It was not, Heaven help us all! a very uncommon occurrence these days: a woman almost unsexed by misery, starvation, and the abnormal excitement engendered by daily spectacles of revenge and of cruelt...

It was not, Heaven help us all! a very uncommon occurrence these days: a woman almost unsexed by misery, starvation, and the abnormal excitement engendered by daily spectacles of revenge and of cruelt...

When she reopened her eyes she was in what appeared to be the lodge of a concierge. She was lying on a horsehair sofa. There was a sense of warmth and of security around her. No wonder that it still s...

Even that bloodthirsty tiger, Jean Paul Marat, has had his apologists. His friends have called him a martyr, a selfless and incorruptible exponent of social and political ideals. We may take it that S...

Paul Molé had been to the offices of the Moniteur and to the printing works of L’Ami du Peuple. He had seen the citizen Dufour at the Club and, presumably, had spent the rest of his time wandering idl...

Chauvelin hurried to the depot. After those few seconds wherein he had felt dazed, incredulous, almost under a spell, he had quickly regained the mastery of his nerves, and regained, too, that intense...

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 t...

That same forenoon, on his return from the Abbaye and the depot, Chauvelin found that a visitor was waiting for him. A woman, who gave her name as Jeannette Maréchal, desired to speak with the citizen...

The Leridans, anxious, obsequious, terrified, were only too ready to obey the citizen Representative in all things. They explained with much complacency that, even though they were personally acquaint...

But that crumpled and soiled scrap of paper given to him by the woman Leridan still lay in his clenched hand as he strode back rapidly citywards. It seemed to scorch his palm. Even before he had glanc...

Thus satisfied, Chauvelin returned to the Abbaye. Hébert was safe and trustworthy, but Hébert, too, had been assailed with the same doubts which had well-nigh wrecked Chauvelin’s triumph, and with suc...

At first Chauvelin had the wish to go back and see the Public Prosecutor⁠—to speak with him⁠—to tell him⁠—what? Yes, what? That he, Chauvelin, had all of a sudden been assailed with the same doubts wh...

Citizen Fouquier-Tinville had returned home from the Palais at a very late hour that same evening. His household in his simple lodgings in the Place Dauphine was already abed: his wife and the twins w...

Bibot was very sure of himself. There never was, never had been, there never would be again another such patriotic citizen of the Republic as was citizen Bibot of the Town Guard. And because his patri...

My name is Fanny Roussell, and I am a respectable married woman, and as good a patriot as any of you sitting there. Aye, and I’ll say it with my dying breath, though you may send me to the guillotine⁠...

Nobody in the quartier could quite recollect when it was that the new Public Letter-Writer first set up in business at the angle formed by the Quai des Augustins and the Rue Dauphine, immediately faci...

Nobody in the quartier could quite recollect when it was that the new Public Letter-Writer first set up in business at the angle formed by the Quai des Augustins and the Rue Dauphine, immediately faci...

It was half-an-hour before noon, and citizen-deputy Hériot was preparing to go out to the small tavern round the corner where he habitually took his déjeuner. Citizen Rondeau, who for the consideratio...

“No use, Ffoulkes,” said Sir Percy Blakeney to his friend half-an-hour later, “the man’s passions of hatred and desire are greater than his greed.” The two men were sitting together in one of Sir Perc...

Citizen Rondeau, whose business it was to look after the creature comforts of deputy Hériot, was standing in the antechamber facing the two visitors whom he had just introduced into his master’s apart...

“Sh!⁠ ⁠… sh!⁠ ⁠… It’s the Englishman. I’d know his footstep anywhere⁠—” “God bless him!” murmured petite maman fervently. Père Lenègre went to the door; he stepped cautiously and with that stealthy fo...

“Sh!⁠ ⁠… sh!⁠ ⁠… It’s the Englishman. I’d know his footstep anywhere⁠—” “God bless him!” murmured petite maman fervently. Père Lenègre went to the door; he stepped cautiously and with that stealthy fo...

A quarter of an hour later half a dozen men of the Republican Guard, with corporal and sergeant in command, were in the small apartment on the fifth floor of the tenement house in the Rue Jolivet. The...

Another quarter of an hour went by. Petite maman and Rosette had hardly moved. The shadows of evening were creeping into the narrow room, blurring the outlines of the pieces of furniture and wrapping ...

Five minutes later the soldiers, directed by petite maman, had reached No. 37 Rue Ste. Anne. The big outside door stood wide open, and the whole party turned immediately into the house. The concierge,...

Ah, monsieur! the pity of it, the pity! Surely there are sins which le bon Dieu Himself will condone. And if not⁠—well, I had to risk His displeasure anyhow. Could I see them both starve, monsieur? I ...

Ah, monsieur! the pity of it, the pity! Surely there are sins which le bon Dieu Himself will condone. And if not⁠—well, I had to risk His displeasure anyhow. Could I see them both starve, monsieur? I ...

Never shall I forget the look of horror which came in Mme. la Marquise’s eyes when she saw me entering our miserable attic in the company of a stranger. The last of the little bit of tallow candle fli...

Less than half an hour later, monsieur, citizen Laporte, one of the most skilful doctors in France and one of the most bloodthirsty tyrants this execrable Revolution has known, was sitting at the beds...

