Front matter (continued 4)

Aline protested civilly, but Mlle Marguerite, a little dark-eyed creature, with a baby mouth, dropped a soft whisper in her ear as she rose:

"Grandmamma is always obeyed—but on the instant," and Aline sat down submissively.

"And now, racontez donc, mon enfant, racontez," said the old lady, "where have you been all these months, and how did you escape?"

Embarrassing questions these, but to hesitate was out of the question. That would at once point to necessity for concealment. She began, therefore, and told her story quite simply, and truly, only omitting mention of her work with Dangeau.

Mme de Matigny tapped her knee.

"But, enfin, I do not understand. What is all this? Why did you not appeal to your cousin's friends, to Mme de St. Aignan, or Mme de Rabutin, for example?"

"I knew only the names, Madame," said Aline, lifting her truthful eyes. "And at first I thought all had perished. I dared not ask, and there was no one to tell me."

"Poor child," the hand stopped tapping, and patted her shoulder kindly. "And this Rosalie you speak of, what was she?"

"Sometimes she was kind. I do not think she meant me any harm, and at least she saved my life once."

When she came to the story of her arrest, she faltered a little. The old eyes were so keen.

"What do they accuse you of? You have done nothing?"

"Oh, chère Comtesse, is it then necessary that one should have done anything?" broke in Adèle de Créspigny, a little bitter colour in that faded voice of hers. "Have you done anything, or I, or little Marguerite here?"

Madame fanned herself, her manner slightly distant. She was not accustomed to be interrupted.

"They say I wrote letters to emigrés, to my son Charles, in fact. Marguerite also. It is a crime, it appears, to indulge in family feeling. But, you, you, Mademoiselle, did not even do that."

"No," said Aline, blushing. "It was ... it was that the Citizen Hébert found out my real name—I do not know how—and denounced me."

Her downcast looks filled in enough of the story for those penetrating eyes.

"Canaille!" said the old lady under her breath, and then aloud:

"You are better here, with us. It is more convenable," and once more she patted the shoulder, and that odd sense of being at home brought sudden tears to Aline's eyes.

A few days later a piece of news reached her. She and Marguerite de Matigny sat embroidering the same long strip of silk. They had become close friends in the enforced daily intimacy of prison life, and the luxury of possessing a friend with whom she could revive the old, innocent, free talk of convent times was delightful in the extreme to the lonely girl, forced too soon into a self-reliance beyond her years.

Mlle Marguerite looked up from the brilliant half-set stitch, and glanced warily round.

"Tiens, Aline," she said, putting her small head on one side, "I heard something this morning, something that concerns you."

Aline grew paler. That all news was bad news was one axiom which the events of the last few months had graved deeply on her heart. Marguerite saw the tremor that passed over her, and made haste to be reassuring.

"No, no, ma belle, it is nothing bad. Stupid that I am! It is that these wretches outside have been fighting amongst themselves, and your M. Hébert has been sent to prison. I hope he likes it," and she took a little vicious stitch which knotted her yellow thread, and confused the symmetrical centre of a most gorgeous flower. "There, I have tangled my thread again, and grandmamma will scold me. I shall say it was the fault of your M. Hébert."

"Please don't call him my M. Hébert," said Aline proudly. Marguerite laid down her needle.

"Aline, why did he denounce you?"

"Ah, Marguerite, don't talk of him. You don't know what a wretch—" and she broke off shuddering.

"No, but I should like to know. I can see you could tell tales—oh, but most exciting ones! Why did he do it? He must have had some reason; or did he just see you, and hate you, like love at first sight, only the other way round?"

Mlle de Rochambeau assumed an air of prudence and reproof.

"Fi donc, Mlle de Matigny, what would your grandmother say to such talk?"

Marguerite made a little, wicked moue.

"She would say—it was not convenable," she mimicked, and laid a coaxing hand on her friend's knee. "But tell me then, Aline, tell me what I want to know—tell me all about it, all there is to tell. I shall tease and tease until you do," she declared.

"Oh, Marguerite, it is too dreadful to laugh about."

"If one never laughed, because of dreadful things, why, then, we should all forget how to do it nowadays," pouted Marguerite. "But, see then, already I cry—" and she lifted an infinitesimal scrap of cambric to her dancing eyes.

Mlle de Rochambeau laughed, but she shook her head, and Marguerite gave her a little pinch.

"Wicked one," she said; "but I shall find out all the same. All my life I have found out what I wanted to, yes, even secrets of grandmamma's," and she nodded mischievously; but Aline turned back to the original subject of the conversation.

"Are you sure he is in prison?" she asked anxiously.

"Yes, yes, quite sure. The Abbé Loisel said so when he came this morning. I heard him say to grand-mamma, 'The wolves begin to tear each other. It is a just retribution.' And then he said, 'Hébert, who edits that disgrace to the civilised world, the Père Duchesne, is in prison.' Oh, Aline, would n't it have been fun if he had been sent here?"

Aline's hand went to her heart.

"Oh, mon Dieu!" she said quickly.

Marguerite made round baby eyes of wonder.

"You are frightened of him," she cried. "He must have done, or said, something very bad to make you look like that. If you would tell me what it was, I should not have to go on worrying you about him, but as it is, I shall have to make you simply hate me. I know I shall," she concluded mournfully.

"Oh, child, child, you don't understand," cried Mlle de Rochambeau, feeling suddenly that her two years of greater age were twenty of bitter experience. Her eyes filled as she bent her burning face over the embroidery, whilst two large tears fell from them and lay on the petals of her golden flower like points of glittering dew.

Marguerite coloured, and looked first down at the floor and then up at her friend's flushed face.

"Oh, Aline!" she breathed, "was it really that? Oh, the wretch! And when you wouldn't look at him he revenged himself? Ouf, it makes me creep. No wonder you feel badly about it. The villain!" she stamped a childish foot, and knotted her thread again.

"Oh dear, it will have to be cut," she declared, "and what grandmamma will say, the saints alone know."

Aline took the work out of the too vehement hands, and spent five minutes in bringing order out of a sad confusion. "Now it is better," she said, handing it back again; "you are too impatient, little one."

"Ah, 'twas not my fault, but that villain's. How could I be calm when I thought of him? But you are an angel of patience, ma mie. How can you be so quiet and still when things go wrong?"

"Ah," said Mademoiselle with half a sigh, "for eight months I earned my living by my work, you know, and if I had lost patience when my thread knotted I should have had nothing to eat next day, so you see I was obliged to learn."

Mme de Matigny came by as she ended, and both girls rose and curtsied. She glanced at the work, nodded her head, and passed on, on M. de Lancy's arm. For the moment chattering Marguerite became decorous Mlle de Matigny—a jeune fille, bien élevée. In her grandmother's presence only the demurest of glances shot from the soft brown eyes, only the most dutiful and conventional remarks dropped from the pretty, prudish lips—but with Aline, what a difference! Now, the stately passage over, she leaned close again above the neglected needle.

"Dis donc, Aline! You were betrothed, were you not, to that poor M. de Sélincourt? Were you inconsolable when he was killed? Did you like him?"

The ambiguous "aimer" fell from her lips with a teasing inflection.

"He is dead," reproved Mlle de Rochambeau.

"Tiens, I did not say he was alive! But did you; tell me? What did it feel like to be betrothed?"

"Ask Mme de Matigny what is the correct feeling for a young girl to have for her betrothed," said Aline, a hint of bitterness behind her smile.

"De grêce!" and Marguerite's plump hands went up in horror. "See then, Aline, I think it would be nice to love—really to love—do you not think so?"

Mlle de Rochambeau shook her head with decision. Something in the light words had stabbed her, and she felt an inward pain.

"I do not see why one should not love one's husband," pursued Marguerite reflectively. "If one has to live with some one always, it would be far more agreeable to love him. But it appears that that is a very bourgeoise idea, and that it is more convenable to love some one else."

"Oh, Marguerite!"

"Yes, yes, I tell you it is so! Here one hears everything. They cannot send one out of the room when the conversation begins to grow interesting. There is Mme de Créspigny—she is in our room—she weeps much in the night, but it is not because of her husband, oh no; it is for M. le Chevalier de St. Armand, who was guillotined on the same day."

"Hush, Marguerite, you should not say such things."

"But if they are true, and this is really true, for when they brought her the news she cried out 'Etienne' very loud, and fainted. M. de Créspigny was our cousin, so I know all his names. There is no Etienne amongst them," and she nodded wisely.

"Oh, Marguerite!"

"So you see it is true. I find that odious, for my part, though, to be sure, what could she do if she loved him? One cannot make oneself love or not love. It comes or it goes, and you can only weep like Mme de Créspigny, unless, to be sure, one could make shift to laugh, as I think I shall try to do when my time comes."

Mlle de Rochambeau looked up with a sudden flame in her eyes.

"It is not true that one cannot help loving," she said quickly. "One can—one can. If it is a wrong love it can be crushed, and one forgets. Oh, you do not know what you are talking about, Marguerite."

Marguerite embraced her.

"And do you?" she whispered slyly.

Girls' talk—strange talk for a prison, and one where Death stood by the entrance, beckoning one and another.

One day it was M. de Lancy who was called away in the midst of a compliment to his "Chère Comtesse," called to appear at Fouquier Tinville's bar, and later, at that of another and more merciful Judge.

The next, Mme de Créspigny's tired eyes rested for the last time upon prison walls, and she went out smiling wistful good-byes, to follow husband and lover to a world where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage.

As each departed, the groups would close their ranks, and after a moment's pause would talk the faster and more lightly, until once more the summons came, and again one would be taken and one left.

