Like a flock of magpies the imprisoned demi-mondaines, petty thieves, and grosser criminals for love or for hate, crowded around the girl, inquiring what offence had brought her amongst them.

"I am innocent!"

Her little sobbing cry of self-justification was received with jibes and winks. Was not such the formula of every prisoner? They pressed her for her story. Looking at these ignoble spirits, the girl could not bear to acquaint them with her pure and holy romance.

As she turned away, a new shock met her gaze.

Faugh! What was this physical weakness, this nausea-like repulsion, but the bodily reaction from the tense spiritual agony she had suffered?

Courage! She must look again. That wild woman—hair down, breath gasping, arms weaving threateningly—was coming at her like a murderess. Momentarily Henriette expected the long arms to seize her, the steel-like hands and wrists to choke her.

She looked yet a third time. The crazy "murderess" had veered her course, but what was that other object nearby? A Niobe weeping for her own and the world's sorrows! Or this one over here—a shrieking maniac calling on all Hell's legions for vengeance on fancied enemies! Beyond, gibbering victims of paresis, white-haired idiots, wasted sufferers from senile dementia.

Not a friendly face, not a kind look nor an understanding eye! Crime, passion, foulness, insanity. The sheer horror of her situation mercifully blotted out consciousness. She sank, a crumpled heap to the floor.

"The girl is sick," said Sister Genevieve, who had entered at this moment and was presently bending over her. "Here, two of you lift her and carry her into the hospital—we shall have the good Doctor from La Force attend her!" Two of the sturdier prisoners bore her away....

Beautiful, pitiful Henriette!

The horrors of the madwomen thou facest in Salpetriere; the obscene shouts and curses of the fallen; the fury of the female criminal; the misery of the poor distracted half-wits, where mad and sane are given the same cell:—these shall be but confused phantasmagoria projected on thy sick brain during this prison time before the awful Storm breaks—the lightning strikes—the thunder crashes, and the sharp female called La Guillotine holds thee in its embrace.

From the tumbril shalt thou find and kiss the blind girl, and Maurice de Vaudrey shall accompany thee into the Valley of the Shadow!



CHAPTER XV

LIGHT RAYS IN THE DARKNESS

Henriette was nursed through a severe mental and bodily illness by Sister Genevieve directed by the visiting prison Doctor, none other than him who had examined the eyes of Louise before Notre Dame.

During this period it was quite impossible for the attendants to get her story. She herself in lucid moments could hardly realize her situation, nor in any wise remember how she had come to it.

But one day new strength seemed to be hers. Feverish and with hair unbound and a wild light in her eyes, she sprang out of her cot, sought Genevieve in the main prison, and knelt before her.

"Oh, Madame!" cried Henriette in imploring accents, "if you are the mistress here, have pity on me, and order them to set me free. I ask you on my knees!"

"You are still ill, my child," said Sister Genevieve tenderly, stroking Henriette's, long hair with a gentle, loving touch.

"Certainly you are," confirmed the Doctor, who was just then on his way to the hospital ward. "Why have you left your bed without my permission?"

"Oh, monsieur!" said the poor girl, turning to the gentle-voiced, pleasant-faced man who spoke so kindly, "have you attended me in my illness? Look—thanks to your care—I have recovered!" she affirmed confidently, though her hectic features and weak motions belied it.

"They left me alone for a few moments, and I arose and dressed myself. Now that you see I am quite well, you will tell them to let me go, will you not?"

The Doctor gazed at her compassionately before answering:

"That is impossible. To release you from this place requires a far greater power than mine."

"This place?" asked the young girl in surprise. "Why, what is it? Is it not a hospital?"

"A hospital and a prison," replied the physician gravely.

"A prison!" exclaimed Henriette in terror, striving to remember how she came to be in such a place.

At last the events that preceded her illness gradually came back to her mind, until she understood all.

"Ah, I remember," she said at length. "Yes, I remember the soldiers who dragged me here, and him who commanded.... And Maurice—was he too condemned? Alas, poor Louise—my last sight of her showed her in the power of vile, unscrupulous wretches! Oh, dear God, what have I done to be crushed like this!"

She dropped, weeping and wailing, to the floor.

"Sister," said the Doctor, turning away to hide his tears, "this is not a case for my care. You must be the physician here."

"I know virtue and innocence when I see it, surely this child has done nothing worthy of a term at Salpetriere!" replied the kind Genevieve softly, lifting up the stricken girl and embracing her.

"Come, dear, you must rest yet a little longer in order to acquire the full strength so as to be able to tell me everything. Assuredly we will help you!"

* * * * *

In the course of convalescence Henriette told her complete story to Sister Genevieve. The narrative included the girls' journey to Paris, her kidnapping and rescue, the disappearance of Louise, de Vaudrey's suit and the objections of his family, the recognition of her sister as the Countess's long-lost daughter, Louise's recapture by the beggars, and the peremptory act of the Police Prefect whereby mother and daughter, and beloved foster-sisters, were cruelly parted, and Henriette branded with the mark of the fallen woman by incarceration in La Salpetriere.

Sister Genevieve was strangely moved by it, as was the Doctor to whom she repeated it.

"Against the will of the Police Prefect we can do nothing!" said the Doctor, soberly. "If only his wrath has cooled, we may possibly get her term shortened—"

"What monstrous wickedness!" interrupted the Sister, ordinarily mild and loyal, but worked up to near-democracy by these and other injustices. "To imprison a pure girl—her only offence a nobleman's honorable suit and her own ceaseless search for her blind sister, lost in the streets of Paris!"

"This girl Henriette was her blind sister's sole support," suggested a nurse.

"I had found her—Louise—at the moment when they arrested me," exclaimed Henriette sorrowfully. "I heard her voice. I saw her. She was covered with rags. Her beautiful golden hair fell in disorder on her shoulders. She was being dragged along by a horrible old woman, who I know ill-treats her—beats her, perhaps, and they would not let me go to her. Now I have lost her forever—forever!"

"Wait a minute, my child," exclaimed the physician, as a sudden thought flashed over him. "I believe I have met that very same girl."

"You, monsieur?" exclaimed Henriette in surprise.

"Yes—yes, a young girl led by an old woman who calls her Louise—"

"Yes—yes, that's her name," and the young girl became breathless with excitement.

"I know the old woman, too," continued the Doctor. "She is called La Frochard—an old hag who goes about whining for alms in the name of Heaven and seven small children.

"Where did I last see them?" he mused. Suddenly he recollected a little scene on the steps of Notre Dame one morning before mass. "Oh, yes," he continued, "they were begging for charity of the churchgoers at Notre Dame. I noticed that the young girl was blind—professionally interested, I examined her pupils and discovered she was merely suffering from cataracts which could be readily removed. I told the old woman so, asked her to bring the girl for treatment to La Force, but they have never shown up—"

"Quick! Quick!" cried Henriette. "Tell me, Doctor, where Mere Frochard lives?"

"Oh, they inhabit an old boathouse at the end of the Rue de Brissac down on the banks of the river Seine. There's a cellar entrance to their hovel near the Paris-Normandy coach house. But what would you do?" he inquired solicitously.

"Oh, Sir," said Henriette piteously, "if you could use your influence to get me out of here some way, I would—would run there and recover my little lost sister! You don't know how I love her, nor my fears that they will kill her. Please, please—" The little voice broke off in sobs.

Patting the girl's shoulder and smiling at her as if to try to impart confidence in a very difficult matter, the good Doctor drew apart with Sister Genevieve and conferred earnestly for a few moments. On their return, the physician spoke again:

"'Twould be of no use to invoke the police, as the Count has probably instructed them not to hunt for Louise. Nor is it in our power to release you from here. But we shall get up a petition signed by all of us for your reprieve, very likely Count de Linieres will not venture to refuse it—"

Henriette was overjoyed even with this slender resource, and warmly thanked them. At once her busy little brain laid plans for invading the lair of the Frochards. And then—a most unexpected ray in the darkness—arrived at Salpetriere the quaint valet Picard and brought her comfort too.

No longer a spy for the Count, he had been converted from base suspicion by the Chevalier's honorable suit and the exile the latter had suffered. He now delivered this little message from his master at Caen:

Dearest, never will I marry anyone but you, my heart's desire! Should I escape, it will be to your arms. Picard knows my secret plan and will tell you—until then, courage! A thousand kisses from your Maurice.

Henriette kissed the little paper fervently.

Countess de Linieres decided to make a clean breast of her wretched past to her husband. "It was not that I—I sinned," she sobbed, kneeling at his feet, "In the sight of God I am innocent, though erring!

"In early girlhood," she continued, "I loved and was loved by a Commoner, a man of the people. The good Cure married us secretly. We were blessed by an infant daughter.

"The family pride of the de Vaudreys was outraged by the so-called dishonor. Two of the clan found our hiding-place and slew my husband, then took my baby Louise from my helpless arms. I was brought back to the chateau and given in marriage to you, after threats of death if I should ever divulge the secret! Twenty years after, I saw my daughter as Louise the blind singer—the girl Henriette, whom you sent to Salpetriere, is her foster-sister. Oh, forgive, forgive—put me away if you wish, but consider what I have suffered!..."

The strong man, whom neither the fate of Maurice nor of Henriette had melted, was crying. Gently he lifted up the Countess and clasped her sobbing in his arms.

"If you had only told me before—" was the only word to which he could give utterance.

The hellish aspect of his persecutions now stood revealed. Count de Linieres, in the act of divine forgiveness, resolved to undo wrongs.

But History struck faster.

The avenger Jacques-Forget-Not annihilated pardons. The Linieres and the other aristocrats were soon to flee for their lives.



CHAPTER XVI

REVOLUTION IS HERE!

The ex-retainer nicknamed "Forget-Not" bore a baleful grudge because of the cruelties inflicted on his own father many years before by the Countess's father—the cruel punishment of pouring boiling lead into the unfortunate tenant's veins: a procedure on which the boy Chevalier had been taught to look approvingly.

