eight through the very
clumsiness and brutality of its assault.

Still Chauvelin had two heavy black marks against him--those of his
failures at Calais and Boulogne. Heron, rendered cautious both by the
deadly danger in which he stood and the sense of his own incompetence to
deal with the present situation, tried to resist the other's authority
as well as his persuasion.

"Your advice was not of great use to citizen Collot last autumn at
Boulogne," he said, and spat on the ground by way of expressing both his
independence and his contempt.

"Still, citizen Heron," retorted Chauvelin with unruffled patience, "it
is the best advice that you are likely to get in the present emergency.
You have eyes to see, have you not? Look on your prisoner at this
moment. Unless something is done, and at once, too, he will be past
negotiating with in the next twenty-four hours; then what will follow?"

He put his thin hand once more on his colleague's grubby coat-sleeve,
he drew him closer to himself away from the vicinity of that huddled
figure, that captive lion, wrapped in a torpid somnolence that looked
already so like the last long sleep.

"What will follow, citizen Heron?" he reiterated, sinking his voice to
a whisper; "sooner or later some meddlesome busybody who sits in the
Assembly of the Convention will get wind that little Capet is no longer
in the Temple prison, that a pauper child was substituted for him, and
that you, citizen Heron, together with the commissaries in charge,
have thus been fooling the nation and its representatives for over a
fortnight. What will follow then, think you?"

And he made an expressive gesture with his outstretched fingers across
his throat.

Heron found no other answer but blasphemy.

"I'll make that cursed Englishman speak yet," he said with a fierce
oath.

"You cannot," retorted Chauvelin decisively. "In his present state he is
incapable of it, even if he would, which also is doubtful."

"Ah! then you do think that he still means to cheat us?"

"Yes, I do. But I also know that he is no longer in a physical state
to do it. No doubt he thinks that he is. A man of that type is sure to
overvalue his own strength; but look at him, citizen Heron. Surely you
must see that we have nothing to fear from him now."

Heron now was like a voracious creature that has two victims lying ready
for his gluttonous jaws. He was loath to let either of them go. He hated
the very thought of seeing the