CHAPTER XXX
COUNCIL OF WAR
When Paris opened her eyes on the morning of Thursday, the twelfth of October, it was to rejoice at one of those soft and beautiful days of autumn which make of every house a dungeon to be escaped at the first possible moment. Even as early as nine o'clock, a perceptible tide had set in toward the Bois de Boulogne, or, rather, innumerable little tides, which converged at the Place de la Concorde and rolled on along the Champs-Elysées in one mighty torrent.
Against this torrent, a sturdy and energetic figure fought its way across the square; a figure carefully arrayed in black morning-coat and grey trousers, and looking alertly about with a pair of very bright eyes magnified by heavy glasses. The haughtiest of the carriage-crowd felt honoured by his bow, for it was none other than that great diplomat, Théophile Delcassé, Minister of Marine.
M. Delcassé was not in the habit of being abroad so early; it was a full hour before his usual time; but he had an appointment to keep which he regarded as most important, so he strode rapidly across the square, entered the handsome building to the north of it, and mounted to the first floor, where, on the corner overlooking the square on one side and the Rue Royale on the other, he had his office.
Early as it was, he found awaiting him the man whom he wished to see—a thin wisp of a man, with straggling white beard and a shock of white hair and a face no wider than one's hand, but lighted by the keenest eyes in the world—in a word, Louis Jean Baptiste Lépine, Prefect of Police, to whom full justice has not been done in this story—nor in any other. M. Lépine had not found the hour early; to him, all hours were the same, for he was a man who slept only when he found the time, which was often not at all.
"Good morning, my dear Prefect," said Delcassé, drawing off his gloves. "I trust I have not kept you waiting?"
"I but just arrived," Lépine assured him; "and I know of no better place to pass one's idle moments than at this window of yours."
Beyond it stretched the great square, with its obelisk and circle of statues, its pavilions and balustrades; beautiful now, and peaceful, but peopled with ghastly memories—for it was here the Revolution set up its guillotine, and it was here that some four thousand men and women, high and low, looked their last upon this earth, mounted the scaffold and passed under the knife. Surely, if any spot on earth be haunted, it is this!