In fact ever since the elder Jean Setain displeased the then Seigneur of the de Vaudrey estate, the affairs of the tenant family had gone to wrack and ruin until the middle-aged son was little more than a landless beggar and an embodied voice calling for vengeance.

The original parties of the quarrel were dead. But the feud (on the part of Jacques-Forget-Not) had taken on a more personal aspect, because his own sufferings were involved as well as the memory of his father's. He had determined to kill the Chevalier, the Countess and the Count.

In normal times the monomaniac's designs would never have reached fruition. Now the vast public discontents converted the cringing ex-tenant or shrieking beggar into a gaunt, long-haired, ferocious agitator—one of the outstanding crazy figures of Great Crises!

For the Storm—long brewing in seditious Palais Royal or seething faubourg, in the heart and conscience of patriot Dantons, the cunning of Robespierres, the wildness of Desmoulins fire-eaters, the starvation and misery of the people—struck the doomed country with full force.

In the outcome the fat King Louis XVI, the hapless royal family, and the whole supporting system of parasitic aristocracy, were hurled down into black nothingness! The upset released our characters from the horrors of prison immurement, only to plunge them in the more awful tyranny of the New Terror.

* * * * *

Early in midsummer the wildest rumors reached Paris that the Versailles government intended to put down the discontents by weight of sword. Armies were advancing on the city, 'twas averred—cannon and arms were being parked in the commanding squares; the King's faithful Allemands and Swiss were about to attack the representatives of the people and mow them down.

As a beehive, stirred by over-curious bear or by an invader's stick, seethes and swarms in milling fury before the myriads of angry occupants attack and overwhelm the intruder with their stings, so the seething populace mills in widening and ever widening circles, out to destroy—burn—slay. The ominous drum murmurs to the people of their ancient wrongs. Artisans pick up their nearest implements, the butcher his axe, the baker his rolling pin, the joiner his saw, the iron worker his mallet or crowbar, rushing to join the homicidal throngs. Vengeful leaders like Forget-Not urge them on, directing the milling masses to the central places of the city.

At the Palais Royal gardens, later from the Cafe de Foy, Camille Desmoulins is in his glory. See him rushing out, sibylline in face; his hair streaming, in each hand a pistol! He springs to a table: the police satellites are eyeing him; alive they shall not take him; not they alive, him alive.



"'Friends, shall we die like hunted hares? Us, meseems, only one cry befits: To arms! Let universal Paris, universal France, as with the throat of the whirlwind, resound: To arms! Friends (continues Camille) some rallying sign! Cockades, green one; the color of hope!' As with the flight of locusts, these green leaves; green ribands from the neighboring shops; all green things are snatched and made cockades of.... And now to Curtius' image shop there; to the boulevards; to the four winds, and rest not until France be on fire!"

Ancient flint-locks, pikes and lances are replevined, and dance high, minatory, over the heads of the mob. Storerooms of powder and musketry are broken into and swept clean. Behold, now, a still more astonishing sight; a rushing tide of women, impetuous, all-devouring, equipped with brooms and household tools, descending like a snowbreak from all directions upon the Hotel de Ville. "And now doors fly under hatchets; the Judiths have broken the armory; have seized guns and cannon, three money-bags," and have fired the beautiful City Hall of King Henry the Fourth's time!

... And where the Storm breaks fiercest and the cry "Down with Tyrants!" most loudly sounds, there Danton the revolutionist, the pock-marked Thunderer, leads the way, whipping up new fury and moulding them to his will with his appeal 'gainst "Starvation—oppression—ages of injustice—vile prisons where innocent ones die under autocracy!"

Danton's voice shakes the world.

Thousands upon thousands of commoners gather for the attack on the hated symbol of royal authority, the prison fortress of Bastille.

Look! His impassioned eloquence touches the popular sympathies of the common soldiers who constitute the royal guard. They lower their opposing bayonets, identify their cause with the people's, the exultant throng rushes past.

Hurrah! The Revolution shall sweep on. The King's foreign soldiery are the only loyal ones now. At the side of the Place de Greve the populace throw up barricades. The conflict twixt Kingship and democracy has begun.

The people have won more cannon and more small arms. They rake the loyalist Swiss and Germans with a murderous fire. The foreign troops fight to the last. They are killed or overwhelmed as the victorious commonalty take possession of the Square. Danton who has directed the proletariat is the popular hero.

Forget-Not has his share of the triumph too. "Come, my men," he yells. "On to the Police Prefect's palace—let us avenge the wrongs of police tyranny!" For in this dreadful hour the baleful Jacques-Forget-Not remembers a private vengeance—his followers need no second urging to haste with him to sack and slaughter....

Fox-like, Maximilien Robespierre, the "people's advocate," has watched from a safe recess the issue of the battle. Not for him, the risking of his precious skin! Later, in the councils of the new democratic State, he shall sway men to his purposes....

And now the mob, re-enforced by many of the popular soldiery, seeks the Bastille. Our previous description of the system of lettres de cachet and the wholesale imprisonments without warrant of law, will have given readers some idea of the hate with which this fortress of injustice was commonly regarded. Many of the attackers, no doubt, had friends or relatives immured there. 'Twas the monstrous and visible crime of the Kingship—the object all had immediately in view when crying "Down with tyranny!"

In less than a day the Bastille falls. 'Tis but feebly defended by a few aged veterans and a handful of valiant Swiss. Their first fire kills some of the commoners and lashes the mob to fury. Up on the walls, bastions and parapets, away from the guns at the port holes, crawl some of the more daring attackers. Others bring cannon, preparing to carry the siege by cannonade, investiture and starvation.

The governor, seeing that it is a losing fight, parleys and yields. But, instead of observing the terms of the honorable surrender and safe-conduct, the inrushing mob slays and mutilates a number of the officers and defenders—the first inkling of what murder and rapine the Wild Beast of the Proletariat will commit!

"Set free the victims of the tyrants!" is the sole thought after the lust of blood is satiated. The dungeons are opened, the prisoners brought forth, joy of reunion or pathos of sorrow is the result of these strange meetings, many of the victims being but the wrecks or shadows of their old selves.

"Set free the victims of tyranny!"

After the Bastille La Salpetriere, the famous female prison, is summoned. Already the inmates are on the qui vive of expectation. Mad and sane are flying about from cells to courtyard, and courtyard to barred windows, like birds in storm-flight.

Impatient, restless little Henriette, between the bars of her cage, is looking out wonderingly on a re-made world. What does it mean? Release? the easy path to her lost Louise?

Pray Heaven it does—



CHAPTER XVII

PRISON DELIVERY—AND AN ENCOUNTER

The jailers deliver the keys; the mob pours tumultuously into the female prison. What cries of joy, what sobs of relief from the saner inmates, as they try to think their new, almost incredible jail delivery! What stony, uncomprehending glances or what wild shrieks from the maniacal! Amid this confused throng Picard, who has entered with the crowd to wait upon his mistress, presents a comic figure. He has arrayed himself in the red-and-white striped garb of the proletariat, is trying his best to look a Revolutionary, though all he gets for it are kicks and wallops!

Sense and nonsense mix strangely in the proceedings of the mob. They set up a rude court headed by two horny-handed butchers, the object of which is to separate the innocent from the guilty. But the new red-and-white cockade—superseding the green cockades of the first battle—is the best passport to their favor. Inmates whose friends have provided them with these Revolutionary badges, are generally turned loose. Shouting and laughing in their glee, they dance out of the prison.

Picard has provided Henriette with his badge, whilst Sister Genevieve and the Doctor vouch to her good character. Henriette kisses the cockade as a sign of fealty to the new order. The brawny judges let her pass. She runs merrily out past the harmless gauntlet of the friendly pikes and lances.

Not so Picard—That luckless valet tries to sneak out past the big chopper of the brawny butcher-judge.

Whir-r! The chopper descends in front of him, almost taking his head off!

Picard executes a strategic retirement to the rear. There! Isn't there seemingly a good chance to crawl out between the other guardian's legs, and thus escape?

Picard tries it.

Alas! the first butcher catches sight of Picard's be-tufted head protruding in this strange manner from under the crotch of his fellow. The Man of Meat grasps Picard firmly by the collar and pulls him forth.

With the other hand he raises the axe to chop the offender's head off, thinks better of it, twirls Picard swiftly around, and using the flat of the chopper spanks the rear of the Picard anatomy, sending him sprawling into the limbo.

So that little Henriette's excursion into Freedom is unattended and alone. It is quite unlikely that she bothers about Picard at all. "Louise! Rue de Brissac!" is the sole thought of her whirling little brain, as she speeds on.

Just where is the Frochards' cellar door? Certainly she has never noticed it in her frequent searches of the Pont Neuf district. But perhaps some one can tell her—She is in the Rue de Brissac now, almost at the spot where she herself was kidnapped and Louise was lost.

A good-looking daughter of the people comes hurrying by.

"Can you tell me where the Frochards live?" inquires Henriette eagerly.

The girl points to an almost indistinguishable trap-door, nearly covered with straw, in front of one of the houses. "There!" she says. Henriette presses the newcomer to accompany her. "Sorry, I haven't a minute!" negatives the other, hastening off in spite of Henriette's efforts to detain her.

* * * * *

Henriette opens the trap-door of the cellar where the Frochards lodged, and peers within. Courageously she goes down the steps. Sympathy and horror struggle in the thought of Louise being an inmate of this foul place.

What is her disgust then to encounter the wart-faced and moustachioed hag who is its proprietor! Quickly Henriette tells La Frochard of her information, and demands Louise.

"I don't know any such person," the hag lies, with ready effrontery. "You must be mistaken!"

But Henriette's eyes are gazing at the Frochard's neck, sensing something or other vaguely familiar. The old woman, who has been drinking, has unloosened her nondescript rig. The girl's gaze sees a well-remembered object.

