er, and this was generally completed
by about one o'clock, Harry called to see how Victor was getting
on. He was gaining strength, but his brain appeared to make far
less progress than his bodily health. He did not recognize Harry in
the least, and although he would answer questions that were asked
him, his mind appeared a blank as to the past, and he often lay for
hours without speaking a word. After leaving him Harry met Louise
and the two girls at a spot agreed upon the day before, a fresh
meeting-place being arranged each day. He found it difficult to
satisfy them, for indeed each day he became more and more doubtful
as to his ability to get the order of release from Robespierre.
Towards the man himself his feelings were of a mixed kind. He
shuddered at the calmness with which, in his letters to the provincial
committees, he advocated wholesale executions of prisoners. He
wondered at the violence with which, in his shrill, high-pitched
voice, he declaimed in favour of the most revolutionary measures.
He admired the simplicity of his life, his affection for his sister
and his birds, his kindness of heart in all matters in which politics
were not concerned.

Among Robespierre's visitors during the next three weeks was Lebat,
who was, Harry found, an important personage, being the representative
on the Committee of Public Safety of the province of Burgundy, and
one of the most extreme of the frequenters of the Jacobin Club. He
did not recognize Harry, whom he had never noticed particularly on
the occasion of his visits to the chateau, and who, in the somewhat
threadbare black suit which he had assumed instead of the workman's
blouse, wrote steadily at a table apart, taking apparently no notice
of what was going on in the apartment.

But Harry's time was not altogether thrown away. It was his duty
the first thing of a morning to open and sort the letters and lay
them in piles upon the table used by Robespierre himself, and he
managed every day to slip quietly into his pockets several of the
letters of denunciation against persons as aristocrats in disguise
or as being suspected of hostility to the Commune. When Robespierre
left him to go to the Club or the Assembly Harry would write short
notes of warning in a disguised hand to the persons named, and
would, when he went out, leave these at their doors. Thus he had
the satisfaction of saving a considerable number of persons from
the clutches of the revolutionists. H