The Companions of Jehu Part 63

"Is that a threat, sir?" asked the young man, raising his head.

"No," replied Morgan, in a gentle, almost supplicating voice, "it is an entreaty."

"Is it addressed to me in particular, or would you include others?"

"I make it to you in particular;" and the chief of the Companions of Jehu dwelt upon the last word.

"Ah!" exclaimed the young man, "then I am so fortunate as to interest you?"

"As a brother," replied Morgan, in the same soft, caressing tone.

"Well, well," said Roland, "this is decidedly a wager."

Bourrienne entered at that moment.

"Roland," he said, "the First Consul wants you."

"Give me time to conduct this gentleman to the street, and I'll be with him."

"Hurry up; you know he doesn't like to wait."

"Will you follow me, sir?" Roland said to his mysterious companion.

"I am at your orders, sir."

"Come, then," And Roland, taking the same path by which he had brought Morgan, took him back, not to the door opening on the garden (the garden was closed), but to that on the street. Once there, he stopped and said: "Sir, I gave you my word, and I have kept it faithfully, But that there may be no misunderstanding between us, have the goodness to tell me that you understand it to have been for this one time and for to-day only."

"That was how I understood it, sir."

"You give me back my word then?"

"I should like to keep it, sir; but I recognize that you are free to take it back."

"That is all I wish to know. Au revoir! Monsieur Morgan."

"Permit me not to offer you the same wish, Monsieur de Montrevel."

The two young men bowed with perfect courtesy, Roland re-entered the Luxembourg, and Morgan, following the line of shadow projected by the walls, took one of the little streets to the Place Saint-Sulpice.

It is he whom we are now to follow.

CHAPTER XXVI. THE BALL OF THE VICTIMS

After taking about a hundred steps Morgan removed his mask. He ran more risk of being noticed in the streets of Paris as a masked man than with uncovered face.

When he reached the Rue Taranne he knocked at the door of a small furnished lodging-house at the corner of that street and the Rue du Dragon, took a candlestick from a table, a key numbered 12 from a nail, and climbed the stairs without exciting other attention than a well-known lodger would returning home. The clock was striking ten as he closed the door of his room. He listened attentively to the strokes, the light of his candle not reaching as far as the chimney-piece. He counted ten.

"Good!" he said to himself; "I shall not be too late."

In spite of this probability, Morgan seemed determined to lose no time.

He pa.s.sed a bit of tinder-paper under the heater on the hearth, which caught fire instantly. He lighted four wax-candles, all there were in the room, placed two on the mantel-shelf and two on a bureau opposite, and spread upon the bed a complete dress of the Incroyable of the very latest fas.h.i.+on. It consisted of a short coat, cut square across the front and long behind, of a soft shade between a pale-green and a pearl-gray; a waistcoat of buff plush, with eighteen mother-of-pearl b.u.t.tons; an immense white cravat of the finest cambric; light trousers of white cashmere, decorated with a knot of ribbon where they b.u.t.toned above the calves, and pearl-gray silk stockings, striped transversely with the same green as the coat, and delicate pumps with diamond buckles. The inevitable eye-gla.s.s was not forgotten. As for the hat, it was precisely the same in which Carle Vernet painted his dandy of the Directory.

When these things were ready, Morgan waited with seeming impatience. At the end of five minutes he rang the bell. A waiter appeared.

"Hasn't the wig-maker come?" asked Morgan.

In those days wig-makers were not yet called hair-dressers.

"Yes, citizen," replied the waiter, "he came, but you had not yet returned, so he left word that he'd come back. Some one knocked just as you rang; it's probably--"

"Here, here," cried a voice on the stairs.

"Ah! bravo," exclaimed Morgan. "Come in, Master Cadenette; you must make a sort of Adonis of me."

"That won't be difficult, Monsieur le Baron," replied the wig-maker.

"Look here, look here; do you mean to compromise me, citizen Cadenette?"

"Monsieur le Baron, I entreat you, call me Cadenette; you'll honor me by that proof of familiarity; but don't call me citizen. Fie; that's a revolutionary denomination! Even in the worst of the Terror I always called my wife Madame Cadenette. Now, excuse me for not waiting for you; but there's a great ball in the Rue du Bac this evening, the ball of the Victims (the wig-maker emphasized this word). I should have thought that M. le Baron would be there."

"Why," cried Morgan, laughing; "so you are still a royalist, Cadenette?"

The wig-maker laid his hand tragically on his heart.

"Monsieur le Baron," said he, "it is not only a matter of conscience, but a matter of state."

"Conscience, I can understand that, Master Cadenette, but state! What the devil has the honorable guild of wigmakers to do with politics?"

"What, Monsieur le Baron?" said Cadenette, all the while getting ready to dress his client's hair; "you ask me that? You, an aristocrat!"

"Hush, Cadenette!"

"Monsieur le Baron, we _ci-devants_ can say that to each other."

"So you are a _ci-devant_?"

"To the core! In what style shall I dress M. le Baron's hair?"

"Dog's ears, and tied up behind."

"With a dash of powder?"

"Two, if you like, Cadenette."

"Ah! monsieur, when one thinks that for five years I was the only man who had an atom of powder '_a la marechale_.' Why, Monsieur le Baron, a man was guillotined for owning a box of powder!"