But Nemesis was stalking him relentlessly if silently.

Among a batch of prisoners whom a chain of curious chances had brought
from Nantes to Paris was our old friend Leroy the cocassier, required
now as a witness against the members of the committee.

Having acquainted the court with the grounds of his arrest, and the
fact that for three years he had lain forgotten and without trial in the
pestilential prison of Le Bouffay, Leroy passed on to a recital of his
sufferings on that night of terror when he had gone down the Loire in
the doomed lighter. He told his tale with an artlessness that rendered
it the more moving and convincing. The audience crowding the chamber
of justice shuddered with horror, and sobbed over the details of his
torments, wept for joy over his miraculous preservation. At the close
he was applauded on all sides, which bewildered him a little, for he had
never known anything but abuse in all his chequered life.

And then, at the promptings of that spirit of reaction that was abroad
in those days when France was awakening from the nightmare of terror,
some one made there and then a collection on his behalf, and came to
thrust into his hands a great bundle of assignats and bank bills, which
to the humble cocassier represented almost a fortune. It was his turn to
weep.

Then the crowd in the court which had heard his story shouted for the
head of Carrier. The demand was taken up by the whole of Paris,
and finally his associates of the Convention handed him over to the
Revolutionary Tribunal.

He came before it on November 25th, and he could not find counsel to
defend him. Six advocates named in succession by the President refused
to plead the cause of so inhuman a monster. In a rage, at last Carrier
announced that he would defend himself. He did.

He took the line that his business in Nantes had been chiefly concerned
with provisioning the Army of the West; that he had had little to do
with the policing of Nantes, which he left entirely to the Revolutionary
Committee; and that he had no knowledge of the things said to have taken
place. But Goullin, Bachelier, and the others were there to fling
back the accusation in their endeavours to save their own necks at the
expense of his.

He was sentenced on the very anniversary of that terrible night on which
the men of the Marat Company broke into the prison of Le Bouffay, and he
was accompanied in the tumbril by Grandmaison the pitiless, who was now