Frank’s face flushed, and he drew off a bit.
“If you are willing to let a little thing like a joke ruin our friendship——”
“Little thing!” again interrupted Browning. “What do you call a little thing? I didn’t come here to Paris with you to be made a guy! I don’t come here to stand as a butt for your wretched jokes! You have been pretty popular in your day, but you’re outgrowing it, and you won’t cut so much ice in the future. I’m no sycophant, to crawl round after you, and let you impose on me just as you please!”
“You are quite unreasonable, old man. I scarcely looked for anything like this from you, and I think you’ll come to your senses in time.”
“Think what you like; from this time, you and I are quits!”
Then Browning turned, and crossed the square toward the Champs-Élysées, leaving Merry there by the fountain. As he walked away, the big fellow grinned, and muttered:
“You didn’t expect that, did you? Oh, I’ll get back at you, Frank Merriwell! You’ll find there is somebody else who can play at that little game! I wonder how you like it!”
Frank Merriwell stood there in the midst of the Place de la Concorde, and watched Browning depart. On one side lay the swiftly flowing Seine, spanned by a bridge five hundred feet in length; on the opposite side, to the north, a beautiful street disclosed the majestic portal of Madeline. To the left was the Garden of the Tuileries, while to the right opened the Champs-Élysées. The fountain tinkled and splashed in the sunshine, and over the smooth, hard pavement cabs came and went like swarms of insects. It seemed that this splendid square, where crowds of joyous people seemed forever crossing and recrossing, had been appropriately named, “The Place of Peace,” but there Frank Merriwell had failed to make peace with his offended comrade, and, as he stood reflecting, he remembered all the horrors that had taken place there on that spot where fell the shadow of the obelisk.
There had been erected the hideous guillotine, the glittering blade of which had descended upon the necks of thousands of the aristocracy of France, among whom were Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. The very ground beneath the stones was soaked with human blood, for there, day after day, the imbruted mob had gathered to sing, and laugh, and shout, as head after head of old and young, weak and strong, proud and beautiful, rich and famous, had rolled from the gory scaffold to mingle in the common basket.
Frank shuddered with horror as he thought of the “knitting women” and “The Vengeance,” described by Dickens. He closed his eyes for a moment, and his vision showed him the scaffold, and he could hear those women calmly counting the blood-dripping heads as they continued to knit, knit, knit, and the scarlet blade rose and fell, cutting short the thread of a human life each time it descended. He saw the long lines of tumbrels rumbling through the streets, surrounded by the armed guard and the howling mobs, all headed toward this blood-cursed spot, bearing helpless and innocent victims to doom.