to group with here a jest and there a
word of encouragement, as seemed best suited to those he addressed.
Of the women, Mademoiselle de Bellecour and her sharp tongued mother,
showed certainly the most undaunted fronts.

Suzanne had not seen her betrothed since the fight upon the stairs. But
she was told that he was unhurt, and that he was tending a cousin of his
who had been severely wounded in the head.

It was an hour or so after sunrise when he sought her out, and they
stood in conversation together--a very jaded pair--looking down from one
of the windows upon the stalwart blue-coats that were bivouacked in the
quadrangle.

Suddenly on the still morning air came the sound of hoof-beats, and as
they looked they espied a man in a cocked hat and an ample black cloak
riding briskly up the avenue.

“See?” exclaimed Ombreval; “yonder at last comes the great man we
are awaiting--the Commissioner of that rabble they call the National
Convention. Now we shall know what fate is reserved for us.”

“But what can they do?” she asked.

“It is the fashion to send people of our station to Paris,” he replied,
“to make a mock of us with an affair they call a trial before they
murder us.”

She sighed.

“Perhaps this gentleman is more merciful,” was the hope she expressed.

“Merciful?” he mocked. “Ma foi, a ravenous tiger may be merciful before
one of these. Had your father been wise he had ordered the few of us
that remained to charge those soldiers when they entered, and to have
met our end upon their bayonets. That would have been a merciful fate
compared with the mercy of this so-called Commissioner is likely to
extend us.”

It seemed to be his way to find fault, and that warp in his character
rendered him now as heroic--in words--as he had been erstwhile scornful.

Suzanne shuddered, brave girl though she was.

“Unless you can conceive thoughts of a pleasanter complexion,” she said,
“I should prefer your silence, M. d’Ombreval.”

He laughed in his disdainful way--for he disdained all things, excepting
his own person and safety--but before he could make any answer they were
joined by the Marquis and his son.

In the courtyard the horseman was now dismounting, and a moment or two
later they heard the fall of feet, upon the stairs. A soldier threw open
the door, and holding it, announced:

“The Citizen-deputy La Boulaye, Commissioner of the National Convention
to the army of General Dumouriez.”

“This,” mocked Ombreval, to whom the name meant nothing, “is the
representative of a Government of strict equality, and he is announced
with as much pomp as was ever an ambassador of his murdered Majesty’s.”

Then a something out of the common in the attitude of his companions
arrested his attention. Mademoiselle was staring with eyes full of the
most ineffable amazement, her lips parted, and her cheeks whiter than
the sleepless night had painted them. The Marquis was scowling in a
surprise that seemed no whit less than his daughter’s, his head thrust
forward, and his jaw fallen. The Vicomte, too, though in a milder
degree, offered a countenance that was eloquent with bewilderment. From
this silent group Ombreval turned his tired eyes to the door and took
stock of the two men that had entered. One of these was Captain Juste,
the officer in command of the military; the other was a tall man, with
a pale face, an aquiline nose, a firm jaw, and eyes that were very
stern--either of habit or because they now rested upon the man who four
years ago had used him so cruelly.

He stood a moment in the doorway as if enjoying the amazement which had
been sown by his coming. There was no mistaking him. It was the same La
Boulaye of four years ago, and yet it was not quite the same. The face
had lost its boyishness, and the strenuous life he had lived had scored
it with lines that gave him the semblance of a greater age than was his.
The old, poetic melancholy that had dwelt in the secretary’s countenance
was now changed to strength and firmness. Although little known as yet
to the world at large, the great ones of the Revolution held him in high
esteem, and looked upon him as a power to be reckoned with in the near
future. Of Robespierre--who, it was said, had discovered him and brought
him to Paris--he was the protege and more than friend, a protection and
friendship this which in ‘93 made any man almost omnipotent in France.

He was dressed in a black riding-suit, relieved only by the white
neck-cloth and the tricolour sash of office about his waist. He removed
his cocked hat, beneath which the hair was tied in a club with the same
scrupulous care as of old.

Slowly he advanced into the salon, and his sombre eyes passed from the
Marquis to Mademoiselle. As they rested upon her some of the sternness
seemed to fade from their glance. He found in her a change almost as
great as that which she had found in him. The lighthearted, laughing
girl of nineteen, who had scorned his proffered love when he had wooed
her that April morning to such disastrous purpose, was now ripened into
a stately woman of three-and-twenty. He had thought his boyish passion
dead and buried, and often in the years that were gone had he smiled
softly to himself at the memory of his ardour, as we smile at the
memory of our youthful follies. Yet now, upon beholding her again, so
wondrously transformed, so tall and straight, and so superbly beautiful,
he experienced an odd thrill and a weakening of the stern purpose that
had brought him to Bellecour.

Then his glance moved on. A moment it rested on the supercilious,
high-bred countenance of the Vicomte d’Ombreval, standing with so
proprietary an air beside her, then it passed to the kindly old face of
Des Cadoux, and he recalled how this gentleman had sought to stay the
flogging of him. An instant it hovered on the Marquis, who--haggard of
face and with his arm in a sling--was observing him with an expression
in which scorn and wonder were striving for the mastery; it seemed to
shun the gaze of the pale-faced Vicomte, whose tutor he had been in the
old days of his secretaryship, and full and stern it returned at last to
settle upon the Marquis.

“Citizen Bellecour,” he said, and his voice, like his face, seemed to
have changed since last the Marquis had heard it, and to have grown more
deep and metallic, “you may marvel, now that you behold the Commissioner
who sent a company of soldiers to rescue you and your Chateau from the
hands of the mob last night, what purpose I sought to serve by extending
to you a protection which none of your order merits, and you least of
any, in my eyes.”

“The times may have wrought sad and overwhelming changes,” answered the
Marquis, with cold contempt, “but it has not yet so utterly abased us
that we bring ourselves to speculate upon the purposes of the rabble.”

A faint crimson flush crept into Caron’s sallow cheeks.

“Indeed, I see how little you have changed!” he answered bitterly. “You
are of those that will not learn, Citizen. The fault lies here,” he
added, tapping his head, “and it will remain until we remove the ones
with the other. But now for the business that brings me,” he proceeded,
more briskly. “Four years ago, Citizen Bellecour, you laid your whip
across my face in the woods out yonder, and when I spoke of seeking
satisfaction action you threatened me with your grooms. I will not speak
of your other brutalities on that same day. I will confine myself to
that first affront.”

“Be brief, sir,” cried the Marquis offensively. “Since you have the
force to compel us to listen to you, let me beg that you will at least
display the generosity of detaining us no longer than you need.”

“I will be as brief as it lies within the possibility of words,”
 answered Caron coldly. “I am come, Citizen Bellecour, to demand of you
to-day the satisfaction which four years ago you refused me.”

“Of me?” cried the Marquis.

“Through the person of your son, the Vicomte, as I asked for it four
years ago,” said Caron. “You are am old man, Citizen, and I do not fight
old men.”

“I am yet young enough to cut you into ribbons, you dog, if I were
minded to dishonour myself by meeting you.” And turning to Ombreval for
sympathy, he vented a low laugh of contemptuous wonder.

“Insolence!” sneered Ombreval sympathetically, whilst Mademoiselle stood
looking on with cheeks that were growing paler, for that this event
would end badly for either her father or her brother she never doubted.

“Citizen Bellecour,” said Caron, still very coldly, “you have heard what
I propose, as have you also, Citizen-vicomte.”

“For myself,” began the youth “I am--”

“Silence, Armand!” his father commanded, laying a hand upon his
sleeve. “Understand me, citizen-deputy, or citizen-commissioner, or
citizen-blackguard or whatever you call your vile self, you are come on
a fruitless journey to Bellecour. Neither I nor my son is so lost to the
duty which we owe our rank as to so much as dream of acceding to your
preposterous request. I think, sir, that you had been better advised to
have left the mob to its work last night, if you but restrained it for
this purpose.”

“Is that your last word?” asked La Boulaye, still calmly weathering that
storm of insults.

“My very last, sir.”

“There are more ways than one of taking satisfaction for that affront,
Citizen Bellecour,” rejoined La Boulaye, “and if the course which I
now pursue should prove more distasteful to you than that which I
last suggested, the blame of it must rest with you.” He turned to the
bluecoat at the door. “Citizen-soldier, my whip.”

There was a sudden movement among the aristocrats--a horrified
recoiling--and even Bellecour was shaken out of his splendid arrogance.

“Insolent cur!” exclaimed Ombreval with withering scorn; “to what
lengths is presumption driving you?”

“To the length of a horsewhip,” answered La Boulaye pleasantly.

He received the whip from the hands of the soldier and he now advanced
towards Bellecour, unwinding the lash as he came. Ombreval barred his
way with an oath.

“By Heaven: you shall not!” he cried.

“Shall not?” echoed La Boulaye, his lips curling. “You had best stand
aside--you that are steeped in musk and fierceness.” And before the
stern and threatening contempt of La Boulaye’s glance the young nobleman
fell back. But his place was taken by the Vicomte de Bellecour, who
advanced to confront Caron.

“Monsieur la Boulaye,” he announced, “I am ready and willing to meet
you.” And considering the grim alternative with which the Republicans
had threatened him, the old Marquis had not the courage to interfere
again.

“Ah!” It was an exclamation of satisfaction from the Commissioner. “I
imagined that you would change your minds. I shall await you, Citizen,
in the garden in five minutes’ time.”

“I shall not keep you waiting, Monsieur,” was the Vicomte’s answer.

Very formally La Boulaye bowed and left the room accompanied by the
officer and followed by the soldier.

“Mon Dieu!” gasped the Marquise, fanning herself as the door closed
after the Republicans. “Open me a window or I shall stifle! How the
place reeks with them. I am a calm woman, Messieurs, but, on my honour,
had he addressed any of you by his odious title of ‘citizen’ again, I
swear that I had struck him with my own hands.”

There were some that laughed. But Mademoiselle was not of those.

Her eyes travelled to her brother’s pale face and weakly frame, and her
glance was such a glance as we bend upon the beloved dead, for in him
she saw one who was going inevitably to his death.



CHAPTER VII. LA BOULAYE DISCHARGES A DEBT


Along the northern side of the Chateau ran a terrace bordered by a
red sandstone balustrade, and below this the Italian garden, so called
perhaps in consequence of the oddly clipped box-trees, its only feature
that suggested Italy. At the far end of this garden there was a strip of
even turf that might have been designed for a fencing ground, and which
Caron knew of old. Thither he led Captain Juste, and there in the
pale sunshine of that February morning they awaited the arrival of the
Vicomte and his sponsor.

But the minutes went by and still they waited-five, ten, fifteen minutes
elapsed, yet no one came. Juste was on the point of returning within to
seek the reason of this delay when steps sounded on the terrace above.
But they were accompanied by the rustle of a gown, and presently it
was Mademoiselle who appeared before them. The two men eyed her with
astonishment, which in the case of La Boulaye, was tempered by another
feeling.

“Monsieur la Boulaye,” said she, her glance wandering towards the
Captain, “may I speak with you alone?”

Outwardly impassive the Commissioner bowed.

“Your servant, Citoyenne,” said he, removing his cocked hat. “Juste,
will you give us leave?”

“You will find me on the terrace when you want me, Citizen-deputy,”
 answered the officer, and saluting, he departed.

For a moment or two after he was gone Suzanne and Caron stood
confronting each other in silence. She seemed smitten with a sudden
awkwardness, and she looked away from him what time he waited, hat in
hand, the chill morning breeze faintly stirring a loose strand of his
black hair.

“Monsieur,” she faltered at last, “I am come to intercede.”

At that a faint smile hovered a second on the Republican’s thin lips.

“And is the noblesse of France fallen so low that it sends its women to
intercede for the lives of its men? But, perhaps,” he added cynically,
“it had not far to fall.”

Her cheeks reddened. His insult to her class acted upon her as a spur
and overcame the irresoluteness that seemed to have beset her.

“To insult the fallen, sir, is worthy of the new regime, whose
representative you are, Enfine! We must take it, I suppose, as we take
everything else in these disordered times--with a bent head and a meek
submission.”

“From the little that I have seen, Citoyenne,” he answered, very coldly,
roused in his turn, “it rather seems that you take things on your knees
and with appeals for mercy.”

“Monsieur,” she cried, and her eyes now met his in fearless anger, “if
you persist in these gratuitous insults I shall leave you.”

He laughed in rude amusement, and put on his hat. The spell that for a
moment her beauty had cast over him when first she had appeared had been
attenuating. It now broke suddenly, and as he covered himself his whole
manner changed.

“Is this interview of my seeking?” he asked. “It is your brother I
am awaiting. Name of a name, Citoyenne, do you think my patience
inexhaustible? The ci-devant Vicomte promised to attend me here. It was
the boast of your order that whatever sins you might be guilty of you
never broke your word. Have you lost even that virtue, which served you
as a cloak for untold vices? And is your brother fled into the woods
whilst you, his sister, come here to intercede with me for his wretched
life? Pah! In the old days you aroused my hatred by your tyrannies
and your injustices; to-day you weary and disgust me by your ineffable
cowardices, from that gentleman in Paris who now calls himself
Orleans-Egalite downwards.”

“Monsieur,” she began But he was not yet done. His cheeks were flushed
with a reflection of the heart within.

“Citoyenne, I have a debt to discharge, and I will discharge it in full.
Intercessions are vain with me. I cannot forget. Send me your brother
within ten minutes to meet me here, man to man, and he shall have--all
of you shall have--the chance that lies in such an encounter. But woe
unto every man at Bellecour if he should fail me. Citoyenne, you know my
mind.”

But she overlooked the note of dismissal in his voice.

“You speak of a debt that you must discharge,” said she, with no whit
less heat than he had exhibited. “You refer to the debt of vengeance
which you look to discharge by murdering that boy, my brother. But do
you not owe me a debt also?”

“You?” he questioned. “My faith! Unless it be a debt of scorn, I know of
none.”

“Aye,” she returned wistfully, “you are like the rest. You have a long
memory for injuries, but a short one for benefits. Had it not been for
me, Monsieur, you would not be here now to demand this that you call
satisfaction. Have you forgotten how I--”

“No,” he broke in. “I well remember how you sought to stay them when
they were flogging me in the yard there. But you came too late. You
might have come before, for from the balcony above you had been watching
my torture. But you waited overlong. I was cast out for dead.”.

She flashed him a searching glance, as though she sought to read his
thoughts, and to ascertain whether he indeed believed what he was
saying.

“Cast out for dead?” she echoed. “And by whose contrivance? By mine,
M. la Boulaye. When they were cutting you down they discovered that you
were not dead, and but that I bribed the men to keep it secret and carry
you to Duhamel’s house, they had certainly informed my father and you
would have been finished off.”

His eyes opened wide now, and into them there came a troubled look--the
look of one who is endeavouring to grasp an elusive recollection.

“Ma foi,” he muttered. “It seems to come to me as if I had heard
something of the sort in a dream. It was--” He paused, and his brows
were knit a moment. Then he looked up suddenly, and gradually his face
cleared. “Why, yes--I have it!” he exclaimed. “It was in Duhamel’s
house. While I was lying half unconscious on the couch I heard one of
the men telling Duhamel that you had paid them to carry me there and to
keep a secret.”

“And you had forgotten that?” she asked, with the faintest note of
contempt.

“Not forgotten,” he answered, “for it was never really there to be
remembered. That I had heard such words had more than once occurred to
me, but I have always looked upon it as the recollection of something
that I had dreamt. I had never looked upon it as a thing that had had a
real happening.”

“How, then, did you explain your escape?”

“I always imagined that I had been assumed dead.”

There was a brief spell of silence. Then--

“And now that you know, Monsieur--?”

She left the question unfinished, and held out her hands to him in a
gesture of supplication. His face paled slightly and overclouded. Her
influence, against which so long he had steeled himself, reinforced
by the debt in which she had shown him that he stood towards her,
was prevailing with him despite himself. Stirred suddenly out of the
coldness that he had hitherto assumed, he caught the outstretched hands
and drew her a step nearer. That was his undoing. Strong man though he
unquestionably was, like many another strong man his strength seemed to
fall from him at a woman’s touch. He had led so austere and stern a life
during the past four years; of women he had but had the most passing of
glances, and intercourse with none save an old female who acted as his
housekeeper in Paris. And here was a woman who was not only beautiful,
but the woman who years ago had embodied all his notions of what was
most perfect in womanhood; the woman who ever since, and despite all
that was past, had reigned in his heart and mind almost in spite of
himself, almost unknown to him.

The touch of her hand now, the closeness of her presence, the faint
perfume that reached him from her, and that was to him as a symbol of
her inherent sweetness, the large blue eyes meeting his in expectation,
and the imploring half-pout of her lips, were all seductions against
which he had not been human had he prevailed.

Very white in the intensity of the long-quiescent passion she had
resuscitated, he cried:

“Mademoiselle, what shall I say to you?”

The four years that were gone seemed suddenly to have slipped away. It
was as if they stood again by the brook in the park on that April
morn when first he had dared to word his presumptuous love. Even the
vocabulary of the Republic was forgotten, and the interdicted title of
“Mademoiselle” fell naturally from his lips.

“Say that you can be generous,” she implored him softly. “Say that you
prefer the debt you owe to the injury you received.”

“You do not know the sacrifice you ask,” he exclaimed still fighting
with himself. “I have waited four years for this, and now--”

“He is my brother,” she whispered, in so wonderful a tone that words
which of themselves may have seemed no argument at all became the
crowning argument of her intercession.

“Soit!” he consented. “For your sake, Mademoiselle, and in payment
of the debt I owe you, I will go as I came. I shall not see the
Citizen-marquis again. But do you tell him from me that if he sets any
value on his life, he had best shake the dust of France from his feet.
Too long already has he tarried, and at any moment those may arrive
who will make him emigrate not only out of France but out of the world
altogether. Besides, the peasantry that has risen once may rise again,
and I shall not be here to protect him from its violence. Tell him he
had best depart at once.”

“Monsieur, I am grateful--very, very deeply grateful. I can say no
more. May Heaven reward you. I shall pray the good God to watch over you
always. Adieu, Monsieur!”

He stood looking at her a moment still retaining his hold of her hands.

“Adieu, Mademoiselle,” he said at last. Then, very slowly--as if so
that realising his intent she might frustrate it were she so minded--he
raised her right hand. It was not withdrawn, and so he bent low, and
pressed his lips upon it.

“God guard you, Mademoiselle,” he said at last, and if they were strange
words for a Republican and a Deputy, it must be remembered that his
bearing during the past few moments had been singularly unlike a
Republican’s.

He released her hand, and stepping back, doffed his hat. With a final
inclination of the head, she turned and walked away in the direction of
the terrace.

At a distance La Boulaye followed, so lost in thought that he did not
observe Captain Juste until the fellow’s voice broke upon his ear.

“You have been long enough, Citizen-deputy,” was the soldier’s greeting.
“I take it there is to be no duel.”

“I make you my compliments upon the acuteness of your perception,”
 answered La Boulaye tartly. “You are right. There is to be no
encounter.”

Juste’s air was slightly mocking, and words of not overdelicate banter
rose to his lips, to be instantly quelled by La Boulaye.

“Let your drums beat a rally, Citizen-captain,” he commanded briskly.
“We leave Bellecour in ten minutes.”.

And indeed, in less than that time the blue-coats were swinging briskly
down the avenue. In the rear rode La Boulaye, his cloak wrapped about
him, his square chin buried in his neck-cloth, and his mind deep in
meditation.

From a window of the Chateau the lady who was the cause of the young
Revolutionist’s mental absorption watched the departing soldiers. On
either side of her stood Ombreval and her father.

“My faith, little one,” said Bellecour good-humouredly. “I wonder what
magic you have exercised to rid us of that infernal company.”

“Women have sometimes a power of which men know nothing,” was her
cryptic answer.

Ombreval turned to her with a scowl of sudden suspicion.

“I trust, Mademoiselle, that you did not--” he stopped short. His
thoughts were of a quality that defied polite utterance.

“That I did not what, Monsieur?” she asked.

“I trust you remembered that you are to become the Vicomtesse
d’Ombreval” he answered, constructing his sentence differently.

“Monsieur!” exclaimed Bellecour angrily.

“I was chiefly mindful of the fact that I had my brother’s life to
save,” said the girl, very coldly, her eye resting upon her betrothed in
a glance of so much contempt that it forced him into an abashed silence.

In her mind she was contrasting this supercilious, vacillating weakling
with the stern, strong man who lode yonder. A sigh fluttered across her
lips. Had things but been different. Had Ombreval been the Revolutionist
and La Boulaye the Vicomte, how much better pleased might she not have
been. But since it was not so, why sigh? It was not as if she had loved
this La Boulaye. How was that possible? Was he not of the canaille,
basely born, and a Revolutionist--the enemy of her order--in addition?
It were a madness to even dream of the possibility of such a thing, for
Suzanne de Bellecour came of too proud a stock, and knew too well the
respect that was due to it.



CHAPTER VIII. THE INVALIDS AT BOISVERT


There had been friction between the National Convention and General
Dumouriez, who, though a fine soldier, was a remarkably indifferent
Republican. The Convention had unjustly ordered the arrest of his
commissariat officers, Petit-Jean and Malus, and in other ways irritated
a man whose patience was never of the longest.

On the eve, however, of war with Holland, the great ones in Paris
had suddenly perceived their error, and had sought--despite the many
enemies, from Marat downwards, that Dumouriez counted among their
numbers--to conciliate a general whose services they found that they
could not dispense with. This conciliation was the business upon
which the Deputy La Boulaye had been despatched to Antwerp, and as
an ambassador he proved signally successful, as much by virtue of the
excellent terms he was empowered to offer as in consequence of the
sympathy and diplomacy he displayed in offering them.

The great Republican General started upon his campaign in the Low
Countries as fully satisfied as under the circumstances he could hope to
be. Malus and Petit-Jean were not only enlarged but reinstated, he was
promised abundant supplies of all descriptions, and he was assured that
the Republic approved and endorsed his plan of campaign.

La Boulaye, his mission satisfactorily discharged, turned homewards once
more, and with an escort of six men and a corporal he swiftly retraced
his steps through that blackened, war-ravaged country. They had slept a
night at Mons, and they were within a short three leagues of French
soil when they chanced to ride towards noon into the little hamlet of
Boisvert. Probably they would have gone straight through without drawing
rein, but that, as they passed the Auberge de l’Aigle, La Boulaye espied
upon the green fronting the wayside hostelry a company of a half-dozen
soldiers playing at bowls with cannon-balls.

The sight brought Caron to a sudden halt, and he sat his horse observing
them and wondering how it chanced that these men should find themselves
so far from the army. Three of them showed signs of having been recently
wounded. One carried his arm in a sling, another limped painfully and
by the aid of a stick, whilst the head of the third was swathed in
bandages. But most remarkable were they by virtue of their clothes. One
fellow--he of the bandaged head--wore a coat of yellow brocaded silk,
which, in spite of a rent in the shoulder, and sundry stains of wine and
oil, was unmistakably of a comparative newness. Beneath this appeared
the nankeens and black leggings of a soldier. Another covered his greasy
locks with a three-cornered hat, richly laced in gold. A third flaunted
under his ragged blue coat a gold-broidered waistcoat and a Brussels
cravat. A valuable ring flashed from the grimy finger of a fourth,
who, instead of the military white nankeens, wore a pair of black
silk breeches. There was one--he of the injured arm--resplendent in a
redingote of crimson velvet, whilst he of the limp supported himself
upon a gold-headed cane of ebony, which was in ludicrous discord with
the tattered blue coat, the phrygian cap, and the toes that peeped
through his broken boots.

They paused in their game to inspect, in their turn, the newcomers,
and to La Boulaye it seemed that their glances were not free from
uneasiness.

“A picturesque company on my life,” he mused aloud. Then beckoned the
one in the crimson coat.

“Hola, Citizen,” he called to him.

The fellow hesitated a moment, then shuffled forward with a sullen air,
and stood by Caron’s stirrup.

“In God’s name, what are you and who are you?” the Deputy demanded.

“We are invalided soldiers from the army of Dumouriez,” the man answered
him.

“But what are you doing here, at Boisvert?”

“We are in hospital, Citizen.”

“Yonder?” asked La Boulaye derisively, pointing with his whip to the
“Eagle Inn.”

The fellow nodded.

“Yes, Citizen, yonder,” he answered curtly.

La Boulaye looked surprised. Then his eyes strayed to the others on the
green.

“But you are not all invalids?” he questioned.

“Many of us are convalescent.”

“Convalescent? But those three braves yonder are something more than
convalescent. They are as well as I am. Why do they not rejoin the
troops?”

The fellow looked up with a scowl.

“We take our orders from our officer,” he answered sourly.

“Ah!” quoth the Deputy. “There is someone in charge here, then? Who may
it be?”

“Captain Charlot,” the fellow answered, with an impudent air, which
clearly seemed to ask: “What have you to say to that?”

“Captain Charlot?” echoed La Boulaye, in astonishment, for the name was
that of the sometime peasant of Bellecour, who had since risen in life,
and who, as an officer, had in a few months acquired a brilliant fame
for deeds of daring. “Charlot Tardivet?” he inquired.

“Is there any other Captain Charlot in the army of the Republic?” the
fellow asked insolently.

“Is he invalided too?” inquired Caron, without heeding the soldier’s
offensiveness of manner.

“He was severely wounded at Jemappes,” was the answer.

“At Jemappes? But, voyons my friend, Jemappes was fought three months
ago.”

“Why, so all the world knows. What then? The General sent Captain
Charlot here to rest and be cured, giving him charge of the invalided
soldiers who came with him and of others who were already here.”

“And of these,” cried La Boulaye, his amazement growing, “have none
returned to Dumouriez?”

“Have I not said that we are invalids?”

Caron eyed him with cold contempt.

“How many of you are there?” he asked. And for all that the man began to
mislike this questioning, he had not the hardihood to refuse an answer
to the stern tones of that stern man on horseback.

“Some fifty, or thereabouts.”

La Boulaye said nothing for a moment, then touching the fellow’s sleeve
with his whip.

“How came you into this masquerade?” he inquired.

“Ma foi,” answered the man, shrugging his shoulders, “we were in rags.
The commissariat was demoralised, and supplies were not forthcoming. We
had to take what we could find, or else go naked.”

“And where did you find these things?”

“Diable! Will your questions never come to an end, Citizen? Would you
not be better advised in putting them to the Captain himself?”

“Why, so I will. Where is he?”

In the distance a cloud of dust might be perceived above the long, white
road. The soldier espied it as La Boulaye put his question.

“I am much at fault if he does not come yonder.” And he pointed to the
dust-cloud.

“I think,” said La Boulaye, turning to his men, “that we will drink a
cup of wine at the ‘Eagle Inn.’”

Mean though the place was, it was equipped with a stable-yard, to which
admittance was gained by a porte-cochere on the right. Wheeling his
horse, La Boulaye, without another word to the soldier he had been
questioning, rode through it, followed by his escort.

The hostess, who came forward to receive them, was a tall, bony woman of
very swarthy complexion, with beady eyes and teeth prominent as a rat’s.
But if ill-favoured, she seemed, at least, well-intentioned, in addition
to which the tricolour scarf of office round La Boulaye’s waist was a
thing that commanded respect and servility, however much it might be the
insignia of a Government of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

She bade the ostler care for their horses, and she brought them her best
wine, seeking under an assumed geniality to conceal the unrest born of
her speculations as to what might happen did Captain Charlot return ere
the Deputy departed.

Charlot did return. Scarce were they seated at their wine when the
confused sounds that from the distance had been swelling took more
definite shape. The hostess looked uneasy as La Boulaye rose and went to
the door of the inn. Down the road marched now a numerous company from
which--to judge by their odd appearance--the players at bowls had been
drawn. They numbered close upon threescore, and in the centre of them
came a great lumbering vehicle, which puzzled La Boulaye. He drew away
from the door and posted himself at the window, so that unobserved he
might ascertain what was toward. Into the courtyard came that company,
pele-mele, an odd mixture of rags and gauds, yet a very lusty party,
vigorous of limb and loud of voice. With them came the coach, and there
was such a press about the gates that La Boulaye looked to see some of
them crushed to death. But with a few shouts and oaths and threats at
one another they got through in safety, and the unwieldy carriage was
brought to a standstill.

They were clamouring about its doors, and to La Boulaye it seemed that
they were on the point of quarrelling among themselves, some wanting to
enter the coach and others seeking to restrain them, when through the
porte-cochere rode Charlot Tardivet himself.

He barked out a sharp word of command, and they grew silent and still,
testifying to a discipline which said much for the strength of character
of their captain. He was strangely altered, was this Tardivet, and
his appearance now was worthy of his followers. Under a gaudily-laced,
three-cornered hat his hair hung dishevelled and unkempt, like wisps of
straw. He wore a coat of flowered black silk, with a heavy gold edging,
and a very bright plum-coloured waistcoat showed above the broad
tricolour scarf that sashed his middle. His breeches were white (or
had been white in origin), and disappeared into a pair of very lustrous
lacquered boots that rose high above his knees. A cavalry sabre of
ordinary dimensions hung from a military belt, and a pistol-butt,
peeping from his sash, completed the astonishing motley of his
appearance. For the rest, he was the same tall and well-knit fellow;
but there was more strength in his square chin, more intelligence in the
keen blue eyes, and, alas! more coarseness in the mouth, which bristled
with a reddish beard of some days’ growth.

La Boulaye watched him with interest. He had become intimate with him
in the old days in Paris, whither Tardivet had gone, and where, fired
by the wrongs he had suffered, he had been one of the apostles of the
Revolution. When the frontiers of France had been in danger Tardivet
had taken up arms, and by the lustre which he had shed upon the name of
Captain Charlotas he was come to be called throughout the army--he had
eclipsed the fame of Citizen Tardivet, the erstwhile prophet of liberty.
Great changes these in the estate of one who had been a simple peasant;
but then the times were times of great changes. Was not Santerre, the
brewer, become a great general, and was not Robespierre, the obscure
lawyer of Arras, by way of becoming a dictator? Was it, therefore,
wonderful that Charlot should have passed from peasant to preacher, from
preacher to soldier, and from soldier to--what?

A shrewd suspicion was being borne in upon La Boulaye’s mind as he
stood by that window, his men behind him watching also, with no less
intentness and some uneasiness for themselves--for they misliked the
look of the company.

In five seconds Charlot had restored order in the human chaos without.
In five minutes there were but ten men left in the yard. The others
were gone at Charlot’s bidding--a bidding, couched in words that went to
confirm La Boulaye’s suspicions.

“You will get back to your posts at once,” he had said. “Because we
have made one rich capture is no reason why you should neglect the
opportunities of making others no less rich. You, Moulinet, with twenty
men, shall patrol the road to Charleroi, and get as near France as
possible. You Boligny, station yourself in the neighbourhood of Conde,
with ten men, and guard the road from Valenciennes. You, Aigreville,
spread your twenty men from Conde to Tournay, and watch the frontiers
closely. Make an inspection of any captures you may take, and waste no
time in bringing hither worthless ones. Now go. I will see that each
man’s share of this is assured him. March!”

There were some shouts of “Vive la Republique!” some of “Vive le
Captaine Charlot!” and so they poured out of the yard, and left him to
give a few hurried directions to the ten men that remained.

“Sad invalids these, as I live!” exclaimed La Boulaye over his shoulder
to his followers. “Ha! There is my friend of the red redingote!”

The fellow with the bandaged head had approached Charlot and was tugging
at his sleeve.

“Let be, you greasy rascal,” the Captain snapped at him, to add: “What
do you say? A Deputy? Where?” The fellow pointed with his thumb in the
direction of the hostelry.

