Produced by Walter Debeuf, Project Gutenberg volunteer.

I Will Repay.

By Baroness Orczy.

PROLOGUE.

Paris: 1783.

"Coward! Coward! Coward!"

The words rang out, clear, strident, passionate, in a crescendo of
agonised humiliation.

The boy, quivering with rage, had sprung to his feet, and, losing his
balance, he fell forward clutching at the table, whilst with a
convulsive movement of the lids, he tried in vain to suppress the tears
of shame which were blinding him.

"Coward!" He tried to shout the insult so that all might hear, but his
parched throat refused him service, his trembling hand sought the
scattered cards upon the table, he collected them together, quickly,
nervously, fingering them with feverish energy, then he hurled them at
the man opposite, whilst with a final effort he still contrived to
mutter: "Coward!"

The older men tried to interpose, but the young ones only laughed, quite
prepared for the adventure which must inevitably ensue, the only
possible ending to a quarrel such as this.

Conciliation or arbitration was out of the question. Déroulède should
have known better than to speak disrespectfully of Adèle de Montchéri,
when the little Vicomte de Marny's infatuation for the notorious beauty
had been the talk of Paris and Versailles these many months past.

Adèle was very lovely and a veritable tower of greed and egotism. The
Marnys were rich and the little Vicomte very young, and just now the
brightly-plumaged hawk was busy plucking the latest pigeon, newly
arrived from its ancestral cote.

The boy was still in the initial stage of his infatuation. To him Adèle
was a paragon of all the virtues, and he would have done battle on her
behalf against the entire aristocracy of France, in a vain endeavour to
justify his own exalted opinion of one of the most dissolute women of
the epoch. He was a first-rate swordsman too, and his friends had
already learned that it was best to avoid all allusions to Adèle's
beauty and weaknesses.

But Déroulède was a noted blunderer. He was little versed in the manners
and tones of that high society in which, somehow, he still seemed an
intruder. But for his great wealth, no doubt, he never would have been
admitted within the intimate circle of aristocratic France. His ancestry
was somewhat doubtful and his coat-of-arms unadorned with quarterings.

But little was known of his family or the origin of its wealth; it was
only known that his father had suddenly become the late King's dearest
friend, and commonly surmised that Déroulède gold had on more than one
occasion filled the emptied coffers of the First Gentleman of France.

Déroulède had not sought the present quarrel. He had merely blundered in
that clumsy way of his, which was no doubt a part of the inheritance
bequeathed to him by his bourgeois ancestry.

He knew nothing of the little Vicomte's private affairs, still less of
his relationship with Adèle, but he knew enough of the world and enough
of Paris to be acquainted with the lady's reputation. He hated at all
times to speak of women. He was not what in those days would be termed a
ladies' man, and was even somewhat unpopular with the sex. But in this
instance the conversation had drifted in that direction, and when
Adèle's name was mentioned, every one became silent, save the little
Vicomte, who waxed enthusiastic.

A shrug of the shoulders on Déroulède's part had aroused the boy's ire,
then a few casual words, and, without further warning, the insult had
been hurled and the cards thrown in the older man's face.

Déroulède did not move from his seat. He sat erect and placid, one knee
crossed over the other, his serious, rather swarthy face perhaps a shade
paler than usual: otherwise it seemed as if the insult had never reached
his ears, or the cards struck his cheek.

He had perceived his blunder, just twenty seconds too late. Now he was
sorry for the boy and angered with himself, but it was too late to draw
back. To avoid a conflict he would at this moment have sacrificed half
his fortune, but not one particle of his dignity.

He knew and respected the old Duc de Marny, a feeble old man now, almost
a dotard whose hitherto spotless _blason_, the young Vicomte, his son,
was doing his best to besmirch.

When the boy fell forward, blind and drunk with rage, Déroulède leant
towards him automatically, quite kindly, and helped him to his feet. He
would have asked the lad's pardon for his own thoughtlessness, had that
been possible: but the stilted code of so-called honour forbade so
logical a proceeding. It would have done no good, and could but imperil
his own reputation without averting the traditional sequel.

The panelled walls of the celebrated gaming saloon had often witnessed
scenes such as this. All those present acted by routine. The etiquette
of duelling prescribed certain formalities, and these were strictly but
rapidly adhered to.

The young Vicomte was quickly surrounded by a close circle of friends.
His great name, his wealth, his father's influence, had opened for him
every door in Versailles and Paris. At this moment he might have had an
army of seconds to support him in the coming conflict.

Déroulède for a while was left alone near the card table, where the
unsnuffed candles began smouldering in their sockets. He had risen to
his feet, somewhat bewildered at the rapid turn of events. His dark,
restless eyes wandered for a moment round the room, as if in quick
search for a friend.

But where the Vicomte was at home by right, Déroulède had only been
admitted by reason of his wealth. His acquaintances and sycophants were
many, but his friends very few.

For the first time this fact was brought home to him. Every one in the
room must have known and realised that he had not wilfully sought this
quarrel, that throughout he had borne himself as any gentleman would,
yet now, when the issue was so close at hand, no one came forward to
stand by him.

"For form's sake, monsieur, will you choose your seconds?"

It was the young Marquis de Villefranche who spoke, a little haughtily,
with a certain ironical condescension towards the rich parvenu, who was
about to have the honour of crossing swords with one of the noblest
gentlemen in France.

"I pray you, Monsieur le Marquis," rejoined Déroulède coldly, "to make
the choice for me. You see, I have few friends in Paris."

The Marquis bowed, and gracefully flourished his lace handkerchief. He
was accustomed to being appealed to in all matters pertaining to
etiquette, to the toilet, to the latest cut in coats, and the procedure
in duels. Good-natured, foppish, and idle, he felt quite happy and in
his element thus to be made chief organiser of the tragic farce, about
to be enacted on the parquet floor of the gaming saloon.

He looked about the room for a while, scrutinising the faces of those
around him. The gilded youth was crowding round De Marny; a few older
men stood in a group at the farther end of the room: to these the
Marquis turned, and addressing one of them, an elderly man with a
military bearing and a shabby brown coat:

"Mon Colonel," he said, with another flourishing bow; "I am deputed by
M. Déroulède to provide him with seconds for this affair of honour, may
I call upon you to ..."

"Certainly, certainly," replied the Colonel. "I am not intimately
acquainted with M. Déroulède, but since you stand sponsor, M. le Marquis
..."

"Oh!" rejoined the Marquis, lightly, "a mere matter of form, you know.
M. Déroulède belongs to the entourage of Her Majesty. He is a man of
honour. But I am not his sponsor. Marny is my friend, and if you prefer
not to ..."

"Indeed I am entirely at M. Déroulède's service," said the Colonel, who
had thrown a quick, scrutinising glance at the isolated figure near the
card table, "if he will accept my services ..."

"He will be very glad to accept, my dear Colonel," whispered the Marquis
with an ironical twist of his aristocratic lips. "He has no friends in
our set, and if you and De Quettare will honour him, I think he should
be grateful."

M. de Quettare, adjutant to M. le Colonel, was ready to follow in the
footsteps of his chief, and the two men, after the prescribed
salutations to M. le Marquis de Villefranche, went across to speak to
Déroulède.

"If you will accept our services, monsieur," began the Colonel abruptly,
"mine, and my adjutant's, M. de Quettare, we place ourselves entirely at
your disposal."

"I thank you, messieurs," rejoined Déroulède. "The whole thing is a
farce, and that young man is a fool; but I have been in the wrong and
..."

"You would wish to apologise?" queried the Colonel icily.

The worthy soldier had heard something of Déroulède's reputed bourgeois
ancestry. This suggestion of an apology was no doubt in accordance with
the customs of the middle-classes, but the Colonel literally gasped at
the unworthiness of the proceeding. An apology? Bah! Disgusting!
cowardly! beneath the dignity of any gentleman, however wrong he might
be. How could two soldiers of His Majesty's army identify themselves
with such doings?

But Déroulède seemed unconscious of the enormity of his suggestion.

"If I could avoid a conflict," he said, "I would tell the Vicomte that I
had no knowledge of his admiration for the lady we were discussing and
..."

"Are you so very much afraid of getting a sword scratch, monsieur?"
interrupted the Colonel impatiently, whilst M. de Quettare elevated a
pair of aristocratic eyebrows in bewilderment at such an extraordinary
display of bourgeois cowardice.

"You mean, Monsieur le Colonel?"--queried Déroulède.

"That you must either fight the Vicomte de Marny to-night, or clear out
of Paris to-morrow. Your position in our set would become untenable,"
retorted the Colonel, not unkindly, for in spite of Déroulède's
extraordinary attitude, there was nothing in his bearing or his
appearance that suggested cowardice or fear.

"I bow to your superior knowledge of your friends, M. le Colonel,"
responded Déroulède, as he silently drew his sword from its sheath.

The centre of the saloon was quickly cleared. The seconds measured the
length of the swords and then stood behind the antagonists, slightly in
advance of the groups of spectators, who stood massed all round the
room.

They represented the flower of what France had of the best and noblest
in name, in lineage, in chivalry, in that year of grace 1783. The
storm-cloud which a few years hence was destined to break over their
heads, sweeping them from their palaces to the prison and the
guillotine, was only gathering very slowly in the dim horizon of
squalid, starving Paris: for the next half-dozen years they would still
dance and gamble, fight and flirt, surround a tottering throne, and
hoodwink a weak monarch. The Fates' avenging sword still rested in its
sheath; the relentless, ceaseless wheel still bore them up in their
whirl of pleasure; the downward movement had only just begun: the cry of
the oppressed children of France had not yet been heard above the din of
dance music and lovers' serenades.

The young Duc de Châteaudun was there, he who, nine years later, went to
the guillotine on that cold September morning, his hair dressed in the
latest fashion, the finest Mechlin lace around his wrists, playing a
final game of piquet with his younger brother, as the tumbril bore them
along through the hooting, yelling crowd of the half-naked starvelings
of Paris.

There was the Vicomte de Mirepoix, who, a few years later, standing on
the platform of the guillotine, laid a bet with M. de Miranges that his
own blood would flow bluer than that of any other head cut off that day
in France. Citizen Samson heard the bet made, and when De Mirepoix's
head fell into the basket, the headsman lifted it up for M. de Miranges
to see. The latter laughed.

"Mirepoix was always a braggart," he said lightly, as he laid his head
upon the block.

"Who'll take my bet that my blood turns out to be bluer than his?"

But of all these comedies, these tragico-farces of later years, none who
were present on that night, when the Vicomte de Marny fought Paul
Déroulède, had as yet any presentiment.

They watched the two men fighting, with the same casual interest, at
first, which they would have bestowed on the dancing of a new movement
in the minuet.

De Marny came of a race that had wielded the sword of many centuries,
but he was hot, excited, not a little addled with wine and rage.
Déroulède was lucky; he would come out of the affair with a slight
scratch.

A good swordsman too, that wealthy parvenu. It was interesting to watch
his sword-play: very quiet at first, no feint or parry, scarcely a
riposte, only _en garde,_ always _en garde_ very carefully, steadily,
ready for his antagonist at every turn and in every circumstance.

Gradually the circle round the combatants narrowed. A few discreet
exclamations of admiration greeted Déroulède's most successful parry. De
Marny was getting more and more excited, the older man more and more
sober and reserved.

A thoughtless lunge placed the little Vicomte at his opponent's mercy.
The next instant he was disarmed, and the seconds were pressing forward
to end the conflict.

Honour was satisfied: the parvenu and the scion of the ancient race had
crossed swords over the reputation of one of the most dissolute women in
France. Déroulède's moderation was a lesson to all the hot-headed young
bloods who toyed with their lives, their honour, their reputation as
lightly as they did with their lace-edged handkerchiefs and gold
snuff-boxes.

Already Déroulède had drawn back. With the gentle tact peculiar to
kindly people, he avoided looking at his disarmed antagonist. But
something in the older man's attitude seemed to further nettle the
over-stimulated sensibility of the young Vicomte.

"This is no child's play, monsieur," he said excitedly. "I demand full
satisfaction."

"And are you not satisfied?" queried Déroulède. "You have borne yourself
bravely, you have fought in honour of your liege lady. I, on the other
hand ..."

"You," shouted the boy hoarsely, "you shall publicly apologise to a
noble and virtuous woman whom you have outraged--now--at--once--on your
knees ..."

"You are mad, Vicomte," rejoined Déroulède coldly. "I am willing to ask
your forgiveness for my blunder ..."

"An apology--in public--on your knees ..."

The boy had become more and more excited. He had suffered humiliation
after humiliation. He was a mere lad, spoilt, adulated, pampered from
his boyhood: the wine had got into his head, the intoxication of rage
and hatred blinded his saner judgment.

"Coward!" he shouted again and again.

His seconds tried to interpose, but he waved them feverishly aside. He
would listen to no one. He saw no one save the man who had insulted
Adèle, and who was heaping further insults upon her, by refusing this
public acknowledgment of her virtues.

De Marny hated Déroulède at this moment with the most deadly hatred the
heart of man can conceive. The older man's calm, his chivalry, his
consideration only enhanced the boy's anger and shame.

The hubbub had become general. Everyone seemed carried away with this
strange fever of enmity, which was seething in the Vicomte's veins. Most
of the young men crowded round De Marny, doing their best to pacify him.
The Marquis de Villefranche declared that the matter was getting quite
outside the rules.

No one took much notice of Déroulède. In the remote corners of the
saloon a few elderly dandies were laying bets as to the ultimate issue
of the quarrel.

Déroulède, however, was beginning to lose his temper. He had no friends
in that room, and therefore there was no sympathetic observer there, to
note the gradual darkening of his eyes, like the gathering of a cloud
heavy with the coming storm.

