"I am sorry beyond measure, but--"

"You shall stay," she interrupted. "Come, Caron. It is months since you were with us. We will make a little fete in honour of your yesterday's triumph," she promised him, sidling up to him with a bewitching glance of blue eyes, and the most distracting toss of golden curls upon an ivory neck.

But to such seductions Caron proved as impervious as might a man of stone. He excused himself with cold politeness. The Nation's business was awaiting him; he might not stay.

"The Nation's business may await you a little longer," she declared, taking hold of his arm with both hands, and had she left it at that it is possible that she had won her way with him. But most indiscreetly she added:

"Come, Caron, you shall tell me who was your yesterday's visitor. Do you know that the sight of her made me jealous? Was it not foolish in me?"

And now, from cold politeness, La Boulaye pa.s.sed to hot impoliteness.

Roughly he shook her detaining hands from him, and with hardly so much as a word of farewell, he pa.s.sed down the stairs, leaving her white with pa.s.sion at the slight he had thereby put upon her.

The beauty seemed to pa.s.s out of her face much as the meekness was wont to pa.s.s out of her uncle's when he was roused. Her blue eyes grew steely and cruel as she looked after him.

"Wait, Caron," she muttered to herself, "I will cry quits with you."

And then, with a sob of anger, she turned and mounted the stairs to her apartments.

CHAPTER XIX. THE THEFT

La Boulaye sat once more in the Rue Nationale and with his head in his hands, his elbows supported by the writing-table, he stared before him, his face drawn with the pain and anger of the defeat he had sustained where no defeat had been expected.

He had been so a.s.sured that he had but to ask for Ombreval's life, and it would be accorded him; he had promised Suzanne with such confidence--boasting almost--that he could do this, and to do it he had pledged his word. And now? For very shame he could not go to her and tell her that despite his fine promises despite his bold bargaining, he was as powerless to liberate Ombreval as was she herself.

And with reflection he came to see that even did he bear her such a tale she would not believe it. The infinite a.s.surance of his power, implicit in everything that he had said to her, must now arise in her memory, and give the lie to his present confession of powerlessness. She would not believe him, and disbelieving him, she would seek a motive for the words that she would deem untrue. And that motive she would not find far to seek. She would account his present att.i.tude the consummation of a miserable subterfuge by which he sought to win her confidence and esteem. She would--she must--believe that he had but made a semblance of befriending her so disinterestedly only that he might enlist her kindness and regard, and turn them presently to his own purposes.

She would infer that he had posed as unselfish--as self-sacrificing, almost--only that he might win her esteem, and that by telling her now that Robespierre was inflexible in his resolve to send Ombreval to the guillotine, he sought to retain that esteem whilst doing nothing for it. That he had ever intended to save Ombreval she would not credit.

She would think it all a cunning scheme to win his own ends. And now he bethought him of the grief that would beset her upon learning that her journey had indeed been fruitless. He smote the table a blow with his clenched hand, and cursed the whole Republic, from Robespierre down to the meanest sans-culotte that brayed the Ca ira in the streets of Paris.

He had pledged his word, and for all that he belonged to the cla.s.s whose right to honour was denied by the aristocrats, his word he had never yet broken. That circ.u.mstance--as personified by Maximilien Robespierre--should break it for him now was matter enough to enrage him, for than this never had there been an occasion on which such a breach could have been less endurable.

He rose to his feet, and set himself to pace the chamber, driven to action of body by the agonised activity of his mind. From the street rose the cry of the pastry-cook going his daily rounds, as it had risen yesterday, he remembered, when Suzanne had been with him. And now of a sudden he stood still. His lips were compressed, his brows drawn together in a forbidding scowl, and his eyes narrowed until they seemed almost closed. Then with his clenched right hand he smote the open palm of the other. His resolve was taken. By fair means or foul, with Robespierre's sanction or without it, he would keep his word. After not only the hope but the a.s.surance he had given Suzanne that her betrothed should go free, he could do no less than accomplish the Vicomte's enlargement by whatever means should present themselves.

And now to seek a way. He recalled the free pardon to which Robespierre had gone the length of appending his signature. He remembered that it had not been destroyed; Robespierre had crumpled it in his hand and tossed it aside. And by now Robespierre would have departed, and it should not be difficult for him--the protege and intimate of Robespierre--to gain access to the Incorruptible's room.

If only he could find that doc.u.ment and fill in the name of Ombreval the thing would be as good as done. True, he would require the signatures of three other Deputies; but one of these he could supply himself, and another two were easily to be requisitioned, seeing that already it bore Robespierre's.

And then as suddenly as the idea of the means had come to him, came now the spectre of the consequences to affright him. How would it fare with him on Robespierre's return? How angered would not Robespierre be upon discovering that his wishes had been set at naught, his very measures contravened--and this by fraud? And than Robespierre's anger there were few things more terrible in '93. It was an anger that sh.o.r.e away heads as recklessly as wayside flowers are flicked from their stems by the idler's cane.

For a second it daunted him. If he did this thing he must seek refuge in flight; he must leave France, abandon the career which was so full of promise for him, and wander abroad, a penniless fortune-hunter. Well might the prospect give him pause. Well might it cause him to survey that pale, sardonic countenance that eyed him gloomily from the mirror above his mantel shelf, and ask it mockingly if it thought that Suzanne de Bellecour--or indeed, any woman living--were worthy of so great a sacrifice.

What had she done for him that he should cast away everything for her sake? Once she had told him that she loved him, only to betray him.

