l Guard. This formidable triumvirate were
assembled to debate on the proceedings of the next day; and the three
sister-witches over their hellish caldron were scarcely animated by a
more fiend-like spirit, or engaged in more execrable designs, than these
three heroes of the Revolution in their premeditated massacre of the
morrow.

Dumas was but little altered in appearance since, in the earlier part of
this narrative, he was presented to the reader, except that his manner
was somewhat more short and severe, and his eye yet more restless. But
he seemed almost a superior being by the side of his associates. Rene
Dumas, born of respectable parents, and well educated, despite his
ferocity, was not without a certain refinement, which perhaps rendered
him the more acceptable to the precise and formal Robespierre. (Dumas
was a beau in his way. His gala-dress was a BLOOD-RED COAT, with the
finest ruffles.) But Henriot had been a lackey, a thief, a spy of the
police; he had drunk the blood of Madame de Lamballe, and had risen
to his present rank for no quality but his ruffianism; and
Fouquier-Tinville, the son of a provincial agriculturist, and afterwards
a clerk at the Bureau of the Police, was little less base in his
manners, and yet more, from a certain loathsome buffoonery, revolting
in his speech,--bull-headed, with black, sleek hair, with a narrow and
livid forehead, with small eyes, that twinkled with a sinister malice;
strongly and coarsely built, he looked what he was, the audacious bully
of a lawless and relentless Bar.

Dumas trimmed the candles, and bent over the list of the victims for the
morrow.

"It is a long catalogue," said the president; "eighty trials for
one day! And Robespierre's orders to despatch the whole fournee are
unequivocal."

"Pooh!" said Fouquier, with a coarse, loud laugh; "we must try them en
masse. I know how to deal with our jury. 'Je pense, citoyens, que vous
etes convaincus du crime des accuses?' (I think, citizens, that you are
convinced of the crime of the accused.) Ha! ha!--the longer the list,
the shorter the work."

"Oh, yes," growled out Henriot, with an oath,--as usual, half-drunk,
and lolling on his chair, with his spurred heels on the table,--"little
Tinville is the man for despatch."

"Citizen Henriot," said Dumas, gravely, "permit me to request thee
to select another footstool; and for the rest, let me warn thee that
to-morrow is a critical and important day; one that will