harm?'
'It must be a surviving impression from your monastic days, citizen, that there is harm in taking profit to yourself. One of the superstitions of a worn-out and discarded kill-joy creed.'
Chabot passed from amazement to amazement. 'But ... But surely ... The profit to myself, whence comes it? Is it not filched from the sacred treasury of the Republic? Is not that to commit a sacrilege? Is it not a robbing of the inviolable altars of the Nation?'
Gently smiling, André-Louis shook his head. He became apostrophic. 'Oh, virtuous excess of sensitiveness! What a thrice-blessed age is this in which we live, that men of State, departing from the corrupt habits of their kind in all ages, should hesitate to appropriate even that which rightly belongs to them! Citizen Chabot, I honour you for this hesitation as all men must honour you. But at the same time I grieve that such lofty ideals should give you so false a perspective of the facts; should make you neglect to reach for those rewards which are your right, which your labours in the cause of freedom have justly earned you. I should grieve even more deeply if as a consequence of your neglect of opportunity this wealth should be appropriated by the worthless, by the hucksters, and even by the friends of despotism, whilst you and your noble kind continue to labour in necessitous circumstances, almost in want. Will you allow these profits, citizen, which you could spend so worthily to the great honour and glory of the sacred cause of Liberty, to fall instead into the hands of corrupt reactionaries who may employ them to undermine the very foundations of this glorious Republic you have laboured with such self-abnegation to establish. Have you no duty there, Citizen-Representative?'
The Citizen-Representative blinked at him helplessly.
That flood of turgid rhetoric, of the very kind of which he himself was so remarkable an exponent, which, meaning nothing explicitly, yet seemed implicit with so much significance, befogged the wits which wine had already rendered torpid. Through this fog gleamed with increasing vividness the prospect of riches whose acquisition would not affront his sensitive conscience or—which is really the same thing at bottom—imperil his position.
The others maintained an impassive silence. Julien almost shared Chabot's stupefaction, bewildered by the specious cant which André-Louis employed. Delaunay, more clear-sighted, was under no illusions, whilst Benoît and de Batz silently admired both the manner and the matter of André-Louis's retort to the deputy's cry of conscience.
'You mean, citizen?' said Chabot at last. 'You mean that if I do not take advantage of these opportunities, others will, who might turn the results to evil purposes?'
'I mean much more than that. These operations ensure a ready liquidation of the confiscated properties with immediate returns to the national treasury. What we do, we do openly. There is no stigma attaching to it. The commission entrusted with the sale of lands welcomes our collaboration without which those sales would be immensely retarded. If, then, it is not wrong in us, if, indeed, it is considered right in us, can it be less right in you, who are so fully entitled to rewards and have so little opportunity of obtaining them in ordinary ways?'
This was a little clearer. It removed satisfactorily the substance of Chabot's opposition. But the shadow remained.
'That is well for you, citizens,' he answered slowly. 'The place you occupy does not leave you vulnerable to such reproaches as might be aimed at me. It might be said, my enemies might make it appear, that I turn my position to my own private benefit. My purity of intention would thus become suspect, and under such suspicion I should no longer be in case to serve my country.'
'That is true. Men whose first aim is the service of mankind are peculiarly susceptible to such attacks. Suspicion can wither your powers, the breath of calumny can wilt your forces and lay low your every noble endeavour. But before suspicion or calumny can touch you, some knowledge of the facts must transpire. And what need any know of your transactions?'
Chabot blinked again under his interlocutor's steady regard. Excitement had drawn the blood from his round cheeks. He drained a bumper that once more de Batz had filled for him, and wiped his mouth with the back of his unclean hand.
'You mean that a thing done in secret ...'
'Name of a name! Is a man to go through life opening the recesses of his heart to the gaze of the multitude? Are you—is any man—under the necessity of putting weapons into the hands of his enemies? You have spoken, citizen, of the tribunal of conscience. A noble image. So long as that is satisfied, are you to trouble about anything else?'
Chabot took his head in his hand, leaning his elbow on the table. 'But if I grow rich ...' He paused. The golden vision dazzled him. He looked back on the grey needy years, spent in a poverty which had denied him all those lovely things of life which he knew himself peculiarly equipped to enjoy. He thought of occasional banquets to which he had been bidden, even such as this at which he had just been a guest, and contrasted it with the lean fare to which he was normally condemned by his restricted means, he, a man of State, a power in France, one of the pillars of this glorious Republic which he had helped to found. Surely, some reward was due to him. Yet timidity made him hesitate. If he grew rich, how was he to enjoy his riches, how spread himself such tables, guzzle such wines, command such mistresses as dark-eyed Babette who had presided here, without betraying this improvement in his fortunes? Something of the kind he expressed, to be promptly answered by instances of other deputies, from Danton down, who had obviously accumulated wealth without anyone daring to question its sources.
'And these sources,' said André-Louis impressively, 'are far from being as pure and untainted as those which we reveal to you.'
A sudden suspicion flared in Chabot to stay him in the very moment of surrender to these almost irresistible seductions.
'Why do you reveal them? What is your interest in me that you should come to empty Fortune's cornucopia into my lap?'
It was de Batz who answered him, laughing frankly. 'Faith, the reason is not far to seek. We are not altruists, Citizen-Representative. We desire your valuable company. We lead you to the source. But we remain to drink at it with you. Am I plain?'
'Ah! I begin to see. But then ...' He hiccoughed. 'Faith! I do not yet see quite clearly.'
Delaunay addressed himself to enlightening him. 'Should I be in this, François, if I perceived in it the least shade of dishonesty? You are a man of ideals, and you have rarely been in close contact with that greatest of realities, money. I am a man experienced in finance. You may take my word for it that all here is beyond reproach!'
Dull eyes regarded him in silence from the deputy's flushed face.
Delaunay continued.
'Consider it this way: the only real sufferers in these transactions are the émigrés, who have crossed the frontier so that they make war upon the country that gave them birth. It is their properties that are to be converted into gold so that the hungry children of France may be fed. Our intervention in these transactions will not lessen by a single liard the sums to be poured into the national treasury. On the contrary, by accelerating the liquidation we do good service to the people.'
'Yes, I have perceived that,' Chabot admitted, but still with a lack of conviction, still fettered by timidity.
He fell into thought, and presently loosed his retrospections.
'I have been rigorously bound by my scruples in the past. No representative has gone upon more missions than have I, and in each of them I could have made money had I not set my probity above all else. At Castries I was entrusted with four thousand livres for secret expenses, and I collected some twenty thousand livres in fines and ransoms. Not a denier of this found its way into my pockets. My hands have remained clean. And these are trifles compared with other temptations that have come my way. The Spanish minister offered me four millions if I would save Louis Capet from the scaffold. It was a bribe that would have overwhelmed the honesty of many a man. But strong in my patriotism and my sense of duty to the Nation, the temptation never touched me.'
It may have been true. But it still remained that the temptation must have lacked point, since Chabot could not have accomplished what was required. As well might the Spanish minister have offered Chabot