“Flight!” exclaimed Nicot; “is it possible?  Flight; how?—­when?—­by what means?  All France begirt with spies and guards!  Flight! would to Heaven it were in our power!”

“Dost thou, too, desire to escape the blessed Revolution?”

“Desire!  Oh!” cried Nicot, suddenly, and, falling down, he clasped Glyndon’s knees,—­“oh, save me with thyself!  My life is a torture; every moment the guillotine frowns before me.  I know that my hours are numbered; I know that the tyrant waits but his time to write my name in his inexorable list; I know that Rene Dumas, the judge who never pardons, has, from the first, resolved upon my death.  Oh, Glyndon, by our old friendship, by our common art, by thy loyal English faith and good English heart, let me share thy flight!”

“If thou wilt, so be it.”

“Thanks!—­my whole life shall thank thee.  But how hast thou prepared the means, the passports, the disguise, the—­”

“I will tell thee.  Thou knowest C—­, of the Convention,—­he has power, and he is covetous.  ‘Qu’on me meprise, pourvu que je dine’ (Let them despise me, provided that I dine.), said he, when reproached for his avarice.”

“Well?”

“By the help of this sturdy republican, who has friends enough in the Comite, I have obtained the means necessary for flight; I have purchased them.  For a consideration I can procure thy passport also.”

“Thy riches, then, are not in assignats?”

“No; I have gold enough for us all.”

And here Glyndon, beckoning Nicot into the next room, first briefly and rapidly detailed to him the plan proposed, and the disguises to be assumed conformably to the passports, and then added, “In return for the service I render thee, grant me one favour, which I think is in thy power.  Thou rememberest Viola Pisani?”

“Ah,—­remember, yes!—­and the lover with whom she fled.”

“And from whom she is a fugitive now.”

“Indeed—­what!—­I understand.  Sacre bleu! but you are a lucky fellow, cher confrere.”

“Silence, man! with thy eternal prate of brotherhood and virtue, thou seemest never to believe in one kindly action, or one virtuous thought!”

Nicot bit his lip, and replied sullenly, “Experience is a great undeceiver.  Humph!  What service can I do thee with regard to the Italian?”

“I have been accessory to her arrival in this city of snares and pitfalls.  I cannot leave her alone amidst dangers from which neither innocence nor obscurity is a safeguard.  In your blessed Republic, a good and unsuspected citizen, who casts a desire on any woman, maid or wife, has but to say, ‘Be mine, or I denounce you!’ In a word, Viola must share our flight.”

“What so easy?  I see your passports provide for her.”

“What so easy?  What so difficult?  This Fillide—­would that I had never seen her!—­would that I had never enslaved my soul to my senses!  The love of an uneducated, violent, unprincipled woman, opens with a heaven, to merge in a hell!  She is jealous as all the Furies; she will not hear of a female companion; and when once she sees the beauty of Viola!—­I tremble to think of it.  She is capable of any excess in the storm of her passions.”