volutionary Tribunal, which
acquitting the Friend of the People had given back to the Convention
the most zealous and most immaculate of its legislators. Again his eyes
could see the head racked with fever, garlanded with the civic crown,
the features instinct with virtuous pride and pitiless love, the worn,
ravaged, powerful face, the close-pressed lips, the broad chest, the
strong man dying by inches who, raised aloft in the living chariot of
his triumph, seemed to exhort his fellow-citizens: "Be ye like
me,--patriots to the death!"

The street was empty, darkening with the shadows of approaching night;
the lamplighter went by with his cresset, and Gamelin muttered to
himself:

"Yes, to the death!"

V

By nine in the morning Evariste reached the gardens of the Luxembourg,
to find Elodie already there seated on a bench waiting for him.

It was a month ago they had exchanged their vows and since then they had
seen each other every day, either at the _Amour peintre_ or at the
studio in the Place de Thionville. Their meetings had been very tender,
but at the same time characterized by a certain reserve that checked
their expansiveness,--a reserve due to the staid and virtuous temper of
the lover, a theist and a good citizen, who, while ready to make his
beloved mistress his own before the law or with God alone for witness
according as circumstances demanded, would do nothing save publicly and
in the light of day. Elodie knew the resolution to be right and
honourable; but, despairing of a marriage that seemed impossible from
every point of view and loath to outrage the prejudices of society, she
contemplated in her inmost heart a liaison that could be kept a secret
till the lapse of time gave it sanction. She hoped one day to overcome
the scruples of a lover she could have wished less scrupulous, and
meantime, unwilling to postpone some necessary confidences as to the
past, she had asked him to meet her for a lover's talk in a lonely
corner of the gardens near the Carthusian Priory.

She threw him a tender look, took his hand frankly, invited him to share
the bench and speaking slowly and thoughtfully:

"I esteem you too well, Evariste, to hide anything from you. I believe
myself worthy of you; I should not be so were I not to tell you
everything. Hear me and be my judge. I have no act to reproach myself
with that is degrading or base, or even merely selfish. I have only been
weak and credulous.... Do not