"My sister's shawl!"

The blue eyes are gleaming now in astonishment—with a hint of coming fury. She snatches the shawl from La Frochard's shoulders, fondles and caresses it. Then like a small tigress robbed of whelp she advances on the beggar, shaking her in paroxysmal rage.

It would have been a comical sight if not so very serious a one; the tiny Henrietta shaking a woman twice her size, pummeling her, brow-beating her till La Frochard sinks to her knees and begs for mercy.

"You have been lying, and that shawl proves it," cries Henriette. "Where is she?"

The old woman gets up. She changes her tone to a whine, and tries to pat Henriette in pretended sympathy. "Well, if you must know the truth—"

"Yes, yes," cries Henriette, "go on!"

"—she was with us, but alas!—poor thing—with the hard life we have to lead—she—she died!"

The searcher for Louise reels as if about to faint.

She collects herself with difficulty, and stares at La Frochard. A distraught look is on the girl's face.

It is a look of utter misery, compounded with mistrustfulness of the deceiving hag.

She leaves the cellar, fully resolved to invoke the Law—if Law—in this wild time—there can be found...

A bundle of rags, on which Henrietta has almost stepped in passing, moves very slightly.



CHAPTER XVIII

"THERE IS NO LAW—"

The wild and drunken madness of the triumphant people expended itself in many strange forms, of which none was stranger, more awesome, more ludicrous and yet more tragic than the Carmagnole.

This was a dance that seized whole multitudes in its rhythmic, swaying clutch. The tune was "Ca Ira!" that mad measure of the sansculottes, meaning roughly—

"Here it goes—

"And there it goes!"

—and go forever it did till all the world of Paris seemed a heaving, throbbing vortex of werewolves and witches, things lower than animals in their topsyturvydom, drunken frenzy and frequent obscenity.

The throng through which Henriette now directed her steps was verging on this madness, though not yet at the pitch of it.

Henriette managed to find her way to two sansculotte troopers stationed in the centre of the Place, to whom she told her story. Reasonable fellows they seemed, offering to conduct her presently to the new authorities and get a search warrant for the Frochard clan. But the madder swirl of the Carmagnole came along, and presto! swallowed them up. It happened on this wise:

As the locust swarms of the dancers enveloped them in shortening circles, two young and attractive maenads broke from the throng and literally entwined themselves with the troopers. Military dignity, assaulted in burlesque, tried to keep its post. But the bold nymphs were clinging, not to be "shaken"; as the mad whirl of the dancers touched the centre, the troopers and their female captors were borne away in the ricocheting, plunging motions, disappearing thenceforward from our story. Little Henriette dived to a place of safety, the side wall of the nearest building. Straightening herself after the unexpected knocks and bruises, she looked aghast at the scene before her.

Whole streets of them, plazas of them, these endlessly gyrating male and female loons; swirls of gayety, twisting, upsetting passers-by like a cyclone;—arms, bodies and legs frantically waving, as at the very brink of Dante's Inferno!

Strange little dramas of lust and conquest punctuated the cyclonic panorama. Here, a girl's snapping black eyes, winking devilishly, and pursed-up Cupid mouth invited a new swain to master her. There, a short-skirted beauty, whose sways and kicks revealed bare thighs, was dancing wildly a solo intended to infatuate further two rival admirers. Again, a half-crazed sansculotte had won a girl and in token of triumph was spinning her body horizontally around like a top, upheld by the open palm of his huge right arm.

But what might be this comic figure, quite unpartnered—knocked and shoved from human pillar to human post—winning the deep curses of the dancers, and their hearty wallops when not o'er-busied with Terpsichore?

Picard, the ex-valet of aristocracy, finally let out from the Salpetriere mock-court, had stumbled into this bedlam of sansculotte craziness, the rhythm and procedure of which were as foreign to him as a proposition in Euclid.

But the Jolly Baker, from the Ile de Paris, was his match. The bare-armed, lean-legged pleasurer had equipped himself (by way of disguise) with a large false moustache, and evading the close watch of his hatchet-faced, middle-aged spouse, had come forth to celebrate. Neither dancer nor vocalist, the Jolly Baker had other little entertaining ways all his own.

As the foolscap-crowned, white-and-red-trousered Picard bumped the pave, he saw squatting opposite him a figure whose gleaming eyes, ferocious whiskerage and lean-wiry frame suggested the canine rather than the human species. The Jolly Baker was a bum werewolf, but a "hot dog."

The gleaming eyes never left Picard's face, the dog-like body jumped whichever way he did, Picard half expected the dog-man to bite or snap the next instant and take a chunk out of him. Both had got to their feet now; the stranger still silent and nosey, Picard looking out of the corner of his eye for a way of escape. But just then the Baker spied a maenad with a drum.

One could beat drum in celebration, if naught else. Lo and behold, the posterior of the foolscapped one would serve for a drum very nicely! The Jolly Baker twisted Picard around, bending him half double as he did so.

With a rear thrust and firm shoulder grip, the Jolly Baker leaped upon Picard's back. Emulating the young woman's beating of the drum, he rained a shower of blows on the valet's hind quarters.

The new "drum"-beater was now quite the cynosure of admiring attention. He had captured the centre of the stage. He gloried in it. With a more elaborate, fanciful and complexive "rat-tat-tat-rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat—"

He suddenly lost his grip of the "human drum," Picard wriggled out from under, and the drummer bumped his own posterior on the pave.

Calmly, quite undisturbed, the foolish Baker continued to "rat-tat-tat" with a stick on the curb, then as the "Ca Ira" beats resounded above him, his own squatting body began to sway with the music in a heightened absurdity. Picard had run off. He was convinced these people were crazier than any of those in the mad cells of Salpetriere....



Long since Henriette had evaded the worse sights and sounds by creeping as best she could along the side walls of the buildings, watching her chance to get away from the revelers. Again, at the street corner, another swirl passed over her, knocking her down. Ruefully she picked herself up again.

The throng had passed by completely, leaving but a drunken fool prancing here and there, or a scant winrow of half-prostrate figures. Henriette ran with all her might to the only refuge she knew—her old faubourg lodgings.

The middle-aged landlady who in days agone had fetched the guard to subdue Danton's would-be assassins, and who likewise had resented Robespierre's prying as to the identity of Henriette's visitor, studied the girl at first a bit quizzically. Released from Salpetriere, eh? Was she the same sweet, pure Henriette she knew? Yes, the little Girard—la petite Girard—looked to be the same hard-working, respectable seamstress person of yore, only that she seemed very weak and about to collapse!

The landlady folded Henriette within one stout arm.

She pointed with her free hand to the bedchamber immediately above.

"Your old room up there awaits you," she remarked kindly. "As soon as you have recovered strength a bit, I have no doubt the old sewing job will be yours too!"

* * * * *

... Jacques-Forget-Not and his men arrived too late at the Prefect's palace for complete vengeance on the de Vaudreys.

Around the historic Fourteenth of July, there was a pell-mell exodus of aristocrats from the city. A panic-stricken servant brought the Count de Linieres tidings of the people's victory.

"Fly, monsieur! Fly, madame!" he cried. "The troops are overthrown, the Bastille surrounded, before nightfall the mob will surely attack here and try to kill your excellencies. Fly, I implore you!"

Other messengers confirmed the news, and thus it happened that the erstwhile proud and arrogant Minister of Police who but yesterday had ruled France was reduced to making the most hurried preparations for flight, aided by the distracted Countess.

The latter realized with a pang that the hegira meant farewell, perhaps forever, to the chance of recovering her lost daughter Louise from this welter of Paris. How mysterious the ways of the Higher Power! Her beloved nephew the Chevalier, at least, was safe in the distant fortress to which the Count her husband had condemned him. Pray God Louise might be saved—, yes! and her foster-sister Henrietta, beloved of the Chevalier—Henriette whom her husband had branded by unjust accusation....

The de Linieres party succeeded in evading the fate of numbers of the runaway aristocrats, who were bodily pulled out of their coaches and trampled upon or strung up by the infuriated mobs. They managed to make their way to the northeastern borders of France. There thousands of emigres were received under the protection of foreign powers, awaiting the ripe moment for the impact of foreign armies on French soil and the hoped-for reconquest of the monarchists....

That night the beautiful Hotel de Vaudrey—home of the Vaudrey and Linieres family and fortune—was given up to sack and pillage. Enraged that the objects of his vengeance had fled, the leader Forget-Not ordered a general demolition.

Priceless works of art were hurled about and destroyed. The cellars of old wines were quickly emptied by drunken revelers. The kitchen and pantries catered to the mob's gluttony. Wenches arrayed themselves in the Countess's costly silks and linens; perfumed, powdered and painted with the cosmetics; preened and perked in the cheval mirrors.

Among the motley crew of destroyers, drunkards, gluttons, satyrs and sirens, our friend the Jolly Baker was on the job—unfortunately for him, accompanied this time by his hatchet-faced spouse.

He started a flirtation with a new-made vamp, all tricked out in stolen finery. The Jolly Baker had found a new use for his eyes and eyebrows, i.e., to convey love messages. He was making the most alarming motions and succeeding most prodigiously in evoking the new vamp's answering smiles when—

"Ker-plunk!"

—Dame Baker fetched him a tremendous slap directly on the face that caused him to see innumerable little stars.

Gradually coming back to this mundane world, the Jolly Baker resolved to devote his strict attention to the bottle....



CHAPTER XIX

KNIFE DUEL AND ESCAPE

The bundle on the cellar floor of the Frochards den stirred again, this time more actively.

The crippled knife-grinder Pierre had entered. His mother was again busied with her potations. Under the half-lifted rags showed the tear-stained face of Louise. The heavy fatigue of street mendicancy had wrapped her in deep sleep, from which she woke with a start to her wretched surroundings. The misery of it all overwhelmed her. She sobbed, and the big tears descended from her blind eyes.

