do you hope to gain by obstinacy? The letters will buy your life. Where are they?'
'Where you'll never find them.'
There followed a considerable pause, during which Saint-Just continued steadily to regard him. The representative's breathing had quickened a little. In the yellow light of the lantern his colour seemed to have darkened.
'I am offering you your only chance of life, Moreau.'
'How you repeat yourself,' said André-Louis.
'You are resolved not to tell me?'
'I have told you. I have nothing to add.'
'Very well,' said Saint-Just quietly, yet with obvious reluctance. 'Very well!' He picked up the lantern, and walked to the door. There he turned. He held up the lantern, so that its light fell full upon the prisoner's face. 'For the last time: will you buy your life with them?'
'You're tiresome. Go to the devil.'
Saint-Just pressed his lips together, lowered the lantern, and went out.
André-Louis sat alone in darkness once more. He told himself that no doubt he was rightly punished for what he had done. Then he relapsed into his weary indifference of what might follow.
Early next morning a gaoler brought him a lump of horrible black bread and a jug of water. He drank the water, but made no attempt to touch the repulsive bread. After that he sat on, in a dull, numbed state of body and of mind, and waited.
Sooner than he had expected, less than an hour after serving him that breakfast, the gaoler appeared again. He held the door open, and beckoned him.
'You are to come with me, citizen.'
André-Louis looked at his watch. It was half-past nine. Singularly early for the tumbrils to be setting out. Was he, perhaps, to have a trial, after all? At the thought a tiny flame of hope was kindled, almost despite him, in his soul.
But it was extinguished when he found himself conducted to the hall where the toilet of the condemned was usually performed. Here, however, a great surprise awaited him. The vaulted place was tenanted by a single person: a short, trim, sturdy figure dressed in black. It was de Batz.
The Baron advanced to meet him. 'I have an order for your release,' he said, quietly grave. 'Come along.'
André-Louis wondered if he was still asleep in his cell and dreaming. His sensations were curiously unreal, and the gloom of the hall on that January morning served to add to their unreality. In this vague condition he stepped beside de Batz to the porter's lodge, where they were detained. The Baron presented a paper, and the concierge scratched an entry in a book, then grinned up at them from under his fur bonnet.
'You're lucky, my lad, to be leaving us so soon. And on foot. It's more usual to ride from here in style. A good-day to you!'
They were outside on the quay, under the grey sky, beside the yellow, swollen river. They walked along in silence towards the Pont Neuf. Midway across this a quacksalver was setting up his booth. A little way beyond him, André-Louis slackened his pace. The Baron slackened with him.
'It is time we talked, Jean. There will be some explanation of this morning walk.'
The Baron looked at him, and the sternness of his face relaxed.
'I owed you what I have done. That is all. For one thing, I struck you yesterday. Because you might desire satisfaction of me one day for the blow, I could not meanly leave you to perish.'
Despite himself, André-Louis smiled at the Gasconnade.
'Was that your only reason for doing whatever you have done?'
'Of course not. I owed it you on other grounds. As an amend, if you choose.' He leaned upon the parapet of the bridge, looking down at the water swirling against the piers. André-Louis leaned beside him. They were practically alone there. Briefly, gloomily, tonelessly, de Batz informed him of what had happened.
'Tissot witnessed your arrest yesterday in the courtyard. He brought us word of it at once, of course; and as we did not know what might follow, but knew that we were not safe, ourselves, we made off at once, and went to earth at Roussel's in the Rue Helvétius. We were thankful to get away, and no more than in time. I left Tissot to observe. He reported to me last night that, within a few minutes of our departure, Saint-Just, himself, arrived with a couple of municipals. They ransacked my lodgings so thoroughly that they have left them in a state of wreckage.
'Your action in not giving the documents to Desmoulins so that with them we could now defy Saint-Just placed us all in a position of great danger. It became necessary to meet it. I went to Saint-Just two hours ago. He was still in bed. But he was glad to see me, and received me with threats of instant arrest, with the guillotine to follow, unless I chose to purchase my life and liberty by surrendering to him the letters which you had stolen from Thuillier and Bontemps.
'I laughed at him. "Do you suppose, Saint-Just, that I should walk into your house without being aware that this is how you would receive me, and, therefore, without taking my precautions? You are not really clever, Saint-Just. You succeed in imposing yourself upon those who are even more foolish than yourself; that is all. When you threaten to take off my head, you really threaten to take off your own. For the one follows upon the other as inevitably as effect upon cause."
'That gave him something to think about.
'"You have come to bargain with me?" he said.
'"A moment's reflection must have shown you that I could come for no other purpose, and you might have spared the breath you wasted in threats."
'He seemed relieved, poor fool. "You have brought me the letters, then?"
'"Either you are ingenuous, Saint-Just, or you think that I am. No, my friend, I have not brought you the letters, and I never shall. I have brought you a warning, that is all. A warning that if you raise a finger against me, and unless you do what else I require, those letters will instantly be in the hands of Danton."
'That put him in a panic. "You would never dare!" he roared.
'"But why not?" I asked him. "It is you who will not dare to refuse me, now that you know that your head will pay the price of your refusal. For you can be under no illusion as to what use Danton will make of the letters. Their publication will show that the ci-devant Chevalier de Saint-Just (that is how they will speak of you, how they are speaking of you already), the ci-devant Chevalier de Saint-Just is true to the evil aristocratic stock from which he springs. That he enriches himself at the expense of the Nation, and that he abuses his power to issue letters of cachet so as to put away the inconvenient persons he has wronged. And that he covers it all under a mantle of virtue, of asceticism, hypocritically preaching purity in private as in public life. A nice tale, Saint-Just. A nice tale to be told by a man with the proofs in his hand."
'He sprang at me like a tiger, his hands reaching for my throat. I laid him low by a kick in the stomach, and invited him to leave violence, come to his senses, and consider his position and mine.
'He gathered himself up, in a rage. He sat down, half-naked as he was, on his tumbled bed and talked foolishly at first, then more wisely. I should have all I wanted in return for the letters.
'But I shook my head at him. "I do not trust you, Saint-Just. I know your record. You are a low, dishonest scoundrel, and only a fool would take your word. It is for you to take mine. And take it you must because you cannot help yourself. I'll keep faith with you as long as you keep faith with me. Do as I require of you, and I give you my word of honour that no man shall ever see those letters. You may consider them as good as destroyed, and you may sleep in peace. But I do not surrender them, because, if I did so, I should have no guarantee that you would not play me false. In other words, I retain them so as to keep you honest."
'That, of course, was not the end of it. We talked for nearly half-an-hour. But at last he came to it, as it was clear that he must. What choice had he? Better take the risk of my keeping faith with him than face the certainty I had given him that the letters would go to Danton at once. He