This was one side of prison society. On the other a group of devout persons kept up the forms of convent life, just as the coterie of Mme de Matigny did those of the salon. The Abbé de Nérac, the Abbé Constantin, and half a dozen nuns were the nucleus of this second group, but not all were ecclesiastics or religious. M. de Maurepas, the young soldier, with the ugly rugged face and good brown eyes, was of their number, and devout ladies not a few, who spent their time between encouraging one another in the holy life, and hours of silent prayer for those in the peril of trial and the agony of death.

Their conversations may still be read, and breathe a piety as exquisite as it is natural and touching. To both these groups came daily the Abbé Loisel, bringing to the one news of the outside world, and to the other the consolations of religion. Mass was said furtively, the Host elevated, the faithful communicated, and Loisel would pass out again to his life of hourly peril, moving from hiding-place to hiding-place, and from plot to plot, risking his safety by day to comfort the prisoners, or to bless the condemned on their way to the scaffold, and by night to give encouragement to some little band of aristocrats who thought they could fight the Revolution.

Singular mixture of conspirator and saint, his courage was undoubted. The recorded heroisms of the times are many, those unrecorded more, and his strange adventures have never found an historian.

Outside the Gironde rocked, tottered, and fell. Imprisoned Hébert was loose again. Danton struck for the Mountain, and struck right home. First arrest, then prison, and lastly death came upon the men who had dreamed of ruling France. The strong man armed had kept the house, until there came one stronger than he.

So passed the Girondins, first of the Revolution's children to fall beneath the Juggernaut car they had reared and set in motion.

CHAPTER XVI

AN UNWELCOME VISITOR

Mlle de Rochambeau shared a small, unwholesome cell with three other women. One of them, Mme de Coigny, a young widow, had lately given birth to a child, a poor, fretful little creature whose wailings added to the general discomfort.

Mme Renard, the linen draper's wife, tossed her head, and complained volubly to whoever would listen, that she got no sleep at nights, since the brat came. She had been a great man's mistress, and was under arrest because he had emigrated. Terrified to death, she bewailed her lot continually, was sometimes fawning, sometimes insolent to her aristocratic companions, and always very disdainful of the fourth inmate, a stout Breton peasant, with a wooden manner which concealed an enormous respect for the company in which she found herself. She told her rosary incessantly, when not occupied with the baby, who was less ill at ease in her accustomed arms than with its frail, young mother.

One night Mademoiselle awoke with a start. She thought she was being called, and listened intently. A little light came through the grated window—moonlight, but sallow, and impure, as if the rays were infected by the heaviness of the atmosphere. It served, however, to show the heavy immobility of Marie Kérac's form as she lay, emitting unmistakable snores, the baby caught in her left arm and sleeping too. A dingy beam fell right across Mme Renard's face. It had been pretty enough, in a round dimpled way, but now it looked heavy and leaden, showing lines of fretful fear, even in sleep.

Out of the darkness in the corner there came a long-drawn sigh, and then a very low voice just breathed the words, "Mademoiselle de Rochambeau, are you awake?" Aline sat up.

"Is it you, Madame de Coigny?" she asked, a little startled, for both sigh and voice had a vague unearthliness that seemed to make the night darker. The Bretonne's honest breathing was a reassuring sound.

"Yes!" said the low voice.

"Are you ill—can I do anything for you?"

There was a rustling movement and a dim shape emerged from the shadow.

"If I might lie down beside you for a while. The little one went so peacefully to sleep with that good soul, that I had not the heart to take her back, and it is lonely—mon Dieu, it is lonely!"

Aline made room on the straw pallet, and put an arm round the cold, shrinking figure.

"Why, you are chilled," she said gently, "and the night is quite warm."

"To-morrow I shall be colder," said Mme de Coigny in a strange whisper.

"My dear, what do you mean?"

Something like a shiver made the straw rustle.

"I am not afraid. It is only that I cannot get warm"; then turning her face to Aline she whispered, "they will come for me to-morrow."

"No, no; why should you think so? How can you know?"

"Ah, I know—I know quite well—and I am glad, really. I should have been glad to die before the little one came, for then she would have been safe too. Now she has this business of life before her, and, see you, I find life too sad, at all events for us women."

"Life is not always sad," said Aline soothingly.

"Mine has been sad," said Mme de Coigny. "May I talk to you a little? We are of the same age, and to-night—to-night I feel so strange, as if I were quite alone in some great empty place."

"Yes, talk to me, and I will put my arms round you. There! Now you will be warmer."

Another shiver shook the bed, and then the low voice began again.

"I wanted to be a nun, you know. When I was a child they called me the little nun, and always I said I would be one. Then when I was eighteen, my elder sister died, and I was an heiress, and they married me to M. de Coigny."

"Did you not want to marry him?"

"Nobody thought of asking me, and, mon Dieu, how I cried, and wept, and tortured myself. I thought I was a martyr, no less, and prayed that I might die. It was terrible! By the time the wedding-day came, M. de Coigny must have wondered at his bride, for my face was swollen with weeping, and my eyes red and sore," and she gave a little ghost of a laugh.

"Was he kind to you?"

"Yes, he was kind"—there was a queer inflection in the low tone—"and almost at once he was called away for six months, and I went back to my prayers, and tried to fancy myself a nun again. Then he came back, and all at once, I don't know how, something seemed to break in my heart, and I loved him. Mon Dieu, how I loved him! And he loved me,—that was what was so wonderful."

"Then you were happy?"

"For a month—one little month—only one little month—" she broke off on a sob, and clung to Aline in the dark. "They arrested us, took us to prison, and when I would have gone to the scaffold with him, they tore me away, yes, though I went on my knees and prayed to them. 'The Republic does not kill her unborn citizens,' they said; and they sent me here to wait."

"You will live for the poor little baby," whispered Aline, her eyes full of tears, but Mme de Coigny shook her head.

"No," she said quietly; "it is over now. To-morrow they will take me away."

She lay a little longer, but did not talk much, and after a while she slipped away to her own mattress, and Aline, listening, could hear that she slept.

In the morning she made no reference to what had passed, but when Aline left the cell to go to Mme de Matigny's room she thought as she passed out that she heard a whispered "Adieu," though on looking round she saw that Mme de Coigny's face was bent over the child, whom she was rocking on her knee.

She went on her way, walking fast, and lifting her skirts carefully, for the passages of the Abbaye were places of indescribable noisomeness. About half-way down, the open door of an empty cell let a little light in upon the filth and confusion, and showed the bestial, empurpled face of a drunken turnkey, who lay all along a bench, sleeping off the previous night's excesses. As Aline hastened, she saw a man come down the corridor, holding feebly to the wall. Opposite the empty cell he paused, catching at the jamb with shaking fingers, and lifting a face which Mademoiselle de Rochambeau recognised with a little cry of shocked surprise.

"M. Cléry!" she exclaimed.

Edmond Cléry could hardly stand, but he forced a pitiful parody of his old, gay laugh and bow.

"Myself," he said, "or at least as much of me as the ague has left."

Just inside the cell was a rough stool, and Aline drew it quickly forward. He sank down gratefully, leaning against the door-post, and closing his eyes for a moment.

"Oh," said Mademoiselle, "how ill you look; you are not fit to walk alone."

He gave her a whimsical glance.

"So it appears," he murmured, "since De Maurepas, you, and my own legs are all of the same story. Well, he will be after me in a few moments, that good Maurepas, and then I shall get to my room again."

"I think I know M. de Maurepas a little," said Aline; "he is very religious."

Cléry gave a faint laugh.

"Yes, we are strange room-mates, he and I. He prays all the time and I not at all, since I never could imagine that le bon Dieu could possibly be interested in my banal conversation; but he is a good comrade, that Maurepas, in spite of his prayers."

"But, Monsieur, how come you to be so ill? If you knew how I have reproached myself, and now to see you like this—oh, you cannot tell how I feel."

Cléry found the pity in her eyes very agreeable.

"And why reproach yourself, Citoyenne; it is not your fault that my cell is damp."

"No, no, but your arrest; to think that I should have brought that upon you. Had I known, I would have done anything rather than ask your help."

"Ah, then you would have deprived me of a pleasure. Indeed, Citoyenne, my arrest need not trouble you; it was due, not to your affairs, but my own."

"Ah, M. Cléry, is that true?" and her voice spoke her relief.

"I should be able to think better of myself if it were not," said Cléry a little bitterly. "I was a fool, and I am being punished for my folly. Dangeau warned me too. When you see him again, Citoyenne, you may tell him that he was right about Thérèse."

"Thérèse—Thérèse Marcel?" asked Aline, shrinking a little.

"Ah—you know her! Well, I trusted her, and she betrayed me, and here I am. Dangeau always said that she was dangerous—the devil's imitation of a woman, he called her once, and you can tell him that he was quite right."

Aline averted her eyes, and her colour rose a shade. For a moment her heart felt warm. Then she looked back at Cléry, and fell quickly upon her knees beside him, for he was gasping for breath, and falling sideways from the stool. She managed to support him for the moment, but her heart beat violently, and at the sound of footsteps she called out. To her relief, M. de Maurepas came up quickly. If he felt any surprise at finding her in such a situation, he was too well-bred to show it.

"Do not be alarmed," he said hastily. "He has been very ill, but this is only a swoon; he should not have walked." Then, "Mademoiselle, move your arm, and let me put mine around him, so—now I can manage."

He lifted Cléry as he spoke, and carried him the length of the corridor.

