I Will Repay Baroness Orczy (philippa perry book .txt) 📖

That through it all she should have known love, and learned its tender secrets, was more than she deserved. That she should have felt his burning kisses on her hand was heavenly compensation for all she would have to suffer.

And so she allowed them to drag her through the sansculotte mob of Paris, who would have torn her to pieces then and there, so as not to delay the pleasure of seeing her die.

They took her to the Luxembourg, once the palace of the Medici, the home of proud “Monsieur” in the days of the Great Monarch, now a loathsome, overfilled prison.

It was then six o’clock in the afternoon, drawing towards the close of this memorable day. She was handed over to the governor of the prison, a short, thickset man in black trousers and black-shag woollen shirt, and wearing a dirty red cap, with tricolour rosette on the side of his unkempt head.

He eyed her up and down as she passed under the narrow doorway, then murmured one swift query to Merlin:

“Dangerous?”

“Yes,” replied Merlin laconically.

“You understand,” added the governor; “we are so crowded. We ought to know if individual attention is required.”

“Certainly,” said Merlin, “you will be personally responsible for this prisoner to the Committee of Public Safety.”

“Any visitors allowed?”

“Certainly not, without the special permission of the Public Prosecutor.”

Juliette heard this brief exchange of words over her future fate.

No visitor would be allowed to see her. Well, perhaps that would be best. She would have been afraid to meet Déroulède again, afraid to read in his eyes that story of his dead love, which alone might have destroyed her present happiness.

And she wished to see no one. She had a memory to dwell on⁠—a short, heavenly memory. It consisted of a few words, a kiss⁠—the last one⁠—on her hand, and that passionate murmur which had escaped from his lips when he knelt at her feet:

“Juliette!”

Citizen-Deputy Déroulède had been privately interviewed by the Committee of Public Safety, and temporarily allowed to go free.

The brief proceedings had been quite private, the people of Paris were not to know as yet that their favourite was under a cloud. When he had answered all the questions put to him, and Merlin⁠—just returned from his errand at the Luxembourg Prison⁠—had given his version of the domiciliary visitation in the Citizen-Deputy’s house, the latter was briefly told that for the moment the Republic had no grievance against him.

But he knew quite well what that meant. He would be henceforth under suspicion, watched incessantly, as a mouse is by the cat, and pounced upon, the moment time would be considered propitious for his final downfall.

The inevitable waning of his popularity would be noted by keen, jealous eyes; and Déroulède, with his sure knowledge of mankind and of character, knew well enough that his popularity was bound to wane sooner or later, as all such ephemeral things do.

In the meanwhile, during the short respite which his enemies would leave him, his one thought and duty would be to get his mother and Anne Mie safely out of the country.

And also⁠—

He thought of her, and wondered what had happened. As he walked swiftly across the narrow footbridge, and reached the other side of the river, the events of the past few hours rushed upon his memory with terrible, overwhelming force.

A bitter ache filled his heart at the remembrance of her treachery. The baseness of it all was so appalling. He tried to think if he had ever wronged her; wondered if perhaps she loved someone else, and wished him out of her way.

But, then, he had been so humble, so unassuming in his love. He had arrogated nothing unto himself, asked for nothing, demanded nothing in virtue of his protecting powers over her.

He was torturing himself with this awful wonderment of why she had treated him thus.

Out of revenge for her brother’s death⁠—that was the only explanation he could find, the only palliation for her crime.

He knew nothing of her oath to her father, and, of course, had never heard of the sad history of this young, sensitive girl placed in one terrible moment between her dead brother and her demented father. He only thought of common, sordid revenge for a sin he had been practically forced to commit.

And how he had loved her! Yes, loved⁠—for that was in the past now.

She had ceased to be a saint or a madonna; she had fallen from her pedestal so low that he could not find the way to descend and grope after the fragments of his ideal.

At his own door he was met by Anne Mie in tears.

“She has gone,” murmured the young girl. “I feel as if I had murdered her.”

“Gone? Who? Where?” queried Déroulède rapidly, an icy feeling of terror gripping him by the heartstrings.

“Juliette has gone,” replied Anne Mie; “those awful brutes took her away.”

“When?”

“Directly after you left. That man Merlin found some ashes and scraps of paper in her room⁠—”

“Ashes?”

“Yes; and a torn letter-case.”

“Great God!”

“She said that they were love letters, which she had been burning for fear you should see them.”

“She said so? Anne Mie, Anne Mie, are you quite sure?”

It was all so horrible, and he did not quite understand it all; his brain, which was usually so keen and so active, refused him service at this terrible juncture.

“Yes; I am quite sure,” continued Anne Mie, in the midst of her tears. “And oh! that awful Merlin said some dastardly things. But she persisted in her story, that she had⁠—another lover. Oh, Paul, I am sure it is not true. I hated her because⁠—because⁠—you loved her so, and I mistrusted her, but I cannot believe that she was quite as base as that.”

“No, no, child,” he said in a toneless, miserable voice; “she was not so base as that. Tell me more of what she said.”

“She said very little else. But Merlin asked her whether she had denounced you so as to get you out of