“I will enter into particulars as soon as I have asked a strange question of you,” he said.  “You have been a great experimenter in chemistry in your time—­is your mind calm enough, at such a trying moment as this, to answer a question which is connected with chemistry in a very humble way?  You seem astonished.  Let me put the question at once.  Is there any liquid or powder, or combination of more than one ingredient known, which will remove writing from paper, and leave no stain behind?”

“Certainly!  But is that all the question?  Is there no greater difficulty?”

“None.  Write the prescription, whatever it may be, on that leaf,” said the other, giving him the pocket-book.  “Write it down, with plain directions for use.”  Trudaine obeyed.  “This is the first step,” continued Lomaque, putting the book in his pocket, “toward the accomplishment of my purpose—­my uncertain purpose, remember!  Now, listen; I am going to put my own head in danger for the chance of saving yours and your sister’s by tampering with the death-list.  Don’t interrupt me!  If I can save one, I can save the other.  Not a word about gratitude!  Wait till you know the extent of your obligation.  I tell you plainly, at the outset, there is a motive of despair, as well as a motive of pity, at the bottom of the action in which I am now about to engage.  Silence!  I insist on it.  Our time is short; it is for me to speak, and for you to listen.  The president of the tribunal has put the deathmark against your names on the prison list of to-day.  That list, when the trials are over and it is marked to the end, will be called in this room before you are taken to St. Lazare.  It will then be sent to Robespierre, who will keep it, having a copy made of it the moment it is delivered, for circulation among his colleagues—­St. Just, and the rest.  It is my business to make a duplicate of this copy in the first instance.  The duplicate will be compared with the original, and possibly with the copy, too, either by Robespierre himself, or by some one in whom he can place implicit trust, and will then be sent to St. Lazare without passing through my hands again.  It will be read in public the moment it is received, at the grating of the prison, and will afterward be kept by the jailer, who will refer to it, as he goes round in the evening with a piece of chalk, to mark the cell doors of the prisoners destined for the guillotine to-morrow.  That duty happens, to-day, to fall to the hunchback whom you saw speaking to me.  He is a confirmed drinker, and I mean to tempt him with such wine as he rarely tastes.  If—­after the reading of the list in public, and before the marking of the cell doors—­I can get him to sit down to the bottle, I will answer for making him drunk, for getting the list out of his pocket, and for wiping your names out of it with the prescription you have just written for me.  I shall write all the names, one under another, just irregularly enough in my duplicate