“Sacred name of a name!” growled Charlot, and, turning suddenly from the
men to whom he had been issuing directions, he sprang up the steps and
entered the inn. As he crossed the threshold of the common room he was
confronted by the tall figure of La Boulaye.

“I make you my compliments, Charlot,” was Caron’s greeting, “upon the
vigorous health that appears to prevail in your hospital.”

Tardivet stood a moment within the doorway, staring at the Deputy. Then
his brow cleared, and with a laugh, at once of welcome and amusement, he
strode forward and put out his hand.

“My good Caron!” he cried. “To meet you at Boisvert is a pleasure I had
not looked for.”

“Are you so very sure,” asked La Boulaye sardonically, as he took the
outstretched hand, “that it is a pleasure?”

“How could it be else, old friend? By St. Guillotine!” he added,
clapping the Deputy on the back, “you shall come to my room, and we will
broach a bottle of green seal.”

In some measure of wonder, La Boulaye permitted himself to be led up the
crazy stairs to a most untidy room above, which evidently did duty as
the Captain’s parlour. A heavy brass lamp, hanging from the ceiling, a
few untrustworthy chairs and a deal table, stained and unclean, were the
only articles of furniture. But in almost every corner there were untidy
heaps of garments Of all sorts and conditions; strewn about the floor
were other articles of apparel, a few weapons, a saddle, and three or
four boots; here an empty bottle, lying on its side, yonder a couple of
full ones by the hearth; an odd book or two and an infinity of playing
cards, cast there much as a sower scatters his seeds upon the ground.

There may be a hundred ways of apprehending the character of a man, but
none perhaps is more reliable than the appearance of his dwelling, and
no discerning person that stepped into Captain Tardivet’s parlour could
long remain in doubt of its inhabitant’s pursuits and habits.

When Dame Capoulade had withdrawn, after bringing them their wine and
casting a few logs upon the fire, La Boulaye turned his back to the
hearth and confronted his host.

“Why are you not with the army, Charlot?” he asked in a tone which made
the question sound like a demand.

“Have they not told you,” rejoined the other airily, engrossed in
filling the glasses.

“I understand you were sent here to recover from a wound you received
three months ago at Jemappes, and to take charge of other invalided
soldiers. But seemingly, your invalids do not number more than a
half-dozen out of the fifty or sixty men that are with you. How is it
then, that you do not return with these to Dumouriez?”

“Because I can serve France better here,” answered Charlot, “and at the
same time enrich myself and my followers.”

“In short,” returned La Boulaye coldly, “because you have degenerated
from a soldier into a brigand.”

Charlot looked up, and for just a second his glance was not without
uneasiness. Then he laughed. He unbuckled his sword and tossed it into a
corner, throwing his hat after it.

“It was ever your way to take extreme views, Caron,” he observed, with
a certain whimsical regret of tone. “That, no doubt, is what has made
a statesman of you. You had chosen more wisely had you elected to serve
the Republic with your sword instead. Come, my friend,” and he pointed
to the wine, “let us pledge the Nation.”

La Boulaye shrugged his shoulders slightly, and sighed. In the end he
came forward and took the wine.

“Long live the Republic!” was Charlot’s toast, and with a slight
inclination of the head La Boulaye drained his glass.

“It is likely to live without you, Charlot, unless you mend your
conduct.”

“Diable!” snapped the Captain, a trifle peevishly. “Can you not
understand that in my own way I am serving my country. You have called
me a brigand. But you might say the same of General Dumouriez himself.
How many cities has he not sacked?”

“That is the way of war.”

“And so is this. He makes war upon the enemies of France that dwell in
cities, whilst I, in a smaller way, make war upon those that travel in
coaches. I confine myself to emigres--these damned aristocrats whom
it is every good Frenchman’s duty to aid in stamping out. Over
the frontiers they come with their jewels, their plate, and their
money-chests. To whom belongs this wealth? To France. Too long already
have they withheld from the sons of the soil that which belongs equally
to them, and now they have the effrontery to attempt to carry these
riches out of the country. Would any true Republican dare to reproach me
for what I do? I am but seizing that which belongs to France, and here
dividing it among the good patriots that are with me, the soldiers that
have bled for France.”

“A specious argument,” sneered La Boulaye.

“Specious enough to satisfy the Convention itself if ever I should be
called to task,” answered Charlot, with heat. “Do you propose to draw
the attention of the Executive to my doings?”

La Boulaye’s grey eyes regarded him steadily for a moment.

“Know you of any reason why I should not?” he asked.

“Yes, Caron, I do,” was the ready answer. “I am well aware of the extent
of your power with the Mountain. In Paris I can see that it might go
hard with me if you were minded that it should, and you were able to
seize me. On the other hand, that such arguments that I have advanced
to you would be acceptable to the Government I do not doubt. But whilst
they would approve of this that you call brigandage, I also do not doubt
that they would claim that the prizes I have seized are by right the
property of the Convention, and they might compel me to surrender them.
Thus they would pass from my hands into those of some statesman-brigand,
who, under the plea of seizing these treasures for the coffers of the
nation, would transfer them to his own. Would you rather help such an
one to profit than me, Caron? Have you so far forgotten how we suffered
together--almost in the self-same cause--at Bellecour, in the old days?
Have you forgotten the friendship that linked us later, in Paris, when
the Revolution was in its dawn? Have you forgotten what I have endured
at the hands of this infernal class that you can feel no sympathy for
me? Caron, it is a measure of revenge, and as there is a Heaven, a very
mild one. Me they robbed of more than life; them I deprive but of their
jewels and their plate, turning them destitute upon the world. Bethink
you of my girl-wife, Caron,” he added, furiously, “and of how she died
of grief and shame a short three months after our hideous nuptials.
God in Heaven! When the memory of it returns to me I marvel at my own
forbearance. I marvel that I do not take every man and woman of them
that fall into my hands and flog them to death as they would have
flogged you when you sought--alas to so little purpose--to intervene on
my behalf.”

He grew silent and thoughtful, and the expression of his face was not
nice. At last: “Have I given you reason enough,” he asked, “why you
should not seek to thwart me?”

“Why, yes,” answered La Boulaye, “more than was necessary. I am
desolated that I should have brought you to re-open a sorrow that I
thought was healed.”

“So it is, Caron. How it is I do not know. Perhaps it is my nature;
perhaps it is that in youth sorrow is seldom long-enduring; perhaps
it is the strenuous life I have lived and the changes that have been
wrought in me--for, after all, there is a little in this Captain
Tardivet that is like the peasant poor Marie took to husband, four years
ago. I am no longer the same man, and among the other things that I
have put from me are the sorrows that were of the old Charlot. But some
memories cannot altogether die, and if to-day I no longer mourn that
poor child, yet the knowledge of the debt that lies ‘twixt the noblesse
of France and me is ever present, and I neglect no opportunity of
discharging a part of it. But enough of that, Caron. Tell me of
yourself. It is a full twelvemonth since last we met, and in that time,
from what I have heard, you have done much and gone far. Tell me of it,
Caron.”

They drew their chairs to the hearth, and they sat talking so long that
the early February twilight came down upon them while they were still at
their reminiscences. La Boulaye had intended reaching Valenciennes that
night; but rather than journey forward in the dark he now proposed to
lie at Boisvert, a resolution in which he did not lack for encouragement
from Charlot.



CHAPTER IX. THE CAPTIVES


Amid the sordid surroundings of Charlot’s private quarters the Captain
and the Deputy supped that evening. The supper sorted well with the
house--a greasy, ill-cooked meal that proved little inviting to the
somewhat fastidious La Boulaye. But the wine, plundered, no doubt, in
common with the goblets out of which they drank it--was more than good,
and whilst La Boulaye showed his appreciation of it, Charlot abused it
like a soldier. They sat facing each other across the little deal table,
whose stains were now hidden by a cloth, and to light them they had four
tapers set in silver candlesticks of magnificent workmanship, and most
wondrous weight, which Tardivet informed his guest had been the property
of a ci-devant prince of the blood.

As the night wore on Captain Charlot grew boisterous and more
confidential. He came at length to speak of the last capture they had
made.

“I have taken prizes, Caron,” said he, “which a king might not despise.
But to-day--” He raised his eyes to the ceiling and wagged his head.

“Well?” quoth La Boulaye. “What about to-day?”

“I have made a capture worth more than all the others put together. It
was an indifferent-looking berline, and my men were within an ace of
allowing it to pass. But I have a nose, mon cher”--and he tapped the
organ with ludicrous significance--“and, bon Dieu, what affair! I can
smell an aristocrat a league off. Down upon that coach I swooped like a
hawk upon a sparrow. Within it sat two women, thickly veiled, and I give
you my word that in a sense I pitied them, for not a doubt of it, but
they were in the act of congratulating themselves upon their escape from
France. But sentiment may become fatal if permitted to interfere with
enterprise. Stifling my regrets I desired them to alight, and they being
wise obeyed me without demur. I allowed them to retain their veils. I
sought the sight of things other than women’s faces, and a brief survey
of the coach showed me where to bestow my attention. I lifted the back
seat. It came up like the lid of the chest it was, and beneath it I
discovered enough gold and silver plate to outweigh in value almost
everything that I had ever taken. But that was by no means all. Under
the front seat there was a chest of gold--louis d’ors they were, some
two or three thousand at least--and, besides that, a little iron-bound
box of gems which in itself was worth more than all the rest of the
contents of that treasure-casket of a coach. I tell you, Caron, I
dropped the lid of that seat in some haste, for I was not minded that
my men should become as wise as I. I stepped down and bade, the women
re-enter, and hither under strong escort I have brought them.”

“And these treasures?” asked La Boulaye.

“They are still in the coach below, with the women. I have told these
that they shall spend the night there. To-morrow I shall see to them and
give them their liberty--which is a more generous proceeding than
might befall them at the hands of another. When they are gone comes the
division of the spoil.” He closed one eye slowly, in a very ponderous
wink. “To my men I shall relegate the gold and silver plate as well as
the money. For myself I shall only retain the little iron-bound box. My
followers will account me more than generous and themselves more than
satisfied. As for me, La Boulaye--by St. Guillotine, I am tempted to
emigrate also and set up as an aristocrat myself in Prussia or England,
for in that little box there is something more than a fortune. I asked
you to-day whether you were minded to lay information against me in
Paris. My faith, I am little concerned whether you do or not, for I
think that before you can reach Paris, Captain Charlot Tardivet will be
no more than a name in the Republican army. Abroad I shall call myself
Charlot du Tardivet, and I shall sleep in fine linen and live on
truffles and champagne. Caron, your health!”

He drained his glass, and laughed softly to himself as he set it down.

“Do you trust your men?” asked La Boulaye.

“Eh? Trust them? Name of a name! They know me. I have placed the ten
most faithful ones on guard. They answer to the rest of us with their
necks for the safety of their charge. Come hither, Caron.”

He rose somewhat unsteadily, and lurched across to the window. La
Boulaye followed him, and gazing out under his indication, he beheld the
coach by the blaze of a fire which the men had lighted to keep them from
freezing at their post.

“Does that look secure?”

“Why, yes--secure enough. But if those fellows were to take it into
their heads that it would be more profitable to share the prize among
ten than among sixty?”

“Secreanom!!” swore Charlot impatiently. “You do my wits poor credit.
For what do you take me? Have I gone through so much, think you,
without learning how little men are to be trusted? Faugh! Look at the
porte-cochere. The gates are closed--aye, and locked, mon cher, and
the keys are here, in my pocket. Do you imagine they are to be broken
through without arousing anyone? And then, the horses. They are in the
stables over there, and again, the keys are in my pocket. So that, you
see, I do not leave everything to the honesty of my ten most faithful
ones.”

“You have learned wisdom, not a doubt of it,” laughed the Deputy.

“In a hard school, Caron,” answered the Captain soberly. “Aye, name of a
name, in a monstrous hard school.”

He turned from the window, and the light of the tapers falling on his
face, showed it heavily scored with lines of pain, testifying to the
ugly memories which the Deputy’s light words had evoked. Then suddenly
he laughed, half-bitterly, half humourously.

“La, la!” said he. “The thing’s past. Charlot Tardivet the bridegroom of
Bellecour and Captain Charlot of Dumouriez’ army are different men-very
different.”

He strode back to the table, filled his goblet, and gulped down the
wine. Then he crossed to the fire and stood with his back to La Boulaye
for a spell. When next he faced his companion all signs of emotion had
cleared from his countenance. It was again the callous, reckless face
of Captain Charlot, rendered a trifle more reckless and a trifle more
callous by the wine-flush on his cheeks and the wine-glitter in his eye.

“Caron” said he, with a half-smile, “shall we have these ladies in to
supper?”

“God forbid!” ejaculated La Boulaye.

“Nay, but I will,” the other insisted, and he moved across to the
window.

As he passed him, La Boulaye laid a detaining hand upon his arm.

“Not that, Charlot,” he begged impressively, his dark face very set.
“Plunder them, turn them destitute upon the world, if you will, but
remember, at least, that they are women.”

Charlot laughed in his face.

“It is something to remember, is it not? They remembered it of our
women, these aristocrats!”

There was so much ugly truth in the Captain’s words, and such a
suggestion of just, if bitter, retribution in his mental attitude, that
La Boulaye released his arm, at a loss for further arguments wherewith
to curb him.

“Paydi!” Charlot continued, “I have a mind for a frolic. Does not
justice give me the right to claim that these aristocrats shall amuse
me?”

With an oath he turned abruptly, and pulled the casement open.

“Guyot!” he called, and a voice from below made answer to him.

“You will make my compliments to the citoyennes in the coach, Guyot, and
tell them that the Citizen-captain Tardivet requests the honour of their
company to supper.”

Then he went to the door, and calling Dame Capoulade, he bade her set
two fresh covers; in which he was expeditiously obeyed. La Boulaye stood
by the fire, his pale face impassive now and almost indifferent. Charlot
returned to the window to learn from Guyot that the citoyennes thanked
the Citizen-captain, but that they were tired and sought to be excused,
asking nothing better than to be allowed to remain at peace in their
carriage.

“Sacred name of a name!” he croaked, a trifle thickly, for the wine he
had taken was mastering him more and more. “Are they defying us? Since
they will not accept an invitation, compel them to obey a command. Bring
them up at once, Guyot.”

“At once, Captain,” was the answer, and Guyot went about the business.

Charlot closed the window and approached the table.

“They are coquettish these scented dames,” he mocked, as he poured
himself out some wine. “You are not drinking Caron.”

“It is perhaps wise that one of us should remain sober,” answered the
Deputy quietly, for in spite of a certain sympathy with the feelings by
which Charlot was actuated, he was in dead antipathy to this baiting of
women that seemed toward.

Charlot made no answer. He drained his goblet and set it down with a
bang. Then he flung himself into a chair, and stretching out his long,
booted legs he began to hum the refrain of the “Marseillaise.” Thus a
few moments went by. Then there came a sound of steps upon the creaking
stairs, and the gruff voice of the soldier urging the ladies to ascend
more speedily.

At last the door opened and two women entered, followed by Guyot.
Charlot lurched to his feet.

“You have come, Mesdames,” said he, forgetting the mode of address
prescribed by the Convention, and clumsily essaying to make a leg. “Be
welcome! Guyot, go to the devil.”

For a moment or two after the soldier’s departure the women remained
in the shadow, then, at the Captain’s invitation, which they dared not
disobey, they came forward into the halo of candle-light. Simultaneously
La Boulaye caught his breath, and took a step forward. Then he drew back
again until his shoulders touched the overmantel and there he remained,
staring at the newcomers, who as yet, did not appear to have observed
him.

They wore no headgear, and their scarfs were thrown back upon their
shoulders, revealing to the stricken gaze of La Boulaye the countenances
of the Marquise de Bellecour and her daughter.

And now, as they advanced into the light, Charlot recognised them too.
In the act of offering a chair he stood, arrested, his eyes devouring
first one, then the other of then, with a glance that seemed to have
grown oddly sobered. The flush died from his face, and his lips twitched
like those of a man who seeks to control his emotions. Then slowly the
colour crept back into his cheeks, a curl of mockery appeared on the
coarse mouth, and the eyes beamed evilly.

They tense silence was broken by the bang with which he dropped the
chair he had half raised. As he leaned forward now, La Boulaye read in
his face the thought that had leapt into the Captain’s mind, and had it
been a question of any woman other than Zuzanne de Bellecour, the Deputy
might have indulged in the consideration of what a wonderful retribution
was there here. Into the hands of the man whose bride the Marquis de
Bellecour had torn from him were now delivered by a wonderful chance
the wife and daughter of that same Bellecour. And at Boisvert this
briganding Captain was as much to-night the lord of life and death,
and all besides, as had been the Marquis of Bellecour of old. But
he pondered not these things, for all that the stern irony of the
coincidence did not escape him. That evil look in Charlot’s eyes, that
sinister smile on Charlot’s lips, more than suggested what manner of
vengeance the Captain would exact--and that, for the time, was matter
enough to absorb the Deputy’s whole attention.

And the women did not see him. They were too much engrossed in the
figure fronting them, and agonisedly, with cheeks white and bosoms
heaving, they waited, in their dread suspense. At last, drawing himself
to the full of his stalwart height, the Captain laughed grimly and
spoke.

“Mesdames,” said he, his very tone an insult in its brutal derision,
“we Republicans have abolished God, and until tonight I have held the
Republic right, arguing that if a God there was, His leanings must
be aristocratic, since He never seemed to concern Himself with the
misfortunes of the lowly-born. But tonight, mesdames, I know that the
Republic is at fault. There is a God--a God of justice and retribution,
who has delivered you, of all people in the world, into my hands. Look
on me well, Ci-devant Marquise de Bellecour, and you, Mademoiselle de
Bellecour. Look in my face and see if you know me again. Not you. You
never heeded me as you rode by in those proud days. But heard you ever
tell of one Charlot Tardivet, a base vassal whose wife your husband,
Madame, and your father, Mademoiselle, took from him on his bridal morn?
Heard you ever tell of that poor girl--one Marie Tardivet--who died of
grief as a consequence of that brutality? But no; such matters were too
trivial for your notice if you saw them, or for your memory if you ever
heard tell of them. What was the life of a peasant more than that of
any other animal of the land, that the concern of it should perturb the
sereneness of your aristocratic being? Mesdames, that Charlot Tardivet
am I; that Marie Tardivet was my wife. I knew not whom you were when I
bade you sup at my table but now that I know it--what do you look for at
my hands?”

It was the Marquise who answered him. She was deathly pale, and her
words came breathlessly: for all that their import was very bold.

“We look for the recollection that we are women and unless you are as
cowardly as--”

“Citoyenne,” he broke in harshly, answering her as he had answered La
Boulaye, “was my wife less a woman think you? Pah! There is yet another
here who was wronged,” he announced, and he waved his hand in the
direction of La Boulaye, who stood, stiff and pale, by the hearth.

The women turned, and at sight of the Deputy a cry escaped Suzanne. It
was a cry of hope, for here was one who would surely lend them aid. It
was a fact, she thought, upon which the Captain had not counted. But La
Boulaye stood straight and cold, and not by so much as an inclination of
the head did he acknowledge that grim introduction. Charlot, mistaking
Mademoiselle’s exclamation, laughed softly.

“Well may you cry out, Citoyenne,” said he, “for him I see you
recognise. He is the man who sought to rescue my wife from the clutches
of your lordly and most noble father. For his pains he was flogged until
they believed him dead. Is it not very fitting that he should be with me
now to receive you?”

“But he, at least, is in my debt,” cried Mademoiselle, now making a step
forward, and sustained by an excitement born of hope. “Whatever may be
my father’s sins, M. la Boulaye, at least, will not seek to visit them
upon the daughter, for he owes his life to me, and he will not forget
the debt.”

Charlot’s brows were suddenly knit with vexation. He half-turned to La
Boulaye, as if to speak; but ere he could utter a word--

“The debt has been paid, Citoyenne,” said Caron impassively.

Before that cold answer, so coldly delivered, Mademoiselle recoiled.

“Paid!” she echoed mechanically.

“Aye, paid,” he rejoined. “You claimed your brother’s life in payment,
and I gave it to you. Do you not think that we are quits? Besides,”
 he ended suddenly, “Captain Tardivet is the master here. Address your
appeals to him, Citoyenne.”

With terror written on her face, she turned from him to meet the flushed
countenance of Charlot, who, with arms akimbo and his head on one side,
was regarding her at once with mockery and satisfaction.

“What do you intend by us, Monsieur?” she questioned in a choking voice.

He smiled inscrutably.

“Allay your fears, Citoyenne; you will find me very gentle.”

“I knew you would prove generous,” she cried.

“But, yes, Citoyenne,” he rejoined, in the tones we employ to those who
fear unreasonably. “I shall prove generous; as generous as--as was my
lord your father.”

La Boulaye trembled, but his face remained calmly expressionless as he
watched that grim scene.

“Monsieur!” Suzanne cried out in horror.

“You will not dare, you scum!” blazed the Marchioness.

Charlot shrugged his shoulders and laughed, whereupon Madame de
Bellecour seemed to become a being transformed. Her ample flesh, which
but a moment back had quivered in fear, quivered now more violently
still in anger. The colour flowed back into her cheeks until they flamed
an angry crimson, and her vituperations rang in so loud and fierce a
voice that at last, putting his hands to his ears, Charlot crossed to
the door.

“Silence!” he roared at her, so savagely that her spirit forsook her
on the instant. “I will put an end to this,” he swore, as he opened the
door. “Hold there! Is Guyot below?”

“Here, Captain,” came a voice.

Charlot retraced his steps, leaving the door wide, his eyes dwelling
upon Suzanne until she shrank under its gaze, as she might have done
from the touch of some unclean thing. She drew near to her mother, in
whom the brief paroxysm of rage was now succeeded by a no less violent
paroxysm of weeping. On the stairs sounded Guyot’s ascending steps.

“Mother,” whispered Suzanne, setting her arms about her in a vain
attempt to comfort. Then she heard Charlot’s voice curtly bidding Guyot
to reconduct the Marquise to her carriage.

Madame de Bellecour heard it also, and roused herself once more.

“I will not go,” she stormed, anger flashing again from the tear-laden
eyes. “I will not leave my daughter.”

Charlot shrugged his shoulders callously.

“Take her away, Guyot,” he said, shortly, and the sturdy soldier obeyed
him with a roughness that took no account of either birth or sex.

When the Marquise’s last scream had died away in the distance, Charlot
turned once more to Suzanne, and it seemed that he sought to compose
his features into an expression of gentleness beyond their rugged
limitations. But the glance of his blue eyes was kind, and mistaking
the purport of that kindness, Mademoiselle began an appeal to his better
feelings.

Straight and tall, pale and delicate she stood, her beauty rendered,
perhaps, the more appealing by virtue of the fear reflected on her
countenance. Her blue eyes were veiled behind their long black lashes,
her lips were tremulous, and her hands clasped and unclasped as she now
made her prayer to the Republican. But in the hardened heart of Charlot
no breath of pity stirred. He beheld her beauty and he bethought him of
his wrongs. For the rest, perhaps, had she been less comely he had been
less vengeful.

And yonder by the hearth stood La Boulaye like a statue, unmoved and
immovable. The Captain was speaking to her, gently and soothingly, but
her thoughts became more taken with the silence of La Boulaye than with
the speech of Charlot. Even in that parlous moment she had leisure to
despise herself for having once--on the day on which, in answer to her
intercessions, he had spared her brother’s life--entertained a kindly,
almost wistful, thought concerning this man whom she now deemed a
dastard.



CHAPTER X. THE BAISER LAMOURETTE


Presently Charlot turned to La Boulaye, and for all that he uttered
no word, his glance left nothing to be said. In response to it Caron
stirred at last, and came leisurely over to the table.

“A mouthful of wine, and I’m gone, Charlot,” said he in level,
colourless tones, as taking up a flagon he filled himself a goblet.

“Fill for me, too,” cried the Captain; “aye, and for the Citoyenne here.
Come, my girl, a cup of wine will refresh you.”

But Suzanne shrank from the invitation as much as from the tenor of
it and the epithet he had applied to her. Observing this, he laughed
softly.

“Oh! As you will. But the wine is good-from cellar of a ci-devant Duke.
My service to you, Citoyenne,” he pledged her, and raising his cup, he
poured the wine down a throat that was parched by the much that he had
drunk already, But ere the goblet was half-empty, a sharp, sudden cry
from La Boulaye came to interrupt his quaffing. He glanced round, and
at what he saw he spilled the wine down his waistcoat, then let the cup
fall to the ground, as with an oath he flung himself upon the girl.

She had approached the table whilst both men were drinking, and quietly
possessed herself of a knife; and, but that it was too blunt to do the
service to which she put it, Charlot’s intervention would have come too
late. As it was he caught her wrist in time, and in a rage he tore the
weapon from her fingers, and flung it far across the room.

“So, pretty lady!” he gasped, now gripping both her wrists. “So! we are
suicidally inclined, are we! We would cheat Captain Charlot, would we?
Fi donc!” he continued with horrid playfulness. “To shed a blood so blue
upon a floor so unclean! Name of a name of a name!”

Accounting herself baffled at every point, this girl, who had hitherto
borne herself so stoutly as to have stoically sought death as a last
means of escape, began to weep softly. Whereupon:

“Nay, nay, little-woman,” murmured the Captain, in such accents as are
employed to a petted child, and instinctively, in his intent to soothe
he drew her nearer. And now the close contact thrilled him; her beauty,
and some subtle perfume that reached him from her, played havoc with his
senses. Nearer he drew her in silence, his face white and clammy, and
his hot, wine laden breath coming quicker every second. And unresisting
she submitted, for she was beyond resistance now, beyond tears even.
From between wet lashes her great eyes gazed into his with a look of
deadly, piteous affright; her lips were parted, her cheeks ashen, and
her mind was dimly striving to formulate a prayer to the Holy Mother,
the natural protectress of all imperilled virgins.

Nearer she felt herself drawn to her tormentor, in whose thoughts there
dwelt now little recollection of the vengeful character of his purpose.
For a second her wrists were released; then she felt his arms going
round her as the coils of a snake go round its prey. With a sudden
reassertion of self, with a panting gasp of horror, she tore herself
free. An oath broke from him as he sprang after her. Then the unexpected
happened. Above his head something bright flashed up, then down. There
was a dull crack, and the Captain stopped short in his rush; his hands
were jerked to the height of his breast, and like a pole-axed beast he
dropped and lay prone at her feet.

Across his fallen body she beheld La Boulaye standing impassively, the
ghost of a smile on his thin lips, and in his hand one of the heavy
silver candlesticks from the table.

Whilst a man might count a dozen they stood so with no word spoken.
Then:

“It was a cowardly blow, Citoyenne,” said the Deputy in accents of
regret; “but what choice had I?” He set down the candlestick, and
kneeling beside Charlot, he felt for the Captain’s heart. “The door,
Citoyenne,” he muttered. “Lock it.”

Mechanically, and without uttering a word, she hastened to do his
bidding. As the key grated in the lock he rose.

“It has only stunned him,” he announced. “Now to prepare an explanation
for it.”

He drew a chair under the old brass lamp, that hung from the ceiling. He
mounted the chair, and with both hands he seized the chain immediately
above the lamp. Drawing himself up, he swung there for just a second;
then the hook gave way, and amid a shower of plaster La Boulaye
half-tumbled to the ground.

“There,” said he, as he dropped the lamp with its chain and hook upon
the floor by Charlot. “It may not be as convincing as we might wish,
but I think that it will prove convincing enough to the dull wits of
the landlady, and of such of Charlot’s followers as may enter here. I am
afraid,” he deplored, “that it will be some time before he recovers. He
was so far gone in wine that it needed little weight to fell him.”

Her glance met his once more, and she took a step towards him with hands
outstretched.

“Monsieur, Monsieur!” she cried. “If you but knew how in my thoughts I
wronged you a little while ago.”

“You had all reason to,” he answered, taking her hands, and there came
the least softening of his stern countenance. “It grieved me to add to
your affliction. But had I permitted him to do so much as suspect that
I was anything but your implacable enemy, I had no chance of saving you.
He would have dismissed me, and I must have obeyed or been compelled,
for he is master here, and has men enough to enforce what he desires.”

And now she would have thanked him for having saved her, but he cut her
short almost roughly.

“You owe me no thanks,” he said. “I have but done for you what my
manhood must have bidden me do for any woman similarly situated. For
to-night I have saved you, Citoyenne. I shall make an effort to smuggle
you and your mother out of Boisvert before morning, but after that you
must help yourselves.”

“You will do this?” she cried, her eyes glistening.

“I will attempt it.”

“By what means, Monsieur Caron?”

“I do not yet know. I must consider. In the meantime you had best return
to your coach. Later to-night I shall have you and your mother brought
to me, and I will endeavour to so arrange matters that you shall not
again return to your carriage.

“Not return to it?” she exclaimed. “But are we then to leave it here?”

“I am afraid there is no help for that.”

“But, Monsieur, you do not know; there is a treasure in that carriage.
All that we have is packed in it, and if we go without it we go
destitute.”

“Better, perhaps, to go destitute than not to go at all, Mademoiselle. I
am afraid there is no choice for you.”

His manner was a trifle impatient. It irritated him that in such a
moment she should give so much thought to her valuables. But in reality
she was thinking of them inasmuch as they concerned her mother, who was
below, and her father and brother who awaited them in Prussia, whither
they had separately emigrated. The impatience in his tone stung her into
a feeling of resentment, that for the moment seemed to blot out the much
that she owed him. A reproachful word was trembling on her lips, when
suddenly he put out his hand.

“Hist!” he whispered, the concentrated look of one who listens stamped
upon his face. His sharp ears had detected some sound which--perhaps
through her preoccupation--she had not noticed. He stepped quickly to
the Captain’s side, and taking up the lamp by its chain, he leapt into
the air like a clown, and came down on his heels with a thud that shook
the chamber. Simultaneously he dropped the lamp with a clatter, and sent
a shout re-echoing through the house.

The girl stared at him with parted lips and the least look of fear in
her eyes. Was he gone clean mad of a sudden?

But now the sound which had warned him of someone’s approach reached
her ears as well. There were steps on the stairs, which at that alarming
noise were instantly quickened. Yet ere they had reached the top La
Boulaye was at the door vociferating wildly.

Into the room came the hostess, breathless and grinning with anxiety,
and behind her came Guyot, who, startled by the din, had hastened up to
inquire into its cause.

At sight of the Captain stretched upon the floor there was a scream from
Mother Capoulade and an oath from the soldier.

“Mon Dieu! what has happened?” she cried, hurrying forward.

“Miserable!” exclaimed La Boulaye, with well-feigned anger. “It seems
that your wretched hovel is tumbling to pieces, and that men are not
safe beneath its roof.” And he indicated the broken plaster and the
fallen lamp.

“How did it happen, Citoyenne-deputy?” asked Guyot; for all that he drew
the only possible inference from what he saw.

“Can you not see how it happened?” returned La Boulaye, impatiently.
“As for you, wretched woman, you will suffer for it, I promise you. The
nation is likely to demand a high price for Captain Charlot’s injuries.”

“But, bon Dieu, how am I to blame?” wailed the frightened woman.

“To blame,” echoed La Boulaye, in a furious voice. “Are you not to blame
that you let rooms in a crazy hovel? Let them to emigres as much as you
will, but if you let them to good patriots and thereby endanger their
lives you must take the consequences. And the consequences in this case
are likely to be severe, malheureuse.”

He turned now to Guyot, who was kneeling by the Captain, and looking to
his hurt.

