his own
escape from the Tuileries when all was seen to be lost and when the
Swiss, having burnt their last cartridge, were submitting to wholesale
massacre at the hands of the indescribably furious mob.

"Oh, it was all most ill done," he ended critically. "We were timid when
we should have been resolute, and resolute at last when it was too late.
That is the history of our side from the beginning of this accursed
struggle. We have lacked proper leadership throughout, and now--as I have
said already--there is an end to us. It but remains to escape, as soon as
we can discover how the thing is to be accomplished."

Madame told him of the hopes that she had centred upon Rougane.

It lifted him out of his gloom. He was disposed to be optimistic.

"You are wrong to have abandoned that hope," he assured her. "If this
mayor is so well disposed, he certainly can do as his son promised. But
last night it would have been too late for him to have reached you, and
to-day, assuming that he had come to Paris, almost impossible for him
to win across the streets from the other side. It is most likely that he
will yet come. I pray that he may; for the knowledge that you and Mlle.
de Kercadiou are out of this would comfort me above all."

"We should take you with us," said madame.

"Ah! But how?"

"Young Rougane was to bring me permits for three persons--Aline, myself,
and my footman, Jacques. You would take the place of Jacques."

"Faith, to get out of Paris, madame, there is no man whose place I would
not take." And he laughed.

Their spirits rose with his and their flagging hopes revived. But as
dusk descended again upon the city, without any sign of the deliverer
they awaited, those hopes began to ebb once more.

M. de La Tour d'Azyr at last pleaded weariness, and begged to be
permitted to withdraw that he might endeavour to take some rest against
whatever might have to be faced in the immediate future. When he had
gone, madame persuaded Aline to go and lie down.

"I will call you, my dear, the moment he arrives," she said, bravely
maintaining that pretence of a confidence that had by now entirely
evaporated.

Aline kissed her affectionately, and departed, outwardly so calm and
unperturbed as to leave the Countess wondering whether she realized the
peril by which they were surrounded, a peril infinitely increased by the
presence in that house of a man so widely known and detested as M. de La
Tour d'Azyr, a man who was p