We were such a happy family before this terrible Revolution broke out; we lived rather simply, but very comfortably, in our dear old home just on the borders of the forest of Compiegne. Jean and André...

Not one of them had really trusted him for some time now. Heaven and his conscience alone knew what had changed my Lord Kulmsted from a loyal friend and keen sportsman into a surly and dissatisfied ad...

Not one of them had really trusted him for some time now. Heaven and his conscience alone knew what had changed my Lord Kulmsted from a loyal friend and keen sportsman into a surly and dissatisfied ad...

Silence reigned in the low-raftered room on the ground floor of the house in the Rue Dauphine. Citizen Robespierre, chairman of the Cordeliers Club, the most bloodthirsty, most Evolutionary club of Fr...

At the top of the Rue Berthier the party halted. On ahead⁠—some two hundred metres farther⁠—Yvonne Lebeau’s little figure, with her ragged skirt pulled over her head and her bare feet pattering in the...

Once more the tramp through the dark and deserted streets, with the drizzle⁠—turned now to sleet⁠—beating on thinly clad shoulders. Fifteen men only on this tramp. The others remained behind to watch ...

“Eight!” “Twelve!” “Four!” A loud curse accompanied this last throw, and shouts of ribald laughter greeted it. “No luck, Guidal!” “Always at the tail end of the cart, eh, citizen?” “Do not despair yet...

“Eight!” “Twelve!” “Four!” A loud curse accompanied this last throw, and shouts of ribald laughter greeted it. “No luck, Guidal!” “Always at the tail end of the cart, eh, citizen?” “Do not despair yet...

Open to the street in front, the locality known under the pretentious title of “Cabaret de la Liberté” was a favoured one among the flotsam and jetsam of the population of this corner of old Paris; me...

For the persistent and optimistic romanticist, there were still one or two idylls to be discovered flourishing under the shadow of the grim and relentless Revolution. One such was that which had Esthe...

“Open, in the name of the Law!” It had come at last. A bolt from out the serene blue of their happiness. A rough, dirty, angry, cursing crowd, who burst through the heavy door even before they had tim...

The whole of that night Esther remained shut up in her apartment in the Petite Rue Taranne. All night she heard the measured tramp, the movements, the laughter and loud talking of men outside her door...

Esther, up in her little attic, knew nothing of what her English lover was even then suffering for her sake. She herself had passed, during the night, through every stage of horror and of fear. Soon a...

The first thing of which Esther Vincent was conscious, when she returned to her senses, was of her English lover kneeling beside her. She was lying on some kind of couch, and she could see his face in...

The children were all huddled up together in one corner of the room. Etienne and Valentine, the two eldest, had their arms round the little one. As for Lucile, she would have told you herself that she...

The children were all huddled up together in one corner of the room. Etienne and Valentine, the two eldest, had their arms round the little one. As for Lucile, she would have told you herself that she...

As soon as the sound of the children’s footsteps had died away down the corridor, Lebel turned with a grunt to his still silent companion. “And now, citizen Chauvelin,” he said roughly, “perhaps you w...

A couple of hours later, when the two children had had their dinner and had settled down to play in the garden, and father been cosily tucked up for his afternoon sleep, Lucile called her brother Etie...

There is nothing now in the whole countryside quite so desolate and forlorn as the château of Montorgueil, with its once magnificent park, now overgrown with weeds, its encircling walls broken down, i...

Six days had gone by since Chauvelin had delivered his cruel “either⁠—or” to poor little Lucile Clamette; three since he had found Henri de Montorgueil’s reply to the girl’s appeal in the hollow of th...

Then suddenly a shiver of excitement went right through him. He was fully awake now, with glowing eyes wide open and the icy calm of perfect confidence ruling every nerve. The sound of stealthy footst...

What had happened was this: Tournefort, one of the ablest of the many sleuthhounds employed by the Committee of Public Safety, was out during that awful storm on the night of the twenty-fifth. The rai...

What had happened was this: Tournefort, one of the ablest of the many sleuthhounds employed by the Committee of Public Safety, was out during that awful storm on the night of the twenty-fifth. The rai...

But no feeling of discomfort ever lasted very long with citizen Tournefort. He was a person of vast resource and great buoyancy of temperament. True, he had not apprehended two exceedingly noxious ari...

The first part of the road from Gentilly to Paris runs through the valley of the Biere, and is densely wooded on either side. It winds in and out for the most part, ribbon-like, through thick coppice ...

Citizen Rateau, if he thought about the matter at all, must indeed have been vastly surprised at the unwonted amiability or indifference of sergeant Ribot, who was in command at the gate of Gentilly. ...

There are no side turnings out of the Rue Bordet, the total length of which is less than fifty metres; so Tournefort, feeling more at his ease, ensconced himself at one end of the street, behind a doo...

A minute or two later Tournefort was once more beside his chief. He was carrying the precious bundle, which, he explained, the boatman had given up without question. “The man knew nothing about it,” t...

Madame la Comtesse de Sucy never went to England. She was one of those French women who would sooner endure misery in their own beloved country than comfort anywhere else. She outlived the horrors of ...