“Here, Guyot,” he commanded sharply, “reconduct the Citoyenne to her
coach. I will perhaps see her again later, when the Captain shall have
recovered consciousness. You, Citoyenne Capoulade, assist me to carry
him to bed.”

Each obeyed him, Guyot readily, as became a soldier, and the hostess
trembling with the dread which La Boulaye’s words had instilled into
her. They got Charlot to bed, and when a half-hour or so later he
recovered consciousness, it was to find Guyot watching at his bed-side.
Bewildered, he demanded an explanation of his present position and
of the pain in his head, which brought him the memory of a sudden and
unaccountable blow he had received, which was the last thing that he
remembered. Guyot, who had never for a moment entertained a doubt of the
genuineness of the mise-en-scene La Boulaye had prepared, answered him
with the explanation of how he had been struck by the falling lamp,
whereupon Charlot fell to cursing lamps and crumblings with horrid
volubility. That done he would have risen, but that La Boulaye, entering
at that moment, insisted that he should remain abed.

“Are you mad?” the Deputy expostulated, “or is it that you do not
appreciate the nature of your hurt? Diable! I have known a man die
through insisting to be about with a cracked skull that was as nothing
to yours.”

“Name of a name!” gasped Charlot, who in such matters was profoundly
ignorant and correspondingly credulous. “Is it so serious?”

“Not serious if you lie still and sleep. You will probably be quite
well by to-morrow. But if you move to-night the consequences may well be
fatal.”

“But I cannot sleep at this hour,” the Captain complained. “I am very
wakeful.”

“We will try to find you a sleeping potion, then,” said La Boulaye.
“I hope the hosteen may have something that will answer the purpose.
Meanwhile, Guyot, do not allow the Captain to talk. If you would have
him well to-morrow, remember that it is of the first importance that he
should have utter rest tonight.”

With that he went in quest of Dame Capoulade to ascertain whether she
possessed any potion that would induce sleep. He told her that the
Captain was seriously injured, and that unless he slept he might die,
and, quickened by the terror of what might befall her in such a case,
the woman presently produced a small phial full of a brown, viscous
fluid. What it might be he had no notion, being all unversed in the
mysteries of the pharmacopoeia; but she told him that it had belonged to
her now defunct husband, who had always said that ten drops of it would
make a man sleep the clock round.

He experimented on the Captain with ten drops, and within a quarter of
an hour of taking the draught of red wine in which it was administered,
Charlot’s deep breathing proclaimed him fast asleep.

That done, La Boulaye sent Guyot below to his post once more, and
returning to the room in which they had supped, he paced up and down for
a full hour, revolving in his mind the matter of saving Mademoiselle and
her mother. At last, towards ten o’clock, he opened the casement, and
calling down to Guyot, as Charlot had done, he bade him bring the women
up again. Now Guyot knew of the high position which Caron occupied in
the Convention, and he had seen the intimate relations in which he stood
to Tardivet, so that unhesitatingly he now obeyed him.

La Boulaye closed the window, and crossed slowly to the fire. He stirred
the burning logs with his boot, then stood there waiting. Presently the
stairs creaked, next the door opened, and Guyot ushered in Mademoiselle.

“The elder citoyenne refuses to come, Citizen-deputy,” said the soldier.
“They both insisted that it was not necessary, and that the Citoyenne
here would answer your questions.”

Almost on the point of commanding the soldier to return for the
Marquise, Caron caught the girl’s eye, and her glance was so significant
that he thought it best to hear first what motives she had for thus
disobeying him.

“Very well,” he said shortly. “You may go below, Guyot. But hold
yourself in readiness lest I should have need of you.”

The soldier saluted and disappeared. Scarce was he gone when
Mademoiselle came hurrying forward.

“Monsieur Caron,” she cried “Heaven is surely befriending us. The
soldiers are drinking themselves out of their wits. They will be keeping
a slack watch presently.”

He looked at her for a moment, fathoming the purport of what she said.

“But,” he demanded at last, “why did not the Marquise obey my summons,
and accompany you?”

“She was afraid to leave the coach, Monsieur. Moreover, she agreed with
me that it would not be necessary.”

“Not necessary?” he echoed. “But it is necessary. When last you were
here I told you I did not intend you should return to the coach. This is
my plan, Citoyenne. I shall keep Guyot waiting below while you and your
mother are fortifying yourselves by supper here. Then I shall dismiss
him with a recommendation that he keep a close watch upon the carriage,
and the information that you will not be returning to it to-night. A
half-hour later or so, when things are quiet, I shall find a way out for
you by the back, after which the rest must remain in your hands. More I
cannot do.”

“You can,” she cried; “you can.”

“If you will enlighten me,” said he, with the faintest touch of irony.

She looked at his stern, sardonic face and solemn grey eyes, and for a
moment it almost seemed to her that she hated him more than anybody in
the world. He was so passionless, so master of himself, and he addressed
her in a tone which, whilst it suggested that he accounted himself most
fully her equal, made her feel that he was really her better by much.
If one of these two was an aristocrat, surely that one was the
Citizen-deputy La Boulaye.

“If you had but the will you would do it, Monsieur,” she answered him.
“It is not mine to enlighten you; I know not how.”

“I have the very best will in the world, Citoyenne,” said he. “Of that I
think that I am giving proof.”

“Aye, the will to do nothing that will shame your manhood,” she
rejoined. “That is all you think of. It was because your manhood bade
you that you came to my rescue--so you said when you declined my thanks.
It is this manhood of yours, I make no doubt, that is now prevailing
upon you to deliver two unprotected women out of the hands of these
brigands.”

“In Heaven’s name, Citoyenne,” quoth the astonished Deputy, “out of what
sentiment would you have me act, and, indeed, so that I save you, how
can it concern you by what sentiment I am prompted?”

She paused a moment before replying. Her eyes were downcast, and some of
the colour faded from her cheeks. She came a step nearer, which brought
her very close to him.

“Monsieur,” she faltered very shyly, “in the old days at Bellecour you
would have served me out of other sentiments.”

He started now in spite of himself, and eyed her with a sudden gleam of
hope, or triumph, or mistrust, or perhaps of all three. Then his glance
fell, and his voice was wistful.

“But the old days are dead, Mademoiselle.”

“The days, yes,” she answered, taking courage from his tone. “But love
Monsieur, is everlasting--it never dies, they say.”

And now it was La Boulaye who drew closer, and this man who had
so rigidly schooled himself out of all emotions, felt his breath
quickening, and his pulses throbbing faster and faster. To him it seemed
that she was right, and that love never died--for the love for her,
which he believed he had throttled out of existence long ago, seemed of
a sudden to take life as vigorously as ever. And then it was as if some
breeze out of the past bore to his nostrils the smell of the violets and
of the moist earth of that April morning when she had repulsed him in
the woods of Bellecour. His emotion died down. He drew back, and stood
rigid before her.

“And if it were to live, Citoyenne,” he said--the resumption of the
Republican form of address showed that he had stepped back into the
spirit as well as in the flesh “what manner of fool were I to again
submit it to the lash of scorn it earned when first it was discovered?”

“But that belonged to the old days,” she cried, “and it is dead with the
old days.’

“It is vain to go back, Citoyenne,” he cut in, and his voice rang harsh
with determination.

She bit her lip under cover of her bent head. If she had hated him
before how much more did she not hate him now? And but a moment back it
had seemed to her that she had loved him. She had held out her hands to
him and he had scorned them; in her eagerness she had been unmaidenly,
and all that she had earned had been humiliation. She quivered with
shame and anger, and sinking into the nearest chair she burst into a
passion of tears.

Thus by accident did she stumble upon the very weapon wherewith to make
an utter rout of all Caron’s resolutions. For knowing nothing of the
fountain from which those tears were springing, and deeming them the
expression of a grief pure and unalloyed--saving, perhaps, by a worthy
penitence--he stepped swiftly to her side.

“Mademoiselle,” he murmured, and his tone was as gentle and beseeching
as it had lately been imperious. “Nay, Mademoiselle, I implore you!”

But her tears continued, and her sobs shook the slender frame as if to
shatter it. He dropped upon his knees. Scarcely knowing what he did, he
set his arm about her waist in a caress of protection.

A long curl of her black, unpowdered hair lay against his cheek.

“Mademoiselle,” he murmured, and she took comfort at the soothing tone.

From it she judged him malleable now, that had been so stern and
unyielding before. She raised her eyes, and through her tears she turned
their heavenly blue full upon the grey depths of his.

“You will not believe me, Monsieur,” she complained softly. “You will
not believe that I can have changed with the times; that I see things
differently now. If you were to come to me again as in the woods at
Bellecour--” She paused abruptly, her cheeks flamed scarlet, and she
covered them with her hands.

“Suzanne!” he cried, seeking to draw those hands away. “Is it true,
this? You care, beloved!”

She uncovered her face at last. Again their eyes met.

“I was right,” she whispered. “Love never dies, you see.”

“And you will marry me, Suzanne?” he asked incredulously.

She inclined her head, smiling through her tears, and he would have
caught her to him but that she rose of a sudden.

“Hist!” she cried, raising her finger: “someone is coming.”

He listened, holding his breath, but no sound stirred. He went to the
door and peered out. All was still. But the interruption served
to impress him with the fact that time was speeding, and that all
unsuspicious though Guyot might be as yet, it was more than possible
that his suspicions would be aroused if she remained there much longer.

He mentioned this, and he was beginning to refer to his plan for their
escape when she thrust it aside, insisting that they must depart in
their coach, so that their treasure might also be saved.

“Be reasonable, Suzanne,” he cried. “It is impossible.”

A cloud of vexation swept across her averted face.

“Nay, surely not impossible,” she answered. “Listen, Caron, there are
two treasures in that coach. One is in money and in gold and silver
plate; the other is in gems, and amounts to thrice the value of the
rest. This latter is my dowry. It is a fortune with which we can quit
France and betake ourselves wherever our fancy leads us. Would you ask
me to abandon that and come to you penniless, compelled thereby to live
in perpetual terror in a country where at any moment an enemy might cast
at me the word aristocrate, and thereby ruin me?”

There was no cupidity in La Boulaye’s nature, and even the prospect of
an independent fortune would have weighed little with him had it not
been backed by the other argument she employed touching the terror that
would be ever with her did they dwell in France.

He stood deep in thought, his hand to his brow, thrusting back the long
black hair from his white forehead, what time she recapitulated her
argument.

“But how?” he exclaimed, in exasperation “Tell me how?”

“That is for you to discover, Caron.”

He thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and set himself to pace the
chamber. And now his fingers came in contact with something foreign.
Idly he drew it forth, and it proved to be the phial Mother Capoulade
had given him, and from which he had poured the ten drops for the
Captain’s sleeping potion. His eyes brightened with inspiration. Here
was a tool whose possibilities were vast. Then his brows were knit
again.

“Wait,” he said slowly. “Let me think.”



CHAPTER XI. THE ESCAPE


Resting his elbow on the table, and with his hand to his brow, Caron
sat deep in thought, his forefinger and thumb pressed against his closed
eyelids. From beyond the board Mademoiselle watched him anxiously and
waited. At last he looked up.

“I think I have it,” he announced, rising. “You say that the men are
drinking heavily. That should materially assist us.”

She asked him what plan he had conceived, but he urged that time
pressed; she should know presently; meanwhile, she had best return
immediately to her carriage. He went to the door to call Guyot, but she
stayed him.

“No, no, Monsieur,” she exclaimed. “I will not pass through the
common-room again in that fellow’s company. They are all in there,
carousing, and--and I dare not.”

As if to confirm her words, now that he held the door open, he caught
some sounds of mirth and the drone of voices from below.

“Come with me, then,” said he, taking up one of the candles. “I will
escort you.”

Together they descended the narrow staircase, La Boulaye going first, to
guide her, since two might not go abreast. At the foot there was a door,
which he opened, and then, at the end of a short passage--in which the
drone of voices sounded very loud and in particular one, cracked voice
that was raised in song--they gained the door of the common-room. As La
Boulaye pushed it open they came upon a scene of Bacchanalian revelry.
On a chair that had been set upon the table they beheld Mother Capoulade
enthroned like a Goddess of Liberty, and wearing a Phrygian cap on her
dishevelled locks. Her yellow cheeks were flushed and her eyes watery,
whilst hers was the crazy voice that sang.

Around the table, in every conceivable attitude of abandonment, sat
Captain Charlot’s guard--every man of the ten--and with them the six men
and the corporal of La Boulaye’s escort, all more or less in a condition
of drunkenness.

“Le jour de gloire est arrive?” sang the croaking voice of Dame
Capoulade, and there it stopped abruptly upon catching sight of La
Boulaye and his companion in the doorway. Mademoiselle shivered out of
loathing; but La Boulaye felt his pulses quickened with hope, for surely
all this was calculated to assist him in his purpose.

At the abrupt interruption of the landlady’s version of the
“Marseillaise” the men swung round, and upon seeing the Deputy they
sought in ludicrous haste to repair the disorder of their appearance.

“So!” thundered Caron. “This is the watch you keep? This is how you are
to be trusted? And you, Guyot,” he continued, pointing his finger at the
man. “Did I not bid you await my orders? Is this how you wait? You see
that I am compelled to reconduct the Citoyenne myself, for I might have
called you in vain all night.”

Guyot came forward sheepishly, and a trifle unsteady in his gait.

“I did not hear you call, Citizen,” he muttered.

“It had been a miracle if you had with this din,” answered La Boulaye.
“Here, take the Citoyenne back to her carriage.”

Obediently Guyot led the Citoyenne across the room and out into the
courtyard, and the men, restrained by La Boulaye’s severe presence,
dared scarcely so much as raise their eyes to her as she passed out.

“And now to your posts,” was Caron’s stern command. “By my soul, if you
were men of mine I would have you flogged for this. Out with you!” And
he pointed imperiously to the door.

“It is a bitter night, Citizen,” grumbled one of them.

“Do you call yourself soldiers, and does a touch of frost make cowards
of you? Outside, you old wives, at once! I’ll see you at your post
before I go to bed.”

And with that he set himself to drive them out, and they went, until
none but his own half-dozen remained. These he bade dispose themselves
about the hearth, in which they very readily obeyed him.

On a side-table stood a huge steaming can which had attracted La
Boulaye’s attention from the moment that he had entered the room. He
went to peer into this, and found it full almost to the brim of mulled
red wine.

With his back to those in the room, so as to screen his actions, he
had uncorked the phial as he was approaching the can. Now, as he made
pretence first to peer into it and then to smell its contents, he
surreptitiously emptied the potion into it, wondering vaguely to himself
whether the men would ever wake again if they had drunk it. Slipping
the phial into his sash he turned to Mother Capoulade, who had descended
from the table and stood looking very foolish.

“What is this?” he demanded angrily.

“It was a last cup of wine for the men,” she faltered. “The night is
bitterly cold, Citizen,” she added, by way of excusing herself.

“Bah!” snarled Caron, and for a moment he stood there as if
deliberating. “I am minded to empty it into the kennel,” he announced.

“Citizen!” cried the woman, in alarm. “It is good wine, and I have
spiced it.”

“Well,” he relented, “they may have it. But see that it is the last
to-night.”

And with that he strode across the room, and with a surly “Good-night”
 to his men, he mounted the stairs once more.

He waited perhaps ten minutes in the chamber above, then he went to the
casement, and softly opened the window. It was as he expected. With
the exception of the coach standing in the middle of the yard, and just
discernible by the glow of the smouldering fire they had built there
but allowed to burn low, the place was untenanted. Believing him to have
retired for the night, the men were back again in the more congenial
atmosphere of the hostelry, drinking themselves no doubt into a stupor
with that last can of drugged wine. He sat down to quietly mature his
plans, and to think out every detail of what he was about to do. At the
end of a half-hour, silence reigning throughout the house, he rose.
He crept softly into Charlot’s chamber and possessed himself of the
Captain’s outer garments. These he carried back to the sitting-room, and
extracted from the coat pocket two huge keys tied together with a piece
of string. He never doubted that they were the keys he sought, one
opening the stable door and the other the gates of the porte-cochere.

He replaced the garments, and then to make doubly sure, he waited
yet--in a fever of impatience--another half-hour by his watch.

It wanted a few minutes to midnight when, taking up his cloak and a
lantern he had lighted, he went below once more. In the common-room he
found precisely the scene he had expected. Both Charlot’s men and
his own followers lay about the floor in all conceivable manner of
attitudes, their senses locked deep in the drunken stupor that possessed
them. Two or three had remained seated, and had fallen across the table,
when overcome. Of these was Mother Capoulade, whose head lay sideways
on her curled arms, and from whose throat there issued a resonant
and melodious snore. Most of the faces that La Boulaye could see were
horribly livid and bedewed with sweat, and again it came into his mind
to wonder whether he had overdone things, and they would wake no more.
On the other hand, an even greater fear beset him, that the drug might
have been insufficient. By way of testing it, he caught one fellow who
lay across his path a violent kick in the side. The man grunted in his
sleep, and stirred slightly, to relapse almost at once into his helpless
attitude, and to resume his regular breathing, which the blow had
interrupted.

La Boulaye smiled his satisfaction, and without further hesitancy passed
out into the yard. He had yet a good deal to say to Mademoiselle, but he
could not bring himself to speak to her before her mother, particularly
as he realised how much the Marquise might be opposed to him. He opened
the carriage door.

“Mademoiselle,” he called softly, “will you do me the favour to alight
for an instant? I must speak to you.”

“Can you not say what you have to say where you are?” came the
Marquise’s voice.

“No, Madame,” answered La Boulaye coldly, “I cannot.”

“Oh, it is ‘Madame’ and ‘Mademoiselle’ now, eh? What have you done to
the man, child, to have earned us so much deference.”

“May I remind Mademoiselle,” put in La Boulaye firmly, “that time
presses, and that there is much to be done?”

“I am here, Monsieur” she answered, as without more ado, and heedless of
her mother’s fresh remarks, she stepped from the carriage.

La Boulaye proffered his wrist to assist her to alight, then reclosed
the door, and led her slowly towards the stable.

“Where are the soldiers?” she whispered.

“Every soul in the inn is asleep,” he answered. “I have drugged them
all, from the Captain down to the hostess. The only one left is the
ostler, who is sleeping in one of the outhouses here. Him you must take
with you, not only because it is not possible to drug him as well, but
also because the blame of your escape must rest on someone, and it may
as well rest on him as another.”

“But why not on you?” she asked.

“Because I must remain.”

“Ah!” It was no more than a breath of interrogation, and her face was
turned towards him as she awaited an explanation.

“I have given it much thought, Suzanne, and unless someone remains to
cover, as it were, your retreat, I am afraid that your flight might be
vain, and that you would run an overwhelming risk of recapture. You must
remember the resourcefulness of this fellow, Tardivet, and his power in
the country here. If he were to awake to the discovery that I had duped
him, he would be up and after us, and I make little doubt that it would
not be long ere he found the scent and ran us to earth. Tomorrow I shall
discover your flight and the villainy of the ostler, and I shall so
organise the pursuit that you shall not be overtaken.”

There was a moment’s pause, during which La Boulaye seemed to expect
some question. But none came, so he proceeded:

“Your original intention was to make for Prussia, where you say that
your father and your brother are awaiting you.”

“Yes, Monsieur. Beyond the Moselle--at Treves.”

“You must alter your plans,” said he shortly. “Your mother, no doubt,
will insist upon repairing thither, and I will see that the road is
left open for her escape. At Soignies you, Suzanne, can hire yourself a
berline, that will take you back to France.”

“Back to France?” she echoed.

“Yes, back to France. That is the unlikeliest road on which to think of
pursuing you, and thus you will baffle Charlot. Let your mother proceed
on her journey to Prussia, but tell her to avoid Charleroi, and to go
round by Liege. Thus only can she hope to escape Tardivet’s men that are
patrolling the road from France. As for you, Suzanne, you had best go
North as far as Oudenarde, so as to circumvent the Captain’s brigands
on that side. Then make straight for Roubaix, and await me at the ‘Hotel
des Cloches.’”

“But, Monsieur, I shudder at the very thought of re-entering France.”

“As Mademoiselle de Bellecour, a proscribed aristocrat, that is every
reason for your fears. But I have given the matter thought and I can
promise you that as the Citoyenne La Boulaye, wife of the Citizen-deputy
Caron La Boulaye, you will be as safe as I should be myself, if you are
questioned, and, in response, you will find nothing but eagerness to
serve you on every hand.”

She spoke now of the difficulties her mother would make, but he
dismissed the matter by reminding her that her mother could not
detain her by force. Again she alluded to her dowry, but that also he
dismissed, bidding her leave it behind. Her family would need the money,
to be realised by the jewels. As for herself, he assured her that as his
wife she would not want, and showed her how idle was her dread of living
in France.

“And now, Mademoiselle,” he said, more briskly, “let us see to this
ostler.”

He opened the door of the outhouse, and uncovering his lantern he raised
it above his head. Its yellow light revealed to them a sleeper on the
straw in a corner. La Boulaye entered and stirred the man with his foot.

The fellow sat up blinking stupidly and dragging odd wisps of straw from
his grey hair.

“What’s amiss?” he grunted.

As briefly as might be La Boulaye informed him that he was to receive a
matter of five hundred francs if he would journey into Prussia with the
ci-devant Marquise de Bellecour.

Five hundred francs? It was a vast sum, the tenth of which had never
been his at any one time of his wretched life. For five hundred francs
he would have journeyed into Hades, and La Boulaye found him willing
enough to go to Prussia, and had no need to resort to the more forcible
measures he had come prepared to employ.

Accompanied by the ostler, they now passed to the stables, and when
La Boulaye had unlocked the door and cut the bonds that pinioned the
Marquis’s coachman, they got the horses, and together they harnessed
them as quietly as might be.

Then working with infinite precaution, and as little sound as possible,
they brought them out into the yard and set them in the shafts of the
carriage. The rest was easy work, and a quarter of an hour later the
heavy vehicle rumbled through the porte-cochere and started on its way
to Soignies.

La Boulaye dropped the keys into a bucket and went within. In the
common-room nothing had changed, and the men lay about precisely as he
had left them. Reassured, he went above and took a peep at the Captain,
whom he found snoring lustily.

Satisfied that all was well, Caron passed quietly to his own chamber,
and with an elation of soul such as had never been his since boyhood,
he fell asleep amid visions of Suzanne and the new life he was to enter
upon in her sweet company.



CHAPTER XII. THE AWAKENING


La Boulaye awakened betimes next morning. It may be that the matter on
his mind and the business that was toward aroused him; certainly it
was none of the sounds that are common to an inn at early morn, for the
place was as silent as a tomb.

Some seconds he remained on his back, staring at the whitewashed ceiling
and listening to the patter of the rain against his window. Then, as his
mind gathered up the threads of recollection, he leapt from his bed and
made haste to assume a garment or two.

He stood a moment at his casement, looking out into the empty courtyard.
From a leaden sky the rain was descending in sheets, and the gargoyle at
the end of the eaves overhead was discharging a steady column of water
into the yard. Caron shivered with the cold of that gloomy February
morning, and turned away from the window. A few moments later he was in
Tardivet’s bedchamber, vigorously shaking the sleeping Captain.

“Up, Charlot! Awake!” he roared in the man’s ear.

“What o’clock?” he asked with a yawn. Then a sudden groan escaped him,
and he put his hand to his head. “Thousand devils!” he swore, “what a
headache!”

But La Boulaye was not there on any mission of sympathy, nor did he
waste words in conveying his news.

“The coach is gone,” he announced emphatically.

“Coach? What coach?” asked the Captain, knitting his brows.

“What coach?” echoed La Boulaye testily. “How many coaches were there?
Why, the Bellecour coach; the coach with the treasure.”

At that Charlot grew very wide-awake. He forgot his headache and his
interest in the time of day.

“Gone?” he bellowed. “How gone? Pardieu, it is not possible!”

“Look for yourself,” was La Boulaye’s answer as he waved his hand in the
direction of the window. “I don’t know what manner of watch your men can
have kept that such a thing should have come about. Probably, knowing
you ill a-bed, they abused the occasion by getting drunk, and probably
they are still sleeping it off. The place is silent enough.”

But Tardivet scarcely heard him. From his window he was staring into the
yard below, too thunderstruck by its emptiness to even have recourse
to profanity. Stable door and porte-cochere alike stood open. He turned
suddenly and made for his coat. Seizing it, he thrust his hand in one
pocket after another. At last:

“Treachery!” he cried, and letting the garment fall to the ground, he
turned upon La Boulaye a face so transfigured by anger that it looked
little like the usually good-humoured countenance of Captain Tardivet
“My keys have been stolen. By St. Guillotine, I’ll have the thief
hanged.”

“Did anybody know that the keys were in your pocket?” asked the
ingenuous Caron.

“I told you last night.”

“Yes, yes; I remember that. But did anybody else know?”

“The ostler knew. He saw me lock the doors.”

“Why, then, let us find the ostler,” urged Caron. “Put on some clothes
and we will go below.”

Mechanically Charlot obeyed him, and as he did so he gave his feelings
vent at last. From between set teeth came now a flow of oaths and
imprecations as steady as the flow of water from the gargoyle overhead.

At last they hastened down the stairs together, and in the common-room
they found the sleeping company much as La Boulaye had left it the night
before. In an access of rage at what he saw, and at the ample evidences
of the debauch that had reduced them to this condition, Charlot began by
kicking the chair from under Mother Capoulade. The noise of her fall and
the scream with which she awoke served to arouse one or two others, who
lifted their heads to gaze stupidly about them.

But Charlot was busy stirring the other slumberers. He had found a whip,
and with this he was now laying vigorously about him.

“Up, you swine!” he blazed at them. “Afoot, you drunken scum!”

His whip cracked, and his imprecations rang high and lurid. And La
Boulaye assisted him in his labours with kicks and cuffs and a tongue no
less vituperative.

At last they were on their feet--a pale, bewildered, shamefaced
company--receiving from the infuriated Charlot the news that whilst they
had indulged themselves in their drunken slumbers their prisoners had
escaped and carried off the treasure with them. The news was received
with a groan of dismay, and several turned to the door to ascertain
for themselves whether it was indeed exact. The dreary emptiness of the
rain-washed yard afforded them more than ample confirmation.

“Where is your pig of an ostler, Mother Capoulade?” demanded the angry
Captain.

Quivering with terror, she answered him that the rascal should be in the
shed by the stables, where it was his wont to sleep. Out into the rain,
despite the scantiness of his attire, went Charlot, followed closely by
La Boulaye and one or two stragglers. The shed proved empty, as Caron
could have told him--and so, too, did the stables. Here, at the spot
where Madame de Bellecour’s coachman had been left bound, the Captain
turned to La Boulaye and those others that had followed him.

“It is the ostler’s work,” he announced. “There was knavery and
treachery writ large upon his ugly face. I always felt it, and this
business proves how correct were my instincts. The rogue was bribed when
he discovered how things were with you, you greasy sots. But you, La
Boulaye,” he cried suddenly, “were you drunk, too?”

“Not I,” answered the Deputy.

“Then, name of a name, how came that lumbering coach to leave the yard
without awakening you?”

“You ask me to explain too much,” was La Boulaye’s cool evasion. “I have
always accounted myself a light sleeper, and I could not have believed
that such a thing could really have taken place without disturbing me.
But the fact remains that the coach has gone, and I think that instead
of standing here in idle speculation as to how it went, you might find
more profitable employment in considering how it is to brought back
again. It cannot have gone very far.”

If any ray of suspicion had begun to glimmer in Charlot’s brain, that
suggestion of La Boulaye’s was enough to utterly extinguish it.

They returned indoors, and without more ado Tardivet set himself to plan
the pursuit. He knew, he announced, that Prussia was their destination.
He had discovered it at the time of their capture from certain papers
that he had found in a portmanteau of the Marquise’s. He discussed
the matter with La Boulaye, and it was now that Caron had occasion to
congratulate himself upon his wisdom in having elected to remain behind.

The Captain proposed to recall the fifty men that were watching the
roads from France, and to spread them along the River Sambre, as far as
Liege, to seek information of the way taken by the fugitives. As soon
as any one of the parties struck the trail it was to send word to the
others, and start immediately in pursuit.

Now, had Charlot been permitted to spread such a net as this, the
Marquise must inevitably fall into it, and Caron had pledged his word
that she should have an open road to Prussia. With a map spread upon the
table he now expounded to the Captain how little necessity there was
for so elaborate a scheme. The nearest way to Prussia was by Charleroi,
Dinant, and Rochefort, into Luxembourg, and--he contended--it was not
only unlikely, but incredible, that the Marquise should choose any but
the shortest road to carry her out of Belgium, seeing the dangers that
must beset her until the frontiers of Luxembourg were passed.

“And so,” argued La Boulaye, “why waste time in recalling your men?
Think of the captives you might miss by such an act! It were
infinitely better advised to assume that the fugitives have taken the
Charleroi-Dinant road, and to despatch, at once, say, half-a-dozen men
in pursuit.”

Tardivet pondered the matter for some moments.

“Yom are right,” he agreed at last. “If they have resolved to continue
their journey, a half-dozen men should suffice to recapture them. I will
despatch these at once...”

La Boulaye looked up at that.

“If they have resolved to continue their journey?” he echoed. “What else
should they have resolved?”

Tardivet stroked his reddish hair and smiled astutely.

“In organising a pursuit,” said he, “the wise pursuer will always put
himself in the place of the fugitives, and seek to reason as they would
probably reason. Now, what more likely than that these ladies, or their
coachman, or that rascally ostler, should have thought of doubling back
into France? They might naturally argue that we; should never think of
pursuing them in that direction. Similarly placed, that is how I should
reason, and that is the course I should adopt, making for Prussia
through Lorraine. Perhaps I do their intelligences too much honour--yet,
to me, it seems such an obvious course.”’

La Boulaye grew cold with apprehension. Yet impassively he asked:

“But what of your men who are guarding the frontiers?”

“Pooh! A detour might circumvent them. The Marquise might go as far
north as Roubaix or Comines, or as fair south as Rocroy, or even
Charlemont. Name of a name, but it is more than likely!” he exclaimed,
with sudden conviction. “What do you say, Caron?”

“That you rave,” answered La Boulaye coldly.

“Well, we shall see. I will despatch a message to my men, bidding
them spread themselves as far north as Comiines and as far south as
Charlemont. Should the fugitives have made such a detour as I suggested
there will be ample time to take them.”

La Boulaye still contemned the notion with a fine show of indifference,
but Tardivet held to his purpose, and presently despatched the
messengers as he had proposed. At that Caron felt his pulses quickening
with anxiety for Mademoiselle. These astute measures must inevitably
result im her capture--for was it not at Roubaix that he had bidden her
await him? There was but one thing to be done, to ride out himself to
meet her along the road from Soignies to Oudenarde, and to escort
her into France. She should go ostensibly as his prisoner, and he was
confident that not all the brigands of Captain Tardivet would suffice to
take her from him.

Accordingly, he announced his intention of resuming his interrupted
journey, and ordered his men to saddle and make ready. Meanwhile, having
taken measures to recapture the Marquise should she have doubled back
into France, Charlot was now organising an expedition to scour the
road to Prussia, against the possibility of her having adhered to her
original intention of journeying that way. Thus he was determined to
take no risks, and leave her no loophole of escape.

Tardivet would have set himself at the head of the six horsemen of
this expedition, but that La Boulaye interfered, and this time to some
purpose. He assured the Captain that he was still far from recovered,
and that to spend a day in the saddle might have the gravest of
consequences for him.

“If the occasion demanded it,” he concluded, “I should myself urge you
to chance the matter of your health. But the occasion does not. The
business is of the simplest, and your men can do as much without you as
they could with you.”

