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A bundle of straw and a corner is all we seek. Of your charity, Madame, is this a night on which to leave a dog out of doors?" A light of recollection leaped suddenly to La Boulaye's eyes, and with a sudden gasp he stooped to the hearth. "But I cannot, Messieurs," the woman was saying, when the second voice interrupted her. "I see your husband by the fire, Madame. Let us hear what he has to say."
"Monsieur," he announced to La Boulaye, who was eyeing him with the faintest tinge of surprise, "I am quite ready." "Have you always been so devout, Citizen?" inquired the Deputy. "Alas! no Monsieur. But there comes a time in the life of every man when, for a few moments at least, he is prone to grow mindful of the lessons learnt in childhood." The surprise increased in La Boulaye's countenance.
He forgot his headache and his interest in the time of day. "Gone?" he bellowed. "How gone? Pardieu, it is not possible!" "Look for yourself," was La Boulaye's answer as he waved his hand in the direction of the window. "I don't know what manner of watch your men can have kept that such a thing should have come about.
Before the fellow could make any answer the corporal in command of La Boulaye's escort entered to inform Caron that the men were in the saddle. At that the Deputy hurriedly took his leave of Tardivet, and wrapping his heavy cloak tightly about him he marched out into the rain, and mounted.
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.
Around the table, in every conceivable attitude of abandonment, sat Captain Charlot's guard every man of the ten and with them the six men and the corporal of La Boulaye's escort, all more or less in a condition of drunkenness.
Within the schoolmaster's study he whom Duhamel called Maximilien strode to and fro, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bent, his chin thrust forward, denouncing the seigneurial system, of whose atrocity he had received that evening instances enough for he had heard the whole story of La Boulaye's rebellion against the power of Bellecour and the causes that had led to it.
There was no cupidity in La Boulaye's nature, and even the prospect of an independent fortune would have weighed little with him had it not been backed by the other argument she employed touching the terror that would be ever with her did they dwell in France.
But there was in Fouquier-Tinvillle's prosecution a lack of virulence for once, just as among La Boulaye's fellows, sitting in judgment, there was a certain uneasiness, for the Revolution was still young, and it had not yet developed that Saturnian habit of devouring its own children which was later to become one of its main features.
A shrewd suspicion was being borne in upon La Boulaye's mind as he stood by that window, his men behind him watching also, with no less intentness and some uneasiness for themselves for they misliked the look of the company. In five seconds Charlot had restored order in the human chaos without. In five minutes there were but ten men left in the yard.
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