"No, no," exclaimed Goyot. "It’s not possible. We had arranged—your name was to be kept back." "Bah," said Defarge, spitting on the ground. "You need not look at me like that, Citizen. It is not my fault. You know that well enough. Orders come, and must be obeyed. I ’m neither blind nor deaf. Things are changing out there, I ’m told, but orders are orders, and a plain man looks no further." Goyot caught at Dangeau’s arm. "We’ll save you yet," he said. "Robespierre is down. Accused this morning in Convention. They ’re all at his throat now. Keep a good heart, my friend; his time has come at last." "And mine," returned Dangeau. "No, no,—I tell you there is hope. It is only a matter of hours." "Just so." Defarge interposed. "Ciel, Citizens, are we to stand here all day? Citizen Goyot, your patient is dying, and you had better see to him. This citizen and I have an engagement,—yes, and a pressing one." An hour later Dangeau passed in to take his trial. His predecessor’s case had taken a scant five minutes, so simple a matter had the death penalty become. Fouquier Tinville seated himself, his sharp features more like the fox’s mask than ever, only now it was the fox who hears the hounds so close upon his heels that he dares not look behind to see how close they are. Fear does not improve the temper, and he nodded maliciously at his former colleague. "Name," he rapped out, voice and eye alike vicious. With smooth indifference Dangeau repeated his names, and added with a touch of amusement: "You know me and my names well enough, or did once, my good Tinville." The thin lips lifted in a snarl. "That, my friend, was when you were higher in the world than you are now. Place of abode?" Dangeau’s gaze went past him. He shrugged his shoulders with a faintly whimsical effect. "Shall we say the edges of the world?" he suggested. Fouquier Tinville spat on the floor and leaned over the table with a yellow glitter in his eyes. "How does it feel?" he sneered. "The edges of the world. Ma foi, how does it feel to look over them into annihilation?" Dangeau returned his look with composure. "I imagine you may soon have an opportunity of judging," he observed. At Tinville’s right hand a man sat drumming on the table. Now he looked up sharply, exhibiting a dead white face, where the lips hung loose, and the eyes showed wildly bloodshot. "But if one could know first," he said in a shaking voice. "When one is so close and looks over, one should see more than others. I have asked so many what they saw. I asked Danton. He said ’The void.’ Do you think it is that? As man to man now, Dangeau, do you think there is anything beyond or not?" Dangeau recognised him with a movement of half-contemptuous pity. It was Duval, the actor who had taken to politics and drink, and sold his soul for a bribe of Robespierre’s. Tinville plucked him down with a curse.