Tardivet permitted himself to be persuaded, and Caron had again good
cause to congratulate himself that he had remained behind to influence
him. He opined that the men, failing to pick up the trail at Charleroi,
would probably go on as far as Dinant before abandoning the chase; then
they would return to Boisvert to announce their failure, and by that
time it would be too late to reorganise the pursuit. On the other hand,
had Tardivet accompanied them, upon failing to find any trace of the
Marquise at Charleroi, La Boulaye could imagine him pushing north along
the Sambre, and pressing the peasantry into his service to form an
impassable cordon.

And so, having won his way in this at least, and seen the six men set
out under the command of Tardivet’s trusted Guyot, Caron took his leave
of the Captain. He was on the very point of setting out when a courier
dashed up to the door of the “Eagle,” and called for a cup of wine. As
it was brought him he asked the hostess whether the Citizen-deputy La
Boulaye, Commissioner to the army of Dumouriez, had passed that way.
Upon being informed that the Deputy was even then within the inn, the
courier got down from his horse and demanded to be taken to him.

The hostess led him into the common-room, and pointed out the Deputy.
The courier heaved a sigh of relief, and removing his sodden cloak he
bade the landlady get it dried and prepare him as stout a meal as her
hostelry afforded.

“Name of a name!” he swore, as he pitched his dripping hat into a
corner. “But it is good to find you at last, Citizen-deputy? I had
expected to meet you at Valenciennes. But as you were not there, and as
my letters were urgent, I have been compelled to ride for the past six
hours through that infernal deluge. Enfin, here you are, and here is my
letter--from the Citizen-deputy Maximilien Robespierre--and here I’ll
rest me for the next six hours.”

Bidding the fellow by all means rest and refresh himself, La Boulaye
broke the seal, and read the following:

  Dear Caron,

  My courier should deliver you this letter as you are on the Point
  of reentering France, on your return from the mission which you
  have discharged with so much glory to yourself and credit to me
  who recommended you for the task.  I make you my compliments on
  the tact and adroitness you have employed to bring this stubborn
  Dumouriez into some semblance of sympathy with the Convention.
  And now, my friend, I have another task for you, which you can
  discharge on your homeward journey.  You will make a slight detour,
  passing into Artois and riding to the Chateau d’Ombreval, which is
  situated some four miles south of Arras.  Here I wish you not only
  to Possess yourself of the person of the ci-devant Vicomte
  d’Ombreval, bringing him to Paris as your Prisoner, but further,
  to make a very searching investigation of that aristocrat’s papers,
  securing any documents that you may consider of a nature
  treasonable to the French Republic, One and Indivisible.

The letter ended with the usual greetings and Robespierre’s signature.

La Boulaye swore softly to himself as he folded the epistle.

“It seems,” he muttered to Charlot, “that I am to turn catch-poll in the
service of the Republic.”

“To a true servant of the Nation,” put in the courier, who had overheard
him, “all tasks that may tend to the advancement of the Republic should
be eagerly undertaken. Diable! Have not I ridden in the rain these six
hours past?”

La Boulaye paid no heed to him; he was too inured to this sort of
insolence since the new rule had levelled all men. But Charlot turned
slowly to regard the fellow.

He was a tall man of rather slender stature, but indifferently dressed
in garments that were splashed from head to foot with mud, and from
which a steam was beginning to rise as he stood now with his back to the
fire. Charlot eyed him so narrowly that the fellow shifted his position
and dropped his glance in some discomfort. His speech, though rough of
purport, had not been ungentle of delivery. But his face was dirty--the
sure sign of an ardent patriot--his hair hung untidy about his face,
and he wore that latest abomination of the ultra-revolutionist, a dense
black beard and moustache.

“My friend,” said Charlot, “although we are ready to acknowledge you our
equal, we should like you to understand that we do not take lessons in
duty even from our equals. Bear you that in mind if you seek to have a
peaceful time while you are here, for it so happens that I am
quartered at this inn, and have a more important way with me than this
good-natured Deputy here.”

The fellow darted Charlot a malevolent glance.

“You talk of equality and you outrage equality in a breath,” he growled.
“I half suspect you of being a turncoat aristocrat.” And he spat
ostentatiously on the ground.

“Suspect what you will, but voice no suspicions here, else you’ll become
acquainted with the mighty short methods of Charlot Tardivet. And as for
aristocrats, my friend, there are none so rabid as the newly-converted.
I wonder how long it is since you became a patriot?”

Before the fellow could make any answer the corporal in command of
La Boulaye’s escort entered to inform Caron that the men were in the
saddle.

At that the Deputy hurriedly took his leave of Tardivet, and wrapping
his heavy cloak tightly about him he marched out into the rain, and
mounted.

A few moments later they clattered briskly out of Boisvert, the thick
grey mud flying from their horses’ hoofs as they went, and took the
road to France. For a couple of miles they rode steadily along under the
unceasing rain and in the teeth of that bleak February wind. Then at a
cross-road La Boulaye unexpectedly called a halt.

“My friends,” he said to his escort, “we have yet a little business to
discharge in Belgium before we cross the frontier.”

With that he announced his intention of going North, and so briskly did
he cause them to ride, that by noon--a short three hours after quitting
Boisvert--they had covered a distance of twenty-five miles, and brought
up their steaming horses before the Hotel de Flandres at Leuze.

At this, the only post-house in the place, La Boulaye made inquiries
as to whether any carriage had arrived from Soignies that morning, to
receive a negative answer. This nowise surprised him, for he hardly
thought that Mademoiselle could have had time to come so far. She must,
however, be drawing nearer, and he determined to ride on to meet her.
From Leuze to Soignies is a distance of some eight or nine leagues by a
road which may roughly be said to be the basis of a triangle having its
apex at Boisvert.

After his men had hurriedly refreshed themselves, La Boulaye ordered
them to horse again, and they now cantered out, along this road, to
Soignes. But as mile after mile was covered without their coming upon
any sign of such a carriage as Mademoiselle should be travelling in, La
Boulaye almost unconsciously quickened the pace until in the end they
found themselves careering along as fast as their jaded horses would
bear them, and speculating mightily upon the Deputy’s odd behaviour.

Soignies itself was reached towards four o’clock, and still they had not
met her whom La Boulaye expected. Here, in a state of some wonder and
even of some anxiety, Caron made straight for the Auberge des Postes.
Bidding his men dismount and see to themselves and their beasts, he
went in quest of the host, and having found him, bombarded him with
questions.

In reply he elicited the information that at noon that day a carriage
such as he described had reached Soignies in a very sorry condition. One
of the wheels had come off on the road, and although the Marquise’s men
had contrived to replace it and to rudely secure it by an improvised
pin, they had been compelled to proceed at a walk for some fifteen miles
of the journey, which accounted for the lateness of their arrival at
Soignies. They had remained at the Auberge des Postes until the wheel
had been properly mended, and it was not more than an hour since they
had resumed their journey along the road to Liege.

“But did both the citoyennes depart?” cried La Boulaye, in amazement,
and upon receiving an affirmative reply it at once entered his mind that
the Marquise must have influenced her daughter to that end--perhaps
even employed force.

“Did there appear to be any signs of disagreement between them?” was his
next question.

“No, Citizen, I observed nothing. They seemed in perfect accord.”

“The younger one did not by any chance inquire of you whether it would
be possible to hire a berline?” asked Caron desperately.

“No,” the landlord answered him, with wondering eyes. “She appeared as
anxious as her mother for the repairing of the coach in which they came,
that they might again depart in it.”

La Boulaye stood a moment in thought, his brows drawn together, his
breathing seeming suspended, for into his soul a suspicion had of a
sudden been thrust--a hideous suspicion. Abruptly he drew himself up
to the full of his active figure, and threw back his head, his resolve
taken.

“Can I have fresh horses at once?” he inquired. “I need eight.”

The landlord thoughtfully scratched his head.

“You can have two at once, and the other six in a half-hour.”

“Very well,” he answered. “Saddle me one at once, and have the other
seven ready for my men as soon as possible.”

And whilst the host sent the ostler to execute the order, Caron called
for a cup of wine and a crust of bread. Munching his crust he entered
the common-room where his men were at table with a steaming ragout
before them.

“Garin,” he said to the corporal, “in a half-hour the landlord will
be able to provide you with fresh horses. You will set out at once to
follow me along the road to Liege. I am starting immediately.”

Garin, with the easy familiarity of the Republican soldier, bade him
take some thought of his exhausted condition, and snatch at least the
half-hour’s rest that was to be theirs. But La Boulaye was out of the
room before he had finished. A couple of minutes later they heard a
clatter of departing hoofs, and La Boulaye was gone along the road too
Liege in pursuit of the ladies of Bellecour.



CHAPTER XIII. THE ROAD TO LIEGE


“Of what are you thinking, little fool?” asked the Marquise peevishly,
her fat face puckered into a hundred wrinkles of ill-humour.

“Of nothing in particular, Madame,” the girl answered patiently.

The Marquise sniffed contemptuously, and glanced through the window of
the coach upon the dreary, rain sodden landscape.

“Do you call the sometime secretary Citizen-cutthroat La Boulaye,
nothing in particular?” she asked. “Ma foi! I wonder that you do not die
of self-contempt after what passed between you at Boisvert.”

“Madame, I was not thinking of him,” said Suzanne.

“More shame to you, then,” was the sour retort, for the Marquise was
bent upon disagreeing with her. “Have you a conscience, Suzanne, that
you could have played such a Delilah part and never give a thought to
the man you have tricked?”

“You will make me regret that I told you of it,” said the girl quietly.

“You are ready enough to regret anything but the act itself. Perhaps
you’ll be regretting that you did not take a berline at Soignies, as you
promised the citizen-scoundrel that you would, and set out to join him?”

“It is hardly generous to taunt me so, Madame, I do very bitterly regret
what has taken place. But you might do me the justice to remember that
what I did I did as much for others as for myself. As much, indeed, for
you as for myself.”

“For me?” echoed the Marquise shrilly. “Tiens, that is droll now! For
me? Was it for me that you made love to the citizen-blackguard? Are you
so dead to shame that you dare remind me of it?”

Mademoiselle sighed, and seemed to shrink back into the shadows of the
carriage. Her face was very pale, and her eyes looked sorely troubled.

“It is something that to my dying day I shall regret,” she murmured. “It
was vile, it was unworthy! Yet if I had not used the only weapon to my
hand--” She ceased, the Marquise caught the sound of a sob.

“What are you weeping for, little fool?” she cried.

“As much as anything for what he must think of me when he realises how
shamefully I have used him.”

“And does it matter what the canaille thinks? Shall it matter what the
citizen-assassin thinks?”

“A little, Madame,” she sighed. “He will despise me as I deserve. I
almost wish that I could undo it, and go back to that little room at
Boisvert the prisoner of that fearful man, Tardivet, or else that--”
 Again she paused, and the Marquise turned towards her with a gasp.

“Or else that what?” she demanded. “Ma foi, it only remains that you
should wish you had kept your promise to this scum.”

“I almost wish it, Madame. I pledged my word to him.”

“You talk as if you were a man,” said her mother; “as if your word was a
thing that bound you. It is a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. As
for this Republican scum--”

“You shall not call him that,” was the rejoinder, sharply delivered;
for Suzanne was roused at last. “He is twenty times more noble and brave
than any gentleman, that I have ever met. We owe our liberty to him at
this moment, and sufficiently have I wronged him by my actions--”

“Fool, what are you saying?” cried the enraged Marquise. “He, more noble
and brave than any gentleman that you ever met? He--this kennel-bred
citizen-ruffian of a revolutionist? Are you mad, girl, or--” The
Marquise paused a moment and took a deep breath that was as a gasp of
sudden understanding. “Is it that you are in love with this wretch!”

“Madame!” The exclamation was laden with blended wonder, dignity, and
horror.

“Well?” demanded Madame de Bellecour severely. “Answer me, Suzanne. Are
you in love with this La Boulaye?”

“Is there the need to answer?” quoth the girl scornfully. “Surely you
forget that I am Mademoiselle de Bellecour, daughter of the Marquise
de Bellecour, and that this man is of the canaille, else you had never
asked the question.”

With an expression of satisfaction the Marquise was sinking back in the
carriage, when of a sudden she sat bolt upright.

“Someone is riding very desperately,” she cried, a note of alarm ringing
in her voice.

Above the thud of the coach-horses’ hoofs and the rumble of their
vehicle sounded now the clatter of someone galloping madly in their
wake. Mademoiselle looked from the window into the gathering dusk.

“It will be some courier, Madame,” she answered calmly. “None other
would ride at such a pace.”

“I shall know no rest until we are safely in a Christian country again,”
 the Marquise complained.

The hoof-beats grew nearer, and the dark figure of a horseman dashed
suddenly past the window. Simultaneously, a loud, harsh command to halt
rang out upon the evening air.

The Marquise clutched at her daughter’s arm with one hand, whilst with
the other she crossed herself, as though their assailant were some
emissary of the powers of evil.

“Mother in Heaven, deliver us!” she gasped, turning suddenly devout.

“Mon Dieu!” cried Mademoiselle, who had recognised the voice that was
now haranguing the men on the box--their driver and the ostler of the
‘Eagle Inn.’ “It is La Boulaye himself.”

“La Boulaye?” echoed the Marquise. Then, in a frenzy of terror: “There
are the pistols there, Suzanne,” she cried. “You can shoot. Kill him!
Kill him!”

The girl’s lips came tightly together until her mouth seemed no more
than a straight line. Her cheeks grew white as death, but her eyes were
brave and resolute. She put forth her hand and seized one of the pistols
as the carriage with a final jolt came to a standstill.

An instant later the door was dragged open, and La Boulaye stood bowing
in the rain with mock ceremoniousness and a very contemptuous smile on
his stern mouth. He had dismounted, and flung the reins of his horse
over the bough of a tree by the roadside. The Marquise shuddered at
sight of him, and sought to shrink farther back into the cushions of the
carriage.

“Citoyenne,” he was saying, very bitterly, “when I made my compact with
you yesternight, I did not reckon upon being compelled to ride after you
in this fashion. I have some knowledge of the ways of your people, of
their full words and empty deeds; but you I was fool enough to trust. By
experience we learn. I must ask you to alight, Citoyenne.”

“To what purpose, Monsieur?” she asked, in a voice which she strove to
render cold and steady.

“To the purpose that your part of the bargain be carried out. Your
mother and your treasure were to find their way into Prussia upon
condition that you return with me to France.”

“It was a bargain of coercion, Monsieur,” she answered attempting to
brazen it out. “I was a woman in a desperate situation.”

“Surely your memory is at fault, Citoyenne,” he answered, with a
politeness that was in itself a mockery.

“Your situation was so little desperate that I had offered to effect the
rescue both of your mother and yourself without asking any guerdon.
Your miserable treasure alone it was that had to be sacrificed. You will
recall that the bargain was of your own proposing.”

There was a pause, during which he stood waiting for her reply. Her blue
eyes made an attempt to meet his steady gaze, but failed. Her bosom rose
and fell in the intensity of her agitation.

“I was a woman distraught, Monsieur. Surely you will not hold me to
words uttered in an hour of madness. It was a bargain I had no right to
make, for I am no longer free to dispose of myself. I am betrothed to
the Vicomte Anatole d’Ombreval. The contract has already been signed,
and the Vicomte will be meeting us at Treves.”

It was as if she had struck him, and amazement left him silent a
moment. In a dim, subconscious way he seemed to notice that the name
she mentioned was that of the man he was bidden to arrest. Then, with an
oath:

“I care naught for that,” he cried. “As God lives, you shall fulfil your
word to me.”

“Monsieur, I refuse,” she answered, with finality. “Let me request you
to close the door and suffer us to proceed.”

“Your mother and your treasure may proceed--it was thus we bargained.
But you shall come with me. I will be no girl’s dupe, no woman’s fool,
Citoyenne.”

When he said that he uttered the full truth. There was no love in his
voice or in his heart at that moment. Than desire of her nothing was
further from his mind. It was his pride that was up in arms, his wounded
dignity that cried out to him to avenge himself upon her, and to punish
her for having no miserably duped him. That she was unwilling to go with
him only served to increase his purpose of taking her, since the more
unwilling she was the more would she be punished.

“Citoyenne, I am waiting for you to alight,” he said peremptorily.

“Monsieur, I am very well as I am,” she answered him, and leaning
slightly from the coach--“Drive on, Blaise,” she commanded.

But La Boulaye cocked a pistol.

“Drive so much as a yard,” he threatened “and I’ll drive you to the
devil.” Then, turning once more to Suzanne: “Never in my life, Citoyenne
have I employed force to a woman,” he said. “I trust that you will not
put me to the pain of commencing now.”

“Stand back, Monsieur,” was her imperious answer. But heedless he
advanced, and thrusting his head under the lintel of the carriage
door he leaned forward, to seize her. Then, before he could so much
as conjecture what she was about, her hand went up grasping a heavy
horse-pistol by the barrel, and she brought the butt of it down with a
deadly precision between his brows.

He reeled backwards, threw up his arms, and measured his length in the
thick grey mud of the road.

Her eyes had followed him with a look of horror, and until she saw him
lying still on his back did she seem to realise what she had done.

“My dear, brave girl,” murmured her mother’s voice but she never heard
it. With a sob she relaxed her grasp of the pistol and let it fall from
the carriage.

“Shall I drive on, Mademoiselle?” inquired Blaise from the box.

But without answering him she had stepped down into the mud, and was
standing bare-headed in the rain beside the body of Caron.

Silently, she stooped and groped for his heart. It was beating
vigorously enough, she thought. She stooped lower and taking him under
the arms, she half bore, half dragged him to the side of the road, as
if the thin, bare hedge were capable of affording him shelter. There
she stood a moment looking down at him. Then with a sob she suddenly
stooped, and careless of the eyes observing her, she kissed him full
upon the mouth.

A second later she fled like a frightened thing back to the carriage,
and, closing the door, she called in a strangled voice too drive on.

She paid little heed to the praise that was being bestowed upon her by
her mother--who had seen nothing of the kiss. But she lay back in her
corner of the coach, and now her lashes were wet at the thought of Caron
lying out there in the road. Now her cheeks grew red with shame at the
thought that she, the nobly-born Mademoiselle de Bellecour, should have
allowed even pity to have so far overcome her as to have caused her to
touch with her lips the lips of a low-bred revolutionist.



CHAPTER XIV. THE COURIER


It was well for La Boulaye that he had tethered his horse to a tree
before approaching the coach. That solitary beast standing by the
roadside in the deepening gloom attracted the attention of his
followers, when--a half-hour or so later--they rode that way, making for
Liege, as La Boulaye had bidden them.

At their approach the animal neighed, and Garin, hearing the sound,
reined in and peered forward into the gloom, to descry the horse’s head
and back outlined above the blur of the hedge. His men halted behind him
whilst he approached the riderless beast and made--as well as he could
in the darkness--an examination of the saddle. One holster he found
empty, at which he concluded that the rider, whoever he had been, had
met with trouble; from the other he drew a heavy pistol, which, however,
gave him no clue.

“Get down,” he ordered his men, “and search the roads hereabouts. I’ll
wager a horse to a horseshoe that you will find a body somewhere.”

He was obeyed, and presently a cry from one of the searchers announced a
discovery. It was succeeded by another exclamation.

“Sacre nom!” swore the trooper. “It is the Citizen-deputy!”

In an instant Garin had leapt to the ground and with the others crowding
about him, their bridles over their arms and their horses in a bunch
behind them, he was bending under the dripping hedge to examine the body
that lay supine in the sodden road. A vigorous oath escaped him when he
assured himself that it was indeed La Boulaye.

“Is he dead?” cried the men in chorus.

“No--not dead” grumbled the corporal. “But there is a lump on his brow
the size of an egg, and God knows how long he has been lying here in
this bed of mud.”

They had no restoratives, and the only thing was to convey him to the
nearest habitation and demand shelter. They held a short council on the
matter, and in the end Garin bade four of them take him up and carry him
in a cloak. Some two miles back they had passed a house, and thither the
corporal now bade them retrace their steps. They made an odd procession;
first went two mounted troopers leading the horses of the others, then
the four on foot, carrying the Deputy in a cloak, and lastly, Garin
riding in the rear.

In this manner they went back along the dark road, and for close upon a
half-hour--for their progress was slow--they trudged along in silence.
At last there was a short exclamation from one of the riders, as half
a mile away an illuminated window beamed invitingly. Encouraged by it,
they quickened their steps a little. But almost at the same time La
Boulaye stirred on the cloak, and the men who carried him heard him
speak. At first it was an incoherent mutter, then his words came more
distinctly.

“Hold! Where are you carrying me? Who the devil are you?”

It was Garin’s voice that came instantly to reassure him. Caron essayed
to sit up, but finding it impracticable, he shortly bade his men set him
down. They halted. Garin dismounted and came to the Deputy’s side, and
it was found that his condition was none so grave after all, for he was
able to stand unaided. When, however, he attempted to walk, he reeled,
and would of a certainty have fallen, but that Garin put out his arm to
support him.

“Steady there, Citizen,” the corporal admonished him.

“Get my horse!” he commanded briefly.

“But, name of a name! you are not fit to ride,” Garin protested.

La Boulaye, however, would listen to no reason. With the recovery of his
faculties came the consideration of how miserably Suzanne had duped him,
and of how she had dealt with him when he had overtaken her. He burned
now to be avenged, and at all costs he would ride after and recapture
her. He announced, therefore, to the corporal that they must push on
to Liege. Garin gasped at his obstinacy, and would have sought to have
dissuaded him, but that La Boulaye turned on him with a fierceness that
silenced his expostulations.

It was left to Nature to enforce what Garin could not achieve. When La
Boulaye came to attempt to mount he found it impossible. He was stiff
and numb from his long exposure in the rain, and when he moved with any
vigour his head swam dizzily and throbbed with pain.

At last he was forced to realise--with inward girding--that he must
relinquish his determination, and he acknowledged himself ready to take
the corporal’s advice and make for the house whose lighted window shone
like a beacon in the darkness that had descended. He even allowed
them to prevail upon him to lie down in the cloak again, and thus they
carried him the remainder of the way. In his heart he still bore the
hope that short rest, restoratives, and fresh clothes would fit him for
the pursuit once more, and that if he set out within the next few hours
he might yet come up with Mademoiselle before she had passed beyond his
reach. Should the morning still find him unequal to the task of going
after her, he would despatch Garin and his men.

At last they reached the cottage--it was little more--and Garin rapped
on the door with his whip. It was opened by a woman, who told them, in
answer to the corporal’s request for shelter, that her husband was from
home, and that she had no accommodation for them. It would seem that
the woman had housed soldiers of the Republic before, and that her
experiences had not been of a nature calculated to encourage her in the
practice. But La Boulaye now staggered forward and promised her generous
payment if she would receive them.

“Payment?” she cried. “In worthless assignats that nobody will take from
me. I know the ways of you.”

“Not in assignats,” La Boulaye promised her, “but in coin.”

And having mollified her somewhat with that assurance, he proceeded
to urge her to admit them. Yonder was a shed where the horses could be
stabled for the night. But still the woman demurred.

“I lack the room,” she said, with some firmness.

“But at least,” put in Garin, “you could house the Citizen here. He has
been hurt, and he is scarcely able to stand. Come, woman, if you will
consent to that, we others can lie with the horses in the shed.”

This in the end they gained by renewed promises of good payment. She
brewed a broth for them, and for La Boulaye she found a suit of her
absent husband’s clothes, whilst his own wet garments were spread to dry
before the fire. Some brandy, too, she found and brought him, and the
draught did much to restore him.

When they had supped, Garin and the troopers withdrew to the outhouse,
leaving La Boulaye in sole possession of the cottage hearth. And there,
in a suit of the absent farmer’s grey homespun, his legs encased in
coarse woollen stockings and sabots upon his feet, sat the young Deputy
alone with his unpleasant thoughts. The woman had brought him a pipe,
and, although the habit was foreign to him as a rule, he had lighted
it and found the smoking somewhat soothing. Ruefully he passed his hand
across his bandaged brow, and in pondering over all that had taken place
since yesternight at Boisvert, his cheeks grew flushed at once with
anger and with shame.

“To have been so duped!”

And now--his mind growing clearer as he recovered in vigour--it occurred
to him that by to-morrow it would be too late to give pursuit. Once she
crossed the Sambre at Liege, or elsewhere, who could tell him by what
road she would elect to continue her journey? He had not sufficient men
at his disposal to send out parties along each of the possible roads.
That her ultimate destination was Treves he knew. But once there she was
beyond his reach, at safety from the talons of the French Republic.

He sat on and thought, what time his brows came closer together and his
teeth fastened viciously upon the stem of the pipe. By the table sat the
woman, knitting industriously, and ever and anon glancing inquiry at her
stern, thoughtful guest, and the click of her needles was the only sound
that disturbed the stillness of the room. Outside the wind was wailing
like the damned, and the rain which had recommenced with new vigour,
rattled noisily upon the panes.

Suddenly above the din of the elements a shout sounded in the night. The
Deputy raised his head, and glanced towards the woman. A moment later
they heard the gate creak, and steps upon the path that led to the
cottage door.

“Your husband?” inquired La Boulaye.

“No, monsieur. He has gone to Liege, and will not return until
to-morrow. I do not know who it can be.”

There was alarm on her face, which La Boulaye now set himself to allay.

“At least you are well protected, Citoyenne. My men are close at hand,
and we can summon them if there be the need.”

Reassured she rose, and at the same moment a knock sounded on the door.
She went to open it, and from his seat by the hearth La Boulaye heard a
gentle, mincing voice that was oddly familiar to him.

“Madame,” it said, “we are two poor, lost wayfarers, and we crave
shelter for the night. We will pay you handsomely.”

“I am desolated that I have no room, Messieur,” she answered, with
courteous firmness.

“Pardi!” interpolated another voice. “We need no room. A bundle of straw
and a corner is all we seek. Of your charity, Madame, is this a night on
which to leave a dog out of doors?”

A light of recollection leaped suddenly to La Boulaye’s eyes, and with a
sudden gasp he stooped to the hearth.

“But I cannot, Messieurs,” the woman was saying, when the second voice
interrupted her.

“I see your husband by the fire, Madame. Let us hear what he has to
say.”

The woman coloured to the roots of her hair. She stepped back a pace,
and was about to answer them when, chancing to glance in La Boulaye’s
direction, she paused. He had risen, and was standing with his back to
the fire. There was a black smudge across his face, which seemed to act
as a mask, and his dark eyes glowed with an intensity of meaning which
arrested her attention, and silenced the answer which was rising to her
lips.

In the brief pause the new-comers had crossed the threshold, and stood
within the rustic chamber. The first of these was he whose gentle voice
La Boulaye had recognised--old M. des Cadoux, the friend of the Marquis
de Bellecour. His companion, to the Deputy’s vast surprise, was none
other than the bearded courier who had that morning delivered him at
Boisvert the letter from Robespierre. What did these two together, and
upon such manifest terms of equality? That, it should be his business to
discover.

“Come in, Messieurs,” he bade them, assuming the role of host. “We are
unused to strangers, and Mathilde there is timid of robbers. Draw near
the fire and dry yourselves. We will do the best we can for you. We are
poor people, Messieurs; very poor.”

“I have already said that we will pay you handsomely my friend,” quoth
Des Cadoux, coming forward with his companion. “Do your best for us and
you shall not regret it. Have you aught to eat in the house?”

The woman was standing by the wall, her face expressing bewilderment and
suspicion. Suspicious she was, yet that glance of La Boulaye’s had ruled
her strangely, and she was content to now await developments.

“We will see what we can do,” answered La Boulaye, as he made room for
them by the hearth. “Come, Mathilde, let us try what the larder will
yield.”

“I am afraid that Madame still mistrusts us,” deplored Des Cadoux.

La Boulaye laughed for answer as he gently but firmly drew her towards
the door leading to the interior of the house. He held it for her to
pass, what time his eyes were set in an intent but puzzled glance upon
the courier. There was something about the man that was not wholly
strange to La Boulaye. That morning, when he had spoken in the gruff
accents of one of the rabble, no suspicion had entered the Deputy’s
mind that he was other than he seemed, for all that he now recalled how
Tardivet had found the fellow’s patriotism a little too patriotic. Now
that he spoke in the voice that was naturally usual to him, it seemed to
La Boulaye that it contained a note that he had heard before.

Still puzzled, he passed out of the room to be questioned sharply by the
woman of the house touching his motives for passing himself off as her
husband and inviting the new-comers to enter.

“I promise you their stay will be a very brief one,” he answered. “I
have suspicions to verify the ends to serve, as you shall see. Will
you do me the favour to go out by the back and call my men? Tell the
corporal to make his way to the front of the house, and to hold himself
in readiness to enter the moment I call him.”

“What are you about to do?” she asked and the face, as he saw it by the
light of the candle she held, wore an expression of sullen disapproval.

He reassured her that there would be no bloodshed, and suggested that
the men were dangerous characters whom it might be ill for her to
entertain. And so at last he won his way, and she went to do his errand,
whilst he reentered the kitchen.

He found Des Cadoux by the fire, intent upon drying as much of himself
as possible. The younger man had seized upon the bottle of brandy that
had been left on the table, and was in the act of filling himself a
second glass. Nothing could be further from the mind of either than
a suspicion of the identity of this rustically-clad and grimy-faced
fellow.

“Mathilde will be here in a moment,” said Caron deferentially. “She is
seeking something for you.”

Had he told them precisely what she was seeking they had been, possibly,
less at ease.

“Let her hasten,” cried the courier, “for I am famished.”

“Have patience, Anatole,” murmured the ever-gentle Cadoux. “The good
woman did not expect us.”

Anatole! The name buzzed through Caron’s brain. To whom did it belong?
He knew of someone who bore it. Yet question himself though he might,
he could at the moment find no answer. And then the courier created a
diversion by addressing him.

“Fill yourself a glass, mon bonhomme,” said he. “I have a toast for
you.”

“For me, Monsieur,” cried La Boulaye, with surprised humility. “It were
too great an honour.”

“Do as you are bidden, man,” returned this very peremptory courier.
“There; now let us see how your favour runs. Cry ‘Long Live the King!’”

Holding the brandy-glass, which the man had forced upon him, La Boulaye
eyed him whimsically for a second.

“There is no toast I would more gladly drink,” said he at last, “if I
considered it availing. But--alas--you propose it over-late.”

“Diable! What may you mean?”

“Why, that since the King is dead, it shall profit us little to cry,
‘Long Live the King!’”

“The King, Monsieur, never dies,” said Cadoux sententiously.

“Since you put it so, Monsieur,” answered La Boulaye, as if convinced,
“I’ll honour the toast.” And with the cry they asked of him he drained
his glass.

“And so, my honest fellow,” said Des Cadoux, producing his eternal
snuff-box, “it seems that you are a Royalist. We did but test you with
that toast, my friend.”

“What should a poor fellow know of politics, Messieurs?” he deprecated.
“These are odd times. I doubt me the world has never seen their like. No
man may safely know his neighbour. Now you, sir,” he pursued, turning
to the younger man, “you have the air of a sans-culotte, yet from your
speech you seem an honest enough gentleman.”

The fellow laughed with unction.

“The air of a sans-culotte?” he cried. “My faith, yes. So much so, that
this morning I imposed myself as a courier from Paris upon no less
an astute sleuth-hound of the Convention than the Citizen-deputy La
Boulaye.”

