The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel/Part 1

 THE TRIUMPH

OF THE
SCARLET PIMPERNEL

BY
BARONESS ORCZY

Author of "Nicolette," "The First Sir Percy,"
"Flower 'o the Lily," "The Scarlet
Pimpernel," etc.

Contents

• I. "The Everlasting Stars Look Down"
• II. Feet of Clay
• III. The Fellowship of Grief
• IV. One Dram of Joy Must Have a Pound of Care
• V. Rascality Rejoices
• VI. One Crowded Hour of Glorious Life
• VII. Two Interludes
• VIII. The Beautiful Spaniard
• IX. A Hideous, Fearful Hour
• X. The Grim Idol that the World Adores
• XI. Strange Happenings
• XII. Chauvelin
• XIII. The Fisherman's Rest
• XIV. The Castaway
• XV. The Nest
• XVI. A Lover of Sport
• XVII. Reunion
• XVIII. Night and Morning
• XIX. A Rencontre
• XX. Departure
• XXI. Memories
• XXII. Waiting
• XXIII. Mice and Men
• XXIV. By Order of the State
• XXV. Four Days
• XXVI. A Dream
• XXVII. Terror or Ambition
• XXVIII. In the Meanwhile
• XXIX. The Close of the Second Day
• XXX. When the Storm Burst
• XXXI. Our Lady or Pity
• XXXII. Grey Dawn
• XXXIII. The Cataclysm
• XXXIV. The Whirlwind

"THE EVERLASTING STARS LOOK DOWN, LIKE GLISTENING
EYES BRIGHT WITH IMMORTAL PITY, OVER THE LOT OF MAN""

§ 1

NEARLY five years have gone by!

Five years, since the charred ruins of grim Bastille—stone image of Absolutism and of Autocracy—set the seal of victory upon the expression of a people's will and marked the beginning of that marvellous era of Liberty and of Fraternity which has led us step by step from the dethronement of a King, through the martryrdom of countless innocents, to the tyranny of an oligarchy more arbitrary, more relentless, above all more cruel, than any that the dictators of Rome or Stamboul ever dream of in their wildest thirst for power. An era that sees a populace always clamouring for the Millennium, which ranting demagogues have never ceased to promise: a Millennium to be achieved alternatively through the extermination of Aristocracy, of Titles, of Riches, and the abrogation of Priesthood: through dethroned royalty and desecrated altars, through an army without leadership, or an Assembly without power.

They have never ceased to prate, these frothy rhetoricians! And the people went on, vaguely believing that one day, soon, that Millennium would surely come, after seas of blood had purged the soil of France from the last vestige of bygone oppression, and after her sons and daughters had been massacred in their thousands and their tens of thousands, until their headless bodies had built up a veritable scaling ladder for the tottering feet of lustful climbers, and these in their turn had perished to make way for other ranters, other speech-makers, a new Demosthenes or long-tongued Cicero.

Inevitably these too perished, one by one, irrespective of their virtues or their vices, their errors or their ideals: Vergniaud, the enthusiast, and Desmoulins, the irresponsible; Barnave, the just, and Chaumette, the blasphemer; Hébert, the carrion, and Danton, the power. All, all have perished, one after the other: victims of their greed and of their crimes—they and their adherents and their enemies. They slew and were slain in their turn. They struck blindly, like raging beasts, most of them for fear lest they too should be struck by beasts more furious than they. All have perished; but not before their iniquities have for ever sullied what might have been the most glorious page in the history of France—her fight for Liberty. Because of these monsters—and of a truth there were only a few—the fight, itself sublime in its ideals, noble in its conception, has become abhorrent to the rest of mankind.

But they, arraigned at the bar of history, what have they to say, what to show as evidence of their patriotism, of the purity of their intentions?

On this day of April, 1794, year II of the New Calendar, eight thousand men, women, and not a few children, are crowding the prisons of Paris to overflowing. Four thousand heads have fallen under the guillotine in the past three months. All the great names of France, her noblesse, her magistracy, her clergy, members of past Parliaments, shining lights in the sciences, the arts, the Universities, men of substance, poets, brain-workers, have been torn from their homes, their churches or their places of refuge, dragged before a travesty of justice, judged, condemned and slaughtered; not singly, not individually, but in batches—whole families, complete hierarchies, entire households: one lot for the crime of being right, another for being nobly born; some because of their religion, others because of professed free-thought. One man for devotion to his friend, another for perfidy; one for having spoken, another for having held his tongue, and another for no crime at all—just because of his family connexions, his profession, or his ancestry.

For months it had been the innocents; but since then it has also been the assassins. And the populace, still awaiting the Millennium, clamour for more victims and for more—for the aristocrat and for the sans-culotte, and howl with execration impartially at both.

§ 2

But through this mad orgy of murder and of hatred, one man survives, stands apart indeed, wielding a power which the whole pack of infuriated wolves thirsting for his blood are too cowardly to challenge. The Girondists and the Extremists have fallen. Hébert, the idol of the mob, Danton its hero and its mouthpiece, have been hurled from their throne, sent to the scaffold along with ci-devant nobles, aristocrats, royalists and traitors. But this one man remains, calm in the midst of every storm, absolute in his will, indigent where others have grasped riches with both hands, adored, almost deified, by a few, dreaded by all, sphinx-like, invulnerable, sinister—Robespierre!

Robespierre at this time was at the height of his popularity and of his power. The two great Committees of Public Safety and of General Security were swayed by his desires, the Clubs worshipped him, the Convention was packed with obedient slaves to his every word. The Dantonists, cowed into submission by the bold coup which had sent their leader, their hero, their idol, to the guillotine, were like a tree that has been struck at the root. Without Danton, the giant of the Revolution, the collossus of crime, the maker of the Terror, the thunderbolt of the Convention, the part was atrophied, robbed of its strength and its vitality, its last few members hanging, servile and timorous, upon the great man's lips.

Robespierre was in truth absolute master of France. The man who had dared to drag his only rival down to the scaffold was beyond the reach of any attack. By this final act of unparalleled despotism he had revealed the secrets of his soul, shown himself to be rapacious as well as self-seeking. Something of his aloofness, of his incorruptibility, had vanished, yielding to that ever-present and towering ambition which hitherto none had dared to suspect. But ambition is the one vice to which the generality of mankind will always accord homage, and Robespierre, by gaining the victory over his one in the Convention, in the Clubs and in the Committees, had tacitly agreed to obey. The tyrant out of his vaulting ambition had brought forth the slaves.

Faint hearted and servile, they brooded over their wrongs, gazed with smouldering wrath on Danton's vacant seat in the Convention, which no one cared to fill. But they did not murmur, hardly dared to plot, and gave assent to every decree, every measure, every suggestion promulgated by the dictator who held their lives in the hollow of his thin white hand; who with a word, a gesture, could send his enemy, his detractor, a mere critic of his actions, to the guillotine.

FEET OF CLAY

§ 1

ON this 26th day of April, 1794, which in the newly constituted calendar is the 7th Floreal, year II of the Republic, three women and one man were assembled in a small, closely curtained room on the top floor of a house in the Rue de la Planchette, which is situated in a remote and dreary quarter of Paris. The man sat upon a chair which was raised on a dais. He was neatly, indeed immaculately, dressed, in dark cloth coat and tan breeches, with clean linen at throats and wrists, white stockings and buckled shoes. His own hair was concealed under a mouse-coloured wig. He sat quite still, with one leg crossed over the other, and his thin, bony hands were clasped in front of him.

Behind the dais there was a heavy curtain which stretched right across the room, and in front of it, at opposite corners, two young girls, clad in grey, clinging draperies, sat upon their heels, with the palms of their hands resting flat upon their thighs. Their hair hung loose down their backs, their chins were uplifted, their eyes fixed, their bodies rigid in an attitude of contemplation. In the centre of the room a woman stood, gazing upwards at the ceiling, her arms folded across her breast. Her grey hair, lank and unruly, was partially hidden by an ample floating veil of an indefinite shade of grey, and from her meagre shoulders and arms, her garment—it was hardly a gown—descended in straight, heavy, shapeless folds. In front of her was a small table, on it a large crystal globe, which rested on a stand of black wood, exquisitely carved and inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and beside it a small metal box.

Immediately above the old woman's head an oil lamp, the flame of which was screened by a piece of crimson silk, shed a feeble and lurid light upon the scene. Against the wall half a dozen chairs, on the floor a threadbare carpet, and in one corner a broken-down chiffonier represented the sum total of the furniture in the stuffy little room. The curtains in front of the window, as well as the portières which masked both the doors, were heavy and thick, excluding all light and most of the outside air.

The old woman, with eyes fixed upon the ceiling, spoke in a dull, even monotone.

"Citizen Robespierre, who is the Chosen of the Most High, hath deigned to enter the humble abode of his servant," she said. "What is his pleasure to-day?"

"The shade of Danton pursues me," Robespierre replied, and his voice too sounded toneless, as if muffled by the heavily weighted atmosphere. "Can you not lay him to rest?"

The woman stretched out her arms. The folds of her woollen draperies hung straight from shoulder to wrist down to the ground, so that she looked like a shapeless bodiless, grey ghost in the dim, red light.

"Blood!" she exclaimed in a weird, cadaverous wail. "Blood around thee and blood at thy feet! But not upon thy head, O Chosen of the Almighty! Thy decrees are those of the Most High! Thy hand wields His avenging Sword! I see thee walking upon a sea of blood, yet thy feet are as white as lilies and thy garments are spotless as the driven snow. Avaunt," she cried in sepulchral tones, "ye spirits of evil! Avaunt, ye vampires and ghouls! and venture not with your noxious breath to disturb the serenity of our Morning Star!"

The girls in front of the dais raised their arms above their heads and echoed the old soothsayer's wails.

"Avaunt!' they cried solemnly. "Avaunt!"

Now from a distant corner of the room, a small figure detached itself out of the murky shadows. It was the figure of a young negro, glad in white from head to foot. In the semi-darkness the draperies which he wore were alone visible, and the whites of his eyes. Thus he seemed to be walking without any feet, to have eyes without any face, and to be carrying a heavy vessel without using any hands. His appearance indeed was so startling and so unearthly that the man upon the dais could not suppress and exclamation of terror. Whereupon a wide row of dazzlingly white teeth showed somewhere between the folds of the spectral draperies, and further enhanced the spook-like appearance of the blackamoor. He carried a deep bowl fashioned of chased copper, which he placed upon the table in front of the old woman, immediately behind the crystal globe and the small metal box. The seer then opened the box, took out a pinch of something brown and powdery, and holding it between finger and thumb, she said solemnly:

"From out the heart of France rises the incense of faith, of hope, and of love!" and she dropped the powder into the bowl. "May it prove acceptable to him who is her chosen Lord!"

A bluish flame shot up from out the depth of the vessel, shed for the space of a second or two its ghostly light upon the gaunt features of the old hag, the squat and grinning face of the negro, and toyed with the will-o'-the-wisp-like fitfulness of the surrounding gloom. A sweet-scented smoke rose upwards to the ceiling. Then the flame died down again, making the crimson darkness around appear by contrast more lurid and more mysterious than before.

Robespierre had not moved. His boundless vanity, his insatiable ambition, blinded him to the effrontery, the ridicule of this mysticism. He accepted the tangible incense, took a deep breath, as if to fill his entire being with its heady fumes, just as he was always ready to accept the fulsome adulation of his devotees and of his sycophants.

The old charlatan then repeated her incantations. Once more she took powder from the box, threw some of it into the vessel, and spoke in a sepulchral voice:

"From out of the heart of those who worship thee rises the incense of their praise!"

A delicate white flame rose immediately out of the vessel. It shed a momentary, unearthly brightness around, then as speedily vanished again. And for the third time the witch spoke the mystic words:

"From out the heart of an entire nation rises the incense of perfect joy in thy triumph over thine enemies!"

This time, however, the magic powder did not act quite so rapidly as it had done on the two previous occasions. For a few seconds the vessel remained dark and unresponsive; nothing came to dispel the surrounding gloom. Even the light of the oil lamp overhead appeared suddenly to grow dim. At any rate, so it seemed to the autocrat who, with nerves on edge, sat upon his throne-like seat, his bony hands, so like the talons of a bird of prey, clutching the arms of his chair, his narrow eyes fixed upon the sybil, who in her turn was gazing on the metal vessal as if she would extort some cabalistic mystery from its depth.

All at once a bright red flame shot out of the bowl. Everything in the room became suffused with a crimson glow. The old witch bending over her cauldron looked as if she were smeared with blood, her eyes appeared bloodshot, her long hooked nose cast a huge black shadow over her mouth, distorting the face into a hideous, cadaverous grin. From her throat issued strange sounds like those of an animal in the throes of pain.

"Red! Red!' she lamented, and gradually as the flame subsided and finally flickered out altogether, her words became more distinct. She raised the crystal globe and gazed fixedly into it. "Always red," she went on slowly. "Thrice yesterday did I cas the spell in the name of Our Chosen... thrice did the spirits cloak their identity in a blood-red flame... red... always red... not only blood... but danger... danger of death through that which is red...."

Robespierre had risen from his seat, his thin lips were murmuring hasty imprecations. The kneeling figurants looked scared, and strange wailing sounds came from their mouths. The young blackamoor alone looked self-possessed. He stood by, evidently enjoying the scene, his white teeth gleaming in a huge, board grin.

"A truce on riddles, Mother!" Robespierre exclaimed at last impatiently, and descended hastily from the dais. He approached the old necromancer, seized her by the arm, thrust his head in front of hers in an endeavour to see something which apparently was revealed to her in the crystal globe. "What is it you see in there?" he queried harshly.

But she pushed him aside, gazed with rapt intentness into the globe.

"Red!" she murmured. "Scarlet ... aye, scarlet! And now it takes shape ... Scarlet ... and it obscures the Chosen One ... the shape becomes more clear ... the Chosen One appears more dim...."

Then she gave a piercing shriek.

"Beware!... beware!... that which is Scarlet is shaped like a flower ... five petals, I see them distinctly ... and the Chosen One I see no more...."

"Malediction!" the man exclaimed. "What foolery is this?"

"No foolery," the old charlatan resumed in a dull monotone. "Thou didst consult the oracle, oh thou, who art the Chosen of the people of France! and the oracle has spoken. Beware of a scarlet flower! From that which is scarlet comes danger of death for thee!"

Wherat Robespierre tried to laugh.

"Some one has filled thy head, Mother," he said in a voice which he vainly tried to steady, "with tales of the mysterious Englishman who goes by the name of the Scarlet Pimpernel——"

"Thy mortal enemy, O Messenger of the Most High!" the old blasphemer broke in solemnly. "In far-off fog-bound England he hath sworn thy death. Beware——"

"If that is the only danger which threatens me——" the other began, striving to speak carelessly.

"The only one, and the greatest one," the hag went on insistently. "Despise it not because it seems small and remote."

"I do not despise it; neither do I magnify it. A gnat is a nuisance, but not a danger."

"A gnat may wield a poisoned dart. The spirits have spoken. Heed their warning, O Chosen of the People! Destroy the Englishman ere he destroy thee!"

"Pardi!" Robespierre retorted, and despite the stuffiness of the room he gave a shiver as if he felt cold. "Since thou dost commune with the spirits, find out from them how I can accomplish that."

The woman once more raised the crystal globe to the level of her breast. With her elbows stretched out and her draperies falling straight all around her, she gazed into it for a while in silence. Then she began to murmur.

"I see the Scarlet Flower quite plainly... a small Scarlet Flower.... And I see the great Light which is like an aureole, the Light of the Chosen One. It is of dazzling brightness—but over the Scarlet Flower casts a Stygian shadow."

"Ask them," Robespierre broke in peremptorily, "ask thy spirits how best I can overcome mine enemy."

"I see something," the witch went on in an even monotone, still gazing into the crystal globe "white and rose and tender ... is it a woman...?"

"A woman?"

"She is tall, and she is beautiful ... a stranger in the land ... with eyes dark as the night and tresses black as the raven's wing.... Yes, it is a woman.... She stands between the Light and that blood-red flower. She takes the flower in her hand ... she fondles it, raises it to her lips.... Ah!" and the old seer gave a loud cry of triumph. "She tosses it mangled and bleeding into the consuming Light.... And now it lies faded, torn, crushed, and the Light grows in radiance and in brilliancy, and there is none now to dim its pristine glory——"

"But the woman? Who is she?" the man broke in impatiently. "What is her name?"

"The spirits speak no names," the seer replied. "Any woman would gladly be thy handmaid, O Elect of France! The spirits have spoken," she concluded solemnly. "Salvation will come to thee by the hand of a woman."

"And mine enemy?" he insisted. "Which of us two is in danger of death now—now that I am warned—which of us two?—mine English enemy, or I?"

Nothing loth, the old hag was ready to continue her sortilege. Robespierre hung breathless upon her lips. His whole personality seemed transformed. He appeared eager, fearful, credulous—a different man to the cold, calculating despot who sent thousands to their death with his measured oratory, the mere power of his presence. Indeed, history has sought in vain for the probably motive which drove this cynical tyrant into consulting this pitiable charlatan. That Catherine Théot had certain psychic powers has never been gainsaid, and since the philosophers of the eighteenth century had undermined the religious superstitions of the Middle Ages, it was only to be expected that in the great upheaval of this awful Revolution, men and women should turn to the mystic and the supernatural as to a solace and respite from the fathomless misery of their daily lives.

In this world of ours, the more stupendous the events, the more abysmal the catastrophes, the more do men realize their own impotence and the more eagerly do they look for the Hidden Hand that is powerful enough to bring about such events and to hurl upon them such devastating cataclysms. Indeed, never since the dawn of history had so many theosophies, demonologies, occult arts, spiritualism, exorcism of all sorts, flourished as they did now: the Theists, the Rosicrucians, the Illuminati, Swedenborg, the Count of Saint Germain, Weishaupt, and scores of others, avowed charlatans or earnest believers, had their neophytes, their devotees, and their cults.

Catherine Théot was one of many: for the nonce, one of the most noteworthy in Paris. She believed herself to be endowed with the gift of prophecy, and her fetish was Robespierre. In this at least she was genuine. She believed him now to be a new Messiah, the Elect of God. Nay! she loudly proclaimed him as such, and one of her earliest neophytes, an ex-Carthusian monk named Gerle, who sat in the Convention next to the great man, had whispered in the latter's ear the insidious flattery which had gradually led his footsteps to the witch's lair.

Whether his own vanity—which was without limit and probably without parallel—caused him to believe in his own heaven-sent mission, or whether he only desire to strengthen his own popularity by endowing it with supernatural prestige, is a matter of conjecture. Certain it is that he did lend himself to Catherine Théot's cabalistic practices and that he allowed himself to be flattered and worshipped by the numerous nepohytes who flocked to this new temple of magic, either from mystical fevour or merely to serve their own ends by fawning on the most dreaded man in France.

§ 2

Catherine Théot had remained rigidly still, in rapt contemplation. It seemed as if she pondered over the Chosen One's last peremptory demand.

"Which of us two," he had queried, in a dry, hard voice, "is in danger of death now—now that I am warned—mine English enemy, or I?"

The next moment, as if moved by inspiration, she took another pinch of powder out of the metal box. The nigger's bright black eyes followed her every movement, as did the dictator's half-contemptuous gaze. The girls had begun to intone a monotonous chant. As the seer dropped the powder into the metal bowl, a highly scented smoke shot upwards and the interior of the vessel was suffused with a golden glow. The smoke rose in spirals. Its fumes spread through the airless room, rendering the atmosphere insufferably heavy.

The dictator of France felt a strange exultation running through him, as with deep breaths he inhaled the potent fumes. It seemed to him as if his body had suddenly become etherealized, as if he were in truth the Chosen of the Most High as well as the idol of France. Thus disembodied, he felt in himself boundless strength! the power to rise triumphant over all his enemies, whoever they may be. There was a mighty buzzing in his ears like the reverberation of thousands of trumpets and drums ringing and beating in unison to his exaltation and to his might. His eyes appeared to see the whole of the people of France, clad in white robes, with ropes round their necks, and bowing as slaves to the ground before him. He was riding on a cloud. His throne was of gold. In his hand he had a sceptre of flame, and beneath his feet lay, crushed and mangled, a huge scarlet flower. The sybil's voice reached his ears as if through a surpernal trumpet:

"Thus lie for ever crushed at the feet of the Chosen One, those who have dared to defy his power!"

Greater and greater became his exultation. He felt himself uplifted high, high above the clouds, until he could see the world as a mere crystal ball at his feet. His head had touched the portals of heaven; his eyes gazed upon his own majesty, which was second only to that of God. An eternity went by. He was immortal.

