ed with a pastoral
group after Boucher. Julie was ready for anything to save her lover.

Renaudin had his way,--rapidly and brutally. When she got up,
readjusting the _citoyenne's_ pretty frock, she met the man's cruel
mocking eye; instantly she knew she had made her sacrifice in vain.

"You promised me my brother's freedom," she said.

He chuckled.

"I told you, _citoyenne_, we would do what was necessary,--that is to
say, we should apply the law, neither more nor less. I told you to have
no anxiety,--and why should you be anxious? The Revolutionary Tribunal
is always just."

She thought of throwing herself upon the man, biting him, tearing out
his eyes. But, realizing she would only be consummating Fortune
Chassagne's ruin, she rushed from the house, and fled to her garret to
take off Elodie's soiled and desecrated frock. All night she lay,
screaming with grief and rage.

Next day, on returning to the Luxembourg, she found the gardens occupied
by gendarmes, who were turning out the women and children. Sentinels
were posted in the avenues to prevent the passers-by from communicating
with the prisoners. The young mother, who used to come every day,
carrying her child in her arms, told Julie that there was talk of
plotting in the prisons and that the women were blamed for gathering in
the gardens in order to rouse the people's pity in favour of aristocrats
and traitors.

XXII

A mountain has suddenly sprung up in the garden of the Tuileries. Under
a cloudless sky, Maximilien heads the procession of his colleagues in a
blue coat and yellow breeches, carrying in his hand a bouquet of
wheatears, cornflowers and poppies. He ascends the mountain and
proclaims the God of Jean-Jacques to the Republic, which hears and
weeps. Oh purity! oh sweetness! oh faith! oh antique simplicity! oh
tears of pity! oh fertilizing dew! oh clemency! oh human fraternity!

In vain Atheism still lifts its hideous face; Maximilien grasps a torch;
flames devour the monster and Wisdom appears, with one hand pointing to
the sky, in the other holding a crown of stars.

On the platform raised against the facade of the Tuileries, Evariste,
standing amid a throng of deeply-stirred spectators, sheds tears of joy
and renders thanks to God. An era of universal felicity opens before his
eyes.

He sighs:

"At last we shall be happy, pure, innocent, if the scoundrels suffer
it."

Alas! the scoundrels have not suffered it. There must be m