ive his guests. Distinguished men,
beautiful women, notabilities from every European country had already
filed past him, had exchanged the elaborate bows and curtsies with him,
which the extravagant fashion of the time demanded, and then, laughing
and talking, had dispersed in the ball, reception, and card rooms
beyond.

Not far from Lord Grenville's elbow, leaning against one of the console
tables, Chauvelin, in his irreproachable black costume, was taking a
quiet survey of the brilliant throng. He noted that Sir Percy and Lady
Blakeney had not yet arrived, and his keen, pale eyes glanced quickly
towards the door every time a new-comer appeared.

He stood somewhat isolated: the envoy of the Revolutionary Government of
France was not likely to be very popular in England, at a time when the
news of the awful September massacres, and of the Reign of Terror and
Anarchy, had just begun to filtrate across the Channel.

In his official capacity he had been received courteously by his English
colleagues: Mr. Pitt had shaken him by the hand; Lord Grenville had
entertained him more than once; but the more intimate circles of London
society ignored him altogether; the women openly turned their backs upon
him; the men who held no official position refused to shake his hand.

But Chauvelin was not the man to trouble himself about these social
amenities, which he called mere incidents in his diplomatic career. He
was blindly enthusiastic for the revolutionary cause, he despised all
social inequalities, and he had a burning love for his own country:
these three sentiments made him supremely indifferent to the snubs he
received in this fog-ridden, loyalist, old-fashioned England.

But, above all, Chauvelin had a purpose at heart. He firmly believed
that the French aristocrat was the most bitter enemy of France; he would
have wished to see every one of them annihilated: he was one of those
who, during this awful Reign of Terror, had been the first to utter the
historic and ferocious desire "that aristocrats might have but one head
between them, so that it might be cut off with a single stroke of the
guillotine." And thus he looked upon every French aristocrat, who
had succeeded in escaping from France, as so much prey of which the
guillotine had been unwarrantably cheated. There is no doubt that those
royalist EMIGRES, once they had managed to cross the frontier, did their
very best to stir up foreign indignation against France. Pl