Then suddenly, through all the mystic music, the clarion sounds and songs of praise, there came a sound, so strange and yet so human, that the almighty dictator's wandering spirit was in an instant hurled back to earth, brought down with a mighty jerk which left him giddy, sick, with throat dry and burning eyes. He could not stand on his feet, indeed would have fallen but that the negro had hastily pulled a chair forward, into which he sank, swooning with unaccountable horror.

And yet that sound had been harmless enough: just a peal of laughter, merry and inane—nothing more. It came faintly echoing form beyond the heavy portière. Yet it had unnerved the most ruthless despot in France. He looked about him, scared and mystified. Nothing had been changed since he had gone wandering into Elysian fields. He was still in a stuffy, curtained room; there was the dais on which he had sat; the two women still chanted their weird lament; and there was the old necromancer in her shapeless, colourless robe, coolly setting down the crystal globe upon its carved stand. There was the blackamoor, grinning and mischievous, the metal vessel, the oil lamp, the threadbare carpet. What of all this had been a dream? The clouds and the trumpets, or that peal of human laughter with the quaint, inane catch in it? No one looked scared: the girls chanted, the old hag mumbled vague directions to her black attendant, who tried to look solemn, since he was paid to keep his impish mirth in check.

"What was that?" Robespierre murmured at last.

The old woman looked up.

"What was what, O Chosen One?" she asked.

"I heard a sound——" he mumbled. "A laugh... Is anyone else in the room?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"People are waiting in the antechamber," she replied carelessly, "until it is the pleasure of the Chosen One to go. As a rule they wait patiently, and in silence. But one of them may have laughed." Then, as he made no further comment but still stood there silent, as if irresolute, she queried with a great show of deference: "What is thy next pleasure, O thou who art beloved of the people of France?"

"Nothing ... nothing!" he murmured. "I'll go now."

She turned straight to him and made him elaborate obeisance, waving her arms about her. The two girls struck the ground with their foreheads. The Chosen One, in his innermost heart vaguely conscious of ridicule, frowned impatiently.

"Do not," he said peremptorily, "let anyone know that I have been here."

"Only those who idolize thee——" she began.

"I know—I know," he broke in more gently, for the fulsome adulation soothed his exacerbated nerves. "But I have many enemies ... and thou too art watched with malevolent eyes.... Let not our enemies make capital of our intercourse."

"I swear to thee, O Mighty Lord, that thy servant obeys thy behests in all things."

"That is well," he retorted drily. "But thy adepts are wont to talk too much. I'll not have my name bandied about for the glorification of thy necromancy."

"Thy name is sacred to thy servants," she insisted with ponderous solemnity. "As sacred as is thy person. Thous art the regenerator of the true faith, the Elect of the First Cause, the high priest of a new religion. We are but thy servants, thy handmaids, thy worshippers."

All this charlatanism was precious incense to the limitless vanity of the despot. His impatience vanished, as did his momentary terror. He became kind, urbane, condescending. At the last, the old hag almost prostrated herself before him, and clasping her wrinkled hands together, she said in tones of reverential entreaty:

"In the name of thyself, of France, of the entire world, I adjure thee to lend ear to what the spirits have revealed this day. Beware the danger that comes to thee from the scarlet flower. Set thy almighty mind to compass its destruction. Do not disdain a woman's help, since the spirits have proclaimed that through a woman thou shalt be saved. Remember! Remember!" she adjured him with ever-growing earnestness. "Once before, the world was saved through a woman. A woman crushed the serpent beneath her foot. Let a woman now crush that scarlet flower beneath hers. Remember!"

She actually kissed his feet; and he, blinded by self-conceit to the folly of this fetishism and the redicule of his own acceptance of it, raised his hand above her head as if in the act of pronouncing a benediction.

Then without another word he turned to go. The young negro brought him his hat and cloak. The latter he wrapped closely round his shoulders, his hat he pulled down well over his eyes. Thus muffled and, he hoped, unrecognizable, he passed with a firm tread out of the room.

§ 3

For awhile the old witch waited, straining her ears to catch the last sound of those retreating footsteps; then, with a curt word and an impatient clapping of her hands, she dismissed her attendants, the negro as well as her neophytes. These young women at her word lost quickly enough their air of rapt mysticism, became very human indeed, stretched out their limbs, yawned lustily, and with none too graceful movements uncurled themselves and struggled to their feet. Chattering and laughing like so many magpies let out of a cage, they soon disappeared through the door in the rear.

Again the old woman waited silent and motionless until that merry sound too gradually subsided. Then she went across the room to the dais, and drew aside the curtain which hung behind it.

"Citizen Chauvelin!" she called peremptorily.

A small figure of a man stepped out from the gloom. He was dressed in black, his hair, of a nondescript blonde shade and his crumpled linen alone told light in the general sombreness of his appearance.

"Well?" he retorted drily.

"Are you satisfied?" the old woman went on with eager impatience. "You heard what I said?"

"Yes, I heard," he replied. "Think you he will act on it?"

"I am certain of it."

"But why not have named Theresia Cabarrus? Then, at least, I would have been sure——"

"He might have recoiled at an actual name," the woman replied, "suspected me of connivance. The Chosen of the people of France is shrewd as well as distrustful. And I have my reputation to consider. But, remember what I said: 'tall, dark, beautiful, a stranger in this land!' So, if indeed you require the help of the Spaniard——"

"Indeed I do!" he rejoined earnestly. And, as if speaking to his own inward self, "Theresia Cabarrus is the only woman I know who can really help me."

"But you cannot force her consent, citizen Chauvelin," the sybil insisted.

The eyes of citizen Chauvelin lit up suddenly with a flash of that old fire of long ago, when he was powerful enough to compel the consent or the co-operation of any man, woman or child on whom he had deigned to cast an appraising glance. But the flash was only momentary. The next second he had once more resumed his unobtrusive, even humbled, attitude.

"My friends, who are few," he said, with a quick sigh of impatience; "and mine enemies, who are without number, will readily share your conviction, Mother, that citizen Chauvelin can compel no one to do his bidding these days. Least of all the affianced wife of powerful Tallien."

"Well, then," the sybil argued, "how think you that——"

"I only hope, Mother," Chauvelin broke in suavely, "that after your séance to-day, citizen Robespierre himself will see to it that Theresia Cabarrus gives me the help I need."

Catherine Théot shrugged her shoulders.

"Oh!" she said drily, "the Cabarrus knows no law save that of her caprice. And as Tallien's fiancée she is almost immune."

"Almost, but not quite! Tallien is powerful, but so was Danton."

"But Tallien is prudent, which Danton was not."

"Tallien is also a coward; and easily led like a lamb, with a halter. He came back from Bordeaux tied to the apron-strings of the fair Spaniard. He should have spread fire and terror in the region; but at her bidding he dispensed justice and even mercy instead. A little more airing of his moderate views, a few more acts of unpatriotic clemency, and powerful Tallien himself may become 'suspect.'"

"And you think that, when he is," the old woman rejoined with grim sarcasm, "you will hold his fair betrothed in the hollow of your hand?"

"Certainly!" he assented, and with an acid smile fell to contemplating his thin, talon-like palms. "Since Robespierre, counselled by Mother Théot, will himself have placed her there."

Whereupon Catherine Théot ceased to argue, since the other appeared so sure of himself. Once more she shrugged her shoulders.

"Well, then, if you are satisfied..." she said.

"I am. Quite," he replied, and at once plunged his hand in the breast-pocket of his coat. He had caught the look of avarice and of greed which had glittered in the old hag's eyes. From his pocket he drew a bundle of notes, for which Catherine immediately stretched out a grasping hand. But before giving her the money, he added a stern warning.

"Silence, remember! And, above all, discretion!"

"You may rely on me, citizen," the sybil riposted quietly. "I am not likely to blab."

He did not place the notes in her hand, but threw them down on the table with a gesture of contempt, without deigning to count. But Catherine Théot cared nothing for his contempt. She coolly picked up the notes and hid them in the folds of her voluminous draperies. Then as Chauvelin, without another word, had turned unceremoniously to go, she placed a bony hand upon his arm.

"And I can rely on you, citizen," she insisted firmly, "that when the Scarlet Pimpernel is duly captured..."

"There will be ten thousand livres for you," he broke in impatiently, "if my scheme with Theresia Cabarrus is successful. I never go back on my word."

"And I'll not go back on mine," she concluded drily. "We are dependent on one another, citizen Chauvelin. You want to capture the English spy, and I want ten thousand livres, so that I may retire from active life and quietly cultivate a plot of cabbages somewhere in the sunshine. So you may leave the matter to me, my friend. I'll not allow the great Robespierre to rest till he has compelled Theresia Cabarrus to do your bidding. Then you may use her as you think best. That gang of English spies must be found, and crushed. We cannot have the Chosen of the Most High threatened by such vermin. Ten thousand livres, you say?" the sybil went on, and once again, as in the presence of the dictator, a mystic exultation appeared to possess her soul. Gone was the glitter of avarice from her eyes; her wizened face seem transfigured, her shrunken form to gain in stature. "Nay! I would serve you on my knees and accord you worship, if you avert the scarlet danger that hovers over the head of the Beloved of France!"

But Chauvelin was obviously in no mood to listen to the old hag's jeremiads, and while with arms uplifted she once more worked herself up to a hysterical burst of enthusiasm for the bloodthirsty monster whom she worshipped, he shook himself free from her grasp and finally slipped out of the room, without further wasting his breath.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF GRIEF

§ 1

IN the antechamber of Catherine Théot's abode of mysteries some two hours later, half a dozen persons were sitting. The room was long, narrow and bare, its walls dank and colourless, and save for the rough wooden benches on which these person sat, was void of any furniture. The benches were ranged against the walls; the one window at the end was shuttered as to exclude all daylight, and from the ceiling there hung a broken-down wrought-iron chandelier, wherein a couple of lighted tallow candles were set, the smoke from which rose in irregular spirals upwards to the low and blackened ceiling.

These persons who sat or sprawled upon the benches did not speak to one another. They appeared to be waiting. One or two of them were seemingly asleep; others, from time to time, would rouse themselves from their apathy, look with dim, inquiring eyes in the direction of a heavy portière. When this subsided again all those in the bare waiting-room resumed their patient, lethargic attitude, and a silence—weird and absolute—reigned once more over them all. Now and then somebody would sigh, and at one time one of the sleepers snored.

Far away a church clock struck six.

§ 2

A few minutes later, the portière was lifted, and a girl came into the room. She held a shawl, very much the worse for wear, tightly wrapped around her meagre shoulders, and from beneath her rough woollen skirt her small feet appeared clad in well-worn shoes and darned worsted stockings. Her hair, which was fair and soft, was partially hidden under a white muslin cap, and as she walked with a brisk step across the room, she looked neither to right nor left, appeared to move as in a dream. And her large grey eyes were brimming over with tears.

Neither her rapid passage across the room nor her exit through a door immediately opposite the window created the slightest stir amongst those who were waiting. Only one of the men, a huge ungainly giant, whose long limbs appeared to stretch half-across the bare wooden floor, looked up lazily as she passed.

After the girl had gone, silence once more fell on the small assembly. Not a sound came from behind the portière; but from beyond the other door the faint patter of the girl's feet could be heard gradually fading away as she went slowly down the stone stairs.

A few more minutes went by, then the door behind the portière was opened and a cadaverous voice spoke the word, "Enter!"

There was a faint stir among those who waited. A woman rose from her seat, said dully: "My turn, I think?" and, gliding across the room like some bodiless spectre, she presently vanished behind the portière.

"Are you going to the Fraternal Supper to-night, citizen Langlois?" the giant said, after the woman had gone. His tone was rasping and harsh and his voice came with a wheeze and an obviously painful effort from his broad, doubled-up chest.

"Not I!" Langlois replied. "I must speak with Mother Théot. My wife made me promise. She is too ill to come herself, and the poor unfortunate believes in the Théot's incantations."

"Come out and get some fresh air, then," the other rejoined. "It is stifling in here!"

It was indeed stuffy in the dark, smoke-laden room. The man put his bony hand up to his chest, as if to quell a spasm of pain. A horrible, rasping cough shook his big body and brought a sweat to his brow. Langlois, a wizened little figure of a man, who looked himself as if he had one foot in the grave, waited patiently until the spasm was over, then, with the indifference peculiar to these turbulent times, he said lightly:

"I would just as soon sit here as wear out shoe-leather on the cobblestones of this God-forsaken hole. And I don't want to miss my turn with mother Théot."

"You'll have another four hours mayhap to wait in this filthy atmosphere."

"What an aristo you are, citizen Rateau!" the other retorted drily. "Always talking about the atmosphere!"

"So would you, if you had only one lung wherewith to inhale this filth," growled the giant through a wheeze.

"Then don't wait for me, my friend," Langlois concluded with a careless shrug of his narrow shoulders. "And, if you don't mind missing your turn...."

"I do not," was Rateau's curt reply. "I would as soon be last as not. But I'll come back presently. I am the third from now. If I'm not back you can have my turn, and I'll follow you in. But I can't——"

His next words were smothered in a terrible fit of coughing, as he struggled to his feet. Langlois swore at him for making such a noise, and the women, roused from their somnolence, sigh with impatience or resignation. But all those who remained seated on the benches watched with a kind of dull curiosity the ungainly figure of the asthmatic giant as he made his way across the room and anon went out through the door.

His heavy footsteps were heard descending the stone stairs with a shuffling sound, and the clatter of his wooden shoes. The women once more settled themselves against the dank walls, with feet stretched out before them and arms folded over their breasts, and in that highly uncomfortable position prepared once more to go to sleep.

Langlois buried his hands in the pockets of his breeches, spat contentedly upon the floor, and continued to wait.

§ 3

In the meanwhile, the girl who, with tear-filled eyes, had come out of the inner mysterious room in Mother Théot's apartments, had, after a slow descent down the interminable stone stairs, at last reached the open air.

The Rue de la Planchette is only a street in name, for the houses in it are few and far between. One side of it is taken up for the major portion of its length by the dry moat which at this point forms the boundary of the Arsenal and of the military ground around the Bastille. The house wherein lodged Mother Théot is one of a small group situated behind the Bastille, the grim ruins of which can be distinctly seen from the upper windows. Immediately facing those houses is the Porte St. Antoine, through which the wayfarer in this remote quarter of Paris has to pass in order to reach the more populous parts of the city. This is just a lonely and squalid backwater, broken up by undeveloped land and timber yards. One end of the street abuts on the river, the other becomes merged in the equally remote suburb of Popincourt.

But, for the girl who had just come out of the heavy, fetid atmosphere of Mother Théot's lodgings, the air which reached her nostrils as she came out of the wicket-gate, was positive manna to her lungs. She stood for awhile quite still, drinking in the balmy spring air, almost dizzy with the sensation of purity and of freedom which came to her from over the vast stretch of open ground occupied by the Arsenal. For a minute or two she stood there, then walked deliberately in the direction of the Porte St. Antoine.

She was very tired, for she had come to the Rue de la Planchette on foot all the way from the small apartment in the St. Germain quarter, where she lodged with her mother and sister and a young brother; she had become weary and jaded by sitting for hours on a hard wooden bench, waiting her turn to speak with Mother Théot, and then standing for what seemed an eternity of time in the presence of the soothsayer, who had further harassed her nerves by weird prophecies and mystic incantations.

But for the nonce weariness was forgotten. Régine de Serval was going to meet the man she loved, at a trysting-place which they had marked as their own: the porch of the church of Petit St. Antoine, a secluded spot where neither prying eyes could see them nor ears listen to what they had to say. A spot which to poor little Régine was the very threshold of Paradise, for here she had Bertrand all to herself, undisturbed by the prattle of Joséphine or Jacques or the querulous complaints of maman, cooped up in that miserable apartment in the old St. Germain quarter of the city.

So she walked briskly and without hesitation. Bertrand had agreed to meet her at five o'clock. It was now close on half-past six. It was still daylight, and a brilliant April sunset tinged the cupola of Ste. Marie with gold and drew long fantastic shadows across the wide Rue St. Antoine.

Régine had crossed the Rue des Balais, and the church porch of Petit St. Antoine was bust a few paces farther on, when she became conscious of heavy, dragging footsteps some little way behind her. Immediately afterwards, the distressing sound of a racking cough reached her ears, followed by heartrending groans as of a human creature in grievous bodily pain. The girl, not in the least frightened, instinctively turned to look, and was moved to pity on seeing a man leaning against the wall of a house, in a state bordering on collapse, his hands convulsively grasping his chest, which appeared literally torn by a violent fit of coughing. Forgetting her own troubles, as well as the joy which awaited her so close at hand, Régine unhesitatingly recrossed the road, approached the sufferer, and in a gentle voice asked him if she could be of any assistance to him in his distress.

"A little water," he gasped, "for mercy's sake!"

Just for a second or two she looked about her, doubtful as to what to do, hoping perhaps to catch sight of Bertrand, if he had not given up all hope of meeting her. The next, she had stepped boldly through the wicket-gate of the nearest porte-cochère, and finding her way to the lodge of the concierge, she asked for a drop of water for a passer-by who was in pain. A jug of water was at once handed to her by a sympathetic concierge, and with it she went back to complete her simple act of mercy.

For a moment she was puzzled, not seeing the poor vagabond there, where she had left him half-swooning against the wall. But soon she spied him, in the very act of turning under the little church porch of Petit St. Antoine, the hallowed spot of her frequent meetings with Bertrand.

§ 4

He seemed to have crawled there for shelter, and there he collapsed upon the wooden bench, in the most remote angle of the porch. Of Bertrand there was not a sign.

Régine was soon by the side of the unfortunate. She held up the jug of water to his quaking lips, and he drank eagerly. After that he felt better, muttered vague words of thanks. But he seemed so weak, despite his stature, which appeared immense in this narrow enclosure, that she did not like to leave him. She sat down beside him, suddenly conscious of fatigue. He seemed harmless enough, and after awhile began to tell her of his trouble. This awful asthma, which he had contracted in the campaign against the English in Holland, where he and his comrades had to march in snow and ice, often shoeless and with nothing but bass mats around their shoulders. He had but lately been discharged out of the army as totally unfit, and he had no money wherewith to pay a doctor, he would no doubt have been dead by now but that a comrade had spoken to him of Mother Théot, a marvellous sorceress, who knew the art of drugs and simples, and could cure all ailments of the body by the mere laying on of hands.

"Ah, yes," the girl sighed involuntarily, "of the body!"

Through the very act of sitting still, a deadly lassitude had crept into her limbs. She was thankful not to move, to say little, and to listen with half an ear to the vagabond's jeremiads. Anyhow, she was sure that Bertrand would no longer be waiting. He was ever impatient if he thought that she failed him in anything, and it was she who had appointed five o'clock for their meeting. Even now the church clock way above the porch was striking half-past six. And the asthmatic giant went glibly on. He had partially recovered his breath.

"Aye!" he was saying, in response to her lament, "and of the mind, too. I had a comrade whose sweetheart was false to him while he was fighting for his country. Mother Théot gave him a potion which he administered to the faithless one, and she returned to him as full of ardour as ever before."

"I have no faith in potions," the girl said, and shook her head sadly the while tears once more gathered in her eyes.

"No more have I," the giant assented carelessly. "But if my sweetheart was false to me I know what I would do."

This he said in so droll a fashion, and the whole idea of this ugly, ungainly creature having a sweetheart was so comical, that despite her will, the ghost of a smile crept round the young girl's sensitive mouth.

"What would you do, citizen?" she queried gently.

"Just take her away, out of the reach of temptation," he replied sententiously. "I should say, 'This must stop,' and 'You come away with me, ma mie!'"

"Ah!" she retorted impulsively, "it is easy to talk. A man can do so much. What can a woman do?"

She checked herself abruptly, ashamed of having said so much. What was this miserable caitiff to her that she should as much as hint her troubles in his hearing? In these days of countless spies, of innumerable confidence tricks set to catch the unwary, it was more than foolhardy to speak of one's private affairs to any stranger, let alone to an out-at-elbows vagabond who was just the sort of refuse of humanity who would earn a precarious livelihood by the sale of information, true or false, wormed out of some innocent fellow-creature. Hardly, then, were the words out of her mouth than the girl repented of her folly, turned quick, frightened eyes on the abject creature beside her.

But he appeared not to have heard. A wheezy cough came out of his bony chest. Nor did he meet her terrified gaze.

"What did you say, citoyenne?" he muttered fretfully. "Are you dreaming?... or what?..."

"Yes—yes!" she murmured vaguely, her heart still beating with that sudden fright. "I must have been dreaming.... But you... you are better——?"

"Better? Perhaps," he replied, with a hoarse laugh. "I might even be able to crawl home."

"Do you live very far?" she asked.

"No. Just by the Rue de l'Anier."

