"Leave him alone," said Chaufelin curly at last. "I have seen all that I
wished to see."

The cell was insufferably hot and stuffy. Chauvelin, finical and queasy,
turned away with a shudder of disgust. There was nothing to be got now
out of a prolonged interview with his captured foe. He had seen him:
that was sufficient. He had seen the super-exquisite Sir Percy Blakeney
locked up in a common cell with some of the most scrubby and abject
rogues which the slums of indigent Paris could yield, having apparently
failed in some undertaking which had demanded for its fulfilment not
only tattered clothes and grimy hands, but menial service with a
beggarly and disease-ridden employer, whose very propinquity must have
been positive torture to the fastidious dandy.

Of a truth this was sufficient for the gratification of any revenge.
Chauvelin felt that he could now go contentedly to rest after an
evening's work excellently done.

He gave order that Mole should be put in a separate cell, denied all
intercourse with anyone outside or in the depot, and that he should be
guarded on sight day and night. After that he went his way.

VI

The following morning citizen Chauvelin, of the Committee of Public
Safety, gave due notice to citizen Fouquier-Tinville, the Public
Prosecutor, that the dangerous English spy, known to the world as the
Scarlet Pimpernel, was now safely under lock and key, and that he must
be transferred to the Abbaye prison forthwith and to the guillotine as