While the great man spoke, Martin-Roget had succeeded in pulling himself together. His throat felt parched, his hands hot and moist: he was like a man who had been stumbling along a road in the dark and been suddenly pulled up on the edge of a yawning abyss into which he had all but fallen. With a few harsh words, with a monstrous insult Carrier had made him feel the gigantic power which could hurl any man from the heights of self-assurance and of ambition to the lowest depths of degradation: he had shown him the glint of steel upon the guillotine.

He had been hit as with a sledge-hammer – the blow hurt terribly, for it had knocked all his self-esteem into nothingness and pulverised his self-conceit. It had in one moment turned him into a humble and cringing sycophant.

"I had no mind," he began tentatively, "to give offence. My thoughts were bent on the Kernogans. They are a fine haul for us both, citizen Carrier, and I worked hard and long to obtain their confidence over in England and to induce them to come with me to Nantes."

"No one denies that you have done well," retorted Carrier gruffly and not yet wholly pacified. "If the haul had not been worth having you would have received no help from me."

"I have shown my gratitude for your help, citizen Carrier. I would show it again … more substantially if you desire…"

He spoke slowly and quite deferentially but the suggestion was obvious. Carrier looked up into his face: the light of measureless cupidity – the cupidity of the coarse-grained, enriched peasant – glittered in his pale eyes. It was by a great effort of will that he succeeded in concealing his eagerness beneath his habitual air of lofty condescension:

"Eh? What?" he queried airily.

"If another five thousand francs is of any use to you…"

"You seem passing rich, citizen Martin-Roget," sneered Carrier.

"I have slaved and saved for four years. What I have amassed I will sacrifice for the completion of my revenge."

"Well!" rejoined Carrier with an expressive wave of the hand, "it certainly is not good for a pure-minded republican to own too much wealth. Have we not fought," he continued with a grandiloquent gesture, "for equality of fortune as well as of privileges…"

A sardonic laugh from young Lalouët broke in on the proconsul's eloquent effusion.

Carrier swore as was his wont, but after a second or two he began again more quietly:

"I will accept a further six thousand francs from you, citizen Martin-Roget, in the name of the Republic and all her needs. The Republic of France is up in arms against the entire world. She hath need of men, of arms, of…"

"Oh! cut that," interposed young Lalouët roughly.

But the over-vain, high and mighty despot who was ready to lash out with unbridled fury against the slightest show of disrespect on the part of any other man, only laughed at the boy's impudence.

"Curse you, you young viper," he said with that rude familiarity which he seemed to reserve for the boy, "you presume too much on my forbearance. These children you know, citizen… Name of a dog!" he added roughly, "we are wasting time! What was I saying …?"

"That you would take six thousand francs," replied Martin-Roget curtly, "in return for further help in the matter of the Kernogans."

"Why, yes!" rejoined Carrier blandly, "I was forgetting. But I'll show you what a good dog I am. I'll help you with those Kernogans … but you mistook my words, citizen: 'tis ten thousand francs you must pour into the coffers of the Republic, for her servants will have to be placed at the disposal of your private schemes of vengeance."

"Ten thousand francs is a large sum," said Martin-Roget. "Let me hear what you will do for me for that."

He had regained something of his former complacency. The man who buys – be it goods, consciences or services – is always for the moment master of the man who sells. Carrier, despite his dictatorial ways, felt this disadvantage, no doubt, for his tone was more bland, his manner less curt. Only young Jacques Lalouët stood by – like a snarling terrier – still arrogant and still disdainful – the master of the situation – seeing that neither schemes of vengeance nor those of corruption had ruffled his self-assurance. He remained beside the door, ready to pounce on either of the two intruders if they showed the slightest sign of forgetting the majesty of the great proconsul.

VI

"I told you just now, citizen Martin-Roget," resumed Carrier after a brief pause, "and I suppose you knew it already, that I am surrounded with spies."

"Spies, citizen?" murmured Martin-Roget, somewhat taken aback by this sudden irrelevance. "I didn't know … I imagine… Any one in your position…"

"That's just it," broke in Carrier roughly. "My position is envied by those who are less competent, less patriotic than I am. Nantes is swarming with spies. Mine enemies in Paris are working against me. They want to undermine the confidence which the National Convention reposes in her accredited representative."

"Preposterous," ejaculated young Lalouët solemnly.

