times will
in moments of great stress, "that a good action brings its own reward.
Perhaps my action is not a good one, after all, and that is why I
suffer."

And, burying his head in his arms, he remained thus with his sorrow
until his official entered to inquire if he desired lights.

CHAPTER XVIII. THE INCORRUPTIBLE

It was towards noon of the following day when Caron La Boulaye presented
himself at the house of Duplay, the cabinet-maker in the Rue St. Honore,
and asked of the elderly female who admitted him if he might see the
Citizen-deputy Robespierre.

A berline stood at the door, the postillion at the horses' heads, and
about it there was some bustle, as if in preparation of a departure. But
La Boulaye paid no heed to it as he entered the house.

He was immediately conducted upstairs to the Incorruptible's
apartment--for he was too well known to so much as need announcing. In
answer to the woman's knock a gentle, almost plaintive voice from within
bade them enter, and thus was Caron ushered into the humble dwelling
of the humble and ineffective-looking individual whose power already
transcended that of any other man in France, and who was destined to
become still more before his ephemeral star went out.

Into that unpretentious and rather close-smelling room--for it was
bed-chamber as well as dining-room and study--stepped La Boulaye
unhesitatingly, with the air of a man who is intimate with his
surroundings and assured of his welcome in them. In the right-hand
corner stood the bed on which the clothes were still tumbled; in the
centre of the chamber was a table all littered with the disorder of
a meal partaken; on the left, by the window, sat Robespierre at his
writing-table, and from the overmantel at the back of the room a marble
counterpart of Robespierre's own head and shoulders looked down upon the
newcomer. There were a few pictures on the whitewashed walls, and a few
objects of art about the chamber, but in the main it had a comfortless
air, which may in part have resulted from the fact that no fire had been
lighted.

The great man tossed aside his pen, and rose as the door closed after
the entering visitor. Pushing his horn-rimmed spectacles up on to his
forehead he stretched out his hand to La Boulaye.

"It is you, Caron," he murmured in that plaintive voice of his. It was a
voice that sorted well with the humane man who had resigned a judgeship
at Arras sooner than pass a death-senten