"Now, if Mademoiselle will have the goodness to push the door a little wider," and he passed in and laid Cléry gently down.

Mademoiselle hesitated by the door for a minute.

"He looks so ill, will he die?" she said.

"Not of this," returned M. de Maurepas; then, after a moment's pause, and with a grave smile, "Nor at all till it is God's will, Mademoiselle."

Mlle de Rochambeau spent the morning with Marguerite. On her return to her own cell she found an empty place. Mme de Coigny was gone, and the little infant wailed on the peasant woman's lap.

Cléry was better next day. On the third Aline met M. de Maurepas in the corridor. He was accompanied by a rough-looking turnkey, and she was about to pass without speaking, but their eyes met, and on the impulse she stopped and asked:

"How is M. Cléry to-day?"

The young soldier looked at her steadily.

"He has—he has moved on, Mademoiselle," he returned, something of distress in his tone.

The turnkey burst into a loud, brutal laugh.

"Eh, that was the citizen with the ague? At the last he shook and shook so much that he shook his head off—yes—right out of the little window, where his friend is now going to look for it," and he clapped De Maurepas on the shoulder with a dingy, jocular hand.

Aline drew a sharp breath.

"Oh, no," she said involuntarily, but De Maurepas bent his head in grave assent.

"Is this so pleasant a camp that you grudge me my marching orders?" he asked; and as they passed he looked back a moment and said, "Adieu, Mademoiselle."

She gave him back the word very low, and he smiled again, a smile that irradiated his rough features and steady brown eyes. "Indeed, I think I go to 'Him,'" he said, and was gone.

Aline steadied herself against the wall, and closed her eyes for a moment. She had conceived a sincere liking for the young soldier; Cléry had done her a service, and now both were gone, and she still left. And yet she knew that Hébert was loose again. When she had first heard of his release she spent days of shuddering apprehension, but as the time went on she began to entertain a trembling hope that she was forgotten, as happened to more than one prisoner in those days.

Hébert was loose again, but, for a time at least, with hands too full of public matters, and brain too occupied with the struggle for existence, to concern himself with matters of private pleasure or revenge.

It was the middle of June before he thought seriously of Mlle de Rochambeau.

"Dangeau is returning," said Danton one morning, and Hébert's dormant spite woke again into full activity.

At the Abbaye, the hot afternoon waned; a drowsy stillness fell upon its inmates. Mme de Matigny dozed a little. She had grown older in the past few weeks, but her glance was still piercing, and she woke at intervals with a start, and let it rest sharply upon her little circle, as if forbidding them to be aware of Juno nodding.

Marguerite and Aline sat together: Aline half asleep with her head in her friend's lap, for Mme de Coigny's baby had died at dawn, and she had been up all night tending it, and now fatigue had its way with her.

Suddenly a turnkey stumbled in. He had been drinking, and stood blinking a moment as, coming from the dark corridor, he met the level sunlight full. Then he called Mlle de Rochambeau's name, and as she awoke with a sense of startled amazement Marguerite flung soft arms about her.

"Ah, ma mie, ma belle, ma bien aimée!" she cried, sobbing.

"Chut!" said the man, with a leer. "She 'd rather hear that from some one else, I take it, my little Citoyenne. If I 'm not mistaken there 's some one ready enough. There 's no need to cry this time, since it is only to see a visitor that I want the Citoyenne. There 's a Citizen Deputy below with an order to see her, so less noise, please, and march."

The blood ran back to Aline's cheek. Only two days back the Abbé had mentioned Dangeau's name, and had said he was returning. If it should be he? The thought flashed, and was checked even as it flashed, but she followed the man with a step that was buoyant in spite of her fatigue. Then in the gaoler's room—Hébert!

Just a moment's pause, and she came forward with a composure that hid God knows what of shrinking, maidenly disgust.

Hébert was not attractive to look at. His garments were dusty and wine-stained, his creased, yellow linen revealing a frowsy and unshaven chin, where the reddish hair showed unpleasantly upon the fat, unwholesome flesh. He laughed, disclosing broken teeth.

"It was not I whom you expected, hein Citoyenne," he said, with diabolical intuition. "He gets tired easily, you see, our good Jacques Dangeau, and lips that have been kissed too often don't tempt him any more."

His leer pointed the insult, and an intolerable burning invaded every limb, but she steadied herself against the wall, and leaned there, her head still up, facing him.

"Did you think I had forgotten you too?" he pursued, smiling odiously. "Ah! I see you did me that injustice, but you do not know me, ma belle. Mine is such a faithful heart. It never forgets, never; and it always gets what it wants in the end. I have been in prison too, as you may have heard—yes, you did? And grieved for me, pretty one, that I am sure of. A few rascals crossed my path and annoyed me for the moment. Where are they now? Trembling under arrest. Had they not detained me, I should have flown to you long ago; but I trust that now you acquit me of the discourtesy of keeping a lady waiting. I am really the soul of politeness."

There was a pause. Mademoiselle held to the wall, and kept her eyes away from his face.

"Your affair comes on to-morrow," he said, with a brisk change of tone.

For the moment she really felt a sense of thankfulness. So she was delivered from the unbearable affront of this man's presence what did death matter?

Hébert guessed her thoughts.

"Rather death than me, hein?" he said, leaning closer. "Is that what you are thinking, Ma'mselle White-face?"

Her eyes spoke for her.

"I can save you yet," he cried, angered by her silence. "A word from me and your patriotism is above reproach. Come, you 've made a good fight, and I won't say that has n't made me like you all the better. I always admire spirit; but now it's time the play was over. Down with the curtain, and let's kiss and make friends behind it."

Mademoiselle stood silent, a helpless thing at bay.

"You won't, eh?" and his tone changed suddenly. "Very well, my pretty piece of innocence; it's Fouquier Tinville to-morrow, and then the guillotine,—but"—his voice sank savagely—"my turn first."

She quivered in a sick horror. "What did he mean; what could he do? Oh, Mary Virgin!"

His face came very close with its pale, hideous smile.

"Come to me willingly, and I 'll save your life and set you free when I 've had enough of you. Remain the obstinate pig you are, and you shall come all the same, but the guillotine shall have you next day."

Her white lips moved.

"You cannot—" she breathed almost inaudibly. Her senses were clouding and reeling, but she clutched desperately at that one thought. Some things were impossible. This was one of them. Death—yes, and oh, quickly, quickly; no more of this torture. But this new, monstrous threat—no, no, dear God! no, such a thing could not, could not happen!

The room was all mist, swirling, rolling mist out of which looked Hébert's eyes. Through it sounded his voice, his laugh.

"Cannot, cannot—fine words, my pretty, fine words. When one has friends, good friends, one can do a good deal more than you think, and instead of finding yourself in the Conciergerie between sentence and execution, I can arrange quite nicely that you should be in these loving arms of mine. Aha, my dear! What do you say now? Will you hear reason, or no?"

The mist covered everything now, and the wall she leaned against seemed to rock and give. She spread out her hands, and with a gasp fell waveringly, first to her knees, and then sideways upon the stones in a dead faint.

CHAPTER XVII

DISTRESSING NEWS

Dangeau entered Paris next morning. His mission had dragged itself out to an interminable length. Even now he returned alone, his colleague, Bonnet, having been ordered to remain at Lyons for the present, whilst Dangeau made report at headquarters. The cities of the South smouldered ominously, and were ready at a breath to break into roaring flame. Even as Dangeau rode the first tongues of fire ran up, and a general conflagration threatened. Of this he rode to give earnest warning, and his face was troubled and anxious, though the outdoor life had given it a brown vigour which had been lacking before.

He put up his horse at an inn and walked to his old quarters with a warm glow rising in his breast; a glow before which all misgivings and preoccupations grew faint.

He had not been able to forget the pale, proud aristocrat, who had claimed his love so much against his will and hers; but in his days of absence he had set her image as far apart as might be, involving himself in the press of public business, to the exclusion of his thoughts of her. But now—now that he was about to see her again, the curtain at the back of his mind lifted, and showed her standing—an image in a shrine—unapproachably radiant, unforgettably enchanting, unalterably dear, and all the love in him fell on its knees and adored with hidden face.

He passed up the Rue des Lanternes and beheld its familiar features transfigured. Here she had walked all the months of his absence, and here perhaps she had thought of him; there in the little room had mingled his name with her sweet prayers. He remembered hotly the night he had asked her if she prayed for him, and her low, exquisitely tremulous, "Yes, Citizen."

He drew a long, deep breath and entered the small shop.

It was dark coming in from the glare, but he made out Rosalie in her accustomed seat, only it seemed to him that she was huddled forward in an unusual manner.

"Why, Citoyenne!" he cried cheerfully, "I am back, you see."

Rosalie raised her head and stared at him, and she seemed to be coming back with difficulty from a great distance. As his eyes grew used to the change from the outer day he looked curiously at her face. There was something strange, it seemed to him, about the sunken eyes; they had lost the old shrewd look, and were dull and wavering. For a moment it occurred to him that she had been drinking; then the heavy glance changed, brightening into recognition.

"You, Citizen?" she said, with a sort of dull surprise.

"Myself, and very glad to be back."

"You are well, Citizen?"

"And you, I fear, suffering?"

Rosalie pulled herself together.

"No, no," she protested, "I am well too, quite well. It is only that the days are dull when there is no spectacle, and I sit there and think, and count the heads, and wonder if it hurt them much; and then it makes my own head ache, and I become stupid."

Dangeau shuddered lightly. A gruesome welcome this.

"I would not go and see such things," he said.

