CHAPTER XXXI: Final Dispositions.
To Chauvelin the day had been one of restless inquietude and nervous apprehension.
Collot d'Herbois harassed him with questions and complaints intermixed with threats but thinly veiled.

At his suggestion Gayole had been transformed into a fully-manned, well-garrisoned fortress.

Troops were to be seen everywhere, on the stairs and in the passages, the guard-rooms and offices: picked men from the municipal guard, and the company which had been sent down from Paris some time ago.
Chauvelin had not resisted these orders given by his colleague.

He knew quite well that Marguerite would make no attempt at escape, but he had long ago given up all hope of persuading a man of the type of Collot d'Herbois that a woman of her temperament would never think of saving her own life at the expense of others, and that Sir Percy Blakeney, in spite of his adoration for his wife, would sooner see her die before him, than allow the lives of innocent men and women to be the price of hers.
Collot was one of those brutish sots--not by any means infrequent among the Terrorists of that time--who, born in the gutter, still loved to wallow in his native element, and who measured all his fellow-creatures by the same standard which he had always found good enough for himself.

In this man there was neither the enthusiastic patriotism of a Chauvelin, nor the ardent selflessness of a Danton.