"Messieurs, he lent his countenance to me, as ever to the unfortunate."

The answer raised a roar of approbation.

"Comme il est fin! take thy goose-skin! and yet we must tax thee somehow."

"Let us destroy this show that he has profaned!" My heart seemed to shrink into itself. I suffered -I suffered; but fortunately for a few moments only.

With the words on his lips, the fellow that had spoken slashed with his sabre, over the kneeling showman's head, amongst the staring effigies. The whistle of his weapon made me blink. What did it matter?-the end must come now.

It was not as I foresaw. The waxen head spun into the air-the figure toppled against that standing next to it-that against its neighbour-its neighbour against me. I saw what was my cue, and went down in my turn, stiffly, with a dusty flop, twisting to my side as I fell, and hoping that he whom I was bowling over in due order was rich in padding. Nevertheless I was horribly bruised. There was a howl of laughter.

"Mor Dieu! but five at a blow!" cried the executioner. "This is better than the one to fifty yonder!" and he came running to read the names of those he had overturned.

"Necker! it is right that he should be pictured fallen. Pitt-Beaumarchais! ha, ha, little toad! where are those patriot muskets? in your breechespocket? but I will cut them out!"

Now I gave up all for lost. He stepped back to get his distance there came a crash by the stairway, and the room was plunged in darkness. One of the mob had swung up his weapon over a figure, and had knocked out the lantern with a backhanded blow.

It is the little incidents of life that are prolific as insects. The situation resolved itself into clamour and laughter and a boisterous groping of the company down the black stairway. In a minute the place was silent and deserted.

I lay still, as yet awaiting developments. I could not forget that M. Tic-tac, as a pronounced patriot, might not honour my confidence. For my escape, it must have been as I supposed. Another victim, eluding the murderers, had drawn them off my scent, and the showman had effected yet a second cross-current. He was indeed fortunate to have kept a whole skin.

Presently I heard him softly stirring and moaning to himself.

"Misérable! to have dishonoured my rôle ! Would he have succumbed thus to an accident? But I am like him-yes, I am like him, for all they may say."

Their mockery was the wormwood in his cup. He dragged himself to his feet by-and-by, and felt his way across the room to recover his abused idol. Then I would delay no longer. I rose, stepped rapidly to the stair-head, and descended to the street. He heard me as I knew by the terrified

cessation of his breathing, and thought me, perhaps, a laggard member of his late company. Anyhow he neither moved nor spoke.

The killers were at their work again. The agonised yells of the victims followed and maddened me. But I was secure from further pursuit,

save by the dogs of conscious helplessness.

And one of these kept barking at my heel: "Carinne, that you were impotent to defend! What has become of the child?"

24

CHAPTER II.

CITOYENNE CARINNE.

It was my unhappiness in the black spring-time of the "Terror" to see my old light acquaintance, the Abbé Michau, jogging on his way to the Place de la Bastille. I pitied him greatly. He had pursued Pleasure so fruitlessly all his days; and into this fatal quagmire had the elusive flame at length conducted him. He sat on the rail of the tumbril-a depressed, puzzled look on his facebetween innocence and depravity. Both were going the same road as himself—the harmless white girl and the besotted priest, who shrunk in terror from giving her the absolution she asked; — and poor Charles divided them.

He was not ever of Fortune's favourites. He would make too fine an art of Epicurism, and he sinned so by rule as to be almost virtuous. I remember him with a half-dozen little axioms of his own concocting, that were after all only morality misapplied: "To know how to forget oneself is to be graduate in the school of pleasure." "Self

consciousness is always a wasp in the peach." "The art of enjoyment is the art of selection." On such as these he founded his creed of conduct; and that procured him nothing but a barren series of disappointments. He was never successful but in extricating himself from mishaps. The ravissantes he sighed after played with and insulted him -though they could never debase his spirit. The dishes he designed lacked the last little secret of perfection. He abhorred untidiness, yet it was a condition of his existence; and he could not carry off any situation without looking like a thief. further turn of the wheel, and he would have been a saint in a monastery.

It

I can recall him with some tenderness, and his confident maxims with amusement. That "art of selection" of his I found never so applicable as to the choice of one's Revolutionary landlord. was Michau's logeur, I understand, who caused the poor Abbé to be arrested and brought before the tribunal miscalled of Liberty, where the advocacy of the chivalrous Chauveau de la Garde was sufficient only to procure him the last grace of an unproductive appeal. It was the atrocity with whom latterly I lodged who brought me to my final pass.

In truth, as the letters of apartments were largely recruited from the valetaille of émigrés, the need of caution in choosing amongst them was very real. M. le Marquis could not take flight in a panic without scattering some of his fine