aristocrats," said the other; "she
gives them nothing but their keep till she pays for their
shaving--once for all. She gave one of these dogs a few rags to dress
a wound on his back with, and he made a rope of his dressings, and let
himself down from the window. We will have no more such games. You may
be training the beast to spit poison at good citizens. Throw it down
and kill it."

Monsieur the Viscount made no reply. His hands had moved towards his
breast, against which he was holding his golden-eyed friend. There are
times in life when the brute creation contrasts favourably with the
lords thereof, and this was one of them. It was hard to part just now.

Antoine, who had been internally cursing his own folly in bringing
such a companion into the cell, now interfered. "If you are going to
stay here to be bitten or spit at, Francois, my friend," said he, "I
am not. Thou art zealous, my comrade, but dull as an owl. The Republic
is far-sighted in her wisdom beyond thy coarse ideas, and has more
ways of taking their heads from these aristocrats than one. Dost thou
not see?" And he tapped his forehead significantly, and looked at the
prisoner; and so, between talking and pushing, got his sulky companion
out of the cell, and locked the door after them.

"And so, my friend--my friend!" said Monsieur the Viscount, tenderly,
"we are safe once more; but it will not be for long, my Crapaud.
Something tells me that I cannot much longer be overlooked. A little
while, and I shall be gone; and thou wilt have, perchance, another
master, when I am summoned before mine."

Monsieur the Viscount's misgivings were just. Francois, on whose
stupidity Antoine had relied, was (as is not uncommon with people
stupid in other respects) just clever enough to be mischievous.
Antoine's evident alarm made him suspicious, and he began to talk
about the too-elegant-looking young lawyer who was imprisoned "in
secret," and permitted by the gaoler to keep venomous beasts. Antoine
was examined and committed to one of his own cells, and Monsieur the
Viscount was summoned before the revolutionary tribunal.

There was little need even for the scanty inquiry that in those days
preceded sentence. In every line of his beautiful face, marred as it
was by sickness and suffering--in the unconquerable dignity, which
dirt and raggedness were powerless to hide, the fatal nobility of his
birth and breeding were betrayed. When he returned to the ante-room,
he