"What audacity!" commented Peyrol, who was really surprised. "But that's just like what they are." Still, it was hard to believe. But wasn't it only a tale?
The patriot flung one arm up in a strained gesture. "I swore to its truth before the tribunal," he said. "It was a dark story," he cried shrilly, and paused. "It cost her father his life," he said in a low voice . . . "her mother too – but the country was in danger," he added still lower.
Peyrol walked away to the western window and looked towards Toulon. In the middle of the great sheet of water within Cape Cicié a tall two-decker lay becalmed and the little dark dots on the water were her boats trying to tow her head round the right way. Peyrol watched them for a moment, and then walked back to the middle of the room.
"Did you actually drag him from this house to the guillotine?" he asked in his unemotional voice.
The patriot shook his head thoughtfully with downcast eyes. "No, he came over to Toulon just before the evacuation, this friend of the English . . . sailed over in a tartane he owned that is still lying here at the Madrague. He had his wife with him. They came over to take home their daughter who was living then with some skulking old nuns. The victorious Republicans were closing in and the slaves of tyranny had to fly."
"Came to fetch their daughter," mused Peyrol. "Strange, that guilty people should . . ."
The patriot looked up fiercely. "It was justice," he said loudly. "They were anti-revolutionists, and if they had never spoken to an Englishman in their life the atrocious crime was on their heads."
"H'm, stayed too long for their daughter," muttered Peyrol. "And so it was you who brought her home."
"I did," said the patron. For a moment his eyes evaded Peyrol's investigating glance, but in a moment he looked straight into his face. "No lessons of base superstition could corrupt her soul," he declared with exaltation. "I brought home a patriot."
Peyrol, very calm, gave him a hardly perceptible nod. "Well," he said, "all this won't prevent me sleeping wery well in this room. I always thought I would like to live in a lighthouse when I got tired of roving about the seas. This is as near a lighthouse lantern as can be. You will see me with all my little affairs to-morrow," he added, moving towards the stairs. " Salut, citoyen."