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Updated: May 5, 2025
A wave of morbid introspection swept over her soul. She realised in a moment how petty and base had been her thoughts and how purposeless her actions. She would have given her life at this moment to eradicate from Deroulede's mind the knowledge of her own jealousy; she hoped that at least he had not guessed her love.
Incidents such as the one which Juliette had provoked, had led to rape and theft, often to murder, before now: but outside Citizen-Deputy Deroulede's house everything was quiet, half-an-hour after Juliette's escape from that howling, brutish crowd. He had merely spoken to them, for about twenty minutes, and they had gone away quite quietly, without even touching one hair of his head.
"Indeed I am entirely at M. Deroulede's service," said the Colonel, who had thrown a quick, scrutinising glance at the isolated figure near the card table, "if he will accept my services..." "He will be very glad to accept, my dear Colonel," whispered the Marquis with an ironical twist of his aristocratic lips.
Merlin and his men, busy with their search in Deroulede's bedroom, took no heed of what was going on behind them; Juliette arrived on the landing, and turned sharply to her right, running noiselessly along the tick Aubusson carpet, and thence quickly to her own room. All this had taken less than a minute to accomplish.
All energy of attitude, all strength of bearing, which were his chief characteristics, seemed to have gone. There was a look of complete blankness, of hopelessness in his listless gesture. "How he loved her!" sighed Anne Mie, as she tenderly wrapped the shawl round Madame Deroulede's shoulders. Juliette had said nothing; it seemed as if her very life had gone out of her.
Her own good sense told her already that Paul Deroulede's first step would be to try and get his mother out of danger, and out of the country, while there was yet time. So, without waiting for instructions, she began that same evening to pack up her belongings and those of Madame Deroulede. There was no longer any hatred in her heart against Juliette.
They had known nothing of Deroulede's plans for the escape of Marie Antoinette, they didn't know what the letter-case had contained, and yet they both vaguely felt that the beautiful girl, who stood up so calmly before the loathsome Terrorist, was not a wanton, as she tried to make out, but only misguided, mad perhaps perhaps a martyr.
The comedy could not be kept up through another visit from them, and while the compromising letter-case remained in Deroulede's private study he was in imminent danger at the hands of his enemy. She thought for a moment of concealing the case about her person, but a second's reflection showed her the futility of such a move.
Thas was Deroulede's stronghold: the people of Paris, whom he had loved through all their infamies, and whom he had succoured and helped in their private need; and above all the women of Paris, whose children he had caused to be tended in the hospitals which he had built for them this they had not yet forgotten, and Merlin knew it.
He knew that Paul Deroulede's heart was completely given to Juliette de Marny; he too, like Anne Mie, instinctively mistrusted the beautiful girl and her strange, silent ways, but, unlike the poor hunchback, he knew that no sin which Juliette might commit would henceforth tear her from out the heart of his friend; that if, indeed, she turned out to be false, or even treacherous, she would, nevertheless, still hold a place in Deroulede's very soul, which no one else would ever fill.
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