"Don't cry, Louise!" begged the almost equally wretched Pierre. "There may yet be escape and the finding of your sister. Oh!" he said to himself. "If I had but the courage to lay down my life that I might make her happy!"

* * * * *

The ruffian Jacques Frochard was exhibiting a sinister interest in the blind girl. He had forbidden Pierre to speak to her or come near her, and now as he entered, the crippled brother shrank away. "Get up and go to work!" said Mother Frochard to the girl roughly, yanking her to her feet.

"I'll find a way to make her work!" laughed Jacques with fiendish coarseness. "You'll slave for me, eh, my pretty? Yes, for you, no one but Jacques!"

He leered at her as he appropriated the coins of her singing.

Huddled in the corner, the silent cripple bit his finger knuckles until they bled....

* * * * *

Inflamed with liquor and lust, Jacques soon decided to carry out his purpose.

"Come with me, my little beauty!"

Mother Frochard chuckled at the sight of him mastering her. Struggle wildly as the poor blind creature would to avoid his grip, he was dragging her slowly to the stair while her screams were stifled by one rough hand over her mouth.

But as he was doing this, the huddled figure rose. "I have been a coward long enough," said Pierre. "Don't touch her!" laying a restraining hand on Jacques' arm.

Astonished, Jacques turned. "Who'll stop me?" He flung his brother prostrate half way across the room.

The cripple had risen again. A dirk gleamed in his extended hand. His eyes blazed like coals. Fury distorted his features which were craned forward in hideous ugliness parallel with the knife.

"I will!"

"You misbegotten hunchback!" roared Jacques, letting loose of the girl and drawing his own knife. "She is mine. I tell you I will kill anyone who interferes with me!"

La Frochard tried to throw herself between the brothers. Louise groped away, and as by instinct found refuge behind Pierre. Jacques pushed the hag aside, saying savagely: "Let me look after this!"

Each brother stripped off his coat, holding it as a buckler whilst the right hand gripped a knife.

"You are right, Jacques," said the frenzied cripple. "We Frochards come of a race that kills!"

The adversaries feinted around each other in circles, in the Latin mode of fighting that was their heritage. Coats or sidesteps parried or evaded blows. The knives gleamed, but did not go quickly home.

If Jacques had the superior strength, Pierre was the more cat-like. His frail body was a slight target, so that the other's great lunges missed. Then, leaping like a puma, he was behind and under Jacques' guard, and stabbed him in the back.

The great hulk of a man fell back into La Frochard's arms, the blood oozing from a cut that was not mortal though fearsome. The hag-mother wailed and crooned as if he were in death agony.

"Quick!" cried the hunchback to Louise, "the road to liberty is open." Taking Louise by the hand, he ran with her up the steps out of the cellar....

But Henriette did not meet—not until one fateful hour—the itinerant grinder and her loved sister whom he protected. They were in many of the scenes of the later Revolution. Louise ate off the de Vaudrey plate, and Pierre perforce sharpened the knives of the September Massacre. Tramps of the boiling, tempestuous City, spectators but not participants of the great events, they looked ceaselessly for her.

Nor did the wicked Frochards abide in the den of Louise's imprisonment and sufferings. They too were swallowed up in the vast maelstrom—to reappear at one ludicrous moment of tragic times.



CHAPTER XX

THE NEW TYRANNY

Before telling you how the Chevalier de Vaudrey got out of Caen and how he fared forth to his love, it is meet that the reader should understand the rapidly changing conditions that converted the New France into a veritable Hell on earth.

After the Fall of the Bastille, and even after the mob's sortie on Versailles which enforced the royal family's return to Paris where they lived in the Tuileries, it was the hope of the moderate patriots that constitutional monarchy might prevail.

These hopes were dashed, first, by royalty's intrigues and double-dealing, and, secondly, through the pressure of the revolting emigres and the threat of foreign invasion that welded all the defenders of France, willy-nilly, into a traitor-crushing and invader-defying Republic.

Of all the personages of that unhappy time, the locksmithing King Louis XVI least understood what was going on about him.

A true Bourbon with an ancestry of nearly a thousand years' possession of the French throne, he never learned anything and never forgot anything. He played at being a limited monarch but his sympathies were naturally with the riffled aristocrats—the nobility whose privileges had been taken away, their estates commandeered, their chateaux fired or sacked, and themselves obliged to flee for their lives to the protection of the foreigner.

Not comprehending the nature of the Storm that wiped out old tyranny, Louis dangerously rode the Storm, he could not guide it. His lack of understanding is sadly shown in the closing scene at Versailles when they brought him news of the people's coming.

"Mais, c'est une revolte. Why, that is a revolt!" exclaimed the bewildered monarch.

"No, Sire," replied the Minister gravely, "'tis not a revolt. It is a revolution!"

Within a few hours the yelling maenads and bold satyrs of the sansculottes possessed the gorgeous Salon de la Paix, whilst the King and his family were on their way to Paris....

Then followed many weary months of royalist intrigue, plot and counter plot, secret dickers with foreign Powers, attempts at escape, fresh indignities by the mob, until at last Royalty is suspended from its function, becomes the prisoner instead of the ruler. Turned out of the Tuileries, Louis and Marie Antoinette are no longer King and Queen—henceforth Citizen and Citizeness Capet. At the end of dreadful imprisonments, looms for the hapless pair the dread Scaffold....

A real Republic teeters for a short period on the crest of the Revolutionary wave. Men are mad with the joy over the new thought of universal brotherhood. Little do Danton and the other Utopians realize that the Pageant of Brotherhood is but the prelude of a new Despotism.

For a dark ring of foes—spurred to invasion by the King's misfortunes—surrounds France on every side. Within, the cry re-echoes: "The traitors to the prisons!" and all the aristocrats as yet at large are hunted down and put in durance.

As Minister of Justice, Danton, the idol of the people, acts quickly to subdue aristocracy, and ceaselessly organizes—organizes—organizes the raw republican levies into troops fit to resist the advancing Prussians, Austrians and Savoyards.

Lashed to uncontrollable rage by the preliminary successes of the invading Prussians, the Paris proletariat break into the prisons and massacre the unfortunate members of the nobility there immured. Few are spared. Young equally with the old—girls and women no less than the sterner sex—the noble, the wise, the cultivated, the beautiful, are murdered in cold blood. The September Massacres shock moderates everywhere with the feeling that France is at last running amuck—the mad dog of the Nations.

Yes, France now is running amuck—'ware of her when she strikes! Lafayette and other moderates—indeed, several of the Generals commanding the patriot armies have fled over the border, disgusted with the national rabies, utterly unable to quench it.

The patriot ranks close up. The wilder element of the sansculottes grasps the helm of State. In the desperate need of a dictatorship to cope against the foreign invasion, Danton procures from the Legislature absolute power for a little inner group, the Committee of Public Safety.

Working on the passions of the people, worming himself into favor by denouncing moderate suspects and advocating the extremest measures, our sly acquaintance of the faubourg lodgings—Maximilien Robespierre—becomes the head of this Committee—thereby the Tyrant of France.

The foreign foe is indeed driven back, but at what a cost! The rule of Robespierre's fanatical minority that has seized the State, inaugurates the dreadful Reign of Terror. The great Revolutionary leader Danton—Minister of Justice in the earlier time—has himself caused to be established the Revolutionary Tribunal for the quick trial of the public's foes, and the guillotine for the guilty. Robespierre uses it as a ready forged weapon for destroying all who do not think as he does.

In this storm-wracked world Jacques-Forget-Not is now a great judge and a most fanatical patriot. The avenger of the de Vaudreys heads the Revolutionary Tribunal. He is in his glory now, for the aristocrats that the mobs overlooked are sent in batches to the guillotine—on the most trifling charges, or finally without accusation at all. The mere fact of being an aristocrat is a capital offence!

And in and among these slaughters is intermixed the destruction of Robespierre's personal and political rivals—a work in which the vengeful Jacques-Forget-Not studies and obeys every whim of his master, for does not Jacques also have private grudges as yet unpaid?

... But Danton remains a popular hero. For his work in driving back the foreign foe, he is upraised in chair of state by the multitudes, heading a huzzaing procession and preceded by young girls strewing flowers.

None of the bloody butchery has been Danton's. He has been too busy fighting Prussia, Austria and Savoy. Today, as he sits in the chair of state acknowledging the acclamations, his heart wells in gratitude to Henriette who had once saved his life—no face of treasured memory so dear as hers!



Confessedly, under the New Tyranny, there is nothing to engage the great heart and soul. Sick of the murderous scramble for pelf and power, he withdraws from most political activity, though still able to exert a wide influence.

* * * * *

About this time twenty-two political rivals of Robespierre—the Girondists—were sent by one decree to the guillotine. Danton, vainly pleading for mercy, saw that the Committee of Safety machine was being made an instrument of slaughter. "France must be purged of all vice!" was Robespierre's sanctimonious reply to his passionate protest. Not long after, the rival masters of France faced one another in the hall of the Revolutionary Tribunal, whereof Jacques-Forget-Not was President.

"Well works this Tribunal you established, Danton!" said Robespierre, in glee at the increasing number of executions.

"It was established," replied the pock-marked man solemnly, "to punish the enemies of the people. Now through you—Robespierre—France rivers with innocent blood!"

... God help our hero and heroine if they should encounter its dread fury!



CHAPTER XXI

ADVENTURES OF A PILGRIM

Some parts of France continued to be held by the royalists after the establishment of the Republic.

Insurrectionary war raged in the provinces, particularly the stubborn war of La Vendee, and certain loyal fortresses like Caen managed to resist capture.

It was thus as a prisoner of the royalist faction, and quite out of touch with worldshaking events, that our young hero Chevalier Maurice de Vaudrey lived through the earlier period of the Revolution.

