Baroness Orczy

“ One man alone was bold enough to take up the challenge—a wizened little fellow, a printer by trade, with skin of the texture of grained oak and a few unruly curls that tumbled over one another above a highly polished forehead.
"And I tell thee, citizen Sical," he said with firm decision; "I tell thee and those who aver, as thou dost, that citizen Rateau had anything to do with those monkey-tricks, that ye lie. Yes!" he reiterated emphatically, and paying no heed to the glowering looks and blasphemies of Sical and his friends. "Yes, ye lie! ”

“ And at one point, sprawling across a table, with head lost between outstretched arms, a figure, apparently asleep, perhaps dead.
Bertrand, now nothing but a bundle of nerves, could hardly suppress a cry of terror. It seemed to him as if his life depended on whether that sprawling figure was alive or dead. But he dared not approach in order to make sure. For awhile he waited, sinking more and more deeply into the shadows, watching that motionless form on which his life depended.
The figure did not move, and gradually Bertrand nerved himself up to confidence and then to action. ”

“ Men in their wildest passions, in their most ebullient moods, must calm down sooner or later, if only temporarily. Blood aglow with enthusiasm, or rage, or idolatry, cannot retain its fever-pitch uninterruptedly for long. And so silence of that turbulent scene of awhile ago.
Here, as in other quarters of Paris, the fraternal suppers had come to an end; and perspiring matrons, dragging weary children at their skirts, wended their way homewards, whilst their men went to consummate the evening's entertainment at one of the numerous clubs or cabarets where the marvellous doings in the Rue St. ”