He made no attempt to thank her for her gentle ministration, and she thought of how ungainly he looked—almost repellent—sprawling right across the porch, with his long legs stretched out before him and his hands buried in the pockets of his breeches. Nevertheless, he looked so helpless and so pitiable that the girl's kind heart was again stirred with compassion, and when presently he struggled with difficulty to his feet, she said impulsively:

"The Rue de l'Anier is on my way. If you will wait, I'll return the jug to the kind concierge who let me have it and I'll walk with you. You really ought not to be about the street alone."

"Oh, I am better now," he muttered, in the same ungracious way. "You had best leave me alone. I am not a suitable gallant for a pretty wench like you."

But already the girl had tripped away with the jug, and returned two minutes later to find that the curious creature had already started on his way and was fifty yards or more farther up the street by now. She shrugged her shoulders, feeling mortified at his ingratitude, and not a little ashamed that she had forced her compassion where it was so obviously unwelcome.

ONE DRAM OF JOY MUST HAVE A POUND OF CARE

§ 1

SHE stood for a moment, gazing mechanically on the retreating figure of the asthmatic giant. The next moment she heard her name spoken, and turned quickly with a little cry of joy.

"Régine!"

A young man was hurrying towards her, was soon by her side and took her hand.

"I have been waiting," he said reproachfully, "for more than an hour."

In the twilight his face appeared pinched and pale, with dark, deep-sunken eyes that told of a troubled soul and a consuming, inward fire. He wore cloth clothes that were very much the worse for wear, and boots that were down at hell. A battered tricorne hat was pushed back from his high forehead, exposing the veined temples with the line of brown hair, and the arched, intellectual brows that proclaimed the enthusiast rather than the man of action.

"I am sorry, Bertrand," the girl said simply. "But I had to wait such a long time at Mother Théot's, and——"

"But what were you doing now?" he queried with an impatient frown. "I saw you from a distance. You came out of yonder house, and then stood here like one bewildered. You did not hear when first I called."

"I have had quite a funny adventure," Régine explained; "and I am very tired. Sit down with me, Bertrand, for a moment. I'll tell you all about it."

A flat refusal hovered palpably on his lips.

"It is too late——" he began, and the frown of impatience deepened upon his brow. He tried to protest, but Régine did look very tired. Already, without waiting for his consent, she had turned into the little porch, and Bertrand perforce had to follow her.

The shades of evening now were fast gathering in, and the lengthened shadows stretched out away, right across the street. The last rays of the sinking sun still tinged the roofs and chimney pots opposite with a crimson hue. But here, in the hallowed little trysting-place, the kingdom of night had already established its sway. The darkness lent an air of solitude and of security to this tiny refuge, and Régine drew a happy little sigh as she walked deliberately to its farthermost recess and sat down on the wooden bench in it extreme and darkest angle.

Behind her, the heavy oaken door of the church was closed. The church itself, owning to the contumaciousness of its parish priest, had been desecrated by the ruthless hands of the Terrorists and left derelict, to fall into decay. The stone walls themselves appeared cut off from the world, as if ostracized. But between them Régine felt safe, and when Bertrand Moncrif somewhat reluctantly sat down beside her, she also felt almost happy.

"It is very late," he murmured once more, ungraciously.

She was leaning her head against the wall, looked so pale, with eyes closed and bloodless lips, that the young man's heart was suddenly filled with compunction.

"You are not ill, Régine?" he asked, more gently.

"No," she replied, and smiled bravely up at him. "Only very tired and a little dizzy. The atmosphere in Catherine Théot's rooms was stifling, and then when I came out——"

He took her hand, obviously making an effort to be patient and to be kind; and she, not noticing the effort or his absorption, began to tell him about her little adventure with the asthmatic giant.

"Such a droll creature," she explained. "He would have frightened me but for that awful, churchyard cough."

But the matter did not seem to interest Bertrand very much; and presently he took advantage of a pause in her narrative to ask abruptly:

"And Mother Théot, what had she to say?"

Régine gave a shudder.

"She foretells danger for us all," she said.

"The old charlatan!" he retorted with a shrug of the shoulders. "As if every one was not in danger these days!"

"She gave me a powder," Régine went on simply, "which she thinks will calm Joséphine's nerves."

"And that is folly," he broke in harshly. "We do not want Joséphine's nerves to be calmed."

But at his words, which in truth sounded almost cruel, Régine roused herself with a sudden air of authority.

"Bertrand," she said firmly, "you are doing a great wrong by dragging the child into your schemes. Joséphine is too young to be used as a tool by a pack of thoughtless enthusiasts."

A bitter, scornful laugh from Bertrand broke in on her vehemence.

"Thoughtless enthusiasts!" he exclaimed roughly. "Is that how you call us, Régine? My God! where is your loyalty, your devotion? Have you no faith, no aspirations? Do you no longer worship God or reverence your King?"

"In heaven's name, Bertrand, take care!" she whispered hoarsely, looked about her as if the stone walls of the porch had ears and eyes fixed upon the man she loved.

"Take care!" he rejoined bitterly. "Yes! that is your creed now. Caution! Circumspection! You fear——"

"For you," she broke in reproachfully; "for Joséphine; for maman; for Jacques—not for myself, God knows!"

"We must all take risks, Régine," he retorted more composedly. "We must all risk our miserable lives in order to end this awful, revolting tyranny. We must have a wider outlook, think not only of ourselves, of those immediately round us, but of France, of humanity, of the entire world. The despotism of a bloodthirsty autocrat has made of the people of France a people of slaves, cringing, fearful, abject—swayed by his word, too cowardly now to rebel."

"And what are you? My God!" she cried passionately. "You and your friends, my poor young sister, my foolish little brother? What are you, that you think you can stem to torrent of this stupendous Revolution? How think you that your feeble voices will be heard above the roar of a whole nation in the throes of misery and of shame?"

"It is the still small voice," Bertrand replied, in the tone of a visionary, who sees mysteries and who dreams dreams, "that is heard by its persistence even above the fury of thousands in full cry. Do we not call our organization 'the Fatalists'? Our aim is to take every opportunity by quick, short speeches, by mixing with the crowd and putting in a word here and there, to make propaganda against the fiend Robespierre. The populace are like sheep; they'll follow a lead. One day, one of us—it may be the humblest, the weakest, the youngest; it may be Joséphine or Jacques; I pray God it may be me—but one of us will find the word and speak it at the right time, and the people will follow us and turn against that execrable monster and hurl him from his throne, down into Gehenna."

He spoke below his breath, in a hoarse whisper which even she had to strain her ears to hear.

"I know, I know, Bertrand," she rejoined, and her tiny hand stole out in a pathetic endeavour to capture his. "Your aims are splendid. You are wonderful, all of you. Who am I, that I should even with a word or a prayer, try to dissuade you to do what you think is right? But Joséphine is so young, so hot-headed! What help can she give you? She is only seventeen. And Jacques! He is just an irresponsible boy! Think, Bertrand, think! If anything were to happen to these children, it would kill maman!"

He gave a shrug of the shoulders and smothered a weary sigh. She had succeeded in capturing his hand, clung to it with the strength of a passionate appeal.

"You and I will never understand one another, Régine," he began; then added quickly, "over these matters," because, following on his cruel words, he had heard the tiny cry of pain, so like that of a wounded bird, which much against her will had escaped her lips. "You do not understand," he went on, more quietly, "that in a great cause the sufferings of individuals are nought beside the glorious achievement that is in view."

"The sufferings of individuals," she murmured, with a pathetic little sigh. "In truth 'tis but little heed you pay, Bertrand, to my sufferings these days." She paused awhile, then added under her breath: "Since first you met Theresia Cabarrus, three months ago, you have eyes and ears only for her."

He smothered an angry exclamation.

"It is useless, Régine——" he began.

"I know," she broke in quietly. "Theresia Cabarrus is beautiful; she has charm, wit, power—all things which I do not possess."

"She has fearlessness and a heart of gold," Bertrand rejoined and, probably despite himself, a sudden warmth crept into his voice. "Do you not know of the marvellous influence which she exercised over that fiend Tallien, down in Bordeaux? He went there filled with a veritable tiger's fury, ready for a wholesale butchery of all the royalists, the aristocrats, the bourgeois, over there—all those, in fact, whom he chose to believe were conspiring against this hideous Revolution. Well! under Theresia's influence he actually modified his views and became so lenient that he was recalled. You know, or should know, Régine," the young man added in a tone of bitter reproach, "that Theresia is as good as she is beautiful."

"I do know that, Bertrand," the girl rejoined with an effort. "Only——"

"Only what?" he queried roughly.

"I do not trust her ... that is all." Then, as he made no attempt at concealing his scorn and his impatience, she went on in a tone which was much harsher, more uncompromising than the one she had adopted hitherto: "your infatuation blinds you, Bertrand, or you—an enthusiastic royalist, an ardent loyalist—would not place your trust in an avowed Republican. Theresia Cabarrus may be kind-hearted—I don't deny it. She may have done and she may be all that you say; but she stands for the negation of every one of your ideals, for the destruction of what you exalt, the glorification of the principles of this execrable Revolution."

"Jealousy blinds you, Régine," he retorted moodily.

She shook her head.

"No, it is not jealousy, Bertrand—not common, vulgar jealousy—that prompts me to warn you, before it is too late. Remember," she added solemnly, 'that you have not only yourself to think of, but that you are accountable to God and to me for the innocent lives of Joséphine and of Jacques. By confiding in that Spanish woman——"

"Now you are insulting her," he broke in mercilessly. "Making her out to be a spy."

"What else is she?" the girl riposted vehemently. "You know that she is affianced to Tallien, whose influence and whose cruelty are second only to those of Robespierre. You know it, Bertrand!" she insisted, seeing that at last she had silenced him and that he sat beside her, sullen and obstinate. "You know it, even though you choose to close your eyes and ears to what is common knowledge."

There was silence after that for a while in the narrow porch, where two hearts once united were filled now with bitterness, one against the other. Even out in the street it had become quite dark, the darkness of a spring night, full of mysterious lights and grey, indeterminate shadows. The girl shivered as with cold and drew her tattered shawl more closely round her shoulders. She was vainly trying to swallow her tears. Goaded into saying more than she had ever meant to, she felt the finality of what she had said. Something had finally snapped just now: something that could never in after years be put together again. The boy and girl love which had survived the past two years of trouble and of stress, lay wounded unto death, bleeding at the foot of the shrine of a man's infatuation and a woman's vanity. How impossible this would have seemed but a brief while ago!

Through the darkness, swift visions of past happy times came fleeting before the girl's tear-dimmed gaze: visions of walks in the woods round Auteuil, of drifting down-stream in a boat on the Seine on hot August days—aye! even of danger shared and perilous moments passed together, hand in hand, with bated breath, in darkened rooms, with curtains drawn and ears straining to hear the distant cannonade, the shouts of an infuriated populace or the rattle of death carts upon the cobblestones. Swift visions of past sorrows and past joys! An immense self-pity filled the girl's heart to bursting. An insistent sob that would not be suppressed rose to her throat.

"Oh, Mother of God, have mercy!" she murmured through her tears.

Bertrand, shamed and confused, his heart stirred by the misery of this girl whom he had so dearly loved, his nerves strained beyond endurance through the many mad schemes which his enthusiasm was for ever evolving, felt like a creature on the rack, torn between compunction and remorse on the one hand and irresistible passion on the other.

"Régine," he pleaded, "forgive me! I am a brute, I know—a brute to you, who have been the kindest little friend a man could possibly hope for. Oh, my dear," he added pitiably, "if you would only understand...."

At once her tender, womanly sentiment was to the fore, sweeping pride and just resentment out of the way. Hers was one of those motherly natures that are always more ready to comfort than to chide. Already she had swallowed her tears, and now that with a wearied gesture he had buried his face in his hands, she put her arm around his neck, pillowed his head against her breast.

"I do understand, Bertrand," she said gently. "And you must never ask my forgiveness, for you and I have loved one another too well to bear anger or grudge one toward the other. There!" she said, and rose to her feet, and seemed by that sudden act to gather up all the moral strength of which she stood in such sore need. "It is getting late, and maman will be anxious. Another time we must have a more quiet talk about our future. But," she added, with renewed seriousness, "if I concede you Theresia Cabarrus without another murmur, you must give me back Joséphine and Jacques, If—if I—am to lose you—I could not bear to lose them as well. They are so young...."

"Who talks of losing them?" he broke in, once more impatient, enthusiastic—his moodiness gone, his remorse smothered, his conscience dead to all save to his schemes. "And what have I to do with it all? Joséphine and Jacques are members of the Club. They may be young, but they are old enough to know the value of an oath. They are pledged just like I am, just like we all are. I could not, even if I would, make them false to their oath." Then, as she made no reply, he leaned over to her, took her hands in his, tried to read her inscrutable face through the shadows of night. He thought that he read obstinacy in her rigid attitude, the unresponsive placidity of her hands. "You would not have them false to their oath?" he insisted.

She made no reply to that, only queried dully:

"What are you going to do to-night?"

"To-night," he said with passionate earnestness, his eyes glowing with the fervid adour of self-immolation, "we are going to let hell loose around the name of Robespierre."

"Where?"

"At the open-air supper in the Rue St. Honoré. Joséphine and Jacques will be there."

She nodded mechanically, quietly disengaged her hands from his feverish grasp.

"I know," she said quietly. "They told me they were going. I have no influence to stop them."

"You will be there, too?" he asked.

"Of course. So will poor maman," she replied simply.

"This may be the turning point, Régine," he said with passionate earnestness, "in the history of France!"

"Perhaps!"

"Think if it, Régine! Think of it! Your sister, your young brother! Their name may go down to posterity as the saviours of France!"

"The saviours of France!" she murmured vaguely.

"One word has swayed a multitude before now. It may do so again... to-night!"

"Yes," she said. "And those poor children believe in the power of their oratory."

"Do not you?"

"I only remember that you, Bertrand, have probably spoken of your plan to Theresia Cabarrus, that the place will be swarming with the spies of Robespierre, and that you and the children will be recognised, seized, dragged into prison, then to the guillotine! My God!" she added, in a pitiful murmur. "And I am powerless to do anything but look on like an insentient log, whilst you run your rash heads into a noose, and then follow you all to death, whilst maman is left alone to perish in misery and in want."

"A pessimist again, Régine!" he said with a forced laugh, and in his turn rose to his feet. "'Tis little we have accomplished this evening," he added bitterly, "by talking."

She said nothing more. An icy chill had hold of her heart. Not only of her heart, but of her brain and her whole being. Strive as she might, she could not enter into Bertrand's schemes, and as his whole entity was wrapped up in them she felt estranged from him, out of touch, shut out from his heart. Unspeakable bitterness filled her soul. She hated Theresia Cabarrus, who had enslaved Bertrand's fancy, and above all she mistrusted her. At this moment she would gladly have given her life to get Bertrand away from the influence of that woman and away from that madcap association which called itself "the Fatalists," and into which he had dragged both Joséphine and Jacques.

Silently she preceded him out of the little church porch, the habitual trysting-place, where at one time she had spent so many happy hours. Just before she turned off into the street, she looked back, as if through the impenetrable darkness which enveloped it now she would conjure up, just once more, those happy images of the past. but the darkness made no response to the mute cry of her fancy, and with a last sigh of intense bitterness, she followed Bertrand down the street.

§ 2

Less than five minutes after Bertrand and Régine had left the porch of Petit St. Antoine, the heavy oak door of the church was cautiously opened. It moved noiselessly upon its hinges, and presently through the aperture the figure of a man emerged, hardly discernible in the gloom. He slipped through the door into the porch, then closed the former noiselessly behind him.

A moment or two later his huge, bulky figure was lumbering up the Rue St. Antoine, in the direction of the Arsenal, his down-at-heel shoes making a dull clip-clop on the cobblestones. There were but very few passers-by at this hour, and the man went along with his peculiar shuffling gaint until he reached the Porte St. Antoine. The city gates were still open at this hour, for it was only a little while ago that the many church clocks of the quartier had struck eight, nor did the sergeant at the gate pay much heed to the beggarly caitiff who went by; only he and the half-dozen men of the National Guard who were in charge of the gate, did remark that the belated wayfarer appeared to be in distress with a terrible asthmatic cough which caused one of the men to say with grim facetiousness:

"Pardi! but here's a man who will not give maman guillotine any trouble!"

They all noticed, moreover, that after the asthmatic giant had passed through the city gate, he turned his shuffling footsteps in the direction of the Rue de la Planchette.

RASCALITY REJOICES

§ 1

THE Fraternal Suppers were a great success. They were the invention of Robespierre, and the unusual warmth of these early spring evenings lent the support of their balmy atmosphere to the scheme.

Whole Paris is out in the streets on these mild April nights. Families out on a holiday, after the daily spectacle of the death-cart taking the enemies of the people, the conspirators against their liberty, to the guillotine.

And maman brings a basket filled with whatever scanty provisions she can save from the maximum per day allowed for the provisioning of her family. Beside her, papa comes along, dragging his youngest by the hand—the latter no longer chubby and rosy, as were his prototypes in the days gone by, because food is scarce and dear, and milk unobtainable; but looking a man for all that, though bare-footed and bare-kneed, with the red cap upon his lank, unwashed locks, and hugging against his meagre chest a tiny toy guillotine, the latest popular fancy, all complete with miniature knife and pulleys, and frame artistically painted a vivid crimson.

The Rue St. Honoré is a typical example of what goes on all over the city. Though it is very narrow and therefore peculiarly inconvenient for the holding of outdoor entertainments, the Fraternal Suppers there are extensively patronized, because the street itself is consecrated as holding the house wherein lives Robespierre.

Here, as elsewhere, huge braziers are lit at intervals, so that materfamilias may cook the few herrings she has brought with her if she be so minded, and all down the narrow street tables are set, innocent of cloths or even of that cleanliness which is next to the equally neglected virtue of godliness. But the tables have an air of cheeriness nevertheless, with resin torches, tallow candles, or old stable lanthorns set here and there, the flames flickering in the gentle breeze, adding picturesqueness to the scene which might otherwise have seemed sordid, with those pewter mugs and tin plates, the horn-handled knives and iron spoons.

The scanty light does little more than accentuate the darkness around, the deep shadows under projecting balconies or lintels of portes-cochères carefully closed and barred for the night; but it glints with weird will-o'-the-wisp-like fitfulness on crimson caps and tricolour cockades, on drawn and begrimed faces, bony arms, or lean, brown hands.

A motley throng, in truth! The workers of Paris, its proletariat, all conscripted servants of the State—slaves, we might call them, though they deem themselves free men—all driven into hard manual labour, partly by starvation and wholly by the decree of the Committees, who decide how and when and in what form the nation requires the arms or hands—not the brains, mind you!—of its citizens. For brains the nation has no use, only in the heads of those who sit in Convention of on Committees. "The State hath no use for science," was grimly said to Lavoisier, the great chemist, when he begged for a few days' surcease from death in order to complete some important experiments.

But coal-heavers are useful citizens of the State; so are smiths and armourers and gunmakers, and those who can sew and knit stockings, do anything in fact to clothe and feed the national army, the defenders of the sacred soil of France. For them, for those workers—the honest, the industrious, the sober—are the Fraternal Suppers invented; but not for them only. There are the "tricotteuses," sexless hags, who, by order of the State, sit at the foot of the scaffold surrounded by their families and their children and knit, and knit, the while they jeer—still by order of the State—at the condemned—old men, young women, children even, as they walk up to the guillotine. There are the "insulteuses publiques," public insulters, women mostly—save the mark!—paid to howl and blaspheme as the death-carts rattle by. There are the "tappe-durs," the hit-hards, who, armed with weighted sticks, form the body-guard around the sacred person of Robespierre. Then, the members of the Société Révolutionnaire, recruited from the refuse of misery and of degradation of this great city; and—oh, the horror of it all!—the "Enfants Rouges," the red children, who cry "Death" and "à la lanterne" with the best of them—precocious little offsprings of the new Republic. For them, too, are the Fraternal Suppers established: for all the riff-raff, all the sweepings of abject humanity. For they too must be amused and entertained, lest they sit in clusters and talk themselves into the belief that they are more wretched, more indigent, more abased, than they were in the days of monarchical oppression.

§ 2

And so, on these balmy evenings of mid-April, family parties are gathered in the open air, around meagre suppers that are "fraternal" by order of the State. Family parties which make for camaraderie between the honest man and the thief, the sober citizen and the homeless vagabond, and help one to forget awhile the misery, the starvation, the slavery, the daily struggle for bare existence, in anticipation of the belated Millennium.

There is even laughter around the festive boards, fun and frolic. jokes are cracked, mostly of a grim order. There is intoxication in the air: spring has got into the heads of the young. And there is even kissing under the shadows, love-making, sentiment; and here and there perhaps a shred of real happiness.

The provisions are scanty. Every family brings its own. Two or three herrings, sprinkled with shredded onions and wetted with a little vinegar, or else a few boiled prunes or a pottage of lentils and beans.

"Can you spare some of that bread, citizen?"

