though he was a rank opportunist and had sacrificed not only his
political convictions but also his conscience to the exigencies of the
time, he still nourished in his innermost heart a secret contempt for
the revolutionary brigands who ruled over France at this hour.

To any other man than citizen Chauvelin, the citizen Commissary would,
no doubt, have given a curt refusal to a request to see a prisoner at
this late hour of the evening. But Chauvelin was not a man to be denied,
and whilst muttering various objections in his ill-kempt beard,
Cuisinier, nevertheless, gave orders that the citizen was to be
conducted at once to the cells.

Paul Mole had in truth turned sulky. The turnkey vowed that the prisoner
had hardly stirred since first he had been locked up in the common cell.
He sat in a corner at the end of the bench, with his face turned to the
wall, and paid no heed either to his fellow-prisoners or to the
facetious remarks of the warder.

Chauvelin went up to him, made some curt remark. Mole kept an obstinate
shoulder turned towards him--a grimy shoulder, which showed naked
through a wide rent in his blouse. This portion of the cell was well-
nigh in total darkness; the feeble shaft of light which came through the
open door hardly penetrated to this remote angle of the squalid burrow.
The same sense of mystery and unreality overcame Chauvelin again as he
looked on the miserable creature in whom, an hour ago, he had recognised
the super-exquisite Sir Percy Blakeney. Now he could only see a vague
outline in the gloom: the stooping shoulders, the long limbs, that naked
piece of shoulder which caught a feeble reflex from the distant light.
Nor did any amount of none too gentle prodding on the part of the warder
induce him to change his position.