Convention, who, trembling for himself, replied hastily,
"I will speak of it to Robespierre." The handsome petitioner put faith
in this promise, which the other carefully forgot. A few loaves of
sugar, or a bottle or two of good liqueur, given to the citoyenne
Duplay would have saved Descoings.

This little mishap proves that in revolutionary times it is quite as
dangerous to employ honest men as scoundrels; we should rely on
ourselves alone. Descoings perished; but he had the glory of going to
the scaffold with Andre Chenier. There, no doubt, grocery and poetry
embraced for the first time in the flesh; although they have, and ever
have had, intimate secret relations. The death of Descoings produced
far more sensation than that of Andre Chenier. It has taken thirty
years to prove to France that she lost more by the death of Chenier
than by that of Descoings.

This act of Robespierre led to one good result: the terrified grocers
let politics alone until 1830. Descoings's shop was not a hundred
yards from Robespierre's lodging. His successor was scarcely more
fortunate than himself. Cesar Birotteau, the celebrated perfumer of
the "Queen of Roses," bought the premises; but, as if the scaffold had
left some inexplicable contagion behind it, the inventor of the "Paste
of Sultans" and the "Carminative Balm" came to his ruin in that very
shop. The solution of the problem here suggested belongs to the realm
of occult science.

During the visits which Roland's secretary paid to the unfortunate
Madame Descoings, he was struck with the cold, calm, innocent beauty
of Agathe Rouget. While consoling the widow, who, however, was too
inconsolable to carry on the business of her second deceased husband,
he married the charming girl, with the consent of her father, who
hastened to give his approval to the match. Doctor Rouget, delighted
to hear that matters were going beyond his expectations,--for his
wife, on the death of her brother, had become sole heiress of the
Descoings,--rushed to Paris, not so much to be present at the wedding
as to see that the marriage contract was drawn to suit him. The ardent
and disinterested love of citizen Bridau gave carte blanche to the
perfidious doctor, who made the most of his son-in-law's blindness, as
the following history will show.

Madame Rouget, or, to speak more correctly, the doctor, inherited all
the property, landed and personal, of Monsieur and Madame Descoings
the elder, who died with