"Aye! if I can have a bite of your cheese."

They are fraternal suppers! Do not, in the name of Liberty and Equality, let us forget that. And the whole of it was Robespierre's idea. He conceived and carried it through, commanded the voices in the Convention that voted the money required for the tables, the benches, the tallow candles. He lives close by, in this very street, humbly, quietly, like a true son of the people, sharing house and board with citizen Duplay, the cabinet-maker, and with his family.

A great man, Robespierre! The only man! Men speak of him with bated breath, young girls with glowing eyes. He is the fetich, the idol, the demigod. No benefactor of mankind, no saint, no hero-martyr was ever worshipped more devotedly than this death-dealing monster by his votaries. Even the shade of Danton is reviled in order to exalt the virtues of his successful rival.

"Danton was gorged with riches: his pockets full, his stomach satisfied! But look at Robespierre!"

"Almost a wraith!—so thin, so white!"

"An ascetic!"

"Consumed by the fire of his own patriotism."

"His eloquence!"

"His selflessness!"

"You have heard him speak, citizen?"

A girl, still in her 'teens, her elbows resting on the table, her hands supporting her rounded chin, asks the question with bated breath. Her large grey eyes, hollow and glowing, are fixed upon her vis-à-vis, a tall, ungainly creature, who sprawls over the table, vainly trying to dispose of his long limbs in a manner comfortable to himself.

His hair is lank and matted with grease, his face covered in coal-dust; a sennight's growth of beard, stubbly and dusty, accentuates the squareness of his jaw even whilst it fails to conceal altogether the cruel, sarcastic curves of his mouth. But for the moment, in the rapt eyes of the young enthusiast, he is a prophet, a seer, a human marvel: he has heard Robespierre speak.

"Was it in the Club, citizen Rateau?" another woman asks—a young matron with a poor little starveling at her breast.

The man gives a loud guffaw, displays in the feeble, flickering light of the nearest torch a row of hideous uneven teeth, scored with gaps and stained with tobacco juice.

"In the Club?" he says with a curse, and spits in a convenient direction to show of his contempt for that or any other institution. "I don't belong to any Club. There's no money in my pocket. And the Jacobins and the Cordeliers like to see a man with a decent coat on his back."

His guffaw broke in a rasping cough which seemed to tear his broad chest to ribbons. For a moment speech was denied him; even oaths failed to reach his lips, trembling like an unset jelly in this distressing spasm. His neighbours alongside the table, the young enthusiast opposite, the comely matron, paid no heed to him—waited indifferently until the clumsy lout had regained his breath. This, mark you, was not an era of gentleness or womanly compassion, and an asthmatic mudlark was not like to excite pity. Only when he once more stretched out his long limbs, raised his head and looked about him, panting and blear-eyed, did the girl insist quietly:

"But you have heard Him speak!"

"Aye! the ruffian replied drily. "I did."

"When?"

"Night before last. Tenez! He was stepping out of citizen Duplay's house yonder. He saw me leaning against the wall close by. I was tired, half asleep, what? He spoke to me and asked me where I lived."

"Where you lived?' the girl echoed, disappointed.

"Was that all?" the matron added with a shrug of her shoulders.

The neighbours laughed. The men enjoyed the discomfiture of the women, who were all craning their necks to hear something great, something palpitating, about their idol.

The young enthusiast sighed, clasped her hands in favour.

"He saw that you were poor, citizen Rateau," she said with conviction; "and that you were tired. He wished to help and comfort you."

"And where did you saw you lived, citizen?" the young matron went on, in her calm, matter-of-fact tone.

"I live far from here, the other side of the water. not in an aristocratic quarter like this one—what?"

"You told Him you lived there?" the girl still insisted. Any scrap or crumb of information even remotely connected with her idol was manna to her body and balm to her soul.

"Yes, I did," citizen Rateau assented.

"Then," the girl resumed earnestly, "solance and comfort will come to you very soon, citizen. He never forgets. His eyes are upon you. He knows your distress and that you are poor and weary. Leave it to him, citizen Rateau. He will know how and when to help."

"He will know, more like," here broke in a harsh voice, vibrating with excitement, "how and when to lay his talons on an obscure and helpless citizen whenever his Batches for the guillotine are insufficient to satisfy his lust!"

A dull murmur greeted this tirade. Only those who sat close by the speaker knew which he was, for the lights were scanty and burnt dim in the open air. The others only heard—received this arrow-shot aimed at their idol—with for the most part a kind of dull resentment. The women were more loudly indignant. one or two young devotees gave a shrill cry or so of passionate indignation.

"Shame! Treason!"

"Guillotine, forsooth! The enemies of the people all deserve the guillotine!"

And the enemies of the people were those who dared raise their voice against their Chosen, their Fetich, the great, incomprehensible Mystery.

Citizen Rateau was once more rendered helpless by a tearing fit of coughing.

But from afar, down the street, there came one or two assenting cries.

"Well spoken, young man! As for me, I never trusted that bloodhound!"

And a woman's voice added shrilly: "His hands reek of blood. A butcher, I call him!"

"And a tyrant!" assented the original spokesman. "His aim is a dictatorship, with his minions hanging around him like abject slaves. Why not Versailles, then? How are we better off now than in the days of kingship? Then, at least, the streets of Paris did not stink of blood. Then, at least——"

But the speaker got no father. A hard crust of very dry, black bread, aimed by a sure hand, caught him full in the face, whilst a hoarse voice shouted lustily:

"Hey there, citizen! If thou'lt not hold thy tongue 'tis thy neck that will be reeking with blood o'er soon, I'll warrant!"

"Well said, citizen Rateau!" put in another, speaking with his mouth full, but with splendid conviction. "Every word uttered by that jackanapes yonder reeks of treason!"

"Shame!" came from every side.

"Where are the agents of the Committee of Public Safety? Men have been thrown into prison for less than this."

"Shame!"

"Denounce him!"

"Take him to the nearest Section!"

"Ere he wreaks mischief more lasting than words!" cried a woman, who tried as she spoke to give her utterance its full, sinister meaning.

"Shame! Treason!" came soon from every side. Voices were raised all down the length of the tables—shrill, full-throated, even dull and indifferent. Some really felt indignation—burning, ferocious indignation; others only made a noise for the sheer pleasure of it, and because the past five years had turned cries of "Treason!" and of "Shame!" into a habit. Not that they knew what the disturbance was about. The street was long and narrow, and the cries came some way from where they were sitting; but when cries of "Treason!" flew through the air these days, 'twas best to join in, lest those cries turned against one, and the next stage in the proceedings became the approach of an Agent of the Sûreté, the nearest prison, and the inevitable guillotine.

So every one cried "Shame!" and "Treason!" whilst those who had first dared to raise their voices against the popular demagogue drew together into a closer batch, trying no doubt to gather courage through one another's proximity. Eager, excited, a small compact group of two men—one a mere boy—and three women, it almost seemed as if they were suffering from some temporary hallucination. How else would five isolated persons—three of them in their first youth—have dared to brave a multitude?

In truth Bertrand Moncrif, face to face as he believed with martyrdom, was like one transfigured. Always endowed with good looks, he appeared like a veritable young prophet, haranguing the multitude and foretelling its doom. The gloom partly hid his figure, but his hand was outstretched, and the outline of an avenging finger pointing straight out before him, appeared in the weird light of the resin torch, as if carved in glowing lava. now and then the fitful light caught the sharp outline of his face—the straight nose and pointed chin, and brown hair matted with the sweat of enthusiasm.

Beside him Régine, motionless and white as a wraith, appeared alive only by her eyes, which were fixed on her beloved. In the hulking giant with the asthmatic cough she had recognized the man to whom she had ministered earlier in the day. Somehow, his presence here and now seemed to her sinister and threatening. It seemed as if all day he had been dogging her footsteps; first at the soothsayer's then he surely must have followed her down the street. then he had inspired her with pity; now his hideous face, his grimy hands, that croaking voice and churchyard cough, filled her with nameless terror.

He appeared to her excited fancy like a veritable spectre of death, hovering over Bertrand and over those she loved. With one arm she tried to press her brother Jacques closer to her breast, to quench his eagerness and solence his foolhardy tongue. But he, like a fierce, impatient young animal, fought to free himself from her loving embrace, shouted approval to Bertrand's oratory, played his part of the young propagandist, heedless of Régine's warnings and of his mother's tears. Next to Régine, her sister Joséphine—a girl not out of her 'teens, with all the eagerness and exaggeration of extreme youth, was shouting quite as loudly as her brother Jacques, clapping her small hands together, turning glowing, defying, arrogant eyes on the crowd of great unwashed whom she hoped to sway with her ardour and her eloquence.

"Shame on us all!" she cried with passionate vehemence. "Shame on us French women and French men that we should be the abject slaves of such a bloodthirsty tyrant!"

Her mother, pale-faced, delicate, had obviously long since given up all hope of controlling this unruly little crowd. She was too listless, too anemic, had no doubt suffered too much already, to be afraid for herself or for her children. She was past any thought or fear. Her wan face only expressed despair—despair that was absolutely final—and the resignation of silent self-immolation, content to suffer beside those she loved, only praying to be allowed to share their martyrdom, even though she had no part in their enthusiasm.

Bertrand, Joséphine and Jacques had all the ardour of martyrdom. Régine and her mother all its resignation.

§ 3

The Fraternal Supper threatened to end in a free fight, wherein the only salvation for the young fire-eaters would lie in a swift taking to their heels. And even then the chances would be hopelessly against them. Spies of the Convention, spies of the Committees, spies of Robespierre himself, swarmed all over the place. They were marked men and women, those five. It was useless to appear defiant and high-minded and patriotic. Even Danton had gone to the guillotine for less.

"Shame! Treason!"

The balmy air of mid-Apirl seemed to echo the sinister words. but Bertrand appeared unconscious of all danger. Nay! it almost seemed as if he courted it.

"Shame on you all!" he called out loudly, and his fresh, sonorous voice rang out above the tumult and the hoarse murmurings. "Shame on the people of France for bowing their necks to such monstrous tyranny. Citizens of Paris, think on it! Is not Liberty a mockery now? Do you call your bodies your own? They are but food for cannon at the bidding of the Convention. Your families? You are parted from those you love. Your wife? You are torn from her embrace. Your children? They are taken from you for the service of the State. And by whose orders? Tell me that! By whose orders, I say?"

He was lashing himself into a veritable fury of self-sacrifice, stood up beside the table and with a gesture even bade Joséphine and Jacques be still. As for Régine, she hardly was conscious that she lived, so acute, so poignant was her emotion, so gaunt and real the approach of death which threatened her beloved.

This of course was the end—this folly, this mad, senseless, useless folly! Already through the gloom she could see as in a horrible vision all those she cared for dragged before a tribunal that knew of no mercy; she could hear the death-carts rattling along the cobblestones, she could see the hideous arms of the guillotine, ready to receive this unique, this believed, this precious prey. She could feel Joséphine's arms clinging pitiably to her for courage; she could see Jacques' defiant young face, glorying in martyrdom; she could see maman, drooping like a faded flower, bereft of what was life to her—the nearness of her children. She could see Bertrand, turning with a dying look of love, not to her but to the beautiful Spaniard who had captured his fancy and then sold him without compunction to the spies of Robespierre and of her own party.

§ 4

But for the fact that this was a "Fraternal Supper," that people had come out here with their families, their young children, to eat and to make merry and to forget all their troubles as well as the pall of crime that hung over the entire city, I doubt not but what the young Hotspur and his crowd of rashlings would ere now have been torn from their eats, trampled under foot, at best been dragged to the nearest Commissary, as the asthmatic citizen Rateau had already threatened. Even as it was, the temper of many a paterfamilias was sorely tried by this insistence, with willful twisting of the tigers' tails. And the women were on the verge of reprisals. As for Rateau, he just seemed to gather his huge limbs together, uttered an impatient oath and an angry: "By all the cats and dogs that render this world hideous with their howls, I have had about enough of this screeching oratory." Then he threw one long leg over the bench on which he had been sitting, and in an instant was lost in the gloom, only to reappear in the dim light a few seconds later, this time on the farther side of the table, immediately behind the young rhetorician, his ugly, begrimed face with its grinning, toothless mouth and his broad, bent shoulders towering above the other's slender figure.

"Knock him down, citizen!" a young woman cried excitedly. "Hit him in the face! Silence his abominable tongue!"

But Bertrand was not to be silenced yet. No doubt the fever of notoriety, of martyrdom, had got into his blood. His youth, his good looks—obvious even in the fitful light and despite his tattered clothes—were an asset in his favour, no doubt; but a man-eating tiger is apt to be indiscriminate in his appetites and will devour a child with as much gusto as a gaffer; and this youthful firebrand was teasing the man-eating tiger with reckless insistence.

"By whose orders," he reiterated, with passionate vehemence, "by whose orders are we, free citizens of France, dragged into this abominable slavery? Is it by those of the Representatives of the People? No! Of the Committees chosen by the People? No! Of your Municipalities? your Clubs? your Sections? No! and again No! Your bodies, citizens, your freedom, your wives, your children, are all slaves, the property, the toys of one man—real tyrant and traitor, the oppressor of the weak, the enemy of the people; and that man is——"

Again he was interrupted, this time more forcibly. A terrific blow on the head deprived him of speech and of sight. His senses reeled, there was a mighty buzzing in his ears, which effectually drowned the cries of execration or of approval that greeted his tirade, as well as a new and deafening tumult which filled the whole narrow street with its weird and hideous sounds.

Whence the blow had come, Bertrand had no notion. It had all been so swift. He had expected to be torn limb from limb, to be dragged to the nearest Commissariat: he courted condemnation, envisaged the guillotine; 'stead of which, he was prosily knocked down by a bow which would have felled an ox.

Just for a second, his fast-fading perceptions struggled back into consciousness. He had a swift vision of a giant form towering over him, with grimy fist uplifted and toothless mouth grinning hideously, and of the crowd, rising from their seats, turning their backs upon him, waving their arms and caps frantically, and shouting, shouting, with vociferous lustiness. He also had an equally swift pang of remorse as the faces of his companions—of Régine and Mme. de Serval, of Joséphine and Jacques—whom he dragged with him into this mad and purposeless outburst, rose prophetically before him from out the gloom, with wide-eyed, scared faces and arms uplifted to ward off vengeful blows.

But the next moment these lightning-like visions faded into complete oblivion. He felt something hard and heavy hitting him in the back. All the lights, the faces, the outstretched hands, danced wildly before his eyes, and he sank like a log on the greasy pavement, dragging pewter plates, mugs and bottles down with him in his fall.

ONE CROWDED HOUR OF GLORIOUS LIFE

§ 1

AND all the while, the people were shouting:

"Le violà!"

"Robespierre!"

The Fraternal Supper was interrupted. Men and women pushed and jostled and screamed, the while a small, spare figure in dark cloth coat and immaculate breeches, with smooth brown hair and pale-ascetic face, stood for a moment under the lintel of a gaping porte-cochère. He had two friends with him; handsome, enthusiastic St. Just, the right hand and the spur of the bloodthirsty monster, own kinsman to Armand St. Just the renegade, whose sister was married to a rich English milor; and Couthon, delicate, half-paralysed, wheeled about in a chair, with one foot in the grave, whose devotion to the tyrant was partly made up of ambition, and wholly of genuine admiration.

At the uproarious cheering which greeted his appearance, Robespierre advanced into the open, whilst a sudden swift light of triumph darted from his narrow, pale eyes.

"And you still hesitate!" St. Just whispered excitedly in his ear. "Why, you hold the people absolutely in the hollow of your hand!"

"Have patience, friend!" Couthon remonstrated quietly. "Robespierre's hour is about to strike. To hasten it now, might be courting disaster."

Robespierre himself would, in the meanwhile, have been in serious danger through the exuberant welcome of his admirers. Their thoughtless crowding around his person would easily have given some lurking enemy or hot-headed, would-be martyr the chance of wielding an assassin's knife with success, but for the presence amongst the crowd of his "tappe-durs"—hid-hards—a magnificent bodyguard composed of picked giants from the mining districts of Eastern France, who rallied around the great man, and with their weighted sticks kept the enthusiastic crowd at bay.

He walked a few steps down the street, keeping close to the houses on his left; his two friends, St. Just and Couthon in his carrying chair, were immediately behind him, and between these three and the mob, the tappe-durs, striding two abreast, formed a solid phalanx.

Then, all of a sudden, the great man came to a halt, faced the crowd, and with an impressive gesture imposed silence and attention. His bodyguard cleared a space for him and he stood in the midst of them, with the light of a resin torch striking full upon his spare figure and bringing into bold relief that thin face so full of sinister expression, the cruel mouth and the coldly glittering eyes. He was looking straight across the table, on which the débris of Fraternal Suppers lay in unsavoury confusion.

On the other side of the table, Mme. de Serval with her three children sat, or rather crouched, closely huddled against one another. Joséphine was clinging to her mother, Jacques to Régine. Gone was the eagerness out of their attitude now, gone the enthusiasm that had reviled the bloodthirsty tyrant in the teeth of a threatening crowd. It seemed as if, with that terrific blow dealt by a giant hand to Bertrand who was their leader in this mad adventure, the awesome fear of death had descended upon their souls. The two young faces as well as that of Mme. de Serval appeared distorted and haggard, whilst Régine's eyes, dilated with terror, strove to meet Robespierre's steady gaze, which was charged with sinister mockery.

And for one short interval of time the crowd was silent; and the everlasting stars looked down from above on the doings of men. To these trembling, terrified young creatures, suddenly possessed with youth's passionate desire to live, with a passionate horror of death, these few seconds of tense silence must have seemed like an eternity of suffering. Then Robespierre's thin face lighted up in a portentous smile—a smile that caused those pale cheeks yonder to take on a still more ashen hue.

"And where is our eloquent orator of a while ago?" the great man asked quietly. "I heard my name, for I sat at my window looking with joy on the fraternization of the people of France. I caught sight of the speaker, and came down to hear more clearly what he had to say. But where is he?"

His pale eyes wandered slowly along the crowd; and such was the power exercised by the extraordinary man, so great the terror that he inspired, that every one there—men, women and children, workers and vagabonds—turned their eyes away, dared not meet his glance lest in it they read an accusation or a threat.

Indeed, no one dared to speak. The young rhetorician had disappeared, and every one trembled lest they should be implicated in his escape. He had evidently got away under cover of the confusion and the noise. But his companions were still there—four of them; the woman and the boy and the two girls, crouching like frightened beasts before the obvious fury, the certain vengeance of the people. The murmurs were ominous. "Death! Guillotine! Traitors!" were words easily distinguishable in the confused babbling of the sullen crowd.

Robespierre's cruel, appraising glance rested on those four pathetic forms, so helpless, so desperate, so terrified.

"Citizens," he said coldly, "did you not hear me ask where your eloquent companion is at this moment?"

Régine alone knew that he lay like a log under the table, close to her feet. She had seen him fall, struck by that awful blow from a brutal fist; but at the ominous query she instinctively pressed her trembling lips close together, whilst Joséphine and Jacques clung to her with the strength of despair.

"Do not parley with the rabble, citizen," St. Just whispered eagerly. "This is a grand moment for you. Let the people of their own accord condemn those who dared to defame you."

And even Couthon, the prudent, added sententiously:

"Such an opportunity may never occur again."

The people, in truth, were over-ready to take vengeance into their own hands.

"À la lanterne, les aristos!"

Gaunt, bedraggled forms leaned across the table, shook begrimed fists in the direction of the four crouching figures. With the blind instinct of trapped beasts, they retreated into the shadows step by step, as those threatening fists appeared to draw closer, clutching at the nearest table and dragging it with them, in an altogether futile attempt at a barricade.

"Holy Mother of God, protect us!" murmured Mme. de Serval from time to time.

Behind them there was nothing but the rows of houses, no means of escape even if their trembling knees had not refused them service; whilst vaguely, through their terror, they were conscious of the proximity of that awful asthmatic creature with the wheezy cough and the hideous, toothless mouth. At times he seemed so close that they shut their eyes, almost feeling his grimy hands around their throat, his huge, hairy arms dragging them down to death.

It all happened in the space of a very few minutes, far fewer even than it would take completely to visualize the picture. Robespierre, like an avenging wraith, theatrical yet impassive, standing in the light of a huge resin torch, which threw alternate lights and shadows, grotesque and weird, upon his meagre figure, now elongating the thin, straight nose, now widening the narrow mouth, misshaping the figure till it appeared like some fantastic ghoul-form from the nether world. Behind him, his two friends were lost in the gloom, as were now Mme. de Serval and her children. They were ensconced against a heavy porte-cochère, a rickety table alone standing between them and the mob, who were ready to drag them to the nearest lanthorn and immolate them before the eyes of their outraged idol.

"Leave the traitors alone!" Robespierre commanded. "Justice will deal with them as they deserve."