“Is it possible?” cried Caron, his eyes opening wide in wonder. “But
how, Monsieurs? For surely a courier must bear letters, and--”

“So did I, so did I, my friend,” the other interrupted, with vain glory.
“I knocked a patriotic courier over the head to obtain them. He was
genuine, that other courier, and I passed myself out of France with his
papers.”

“Monsieur is amusing himself at the expense of my credulity,” La Boulaye
complained.

“My good man, I am telling you facts,” the other insisted.

“But how could such a thing be accomplished?” asked Caron, seating
himself at the table, and resting his chin upon his hand, his gaze so
full of admiration as to seem awestruck.

“How? I will tell you. I am from Artois.”

“You’ll be repeating that charming story once too often,” Des Cadoux
cautioned him.

“Pish, you timorous one!” he laughed, and resumed his tale. “I am from
Artois, then. I have some property there, and it lately came to my ears
that this assembly of curs they call the Convention had determined to
make an end of me. But before they could carry out their design, those
sons of dogs, my tenants, incited by the choice examples set them
by other tenantry, made a descent on my Chateau one night, and did
themselves the pleasure of burning it to the ground. By a miracle I
escaped with my life and lay hidden for three weeks in the house of an
old peasant who had remained faithful. In that time I let my beard
grow, and trained my hair into a patriotic unkemptness. Then, in filthy
garments, like any true Republican, I set out to cross the frontier. As
I approached it, I was filled with fears that I might not win across,
and then, in the moment of my doubtings, I came upon that most opportune
of couriers. I had the notion to change places with him, and I did. He
was the bearer of a letter to the Deputy La Boulaye, of whom you may
have heard, and this letter I opened to discover that it charged him to
effect my arrest.”

If La Boulaye was startled, his face never betrayed it, not by so much
as the quiver of an eyelid. He sat on, his jaw in his palm, his eyes
admiringly bent upon the speaker.

“You may judge of my honesty, and of how fully sensible I was of
the trust I had undertaken, when I tell you that with my own hand
I delivered the letter this morning to that animal La Boulaye at
Boisvert.” He seemed to swell with pride in his achievement. “Diable!”
 he continued. “Mine was a fine piece of acting. I would you could have
seen me play the part of the patriot. Think of the irony of it! I won
out of France with the very papers ordering my arrest. Ma foi! You
should have seen me befool that dirt of a deputy! It was a performance
worthy of Talma himself.” And he looked from Cadoux to La Boulaye for
applause.

“I doubt not,” said the Deputy coldly. “It must have been worth
witnessing. But does it not seem a pity to spoil everything and to
neutralise so wonderful an achievement for the mere sake of boasting of
it to a poor, ignorant peasant, Monsieur le Vicomte Anatole d’Ombreval?”

With a sudden cry, the pseudo courier leapt to his feet, whilst Des
Cadoux turned on the stool he occupied to stare alarmedly at the
speaker.

“Name of God! Who are you?” demanded Ombreval advancing a step.

With his sleeve La Boulaye rubbed part of the disfiguring smear from his
face as he stood up and made answer coolly:

“I am that dirt of a Deputy whom you befooled at Boisvert.” Then,
raising his voice, “Garin!” he shouted, and immediately the door opened
and the soldiers filed in.

Ombreval stood like a statue, thunderstruck with amazement at this
most unlooked-for turning of the tables, his face ashen, his weak mouth
fallen open and his eyes fearful.

Des Cadoux, who had also risen, seemed to take in the situation at a
glance. Like a well-bred gamester who knows how to lose with a good
grace the old gentleman laughed drily to himself as he tapped his
snuff-box.

“We are delightfully taken, cher Vicomte,” he murmured, applying the
tobacco to his nostril as he spoke. “It’s odds you won’t be able to
repeat that pretty story to any more of your friends. I warned you that
you inclined to relate it too often.”

With a sudden oath, Ombreval--moved to valour by the blind rage that
possessed him--sprang at La Boulaye. But, as suddenly, Garin caught his
arms from behind and held him fast.

“Remove them both,” La Boulaye commanded. “Place them in safety for the
night, and see that they do not escape you, Garin, as you value your
neck.”

Des Coudax shut his snuff-box with a snap.

“For my part, I am ready, Monsieur--your pardon--Citizen,” he said, “and
I shall give you no trouble. But since I am not, I take it, included in
the orders you have received, I have a proposal to make which may prove
mutually convenient.”

“Pray make it, Citizen,” said La Boulaye.

“It occurs to me that it may occasion you some measure of annoyance to
carry me all the way to Paris--and certainly, for my part, I should
much prefer not to undertake the journey. For one thing, it will be
fatiguing, for another, I have no desire to look upon the next world
through the little window of the guillotine. I wish, then, to propose,
Citizen,” pursued the old nobleman, nonchalantly dusting some fragments
of tobacco from his cravat, “that you deal with me out of hand.”

“How, Citizen?” inquired La Boulaye.

“Why, your men, I take it are tolerable marksmen. I think that it might
prove more convenient to both of us if you were to have me shot as soon
as there is light enough.”

La Boulaye’s eyes rested in almost imperceptible kindness upon Des
Cadoux. Here, at least, was an aristocrat with a spirit to be admired
and emulated.

“You are choosing the lesser of two evils, Citizen,” said the Deputy.

“Precisely,” answered Des Cadoux.

“But possibly, Citizen, it may be yours to avoid both. You shall hear
from me in the morning. I beg that you will sleep tranquilly in the
meantime. Garin, remove the prisoners.”



CHAPTER XV. LA BOULAYE BAITS HIS HOOK


For fully an hour after their prisoners had been removed La Boulaye
paced the narrow limits of the kitchen with face inscrutable and busy
mind. He recalled what Suzanne had said touching her betrothal to
Ombreval, whom she looked to meet at Treves. This miserable individual,
then, was the man for whose sake she had duped him. But Ombreval at
least was in Caron’s power, and it came to him now that by virtue of
that circumstance he might devise a way to bring her back without the
need to go after her. He would send her word--aye, and proof--that he
had taken him captive, and it should be hers to choose whether she would
come to his rescue and humble herself to save him or leave him to his
fate. In that hour it seemed all one to La Boulaye which course she
followed, since by either, he reasoned, she must be brought to
suffer. That he loved her was with him now a matter that had sunk into
comparative insignificance. The sentiment that ruled his mind was anger,
with its natural concomitant--the desire to punish.

And when morning came the Deputy’s view of the situation was still
unchanged. He was astir at an early hour, and without so much as
waiting to break his fast, he bade Garin bring in the prisoners. Their
appearance was in each case typical. Ombreval was sullen and his dress
untidy, even when allowance had been made for the inherent untidiness of
the Republican disguise which he had adopted to so little purpose. Des
Cadoux looked well and fresh after his rest, and gave the Deputy an airy
“Good morning” as he entered. He had been at some pains, too, with his
toilet, and although his hair was slightly disarranged and most of the
powder was gone from the right side, suggesting that he had lain on it,
his appearance in the main was creditably elegant.

“Citizen Ombreval,” said La Boulaye, in that stern, emotionless voice
that was becoming characteristic of him, “since you have acquainted
yourself with the contents of the letter you stole from the man you
murdered, you cannot be in doubt as to my intentions concerning you.”

The Vicomte reddened with anger.

“For your intentions I care nothing,” he answered hotly--rendered very
brave by passion--“but I will have you consider your words. Do you say
that I stole and murdered? You forget, M. le Republican, that I am a
gentlemen.”

“Meaning, of course, that the class that so described itself could do
these things with impunity without having them called by their proper
names, is it not so? But you also forget that the Republic has abolished
gentlemen, and with them, their disgraceful privileges.”

“Canaille!” growled the Vicomte, his eyes ablaze with wrath.

“Citizen-aristocrat, consider your words!” La Boulaye had stepped close
up to him, and his voice throbbed with a sudden anger no whit less
compelling than Ombreval’s. “Fool! let me hear that word again, applied
either to me or to any of my followers, and I’ll have you beaten like a
dog.”

And as the lesser ever does give way before the greater, so now did
the anger that had sustained Ombreval go down and vanish before the
overwhelming passion of La Boulaye. He grew pale to the lips at the
Deputy’s threat, and his eyes cravenly avoided the steady gaze of his
captor.

“You deserve little consideration at my hands, Citizen,” said La
Boulaye, more quietly, “and yet I have a mind to give you a lesson in
generosity. We start for Paris in half-an-hour. If anywhere you should
have friends expecting you, whom you might wish to apprise of your
position, you may spend the half-hour that is left in writing to them. I
will see that your letter reaches its destination.”

Ombreval’s pallor seemed to intensify. His eyes looked troubled as
they were raised to La Boulaye’s. Then they fell again, and there was a
pause. At last--.

“I shall be glad to avail myself of your offer,” he said, in a voice
that for meekness was ludicrously at variance with his late utterances.

“Then pray do so at once.” And La Boulaye took down an inkhorn a quill,
and a sheaf of paper from the mantel-shelf behind him. These he placed
on the table, and setting a chair, he signed to the aristocrat to be
seated.

“And now, Citizen Cadoux,” said La Boulaye, turning to the old nobleman,
“I shall be glad if you will honour me by sharing my breakfast while
Citizen Ombreval is at his writing.”

Des Cadoux looked up in some surprise.

“You are too good, Monsieur,” said he, inclining his head. “But
afterwards?”

“I have decided,” said La Boulaye, with the ghost of a smile, “to deal
with your case myself, Citizen.”

The old dandy took a deep breath, but the glance of his blue eyes was
steadfast, and his lips smiled as he made answer:

“Again you are too good. I feared that you would carry me to Paris,
and at my age the journey is a tiresome one. I am grateful, and
meanwhile,--why, since you are so good as to invite me, let us
breakfast, by all means.”

They sat down at a small table in the embrasure of the window, and their
hostess placed before them a boiled fowl, a dish of eggs, a stew of
herbs, and a flask of red wine, all of which La Boulaye had bidden her
prepare.

“Why, it is a feast,” declared Des Cadoux, in excellent humour, and for
all that he was under the impression that he was to die in half-an-hour
he ate with the heartiest good-will, chatting pleasantly the while with
the Republican--the first Republican with whom it had ever been his
aristocratic lot to sit at table. And what time the meal proceeded
Ombreval--with two soldiers standing behind his chair-penned his letter
to Mademoiselle de Bellecour.

Had La Boulaye--inspired by the desire to avenge himself for the
treachery of which he had been the victim--dictated that epistle, t
could not have been indicted in a manner better suited to his ends.
It was a maudlin, piteous letter, in which, rather than making his
farewells, the Vicomte besought the aid of Suzanne. He was, he wrote,
in the hands of men who might be bribed, and since she was rich--for he
knew of the treasure with which she had escaped--he based his hopes upon
her employing a portion of her riches to obtaining his enlargement. She,
he continued, was his only hope, and for the sake of their love, for
the sake of their common nobility, he besought her not to fail him now.
Carried away by the piteousness of his entreaties the tears welled up to
his eyes and trickled down his cheeks, one or two of them finding their
way to the paper thus smearing it with an appeal more piteous still if
possible than that of his maudlin words.

At last the letter was ended. He sealed it with a wafer and wrote the
superscription:

“To Mademoiselle de Bellecour. At the ‘Hotel des Trois Rois,’ Treves.”

He announced the completion of his task, and La Boulaye bade him go
join Des Cadoux at the next table and take some food before setting out,
whilst the Deputy himself now sat down to write.

“Citoyenne,” he wrote, “the man to whom you are betrothed, for whose
sake you stooped to treachery and attempted murder, is in my hands. Thus
has Heaven set it in my power to punish you, if the knowledge that he
travels to the guillotine is likely to prove a punishment. If you would
rescue him, come to me in Paris, and, conditionally, I may give you his
life.”

That, he thought should humble her. He folded his letter round
Ombreval’s and having sealed the package, he addressed it as Ombreval
had addressed his own missive.

“Garin,” he commanded briefly, “remove the Citizen Ombreval.”

When he had been obeyed, and Garin had conducted the Vicomte from the
room, La Boulaye turned again to Des Cadoux. They were alone, saving the
two soldiers guarding the door.

The old man rose, and making the sign of the cross, he stepped forward,
calm and intrepid of bearing.

“Monsieur,” he announced to La Boulaye, who was eyeing him with the
faintest tinge of surprise, “I am quite ready.”

“Have you always been so devout, Citizen?” inquired the Deputy.

“Alas! no Monsieur. But there comes a time in the life of every man
when, for a few moments at least, he is prone to grow mindful of the
lessons learnt in childhood.”

The surprise increased in La Boulaye’s countenance. At last he shrugged
his shoulders, after the manner of one who abandons a problem that has
grown too knotty.

“Citizen des Cadoux,” said he, “I have deliberated that since I have
received no orders from Paris concerning you, and also since I am not by
profession a catch-poll there is no reason whatever why I should
carry you to Paris. In fact, Citizen, I know of no reason why I should
interfere with your freedom at all. On the contrary when I recall the
kindness you sought to do me that day, years ago, at Bellecour, I find
every reason why I should further your escape from the Revolutionary
tribunal. A horse, Citizen, stands ready saddled for you, and you are
free to depart, with the one condition, however, that you will consent
to become my courier for once, and carry a letter for me--a matter which
should occasion you, I think, no deviation from your journey.”

The old dandy, in whose intrepid spirit the death which he had believed
imminent had occasioned no trembling, turned pale as La Boulaye ceased.
His blue eyes were lifted almost timidly to the Deputy’s face, and his
lip quivered.

“You are not going to have me shot, then?” he faltered.

“Shot?” echoed La Boulaye, and then he remembered the precise words of
the request which Des Cadoux had preferred the night before, but which,
at the time, he had treated lightly. “Ma foi, you do not flatter me!” he
cried. “Am I a murderer, then? Come, come, Citizen, here is the letter
that you are to carry. It is addressed to Mademoiselle de Bellecour, at
Treves, and encloses Ombreval’s farewell epistle to that lady.”

“But, gladly, Monsieur,” exclaimed Des Cadoux.

And then, as if to cover his sudden access of emotion, of which he was
most heartily ashamed, he fumbled for his snuff-box, and, having found
it, he took an enormous pinch.

They parted on the very best of terms did these two--the aristocrat and
the Revolutionary--actuated by a mutual esteem tempered in each case
with gratitude.

When at last Des Cadoux had taken a sympathetic leave of Ombreval and
departed, Caron ordered the Vicomte to be brought before him again, and
at the same time bade his men make ready for the road.

“Citizen,” said La Boulaye, “we start for Paris at once. If you will
pass me your word of honour to attempt no escape you shall travel with
us in complete freedom and with all dignity.”

Ombreval looked at him with insolent surprise, his weak supercilious
mouth growing more supercilious even than its wont. He had recovered a
good deal of his spirit by now.

“Pass you my word of honour?” he echoed. “Mon Dieu! my good fellow a
word of honour is a bond between gentlemen. I think too well of mine to
pass it to the first greasy rascal of the Republic that asks it of me.”

La Boulaye eyed him a second with a glance before which the aristocrat
grew pale, and already regretted him of his words. The veins in the
Deputy’s temples were swollen.

“I warned you,” said he, in a dull voice. Then to the soldiers standing
on either side of Ombreval--“Take him out,” he said, “mount him on
horseback. Let him ride with his hands pinioned behind his back, and his
feet lashed together under the horse’s belly. Attend to it!”

“Monsieur,” cried the young man, in an appealing voice, “I will give you
my word of honour not to escape. I will--”

“Take him out,” La Boulaye repeated, with a dull bark of contempt. “You
had your chance, Citizen-aristocrat.”

Ombreval set his teeth and clenched his hands.

“Canaille!” he snarled, in his fury.

“Hold!” Caron called after the departing men.

They obeyed, and now this wretched Vicomte, of such unstable spirit
dropped all his anger again, as suddenly as he had caught it up. Fear
paled his cheek and palsied his limbs once more, for La Boulaye’s
expression was very terrible.

“You know what I said that I would have done to you if you used that
word again?” La Boulaye questioned him coldly.

“I--I was beside myself, Monsieur,” the other gasped, in the intensity
of his fear. And at the sight of his pitiable condition the anger fell
away from La Boulaye, and he smiled scornfully.

“My faith,” he sneered. “You are hot one moment and cold the next.
Citizen, I am afraid that you are no better than a vulgar coward. Take
him away,” he ended, waving his hand towards the door, and as he watched
them leading him out he reflected bitterly that this was the man to whom
Suzanne was betrothed--the man whom, not a doubt of it, she loved, since
for him she had stooped so low. This miserable craven she preferred to
him, because the man, so ignoble of nature, was noble by the accident of
birth.



PART III. THE EVERLASTING RULE

   Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
   And men below and saints above,
   For love is Heaven and Heaven is love.

   --The Lay of the Last Minstrel.



CHAPTER XVI. CECILE DESHAIX. In his lodgings at the corner of the
Rue-St. Honore and the Rue de la Republique--lately changed, in the
all-encompassing metamorphosis, from “Rue Royale” sat the Deputy Caron
La Boulaye at his writing-table.

There was a flush on his face and a sparkle in the eyes that looked
pensively before him what time he gnawed the feathered end of his quill.
In his ears still rang the acclamations that had greeted his brilliant
speech in the Assembly that day. He was of the party of the Mountain--as
was but natural in a protege of the Seagreen Robespierre--a party more
famed for its directness of purpose than elegance of expression, and in
its ranks there was room and to spare for such orators as he. The season
was March of ‘93--a season marked by the deadly feud raging ‘twixt the
Girondins and the Mountain, and in that battle of tongues La Boulaye
was covering himself with glory and doing credit to his patron, the
Incorruptible. He was of a rhetoric not inferior to Vergniaud’s--that
most eloquent Girondon--and of a quickness of wit and honesty of aim
unrivalled in the whole body of the Convention, and with these gifts he
harassed to no little purpose those smooth-tongued legislators of
the Gironde, whom Dumouriez called the Jesuits of the Revolution. His
popularity with the men of the Mountain and with the masses of Paris was
growing daily, and the crushing reply he had that day delivered to the
charges preferred by Vergniaud was likely to increase his fame.

Well, therefore, might he sit with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes
chewing the butt of his pen and smiling to himself at the memory of
the enthusiasm of which he had been the centre a half-hour ago. Here,
indeed, was something that a man might live for, something that a
man might take pride in, and something that might console a man for a
woman’s treachery. What, indeed, could woman’s love give him that might
compare with this? Was it not more glorious far to make himself the
admired, the revered, the very idol of those stern men, than the beloved
of a simpering girl? The latter any coxcomb with a well-cut coat might
encompass, but the former achievement was a man’s work.

And yet, for all that he reasoned thus speciously and philosophically,
there was a moment when his brow grew clouded and his eyes lost their
sparkle. He was thinking of that night in the inn at Boisvert, when he
had knelt beside her and she had lied to him. He was thinking of the
happiness, that for a few brief hours had been his, until he discovered
how basely she had deceived him, and for all the full-flavour of his
present elation it seemed to him that in that other happiness which he
now affected to despise by contrast, there had dwelt a greater, a more
contenting sweetness.

Would she come to Paris? He had asked himself that question every day
of the twenty that were spent since his return. And in the meantime the
Vicomte d’Ombreval lay in the prison of the Luxembourg awaiting trial.
That he had not yet been arraigned he had to thank the efforts of La
Boulaye. The young Deputy had informed Robespierre that for reasons
of his own he wished the ci-devant Vicomte, to be kept in prison some
little time, and the Incorruptible, peering at him over his horn-rimmed
spectacles, had shrugged his shoulders and answered:

“But certainly, cher Caron, since it is your wish. He will be safe in
the Luxembourg.”

He had pressed his protege for a reason, but La Boulaye had evaded the
question, promising to enlighten him later.

Since then Caron had waited, and now it was more than time that
Mademoiselle made some sign. Or was it that neither Ombreval’s craven
entreaties nor his own short message had affected her? Was she wholly
heartless and likely to prove as faithless to the Vicomte in his hour of
need as she had proved to him?

With a toss of the head he dismissed her from his thoughts, and dipping
his quill, he began to write.

From the street came the dull roll of beaten drums and the rhythmical
fall of marching feet. But the sound was too common in revolutionary
Paris to arrest attention, and he wrote on, heeding it as little as he
did the gruff voice of a pastry-cook crying his wares, the shriller call
of a milkman, or the occasional rumblings of passing vehicles. But of a
sudden one of those rumblings ceased abruptly at his door. He heard the
rattle of hoofs and the grind of the wheel against the pavement, and
looking up, he glanced across at the ormolu timepiece on his overmantel.
It was not yet four o’clock.

Wondering whether the visitor might be for him or for the tenant of
the floor above, he sat listening until his door opened and his
official--the euphemism of “servant” in the revolutionary lexicon--came
to announce that a woman was below, asking to see him.

Now for all that he believed himself to have become above emotions where
Mademoiselle de Bellecour was concerned, he felt his pulses quicken at
the very thought that this might be she at last.

“What manner of woman, Brutus?” he asked.

“A pretty woman, Citizen,” answered Brutus, with a grin. “It is the
Citoyenne Deshaix.”

La Boulaye made an impatient gesture.

“Fool, why did you not say so,” he cried sharply.

“Fool, you did not ask me,” answered the servant, with that touching,
fraternal frankness adopted by all true patriots. He was a thin,
under-sized man of perhaps thirty years of age, and dressed in black,
with a decency--under La Boulaye’s suasion--that was rather at variance
with his extreme democracy. His real name was Ferdinand, but, following
a fashion prevailing among the ultra-republicans, he had renamed himself
after the famous Roman patriot.

La Boulaye toyed a moment with his pen, a frown darkening his brow.
Then:

“Admit her,” he sighed wearily.

And presently she came, a pretty woman, as Brutus had declared, very
fair, and with the innocent eyes of a baby. She was small of stature,
and by the egregious height of her plume-crowned head-dress it would
seem as if she sought by art to add to the inches she had received
from Nature. For the rest she wore a pink petticoat, very extravagantly
beflounced, and a pink corsage cut extravagantly low. In one hand she
carried a fan--hardly as a weapon against heat, seeing that the winter
was not yet out--in the other a huge bunch of early roses.

“Te voile!” was her greeting, merrily--roguishly--delivered, and if the
Revolution had done nothing else for her, it had, at least, enabled her
to address La Boulaye by the “Thou” of intimacy which the new vocabulary
prescribed.

La Boulaye rose, laid aside his pen, and politely, if coolly, returned
her greeting and set a chair for her.

“You are,” said he, “a very harbinger of Spring, Citoyenne, with your
flowers and your ravishing toilette.”

“Ah! I please you, then, for once,” said she without the least
embarrassment. “Tell me--how do you find me?” And, laughing, she turned
about that he might admire her from all points of view.

He looked at her gravely for a moment, so gravely that the laughter
began to fade from her eyes.

“I find you charming, Citoyenne,” he answered at last. “You remind me of
Diana.”

“Compliments?” quoth she, her eyebrows going up and her eyes beaming
with surprise and delight. “Compliments from La Boulaye! But surely it
is the end of the world. Tell me, mon ami,” she begged, greedily angling
for more, “in what do I remind you of the sylvan goddess?”

“In the scantiness of your raiment, Citoyenne,” he answered acidly. “It
sorts better with Arcadia than with Paris.”

Her eyebrows came down, her cheeks flushed with resentment and
discomfiture. To cover this she flung her roses among the papers of his
writing-table, and dropping into a chair she fanned herself vigorously.

“Citoyenne, you relieve my anxieties,” said he. “I feared that you stood
in danger of freezing.”

“To freeze is no more than one might expect in your company,” she
answered, stifling her anger.

He made no reply. He moved to the window, and stood drumming absently
on the panes. He was inured to these invasions on the part of Cecile
Deshaix and to the bold, unwomanly advances that repelled him. To-day
his patience with her was even shorter than its wont, haply because when
his official had announced a woman he had for a moment permitted himself
to think that it might be Suzanne. The silence grew awkward, and at last
he broke it.

“The Citizen Robespierre is well?” he asked, without turning.

“Yes,” said she, and for all that there was chagrin to spare in the
glance with which she admired the back of his straight and shapely
figure, she contrived to render her voice airily indifferent. “We were
at the play last night.”

“Ah!” he murmured politely. “And was Talma in veine?”

“More brilliant than ever,” answered she.

“He is a great actor, Citoyenne.”

A shade of annoyance crossed her face.

“Why do you always address me as Citoyenne?” she asked, with some
testiness.

He turned at last and looked at her a moment.

“We live in a censorious world, Citoyenne,” he answered gravely.

She tossed her head with an exclamation of impatience.

“We live in a free world, Citizen. Freedom is our motto. Is it for
nothing that we are Republicans?”

“Freedom of action begets freedom of words,” said he, “and freedom of
words leads to freedom of criticism--and that is a thing to which no
wise woman will expose herself, no matter under what regime we live.
You would be well-advised, Citoyenne, in thinking of that when you come
here.”

“But you never come to us, Caron,” she returned, in a voice of mild
complaint. “You have not been once to Duplay’s since your return from
Belgium. And you seem different, too, since your journey to the army.”
 She rose now and approached him. “What is it, cher Caron?” she asked,
her voice a very caress of seductiveness, her eyes looking up into his.
“Is something troubling you?”

“Troubling me?” he echoed, musingly. “No. But then I am a busy man,
Citoyenne.”

A wave of red seemed to sweep across her face, and her heel beat the
parquet floor.

“If you call me Citoyenne again I shall strike you,” she threatened him.

He looked down at her, and she had the feeling that behind the
inscrutable mask of his countenance he was laughing at her.

“It would sort well with your audacity,” he made answer coolly.

She felt in that moment that she hated him, and it was a miracle that
she did not do as she had threatened, for with all her meek looks she
owned a very fiercest of tempers. She drew back a pace or two, and her
glance fell.

“I shall not trouble you in future,” she vowed. “I shall not come here
again.”

He bowed slightly.

“I applaud the wisdom of your resolve--Cit--Cecile. The world, as I have
said, is censorious.”

She looked at him a second, then she laughed, but it was laughter of the
lips only; the eyes looked steely as daggers and as capable of mischief.

“Adieu, Citizen La Boulaye,” she murmured mockingly.

“Au revoir, Citoyenne Deshaix,” he replied urbanely.

“Ough!” she gasped, and with that sudden exclamation of pent-up wrath,
she whisked about and went rustling to the door.

“Citoyenne,” he called after her, “you are forgetting your flowers.”

She halted, and seemed for a second to hesitate, looking at him oddly.
Then she came back to the table and took up her roses. Again she looked
at him, and let the bouquet fall back among the papers.

“I brought them for you, Caron,” she said, “and I’ll leave them with
you. We can at least be friends, can we not?”

“Friends? But were we ever aught else?” he asked.

“Alas! no,” she said to herself, whilst aloud she murmured: “I thought
that you would like them. Your room has such a gloomy, sombre air, and
a few roses seem to diffuse some of the sunshine on which they have been
nurtured.”

“You are too good, Cecile” he answered, and, for all his coldness, he
was touched a little by this thoughtfulness.

She looked up at the altered tone, and the expression of her face seemed
to soften. But before she could make answer there was a rap at the door.
It opened, and Brutus stood in the doorway.

“Citizen,” he announced, in his sour tones, “there is another woman
below asking to see you.”

La Boulaye started, as again his thoughts flew to Suzanne, and a dull
flush crept into his pale cheeks and mounted to his brow. Cecile’s eyes
were upon him, her glance hardening as she observed these signs. Bitter
enough had it been to endure his coldness whilst she had imagined that
it sprang from the austerity of his nature and the absorption of his
soul in matters political. But now that it seemed she might have cause
to temper her bitterness with jealousy her soul was turned to gall.

“What manner of woman, Brutus?” he asked after a second’s pause.

“Tall, pale, straight, black hair, black eyes, silk gown--and savours
the aristocrat a league off,” answered Brutus.

“Your official seems gifted with a very comprehensive eye,” said Cecile
tartly.

But La Boulaye paid no heed to her. The flush deepened on his face, then
faded again, and he grew oddly pale. His official’s inventory of her
characteristics fitted Mademoiselle de Bellecour in every detail.

“Admit her, Brutus,” he commanded, and his voice had a husky sound.
Then, turning to Cecile, “You will give me leave?” he said, cloaking
rude dismissal in its politest form.

“Assuredly,” she answered bitterly, making shift to go. “Your visitor is
no doubt political?” she half-asked half-asserted.

But he made no answer as he held the door for her, and bowed low as she
passed out. With a white face and lips tightly compressed she went, and
half-way on the stairs she met a handsome woman, tall and of queenly
bearing, who ascended. Her toilette lacked the elaborateness of
Cecile’s, but she carried it with an air which not all the modistes of
France could have succeeded in imparting to the Citoyenne Deshaix.

So dead was Robespierre’s niece to every sense of fitness that, having
drawn aside to let the woman pass, she stood gazing after her until she
disappeared round the angle of the landing. Then, in a fury, she swept
from the house and into her waiting coach, and as she drove back to
Duplay’s in the Rue St. Honore she was weeping bitterly in her jealous
rage.



CHAPTER XVII. LA BOULAYE’S PROMISE


La Boulaye remained a moment by the door after Cecile’s departure;
then he moved away towards his desk, striving to master the tumultuous
throbbing of his pulses. His eye alighted on Cecile’s roses, and,
scarce knowing why he did it, he picked them up and flung them behind a
bookcase. It was but done when again the door opened, and his official
ushered in Mademoiselle de Bellecour.

Oddly enough, at sight of her, La Boulaye grew master of himself. He
received her with a polite and very formal bow--a trifle over-graceful
for a patriot.

“So, Citoyenne,” said he, and so cold was his voice that it seemed even
tinged with mockery, “you are come at last.”

“I could not come before, Monsieur,” she answered, trembling. “They
would not let me.” Then, after a second’s pause: “Am I too late,
Monsieur?” she asked.

“No,” he answered her. “The ci-devant Vicomte d’Ombreval still lies
awaiting trial. Will you not be seated?”

“I do not look to remain long.”

“As you please, Citoyenne. I have delayed Ombreval’s trial thinking that
if not my letter why then his might bring you, sooner or later, to his
rescue. It may interest you to hear,” he continued with an unmistakable
note of irony, “that that brave but hapless gentleman is much fretted at
his incarceration.”

A shadow crossed her face, which remained otherwise calm and composed
--the beautiful, intrepid face that had more than once been La Boulaye’s
undoing.

“I am glad that you have waited, Monsieur. In so doing you need have
no doubts concerning me. M. d’Ombreval is my betrothed, and the troth I
plighted him binds me in honour to succour him now.”

La Boulaye looked steadily at her for a moment.

“Upon my soul,” he said at last, a note of ineffable sarcasm vibrating
in his voice, “I shall never cease to admire the effrontery of your
class, and the coolness with which, in despite of dishonourable action,
you make high-sounding talk of honour and the things to which it binds
you. I have a dim recollection, Citoyenne, of something uncommonly like
your troth which you plighted me one night at Boisvert. But so little
did that promise bind you that when I sought to enforce your fulfilment
of it you broke my head and left me to die in the road.”

His words shook her out of her calm. Her bosom rose and fell, her eyes
seemed to grow haggard and her hands were clasped convulsively.

“Monsieur,” she answered, “when I gave you my promise that night I had
every intention of keeping it. I swear it, as Heaven is my witness.”

“Your actions more than proved it,” he said dryly.

“Be generous, Monsieur,” she begged. “It was my mother prevailed upon me
to alter my determination. She urged that I should be dishonoured if I
did not.”

