I Will Repay | Page 8

the oath."
The child closed her eyes, and as the old man watched her, he could see
the lips framing the words of het spirituel confession.

Juliette made the sign of the cross, then opened her eyes and looked at
her father.
"I am ready, father," she said; "I hope God has forgiven me the little
sins of yesterday."
"Will you swear, my child?"
"What, father?"
"That you will avenge your brother's death on his murderer?"
"But, father..."
"Swear it, my child!"
"How can I fulfil that oath, father? - I don't understand..."
"God will guide you, my child. When you are older you will
understand."
For a moment Juliette still hesitated. She was just on that borderland
between childhood and womanhood when all the sensibilities, the
nervous system, the emotions, are strung to their highest pitch.
Throughout her short life she had worshipped her father with a
whole-hearted, passionate devotion, which had completely blinded her
to his weakening faculties and the feebleness of his mind.
She was also in that initial stage of enthusiastic piety which
overwhelms every girl of temperament, if she be brought up in the
Roman Catholic religion, when she is first initiated into the mysteries
of the Sacraments.
Juliette had been to confession and communion. She had been
confirmed by Monseigneur, the Archbishop. Her ardent nature had
responded to the full to the sensuous and ecstatic expressions of the
ancient faith.

And somehow her father's wish, her brother's death, all seemed mingled
in her brain with that religion, for which in her juvenile enthusiasm she
would willingly have laid down her life.
She thought of all the saints, whose lives she had been reading. Her
young heart quivered at the thought of their sacrifices, their
martyrdoms, their sense of duty.
An exaltation, morbid perhaps, superstitious and overwhelming, took
possession of her mind; also, perhaps, far back in the innermost
recesses of her heart, a pride in her own importance, her mission in life,
her individuality: for she was a girl after all, a mere child, about to
become a woman.
But the old Duc was waxing impatient.
"Surely you do not hesitate, Juliette, with your dead brother's body
clamouring mutely for revenge? You, the only Marny left now! - for
from this day I too shall be as dead."
"No, father," said the young girl in an awed whisper, "I do not hesitate.
I will swear, just as you bid me."
"Repeat the words after me, my child."
"Yes, father."
"Before the face of Almighty God, who sees and hears me..."
"Before the face of Almighty God, who sees and hears me," repeated
Juliette firmly.
"I swear that I will seek out Paul Déroulède."
"I swear that I will seek out Paul Déroulède."
"And in any manner which God may dictate to me encompass his death,
his ruin or dishonour, in revenge for my brother's death."

"And in any manner which God may dictate to me encompass his death,
his ruin or dishonour, in revenge for my brother's death," said Juliette
solemnly.
"May my brother's soul remain in torment until the final Judgment Day
if I should break my oath, but may it rest in eternal peace the day on
which his death is fitly avenged."
"May my brother's soul remain in torment until the final Judgment Day
if I should break my oath, but may it rest in eternal peace the day on
which his death is fitly avenged."
The child fell upon her knees. The oath was spoken, the old man was
satisfied.
He called for his valet, and allowed himself quietly to be put to bed.
One brief hour had transformed a child into a woman. A dangerous
transformation when the brain is overburdened with emotions, when
the nerves are overstrung and the heart full to breaking.
For the moment, however, the childlike nature reasserted itself for the
last time, for Juliette, sobbing, had fled out of the room, to the privacy
of her own apartment, and thrown herself passionately into the arms of
kind old Pétronelle.
CHAPTER I
Paris :1793
The outrage.
It would have been very difficult to say why Citizen Déroulède was
quite so popular as he was. Still more difficult would it have been to
state the reason why he remained immune from the prosecutions, which
were being conducted at the rate of several scores a day, now against
the moderate Gironde, anon against the fanatic Mountain, until the
whole of France was transformed into one gigantic prison, that daily

fed the guillotine.
But Déroulède remained unscathed. Even Merlin's law of the suspect
had so far failed to touch him. And when, last July, the murder of
Marat brought an entire holocaust of victims to the guillotine - from
Adam Lux, who would have put up a statue in honour of Charlotte