Part 34 (2/2)
”Pardon, my dear brother-in-law, my not yet having pressed your hand, you whose hospitality I shall share for a few hours,” spoke up Hubert, stepping to meet the lawyer; ”but it was so long since I saw my sister, that my first movement was to run to her, and--”
”Citizen Hubert,” broke in the attorney, pale and trembling between rage and fear, ”the house of a Mountainist of the Convention shall not serve as the refuge of traitors.”
”Good G.o.d!” Madam Desmarais murmured, clasping her hands in fright.
”What, brother-in-law, I ask you for shelter for a few hours, you, my relative, you, erstwhile my friend, and you dare drive me from your door?”
”Citizen Hubert, the enemies of the Republic are my enemies; I shall treat them as political enemies when they fall into my hands. Out you go!”
”Such greetings from you!” stammered Hubert, dazed.
”Brother,” cried Madam Desmarais, ”do not believe what my husband says!
He is incapable of committing such an act of infamy. It was only a few moments ago that he was cursing the excesses of the Revolution.”
”Wretch!” shrieked Desmarais, seizing his wife by the wrist. ”Will you hold your peace!” Then, turning to his brother-in-law, ”Citizen Hubert, if you do not leave this building on the instant, I shall send for the patrol of the Section, and have you arrested.”
”Ah!” cried Hubert with indignation. ”I come to ask a relative for a few hours' refuge, and the coward, for fear of being compromised, wishes to send me to the scaffold!”
As Hubert p.r.o.nounced these last words, Gertrude rapped at the door and called in a quaking voice:
”Open, open! The commissioner of the Section, in his scarf of office, is here with the mounted police. He is coming upstairs.”
Hubert drew from his coat pockets a brace of double-barreled pistols, c.o.c.ked them, and said in a low voice:
”I shall sell my life dear; but, by the thousand G.o.ds! my first bullet will be for you, my coward and traitor brother-in-law!”
Advocate Desmarais leaped to the door and drew back the bolt. His wife, struck with a sudden inspiration, and displaying, in the terror which seized her, an unwonted strength, dragged her brother into her bed-chamber, which opened on the parlor, slammed the door after her, and shot the bolt into its socket.
CHAPTER XII.
HOWLING WITH THE WOLVES.
While Hubert was thus perforce following his sister to safety, Desmarais did not notice his brother-in-law's disappearance; for the lawyer, at the moment, was leaving the parlor to meet the commissioner. Contrary to his expectations, he did not find the officer in the ante-room, and was compelled to go as far as the stair-landing, where he encountered him and accompanied him back to the parlor.
The commissioner was a man of cold and rigid physiognomy; in his suite were some gendarmes of the Republic, and several police agents. Bowing to the commissioner, the advocate said:
”Citizen, if I had a son a traitor to the nation, I would myself give him up to the public powers. I would follow the example of Brutus the Roman.” Then stopping short and casting about him looks of stupefaction, he added: ”But where has my brother-in-law gone to?”
”That is for me to ask you, Citizen Representative of the people,”
rejoined the commissioner. ”This disappearance is strange!”
”I commence to see! My wife has let out her brother by her bed-chamber; the rear staircase descends to the court, and from the court the rascal will gain the garden!”
The advocate flung himself against the bedroom door, and beating upon it with both fists, cried breathlessly, ”G.o.d be praised, the traitor will not escape us!”
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