.

THE INCORRUPTIBLE.
It was towards noon of the following day when Caron La Boulaye presented himself at the house of Duplay, the cabinet-maker in the Rue St.Honore, and asked of the elderly female who admitted him if he might see the Citizen-deputy Robespierre.
A berline stood at the door, the postillion at the horses' heads, and about it there was some bustle, as if in preparation of a departure.

But La Boulaye paid no heed to it as he entered the house.
He was immediately conducted upstairs to the Incorruptible's apartment--for he was too well known to so much as need announcing.

In answer to the woman's knock a gentle, almost plaintive voice from within bade them enter, and thus was Caron ushered into the humble dwelling of the humble and ineffective-looking individual whose power already transcended that of any other man in France, and who was destined to become still more before his ephemeral star went out.
Into that unpretentious and rather close-smelling room--for it was bed-chamber as well as dining-room and study--stepped La Boulaye unhesitatingly, with the air of a man who is intimate with his surroundings and assured of his welcome in them.

In the right-hand corner stood the bed on which the clothes were still tumbled; in the centre of the chamber was a table all littered with the disorder of a meal partaken; on the left, by the window, sat Robespierre at his writing-table, and from the overmantel at the back of the room a marble counterpart of Robespierre's own head and shoulders looked down upon the newcomer.