Gradually, as Deroulede spoke, a murmur, like the distant roar of a monstrous breaker, rose among the crowd on the upper benches.  As he continued quietly and firmly, so it grew in volume and in intensity, until his last words were drowned in one mighty, thunderous shout of horror and execration.

Deroulede, the friend and idol of the people, the privileged darling of this unruly population, the father of the children, the friend of the women, the sympathiser in all troubles, Papa Deroulede as the little ones called him—­he a traitor, self-accused, plotting and planning for an ex-tyrant, a harlot who had called herself a queen, for Marie Antoinette the Austrian, who had desired and worked for the overthrow of France!  He, Deroulede, a traitor!

In one moment, as he spoke, the love which in their crude hearts they bore him, that animal primitive love, was turned to sudden, equally irresponsible hate.  He had deceived them, laughed at them, tried to bribe them by feeding their little ones!

Bah! the bread of the traitor!  It might have choked the children.

Surprise at first had taken their breath away.  Already they had marvelled why he should stand up to defend a wanton.  And now, probably feeling that he was on the point of being found out, he thought it better to make a clean breast of his own treason, trusting in his popularity, in his power over the people.

Bah!!!

Not one extenuating circumstance did they find in their hardened hearts for him.

He had been their idol, enshrined in their squalid, degraded minds, and now he had fallen, shattered beyond recall, and they hated and loathed him as much as they had loved him before.

And this his enemies noted, and smiled with complete satisfaction.

Merlin heaved a sigh of relief.  Tinville nodded his shaggy head, in token of intense delight.

What that provincial coal-heaver had foretold had indeed come to pass.

The populace, that most fickle of all fickle things in this world, had turned all at once against its favourite.  This Lenoir had predicted, and the transition had been even more rapid than he had anticipated.

Deroulede had been given a length of rope, and, figuratively speaking, had already hanged himself.

The reality was a mere matter of a few hours now.  At dawn to-morrow the guillotine; and the mob of Paris, who yesterday would have torn his detractors limb from limb, would on the morrow be dragging him, with hoots and yells and howls of execration, to the scaffold.

The most shadowy of all footholds, that of the whim of a populace, had already given way under him.  His enemies knew it, and were exulting in their triumph.  He knew it himself, and stood up, calmly defiant, ready for any event, if only he succeeded in snatching her beautiful head from the ready embrace of the guillotine.

Juliette herself had remained as if entranced.  The colour had again fled from her cheeks, leaving them paler, more ashen than before.  It seemed as if in this moment she suffered more than human creature could bear, more than any torture she had undergone hitherto.