A love-message from him through Picard to Henriette—an unsuccessful attempt to escape; a glimpse of the still handsomely frizzed and powdered head gazing through trefoil Gothic window on the outer sunshine and liberty:—such is all that we may see of de Vaudrey's strangely trussed up life during this time.

He was still enshrined in the heart of the little seamstress in the Paris faubourg, still dear to his aunt the Countess who with her husband was an emigre beyond the borders. Otherwise, no hermit nor solitary was more completely effaced from the world.

The first light of hope was brought to Caen by a messenger from the Countess, who had managed to smuggle through a letter or two and a small box of gold.

"I dare not advise you," his kind Aunt wrote. "Escape into France would invite your death as an aristocrat. On the other hand, if you make use of the accompanying pardon signed by your uncle the Count, the Governor of Caen will probably enroll you for the inhuman and useless war of La Vendee. Take the money, my dear Nephew, and use it as you deem best—the messenger will secure it for you outside the prison until you need it!"

De Vaudrey pondered, as his Aunt advised. But, really, there was but the one course for him! To win through, disguised, at whatever peril, to Henriette; to find her and Louise; to save them from that black welter of the Revolution, and guide them out of the country to the loving care of the Countess and the repentant Count: yes, such was the course that both Love and Duty dictated. He would begin it that night, aided by his faithful friend the messenger.

"Hand part of the gold," he whispered the Countess's agent, "to some rustic carter on whom you can rely. Bring another part here and give it to a keeper whom I shall point out to you!"

The impromptu little plot worked perfectly. The friendly keeper, having gotten a peep at the ex-Police Prefect's letter of pardon, needed but the clincher argument of the gold in order to aid de Vaudrey's escape. A rope over the wall, and even a plank across the moat, were mysteriously provided. In the last silent watch of the night, the go-between (who had been waiting) conducted the escaped prisoner to the carter's cavern. Already the East was showing the ghostly light of the first faint streaks of dawn.

Having breakfasted in the cave and put his few belongings into a pack, de Vaudrey with the two others stepped out of the dark hole into the growing light.

The carter pointed to the Chevalier's frizzled locks and elegant if faded dress. "They would take you up at the first village crossing on that!" he remarked. "Your get-up gives you away."

The Chevalier retired to a new toilette. Within, were the primitive resources of rustic wardrobe. As he emerged again from the cavern, old boon companions would indeed have been startled by the guise he now wore.

Beautiful apparel, cane, wig, lorgnette and snuffbox were in the discard. The frizzled locks were gone, revealing long straight black hair which was crowned by a shabby tricorne hat. The Chevalier's elegant form was covered by an ill-fitting ragged black suit, which a pair of dusty shoes well matched. Across one shoulder he carried a pack stick, to which a thoroughly disreputable-looking small black bundle was fastened.

"You'll do now," said the rustic. "Remember you're only a helper on a carter's journey to Paris."

Rustic and helper took their leave of the go-between by plunging through a wide but shallow stream. When they had emerged at the farther bank, they felt secure that their steps could not be traced. Waving good-byes to the other, the rustic and his man hastened to a stable where they loaded a provision wagon and attached a country Dobbin to the thills. Presently de Vaudrey, in his new character of the carter's assistant, was on the first stage of the long journey to the storm-wracked metropolis.

The carter's load was of so little value, the whole outfit so poverty-stricken, that neither country Royalist nor provincial Revolutionary saw fit to bother them.

Gradually the carter sold his wares in the smaller villages en route. They wisely avoided the larger towns. The cart was nearly empty now. Saleables had all been disposed of except a few apples.

"How are you and I going to get into Paris?" said the distinguished young aristocrat, whose respect for the Reuben had increased daily.

"Trust me!" said the other. His broad, moon-faced physiognomy masked the cunning of the fox. "I have this apple here—"

The carter eyed his assistant intently and winked solemnly as if to say: "That will do the trick!"

As they leave the open country behind and jog through the better settled regions immediately north of Paris, let us take our stand beside the "barrier" or outer gate which they are slowly approaching.

Judge Forget-Not and his fellows are inspecting the barriers. The voice of the Chief is heard speaking.

"Watch strictly that no aristocrats escape. Our new law also condemns to death all who harbor an aristocrat."

The Inquisitor's face assumes a yet harsher expression as he addresses the guards: "Beware lest you yourselves be suspect!—Remember the sharp female 'Guillotine'!"

Forget-Not draws a significant hand across the throat. A shudder passes through the more timid folk.

The coarse-faced guards applaud and promise to use the utmost precautions. The judges move on, inspecting another part of the barrier.



CHAPTER XXII

ADVENTURES OF A PILGRIM (CONTINUED)

The farmer's cart nears the gate. The moon-faced Reuben is as impassive as ever. Though the tall assistant manages to keep his expression fairly immobile too, 'tis evident to us who know him that he labors under suppressed excitement. For the prize of his Great Quest is Henriette; the penalty of discovery and capture, Death!

The gallant young man does not hesitate, however. He has never shrunk from Danger's bright face, least of all would he shrink now when the passing of a brief ordeal may well mean reunion with his beloved and her rescue from the welter of Paris. The Pilgrim's soul hungers and thirsts for her. After the great Sahara of imprisoned loneliness, how near the Oasis of love and rapture! How beautiful the prospect, if not indeed Mirage!

The rustic's helper dismounts with the farmer at the gate, and follows him into the office of the registrar. The farmer presents a pass.

"This is for one only," says the registrar at the gate, roughly. "The other cannot go through," he says, pointing to de Vaudrey, who tries to look as stupid and uncomprehending as possible.

The farmer hands a big red apple to the functionary. But the latter makes a gesture of refusal.

"Bite into it!" says the Rustic ingratiatingly.

The official bites at the top which comes off—a smooth and even slice. The centre of the apple is hollow. Within it are several gold coins.

Quickly the gatekeeper covers the golden apple with his hairy paw. "Your papers are all right," he says gruffly, rapidly converting the figure 1 into a 2, and viseing the pass for two. He motions for both the man and the youth to go through.

The farmer and his follower drive in and mix with the crowd on the inside of the barrier. At this stage the farmer disappears from our history. But the face of the youth is noted by an eagle eye and recognized by a brain that does not forget!

The prowling Judge sees the Chevalier, though the Chevalier does not see him.

"Follow that man!" he says quietly to his deputies. "We shall catch him red-handed in some plot!"

* * * * *

Our little heroine had lived quietly for many months in the faubourg lodgings to which, perforce, she had to return after her vain visit to the Frochard cellar and her rough handling by the Carmognole rioters. The little sparrow of a seamstress was quite undisturbed by the great events of the French Revolution, except as they had put everything at sixes and sevens and whirled away her own intimates in the mad whirligig.

The pock-marked man (whom she had sheltered overnight in this very place) was the Savior of the Country; the prying lodger Robespierre was the Chief of State. Of course she never saw them now, her small self would hardly dare address them! Sister Genevieve and the Doctor, who had told her about the Frochards' den, were no longer within her ken.

The weary months had dragged along. Notwithstanding the cheering message conveyed by Picard, her knight the Chevalier—so far as she knew—was still a prisoner of Caen. And the weary months had dragged their ball and chain of silence and despair still more wearingly in the failure of her many renewed attempts to find Louise. The blind sister was again swallowed up in the devouring city—the Frochards were fled.

Whither was Henriette to look—whither to turn?

A ray of light from the window glinted on the holy Book of books that the girl treasured. She opened it. A line read at random comforted her. Clasping the volume in her hands, she knelt in prayer, addressing God softly:

"Thou who hast said: 'I am the Light!' oh, show me the way!"

At the sound of a knock at the door, the girl rose from her supplications. Entered sad and dusty pilgrim, carrying his few belongings in bag suspended from shoulder stick. Now they dropped sharply to the floor, and the disguised Chevalier gazed long and earnestly upon his love.

Her eyes in turn were riveted on his sad, lean apparition, how terribly changed from the old debonair days! Kind sympathy spoke in her look and mien till the radiance of love, beginning in little ghosts of welcoming smiles at the corners of her mouth, broke into clear effulgence.

The Chevalier tottered forward. He collapsed into the nearest chair.

She put her arms around him and hovered there, comforting him with affectionate little hand pats and soft kisses.

Jacques-Forget-Not, the avenger of the de Vaudreys, had not been far behind during the pilgrim's tramp across the city. He had in fact sneaked back of him, seen the wanderer enter Henriette's door. Standing at the head of the stair, he could almost overhear stray phrases of their talk, knew that they were quite within his power.

The shaggy-haired one fairly gloated in his triumph. "Number One!" he hissed, raising a forefinger in token that de Vaudrey—the first of his Trinity of Hate—was in the net. "Two and Three shall come next!" he whispered savagely, knuckling down two other fingers to mark his vengeance on the Count and Countess.

The shaggy-haired Forget-Not hurried down the stairs, his gaunt features baleful with unholy glee. Pointing significantly overhead, he ordered a detail of his guards:

"Arrest de Vaudrey and all in that room!" The men at once proceeded to carry out the order.

* * * * *

The guard captain would have been equally at home in a pirate crew or at a land massacre. Enormous black brows and heavy moustache accentuated his ferocity, the particolored Revolutionary garb and in particular the red-and-white striped pantaloons gave him a bizarre appearance like a pirate chief.

The detail were armed with muskets and bayonets. They clattered up the stairs and burst into Henriette's room.

The lovers seemed dazed rather than affrighted. They clasped each other again. With a little warning gesture Henriette bade Maurice say nothing when the captain addressed him as de Vaudrey.

The villain laid a heavy hand on his victim while two of the soldiers seized and pinioned his arms. "You are under arrest as a returned emigre!" the head pirate said.

Then he turned his attention to Henriette who made futile little efforts like a tiny mother wren.

"You are also under arrest, Citizeness," said the captain harshly, "for the crime of sheltering a returned aristocrat."

