ld be base to
do as you urge. After plucking life's blossoms as an aristocrat I must
grasp the thorns."

Nothing could save him from his determination. He had lived as an
aristocrat--it was incumbent on him, he said, not to shirk death as one.

At last la Tour left him and sought for the Admiral. He could not find
the latter until about two o'clock, and then at the prison. The
concierge said he was in the courtyard and la Tour found him engaged in
a singular business.

The women's courtyard was separated by an iron railing some fifteen feet
long from the men's. Here the imprisoned ladies communicated with their
male friends as gaily as if each were not foredoomed. The Faubourg St.
Germain was transferred to the Conciergerie. The toilets were the
freshest and the manners most well-bred in Paris. The guillotine was the
subject of facetious remarks up to the very hour of parting for the
mockery of the trial below, and at evening vows of love were breathed
between the bars. La Tour found a crowd on both sides enjoying the
cramped promenade. Amid this crowd was a "sheep"--one of those vile
spies who acted the part of pretending to be a fellow-prisoner of the
rest in order that he might entrap them into unguarded expressions and
denounce them.

The _Sans-culottes_ commissioners were selecting their daily list of
victims at random. In doing so they seized the "sheep." The Admiral was
present and the "sheep" appealed to him, protesting his occupation. The
Admiral only laughed at him.

"Correct," said he to the guard, chuckling, and the guard needed no
more. They began to drag the "sheep" away.

The "sheep" was Jude.

"I am yours--you promised me my life," he desperately screamed back. The
Admiral smiled contemptuously; his eyes were very bright and hard.

"I promised that Repentigny should die first; you afterwards; I grant
you the privilege of going second." The _Sans-culottes_, their noisy
laughs resounding through the corridor and echoed by the baying of the
mastiffs, dragged the spy away.

La Tour could not move the Admiral to any leniency for Germain. The
bandit followed each of his prayers by a sinister silence. At length la
Tour was compelled by lack of time to give him up and speed to the
revolutionary tribunal itself, in session underneath. He was just in
time to make his appeal, for Lecour was already brought before the jury
and the five judges.

The strenuous efforts of Hugues were nullified by the persi