Juliette shuddered as the great gates closed behind
her with a heavy clank. It seemed to shut out
even the memory of this happy day, which for a brief
space had been quite perfect.
She did not know Paris very well, and wondered where
lay that gloomy Conciergerie, where a dethroned queen
was living her last days, in an agonised memory of
the past. But as they crossed the bridge she
recognised all round her the massive towers of the
great city: Notre Dame, the grateful spire of
La Sainte Chapelle, the sombre outline of St. Gervais,
and behind her the Louvre with its great history and
irreclaimable grandeur. How small her own tragedy
seemed in the midst of this great sanguinary drama,
the last act of which had not yet even begun.
Her own revenge, her oath, her tribulations, what were
they in comparison with that great flaming Nemesis
which had swept away a throne, that vow of retaliation
carried out by thousands against other thousands,
that long story of degradation, of regicide, of fratricide,
the awesome chapters of which were still being unfolded
one by one?
She felt small and petty: ashamed of the pleasure
she had felt in the woods, ashamed of her high spirits
and light-heartedness, ashamed of that feeling of
sudden pity and admiration for the man who had done
her and her family so deep an injury, which she was
too feeble, too vacillating to avenge.
The majestic outline of the Louvre seemed to frown
sarcastically on her weakness, the silent river to
mock her and her wavering purpose. The man beside
her had wronged her and hers far more deeply than the
Bourbons had wronged their people. The people
of France were taking their revenge, and God had at
the close of this last happy day of her life pointed
once more to the means for her great end.
CHAPTER VI
The Scarlet Pimpernel.
It was some few hours later. The ladies sat
in the drawing-room, silent and anxious.
Soon after supper a visitor had called, and had been
closeted with Paul Deroulede in the latter’s
study for the past two hours.
A tall, somewhat lazy-looking figure, he was sitting
at a table face to face with the Citizen-Deputy.
On a chair beside him lay a heavy caped coat, covered
with the dust and the splashings of a long journey,
but he himself was attired in clothes that suggested
the most fastidious taste, and the most perfect of
tailors; he wore with apparent ease the eccentric
fashion of the time, the short-waisted coat of many
lapels, the double waistcoat and billows of delicate
lace. Unlike Deroulede he was of great height,
with fair hair and a somewhat lazy expression in his
good-natured blue eyes, and as he spoke, there was
just a soupcon of foreign accent in the pronunciation
of the French vowels, a certain drawl of o’s
and a’s, that would have betrayed the Britisher
to an observant ear.
The two men had been talking earnestly for some time,
the tall Englishman was watching his friend keenly,
whilst an amused, pleasant smile lingered round the
corners of his firm mouth and jaw. Deroulede,
restless and enthusiastic, was pacing to and fro.
Copyrights
I Will Repay from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