"À la lanterne!" the people—more especially the women—demanded insistently.

Robespierre turned to one of his "tappe-durs."

"Take the aristos to the nearest Commissariat," he said. "I'll have no bloodshed to mar our Fraternal Supper."

"The Commissariat, forsooth!" a raucous voice positively bellowed. "Who is going to stand between us and our vengeance? Robespierre has been outraged by this rabble. Let them perish in sight of all!"

How it all happened after that, none who were there could in truth have told you. The darkness, the flickering lights, the glow of the braziers, which made the inky blackness around more pronounced, made everything indistinguishable to ordinary human sight. Certain it is that citizen Rateau—who had constituted himself the spokesman of the mob—was at one time seen towering behind the four unfortunates, with his huge arms stretched out, his head thrown back, his mouth wide open, screaming abuse and vituperation, demanding the people's right to take the law into its own sovereign hands.

At that moment the light of the nearest resin torch threw his hulking person into bold relief against a heavy porte-cochère which was immediately behind him. The mob acclaimed him, cheered him to the echoes, agreed with him that summary justice in such a case was lone satisfying. The next instant a puff of wind blew the flame of the torch in a contrary direction, and darkness suddenly enveloped the ranting colossus and the cowering prey all ready to his hand.

"Rateau!" shouted some one.

"Hey, there! citizen Rateau! Where art thou?" came soon from every side.

No answer came from the spot where Rateau had last been seen, and it seemed as if just then a strong current of air had slammed a heavy door to somewhere in the gloom. Citizen Rateau had disappeared, and the four traitors along with him.

It took a few seconds of valuable time ere the mob suspected that it was being robbed of its prey. Then a huge upheaval occurred, a motion of the human mass densely packed in the Rue St. Honoré, that was not unlike the rush of water through a narrow gorge.

"Rateau!" People were yelling the name from end to end of the street.

§ 2

Superstition, which was rampant in these days of carnage and of crime, had possession of many a craven soul. Rateau had vanished. It seemed as if the Evil One, whose name had been so freely invoked during the course of the Fraternal Supper, had in very truth spirited Rateau away.

On the top of the tumult came a silence as complete as that of a graveyard at midnight. The "tappe-durs," who at their chief's command had been forging their way through the crowd, in order to reach the traitors, ceased their hoarse calls of "Make way there, in the name of the Convention!" whilst St. Just, who still stood close to his friend, literally saw the cry stifled on Robespierre's lips.

Robespierre himself had not altogether realized what had happened. In his innermost heart he had already yielded to his friends' suggestion, and was willing to let mob-law run its course. As St. Just had said: what a triumph for himself if his detractors were lynched by the mob! When Rateau towered above the four unfortunates, hurling vituperation above their heads, the tyrant smiled, well satisfied; and when the giant thus incontinently vanished, Robespierre for a moment or two remained complacent and content.

Then the whole crowd oscillated in the direction of the mysterious porte-cochère. Those who were in the front ranks threw themselves against the heavy panels, whilst those in the rear pushed with all their might. But the porte-cochères of old Paris are heavily constructed. Woodwork that had resisted the passage of centuries withheld the onslaught of a pack of half-starved caitiffs. But only for awhile.

The mob, fearing that it was getting foiled, broke into a howl of execration, and Robespierre, his face more drawn and grey than before, turned to his companions, trying to read their thoughts.

"If it should be——" St. Just murmured, yet dared not put his surmise into words.

Nor had he time to do so, or Robespierre the leisure to visualize his own fears. Already the massive oak panels were yielding to persistent efforts. The mighty woodwork began to crack under the pressure of this living battering ram; when suddenly the howls of those who were in the rear turned to a wild cry of delight. Those who were pushing against the porte-cochère paused in their task. All necks were suddenly craned upwards. The weird lights of torches and the glow of braziers glinted on gaunt necks and upturned chins, turned heads and faces into phantasmagoric, unearthly shapes.

Robespierre and his two companions instinctively looked up too. There, some few mètres lower down the street, on the third-floor balcony of a neighbouring house, the figure of Rateau had just appeared. The window immediately behind him was wide open and the room beyond was flooded with light, so that his huge person appeared distinctly silhouetted—a black and gargantuan mass—against the vivid and glowing background. His head was bare, his lank hair fluttered in the breeze, his huge chest was bare and his ragged shirt hung in tatters from his brawny arms. Flung across his left shoulder, he held an inanimate female form, whilst with his right hand he dragged another through the open window in his wake. Just below him, a huge brazier was shedding its crimson glow.

The sight of him—gaunt, weird, a veritable tower of protean revenge—paralyzed the most ebullient, silenced every clamour. For the space of two seconds only did he stand there, in full view of the crowd, in full view of the almighty tyrant whose defamation he had sworn to avenge. Then he cried in stentorian tones:

"Thus perish all conspirators against the liberty of the people, all traitors to its cause, by the hands of the people and for the glory of their chosen!"

And, with a mighty twist of his huge body, he picked up the inanimate form that lay lifeless at his feet. For a moment he held the two in his arms, high above the iron railing of the balcony; for a moment those two lifeless, shapeless forms hung in the darkness in mid-air, whilst an entire crowd of fanatics held their breath and waited, awed and palpitating, only to break out into frantic cheering as the giant hurled the two lifeless bodies down, straight into the glowing brazier.

"Two more to follow!" he shouted lustily.

There was pushing and jostling and cheering. Women screamed, men blasphemed and children cried. Shouts of "Vive Rateau!" mingled with those of "Vive Robespierre!" a circle was formed, hands holding hands, and a wild saraband danced around the glowing brazier. And this mad orgy of enthusiasm lasted for full three minutes, until the foremost among those who, awestruck and horrified, had approached the brazier in order to see the final agony of the abominable traitor, burst out with a prolonged "Malediction!"

Beyond that exclamation, they were speechless—pointed with trembling hands at the shapeless bundles on which the dull fire of the braziers had not yet obtained a purchase.

The bundles were shapeless indeed. Rags hastily tied together to represent human forms; but rags only! No female traitors, no aristos beneath! The people had been fooled, hideously fooled by a traitor all the more execrable, as he had seemed one of themselves.

"Malediction! Death to the traitor!"

Aye, death indeed! The giant, whoever he might be, would have to bear a charmed life if he were to escape the maddened fury of a foiled populace.

"Rateau!" they shouted hoarsely.

They looked up to that third-floor balcony which had so fascinated them awhile ago. But now the window was shut and no light from within chased the gloom that hung over the houses around.

"Rateau!" the people shouted.

But Rateau had disappeared. It all seemed like a dream, a nightmare. Had Rateau really existed, or was he a wraith, sent to tease and to scare those honest patriots who were out for liberty and for fraternity? Many there were who would have liked to hold on to that theory—men and women whose souls, warped and starved by the excesses and the miseries of the past five years, clung to any superstition, any so-called supernatural revelations, that failed to replace the old religion that had been banished from their hearts.

But in this case not even superstition could be allowed free play. Rateau had vanished, it is true. The house from whence he had thus mocked and flouted the people was searched through and through by a mob who found nothing but bare boards and naked walls, empty rooms and disused cupboards on which to wreak its fury.

But down there, lying on the top of the brazier, were those two bundles of rags slowly being consumed by the smouldering embers, silent proofs of the existence of that hulking creature whose size and power had, with that swiftness peculiar to human conceptions, already become legendary.

And in a third-floor room, a lamp that had recently been extinguished, a coil of rope, more rags, male and female clothes, a pair of boots, a battered hat, were mute witnesses to the swift passage of the mysterious giant with the wheezy cough—the trickster who had fooled a crowd and thrown the great Robespierre himself into ridicule.

TWO INTERLUDES

§ 1

TWO hours later the Rue St. Honoré had resumed its habitual graveyard-like stillness. The stillness had to come at last. Men in their wildest passions, in their most ebullient moods, must calm down sooner or later, if only temporarily. Blood aglow with enthusiasm, or rage, or idolatry, cannot retain its fever-pitch uninterruptedly for long. And so silence of that turbulent scene of awhile ago.

Here, as in other quarters of Paris, the fraternal suppers had come to an end; and perspiring matrons, dragging weary children at their skirts, wended their way homewards, whilst their men went to consummate the evening's entertainment at one of the numerous clubs or cabarets where the marvellous doings in the Rue St. Honoré could be comfortably lived over again or retailed to those, less fortunate, who had not been there to see.

In the early morning the "nettoyeurs publiques" would be coming along, to clear away the débris of the festivities and to gather up the tables and benches which were the property of the several Municipal sections, and put them away for the next occasion.

But these "nettoyeurs" were not here yet. They, too, were spending an hour or two in the nearest cabarets, discussing the startling events that had rendered notorious one corner of the Rue St. Honoré.

And so the streets were entirely deserted, save here and there for the swift passage of a furtive form, hugging the walls, with hands in pockets and a crimson cap pulled over the eyes, anxious only to escape the vigilance of the night-watchman, swift of foot and silent of tread; and anon, in the Rue St. Honoré itself, when even these nightbirds had ceased to flutter, the noiseless movement of a dark and mysterious form that stirred cautiously upon the greasy cobblestones. More silent, more furtive than any hunted beast creeping out of its lair, this mysterious form emerged from under one of the tables that was standing nearly opposite the house where Robespierre lived and close to the one where the superhuman colossus had wrought his magic trick.

It was Bertrand Moncrif. No longer a fiery Desmosthenes now, but a hunted, terror-filled human creature, whom a stunning blow from a giant fist had rendered senseless, even whilst it saved him from the consequences of his own folly. His senses still reeling, his limbs cramped and aching, he had lain stark and still under the table just where he had fallen, not sufficiently conscious to realize what was happening beyond his very limited range of vision or to marvel what was the ultimate fate of his companions.

His only instinct throughout this comatose condition was the blind one of self-preservation. Feeling rather than hearing the tumult around him, he had gathered his limbs close together, lain as still as a mouse, crouching within himself in the shelter of the table above. It was only when the silence around had lasted an eternity of time that he ventured out of his hiding-place. With utmost caution, hardly daring to breathe, he crept on hands and knees and looked about him, up and down the street. There was no one about. The night fortunately was moonless and dark; nature had put herself on the side of those who wished to pass unperceived.

Bertrand struggled to his feet, smothering a cry of pain. His head ached furiously, his knees shook under him; but he managed to crawl as far as the nearest house, and rested for awhile against its wall. The fresh air did him good. The April breeze blew across his burning forehead.

For a few minutes he remained thus, quite still, his eyes gradually regaining their power of vision. He recollected where he was and all that had happened. An icy shiver ran down his spine, for he also remembered Régine and Mme. de Serval and the two children. But he was still too much dazed, really only half conscious, to do more than vaguely marvel what had become of them.

He ventured to look fearfully up and down the street. Tables scattered pell-mell, the unsavoury remnants of fraternal suppers, a couple of smouldering braziers, collectively met his gaze. And at one point, sprawling across a table, with head lost between outstretched arms, a figure, apparently asleep, perhaps dead.

Bertrand, now nothing but a bundle of nerves, could hardly suppress a cry of terror. It seemed to him as if his life depended on whether that sprawling figure was alive or dead. But he dared not approach in order to make sure. For awhile he waited, sinking more and more deeply into the shadows, watching that motionless form on which his life depended.

The figure did not move, and gradually Bertrand nerved himself up to confidence and then to action. He buried his head in the folds of his coat-collar and his hands in the pockets of his breeches, and with silence, stealthy footsteps he started to make his way down the street. At first he looked back once or twice at the immobile figure sprawling across the table. It had not moved, still appeared as if it might be dead. Then Bertrand took to his heels and, no longer looking either behind him or to the right or left, with elbows pressed close to his side, he started to run in the direction of the Tuileries.

A minute later, the motionless figure came back to life, rose quickly and with swift, noiseless tread, started to run in the same direction.

§ 2

In the cabarets throughout the city, the chief topic of conversation was the mysterious events of the Rue St. Honoré. Those who had seen it all had marvellous tales to tell of the hero of the adventure.

"The man was eight or else nine feet high; his arms reached right across the street from house to house. Flames spurted out of his mouth when he coughed. He had horns on his head; cloven feet; a forked tail!"

These were but a few of the asserverations which rendered the person of the fictitious citizen Rateau a legendary one in the eyes of those who had witnessed his amazing prowess. Those who had not been thus favoured listened wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

But all agreed that the mysterious giant was in truth none other than the far-famed Englishman—that spook, that abominable trickster, that devil incarnate, known to the Committees as the Scarlet Pimpernel.

"But how could it be the Englishman?" was suddenly put forward by citizen Hottot, the picturesque landlord of the Cabaret de la Liberté, a well-known rendezvous close to the Carrousel. "How could it be the Englishman who played you that trick, seeing that you all say it was citizen Rateau who... The devil take it all!" he added, and scratched his bald head with savage vigour, which he always did whene'er he felt sorely perplexed. "A man can't be two at one and the same time; nor two men become one. Nor... Name of a name of a dog!" concluded the worthy citizen, puffing and blowing in the maze of his own puzzlement like an old walrus that is floundering in the water.

"It was the Englishman, I tell thee!" one of his customers asserted indignantly. "Ask anyone who saw him! Ask the tappe-durs! Ask Robespierre himself! He saw him, and turned as grey as—as putty, I tell thee! he concluded, with more conviction than eloquence.

"And I tell thee," broke in citizen Sical, the butcher—he with the bullet-head and bull-neck and a fist that could in truth have felled an ox; "I tell thee that it was citizen Rateau. Don't I know citizen Rateau?" he added, and brought that heavy fist of his down upon the upturned cask on which stood pewter mugs and bottles of eau de vie, and glared aggressively round upon the assembly. He had only one eye; the other presented a hideous appearance, scarred and blotched, the result of a terrible fatality in his early youth. The one eye leered with a glance of triumph as well as of a challenge, daring any less muscular person to impugn his veracity.

One man alone was bold enough to take up the challenge—a wizened little fellow, a printer by trade, with skin of the texture of grained oak and a few unruly curls that tumbled over one another above a highly polished forehead.

"And I tell thee, citizen Sical," he said with firm decision; "I tell thee and those who aver, as thou dost, that citizen Rateau had anything to do with those monkey-tricks, that ye lie. Yes!" he reiterated emphatically, and paying no heed to the glowering looks and blasphemies of Sical and his friends. "Yes, ye lie! Not consciously, I grant you; but you lie nevertheless. Because——" He paused and glanced around him, like a clever actor conscious of the effect which he produced. His tiny beady eyes blinked in the glare of the lamp before him.

"Because what?" came in an eager chorus from every side.

"Because," resumed the other sententiously, "all the while that ye were supping at the expense of the State in the open, and had your gizzards stirred by the juggling devices of some unknown mountebank, citizen Rateau was lying comfortably drunk and snoring lustily in the antechamber of Mother Théot, the soothsayer, right at the other end of Paris!"

"How do you know that, citizen Langlois?" queried the host with icy reproval, for butcher Sical was his best customer, and Sical did not like being contradicted. But little Langlois with the shiny forehead and tiny, beady, humorous eyes, continued unperturbed.

"Pardi!" he said gaily, "because I was at Mother Théot myself, and saw him there."

That certainly was a statement to stagger even the great Sical. It was received in complete silence. Every one promptly felt that the moment was propitious for another drink; nay! that the situation demanded it.

Sical, and those who had fought against the Scarlet Pimpernel theory, were too staggered to speak. They continued to imbibe citizen Hottot's eau de vie in sullen brooding. The idea of the legendary Englishman, which has so unexpectedly been strengthened by citizen Langlois' statement concerning Rateau, was repugnant to their common sense. Superstition was all very well for women and weaklings like Langlois; but for men to be asked to accept the theory that a kind of devil in human shape had so thrown dust in the eyes of a number of perfectly sober patriots that they literally could not believe what they saw, was nothing short of an insult.

And they had seen Rateau at the fraternal supper, had talking with him, until the moment when... Then who in Satan's name had they been talking with?

"Here, Langlois! Tell us-"

And Langlois, who had become the hero of the hour, told all he knew, and told it, we are told, a dozen times and more. How he had gone to Mother Théot's at about four o'clock in the afternoon, and had sat patiently waiting beside his friend Rateau, who wheezed and snored alternately for a couple of hours. How, at six o'clock or a little after, Rateau went out because—the aristo, forsooth!—had found the atmosphere filthy in Mother Théot's antechamber—no doubt he went to get another drink.

"At about half-past seven," the little printer went on glibly, "my turn came to speak with the old witch. When I came out it was long past eight o'clock and quite dark. I saw Rateau sprawling upon a bench, half asleep. I tried to speak with him, but he only grunted. However, I went out then to get a bit of supper at one of the open-air places, and at ten o'clock I was once more past Mother Théot's place. One or two people were coming out of the house. They were all grumbling because they had been told to go. Rateau was one who was for making a disturbance, but I took him by the arm. We went down the street together, and parted company in the Rue de l'Anier, where he lodges. And here I am!" concluded Langlois, and turned triumphantly to challenge the gaze of every one of the sceptics around him.

There was not a single doubtful point in his narrative, and though he was questioned—aye! and severely cross-questioned, too—he never once swerved from his narrative or in any manner did he contradict himself. Later on it transpired that there were others who had been in Mother Théot's antechamber that day. They too subsequently corroborated all that the little printer had said. One of them was the wife of Sical's own brother; and there were others. So, what would you?

"Name of a name of a dog, then, who was it when spirited the aristos away?"

THE BEAUTIFUL SPANIARD

§ 1

IN the Rue Villedot, which is in the Louvre quarter of Paris, there is a house, stone built and five-storied, with grey shutters to all the windows and balconies of wrought iron—a house exactly similar to hundreds and thousands of others in every quarter of Paris. During the day the small wicket in the huge porte-cochère is usually kept open; it allows a peep into a short dark passage, and beyond it to the lodge of the concierge. Beyond this again there is a courtyard, into which, from every one of its four sides, five rows of windows, all adorned with grey shutters, blink down like so many colourless eyes. The inevitable wrought-rion balconies extend along three sides of the quadrangle on every one of the five floors, and on the balustrade of these, pieces of carpet in various stages of decay are usually to be seen hanging out to air. From shutter to shutter clothes lines are stretched and support fantastic arrays of family linene that flap lazily in the sultry, vitiated air which alone finds its way down the shaft of the quadrangle.

On the left of the entrance passage and opposite the lodge of the concierge there is a tall glass door, and beyond it the vestibule and primary staircase, which gives access to the principal apartments—those that look out upon the street and are altogether more luxurious and more airy than those which give upon the courtyard. To the latter, two back stairways give access. They are at the far corners of the courtyard; both are pitch dark and reek of stuffiness and evil smells. The apartments which they serve, especially those on the lower floors, are dependent for light and air on what modicum of these gifts of heaven comes down the shaft into the quadrangle.

After dark, of course, porte-cochère and wicket are both closed, and if a belated lodger of visitor desires to enter the house, he must ring the bell and the concierge in his lodge will pull a communicating cord that will unlatch the wicket. It is up to the belated visitor or lodger to close the wicket after him, and he is bound by law to give his name, together with the number of the apartment to which he is going, in to the concierge as he goes past the lodge. The concierge, on the other hand, will take a look at him so that he may identify him should trouble or police inquiry arise.

On this night of April, somewhere near midnight, there was a ring at the outer door. Citizen Leblanc, the concierge, roused from his first sleep, pulled the communicating cord. A young man, hatless and in torn coat and muddy breeches, slipped in through the wicket and hurried past the lodge, giving only one name, but that in a clear voice, as he passed:

"Citoyenne Cabarrus."

The concierge turned over in his bed and grunted, half asleep. His duty clearly was to run after the visitor, who had failed to give his own name; but to begin with, the worthy concierge was very tired; and then the name which the belated caller had given was one requiring special consideration.

The citoyenne Cabarrus was young and well favoured, and even in these troublous days, youth and beauty demanded certain privileges which no patriotic concierge could refuse to grant. Moreover, the aforesaid lady had visitors at all hours of the day and late into the night—visitors for the most part with whom it was not well to interfere. Citizen Tallien, the popular Representative in the Convention was, as every one knew, her ardent adorer. 'Twas said by all and sundry that since the days when he met the fair Cabarrus in Bordeaux and she exercised such a mellowing influence upon his bloodthirsty patriotism, he had no thought save to win her regard.

But he was not the only one who came to the dreary old apartment in the Rue Villedot, with a view to worshipping at the Queen of Beauty's shrine. Citizen Leblanc had seen many a great Representative of the People pass by his lodge since the beautiful Theresia came to dwell here. And if he became very confidential and his interlocutor very insistent, he would throw out a hint that the greatest man in France to-day was not infrequent visitor in the house.