“That word again!” he cried. “What part it plays in the life of the
noblesse. All that it suits you to do, you do because honour bids you,
all to which you have bound yourselves, but which is distasteful, you
discover that honour forbids, and that you would be dishonoured did you
persist. But I am interrupting you, Citoyenne. Did your mother advance
any arguments?”

“The strongest argument of all lay here, in my heart, Monsieur,” she
answered him, roused and hardened by his scorn. “You must see that it
had become with me a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. Upon
reflection I discovered that I was bound to two men, and it behoved me
to keep the more binding of my pledges.”

“Which you discovered to be your word to Ombreval,” he said, and his
voice grew unconsciously softer, for he began to realise the quandary in
which she had found herself.

She inclined her head assentingly.

“To him I had given the earlier promise, and then, again, he was of my
own class whilst you--”

“Spare me, Citoyenne,” he cried. “I know what you would say. I am of the
rabble, and of little more account in a matter of honour than a beast of
the field. It is thus that you reason, and yet, mon Dieu! I had thought
that ere now such notions had died out with you, and that, stupid enough
though your class has proved itself, it would at least have displayed
the intelligence to perceive that its day is ended, its sun set.” He
turned and paced the apartment as he spoke. “The Lilies of France have
been shorn from their stems, they have withered by the roadside, and
they have been trampled into the dust by the men of the new regime,
and yet it seems that you others of the noblesse have not learnt your
lesson. You have not yet discovered that here in France the man who was
born a tiller of the soil is still a man, and, by his manhood, the equal
of a king, who, after all, can be no more than a man, and is sometimes
less. Enfin!” he ended brusquely. “This is not the National Assembly,
and I talk to ears untutored in such things. Let us deal rather with the
business upon which you are come.”

She eyed him out of a pale face, with eyes that seemed fascinated. That
short burst of the fiery eloquence that had made him famous revealed him
to her in a new light: the light of a strength and capacity above and
beyond that which, already, she had perceived was his.

“Will you believe, Monsieur, that it cost me many tears to use you as I
did? If you but knew--” And there she paused abruptly. She had all but
told him of the kiss that she had left upon his unconscious lips that
evening on the road to Liege. “Mon Dieu how I hated myself!” And she
shuddered as she spoke.

He observed all this, and with a brusqueness that was partly assumed he
hastened to her rescue.

“What is done is done, Citoyenne. Come, let us leave reminiscences. You
are here to atone, I take it.”

At that she started. His words reminded her of those of his letter.

“Monsieur La Boulaye--”

“If it is all one to you, Citoyenne, I should prefer that you call me
citizen.”

“Citizen, then,” she amended. “I have brought with me the gems which
I told you would constitute my dowry. In his letter to me the Vicomte
suggested that--” She paused.

“That some Republican blackguard might be bribed,” he concluded, very
gently.

His gentleness deceived her. She imagined that it meant that he might
not be unwilling to accept such a bribe, and thereupon she set herself
to plead with him. He listened dispassionately, his hands behind his
back, his eyes bent upon her, yet betraying nothing of his thoughts. At
last she brought her prayer for Ombreval’s life to an end, and produced
a small leather bag which she set upon the table, beseeching him to
satisfy himself as to the value of the contents.

Now at last he stirred. His face grew crimson to the roots of his hair,
and his eyes seemed of a sudden to take fire. He seized that little bag
and held it in his hand.

“And so, Mademoiselle de Bellecour,” said he, in a concentrated voice,
“you have learnt so little of me that you bring me a bribe of gems. Am
I a helot, that you should offer to buy my very soul? Do you think my
honour is so cheap a thing that you can have it for the matter of some
bits of glass? Or do you imagine that we of the new regime, because we
do not mouth the word at every turn, have no such thing as honour? For
shame!” He paused, his wrath boiling over as he sought words in which
to give it utterance. And then, words failing him to express the half of
what was in him, he lifted the bag high above his head, and hurled it
at her feet with a force that sent half the glittering contents rolling
about the parquet floor. “Citoyenne, your journey has been in vain. I
will not treat with you another instant.”

She recoiled before his wrath, a white and frightened thing that but an
instant back had been so calm and self-possessed. She gave no thought to
the flashing jewels scattered about the floor. Through all the fear that
now possessed her rose the consideration of this man--this man whom she
had almost confessed half-shamedly to herself that she loved, that night
on the Liege road; this man who at every turn amazed her and filled her
with a new sense of his strength and dignity.

Then, bethinking her of Ombreval and of her mission, she took her
courage in both hands, and, advancing a step, she cast herself upon her
knees before Caron.

“Monsieur, forgive me,” she besought him. “I meant you no insult. How
could I, when my every wish is to propitiate you? Bethink you, Monsieur,
I have journeyed all the way from Prussia to save that man, because my
hon--because he is my betrothed. Remember, Monsieur, you held out to me
the promise in your letter that if I came you would treat with me, and
that I might buy his life from you.”

“Why, so I did,” he answered, touched by her humiliation and her tears.
“But you went too fast in your conclusions.”

“Forgive me that. See! I am on my knees to you. Am I not humbled enough?
Have I not suffered enough for the wrong I may have done you?”

“It would take the sufferings of a generation to atone for the wrongs I
have endured at the hands of your family, Citoyenne.”

“I will do what you will, Monsieur. Bethink you that I am pleading for
the life of the man I am to marry.”

He looked down upon her now in an emotion that in its way was as
powerful as her own. Yet his voice was hard and sternly governed as he
now asked her,

“Is that an argument, Mademoiselle? Is it an argument likely to prevail
with the man who, for his twice-confessed love of you, has suffered sore
trials?”

He felt that in a way she had conquered him; his career, which but that
day had seemed all-sufficing to him, was now fallen into the limbo of
disregard. The one thing whose possession would render his life a happy
one, whose absence would leave him now a lasting unhappiness, knelt here
at his feet. Forgotten were the wrongs he had suffered, forgotten the
purpose to humble and to punish. Everything was forgotten and silenced
by the compelling voice of his blood, which cried out that he loved her.
He stooped to her and caught her wrists in a grip that made her wince.
His voice grew tense.

“If you would bribe me to save his life, Suzanne, there is but one price
that you can pay.”

“And that?” she gasped her eyes looking up with a scared expression into
his masterful face.

“Yourself,” he whispered, with an ardour that almost amounted to
fierceness.

She gazed a second at him in growing alarm, then she dragged her hands
from his grasp, and covering her face she fell a-sobbing.

“Do not misunderstand me,” he cried, as he stood erect over her. “If
you would have Ombreval saved and sent out of France you must become my
wife.”

“Your wife?” she echoed, pausing in her weeping, and for a moment an odd
happiness seemed to fill her. But as suddenly as it had arisen did
she stifle it. Was she not the noble daughter of the noble Marquis de
Bellecour and was not this a lowly born member of a rabble government?
There could be no such mating. A shudder ran through her. “I cannot,
Monsieur, I cannot!” she sobbed.

He looked at her a moment with a glance that was almost of surprise,
then, with a slight compression of the lips and the faintest raising of
the shoulders, he turned from her and strode over to the window. There
was a considerable concourse of people on their way to the Place de la
Republique, for the hour of the tumbrils was at hand.

A half-dozen of those unsexed viragos produced by the Revolution, in
filthy garments, red bonnets and streaming hair, were marching by to the
raucous chorus of the “Ca ira!”

He turned from the sight in disgust, and again faced his visitor.

“Citoyenne,” he said, in a composed voice, “I am afraid that your
journey has been in vain.”

She rose now from her knees, and advanced towards him.

“Monsieur, you will not be so cruel as to send me away empty-handed?”
 she cried, scarce knowing what she was saying.

But he looked at her gravely, and without any sign of melting.

“On what,” he asked, “do you base any claim upon me?”

“On what?” she echoed, and her glance was troubled with perplexity. Then
of a sudden it cleared. “On the love that you have confessed for me,”
 she cried.

He laughed a short laugh-half amazement, half scorn.

“Mon Dieu!” he exclaimed, tossing his arms to Heaven, “a fine claim
that, as I live; a fine argument by which to induce me to place another
man in your arms. I am to do it because I love you!”

They gazed at each other now, she with a glance of strained anxiety,
he with the same look of half-contemptuous wonder. And then a creaking
rumble from below attracted his attention, and he looked round. He moved
forward and threw the window wide, letting in with the March air an odd
medley of sounds to which the rolling of drums afforded a most congruous
accompaniment.

“Look, Citoyenne,” he said, and he pointed out the first tumbril, which
was coming round the corner of the Rue St. Honore.

She approached with some shrinking begotten by a suspicion of what she
was desired to see.

In the street below, among a vociferating crowd of all sorts and
conditions, the black death-cart moved on its way to the guillotine.
It was preceded by a company of National Guards, and followed by the
drummers and another company on foot. Within the fatal vehicle travelled
three men and two women, accompanied by a constitutional priest--one of
those renegades who had taken the oath imposed by the Convention. The
two women sat motionless, more like statues than living beings,
their faces livid and horribly expressionless, so numbed were their
intelligences by fear. Of the men, one stood calm and dignified, another
knelt at his prayers, and was subject, therefore, to the greater portion
of the gibes the mob was offering these poor victims; the third, a
very elegant gentleman in a green coat and buckskin breeches, leant
nonchalantly upon the rail of the tumbril and exchanged gibes with
the people. All five of them were in the prime of life, and, by their
toilettes and the air that clung to them, belonged unmistakably to the
noblesse.

One glance did Mademoiselle bestow upon that tragic spectacle, then with
a shudder she drew back, her face going deathly white.

“Why did you bid me look?” she moaned.

“That for yourself you might see,” he answered pitilessly, “the road by
which your lover is to journey.”

“Mon Dieu!” she cried, wringing her hands, “it is horrible. Oh! You are
not men, you Revolutionists. You are beasts of prey, tigers in human
semblance.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Great injustices beget great reactions. Great wrongs can only be
balanced by great wrongs. For centuries the power has lain with the
aristocrats, and they have most foully abused it. For centuries the
people of France have writhed beneath the armed heel of the nobility,
and their blood, unjustly and wantonly shed, has saturated the soil
until from that seed has sprung this overwhelming retribution.
Now--now, when it is too late--you are repenting; now, when at last some
twenty-five million Frenchmen have risen with weapons in their hands to
purge the nation of you. We are no worse than were you; indeed, not so
bad. It is only that we do in a little while--and, therefore, while it
lasts in greater quantity--what you have been doing through countless
generations.”

“Spare me these arguments, Monsieur,” she cried, recovering her spirit.
“The ‘whys’ and ‘wherefores’ of it are nothing to me. I see what you are
doing, and that is enough. But,” and her voice grew gentle and pleading,
her hands were held out to him, “you are good at heart, Monsieur; you
are generous and you can be noble. You will give me the life that I have
come to beg of you; the life you promised me.”

“Yes, but upon terms, Mademoiselle, and those terms you have heard.”

She looked a moment into that calm, set face, into the dark grey eyes
that looked so solemn and betrayed so little of what was passing within.

“And you say that you love me?” she cried.

“Helas!” he sighed. “It is a weakness I cannot conquer.

“Look well down into your heart, M. La Boulaye,” she answered him, “and
you will find how egregious is your error. You do not love me; you love
yourself, and only yourself. If you loved me you would not seek to
have me when I am unwilling. Above all things, you would desire my
happiness--it is ever so when we truly love--and you would seek to
promote it. If, indeed, you loved me you would grant my prayer, and
not torture me as you are doing. But since you only love yourself, you
minister only to yourself, and seek to win me by force since you desire
me.”

She ceased, and her eyes fell before his glance, which remained riveted
upon her face. Immovable he stood a moment or two, then he turned from
her with a little sigh, and leaning his elbow upon the window-sill,
he gazed down into the crowds surging about the second tumbril. But
although he saw much there that was calculated to compel attention,
he heeded nothing. His thoughts were very busy, and he was doing what
Mademoiselle had bidden him. He was looking into himself. And from that
questioning he gathered not only that he loved her, but that he loved
her so well and so truly that--in spite even of all that was passed--he
must do her will, and deliver up to her the man she loved.

His resolve was but half taken when he heard her stirring in the room
behind him. He turned sharply to find that she had gained the door.

“Mademoiselle!” he called after her. She stopped, and as she turned, he
observed that her lashes were wet. But in her heart there arose now a
fresh hope, awakened by the name by which he had recalled her. “Whither
are you going?” he asked.

“Away, Monsieur,” she answered. “I was realising that my journey had
indeed been in vain.”

He looked at her a second in silence. Then stepping forward:

“Mademoiselle,” he said, very quietly, “your arguments have prevailed,
and it shall be as you desire. The ci-devant Vicomte d’Ombreval shall go
free.”

Her face seemed to grow of a sudden paler, and for an instant she stood
still as if robbed of understanding. Then she came forward with hands
outheld.

“Said I not that you were good and generous? Said I not that you could
be noble, Monsieur?” she cried, as she caught his resisting hand and
sought to carry it to her lips. “God will bless you, Monsieur--”

He drew his hand away, but without roughness. “Let us say no more,
Mademoiselle,” he begged.

“But I will,” she answered him. “I am not without heart, Monsieur, and
now that you have given me this proof of the deep quality of your love,
I--” She paused, as if at a loss for words.

“Well, Mademoiselle?” he urged her.

“I have it in my heart to wish that--that it were otherwise,” she said,
her cheeks reddening under his gaze. “If it were not that I account
myself in honour bound to wed M. le Vicomte--”

“Stop!” he interrupted her. He had caught at last the drift of what she
was saying. “There is no need for any comedy, Suzanne. Enough of that
had we at Boisvert.”

“It is not comedy,” she cried with heat. “It was not altogether comedy
at Boisvert.”

“True,” he said, wilfully misunderstanding her that he might the more
easily dismiss the subject, “it went nearer to being tragedy.” Then
abruptly he asked her:

“Where are you residing?”

She paused before replying. She still wanted to protest that some
affection for him dwelt in her heart, although curbed (to a greater
extent even than she was aware) by the difference in their stations, and
checked by her plighted word to Ombreval. At last, abandoning a purpose
which his countenance told her would be futile:

“I am staying with my old nurse at Choisy,” she answered him. “Henriette
Godelliere is her name. She is well known in the village, and seems
in good favour with the patriots, so that I account myself safe. I am
believed to be her niece from the country.”

“Hum!” he snorted. “The Citoyenne Godelliere’s niece from the country in
silks?”

“That is what someone questioned, and she answered that it was a gown
plundered from the wardrobe of some emigrated aristocrats.”

“Have a care, Suzanne,” said he. “The times are dangerous, and it is a
matter of a week ago since a man was lanterne for no other reason than
because he was wearing gloves, which was deemed an aristocratic habit.
Come, Mademoiselle, let us gather up your gems. You were going without
them some moments ago.”

And down upon his knees he went, and, taking up the little bag which had
been left where he had flung it, he set himself to restore the jewels to
it. She came to his assistance, in spite of his protestations, and so,
within a moment or two, the task was completed, and the little treasure
was packed away in the bosom of her gown.

“To-morrow,” he said, as he took his leave of her at the door, “I shall
hope to bring the ci-devant Vicomte to Choisy, and I will see that he is
equipped with a laissez-passer that will carry both of you safely out of
France.”

She was beginning to thank him all over again, but he cut her short, and
so they parted.

Long after she was gone did he sit at his writing-table, his head in his
hands and his eyes staring straight before him. His face looked grey and
haggard; the lines that seared it were lines of pain.

“They say,” he murmured once, thinking aloud, as men sometimes will
in moments of great stress, “that a good action brings its own reward.
Perhaps my action is not a good one, after all, and that is why I
suffer.”

And, burying his head in his arms, he remained thus with his sorrow
until his official entered to inquire if he desired lights.



CHAPTER XVIII. THE INCORRUPTIBLE


It was towards noon of the following day when Caron La Boulaye presented
himself at the house of Duplay, the cabinet-maker in the Rue St. Honore,
and asked of the elderly female who admitted him if he might see the
Citizen-deputy Robespierre.

A berline stood at the door, the postillion at the horses’ heads, and
about it there was some bustle, as if in preparation of a departure. But
La Boulaye paid no heed to it as he entered the house.

He was immediately conducted upstairs to the Incorruptible’s
apartment--for he was too well known to so much as need announcing. In
answer to the woman’s knock a gentle, almost plaintive voice from within
bade them enter, and thus was Caron ushered into the humble dwelling
of the humble and ineffective-looking individual whose power already
transcended that of any other man in France, and who was destined to
become still more before his ephemeral star went out.

Into that unpretentious and rather close-smelling room--for it was
bed-chamber as well as dining-room and study--stepped La Boulaye
unhesitatingly, with the air of a man who is intimate with his
surroundings and assured of his welcome in them. In the right-hand
corner stood the bed on which the clothes were still tumbled; in the
centre of the chamber was a table all littered with the disorder of
a meal partaken; on the left, by the window, sat Robespierre at his
writing-table, and from the overmantel at the back of the room a marble
counterpart of Robespierre’s own head and shoulders looked down upon the
newcomer. There were a few pictures on the whitewashed walls, and a few
objects of art about the chamber, but in the main it had a comfortless
air, which may in part have resulted from the fact that no fire had been
lighted.

The great man tossed aside his pen, and rose as the door closed after
the entering visitor. Pushing his horn-rimmed spectacles up on to his
forehead he stretched out his hand to La Boulaye.

“It is you, Caron,” he murmured in that plaintive voice of his. It was a
voice that sorted well with the humane man who had resigned a judgeship
at Arras sooner than pass a death-sentence, but hardly so well with him
who, as Public Prosecutor in Paris, had brought some hundreds of heads
to the sawdust. “I have been desiring to congratulate you upon your
victory of yesterday,” he continued, “even as I have been congratulating
myself upon the fact that it was I who found you and gave you to the
Nation. I feared that I might not see you ere I left.”

“You are leaving Paris?” asked La Boulaye, without heeding the
compliments in the earlier part of the other’s speech.

“For a few days. Business of the Nation, my friend. But you--let us talk
of you. Do you know that I am proud of you, cher Caron? Your eloquence
turned Danton green with jealousy, and as for poor Vergniaud, it
extinguished him utterly. Ma foi! If you continue as you have begun,
the day may not be far distant when you will become the patron and I the
Protege.” And his weak eyes beamed pleasantly from out of that unhealthy
pale face.

Outwardly he had changed little since his first coming to Paris, to
represent the Third Estate of Artoise, saving, his cheeks were grown
more hollow. Upon his dress he still bestowed the same unpretentious
care that had always characterised it, which, in one of the most
prominent patriots of the Mountain, amounted almost to foppishness. Blue
coat, white waistcoat, silk hose and shoes buckled with silver, gave him
an elegant exterior that must have earned him many a covert sneer
from his colleagues. His sloping forehead was crowned by a periwig,
sedulously curled and powdered--for all that with the noblesse this was
already a discarded fashion.

La Boulaye replied to his patron’s compliments with the best grace he
could command considering how full of another matter was his mind.

“I may congratulate myself, Maximilien,” he added, “upon my good fortune
in coming before you took your departure. I have a request to prefer, a
favour to ask.”

“Tut! Who talks of favours? Not you, Caron, I hope. You have but to name
what you desire, and so that it lies within my power to accord it, the
thing is yours.”

“There is a prisoner in the Luxembourg in whom I am interested. I seek
his enlargement.”

“But is that all?” cried the little man, and, without more ado, he
turned to his writing-table and drew a printed form from among the chaos
of documents. “His name?” he asked indifferently, as he dipped his quill
in the ink-horn and scratched his signature at the foot of it.

“An aristocrat,” said Caron, with some slight hesitancy.

“Eh?” And the arched brows drew together for an instant. “But no matter.
There are enough and to spare even for Fouquier-Tinvillle’s voracious
appetite. His name?”

“The ci-devant Vicomte Antole d’Ombreval.”

“Qui-ca?” The question rang sharp as a pistol-shot, sounding the
more fearful by virtue of the contrast with the gentle tones in which
Robespierre had spoken hitherto. The little man’s face grew evil.
“d’Ombreval?” he cried. “But what is this man to you? It is by your
favour alone that I have let him live so long, but now--” He stopped
short. “What is your interest in this man?” he demanded, and the
question was so fiercely put as to suggest that it would be well for La
Boulaye that he should prove that interest slight indeed.

But whatever feelings may have been swaying Caron at the moment, fear
was not one of them.

“My interest in him is sufficiently great to cause me to seek his
freedom at your hands,” he answered, with composure.

Robespierre eyed him narrowly for a moment, peering at him over his
spectacles which he had drawn down on to his tip-tilted nose. Then the
fierceness died out of his mien and manner as suddenly as it had sprung
up. He became once more the weak-looking, ineffectual man that had first
greeted La Boulaye: urbane and quiet, but cold-cold as ice.

“I am desolated, my dear Caron, but you have asked me for the one man in
the prisons of France whose life I cannot yield you. He is from Artois,
and there is an old score ‘twixt him and me, ‘twixt his family and mine.
They were the grands seigneurs of the land on which we were born, these
Ombrevals, and I could tell you of wrongs committed by them which would
make you shudder in horror. This one shall atone in the small measure
we can enforce from him. It was to this end that I ordered you to effect
his capture. Have patience, dear Caron, and forgive me that I cannot
grant your request. As I have said, I am desolated that it should be
so. Ask me, if you will, the life of any other--or any dozen others--and
they are yours. But Ombreval must die.”

Caron stood a moment in silent dismay. Here was an obstacle upon which
he had not counted when he had passed his word to Suzanne to effect the
release of her betrothed. At all costs he must gain it, he told himself,
and to that end he now set himself to plead, advancing, as his only
argument--but advancing it with a fervour that added to its weight--that
he stood pledged to save the ci-devant Vicomte. Robespierre looked up
at him with a shade of polite regret upon his cadaverous face, and with
polite regret he deplored that Caron should have so bound himself.

So absorbed were they, the one in pleading, the other in resisting,
that neither noticed the opening of the door, nor yet the girl who stood
observing them from the threshold.

“If this man dies,” cried La Boulaye at last, “I am dishonoured.

“It is regrettable,” returned Robespierre, “that you should have pledged
your word in the matter. You will confess, Caron, that it was a little
precipitate. Enfin,” he ended, crumpling the document he had signed and
tossing it under the table, “you must extricate yourself as best you
can. I am sorry, but I cannot give him to you.”

Caron’s face was very white and his hands were clenched convulsively. It
is questionable whether in that moment he had not flung himself upon the
Incorruptible, and enforced that which hitherto he had only besought,
but that in that instant the girl stepped into the room.

“And is it really you, Caron?” came the melodious voice of Cecile.

La Boulaye started round to confront her, and stifled a curse at the
untimely interruption which Robespierre was blessing as most timely.

“It is--it is, Citoyenne,” he answered shortly, to add more shortly
still: “I am here on business with the Citizen, your uncle.”

But before the girl could so much as appreciate the rebuke he levelled
at her intrusion, her uncle had come to the rescue.

“The business, however, is at an end. Take charge of this good Caron,
Cecile, whilst I make ready for my journey.”

Thus, sore at heart, and chagrined beyond words, La Boulaye was forced
to realise his defeat, and to leave the presence of the Incorruptible.
But with Cecile he went no farther than the landing.

“If you will excuse me, Citoyenne,” he said abstractedly, “I will take
my leave of you.”

“But I shall not excuse you, Caron,” she said, refusing to see his
abstraction. “You will stay to dinner--”

“I am sorry beyond measure, but--”

“You shall stay,” she interrupted. “Come, Caron. It is months since you
were with us. We will make a little fete in honour of your yesterday’s
triumph,” she promised him, sidling up to him with a bewitching glance
of blue eyes, and the most distracting toss of golden curls upon an
ivory neck.

But to such seductions Caron proved as impervious as might a man of
stone. He excused himself with cold politeness. The Nation’s business
was awaiting him; he might not stay.

“The Nation’s business may await you a little longer,” she declared,
taking hold of his arm with both hands, and had she left it at that it
is possible that she had won her way with him. But most indiscreetly she
added:

“Come, Caron, you shall tell me who was your yesterday’s visitor. Do you
know that the sight of her made me jealous? Was it not foolish in me?”

And now, from cold politeness, La Boulaye passed to hot impoliteness.
Roughly he shook her detaining hands from him, and with hardly so much
as a word of farewell, he passed down the stairs, leaving her white with
passion at the slight he had thereby put upon her.

The beauty seemed to pass out of her face much as the meekness was wont
to pass out of her uncle’s when he was roused. Her blue eyes grew steely
and cruel as she looked after him.

“Wait, Caron,” she muttered to herself, “I will cry quits with you.”
 And then, with a sob of anger, she turned and mounted the stairs to her
apartments.



CHAPTER XIX. THE THEFT


La Boulaye sat once more in the Rue Nationale and with his head in his
hands, his elbows supported by the writing-table, he stared before him,
his face drawn with the pain and anger of the defeat he had sustained
where no defeat had been expected.

He had been so assured that he had but to ask for Ombreval’s life,
and it would be accorded him; he had promised Suzanne with such
confidence--boasting almost--that he could do this, and to do it he had
pledged his word. And now? For very shame he could not go to her and
tell her that despite his fine promises despite his bold bargaining, he
was as powerless to liberate Ombreval as was she herself.

And with reflection he came to see that even did he bear her such a tale
she would not believe it. The infinite assurance of his power, implicit
in everything that he had said to her, must now arise in her memory, and
give the lie to his present confession of powerlessness. She would not
believe him, and disbelieving him, she would seek a motive for the words
that she would deem untrue. And that motive she would not find far
to seek. She would account his present attitude the consummation of
a miserable subterfuge by which he sought to win her confidence and
esteem. She would--she must--believe that he had but made a semblance
of befriending her so disinterestedly only that he might enlist her
kindness and regard, and turn them presently to his own purposes.
She would infer that he had posed as unselfish--as self-sacrificing,
almost--only that he might win her esteem, and that by telling her now
that Robespierre was inflexible in his resolve to send Ombreval to the
guillotine, he sought to retain that esteem whilst doing nothing for
it. That he had ever intended to save Ombreval she would not credit.
She would think it all a cunning scheme to win his own ends. And now he
bethought him of the grief that would beset her upon learning that her
journey had indeed been fruitless. He smote the table a blow with his
clenched hand, and cursed the whole Republic, from Robespierre down to
the meanest sans-culotte that brayed the Ca ira in the streets of Paris.

He had pledged his word, and for all that he belonged to the class whose
right to honour was denied by the aristocrats, his word he had never
yet broken. That circumstance--as personified by Maximilien
Robespierre--should break it for him now was matter enough to enrage
him, for than this never had there been an occasion on which such a
breach could have been less endurable.

He rose to his feet, and set himself to pace the chamber, driven to
action of body by the agonised activity of his mind. From the street
rose the cry of the pastry-cook going his daily rounds, as it had risen
yesterday, he remembered, when Suzanne had been with him. And now of
a sudden he stood still. His lips were compressed, his brows drawn
together in a forbidding scowl, and his eyes narrowed until they seemed
almost closed. Then with his clenched right hand he smote the open
palm of the other. His resolve was taken. By fair means or foul, with
Robespierre’s sanction or without it, he would keep his word. After not
only the hope but the assurance he had given Suzanne that her betrothed
should go free, he could do no less than accomplish the Vicomte’s
enlargement by whatever means should present themselves.

And now to seek a way. He recalled the free pardon to which Robespierre
had gone the length of appending his signature. He remembered that it
had not been destroyed; Robespierre had crumpled it in his hand and
tossed it aside. And by now Robespierre would have departed, and
it should not be difficult for him--the protege and intimate of
Robespierre--to gain access to the Incorruptible’s room.

If only he could find that document and fill in the name of Ombreval the
thing would be as good as done. True, he would require the signatures
of three other Deputies; but one of these he could supply himself, and
another two were easily to be requisitioned, seeing that already it bore
Robespierre’s.

And then as suddenly as the idea of the means had come to him, came now
the spectre of the consequences to affright him. How would it fare with
him on Robespierre’s return? How angered would not Robespierre be upon
discovering that his wishes had been set at naught, his very measures
contravened--and this by fraud? And than Robespierre’s anger there were
few things more terrible in ‘93. It was an anger that shore away heads
as recklessly as wayside flowers are flicked from their stems by the
idler’s cane.

For a second it daunted him. If he did this thing he must seek refuge
in flight; he must leave France, abandon the career which was so full
of promise for him, and wander abroad, a penniless fortune-hunter. Well
might the prospect give him pause. Well might it cause him to survey
that pale, sardonic countenance that eyed him gloomily from the mirror
above his mantel shelf, and ask it mockingly if it thought that Suzanne
de Bellecour--or indeed, any woman living--were worthy of so great a
sacrifice.

What had she done for him that he should cast away everything for her
sake? Once she had told him that she loved him, only to betray him.
Was that a woman for whom a man should wanton his fortunes? And then
he smiled derisively, mocking his reflections in the mirror even as he
mocked himself.

“Poor fool,” he muttered, “it is not for the sake of what you are to
her. Were it for that alone, you would not stir a finger to gratify her
wishes. It is for the sake of what she is to you, Caron.”

He turned from the mirror, his resolve now firm, and going to the
door he called his official. Briefly he instructed Brutus touching the
packing of a valise, which he would probably need that night.

“You are going a journey, Citizen?” inquired Brutus, to which La Boulaye
returned a short answer in the affirmative. “Do I accompany you?”
 inquired the official, to which La Boulaye shook his head.

At that Brutus, who, for all his insolence of manner, was very devotedly
attached to his employer, broke into remonstrances, impertinent of
diction but affectionate of tenor. He protested that La Boulaye had left
him behind, and lonely, during his mission to the army in Belgium, and
he vowed that he would not be left behind again.

“Well, well; we shall see, Brutus,” answered the Deputy, laying his hand
upon the fellow’s shoulder. “But I am afraid that this time I am going
farther than you would care to come.”

The man’s ferrety eyes were raised of a sudden to La Boulaye’s face in a
very searching glance. Caron’s tone had been laden with insinuation.

“You are running way,” cried the official.

“Sh! My good Brutus, what folly! Why should I run away--and from whom,
pray?”

“I know not that. But you are. I heard it in your voice. And you do not
trust me, Citizen La Boulaye,” the fellow added, in a stricken voice. “I
have served you faithfully these two years, and yet you have not learnt
to trust me.”

“I do, I do, my friend. You go too fast with your conclusions. Now see
to my valise, and on my return perhaps I’ll tell you where I am going,
and put your fidelity to the test.”

“And you will take me with you?”

“Why, yes,” La Boulaye promised him, “unless you should prefer to remain
in Paris.”

With that he got away and leaving the house, he walked briskly up
the street, round the corner, and on until he stood once more before
Duplay’s.

“Has the Citizen Robespierre departed yet?” he inquired of the woman who
answered his peremptory knock.

“He has been gone this hour, Citizen La Boulaye,” she answered. “He
started almost immediately after you left him.”

“Diable!” grumbled Caron, with well-feigned annoyance. “Quel
contretemps! I have left a most important document in his room, and, of
course, it will be locked.”

“But the Citoyenne Cecile has the key,” answered the woman, eager to
oblige him.

“Why, yes--naturally! Now that is fortunate. Will you do me the favour
to procure the key from he Citoyenne for a few moments, telling her, of
course, that it is I who need it?”

“But certainly, Montez, Citoyen.” And with a wave of the hand towards
the stairs she went before him.

He followed leisurely, and by the time he had reached Robespierre’s door
her voice floated down to him from above, calling the Incorruptible’s
niece. Next he heard Cecile’s voice replying, and then a whispered
conference on the landing overhead, to the accompaniment of the
occasional tinkle of a bunch of keys.

