“Ah! is it you, Louison?” he said, wearily. “How did you get in? I told my people to admit no one.” Louison laughed with some bitterness. “They do not regard me as ‘any one,’ my good friend; or dream, perhaps, there will ever come a time when I shall be excluded from Count Mirabeau’s presence.” “But there may arise times when I am busy.” “These times have arisen again and again; but you were always glad to have me by your side, especially when there was work to accomplish. Shall I sit down now? Or has my presence, all at once, become troublesome?” The girl seated herself, as she spoke, upon the foot of Mirabeau’s couch, and sat gazing on him with an expression in her great black eyes that disturbed him. This woman had frightened away all his pleasant dreams. “You are never troublesome,” he said; “but in the lives of all hard working and hard thinking men there is need of rest. This craving was upon me when you came in.” “Indeed!” “I have been giving the day to thought, and sunk down here to rest awhile before going to the club. Had you delayed coming a little longer, I should have been gone.” “Ah! you go to the club, then!” exclaimed Louison, brightening. “There you will meet Robespierre and Marat, your brother journalists; those two men who love France, and hate the queen.” “Ah, ha!” said Mirabeau, sharply; and his massive features contracted with quick suspicion. “How did you learn so much of Robespierre, and that animal who calls himself Marat?” “I know that they are patriots and true Frenchmen,” answered Louison. “Be careful, Mirabeau, that they do not prove the serpent, that may bite your heel.” “What, those reptiles!” exclaimed Mirabeau, with careless contempt. “How can they hurt a man so much above them? They crawl, I soar!” The magnificent demagogue made a circle around his head with one large, white hand, as if he were crowning himself, and repeated, “I soar! I soar!” Louison understood that look of triumph, and smiled with bitter irony when she saw the gesture. “This man,” she said to herself, “seems to feel the glory of a crown upon his head, since he has kissed the Austrian hand with those perfidious lips;” still she answered him calmly, looking downward with half-closed eyes, like a slumbrous panther. “But, you and these men have a common object—love of France and hatred of her oppressors.” Mirabeau turned his eyes quickly upon that handsome face to read the hidden thought that lay under these words. He saw a gleam break through the drooping lashes, and suspected that something was wrong, but could not understand what. He had no wish to disagree with Louison, for her talent had been of great use to him, and it was through her that a large portion of his popularity among the rabble of women, who were the worst disturbing element of the nation, was maintained.