“Ay, Boissin, that’s my name, and he asks you what you have to complain of?”

“Much, very much, citizen.  It is not enough that a cursed aristocrat uses my lodgings as a shelter while I am away from home, but a crowd of unauthorized persons invade it and break a cabinet for which I have a great affection.  Maybe, since you were there, Citizen Boissin, you can tell me who broke my cabinet.”

“Curse your cabinet!”

“Curse you for coming to my lodgings without an invitation,” said Bruslart, quietly.

There was a shuffling of feet, a promise of quick and dangerous excitement, but Sabatier did not move, and Bruslart’s eyes, as he quietly sipped his wine, looked over the rim of the glass at Boissin, who seemed confused and unable to bluster.  There was a long pause which was broken by a man seated at another table.

“The breakage need not trouble you, Citizen Bruslart, your trouble will come when you have to explain how the aristocrat came to be in your lodgings.”

“Whether she entered by the door, or climbed in at the window, I cannot say, since I was not at home,” said Bruslart, with a smile.  “My servant must answer that question.  What I want to know is, who is this aristocrat?”

In a moment every eye was turned upon him.  Jacques Sabatier smiled.

“I was going to the prison to ask that question,” Bruslart went on.  “She is a woman, that I have heard of, but no more.  I am interested enough to wonder whether she was an acquaintance of mine in the past.”

“An acquaintance!” and there was a chorus of laughter.

“It was Mademoiselle St. Clair,” said Boissin.

Lucien Bruslart did not start at the mention of the name, not an eye fixed upon him could detect the slightest trembling in his hand as he raised the glass to his lips and slowly drank the wine which was in it.  He knew perfectly well what a false move, or an ill-considered word, might mean to him.  There was not a man in that company who did not hate the name of aristocrat, yet after their fashion, many of them had ties which they held sacred.  The same man who could spend hours rejoicing in the bloodthirsty work of the guillotine would return home to kiss his wife, and play innocently with his children.  Bruslart knew that to pity the aristocrat might be hardly more dangerous than to abuse the woman.

“Mademoiselle St. Clair.  In the past she was more than an acquaintance,” he said.

“She is your lover,” said half a dozen voices together.

“She was,” corrected Bruslart, quietly, “and therefore a little sentiment enters into the affair.  I could almost wish it had been some other woman.  That is natural, I think.”

“Ay; and it explains why she took shelter in your lodgings,” said Boissin.

“True, it does; and, so far as I remember, it is the only personal matter I have against her.  I do not recall any other injury she has done me.  I am afraid, citizens, she has some case against me, for I grew tired of her long ago.”