Then as Chauvelin seemed to have relapsed into sullen silence, he
continued with his original ill-omened blandness:

"Ma foi! Citizen Chauvelin, were I standing in your buckled shoes, I
would not lose another hour in trying to avenge mine own
humiliation!"

"Have I ever had a chance?" burst out Chauvelin with ill-suppressed
vehemence. "What can I do single-handed? Since war has been
declared I cannot go to England unless the Government will find
some official reason for my doing so. There is much grumbling and
wrath over here, and when that damned Scarlet Pimpernel League has
been at work, when a score or so of valuable prizes have been
snatched from under the very knife of the guillotine, then, there is
much gnashing of teeth and useless cursings, but nothing serious or
definite is done to smother those accursed English flies which come
buzzing about our ears."

"Nay! you forget, Citizen Chauvelin," retorted Robespierre, "that we
of the Committee of Public Safety are far more helpless than you.
You know the language of these people, we don't. You know their
manners and customs, their ways of thought, the methods they are
likely to employ: we know none of these things. You have seen and
spoken to men in England who are members of that damned League.
You have seen the man who is its leader. We have not."

He leant forward on the table and looked more searchingly at the
thin, pallid face before him.