foiled, and yet here I am, you see, unscathed and free. I walk
about the streets boldly, and talk to my friends as I meet them."

"You are lucky," said St. Just, not without a tinge of sarcasm.

"I have been prudent," retorted de Batz. "I have taken the
trouble to make friends there where I thought I needed them
most--the mammon of unrighteousness, you know-what?"

And he laughed a broad, thick laugh of perfect self-satisfaction.

"Yes, I know," rejoined St. Just, with the tone of sarcasm still
more apparent in his voice now. " You have Austrian money at your
disposal."

"Any amount," said the other complacently, "and a great deal of it
sticks to the grimy fingers of these patriotic makers of
revolutions. Thus do I ensure my own safety. I buy it with the
Emperor's money, and thus am I able to work for the restoration of
the monarchy in France."

Again St. Just was silent. What could he say? Instinctively now,
as the fleshy personality of the Gascon Royalist seemed to spread
itself out and to fill the tiny box with his ambitious schemes and
his far-reaching plans, Armand's thoughts flew back to that other
plotter, the man with the pure and simple aims, the man whose
slender fingers had never handled alien gold, but were ever there
ready stretched out to the helpless and the weak, whilst his
thoughts were only of the help that he might give them, but never
of his own safety.