The stay in Nevers was made endurable for Aurore through the absence of her husband.

Her husband!

The Mignets explained to her that André had left for Paris on the very day of their arrival, while she was lying asleep. He wouldn't have her disturbed. He had gone in order to make arrangements for their new home, and he had gone full of joy and hope, because Citizen Danton had sent a courier over from Paris confirming the happy tidings already sent to Val-le-Roi a few days ago, that he would be overjoyed to see his old friend and colleague André Vallon again. There was work and to spare for young hands and young brains who had the welfare of the people at heart. The education of the young and the reclaiming of the unfit were the two questions that occupied the minds of the committees at the present moment, and Danton held out hopes of an important post for André in connection with these questions.

"It is the sort of work that will appeal to your clever husband, citizeness," the Doctor said, "now that the loss of his arm has compelled him to leave the army. The illiterates in France have been reckoned by the million in the past. Whatever else the present great upheaval may do, it will certainly remedy that crying evil."

"They are opening schools all over France," the old lady continued, "not only for the young, but also for the afflicted: the deaf and dumb and the blind."

"Schools?" Aurore remarked with a slight lifting of the eyebrows. "To teach what?"

"The elements of education," Madame Mignet replied quietly. "These must no longer remain the privilege of the few."

"And is my - my husband taking a hand in this scheme of education for the million?"

"Indeed, yes," the Doctor said. "I understand that Citizen Danton has obtained an important post for him in connection with the schools for the blind."

"Citizen Danton is the most influential man in France," Madame Mignet went on to explain to the somewhat bewildered Aurore. "He has a charming young wife. Madame Roland is one of their intimate friends. You and your husband will move among the most brilliant and most intellectual society in Paris."

Aurore was indeed bewildered. She gazed on this fastidious-looking old lady with the aristocratic features and delicate hands, who talked so calmly of Danton, the hideous master butcher of this awful slaughterhouse, the man whose large plebeian hands were stained with the blood of hundreds of his fellow men. Madame Mignet, or Citizeness Mignet as she preferred to be called, could talk of that man and his circle as "intellectual" and "brilliant," and took it for granted that she, Aurore, daughter of Monseigneur le Duc de Marigny, would find pleasure in their society. Pleasure? Aurore could only marvel whether she would have sufficient courage to show her horror and loathing should the hands of those butchers be extended in friendly welcome to her.

It seemed impossible that people like the Mignets should look complacently on the wholesale butcheries which were turning the fair city of Paris into a shambles; that they could condone the hideous crime of regicide about to culminate in the still more deadly sin of the execution of the Queen; that they could utter such names as Danton or Robespierre, Carrier or Desmoulins without a shudder. And when, after a few days of quiet intimacy, Aurore ventured to put the question to Madame Mignet, the old lady replied with strange earnestness:

"My dear, since the beginning of all times men have perpetrated horrors against one another. It is the devil in them, but the devil would have no power over men if God did not allow it. Could He not, if He so willed, quell this revolution with His Word? Must we not rather bow to His will and try to realize that something great, something good, something, at any rate, that is in accordance with the great scheme of the universe must in the end come out of all this sorrow?"

"But, surely," Aurore protested, "you must look with horror on these wholesale murders."

"I look with horror on every act of violence committed by man against his fellow creatures. I look with horror on every war where men are trained and encouraged to kill or maim one another. I look with horror upon the slave owners in our colonies, where men drive their fellow creatures with whip lash and torture to toil so that they themselves may reap. All these, my dear child, are horrors which we women condemn and shudder at. But wars there will always be, because man will always defend his property against aggression, and there will be revolutions in this world so long as men use their power in order to enslave others."

Aurore hotly defended her caste. On her father's estate the people were content and prosperous.

"I am sure they were," Madame Mignet admitted, with an indulgent smile, "but throughout the history of the world, the innocent have suffered together with the guilty. Great evils need desperate remedies. The children of France, egged on by centuries of misery and spurred by starvation, have struck blindly about them in their scramble for food. In the mêlée noble heads have fallen along with some that were heavy with guilt. But it is God's will, and we must have patience. France is a great and glorious country. This is the period of her travail. From it she will bring forth liberty and progress which, as the years roll on, will cause her children to forget what they have endured in the cause."

It was amazing to hear a woman of refinement talk so placidly about it all. In fact, Aurore could not help remarking to herself how strangely like this old lady's philosophy of life was that of Abbé Rosemonde. Resignation to the will of God. Contentment in leaving everything in His hands. She felt a kind of mild contempt for this placidity, and yet, what right had she to scorn anyone? She, the miserable coward who shrank from the hurt that her father's death would cause her, and to save herself and him had grovelled at the feet of one whom she despised?

But it was only toward the end of her stay at Nevers that she spoke of all this to Madame Mignet. She wondered how much of her history the old lady and the Doctor knew; if they realized that as far as she was concerned the greatest horror she had ever experienced was when she found herself the wife of one whom her father had so justly dubbed "Canaille!" They, of course, would not understand how her entire being was in revolt against this slavery. André Vallon was admittedly a poor man, which would mean that she, Aurore de Marigny, would be little better than a servant to a despicable knave. Ignorant of the commonest elements of household work, she would be a constant suffering victim to his gibes and his tyranny. But it was not the work that she feared, it was the mental, the moral, the physical contact with one whom she hated.

And all the while that she was at Nevers, her ears were constantly filled with his name. Though absent, he seemed always to be there in this home of culture and refinement, as he was ever present apparently in the hearts of his friends. From beginning to end, Aurore was forced to listen to the story of André's heroism when he carried Doctor Mignet on his back out of range of the Prussian cannon; how a chance musket shot had shattered his arm and he had dragged himself and his swooning comrade back to the French lines, only to return to the scene of danger and bring to safety half a dozen more of his wounded comrades until, stricken with a raging fever, more dead than alive, he in his turn had completely lost consciousness.

With a wealth of detail and a plethora of exciting incidents did Doctor Mignet recount not only this story, but others in which André Vallon was the hero and had accomplished prodigies of valour.

"Four citations, citizeness," he said with undisguised enthusiasm. "Dumouriez, before his abominable treachery, always spoke of Vallon as the bravest soldier he had ever had under his command; and when the crash came, when Dumouriez, whom the whole of France trusted as an able general and a loyal patriot, when he sold his sword to the enemies of his country, Vallon was one of those who put heart into the troops, who revived their courage and led them to a series of victories which culminated in that glorious day of Valmy."

And the old lady would then conclude with a happy little sigh:

"Indeed, citizeness, André is a man to be proud of as a husband and as a friend."

And Aurore wondered if all those stories could possibly be true. Valour, loyalty, selflessness, these were the attributes of her caste. Caitiffs like André Vallon surely were not capable of such noble impulses. They had no educations to guide them, no tradition, none of the examples which formed the glorious history of a noble race such as hers. It couldn't be true. The whole thing was an exaggeration on the Doctor's part. He was blinded by his affection for a comrade in arms, by dangers passed together, by suffering endured for the sake of France, when the whole of Europe raised its hand against her, and the Prussian hordes invaded her sacred soil.

"I look with horror on every war," the old lady had said. And for the first time in all these miserable years Aurore was conscious of a vague feeling of shame that so many of her kindred had turned their sword against their country in the hour of her greatest peril, or sought refuge and safety on foreign soil.

"France, my country!" an unconscious poet had once sung. "She may have erred, she may have sinned, but still she is my country!"