The man Forget-not, directly the paper was signed, rushed past the speaker and out of the hall into the lobbies. He was followed presently by the Court’s messenger. There was here some trickery or other that Danton sensed.
He could not stop the Chief Judge leaving, but he pounced on the messenger and yanked the reprieve out of his hand. “I will deliver it!” said Danton. The people applauded the act. Everyone knew that he dared greatly.
Quick as he had been, Jacques-Forget-Not had already given his orders.
“Stop Danton if you can!” had been Jacques’ word to the outer guard. To his inspectors of defences, he had said: “The barriers to the guillotine––close them!” He ran forth to see that the orders were obeyed. None of Robespierre’s party wanted to see Danton achieve his errand of mercy––least of all, the vengeful Jacques-Forget-Not!....
The pock-marked Thunderer wasn’t stopped beyond the door. His giant strength threw off the minions who would have blocked him. He hastened to the yard where his beloved troopers were quartered.
Henriette and Maurice’s route lay past an obscene and sacrilegious rite.
Mocking at religion, the more fanatical had thrown off every vestige of decency and indulged in Bacchanalian worship of a so-called “Goddess of Reason.” This was a lewd female from the Paris half-world, flower-chapleted, flimsily draped, prancing in drunken frenzy atop a table surrounded by her “worshippers.”
The Feast of Reason included hundreds of revelers grouped around the open-air tables for the “supper of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,” and between long lines of these they were obliged to pass.