As Hubert pronounced these last words, Gertrude rapped at the door and called in a quaking voice:
"Open, open! The commissioner of the Section, in his scarf of office, is here with the mounted police. He is coming upstairs."
Hubert drew from his coat pockets a brace of double-barreled pistols, cocked them, and said in a low voice:
"I shall sell my life dear; but, by the thousand gods! my first bullet will be for you, my coward and traitor brother-in-law!"
Advocate Desmarais leaped to the door and drew back the bolt. His wife, struck with a sudden inspiration, and displaying, in the terror which seized her, an unwonted strength, dragged her brother into her bed-chamber, which opened on the parlor, slammed the door after her, and shot the bolt into its socket.
CHAPTER XII.
HOWLING WITH THE WOLVES.
While Hubert was thus perforce following his sister to safety, Desmarais did not notice his brother-in-law's disappearance; for the lawyer, at the moment, was leaving the parlor to meet the commissioner. Contrary to his expectations, he did not find the officer in the ante-room, and was compelled to go as far as the stair-landing, where he encountered him and accompanied him back to the parlor.
The commissioner was a man of cold and rigid physiognomy; in his suite were some gendarmes of the Republic, and several police agents. Bowing to the commissioner, the advocate said:
"Citizen, if I had a son a traitor to the nation, I would myself give him up to the public powers. I would follow the example of Brutus the Roman." Then stopping short and casting about him looks of stupefaction, he added: "But where has my brother-in-law gone to?"
"That is for me to ask you, Citizen Representative of the people," rejoined the commissioner. "This disappearance is strange!"