"Sometimes I wish—" began Rosalie, and then paused; a red patch came on either sallow cheek. "It is too ennuyant when there is nothing to excite one, voyez-vous? Yesterday there were five, and one of them struggled. Ah, that gave me a palpitation! They say it was n't an aristocrat. They all die alike, with a little stretched smile and steady eyes—no crying out—I find that tiresome at the last."

"Why, Rosalie," said Dangeau, "you should stay at home as you used to. Since when have you become a gadabout? You will finish by having bad dreams and losing your appetite."

Rosalie looked up with a sort of horrid animation.

"Ah, j'y suis déjà," she said quickly. "Already I see them in the night. A week ago I wake, cold, wet—and there stands the Citizen Cléry with his head under his arm like any St. Denis. Could I eat next day?—Ma foi, no! And why should he come to me, that Cléry? Was it I who had a hand in his death? These revenants have not common-sense. It is my cousin Thérèse whose nights should be disturbed, not mine."

Dangeau looked at her steadily.

"Come, come, Rosalie," he said, "enough of this—Edmond Cléry's head is safe enough."

"Yes, yes," nodded Rosalie, "safe enough in the great trench. Safe enough till Judgment day, and then it is Thérèse who must answer, and not I. It was none of my doing."

"But, Rosalie—mon Dieu! what are you saying—Edmond——?"

"Why, did you not know?"

"Woman!—what?"

"Ask Thérèse," said Rosalie with a sullen look, and fell to plaiting the border of her coarse apron.

"Rosalie!"

His voice startled her, and her mood shifted.

"Yes, to be sure, he was a friend of yours, and it is bad news. Ah, he 's dead, there 's no doubt of that. I saw it with my own eyes. He had been ill, and could hardly mount the steps; but in the end he smiled and waved his hand, and went off as bravely as the best of them. It is a pity, but he offended Thérèse, and she is a devil. I told her so; I said to her, 'Thérèse, I think you are a devil,' and she only laughed."

Dangeau could see that laugh,—red, red lips, and white, even teeth, and all the while lips that had kissed hers livid, dabbled with blood. Oh, horrible! Poor Cléry, poor Edmond!

He gave a great shudder and forced his thoughts away from the vision they had evoked, but he sought voice twice before he could say:

"All else are well?"

She looked sullen again, and shrugged her shoulders.

"Ma foi, Citizen, Paris does not stand still."

He bit his lip.

"But here, in this house?"

"I am well, I have said so before."

He turned as if to go.

"And the Citoyenne Roche?" He had his voice in hand now, and the question had a careless ring.

"Gone," said Rosalie curtly.

In a flash that veil of carelessness had dropped. His hand fell heavily upon her shoulder.

"Gone—where?" he asked tensely.

"Where every one goes these days, these fine days. To prison, to the guillotine. They all go there."

For a moment Dangeau's heart stood still, then laboured so that his voice was beyond control. It came in husky gasps. "Dead—she is dead. Oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!"

Rosalie was rocking to and fro, counting on her fingers. His emotion seemed to please her, for she gave a foolish smile.

"She has a little white neck, very smooth and soft," she muttered.

A terrible sound broke from Dangeau's ghastly lips; a sound that steadied for a moment the woman's tottering mind. She looked up curiously, as if recalling something, smoothed the hair from her forehead, and touched the rigid hand which lay upon her shoulder.

"Tiens, Citizen," she said in a different tone, "she is not dead yet"; and the immense relief gave Dangeau's anger rein.

"Woman!" he said violently, "what has happened? Where is she? At once——"

Rosalie twitched away her shoulder, shrinking back against the wall. This blaze of anger kept her sane for the moment.

"She is in prison, at the Abbaye," she said. Under the excitement her brain cleared, and she was thinking now, debating how much she should tell him.

"Since when?"

"A month—six weeks—what do I know?"

"How came she to be arrested?"

"How should I know, Citizen?"

"Did you betray her? You knew who she was. Take care and do not lie to me."

"I lie, I—Citizen! But I was her best friend, and when that beast Hébert came hanging round——"

"Hébert?"

"She took his fancy, Heaven knows why, and you know her proud ways. Any other girl would have played with him a little, given a smile or two, and kept him off; but she, with her nose in the air, and her eyes looking past him, as if he was n't fit for her to see,—why, she made him feel as if he were the mud under her feet, and what could any one expect? He got her clapped into the Abbaye, to repent at leisure."

Dangeau was a man of clean lips, but now he called down damnation upon Hébert's black soul with an earnestness that frightened Rosalie.

"What more do you know? Tell me at once!"

She turned uneasily from the look in his eyes.

"She will be tried to-day."

"You are sure?"

"Thérèse told me, and she and Hébert are thick as thieves again."

"What hour? Dieu! what hour? It is ten o'clock now."

"Before noon, I think she said, but I can't be sure of that."

"You are lying?"

"No, no, Citizen—I do not know—indeed I do not."

He saw that she was speaking the truth, and turned from her with a despairing gesture. As he stumbled out of the shop he knocked over a great basket of potatoes, and Rosalie, with a sort of groan of relief, went down on her knees and began to gather them up. As the excitement of the scene she had been through subsided her eyes took that dull glaze again. Her movements became slower, and she stared oddly at the brown potatoes as she handled them.

"One—two—three," she counted in a monotonous voice, dropping them into the basket. At each little thud she started slightly, then went on counting.

"Four—five—six—seven—eight—" Suddenly she stared at them heavily. "There's no blood," she muttered, "no blood."

Half an hour later Thérèse found her with a phlegmatic smile upon her face and idle hands folded over something that lay beneath her coarse apron.

"Come along then, Rosalie," she called out impatiently. "Have you forgotten the trial?—we've not too much time."

"Ah!" said Rosalie, nodding slowly; "ah, the trial."

Thérèse tapped impatiently with her foot.

"Come then, for Heaven's sake! or we shall not get places."

"Places," said Rosalie suddenly; "what for?"

"Ma foi, if you are not stupid to-day. The trial, I tell you, that Rochambeau girl's trial—white-faced little fool. Ciel! if I could not play my cards better than that," and she laughed.

Rosalie's hands were hidden by her apron. One of them clutched something. The fingers lifted one by one, and in her mind she counted, "One—two—three—four—five"—and then back again—"One—two—three—four—five—" Thérèse was staring at her.

"What's the matter with you to-day?" she said. "Are you coming or no? It will be amusing, Hébert says; but if you prefer to sit here and sulk, do so by all means. For me, I go."

She turned to do so, but Rosalie was already getting out of her chair.

"Wait then, Thérèse," she grumbled. "Is no one to have any amusement but you? There, give me your arm, come close. Now tell me what's going to happen?"

"Oh, just the trial, but I thought you wanted to see it. For me, I always think it makes the execution more interesting if one has seen the trial also."

"Dangeau is back," said Rosalie irrelevantly.

Thérèse laughed loud.

"He has a fine welcome home," she said. "Well, are you coming, for I 've no mind to wait?"

"It is only the trial," said Rosalie vaguely. "Just a trial—and what is that? I do not care for a trial, there is no blood."

She laughed a little and rocked, cuddling what lay beneath her apron.

"Just a trial," she muttered; "but whose trial did you say?"

Thérèse lost patience. She stamped on the floor.

"What, again? What the devil is the matter with you to-day? Are you drunk?"

Rosalie turned her big head and looked at her cousin. They were standing close together, and her left hand, with its strong, stumpy fingers, closed like a vice upon the girl's arm.

"No, I 'm not drunk, not drunk, Thérèse," she said in a thick voice.

Thérèse tried to shake her off.

"Well, you sound like it, and behave like it, you old fool," she said furiously. "Drunk or crazy, it's all one. Let go of me, I shall be late."

"Yes," said Rosalie, nodding her head—"yes, you will be late, Thérèse."

"Va, imbécile!" cried the girl in a passion.

As she spoke she hit the nodding face sharply, twitching violently to one side in the effort to free her arm.

The ponderous hand closed tighter, and Thérèse, turning again with a curse, saw that upon Rosalie's heavily flushed face that stopped the words half-way, and changed them to a shriek.

"Oh, Mary Virgin!" she screamed, and saw the hidden right hand come swinging into sight, holding a long, sharp knife such as butchers use at their work. Her eyes were all black, dilated pupil, and she choked on the breath she tried to draw in order to scream again. Oh, the hand! the knife!

It flashed and fell, wrenched free and fell again, and Thérèse went down, horribly mute, her hands grasping in the air, and catching at the basket across which she fell.

She would scream no more now. The knife clattered to the floor from Rosalie's suddenly opened hand, and, as if the sound were a signal, Thérèse gave one convulsive shudder, which passed with a gush of crimson.

Rosalie went down on her knees, and gathered a handful of the brown tubers from the piled basket. She had to push the corpse aside to get at them, and she did it without a glance.

Then she threw the potatoes back into the basket one by one. She wore a complacent smile. Her eyes were intent.

"Now, there is blood," she said, nodding as if satisfied. "Now, there is blood."

CHAPTER XVIII

A TRIAL AND A WEDDING

Of the hours that passed after that death-like swoon of hers Mlle de Rochambeau never spoke. Never again could she open the door behind which lurked madness, and an agony such as women have had to bear, time and again, but of which no woman whom it has threatened can speak. Hébert had given his orders, and she was thrust into an empty cell, where she lay cowering, with hidden face, and lips that trembled too much to pray.

