It now became necessary to explain the circumstances to his companions, and in explaining them the whole affair, from Robespierre's refusal to grant him the life of the Vicomte down to the means to which he had had recourse, could not be kept from transpiring. As she listened, Suzanne's expression changed into one of ineffable wonder.
'And you have done this for me?' she cried, when at last he paused, 'you have ruined your career and endangered your life?'
La Boulaye shrugged his shoulders.
'I spoke over-confidently when I said that I could obtain you the Vicomte's pardon. There proved to be a factor on which I had not counted. Nevertheless, what I had promised I must fulfil. I was by honour bound to leave nothing undone that might result in the Vicomte's enlargement.'
Ornbreval laughed softly, but with consummate amusement.
'A sans-culotte with a sense of honour is such an anomaly—' he began, when Mademoiselle interposed, a note of anger sounding in her voice.
'M. d'Ombreval means to pay you a compliment,' she informed La Boulaye, 'but he has such an odd way of choosing his expressions that I feared you might misunderstand him.'
La Boulaye signified his indifference by a smile.
'I am afraid the ci-devant Vicomte has not yet learnt his lesson,' said he; 'or else he is like the sinner who upon recovering health forgot the penitence that had come to him in the days of sickness. But we have other matters to deal with, Citoyenne, and, in particular, the matter of the passport. Fool that I am!' he cried bitterly.
'I must return to Paris at once,' he announced briskly. 'There is no help for it. We will hope that as yet the way is open to me, and that I shall be permitted to go and to return unmolested. In such a case the rest is easy— except that you will have to suffer my company as far as the frontier.'
It was Mademoiselle who accompanied him to the door.
'Monsieur,' she said, in a voice that shook with the sincere intensity of her feelings, 'think me not ungrateful that I have said so little. But your act has overwhelmed me. It is so truly noble, that to offer you thanks that are but words, seems tome little short of a banality.'
'Tut!' he laughed. 'I have not yet done half. It will be time to thank me when we are out of France.'
'And you speak so lightly of leaving France?' she cried. 'But what is to become of you? What of your career?'
'Other careers are possible in other countries,' he answered, with a lightness he did not feel. 'Who knows perhaps the English or the Prussians might be amenable to a change of government. I shall seek to induce one or the other of them to became a republic, and then I shall become once more a legislator.'
With that, and vowing that every moment he remained their chances of leaving France grew more slender, he took his leave of her, expressing the hope that he might be back within a couple of hours. Mademoiselle watched him to the garden gate, then closing the door she returned within.
She discovered her betrothed—he whom La Boulaye had called her lover—standing with his back to the fire, his hands clasped behind him, the very picture of surliness. He made none of the advances that one might look for in a man placed as he was at that moment. He greeted her, instead, with a complaint.
'Will you permit me, Mademoiselle, to say that in this matter you have hardly chosen the wiser course?'
'In what matter?' quoth she, at a loss to understand him.
'In the matter of my release. I advised you in my letter to purchase my freedom. Had you done so, we should now be in a position to start for the frontier—for you would have made a passport a part of your bargain. Instead of this, not only are we obliged to run the risk of waiting, but even if this fellow should return, we shall be affronted by his company for some days to come.' And the Vicomte sniffed the air in token of disgust.
Suzanne looked at him in an amazement that left her speechless for a moment. At last:
'And this is your gratitude?' she demanded. 'This is all that you have to say in thanks for the discomfort and danger that I have suffered on your behalf? Your tone is oddly changed since you wrote me that piteous, pitiable letter from Belgium, M. le Vicomte.'
He reddened slightly.
'I am afraid that I have been clumsy in my expressions,' he apologised. 'But never doubt my gratitude, Mademoiselle. I am more grateful to you than words can tell. You have done your duty to me as few women could.'
The word 'duty' offended her, yet she let it pass. In his monstrous vanity it was often hopeless to make him appreciate the importance of anything or anybody outside of himself. Of this the present occasion was an instance.
'You must forgive me my seeming thanklessness, Mademoiselle,' he pursued. 'It was the company of that sans-culotte rascal that soured me. I had enough of him a month ago, when he brought me to Paris. It offended me to have him stand here again in the same room with me, and insolently refer to his pledged word as though he were a gentleman born.'
'To whom do you refer?' quoth she.
'Ma foi! How many of them are there? Why, to this fellow, La Boulaye?'
'So it seemed, and yet I could not believe it of you. Do you not realise that your ingratitude approaches the base?'
He vouchsafed her a long, cold stare of amazement.
'Mordieu!' he ejaculated at last. 'I am afraid that your reason has been affected by your troubles. You seem, Mademoiselle, to be unmindful of the station into which you have had the honour to be born.'
'If your bearing is to be accepted as a sign that you remember it, I will pray God that I may, indeed, forget it—completely and for all time.'
And then the door opened to admit the good Henriette, who came to announce that she had contrived a hasty meal, and that it was served and awaiting them.
'Diable!' he laughed. 'Those are the first words of true wit that I have heard these many days. I swear,' he added, with a pleasantness that was oddly at variance with his sullen humour of a moment back, 'that I have not tasted human food these four weeks, and as for my appetite—it is capable of consuming the whole patrimony of St. Peter. Lead the way, my good Henriette. Come, Mademoiselle.'
CHAPTER XXI. THE ARREST
Facts proved how correct had been La Boulaye's anticipations of the course that Cecile would adopt, Within a half-hour of his having quitted the house of Billaud Varennes, she presented herself there, and demanded to see the Deputy. Upon being told that he was absent she determined to await his return.
And so, for the matter of an hour, she remained in the room where the porter had offered her accommodation, fretting at the delay, and only restrained from repairing to some other member of the Convention by the expectation that the next moment would see Varennes arrive. Arrive he did at last, when her patience was all but exhausted, and excitedly she told her tale of what had taken place. Varennes listened gravely, and cross- questioned her in his unbelief—for it seemed, indeed, monstrous that a man of La Boulaye's position should ruin so promising a future as was his by an act for which Varennes could not so much as divine a motive. But her story hung together so faithfully, and was so far borne out by the fact that Varennes himself had indeed signed such a document as she described, that in the end the Deputy determined to take some steps to neutralise the harm that might have been done.
Dismissing the girl with the assurance that the matter should have his attention, he began by despatching a courier to Robespierre at Chartres—where he knew the Incorruptible to be. That done, he resorted to measures for La Boulaye's detention. But this proved a grave matter. What if, after all, that half-hysterical girl's story should be inaccurate? In what case would he find himself if, acting upon it in the meantime, he should order Caron's arrest? The person of a Deputy was not one to be so lightly treated, and he might find himself constrained to answer a serious charge in consequence. Thus partly actuated by patriotism and the fear of Robespierre, and
