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In the blindness of his passion all his fine keenness was cast to the wind, his all-observing watchfulness was smothered in the cloud of anger that oppressed his brain. He never saw the sign that madame made to her son, never so much as noticed Marius's stealthy progress towards the door.
Marius's faltering fingers had come near letting the pistol fall. Jondrette, by revealing his identity, had not moved M. Leblanc, but he had quite upset Marius. That name of Thenardier, with which M. Leblanc did not seem to be acquainted, Marius knew well. Let the reader recall what that name meant to him! That name he had worn on his heart, inscribed in his father's testament!
"Certainly," he answered, with his grim courtesy. "Upon your acceptance of those terms shall depend Marius's life and your own future liberty." "What are they?" "That within the hour all your people to the last scullion shall have laid down their arms and vacated Condillac." It was beyond her power to refuse. "The Marquis will not drive me forth?" she half affirmed, half asked.
Sulpicius, tribune of the people, a bold and confident man, contrary to everybody's expectation, brought forward Marius, and proposed him as proconsul and general in that war. The people were divided; some were on Marius's side, others voted for Sylla, and jeeringly bade Marius go to his baths at Baiae, to cure his body, worn out, as himself confessed, with age and catarrhs.
"Captain," said the elder Cannon, chuckling as if still in admiration of Marius's subtlety, "I recollect now that our ferryman brought over a man from Laurel this morning with some news. A woman with a broken shackle reported there last night, and said she was the slave of Daniel Custis of Princess Anne: she came from Broad Creek." "Where did she go?"
A second and clearer instance of their favor appeared upon his making a magnificent oration in praise of his aunt Julia, wife to Marius, publicly in the forum, at whose funeral he was so bold as to bring forth the images of Marius, which nobody had dared to produce since the government came into Sylla's hands, Marius's party having from that time been declared enemies of the State.
"Enough allusions," she said: "let us speak frankly, and face to face now. What do you want?" But the change was too sudden not to arouse Marius's suspicions. "I want a great many things," he replied. "Still you must specify." "Well, I claim first the five hundred thousand francs which my father had settled upon his daughter, the daughter whom you cast off." "And what next?"
"What do you suppose is Marius's business?" "Hair-dressing."
When they had now butchered a great number, Cinna grew more remiss and cloyed with murders; but Marius's rage continued still fresh and unsatisfied, and he daily sought for all that were any way suspected by him.
She stood regarding him a moment with lips compressed and a white, startled, angry face. Then: "It was by Marius's contrivance that he was placed sentry over the girl," he heard her tell Fortunio, and he thought she sneered. She looked at the two bodies on the floor, one almost at her feet, the other just inside the doorway, now almost hidden in the shadows of the table.
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