"I pray you, messieurs, let us cease the argument," he said at last, in
a loud, impatient voice. "M. le Vicomte de Marny desires a further
lesson, and, by God! he shall have it. En garde, M. le Vicomte!"

The crowd quickly drew back. The seconds once more assumed the bearing
and imperturbable expression which their important function demanded.
The hubbub ceased as the swords began to clash.

Everyone felt that farce was turning to tragedy.

And yet it was obvious from the first that Déroulède merely meant once
more to disarm his antagonist, to give him one more lesson, a little
more severe perhaps than the last. He was such a brilliant swordsman, and
De Marny was so excited, that the advantage was with him from the very
first.

How it all happened, nobody afterwards could say. There is no doubt that
the little Vicomte's sword-play had become more and more wild: that he
uncovered himself in the most reckless way, whilst lunging wildly at his
opponent's breast, until at last, in one of these mad, unguarded
moments, he seemed literally to throw himself upon Déroulède's weapon.

The latter tried with lightning-swift motion of the wrist to avoid the
fatal issue, but it was too late, and without a sigh or groan, scarce a
tremor, the Vicomte de Marny fell.

The sword dropped out of his hand, and it was Déroulède himself who
caught the boy in his arms.

It had all occurred so quickly and suddenly that no one had realised it
all, until it was over, and the lad was lying prone on the ground, his
elegant blue satin coat stained with red, and his antagonist bending
over him.

There was nothing more to be done. Etiquette demanded that Déroulède
should withdraw. He was not allowed to do anything for the boy whom he
had so unwillingly sent to his death.

As before, no one took much notice of him. Silence, the awesome silence
caused by the presence of the great Master, fell upon all those around.
Only in the far corner a shrill voice was heard to say:

"I hold you at five hundred louis, Marquis. The parvenu is a good
swordsman."

The groups parted as Déroulède walked out of the room, followed by the
Colonel and M. de Quettare, who stood by him to the last. Both were old
and proved soldiers, both had chivalry and courage in them, with which
to do tribute to the brave man whom they had seconded.

At the door of the establishment, they met the leech who had been
summoned some little time ago to hold himself in readiness for any
eventuality.

The great eventuality had occurred: it was beyond the leech's learning.
In the brilliantly lighted saloon above, the only son of the Duc de
Marny was breathing his last, whilst Déroulède, wrapping his mantle
closely round him, strode out into the dark street, all alone.

II

The head of the house of Marny was at this time barely seventy years of
age. But he had lived every hour, every minute of his life, from the day
when the Grand Monarque gave him his first appointment as gentleman page
in waiting when he was a mere lad, barely twelve years of age, to the
moment--some ten years ago now--when Nature's relentless hand struck him
down in the midst of his pleasures, withered him in a flash as she does
a sturdy old oak, and nailed him--a cripple, almost a dotard--to the
invalid chair which he would only quit for his last resting place.

Juliette was then a mere slip of a girl, an old man's child, the spoilt
darling of his last happy years. She had retained some of the melancholy
which had characterised her mother, the gentle lady who had endured so
much so patiently, and who had bequeathed this final tender burden--her
baby girl--to the brilliant, handsome husband whom she had so deeply
loved, and so often forgiven.

When the Duc de Marny entered the final awesome stage of his gilded
career, that deathlike life which he dragged on for ten years wearily to
the grave, Juliette became his only joy, his one gleam of happiness in
the midst of torturing memories.

In her deep, tender eyes he would see mirrored the present, the future
for her, and would forget his past, with all its gaieties, its mad,
merry years, that meant nothing now but bitter regrets, and endless
rosary of the might-have-beens.

And then there was the boy. The little Vicomte, the future Duc de Marny,
who would in _his_ life and with _his_ youth recreate the glory of the
family, and make France once more ring with the echo of brave deeds and
gallant adventures, which had made the name of Marny so glorious in camp
and court.

The Vicomte was not his father's love, but he was his father's pride,
and from the depths of his huge, cushioned arm-chair, the old man would
listen with delight to stories from Versailles and Paris, the young
Queen and the fascinating Lamballe, the latest play and the newest star
in the theatrical firmament. His feeble, tottering mind would then take
him back, along the paths of memory, to his own youth and his own
triumphs, and in the joy and pride in his son, he would forget himself
for the sake of the boy.

When they brought the Vicomte home that night, Juliette was the first to
wake. She heard the noise outside the great gates, the coach slowly
drawing up, the ring for the doorkeeper, and the sound of Matthieu's
mutterings, who never liked to be called up in the middle of the night
to let anyone through the gates.

Somehow a presentiment of evil at once struck the young girl: the
footsteps sounded so heavy and muffled along the flagged courtyard, and
up the great oak staircase. It seemed as if they were carrying something
heavy, something inert or dead.

She jumped out of bed and hastily wrapped a cloak round her thin girlish
shoulders, and slipped her feet into a pair of heelless shoes, then she
opened her bedroom door and looked out upon the landing.

Two men, whom she did not know, were walking upstairs abreast, two more
were carrying a heavy burden, and Matthieu was behind moaning and crying
bitterly.

Juliette did not move. She stood in the doorway rigid as a statue. The
little cortège went past her. No one saw her, for the landings in the
Hotel de Marny are very wide, and Matthieu's lantern only threw a dim,
flickering light upon the floor.

The men stopped outside the Vicomte's room. Matthieu opened it, and then
the five men disappeared within, with their heavy burden.

A moment later old Pétronelle, who had been Juliette's nurse, and was
now her devoted slave, came to her, all bathed in tears.

She had just heard the news, and she could scarcely speak, but she
folded the young girl, her dear pet lamb, in her arms, and rocking
herself to and fro she sobbed and eased her aching, motherly heart.

But Juliette did not cry. It was all so sudden, so awful. She, at
fourteen years of age, had never dreamed of death; and now there was her
brother, her Philippe, in whom she had so much joy, so much pride--he
was dead--and her father must be told ...

The awfulness of this task seemed to Juliette like unto the last
Judgment Day; a thing so terrible, so appalling, so impossible, that it
would take a host of angels to proclaim its inevitableness.

The old cripple, with one foot in the grave, whose whole feeble mind,
whose pride, whose final flicker of hope was concentrated in his boy,
must be told that the lad had been brought home dead.

"Will you tell him, Pétronelle?" she asked repeatedly, during the brief
intervals when the violence of the old nurse's grief subsided somewhat.

"No--no--darling, I cannot--I cannot--" moaned Pétronelle, amidst a
renewed shower of sobs.

Juliette's entire soul--a child's soul it was--rose in revolt at thought
of what was before her. She felt angered with God for having put such a
thing upon her. What right had He to demand a girl of her years to
endure so much mental agony?

To lose her brother, and to witness her father's grief! She couldn't!
she couldn't! she couldn't! God was evil and unjust!

A distant tinkle of a bell made all her nerves suddenly quiver. Her
father was awake then? He had heard the noise, and was ringing his bell
to ask for an explanation of the disturbance.

With one quick movement Juliette jerked herself free from the nurse's
arms, and before Pétronelle could prevent her, she had run out of the
room, straight across the dark landing to a large panelled door
opposite.

The old Duc de Marny was sitting on the edge of his bed, with his long,
thin legs dangling helplessly to the ground.

Crippled as he was, he had struggled to this upright position, he was
making frantic, miserable efforts to raise himself still further. He,
too, had heard the dull thud of feet, the shuffling gait of men when
carrying a heavy burden.

His mind flew back half-a-century, to the days when he had witnessed
scenes wherein he was then merely a half-interested spectator. He knew
the cortège composed of valets and friends, with the leech walking
beside that precious burden, which anon would be deposited on the bed
and left to the tender care of a mourning family.

Who knows what pictures were conjured up before that enfeebled vision?
But he guessed. And when Juliette dashed into his room and stood before
him, pale, trembling, a world of misery in her great eyes, she knew that
he guessed and that she need not tell him. God had already done that for
her.

Pierre, the old Duc's devoted valet, dressed him as quickly as he could.
M. le Duc insisted on having his _habit de cérémonie,_ the rich suit of
black velvet with the priceless lace and diamond buttons, which he had
worn when they laid le Roi Soleil to his eternal rest.

He put on his orders and buckled on his sword. The gorgeous clothes,
which had suited him so well in the prime of his manhood, hung somewhat
loosely on his attenuated frame, but he looked a grand and imposing
figure, with his white hair tied behind with a great black bow, and the
fine jabot of beautiful point d'Angleterre falling in a soft cascade
below his chin.

Then holding himself as upright as he could, he sat in his invalid
chair, and four flunkeys in full livery carried him to the deathbed of
his son.

All the house was astir by now. Torches burned in great sockets in the
vast hall and along the massive oak stairway, and hundreds of candles
flickered ghostlike in the vast apartments of the princely mansion.

The numerous servants were arrayed on the landing, all dressed in the
rich livery of the ducal house.

The death of an heir of the Marnys is an event that history makes a note
of.

The old Duc's chair was placed close to the bed, where lay the dead body
of the young Vicomte. He made no movement, nor did he utter a word or
sigh. Some of those who were present at the time declared that his mind
had completely given way, and that he neither felt nor understood the
death of his son.

The Marquis de Villefranche, who had followed his friend to the last,
took a final leave of the sorrowing house.

Juliette scarcely noticed him. Her eyes were fixed on her father. She
would not look at her brother. A childlike fear had seized her, there,
suddenly, between these two silent figures: the living and the dead.

But just as the Marquis was leaving the room, the old man spoke for the
first time.

"Marquis," he said very quietly, "you forget--you have not yet told me
who killed my son."

"It was in a fair fight, M. de Duc," replied the young Marquis, awed in
spite of all his frivolity, his light-heartedness, by this strange,
almost mysterious tragedy.

"Who killed my son, M. le Marquis?" repeated the old man mechanically.
"I have the right to know," he added with sudden, weird energy.

"It was M. Paul Déroulède, M. le Duc," replied the Marquis. "I repeat,
it was in fair fight."

The old Duc sighed as if in satisfaction. Then with a courteous gesture
of farewell reminiscent of the _grand siècle_ he added:

"All thanks from me and mine to you, Marquis, would seem but a mockery.
Your devotion to my son is beyond human thanks. I'll not detain you now.
Farewell."

Escorted by two lacqueys, the Marquis passed out of the room.

"Dismiss all the servants, Juliette; I have something to say," said the
old Duc, and the young girl, silent, obedient, did as her father bade
her.

Father and sister were alone with their dead. As soon as the last hushed
footsteps of the retreating servants died away in the distance, the Duc
de Marny seemed to throw away the lethargy which had enveloped him until
now. With a quick, feverish gesture he seized his daughter's wrist, and
murmured excitedly:

"His name. You heard his name, Juliette?"

"Yes, father," replied the child.

"Paul Déroulède! Paul Déroulède! You'll not forget it?"

"Never, father!"

"He killed your brother! You understand that? Killed my only son, the
hope of my house, the last descendant of the most glorious race that has
ever added lustre to the history of France."

"In fair fight, father!" protested the child.

"'Tis not fair for a man to kill a boy," retorted the old man, with
furious energy.

"Déroulède is thirty: my boy was scarce out of his teens: may the
vengeance of God fall upon the murderer!"

Juliette, awed, terrified, was gazing at her father with great,
wondering eyes. He seemed unlike himself. His face wore a curious
expression of ecstasy and of hatred, also of hope and exultation,
whenever he looked steadily at her.

That the final glimmer of a tottering reason was fast leaving the poor,
aching head she was too young to realise. Madness was a word that had
only a vague meaning for her. Though she did not understand her father
at the present moment, though she was half afraid of him, she would have
rejected with scorn and horror any suggestion that he was mad.

Therefore when he took her hand and, drawing her nearer to the bed and
to himself, placed it upon her dead brother's breast, she recoiled at
the touch of the inanimate body, so unlike anything she had ever touched
before, but she obeyed her father without any question, and listened to
his words as to those of a sage.

"Juliette, you are now fourteen, and able to understand what I am going
to ask of you. If I were not chained to this miserable chair, if I were
not a hopeless, abject cripple, I would not depute anyone, not even you,
my only child, to do that, which God demands that one of us should do."

He paused a moment, then continued earnestly:

"Remember, Juliette, that you are of the house of Marny, that you are a
Catholic, and that God hears you now. For you shall swear an oath before
Him and me, an oath from which only death can relieve you. Will you
swear, my child?"

"If you wish it, father."

"You have been to confession lately, Juliette?"

"Yes, father; also to holy communion, yesterday," replied the child. "It
was the Fête-Dieu, you know."

"Then you are in a state of grace, my child?"

"I was yesterday morning, father," replied the young girl naïvely, "but
I have committed some little sins since then."

"Then make your confession to God in your heart now. You must be in a
state of grace when you speak the oath."

The child closed her eyes, and as the old man watched her, he could see
the lips framing the words of her spiritual confession.

Juliette made the sign of the cross, then opened her eyes and looked at
her father.

"I am ready, father," she said; "I hope God has forgiven me the little
sins of yesterday."

"Will you swear, my child?"

"What, father?"

"That you will avenge your brother's death on his murderer?"

"But, father ..."

"Swear it, my child!"

"How can I fulfil that oath, father?--I don't understand ..."

"God will guide you, my child. When you are older you will understand."

For a moment Juliette still hesitated. She was just on that borderland
between childhood and womanhood when all the sensibilities, the nervous
system, the emotions, are strung to their highest pitch.

Throughout her short life she had worshipped her father with a
whole-hearted, passionate devotion, which had completely blinded her to
his weakening faculties and the feebleness of his mind.

She was also in that initial stage of enthusiastic piety which
overwhelms every girl of temperament, if she be brought up in the Roman
Catholic religion, when she is first initiated into the mysteries of the
Sacraments.

