V
No one made reply. It seemed as if some giant and spectral hand had passed over this mass of people and with its magic touch had stilled their turbulent passions, silenced their imprecations and cooled their ardour—and left naught but a vague fear, a subtle sense of awe as when something unexplainable and supernatural has manifested itself before the eyes of men.
From far away the roll of coach wheels rapidly disappearing in the distance alone broke the silence of the night.
"Is there no one here who will explain what all this means?" queried young Lalouët, who alone had remained self-assured and calm, for he alone knew nothing of what had happened. "Citizen Fleury, are you there?"
Then as once again he received no reply, he added peremptorily:
"Hey! some one there! Are you all louts and oafs that not one of you can speak?"
A timid voice from the rear ventured on explanation.
"The citizen proconsul was here a moment ago.... We all saw him, and you citizen Lalouët were with him...."
An imprecation from young Lalouët silenced the timid voice for the nonce ... and then another resumed the halting narrative.
"We all could have sworn that we saw you, citizen Lalouët, also the citizen proconsul.... He got into his coach with you ... you ... that is ... they have driven off...."
"This is some awful and treacherous hoax," cried the youngster now in a towering passion; "the citizen proconsul is upstairs in bed, I tell you ... and I have only just come out of the hotel ...! Name of a name of a dog! am I standing here or am I not?"
Then suddenly he bethought himself of the many events of the day which had culminated in this gigantic feat of leger-de-main.
"Chauvelin!" he exclaimed. "Where in the name of h——ll is citizen Chauvelin?"
But Chauvelin for the moment could nowhere be found. Dazed, half-unconscious, wholly distraught, he had fled from the scene of his discomfiture as fast as his trembling knees would allow. Carrier searched the city for him high and low, and for days afterwards the soldiers of the Compagnie Marat gave aristos and rebels a rest: they were on the look-out for a small, wizened figure of a man—the man with the pale, keen eyes who had failed to recognise in the pseudo-Paul Friche, in the dirty, out-at-elbows sans-culotte—the most exquisite dandy that had ever graced the salons of Bath and of London: they were searching for the man with the acute and sensitive brain who had failed to scent in the pseudo-Carrier and the pseudo-Lalouët his old and arch enemy Sir Percy Blakeney and the charming wife of my lord Anthony Dewhurst.