“Which you discovered to be your word to Ombreval,” he said, and his voice grew unconsciously softer, for he began to realise the quandary in which she had found herself.
She inclined her head assentingly.
“To him I had given the earlier promise, and then, again, he was of my own class whilst you—”
“Spare me, Citoyenne,” he cried. “I know what you would say. I am of the rabble, and of little more account in a matter of honour than a beast of the field. It is thus that you reason, and yet, mon Dieu! I had thought that ere now such notions had died out with you, and that, stupid enough though your class has proved itself, it would at least have displayed the intelligence to perceive that its day is ended, its sun set.” He turned and paced the apartment as he spoke. “The Lilies of France have been shorn from their stems, they have withered by the roadside, and they have been trampled into the dust by the men of the new regime, and yet it seems that you others of the noblesse have not learnt your lesson. You have not yet discovered that here in France the man who was born a tiller of the soil is still a man, and, by his manhood, the equal of a king, who, after all, can be no more than a man, and is sometimes less. Enfin!” he ended brusquely. “This is not the National Assembly, and I talk to ears untutored in such things. Let us deal rather with the business upon which you are come.”
She eyed him out of a pale face, with eyes that seemed fascinated. That short burst of the fiery eloquence that had made him famous revealed him to her in a new light: the light of a strength and capacity above and beyond that which, already, she had perceived was his.
“Will you believe, Monsieur, that it cost me many tears to use you as I did? If you but knew—” And there she paused abruptly. She had all but told him of the kiss that she had left upon his unconscious lips that evening on the road to Liege. “Mon Dieu how I hated myself!” And she shuddered as she spoke.
He observed all this, and with a brusqueness that was partly assumed he hastened to her rescue.
“What is done is done, Citoyenne. Come, let us leave reminiscences. You are here to atone, I take it.”
At that she started. His words reminded her of those of his letter.
“Monsieur La Boulaye—”