"Well!" rejoined Carrier with a savage oath, "you would have thought that the Convention would be only too thankful to get a strong man at the head of affairs in this hotbed of treason and of rebellion. You would have thought that it was no one's affair to interfere with the manner in which I administer the powers that have been given me. I command in Nantes, what? Yet some busybodies up in Paris, some fools, seem to think that we are going too fast in Nantes. They have become weaklings over there since Marat has gone. It seems that they have heard rumours of our flat-bottomed barges and of our fine Republican marriages: apparently they disapprove of both. They don't realise that we have to purge an entire city of every kind of rabble – traitors as well as criminals. They don't understand my aspirations, my ideals," he added loftily and with a wide, sweeping gesture of his arm, "which is to make Nantes a model city, to free her from the taint of crime and of treachery, and…"

An impatient exclamation from young Lalouët once again broke in on Carrier's rhetoric, and Martin-Roget was able to slip in the query which had been hovering on his lips:

"And is this relevant, citizen Carrier," he asked, "to the subject which we have been discussing?"

"It is," replied Carrier drily, "as you will see in a moment. Learn then, that it has been my purpose for some time to silence mine enemies by sending to the National Convention a tangible reply to all the accusations which have been levelled against me. It is my purpose to explain to the Assembly my reasons for mine actions in Nantes, my Drownages, my Republican marriages, all the coercive measures which I have been forced to take in order to purge the city from all that is undesirable."

"And think you, citizen Carrier," queried Martin-Roget without the slightest trace of a sneer, "that up in Paris they will understand your explanations?"

"Yes! they will – they must when they realise that everything that I have done has been necessitated by the exigencies of public safety."

"They will be slow to realise that," mused the other. "The National Convention to-day is not what the Constitutional Assembly was in '92. It has become soft and sentimental. Many there are who will disapprove of your doings… Robespierre talks loftily of the dignity of the Republic … her impartial justice… The Girondins…"

Carrier interposed with a coarse imprecation. He suddenly leaned forward, sprawling right across the desk. A shaft of light from between the damask curtains caught the end of his nose and the tip of his protruding chin, distorting his face and making it seem grotesque as well as hideous in the dim light. He appeared excited and inflated with vanity. He always gloried in the atrocities which he committed, and though he professed to look with contempt on every one of his colleagues, he was always glad of an opportunity to display his inventive powers before them, and to obtain their fulsome eulogy.

"I know well enough what they talk about in Paris," he said, "but I have an answer – a substantial, definite answer for all their rubbish. Dignity of the Republic? Bah! Impartial justice? 'Tis force, strength, Spartan vigour that we want … and I'll show them… Listen to my plan, citizen Martin-Roget, and see how it will work in with yours. My idea is to collect together all the most disreputable and notorious evil-doers of this city … there are plenty in the entrepôt at the present moment, and there are plenty more still at large in the streets of Nantes – thieves, malefactors, forgers of State bonds, assassins and women of evil fame … and to send them in a batch to Paris to appear before the Committee of Public Safety, whilst I will send to my colleagues there a letter couched in terms of gentle reproach: 'See!' I shall say, 'what I have to contend with in Nantes. See! the moral pestilence that infests the city. These evil-doers are but a few among the hundreds and thousands of whom I am vainly trying to purge this city which you have entrusted to my care!' They won't know how to deal with the rabble," he continued with his harsh strident laugh. "They may send them to the guillotine wholesale or deport them to Cayenne, and they will have to give them some semblance of a trial in any case. But they will have to admit that my severe measures are justified, and in future, I imagine, they will leave me more severely alone."

"If as you say," urged Martin-Roget, "the National Convention give your crowd a trial, you will have to produce some witnesses."

"So I will," retorted Carrier cynically. "So I will. Have I not said that I will round up all the most noted evil-doers in the town? There are plenty of them I assure you. Lately, my Company Marat have not greatly troubled about them. After Savenay there was such a crowd of rebels to deal with, there was no room in our prisons for malefactors as well. But we can easily lay our hands on a couple of hundred or so, and members of the municipality or of the district council, or tradespeople of substance in the city will only be too glad to be rid of them, and will testify against those that were actually caught red-handed. Not one but has suffered from the pestilential rabble that has infested the streets at night, and lately I have been pestered with complaints of all these night-birds – men and women and…"

Suddenly he paused. He had caught Martin-Roget's feverish gaze fixed excitedly upon him. Whereupon he leaned back in his chair, threw his head back and broke into loud and immoderate laughter.

