The Elusive Pimpernel | Page 7

liked, she explained to Citizen Tinville. She never bothered about him,
as he never took a meal in the house, and he was only there two days.
She did not know her lodger was English until the day he left. She
thought he was a Frenchman from the South, as he certainly had a
peculiar accent when he spoke.
"It was the day of the riots," she continued; "he would go out, and I told
him I did not think that the streets would be safe for a foreigner like
him: for he always wore such very fine clothes, and I made sure that the
starving men and women of Paris would strip them off his back when
their tempers were roused. But he only laughed. He gave me a bit of
paper and told me that if he did not return I might conclude that he had
been killed, and if the Committee of Public Safety asked me questions
about me, I was just to show the bit of paper and there would be no
further trouble."
She had talked volubly, more than a little terrified at Merlin's scowls,
and the attitude of Citizen Tinville, who was known to be very severe if
anyone committed any blunders.
But the Citizeness--her name was Brogard and her husband's brother
kept an inn in the neighbourhood of Calais--the Citizeness Brogard had
a clear conscience. She held a license from the Committee of Public
Safety for letting apartments, and she had always given due notice to
the Committee of the arrival and departure of her lodgers. The only
thing was that if any lodger paid her more than ordinarily well for the
accommodation and he so desired it, she would send in the notice
conveniently late, and conveniently vaguely worded as to the

description, status and nationality of her more liberal patrons.
This had occurred in the case of her recent English visitor.
But she did not explain it quite like that to Citizen Foucquier Tinville
or to Citizen Merlin.
However, she was rather frightened, and produced the scrap of paper
which the Englishman had left with her, together with the assurance
that when she showed it there would be no further trouble.
Tinville took it roughly out of her hand, but would not glance at it. He
crushed it into a ball and then Merlin snatched it from him with a
coarse laugh, smoothed out the creases on his knee and studied it for a
moment.
There were two lines of what looked like poetry, written in a language
which Merlin did not understand. English, no doubt.
But what was perfectly clear, and easily comprehended by any one, was
the little drawing in the corner, done in red ink and representing a small
star-shaped flower.
Then Tinville and Merlin both cursed loudly and volubly, and bidding
their men follow them, turned away from the house in the Rue de
l'Ancienne Comedie and left its toothless landlady on her own doorstep
still volubly protesting her patriotism and her desire to serve the
government of the Republic.
Tinville and Merlin, however, took the scrap of paper to Citizen
Robespierre, who smiled grimly as he in his turn crushed the offensive
little document in the palm of his well-washed hands.
Robespierre did not swear. He never wasted either words or oaths, but
he slipped the bit of paper inside the double lid of his silver snuff box
and then he sent a special messenger to Citizen Chauvelin in the Rue
Corneille, bidding him come that same evening after ten o'clock to
room No. 16 in the ci-devant Palace of the Tuileries.

It was now half-past ten, and Chauvelin and Robespierre sat opposite
one another in the ex-boudoir of Queen Marie Antoinette, and between
them on the table, just below the tallow-candle, was a much creased,
exceedingly grimy bit of paper.
It had passed through several unclean hands before Citizen
Robespierre's immaculately white fingers had smoothed it out and
placed it before the eyes of ex-Ambassador Chauvelin.
The latter, however, was not looking at the paper, he was not even
looking at the pale, cruel face before him. He had closed his eyes and
for a moment had lost sight of the small dark room, of Robespierre's
ruthless gaze, of the mud-stained walls and greasy floor. He was seeing,
as in a bright and sudden vision, the brilliantly-lighted salons of the
Foreign Office in London, with beautiful Marguerite Blakeney gliding
queenlike on the arm of the Prince of Wales.
He heard the flutter of many fans, the frou-frou of silk dresses, and
above all the din and sound of dance music, he heard an inane laugh
and an affected voice repeating the doggerel rhyme that was even now
written on that dirty piece of paper which Robespierre had