Ragons had been faithful adherents of the Royalist cause; it was through their means that the Vendean leaders kept up a correspondence with the Princes and the Royalist Committee in Paris. The abbe, in the ordinary dress of the time, was standing on the threshold of the shop --which stood between Saint Roch and the Rue des Frondeurs--when he saw that the Rue Saint Honore was filled with a crowd and he could not go out. "What is the matter?" he asked Madame Ragon. "Nothing," she said; "it is only the tumbril cart and the executioner going to the Place Louis XV. Ah! we used to see it often enough last year; but to-day, four days after the anniversary of the twenty-first of January, one does not feel sorry to see the ghastly procession." "Why not?" asked the abbe. "That is not said like a Christian." "Eh! but it is the execution of Robespierre's accomplices. They defended themselves as long as they could, but now it is their turn to go where they sent so many innocent people." The crowd poured by like a flood. The abbe, yielding to an impulse of curiosity, looked up above the heads, and there in the tumbril stood the man who had heard mass in the garret three days ago. "Who is it?" he asked; "who is the man with----" "That is the headsman," answered M. Ragon, calling the executioner --the _executeur des hautes oeuvres_--by the name he had borne under the Monarchy. "Oh! my dear, my dear! M. l'Abbe is dying!" cried out old Madame Ragon. She caught up a flask of vinegar, and tried to restore the old priest to consciousness. "He must have given me the handkerchief that the King used to wipe his brow on the way to his martyrdom," murmured he. " . . . Poor man! . . . There was a heart in the steel blade, when none was found in all France . . . " The perfumers thought that the poor abbe was raving.