Presently the domestic returned, and unlocking the door, she held it
open for La Boulaye to pass. From her attitude it seemed to Caron as if
she were intentioned--probably she had been instructed--to remain there
while he obtained what he sought. Now he had no mind that she should see
him making his quest among the wasted papers on the floor, and so:

“I shall not be more than a few minutes,” he announced quietly. “I will
call you when I am ready to depart.”

Thus uncompromisingly dismissed, she did not venture to remain, and,
passing in, La Boulaye closed the door. As great as had been his
deliberation hitherto was now the feverish haste with which he crossed
to the spot where he had seen the document flung. He caught up a
crumpled sheet and opened it out It was not the thing he sought. He cast
it aside and took up another with no better luck. To crumple discarded
papers seemed the habit of the Incorruptible, for there was a very
litter of them on the ground. One after another did Caron investigate
without success. He was on his knees now, and his exploration had
carried him as far as the table; another moment and he was grovelling
under it, still at his search, which with each fresh disappointment grow
more feverish.

Yonder--by the leg of the Incorruptible’s chair--he espied the ball
of paper, and to reach it he stretched to his full length, lying prone
beneath a table in an attitude scarce becoming a Deputy of the French
Republic. But it was worth the effort and the disregard of dignity, for
when presently on his knees he smoothed out that document, he discovered
it to be the one he sought the order upon the gaolers of the Luxembourg
to set at liberty a person or persons whose names were to be filled in,
signed by Maximilien Robespierre.

He rose, absorbed in his successful find, and he pursued upon the table
the process of smoothing the creases as much as possible from that
priceless document. That done he took up a pen and attached his own
signature alongside of Robespierre’s; then into the blank space above he
filled the name of Anatole d’Ombreval ci-devant Vicomte d’Ombreval.
He dropped the pen and took up the sand-box. He sprinkled the writing,
creased the paper, and dusted the sand back into the receptacle. And
then of a sudden his blood seemed to freeze, and beads of cold sweat
stood out upon his brow. There had been the very slightest stir behind
him, and with it had come a warm breath upon his bowed neck. Someone was
looking over his shoulder. An instant he remained in that bowed attitude
with head half-raised. Then suddenly straightening himself he swung
round and came face to face with Cecile Deshaix.

Confronting each other and very close they now stood and each was
breathing with more than normal quickness. Her cheeks were white, her
nostrils dilated and quivering, her blue eyes baleful and cruel, whilst
her lips wore never so faint a smile. For a second La Boulaye looked the
very picture of foolishness and alarm. Then it seemed as if he drew a
curtain, and his face assumed the expressionless mask that was habitual
to it in moments of great tension. Instinctively he put behind him his
hands which held the paper. Cecile’s lips took on an added curl of scorn
as she observed the act.

“You thief!” she said, very low, but very fiercely. “That was the paper
that you left behind you, was it?”

“The paper that I have is certainly the paper that I left behind,” he
answered serenely, for he had himself well in hand by now. “And as
for dubbing me a thief so readily”--he paused, and shrugged his
shoulders--“you are a woman,” he concluded, with an air suggesting that
that fact was a conclusion to all things.

“Fool!” she blazed. “Do you think to overcome me by quibbles? Do you
think to dupe me with words and shrugs?”

“My dear Cecile” he begged half-whimsically, “may I implore you to use
some restraint? Inured as I am to the unbounded licence of your tongue
and to the abandon that seems so inherent in you, let me assure you
that--”

“Ah! You can say Cecile now?” she cried, leaving the remainder of his
speech unheeded. “Now that you need me; now that you want me to be a
party to your treacherous designs against my uncle. Oh, you can say
‘Cecile’ and ‘dear Cecile’ instead of your everlasting ‘Citoyenne’.

“It seems I am doomed to be always misunderstood by you,” he laughed,
and at the sound she started as if he had struck her.

Had she but looked in his eyes she had seen no laughter there; she might
have realised that murder rather than mirth was in his soul--for, at all
costs, he was determined to hold the paper he had been at such pains to
get.

“I understand you well enough,” she cried hotly, her cheeks flaming red
of a sudden. “I understand you, you thief, you trickster. Do you think
that I heard nothing of what passed this morning between my uncle and
you? Do you think I do not know whose name you have written on that
paper? Answer me,” she commanded him.

“Since you know so much, what need for any questions?” quoth he coolly,
transferring the coveted paper to his pocket as he spoke. “And since
we are so far agreed that I am not contradicting anything you say--nor,
indeed, intend to--perhaps you will see the convenience of ending an
interview that promises to be fruitless. My dear Cecile, I am very
grateful to you for the key of this room. I beg that you will make my
compliments to the Citizen your uncle upon his return, and inform him of
how thoroughly you ministered to my wants.”

With that and a superb air of insouciance, he made shift to go. But
fronting him she barred his way.

“Give me that paper, sclerat,” she demanded imperiously. “You shall not
go until you surrender it. Give it to me or I will call Duplay.”

“You may call the devil for aught I care, you little fool,” he answered
her, very pleasantly. “Do you think Duplay will be mad enough to lay
hands upon a Deputy of the Convention in the discharge of the affairs of
the Nation?”

“It is a lie!”

“Why, of course it is,” he admitted sweetly. “But Duplay will not be
aware of that.”

“I shall tell him.”

“Tut! He won’t believe you. I’ll threaten him with the guillotine if
he does. And I should think that Duplay has sufficient dread of the
national barber not to risk having his toilet performed by him. Now, be
reasonable, and let me pass.”

Enraged beyond measure by his persiflage and very manifest contempt
of her, she sprang suddenly upon him, and caught at the lapels of his
redingote.

“Give me that paper!” she screamed, exerting her entire strength in a
vain effort to boldly shake him.

Coldly he eyed this golden-haired virago now, and looked in vain for
some trace of her wonted beauty in the stormy distortion of her face.

“You grow tiresome with your repetitions,” he answered her impatiently,
as, snatching at her wrists, he made her release her hold. “Let me go.”
 And with that he flung her roughly from him.

A second she staggered, then, recovering her balance and without an
instant’s hesitation, she sped to the door. Imagining her intent to be
to lock him in La Boulaye sprang after her. But it seemed that his
mind had been more swift to fasten upon the wiser course than had hers.
Instead, she snatched the key and closed the door on the inside. She
wasted a moment fumbling at the lock, and even as he caught her by
the waist the key slipped in, and before he dragged her back she had
contrived to turn it, and now held it in her hand. He laughed a trifle
angrily as she twisted out of his grasp, and stood panting before him.

“You shall not leave this room with that paper,” she gasped, her anger
ever swelling, and now rendering her speech almost incoherent.

He set his arms akimbo, and surveyed her whimsically.

“My dear Cecile,” quoth he, “if you will take no thought for my
convenience, I beg that, at least, you will take some for your good
name. Thousand devils woman! Will you have it said in Paris that
you were found locked in a room with me? What will your uncle--your
virtuous, prudish, incorruptible uncle--say when he learns of it? If he
does not demand a heavy price from you for so dishonouring him, he is
not the man I deem him. Now be sensible, child, and open that door
while there is yet time, and before anybody discovers us in this most
compromising situation.”

He struck the tone most likely to win him obedience, and that he had
judged astutely her face showed him. In the place of the anger that had
distorted it there came now into that countenance a look of surprise
and fear. She saw herself baffled at every point. She had threatened him
with Duplay--the only man available--and he had shown her how futile it
must prove to summon him. And now she had locked herself in with him,
thinking to sit there until he should do her will, and he showed her the
danger to herself therein, which had escaped her notice.

There was a settle close behind her, and on to this she sank, and
bending her head she opened the floodgates of her passionate little
soul, and let the rage that had so long possessed her dissolve in tears.
At sight of that sudden change of front La Boulaye stamped his foot. He
appreciated the fact that she was about to fight him with weapons that
on a previous occasion--when, however, it is true, they were wielded by
another--had accomplished his undoing.

And for all that he steeled his heart, and evoked the memory of Suzanne
to strengthen him in his purpose: he approached her with a kindly
exterior. He sat him down beside her; he encompassed her waist with his
arm, and drawing her to him he set himself to soothe her as one soothes
a wilful child. Had he then recalled what her attitude had been towards
him in the past he had thought twice before adopting such a course. But
in his mind there was no sentiment that was not brotherly, and far from
his wishes was it to invest his action with any other than a fraternal
kindness.

But she, feeling that caressing arm about her, and fired by it in her
hapless passion for this man, was quick to misinterpret him, and to
translate his attitude into one of a kindness far beyond his dreams. She
nestled closer to him; at his bidding her weeping died down and ceased.

“There, Cecile, you will give me the key now?” he begged.

She glanced up at him shyly through wet lashes--as peeps the sun through
April clouds.

“There is nothing I will not do for you, Caron,” she murmured. “See, I
will even help you to play the traitor on my uncle. For you love me a
little, cher Caron, is it not so?”

He felt himself grow cold from head to foot, and he grew sick at the
thought that by the indiscretion of his clumsy sympathy he had brought
this down upon his luckless head. Mechanically his arm relaxed the hold
of her waist and fell away. Instinctively she apprehended that all was
not as she had thought. She turned on the seat to face him squarely, and
caught something of the dismay in his glance of the loathing almost (for
what is more loathsome to a man than to be wooed by a woman he desires
not?) Gradually, inch by inch, she drew away from him, ever facing him,
and her eyes ever on his, as if fascinated by the horror of what she
saw. Thus until the extremity of the settle permitted her to go no
farther. She started, then her glance flickered down, and she gave a
sudden gasp of passion. Simultaneously the key rang on the boards at
Caron’s feet angrily flung there by Cecile.

“Go!” she exclaimed, in a suffocating voice, “and never let me see your
face again.”

For a second or two he sat quite still, his eyes observing her with a
look of ineffable pity, which might have increased her disorder had she
perceived it. Then slowly he stooped, and took up the key.

He rose from the settle, and without a word--for words he realised,
could do no more than heighten the tragic banality of the situation--he
went to the door, unlocked it, and passed out.

Huddled in her corner sat Cecile, listening until his steps had died
away on the stairs. Then she cast herself prone upon the settle, and in
a frenzy of sobs and tears she vented some of the rage and shame that
were distracting her.



CHAPTER XX. THE GRATITUDE OF OMBREVAL


What La Boulaye may have lacked in knowledge of woman’s ways he made up
for by his knowledge of Cecile, and from this he apprehended that there
was no time to be lost if he would carry out his purpose. Touching her
dismissal of him, he permitted himself no illusions. He rated it at its
true value. He saw in it no sign of relenting of generosity, but only
a desire to put an end to the shame which his presence was occasioning
her.

He could imagine the lengths to which the thirst of vengeance would urge
a scorned woman, and of all women he felt that Cecile scorned was
the most to be feared. She would not sit with folded hands. Once she
overcame the first tempestuous outburst of her passion she would be
up and doing, straining every sense to outwit and thwart him in his
project, whose scope she must have more than guessed.

Reasoning thus, he clearly saw not only that every moment was of value,
but that flight was the only thing remaining him if he would save
himself as well as Ombreval. And so he hired him a cabriolet, and drove
in all haste to the house of Billaud Varennes, the Deputy, from whom he
sought to obtain one of the two signatures still needed by his order
of release. He was disappointed at learning that Varennes was not at
home--though, had he been able to peep an hour or so into the future, he
would have offered up thanks to Heaven for that same Deputy’s absence.
His insistent and impatient questions elicited the information that
probably Verennes would be found at Fevrier’s. And so to Fevrier’s
famous restaurant in the old Palais Royal went La Boulaye, and there
he had the good fortune to find not only Billaud Varennes, but also the
Deputy Carnot. Nor did fortune end her favours there. She was smiling
now upon Caron, as was proved by the fact that neither to Varennes
nor Carnot did the name of Ombreval mean anything. Robespierre’s
subscription of the document was accepted by each as affording him a
sufficient warrant to append his own signature, and although Carnot
asked a question or two, it was done in an idle humour, and he paid
little attention to such replies as Caron made him.

Within five minutes of entering the restaurant, La Boulaye was in the
street again, driving, by way of the Pont Neuf, to the Luxembourg.

At the prison he encountered not the slightest difficulty. He was
known personally to the officer, of whom he demanded the person of the
ci-devant Vicomte, and his order of release was too correct to give rise
to any hesitation on the part of the man to whom it was submitted.
He was left waiting a few moments in a chamber that did duty as a
guard-room, and presently the Vicomte, looking pale, and trembling with
excitement at his sudden release, stood before him.

“You?” he muttered, upon beholding La Boulaye. But the Republican
received him very coldly, and hurried him out of the prison with scant
ceremony.

The officer attended the Deputy to the door of his cabriolet, and in
his hearing Caron bade the coachman drive to the Porte St. Martin. This,
however, was no more than a subterfuge to which he was resorting with a
view to baffling the later possibility of their being traced. Ombreval
naturally enough plied him with questions as they went, to which La
Boulaye returned such curt answers that in the end, discouraged and
offended, the nobleman became silent.

Arrived at the Porte St. Martin they alighted, and La Boulaye dismissed
the carriage. On foot he now led his companion as far as the church of
St. Nicholas des Champs, where he hired a second cabriolet, bidding the
man drive him to the Quai de la Greve. Having reached the riverside they
once more took a short walk, crossing by the Pont au Change, and thence
making their way towards Notre Dame, in the neighbourhood of which La
Boulaye ushered the Vicomte into a third carriage, and thinking that by
now they had done all that was needed to efface their tracks, he ordered
the man to proceed as quickly as possible to Choisy.

They arrived at that little village on the Seine an hour or so later,
and having rid themselves of their conveyance, Caron inquired and
discovered the way to the house of Citoyenne Godelliere.

Mademoiselle was within, and at sound of Caron’s voice questioning
the erstwhile servant who had befriended her, she made haste to show
herself. And at a word from her, Henriette admitted the two men
and ushered them into a modest parlour, where she left them with
Mademoiselle.

La Boulaye was the first to speak.

“I trust that I have not kept you waiting overlong, Citoyenne,” he said,
by way of saying something.

“Monsieur,” she answered him, with a look that was full of gratitude and
kindliness “you have behaved nobly, and to my dying day I shall remember
it.”

This La Boulaye deprecated by a gesture, but uttered no word as the
Vicomte now stepped forward and bore Suzanne’s hand to his lips.

“Mademoiselle,” said he, “Monsieur La Boulaye here was very reticent
touching the manner in which my release has been gained. But I never
doubted that I owed it to your good efforts, and that you had adopted
the course suggested to you by my letter, and bought me from the
Republic.”

La Boulaye flushed slightly as much at the contemptuous tone as at the
words in which Ombreval referred to the Republic.

“It is not to me but to our good friend, M. La Boulaye, that you should
address your thanks, Monsieur.”

“Ah? Vraiment?” exclaimed the Vicomte, turning a supercilious eye upon
the Deputy, for with his freedom he seemed to have recovered his old
habits.

“I have not sold you to the Citoyenne,” said La Boulaye, the words being
drawn from him by the other’s manner. “I am making her a present of
you--a sort of wedding gift.” And his lips smiled, for all that his eyes
remained hard.

Ombreval made him no answer, but stood looking from the Deputy to
Suzanne in some hesitation. The expressions which his very lofty dignity
prompted, his sense of fitness--feeble though it was--forbade him. And
so there followed a pause, which, however, was but brief, for La Boulaye
had yet something to say.

It had just come to him with a dismaying force that in the haste of his
escape from Paris with the Vicomte he had forgotten to return to his
lodging for a passport that he was fortunately possessed of. It was
a laissez-passer, signed and left in blank, with which he had been
equipped--against the possibility of the need for it arising--when
he had started upon the Convention’s errand to the Army of Dumouriez.
Whilst on his way to Robespierre’s house to secure the order of release,
he had bethought him of filling in that passport for three persons, and
thus, since to remain must entail his ruin and destruction, make his
escape from France with Mademoiselle and the Vicomte. It was his only
chance. Then in the hurry of the succeeding incidents, the excitement
that had attended them, and the imperative need for haste in getting the
Vicomte to Choisy, he had put the intended return to his lodging from
his mind--overlooking until now the fact that not only must he go back
for the valise which he had bidden Brutus pack, but also for that far
more precious passport.

It now became necessary to explain the circumstances to his companions,
and in explaining them the whole affair, from Robespierre’s refusal to
grant him the life of the Vicomte down to the means to which he had had
recourse, could not be kept from transpiring. As she listened, Suzanne’s
expression changed into one of ineffable wonder.

“And you have done this for me?” she cried, when at last he paused, “you
have ruined your career and endangered your life?”

La Boulaye shrugged his shoulders.

“I spoke over-confidently when I said that I could obtain you the
Vicomte’s pardon. There proved to be a factor on which I had not
counted. Nevertheless, what I had promised I must fulfil. I was by
honour bound to leave nothing undone that might result in the Vicomte’s
enlargement.”

Ornbreval laughed softly, but with consummate amusement.

“A sans-culotte with a sense of honour is such an anomaly--” he began,
when Mademoiselle interposed, a note of anger sounding in her voice.

“M. d’Ombreval means to pay you a compliment,” she informed La Boulaye,
“but he has such an odd way of choosing his expressions that I feared
you might misunderstand him.”

La Boulaye signified his indifference by a smile.

“I am afraid the ci-devant Vicomte has not yet learnt his lesson,” said
he; “or else he is like the sinner who upon recovering health forgot
the penitence that had come to him in the days of sickness. But we have
other matters to deal with, Citoyenne, and, in particular, the matter of
the passport. Fool that I am!” he cried bitterly.

“I must return to Paris at once,” he announced briskly. “There is no
help for it. We will hope that as yet the way is open to me, and that
I shall be permitted to go and to return unmolested. In such a case the
rest is easy--except that you will have to suffer my company as far as
the frontier.”

It was Mademoiselle who accompanied him to the door.

“Monsieur,” she said, in a voice that shook with the sincere intensity
of her feelings, “think me not ungrateful that I have said so little.
But your act has overwhelmed me. It is so truly noble, that to offer you
thanks that are but words, seems tome little short of a banality.”

“Tut!” he laughed. “I have not yet done half. It will be time to thank
me when we are out of France.”

“And you speak so lightly of leaving France?” she cried. “But what is to
become of you? What of your career?”

“Other careers are possible in other countries,” he answered, with
a lightness he did not feel. “Who knows perhaps the English or the
Prussians might be amenable to a change of government. I shall seek to
induce one or the other of them to became a republic, and then I shall
become once more a legislator.”

With that, and vowing that every moment he remained their chances of
leaving France grew more slender, he took his leave of her, expressing
the hope that he might be back within a couple of hours. Mademoiselle
watched him to the garden gate, then closing the door she returned
within.

She discovered her betrothed--he whom La Boulaye had called her
lover--standing with his back to the fire, his hands clasped behind him,
the very picture of surliness. He made none of the advances that one
might look for in a man placed as he was at that moment. He greeted her,
instead, with a complaint.

“Will you permit me, Mademoiselle, to say that in this matter you have
hardly chosen the wiser course?”

“In what matter?” quoth she, at a loss to understand him.

“In the matter of my release. I advised you in my letter to purchase my
freedom. Had you done so, we should now be in a position to start for
the frontier--for you would have made a passport a part of your bargain.
Instead of this, not only are we obliged to run the risk of waiting, but
even if this fellow should return, we shall be affronted by his company
for some days to come.” And the Vicomte sniffed the air in token of
disgust.

Suzanne looked at him in an amazement that left her speechless for a
moment. At last:

“And this is your gratitude?” she demanded. “This is all that you have
to say in thanks for the discomfort and danger that I have suffered on
your behalf? Your tone is oddly changed since you wrote me that piteous,
pitiable letter from Belgium, M. le Vicomte.”

He reddened slightly.

“I am afraid that I have been clumsy in my expressions,” he apologised.
“But never doubt my gratitude, Mademoiselle. I am more grateful to you
than words can tell. You have done your duty to me as few women could.”

The word “duty” offended her, yet she let it pass. In his monstrous
vanity it was often hopeless to make him appreciate the importance of
anything or anybody outside of himself. Of this the present occasion was
an instance.

“You must forgive me my seeming thanklessness, Mademoiselle,” he
pursued. “It was the company of that sans-culotte rascal that soured
me. I had enough of him a month ago, when he brought me to Paris. It
offended me to have him stand here again in the same room with me,
and insolently refer to his pledged word as though he were a gentleman
born.”

“To whom do you refer?” quoth she.

“Ma foi! How many of them are there? Why, to this fellow, La Boulaye?”

“So it seemed, and yet I could not believe it of you. Do you not realise
that your ingratitude approaches the base?”

He vouchsafed her a long, cold stare of amazement.

“Mordieu!” he ejaculated at last. “I am afraid that your reason has been
affected by your troubles. You seem, Mademoiselle, to be unmindful of
the station into which you have had the honour to be born.”

“If your bearing is to be accepted as a sign that you remember it, I
will pray God that I may, indeed, forget it--completely and for all
time.”

And then the door opened to admit the good Henriette, who came to
announce that she had contrived a hasty meal, and that it was served and
awaiting them.

“Diable!” he laughed. “Those are the first words of true wit that I have
heard these many days. I swear,” he added, with a pleasantness that was
oddly at variance with his sullen humour of a moment back, “that I have
not tasted human food these four weeks, and as for my appetite--it is
capable of consuming the whole patrimony of St. Peter. Lead the way, my
good Henriette. Come, Mademoiselle.”



CHAPTER XXI. THE ARREST


Facts proved how correct had been La Boulaye’s anticipations of the
course that Cecile would adopt, Within a half-hour of his having quitted
the house of Billaud Varennes, she presented herself there, and demanded
to see the Deputy. Upon being told that he was absent she determined to
await his return.

And so, for the matter of an hour, she remained in the room where the
porter had offered her accommodation, fretting at the delay, and only
restrained from repairing to some other member of the Convention by the
expectation that the next moment would see Varennes arrive. Arrive he
did at last, when her patience was all but exhausted, and excitedly she
told her tale of what had taken place. Varennes listened gravely, and
cross-questioned her in his unbelief--for it seemed, indeed, monstrous
that a man of La Boulaye’s position should ruin so promising a future
as was his by an act for which Varennes could not so much as divine a
motive. But her story hung together so faithfully, and was so far borne
out by the fact that Varennes himself had indeed signed such a document
as she described, that in the end the Deputy determined to take some
steps to neutralise the harm that might have been done.

Dismissing the girl with the assurance that the matter should have
his attention, he began by despatching a courier to Robespierre at
Chartres--where he knew the Incorruptible to be. That done, he resorted
to measures for La Boulaye’s detention. But this proved a grave
matter. What if, after all, that half-hysterical girl’s story should be
inaccurate? In what case would he find himself if, acting upon it in the
meantime, he should order Caron’s arrest? The person of a Deputy was not
one to be so lightly treated, and he might find himself constrained
to answer a serious charge in consequence. Thus partly actuated by
patriotism and the fear of Robespierre, and partly restrained by
patriotism and the fear of La Boulaye, he decided upon a middle course:
that of simply detaining La Boulaye at his lodging until Robespierre
should either return or send an answer to his message. Thus, whilst
leaving him perfect freedom of movement within his own apartments, he
would yet ensure against his escape so that should Robespierre demand
him he could without difficulty be produced.

To this end he repaired with a sous-lieutenant and six men to La
Boulaye’s house in the Rue Nationale, intending to station the soldiers
there with orders not to allow the Deputy to go out, and to detain and
question all who sought admittance to him. He nourished the hope
that the ci-devant Vicomte might still be with La Boulaye. At the
Rue Nationale, however, he was to discover that neither Deputy nor
aristocrat was to be found. Brutus informed him that he was expecting
the Citizen La Boulaye, but beyond that he would say nothing, and he
wisely determined to hold his peace touching the valise that he had been
ordered to pack and the fact that he knew the Deputy meditated leaving
Paris. Brutus had learnt the value of silence, especially when those who
sought information were members of the Convention.

Alarmed at this further corroboration of Cecile’s story of treachery
Varennes left the military at Caron’s house, with orders not to allow
the Deputy to again depart if in the meantime he should happen to
return, whilst to every barrier of Paris he sent instructions to have
La Boulaye detained if he should present himself. By these measures he
hoped still to be able to provide against the possibility of Caron’s
seeking to leave Paris.

But Caron had been gone over an hour, and as a matter of fact, he was
back again in Paris within a very little time of these orders having
been issued. At the Barriere d’Enfer, although recognised, he was not
molested, since the orders only, and distinctly, concerned his departure
and nowise his arrival.

Thus, not until he had reached his lodgings did he realise that all was
not as he had hoped. And even then it was only within doors that he
made the discovery, when he found himself suddenly confronted by the
sous-lieutenant, who was idling in the passage. The officer saluted
him respectfully, and no less respectfully, though firmly, informed him
that, by order of the Citizen-deputy Billaud Varennes, he must ask him
to confine himself to his own apartments until further orders.

“But why, Citizen-officer?” La Boulaye demanded, striving to exclude
from his voice any shade of the chagrin that was besetting him. “What do
these orders mean?”

The officer was courtesy personified, but explanations he had none to
give, for the excellent reason, he urged that he was possessed of none.
He was a soldier, and he had received orders which he must obey, without
questioning either their wisdom or their justice. Appreciating the
futility of bearing himself otherwise, since his retreat was already
blocked by a couple of gendarmes, Caron submitted to the inevitable.

He mounted leisurely to his study, and the ruin that stared him in
the eyes was enough to have daunted the boldest of men. Yet, to do him
justice, he was more concerned at the moment with the consequences this
turn of affairs might have for Mademoiselle than with his own impending
downfall. That he had Cecile to thank for his apprehension he never
doubted. Yet it was a reflection that he readily dismissed from his
mind. In such a pass as he now found himself none but a weakling could
waste time and energy in bewailing the circumstances that had conspired
to it. In a man of La Boulaye’s calibre and mettle it was more befitting
to seek a means to neutralise as much as possible the evil done.

He called Brutus and cross-questioned him regarding the attitude and
behaviour of the soldiery since their coming. He learnt that nothing
had been touched by them, and that they were acting with the utmost
discreetness, taking scrupulous care not to exceed the orders they had
received, which amounted to detaining La Boulaye and nothing more.

“You think, then, that you might come and go unmolested?” he asked.

“I think that I might certainly go. But whether they would permit me
to return once I had left, I cannot say. So that they will let you pass
out, that is all that signifies at the moment,” said Caron. “Should they
question you, you can tell them that you are going to dine and to fetch
me my dinner from Berthon’s. As a matter of fact, I shall want you to go
to Choisy with a letter, which you must see does not fall into the hands
of any of these people of the Convention.”

“Give me the letter, Citizen, and trust me to do the rest,” answered the
faithful Brutus.

La Boulaye searched a drawer of his writing-table for the blank passport
he required. Having found it, he hesitated for a moment how to fill it
in. At last he decided, and set down three names--Pierre, Francois,
and Julie Michael, players, going to Strasbourg--to which he added
descriptions of himself, the Vicomte, and Mademoiselle. He reasoned that
in case it should ultimately prove impossible for him to accompany them,
the passport, thus indited, would still do duty for the other two. They
could easily advance some excuse why the third person mentioned was not
accompanying them. From this it will be seen that La Boulaye was far
from having abandoned hope of effecting his escape, either by his own
resourcefulness or by the favour of Robespierre himself, whose kindness
for him, after all, was a factor worth reckoning upon.

To Mademoiselle he now wrote as follows:

  I am sending you the laissez-passer filled in for the three of
  us.  I am unfortunately unable to bring it myself as my
  abstraction of the order of release has already been discovered,
  and I am being detained pending the arrival of Robespierre.  But
  I am at my own lodging, and I have every hope that, either by
  the use of my own wit, or else by the favour of my friend
  Robespierre, I shall shortly be able to join you.  I would
  therefore ask you to wait a few days.  But should I presently
  send you word not to do so any longer, or should you hear of
  events which will render it impossible for me to accompany you,
  you can then set out with Ombreval, travelling under the guise
  described in the passport, and informing any questioners that
  the other person mentioned has been forced by ill health to
  interrupt his journey.  As I have said, I have every hope of
  winning through my present difficulties; but should I fail to
  do so, my most earnest prayer will be that you may make your
  way out of France in safety, and that lasting happiness may be
  your lot in whatever country you may elect to settle.  You may
  trust the bearer implicitly, patriotic though he may appear.

He subscribed the letter with his initials, and, having enclosed the
passport and sealed the package, he gave it to Brutus, with the most
minute instructions touching its delivery.

These instructions Brutus carried out with speed and fidelity. He was
allowed to quit the house without so much as a question, which left his
plan for readmittance the greater likelihood of succeeding. In
something less than an hour--for he hired himself a horse at the nearest
post-house--he had delivered his letter to Mademoiselle at Choisy.

Its contents sowed in her heart the very deepest consternation--a
consternation very fully shared by the Vicomte.

“Tenez!” he exclaimed, when he had read it. “Perhaps now you will admit
the justice of my plaint that you did not make a simple purchase of
my liberty, as I counselled you, instead of entering into this idiotic
compact with that sans-culotte.”

She looked at him a moment in silence. She was suffering as it was
at the very thought that La Boulaye’s life might be in danger in
consequence of what he had done for her. With reluctance had she
accepted the sacrifice of his career which he had made to serve her.
Now that it became the question of a sacrifice of life as well she was
dismayed. All the wrongs that she and hers had done that man seemed to
rise up and reproach her now. And so, when presently she answered
the Vicomte, it was no more than natural that she should answer him
impatiently.

“I thought, Monsieur, that we had already discussed and settled that?”

“Settled it?” he echoed, with a sneer. “It seems none so easy to settle.
Do you think that words will settle it.”

“By no means,” she answered, her voice quivering. “It seems as if a
man’s life will be required for that.”

He shrugged his shoulders, and his face put on a look of annoyance.

“I hope, Mademoiselle, that you are not proposing to introduce
sentimentality. I think you would be better advised to leave that
vulgarity to the vulgar.”

“I do not propose to pursue the discussion at all, Monsieur,” was her
chilly answer.

“The way of woman,” he reflected aloud. “Let her find that she is being
worsted in argument, and she calmly tells you that she has no mind
to pursue it. But, Mademoiselle, will you tell me at least what you
intend?”

“What do I intend?” she questioned. “What choice have we?”

“Whenever we are asked to follow a given course, we have always the
choice between two alternatives,” he theorised. “We can comply, or not
comply.”

“In the present instance I am afraid your rule is inapplicable. There is
no room for any alternative. We can do nothing but wait.”

She looked at him impatiently, and wearily she sank on to a chair.

“Monsieur,” she said, as calmly as might be, “I am almost distracted by
my thoughts as it is. I don’t know whether you are seeking to complete
the rout of my senses. Let me beg of you at least not to deal in riddles
with me. The time is ill-chosen. Tell me bluntly what is in your mind,
if, indeed, anything.”

He turned from her peevishly, and crossed to the window. The twilight
was descending, and the little garden was looking grey in the now pallid
light. Her seeming obtuseness was irritating him.

“Surely, Mademoiselle,” he exclaimed at last, “it is not necessary that
I should tell you what other course is open to us? It is a matter for
our choice whether we depart at once. We have a passport, and--and,
enfin, every hour that we remain here our danger is increased, and our
chances of escape are lessened.”

“Ah!” She breathed the syllable contemptuously. “And what of La
Boulaye?”

“Pooh! he says himself that he is in no great danger. He is among his
fellows. Leave him to extricate himself. After all, it is his fault
that we are here. Why should we endanger our necks by waiting his
convenience?”

