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Citizen Chaumette's Goddess of Reason by all means Henriot conceded that the idea was a good one but the goddess merely as a figure-head: around her a procession of unfrocked and apostate priests, typifying the destruction of ancient hierarchy, mules carrying loads of sacred vessels, the spoils of ten thousand churches of France, and ballet girls in bacchanalian robes, dancing the Carmagnole around the new deity.
Thus, the destiny of France, as is seen, hung by the thread of the moment. It will be recollected that Henriot had the arsenal at his disposal; he commanded the Parisian guard, and six thousand men encamped on the Plaine des Sablons, close to the capital: in a word, all the springs of the public force were in his hands.
But the letter is clever, and if Henriot be like other husbands, it will embroil him at once with his wife, Turenne, the Guises, and even with Spain. But if Henri de Valois is so well informed of all that passes in Navarre, he must have some spy there.
Here, Henriot, one of his most devoted creatures, whom he had raised to the situation of commandant general of the Parisian guard, after having been carried prisoner before the Committee of Public Safety, then sitting in the palace of the Tuileries, was released by Coffinhal, the President of the Revolutionary Tribunal, who suddenly made his appearance at the head of a large body of horse and foot, supported by four pieces of cannon served by gunners the most devoted to Robespierre.
It was so simple a manoeuvre by which Fate began the innocent game. The woman left a couple of books behind her on the table one night, and Henriot, after a moment's hesitation, took them out after her. He knew the titles The House of the Master, and The House of the Hidden Places, both singular interpretations of the Pyramids that once had held his own mind spellbound.
The worship of sacred animals was the relic of a once gigantic system of evocation not of monsters," and she smiled sadly, "but of Powers that were willing and ready to descend when worship summoned them." Again, beneath his breath, Henriot heard himself murmur his own voice startled him as he whispered it: "Actual bodily shape and outline?"
The Minister of War appoints Henriot brigadier-general, July 3, 1793, and major-general on the 19th of September, and says in a postscript, "Please communicate your service record to me," unknown in the ministry because they were of no account. "Let our enemies pile up their property, build houses and palaces, let them have them, what do we care, we republicans, we do not want them!
Then, with an abrupt rise and fall like a wailing voice that sought to claim attention, it called him. He peered through the window into the blurred darkness, listening. There is no cry in the world like that of the homeless wind. A vague excitement, scarcely to be analysed, ran through his blood. The curtain of fog waved momentarily aside. Henriot fancied a star peeped down at him.
Henriot started nervously in his chair, convicted once more of unconscionable staring; and at the same moment a group of hotel people, returning from a dance, passed through the hall and nodded him good-night. The scent of the women reached him; and with it the sound of their voices discussing personalities just left behind. A London atmosphere came with them.
Henriot tried every one else in the room as well; but, though his thought settled on others too, he always came back to the figure of this solitary being opposite, who ate his dinner as if afraid of being seen, and glanced up sometimes as if fearful of being watched. Henriot's curiosity, before he knew it, became suspicion. There was mystery here. The table, he noticed, was laid for two.
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