He called for his valet, and allowed himself quietly to be put to bed.

One brief hour had transformed a child into a woman. A dangerous
transformation when the brain is overburdened with emotions, when the
nerves are overstrung and the heart full to breaking.

For the moment, however, the childlike nature reasserted itself for
the last time, for Juliette, sobbing, had fled out of the room, to the
privacy of her own apartment, and thrown herself passionately into the
arms of kind old Petronelle.





CHAPTER I

Paris: 1793

The outrage.


It would have been very difficult to say why Citizen Deroulede was
quite so popular as he was. Still more difficult would it have been to
state the reason why he remained immune from the prosecutions, which
were being conducted at the rate of several scores a day, now against
the moderate Gironde, anon against the fanatic Mountain, until the
whole of France was transformed into one gigantic prison, that daily
fed the guillotine.