“Commandant, the order of the ministers states that you are to obey Mademoiselle de Verneuil.”
“Let her come and give them to me herself and I’ll see about it.”
“Well, citizen,” said Corentin, haughtily, “she shall come. She shall tell you herself the hour at which she expects the ci-devant. Possibly she won’t be easy till you do post the sentinels round the house.”
“The devil is made man,” thought the old leader as he watched Corentin hurrying up the Queen’s Staircase at the foot of which this scene had taken place. “He means to deliver Montauran bound hand and foot, with no chance to fight for his life, and I shall be harrassed to death with a court-martial. However,” he added, shrugging his shoulders, “the Gars certainly is an enemy of the Republic, and he killed my poor Gerard, and his death will make a noble the less—the devil take him!”
He turned on the heels of his boots and went off, whistling the Marseillaise, to inspect his guard-rooms.
Mademoiselle de Verneuil was absorbed in one of those meditations the mysteries of which are buried in the soul, and prove by their thousand contradictory emotions, to the woman who undergoes them, that it is possible to have a stormy and passionate existence between four walls without even moving from the ottoman on which her very life is burning itself away. She had reached the final scene of the drama she had come to enact, and her mind was going over and over the phases of love and anger which had so powerfully stirred her during the ten days which had now elapsed since her first meeting with the marquis. A man’s step suddenly sounded in the adjoining room and she trembled; the door opened, she turned quickly and saw Corentin.
“You little cheat!” said the police-agent, “when will you stop deceiving? Ah, Marie, Marie, you are playing a dangerous game by not taking me into your confidence. Why do you play such tricks without consulting me? If the marquis escapes his fate—”
“It won’t be your fault, will it?” she replied, sarcastically. “Monsieur,” she continued, in a grave voice, “by what right do you come into my house?”
“Your house?” he exclaimed.