CHAPTER X 

LORD TONY 

I 

A quarter of an hour later citizen-commandant Fleury was at last ushered into the presence of the proconsul and received upon his truly innocent head the full torrent of the despot's wrath. But Martin-Roget had listened to the counsels of prudence: for obvious reasons he desired to avoid any personal contact for the moment with Carrier, whom fear of the English spies had made into a more abject and more craven tyrant than ever before. At the same time he thought it wisest to try and pacify the brute by sending him the ten thousand francs--the bribe agreed upon for his help in the undertaking which had culminated in such a disastrous failure. 

At the self-same hour whilst Carrier--fuming and swearing--was for the hundredth time uttering that furious "How?" which for the hundredth time had remained unanswered, two men were taking leave of one another at the small postern gate which gives on the cemetery of St. Anne. The taller and younger one of the two had just dropped a heavy purse into the hand of the other. The latter stooped and kissed the kindly hand. 

"Milor," he said, "I swear to you most solemnly that M. le duc de Kernogan will rest in peace in hallowed ground. M. le curé de Vertou--ah! he is a saint and a brave man, milor--comes over whenever he can prudently do so and reads the offices for the dead--over those who have died as Christians, and there is a piece of consecrated ground out here in the open which those fiends of Terrorists have not discovered yet." 
Was the francs considered a bribe?
At the same time he thought it wisest to try and pacify the brute by sending him the ten thousand francs--the bribe agreed upon for his help in the undertaking which had culminated in such a disastrous failure. 