Robespierre started back.
"What, to me! I, the Regent, the tutor of that boy? You are joking!"
The "Incorruptible" did not think fit to tell him that five years previously he had vainly solicited the position of tutor to the royal infant at Versailles. He now walked excitedly to and fro, asserting positively his refusal, in short, broken phrases; all the while on the alert for the slightest sound, and stopping now and then to ask, "Did you hear anything? I thought I heard steps? Are you there, Blount? Hoop la! Good dog! Keep a good watch!"
Carried away by his vanity, Robespierre laid his soul bare before the Englishman, who listened with the greatest curiosity and interest. "Restore Royalty? Ah! it was too ludicrous! Had he worked, then, to re-establish a kingdom for the son of the man he had sent to the scaffold? No! he had worked first for France, whom he had purged of her internal evils, of the whole corrupt and infamous crowd that had so long polluted her! And then for himself; oh no! not from motives of personal ambition, but because he felt himself called to regenerate his country, to breathe into her a new soul, cleansed in the pure waters of virtue and justice and equality.
"Regent, indeed? Fox could not mean it! Dictator, perhaps; Protector, as was Cromwell; Lord-Protector of his country, now degraded by centuries of tyranny and corruption. Ah! they would soon see her arise, pure and radiant, cleansed of all stain, regenerated by a baptism of blood! A few more heads, and then from the soil soaked with the blood of aristocrats, those butchers of the old regime, would spring the tree of liberty, the tree of life and justice, of joy and love, which would bring forth marvellous fruits, and to whose branches France would cling for support and nourishment, as to a mother's breast!"
Vaughan gazed at him in bewilderment. For through this ambition, this bloodthirsty hypocrisy, he descried the madman; and the Englishman said within himself that the man was absolutely dangerous. He only interrupted Robespierre as a matter of form, knowing well there was absolutely nothing in the way of common sense to be looked for in such a fanatic.
"So you refuse?" said Vaughan, in conclusion.
"Decidedly!"
"Then I have only to retire, with your permission."
But Robespierre turned round abruptly. Blount had started barking, and a man was crossing their path.