Juliette had been to confession and communion. She had been confirmed by
Monseigneur, the Archbishop. Her ardent nature had responded to the full
to the sensuous and ecstatic expressions of the ancient faith.

And somehow her father's wish, her brother's death, all seemed mingled
in her brain with that religion, for which in her juvenile enthusiasm
she would willingly have laid down her life.

She thought of all the saints, whose lives she had been reading. Her
young heart quivered at the thought of _their_ sacrifices, their
martyrdoms, their sense of duty.

An exaltation, morbid perhaps, superstitious and overwhelming, took
possession of her mind; also, perhaps, far back in the innermost
recesses of her heart, a pride in her own importance, her mission in
life, her individuality: for she was a girl after all, a mere child,
about to become a woman.

But the old Duc was waxing impatient.

"Surely you do not hesitate, Juliette, with your dead brother's body
clamouring mutely for revenge? You, the only Marny left now!--for from
this day I too shall be as dead."

"No, father," said the young girl in an awed whisper, "I do not
hesitate. I will swear, just as you bid me."

"Repeat the words after me, my child."

"Yes, father."

"Before the face of Almighty God, who sees and hears me ..."

"Before the face of Almighty God, who sees and hears me," repeated
Juliette firmly.

"I swear that I will seek out Paul Déroulède."

"I swear that I will seek out Paul Déroulède."

"And in any manner which God may dictate to me encompass his death, his
ruin or dishonour, in revenge for my brother's death."

"And in any manner which God may dictate to me encompass his death, his
ruin or dishonour, in revenge for my brother's death," said Juliette
solemnly.

"May my brother's soul remain in torment until the final Judgment Day if
I should break my oath, but may it rest in eternal peace the day on
which his death is fitly avenged."

"May my brother's soul remain in torment until the final Judgment Day if
I should break my oath, but may it rest in eternal peace the day on
which his death is fitly avenged."

The child fell upon her knees. The oath was spoken, the old man was
satisfied.

He called for his valet, and allowed himself quietly to be put to bed.

One brief hour had transformed a child into a woman. A dangerous
transformation when the brain is overburdened with emotions, when the
nerves are overstrung and the heart full to breaking.

For the moment, however, the childlike nature reasserted itself for the
last time, for Juliette, sobbing, had fled out of the room, to the
privacy of her own apartment, and thrown herself passionately into the
arms of kind old Pétronelle.

CHAPTER I

Paris: 1793

The outrage.

It would have been very difficult to say why Citizen Déroulède was quite
so popular as he was. Still more difficult would it have been to state
the reason why he remained immune from the prosecutions, which were
being conducted at the rate of several scores a day, now against the
moderate Gironde, anon against the fanatic Mountain, until the whole of
France was transformed into one gigantic prison, that daily fed the
guillotine.

But Déroulède remained unscathed. Even Merlin's law of the suspect had
so far failed to touch him. And when, last July, the murder of Marat
brought an entire holocaust of victims to the guillotine--from Adam Lux,
who would have put up a statue in honour of Charlotte Corday, with the
inscription: "Greater than Brutus", to Charlier, who would have had her
publicly tortured and burned at the stake for her crime--Déroulède alone
said nothing, and was allowed to remain silent.

The most seething time of that seething revolution. No one knew in the
morning if his head would still be on his own shoulders in the evening,
or if it would be held up by Citizen Samson the headsman, for the
sansculottes of Paris to see.

Yet Déroulède was allowed to go his own way. Marat once said of him: "Il
n'est pas dangereux." The phrase had been taken up. Within the precincts
of the National Convention, Marat was still looked upon as the great
protagonist of Liberty, a martyr to his own convictions carried to the
extreme, to squalor and dirt, to the downward levelling of man to what
is the lowest type in humanity. And his sayings were still treasured up:
even the Girondins did not dare to attack his memory. Dead Marat was
more powerful than his living presentment had been.

And he had said that Déroulède was not dangerous. Not dangerous to
Republicanism, to liberty, to that downward, levelling process, the
tearing down of old traditions, and the annihilation of past
pretensions.

Déroulède had once been very rich. He had had sufficient prudence to
give away in good time that which, undoubtedly, would have been taken
away from him later on.

But when he gave willingly, at a time when France needed it most, and
before she had learned how to help herself to what she wanted.

And somehow, in this instance, France had not forgotten: an invisible
fortress seemed to surround Citizen Déroulède and keep his enemies at
bay. They were few, but they existed. The National Convention trusted
him. "He was not dangerous" to them. The people looked upon him as one
of themselves, who gave whilst he had something to give. Who can gauge
that most elusive of all things: _Popularity?_

He lived a quiet life, and had never yielded to the omni-prevalent
temptation of writing pamphlets, but lived alone with his mother and
Anne Mie, the little orphaned cousin whom old Madame Déroulède had taken
care of, ever since the child could toddle.

Everyone knew his house in the Rue Ecole de Médecine, not far from the
one wherein Marat lived and died, the only solid, stone house in the
midst of a row of hovels, evil-smelling and squalid.

The street was narrow then, as it is now, and whilst Paris was cutting
off the heads of her children for the sake of Liberty and Fraternity,
she had no time to bother about cleanliness and sanitation.

Rue Ecole de Médecine did little credit to the school after which it was
named, and it was a most unattractive crowd that usually thronged its
uneven, muddy pavements.

A neat gown, a clean kerchief, were quite an unusual sight down this
way, for Anne Mie seldom went out, and old Madame Déroulède hardly ever
left her room. A good deal of brandy was being drunk at the two drinking
bars, one at each end of the long, narrow street, and by five o'clock in
the afternoon it was undoubtedly best for women to remain indoors.

The crowd of dishevelled elderly Amazons who stood gossiping at the
street corner could hardly be called women now. A ragged petticoat, a
greasy red kerchief round the head, a tattered, stained shift--to this
pass of squalor and shame had Liberty brought the daughters of France.

And they jeered at any passer-by less filthy, less degraded than
themselves.

"Ah! voyons l'aristo!" they shouted every time a man in decent clothes,
a woman with tidy cap and apron, passed swiftly down the street.

And the afternoons were very lively. There was always plenty to see:
first and foremost, the long procession of tumbrils, winding its way
from the prisons to the Place de la Révolution. The forty-four thousand
sections of the Committee of Public Safety sent their quota, each in
their turn, to the guillotine.

At one time these tumbrils contained royal ladies and gentlemen,
_ci-devant_ dukes and princesses, aristocrats from every county in
France, but now this stock was becoming exhausted. The wretched Queen
Marie Antoinette still lingered in the Temple with her son and daughter.
Madame Elisabeth was still allowed to say her prayers in peace, but
_ci-devant_ dukes and counts were getting scarce: those who had not
perished at the hand of Citizen Samson were plying some trade in Germany
or England.

There were aristocratic joiners, innkeepers, and hairdressers. The
proudest names in France were hidden beneath trade signs in London and
Hamburg. A good number owed their lives to that mysterious Scarlet
Pimpernel, that unknown Englishman who had snatched scores of victims
from the clutches of Tinville the Prosecutor, and sent M. Chauvelin,
baffled, back to France.

Aristocrats were getting scarce, so it was now the turn of deputies of
the National Convention, of men of letters, men of science or of art,
men who had sent others to the guillotine a twelvemonth ago, and men who
had been loudest in defence of anarchy and its Reign of Terror.

They had revolutionised the Calendar: the Citizen-Deputies, and every
good citizen of France, called this 19th day of August 1793 the 2nd
Fructidor of the year I. of the New Era.

At six o'clock on that afternoon a young girl suddenly turned the angle
of the Rue Ecole de Médecine, and after looking quickly to the right and
left she began deliberately walking along the narrow street.

It was crowded just then. Groups of excited women stood jabbering before
every doorway. It was the home-coming hour after the usual spectacle on
the Place de la Révolution. The men had paused at the various drinking
booths, crowding the women out. It would be the turn of these Amazons
next, at the brandy bars; for the moment they were left to gossip, and
to jeer at the passer-by.

At first the young girl did not seem to heed them. She walked quickly
along, looking defiantly before her, carrying her head erect, and
stepping carefully from cobblestone to cobblestone, avoiding the mud,
which could have dirtied her dainty shoes.

The harridans passed the time of day to her, and the time of day meant
some obscene remark unfit for women's ears. The young girl wore a simple
grey dress, with fine lawn kerchief neatly folded across her bosom, a
large hat with flowing ribbons sat above the fairest face that ever
gladdened men's eyes to see.

Fairer still it would have been, but for the look of determination which
made it seem hard and old for the girl's years.

She wore the tricolour scarf round her waist, else she had been more
seriously molested ere now. But the Republican colours were her
safeguard: whilst she walked quietly along, no one could harm her.

Then suddenly a curious impulse seemed to seize her. It was just outside
the large stone house belonging to Citizen-Deputy Déroulède. She had so
far taken no notice of the groups of women which she had come across.
When they obstructed the footway, she had calmly stepped out into the
middle of the road.

It was wise and prudent, for she could close her ears to obscene
language and need pay no heed to insult.

Suddenly she threw up her head defiantly.

"Will you please let me pass?" she said loudly, as a dishevelled Amazon
stood before her with arms akimbo, glancing sarcastically at the lace
petticoat, which just peeped beneath the young girl's simple grey frock.

"Let her pass? Let her pass? Ho! ho! ho!" laughed the old woman, turning
to the nearest group of idlers, and apostrophising them with a loud
oath. "Did _you_ know, citizeness, that this street had been specially
made for aristos to pass along?"

"I am in a hurry, will you let me pass at once?" commanded the young
girl, tapping her foot impatiently on the ground.

There was the whole width of the street on her right, plenty of room for
her to walk along. It seemed positive madness to provoke a quarrel
singlehanded against this noisy group of excited females, just home from
the ghastly spectacle around the guillotine.

And yet she seemed to do it wilfully, as if coming to the end of her
patience, all her proud, aristocratic blood in revolt against this
evil-smelling crowd which surrounded her.

Half-tipsy men and noisome, naked urchins seemed to have sprung from
everywhere.

"Oho, quelle aristo!" they shouted with ironical astonishment, gazing at
the young girl's face, fingering her gown, thrusting begrimed,
hate-distorted faces close to her own.

Instinctively she recoiled and backed towards the house immediately on
her left. It was adorned with a porch made of stout oak beams, with a
tiled roof; an iron lantern descended from this, and there was a stone
parapet below, and a few steps, at right angles from the pavement, led
up to the massive door.

On these steps the young girl had taken refuge. Proud, defiant, she
confronted the howling mob, which she had so wilfully provoked.

"Of a truth, Citizeness Margot, that grey dress would become you well!"
suggested a young man, whose red cap hung in tatters over an evil and
dissolute-looking face.

"And all that fine lace would make a splendid jabot round the aristo's
neck when Citizen Samson holds up her head for us to see," added
another, as with mock elegance he stooped and with two very grimy
fingers slightly raised the young girl's grey frock, displaying the
lace-edged petticoat beneath.

A volley of oaths and loud, ironical laughter greeted this sally.

"'Tis mighty fine lace to be thus hidden away," commented an elderly
harridan. "Now, would you believe it, my fine madam, but my legs are
bare underneath my kirtle?"

"And dirty, too, I'll lay a wager," laughed another. "Soap is dear in
Paris just now."

"The lace on the aristo's kerchief would pay the baker's bill of a whole
family for a month!" shouted an excited voice.

Heat and brandy further addled the brains of this group of French
citizens; hatred gleamed out of every eye. Outrage was imminent. The
young girl seemed to know it, but she remained defiant and
self-possessed, gradually stepping back and back up the steps, closely
followed by her assailants.

"To the Jew with the gewgaw, then!" shouted a thin, haggard female
viciously, as she suddenly clutched at the young girl's kerchief, and
with a mocking, triumphant laugh tore it from her bosom.

This outrage seemed to be the signal for the breaking down of the final
barriers which ordinary decency should have raised. The language and
vituperation became such as no chronicler could record.

The girl's dainty white neck, her clear skin, the refined contour of
shoulders and bust, seemed to have aroused the deadliest lust of hate in
these wretched creatures, rendered bestial by famine and squalor.

It seemed almost as if one would vie with the other in seeking for words
which would most offend these small aristocratic ears.

The young girl was now crouching against the doorway, her hands held up
to her ears to shut out the awful sounds. She did not seem frightened,
only appalled at the terrible volcano which she had provoked.

Suddenly a miserable harridan struck her straight in the face, with
hard, grimy fist, and a long shout of exultation greeted this monstrous
deed.

Then only did the girl seem to lose her self-control.

"A moi," she shouted loudly, whilst hammering with both hands against
the massive doorway. "A moi! Murder! Murder! Citoyen Déroulède, à moi!"

But her terror was greeted with renewed glee by her assailants. They
were now roused to the highest point of frenzy: the crowd of brutes
would in the next moment have torn the helpless girl from her place of
refuge and dragged her into the mire, an outraged prey, for the
satisfaction of an ungovernable hate.

But just as half-a-dozen pairs of talon-like hands clutched frantically
at her skirts, the door behind her was quickly opened. She felt her arm
seized firmly, and herself dragged swiftly within the shelter of the
threshold.

Her senses, overwrought by the terrible adventure which she had just
gone through, were threatening to reel; she heard the massive door
close, shutting out the yells of baffled rage, the ironical laughter,
the obscene words, which sounded in her ears like the shrieks of Dante's
damned.

She could not see her rescuer, for the hall into which he had hastily
dragged her was only dimly lighted. But a peremptory voice said quickly:

"Up the stairs, the room straight in front of you, my mother is there.
Go quickly."

She had fallen on her knees, cowering against the heavy oak beam which
supported the ceiling, and was straining her eyes to catch sight of the
man, to whom at this moment she perhaps owed more than her life: but he
was standing against the doorway, with his hand on the latch.

