k dresses, and
above all the din and sound of dance music, he heard an inane laugh and
an affected voice repeating the doggerel rhyme that was even now written
on that dirty piece of paper which Robespierre had placed before him:

"We seek him here, and we seek him there, Those Frenchies seek him
everywhere! Is he in heaven, is he in hell, That demmed elusive
Pimpernel?"

It was a mere flash! One of memory's swiftly effaced pictures, when she
shows us for the fraction of a second, indelible pictures from out our
past. Chauvelin, in that same second, while his own eyes were closed
and Robespierre's fixed upon him, also saw the lonely cliffs of Calais,
heard the same voice singing: "God save the King!" the volley of
musketry, the despairing cries of Marguerite Blakeney; and once again he
felt the keen and bitter pang of complete humiliation and defeat.

Chapter III: Ex-Ambassador Chauvelin

Robespierre had quietly waited the while. He was in no hurry: being a
night-bird of very pronounced tastes, he was quite ready to sit here
until the small hours of the morning watching Citizen Chauvelin mentally
writhing in the throes of recollections of the past few months.

There was nothing that delighted the sea-green Incorruptible quite so
much as the aspect of a man struggling with a hopeless situation and
feeling a net of intrigue drawing gradually tighter and tighter around
him.

Even now, when he saw Chauvelin's smooth forehead wrinkled into an
anxious frown, and his thin hand nervously clutched upon the table,
Robespierre heaved a pleasurable sigh, leaned back in his chair, and
said with an amiable smile:

"You do agree with me, then, Citizen, that the situation has become
intolerable?"

Then as Chauvelin did not reply, he continued, speaking more sharply:

"And how terribly galling it all is, when we could have had that man
under the guillotine by now, if you had not blundered so terribly last
year."

His voice had become hard and trenchant like that knife to which he was
so ready to make constant allusion. But Chauvelin still remained silent.
There was really nothing that he could say.

"Citizen Chauvelin, how you must hate that man!" exclaimed Robespierre
at last.

Then only did Chauvelin break the silence which up to now he had
appeared to have forced himself to keep.

"I do!" he said with unmistakable fervour.

"Then why do you not make an effort to retrieve the blunders of last
year?" querie