When the populace had forgotten all that he had done, then Deroulede would fall.
But that time was not yet.
The men had finished ransacking the room; every scrap of paper, every portable article had been eagerly seized upon.
Merlin, half blind with fury, had jumped to his feet.
"Search him!" he ordered peremptorily.
Deroulede set his teeth, and made no protest, calling up every fibre of moral strength within him, to aid him in submitting to this indignity.
At a coarse jest from Merlin, he buried his nails into the palms of his hand, not to strike the foulmouthed creature in the face.

But he submitted, and stood impassive by, whilst the pockets of his coat were turned inside out by the rough hands of the soldiers.
All the while Juliette had remained silent, watching Merlin as any hawk would its prey.

But the Terrorist, through the very coarseness of his nature, was in this case completely fooled.
He knew that it was Juliette who had denounced Deroulede, and had satisfied himself as to her motive.

Because he was low and brutish and degraded, he never once suspected the truth, never saw in that beautiful young woman, anything of the double nature within her, of that curious, self-torturing, at times morbid sense of religion and of duty, at war with her own upright, innately heathy disposition.
The low-born, self-degraded Terrorist had put his own construction on Juliette's action, and with this he was satisfied, since it answered to his own estimate of the human race, the race which he was doing his best to bring down to the level of the beast.
Therefore Merlin did not interfere with Juliette, but contented himself with insinuating, by jest and action, what her share in this day's work had been.

To these hints Deroulede, of course, paid no heed.