cried he, in terror: "two
commissaries have brought the news to Bailly that the king was about to
fly to De Bouilly's camp; and all the horses at Versailles were ready
for the start. Two hundred mounted royalists were in the Cour when
the commissaries arrived." I could tell you of other and more striking
scenes than this,' said De Noe; 'some are yet unaccomplished; but I
believe in them as I believe in my own existence.'

Gerald sat without uttering a word for some time. At last he said, 'You
have given me a great curiosity to see your priestess, if I could but do
so unobserved.'

'Nothing is easier. Come early to-morrow evening; and I will take care,
after your presentation to the hostess, to secrete you where none will
remark you.'

'I agree, then, and will ask you to come and fetch me at the proper
hour.'

'Remember, Gerald, that in your dress you must adopt the mode of the
Jacobins.'

'Marat himself could not be more accurate in costume than you will find
me,' said Gerald, as he squeezed his friend's hand to say adieu.

CHAPTER V. A RECEPTION AT MADAME ROLAND'S

If it be matter of wonderment that at such a time as we now speak of
De Noe should have opened his heart thus freely to one he had never
met before, the simple explanation lies in the fact that periods of
"espionage" are precisely those when men make the rashest confederacies.
Wearied and worn out, as it were, by everlasting chicanery and trick,
they seize with avidity on the first occasion that presents itself to
relieve the weight of an overburdened heart. To feel a sense of trust
is sufficient to make them reveal their most secret feelings; and it was
thus that De Noe no sooner found himself alone with Gerald than he told
him the whole story of his love.

Gerald not only read his motives aright, but saw also something of
the man himself. He perceived in him a type of a class by no means
unfrequent at the time--royalists by birth and instinct, and yet so
stripped of all the prestige of their once condition, and so destitute
of hope, that they really lived on the contingency of each day, not
knowing by what stratagem the morrow was to be met, nor to what straits
future fate might subject them. Besides this, he saw how the supporters
of the 'cause' had gradually degenerated from the great names and nobles
of France to men of ruined hopes and blasted fortunes, whose intrigues
were conceived in the lowest places, and carried on by the meanest