El Dorado | Page 5

the brother of Lady
Blakeney, had something of the refined beauty of his lovely sister, but
the features though manly--had not the latent strength expressed in
them which characterised every line of Marguerite's exquisite face. The
forehead suggested a dreamer rather than a thinker, the blue-grey eyes
were those of an idealist rather than of a man of action.
De Batz's keen piercing eyes had no doubt noted this, even whilst he
gazed at his young friend with that same look of good-humoured
indulgence which seemed habitual to him.
"We have to think of the future, my good St. Just," he said after a slight
pause, and speaking slowly and decisively, like a father rebuking a
hot-headed child, "not of the present. What are a few lives worth beside
the great principles which we have at stake?"
"The restoration of the monarchy--I know," retorted St. Just, still
unsobered, "but, in the meanwhile--"
"In the meanwhile," rejoined de Batz earnestly, "every victim to the
lust of these men is a step towards the restoration of law and order--that
is to say, of the monarchy. It is only through these violent excesses
perpetrated in its name that the nation will realise how it is being fooled
by a set of men who have only their own power and their own
advancement in view, and who imagine that the only way to that power
is over the dead bodies of those who stand in their way. Once the
nation is sickened by these orgies of ambition and of hate, it will turn
against these savage brutes, and gladly acclaim the restoration of all
that they are striving to destroy. This is our only hope for the future,
and, believe me, friend, that every head snatched from the guillotine by
your romantic hero, the Scarlet Pimpernel, is a stone laid for the
consolidation of this infamous Republic."
"I'll not believe it," protested St. Just emphatically.
De Batz, with a gesture of contempt indicative also of complete
self-satisfaction and unalterable self-belief, shrugged his broad

shoulders. His short fat fingers, covered with rings, beat a tattoo upon
the ledge of the box.
Obviously, he was ready with a retort. His young friend's attitude
irritated even more than it amused him. But he said nothing for the
moment, waiting while the traditional three knocks on the floor of the
stage proclaimed the rise of the curtain. The growing impatience of the
audience subsided as if by magic at the welcome call; everybody settled
down again comfortably in their seats, they gave up the contemplation
of the fathers of the people, and turned their full attention to the actors
on the boards.
CHAPTER II
WIDELY DIVERGENT AIMS
This was Armand S. Just's first visit to Paris since that memorable day
when first he decided to sever his connection from the Republican party,
of which he and his beautiful sister Marguerite had at one time been
amongst the most noble, most enthusiastic followers. Already a year
and a half ago the excesses of the party had horrified him, and that was
long before they had degenerated into the sickening orgies which were
culminating to-day in wholesale massacres and bloody hecatombs of
innocent victims.
With the death of Mirabeau the moderate Republicans, whose sole and
entirely pure aim had been to free the people of France from the
autocratic tyranny of the Bourbons, saw the power go from their clean
hands to the grimy ones of lustful demagogues, who knew no law save
their own passions of bitter hatred against all classes that were not as
self-seeking, as ferocious as themselves.
It was no longer a question of a fight for political and religious liberty
only, but one of class against class, man against man, and let the
weaker look to himself. The weaker had proved himself to be, firstly,
the man of property and substance, then the law-abiding citizen, lastly
the man of action who had obtained for the people that very same
liberty of thought and of belief which soon became so terribly misused.

Armand St. Just, one of the apostles of liberty, fraternity, and equality,
soon found that the most savage excesses of tyranny were being
perpetrated in the name of those same ideals which he had worshipped.
His sister Marguerite, happily married in England, was the final
temptation which caused him to quit the country the destinies of which
he no longer could help to control. The spark of enthusiasm which he
and the followers of Mirabeau had tried to kindle in the hearts of an
oppressed people had turned to raging tongues of unquenchable flames.
The taking of the Bastille had been the prelude to the massacres of
September, and even the horror of these had since paled beside the
holocausts of to-day.
Armand, saved from the