"Don't worry, my girl," he said; "Simon is no fool, and there is no one in Choisy who would dare touch him."

By this time, Maurin had succeeded in turning his thoughts in another direction. Self-reproach gave place to his usual self-complacency and self-exaltation. He had made a false move, but he thanked his stars that he was in a position to retrieve it.

"I am afraid you are wrong there, Monsieur Levet," he observed unctuously. "As a matter of fact, I happen to know that the Section has its eye on Docteur Pradel His mysterious comings and goings yesterday, and his constant visits at the Château de la Rodière, which often extend late into the night, have aroused suspicion, and, as you know, from suspicion to denunciation there is only one step and that one sometimes leads as far as the guillotine. However, as I had the pleasure of telling you just now, I will do my best for the doctor, seeing that he is your friend."

"And that he is innocent," Blanche asserted vehemently. "There was nothing mysterious about Simon's comings and goings yesterday. He only goes to the château when he is sent for professionally, nor does he extend his visits late into the night."

Maurin shrugged.

"I can only repeat what I have been told, Mademoiselle," he said, "I can assure you . . ."

He felt that he had made another false move by saying that which was sure to arouse the girl's jealousy. Indeed, he was beginning to think that luck had not attended him in the manner he had hoped, and was quite relieved when the sound of shuffling sabots over the sanded floor cut this awkward conversation short. Maurin looked round to see the old beggar of a while ago standing in the middle of the room, waiting at a respectful distance till he was spoken to.

Maurin queried sharply:

"What do you want?"

The man raised a hand stiff with cold to his white forelock.

"The cabriolet, Citizen," he murmured.

The poor wretch seemed unable to say more than that. With trembling finger he pointed to the door behind him. A ramshackle vehicle drawn by a miserable nag was waiting outside. Levet paid for the drinks and the whole party made their way to the door. At the last, when the family had crowded into the cabriolet, old Levet pressed a piece of silver into the beggar's shaky hand.

Maurin remained in the road outside the tavern until the vehicle had disappeared at a turning of the street. He was not the man ever to admit, even to himself, that he was in the wrong, but in this case he had, perhaps, been somewhat injudicious, and he felt that he must take an early opportunity to retrieve whatever blunder he may have committed. Blanche was very young, he commented to himself; she scarcely knew her own mind, and Pradel was the man whom she met most constantly. But after this, gratitude would be sure to play in important rôle in the girl's attitude towards the friend who had helped her and her family out of a very difficult situation. Maurin prided himself on the fact that he had persuaded the girl, if not the others, that it was his influence and his alone that had brought about their liberation after a few hours' detention. She was already inclined to be grateful and affectionate for that. It would be his task after this to work unceasingly on her emotions and to his own advantage.

And reflecting thus, lawyer Maurin made final tracks for home.

BOOK II

THE DOCTOR

13 THE CHÂTEAU DE LA RODIÈRE

It had always been a stately château ever since the day when Luc de la Rodière, returning from the war with Holland after the peace of Ryswick, received this quasi-regal residence at the hands of Louis XIV in recognition for his gallantry in the field. It was still stately in this year 1793, even though it bore the indelible marks of four years of neglect following the riots of 1789 when the populace of Choisy, carried away by the events up in Paris and the storming of the Bastille, and egged on by paid agitators, marched in a body up to the château, smashed a quantity of furniture and a few windows and mirrors, tore curtains down and carpets up, ransacked the larders and cellars, and then marched down again with lusty shouts of the new popular cry: "A la lanterne les aristos!"

Luckily, Madame la Marquise with her son and daughter were absent on that day: they had gone up to Paris for the funeral of Monsieur le Marquis. Whether it was the emptiness of the house, or its atmosphere of faded flowers, stale incense, and burnt-out candles, which dampened the ebullient spirits of the crowd, it is impossible to say. Certain it is that after they had done what mischief they could on the ground floor, and then marched upstairs to the monumental ballroom, where they found lackeys and valets busy sweeping up dead floral wreaths, they felt awed all of a sudden: something of their old beliefs, of their respect for the dead, of all that these burnt-out candles and stale incense stood for kept them silent and subdued, even though such things had by government decree been denounced as superstition, and unworthy the dignity of man.

They had come up to the château determined to demand all sorts of things-they didn't know exactly what-and as there was no one there to give satisfaction to these demands, and the paid agitator had, as usual, kept carefully out of the way, these poor people felt very like a lot of dogs who had taken to the water, hoping to find something to play with, and merely succeeding in getting very wet.

But the mischief was done, and when the young Marquise with Madame, his mother, and Mademoiselle Cécile returned to La Rodière three days later, they found the château in the state in which the riotous crowd had left it; the stately hall on the ground floor, the banqueting room, the monumental staircase, the cellars and the larders, were a mass of wreckage. The terrified personnel of lackeys and female servants had run away, leaving the ballroom where their late master had lain dead, still a litter of dead flowers and linen cloths, of torn lace and stumps of wax candles. Only Paul Leroux and his wife Marie had remained. They were old people-very old-who had served feu Monsieur le Marquis and his father and mother before him, first as kitchen wench and scullion then on through the hierarchy of maid and valet, to that of butler and housekeeper. They had never known any other home but La Rodière: if they left it, they would not have known where to go: they had no children, no family, no kindred. And so they stayed on, after the mob had cleared away, and one by one the château staff-young and old, indoors and out of doors, garden and stable-men-had packed up their belongings and betaken themselves to their own homes wherever these might be. Paul and Marie stayed on and did their best to feed the horses and dogs that had been left behind, and to get a few rooms tidy and warm for the occupation of Madame la Marquise. And thus the widow and the young Marquis and Mademoiselle Cécile found them and their devastated home. Marie had prepared a meagre supper, Paul had brushed his clothes and polished his shoes, and placed such pieces of silver on the table as had escaped the attention of the mob. He wore his white gloves and served his young master and the family with the same solemnity as he had done, when half a dozen footmen were in attendance round the dinner-table.

Madame la Marquise, herself a scion of the old French noblesse, was far too proud to display her feelings before her servants, or before her children. She bore herself with marvellous courage during the terrible trial of this first evening in the wrecked château. Nor did she lose any of her dignity during the years that followed. In that attitude she emulated those of her own class with whom the watchword seemed to be not to let those assassins in the government know how bitterly they felt the repeated onslaughts on their property and on their privileges. Not one of them believed, in those early days of the Revolution, that such a state of tyranny and mob-law could persist, and secretly most of them-especially the older generation-nursed thoughts of exemplary retaliation. But the years rolled on and tyranny and mob-law did persist, and hopes of retribution had perforce to give way to a kind of proud indifference in the men and silent resignation in the women: but in the same way as tyranny and hatred grew in intensity in those who for centuries had been little else than bondslaves to the privileged classes, so did contempt for them and their accession to power continue to dwell in the hearts of the aristocrats. Where the latter had felt condescension and often kindly tolerance toward their subordinates, as in the case of Madame la Marquise, they had now, for the most part, nothing but lofty scorn for those whom they looked on as spoliators and assassins. The middle classes, those at any rate who professed liberal ideas, however moderate, they treated with contumely far worse than before: the local lawyer, the local doctor, the artist, the musician, all those in fact who were to a certain extent still dependent on them for their living, they still kept at arm's length: as for their actual dependants, the workers on their estate, or in the towns, they were the rabble in their sight, plagues which God sent down to earth to punish France for her sins.