"By the devil and all his myrmidons, citizen!" he said, as soon as he had recovered his breath, "meseems you have tumbled to my meaning as a pig into a heap of garbage. Is not ten thousand francs far too small a sum to pay for such a perfect realisation of all your dreams? We'll send the Kernogan girl and her father to Paris with the herd, what?.. I promise you that such filth and mud will be thrown on them and on their precious name that no one will care to bear it for centuries to come."

Martin-Roget of a truth had much ado to control his own excitement. As the proconsul unfolded his infamous plan, he had at once seen as in a vision the realisation of all his hopes. What more awful humiliation, what more dire disgrace could be devised for proud Kernogan and his daughter than being herded together with the vilest scum that could be gathered together among the flotsam and jetsam of the population of a seaport town? What more perfect retaliation could there be for the ignominious death of Jean Adet the miller?

Martin-Roget leaned forward in his chair. The hideous figure of Carrier was no longer hideous to him. He saw in that misshapen, gawky form the very embodiment of the god of vengeance, the wielder of the flail of retributive justice which was about to strike the guilty at last.

"You are right, citizen Carrier," he said, and his voice was thick and hoarse with excitement. He rested his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. He hammered his nails against his teeth. "That was exactly in my mind while you spoke."

"I am always right," retorted Carrier loftily. "No one knows better than I do how to deal with traitors."

"And how is the whole thing to be accomplished? The wench is in my sister's house at present … the father is in the Rat Mort…"

"And the Rat Mort is an excellent place… I know of none better. It is one of the worst-famed houses in the whole of Nantes … the meeting-place of all the vagabonds, the thieves and the cut-throats of the city."

"Yes! I know that to my cost. My sister's house is next door to it. At night the street is not safe for decent females to be abroad: and though there is a platoon of Marats on guard at Le Bouffay close by, they do nothing to free the neighbourhood of that pest."

"Bah!" retorted Carrier with cynical indifference, "they have more important quarry to net. Rebels and traitors swarm in Nantes, what? Commandant Fleury has had no time hitherto to waste on mere cut-throats, although I had thoughts before now of razing the place to the ground. Citizen Lamberty has his lodgings on the other side and he does nothing but complain of the brawls that go on there o' nights. Sure it is that while a stone of the Rat Mort remains standing all the night-hawks of Nantes will congregate around it and brew mischief there which is no good to me and no good to the Republic."

"Yes! I know all about the Rat Mort. I found a night's shelter there four years ago when…"

"When the ci-devant duc de Kernogan was busy hanging your father – the miller – for a crime which he never committed. Well then, citizen Martin-Roget," continued Carrier with one of his hideous leers, "since you know the Rat Mort so well what say you to your fair and stately Yvonne de Kernogan and her father being captured there in the company of the lowest scum of the population of Nantes?"

"You mean …?" murmured Martin-Roget, who had become livid with excitement.

"I mean that my Marats have orders to raid some of the haunts of our Nantese cut-throats, and that they may as well begin to-night and with the Rat Mort. They will make a descent on the house and a thorough perquisition, and every person – man, woman and child – found on the premises will be arrested and sent with a batch of malefactors to Paris, there to be tried as felons and criminals and deported to Cayenne where they will, I trust, rot as convicts in that pestilential climate. Think you," concluded the odious creature with a sneer, "that when put face to face with the alternative, your Kernogan wench will still refuse to become the wife of a fine patriot like yourself?"

"I don't know," murmured Martin-Roget. "I … I…"

"But I do know," broke in Carrier roughly, "that ten thousand francs is far too little to pay for so brilliant a realisation of all one's hopes. Ten thousand francs? 'Tis an hundred thousand you should give to show your gratitude."

Martin-Roget rose and stretched his large, heavy figure to its full height. He was at great pains to conceal the utter contempt which he felt for the abominable wretch before whom he was forced to cringe.

"You shall have ten thousand francs, citizen Carrier," he said slowly; "it is all that I possess in the world now – the last remaining fragment of a sum of twenty-five thousand francs which I earned and scraped together for the past four years. You have had five thousand francs already. And you shall have the other ten. I do not grudge it. If twenty years of my life were any use to you, I would give you that, in exchange for the help you are giving me in what means far more than life to me."

The proconsul laughed and shrugged his shoulders – of a truth he thought citizen Martin-Roget an awful fool.

"Very well then," he said, "we will call the matter settled. I confess that it amuses me, although remember that I have warned you. With all these aristos, I believe in the potency of my barges rather than in your elaborate schemes. Still! it shall never be said that Jean Baptiste Carrier has left a friend in the lurch."

