Chauvelin went up to him, made some curt remark.  Mole kept an obstinate shoulder turned towards him—­a grimy shoulder, which showed naked through a wide rent in his blouse.  This portion of the cell was well-nigh in total darkness; the feeble shaft of light which came through the open door hardly penetrated to this remote angle of the squalid burrow.  The same sense of mystery and unreality overcame Chauvelin again as he looked on the miserable creature in whom, an hour ago, he had recognised the super-exquisite Sir Percy Blakeney.  Now he could only see a vague outline in the gloom:  the stooping shoulders, the long limbs, that naked piece of shoulder which caught a feeble reflex from the distant light.  Nor did any amount of none too gentle prodding on the part of the warder induce him to change his position.

“Leave him alone,” said Chaufelin curly at last.  “I have seen all that I wished to see.”

The cell was insufferably hot and stuffy.  Chauvelin, finical and queasy, turned away with a shudder of disgust.  There was nothing to be got now out of a prolonged interview with his captured foe.  He had seen him:  that was sufficient.  He had seen the super-exquisite Sir Percy Blakeney locked up in a common cell with some of the most scrubby and abject rogues which the slums of indigent Paris could yield, having apparently failed in some undertaking which had demanded for its fulfilment not only tattered clothes and grimy hands, but menial service with a beggarly and disease-ridden employer, whose very propinquity must have been positive torture to the fastidious dandy.

Of a truth this was sufficient for the gratification of any revenge.  Chauvelin felt that he could now go contentedly to rest after an evening’s work excellently done.

He gave order that Mole should be put in a separate cell, denied all intercourse with anyone outside or in the depot, and that he should be guarded on sight day and night.  After that he went his way.

VI

The following morning citizen Chauvelin, of the Committee of Public Safety, gave due notice to citizen Fouquier-Tinville, the Public Prosecutor, that the dangerous English spy, known to the world as the Scarlet Pimpernel, was now safely under lock and key, and that he must be transferred to the Abbaye prison forthwith and to the guillotine as quickly as might be.  No one was to take any risks this time; there must be no question either of discrediting his famous League or of obtaining other more valuable information out of him.  Such methods had proved disastrous in the past.

There were no safe Englishmen these days, except the dead ones, and it would not take citizen Fouquier-Tinville much thought or time to frame an indictment against the notorious Scarlet Pimpernel, which would do away with the necessity of a prolonged trial.  The revolutionary government was at war with England now, and short work could be made of all poisonous spies.