Part 50 (2/2)

”One, two, three tumbrils! The guillotine was hungry this morning.

Raymond Latour was in the last tumbril.

”I was promised life--I told all I knew--there is a mistake. Ask! Let me wait until to-morrow--for G.o.d's sake let me wait until to-morrow!”

Latour looked at the frightened wretch who was literally thrown into the tumbril after him, but the expression on his face did not change; he did not speak.

The man continued to cry out until the tumbrils started, then with a wail of despair he fell on his knees, shaking in every limb, chattering to himself, whether oaths or prayers who shall say?

The tumbrils moved forward slowly.

The wretch upon his knees seemed to realize suddenly that he was not alone. He looked up into the face of the man beside him. Then rose slowly and touched him.

”Latour.”

There was no answer, no turning of the head even.

”Latour. So this is how we meet at last.”

There were crowds in the streets, yelling crowds. He spoke clearly so that the man might hear him, but there was no answer.

”Raymond Latour--Latour--this is how we meet, both d.a.m.ned and betrayed for the sake of a woman.”

No words answered him, but Latour turned and looked full into the eyes of Lucien Bruslart.

The tumbrils went forward slowly, a yelling mob on every side.

”Lucien! Lucien! Look at me!”

It was a woman's cry, shrill, sounding above the uproar.

Shaking with fear, yet perhaps with a glimmer of hope still in his heart, Bruslart looked. There was a woman held high above the crowd, supported and steadied by strong men's arms.

”I said you should see me laugh. Look, Lucien! I laugh at you.”

”It is a mistake. Save me, Pauline, save me!”

”I laugh, Lucien,” and a shriek of laughter, mad, riotous, fiendish, cut like a sharp knife through all that yelling confusion.

With a cry of rage, despair, and terror, Bruslart sank trembling in a heap to the floor of the tumbril. Latour did not move. He had not turned to look at Pauline Vaison. The thought of another woman was in his soul.

Was she safe?

There was a pause, the crowd was so dense at this corner; then the tumbril moved on again. The corner was turned. Straight before him looked Raymond Latour, over the mult.i.tude of heads, over the waving arms and red caps, straight before him across the Place de la Revolution to the guillotine, to the blue sky, sunlit, against which it rose--and beyond.

EPILOGUE

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