ce, but hardly so well with him
who, as Public Prosecutor in Paris, had brought some hundreds of heads
to the sawdust. "I have been desiring to congratulate you upon your
victory of yesterday," he continued, "even as I have been congratulating
myself upon the fact that it was I who found you and gave you to the
Nation. I feared that I might not see you ere I left."

"You are leaving Paris?" asked La Boulaye, without heeding the
compliments in the earlier part of the other's speech.

"For a few days. Business of the Nation, my friend. But you--let us talk
of you. Do you know that I am proud of you, cher Caron? Your eloquence
turned Danton green with jealousy, and as for poor Vergniaud, it
extinguished him utterly. Ma foi! If you continue as you have begun,
the day may not be far distant when you will become the patron and I the
Protege." And his weak eyes beamed pleasantly from out of that unhealthy
pale face.

Outwardly he had changed little since his first coming to Paris, to
represent the Third Estate of Artoise, saving, his cheeks were grown
more hollow. Upon his dress he still bestowed the same unpretentious
care that had always characterised it, which, in one of the most
prominent patriots of the Mountain, amounted almost to foppishness. Blue
coat, white waistcoat, silk hose and shoes buckled with silver, gave him
an elegant exterior that must have earned him many a covert sneer
from his colleagues. His sloping forehead was crowned by a periwig,
sedulously curled and powdered--for all that with the noblesse this was
already a discarded fashion.

La Boulaye replied to his patron's compliments with the best grace he
could command considering how full of another matter was his mind.

"I may congratulate myself, Maximilien," he added, "upon my good fortune
in coming before you took your departure. I have a request to prefer, a
favour to ask."

"Tut! Who talks of favours? Not you, Caron, I hope. You have but to name
what you desire, and so that it lies within my power to accord it, the
thing is yours."

"There is a prisoner in the Luxembourg in whom I am interested. I seek
his enlargement."

"But is that all?" cried the little man, and, without more ado, he
turned to his writing-table and drew a printed form from among the chaos
of documents. "His name?" he asked indifferently, as he dipped his quill
in the ink-horn and scratched his signature at the foot of it.

"An aristocrat," said Caron, with some slight