people how you sold yourself to the Austrian Jews?'
He eyed her with formidable dislike. 'Putaine!' With that vile word he swung aside and went to sit down. He was suddenly limp. He had nursed a snake in his bosom. This woman might have the will, as she had the power, to ruin him. He must temporize, conciliate. Threats could not avail him against one who held all the weapons.
Meanwhile she raged on. That foul name contemptuously flung had acted as a goad. Her strident voice—the voice with which Nature seems ever to endow the shrew—shrilled up. It floated out through the open windows, and could be heard in the street below. Neighbours paused to listen, smiled and shrugged. The Citizen-Representative Chabot was at one of his love-scenes with his borgnesse. He might rule a nation, but he would never rule that woman.
He strove to calm her. 'Quiet, my dear! In Heaven's name, a little calm! Sh! The neighbours will hear you! Listen, now, my dove! Listen! I supplicate, my little one!'
Not until she was out of breath, invective momentarily exhausted, did he really have an opportunity. He seized it, and talked rapidly. He reasoned. It was not at all as she supposed. He presented the case to her as the Freys and André-Louis had presented it to him. What he had done, he had done from a sense of duty. The rewards that came to him were rewards that he might take with an easy mind, and for which he could answer freely before the tribunal of his conscience.
She listened, sneering. Then, perceiving profit perhaps in accepting these explanations, she ceased to sneer. She demanded.
'I understand. I understand, my love. You are right. We should be better housed, better fed, better clad. Look at me. I am in tatters. Give me ten louis, that I may go and buy myself a gown to do you credit.' She rose and held out her hand.
'In a few days,' he answered readily, thankful that the storm had passed.
'Now,' she insisted. 'At once. Since you are rich, I will not go in rags a moment longer. Look at this gown. It goes to pieces if you pull it.'
'But I have no money yet. That is to come.'
'To come? When?'
'What do I know? In a few days, a few weeks, perhaps.'
'A few weeks!' She was shrill again. 'Why, what a fool you are, Chabot! In your place ...' She checked.
More cunning than Chabot in the minutiæ of life, she perceived what he had overlooked, the omission which in his place she would never have been so foolish as to have made. As it was she could correct it.
Two mornings later, she blossomed forth in a new gown, striped red and black, high-waisted as the fashion was, new shoes and stockings, and a new mob-cap under which her hair for once was tidily disposed. The Citizen-Representative opened his eyes, and demanded explanations. She tittered and was archly mysterious.
'We are not all of us such fools as you, Chabot. I am not one to go thirsty when there's a well within reach.'
That was all that she would tell him, and he went off perplexed, the mystery unsolved. Junius Frey could have solved it for him, and had thought of doing so. But upon further reflection the financier preferred to seek the Citizen Moreau and his friend de Batz, of whose judgment and ability he had by now been afforded such signal proof.
He found them at home when Tissot admitted them to their lodging in the Rue de Ménars. He made no attempt to minimize his uneasiness, which indeed scarcely needed expressing, for the signs of it were in his countenance. He rumbled forth a flood of lamentations in his deep, guttural voice. He announced that they were sold, betrayed. That puffed-up fool Chabot had allowed their secret to be discovered. His indiscretion had forged a sword which was being held over the head of Junius. He was being shamelessly blackmailed.
'Blackmailed!' It was André-Louis who stirred to that word, adducing the whole story from it. 'Let me know by whom. I have a short way with blackmailers.'
His grim confidence in himself was inspiring. Frey entered into explanations. Chabot had a housekeeper—this was the euphemism he employed to describe Julie—who was a traitress. She had discovered details of the business of the corsairs, and she had come to him yesterday to demand money.
'Did you give her any?'
'What else could I do? For the moment I have stopped her mouth with twenty louis.'
André-Louis shook his head. 'Not enough.'
'Not enough! Oh, my God! But I am then to give everything away? Chabot himself has had ...'
'No matter what Chabot has had. You should have given her two hundred. That would have compromised her. I would have done the rest for you.'
But de Batz joined issue with him. 'You can't deal with her as you dealt with Burlandeux. She is in possession of dangerous facts.'
André-Louis retired from the debate, and left it to de Batz and Junius. They concluded nothing. And this, after Junius had gone again, his panic undiminished, de Batz revealed to be precisely what he desired. He rubbed his hands and laughed.
'The thing is done, I think. Let the fair Julie precipitate the avalanche.'
But André-Louis was scornful! 'Is that your notion of an avalanche, Jean? Why, it's scarcely a snowball. Let Julie dare to throw it at the idol of the mob, and her head will pay for her temerity. I waste no thought on her. I have work to do this morning. I am to write an article for the Père Duchesne in praise of Chabot, for his labours of two days ago.' He smiled grimly. 'The higher we hoist him, the heavier the crash when he comes down. And I have promised Hébert an article demanding the expropriation of all foreign property in France. That should be popular.'
You may still read both those articles, the one a pæan of praise, the other a bitter philippic, both couched in the flamboyant inflammatory jargon of that Age of Reason, and both bearing the signature 'Scaramouche,' a nom de guerre which he was already rendering famous.
De Batz, however, was dubious of the timeliness of the second article. He accounted it premature, and said so at length. 'It will definitely ruin the Freys, and we may still need them for our purposes.'
André-Louis laughed. 'It would ruin the Freys if it were not for Chabot. Chabot will be moved to protect them. Don't you see? That is the trap in which I hope to take him. Lebrun will help him. Both will be compromised, and the compromising of two such prominent conventionals should set up a fine stench for the people's nostrils.'
But de Batz was persuaded that Chabot would take fright, and leave the Freys to their fate. 'The fellow is a poltroon. You are forgetting that.'
'I am forgetting nothing. In the matter of money Chabot has tasted blood: the merest taste. But it has given him an appetite for more. He'll not allow the source of it to be cut off without a struggle. Leave this to me, Jean. I see very clearly where I am going.'
De Batz, however, for all his faith in his remorselessly shrewd and energetic associate, was not reassured. He brooded over the matter. With brooding his persuasion grew that it would require stronger bonds than those now binding Chabot to the Freys before the conventional could be moved to take the risk of defending the brothers from the proposed decree of expropriation. Here was a problem for his ready wits. The thought of Julie Berger intruded upon his brooding, and suddenly he was inspired. The inspiration took him forthwith to the Rue d'Anjou.
The brothers received the Baron in the green-and-white salon, over whose elegancies presided an austere bust of Brutus set upon a tall marble-topped console. Conceiving his visit to be concerned with this distressing business of the Berger, they enlarged upon it at once.
'Be easy,' the Baron confidently reassured them. 'What she can do at present is less than nothing. She holds no proof. A man in Chabot's position is not to be destroyed by an unsupported denunciation. It would recoil upon the head that utters it. If Julie were to commit this indiscretion, fling this handful of mud at the popular idol, she would get herself torn to pieces for her pains. Make that clear to her next time she seeks you, and send her packing.'
Thus he elaborated the opinion conveyed to him in a half-dozen words by André-Louis.