He smote the table a blow with his clenched hand, and cursed the whole Republic, from Robespierre down to the meanest sans-culotte that brayed the Ca ira in the streets of Paris.
He had pledged his word, and for all that he belonged to the class whose right to honour was denied by the aristocrats, his word he had never yet broken.

That circumstance--as personified by Maximilien Robespierre--should break it for him now was matter enough to enrage him, for than this never had there been an occasion on which such a breach could have been less endurable.
He rose to his feet, and set himself to pace the chamber, driven to action of body by the agonised activity of his mind.

From the street rose the cry of the pastry-cook going his daily rounds, as it had risen yesterday, he remembered, when Suzanne had been with him.

And now of a sudden he stood still.

His lips were compressed, his brows drawn together in a forbidding scowl, and his eyes narrowed until they seemed almost closed.