anyway, had I only judged by appearances I would have avoided you like the plague, like I avoid that dirty crowd of assassins...."
"But you were there yourself, Monsieur le Baron," the Professor observed.
"I went out of curiosity, my friend, as you did and as a number of respectable-looking people did also. I sized up those respectable people very quickly. I had no use for them. They were just the sort of nincompoops whom Danton's oratory soon turns into potential regicides. But I accosted you that evening because I saw that you were different."
"Why different?"
"Your cultured speech and the cleanliness of your collar."
"You flatter me, sir."
"We talked of many things at first, if you remember. We touched on philosophy and on the poets, on English rhetoric and Italian art: and I went home that night convinced that I had met a kindred spirit, whom I hoped to meet again. When you entered this place an hour ago, and honoured me by allowing me to sit at your table, I felt that Chance had been benign to me."
"Again you flatter me, sir."
The room in the meanwhile had soon become deserted. There remained only de Batz and the Professor at one table, and in the farther corner a group of three men, two of whom were playing dominoes and the third reading a newspaper. De Batz's restless eyes took a quick survey of the room, then he leaned over the table and fixed his gaze on the other's placid face.
"I propose to flatter you still more, my friend," he said, sinking his voice to a whisper. "Nay! I may say to honour you...."
"Indeed?"
"By asking you to help me...."
"To do what?"
"To save the King."
"A heavy task, sir."
"But not impossible. Listen. I have five hundred friends who will be posted to-morrow in different houses along the route between the Temple and the Place de la Révolution. At a signal from me, they will rush the carriage in which only His Majesty and his confessor will be sitting, they will drag the King out of it, and in the mêlée smuggle him into a house close by, all the inhabitants of which are in my pay. You are silent, sir?" de Batz went on, his thick guttural voice hoarse with emotion. "Of what are you thinking?" he added impatiently, seeing that the other remained impassive, almost motionless.
"Of General Santerre," the Professor replied, "and his eighty thousand armed men. Are they also in your pay?"
"Eighty thousand?" de Batz rejoined with a sneer: "Bah!"
"Do you doubt the figure?"
"No! I do not. I know all about Santerre and his eighty thousand armed men, his bristling cannon that are already being set up on the Place de la Révolution, and his cannoneers who will stand by with match burning. But you must take surprise into consideration. The unexpected. The sudden panic. The men off their guard. As a matter of fact I could tell you of things that occurred before my very eyes when that daredevil Englishman whom they call the Scarlet Pimpernel snatched condemned prisoners from the very tumbrils that took them to execution. Surely you know about that?"
"I do," the Professor put in quietly, "but I don't suppose that those tumbrils were escorted by eighty thousand armed men. There is such a thing in this world as the impossible, you know, Monsieur le Baron: things that are beyond man's power to effect."
"Then you won't help me?"
"You have not yet told me what you want me to do."
"I am not going to ask you to risk your life," de Batz said, trying to keep the suspicion of a sneer out of his tone. "There are five hundred of us for that, and one more or less wouldn't make any difference to our chance of success. But there is one little matter in which you could render our cause a signal service, and incidentally help to save His Majesty the King."
"What may that be, sir?"
A pause, after which Batz resumed with seeming irrelevance:
"There is an Irish priest, the Abbé Edgeworth, you have met him perhaps?"
"Yes! I know him."
"He is known by renown to the King. The Convention, as perhaps you are aware, has acceded to His Majesty's desire for a confessor, but those inhuman brutes have made it a condition that that confessor shall be of their own choosing. We know what that means. Some apostate priest whose presence would distress and perhaps unnerve His Majesty when he will have need of all his courage. You agree with me?"
"Of course."
"Equally, of course, we want someone to be by the side of His Majesty during that harrowing drive from the Temple, and to prepare and encourage him for the coup which we are contemplating.
"The Abbé Edgeworth is the man we want for this mission. His loyalty is unquestioned, so is his courage. Cléry, the King's devoted valet, has tried to get in touch with him, and so have His Majesty's advocates, but they failed to find him. He is hiding somewhere in Paris, that we know. Until fairly recently he was a lecturer at the Sorbonne. I understand that you too, Monsieur le Professeur, have graced that seat of learning. Anyway, I thought that you might make enquiries in that direction. If you succeed," de Batz concluded, his voice thick with excitement, "you will have done your share in saving our King."
There was a moment's pause while de Batz, taking out his handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his moist hands and his forehead which was streaming with perspiration. Seeing that the Professor still sat silent and impassive he said, with obvious impatience:
"Surely you are not hesitating, Monsieur le Professeur! A little thing like that! And for such a cause! I would scour Paris myself, only that my hands are full. And my five hundred adherents —— "
"You should apply to one of them, Monsieur le Baron," the other broke in quietly.
Monsieur le Baron gave a jump.
"You don't mean to say that you hesitate?" he uttered in a hoarse whisper.
"I do more than that, Monsieur le Baron. I refuse."
"Refuse? ... ref —— "
De Batz was choking. His passed his thick finger round the edge of his cravat.
"Refuse what?" he queried, trying to speak calmly.
"To lend a hand in dragging the Abbé Edgeworth into this affair."
De Batz was striving to control his temper: under his breath he muttered the words "Poltroon! Coward!" once or twice. Aloud he said:
"You are afraid?"
"I am a man of peace," the Professor replied.
"I don't believe it," de Batz protested. "No man with decent feeling in him would refuse to render this service. Good God, man! you are not risking your life, not like I and my friends are willing to do. You can help us, I know. You must have a reason — a valid reason — for refusing to do so. As I say, you wouldn't be risking your life —— "
"Not mine, but that of an innocent and a good man."
"What