Hébert's threat lay in her mind like a poison in the body. Soon it would kill—but not in time, not soon enough. She could not think, or reason, and hope was dead. Something else had come in its place, a thing unformulated and dreadful, not to be thought of, unbelievable, and yet unbearably, irrevocably present.

Oh, the long, shuddering hours, and yet, by a twist of the tortured brain, how short—how brief—for now she saw them as barriers between her and hell, and each as it fell away left her a thing more utterly unhelped.

When they brought her out in the morning, and she stepped from the dark prison into the warm, sunny daylight, she raised her head and looked about her a little wonderingly.

Still a sun in the sky! Still summer shine and breath, and beautiful calm space of blue ethereal light above. A sort of stunned bewilderment fell upon her, and she sat very still and quiet all the way.

Inside the hall citizens crowded and jostled one another for a place; plump, respectable mothers of families, cheek by jowl with draggled wrecks of the slums, moneyed shopkeepers, tattered loafers, a wild-eyed Jacobin or two, and everywhere women, women, women. Women with their children, lifting a round-eyed starer high to see the white-faced aristocrat go past; women with their work, whose chattering tongues kept pace with the clattering needles; women fiercer and more cruel than men, to whom death and blood and anguish were become a stimulant more fatally potent than any alcohol.

There were men there too, gaping, yawning, telling horrible tales, men whose hands had dripped innocent blood in September. There was a reek of garlic, the air was abominably hot and close, and wherever citizens could get an elbow free one saw a mopping of greasy faces going forward.

As Mademoiselle de Rochambeau was brought in, a sort of growling murmur went round. The crowd was in a dangerous mood: on the verge of ennui, it wanted something fresh—a sauce piquante to its daily dish—and here was only another cursed aristocrat with nothing very remarkable about her.

She looked round, not curiously, but in some vague, helpless fashion, which might have struck pity from hearts less inured to suffering. On the raised stage to which they had brought her there were a couple of rough tables. At the nearest of the two sat a number of men, very dirty and evil-eyed—Fouquier Tinville's carefully packed jury; and at the farther one, Herman, the great tow-haired Judge President, with his heavy air of being half asleep; and Tinville himself, the Public Prosecutor, low-browed, with retreating chin—Renard the Fox, as a contemporary squib has it, the perpetrator of which lost his head for his pains. Behind him lounged Hébert, hands in pockets, light eyes roving here and there. She saw him and turned her head away with the wince of a trapped animal, looking through a haze of misery to the sea of faces below.

There is a peculiar effluence from any large body of people. Their encouragement, or their hostility, radiates from them, and has an overwhelming influence upon the mind. When the crowd cheers how quickly enthusiasm spreads, until, like a rising tide, it covers its myriad human grains of sand! And a multitude in anger?—No one who has heard it can forget!

Imagine, then, one bruised, tormented human speck, girl in years, gently nurtured, set high in face of a packed assemblage, every upturned face in which looked at her with appraising lust, bloodthirsty cruelty, or inhuman curiosity. A wild panic unknown before swept in upon her soul. She had not thought it could feel again, but between Hébert's glance, which struck her like a shameful blow, and all these eyes staring with hatred, her reason rocked, and she felt a scream rise shuddering from the very centre of her being.

Those watching saw both slender hands catch suddenly at the white throat, whilst for a minute the darkened eyes stared wildly round; then, with a supreme effort, she drew herself up, and stood quietly, and if the blood beat a mad tune on heart and brain, there was no outward sign, except a pallor more complete, and a tightening of the clasped, fallen hands that left the knuckles white.

It was thus, after months of absence, that Dangeau saw her again, and the rage and love and pity in his heart boiled up until it challenged his utmost self-control to keep his hands from Hébert's throat.

Hébert smiled, but uneasily. This was what he had planned—wished for—and yet— Face to face with Dangeau again, he felt the old desire to slink past, and get out of the range of the white, hot anger in the eyes that for a moment seemed to scorch his face.

Dangeau had come in quietly enough, and stood first at the edge of the crowd, by the steps which led to the raised platform on which accused and judges were placed. He had shot his bolt, had made a vain effort to see Danton, and was now come here to do he knew not what.

Mademoiselle looking straight before her, with eyes that now saw nothing, was not aware of his presence, as in a strained, far-away voice she answered the questions Fouquier Tinville put to her.

"Your name?"

"Aline Marie de Rochambeau."

"You are a cousin of the late ci-devant and conspirator Montargis?"

"Yes."

A sort of howl went up from the back of the room, where a knot of filthy men stood gesticulating.

"And you were betrothed to that other traitor Sélincourt?"

"Yes."

The answers dropped almost indifferently from the scarcely parted lips, but she shrank and swayed a little, as a second shout followed her reply, and she caught curses, cries for her death, and a woman's scream of, "Down with Sélincourt's mistress! Give her to us! Throw her down!"

Tinville waved for silence and gradually the noise lessened, the audience settling down with the reflection that perhaps it would be a pity to cut the play short in its first act.

"You have conspired against the Republic?"

"No."

"But I say yes," said Tinville loudly. "Citizen Hébert discovered you under an assumed name. Why did you take a name that was not your own if you had no intention of plotting? Are honest citizens ashamed of their names?"

Dangeau swung himself on to the platform and came forward.

"Citizen President," he said quietly. "I claim to represent the accused, who has, I see, no counsel."

Herman looked up stupidly, a vague smile on his broad, blond face.

"We have done away with counsel for the defence," he observed, with a large, explanatory wave of the hand. "It took too much time. The Revolutionary Tribunal now has increased powers, and requires only to hear and to be convinced of the prisoners' crimes. We have simplified the forms since you went south, Citizen."

Fouquier Tinville glanced at him with venomous intention. "And the Citizen delays us," he said politely.

Aline had let one only sign of feeling escape her,—a soft, quick gasp as Dangeau came within the contracting circle of her consciousness,—but the sound reached him and came sweetly to his ears.

He turned again to Herman.

"But you still hear witnesses, or whence the conviction?" he said in a carefully controlled voice.

"It is Dangeau, our Dangeau!" shouted a woman near the front. "Let him speak if he wants to: what does he know of the girl?"

He recognised little Louison, hanging to her big husband's arm, and sent her a smiling nod of thanks.

"Witnesses, by all means," shrugged Tinville, to whom Hébert had been whispering. "Only be quick, Citizen, and remember it is a serious thing to try to justify a conspirator." He turned and whispered back, "He 'll talk his head off if we give him the chance—devil speed him!" then leaned across the table and inquired:

"What do you know of the accused?"

"I know her motive for changing her name."

"Oh, you know her motive—eh?"

Dangeau raised his voice.

"A patriotic one. She came to Paris, she witnessed the corruption and vice of aristocrats, and she determined to come out from among them and throw in her lot with the people."

Mademoiselle turned slowly and faced him. Now if she spoke, if she demurred, if she even looked a contradiction of his words, they were both lost—both.

His eyes implored, commanded her, but her lips were already opening, and he could see denial shaping there, denial which would be a warrant of death, when of a sudden she met Hébert's dull, anxious gaze, and, shuddering, closed her lips, and looked down again at the uneven, dusty floor. Dangeau let out his breath with a gasp of relief, and spoke once more.

"She called herself Marie Roche because her former name was hateful to her. She worked hard, and went hungry. I call on Louison Michel to corroborate my words."

Hébert raised a careless hand, and instantly there was a clamour of voices from the back. He congratulated himself in having had the forethought to install a claque, as they listened to the cries of, "Death to the aristocrat! Down with the conspirator! Death! Death!"

Dangeau turned from the bar to the people.

"Citizens," he cried, "I turn to you for justice. What did they say in the bad old days?—'The King's voice is God's voice,' and I say it still." The clamour rose again, but his voice dominated it.

"I say it still, for, though the King is dead, a new king lives whose reign will never end,—the Sovereign People,—and at their bar I know there will be equal justice shown, and no consideration of persons. Why did Capet fall? Why did I vote for his death? Because of oppression and injustice. Because there was no protection for the weak—no hearing for the poor. But shall not the People do justice? Citizens, I appeal to you—I am confident in your integrity."

A confused uproar followed, some shouting, "Hear him!" and others still at their old parrot-cry of, "Death! Death!"

Above it all rang Louison's shrill cry:

"A speech, a speech! Let Dangeau speak!" and by degrees it was taken up by others.

"The girl is innocent. Will you, just Citizens, punish her for a name which she has discarded, for parents who are dead, and relations from whom she shrank in horror? I vouch for her, I tell you—I, Jacques Dangeau. Does any one accuse me? Does any one cast a slur upon my patriotism? I tell you I would cut off my right hand if it offended those principles which I hold dearer than my life; and saying that, I say again, I vouch for her."

"All very fine that," called a man's voice, "but what right have you to speak for her, Citizen? Has n't the girl a tongue of her own?"

"Yes, yes!" shouted a big brewer who had swung himself to the edge of the platform, and sat there kicking his heels noisily. "Yes, yes! it 's all very well to say 'I vouch for her,' but there 's only one woman any man can vouch for, and that's his wife."

"What, Robinot, can you vouch for yours?" screamed Louison; and a roar of laughter went up, spiced by the brewer's very evident discomfort.

"Yes, what's she to you after all?" said another woman.

"A hussy!" shrieked a third.

"An aristocrat!"

"What do you know of her, and how do you know it?"

"Explain, explain!"

"Death, death to the aristocrat!"

Dangeau sent his voice ringing through the hall:

"She is my betrothed!"

A momentary hush fell upon the assembly. Hébert sprang forward with a curse, but Tinville plucked him back, whispering, "Let him go on; that 'll damn him, and is n't that what you want?"

