a smile.
'All things considered, it is perhaps as well that Monsieur Moreau is out of the way.'
'Eh? What?' The Regent stood still, a startled man. Had he heard in the words of the Count an echo of his own thoughts?
Monsieur d'Entragues's view of the matter accorded with Monsieur de Plougastel's. 'Had he lived, an unhappy mésalliance might have resulted.'
'Ah!' The Regent took a deep breath, and moved on. 'That is my own view of the matter. But I must wish that her distress had been less sharp.'
'Mademoiselle de Kercadiou is young. At her age grief is soon conquered.'
'We must do our best to comfort the poor child, d'Entragues.'
'Why, yes. That becomes almost a duty.'
'A duty, d'Entragues. A duty. That is the word. Moreau died in my service, after all. Yes, a duty.'
CHAPTER XIX
REPAYMENT
Monsieur de Langéac's story that André-Louis Moreau had been killed in the Rue Charlot, which he and those who charitably bade him tell it as charitably hoped might be true, was entirely false.
André-Louis recovered consciousness long before they brought him to the headquarters of the section. In fact, he made most of the journey thither upon his own feet. By the time his senses cleared and coherent thought was added once more to mere physical impressions, he came to the opinion subsequently expressed by Monsieur de Langéac that it would have been a better thing for him if he had been finished outright in that rough-and-tumble. In that case his dying would have been completely done by now; whereas at present it still lay before him; and he would have to travel to it by the unpleasant way of the Place de la Révolution and the National Barber. Of this there was in his mind no shadow of doubt. Not even the far-reaching influence wielded by de Batz could accomplish the miracle of delivering a man taken red-handed in the business with which André-Louis would be charged.
It was long after midnight when they reached the headquarters of the section, and at that hour there was no one there before whom he could be brought for examination. Simon, himself, however, formally demanded his name, age, and place of abode so that he might enter them upon the register. But André-Louis could not suffer Simon to go beyond these matters.
'You may be a police agent. But you are not a judge. And you have no authority to question me. Therefore, I shall not answer you.'
They deprived him of his pistols, money, watch, and papers. They thrust him into a small almost windowless room in a cellar, whose only furniture was a three-legged stool and a pile of unclean straw to serve for a bed, and there they left him for the night to reflect upon the abrupt and unpleasant end to his king-making.
At eight o'clock in the morning they haled him from his cell, and, despite his demands for food, he was marched away with his fast unbroken. Six National Guards of the section formed his escort, and Simon accompanied them.
They crossed the river by the Bridge of the Louvre and came to the Tuileries before nine. There, in the spacious entrance-hall, the Citizen Simon was informed that the Committee of Public Safety would not be in session until noon, as its members were in the Convention. But the President was in his office, and would deal with the matter if it was urgent. Simon, whose sense of his own consequence was hourly increasing, noisily proclaimed it of the greatest national urgency. The usher led the way up the great staircase. Simon stepped beside him. André-Louis followed between two guards, the other four remained below.
They came by the wide gallery to a lofty chamber with gilded furnishings and damask panels which still showed signs of the damage suffered in the assault upon the Palace nearly a year ago.
Here the usher left them, whilst he passed beyond a tall, ornate door to announce the Citizen Simon's business to the President.
They were kept waiting some time. The grimy, bow-legged agent began to grumble. Pacing the polished floor, he demanded to be informed by no one in particular whether they had returned to the days of the Capets and the manners of the despots that a patriot should be left cooling his heels in an antechamber which the Citizen Simon qualified by unprintable adjectives.
The two National Guards enjoyed his picturesque invective. André-Louis scarcely heard and certainly did not heed it. His thoughts were leagues away, in the Bear Inn at Hamm, with his Aline. How would she take the news of his end when it was borne to her? She would suffer. That was inevitable. But he prayed that she might not suffer too acutely, and that resignation and consolation would follow soon. Later, perhaps, love might come to her again. She might marry and be the happy mother of children. It was what he must desire for her since he loved her. And yet the thought of it seared his soul. She was so much his own that the contemplation of her possible possession by another was intolerable. But for this he might now be confronting his fate with a greater resignation.
His spirit sought to bridge the distance between them, to reach her and make her aware of him. If only he could write to her: pack into one final glowing letter all the passion and worship which he had never yet expressed! But how was he from a revolutionary prison to despatch a letter to an aristocrat in exile? Even this little consolation would be denied him. He must die without having told her the half of his devotion.
He was roused from the anguish of these reflections by the return of the usher.
With the opening of the door, the Citizen Simon's grumblings instantly ceased. This champion of equality shed the last vestige of his magnificent independence when they entered the presence of the President of the dread Committee. Cringing a little, he waited with exemplary patience while the neat powdered head presented to them continued bowed over the writing upon which its owner was engaged.
In a silence broken only by the swift scratching of the writer's pen, and the ticking of the ormolu timepiece on the tall fluted overmantel, they continued to wait. Even when the writing ceased, and the President spoke at last, he did not look up. He continued bowed over his table, which was covered by a claret-coloured serge cloth reaching to the ground, and his eyes remained engaged upon what he had written.
'What is this story of an attempt to procure the escape of the Widow Capet from the Temple?'
The Citizen Simon began to speak. 'May it please you, Citizen-President,' was the deferential opening with which he introduced a tale in which he assigned himself a very noble part. No false sense of modesty prevented him from making the fullest parade of his acumen, intrepidity, and burning patriotism. He was still at the shrewdness of the inferences which had led to his denunciation of Michonis when the President interrupted him.
'Yes, yes. I am informed of all that. Come to the business at the Temple.'
The Citizen Simon, flung out of balance by that hectoring interruption, silently sought a fresh starting-point. At last the Citizen-President raised his head and confirmed the assumptions André-Louis had already formed from the voice, by disclosing the narrow, swarthy face and impertinent nose of Le Chapelier. But it was a countenance oddly changed in the few months since André-Louis had last beheld it. It had lost flesh. The bone structures were more prominent. A grey pallor overspread it. Lines of care were deeply carved between the brows, and the eyes were the eyes of a haunted man, strained and anxious. André-Louis, with pulses suddenly quickened, awaited an explosion. None came. Beyond a momentary lift of his fine brows, so momentary that only André-Louis perceived it, Le Chapelier gave no sign of recognition. Deliberately he levelled a gold-rimmed quizzing-glass, the better to survey the prisoner, and again his dry voice spoke.
'Whom have you there?'
'But, as I am telling you, Citizen-President, this is one of the men who made possible the escape of that aristocrat scoundrel de Batz. He had the impudence to declare himself an agent of the Committee of Public Safety.' And Simon pursued his tale of the encounter in the Rue Charlot. But when it was done, there was no such panegyric as he was expecting and believed