"Come now, let's compose ourselves," muttered the advocate, mopping the perspiration which beaded his brow. "Billaud-Varenne is another sort of monster, and perhaps more dangerous than Marat. What answer will he bring me? If St. Just consents to be my son-in-law, I have nothing more to fear! If not--ah! What a hell!" Billaud-Varenne entered. The Representative of the people was not a monster, as the advocate had christened him; but a man of inflexible convictions and rigid probity, besides being the possessor of some fortune. He did not touch, any more than Lepelletier St. Fargeau, Herault of Sechelles, and other wealthy citizens, the compensation allowed to a Representative. Gifted with natural eloquence, always sanguine, there was no patriot more devoted to the Revolution than Billaud-Varenne. He wore a short-haired black wig, and a maroon suit with steel buttons; like Robespierre, St. Just, Camille Desmoulins and other Jacobins, he carried dignity even into the care of his person and his clothes. "Eh, well, colleague," quoth Billaud-Varenne on entering, "what am I to surmise by this visit of the Section commissioner, whom I just met leaving your rooms?" "Confess that it is a spicy incident to find, in the house one of us Mountainists a deposit of royalist poniards!" "That is very easily explained: You receive a case from the depot, you don't know what is in it--nothing simpler." "Do you think, my dear colleague, that it seemed so simple to the commissioner?" "He could know nothing to the contrary. But, between ourselves, you exhibited extreme rigor towards your wife." "You know that also--?" "I know that you applied for her arrest, and that you demanded two watchmen, whom I found out there, in the ante-room. The precaution seems to me excessive." "You disapprove of this measure, you, Billaud-Varenne, you, man of iron?" "I disapprove of your whole procedure. My dear colleague, there are painful duties to which one resigns himself; but there are useless harshnesses which one does not call down upon his dear ones. That is my way of looking at it." Without noticing, or without seeming to notice, the uneasiness which his last words produced in Desmarais, Billaud-Varenne proceeded: "But, let us speak of the object of my visit. I am just from the Jacobins, where I saw St. Just. He was highly sensible of the honor of the advances I made him on your part, on the subject of his marrying your daughter; but he refused to contract any union whatsoever." "He refuses!" gasped Desmarais, pale with consternation. "Is not the refusal perhaps revokable?" "St. Just never turns back on a determination once taken." "But, at least, I may know the cause of his declination? Answer my question, my dear colleague."