Again Aline's lips moved, but instead of speaking she put both hands to her heart, and stood pressing them there silently. In the strength of that silence Dangeau turned upon the murmuring crowd.

"She is my betrothed, and I answer for her. You all know me. She is an aristocrat no longer, but the Daughter of the Revolution, for it has borne her into a new life. All the years before she has discarded. From its mighty heart she has drawn the principles of freedom, and at its guiding hand learned her first trembling steps towards Liberty. In trial of poverty, loneliness, and hunger she has proved her loyalty to the other children of our great Mother. Sons and Daughters of the Republic, protect this child who claims to be of your line, who holds out her hands to you and cries: 'Am I not one of you? Will you not acknowledge me? brothers before whom I have walked blamelessly, sisters amongst whom I have lived in poverty and humility.'"

He caught Mademoiselle's hand, and held it up.

"See the fingers pricked and worn, as many of yours are pricked and worn. See the thin face—thin as your daughters' faces are thin when there is not food for all, and the elder must go without that the younger may have more. Look at her. Look well, and remember she comes to you for justice. Citizens, will you kill your converts? She gives her life and all its hopes to the Republic, and will the Republic destroy the gift? Keep the knife to cut away the alien and the enemy. Is my betrothed an alien? Shall my wife be an enemy? I swear to you that, if I believed it, my own hand would strike her down! If there is a citizen here who does not believe that I would shed the last drop of my heart's blood before I would connive at the danger of the Republic, let him come forward and accuse me!"

"Stop him!" gasped Hébert.

Fouquier Tinville shrugged his shoulders, as he and Herman exchanged glances.

"No, thanks, Hébert," he said coolly. "He's got them now, and I 've no fancy for a snug position between the upper and the nether millstone. After all, what does it matter? There are a hundred other girls" and he spat on the dirty floor.

Undoubtedly Dangeau had them, for in that pause no one spoke, and his voice rang out again at its full strength:

"Come forward then. Do any accuse me?"

There was a prolonged hush. The jury growled amongst themselves, but no one coveted the part of spokesman.

Once Hébert started forward, cleared his throat, then reflected for a moment on Danton and his ways—reflected, too, that this transaction would hardly bear the light of day, cursed the universe at large, and fell back into his chair choking with rage.

It appeared that no one accused Dangeau. Far in the crowd a pretty gipsy of a girl laughed loudly.

"Handsome Dangeau for me!" she cried. "Vive Dangeau!"

In a minute the whole hall took it up, and the roof rang with the shouting. The girl who had laughed had been lifted to her lover's shoulders, and stood there, flushed and exuberant, leading the cheers with her wild, shrill voice.

When the noise fell a little, she waved her arms, crying, with a peal of laughter:

"Let's have a wedding, a wedding, mes amis! If she 's the Daughter of the Revolution, let the Revolution give away the bride, and we 'll all say Amen!"

The crowd's changed mood tossed the new suggestion into instant popularity. The girl's cry was taken up on all sides, there was bustling to and fro, laughter, gossip, whispering, shouting, and general jubilation. A fête, a spectacle—something new—oh, but quite new. A trial that ended in the bridal of the victim, to be sure one did not see that every day. That was romantic. That made one's heart beat. Well, well, she was in luck to get a handsome lover instead of having her head sliced off.

"Vive Dangeau! Vive Dangeau and the Daughter of the Revolution!"

Up on to the platform swarmed the crowd, laughing, gesticulating, pressing upon the jury, and even jostling Fouquier Tinville himself.

Hébert bent to his ear in a last effort, but got only a curse and a shrug for his pains.

"I tell you, he 's got them, and no human power can thwart them now."

"You should have shut his mouth! Why in the devil's name did you let him speak?"

"You wanted him to compromise himself, and it seemed the easiest way. He has the devil's own luck. Hark to the fools with their 'Vive Dangeau!' A while ago it was 'Death to the aristocrat!' and now it 's 'Dangeau and the Daughter of the Revolution!'"

"Speak to them,—do something," insisted Hébert.

"Try it yourself, and get torn to pieces," retorted the other. "The girl 's not my fancy. Burn your own fingers if you want to."

Dangeau was at the table now.

"We await the decision of the Tribunal," he said, with a hint of sarcasm in the quiet tones.

Fouquier Tinville's eyes rested insolently upon him.

"Our Sovereign has decided, it seems," he said. "For me—I throw up the prosecution."

Hébert flung away with an oath, and Herman bent stolidly and wrote against the interrogatory the one word, "Acquitted."

It stood out black and bold in his gross scrawl, and as he threw the sand on it, Dangeau turned away with a bow.

Some one was being pushed through the crowd—a dark man in civil dress, but with the priest's look on his sallow, nervous face. Dangeau recognised the odd, cleft chin and restless eyes of Latour, the Constitutional curé of St. Jean.

"A wedding, a wedding!" shouted the whole assembly, those at the back crying the more loudly, as if to make up by their own noise for not being able to hear what was passing on the platform.

"A wedding, a wedding!" shrieked the same women who, not half an hour ago, had raised the howl for the aristocrat's blood.

"Bride, bridegroom, and priest," laughed the gipsy-eyed girl. "What more do we want? The Citizen President can give away the bride, and I 'll be brides-maid. Set me down then, Réné, and let 's to work."

Her lover pushed a way to the front and lifted her on to the stage. She ran to Mademoiselle and began to touch her hair and settle the kerchief at her throat, whilst Aline stood quite, quite still, and let her do what she would.

She had not stirred since Dangeau had released her hand, and within her every feeling and emotion lay swooning. It was as if a black tide had risen, covering all within. Upon its dark mirror floated the reflection of Hébert's cruel eyes, and loose lips that smiled upon a girl's shamed agony. If those waters rose any higher they would flood her brain and send her mad with horror, Dangeau's voice seemed to arrest the tide, and whilst he spoke the reflection wavered and grew faint. She listened, knowing what he said, as one knows the contents of a book read long ago; but it was the voice itself, not the words carried on it, that reached her reeling brain and steadied it.

All at once a hand on her hair, at her breast; a girl's eyes shining with excitement, whilst a shrill voice whispered, "Saints! how pale you are! What! not a blush for the bridegroom?" Then loud laughter all around, and she felt herself pushed forward into an open space.

A ring had been formed around one of the tables; men and women jostled at its outskirts, pushed one another aside, and stood on tiptoe, peeping and applauding. In the centre, Dangeau with his tricolour sash; Mademoiselle, upon whose head some one had thrust the scarlet cap of Liberty; and the priest, whose eyes looked back and forth like those of a nervous horse. He cleared his throat, moistened his dry lips, and began the Office. After a second's pause, Dangeau took the bride's hand and did his part. Cold as no living thing should be, it lay in his, unresisting and unresponsive, whilst his was like his mood—hotly masterful. After one glance he dared not trust himself to look at her. Her white features showed no trace of emotion, her eyes looked straight before her in a calm stare, her voice made due response without tremor or hesitation. "Ego conjugo vos," rang the tremendous words, and they rose from their knees before that strange assembly, man and wife in the sight of God and the Republic.

"Kiss her then, Citizen," laughed the bridesmaid, slipping her arm through Dangeau's, and he touched the marble forehead with his lips. The first kiss of his strong love, and given and taken so. Fire and ice met, thrust into contact of all contacts the most intimate. How strange, how unbearable! Fraught with what presage of disaster.

"Now you may kiss me," said the bridesmaid, pouting. "Réné isn't looking; but be quick, Citizen, for he 's jealous, and a broken head would n't be a pleasant marriage gift."

Like a man in a dream he brushed the glowing cheek, and felt its warmth.

Yes, so the living felt; but his bride was cold, as the week-old dead are cold.

CHAPTER XIX

THE BARRIER

After the wedding, what a home-coming! Dangeau had led his pale bride through the cheering, applauding crowd, which followed them to their very door, and on the threshold horror met them—for the floor was dabbled with blood. Thérèse's corpse lay yet in the house, and a voluble neighbour told how Rosalie had murdered her cousin, and had been taken, raving, to the cells of the Salpêtrière. The crowd was all agog for details, and, taking advantage of the diversion, Dangeau cleared a path for himself and Aline. He took her to her old room and closed the door. The silence fell strangely.

"My dearest, you are safe. Thank God you are safe," he said in broken tones.

She looked straight before her with an expression deeper than that which is usually called unconscious, her eyes wide and piteous, like those of a child too badly frightened to cry out. He took her cold hands and held them to his breast, chafing them gently, trying to revive their warmth, and she let him do it, still with that far-away, unreal look.

"My dear, I must go," he said after a moment. "For both our sakes I must see Danton at once, before any garbled tale reaches his ear. I will see that there is some one in the house. Louison Michel would come I think. There is my report to make, letters of the first importance to be delivered; a good deal of work before me, in fact. But you will not be afraid now? You are safer than any woman in Paris to-day. You will not be nervous?"

She shook her head slightly, and drew one hand away in order to push the hair from her forehead. The gesture was a very weary one, and Dangeau would have given the world to catch her in his arms.

"So tired, my heart," he said in a low voice; and as a little quiver took her, he continued quickly: "I will find Louison; she came here with us, and is sure not to be far away. She will look after you, and bring you food, and then you should sleep. I dare not stay."

He kissed the hand which still lay passively in his and went out hurriedly, not trusting himself to turn and look at her again lest he should lose his careful self-control and startle her by some wild outpouring of love, triumph, and thankfulness.