"What are you going to do?" she murmured.

"Prevent their breaking into my house in order to drag you out of it,"
he replied quietly; "so, I pray you, do as I bid you."

Mechanically she obeyed him, drew herself to her feet, and, turning
towards the stairs, began slowly to mount the shallow steps. Her knees
were shaking under her, her whole body was trembling with horror at the
awesome crisis she had just traversed.

She dared not look back at her rescuer. Her head was bent, and her lips
were murmuring half-audible words as she went.

Outside the hooting and yelling was becoming louder and louder. Enraged
fists were hammering violently against the stout oak door.

At the top of the stairs, moved by an irresistible impulse, she turned
and looked into the hall.

She saw his figure dimly outlined in the gloom, one hand on the latch,
his head thrown back to watch her movements.

A door stood ajar immediately in front of her. She pushed it open and
went within.

At that moment he too opened the door below. The shrieks of the howling
mob once more resounded close to her ears. It seemed as if they had
surrounded him. She wondered what was happening, and marvelled how he
dared to face that awful crowd alone.

The room into which she had entered was gay and cheerful-looking with
its dainty chintz hangings and graceful, elegant pieces of furniture.
The young girl looked up, as a kindly voice said to her, from out the
depths of a capacious armchair:

"Come in, come in, my dear, and close the door behind you! Did those
wretches attack you? Never mind. Paul will speak to them. Come here, my
dear, and sit down; there's no cause now for fear."

Without a word the young girl came forward. She seemed now to be walking
in a dream, the chintz hangings to be swaying ghostlike around her, the
yells and shrieks below to come from the very bowels of the earth.

The old lady continued to prattle on. She had taken the girl's hand in
hers, and was gently forcing her down on to a low stool beside her
armchair. She was talking about Paul, and said something about Anne Mie,
and then about the National Convention, and those beasts and savages,
but mostly about Paul.

The noise outside had subsided. The girl felt strangely sick and tired.
Her head seemed to be whirling round, the furniture to be dancing round
her; the old lady's face looked at her through a swaying veil, and
then--and then ...

Tired Nature was having her way at last; she folded the quivering young
body in her motherly arms, and wrapped the aching senses beneath her
merciful mantle of unconsciousness.

CHAPTER II

Citizen-Deputy.

When, presently, the young girl awoke, with a delicious feeling of rest
and well-being, she had plenty of leisure to think.

So, then, this was his house! She was actually a guest, a rescued
protégé, beneath the roof of Citoyen Déroulède.

He had dragged her from the clutches of the howling mob which she had
provoked; his mother had made her welcome, a sweet-faced, young girl
scarce out of her teens, sad-eyed and slightly deformed, had waited upon
her and made her happy and comfortable.

Juliette de Marny was in the house of the man, whom she had sworn before
her God and before her father to pursue with hatred and revenge.

Ten years had gone by since then.

Lying upon the sweet-scented bed which the hospitality of the Déroulèdes
had provided for her, she seemed to see passing before her the spectres
of these past ten years--the first four, after her brother's death,
until the old Duc de Marny's body slowly followed his soul to its grave.

After that last glimmer of life beside the deathbed of his son, the old
Duc had practically ceased to be. A mute, shrunken figure, he merely
existed; his mind vanished, his memory gone, a wreck whom Nature
fortunately remembered at last, and finally took away from the invalid
chair which had been his world.

Then came those few years at the Convent of the Ursulines. Juliette had
hoped that she had a vocation; her whole soul yearned for a secluded, a
religious, life, for great barriers of solemn vows and days spent in
prayer and contemplation, to interpose between herself and the memory of
that awful night when, obedient to her father's will, she had made the
solemn oath to avenge her brother's death.

She was only eighteen when she first entered the convent, directly after
her father's death, when she felt very lonely--both morally and mentally
lonely--and followed by the obsession of that oath.

She never spoke of it to anyone except to her confessor, and he, a
simple-minded man of great learning and a total lack of knowledge of the
world, was completely at a loss how to advise.

The Archbishop was consulted. He could grant a dispensation, and release
her of that most solemn vow.

When first this idea was suggested to her, Juliette was exultant. Her
entire nature, which in itself was wholesome, light-hearted, the very
reverse of morbid, rebelled against this unnatural task placed upon her
young shoulders. It was only religion--the strange, warped religion of
that extraordinary age--which kept her to it, which forbade her breaking
lightly that most unnatural oath.

The Archbishop was a man of many duties, many engagements. He agreed to
give this strange "cas de conscience" his most earnest attention. He
would make no promises. But Mademoiselle de Marny was rich: a munificent
donation to the poor of Paris, or to some cause dear to the Holy Father
himself, might perhaps be more acceptable to God than the fulfilment of
a compulsory vow.

Juliette, within the convent walls, was waiting patiently for the
Archbishop's decision at the very moment, when the greatest upheaval the
world has ever known was beginning to shake the very foundations of
France.

The Archbishop had other things now to think about than isolated cases
of conscience. He forgot all about Juliette, probably. He was busy
consoling a monarch for the loss of his throne, and preparing himself
and his royal patron for the scaffold.

The Convent of the Ursulines was scattered during the Terror. Everyone
remembers the Thermidor massacres, and the thirty-four nuns, all
daughters of ancient families of France, who went so cheerfully to the
scaffold.

Juliette was one of those who escaped condemnation. How or why, she
herself could not have told. She was very young, and still a postulant;
she was allowed to live in retirement with Pétronelle, her old nurse,
who had remained faithful through all these years.

Then the Archbishop was prosecuted and imprisoned. Juliette made frantic
efforts to see him, but all in vain. When he died, she looked upon her
spiritual guide's death as a direct warning from God, that nothing could
relieve her of her oath.

She had watched the turmoils of the Revolution through the attic window
of her tiny apartment in Paris. Waited upon by faithful Pétronelle, she
had been forced to live on the savings of that worthy old soul, as all
her property, all the Marny estates, the _dot_ she took with her to the
convent--everything, in fact--had been seized by the Revolutionary
Government, self appointed to level fortunes, as well as individuals.

From that attic window she had seen beautiful Paris writhing under the
pitiless lash of the demon of terror which it had provoked; she had
heard the rumble of the tumbrils, dragging day after day their load of
victims to the insatiable maker of this Revolution of Fraternity--the
Guillotine.

She had seen the gay, light-hearted people of this Star-City turned to
howling beasts of prey, its women changed to sexless vultures, with
murderous talons implanted in everything that is noble, high or
beautiful.

She was not twenty when the feeble, vacillating monarch and his
imperious consort were dragged back--a pair of humiliated prisoners--to
the capital from which they had tried to flee.

Two years later, she had heard the cries of an entire people exulting
over a regicide. Then the murder of Marat, by a young girl like herself,
the pale-faced, large-eyed Charlotte, who had committed a crime for the
sake of a conviction. "Greater than Brutus!" some had called her.
Greater than Joan of Arc, for it was to a mission of evil and of sin
that she was called from the depths of her Breton village, and not to
one of glory and triumph.

"Greater than Brutus!"

Juliette followed the trial of Charlotte Corday with all the passionate
ardour of her exalted temperament.

Just think what an effect it must have had upon the mind of this young
girl, who for nine years--the best of her life--had also lived with the
idea of a sublime mission pervading her very soul.

She watched Charlotte Corday at her trial. Conquering her natural
repulsion for such scenes, and the crowds which usually watched them,
she had forced her way into the foremost rank of the narrow gallery
which overlooked the Hall of the Revolutionary Tribunal.

She heard the indictment, heard Tinville's speech and the calling of the
witnesses.

"All this is unnecessary. I killed Marat!"

Juliette heard the fresh young voice ringing out clearly above the
murmur of voices, the howls of execration; she saw the beautiful young
face, clear, calm, impassive.

"I killed Marat!"

And there in the special space allotted to the Citizen-Deputies, sitting
among those who represented the party of the Moderate Gironde, was Paul
Déroulède, the man whom she had sworn to pursue with a vengeance as
great, as complete, as that which guided Charlotte Corday's hand.

She watched him during the trial, and wondered if he had any
presentiment of the hatred which dogged him, like unto the one which had
dogged Marat.

He was very dark, almost swarthy a son of the South, with brown hair,
free from powder, thrown back and revealing the brow of a student rather
than that of a legislator. He watched Charlotte Corday earnestly, and
Juliette who watched him saw the look of measureless pity, which
softened the otherwise hard look of his close-set eyes.

He made an impassioned speech for the defence: a speech which has become
historic. It would have cost any other man his head.

Juliette marvelled at his courage; to defend Charlotte Corday was
equivalent to acquiescing in the death of Marat: Marat, the friend of
the people; Marat, whom his funeral orators had compared to the Great,
the Sacred Leveller of Mankind!

But Déroulède's speech was not a defence, it was an appeal. The most
eloquent man of that eloquent age, his words seemed to find that hidden
bit of sentiment which still lurked in the hearts of these strange
protagonists of Hate.

Everyone round Juliette listened as he spoke: "It is Citoyen Déroulède!"
whispered the bloodthirsty Amazons, who sat knitting in the gallery.

But there was no further comment. A huge, magnificently-equipped
hospital for sick children had been thrown open in Paris that very
morning, a gift to the nation from Citoyen Déroulède. Surely he was
privileged to talk a little, if it pleased him. His hospital would cover
quite a good many defalcations.

Even the rabid Mountain, Danton, Merlin, Santerre, shrugged their
shoulders. "It is Déroulède, let him talk an he list. Murdered Marat
said of him that he was not dangerous."

Juliette heard it all. The knitters round her were talking loudly. Even
Charlotte was almost forgotten whilst Déroulède talked. He had a fine
voice, of strong calibre, which echoed powerfully through the hall.

He was rather short, but broad-shouldered and well knit, with an
expressive hand, which looked slender and delicate below the fine lace
ruffle.

Charlotte Corday was condemned. All Déroulède's eloquence could not save
her.

Juliette left the court in a state of mad exultation. She was very
young: the scenes she had witnessed in the past two years could not help
but excite the imagination of a young girl, left entirely to her own
intellectual and moral resources.

What scenes! Great God!

And now to wait for an opportunity! Charlotte Corday, the half-educated
little provincial should not put to shame Mademoiselle de Marny, the
daughter of a hundred dukes, of those who had made France before she
took to unmaking herself.

But she could not formulate any definite plans. Pétronelle, poor old
soul, her only confidante, was not of the stuff that heroines are made
of. Juliette felt impelled by duty, and duty at best is not so prompt a
counsellor as love or hate.

Her adventure outside Déroulède's house had not been premeditated.
Impulse and coincidence had worked their will with her.

She had been in the habit, daily, for the past month, of wandering down
the Rue Ecole de Médecine, ostensibly to gaze at Marat's dwelling, as
crowds of idlers were wont to do, but really in order to look at
Déroulède's house. Once or twice she saw him coming or going from home.
Once she caught sight of the inner hall, and of a young girl in a dark
kirtle and snow-white kerchief bidding him good-bye at his door. Another
time she caught sight of him at the corner of the street, helping that
same young girl over the muddy pavement. He had just met her, and she
was carrying a basket of provisions: he took it from her and carried it
to the house.

Chivalrous--eh?--and innately so, evidently, for the girl was slightly
deformed: hardly a hunchback, but weak and unattractive-looking, with
melancholy eyes, and a pale, pinched face.

It was the thought of that little act of simple chivalry, witnessed the
day before, which caused Juliette to provoke the scene which, but for
Déroulède's timely interference, might have ended so fatally. But she
reckoned on that interference: the whole thing had occurred to her
suddenly, and she had carried it through.

Had not her father said to her that when the time came, God would show
her a means to the end?

And now she was inside the house of the man who had murdered her brother
and sent her sorrowing father, a poor, senseless maniac, tottering to
the grave.

Would God's finger point again, and show her what to do next, how best
to accomplish what she had sworn to do?

Hospitality.

"Is there anything more I can do for you now, mademoiselle?"

The gentle, timid voice roused Juliette from the contemplation of the
past.

She smiled at Anne Mie, and held her hand out towards her.

"You have all been so kind," she said, "I want to get up now and thank
you all."

"Don't move unless you feel quite well."

"I am quite well now. Those horrid people frightened me so, that is why
I fainted."

"They would have half-killed you, if ..."

"Will you tell me where I am?" asked Juliette.

"In the house of M. Paul Déroulède--I should have said of Citizen-Deputy
Déroulède. He rescued you from the mob, and pacified them. He has such a
beautiful voice that he can make anyone listen to him, and ..."

"And you are fond of him, mademoiselle?" added Juliette, suddenly
feeling a mist of tears rising to her eyes.

"Of course I am fond of him," rejoined the other girl simply, whilst a
look of the most tender-hearted devotion seemed to beautify her pale
face. "He and Madame Déroulède have brought me up; I never knew my
parents. They have cared for me, and he has taught me all I know."

"What do they call you, mademoiselle?"

"My name is Anne Mie."

"And mine, Juliette--Juliette Marny," she added after a slight
hesitation. "I have no parents either. My old nurse, Pétronelle, has
brought me up, and--But tell me more about M. Déroulède--I owe him so
much, I'd like to know him better."

"Will you not let me arrange your hair?" said Anne Mie as if purposely
evading a direct reply. "M. Déroulède is in the salon with madame. You
can see him then."

Juliette asked no more questions, but allowed Anne Mie to tidy her hair
for her, to lend her a fresh kerchief and generally to efface all traces
of her terrible adventure. She felt puzzled and tearful. Anne Mie's
gentleness seemed somehow to jar on her spirits. She could not
understand the girl's position in the Déroulède household. Was she a
relative, or a superior servant? In these troublous times she might
easily have been both.

