"I?" she exclaimed, with a quiet laugh. "Is that likely? You promised me ten thousand livres the day the Scarlet Pimpernel is captured!" "And the guillotine," Chauvelin broke in grimly, "if thou shouldst allow the woman upstairs to escape." "I know that," the old woman rejoined dryly. "If she escapes 'twill not be through my connivance." "In the service of the State," Chauvelin riposted, "even carelessness becomes a crime." Catherine Théot was silent for a moment or two, pressed her thin lips together; then rejoined quite quietly: "She'll not escape. Have no fear, citizen Chauvelin." "That's brave! And now, tell me what has become of the coalheaver Rateau?" "Oh, he comes and goes. You told me to encourage him." "Yes" "So I give him potions for his cough. He has one foot in the grave." "Would that he had both!" Chauvelin broke in savagely. "That man is a perpetual menace to my plans. It would have been so much better if we could have sent him last April to the guillotine." "It was in your hands," Mother Théot retorted. "The Committee reported against him. His measure was full enough. Aiding that execrable Scarlet Pimpernel to escape . . .! Name of a name! it should have been enough!" "It was not proved that he did aid the English spies," Chauvelin retorted moodily. "And Foucquier-Tinville would not arraign him. He vowed it would anger the people--the rabble--of which Rateau himself forms an integral part. We cannot afford to anger the rabble these days, it seems." "And so Rateau, the asthmatic coalheaver, walked out of prison a free man, whilst my neophytes were dragged up to the guillotine, and I was left without means of earning an honest livelihood!" Mother Théot concluded with a doleful sigh. "Honest?" Chauvelin exclaimed, with a sarcastic chuckle. Then, seeing that the old witch was ready to lose her temper, he quickly added: "Tell me more about Rateau. Does he often come here?" "Yes; very often. He must be in my anteroom now. He came directly he was let out of prison, and has haunted this place ever since. He thinks I can cure him of his asthma, and as he pays me well----" "Pays you well?" Chauvelin broke in quickly. "That starveling?" "Rateau is no starveling," the old woman asserted. "Many an English gold piece hath he given me." "But not of late?" "Not later than yesterday." Chauvelin swore viciously. "Then he is still in touch with that cursed Englishman!" Mother Théot shrugged her shoulders. "Does one ever know which is the Englishman and which the asthmatic Rateau?" she queried, with a dry laugh. Whereupon a strange thing happened--so strange indeed that Chauvelin's next words turned to savage curses, and that Mother Théot, white to the lips, her knees shaking under her, tiny beads of perspiration rising beneath her scanty locks, had to hold on to the table to save herself from falling.