et-Not leaped and cowered behind his bar,
imploring Robespierre for a sign. The Dictator nodded to yield. But
again was there not the very slightest motion of hand past neck, the
eyes side-glancing at the Thunderer?

Danton stilled the tempest as Chief Judge Forget-Not wrote the
reprieve and the other affrighted Judges confirmed it.

... Outside, the tumbrils were already on their way to the
guillotine. Henrietta and de Vaudrey were approaching the gates of
death....

CHAPTER XXVI

REPRIEVE OR AGONY

The man Forget-not, directly the paper was signed, rushed past the
speaker and out of the hall into the lobbies. He was followed
presently by the Court's messenger. There was here some trickery or
other that Danton sensed.

He could not stop the Chief Judge leaving, but he pounced on the
messenger and yanked the reprieve out of his hand. "I will deliver
it!" said Danton. The people applauded the act. Everyone knew that he
dared greatly.

Quick as he had been, Jacques-Forget-Not had already given his
orders.

"Stop Danton if you can!" had been Jacques' word to the outer guard.
To his inspectors of defences, he had said: "The barriers to the
guillotine--close them!" He ran forth to see that the orders were
obeyed. None of Robespierre's party wanted to see Danton achieve his
errand of mercy--least of all, the vengeful Jacques-Forget-Not!....

The pock-marked Thunderer wasn't stopped beyond the door. His giant
strength threw off the minions who would have blocked him. He hastened
to the yard where his beloved troopers were quartered.

* * * * *

Henriette and Maurice's route lay past an obscene and sacrilegious
rite.

Mocking at religion, the more fanatical had thrown off every vestige
of decency and indulged in Bacchanalian worship of a so-called
"Goddess of Reason." This was a lewd female from the Paris half-world,
flower-chapleted, flimsily draped, prancing in drunken frenzy atop a
table surrounded by her "worshippers."

The Feast of Reason included hundreds of revelers grouped around the
open-air tables for the "supper of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,"
and between long lines of these they were obliged to pass.

"Drink a toast to the Goddess!" cried the revelers, offering the
winecup to the victims.

"Curses on them!" said others. "Death is too good for vile aristocrats."

"Tra-la-la-la!" sang drunken wenches, "La Guillotine will soon hold ye
in her