In any case she was a childhood's companion of the
Citizen-Deputy--whether on an equal or a humbler footing, Juliette would
have given much to ascertain.

With the marvellous instinct peculiar to women of temperament, she had
already divined Anne Mie's love for Déroulède. The poor young cripple's
very soul seemed to quiver magnetically at the bare mention of his name,
her whole face became transfigured: Juliette even thought her beautiful
then.

She looked at herself critically in the glass, and adjusted a curl,
which looked its best when it was rebellious. She scrutinised her own
face carefully; why? she could not tell: another of those subtle
feminine instincts perhaps.

The becoming simplicity of the prevailing mode suited her to perfection.
The waist line, rather high but clearly defined--a precursor of the
later more accentuated fashion--gave grace to her long slender limbs,
and emphasised the lissomeness of her figure. The kerchief, edged with
fine lace, and neatly folded across her bosom, softened the contour of
her girlish bust and shoulders.

And her hair was a veritable glory round her dainty, piquant face. Soft,
fair, and curly, it emerged in a golden halo from beneath the prettiest
little lace cap imaginable.

She turned and faced Anne Mie, ready to follow her out of the room, and
the young crippled girl sighed as she smoothed down the folds of her own
apron, and gave a final touch to the completion of Juliette's attire.

The time before the evening meal slipped by like a dream-hour for
Juliette.

She had lived so much alone, had led such an introspective life, that
she had hardly realised and understood all that was going on around her.
At the time when the inner vitality of France first asserted itself and
then swept away all that hindered its mad progress, she was tied to the
invalid chair of her half-demented father; then, after that, the
sheltering walls of the Ursuline Convent had hidden from her mental
vision the true meaning of the great conflict, between the Old Era and
the New.

Déroulède was neither a pedant nor yet a revolutionary: his theories
were Utopian and he had an extraordinary overpowering sympathy for his
fellow-men.

After the first casual greetings with Juliette, he had continued a
discussion with his mother, which the young girl's entrance had
interrupted.

He seemed to take but little notice of her, although at times his dark,
keen eyes would seek hers, as if challenging her for a reply.

He was talking of the mob of Paris, whom he evidently understood so
well. Incidents such as the one which Juliette had provoked, had led to
rape and theft, often to murder, before now: but outside Citizen-Deputy
Déroulède's house everything was quiet, half-an-hour after Juliette's
escape from that howling, brutish crowd.

He had merely spoken to them, for about twenty minutes, and they had
gone away quite quietly, without even touching one hair of his head. He
seemed to love them: to know how to separate the little good that was in
them, from that hard crust of evil, which misery had put around their
hearts.

Once he addressed Juliette somewhat abruptly: "Pardon me, mademoiselle,
but for your own sake we must guard you a prisoner here awhile. No one
would harm you under this roof, but it would not be safe for you to
cross the neighbouring streets to-night."

"But I must go, monsieur. Indeed, indeed I must!" she said earnestly. "I
am deeply grateful to you, but I could not leave Pétronelle."

"Who is Pétronelle?"

"My dear old nurse, monsieur. She has never left me. Think how anxious
and miserable she must be, at my prolonged absence."

"Where does she live?"

"At No. 15 Rue Taitbout, but ..."

"Will you allow me to take her a message?--telling her that you are safe
and under my roof, where it is obviously more prudent that you should
remain at present."

"If you think it best, monsieur," she replied.

Inwardly she was trembling with excitement. God had not only brought her
to this house, but willed that she should stay in it.

"In whose name shall I take the message, mademoiselle?" he asked.

"My name is Juliette Marny."

She watched him keenly as she said it, but there was not the slightest
sign in his expressive face, to show that he had recognised the name.

Ten years is a long time, and every one had lived through so much during
those years! A wave of intense wrath swept through Juliette's soul, as
she realised that he had forgotten. The name meant nothing to him! It
did not recall to him the fact that his hand was stained with blood.
During ten years she had suffered, she had fought with herself, fought
for him as it were, against the Fate which she was destined to mete out
to him, whilst he had forgotten, or at least had ceased to think.

He bowed to her and went out of the room.

The wave of wrath subsided, and she was left alone with Madame
Déroulède: presently Anne Mie came in.

The three women chatted together, waiting for the return of the master
of the house. Juliette felt well and, in spite of herself, almost happy.
She had lived so long in the miserable, little attic alone with
Pétronelle that she enjoyed the well-being of this refined home. It was
not so grand or gorgeous of course as her father's princely palace
opposite the Louvre, a wreck now, since it was annexed by the Committee
of National Defence, for the housing of soldiery. But the Déroulèdes'
home was essentially a refined one. The delicate china on the tall
chimney-piece, the few bits of Buhl and Vernis Martin about the room,
the vision through the open doorway of the supper-table spread with a
fine white cloth, and sparkling with silver, all spoke of fastidious
tastes, of habits of luxury and elegance, which the spirit of Equality
and Anarchy had not succeeded in eradicating.

When Déroulède came back, he brought an atmosphere of breezy
cheerfulness with him.

The street was quiet now, and when walking past the hospital--his own
gift to the Nation--he had been loudly cheered. One or two ironical
voices had asked him what he had done with the aristo and her lace
furbelows, but it remained at that and Mademoiselle Marny need have no
fear.

He had brought Pétronelle along with him: his careless, lavish
hospitality would have suggested the housing of Juliette's entire
domestic establishment, had she possessed one.

As it was, the worthy old soul's deluge of happy tears had melted his
kindly heart. He offered her and her young mistress shelter, until the
small cloud should have rolled by.

After that he suggested a journey to England. Emigration now was the
only real safety, and Mademoiselle Marny had unpleasantly drawn on
herself the attention of the Paris rabble. No doubt, within the next few
days her name would figure among the "suspect." She would be safest out
of the country, and could not do better than place herself under the
guidance of that English enthusiast, who had helped so many persecuted
Frenchmen to escape from the terrors of the Revolution: the man who was
such a thorn in the flesh of the Committee of Public Safety, and who
went by the nickname of The Scarlet Pimpernel.

CHAPTER IV

The faithful house-dog.

After supper they talked of Charlotte Corday.

Juliette clung to the vision of that heroine, and liked to talk of her.
She appeared as a justification of her own actions, which somehow seemed
to require justification.

She loved to hear Paul Déroulède talk; liked to provoke his enthusiasm
and to see his stern, dark face light up with the inward fire of the
enthusiast.

She had openly avowed herself as the daughter of the Duc de Marny. When
she actually named her father, and her brother killed in duel, she saw
Déroulède looking long and searchingly at her. Evidently he wondered if
she knew everything: but she returned his gaze fearlessly and frankly,
and he apparently was satisfied.

Madame Déroulède seemed to know nothing of the circumstances of that
duel. Déroulède tried to draw Juliette out, to make her speak of her
brother. She replied to his questions quite openly, but there was
nothing in what she said, suggestive of the fact that she knew who
killed her brother.

She wanted him to know who she was. If he feared an enemy in her, there
was yet time enough for him to close his doors against her.

But less than a minute later, he had renewed his warmest offers of
hospitality.

"Until we can arrange for your journey to England," he added with a
short sigh, as if reluctant to part from her.

To Juliette his attitude seemed one of complete indifference for the
wrong he had done to her and to her father: feeling that she was an
avenging spirit, with flaming sword in hand, pursuing her brother's
murderer like a relentless Nemesis, she would have preferred to see him
cowed before her, even afraid of her, though she was only a young and
delicate girl.

She did not understand that in the simplicity of his heart, he only
wished to make amends. The quarrel with the young Vicomte de Marny had
been forced upon him, the fight had been honourable and fair, and on his
side fought with every desire to spare the young man. He had merely been
the instrument of Fate, but he felt happy that Fate once more used him
as her tool, this time to save the sister.

Whilst Déroulède and Juliette talked together Anne Mie cleared the
supper-table, then came and sat on a low stool at madame's feet. She
took no part in the conversation, but every now and then Juliette felt
the girl's melancholy eyes fixed almost reproachfully upon her.

When Juliette had retired with Pétronelle, Déroulède took Anne Mie's
hand in his.

"You will be kind to my guest, Anne Mie, won't you? She seems very
lonely, and has gone through a great deal."

"Not more than I have," murmured the young girl involuntarily.

"You are not happy, Anne Mie? I thought ..."

"Is a wretched, deformed creature ever happy?" she said with sudden
vehemence, as tears of mortification rushed to her eyes, in spite of
herself.

"I did not think that you were wretched," he replied with some sadness,
"and neither in my eyes, nor in my mother's, are you in any way
deformed."

Her mood changed at once. She clung to him, pressing his hand between
her own.

"Forgive me! I--I don't know what's the matter with me to-night," she
said with a nervous little laugh. "Let me see, you asked me to be kind
to Mademoiselle Marny, did you not?"

He nodded with a smile.

"Of course I'll be kind to her. Isn't every one kind to one who is young
and beautiful, and has great, appealing eyes, and soft, curly hair? Ah
me! how easy is the path in life for some people! What do you want me to
do, Paul? Wait on her? Be her little maid? Soothe her nerves or what?
I'll do it all, though in her eyes I shall remain both wretched and
deformed, a creature to pity, the harmless, necessary house-dog ..."

She paused a moment: said "Good-night" to him, and turned to go, candle
in hand, looking pathetic and fragile, with that ugly contour of
shoulder, which Déroulède assured her he could not see.

The candle flickered in the draught, illumining the thin, pinched face,
the large melancholy eyes of the faithful house-dog.

"Who can watch and bite!" she said half-audibly as she slipped out of
the room. "For I do not trust you, my fine madam, and there was
something about that comedy this afternoon, which somehow, I don't quite
understand."

CHAPTER V

A day in the woods.

But whilst men and women set to work to make the towns of France hideous
with their shrieks and their hootings, their mock-trials and bloody
guillotines, they could not quite prevent Nature from working her sweet
will with the country.

June, July, and August had received new names--they were now called
Messidor, Thermidor, and Fructidor, but under these new names they
continued to pour forth upon the earth the same old fruits, the same
flowers, the same grass in the meadows and leaves upon the trees.

Messidor brought its quota of wild roses in the hedgerows, just as
archaic June had done. Thermidor covered the barren cornfields with its
flaming mantle of scarlet poppies, and Fructidor, though now called
August, still tipped the wild sorrel with dots of crimson, and laid the
first wash of tender colour on the pale cheeks of the ripening peaches.

And Juliette--young, girlish, feminine and inconsequent--had sighed for
country and sunshine, had longed for a ramble in the woods, the music of
the birds, the sight of the meadows sugared with marguerites.

She had left the house early: accompanied by Pétronelle, she had been
rowed along the river as far as Suresnes. They had brought some bread
and fresh butter, a little wine and fruit in a basket, and from here she
meant to wander homewards through the woods.

It was all so peaceful, so remote: even the noise of shrieking, howling
Paris did not reach the leafy thickets of Suresnes.

It almost seemed as if this little old-world village had been forgotten
by the destroyers of France. It had never been a royal residence, the
woods had never been preserved for royal sport: there was no vengeance
to be wreaked upon its peaceful glades and sleepy, fragrant meadows.

Juliette spent a happy day; she loved the flowers, the trees, the birds,
and Pétronelle was silent and sympathetic. As the afternoon wore on, and
it was time to go home, Juliette turned townwards with a sigh.

You all know that road through the woods, which lies to the north-west
of Paris: so leafy, so secluded. No large, hundred-year-old trees, no
fine oaks or antique elms, but numberless delicate stems of hazel-nut
and young ash, covered with honeysuckle at this time of year,
sweet-smelling and so peaceful after that awful turmoil of the town.

Obedient to Madame Déroulède's suggestion, Juliette had tied a tricolour
scarf round her waist, and a Phrygian cap of crimson cloth, with the
inevitable rosette on one side, adorned her curly head.

She had gathered a huge bouquet of poppies, marguerites and blue lupin
--Nature's tribute to the national colours--and as she wandered through
the sylvan glades she looked like some quaint dweller of the woods--a
sprite, mayhap--with old mother Pétronelle trotting behind her, like an
attendant witch.

Suddenly she paused, for in the near distance she had perceived the
sound of footsteps upon the leafy turf, and the next moment Paul
Déroulède emerged from out the thicket and came rapidly towards her.

"We were so anxious about you at home!" he said, almost by way of an
apology. "My mother became so restless ..."

"That to quiet her fears you came in search of me!" she retorted with a
gay little laugh, the laugh of a young girl, scarce a woman as yet, who
feels that she is good to look at, good to talk to, who feels her wings
for the first time, the wings with which to soar into that mad, merry,
elusive land called Romance. Ay, her wings! but her power also! that
sweet, subtle power of the woman: the yoke which men love, rail at, and
love again, the yoke that enslaves them and gives them the joy of kings.

How happy the day had been! Yet it had been incomplete!

Pétronelle was somewhat dull, and Juliette was too young to enjoy long
companionship with her own thoughts. Now suddenly the day seemed to have
become perfect. There was someone there to appreciate the charm of the
woods, the beauty of that blue sky peeping though the tangled foliage of
the honeysuckle-covered trees. There was some one to talk to, someone to
admire the fresh white frock Juliette had put on that morning.

"But how did you know where to find me?" she asked with a quaint touch
of immature coquetry.

"I didn't know," he replied quietly. "They told me you had gone to
Suresness, and meant to wander homewards through the woods. It
frightened me, for you will have to go through the north-west barrier,
and ..."

"Well?"

He smiled, and looked earnestly for a moment at the dainty apparition
before him.

"Well, you know!" he said gaily, "that tricolour scarf and the red cap
are not quite sufficient as a disguise: you look anything but a staunch
friend of the people. I guessed that your muslin frock would be clean,
and that there would still be some tell-tale lace upon it."

