She looked at him in astonishment, wondering how such a thing could be possible to him, a foreigner. Then suddenly struck by the recollection that she had selfishly kept him occupied with her affairs all the time, she hastened to ask him what had brought him to France. Perhaps she was detaining him? And she begged him to forgive her want of thought.
"You need not make any excuse," he said, smiling; "it would not have interested you, for my presence here is due to politics. It must astonish you that I should come to France when our countries are at war; but, be assured, I am well protected."
And Vaughan explained to her how he had been sent by an influential member of the House of Commons to confer with the man who was looked upon as the most powerful, the master, in fact, of the Republic—Robespierre.
At the mention of this name Clarisse drew back terrified.
Vaughan evinced no particular surprise, for that name produced the same effect on every woman. Was not Robespierre, indeed, the personification of that bloodthirsty Government in whose iron grip France was then writhing in agony?
He traced a striking portrait of the Incorruptible, from the intricacies of his subtle politics to the fierce and stubborn ambition capable of anything to attain its end. Clarisse listened, spell-bound and trembling.
Vaughan, judging the man from a political standpoint, estimated him at his true value. His character, mediocre at the best, was exaggerated in England. The Whig party had commissioned Vaughan to propose to Robespierre an arrangement which, if accepted, would most likely change the face of things. But would he accept? Vaughan doubted it, for the arrangement, though in one way flattering to the self-love and pride of the Incorruptible, would at the same time diminish his importance, and set a curb on his ambition, which, as Vaughan well knew, with all the pretensions of the man to simplicity and republican austerity, was all-absorbing and unbounded.
Seeing Clarisse so attentive, Vaughan continued to paint Robespierre at home in the patriarchal circle of the Duplay family in the Rue Saint Honoré, where he occupied a modest apartment between that of the old couple and their younger son, as whose tutor he was acting until the time came for his marriage with Cornelia, Duplay's youngest daughter, to whom, as it seemed, he was devotedly attached.
Clarisse, her eyes fixed on Vaughan, drank in every word. The Englishman went on, giving a precise and detailed account of Duplay's home—a home guarded by the wife, who watched the door in real bull-dog fashion, for it was the centre of mistrust and suspicion. Yes, Robespierre was well guarded. He, Vaughan, even with an introduction as Pitt's agent, had not been able to see him. He had only succeeded after many difficulties in obtaining an interview in the forest, where he was to confer with him in secret, until joined by the Duplay family. Constantly beset by the fear of the Committee of Public Safety, who watched his every movement, he had arranged for a picnic in the glades, to avert suspicion from this forest interview.
Clarisse, pale and trembling, made a great effort to steady her voice, and asked—