It was now half-past ten, and Chauvelin and Robespierre sat opposite
one another in the ex-boudoir of Queen Marie Antoinette, and
between them on the table, just below the tallow-candle, was a much
creased, exceedingly grimy bit of paper.

It had passed through several unclean hands before Citizen
Robespierre's immaculately white fingers had smoothed it out and
placed it before the eyes of ex-Ambassador Chauvelin.

The latter, however, was not looking at the paper, he was not even
looking at the pale, cruel face before him. He had closed his eyes and
for a moment had lost sight of the small dark room, of Robespierre's
ruthless gaze, of the mud-stained walls and greasy floor. He was
seeing, as in a bright and sudden vision, the brilliantly-lighted salons
of the Foreign Office in London, with beautiful Marguerite Blakeney
gliding queenlike on the arm of the Prince of Wales.

He heard the flutter of many fans, the frou-frou of silk dresses, and
above all the din and sound of dance music, he heard an inane laugh
and an affected voice repeating the doggerel rhyme that was even
now written on that dirty piece of paper which Robespierre had
placed before him:

"We seek him here, and we seek him there, Those Frenchies seek
him everywhere! Is he in heaven, is he in hell, That demmed elusive
Pimpernel?"

It was a mere flash! One of memory's swiftly effaced pictures, when
she shows us for the fraction of a second, indelible pictures from out