rrow would roll into the gruesome basket at the foot of
the guillotine.

In one of the tiny avant-scene boxes two men had taken their seats long
before the bulk of the audience had begun to assemble in the house. The
inside of the box was in complete darkness, and the narrow opening which
allowed but a sorry view of one side of the stage helped to conceal
rather than display the occupants.

The younger one of these two men appeared to be something of a stranger
in Paris, for as the public men and the well-known members of the
Government began to arrive he often turned to his companion for
information regarding these notorious personalities.

"Tell me, de Batz," he said, calling the other's attention to a group
of men who had just entered the house, "that creature there in the green
coat--with his hand up to his face now--who is he?"

"Where? Which do you mean?"

"There! He looks this way now, and he has a playbill in his hand. The
man with the protruding chin and the convex forehead, a face like a
marmoset, and eyes like a jackal. What?"

The other leaned over the edge of the box, and his small, restless eyes
wandered over the now closely-packed auditorium.

"Oh!" he said as soon as he recognised the face which his friend had
pointed out to him, "that is citizen Foucquier-Tinville."

"The Public Prosecutor?"

"Himself. And Heron is the man next to him."

"Heron?" said the younger man interrogatively.

"Yes. He is chief agent to the Committee of General Security now."

"What does that mean?"

Both leaned back in their chairs, and their sombrely-clad figures were
once more merged in the gloom of the narrow box. Instinctively, since
the name of the Public Prosecutor had been mentioned between them, they
had allowed their voices to sink to a whisper.

The older man--a stoutish, florid-looking individual, with small, keen
eyes, and skin pitted with small-pox--shrugged his shoulders at
his friend's question, and then said with an air of contemptuous
indifference:

"It means, my good St. Just, that these two men whom you see down
there, calmly conning the programme of this evening's entertainment, and
preparing to enjoy themselves to-night in the company of the late M. de
Moliere, are two hell-hounds as powerful as they are cunning."

"Yes, yes," said St. Just, and much against his will a slight shudder
ran through his slim figure as he spoke. "Foucquier-Tinville I know; I
know his cunning, and I know his p