Page:Weird Tales volume 33 number 04.djvu/22

 member of the National Assembly helped draw the Constitution.

"One of the workers on our farm was Macrin Henriot, a farrier and stableman. He was about my age, and as children we were playmates, for social distinctions were not tightly drawn at Aules. He was handsome and high-spirited, but given to long periods of black melancholy. When these were on him he would neither speak nor eat. Once he tried to drown himself, and would have done so if I had not screamed until some laborers in the field heard me and ran to pull him from the river. May the good God pardon me that scream!

"Macrin's father was a farrier and wanted him to learn the trade, but he considered it beneath him; so when he was fourteen and I twelve, and I was sent for schooling to a convent, my father in the goodness of his noble heart sent Macrin to a notary at Caen to study for the law, paying all of his expenses.

"I was a pupil at the convent for three years, and when I came back to Aules I found Macrin in his father's place at our stables, doctoring and shoeing horses. He had made a wretched failure as a notary's apprentice, and had come back to the only work he knew.

"No one else would hire him, no one wanted him, for when he was not sullen he was drunk, and when he was not drunk he was inciting laborers and peasants to revolt.

"I was sorry for my old playfellow, and tried to comfort him, but he mistook my pity for a warmer, tenderer feeling, and had the audacity to demand my hand in marriage.

"Gentlewomen do not wed with stable-boys, however long they may have known them, and when my father tried to make him understand, Macrin flew into a rage and stormed out of the chateau, vowing that we'd live to see the day when I should beg him on my knees to marry me, and he would spurn me.

"You know the recent history of this so unhappy country, Monsieur—how the Jacobins assumed authority, how they drove the patriot LaFayette to exile, slew the king and decreed all former nobles, even moderate Republicans, were traitors to the Revolution.

"Macrin Henriot had come to Paris and become an agent of General Security. It was he denounced my father to the Tribunal, and sent him to the chopper without trial. I did not even know that he had been arrested until I heard the urchins bawl the names of those who had 'drawn prizes in the lottery of Madame Guillotine.'

"What was one to do, Monsieur? To go home to Aules was to go to certain death, for in the North the peasants had revolted, our château had been burned to ashes; I should be recognized and denounced if I dared show my face in the vicinity. Besides, how could I make the journey? How could I obtain a laissez-passer, traveling without which meant sure death? I should be safer if I stayed in Paris and kept within-doors than in any other part of France. We had this little house in the Street of the Windows, and to it I and old Marjotte came for a refuge. She does the marketing; I stay indoors all day, and go out only in the evening when the sun has set. Tonight I took my customary promenade de santé and had not walked a hundred feet when I heard steps behind me. I walked more slowly; so did they. At last I became frightened and began to run, but before I had gone twenty paces they were on me, and when I turned to face them in