amount," said the other complacently, "and a great deal of it
sticks to the grimy fingers of these patriotic makers of revolutions.
Thus do I ensure my own safety. I buy it with the Emperor's money, and
thus am I able to work for the restoration of the monarchy in France."

Again St. Just was silent. What could he say? Instinctively now, as the
fleshy personality of the Gascon Royalist seemed to spread itself out
and to fill the tiny box with his ambitious schemes and his far-reaching
plans, Armand's thoughts flew back to that other plotter, the man
with the pure and simple aims, the man whose slender fingers had never
handled alien gold, but were ever there ready stretched out to the
helpless and the weak, whilst his thoughts were only of the help that he
might give them, but never of his own safety.

De Batz, however, seemed blandly unconscious of any such disparaging
thoughts in the mind of his young friend, for he continued quite
amiably, even though a note of anxiety seemed to make itself felt now in
his smooth voice:

"We advance slowly, but step by step, my good St. Just," he said. "I
have not been able to save the monarchy in the person of the King or the
Queen, but I may yet do it in the person of the Dauphin."

"The Dauphin," murmured St. Just involuntarily.

That involuntary murmur, scarcely audible, so soft was it, seemed in
some way to satisfy de Batz, for the keenness of his gaze relaxed, and
his fat fingers ceased their nervous, intermittent tattoo on the ledge
of the box.

"Yes! the Dauphin," he said, nodding his head as if in answer to his
own thoughts, "or rather, let me say, the reigning King of France--Louis
XVII, by the grace of God--the most precious life at present upon the
whole of this earth."

"You are right there, friend de Batz," assented Armand fervently,
"the most precious life, as you say, and one that must be saved at all
costs."

"Yes," said de Batz calmly, "but not by your friend the Scarlet
Pimpernel."

"Why not?"

Scarce were those two little words out of St. Just's mouth than he
repented of them. He bit his lip, and with a dark frown upon his face he
turned almost defiantly towards his friend.

But de Batz smiled with easy bonhomie.

"Ah, friend Armand," he said, "you were not cut out for diplomacy, nor
yet for intrigue. So then," he added more seriously, "that gallant hero,
the Scarlet Pimpernel, has hopes of rescuing our young King from the
clutches of Simon the co