“Maître Greffier,” said he, in quite a noiseless little voice, “acquaint us of the charge, I desire thee, against this patte-pelu.”
Nom de Dieu! here was a fine coup d’archet to the overture. My heart drummed very effectively in response.
A little black-martin of a fellow, with long coat-tails and glasses to his eyes, stood up by the notaries’ table and handled a slip of paper. Everywhere the murmur of Tinville’s voice had brought the court to attention. I listened to the greffier with all my ears.
“Act of Accusation,” he read out brassily, “against Jean-Louis Sebastien de Crancé, ci-devant Comte de la Muette, and since calling himself the Citizen Jean-Louis Thibaut.”
Very well, and very well—I was discovered, then; through whose agency, if not through Jacques Crépin’s, I had no care to learn. The wonder to me was that, known and served as I had been, I should have enjoyed so long an immunity from proscription as an aristocrat. But I accused Crépin—and wrongfully, I believe—in my heart.
“Hath rendered himself answerable to the law of the 17th Brumaire,” went on the greffier, mechanically, “in that he, an émigré, hath ventured himself in the streets of Paris in disguise, and——”
The Public Accuser waved him impatiently to a stop. There fell a dumb silence.
“One pellet out of a charge is enough to kill a rat,” said he, quietly: then in an instant his voice changed to harsh and terrible, and he bellowed at me—
“What answer to that, Monsieur r-r-r-rat, Monsieur ratatouille?”
The change of manner was so astounding that I jumped as at the shock of a battery. Then a hot flush came to my face, and with it a dreadful impulse to strike this insolent on the mouth. I folded my arms, and gave him back glare for glare.