She laughed again, and with delicate fingers lifted her pretty muslin
frock, displaying a white frou-frou of flounces beneath the hem.

"How careless and childish!" he said, almost roughly.

"Would you have me coarse and grimy to be a fitting match for your
partisans?" she retorted.

His tone of mentor nettled her, his attitude seemed to her priggish and
dictatorial, and as the sun disappearing behind a sudden cloud, so her
childish merriment quickly gave place to a feeling of unexplainable
disappointment.

"I humbly beg your pardon," he said quietly, "And must crave your kind
indulgence for my mood: but I have been so anxious ..."

"Why should you be anxious about me?"

She had meant to say this indifferently, as if caring little what the
reply might be: but in her effort to seem indifferent her voice became
haughty, a reminiscence of the days when she still was the daughter of
the Duc de Marny, the richest and most high-born heiress in France.

"Was that presumptuous?" he asked, with a slight touch of irony, in
response to her own hauteur.

"It was merely unnecessary," she replied. "I have already laid too many
burdens on your shoulders, without wishing to add that of anxiety."

"You have laid no burden on me," he said quietly, "save one of
gratitude."

"Gratitude? What have I done?"

"You committed a foolish, thoughtless act outside my door, and gave me
the chance of easing my conscience of a heavy load."

"In what way?"

"I had never hoped that the Fates would be so kind as to allow me to
render a member of your family a slight service."

"I understand that you saved my life the other day, Monsieur Déroulède.
I know that I am still in peril and that I owe my safety to you ..."

"Do you also know that your brother owed his death to me?"

She closed her lips firmly, unable to reply, wrathful with him, for
having suddenly and without any warning, placed a clumsy hand upon that
hidden sore.

"I always meant to tell you," he continued somewhat hurriedly; "for it
almost seemed to me that I have been cheating you, these last few days.
I don't suppose that you can quite realise what it means to me to tell
you this just now; but I owe it to you, I think. In later years you
might find out, and then regret the days you spent under my roof. I
called you childish a moment ago, you must forgive me; I know that you
are a woman, and hope therefore that you will understand me. I killed
your brother in fair fight. He provoked me as no man was ever provoked
before ..."

"Is it necessary, M. Déroulède, that you should tell me all this?" she
interrupted him with some impatience.

"I thought you ought to know."

"You must know, on the other hand, that I have no means of hearing the
history of the quarrel from my brother's point of view now."

The moment the words were out of her lips she had realised how cruelly
she had spoken. He did not reply; he was too chivalrous, too gentle, to
reproach her. Perhaps he understood for the first time how bitterly she
had felt her brother's death, and how deeply she must be suffering, now
that she knew herself to be face to face with his murderer.

She stole a quick glance at him, through her tears. She was deeply
penitent for what she had said. It almost seemed to her as if a dual
nature was at war within her.

The mention of her brother's name, the recollection of that awful night
beside his dead body, of those four years whilst she watched her
father's moribund reason slowly wandering towards the grave, seemed to
rouse in her a spirit of rebellion, and of evil, which she felt was not
entirely of herself.

The woods had become quite silent. It was late afternoon, and they had
gradually wandered farther and farther away from pretty sylvan
Suresness, towards great, anarchic, deathdealing Paris. In this part of
the woods the birds had left their homes; the trees, shorn of their
lower branches looked like gaunt spectres, raising melancholy heads
towards the relentless, silent sky.

In the distance, from behind the barriers, a couple of miles away, the
boom of a gun was heard.

"They are closing the barriers," he said quietly after a long pause. "I
am glad I was fortunate enough to meet you."

"It was kind of you to seek for me," she said meekly. "I didn't mean
what I said just now ..."

"I pray you, say no more about it. I can so well understand. I only wish
..."

"It would be best I should leave your house," she said gently; "I have
so ill repaid your hospitality. Pétronelle and I can easily go back to
our lodgings."

"You would break my mother's heart if you left her now," he said, almost
roughly. "She has become very fond of you, and knows, just as well as I
do, the dangers that would beset you outside my house. My coarse and
grimy partisans," he added, with a bitter touch of sarcasm, "have that
advantage, that they are loyal to me, and would not harm you while under
my roof."

"But you ..." she murmured.

She felt somehow that she had wounded him very deeply, and was half
angry with herself for her seeming ingratitude, and yet childishly glad
to have suppressed in him that attitude of mentorship, which he was
beginning to assume over her.

"You need not fear that my presence will offend you much longer,
mademoiselle," he said coldly. "I can quite understand how hateful it
must be to you, though I would have wished that you could believe at
least in my sincerity."

"Are you going away then?"

"Not out of Paris altogether. I have accepted the post of Governor of
the Conciergerie."

"Ah!--where the poor Queen ..."

She checked herself suddenly. Those words would have been called
treasonable to the people of France.

Instinctively and furtively, as everyone did in these days, she cast a
rapid glance behind her.

"You need not be afraid," he said; "there is no one here but
Pétronelle."

"And you."

"Oh! I echo your words. Poor Marie Antoinette!"

"You pity her?"

"How can I help it?"

"But your are that horrible National Convention, who will try her,
condemn her, execute her as they did the King."

"I am of the National Convention. But I will not condemn her, nor be a
party to another crime. I go as Governor of the Conciergerie, to help
her, if I can."

"But your popularity--your life--if you befriend her?"

"As you say, mademoiselle, my life, if I befriend her," he said simply.

She looked at him with renewed curiosity in her gaze.

How strange were men in these days! Paul Déroulède, the republican, the
recognised idol of the lawless people of France, was about to risk his
life for the woman he had helped to dethrone.

Pity with him did not end with the rabble of Paris; it had reached
Charlotte Corday, though it failed to save her, and now it extended to
the poor dispossessed Queen. Somehow, in his face this time, she saw
either success or death.

"When do you leave?" she asked.

"To-morrow night."

She said nothing more. Strangely enough, a tinge of melancholy had
settled over her spirits. No doubt the proximity of the town was the
cause of this. She could already hear the familiar noise of muffled
drums, the loud, excited shrieking of the mob, who stood round the gates
of Paris, at this time of the evening, waiting to witness some important
capture, perhaps that of a hated aristocrat striving to escape from the
people's revenge.

They had reached the edge of the wood, and gradually, as she walked, the
flowers she had gathered fell unheeded out of her listless hands one by
one.

First the blue lupins: their bud-laden heads were heavy and they dropped
to the ground, followed by the white marguerites, that lay thick behind
her now on the grass like a shroud. The red poppies were the lightest,
their thin gummy stalks clung to her hands longer than the rest. At last
she let them fall too, singly, like great drops of blood, that glistened
as her long white gown swept them aside.

Déroulède was absorbed in his thoughts, and seemed not to heed her. At
the barrier, however, he roused himself and took out the passes which
alone enabled Juliette and Pétronelle to re-enter the town unchallenged.
He himself as Citizen-Deputy could come and go as he wished.

Juliette shuddered as the great gates closed behind her with a heavy
clank. It seemed to shut out even the memory of this happy day, which
for a brief space had been quite perfect.

She did not know Paris very well, and wondered where lay that gloomy
Conciergerie, where a dethroned queen was living her last days, in an
agonised memory of the past. But as they crossed the bridge she
recognised all round her the massive towers of the great city: Notre
Dame, the grateful spire of La Sainte Chapelle, the sombre outline of
St. Gervais, and behind her the Louvre with its great history and
irreclaimable grandeur. How small her own tragedy seemed in the midst of
this great sanguinary drama, the last act of which had not yet even
begun. Her own revenge, her oath, her tribulations, what were they in
comparison with that great flaming Nemesis which had swept away a
throne, that vow of retaliation carried out by thousands against other
thousands, that long story of degradation, of regicide, of fratricide,
the awesome chapters of which were still being unfolded one by one?

She felt small and petty: ashamed of the pleasure she had felt in the
woods, ashamed of her high spirits and light-heartedness, ashamed of
that feeling of sudden pity and admiration for the man who had done her
and her family so deep an injury, which she was too feeble, too
vacillating to avenge.

The majestic outline of the Louvre seemed to frown sarcastically on her
weakness, the silent river to mock her and her wavering purpose. The man
beside her had wronged her and hers far more deeply than the Bourbons
had wronged their people. The people of France were taking their
revenge, and God had at the close of this last happy day of her life
pointed once more to the means for her great end.

CHAPTER VI

The Scarlet Pimpernel.

It was some few hours later. The ladies sat in the drawing-room, silent
and anxious.

Soon after supper a visitor had called, and had been closeted with Paul
Déroulède in the latter's study for the past two hours.

A tall, somewhat lazy-looking figure, he was sitting at a table face to
face with the Citizen-Deputy. On a chair beside him lay a heavy caped
coat, covered with the dust and the splashings of a long journey, but he
himself was attired in clothes that suggested the most fastidious taste,
and the most perfect of tailors; he wore with apparent ease the
eccentric fashion of the time, the short-waisted coat of many lapels,
the double waistcoat and billows of delicate lace. Unlike Déroulède he
was of great height, with fair hair and a somewhat lazy expression in
his good-natured blue eyes, and as he spoke, there was just a soupçon of
foreign accent in the pronunciation of the French vowels, a certain
drawl of o's and a's, that would have betrayed the Britisher to an
observant ear.

The two men had been talking earnestly for some time, the tall
Englishman was watching his friend keenly, whilst an amused, pleasant
smile lingered round the corners of his firm mouth and jaw. Déroulède,
restless and enthusiastic, was pacing to and fro.

"But I don't understand now, how you managed to reach Paris, my dear
Blakeney!" said Déroulède at last, placing an anxious hand on his
friend's shoulder. "The government has not forgotten The Scarlet
Pimpernel."

"La! I took care of that!" responded Blakeney with his short, pleasant
laugh. "I sent Tinville my autograph this morning."

"You are mad, Blakeney!"

"Not altogether, my friend. My faith! 'twas not only foolhardiness caused
me to grant that devilish prosecutor another sight of my scarlet device.
I knew what you maniacs would be after, so I came across in the
_Daydream,_just to see if I couldn't get my share of the fun."

"Fun, you call it?" queried the other bitterly.

"Nay! what would you have me call it? A mad, insane, senseless tragedy,
with but one issue?--the guillotine for you all."

"Then why did you come?"

"To--What shall I say, my friend?" rejoined Sir Percy Blakeney, with
that inimitable drawl of his. "To give your demmed government something
else to think about, whilst you are all busy running your heads into a
noose."

"What makes you think we are doing that?"

"Three things, my friend--may I offer you a pinch of snuff--No?--Ah
well!..." And with the graceful gesture of an accomplished dandy, Sir
Percy flicked off a grain of dust from his immaculate Mechlin ruffles.

"Three things," he continued quietly; "an imprisoned Queen, about to be
tried for her life, the temperament of a Frenchman--some of them--and
the idiocy of mankind generally. These three things make me think that a
certain section of hot-headed Republicans with yourself, my dear
Déroulède, _en tête,_ are about to attempt the most stupid, senseless,
purposeless thing that was ever concocted by the excitable brain of a
demmed Frenchman."

Déroulède smiled.

"Does it not seem amusing to you, Blakeney, that you should sit there
and condemn anyone for planning mad, insane, senseless things."

"La! I'll not sit, I'll stand!" rejoined Blakeney with a laugh, as he
drew himself up to his full height, and stretched his long, lazy limbs.
"And now let me tell you, friend, that my League of The Scarlet
Pimpernel never attempted the impossible, and to try and drag the Queen
out of the clutches of these murderous rascals now, is attempting the
unattainable."

"And yet we mean to try."

"I know it. I guessed it, that is why I came: that is also why I sent a
pleasant little note to the Committee of Public Safety, signed with the
device they know so well: The Scarlet Pimpernel."

"Well?"

"Well! the result is obvious. Robespierre, Danton, Tinville, Merlin, and
the whole of the demmed murderous crowd, will be busy looking after
me--a needle in a haystack. They'll put the abortive attempt down to me,
and you may--_ma foi!_ I only suggest that you _may_ escape safely out
of France--in the _Daydream,_ and with the help of your humble servant."

"But in the meanwhile they'll discover you, and they'll not let you
escape a second time."

"My friend! if a terrier were to lose his temper, he never would run a
rat to earth. Now your Revolutionary Government has lost its temper with
me, ever since I slipped through Chauvelin's fingers; they are blind
with their own fury, whilst I am perfectly happy and cool as a cucumber.
My life has become valuable to me, my friend. There is someone over the
water now who weeps when I don't return--No! no! never fear--they'll not
get The Scarlet Pimpernel this journey ..."

He laughed, a gay, pleasant laugh, and his strong, firm face seemed to
soften at thought of the beautiful wife, over in England, who was
waiting anxiously for his safe return.

"And yet you'll not help us to rescue the Queen?" rejoined Déroulède,
with some bitterness.

"By every means in my power," replied Blakeney, "save the insane. But I
will help to get you all out of the demmed hole, when you have failed."

"We'll not fail," asserted the other hotly.

Sir Percy Blakeney went close up to his friend and placed his long,
slender hand, with a touch of almost womanly tenderness upon the
latter's shoulder.

"Will you tell me your plans?"

In a moment Déroulède was all fire and enthusiasm.

"There are not many of us in it," he began, "although half France will
be in sympathy with us. We have plenty of money, of course, and also the
necessary disguise for the royal lady."

"Yes?"

"I, in the meanwhile, have asked for and obtained the post of Governor
of the Conciergerie; I go into my new quarters to-morrow. In the
meanwhile, I am making arrangements for my mother and--and those
dependent upon me to quit France immediately."