Obviously, therefore, it was best not to pry too closely into secrets, the keeping of which might prove uncomfortable for one's peace of mind. And citizen Leblanc, tossing restlessly in his sleep, dreamed of the fair Cabarrus and wished himself in the place of those who were privileged and pay their court to her.

§ 2

And so the belated visitor was able to make his way across the courtyard and up the dark back stairs unmolested. but even this reassuring fact failed to give him confidence. He hurried on with the swift and stealthy footstep which had become habitual to him, glancing over his shoulder from time to time, wide-eyed and with ears alert, and heart quivering with apprehension.

Up the dark and narrow staircase he hurried, dizzy and sick, his head reeling in the dank atmosphere, his shaking hands seeking the support of the walls as he climbed wearily up to the third floor. Here he almost measured his length upon the landing, tottered up again and came down sprawling on his knees against one of the doors—the one which had the number 22 painted upon it. For the moment it seemed as if he would once more fall into a swoon. Terror and relief were playing havoc with his whirling brain. He had not sufficient strength to stretch out an arm in order to ring the bell, but only beat feebly against the panel of the door with his moist palm.

A moment later the door was opened, and the unfortunate fell forward into the vestibule at the feet of a tall apparition clad in white and holding a small table lamp above her head. The apparition gave a little scream which was entirely human and wholly feminine, hastily put down the lamp on a small console close by, and by retreating forcefully farther into the vestibule, dragged the half-animate form of the young man along too; for he was now clinging to a handful of white skirt with the strength of despair.

"I am lost, Theresia!" he moan pitiably. "Hide me, for God's sake!... only for to-night!"

Theresia Cabarrus was frowning now, looked more perplexed than kindly, and certainly made no attempt to raise the crouching figure from the ground. Anon she called loudly: "Pepita!" and whilst waiting for an answer to this call, she remained quite still, and the frown of puzzlement on her face yielded to one of fear. The young man, obviously only half conscious, continued to moan and to implore.

"Silence, you fool!" she said peremptorily. "The door is still open. Anyone on the stairs could hear you. Pepita!" she called again, more harshly this time.

The next moment an old woman came from somewhere out of the darkness, threw up her hands at sight of that grovelling figure on the floor, and would no doubt have broken out in loud lament but that her young mistress ordered her at once to close the door.

"Then help the citoyen Moncrif to a sofa in my room," the beautiful Theresia went on peremptorily. "Give him a restorative and see above all to it that he hold his tongue!"

With a quick imperious jerk she freed herself from the convulsive grasp of the young man, and walking quickly across the small vestibule, she went through a door at the end of it that had been left ajar, leaving the unfortunate Moncrif to the ministrations of Pepita.

§ 3

Theresia Cabarrus, who had obtained a divorce from her husband, the Marquis de Fontenay (by virtue of a decree of the former Legislative Assembly, which allowed—nay, encouraged—the dissolution of a marriage with an emigré who refused to return to France). Theresia Cabarrus was, in this year 1794, in her twenty-fourth year, and perhaps in the zenith of her beauty and in the plenitude of that power which had subjugated so many men. In what that power consisted the historian has vainly tried to guess; for it was not her beauty only that brought so many to her feet. In the small oval face, the pointed chin, the full, sensuous lips, so typically Spanish, we look in vain for traces of that beauty which we are told surpassed that of other women of her time; whilst in the dark, velvety eyes, more tender than spiritual, and in the narrow arched brows, we fail to find an expression of the esprit which had moulded Tallien to her will and even brought Robespierre out of the shell of his asceticism—a willing victim to her wiles.

But who would be bold enough to analyse that subtle quality, acknowledged by all, possessed by a very few, which is vaguely denoted by the word "charm"? Theresia Cabarrus must have possessed it to a marvellous degree—that, and an utter callousness for the feelings of her victims, which would leave her mind cool and keen to pursue her own ends, whilst theirs was thrown into that maze of jealousy and of passion wherein prudence flies to the winds and the fever of self-immolation gets into the blood.

At this moment, in the sparsely furnished room of her dingy apartment, she looked like an angry goddess. Her figure, which undeniably was superb, was drawn to its full height, its splendid proportions accentuated by the clinging folds of her modish gown—a marvel of artistic scantiness, which only have concealed the perfectly modelled bust, and left the rounded thigh, in its skin-tight, flesh-coloured undergarment, unblushingly exposed. Her blue-black hair was dressed in the new fashion, copied from ancient Greece and snooded by a glittering antique fillet; and her small bare feet were encased in satin sandals. Truly a lovely woman, but for that air of cold displeasure coupled with fear, which marred the harmony of the dainty, child-like features.

After awhile Pepita came back.

"Well?" queried Theresia impatiently.

"Poor M. Bertrand is very ill," the old Spanish woman replied with unconcealed sympathy. "He has fever, the poor cabbage. Bed is the only place for him...."

"He cannot stay here, as thou well knowest, Pepita," the imperious beauty retorted drily. "Thy head and mine are in danger every moment that he spends under this roof."

"But thou couldst not turn a sick man out into the streets in the middle of the night."

"Why not?" Theresia riposted coldly. "It is a beautiful and balmy night. Why not?" she reiterated fretfully.

"Because he would die on thy doorstep," was old Pepita's muttered reply.

Theresia shrugged her shoulders.

"He dies if he goes," she said slowly, "and we die if he stays. Tell him to go, Pepita, ere citizen Tallien comes."

A shudder went through the old woman's spare frame.

"It is late," she protested. "Citizen Tallien will not come to-night."

"Not only he, Theresia rejoined coldly, "but—but—the other—— Thou knowest well, Pepita—those two arranged to meet here in my lodgings to-night."

"But not at this hour!"

"After the sitting of the Convention."

"It is nearly midnight. They'll not come," the old woman persisted obstinately.

"They arranged to meet here, to talk over certain matters which interest their party," citoyenne Cabarrus went on, equally firmly. "They'll not fail. So tell citizen Moncrif to go, Pepita. He endangers my life by staying here."

"Then do the dirty work thyself," the old woman muttered sullenly. "I'll not be a part to cold-blooded murder."

"Well, since citizen Moncrif's life is more valuable to thee than mine——" Theresia began, but got no father. The words died on her lips.

Bertrand Moncrif, very pale, still looking scared and wild, had quietly entered the room.

"You wish me to go, Theresia," he said simply. "You did not think surely that I would do anything that might endanger your safety. My God!" he added with passionate vehemence, "Do you not know that I would at any time lay down my life for yours?"

Theresia shrugged her statuesque shoulders.

"Of course, of course, Bertrand," she said a little impatiently, though obviously trying to be kind. "But I do entreat you not to go into heroics at this hour, and not to put on tragic airs. You must see that for yourself as well as for me it would be fatal if you were found here, and——"

"And I am going, Theresia," he broke in seriously. "I ought never to have come. I was a fool, as usual!" he added with bitterness. "But after that awful fracas I was dazed and hardly knew what I was doing."

The frown of vexation reappeared upon the woman's fair, smooth brow.

"The fracas?" she asked quickly. "What fracas?"

"In the Rue St. Honoré. I thought you knew."

"No. I know nothing," she retorted, and her voice was now trenchant and hard. "What happened?"

"They were deifying that brute Robespierre——"

"Silence!" she broke in harshly. "Name no names."

"And they were deifying a bloodthirsty tyrant, and I——"

"And you rose from your seat," she broke in again, and this time with a laugh that was cruel in its biting irony; "and lashed yourself into a fury of eloquent vituperation. Oh, I know! I know!" she went on excitedly. "You and your Fatalists, or whatever you call yourselves! And that rage for martyrdom!... Senseless, stupid, and selfish! Oh, my God! how selfish! And then you came here to drag me down with you into an abyss of misery, along with you to the guillotine... to..."

It seemed as if she were choking, and her small white hands, with a gruesome and pathetic gesture, went up to her neck, smoothed it and fondled it, as if to shield it from that awful fate.

Bertrand tried to pacify her. It was he who was the more calm of the two now. It seemed as if her danger had brought him back to full consciousness. He forgot his own danger, the threat of death which lay in wait for him, probably on the very threshold of this house. He was a marked man now; martyrdom had ceased to be a dream: it had become a grim reality. But of this he did not think. Theresia was in danger, compromised by his own callous selfishness. His mind was full of her; and Régine, the true and loyal friend, the beloved of past happier years, had no place in his thoughts beside the exquisite enchantress, whose very nearness was paradise.

"I am going," he said earnestly. "Theresia, my beloved, try to forgive me. I was a fool—a criminal fool! But lately—since I thought that you—you did not really care; that all my hopes of future happiness were naught but senseless dreams; since then I seem to have lost my head—I don't know what I am doing!... And so——"

He got no farther. Ashamed of his own weakness, he was too proud to let her see that she made him suffer. For the moment, he only bent the knee and kissed the hem of her diaphanous gown. He looked so handsome then, despite his bedraggled, woebegone appearance—so young, so ardent, that Theresia's egotistical heart was touched, as it had always been when the incense of his perfect love rose to her sophisticated nostrils. She put out her hand and brushed with a gentle, almost maternal, gesture the matted brown hair from his brow.

"Dear Bertrand," she murmured vaguely. "What a foolish boy to think that I do not care!"

Already he had been brought back to his senses. The imminence of her danger lent him the courage which he had been lacking, and unhesitatingly now he jumped to his feet and turned to go. But she, quick in the transition of her moods, had already seized him by the arm.

"No, no!" she murmured in a hoarse whisper. "Don't go just yet... not before Pepita has seen if the stairs are clear."

Her small hand held him as in a vice, whilst Pepita, obedient and silent, was shuffling across the vestibule in order toe execute her mistress's commands. But, even so, Bertrand struggled to get away. An epitome of their whole life, this struggle between them!—he trying to free himself from those insidious bonds that held him one moment and loosed him the next; that numbed him to all that he was wont to hold sacred and dear—his love for Régine, his loyalty, his honour. An epitome of her character and his: he, weak and yielding, every a ready martyr thirsting for self-immolation; and she, just a bundle of feminine caprice, swayed by sentiment one moment and by considerations of ambition or of personal safety the next.

"You must wait, Bertrand," she urged insistently. "Citizen Tallien may be on the stairs—he or—or the other. If they saw you!... My God!"

"They would conclude that you had turned me out of doors," he riposted simply. "Which would, in effect, be the truth. I entreat you to let me go!" he added earnestly. "'Twere better they met me on the stairs than in here."

The old woman's footsteps were heard hurrying back. Bertrand struggled to free himself—did in truth succeed; and Theresia smothered a desperate cry of warning as he strode rapidly through the door and across the vestibule only to be met here by Pepita, who pushed him with all her might incontinently back.

Theresia held her tiny handkerchief to her mouth to deaden the scream that forced itself to her lips. She had followed Bertrand out of the salon, and now stood in the doorway, a living statue of fear.

"Citizen Tallien," Pepita had murmured hurriedly. "He is on the landing. Come this way."

She dragged Bertrand by the arm, not waiting for orders from her mistress this time, along a narrow dark passage, which at its extreme end gave access to a tiny kitchen. Into this she pushed him and locked the door upon him.

"Name of a name!" she muttered as she shuffled back to the vestibule. "If they should find him here!"

Citoyenne Cabarrus had not moved. Her eyes, dilated with terror, mutely questioned the old woman as the latter made ready to admit the visitor. Pepita gave reply as best she could, by silent gestures, indicating the passage and the action of turning a key in the lock. Her wrinkled old lips hardly stirred, and then only in order to murmur quickly and with a sudden assumption of authority:

"Self-possession, my cabbage, or you'll endanger yourself and us all!"

Theresia pulled herself together. Obviously the old woman's warning was not to be ignored, nor had it been given a moment too soon. Outside, the visitor had renewed his impatient rat-tat against the door. The eyes of mistress and maid met for one brief second. Theresia was rapidly regaining her presence of mind; whereupon Pepita smoothed out her apron, readjusted her cap, and went to open the door, even whilst Theresia said in a firm voice, loudly enough for the new visitor to hear:

"One of my guests, at last! Open quickly, Pepita!"

A HIDEOUS, FEARFUL HOUR

§ 1

AYOUNG man—tall, spare, with sallow skin and shifty, restless eyes—pushed unceremoniously past the old servant, threw his hat and cane down on the nearest chair, and hurrying across the vestibule, entered the salon where the beautiful Spaniard, a picture of serene indifference, sat ready to receive him.

She had chosen for the setting of this scene a small settee covered in old rose brocade. On this she half sat, half reclined, with an open book in her hand, her elbow resting on the frame of the settee, her cheek leaning against her hand. Immediately behind her, the light from an oil lamp tempered by a shade of rose-coloured silk, outlined with a brilliant, glowing pencil the contour of her small head, one exquisite shoulder, and the mass of her raven hair, whilst it accentuated the cool half-tones of her diaphanous gown, on the round bare arms and bust, the tiny sandalled feet and cross-gartered legs.

A picture in truth to dazzle the eyes of any man! Tallien should have been at her feet in an instant. The fact that he paused in the doorway bore witness to the unruly thoughts that ran riot in his brain.

"Ah, citizen Tallien!" the fair Theresia exclaimed with a perfect assumption of sang-froid. "You are the first to arrive, and are indeed welcome; for I was nearly swooning with ennui. Well!" she added, with a provocative smile, and extended a gracious arm in his direction. "Are you not going to kiss my hand?"

"I heard a voice," was all the response which he gave to this seductive invitation. "A man's voice. Who was it?"

She raised a pair of delicately pencilled eyebrows. her eyes became as round and as innocent-looking as a child's.

"A man's voice?" she riposted with a perfect air of astonishment. "You are crazy, mon ami; or else are crediting my faithful Pepita with a virile bass, which in truth she doth not possess!"

"Whose voice was it?" Tallien reiterated, making an effort to speak calmly, even though he was manifestly shaking with choler.

Whereupon the fair Theresia, no longer gracious or arch, looked him up and down as if he were no better than a lacquey.

"Ah, ça!" she rejoined coldly. "Are you perchance trying to cross-question me? By what right, I pray you, citizen Tallien, do you assume this hectoring tone in my presence? I am not yet your wife, remember; and 'tis not you, I image, who are the dictator of France."

"Do not tease me, Theresia!" the man interposed hoarsely. "Bertrand Moncrif is here."

For the space of a second, or perhaps less, Theresia gave no reply to the taunt. Her quick, alert brain had already faced possibilities, and she was far too clever a woman to take the risks which a complete evasion of the truth would have entailed at this moment. She did not, in effect, know whether Tallien was speaking from positive information given to him by spies, or merely from conjecture born of jealousy. Moreover, another would be here presently—another, whose spies were credited with omniscience, and whom she might not succeed in dominating with a smile or a frown, as she could the love-sick Tallien. Therefore, after that one brief instant's reflection she decided to temporize, to shelter behind a half-truth, and replied, with a quick glance from under her long lashes:

"I am not teasing you, citizen. Bertrand came here for shelter awhile ago."

Tallien drew a quick sigh of satisfaction, and she went on carelessly:

"But, obviously, I could not keep him here. He seemed hurt and frightened.... He has been gone this past half-hour."

For a moment it seemed as if the man, in face of this obvious lie, would flare out into a hot retort; but Theresia's luminous eyes subdued him, and before the cool contempt expressed by those exquisite lips, he felt all his blustering courage oozing away.

"The man is an abominable and an avowed traitor," he said sullenly. "Only two hours ago——"

"I know," she broke in coldly. "He vilified Robespierre. A dangerous thing to do. Bertrand was ever a fool, and he lost his head."

"He will lose it more effectually to-morrow," Tallien retorted grimly.

"You mean that you would denounce him?"

"That I will denounce him. I would have done so to-night, before coming here, only—only——"

"Only what?"

"I was afraid he might be here."

Theresia broke into a ringing if somewhat artificial peal of laughter.

"I must thank you, citizen, for this consideration of my feelings. It was, in truth, thoughtful of you to think of sparing me a scandal. But, since Bertrand is not here——"

"I know where he lodges. He'll not escape, citoyenne. My word on it!"

Tallien spoke very quietly, but with that concentrated fury of which a fiercely jealous man is ever capable. He had remained standing in the doorway all this while, his eyes fixed on the beautiful woman before him, but his attention feverishly divided between her and what might be going on in the vestibule behind him.

In answer to his last threatening words, the lovely Theresia rejoined, more seriously:

"So as to make sure I do not escape either!" And a flash of withering anger shot from her dark eyes on the unromantic figure of her adorer. "Or you, mon ami! You are determined that Mme Roland's fate shall overtake me, eh? And no doubt you will be thrilled to the marrow when you see my head fall into your precious salad-bowl. Will yours follow mine, think you? Or will you prefer to emulate citizen Roland's more romantic ending?"

Even while she spoke, Tallien had been unable to repress a shudder.

"Theresia, in heaven's name——!" he murmured.

"Bah, mon ami! There is no longer a heaven these days. You and your party have carefully abolished the Hereafter. So, after you and I have taken our walk up the steps of the scaffold——"

"Theresia!"

"Eh, what?" she went on coolly. "Is that not perchance what you have in contemplation? Moncrif, you say, is an avowed traitor. Has openly vilified and insulted your demi-god. He has been seen coming to my apartments. Good! I tell you that he is no longer here. But let that pass. He is denounced. Good! Sent to the guillotine. Good again! And Theresia Cabarrus in whose house he tried to seek refuge, much against her will, goes to the guillotine in his company. The prospect may please you, mon ami, because for the moment you are suffering from a senseless attack of jealousy. But I confess that it does not appeal to me."

The man was silent now; awed against his will. His curiously restless eyes swept over the graceful apparition before him. Insane jealousy was fighting a grim fight in his heart with terror for his beloved. Her argument was a sound one. Even he was bound to admit that. Powerful though he was in the Convention, his influence was as nothing compared with that of Robespierre. And he knew his redoubtable colleague well enough that an insult such as Moncrif had put upon in the Rue St. Honoré this night would never be forgiven, neither in the young hot-head himself nor in any of his friends, adherents, or mere pitying sympathizers.

Theresia Cabarrus was clever enough and quick enough to see that she had gained one point.

"Come and kiss my hand," she said, with a little sight of satisfaction.

This time the man obeyed, without an instant's hesitation. Already he was down on his knees, repentant and humiliated. She gave him her small, sandalled foot to kiss. After that, Tallien became abject.

"You know that I would die for you, Theresia!" he murmured passionately.

This was the second time to-night that such an assertion had been made in this room. And both had been made in deadly earnest, whilst the fair listener had remained equally indifferent to both. And for the second time to-night, Theresia passed her cool white hand over the bent head of an ardent worshipper, whilst her lips murmured vaguely:

"Foolish! Oh, how foolish! Why do men torture themselves, I wonder, with senseless jealousy?"

Instinctively she turned her small head in the direction of the passage and the little kitchen, where Bertrand Moncrif had found temporary and precarious shelter. Self-pity and a kind of fierce helplessness not untinged with remorse made her eyes appear resentful and hard.

There, in the stuffy little kitchen at the end of the dark, dank passage, love in its pure sense, happiness, brief perhaps but unalloyed, and certainly obscure, lay in wait for her. Here, at her feet, was security in the present turmoil, power, and a fitting background for her beauty and her talents. She did not want to lose Bertrand; indeed, she did not intend to lose him. She sighed a little regretfully as she thought of his good looks, his enthusiasm, his selfless ardour. Then she looked down once more on the narrow shoulders, the lank, colourless hair, the bony hands of the erstwhile lawyer's clerk to whom she had already promised marriage, and she shuddered a little when she remembered that those same hands into which she had promised to place her own and which now grasped hers in passionate adoration had, of a certainty, signed the order for those execrable massacres which had for ever sullied the early days of the Revolution. For a moment—a brief one, in truth—she marvelled if union with such a man was not too heavy a price to pay for immunity and for power.

But the hesitancy only lasted a few seconds. The next, she had thrown back her head as if in defiance of the whisperings of conscience and of heart. She need not lose her youthful lover at all. He was satisfied with so little! A few kind words here, an occasional kiss, a promise or two, and he would always remain her willing slave.

It were foolish indeed, and far, far too late, to give way to sentiment at this hour, when Tallien's influence in the Convention was second only to that of Robespierre, whilst Bertrand Moncrif was a fugitive, a suspect, a poor miserable fanatic, whose hot-headedness was for ever landing him from one dangerous situation into another.

So, after indulging in the faintest little sigh of yearning for the might-have-been, she met her latest adorer's worshipping glance with coquettish air of womanly submission, which completed his subjugation, and said lightly:

"And now give me my orders for to-night, mon ami."

She settled herself down more comfortably upon the settee, and graciously allowed him to sit on a low chair beside her.

§ 2

The turbulent little incident was closed. Theresia had her way, and poor, harassed Tallien succeeded in shutting away in the innermost recesses of his heart the pangs of jealousy which still tortured him. His goddess was now all smiles, and the subtle flattery implied by her preference for him above his many rivals warmed his atrophied heart and soothed his boundless vanity.

