André-Louis, desperately beating off an attack that seemed concentrated upon himself, suddenly caught the glow of lanterns and the livid gleam of bayonets rounding the corner of the Rue de Bretagne. A patrol was advancing at the double. At first he thought it might be Cortey and his men, or Boissancourt, either of which would perhaps have meant salvation. But realizing at once from the direction of their approach that there was no ground for the hope, he gave the word to scatter.
'Away! Away! Every man for himself!'
He turned to set the example of flight, when one of Simon's men leapt upon him, and bore him down. He twisted even as he fell, drew his second pistol with his left hand, and fired. It missed his assailant, but brought down another of the patriots with a bullet in his leg. Only two of them remained entirely whole, and these two were both now upon André-Louis. They were joined by Simon, who, having recovered from the blow that had felled him, came staggering towards them. Of the other three, one sat against a wall nursing a broken head from which the blood was streaming, a second lay face downwards in the middle of the street, whilst the third, crippled by the bullet in his leg, was howling dismally.
Of the royalists, the Chevalier de Larnache was dead, with a knife in his heart, and André-Louis lay inert, stretched out by a blow over the head from one of his captors. The other four royalists had vanished when the patrol reached the field of battle.
Their escape was assisted by the fact that, entirely misunderstanding the situation, the sergeant of the patrol ordered his men to surround these disturbers of the peace, and the Citizen Simon standing now before him was still too dazed by the effects of the blow to think of more than one thing at a time. At the moment he was being required by the sergeant to give an account of himself. He produced his civic card. The sergeant scanned it.
'What were you doing here, Citizen Simon?'
'What was I doing here? Ah, that! Sacred name of a pig, what was I doing?' He choked in his fury. 'I was defeating a royalist plot to save the Widow Capet and her cub. But for me her —— aristocratic friends would have got her away by now. And you ask me what I am doing! As it is, the damned scoundrels have got off; all but this one who's dead and this one we hold.'
The sergeant was incredulous. 'Oh, but a plot to save the heretofore Queen! How could that have succeeded?'
'How?' Fiercer grew the Citizen Simon before this incredulity. 'Take me to the headquarters of the section. I'll explain myself there, by God! And let your men bring along this cursed aristocrat. On your lives, don't let him get away. I mean to make sure of this one. It'll be one of the cursed fribbles for the guillotine, anyway.'
CHAPTER XVII
AT CHARONNE
In the outskirts of the hamlet of Charonne, between four and five miles from Paris, on the very edge of the Park of Bagnolet, the Baron de Batz possessed a pleasant little property, which had once, in the days of the Regency, been a hunting pavilion. It was tenanted in 1793 by the talented Babette de Grandmaison, who until lately had been a singer at the Italian Theatre. The property was nominally owned by her brother Burette, who was the postmaster of Beauvais. Burette was no more than a mask for the Baron de Batz. Foreseeing that the property of the nobles, whether they emigrated or remained in France, was doomed to confiscation, and acting with that foresight which usually enabled him to carry out his undertakings with safety, if not always with success, the Baron had made a simulated sale of this property to Burette, who was not likely to be molested in his possessions.
In this country retreat on the day after the miscarried attempt to save the Queen, the survivors of the rough-and-tumble in the Rue Charlot were assembled with de Batz.
The Baron had succeeded last night in finding shelter at No. 12, where, some hours later, when the alarm had died down, the others had come, one by one, to join him. They had remained there until morning. Then, because he had deemed it prudent to disappear from Paris for some days, he had made his way to Charonne, quitting Paris by the Enfer Barrier rather than by that of the Bastille which led directly to the Charonne road. Thither he had bidden his companions to follow him severally, and thither they had safely come.
Langéac had arrived late in the afternoon, some hours after the others, for Langéac accounted it his duty to inform the Chevalier de Pomelles, who was d'Entragues's chief agent in Paris—the head of the royalist committee which d'Entragues had established there—of last night's events.
Langéac found de Batz at table with Devaux, Boissancourt, La Guiche, and Roussel. Babette de Grandmaison was also present, a dark, handsome young woman who belonged body and soul to the Baron and who shared now the dejection which, whilst general, sat most heavily upon de Batz. As much as by the exasperating failure of his cherished plot and by the apparently fortuitous wrecking of plans so carefully prepared was de Batz now troubled by the fate of André-Louis whom he had come to love and to whose gallant stand he owed his own escape.
Langéac's arrival aroused the hope of news. De Batz started up eagerly as the young man entered. Langéac met his anxious questions with a shrug.
'I have no definite news. But there is no ground for any hope.'
De Batz displayed a fierce impatience. He was white, his eyes blood-injected.
'Is he alive, at least?'
Langéac was entirely pessimistic, and rather languid. 'Does it matter? For his own sake I hope that he is not. It will be the guillotine for him if he has survived. That is inevitable.'
De Batz was beyond being civil. 'Devil take your assumptions! I do not ask for them. I ask for facts. If you have been unable to glean any, say so, and I'll employ someone else to obtain them, or else go myself.'
Langéac's lips tightened sulkily. 'I have already told you that I bring no news.'
'I should have known you wouldn't. You're so damned careful of your skin, Langéac. Will you tell me what you've been doing all these hours in Paris?'
Langéac faced him across the table. 'I've not been taking care of my skin, sir. And I resent your words. You have no right to use them to me.'
'I care nothing about your resentments.' The Baron rapped his knuckles on the table. 'I ask you what you have been doing in Paris. All that it imported me to know is whether Moreau is alive.'
The gigantic, and rather phlegmatic, Boissancourt, beside whose chair Langéac was standing, leaned across to set a hand on the Baron's arm. 'Patience, de Batz, my friend,' he boomed in his great voice. 'You have already been answered. After all, Langéac can't work miracles.'
The hawk-faced, impetuous young Marquis de la Guiche agreed with bitterly ironical vehemence. 'That's the truth, by God!'
Devaux sought to keep the peace. 'The fact is, Langéac, we are all a little fretted.'
De Batz shrugged impatiently, and set himself to pace the room in line with the three long windows that stood open to the lawn. Babette's handsome eyes followed him, pain and anxiety in their dark depths. Then she looked up at the resentful newcomer with a sad little smile.
'You are standing, Monsieur de Langéac. Sit down and give yourself something to eat. You will be tired and hungry.'
'Tired, yes. God knows I'm tired. But too sick at heart for hunger. I thank you, mademoiselle.' He flung himself into a chair, stretching his dusty legs under the table. He, too, was pale, his red-brown hair dishevelled. 'Give me some wine, Devaux.'
Devaux passed him the bottle, whilst de Batz continued to pace, like a caged animal. At last he halted.
'I must know,' he announced. 'I can't bear any more of this uncertainty.'
'Unfortunately,' said Devaux, 'Langéac is right. There is no uncertainty. Oh, spare me your scowls, de Batz. God knows I am as sick at heart as you are. But facts must be faced, and we must count our losses without self-deception. Larnache was killed, and, if Moreau wasn't,