"Every foot of the way," he answered.
She laughed and clapped her hands. Suddenly the little chevalier broke in. "By the head of John the Baptist!" said he.
Detricand put down his knife and fork in amazement, and Guida coloured, for the words sounded almost profane upon the chevalier's lips.
Du Champsavoys held up his eye-glass, and, turning from one to the other, looked at each of them imperatively yet abstractedly too. Then, pursing up his lower lip, and with a growing amazement which carried him to distant heights of reckless language, he said again:
"By the head of John the Baptist on a charger!" He looked at Detricand with a fierceness which was merely the tension of his thought. If he had looked at a wall it would have been the same. But Detricand, who had an almost whimsical sense of humour, felt his neck in affected concern as though to be quite sure of it. "Chevalier," said he, "you shock us—you shock us, dear chevalier."
"The most painful things, and the most wonderful too," said the chevalier, tapping the letter with his eye-glass; "the most terrible and yet the most romantic things are here. A drop of cider, if you please, mademoiselle, before I begin to read it to you, if I may—if I may—eh?"
They all nodded eagerly. Guida handed him a mogue of cider. The little grey thrush of a man sipped it, and in a voice no bigger than a bird's began:
"From Lucillien du Champsavoys, Comte de Chanier, by the hand of a faithful friend, who goeth hence from among divers dangers, unto my cousin, the Chevalier du Champsavoys de Beaumanoir, late Gentleman of the Bedchamber to the best of monarchs, Louis XV, this writing:
"MY DEAR AND HONOURED Cousin"—The chevalier paused, frowned a trifle, and tapped his lips with his finger in a little lyrical emotion—"My dear and honoured cousin, all is lost. The France we loved is no more. The twentieth of June saw the last vestige of Louis's power pass for ever. That day ten thousand of the sans- culottes forced their way into the palace to kill him. A faithful few surrounded him. In the mad turmoil, we were fearful, he was serene. 'Feel,' said Louis, placing his hand on his bosom, 'feel whether this is the beating of a heart shaken by fear.' Ah, my friend, your heart would have clamped in misery to hear the Queen cry: 'What have I to fear? Death? it is as well to-day as to- morrow; they can do no more!' Their lives were saved, the day passed, but worse came after.
"The tenth of August came. With it too, the end-the dark and bloody end-of the Swiss Guard. The Jacobins had their way at last. The Swiss Guard died in the Court of the Carrousel as they marched to the Assembly to save the King. Thus the last circle of defence round the throne was broken. The palace was given over to flame and the sword. Of twenty nobles of the court I alone escaped. France is become a slaughter-house. The people cried out for more liberty, and their liberators gave them the freedom of death. A fortnight ago, Danton, the incomparable fiend, let loose his assassins upon the priests of God. Now Paris is made a theatre where the people whom Louis and his nobles would have died to save have turned every street into a stable of carnage, every prison and hospital into a vast charnel-house. One last revolting thing alone remains to be done—the murder of the King; then this France that we have loved will have no name and no place in our generation. She will rise again, but we shall not see her, for our eyes have been blinded with blood, for ever darkened by disaster. Like a mistress upon whom we have lavished the days of our youth and the strength of our days, she has deceived us; she has stricken us while we slept. Behold a Caliban now for her paramour!