Blakeney had perceived the slight hesitation when Déroulède mentioned
those dependent upon him. He looked scrutinisingly at his friend, who
continued quickly:

"I am still very popular among the people. My family can go about
unmolested. I must get them out of France, however, in case--in case
..."

"Of course," rejoined the other simply.

"As soon as I am assured that they are safe, my friends and I can
prosecute our plans. You see the trial of the Queen has not yet been
decided on, but I know that it is in the air. We hope to get her away,
disguised in one of the uniforms of the National Guard. As you know, it
will be my duty to make the final round every evening in the prison, and
to see that everything is safe for the night. Two fellows watch all
night, in the room next to that occupied by the Queen. Usually they
drink and play cards all night long. I want an opportunity to drug their
brandy, and thus to render them more loutish and idiotic than usual;
then for a blow on the head that will make them senseless. It should be
easy, for I have a strong fist, and after that ..."

"Well? After that, friend?" rejoined Sir Percy earnestly, "after that?
Shall I fill in the details of the picture?--the guard twenty-five
strong outside the Conciergerie, how will you pass them?"

"I as the Governor, followed by one of my guards ..."

"To go whither?"

"I have the right to come and go as I please."

"I' faith! so you have, but 'one of your guards'--eh? Wrapped to the
eyes in a long mantle to hide the female figure beneath. I have been in
Paris but a few hours, and yet already I have realised that there is not
one demmed citizen within its walls, who does not at this moment suspect
some other demmed citizen of conniving at the Queen's escape. Even the
sparrows on the house-tops are objects of suspicion. No figure wrapped
in a mantle will from this day forth leave Paris unchallenged."

"But you yourself, friend?" suggested Déroulède. "You think you can quit
Paris unrecognised--then why not the Queen?"

"Because she is a woman, and has been a queen. She has nerves, poor
soul, and weaknesses of body and of mind now. Alas for her! Alas for
France! who wreaks such idle vengeance on so poor an enemy? Can you take
hold of Marie Antoinette by the shoulders, shove her into the bottom of
a cart and pile sacks of potatoes on the top of her? I did that to the
Comtesse de Tournai and her daughter, as stiff-necked a pair of French
aristocrats as ever deserved the guillotine for their insane prejudices.
But can you do it to Marie Antoinette? She'd rebuke you publicly, and
betray herself and you in a flash, sooner than submit to a loss of
dignity."

"But would you leave her to her fate?"

"Ah! there's the trouble, friend. Do you think you need appeal to the
sense of chivalry of my league? We are still twenty strong, and heart
and soul in sympathy with your mad schemes. The poor, poor Queen! But
you are bound to fail, and then who will help you all, if we too are put
out of the way?"

"We should succeed if you helped us. At one time you used proudly to
say: 'The League of The Scarlet Pimpernel has never failed.'"

"Because it attempted nothing which it could not accomplish. But, la!
since you put me on my mettle--Demm it all! I'll have to think about
it!"

And he laughed that funny, somewhat inane laugh of his, which had
deceived the clever men of two countries as to his real personality.

Déroulède went up to the heavy oak desk which occupied a conspicuous
place in the centre of one of the walls. He unlocked it and drew forth a
bundle of papers.

"Will you look through these?" he asked, handing them to Sir Percy
Blakeney.

"What are they?"

"Different schemes I have drawn up, in case my original plan should not
succeed."

"Burn them, my friend," said Blakeney laconically. "Have you not yet
learned the lesson of never putting your hand to paper?"

"I can't burn these. You see, I shall not be able to have long
conversations with Marie Antoinette. I must give her my suggestions in
writing, that she may study them and not fail me, through lack of
knowledge of her part."

"Better that than papers in these times, my friend: these papers, if
found, would send you, untried, to the guillotine."

"I am careful, and, at present, quite beyond suspicion. Moreover, among
the papers is a complete collection of passports, suitable for any
character the Queen and her attendant may be forced to assume. It has
taken me some months to collect them, so as not to arouse suspicion; I
gradually got them together, on one pretence or another: now I am ready
for any eventuality ..."

He suddenly paused. A look in his friend's face had given him a swift
warning.

He turned, and there in the doorway, holding back the heavy portière,
stood Juliette, graceful, smiling, a little pale, this no doubt owing to
the flickering light of the unsnuffed candles.

So young and girlish did she look in her soft, white muslin frock that
at sight of her the tension in Déroulède's face seemed to relax.
Instinctively he had thrown the papers back into the desk, but his look
had softened, from the fire of obstinate energy to that of inexpressible
tenderness.

Blakeney was quietly watching the young girl as she stood in the
doorway, a little bashful and undecided.

"Madame Déroulède sent me," she said hesitatingly, "she says the hour is
getting late and she is very anxious. M. Déroulède, would you come and
reassure her?"

"In a moment, mademoiselle," he replied lightly, "my friend and I have
just finished our talk. May I have the honour to present him?--Sir Percy
Blakeney, a traveller from England. Blakeney, this is Mademoiselle
Juliette de Marny, my mother's guest."

CHAPTER VII

A warning.

Sir Percy bowed very low, with all the graceful flourish and elaborate
gesture the eccentric customs of the time demanded.

He had not said a word, since the first exclamation of warning, with
which he had drawn his friend's attention to the young girl in the
doorway.

Noiselessly, as she had come, Juliette glided out of the room again,
leaving behind her an atmosphere of wild flowers, of the bouquet she had
gathered, then scattered in the woods.

There was silence in the room for awhile. Déroulède was locking up his
desk and slipping the keys into his pocket.

"Shall we join my mother for a moment, Blakeney?" he said, moving
towards the door.

"I shall be proud to pay my respects," replied Sir Percy; "but before we
close the subject, I think I'll change my mind about those papers. If I
am to be of service to you I think I had best look through them, and
give you my opinion of your schemes."

Déroulède looked at him keenly for a moment.

"Certainly," he said at last, going up to his desk. "I'll stay with you
whilst you read them through."

"La! not to-night, my friend," said Sir Percy lightly; "the hour is
late, and madame is waiting for us. They'll be quite safe with me, and
you'll entrust them to my care."

Déroulède seemed to hesitate. Blakeney had spoken in his usual airy
manner, and was even now busy readjusting the set of his
perfectly-tailored coat.

"Perhaps you cannot quite trust me?" laughed Sir Percy gaily. "I seemed
too lukewarm just now."

"No; it's not that, Blakeney!" said Déroulède quietly at last. "There is
no mistrust in me, all the mistrust is on your side."

"Faith!--" began Sir Percy.

"Nay! do not explain. I understand and appreciate your friendship, but I
should like to convince you how unjust is your mistrust of one of God's
purest angels, that ever walked the earth."

"Oho! that's it, is it, friend Déroulède? Methought you had foresworn
the sex altogether, and now you are in love."

"Madly, blindly, stupidly in love, my friend," said Déroulède with a
sigh. "Hopelessly, I fear me!"

"Why hopelessly?"

"She is the daughter of the late Duc de Marny, one of the oldest names
in France; a Royalist to the backbone ..."

"Hence your overwhelming sympathy for the Queen!"

"Nay! you wrong me there, friend. I'd have tried to save the Queen, even
if I had never learned to love Juliette. But you see now how unjust were
your suspicions."

"Had I any?"

"Don't deny it. You were loud in urging me to burn those papers a moment
ago. You called them useless and dangerous and now ..."

"I still think them useless and dangerous, and by reading them would
wish to confirm my opinion and give weight to my arguments."

"If I were to part from them now I would seem to be mistrusting her."

"You are a mad idealist, my dear Déroulède!"

"How can I help it? I have lived under the same roof with her for three
weeks now. I have begun to understand what a saint is like."

"And 'twill be when you understand that your idol has feet of clay that
you'll learn the real lesson of love," said Blakeney earnestly.

"Is it love to worship a saint in heaven, whom you dare not touch, who
hovers above you like a cloud, which floats away from you even as you
gaze? To love is to feel one being in the world at one with us, our
equal in sin as well as in virtue. To love, for us men, is to clasp one
woman with our arms, feeling that she lives and breathes just as we do,
suffers as we do, thinks with us, loves with us, and, above all, sins
with us. Your mock saint who stands in a niche is not a woman if she
have not suffered, still less a woman if she have not sinned. Fall at
the feet of your idol an you wish, but drag her down to your level after
that--the only level she should ever reach, that of your heart."

Who shall render faithfully a true account of the magnetism which poured
forth from this remarkable man as he spoke: this well-dressed, foppish
apostle of the greatest love that man has ever known. And as he spoke
the whole story of his own great, true love for the woman who once had
so deeply wronged him seemed to stand clearly written in the strong,
lazy, good-humoured, kindly face glowing with tenderness for her.

Déroulède felt this magnetism, and therefore did not resent the implied
suggestion, anent the saint whom he was still content to worship.

A dreamer and an idealist, his mind held spellbound by the great social
problems which were causing the upheaval of a whole country, he had not
yet had the time to learn the sweet lesson which Nature teaches to her
elect--the lesson of a great, a true, human and passionate love. To him,
at present, Juliette represented the perfect embodiment of his most
idealistic dreams. She stood in his mind so far above him that if she
proved unattainable, he would scarce have suffered. It was such a
foregone conclusion.

Blakeney's words were the first to stir in his heart a desire for
something beyond that quasi-mediaeval worship, something weaker and yet
infinitely stronger, something more earthy and yet almost divine.

"And now, shall we join the ladies?" said Blakeney after a long pause,
during which the mental workings of his alert brain were almost visible,
in the earnest look which he cast at his friend. "You shall keep the
papers in your desk, give them into the keeping of your saint, trust her
all in all rather than not at all, and if the time should come that your
heaven-enthroned ideal fall somewhat heavily to earth, then give me the
privilege of being a witness to your happiness."

"You are still mistrustful, Blakeney," said Déroulède lightly. "If you
say much more I'll give these papers into Mademoiselle Marny's keeping
until to-morrow."

CHAPTER VIII

Anne Mie.

That night, when Blakeney, wrapped in his cloak, was walking down the
Rue Ecole de Médecine towards his own lodgings, he suddenly felt a timid
hand upon his sleeve.

Anne Mie stood beside him, her pale, melancholy face peeping up at the
tall Englishman, through the folds of a dark hood closely tied under her
chin.

"Monsieur," she said timidly, "do not think me very presumptuous. I--I
would wish to have five minutes' talk with you--may I?"

He looked down with great kindness at the quaint, wizened little figure,
and the strong face softened at the sight of the poor, deformed
shoulder, the hard, pinched look of the young mouth, the general look of
pathetic helplessness which appeals so strongly to the chivalrous.

"Indeed, mademoiselle," he said gently, "you make me very proud; and I
can serve you in any way, I pray you command me. But," he added, seeing
Anne Mie's somewhat scared look, "this street is scarce fit for private
conversation. Shall we try and find a better spot?"

Paris had not yet gone to bed. In these times it was really safest to be
out in the open streets. There, everybody was more busy, more on the
move, on the lookout for suspected houses, leaving the wanderer alone.

Blakeney led Anne Mie towards the Luxembourg Gardens, the great
devastated pleasure-ground of the ci-devant tyrants of the people. The
beautiful Anne of Austria, and the Medici before her, Louis XIII, and
his gallant musketeers--all have given place to the great cannon-forging
industry of this besieged Republic. France, attacked on every side, is
forcing her sons to defend her: persecuted, martyrised, done to death by
her, she is still their Mother: La Patrie, who needs their arms against
the foreign foe. England is threatening the north, Prussia and Austria
the east. Admiral Hood's flag is flying on Toulon Arsenal.

The siege of the Republic!

And the Republic is fighting for dear life. The Tuileries and Luxembourg
Gardens are transformed into a township of gigantic smithies; and Anne
Mie, with scared eyes, and clinging to Blakeney's arm, cast furtive,
terrified glances at the huge furnaces and the begrimed, darkly scowling
faces of the workers within.

"The people of France in arms against tyranny!" Great placards, bearing
these inspiriting words, are affixed to gallows-shaped posts, and
flutter in the evening breeze, rendered scorching by the heat of the
furnaces all around.

Farther on, a group of older men, squatting on the ground, are busy
making tents, and some women--the same Megaeras who daily shriek round
the guillotine--are plying their needles and scissors for the purpose of
making clothes for the soldiers.

The soldiers are the entire able-bodied male population of France.

"The people of France in arms against tyranny!"

That is their sign, their trade-mark; one of these placards, fitfully
illumined by a torch of resin, towers above a group of children busy
tearing up scraps of old linen--their mothers', their sisters' linen
--in order to make lint for the wounded.

Loud curses and suppressed mutterings fill the smoke-laden air.

The people of France, in arms against tyranny, is bending its broad back
before the most cruel, the most absolute and brutish slave-driving ever
exercised over mankind.

Not even mediaeval Christianity has ever dared such wholesale
enforcements of its doctrines, as this constitution of Liberty and
Fraternity.

Merlin's "Law of the Suspect" has just been formulated. From now onward
each and every citizen of France must watch his words, his looks, his
gestures, lest they be suspect. Of what--of treason to the Republic, to
the people? Nay, worse! lest they be suspect of being suspect to the
great era of Liberty.

Therefore in the smithies and among the groups of tent-makers a moment's
negligence, a careless attention to the work, might lead to a brief
trial on the morrow and the inevitable guillotine. Negligence is treason
to the higher interests of the Republic.

Blakeney dragged Anne Mie away from the sight. These roaring furnaces
frightened her; he took her down the Place St Michel, towards the river.
It was quieter here.

"What dreadful people they have become," she said, shuddering; "even I
can remember how different they used to be."

The houses on the banks of the river were mostly converted into
hospitals, preparatory for the great siege. Some hundred mètres lower
down, the new children's hospital, endowed by Citizen-Deputy Déroulède,
loomed, white, clean, and comfortable-looking, amidst its more squalid
fellows.

