Part 3 (1/2)
”Why not?”
Scarce were those two little words out of St Just's mouth than he repented of them He bit his lip, and with a dark frown upon his face he turned almost defiantly towards his friend
But de Batz smiled with easy bonhomie
”Ah, friend Armand,” he said, ”you were not cut out for diploue So then,” he added allant hero, the Scarlet Pi from the clutches of Simon the cobbler and of the herd of hyenas on the watch for his attenuated little corpse, eh?”
”I did not say that,” retorted St Just sullenly
”No But I say it Nay! nay! do not bla friend Could I, or any one else, doubt for a moment that sooner or later your roht in the whole of Europe--the child-martyr in the Temple prison?
The wonder were to ether for the sake of his subjects No, no; do not think for a moment that you have betrayed your friend's secret to uessed at once that you were here under the banner of the enig, I even went a step further in my conjecture The Scarlet Pi Louis XVII from the Temple prison”
”If that is so, you must not only rejoice but should be able to help”
”And yet, my friend, I do neither the one now nor mean to do the other in the future,” said de Batz placidly ”I happen to be a Frenchman, you see”
”What has that to do with such a question?”
”Everything; though you, Arh ood St Just; he must owe his freedom and his life to us Frenchmen, and to no one else”
”That is sheer madness, man,” retorted Armand ”Would you have the child perish for the sake of your own selfish ideas?”
”You may call them selfish if you will; all patriotism is in a measure selfish What does the rest of the world care if we are a republic or a archy or hopeless anarchy? We work for ourselves and to please ourselves, and I for one will not brook foreign interference”
”Yet you ith foreign et e for the escape of Louis XVII is King of France,the honour and glory of having saved our King”
For the third tiazing wide-eyed, alh ferocious selfishness and vanity De Batz, s at his young friend with perfect contentment expressed in every line of his pock-marked face and in the very attitude of his well-fed body It was easy enough now to understand the re, despite the many foolhardy plots which he hatched, and which had up to now invariably co, he had taken but one good care, and that was of his own skin Unlike other less fortunate Royalists of France, he neither fought in the country nor braved dangers in town He played a safer gaent of Austria; he succeeded in gaining the Eood of the Royalist cause, and for his own most especial benefit
Even a less astute uessed that de Batz' desire to be the only instrument in the rescue of the poor little Dauphin froreed Obviously there was a rich reaiting for hiht Louis XVII safely into Austrian territory; that reward he would lishle he risked the life of the child-King or not et the reward, and whose welfare and prosperity mattered more than the most precious life in Europe
CHAPTER III THE DEMON CHANCE
St Just would have given s now Too late did he realise hoise had been the dictu friendshi+ps in France
Men had changed with the tied! Personal safety had becooal so difficult to attain that it had to be fought for and striven for, even at the expense of humanity and of self-respect
Selfishness--the mere, cold-blooded insistence for self-advancenit to right and left to still the areed of innumerable spies
What was left over he used for the purpose of pitting the bloodthirsty de of the National asseantic bear-den, wherein wild beasts could rend one another limb from limb
In the meanwhile, what cared he--he said it himself--whether hundreds of innocent martyrs perished miserably and uselessly? They were the necessary food whereby the Revolution was to be satiated and de Batz'