was about to be released by
Jourdan, your voice alone called for his condemnation. I saw him
die, butchered before my eyes. This is why I struck you.

LOUIS RENE DE COURVAL.

"That will do," said Schmidt. "He shall have it to-night. You will have
a week to spend with Du Vallon. No prudent man would meet you in the
condition in which you left him."

"I suppose not. I can wait. I have waited long. I regret the delay
chiefly because in this city everything is known and talked about, and
before we can end the matter it will be heard of here."

"Very probably; but no one will speak of it before your mother, and you
may be sure that these good people will ask no questions, and only
wonder and not realize what must come out of it."

"Perhaps, perhaps." He was not so sure and wished to end it at once.

It had been in his power to have made the social life of the better
republicans impossible for his father's murderer; but this might have
driven Carteaux away and was not what he desired. The constant thought
of his mother had kept him as undecided as Hamlet, but now a sudden
burst of anger had opened the way to what he longed for. He was glad.

When, that night, Jean Carteaux sat up in bed and read by dim
candlelight De Courval's letter, he, too, saw again the great hall at
Avignon and recalled the blood madness. His Jacobin alliances had closed
to him in Philadelphia the houses of the English party and the
Federalists, and in the society he frequented, at the official dinners
of the cabinet officers, he had never seen De Courval, nor, indeed,
heard of him, or, if at all casually, without his title and as one of
the many _emigres_ nobles with whom he had no social acquaintance. It
was the resurrection of a ghost of revenge. He had helped to send to the
guillotine others as innocent as Jean de Courval, and then, at last, not
without fear of his own fate, had welcomed the appointment of
commissioner to San Domingo and, on his return to France, had secured
the place of secretary to Genet's legation. The mockery of French
sentiment in the clubs of the American cities, the cockades, and red
bonnets, amused him. It recoiled from personal violence, and saying wild
things, did nothing of serious moment. The good sense and the trust of
the great mass of the people throughout the country in one man promised
little of value to France, as Carteaux saw full well when the recall of
Genet