"I think it would be best not to sit down," suggested Blakeney, "and
wiser for you to throw your hood away from your face."

He seemed to have no fears for himself; many had said that he bore a
charmed life; and yet ever since Admiral Hood had planted his flag on
Toulon Arsenal, the English were more feared than ever, and The Scarlet
Pimpernel more hated than most.

"You wished to speak to me about Paul Déroulède," he said kindly, seeing
that the young girl was making desperate efforts to say what lay on her
mind. "He is my friend, you know."

"Yes; that is why I wished to ask you a question," she replied.

"What is it?"

"Who is Juliette de Marny, and why did she seek an entrance into Paul's
house?"

"Did she seek it, then?"

"Yes; I saw the scene from the balcony. At the time it did not strike me
as a farce. I merely thought that she had been stupid and foolhardy. But
since then I have reflected. She provoked the mob of the street,
wilfully, just at the very moment when she reached M. Déroulède's door.
She meant to appeal to his chivalry, and called for help, well knowing
that he would respond."

She spoke rapidly and excitedly now, throwing off all shyness and
reserve. Blakeney was forced to check her vehemence, which might have
been thought "suspicious" by some idle citizen unpleasantly inclined.

"Well? And now?" he asked, for the young girl had paused, as if ashamed
of her excitement.

"And now she stays in the house, on and on, day after day," continued
Anne Mie, speaking more quietly, though with no less intensity. "Why
does she not go? She is not safe in France. She belongs to the most
hated of all the classes--the idle, rich aristocrats of the old régime.
Paul has several times suggested plans for her emigration to England.
Madame Déroulède, who is an angel, loves her, and would not like to part
from her, but it would be obviously wiser for her to go, and yet she
stays. Why?"

"Presumably because ..."

"Because she is in love with Paul?" interrupted Anne Mie vehemently.
"No, no; she does not love him--at least--Oh! sometimes I don't know.
Her eyes light up when he comes, and she is listless when he goes. She
always spends a longer time over her toilet, when we expect him home to
dinner," she added, with a touch of naïve femininity. "But--if it be
love, then that love is strange and unwomanly; it is a love that will
not be for his good ..."

"Why should you think that?"

"I don't know," said the girl simply. "Isn't it an instinct?"

"Not a very unerring one in this case, I fear."

"Why?"

"Because your own love for Paul Déroulède has blinded you--- Ah! you
must pardon me, mademoiselle; you sought this conversation and not I,
and I fear me I have wounded you. Yet I would wish you to know how deep
is my sympathy with you, and how great my desire to render you a service
if I could."

"I was about to ask a service of you, monsieur."

"Then command me, I beg of you."

"You are Paul's friend--persuade him that that woman in his house is a
standing danger to his life and liberty."

"He would not listen to me."

"Oh! a man always listens to another."

"Except on one subject--the woman he loves."

He had said the last words very gently but very firmly. He was deeply,
tenderly sorry for the poor, deformed, fragile girl, doomed to be a
witness of that most heartrending of human tragedies, the passing away
of her own scarce-hoped-for happiness. But he felt that at this moment
the kindest act would be one of complete truth. He knew that Paul
Déroulède's heart was completely given to Juliette de Marny; he too,
like Anne Mie, instinctively mistrusted the beautiful girl and her
strange, silent ways, but, unlike the poor hunchback, he knew that no
sin which Juliette might commit would henceforth tear her from out the
heart of his friend; that if, indeed, she turned out to be false, or
even treacherous, she would, nevertheless, still hold a place in
Déroulède's very soul, which no one else would ever fill.

"You think he loves her?" asked Anne Mie at last.

"I am sure of it."

"And she?"

"Ah! I do not know. I would trust your instinct--a woman's--sooner than
my own."

"She is false, I tell you, and is hatching treason against Paul."

"Then all we can do is to wait."

"Wait?"

"And watch carefully, earnestly, all the time. There! shall I pledge you
my word that Déroulède shall come to no harm?"

"Pledge me your word that you'll part him from that woman."

"Nay; that is beyond my power. A man like Paul Déroulède only loves once
in life, but when he does, it is for always."

Once more she was silent, pressing her lips closely together, as if
afraid of what she might say.

He saw that she was bitterly disappointed, and sought for a means of
tempering the cruelty of the blow.

"It will be your task to watch over Paul," he said; "with your
friendship to guard and protect him, we need have no fear for his
safety, I think."

"I will watch," she replied quietly.

Gradually he had led her steps back towards the Rue Ecole de Médecine.

A great melancholy had fallen over his bold, adventurous spirit. How
full of tragedies was this great city, in the last throes of its insane
and cruel struggle for an unattainable goal. And yet, despite its
guillotine and mock trials, its tyrannical laws and overfilled prisons,
its very sorrows paled before the dead, dull misery of this deformed
girl's heart.

A wild exaltation, a fever of enthusiasm lent glamour to the scenes
which were daily enacted on the Place de la Revolution, turning the
final acts of the tragedies into glaring, lurid melodrama, almost unreal
in its poignant appeal to the sensibilities.

But here there was only this dead, dull misery, an aching heart, a poor,
fragile creature in the throes of an agonised struggle for a
fast-disappearing happiness.

Anne Mie hardly knew now what she had hoped, when she sought this
interview with Sir Percy Blakeney. Drowning in a sea of hopelessness,
she had clutched at what might prove a chance of safety. Her reason told
her that Paul's friend was right. Déroulède was a man who would love but
once in his life. He had never loved--for he had too much pitied--poor,
pathetic little Anne Mie.

Nay; why should we say that love and pity are akin?

Love, the great, the strong, the conquering god--Love that subdues a
world, and rides roughshod over principle, virtue, tradition, over home,
kindred, and religion--what cares he for the easy conquest of the
pathetic being, who appeals to his sympathy?

Love means equality--the same height of heroism or of sin. When Love
stoops to pity, he has ceased to soar in the boundless space, that
rarefied atmosphere wherein man feels himself made at last truly in the
image of God.

CHAPTER IX

Jealousy.

At the door of her home Blakeney parted from Anne Mie, with all the
courtesy with which he would have bade adieu to the greatest lady in his
own land.

Anne Mie let herself into the house with her own latch-key. She closed
the heavy door noiselessly, then glided upstairs like a quaint little
ghost.

But on the landing above she met Paul Déroulède.

He had just come out of his room, and was still fully dressed.

"Anne Mie!" he said, with such an obvious cry of pleasure, that the
young girl, with beating heart, paused a moment on the top of the
stairs, as if hoping to hear that cry again, feeling that indeed he was
glad to see her, had been uneasy because of her long absence.

"Have I made you anxious?" she asked at last.

"Anxious!" he exclaimed. "Little one, I have hardly lived this last
hour, since I realised that you had gone out so late as this, and all
alone."

"How did you know?"

"Mademoiselle de Marny knocked at my door an hour ago. She had gone to
your room to see you, and, not finding you there, she searched the house
for you, and finally, in her anxiety, came to me. We did not dare to
tell my mother. I won't ask you where you have been, Anne Mie, but
another time, remember, little one, that the streets of Paris are not
safe, and that those who love you suffer deeply, when they know you to
be in peril."

"Those who love me!" murmured the girl under her breath.

"Could you not have asked me to come with you?"

"No; I wanted to be alone. The streets were quite safe, and--I wanted to
speak with Sir Percy Blakeney."

"With Blakeney?" he exclaimed in boundless astonishment. "Why, what in
the world did you want to say him?"

The girl, so unaccustomed to lying, had blurted out the truth, almost
against her will.

"I thought he could help me, as I was much perturbed and restless."

"You went to him sooner than to me?" said Déroulède in a tone of gentle
reproach, and still puzzled at this extraordinary action on the part of
the girl, usually so shy and reserved.

"My anxiety was about you, and you would have mocked me for it."

"Indeed, I should never mock you, Anne Mie. But why should you be
anxious about me?"

"Because I see you wandering blindly on the brink of a great danger, and
because I see you confiding in those, whom you had best mistrust."

He frowned a little, and bit his lip to check the rough word that was on
the tip of his tongue.

"Is Sir Percy Blakeney one of those whom I had best mistrust?" he said
lightly.

"No," she answered curtly.

"Then, dear, there is no cause for unrest. He is the only one of my
friends whom you have not known intimately. All those who are round me
now, you know that you can trust and that you can love," he added
earnestly and significantly.

He took her hand; it was trembling with obvious suppressed agitation.
She knew that he had guessed what was passing in her mind, and now was
deeply ashamed of what she had done. She had been tortured with jealousy
for the past three weeks, but at least she had suffered quite alone: no
one had been allowed to touch that wound, which more often than not,
excites derision rather than pity. Now, by her own actions, two men knew
her secret. Both were kind and sympathetic; but Déroulède resented her
imputations, and Blakeney had been unable to help her.

A wave of morbid introspection swept over her soul. She realised in a
moment how petty and base had been her thoughts and how purposeless her
actions. She would have given her life at this moment to eradicate from
Déroulède's mind the knowledge of her own jealousy; she hoped that at
least he had not guessed her love.

She tried to read his thoughts, but in the dark passage, only dimly
lighted by the candles in Déroulède's room beyond, she could not see the
expression of his face, but the hand which held hers was warm and
tender. She felt herself pitied, and blushed at the thought. With a
hasty good-night she fled down the passage, and locked herself in her
room, alone with her own thoughts at last.

CHAPTER X

Denunciation.

But what of Juliette?

What of this wild, passionate, romantic creature tortured by a Titanic
conflict? She, but a girl, scarcely yet a woman, torn by the greatest
antagonistic powers that ever fought for a human soul. On the one side
duty, tradition, her dead brother, her father--above all, her religion
and the oath she had sworn before God; on the other justice and honour,
a case of right and wrong, honesty and pity.

How she fought with these powers now!

She fought with them, struggled with them on her knees. She tried to
crush memory, tried to forget that awful midnight scene ten years ago,
her brother's dead body, her father's avenging hand holding her own, as
he begged her to do that, which he was too feeble, too old to
accomplish.

His words rang in her ears from across that long vista of the past.

"Before the face of Almighty God, who sees and hears me, I swear ..."

And she had repeated those words loudly and of her own free will, with
her hand resting on her brother's breast, and God Himself looking down
upon her, for she had called upon Him to listen.

"I swear that I will seek out Paul Déroulède, and in any manner which
God may dictate to me encompass his death, his ruin, or dishonour in
revenge for my brother's death. May my brother's soul remain in torment
until the final Judgment Day if I should break my oath, but may it rest
in eternal peace, the day on which his death is fitly avenged."

Almost it seemed to her as if father and brother were standing by her
side, as she knelt and prayed.--Oh! how she prayed!

In many ways she was only a child. All her years had been passed in
confinement, either beside her dying father or, later, between the four
walls of the Ursuline Convent. And during those years her soul had been
fed on a contemplative, ecstatic religion, a kind of sanctified
superstition, which she would have deemed sacrilege to combat.

Her first step into womanhood was taken with that oath upon her lips;
since then, with a stoical sense of duty, she had lashed herself into a
daily, hourly remembrance of the great mission imposed upon her.

To have neglected it would have been, to her, equal to denying God.

She had but vague ideas of the doctrinal side of religion. Purgatory was
to her merely a word, but a word representing a real spiritual
state--one of expectancy, of restlessness, of sorrow. And vaguely, yet
determinedly, she believed that her brother's soul suffered, because she
had been too weak to fulfil her oath.

The Church had not come to her rescue. The ministers of her religion
were scattered to the four corners of besieged, agonising France. She
had no one to help her, no one to comfort her. That very peaceful,
contemplative life she had led in the convent, only served to enhance
her feeling of the solemnity of her mission.

It was true, it was inevitable, because it was so hard.

To the few who, throughout those troublous times, had kept a feeling of
veneration for their religion, this religion had become one of
abnegation and martyrdom.

A spirit of uncompromising Jansenism seemed to call forth sacrifices and
renunciation, whereas the happy-go-lucky Catholicism of the past century
had only suggested an easy, flowered path, to a comfortable,
well-upholstered heaven.

The harder the task seemed which was set before her, the more real it
became to Juliette. God, she firmly believed, had at last, after ten
years, shown her the way to wreak vengeance upon her brother's murderer.
He had brought her to this house, caused her to see and hear part of the
conversation between Blakeney and Déroulède, and this at the moment of
all others, when even the semblance of a conspiracy against the Republic
would bring the one inevitable result in its train: disgrace first, the
hasty mock trial, the hall of justice, and the guillotine.

She tried not to hate Déroulède. She wished to judge him coldly and
impartially, or rather to indict him before the throne of God, and to
punish him for the crime he had committed ten years ago. Her personal
feelings must remain out of the question.

Had Charlotte Corday considered her own sensibilities, when with her own
hand she put an end to Marat?

Juliette remained on her knees for hours. She heard Anne Mie come home,
and Déroulède's voice of welcome on the landing. This was perhaps the
most bitter moment of this awful soul conflict, for it brought to her
mind the remembrance of those others who would suffer too, and who were
innocent--Madame Déroulède and poor, crippled Anne Mie. They had done no
wrong, and yet how heavily would they be punished!

And then the saner judgment, the human, material code of ethics gained
for a while the upper hand. Juliette would rise from her knees, dry her
eyes, prepare quietly to go to bed, and to forget all about the awful,
relentless Fate which dragged her to the fulfilment of its will, and
then sink back, broken-hearted, murmuring impassioned prayers for
forgiveness to her father, her brother, her God.

The soul was young and ardent, and it fought for abnegation, martyrdom,
and stern duty; the body was childlike, and it fought for peace,
contentment, and quiet reason.

The rational body was conquered by the passionate, powerful soul.