"She cannot be blamed," interrupted de Vaudrey. "I entered this place, uninvited."

"Silence!" roared the Captain. "Your plea, if any, must be made to the Revolutionary Tribunal."



CHAPTER XXIII

BEFORE THE DREAD TRIBUNAL

That awful Tribunal sat daily. During the height of the Terror, no time was allowed to prisoners for the preparation of their cases—no interval elapsed between the prisoners' arrest and their arraignment. Dispatch—dispatch—DISPATCH was the essence of the bloody business, the purpose being to strike terror upon all that opposed the little fanatical minority then in power.

Therefore the guard brought Henriette and Maurice directly from their arrest to their trial, and they gazed upon a sight for Gods and men—a travesty on the sacred name of justice. Such scenes would seem unbelievable to us but for the recent events of the Russian Revolution, which prove that in our age also a proletarian dictatorship can be senselessly wicked and cruel.

The trials—beside their Terror function of upholding a minority government—were great public shows for the howling rabble and leering sansculottes, the hoodlums of Paris whom even the masters dared not offend. The riff-raff acted exactly as at any of their own celebrations and feastings.

Along the side benches and up on the "Mountain," flirtation and sweethearting went on, of a rough-and-ready order. Some spectators coolly munched their dinners. Others, having brought along their bottles, indulged in drinking bouts. Everyone's ideas of a good time cannot be the same. There was our eccentric acquaintance the Jolly Baker, for instance. The height of bliss for him, at one of these capital trials, was to lean far, far back with open mouth whilst a tilted bottle, held by a ministering Hebe, spilled ecstatic drops of damp and ruby "happiness" upon his "open-face" physiognomy.

Another misfit of the grotesque crowds was Picard, foolishly trying to discover what 'twas all about, gazing soulful-eyed into hoodlum "mugs" that gave him the merry "ha! ha!" or sickened him with the likeness of the First Murderer. But "crime," in one instance at least, was followed by "punishment," for as the murderous citizen suddenly thrust out his roaring raucous mouth, Picard inadvertently leaned back.



The huge sansculotte, to his own surprise, was eating the bushy horse-hair pigtail of Picard's bobbing queue! The ex-valet made a quick duck. His murderous-looking neighbor, with a full swing, walloped the countenance of the sansculotte beyond....

On this day of our characters' trial, the side benches and balconies of the great hall quickly fill with the howling, leering mobs—the fierce and grotesque chorus of the grim tragedy.

Interspersed with the rabid Jacobins are other—less partisan—spectators, and among the hurrying throngs a close observer might have noticed the luckless Pierre Frochard and the blind girl Louise entering. They found seats on a front bench.

"The judges are taking their places now," said Pierre. "You will soon hear the trials. Over on their right sits Robespierre, the dictator of France!"

The judges, so-called, are five villainous individuals, wearing dirty-looking plumed hats, black jerkins and breeches, and tall jack boots. The shaggy-haired Jacques-Forget-Not presides.

A frowsy public prosecutor—red, white and blue cockade affixed to his tousled hat plume—calls the names of the accused and presents the charge. From the background, the stripe-panted soldiery are bringing the victims up.

"They are arraigning them in batches," says Pierre. "The judges make quick work!" Louise shudders, lays hold of his arm.

There is something horrible in the sound of the advancing footsteps; the harsh accusations and weak replies, oft drowned by the sansculottes' roar; the sentences of doom, and the final scuffling of feet as the soldiers seize their prey and bear it off.

Innocence and guilt often go up together.

Unfortunate women of the street are arraigned next high-bred aristocrats, or moderates whose only crime has been to denounce such horrors. A gallant gentleman pleads vainly to the judges who are also the jury: "We have had no trial!" The mob howls "Guillotine!" and "Guillotine!" is Jacques-Forget-Not's brief sentence !

A young Corsican lieutenant of artillery looks on meditatively. His silent thought is sensed by a bystander who remarks: "I suppose, Napoleon, you think you could manage things better!" The man grins. But Napoleon Bonaparte—he who snuffed out Revolution later by whiff of grapeshot—nods gravely yes.

As the prisoners from the faubourg are brought in, Henriette sees the loved and long lost face of her dreams among the front row of the sansculottes.

Stupefied, unbelieving, she looks again and again. Yes, it is she—none other! Her own peril and that of Maurice are unthought of. Protective love of the blind one tides back in resistless strength.

She is trying now to escape from the guards, run to her sister—even to pantomime her love, gesticulate it with funny little motions and confidential fingers on lips—forgetting that the other cannot see! And then her wild, excited cry rings through the great hall:

"LOUISE! LOUISE!"

Louise jumps to her feet, groping wildly towards the cry. Her blind features are strained in agonized expectancy. Pierre has located the frenzied Henriette. He guides the groping blind girl from the benches to her sister.

In this council chamber of hates and cruelty, rulers and attendants alike are steeled against shrieks of suffering or the outbursts of the accused. A fence of locked bayonets stops each advancing sister. Paying rather less heed to the incident than if it were a request for a drink of water, the soldiery push back Pierre and Louise to the seats and make ready to obey the prosecutor's call.

"Citizen de Vaudrey and Henriette Girard to the bar!"

The Chevalier faces the dread quintet. The prosecutor reads the charge, demands the death penalty on the returned aristocrat. Poor Henriette is divided between her frenzied wish to clasp her sister and her horror about Maurice.

The young man defends himself.

"An emigre, yes!" he acknowledges, "but not an enemy of the people."

Many a spectator of the scenes—even the wicked judges—could bear witness (did not prejudice blind!) to his kindness for the afflicted and fallen. Is there an undercurrent of sympathy for him even amongst hard sansculottes?

But this is Jacques-Forget-Not's great moment.

Vengeance's hour has struck.

The wickedness of the old de Vaudreys is to be expiated at last!



CHAPTER XXIV

VENGEANCE COME TO JUDGMENT

"I myself accuse you, Citizen de Vaudrey!" says the Judge, rising and pointing to the culprit.

"I accuse your family and all aristocrats of oppression and murder through countless generations!"

A yell of approval—the savage howl of the Mob Beast—resounds from the rabble whose passion is played upon. It is followed by the general roar:

"Guillotine! Guillotine! GUILLOTINE!"

With a smile Forget-Not records the death sentence given by his compliant fellow judges, in his book. Chevalier de Vaudrey is hustled back to the rear of the hall.

Poor trembling Henriette is next. The horrors of Maurice's condemnation and the thought of her little lost sister nearby, rack her with a stinging pain in which is commingled little thought of self.

"You sheltered this aristocrat?" questions the Judge.

"Of course—I—love him!"

"The penalty for sheltering an emigre is death!" replies Forget-Not shrilly, again playing to the Jacobins.

But Henriette is thinking of the suffering Louise. She strives to direct the Judge's attention to the blind girl.

"She might hear!" says Henriette softly. "Please—not so loud!"

The Judge turns the pages of his book in studied indifference.

"Please—my sister—we have just met after a long time—she—she is blind!" The little voice breaks off in sobs.

The idea strikes her that, if they can only see the helpless creature, they will have pity. She calls:

"Louise, stand up—they want to see you!"

The cripple Pierre aids Louise to her feet. She stands there alone, a picture of abject misery.

"You see!" cries Henriette. "Blind—no one to care for her!"

* * * * *

The dandified dictator of France fixes fishy eyes on the little person in the dock. One affected hand has raised a double lorgnette through which he peers at her. He muses, strokes a long nostril with his forefinger, recollects something which causes him to curl his lip:

Henriette's door slam on the obscure Maximilian Robespierre finds its re-echo to day at the gates of Death. Ah, yes, he has placed the girl of the Faubourg lodging now!

"You were an inmate of the prison for fallen women?" he asks coldly.

The clear, unashamed blue eyes would have told innocence if the words had not.

"Yes, Monsieur, but I was not guilty."

Robespierre's delicate hand passes in the faintest movement across his throat and toys with the neck ruffle underneath it.

His lips frame a dreadful word though he does not speak it. A nod to Jacques-Forget-Not completes the by-play.

The servant imitates the master's gesture. This time, the drawing of the hand across the throat is more decisive.

Jacques speaks the word that his master did not vocalize. The other judges confirm it.

"GUILLOTINE!"

Henriette is borne shrieking out to the death chamber—"One hour with her—only one hour—then I will go with him!"

But she and the Vaudrey are already being taken out together by the attendants.



CHAPTER XXV

THE VOICE OF DANTON

We have explained that Danton took little part in the Government after the repelling of the foreign foe and the commencement of the Terror. He had no sympathy with the excesses of his former colleagues, but on the other hand was subject to strange lassitudes or inhibitions that oft paralyzed his spirit except at the supreme hour.

Saving France had been his real job.

Among these petty and mean minds seeking power or pelf or the repayment of some ancient grudge, Danton had nothing to do! He loved his frontier fighters—men who, the same as himself, dared all for France.

They were somewhat like our cowboys of the Western plains. Born to the saddle; recruited for the northern cavalry; supremely successful in whirlwind charges and harassing flank attacks that drove back Brunswick's legions, they were now quartered on well-deserved furlough within the city.

The old lion of Danton's nature woke again, his indomitable spirit reasserted itself whenever he went to their yard and roused them by his patriotic eloquence.

Alas! within the tribunal and on the execution place at the other side of the city, was that going on which shamed patriotism and mocked liberty.

"La Guillotine"—that fiendish beheading instrument that a deputy named Doctor Guillotin had devised—was become Robespierre's private engine to tyrannize France.

It stood in a great suburban place, on a scaffolding led up to by a flight of steps: a tall massive upright with high cross piece—uglier than the gallows. A brightly gleaming, triangular knife, about the size of a ploughshare, worked up and down in the channels.

The knife was first raised to the top of the upright, and held there by a lever. The master of the ceremonial raised right hand in token to the executioners to be ready.

