Lord Tony's Wife by Emmuska Orczy

Martin-Roget a while ago. Chauvelin poured the contents of it down his throat. He had talked uninterruptedly, in short, jerky sentences, without the slightest expression of horror at the atrocities which he recounted. His whole appearance had become transfigured while he spoke. Gone was the urbane manner which he had learnt at courts long ago, gone was the last instinct of the gentleman sunk to proletarianism through stress of circumstances, or financial straits or even political convictions. The erstwhile Marquis de Chauvelin—envoy of the Republic at the Court of St. James’—had become citizen Chauvelin in deed and in fact, a part of that rabble which he had elected to serve, one of that vile crowd of bloodthirsty revolutionaries who had sullied the pure robes of Liberty and of Fraternity by spattering them with blood. Now he smacked his lips, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and burying his hands in the pockets of his breeches he stood with legs wide apart and a look of savage satisfaction settled upon his pale face. Martin-Roget had made no comment upon the narrative. He had resumed his seat by the fire and was listening attentively. Now while the other drank and paused, he showed no sign of impatience, but there was something in the look of the bent shoulders, in the rigidity of the attitude, in the large, square hands tightly clasped together which suggested the deepest interest and an intentness that was almost painful.
    ‘I was at the woman Pichot’s tavern that night,’ resumed Chauvelin after a while. ‘I saw the barge–a moving coffin, what?–gliding down stream towed by the galliot and escorted by a small boat. The floating battery at La Samaritaine challenged her as she passed, for Carrier had prohibited all navigation up or down the Loire until further notice. Foucaud, Lamberty, Fouquet and O’Sullivan the armourer were in the boat: they rowed up to the pontoon and Vailly the chief gunner of the battery challenged them once more. However, they had some sort of written authorization from Carrier, for they were allowed to pass. Vailly remained on guard. He saw the barge glide further down stream. It seems that the moon at the time was hidden by a cloud. But the night was not dark and Vailly watched the barge till she was out of sight. She was towed past Trentemoult and Chantenay into the wide reach of the river just below Chevirι where, as you know, the Loire is nearly two thousand feet wide.’
    Once more he paused, looking down with grim amusement on the bent shoulders of the other man.
    ‘Well?’
    Chauvelin laughed. The query sounded choked and hoarse, whether through horror, excitement or mere impatient curiosity it were impossible to say.
    ‘Well!’ he retorted with a careless shrug of the shoulders. ‘I was too far up stream to see anything and Vailly saw nothing either. But he heard. So did others who happened to be on the shore close by.’
    ‘What did they hear?’
    ‘The hammering,’ replied Chauvelin curtly, ‘when the portholes were knocked open to let in the flood of water. And the screams and yells of five and twenty drowning priests.’
    ‘Not one of them escaped, I suppose?’
    ‘Not one.’
    Once more Chauvelin laughed. He had a way of laughing—just like that–in a peculiar mirthless, derisive manner, as if with joy at another man’s discomfiture, at another’s material or moral downfall. There is only one language in the world which has a word to express that type of mirth; the word is Schadenfreude.
    It was Chauvelin’s turn to triumph now. He had distinctly perceived the signs of an inward shudder which had gone right through Martin-Roget’s spine: he had also perceived through the man’s bent shoulders, his silence, his rigidity that his soul was filled with horror at the story of that abominable crime which he—Chauvelin—had so blandly retailed and that he was afraid to show the horror which he felt. And the man who is afraid can never climb the ladder of