A quick, impatient sigh escaped de Batz' lips. He had skirted the
wide courtyard in the wake of his guide, and from where he was he
could see the great central tower, with its tiny windows lighted
from within, the grim walls behind which the descendant of the
world's conquerors, the bearer of the proudest name in Europe, and
wearer of its most ancient crown, had spent the last days of his
brilliant life in abject shame, sorrow, and degradation. The
memory had swiftly surged up before him of that night when he all
but rescued King Louis and his family from this same miserable
prison: the guard had been bribed, the keeper corrupted,
everything had been prepared, save the reckoning with the one
irresponsible factor--chance!
He had failed then and had tried again, and again had failed; a
fortune had been his reward if he had succeeded. He had failed,
but even now, when his footsteps echoed along the flagged
courtyard, over which an unfortunate King and Queen had walked on
their way to their last ignominious Calvary, he hugged himself
with the satisfying thought that where he had failed at least no
one else had succeeded.
Whether that meddlesome English adventurer, who called himself the
Scarlet Pimpernel, had planned the rescue of King Louis or of
Queen Marie Antoinette at any time or not--that he did not 'know;
but on one point at least he was more than ever determined, and
that was that no power on earth should snatch from him the golden
prize offered by Austria for the rescue of the little Dauphin.
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