As he dropped his hand in a down-sweeping gesture, one of these villains pulled the rope which released the lever. Down fell the heavy knife across the neck opening of a body board to which the victim was strapped. Below the contraption was a huge basket.

A cordon of soldiery guarded the place, keeping back the crowds. The brawny executioners—naked to the waist, like butchers in a stockyard—daily performed their office.

On this day of Henriette and Maurice's sentence, they were giving it a preliminary trial. "The trigger's been slipping—not working well," the head fellow explained to the master of ceremonies. Back and forth the terrible guillotine knife hissed and whistled until they pronounced its action perfect....

Danton and three of his friends had an errand at the Government that day that took them past the death chamber. A little frightened face amongst the condemned drew his notice.

"Killing aristocrats, yes!" he was thinking. "But these poor huddled folk are not the public foe. Would I might summon the legions to put an end to slaughter—but that Robespierre has inflamed all France with the lust of blood!"

He was startled from the reflection by the woe-begone, distrait little thing who seemed hypnotized by terror. The tall man bent down and peered at the girl.

Like the other condemned, her hands had just been pinioned behind her. She stood forlorn and helpless.

Horror froze him.... The Child who had saved his life from the spadassins—the dear little face the memory of which he had always treasured! He asked her a mute question, she mutely nodded.

So black-hearted murder was to snuff her out too—yes, and that young man nearby, Maurice de Vaudrey whom he knew.

Not if Danton could protect and save!

Stern was his voice as he said to the jailer:

"There is some mistake. Keep her—and her friend—until I return!" He was on his heel and striding to the courtroom.

A follower sensed his purpose. He laid hand on Danton's shoulder, saying: "No, Danton—you endanger your own life!"

"What if I do? She must be saved."

As we see him pass into the Tribunal, let us stop for a moment and watch the procedure in the death chamber. Outside, the tumbrils of death clatter up to receive their load. A functionary calls the names of the condemned whilst a court officer identifies them. Each in turn is bundled off to the carts. The men hesitate over Henriette and Maurice.

"The ex-Minister of Justice," said one, "asked that this case be delayed."

"Her name is here," said the master functionary, a creature of the Dictator. "She goes—"

"We might as well take the other too," said the court officer, pointing to de Vaudrey....

* * * * *

Superbly the Lion of the Revolution faced the judges and the mob, and demanded a hearing. Robespierre uplifted eyebrows and half-smiled, vulpinely. His rapid exchange of looks with the Court seemed to say: "Well, we have got to listen to this crazy man, but be on guard!"

The president, Jacques-Forget-Not, took the cue and acceded to Danton's request.

"A great injustice has been done," cried Danton, "to the innocent and helpless. I ask the lives of Henriette Girard and Citizen de Vaudrey!"

The judges did not need to answer.

A savage cry of "No! No!" swelled from the infuriated "Mountain."

The sansculottes half rose from their benches, shaking minatory fists, yelling, gesticulating. Faces were contorted in fury. The mob—the same that had once acclaimed Danton in chair of state—was not to be balked of blood.

The orator continued: "These sufferers are friends of you who demand their death. The girl once saved me—the organizer of your victory—from spadassins. The boy was ever known as the people's benefactor—I have seen him buy loaves to keep you from starving! Now through trumped-up charges they are to be hurried away to death—"

"You question the justice of the people's Tribunal?" interrupted Judge Forget-Not shrilly, with obvious play at the mob.

"Hell's bells!" replied the indignant Thunderer. "I established this Tribunal. Did not I as Minister of Justice set it in being, and shall I not speak when crimes are done in its name!"

... In the death chamber Henriette and Maurice were trying to kiss each other good-by. The guards had separated them. Vaudrey was going in one death cart, Henriette in another....

He had silenced the querulous Forget-Not, was waking the echoes with the same thunders that had nerved France to resist the foe. "I ask for their lives not only, but for MERCY and JUSTICE to wipe out the tyranny and cruelty that are befouling all of us. I ask for a regenerated nation, purged of these vile offences."

Robespierre was sinisterly serious now.

The group of judges sat amazed.

"Give Danton a hearing!" was the murmur among the sansculottes, half awed by his old witchery.

The impassioned orator swung upon them, his old supporters.

"My heart—my brain—my soul—my very life! Do they mean anything to you—to France?"

"YES! YES!" shouted the answering mob, caught by the personal appeal.

Alarmed at the swiftly changing tide, the Chief Judge sought the Dictator's eye. The orator's eyes were far away, his frame was convulsed by emotion as he cried: "My very life—everything—I owe to one of these victims!" The mob identified its cause with Danton's, submerged their personalities with his own!



Robespierre answered Forget-Not's look. He indicated the speaker by a slight motion of the head, then drew his right hand across the throat, played with the lace ruffles—and smiled! Forget-Not understood. Not then—but later, only a little later—would come the time to snuff out this disturber!

Danton turned from the mob, swinging the peroration to the judges in the one impassioned cry of "JUSTICE!" Lion-like he glanced from those mean, denying souls to the rabble, and held out his hands.

Like an avalanche, the "Mountain" swept down from benches to hall and on, on toward the judges. Murder was in their eyes. A word from the Thunderer would have sealed Forget-Not's fate.

"His wish! Give Danton his wish!" they roared.

Like a monkey the man Forget-Not leaped and cowered behind his bar, imploring Robespierre for a sign. The Dictator nodded to yield. But again was there not the very slightest motion of hand past neck, the eyes side-glancing at the Thunderer?

Danton stilled the tempest as Chief Judge Forget-Not wrote the reprieve and the other affrighted Judges confirmed it.

... Outside, the tumbrils were already on their way to the guillotine. Henrietta and de Vaudrey were approaching the gates of death....



CHAPTER XXVI

REPRIEVE OR AGONY

The man Forget-not, directly the paper was signed, rushed past the speaker and out of the hall into the lobbies. He was followed presently by the Court's messenger. There was here some trickery or other that Danton sensed.

He could not stop the Chief Judge leaving, but he pounced on the messenger and yanked the reprieve out of his hand. "I will deliver it!" said Danton. The people applauded the act. Everyone knew that he dared greatly.

Quick as he had been, Jacques-Forget-Not had already given his orders.

"Stop Danton if you can!" had been Jacques' word to the outer guard. To his inspectors of defences, he had said: "The barriers to the guillotine—close them!" He ran forth to see that the orders were obeyed. None of Robespierre's party wanted to see Danton achieve his errand of mercy—least of all, the vengeful Jacques-Forget-Not!....

The pock-marked Thunderer wasn't stopped beyond the door. His giant strength threw off the minions who would have blocked him. He hastened to the yard where his beloved troopers were quartered.

* * * * *

Henriette and Maurice's route lay past an obscene and sacrilegious rite.

Mocking at religion, the more fanatical had thrown off every vestige of decency and indulged in Bacchanalian worship of a so-called "Goddess of Reason." This was a lewd female from the Paris half-world, flower-chapleted, flimsily draped, prancing in drunken frenzy atop a table surrounded by her "worshippers."

The Feast of Reason included hundreds of revelers grouped around the open-air tables for the "supper of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity," and between long lines of these they were obliged to pass.

"Drink a toast to the Goddess!" cried the revelers, offering the winecup to the victims.

"Curses on them!" said others. "Death is too good for vile aristocrats."

"Tra-la-la-la!" sang drunken wenches, "La Guillotine will soon hold ye in her sharp embrace—"

The blasphemy of burlesquing a far greater Scene of Sorrows occurred to drunken Carmagnole dancers. The notion was applauded, carried into effect at once.

A tall sansculotte reached over betwixt the guards and placed a Crown of Thorns on the girl's brow. Another dashed a cupful of vinegar in the girl's face.

"Can't you see she's helpless?" said a centurion, pointing to her pinioned arms. He yanked off the chaplet and threw it back in the crowd. They roared with merriment at the farce....

But, in the stable yard of the Northern cavalry, Danton from a horseblock was addressing the fiery spirits who knew and loved him.

"Will you dare with Danton?" he cried. "Will you risk Death to open a Nation's eyes?"

The head Cavalryman embraced the Thunderer and kissed him on both cheeks.

"We are with you to the last man—to the last ounce of our strength to save this girl and boy!" he said while the others cheered.

Danton had got a gallant white mount, the Captain was on a noble black Arabian charger; the others had leaped astride their ever ready army steeds—the ride with the reprieve was in full course!



CHAPTER XXVII

THE FAREWELL

Louise, guided by her faithful attendant Pierre, had left the courtroom directly after the condemnation. Leaning heavily upon him, the blind girl had staggered out, or pressed by the awful knowledge that her sister Henriette was doomed to die. "Oh, take me to her!" she had cried.

There was only one thing to do: to follow the route of the death tumbrils, in the slight hope of overtaking her. The crippled Pierre could not walk fast, and the steps of Louise had to be most carefully directed. Now and again Pierre could see the death carts a long way ahead, he tried to hasten their steps, but presently the transports of death were out of sight again.

A traffic tie-up and street delay that halted the tumbrils just beyond the scene of the bacchanalian Feast of Reason, gave them their opportunity. Here the revelers had burlesqued Henriette as the "Woman of Sorrows," and here the guardsman had thrown off the chaplet and rebuked the crowd.

During the halt Pierre and his companion came up with what speed they could; he led Louise to the back of the death cart, and placed her hands on the bound and standing figure of poor little Henriette.

"It is your sister!" said Pierre softly.

Gently the blind girl's fingers traveled up to the wet face of her little foster-mother, now bending towards her. With a handkerchief Louise tenderly wiped it, her fingers gave loving little pats of the heaving neck and bosom, she kissed the stained cheeks, and then the girls' lips met—met long and passionately! No words were spoken, none was needed for a reunion that was also a farewell.

The cart moved. The loving lips were parted. Now one might see Louise's imploring arms still held out toward the sad receding little figure.