“But surely you forget what he has done for us. You are forgetting that
he has rescued you from the guillotine, dragged you out of the very
jaws of death. Do you think that to forsake him now would be a fair, an
honest return?”

“But name of a name,” rasped the Vicomte, “does he not say that he is
far from despairing? His position is not half so dangerous as ours. If
we are taken, there will be an end of us. With him matters are far from
being so bad. He is one of the rabble himself, and the rabble will look
after its own.”

She rose impatiently.

“Monsieur, I am afraid the subject is not one that we may profitably
discuss. I shall obey the voice of my conscience in the matter, and I
shall wait until we hear again from La Boulaye. That is the message I am
about to return him by his servant.”

The Vicomte watched her fling out of the room, and his weak face was
now white with anger. He rapped out an oath as he turned to the window
again.

“Mad!” he muttered, through-set teeth. “Mad as a sun-struck dog. The
troubles she has lately seen have turned her head--never a difficult
matter with a woman. She talks as if she had been reading Rousseau on
the ‘Right of man’. To propose to endanger our lives for the sake of
that scum, La Boulaye! Ciel! It passes belief.”

But it was in vain that he was sullen and resentful. Suzanne’s mind
entertained no doubt of what she should do, and she had her way in the
matter, sending back Brutus with the message that she would wait until
La Boulaye communicated with her again.

That night Caron slept tranquilly. He had matured a plan of escape which
he intended to carry out upon the morrow, and with confident hope to
cradle him he had fallen asleep.

But the morrow--early in the forenoon--brought a factor with which
he had not reckoned, in the person of the Incorruptible himself.
Robespierre had returned in hot haste to Paris upon receiving Varennes’
message, and he repaired straight to the house of La Boulaye.

Caron was in his dressing-gown when Robespierre was ushered into his
study, and the sight of that greenish complexion and the small eyes,
looking very angry and menacing, caused the song that the young man had
been humming to fade on his lips.

“You, Maximilien!” he exclaimed.

“Your cordial welcome flatters me,” sneered the Incorruptible, coming
forward. Then with a sudden change of voice: “What is that they tell me
you have done, miserable?” he growled.

It would have been a madness on Caron’s part to have increased an
anger that was already mounting to very passionate heights. Contritely,
therefore, and humbly he acknowledged his fault, and cast himself upon
the mercy of Robespierre.

But the Incorruptible was not so easily to be shaken.

“Traitor that you are!” he inveighed. “Do you imagine that because it
is yours to make high sounding speeches in the Convention you are to
conspire with impunity against the Nation? Your loyalty, it seems, is
no more than a matter of words, and they that would keep their heads on
their shoulders in France to-day will find the need for more than words
as their claim to be let live. If you would save your miserable neck,
tell me what you have done with this damned aristocrat.”

“He is gone,” answered La Boulaye quietly.

“Don’t prevaricate, Caron! Don’t seek to befool me, Citizen-deputy. You
have him in hiding somewhere. You can have supplied him with no papers,
and a man may not travel out of France without them in these times. Tell
me--where is he?”

“Gone,” repeated La Boulaye. “I have set him free, and he has availed
himself of it to place himself beyond your reach. More than that I
cannot tell you.”

“Can you not?” snarled Robespierre, showing his teeth. “Of what are you
dreaming fool? Do you think that I will so easily see myself cheated of
this dog? Did I not tell you that rather would I grant you the lives of
a dozen aristocrats than that of this single one? Do you think, then,
that I am so lightly to be baulked? Name of God? Who are you, La
Boulaye, what are you, that you dare thwart me in this?” He looked at
the young man’s impassive face to curb his anger. “Come, Caron,” he
added, in a wheedling tone. “Tell me what you have done with him?”

“I have already told you,” answered the other quietly.

As swift and suddenly as it changed before did Robespierre’s humour
change again upon receiving that reply. With a snort of anger he strode
to the door and threw it open.

“Citizen-lieutenant!” he called, in a rasping voice.

“Here, Citizen,” came a voice from below.

“Give yourself the trouble of coming up with a couple of men. Now,
Citizen La Boulaye,” he said, more composedly, as he turned once more
to the young man, “since you will not learn reason you may mount the
guillotine in his place.”

Caron paled slightly as he inclined his head in silent submission. At
that moment the officer entered with his men at his heels.

“Arrest me that traitor,” Maximilien commanded, pointing a shaking
finger at Caron. “To the Luxembourg with him.”

“If you will wait while I change my dressing-gown for a coat,
Citizen-officer,” said La Boulaye composedly, “I shall be grateful.”
 Then, turning to his official, “Brutus,” he called, “attend me.”

He had an opportunity while Brutus was helping him into his coat to
whisper in the fellow’s ear:

“Let her know.”

More he dared not say, but to his astute official that was enough, and
with a sorrowful face he delivered to Suzanne, a few hours later, the
news of La Boulaye’s definite arrest and removal to the Luxembourg.

At Brutus’s description of the scene there had been ‘twixt Robespierre
and Caron she sighed heavily, and her lashes grew wet.

“Poor, faithful La Boulaye!” she murmured. “God aid him now.”

She bore the news to d’Ombreval, and upon hearing it he tossed aside
the book that had been engrossing him and looked up, a sudden light of
relief spreading on his weak face.

“It is the end,” said he, as though no happier consummation could have
attended matters, “and we have no more to wait for. Shall we set out
to-day?” he asked, and urged the wisdom of making haste.

“I hope and I pray God that it may not be the end, as you so fondly deem
it, Monsieur,” she answered him. “But whether it is the end or not, I am
resolved to wait until there is no room for any hope.”

“As you will,” he sighed wearily, “The issue of it all will probably be
the loss of our heads. But even that might be more easily accomplished
than to impart reason to a woman.”

“Or unselfishness, it seems, to a man,” she returned, as she swept
angrily from the room.



CHAPTER XXII. THE TRIBUNAL


At the Bar of the Revolutionary Tribunal stood Deputy Caron La Boulaye
upon his trial for treason to the Nation and contravention of the ends
of justice. Fouquier-Tinvillle, the sleuth-hound Attorney-General,
advanced his charges, and detailed the nature of the young
revolutionist’s crime. But there was in Fouquier-Tinvillle’s prosecution
a lack of virulence for once, just as among La Boulaye’s fellows,
sitting in judgment, there was a certain uneasiness, for the Revolution
was still young, and it had not yet developed that Saturnian habit of
devouring its own children which was later to become one of its main
features.

The matter of La Boulaye’s crime, however, was but too clear, and
despite the hesitancy on the part of the jury, despite the unwonted
tameness of Tinvillle’s invective, the Tribunal’s course was
well-defined, and admitted of not the slightest doubt. And so, the
production of evidence being dispensed with by Caron’s ready concurrence
and acknowledgment of the offence, the President was on the point of
formally asking the jury for their finding, when suddenly there happened
a commotion, and a small man in a blue coat and black-rimmed spectacles
rose at Tinvillle’s side, and began an impassioned speech for the
defence.

This man was Robespierre, and the revolutionists sitting there
listened to him in mute wonder, for they recalled that it was upon
the Incorruptible’s own charge their brother-deputy had been arrested.
Ardently did Maximilien pour out his eloquence, enumerating the many
virtues of the accused and dwelling at length upon his vast services to
the Republic, his hitherto unfaltering fidelity to the nation and the
people’s cause, and lastly, deploring that in a moment of weakness he
should have committed the indiscretion which had brought him where he
stood. And against this thing of which he was now accused, Robespierre
bade the Deputies of the jury balance the young man’s past, and the much
that he had done for the Revolution, and to offer him, in consideration
of all that, a chance of making atonement and regaining the position of
trust and of brotherly affection which for a moment he had forfeited.

The Court was stirred by the address. They knew the young sans-culotte’s
worth, and they were reluctant to pass sentence upon him and to send him
to the death designed for aristocrats and traitors. And so they readily
pronounced themselves willing to extend him the most generous measure
of mercy, to open their arms and once more to clasp to their hearts the
brother who had strayed and to reinstate him in their confidence and
their councils. They pressed Robespierre to name the act of atonement
by which he proposed La Boulaye should recover his prestige, and
Robespierre in answer cried:

“Let him repair the evil he has done. Let him neutralise the treachery
into which a moment of human weakness betrayed him. Let him return to
us the aristocrat he has attempted to save, and we will forget his
indiscretion and receive him back amongst us with open arms, as was the
prodigal son received.”

There was a salvo of applause. Men rose to their feet excitedly, and
with arms outstretched in Caron’s direction they vociferously implored
him to listen to reason as uttered by the Incorruptible, to repent him
and to atone while there was yet time. They loved him, they swore in
voices of thunder, each seeking to be heard above his neighbour’s din,
and it would break their hearts to find him guilty, yet find him guilty
they must unless he chose the course which this good patriot Maximilien
pointed out to him.

La Boulaye stood pale but composed, his lips compressed, his keen eyes
alert. Inwardly he was moved by this demonstration of goodwill, this
very storm of fraternity, but his purpose remained adamant, and when at
last the President’s bell had tinkled his noisy judges into silence, his
voice rose clear and steady as he thanked them for leaning to clemency
on his behalf.

“Helas,” he ended, “words cannot tell you how deeply I deplore that it
is a clemency of which I may not avail myself. What I have done I may
not undo. And so, Citizens, whilst I would still retain your love and
your sympathy, you must suffer me to let justice take its course. To
delay would be but to waste your time the Nation’s time.”

“But this is rank defiance,” roared Tinvillle, roused at last into some
semblance of his habitual bloodthirstiness. “He whose heart can be so
insensible to our affections merits no clemency at this bar.”

And so the President turned with a shrug to his colleagues, and the
verdict was taken. The finding was “Guilty,” and the President was on
the point of passing sentence, when again Robespierre sprang to his
feet. The Incorruptible’s complexion looked sicklier than its wont, for
mortification had turned him green outright. A gust of passion swept
through his soul, such as would have made another man call for the death
of this defiant youth who had withstood his entreaties. But such was
Robespierre’s wonderful command of self, such was his power of making
his inclinations subservient to the ends he had in view that he had but
risen to voice a fresh appeal.

He demanded that the sentence should be passed with the reservation that
the accused should have twenty-four hours for reflection. Should he
at the end of that time be disposed to tell them where the ci-devant
Vicomte d’Ombreval was to be found, let them reconsider his case. On the
other hand, should he still continue obdurate by the noon of to-morrow,
then let the sentence be consummated.

There was some demur, but Robespierre swept it fiercely aside with
patriotic arguments. La Boulaye was a stout servant of the Nation, whom
it must profit France to let live that he might serve her; Ombreval
was a base aristocrat, whose death all true Republicans should aim at
encompassing. And so he won the day in the end, and when the sentence
of death was passed, it was passed with the reservation that should the
prisoner, upon reflection, be inclined to show himself more loyal to
France and the interests of the Republic by telling them how Ornbreval
might be recaptured, he would find them still inclined to mercy and
forgiveness. Allowing his eyes to stray round the Court at that moment,
La Boulaye started at sight of an unexpected face. It was Mademoiselle
de Bellecour, deathly pale and with the strained, piteous look that
haunts the eyes of the mad. He shivered at the thought of the peril
to herself in coming into that assembly; then, recovering himself, he
turned to his judges.

“Citizen-President, Citizens all, I thank you; but I should be
unappreciative of your kindness did I permit you to entertain false
hopes. My purpose is unalterable.”

“Take him away,” the President commanded impatiently, and as they
removed him Mademoiselle crept from the Court, weeping softly in her
poignant grief, and realising that not so much for the President’s ear
as for her own had La Boulaye uttered those words. They were meant to
fortify her and to give her courage with the assurance that Ombreval
would not be betrayed. To give her courage! Her lip was twisted into an
oddly bitter smile at the reflection, as she stepped into her cabriolet,
and bade the driver return to Choisy. Caron was doing this for her.
He was casting away his young, vigorous life, with all its wealth of
promise, to the end that her betrothed--the man whom he believed she
loved--might be spared. The greatness, the nobility of the sacrifice
overwhelmed her. She remembered the thoughts that in the past she had
entertained concerning this young revolutionist. Never yet had she
been able to regard him as belonging to the same order of beings as
herself-not even when she had kissed his unconscious lips that evening
on the Ridge road. An immeasurable gulf had seemed to yawn between
them--the gulf between her nobility and his base origin. And now, as
her carriage trundled out of Paris and took the dusty high road, she
shuddered, and her cheeks burned with shame at the memory of the wrong
that by such thoughts she had done him. Was she, indeed, the nobler? By
accident of birth, perhaps, but by nature proper he was assuredly the
noblest man that ever woman bore.

In the Place de la Revolution a gruesome engine they called the
guillotine was levelling all things, and fast establishing the reign of
absolute equality. But with all the swift mowing of its bloody scythe,
not half so fast did it level men as Mademoiselle de Bellecour’s
thoughts were doing that afternoon.

So marked was the disorder in her countenance when she reached Choisy
that even unobservant Ombreval whom continuous years of self-complacency
had rendered singularly obtuse--could not help but notice it,
and--fearing, no doubt, that this agitation might in some way concern
himself--he even went the length of questioning her, his voice sounding
the note of his alarm.

“It is nothing,” she answered, in a dejected voice. “At least, nothing
that need cause you uneasiness. They have sentenced La Boulaye to
death,” she announced, a spasm crossing her averted face.

He took a deep breath of relief.

“God knows they’ve sentenced innocent men enough. It is high time they
began upon one another. It augurs well-extremely well.”

They were alone in Henriette’s kitchen; the faithful woman was at
market. Mademoiselle was warming herself before the fire. Ombreval stood
by the window. He had spent the time of her absence in the care of his
clothes, and he had contrived to dress himself with some semblance of
his old-time elegance which enhanced his good looks and high-born air.

“You seem to utterly forget, Monsieur, the nature of the charge upon
which he has been arraigned,” she said, in a tired voice.

“Why, no,” he answered, and he smiled airily; “he was sufficiently a
fool to be lured by the brightest eyes in France into a service for
their mistress. My faith! He’s not the first by many a thousand whom a
woman’s soft glances have undone--”

“The degree in which you profit by the service he is doing those bright
eyes, appears singularly beneath the dignity of your notice.”

“What a jester you are becoming, ma mie,” he laughed and at the sound
she shuddered again and drew mechanically nearer to the fire as though
her shuddering was the result of cold.

“It is yet possible that he may not die,” she said almost as if speaking
to herself. “They have offered him his liberty, and his reinstatement
even--upon conditions.”

“How interesting!” he murmured nonchalantly. “They have an odd way of
dispensing justice.”

“The conditions imposed are that he shall amend the wrong he has done,
and deliver up to the Convention the person of one ci-devant Vicomte
d’Ombreval.”

“My God!”

It was a gasp of sudden dismay that broke from the young nobleman. The
colour swept out of his face, and his eyes dilated with horror. Watching
him Suzanne observed the sudden change, and took a fierce joy in having
produced it.

“It interests you more closely now, Monsieur?” she asked.

“Suzanne,” he cried, coming a step nearer, and speaking eagerly; “he
knows my whereabouts. He brought me here himself. Are you mad, girl,
that you can sit there so composedly and tell me this?”

“What else would you have me do?” she inquired.

“Do? Why, leave Choisy at once. Come; be stirring. In God’s name, girl,
bethink you that we have not a moment to lose. I know these Republicans,
and how far they are to be trusted. This fellow would betray me to save
his skin with as little compunction as--”

“You fool!” she broke in, an undercurrent of fierce indignation
vibrating through her scorn. “What are you saying? He would betray you?
He?” She tossed her arms to Heaven, and burst into a laugh of infinite
derision. “Have no fear of that, M. le Vicomte, for you are dealing with
a nature of a nobility that you cannot so much as surmise. If he were
minded to betray you, why did he not do so to-day, when they offered
him his liberty in exchange for information that would lead to your
recapture?”

“But although he may have refused to-day,” returned the Vicomte
frenziedly, “he may think better of it to-morrow-perhaps even tonight.
Ciel! Think of the risk we run; already it may be too late. Oh, why,” he
demanded reproachfully, “why didn’t you listen to me when, days ago, I
counselled flight?”

“Because it neither was, nor is, my intention to fly.”

“What?” he cried, and, his jaw fallen and his eyes wide, he regarded
her. Then suddenly he caught her by the arm and shook her roughly. “Are
you mad?” he cried, in a frenzy of anger and fear. “Am I to die like
a dog that a scum of a Republican may save his miserable neck? Is this
canaille of a revolutionist to betray me to his rabble Tribunal?”

“Already have I told you that you need fear no betrayal.”

“Need I not?” he sneered. “Ma foi! but I know these ruffians. There is
not an ounce of honour in the whole National Convention.”

“Fool!” she blazed, rising and confronting him with an anger before
which he recoiled, appalled. “Do you dare to stand there and prate of
honour--you? Do you forget why he stood his trial? Do you forget why
he is dying, and can you not see the vile thing that you are doing in
arguing flight, that you talk of honour thus, and deny his claim to it?
Mon Dieu! Your effrontery stifles me! La Boulaye was right when he said
that with us honour is but a word--just so much wind, and nothing more.”

He stared at her in uncomprehending wonder. He drew away another step.
He accounted her mad, and, that he might humour her, he put by his
own fears for the moment--a wonderful unselfishness this in the most
nobly-born Vicomte d’Ombreval.

“My poor Suzanne,” he murmured. “Our trouble has demoralised your
understanding. You take a false view of things. You do not apprehend the
situation.”

“In God’s name, be silent!” she gasped.

“But the time is not one for silence,” he returned.

“So I had thought,” quoth she. “Yet since you can be silent and furtive
in other matters, I beg that you will be silent in this also. You talk
in vain, Monsieur, in any case. For I am not minded to leave Choisy. If
you urge me further I shall burn our passport.”

And with that she left him, to seek the solitude of her own room. In a
passion of tears she flung herself upon the little bed, and there she
lay, a prey to such an anguish as had never touched her life before.

And now, in that hour of her grief, it came to her--as the sun pierces
the mist--that she loved La Boulaye; that she had loved him, indeed,
since that night at Boisvert, although she had stifled the very thought,
and hidden it even from herself, as being unworthy in one of her station
to love a man so lowly-born as Caron. But now, on the eve of his death,
the truth would no longer be denied. It cried, perchance, the louder by
virtue of the pusillanimity of the craven below stairs in whose place
Caron was to die; but anyhow, it cried so loudly that it overbore the
stern voice of the blood that had hitherto urged her to exclude the
sentiment from her heart. No account now did she take of any difference
in station. Be she nobler a thousand times, be he simpler a thousand
times, the fact remained that she was a woman, he a man, and beyond that
she did not seek to go.

Low indeed were the Lilies of France when a daughter of the race of
their upholders heeded them so little and the caste they symbolised.

Henriette came to her that afternoon, and, all ignorant of the sources
of her grief, she essayed to soothe and comfort her, in which, at last,
she succeeded.

In the evening Ombreval sent word that he wished to speak to her--and
that his need was urgent. But she returned him the answer that she would
see him in the morning. She was indisposed that evening, she added, in
apology.

And in the morning they met, as she had promised him. Both pale,
although from different causes, and both showing signs of having slept
but little. They broke their fast together and in silence, which at last
he ended by asking her whether the night had brought her reflection, and
whether such reflection had made her appreciate their position and the
need to set out at once.

“It needed no reflection to make me realise our position better than I
did yesterday,” she answered. “I had hoped that it would have brought
you to a different frame of mind. But I am afraid that it has not done
so.”

“I fail to see what change my frame of mind admits of,” he answered
testily.

“Have you thought,” she asked at last, and her voice was cold and
concentrated, “that this man is giving his life for you?”

“I have feared,” he answered, with incredible callousness, “that to save
his craven skin he might elect to do differently at the last moment.”

She looked at him in a mighty wonder, her dark eyes open to their
widest, and looking black by the extreme dilation of the pupils. So vast
was her amazement at this unbounded egotism that it almost overruled her
disgust.

“You cast epithets about you and bestow titles with a magnificent
unconsciousness of how well they might fit you.”

“Ah? For example?”

“In calling this man a craven, you take no thought for the cowardice
that actuates you into hiding while he dies for you?”

“Cowardice?” he ejaculated. Then a flush spread on his face. “Ma
foi, Mademoiselle,” said he, in a quivering voice, “your words betray
thoughts that would be scarcely becoming in the Vicomtesse d’Ombreval.”

“That, Monsieur, is a point that need give you little thought. I am not
likely to become the Vicomtesse.”

He bestowed her a look of mingling wonder and anger. Had he, indeed,
heard her aright? Did her words imply that she disdained the honour?

“Surely,” he gasped, voicing those doubts of his, “you do not mean that
you would violate your betrothal contract? You do not--”

“I mean, Monsieur,” she cut in, “that I will give myself to no man I do
not love.”

“Your immodesty,” said he, “falls in nothing short of the extraordinary
frame of mind that you appear to be developing in connection with other
matters. We shall have you beating a drum and screeching the Ca ira in
the streets of Paris presently, like Mademoiselle de Mericourt.”

She rose from the table, her face very white, her hand pressing upon her
corsage. A moment she looked at him. Then:

“Do not let us talk of ourselves,” she exclaimed at last. “There is
a man in the Conciergerie who dies at noon unless you are forthcoming
before then to save him. He himself will not betray you because he--No
matter why, he will not. Tell me, Monsieur, how do you, who account
yourself a man of honour above everything, intend to deal with this
situation?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Once he is dead and done with--provided that he does not first betray
me--I trust that, no longer having this subject to harp upon, you will
consent to avail yourself of our passport, and accompany me out of
France.”

“Honour does not for instance, suggest to you that you should repair
to the Conciergerie and take the place that belongs to you, and which
another is filling?”

A sudden light of comprehension swept now into his face.

“At last I understand what has been in your mind since yesterday, what
has made you so odd in your words and manner. You have thought that it
was perhaps my duty as a man of honour to go and effect the rescue of
this fellow. But, my dear child, bethink you of what he is, and of
what I am. Were he a gentleman--my equal--my course would stand clearly
defined. I should not have hesitated a moment. But this canaille! Ma
foi! let me beg of you to come to your senses. The very thought is
unworthy in you.”

“I understand you,” she answered him, very coldly. “You use a coward’s
arguments, and you have the effrontery to consider yourself a man of
honour--a nobleman. I no longer marvel that there is a revolution in
France.”

She stood surveying him for a moment, then she quietly left the room. He
stared after her.

“Woman, woman!” he sighed, as he set down his napkin and rose in his
turn.

His humour was one of pitying patience for a girl that had not the
wit to see that to ask him--the most noble d’Ombreval--to die that La
Boulaye might live was very much like asking him to sacrifice his life
to save a dog’s.



CHAPTER XXIII. THE CONCIERGERIE


It wanted but a few minutes to noon as the condemned of the day were
being brought out of the Conciergerie to take their places in the
waiting tumbrils. Fourteen they numbered, and there was a woman amongst
them as composed as any of the men. She descended the prison steps in
nonchalant conversation with a witty young man of some thirty years of
age, who had been one of the ornaments of the prerevolutionary salons.
Had the pair been on the point of mounting a wedding coach they could
not have shown themselves in better spirits.

Aristocrats, too, were the remaining twelve, with one exception, and if
they had not known how to live, at least they could set a very splendid
example of how to die. They came mostly in pairs, and the majority
of them emulating the first couple and treating the whole matter as
a pleasantry that rather bored them by the element of coarseness
introduced by the mob. One or two were pale, and their eyes wore a
furtive, frightened look. But they valiantly fought down their fears,
and for all that the hearts within them may have been sick with horror,
they contrived to twist a smile on to their pale lips. They did not lack
for stout patterns of high bearing, and in addition they had their own
arrogant pride--the pride that had brought them at last to this pass--to
sustain them in their extremity. Noblesse les obligeait. The rabble, the
canaille of the new regime, might do what they would with their bodies,
but their spirits they could not break, nor overcome their indomitable
pride. By the brave manner of their death it remained for them to make
amends for the atrocious manner of their lives, and such a glamour did
they shed upon themselves by the same brave manner, that it compelled
sympathy and admiration of those that beheld them, and made upon
humanity an impression deep enough to erase the former impression left
by their misdeeds.

Like heroes, like sainted martyrs, they died, these men who, through
generation after generation, had ground and crushed the people ‘neath
the iron heel of tyranny and oppression, until the people had, of a
sudden, risen and reversed the position, going to excesses, in their
lately-awakened wrath, that were begotten of the excesses which for
centuries they had endured.

Last of this gallant and spruce company (for every man had donned his
best, and dressed himself with the utmost care) came Caron La Boulaye.
He walked alone, for although their comrade in death, he was their
comrade in nothing else. Their heads might lie together in the sawdust
of Sanson’s basket, but while they lived, no contact would they permit
themselves, of body or of soul, with this sans-culotte. Had they known
why he died, perhaps, they had shown him fellowship. But in their
nescience of the facts, it would need more than death to melt them into
a kindness to a member of the Convention, for death was the only thing
they had in common, and death, as we have seen, had not conquered them.

As he was about to pass out, a gaoler suddenly thrust forward a hand
to detain him, and almost simultaneously the door, which had swung to
behind the last of his death-fellows, re-opened to admit the dapper
figure of the Incorruptible.

He eyed Caron narrowly as he advanced into the hall, and at the
composure evident in the young man’s bearing, his glance seemed to
kindle with admiration, for all that his lips remained cruel in their
tightened curves.

Caron gave him good-day with a friendly smile, and before Robespierre
could utter a word the young man was expressing his polite regrets at
having baulked him as he had done.

“I had a great object to serve, Maximilien,” he concluded, “and my only
regret is that it should have run counter to your wishes. I owe you so
much--everything in fact--that I am filled with shame at the thought of
how ill a return I am making you. My only hope is that by my death you
will consider that I have sufficiently atoned for my ingratitude.”

“Fool!” croaked Robespierre, “you are sacrificing yourself for some
chimaera and the life you are saving is that of a very worthless and
vicious individual. Of your ingratitude to me we will not speak.
But even now, in the eleventh hour, I would have you bethink you of
yourself.”

He held out his hands to him, and entreaty was stamped upon
Robespierre’s countenance to a degree which perhaps no man had yet seen.
“Bethink you, cher Caron--” he began again. But the young man shook his
head.

“My friend, my best of friends,” he exclaimed, “I beg that you will
not make it harder for me. I am resolved, and your entreaties do but
heighten my pain of thwarting your--the only pain that in this supreme
hour I am experiencing. It is not a difficult thing to die, Maximilien.
Were I to live, I must henceforth lead a life of unsatisfied desire. I
must even hanker and sigh after a something that is unattainable. I die,
and all this is extinguished with me. At the very prospect my desires
fade immeasurably. Let me go in peace, and with your forgiveness.”

Robespierre eyed him a moment or two in astonishment. Then he made an
abrupt gesture of impatience.

“Fool that you are! It is suicide you are committing. And for what?
For a dream a shadow. Is this like a man, Caron’? Is this--Will you be
still, you animal?” he barked at a gaoler who had once before touched
him upon the arm. “Do you not see that I am occupied?”

But the man leant forward, and said some words hurriedly into
Robespierre’s ear, which cast the petulance out of his face and mind,
and caused him of a sudden to become very attentive.

“Ah?” he said at last. Then, with a sudden briskness: “Let the Citizen
La Boulaye not go forth until I return,” he bade the gaoler; and to
Caron he said: “You will have the goodness to await my return.”

With that he turned and stepped briskly across the hall and through the
door, which the gaoler, all equality notwithstanding, hastened to open
for him with as much servility as ever the haughtiest aristocrat had
compelled.

Saving that single gaoler, La Boulaye was alone in the spacious hall
of the Conciergerie. From without they heard the wild clamouring and
Ca-iraing of the mob. Chafing at this fresh delay, which was as a
prolongation of his death-agony, La Boulaye was pacing to and fro, the
ring of his footsteps on the stone floor yielding a hollow, sepulchral
echo.

“Is he never returning?” he cried at last; and as if in answer to his
question, the drums suddenly began to roll, and the vociferations of the
rabble swelled in volume and grew shriller. “What is that?” he inquired.

The gaoler, on whose dirty face some measure of surprise was manifested,
approached the little grating that overlooked the yard and peered out.

“Sacrenom!” he swore. “The tumbrils are moving. They have left you
behind, Citizen.”

But La Boulaye gathered no encouragement, such as the gaoler thought he
might, from that contingency. He but imagined that it was Robespierre’s
wish to put him back for another day in the hope that he might still
loosen his tongue. An oath of vexation broke from him, and he stamped
his foot impatiently upon the floor.

Then the door opened suddenly, and Robespierre held it whilst into the
room came a woman, closely veiled, whose tall and shapely figure caused
the young Deputy’s breath to flutter. The Incorruptible followed her,
and turning to the gaoler:

“Leave us,” he commanded briskly.

And presently, when those three stood alone, the woman raised her veil
and disclosed the face he had expected--the beautiful face of Suzanne
de Bellecour, but, alas! woefully pale and anguished of expression. She
advanced a step towards Caron, and then stood still, encountering his
steadfast, wonder-struck gaze, and seeming to falter. With a sob, at
last she turned to Maximilien, who had remained a pace or two behind.

“Tell him, Monsieur,” she begged.

Robespierre started out of his apparent abstraction. He peered at her
with his short-sighted eyes, and from her to Caron. Then he came forward
a step and cleared his throat, rather as a trick of oratory than to
relieve any huskiness.

“To put it briefly, my clear Caron,” said he, “the Citoyenne here has
manifested a greater solicitude for your life than you did yourself, and
she has done me the twofold service of setting it in my power to punish
an enemy, and to preserve a friend from a death that was very imminent.
In the eleventh hour she came to me to make terms for your pardon.
She proposed to deliver up to me the person of the ci-devant Vicomte
d’Ombreval provided that I should grant you an unconditional pardon.
You can imagine, my good Caron, with what eagerness I agreed to her
proposal, and with what pleasure I now announce to you that you are
free.”

“Free!” gasped La Boulaye, his eyes travelling fearfully from
Robespierre to Mademoiselle, and remaining riveted upon the latter as
though he were attempting to penetrate into the secrets of her very
soul.

“Practically free,” answered the Incorruptible. “You may leave the
Conciergerie when you please, thought I shall ask you to remain at your
lodging in the Rue Nationale until this Ombreval is actually taken. Once
he has been brought to Paris, I shall send you your papers that you may
leave France, for, much though I shall regret your absence, I think that
it will be wiser for you to make your fortune elsewhere after what has
passed.”

La Boulaye took a step in Suzanne’s direction.

“You have done this?” he cried, in a quivering voice. “You have betrayed
the man to whom you were betrothed?”

“Do not use that word, Monsieur,” she cried, with a shudder. “My action
cannot be ranked among betrayals. He would have let you go to the
guillotine in his stead. He had not the virtue to come forward, for all
that he knew that you must die if he did not. On the contrary, such a
condition of things afforded him amusement, matter to scorn and insult
you with. He would have complacently allowed a dozen men to have gone to
the guillotine that his own worthless life might have been spared.

“But he was your betrothed!” La Boulaye protested.

“True!” she made answer; “but I had to choose between the man it had
been arranged I should marry and the man I loved.” A flush crimsoned her
cheek, and her voice sank almost to a whisper. “And to save the man I
love I have delivered up Ombreval.”

“Suzanne”

The name burst from his lips in a shout of wonder and of joy ineffable.
In a stride he seemed to cover the distance between them, and he caught
her to him as the door slammed on the discreetly departing Robespierre.





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