We must accept the verdict of history that Theresia Cabarrus never loved Tallien. In truth appears to be that what love she was capable of had undoubtedly been given to Bertrand Moncrif, whom she would not entirely dismiss from his allegiance, even though she had at last been driven into promising marriage to the powerful Terrorist.

It is doubtful if, despite that half-hearted and wholly selfish love for the young royalist, she had ever intended that he should be more to her than a slavish worshipper, a friend on whom she could count for perpetual adoration or mere sentimental dalliance; but a husband—never! Certain it is that even Tallien, influential as he was, was only a pis-aller. The lovely Spaniard, we make no doubt, would have preferred Robespierre as a future husband, or, failing him, Louise-Antoine St. Just. but the latter was deeply enamoured of another woman; and Robespierre was too cautious, too ambitious, to allow himself to be enmeshed.

So she fell back on Tallien.

§ 3

"Give me my orders for tonight," the lovely woman had said to her future lord. And he—a bundle of vanity and egoism—was flattered and soothed by this submission, though he knew in his heart of hearts that it was only pretence.

"You will help me, Theresia?" he pleaded.

She nodded, and asked coldly: "How?"

"You know that Robespierre suspects me," he went on, and instinctively, at the mere breathing of that awe-inspiring name his voice sank to a murmur. "Ever since I came back from Bordeaux."

"I know. Your leniency there is attributed to me."

"It was your influence, Theresia——" he began.

"That turned you," she broke in coldly, "from a bloodstained beast into a right-minded justiciary. Do you regret it?"

"No, no!" he protested; "since it gained me your love."

"Could I love a beast of prey?" she retorted. "But if you do not regret, you are certainly afraid."

"And he had sent me to Bordeaux to punish, not to pardon."

"Then you are afraid!" she insisted. "Has anything happened?"

"No; only his usual hints—his vague threats. You know them."

She nodded.

"The same," he went on somberly, "that he used ere he struck Danton."

"Danton was hot-headed. He was too proud to appeal to the populace who idolized him."

"And I have no popularity to which I can appeal. If Robespierre strikes at me in the Convention, I am doomed——"

"Unless you strike first."

"I have no following. We none of us have. Robespierre sways the Convention with one word."

"You mean," she broke in more vehemently, "that you are all cringing cowards—the abject slaves of one man. Two hundred of you are longing for this era of bloodshed to cease; two hundred would stay the pitiless work of the guillotine—and not one is plucky enough to cry, "Halt! It is enough!'"

"The first man who cries 'Halt!' is called a traitor," Tallien retorted gloomily. "And the guillotine will not rest until Robespierre himself had said, 'It is enough!'"

"He alone knows what he wants. He alone fears no one," she exclaimed, almost involuntarily giving grudging admiration where in truth she felt naught but loathing.

"I would not fear either, Theresia," he protested, and there was a note of tender reproach in his voice, "if it were not for you."

"I know that, mon ami," she rejoined with an impatient little sight. "Well, what do you want me to do?"

He leaned forward in his chair, closer to her, and did not mark—poor fool!—that, as he drew near, she recoiled ever so slightly from him.

"There are two things," he said insinuatingly, "which you could do, Theresia, either of which would place Robespierre under such lasting obligation to you that he would admit us into the inner circle of his friends, trust us and confide in us as he does in St. Just or Couthon."

"Trust you, you mean. He never would trust a woman."

"It means the same thing—security for us both."

"Well?" she rejoined. "What are these two things?"

He paused a moment, appeared to hesitate; then said resolutely:

"Firstly, there is Bertrand Moncrif... and his Fatalists——"

Her face hardened. She shook her head.

"I warned Robespierre about to-night," she said. "I knew that a lot of young fools meant to cause a fracas in the Rue St. Honoré. But the whole thing has been a failure, and Robespierre has no use for failures."

"It need not be a failure—even yet."

"What do you mean?"

"Robespierre will be here directly," he urged, in a whisper rendered hoarse with excitement. "Bertrand Moncrif is here—— Why not deliver the young traitor, and earn Robespierre's gratitude?"

"Oh!" she broke in indignant protest. Then, as she caught the look of jealous anger which at her obvious agitation suddenly flared up in his narrow eyes again, she went on with a careless shrug of her statuesque shoulders: "Bertrand is not here, as I told you, my friend. So these means of serving your cause are out of my reach."

"Theresia," he urged, "by deceiving me——"

"By tantalizing me," she broke in harshly, "you do yourself no good. Let us understand one another, my friend," she went on more gently. "You wish me to serve you by serving the dictator of France. And I tell you you'll not gain your ends by taunting me."

"Theresia, we must make friends with Robespierre! He has the power; he rules over France. Whilst I——"

"Ah!" she retorted with vehemence. "That is where you and your weak-kneed friends are wrong! You say that Robespierre rules France. 'Tis not true. It is not Robespierre, the man, who rules; it is his name! The name of Robespierre has become a fetish, an idolatry. Before it every head is bent and every courage cowed. It rules by the fear which it evokes and by the slavery which it compels under the perpetual threat of death. Believe me," she insisted, "'tis not Robespierre who rules, but the guillotine which he wields! And we are all of us helpless—you and I and your friends. And all the others who long to see the end of this era of bloodshed and of revenge, we have got to do as he tells us—pile up crime upon crime, massacre upon massacre, and bear the odium of it all, while he stands aloof in darkness and in solitude, the brain that guides, whilst you and your party are only the hands that strike. Oh! the humiliation of it! And if you were but men, all of you, instead of puppets——"

"Hush, Theresia, in heaven's name!" Tallien broke in peremptorily at last. He had vainly tried to pacify her while she poured forth the vials of her resentment and her contempt. But now his ears, attuned to sensitiveness by an ever-present danger, had caught a sound which proceeded from the vestibule—a sound which made him shudder—a footstep—the opening of a door—a voice. "Hush!" he entreated. "Every dumb wall has ears, these days!"

She broke into a harsh, excited little laugh.

"You are right, my friend," she said under her breath. "What do I care, after all? What do any of us care now, so long as our necks are fairly safe upon our shoulders? But I'll not sell Bertrand," she added firmly. "If I did it I should despise myself too much and hate you worse. So tell me quickly what else I can do to propitiate the ogre!"

"He'll tell you himself," Tallien murmured hurriedly, as the sounds in the vestibule became more loud and distinctive. "Here they are! And, in heaven's name, Theresia, remember that our lives are at that one man's mercy!"

THE GRIM IDOL THAT THE WORLD ADORES

§ 1

THERESIA, being a woman, was necessarily the more accomplished actor. While Tallien retired into a gloomy corner of the room, vainly trying to conceal his agitation, she rose quite serene in order to greet her visitors.

Pepita had just admitted into her mistress's apartments a singular group, composed of two able-bodied men supporting a palsied one. One of the former was St. Just, one of the most romantic figures of the Revolutionary period, the confidant and intimate friend of Robespierre and own cousin to Armand St. Just and to the beautiful Marguerite, who had married the fastidious English milord, Sir Percy Blakeney. The other was Chauvelin, at one time one of the most influential members of the Committee of Public Safety, now little more than a hanger-on of Robespierre's party. A man of no account, to whom not even Tallien and his colleagues thought it worth while to pay their court. The palsied man was Couthon, despite his crimes an almost pathetic figure in his helplessness, after his friends had deposited him in an armchair and wrapped a rug around his knees. The carrying chair in which he spent the greater part of his life had been left down below in the concierge's lodge, and St. Just and Chauvelin had carried him up the three flights of stairs to citoyenne Cabarrus's apartment.

Close behind these three men came Robespierre.

Heavens! if a thunderbolt had fallen from the skies on that night of the 26th of April, 1794, and destroyed house No. 22 in the Rue Villedot, with all those who were in it, what a torrent of blood would have been stemmed, what horrors averted, what misery forefended!

But nothing untoward happened. The four men who sat that night and well into the small hours of the morning in the dingy apartment, occupied for the present by the beautiful Cabarrus, were allowed by inscrutable Providence to discuss their nefarious designs unchecked.

In truth, there was no discussion. One man dominated the small assembly, even though he sat for the most part silent and apparently self-absorbed, wrapped in that taciturnity and even occasional somnolence which seemed to have become a pose with him of late. He sat on a high chair, prim and upright. Immaculately dressed in blue cloth coat and white breeches, with clean linen at throat and wrist, his hair neatly tied back with a black silk bow, his nails polished, his shoes free from mud, he presented a marked contrast to the ill-conditioned appearance of those other products of revolutionary ideals.

St. Just, on the other hand—young, handsome, a brilliant talker and convinced enthusiast—was only too willing to air his compelling eloquence, was in effect the mouthpiece of the great man as he was his confidant and his right hand. He had acquired in the camps which he so frequently visited a breezy, dictatorial manner that pleased his friends and irritated Tallien and his clique, more especially when sententious phrases fell from his lips which were obviously the echo of some of Robespierre's former speeches in the Convention.

Then there was Couthon, sarcastic and contemptuous, delighting to tease Tallien and to affect a truculent manner, which brought abject flattery from the other's lips.

St. just the fiery young demagogue, and Couthon the half-paralysed enthusiast, were known to be pushing their leader toward the proclamation of a triumvirate, with Robespierre as chief dictator and themselves as his two hands; and it amused the helpless cripple to see just how far the obsequiousness to Tallien and his colleagues would go in subscribing to so monstrous a project.

As for Chauvelin, he said very little, and the deference wherewith he listened to the others, the occasional unctuous words which he let fall, bore testimony to the humiliating subservience to which he had sunk.

And the beautiful Theresia, presiding over the small assembly like a goddess who listens to the prattle of men, sat for the most part quite still, on the one dainty piece of furniture of which her dingy apartment boasted. She was careful to sit so that the rosy glow of the lamp fell on her in the direction most becoming to her attitude. From time to time she threw in a word; but all the while her whole attention was concentrated on what was said. At her future husband's fulsome words of flattery, at his obvious cowardice before the popular idol and his cringing abjectness, a faint smile of contempt would now and then force itself up to her lips. But she neither reproved nor encouraged him. And when Robespierre appeared to be flattered by Tallien's obsequiousness she even gave a little sigh of satisfaction.

§ 2

St. Just, now as always the mouthpiece of his friend, was the first to give a serious turn to the conversation. Compliments, flatteries, had gone their round; platitudes, grandiloquent phrases on the subject of country, intellectual revolution, liberty, purity, and so on, had been spouted with varying eloquence. The fraternal suppers had been alluded to with servile eulogy of the giant brain who had conceived the project.

Then it was that St. Just broke into a euphemistic account of the disorderly scene in the Rue St. Honoré.

Theresia Cabarrus, roused from her queen-like indifference, at once became interested.

"The young traitor!" she exclaimed, with a great show of indignation. "Who was he? What was he like?"

Couthon gave quite a minute description of Bertrand, and accurate one, too. He had faced the blasphemer—thus was he called by this compact group of devotees and sycophants—for fully five minutes, and despite the flickering and deceptive light, had studied his features, distorted by fury and hate, and was quite sure that he would know them again.

Theresia listened eagerly, caught every inflection of the voices as they discussed the strange events that followed. The keenest observer there could not have detected the slightest agitation in her large, velvety eyes—not even when the met Robespierre's coldly inquiring gaze. No one—not even Tallien—could have guessed what an effort it cost her to appear unconcerned, when all the while she was straining every sense in the direction of the small kitchen at the end of the passage, where the much-discussed Bertrand was still lying concealed.

However, the certainty that Robespierre's spies and those of the Committees had apparently lost complete track of Moncrif, did much to restore her assurance, and her gaiety became after awhile somewhat more real.

At one time she turned boldly to Tallien.

"You were there, too, citizen," she said provokingly. "Did you not recognise any of the traitors?"

Tallien stammered out an evasive answer, implored her with a look not to taunt him and not to play like a thoughtless child within sight and hearing of a man-eating tiger.

Thereisa's dalliance with the young and handsome Bertrand must in truth be known to Robespierre's army of spies, and he—Tallien—was not altogether convinced that the fair Spaniard, despite her assurances to the contrary, was not harbouring Moncrif in her apartment even now.

Therefore he would not meet her tantalizing glance; and she, delighted to tease, threw herself with greater zest than before into the discussion, amused to see sober Tallien, whom in her innermost heart she despised, enduring tortures of apprehension.

"Ah!" she exclaimed, apparently enraptured by St. Just's glowing account of the occurrence, "what would I not give to have seen it all! In truth, we do not often get such thrilling incidents every day in this dull and dreary Paris. The death-carts with their load of simpering aristos have ceased to entertain us. But the drama in the Rue St. Honoré! à la bonne heure! What a palpitating scene!"

"Especially," added Couthon, "the spiriting away of the company of traitors through the agency of that mysterious giant, who some aver was just a coal-heaver named Rateau, well known to half the night-birds of the city as an asthmatic reprobate; whilst others vow that he was——"

"Name him not, friend Couthon," St. Just broke in with a sarcastic chuckle. "I pray thee, spare the feelings of citizen Chauvelin." And his bold, provoking eyes shot a glance of cool irony on the unfortunate victim of his taunt.

Chauvelin made no retort, pressed his thin lips more tightly together as if to smother any incipient expression of the resentment which he felt. Instinctively his glance sought those of Robespierre, who sat by, still apparently disinterested and impassive, with head bent and arms cross over his narrow chest.

"Ah, yes!" here interposed Tallien unctuously. "Citizen Chauvelin has had one or two opportunities of measuring his prowess against that of the mysterious Englishman; but we are told that, despite his talents, he has met with no success in that direction."

"Do not tease our modest friend Chauvelin, I pray you, citizen," Theresia broke in gaily. "The Scarlet Pimpernel—that is the name of the mysterious Englishman, is it not?—is far more elusive and a thousand times more resourceful and daring than any mere man can possibly conceive. 'Tis woman's wits that will bring him to his knees one day. You can take my word for that!"

"Your wits, citoyenne?"

Robespierre had spoken. It was the first time, since the discussion had turned on the present subject, that he had opened his lips. All eyes were at once reverentially turned to him. His own, cold and sarcastic, were fixed upon Theresia Cabarrus.

She returned his glance with provoking coolness, shrugged her splendid shoulders, and retorted airily:

"Oh, you want a woman with some talent as a sleuthhound—a female counterpart of citizen Chauvelin. I have no genius in that direction."

"Why not?" Robespierre went on drily. "You, fair citoyenne, would be well qualified to deal with the Scarlet Pimpernel, seeing that your adorer, Bertrand Moncrif, appears to be a protégé of the mysterious League."

At this taunt, uttered by the dictator with deliberate emphasis, like one who knows what he is talking about, Tallien gave a gasp and his sallow cheeks became the colour of lead. But Theresia placed her cool, reassuring hand upon his.

"Bertrand Moncrif," she said serenely, "is no adorer of mine. He foreswore his allegiance to me on the day that I plighted my troth to citizen Tallien."

"That is as may be," Robespierre retorted coldly. "But he certainly was the leader of the gang of traitors whom that meddlesome English rabble chose to snatch away to-night from the vengeance of a justly incensed populace."

"How do you know that, citizen Robespierre?" Theresia asked. She was still maintaining an outwardly calm attitude; her voice was apparently quite steady, her glance absolutely serene. Only Tallien's keen perceptions were able to note the almost wax-like pallor which had spread over her cheeks and the strained, high-pitched tone of her usually mellow voice. "Why do you suppose, citizen," she insisted, "that Bertrand Moncrif had anything to do with the fracas to-night? Methought he had emigrated to England—or somewhere," she added airily, "after—after I gave him his definite congé."

"Did you think that, citoyenne?" Robespierre rejoined with a wry smile. "Then let me tell you that you are under a misapprehension. Moncrif, the traitor, was the leader of the gang that tried to rouse the people against me to-night. You ask me how I know it?" he added icily. "Well, I saw him—that is all!"

"Ah!" exclaimed Theresia, in well-played mild astonishment. "You say Bertrand Moncrif, citizen? He is in Paris, then?"

"Seemingly."

"Strange, he never came to see me!"

"Strange, indeed!"

"What does he look like? Some people have told me that he is getting fat."

The discussion had now resolved itself into a duel between these two: the ruthless dictator, sure of his power, and the beautiful woman, conscious of hers. The atmosphere of the drabbily furnished room had became electrical. Every one felt it. Every man instinctively held his breath, conscious of the quickening of his pulses, of the accelerated beating of his heart.

Both the duellists appeared perfectly calm. Of the two, in truth, Robespierre appeared the most moved. His staccato voice, the drumming of his pointed fingers upon the arms of his chair, suggested that the banter of the beautiful Theresia was getting on his nerves. It was like the lashing of a puma's tail, the irritation of a tempter unaccustomed to being provoked. and Theresia was clever enough—above all, woman enough—to note that, since the dictator was moved, he could not be perfectly sure of his ground. He would not display this secret irritation if by a word he could confound his beautiful adversary, and openly threaten where now he only insinuated.

"He saw Bertrand in the Rue St. Honoré," was the sum total of her quick reasoning; "but does not know that he is here. I wonder what it is he does want!" came as an afterthought.

The one that really suffered throughout, and suffered acutely, was Tallien. He would have given all that he possessed to know for a certainty that Bertrand Moncrif was no longer in the house. Surely Theresia would not be foolhardy enough to provoke the powerful dictator into one of those paroxysms of spiteful fury for which he was notorious—fury wherein he might be capable of anything—insulting his hostess, setting his spies to search her apartments for a traitor if he suspected one of lying hidden away somewhere. In truth, Tallien, trembling for his beloved, was ready to swoon. How marvellous she was! how serene! While men held their breath before the inexorable despot, she went on teasing the tiger, even though he had already begun to snarl.

"I entreat you, citizen Robespierre," she said, with a pout, "to tell me if Bertrand Moncrif has grown fat."

"That I cannot tell you, citoyenne," Robespierre replied curtly. "Having recognized my enemy, I no longer paid heed to him. My attention was arrested by his rescuer——"

"That elusive Scarlet Pimpernel," she broke in gaily. "Unrecognisable to all save to citizen Robespierre, under the disguise of an asthmatic gossoon. Ah, would I had been there!"

"I would you had, citoyenne," he retorted. "You would have realized that to refuse your help to unmask an abominable spy after such an episode is tantamount to treason."

Her gaiety dropped from her like a mantle. In a moment she was serious, puzzled. A frown appeared between her brows. Her dark eyes flashed, rapidly inquiring, suspicious, fearful, upon Robespierre.

"To refuse my help?" she asked slowly. "My help in unmasking a spy? I do not understand."

She looked from one man to the other. Chauvelin was the only one who would not meet her gaze. No, not the only one. Tallien, too, appeared absorbed in contemplating his finger nails.

"Citizen Tallien," she queried harshly. "What does this mean?"

"It means just what I said," Robespierre intervene coldly. "That abominable English spy has fooled us all. You said yourself that 'tis a woman's wit that will bring that elusive adventurer to his knees one day. Why not yours?"

Theresia gave no immediate reply. She was meditating. Here, then, was this other means to her hand, whereby she was to propitiate the man-eating tiger, turn his snarl into a purr, obtain immunity for herself and her future lord. but what a prospect!

"I fear me, citizen Robespierre," she said after awhile, "that you overestimate the keenness of my wits."

"Impossible!" he retorted drily.

And St. Just, ever the echo of his friend's unspoken words, added with a great show of gallantry:

"The citoyenne Cabarrus, even from her prison in Bordeaux, succeeded in snaring our friend Tallien, and making him the slave of her beauty."

"Then why not the Scarlet Pimpernel?" was Couthon's simple conclusion.

"The Scarlet Pimpernel!" Theresia exclaimed with a shrug of her handsome shoulders. "The Scarlet Pimpernel, forsooth! Why, meseems that no one knows who he is! Just now you all affirmed that he was a coal-heaver named Rateau. I cannot make love to a coal-heaver, can I?"

"Citizen Chauvelin knows who the Scarlet Pimpernel is," Couthon went on deliberately. "He will put you on the right track. All that we want is that he should be at your feet. It is so easy for the citoyenne Cabarrus to accomplish that."

"But if you know who he is," she urged, "why do you need my help?"

"Because," St. Just replied, "the moment that he lands in France he sheds his identity, as a man would a coat. Here, there, everywhere—he is more elusive than a ghost, for a ghost is always the same, whilst the Scarlet Pimpernel is never twice alike. A coal-heaver one day; a prince of dandies the next. He has lodgings in every quarter of Paris and quits them at a moment's notice. He has confederates everywhere: concierges, cabaret-keepers, soldiers, vagabonds. He has been a public letter-writer, a sergeant of the National Guard, a rogue, a thief! 'Tis only in England that he is always the same, and citizen Chauvelin can identify him there. 'Tis there that you can see him, citoyenne, there that you can spread your nets for him; from thence that you can lure him to France in your train, like you lured citizen Tallien to obey your every whim in Bordeaux. Once a man hath fallen a victim to the charms of beautiful Theresia Cabarrus," added the young demagogue gallantly, "she need only to beckon and he will follow, as does citizen Tallien, as did Bertrand Moncrif, as do so many others. Bring the Scarlet Pimpernel to your feet, here in Pairs, citoyenne, and we will do the rest."

