He had no future but in this life; and how in this life had the men of power around him, the great wrestlers for dominion, thriven?
All that was good, pure, unselfish,--whether among Royalists or Republicans,--swept to the shambles, and the deathsmen left alone in the pomp and purple of their victims! Nobler paupers than Jean Nicot would despair; and Poverty would rise in its ghastly multitudes to cut the throat of Wealth, and then gash itself limb by limb, if Patience, the Angel of the Poor, sat not by its side, pointing with solemn finger to the life to come! And now, as Nicot neared the house of the Dictator, he began to meditate a reversal of his plans of the previous day: not that he faltered in his resolution to denounce Glyndon, and Viola would necessarily share his fate, as a companion and accomplice,--no, THERE he was resolved! for he hated both (to say nothing of his old but never-to-be-forgotten grudge against Zanoni).

Viola had scorned him, Glyndon had served, and the thought of gratitude was as intolerable to him as the memory of insult.

But why, now, should he fly from France ?--he could possess himself of Glyndon's gold; he doubted not that he could so master Fillide by her wrath and jealousy that he could command her acquiescence in all he proposed.

The papers he had purloined--Desmoulins' correspondence with Glyndon--while it insured the fate of the latter, might be eminently serviceable to Robespierre, might induce the tyrant to forget his own old liaisons with Hebert, and enlist him among the allies and tools of the King of Terror.

Hopes of advancement, of wealth, of a career, again rose before him.