Ned—carried into a dusky vestibule, and thence into a little side office where he must await, under guard, the commissary’s pleasure—was ushered, after no great interval, into the presence of that tremendous functionary. He found him a young man—rather a revolutionary blondin—military and fastidious, with a nose as high-bridged as the fifth proposition in Euclid, and an under-jaw like a griffin’s. He was seated in an elbow-chair in the front of his men. The Cagot, under care of a turnkey, stood before and well away from him; and between him and the Cagot a soldier held out a burning pastile on the point of a bayonet. He made a little gesture to the new-comer, almost as if he were kissing his finger-tips, and addressed him at once in a lisping voice.
“Your name, if you please?”
Ned satisfied him.
“Citizen Edward Murk,” he said, waving away the superfluous title with a scented hand, “thou art accused of interfering with the processes of the law and inciting to a riot.”
Ned exploded immediately.
“The law, monsieur! But I interfered in vindication of it.”
“How, then? Didst thou not oppose thyself to the people’s will?”
“To their violence, rather.”
“It was their will, nevertheless; and the people’s will is the law. Therefore thou opposedst the law.”
“It is a new law, that, monsieur.”