While his young devotee spoke thus vehemently, Robespierre had relapsed into his usual pose of affected detachment. His head was bent, his arms were folded across his chest. He appeared to be asleep. When St. Just paused, Theresia waiting awhile, her dark eyes fixed on the great man who had conceived this monstrous project. Monstrous, because of the treachery that it demanded.

Theresia Cabarrus had in truth identified herself with the Revolutionary government. She had promised to marry Tallien, who outwardly at least was as bloodthirsty and ruthless as was Robespierre himself; but she was a woman and not a demon. She had refused to sell Bertrand Moncrif in order to pander to Tallien's fear of Robespierre. To entice a man—whoever he was—into making love to her, and then to betray him to his death, was in itself an abhorrent idea. What she might do if actual danger of death threatened her, she did not know. No human soul can with certainty say, "I would not do this or that, under any circumstances whatever!" Circumstance and impulse are the only two forces that create cowards or heroes. Principles, will-power, virtue, are really subservient to those two. If they prove the stronger, everything in man must yield to them.

And Theresia Cabarrus had not yet been tried by force of circumstance or driven by force of impulse. Self-preservation was her dominant law, and she had not yet been in actual fear of death.

This is not a justification on the part of this veracious chronicle of Theresia's subsequent actions; it is an explanation. Faced with this demand upon her on the part of the most powerful despot in France, she hesitated, even though she did not altogether dare to refuse. Womanlike, she tried to temporize.

She appeared puzzled; frowned. Then asked vaguely:

"Is it then that you wish me to go to England?"

St. Just nodded.

"But," she continued, in the same indeterminate manner, "meseems that you talk very glibly of my—what shall I say?—my proposed dalliance with the mysterious Englishman. Suppose he—he does not respond?"

"Impossible!" Couthon broke in quickly.

"Oh!" she protested. "Impossible? Englishmen are known to be prudish—moral—what? And if the man is married—what then?"

"The citoyenne Cabarrus underrates her powers," St. Just riposted glibly.

"Theresia, I entreat!" Tallien put in dolefully.

He felt that the interview, from which he had hoped so much, was proving a failure—nay, worse! For he realized that Robespierre, thwarted in this desire, would bitterly resent Theresia's positive refusal to help him.

"Eh, what?" she riposted lightly. "And it is you, citizen Tallien, who would push me into this erotic adventure? I' faith, your trust in me is highly flattering! Have you not thought that in the process I might fall in love with the Scarlet Pimpernel myself? He is young, they say, handsome, adventurous; and I am to try and capture his fancy ... the butterfly is to dance around the flame.... No, no! I am too much afraid that I may singe my wings!"

"Does that mean," Robespierre put in coldly, "that you refuse us your help, citoyenne Cabarrus?"

"Yes—I refuse," she replied calmly. "The project does not please me, I confess——"

"Not even if we guaranteed immunity to your lover, Bertrand Moncrif?"

She gave a slight shudder. Her lips felt dry, and she passed her tongue rapidly over them.

"I have no lover, except citizen Tallien," she said steadily, and placed her fingers, which had suddenly become ice-cold, upon the clasped hands of her future lord. Then she rose, thereby giving the signal for the breaking-up of the little party.

In truth, she knew as well as Tallien that the meeting had been a failure. Tallien was looking sallow and terribly worried. Robespierre, taciturn and sullen, gave her one threatening glance before he took his leave.

"You know, citoyenne," he said coldly, "that the nation has means at its disposal for compelling its citizens to do their duty."

"Ah, bah!" retorted the fair Spaniard, shrugging her shoulders. "I am not a citizen of France. And even your unerring Public Prosecutor would find it difficult to frame an accusation against me."

Again she laughed, determined to appear gay and inconsequent through it all.

"Think how the accusation would sound, citizen Robespierre!" she went on mockingly. "'The citoyenne Cabarrus, for refusing to make amorous overtures to the mysterious Englishman known as the Scarlet Pimpernel, and for refusing to administer a love-philtre to him as prepared by Mother Théot at the bidding of citizen Robespierre!' Confess! Confess!" she added, and her rippling laugh had a genuine note of merriment in it at last, "that we none of us would survive such ridicule!"

Theresia Cabarrus was a clever woman, and by speaking the word "ridicule," she had touched the one weak chink in the tyrant's armour. But it is not always safe to prod a tiger, even with a child's cane, or even from behind protecting bars. Tallien knew this well enough. He was on tenterhooks, longing to see the others depart so that he might throw himself once again at Theresia's feet and implore her to obey the despot's commands.

But Theresia appeared unwilling to give him such another chance. She professed intense fatigue, bade him "good night" with such obvious finality, that he dared not outstay his welcome. A few moments later they had all gone. Their gracious hostess accompanied them to the door, since Pepita had by this time certainly gone to bed. The little procession was formed, with St. Just and Chauvelin supporting their palsied comrade, Robespierre detached and silent, and finally Tallien, whose last appealing look to his beloved would have melted a heart of stone.

STRANGE HAPPENINGS

§ 1

NOW the dingy little apartment in the Rue Villedot was silent and dark. The elegant little lamp with its rose-coloured shade was turned down in the withdrawing-room, leaving only a tiny glimmer of light, which failed to dispel the gloom around. The nocturnal visitors had departed more than a quarter of an hour ago; nevertheless, the beautiful hostess had not yet gone to bed. In fact, she had hardly moved since she bade the final adieu to her timorous lover. The enforced gaiety of the last few moments still sat like a mask upon her face. all that she had done was to sink with a sigh of weariness upon the settee.

And there she remained, with neck craned forward, listening, straining every nerve to listen, even though the heavy, measured footsteps of the five men had long since ceased to echo up and down the stone passages and stairs. Her foot, in its quaint small sandal, beat now and then an impatient tattoo upon the threadbare carpet. Her eyes at intervals cast anxious looks upon the old-fashioned clock above the mantelpiece.

It struck half-past two. Whereupon Theresia rose and went out into the vestibule. Here a tallow candle flickered faintly in its pewter sconce and emitted an evil-smelling smoke, which rose in spirals to the blackened ceiling.

Theresia paused, glanced inquiringly down the narrow passage which gave access to the little kitchen beyond. Between the kitchen and the corner of the vestibule where she was standing, two doors gave on the passage: her bedroom, and that of her maid Pepita. Theresia was vividly conscious of the strange silence which reigned in the whole apartment. The passage was pitch dark save at its farthest end, where a tiny ray of light found its way underneath the kitchen door.

The silence was oppressive, almost terrifying. In a hoarse, anxious voice, Theresia called:

"Pepita!"

But there came no answer. Pepita apparently had gone to bed, was fast asleep by now. But what had become of Bertrand?

Full of vague misgivings, her nerves tingling with a nameless fear, Theresia picked up the candle and tiptoed down the passage. Outside Pepita's door she paused and listened. Her large dark eyes looked weird in their expression of puzzlement and of awe, the flickering light of the candle throwing gleams of orange-coloured lights into the depths of the widely dilated pupils.

"Pepita!" she called; and somehow the sound of her own voice added to her terror. Strange that she should be frightened like this in her own familiar apartment, and with a faithful, sturdy maid sleeping the other side of this thin partition wall!

"Pepita!" Theresia's voice was shaking. She tried to open the door, but it was locked. Why had Pepita, contrary to her habit, locked herself in? Had she, too, been a prey to some unexplainable panic? Theresia knocked against the door, rattled the handle in its socket, called more loudly and more insistently, "Pepita!" and, receiving no reply, fell, half-swooning with fear, against the partition wall, whilst the candle slipped out of her trembling grasp and fell with a clatter to the ground.

She was now in complete darkness, with senses reeling and brain paralysed. How long she remained thus, in a state bordering on collapse, she did not know; probably not more than a minute or so. Consciousness returned quickly, and with it the cold sweat of an abject fear; for through this returning consciousness she had perceived a groan issuing from behind the locked door. But her knees were still shaking; she felt unable to move.

"Pepita!" she called again; and to her own ears her voice sounded hoarse and muffled. Straining her ears and holding her breath, she once more caught the sound of a smothered groan.

Whereupon, driven into action by the obvious distress of her maid, Theresia recovered a certain measure of self-control. Pulling herself vigorously together, she began by groping for the candle which had dropped out of her hand a while ago. Even as she stooped down for this she contrived to say in a moderately clear and firm voice:

"Courage, Pepita! I'll find the light and come back." Then she added: "Are you unable to unlock the door?"

To this, however, she received no reply save another muffled groan.

Theresia now was on her hands and knees, groping for the candlestick. Then a strange thing happened. Her hands, as they wandered vaguely along the flagged floor, encountered a small object, which proved to be a key. In an instant she was on her feet again, her fingers running over the door until they encountered the keyhole. into this she succeeded, after further groping, in inserting the key; it fitted and turned the lock. She pushed open the door, and remained paralysed with surprise upon the threshold.

Pepita was reclining in an arm-chair, her hands tied behind her, a woollen shawl wound loosely around her mouth. in a distant corner of the room, a small oil-lamp, turned very low, cast a glimmer of light upon the scene. For Theresia to run to the pinioned woman and undo the bonds that held her was but the work of a few seconds.

"Pepita!" she cried. "What in heaven's name has happened?"

The woman seemed not much the worse for her enforced duress. She groaned, and even swore under her breath, and indeed appeared more dazed than hurt. Theresia, impatient and excited, had to shake her more than once vigorously by the shoulder before she was able to gather her scattered wits together.

"Where is M. Bertrand?" Theresia asked repeatedly, ere she got a reply from her bewildered maid.

At last Pepita was able to speak.

"In very truth, Madame," she said slowly, "I do not know."

"How do you mean, you do not know?" Theresia queried, with a deepened frown.

"Just what I saw, my pigeon," Pepita retorted with marked acerbity. "You ask me what has happened, and I say I do not know. You want to know what has become of M. Bertrand. Then go and look for yourself. When I last say him, he was in the kitchen, unfit to move, the poor cabbage!"

"But, Pepita," Theresia insisted, and stamped her foot with impatience, "you must know how you came to be sitting here, pinioned and muffled. Who did it? Who has been here? God preserve the woman, will she never speak!"

Pepita by now had fully recovered her senses. She had struggled to her feet, and went to take up the lamp, then led the way toward the door, apparently intent on finding out for herself what had become of M. Bertrand and in no way sharing her mistress's unreasoning terror. She halted on the threshold and turned to Theresia, who quite mechanically started to follow her.

"M. Bertrand was sitting in the arm-chair in the kitchen," she said simply. "I was arranging a cushion for his head, to make him more comfortable, when suddenly a shawl was flung over my head without the slightest warning. I had seen nothing; I had not heard the merest sound. And I had not the time to utter a scream before I was muffled up in the shawl. Then I was lifted off the ground as if I were a sack of feathers, and I just remember smelling something acrid which made my head spin round and round. But I remember nothing more after until I heard voices in the vestibule when thy guests were going away. Then I heard thy voice and tried to make thee hear mine. And that is all!"

"When did that happen, Pepita?"

"Soon after the last of thy guests had arrived. I remember I looked at the clock. It must have been half an hour after midnight."

While the woman spoke, Theresia had remained standing in the middle of the room, looking in the gloom like an elfin apparition, with her clinging, diaphanous draperies. A frown of deep puzzlement lay between her brows and her lips were tightly pressed together as if in wrath; but she said nothing more, and when Pepita, lamp in hand, went out of the room, she followed.

§ 2

When, the kitchen door being opened, that room was found to be empty, Theresia was no longer surprised. Somehow she had expected this. She knew that Bertrand would be gone. The windows of the kitchen gave on the ubiquitous wrought-iron balcony, as did all the other windows of the apartment. That those windows were unfastened, had only been pushed to from the outside, appeared to her as a matter of course. It was not Bertrand who had thrown the shawl over Pepita's head; therefore some one had come in from the outside and had kidnapped Bertrand—some one who was peculiarly bold and daring. He had not come in from the balcony and through the window, because the latter had been fastened as usual by Pepita much earlier in the evening. No! He had gone that way, taking Bertrand with him; but he must have entered the place in some other mysterious manner, like a disembodied sprite bent on mischief or mystery.

Whilst Pepita fumbled and grumbled, Theresia started on a tour of inspection. Still deeply puzzled, she was no longer afraid. With Pepita to speak and the lamps all turned on, her habitual courage and self-possession had quickly returned to her. She had no belief in the supernatural. Her materialistic, entirely rational mind at once rejected the supposition, hinted at by Pepita, that magical powers had been at work to take Bertrand Moncrif to a place of safety.

Something was going on in her brain, certain theories, guesses, conjectures, which she was passionately eager to set at rest. Nor did it take her long. Candle in hand, she had gone round to explore. No sooner had she entered her own bedroom than the solution of the mystery lay revealed before her, in a shutter, forced open from the outside, a broken pane of glass which had allowed a hand to creep in and surreptitiously turn the handle of the tall French window to allow of easy ingress. It had been quickly and cleverly done; the splinters of glass had made no noise as they fell upon the carpet. But for the disappearance of Bertrand, the circumstances suggested a nimble housebreaker rather than a benevolent agency for the rescue of young rashlings in distress.

The frown of puzzlement deepened on Theresia Cabarrus's brow, and her mobile mouth with the perfectly arched if somewhat thin lips expressed a kind of feline anger, whilst the hand that held the pewter candlestick trembled perceptibly.

Pepita's astonishment expressed itself by sundry exclamations: "Name of a name!" and "Is it possible?" The explanation of the mystery had loosened her tongue, and while she set stolidly to work to clear up the debris of glass in her mistress's bedroom, she allowed free rein to her indignation against the impudent marauder, who in doubt had only been foiled in his attempt at wholesale robbery by some lucky circumstance which would presently come to light.

The worthy old peasant absolutely refused to connect the departure of M. Bertrand with so obvious an attempt at housebreaking.

"M. Bertrand was determined to go, the poor cabbage!" she said decisively; "since thou didst make him understand that his staying here was a danger to the front door whilst thou wast engaged in conversation with that pack of murderers, whom may the good God punish one of these days!"

From which remark we may gather that Pepita had not imbibed revolutionary ideals with the air of her native Andalusia.

Theresia Cabarrus, wearied beyond endurance by all the events of this night, as well as by her old servant's incessant gabble, finally sent her, still muttering and grumbling, to bed.

CHAUVELIN

§ 1

THERESIA had opposed a stern refusal to Pepita's request that she might put her mistress to bed before she herself went to rest. She did not want to go to bed: she wanted to think. and now that that peculiar air of mystery, that silence and semi-darkness no longer held their gruesome sway in her apartment, she did not feel afraid.

Pepita went to bed. For awhile, Theresia could hear her moving about, with ponderous, shuffling footsteps; then, presently everything was still. The clock of old St. Roch struck three. not much more than half an hour had gone by since her guests had been departed. To Theresia it seemed like an infinity of time. The sense of a baffling mystery being at work around her had roused her ire and killed all latent fear.

But what was the mystery?

And was there a mystery at all? Or was Pepita's rational explanation of the occurrence of this night the right one after all?

Citoyenne Cabarrus, unable to sit still, wandered up and down the passage, in and out of the kitchen; in and out of her bedroom, and thence into the vestibule. Then back again. At one moment, when standing in the vestibule, she thought she heard some one moving on the landing outside the front door. Her heart beat a little more rapidly, but she was not afraid. She did not believe in housebreakers and she felt that Pepita, who was a very light sleeper, was well within call.

So she went to the front door and opened it. The quick cry which she gave was one of surprise rather than of fear. In her belated visitor she had recognized citizen Chauvelin; and somehow, by a vague process of reasoning, his presence just at this moment seemed quite rational—in keeping with the unsolved mystery that was so baffling to the fair Theresia.

"May I come in, citoyenne?" Chauvelin said in a whisper. "It is late, I know; but there is urgency."

He was standing on the threshold, and she, a few paces away from him in the vestibule. The candle, which now burned low in its socket, was behind her. Its light touched with a weird, flickering glow on the pale face of the once noted Terrorist, with its pale eyes and sharply hooked nose, which gave him the air of a gaunt bird of prey.

"It is late," she murmured vaguely. "What do you want?"

"Something has happened," he replied, still speaking below his breath. "Something which concerns you. And, before speaking of it to citizen Robespierre——"

At the dread name Theresia stepped farther back into the vestibule.

"Enter!" she said curtly.

He came in, and she closed the door carefully behind him. Then she led the way into the withdrawing room and turned up the wick of the lamp under its rosy shade. She sat down and motioned to him to do the same.

"What is it?" she asked.

Before replying, Chauvelin's finger and thumb—thin and pointed like the talons of a vulture—went fumbling in the pocket of his waistcoat. From it he extracted a small piece of neatly folded paper.

"When we left your apartment, citoyenne—my friend St. Just and I supporting poor palsied Couthon, and Robespierre following close behind us—I spied this scrap of paper, which St. Just's careless foot had just kicked to one side when he was stepping across the threshold. Some unknown hand must have insinuated it underneath the door. Now, I never despise stray bits of paper. I have had so many through my hands that proved after examination to be of paramount importance. So, whilst the others were busy with their own affairs I, unseen by them, had already stooped and picked the paper up."

He paused for a moment or two, then, satisfied that he held the beautiful woman's undivided attention, he went on in his habitual dry, urbane monotone:

"Now, though I was quite sure in my own mind, citoyenne, that this billet-doux was intended for your fair hands, I felt that, as its finder, I had some sort of lien upon it——"

"To the point, citizen, I pray you!" Theresia broke in harshly, tried by a show of impatience and of fatigue to hide the anxiety which had once more taken possession of her heart. "You found a letter addressed to me; you read it. As you have brought it here, I presume that you wish me to know its contents. So get on, man, get on!" she added more vehemently. "It is not at three in the morning that one cares for dalliance."

By way of reply, Chauvelin slowly unfolded the not and began to read:

"'Bertrand Moncrif is a young fool, but he is too good to be the plaything of a sleek black pantheress, however beautiful she might be. So I am taking him away to England where, in the arms of his long-suffering and loyal sweetheart, he will soon forget the brief madness which so nearly landed him on the guillotine and made of him a tool to serve the selfish whims of Theresia Cabarrus.'"

Theresia had listened to the brief, enigmatic epistle without displaying the slightest sign of emotion or surprise. Now, when Chauvelin had finished reading, and with his strange, dry smile had handed her the tiny note, she took it and for awhile contemplated it in silence, her face perfectly placid save for a curious and ominous contraction of the brows and a screwing-up of the fine eyes, which gave her a curious, snake-like expression.

"You know, of course, citoyenne," Chauvelin said after awhile, "who the writer of this—shall we say?—impudent epistle happens to be?"

She nodded.

"The man," he went on placidly, "who goes by the name of the Scarlet Pimpernel. The impudent English adventurer whom citizen Robespierre has asked you, citoyenne, to lure into the net which we may spread for him."

Still Theresia was silent. She did not look at Chauvelin, but kept her eyes fixed upon the scrap of paper, which she had folded into a long, narrow ribbon and was twining in and out between her fingers.

"A while ago, citoyenne," Chauvelin continued, "in this very room, you refused to lend us a helping hand."

Still no reply from Theresia. She had just smoothed out the mysterious epistle, carefully folded it into four, and was in the act of slipping it into the bosom of her gown. Chauvelin waited quite patiently. He was accustomed to waiting, and patience was an integral part of his stock in trade. Opportunism was another.

Theresia was sitting on her favourite settee, leaning forward with her hands clasped between her knees. her head was bent, and the tiny rose-shaded lamp failed to throw its glimmer of light upon her face. The clock on the mantelshelf behind her was ticking with insentient monotony. Anon, a distant chime struck the quarter after three. Whereupon Chauvelin rose.

"I think we understand one another, citoyenne," he said quietly, and with a sigh of complete satisfaction. "It is late now. At what hour may I have the privilege of seeing you alone?"

"At three in the afternoon?" she replied tonelessly, like one speaking in a dream. "Citizen Tallien is always at the Convention then, and my door will be denied to everybody else."

"I'll be here at three o'clock," was Chauvelin's final word.

Theresia had not moved. He made her a deep bow and went out of the room. The next moment, the opening and shutting of the outer door proclaimed that he had gone.

After that, Theresia Cabarrus went to bed.

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 Metasyntactic variable, which is released under the 
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