He had been waiting for the summons, was ready for it.  His hands had tightened a little as he heard the wreckage of the room above.  He knew that the woman was no longer there, he knew that with his capture they would forget all about her for a little while.  The hours to-night would be precious to her.  Two men loved her, and Richard Barrington was not the only man who was willing to die for her.  So he faced the crowd upon the stairs which, after one yell of triumph, had fallen silent.  This man had always been feared.  No one knew his power for certain.  He was feared now as he stood, calm and erect, in the doorway.

“What do you want, citizens, with Raymond Latour?”

Still a moment more of silence; then a fiendish yell, earsplitting, filling the whole house hideously, repeated by the crowd in the courtyard, finding an echo far down the Rue Valette.

“Latour is taken!  We’ve got that devil Latour!”

They brought him out of the house, bareheaded and with no heavy coat to shield him from the bitter night, just as they had found him.  The officers, with naked sabres, were close to him as they crossed the courtyard, and went through the passage to the street.  They were afraid that the crowd might attack the prisoner.  A woman, old and wrinkled, looking out from the baker’s shop, shrank back behind the little counter that she might not be noticed.  The mob danced and sang, but no one attempted to touch Latour.  They were still afraid of him, he walked so erect, with so set a face, with so stern a purpose.  He was the one silent figure in this pandemonium.

“The man who would have saved Louis Capet!” cried one, pointing at him.

Latour heeded not.

“The lover of an aristocrat!” cried another.

No one noticed it, but a smile was on Latour’s face.  This was his real offense, that he loved.  The face of the woman seemed to shine down upon him out of the darkness of the night.  All the past was in his brain; his love, his ambition, his schemes which had ended in this hour of ruin and failure.  Yet still the smile was upon his lips, and there was a strange light in his eyes.  Was it failure after all?  This end was for her sake, the supreme sacrifice.  What more can a man do than lay down his life for love?

CHAPTER XXIX

THE END OF THE JOURNEY

Richard Barrington looked at the man in the doorway and laughed.  He was a mere stripling.

“You will want greater odds than that to drive desperate men,” he said fiercely.  “We return to Paris at once and must have your papers.”

“Richard!”

Barrington stood perfectly still for a moment as the stripling stepped into the room, then he sprang forward with a little cry.

“Jeanne!”

“Ah!  I hate that you should see me like this,” she said, “but Citizen Sabatier declared it was necessary.”