Dangeau, left alone, fell to thinking. His strange elation was still upon him, and he felt an unwonted lightness of spirit. He began to consider whether he should wait to be arrested, or end now in the Roman way. Suicide was much in vogue at the time, and was gilded with a strong halo of heroics. The doctrine of a purpose in the individual existence being rejected, the Stoic argument that life was a thing to be laid down at will seemed reasonable enough. It appealed to the dramatic sense, a thing very inherent in man, and the records of the times set down almost as many suicides as executions. Dangeau had often enough maintained man’s right to relinquish that which he had not asked to receive, but at this crisis in his life there came up in him old teachings, those which are imperishable, because they have their roots in an imperishable affection. His mother, whom he adored, had lived and died a devout Catholic, and there came back to him now a strange, faint sense of the dignity and purpose of the soul, of life as a trial, life as a trust. It seemed suddenly nobler to endure than to relinquish. An image of the deserter flitted through his brain, to be followed by another of the child that pettishly casts away a broken toy, and from that his mind went back, back through the years. For a moment his mother’s eyes looked quite clearly into his, and he heard her voice say, "Jacques, you do not listen." Ah, those tricks of the brain! How at a touch, a turn of the head, a breath, a scent, the past rises quick, and the brain, phonograph and photograph in one, shows us our dead again, and brings their voices to our ears. Dangeau saw the chimney corner, and a crooked log on the fire. The resin in it boiled up, and ran down all ablaze. He watched it with wondering, childish eyes, and heard the gentle voice at his ears say, "Jacques, you do not listen." It was there and gone between one breath and the next, but it took with it the dust of years, and left the old love very fresh and tender. Ah—the dear woman, the dear mother. "Que Dieu te bénisse," he said under his breath. The current of thought veered to Aline, and at that life woke in him, the desire to live, the desire of her, the desire to love. Then on a tide of bitterness, "She will be free." Quickly came the answer, "Free and defenceless." He sank his head in his hands, and, for the first time for months, deliberately evoked her image. It seemed as if Fate were concerning herself with Dangeau’s affairs, for she sent a bullet Vibert’s way next morning. It ripped his scalp, and sent him bleeding and delirious to a sick-bed from which he did not rise for several weeks. It was, therefore, not until late in June that Robespierre stretched out his long arm, and haled Dangeau from his post in Spain to Paris and the prison of La Force.