The old dandy, in whose intrepid spirit the death which he had believed imminent had occasioned no trembling, turned pale as La Boulaye ceased. His blue eyes were lifted almost timidly to the Deputy's face, and his lip quivered.
"You are not going to have me shot, then?" he faltered.
"Shot?" echoed La Boulaye, and then he remembered the precise words of the request which Des Cadoux had preferred the night before, but which, at the time, he had treated lightly. "Ma foi, you do not flatter me!" he cried. "Am I a murderer, then? Come, come, Citizen, here is the letter that you are to carry. It is addressed to Mademoiselle de Bellecour, at Treves, and encloses Ombreval's farewell epistle to that lady."
"But, gladly, Monsieur," exclaimed Des Cadoux.
And then, as if to cover his sudden access of emotion, of which he was most heartily ashamed, he fumbled for his snuff-box, and, having found it, he took an enormous pinch.
They parted on the very best of terms did these two - the aristocrat and the Revolutionary - actuated by a mutual esteem tempered in each case with gratitude.
When at last Des Cadoux had taken a sympathetic leave of Ombreval and departed, Caron ordered the Vicomte to be brought before him again, and at the same time bade his men make ready for the road.
"Citizen," said La Boulaye, "we start for Paris at once. If you will pass me your word of honour to attempt no escape you shall travel with us in complete ******* and with all dignity."
Ombreval looked at him with insolent surprise, his weak supercilious mouth growing more supercilious even than its wont. He had recovered a good deal of his spirit by now.
"Pass you my word of honour?" he echoed. "Mon Dieu! my good fellow a word of honour is a bond between gentlemen. I think too well of mine to pass it to the first greasy rascal of the Republic that asks it of me."
La Boulaye eyed him a second with a glance before which the aristocrat grew pale, and already regretted him of his words. The veins in the Deputy's temples were swollen.
"I warned you," said he, in a dull voice. Then to the soldiers standing on either side of Ombreval - "Take him out," he said, "mount him on horseback. Let him ride with his hands pinioned behind his back, and his feet lashed together under the horse's belly. Attend to it!"
"Monsieur," cried the young man, in an appealing voice," I will give you my word of honour not to escape. I will - "
"Take him out," La Boulaye repeated, with a dull bark of contempt.
"You had your chance, Citizen-aristocrat."
Ombreval set his teeth and clenched his hands.
"Canaille!" he snarled, in his fury.
"Hold!" Caron called after the departing men.
They obeyed, and now this wretched Vicomte, of such unstable spirit dropped all his anger again, as suddenly as he had caught it up.
Fear paled his cheek and palsied his limbs once more, for La Boulaye's expression was very terrible.
"You know what I said that I would have done to you if you used that word again?" La Boulaye questioned him coldly.
"I - I was beside myself, Monsieur," the other gasped, in the intensity of his fear. And at the sight of his pitiable condition the anger fell away from La Boulaye, and he smiled scornfully.
"My faith," he sneered. "You are hot one moment and cold the next.
Citizen, I am afraid that you are no better than a vulgar coward.
Take him away," he ended, waving his hand towards the door, and as he watched them leading him out he reflected bitterly that this was the man to whom Suzanne was betrothed - the man whom, not a doubt of it, she loved, since for him she had stooped so low. This miserable craven she preferred to him, because the man, so ignoble of nature, was noble by the accident of birth.