There had always been a great amount of persuasive power in citizen Chauvelin, ex-envoy of the revolutionary Government of France at the Court of St. James, and that same persuasive eloquence did not fail now in its effect on the chief agent of the Committee of General Security. The latter was made of coarser stuff than his more brilliant colleague. Chauvelin was like a wily and sleek panther that is furtive in its movements, that will lure its prey, watch it, follow it with stealthy footsteps, and only pounce on it when it is least wary, whilst Heron was more like a raging bull that tosses its head in a blind, irresponsible fashion, rushes at an obstacle without gauging its resisting powers, and allows its victim to slip from beneath its weight through the very clumsiness and brutality of its assault.
Still Chauvelin had two heavy black marks against him—those of his failures at Calais and Boulogne. Heron, rendered cautious both by the deadly danger in which he stood and the sense of his own incompetence to deal with the present situation, tried to resist the other’s authority as well as his persuasion.
“Your advice was not of great use to citizen Collot last autumn at Boulogne,” he said, and spat on the ground by way of expressing both his independence and his contempt.
“Still, citizen Heron,” retorted Chauvelin with unruffled patience, “it is the best advice that you are likely to get in the present emergency. You have eyes to see, have you not? Look on your prisoner at this moment. Unless something is done, and at once, too, he will be past negotiating with in the next twenty-four hours; then what will follow?”
He put his thin hand once more on his colleague’s grubby coat-sleeve, he drew him closer to himself away from the vicinity of that huddled figure, that captive lion, wrapped in a torpid somnolence that looked already so like the last long sleep.
“What will follow, citizen Heron?” he reiterated, sinking his voice to a whisper; “sooner or later some meddlesome busybody who sits in the Assembly of the Convention will get wind that little Capet is no longer in the Temple prison, that a pauper child was substituted for him, and that you, citizen Heron, together with the commissaries in charge, have thus been fooling the nation and its representatives for over a fortnight. What will follow then, think you?”
And he made an expressive gesture with his outstretched fingers across his throat.
Heron found no other answer but blasphemy.
“I’ll make that cursed Englishman speak yet,” he said with a fierce oath.
“You cannot,” retorted Chauvelin decisively. “In his present state he is incapable of it, even if he would, which also is doubtful.”