* * * * *

It was indeed a busy day for the executioners. Batches of men and women preceded Henriette and Maurice. Two of these were beautiful young girls who, in default of priest, were saying the last offices of the Church as they knelt on the bare ground. In tragic glory Faith's clear credo rang out: "I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live!"

Their lovely heads dropped in the basket as the knitting women clicked their needles and cried "Two!" Henriette, with a physical retch at the sight, fell back half-fainting on Maurice. Roughly the soldiers yanked them asunder.

"Citizeness, your time is come!" said one of the brawny butchers. He half led, half supported her up the steps of the guillotine....

The Chief executioner turned Henriette about, inspecting her fine points as an equine connoisseur would inspect a filly. He gloated over her not yet budded form, the swan-like neck, unlined piquant features, the golden head-curls that fell in ringlets.

"A pretty one—eh, Jean?" he commented to his assistant.

Between the two, they had strapped her unresisting on the board. They lowered it below the razor edge of the knife, so that she lay prone with her neck directly underneath. The finale was to fasten on the neck piece, a round-holed cross board which prevented the head from drawing back....

Alas! what avails it that five miles away—in the heart of the city—the hoofbeats of a company of cavalry resound rhythmically over the flagstones?

Danton and his Northern riders are straining every nerve, galloping their steeds furiously—eyes fixed on the seeming-impossible goal. Rather are they modern centaurs, each rider and steed a unit of undivisible will and energy: Danton a furious resistless hippogriff, fire-striking, fire-exhaling, in unity with his white charger; the lean-jawed, sternly set Captain on his lean galloping Arabian, cyclonic, onrushing like some Spectral Horseman; the rest riding like the Valkyries—as it were, twixt Heaven and earth—their galloping beats scorning the ground as they rush by to the hissing of the cleaved and angry winds.

But what avails it?...

Even on the straightway 'twere a quarter-hour ride to the outer-suburban locality where the guillotine does its dreadful work. Ancient Paris with its tortuous streets delays them. Ahead, are Jacques-Forget-Not—Jacobin troops—barriers—gates.

Poor little Henriette's golden head!

Is it not fated to drop in the basket long, long before they can appear?



CHAPTER XXVIII

MANIAC WITH A DAGGER

A sansculotte soldier, less brutal than his fellows, had allowed Louise and Pierre to approach one side of the scaffold. They were more privileged than the frantic Picard, who could not get near his young master and mistress. Revolutionary infantry guarded every side of the public square. Intermingled among them were the favored hoodlums of the Jacobin party, execrating the victims and howling with glee whenever the dread axe fell.

Among the riff-raff, Mere Frochard and her precious son Jacques Frochard were conspicuous. For no particular reason they were gloating over the cutting-off of aristocrats, whilst indulging in rough horseplay at the expense of the friends of the condemned. Picard's quaint look of helpless sympathy excited ready mirth.

"Sniveling over those good-for-nothings, eh?" La Frochard curled her heavy moustachioed lip in scorn.

"We'll find a way to make that sensitive young man feel something—" she confided to Jacques. A moment later she had pulled over a sansculotte's bayonet, with which she executed a neat jab into Picard's anatomy.

Picard leaped in the air like a jumping jack. When he descended to earth and turned to survey the cause of his torment, he faced but an impassive trooper with weapon at parade rest and the grinning countenances of Mere and Jacques Frochard, convulsed with laughter.

Picard decided the vicinity of the guillotine was almost as dangerous for him as for his master. He edged out of range, biding the occasion for a counter-thrust....

Pierre and Louise stood on the other side of the scaffold, the heavy structure of which quite hid the ruffian Frochards and their horseplay with Picard.

Henriette had been borne up the steps of the guillotine a few moments before Pierre and Louise reached the scene. The cripple, terribly excited, was telling Louise of Henriette's being strapped to the board and shoved toward the knife vent.

"That big murderer is going to kill her!" hissed Pierre.

Louise's blind features became contorted with agony. Large tear drops fell from her eyes. Both arms were extended toward her sister above, then clawed convulsively at Pierre.

"They-have-put-her-head-in-the crossboard-and—oh, oh!—fastened-it-down!

"The-executioner-is-all-ready." Pierre was gesticulating like a madman. He seemed to be raising despairing hands to high Heaven, in token of helplessness.

Above—around—everywhere, he looked for succor; found none. A glance from Henriette's doomed form to Louise's bitter anguish converts him into a maniac.

"HE'S ASKING THE MASTER FOR THE SIGNAL TO PULL THE ROPE!"

Pierre shouts the words in a fury that is rapidly growing uncontrollable. Spectators for the first time notice his strange actions. But neither the expectant executioner nor the self-important master of ceremonial looks down, or distinguishes the cry in the babel of savage sounds.

The wild youth now disengages himself from Louise's clutch. With his right hand he pulls a dagger from his hip pocket. Look! As the master's signalling hand is upraised high and begins to lower, the boy leaps up the steps of the guillotine, and attacks the executioner whose fingers are already on the death rope....

Ride on yet more fiercely, O Danton and ye fierce Cavalrymen—ride on, e'en past the barrier, if Jacques-Forget-Not and his men do not stay thee. Yes, thank God! there may yet be time, should this maniac with the dagger provide sufficient respite!

... The brawny butcher is too astonished to defend himself. His nerveless fingers are no longer on the rope; he stands like a stalled ox in front of his homicidal assailant. With the rapidity of lightning Pierre plunges his long Provencal dirk in the executioner's side. The butchered butcher falls with a single bawling outcry and a groan. The crowd is thunderstruck, and the pinioned de Vaudrey is wild with joy. Though bound and helpless, he tries to leap up to his prostrate Henriette.

But the master of ceremonial, at first too panic-stricken to intervene, now summons the sansculotte guards from the ground below. Up the steps on the double-quick they rush with fixed bayonets. As the huge victim falls back into the arms of his assistant, the bayoneting soldiers corner the dirk-waving Pierre.

The brief contest is quite unequal. In less time than it takes to tell it, one of the men plunges his bright, long steel in Pierre's side. The latter falls like a lump of clay on the scaffold flooring. Several of the bayonets speed toward the inert lump, with the intent on the part of their owners to fling the body contemptuously from the scaffold to the floor.

But a more refined cruelty speaks: "Save him for the guillotine!" The soldiers leave the crumpled-up, desperately wounded Pierre, dooming him yet to taste La Guillotine's embrace. They subdue de Vaudrey and truss him up anew.

The roars of the crowd die down. Comparative order is again restored. The master of ceremonial, having recovered the habit of command, orders Jean, the remaining executioner, to complete the stricken one's job.



Fortunately for our heroine under the knife, the second executioner is slow and awkward. He has seen butchery come quite too close to his own flesh! Still somewhat unnerved, he prepares himself for the task with clumsy movements and halting fingers. The master bids him hurry—Jean takes his time, he's not going to bungle the job....

As the supreme moment nears, it is well that we should note what is happening with Danton and his Centaurs—



CHAPTER XXIX

DANTON'S RIDERS

About half way of the journey through the City, Jacques-Forget-Not and his men take up a stand in front of the onrushing cavalry.

They wave orders and prohibitions.

They yell to the horsemen to draw rein.

Resistlessly the troopers keep their careering course—the talk and gestures are but as the East Wind to tensed Danton, stern-set Captain, and the rest.

Forget-Not's tribe escape the deadly horse hoofs by quick side jumps.

Within the next few minutes—even while the head executioner is making the little victim ready—Danton and his riders reach the barrier on the Guillotine side of Paris. Orders had already been received to close the gates at the cavalry's approach.

"Quick! there is not a moment to lose," yells the Jacobin commander as he sights the oncoming host. He hastens to deploy his soldiers with spears and pikes across the barrier, whilst the keepers bring the heavy gates to.

The barred gates and the opposing fighters threaten to dash Danton's every hope of saving by reprieve his "dear one of treasured memory." Indeed, as we have seen, but for frenzied Pierre's maniacal slaughter of the headsman, the fatal blow would now be falling! Neither Danton nor his men, of course, know that. Theirs to struggle on, to confront and conquer fortune, never to despair! Within those iron souls is no such thought as "Defeat."

Hurrah!

One foremost rider has managed to squeeze through the mighty gates before they clang. Danton and the rest of his men face a small army on the closed barrier's City side.

The superb horses would charge against a stone wall if bade to! They charge against the living wall of foot soldiers; kicking, pounding, trampling in the narrow space, while the riders strike.

Some footmen perish under the hoofs. Others save themselves by leaping, scrambling out over the side parapets. The attack becomes a rout. Hip-hip-hurrah! The lone rider on the guillotine side has succeeded in unloosing the bar. The gates fly open. Danton's cavalry dash madly down the straight and unobstructed road that leads to the Place de la Execution, still a few furlongs distant!

Can they even yet save her? For now it would appear as if the supremely tragical moment might anticipate them—by seconds!

During the final furlongs—the executioner now in readiness—Henriette looks up with gaping mouth at the awful knife edge. A terrible cry escapes her. Wracked with agony, she gazes about at the sea of hostile faces—not one stray iota of sympathy in that Dark Hour. Missing is de Vaudrey, missing the loved blind sister! As the down-dropping gesture of Death is again begun by the grim master of ceremonial, Henriette with a low cry of "Louise!" shuts eyes and drops head to receive the stroke!

But the clatter of myriad hoofbeats assails the Master's ears; the hoarse cries of Danton's riders, and the astonished roars of the populace. His hand falters. He turns to look at the tumult. The executioner takes his hand off the rope.

The cavalrymen are dashing down the roadway, from which quick clearance has been made by the sansculotte guards and the loaferish spectators. At their head gallops Danton, the Thunderer of old, thundering at the officials, waving in his free hand a State paper!

In front of the death machine he halts and dismounts—then taking the steps in two bounds, puts the reprieve of Henriette and Maurice in the hands of the master of ceremonial!