"I am grateful for your help, citizen Carrier," said Martin-Roget coldly. Then he added slowly, as if reviewing the situation in his own mind: "To-night, you say?"

"Yes. To-night. My Marats under the command of citizen Fleury will make a descent upon the Rat Mort. Those shall be my orders. The place will be swept clean of every man, woman and child who is inside. If your two Kernogans are there … well!" he said with a cynical laugh and a shrug of his shoulders, "they can be sent up to Paris with the rest of the herd."

"The dinner bell has gone long ago," here interposed young Lalouët drily, "the soup will be stone-cold and the chef red-hot with anger."

"You are right, citizen Lalouët," said Carrier as he leaned back in his chair once more and stretched out his long legs at his ease. "We have wasted far too much time already over the affairs of a couple of aristos, who ought to have been at the bottom of the Loire a week ago. The audience is ended," he added airily, and he made a gesture of overweening condescension, for all the world like the one wherewith the Grand Monarque was wont to dismiss his courtiers.

Chauvelin rose too and quietly turned to the door. He had not spoken a word for the past half-hour, ever since in fact he had put in a conciliatory word on behalf of his impetuous colleague. Whether he had taken an active interest in the conversation or not it were impossible to say. But now, just as he was ready to go, and young Lalouët prepared to close the doors of the audience chamber, something seemed suddenly to occur to him and he called somewhat peremptorily to the young man.

"One moment, citizen," he said.

"What is it now?" queried the youth insolently, and from his fine eyes there shot a glance of contempt on the meagre figure of the once powerful Terrorist.

"About the Kernogan wench," continued Chauvelin. "She will have to be conveyed some time before night to the tavern next door. There may be agencies at work on her behalf…"

"Agencies?" broke in the boy gruffly. "What agencies?"

"Oh!" said Chauvelin vaguely, "we all know that aristos have powerful friends these days. It will not be over safe to take the girl across after dark from one house to another … the alley is badly lighted: the wench will not go willingly. She might scream and create a disturbance and draw … er … those same unknown agencies to her rescue. I think a body of Marats should be told off to convey her to the Rat Mort…"

Young Lalouët shrugged his shoulders.

"That's your affair," he said curtly. "Eh, Carrier?" And he glanced over his shoulder at the proconsul, who at once assented.

Martin-Roget – struck by his colleague's argument – would have interposed, but Carrier broke in with one of his uncontrolled outbursts of fury.

"Ah ça," he exclaimed, "enough of this now. Citizen Lalouët is right and I have done enough for you already. If you want the Kernogan wench to be at the Rat Mort, you must see to getting her there yourself. She is next door, what? I won't have anything to do with it and I won't have my Marats implicated in the affair either. Name of a dog! have I not told you that I am beset with spies? It would of a truth be a climax if I was denounced as having dragged aristos to a house of ill-fame and then had them arrested there as malefactors! Now out with you! I have had enough of this! If your rabble is at the Rat Mort to-night, they shall be arrested with all the other cut-throats. That is my last word. The rest is your affair. Lalouët! the door!"

And without another word, and without listening to further protests from Martin-Roget or Chauvelin, Jacques Lalouët closed the doors of the audience chamber in their face.

VII

Outside on the landing, Martin-Roget swore a violent, all comprehensive oath.

"To think that we are under the heel of that skunk!" he said.

"And that in the pursuit of our own ends we have need of his help!" added Chauvelin with a sigh.

"If it were not for that… And even now," continued Martin-Roget moodily, "I doubt what I can do. Yvonne de Kernogan will not follow me willingly either to the Rat Mort or elsewhere, and if I am not to have her conveyed by the guard…"

He paused and swore again. His companion's silence appeared to irritate him.

"What do you advise me to do, citizen Chauvelin?" he asked.

"For the moment," replied Chauvelin imperturbably, "I should advise you to join me in a walk along the quay as far as Le Bouffay. I have work to see to inside the building and the north-westerly wind is sure to be of good counsel."

An angry retort hovered on Martin-Roget's lips, but after a second or two he succeeded in holding his irascible temper in check. He gave a quick sigh of impatience.

"Very well," he said curtly. "Let us to Le Bouffay by all means. I have much to think on, and as you say the north-westerly wind may blow away the cobwebs which for the nonce do o'ercloud my brain."

And the two men wrapped their mantles closely round their shoulders, for the air was keen. Then they descended the staircase of the hotel and went out into the street.