Was that a woman for whom a man should wanton his fortunes? And then he smiled derisively, mocking his reflections in the mirror even as he mocked himself.

"Poor fool," he muttered, "it is not for the sake of what you are to her. Were it for that alone, you would not stir a finger to gratify her wishes. It is for the sake of what she is to you, Caron."

He turned from the mirror, his resolve now firm, and going to the door he called his official. Briefly he instructed Brutus touching the packing of a valise, which he would probably need that night.

"You are going a journey, Citizen?" inquired Brutus, to which La Boulaye returned a short answer in the affirmative. "Do I accompany you?"

inquired the official, to which La Boulaye shook his head.

At that Brutus, who, for all his insolence of manner, was very devotedly attached to his employer, broke into remonstrances, impertinent of diction but affectionate of tenor. He protested that La Boulaye had left him behind, and lonely, during his mission to the army in Belgium, and he vowed that he would not be left behind again.

"Well, well; we shall see, Brutus," answered the Deputy, laying his hand upon the fellow's shoulder. "But I am afraid that this time I am going farther than you would care to come."

The man's ferrety eyes were raised of a sudden to La Boulaye's face in a very searching glance. Caron's tone had been laden with insinuation.

"You are running way," cried the official.

"Sh! My good Brutus, what folly! Why should I run away--and from whom, pray?"

"I know not that. But you are. I heard it in your voice. And you do not trust me, Citizen La Boulaye," the fellow added, in a stricken voice. "I have served you faithfully these two years, and yet you have not learnt to trust me."

"I do, I do, my friend. You go too fast with your conclusions. Now see to my valise, and on my return perhaps I'll tell you where I am going, and put your fidelity to the test."

"And you will take me with you?"

"Why, yes," La Boulaye promised him, "unless you should prefer to remain in Paris."

With that he got away and leaving the house, he walked briskly up the street, round the corner, and on until he stood once more before Duplay's.

"Has the Citizen Robespierre departed yet?" he inquired of the woman who answered his peremptory knock.

"He has been gone this hour, Citizen La Boulaye," she answered. "He started almost immediately after you left him."

"Diable!" grumbled Caron, with well-feigned annoyance. "Quel contretemps! I have left a most important doc.u.ment in his room, and, of course, it will be locked."

"But the Citoyenne Cecile has the key," answered the woman, eager to oblige him.

"Why, yes--naturally! Now that is fortunate. Will you do me the favour to procure the key from he Citoyenne for a few moments, telling her, of course, that it is I who need it?"

"But certainly, Montez, Citoyen." And with a wave of the hand towards the stairs she went before him.

He followed leisurely, and by the time he had reached Robespierre's door her voice floated down to him from above, calling the Incorruptible's niece. Next he heard Cecile's voice replying, and then a whispered conference on the landing overhead, to the accompaniment of the occasional tinkle of a bunch of keys.

Presently the domestic returned, and unlocking the door, she held it open for La Boulaye to pa.s.s. From her att.i.tude it seemed to Caron as if she were intentioned--probably she had been instructed--to remain there while he obtained what he sought. Now he had no mind that she should see him making his quest among the wasted papers on the floor, and so:

"I shall not be more than a few minutes," he announced quietly. "I will call you when I am ready to depart."

Thus uncompromisingly dismissed, she did not venture to remain, and, pa.s.sing in, La Boulaye closed the door. As great as had been his deliberation hitherto was now the feverish haste with which he crossed to the spot where he had seen the doc.u.ment flung. He caught up a crumpled sheet and opened it out It was not the thing he sought. He cast it aside and took up another with no better luck. To crumple discarded papers seemed the habit of the Incorruptible, for there was a very litter of them on the ground. One after another did Caron investigate without success. He was on his knees now, and his exploration had carried him as far as the table; another moment and he was grovelling under it, still at his search, which with each fresh disappointment grow more feverish.

Yonder--by the leg of the Incorruptible's chair--he espied the ball of paper, and to reach it he stretched to his full length, lying p.r.o.ne beneath a table in an att.i.tude scarce becoming a Deputy of the French Republic. But it was worth the effort and the disregard of dignity, for when presently on his knees he smoothed out that doc.u.ment, he discovered it to be the one he sought the order upon the gaolers of the Luxembourg to set at liberty a person or persons whose names were to be filled in, signed by Maximilien Robespierre.

He rose, absorbed in his successful find, and he pursued upon the table the process of smoothing the creases as much as possible from that priceless doc.u.ment. That done he took up a pen and attached his own signature alongside of Robespierre's; then into the blank s.p.a.ce above he filled the name of Anatole d'Ombreval ci-devant Vicomte d'Ombreval.

He dropped the pen and took up the sand-box. He sprinkled the writing, creased the paper, and dusted the sand back into the receptacle. And then of a sudden his blood seemed to freeze, and beads of cold sweat stood out upon his brow. There had been the very slightest stir behind him, and with it had come a warm breath upon his bowed neck. Someone was looking over his shoulder. An instant he remained in that bowed att.i.tude with head half-raised. Then suddenly straightening himself he swung round and came face to face with Cecile Deshaix.

Confronting each other and very close they now stood and each was breathing with more than normal quickness. Her cheeks were white, her nostrils dilated and quivering, her blue eyes baleful and cruel, whilst her lips wore never so faint a smile. For a second La Boulaye looked the very picture of foolishness and alarm. Then it seemed as if he drew a curtain, and his face a.s.sumed the expressionless mask that was habitual to it in moments of great tension. Instinctively he put behind him his hands which held the paper. Cecile's lips took on an added curl of scorn as she observed the act.