“Citizen Chauvelin, how you must hate that man!” exclaimed Robespierre at last.
Then only did Chauvelin break the silence which up to now he had appeared to have forced himself to keep.
“I do!” he said with unmistakable fervour.
“Then why do you not make an effort to retrieve the blunders of last year?” queried Robespierre blandly. “The Republic has been unusually patient and long-suffering with you, Citizen Chauvelin. She has taken your many services and well-known patriotism into consideration. But you know,” he added significantly, “that she has no use for worthless tools.”
Then as Chauvelin seemed to have relapsed into sullen silence, he continued with his original ill-omened blandness:
“Ma foi! Citizen Chauvelin, were I standing in your buckled shoes, I would not lose another hour in trying to avenge mine own humiliation!”
“Have I ever had a chance?” burst out Chauvelin with ill-suppressed vehemence. “What can I do single-handed? Since war has been declared I cannot go to England unless the Government will find some official reason for my doing so. There is much grumbling and wrath over here, and when that damned Scarlet Pimpernel League has been at work, when a score or so of valuable prizes have been snatched from under the very knife of the guillotine, then, there is much gnashing of teeth and useless cursings, but nothing serious or definite is done to smother those accursed English flies which come buzzing about our ears.”
“Nay! you forget, Citizen Chauvelin,” retorted Robespierre, “that we of the Committee of Public Safety are far more helpless than you. You know the language of these people, we don't. You know their manners and customs, their ways of thought, the methods they are likely to employ: we know none of these things. You have seen and spoken to men in England who are members of that damned League. You have seen the man who is its leader. We have not.”
He leant forward on the table and looked more searchingly at the thin, pallid face before him.
“If you named that leader to me now, if you described him, we could go to work more easily. You could name him, and you would, Citizen Chauvelin.”