“It is a pity, but I shall manage alone,” Sabatier answered.  “Am I to give the usual answer to Citizen Latour?”

“Yes.  Can any answer be better than the truth?”

Had a miracle happened?  Was this man honestly meaning to help him, or had he seen that the prisoner intended to attack him and chosen this way of protecting himself?  Barrington could not tell.  He could only wait and see.

CHAPTER XX

THE LETTER

Jacque Sabatier is busy in these days, also his master Raymond Latour.  Their private affairs must proceed as quickly as possible, but there are public affairs which must be done at once, which cannot wait, which a frenzied people loudly demand with cursings and dancings and mad songs.

War thunders along the frontiers, and passes beyond them.  Such a gathering of nations in arms that right and justice may be done, is a new thing.  Paris has realized its danger, has known it for weeks past; Jacques Danton, mighty in the Club of the Cordeliers, has urged it with great words, with a great voice which has made the rafters ring; more, he has shown how the danger must be met.  Safety lies in daring, not once but again and always.  “De l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace et la France est sauvee.”  It is a battlecry which has stirred hearts, and sent ill-conditioned men to face trained regiments, which are surprised when such a ragged rabble does not turn and run.  Courage is under those rags and something of true patriotism.  But there are other patriots in Paris, and of a different sort.  The frontiers are a long way off, but here to hand is work for them, work which is easy and pleases them.  The Place de la Revolution is their battlefield where they can yell their war crys and their war songs; their weapon is the guillotine, and the guillotine is always victorious.  The enemy, cursed aristocrats, and others not aristocrats but equally cursed because they differ from the people and the people’s demigods, are foredoomed to defeat and death.  Only one thing is lacking, sufficient enemies that the guillotine may not stand idle.  Each day must bring its excitement.  The denizens of the slums and alleys of Paris must have their amusement day by day.  The inhabitants of the narrow streets off the Rue Charonne have forgotten the American they hunted so fiercely, although Richard Barrington waiting in his underground prison does not know it.  They are yelling, half afraid of their own audacity, for another victim.  They gather daily, in another part of the city, by the Riding Hall close to the Tuileries.  There is excitement in plenty here.  In the Rue Charonne one might walk in safety.