Aline heard his footsteps die away, listening with strained attention until the last sound melted into a tense silence. Then she looked wildly round, her breast heaved distressfully, and tottering to the bed she fell on it face downwards, and lay there in a stunned fatigue of mind and body that left no place for thought or tears. Presently came Louison, all voluble eagerness to talk of the wedding and the murder, especially the latter.

"And to think that it was Jean's knife! Holy Virgin, if I had known what she came for! There she sat, and stared, and stared, until I told her she had best be going, since I, at least, had no time to waste. Yesterday, that was; and this morning when Jean seeks his knife it is gone,—and the noise, and the fuss. 'My friend,' I said, 'do I eat knives?' and with that I turned him out, and all the while Rosalie had it. Ugh! that makes one shudder. Not that that baggage Thérèse was any loss, but it might as well have been you, or me. When one is mad they do not distinguish. For me, I have said for a long time that Rosalie's mind was going, and now it is seen who is right. Well, well, now Charlotte will come round. Mark my words, Charlotte will be here bright and early to-morrow, if not to-night. It will be the first time she has set foot here in ten years. She hated Rosalie like poison,—a stepmother, only a dozen years older than herself, and when the old man died she cleared out, and has never spoken to Rosalie since the funeral. But she 'll be round now, mark my words."

Aline lay quite still. She was just conscious that Louison was there, talking a great deal, and that presently she brought her some hot soup, which it was strangely comfortable to swallow. The little woman was not ungentle with her, and did not leave her until the half-swoon of fatigue had passed into deep sleep. She herself was to sleep in the house. Dangeau had asked her to, saying he might be late, and she had promised, pleased to be on the spot where such exciting events had taken place, and convinced that it would be for the health of her husband's soul to have the charge of the children for once.

It was very late before Dangeau came home. If the French language holds no such word, his heart supplied it, for the first time in all the long years during which there had been no one to miss him going, or look for him returning. Now the little room under the roof held the long-loved, the despaired-of, the unattainably-distant,—and she was his, his wife, caught by his hands from insult and from death. Outside her door he hesitated a moment, then lifted the latch with a gentle touch, and went in reverently. The moon was shining into the room, and one long beam trembled mistily just above the bed, throwing upon the motionless form below a light like that of the land wherein we walk in dreams. Aline was asleep. She lay on her side, with one hand under her cheek, and her loosened hair in a great swathe across the bosom that scarcely seemed to lift beneath it, so deep the tranced fatigue that held her.

The moon was still rising, and the beam slid lower, lower; now it silvered her brow,—now showed the dark, curled lashes lying upon a cheek white with that translucent pallor—sleep's gift to youth. Her chin was a little lifted, the soft mouth relaxed, and its tender curve had taken a look at once pitiful and pure, like that of a child drowsing after pain. Her eyelids were only half-closed, and he was aware of the sleeping blue within, of the deeper stain below; and all his heart went out to her in a tremulous rapture of adoration which caught his breath, and ran in fire through every vein. How tired she was, and how deeply asleep,—how young, and pure.

A thought of Hébert rose upon his shuddering mind, and involuntarily words broke from him—"Ah, mon Dieu!" he said, with heaving chest.

Aline stirred a little; a slow, fluttering sigh interrupted her breathing, as she withdrew the hand beneath her cheek and put it out gropingly. Then she sighed again and turned from the light, nestling into the pillow with a movement that hid her face. If Dangeau had gone to her then, knelt by the bed, and put his arms about her, she might have turned to his protecting love as instinctively as ever child to its mother. But that very love withheld him. That, and the thought of Hébert. If she should think him such another! Oh, God forbid!

He looked once more, blessed her in his soul, and turned away.

In the morning he was afoot betimes. Danton had set an early hour for the conclusion of the business between them, and it was noon past before he returned.

In the shop he found a pale, dark, thin-lipped woman, engaged in an extremely thorough scrubbing and tidying of the premises. She stopped him at once, with a grin—

"I 'll have no loafing or gossiping here, Citizen"; and received his explanation with perfect indifference.

"I am Charlotte Leboeuf. I take everything over. Bah! the state the house is in! Fitter for pigs than Christians. For the time you may stay on. You have two rooms, you say?"

"Yes, two, Citoyenne."

"And you wish to keep them? Well, I have no objection. Later on I shall dispose of the business, but these are bad times for selling; and now, if the Citizen will kindly not hinder me at my work any more for the present." She shrugged her shoulders expressively, adding, as she seized the broom again, "Half the quarter has been here already, but they got nothing out of me."

Aline had risen and dressed herself. Rosalie had left her room just as it was on the day of her arrest, and the dust stood thick on table, floor, and window-sill. Mechanically she began to set things straight; to dust and arrange her few possessions, which lay just as they had been left after the usual rummage for treasonable papers.

Presently she found the work she had been doing, a stitch half taken, the needle rusty. She cleaned it carefully, running it backwards and forwards through the stuff of her skirt, and taking the work, she began to sew, quickly, and without thought of anything except the neat, fine stitches.

At Dangeau's knock, followed almost immediately by his entrance, her hands dropped into her lap, and she looked up in a scared panic of realisation. All that she had kept at bay rushed in upon her; the little tasks which she had set as barriers between her and thought fell away into the past, leaving her face to face with her husband and the future.

He crossed the floor to her quickly, and took her hands. He felt them tremble, and put them to his lips.

"Aline, my dearest!" he said in a low, vibrating voice.

With a quick-caught breath she drew away from him, sore trouble in her eyes.

"Wait!" she panted. Oh, where was her courage? Why had she not thought, planned? What could she say? "Oh, please wait!"

There was a long pause, whilst he held her hands and looked into her face.

"There is something—something I must tell you," she murmured at last, her colour coming and going.

The pressure upon her hands became suddenly agonising.

"Ah, mon Dieu! he has not harmed you? Aline, Aline—for God's sake——"

She said, "No, no," hastily, relieved to have something to answer, wondering that he should be so moved, frightened by the great sob that shook him. Then—

"How do you know about—him?" and the words came hardly from her.

"Rosalie," he said, catching at his self-control,—"Rosalie told me—curse him—curse him! Thank God you are safe. He cannot touch you now. What is it, then, my dear?" and the voice that had cursed Hébert seemed to caress her.

"If you know—that"—the word came on a shudder—"you know why I did—what I did—yesterday. But no—I forget; no one knew it all, no one knew the worst. I could n't say it, but now I must—I must."

"My dear, leave it—leave it. Why should you say anything?"

But she took a long breath and went on, speaking very low, and hurriedly, with bent head, and cheeks that flamed with a shamed, crimson patch.

"He is a devil, I think; and when I said I would die, he said—oh, mon Dieu!—he said his turn came first, he had friends, he could get me into his power after I was condemned."

Dangeau's arm went up—the arm with which he would have killed Hébert had he stood before him—and then fell protectingly about her shoulders.

"Aline, let him go—don't think of him again. You are safe—Death has given you back to me." But she shrank away.

"Oh, Monsieur," she said, with a quick gasp, "it was not death that I feared—indeed it was not death. I could have died, I should have died, before I betrayed—everything—as I did yesterday. I should have died, but there are some things too hard to bear. Oh, I do not think God can expect a woman to bear—that!" Again the deep shudder shook her. "Then you came, and I took the one way out, or let you take it."

"Aline!"

"No, no," she cried,—"no, no, you must understand—surely you understand that there is too much between us—we can never be—never be—oh, don't you understand?"

Dangeau's face hardened. The tenderness went out of it, and his eyes were cold as steel. How cruelly she was stabbing him she did not know. Her mind held dazed to its one idea. She had betrayed the honour of her race, to save her own. That red river of which she had spoken long months before, it lay between them still, only now she had stained her very soul with it. But not for profit of safety, not for pleasure of love, not even for life, bare life, but to escape the last, worst insult life holds—insult of which it is no disgrace to be afraid. She must make that clear to him, but it was so hard, so hard to find words, and she was so tired, so bruised, she hungered so for peace. How easy to yield, to take life's sweetness with the bitterness, love's promise with love's pain! But no, it were too base; the bitterness and the pain were her portion. His part escaped her.

When he spoke his changed voice startled her ears.

"So it comes to this," he said, with a short, bitter laugh; "having to choose between me and Hébert, you chose me. Had the choice lain between me and death, you would have gone to the guillotine without soiling your fingers by touching me."

She looked at him—a bewildered, frightened look.

Pain spurred him on.

"Oh, you make it very clear, my wife. Ah! that makes you wince? Yes, you are my wife, and you have just told me that you would rather have died than have married me. Yesterday I kissed your forehead. Is there a stain there? Suppose I were to kiss you now? Suppose I were to claim what is mine? What then, Aline, what then?"

A look she had never seen before was in his eyes, as he bent them upon her. His breath came fast, and for a moment her mind was terrified by the realisation that her power to hold, to check him, was gone. This was a new Dangeau—one she had never seen. She had been so sure of him. All her fears had been for herself, for that rebel in her own heart; but she had thought her self-control could give the law to his, and had never for a moment dreamed that his could break down thus, leaving her face to face with—what? Was it the brute?

She shrank, waiting.

"I am your husband, Aline," he said in a strange voice. "I could compel your kisses. If I bade you come to me now, what then? Does your Church not order wives to obey their husbands?"

She looked at him piteously.

"Yes, Monsieur."

"Yes, Monsieur? Very well, then, since I order it, and the Church tells you to obey me, come here and kiss me, my wife."

That drew a shiver from her, but she came slowly and stood before him with such a look of appeal as smote him through all his bitter anger.

"You will obey?"

She spoke, agonised.

"You can compel me. Ah! you have been good to me—I have thought you good—you will not——"

He laid his hands heavily upon her shoulders and felt her shrink. Oh death—the pain of it! He thought of her lying in the moonlight, and the confiding innocence of her face. How changed now!—all drawn and terrified. Hébert had seen it so. He spoke his thought roughly.

"Is that how you looked at him?" he said, bending over her, and she felt her whole body quiver as he spoke. She half closed her eyes, and looked about to swoon.

"Yes, I can compel you," he said again, low and bitterly. "I can compel you, but I 'm not Hébert, Aline, and I shan't ask you to choose between me and death." He took his hands away and stepped back from her, breathing hard.

"I kissed you once, but I shall never kiss you again. I shall never touch you against your will, you need not be afraid. That I have loved you will not harm you,—you can forget it. That you must call yourself Dangeau, instead of Roche, need not matter to you so greatly. I shall not trouble you again, so you need not wish you had chosen my rival, Death. Child, child! don't look at me like that!"

As he spoke Aline sank into a chair, and laying her arms upon the table, she put her head down on them with a sharp, broken cry:

"Oh God, what have I done—what have I done?"

Dangeau looked at her with a sort of strained pity. Then he laughed again that short, hard laugh, which comes to some men instead of a sob.

"Mlle de Rochambeau has married out of her order, but since her plebeian husband quite understands his place, quite understands that a touch from him would be worse than death, and since he is fool enough to accept this proud position, there is not so much harm done, and you may console yourself, poor child."

Every word stabbed deep, and deeper. How she had hurt him—oh, how she had hurt him! She pressed her burning forehead against her trembling hands, and felt the tears run hot, as if they came from her very heart.

Dangeau had reached the door when he turned suddenly, came back and laid his hand for a moment on her shoulder. Even at that moment, to touch her was a poignant and wonderful thing, but he drew back instantly, and spoke in a harsh tone.

"One thing I have a right to ask—that you remember that you bear my name, that you bear in mind that I have pledged my honour for you. You have been at the Abbaye; I hear the place is honeycombed with plots. My wife must not plot. If I have saved your honour, remember you hold mine. I pledged it to the people yesterday, I pledged it to Danton to-day."

Aline raised her head proudly. Her eyes were steady behind the brimming tears.

"Monsieur, your honour is safe," she said, with a thrill in her voice.

Dangeau gazed long at her—something of the look upon his face with which a man takes his farewell of the beloved dead. Then his whole face set cool and hard, and without another word he turned and strode out, his dreamed-of home in ruins—love's ashes heaped and dusty on the cold and broken hearth.

CHAPTER XX

A ROYALIST PLOT

Charlotte Leboeuf was one of the people who would certainly have set cleanliness above godliness, and she sacrificed comfort to it with a certain ruthless pleasure. The house she declared to be a sty, impossible to cleanse, but she would do her best, and her best apparently involved a perpetual steam of hot water, and a continual reek of soap-suds. Dangeau put up more than one sigh at the shrine of the absent Rosalie as he stumbled over pails and brooms, or slipped on the damp floor. For the rest, the old life had begun again, but with a dead, dreary weight upon it.

Dangeau at his busy writing, at his nightly pacings, and Aline at her old task of embroidering, felt the burden of life press heavily, chafed at it for a moment, perhaps, and turned again with a sigh to toil, unsweetened by that nameless something which is the salt of life. Once he ventured on a half-angry remonstrance on the long hours of stitching, which left her face so pale and her eyes so tired. It was not necessary for his wife, he began, but at the first word so painful a colour stained her cheek, eyes so proudly distressed looked at him between imploring and defiance, that he stammered, drew a long breath, and turned away with a sound, half groan, half curse. Aline wept bitterly when he was gone, worked harder than before, and life went drearily enough for a week or so.

Then one day in July Dangeau received orders to go South again. He had known they would come, and the call to action was what he craved, and yet what to do with the girl who bore his name he could not tell.

He was walking homewards, revolving a plan in his mind, when to his surprise he saw Aline before him, and not alone. Beside her walked a man in workman's dress, and they were in close conversation. As he caught sight of them they turned down a small side street, and after a moment's amazed hesitation he took the same direction, walking slowly, but ready to interfere if he saw cause.

Earlier in the afternoon, Aline having finished her work, had tied it up neatly and gone out. The streets were a horror to her, but she was obliged to take her embroidery to the woman who disposed of it, and on these hot days she craved for air. She accomplished her business, and started homewards, walking slowly, and enjoying the cool breeze which had sprung up. As she turned out of the more frequented thoroughfares, a man, roughly dressed, passed her, hung on his footsteps a little, and as she came up to him, looked sharply at her, and said in a low voice, "Mlle de Rochambeau?"

She started, her heart beating violently, and was about to walk on, when coming still nearer her, he glanced all round and rapidly made the sign of the cross in the air. With a sudden shock she recognised the Abbé Loisel.

"It is M. l'Abbé?" she said in a voice as low as his own.

"Yes, it is I. Walk on quietly, and do not appear to be specially attentive. I saw you last at the Abbaye, how is it that I meet you here?"

A slight colour rose to Aline's cheek. Her tone became distant.

"I think you are too well informed as to what passes in Paris not to know, M. l'Abbé," she said.

They came out into a little crowd of people as she spoke, and he walked on without replying, his thoughts busy.

Part saint, part conspirator, he had enough of the busybody in his composition to make his position as arch manipulator of Royalist plots a thoroughly congenial one. In Mlle de Rochambeau he saw a ravelled thread, and hastened to pick it up, with the laudable intention of working it into his network of intrigue. They came clear of the press, and he turned to her, his pale face austerely plump, his restless eyes hard.

"I heard what I could hardly believe," he returned. "I heard that Henri de Rochambeau's daughter had bought her life by accepting marriage with an atheist and a regicide, a Republican Deputy of the name of Dangeau."

Aline bit her lip, her eyes stung. She would not justify herself to this man. There was only one man alive who mattered enough for that, but it was bitter enough to hear, for this was what all would say. She had known it all along, but realisation was keen, and she shrank from the pictured scorn of Mme de Matigny's eyes and from Marguerite's imagined recoil. She walked on a little way before she could say quietly:

"It is true that I am married to M. Dangeau."

But the Abbé had seen her face quiver, and drew his own conclusions. He was versed in reading between the lines.

"Mme de Matigny suffered yesterday," he said with intentional abruptness, and Aline gave a low cry.

"Marguerite—not Marguerite!" she cried out, and he touched her arm warningly.

"Not quite so loud, if you please, Madame, and control your features better. Yes, that is not so bad. And now allow me to ask you a question. Why should Mlle de Matigny's fate interest the wife of the regicide Dangeau?"

"M. l'Abbé, for pity's sake, tell me, she is not dead—little Marguerite?"

"Not this time, Madame, but who knows when the blow will fall? But there, it can matter very little to you."

"To me?" She sighed heavily. "It matters greatly. M. l'Abbé; I do not forget my friends. I have not so many that I can forget them."

"You remember?"

"Oh, M. l'Abbé!"

"And you would help them?"

"If I could."

He paused, scrutinising her earnest face. Then he said slowly:

"You bought your life at a great price, and something is due to those whom you left behind you in peril whilst you went out to safety. I knew your father. It is well that he is dead—yes, I say that it is well; but there is an atonement possible. In that you are happy. From where you are, you can hold out a hand to those who are in danger; you may do more, if you have the courage, and—if we can trust you."

His keen look dwelt on her, and saw her face change suddenly, the eager light go out of it.

"M. l'Abbé, you must not tell me anything," she said quickly, catching her breath; for Dangeau's voice had sounded suddenly in her memory:

"I have pledged my honour"; and she heard the ring of her own response—"Monsieur, your honour is safe." She had answered so confidently, and now, whatever she did, dishonour seemed imminent, unavoidable.

"You have indeed gone far," he said. "You must not hear—I must not tell. What does it mean? Who forbids?"

Aline turned to him desperately.

"M. l'Abbé, my hands are tied. You spoke just now of M. Dangeau, but you do not know him. He is a good man—an honourable man. He has protected me from worse than death, and in order to do this he risked his own life, and he pledged his honour for me that I would engage in no plots—do nothing against the Republic. When I let him make that pledge, and what drove me to do so, lies between me and my own conscience. I accepted a trust, and I cannot betray it."

"Fine words," said Loisel curtly. "Fine words. Dutiful words from a daughter of the Church. Let me remind you that an oath taken under compulsion is not binding."

"He said that he had pledged his honour, and I told him that his honour was safe. I do not break a pledge, M. l'Abbé."

"So for a word spoken in haste to this atheist, to this traitor stained with your King's blood, you will allow your friends to perish, you will throw away their lives and your own chance of atoning for the scandal of your marriage—" he began; but she lifted her head with a quick, proud gesture.

"M. l'Abbé, I cannot hear such words."

"You only have to raise your voice a little more and you will hear no more words of mine. See, there is a municipal guard. Tell him that this is the Abbé Loisel, non-juring priest, and you will be rid of me easily enough. You will find it harder to stifle the voice of your own conscience. Remember, Madame, that there is a worse thing even than dishonour of the body, and that is damnation of the soul. If you have been preserved from the one, take care how you fall into the other. What do you owe to this man who has seduced you from your duty? Nothing, I tell you. And what do you owe to your Church and to your order? Can you doubt? Your obedience, your help, your repentance."