автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу  Scaramouche

Rafael Sabatini

Book I The Robe

I The Republican

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his pat­ri­mony. His very pa­tern­ity was ob­scure, al­though the vil­lage of Gav­ril­lac had long since dis­pelled the cloud of mys­tery that hung about it. Those simple Brit­tany folk were not so simple as to be de­ceived by a pre­ten­ded re­la­tion­ship which did not even pos­sess the vir­tue of ori­gin­al­ity. When a no­ble­man, for no ap­par­ent reason, an­nounces him­self the god­father of an in­fant fetched no man knew whence, and there­after cares for the lad’s rear­ing and edu­ca­tion, the most un­soph­ist­ic­ated of coun­try folk per­fectly un­der­stand the situ­ation. And so the good people of Gav­ril­lac per­mit­ted them­selves no il­lu­sions on the score of the real re­la­tion­ship between André-Louis Mor­eau—as the lad had been named—and Quintin de Ker­ca­diou, Lord of Gav­ril­lac, who dwelt in the big grey house that dom­in­ated from its em­in­ence the vil­lage clus­ter­ing be­low.

André-Louis had learnt his let­ters at the vil­lage school, lodged the while with old Rabouil­let, the at­tor­ney, who in the ca­pa­city of fiscal in­tend­ant, looked after the af­fairs of M. de Ker­ca­diou. There­after, at the age of fif­teen, he had been packed off to Paris, to the Lycée of Louis Le Grand, to study the law which he was now re­turned to prac­tise in con­junc­tion with Rabouil­let. All this at the charges of his god­father, M. de Ker­ca­diou, who by pla­cing him once more un­der the tu­tel­age of Rabouil­let would seem thereby quite clearly to be mak­ing pro­vi­sion for his fu­ture.

André-Louis, on his side, had made the most of his op­por­tun­it­ies. You be­hold him at the age of four-and-twenty stuffed with learn­ing enough to pro­duce an in­tel­lec­tual in­di­ges­tion in an or­din­ary mind. Out of his zest­ful study of Man, from Thucy­dides to the En­cyc­lo­paed­ists, from Seneca to Rousseau, he had con­firmed into an un­as­sail­able con­vic­tion his earli­est con­scious im­pres­sions of the gen­eral in­san­ity of his own spe­cies. Nor can I dis­cover that any­thing in his event­ful life ever af­ter­wards caused him to waver in that opin­ion.

In body he was a slight wisp of a fel­low, scarcely above middle height, with a lean, as­tute coun­ten­ance, prom­in­ent of nose and cheekbones, and with lank, black hair that reached al­most to his shoulders. His mouth was long, thin-lipped, and hu­mor­ous. He was only just re­deemed from ugli­ness by the splend­our of a pair of ever-quest­ing, lu­min­ous eyes, so dark as to be al­most black. Of the whim­sical qual­ity of his mind and his rare gift of grace­ful ex­pres­sion, his writ­ings—un­for­tu­nately but too scanty—and par­tic­u­larly his Con­fes­sions, af­ford us very ample evid­ence. Of his gift of oratory he was hardly con­scious yet, al­though he had already achieved a cer­tain fame for it in the Lit­er­ary Cham­ber of Rennes—one of those clubs by now ubi­quit­ous in the land, in which the in­tel­lec­tual youth of France fore­gathered to study and dis­cuss the new philo­sophies that were per­meat­ing so­cial life. But the fame he had ac­quired there was hardly en­vi­able. He was too imp­ish, too caustic, too much dis­posed—so thought his col­leagues—to ri­dicule their sub­lime the­or­ies for the re­gen­er­a­tion of man­kind. Him­self he pro­tested that he merely held them up to the mir­ror of truth, and that it was not his fault if when re­flec­ted there they looked ri­dicu­lous.

All that he achieved by this was to ex­as­per­ate; and his ex­pul­sion from a so­ci­ety grown mis­trust­ful of him must already have fol­lowed but for his friend, Phil­ippe de Vilmorin, a di­vin­ity stu­dent of Rennes, who, him­self, was one of the most pop­u­lar mem­bers of the Lit­er­ary Cham­ber.

Com­ing to Gav­ril­lac on a Novem­ber morn­ing, laden with news of the polit­ical storms which were then gath­er­ing over France, Phil­ippe found in that sleepy Bréton vil­lage mat­ter to quicken his already lively in­dig­na­tion. A peas­ant of Gav­ril­lac, named Mabey, had been shot dead that morn­ing in the woods of Meupont, across the river, by a game­keeper of the Mar­quis de La Tour d’Azyr. The un­for­tu­nate fel­low had been caught in the act of tak­ing a pheas­ant from a snare, and the game­keeper had ac­ted un­der ex­pli­cit or­ders from his mas­ter.

In­furi­ated by an act of tyranny so ab­so­lute and mer­ci­less, M. de Vilmorin pro­posed to lay the mat­ter be­fore M. de Ker­ca­diou. Mabey was a vas­sal of Gav­ril­lac, and Vilmorin hoped to move the Lord of Gav­ril­lac to de­mand at least some meas­ure of re­par­a­tion for the widow and the three orphans which that bru­tal deed had made.

But be­cause André-Louis was Phil­ippe’s dearest friend—in­deed, his al­most brother—the young sem­in­ar­ist sought him out in the first in­stance. He found him at break­fast alone in the long, low-ceilinged, white-pan­elled din­ing-room at Rabouil­let’s—the only home that André-Louis had ever known—and after em­bra­cing him, deafened him with his de­nun­ci­ation of M. de La Tour d’Azyr.

“I have heard of it already,” said André-Louis.

“You speak as if the thing had not sur­prised you,” his friend re­proached him.

“Noth­ing beastly can sur­prise me when done by a beast. And La Tour d’Azyr is a beast, as all the world knows. The more fool Mabey for steal­ing his pheas­ants. He should have stolen some­body else’s.”

“Is that all you have to say about it?”

“What more is there to say? I’ve a prac­tical mind, I hope.”

“What more there is to say I pro­pose to say to your god­father, M. de Ker­ca­diou. I shall ap­peal to him for justice.”

“Against M. de La Tour d’Azyr?” André-Louis raised his eye­brows.

“Why not?”

“My dear in­genu­ous Phil­ippe, dog doesn’t eat dog.”

“You are un­just to your god­father. He is a hu­mane man.”

“Oh, as hu­mane as you please. But this isn’t a ques­tion of hu­man­ity. It’s a ques­tion of game-laws.”

M. de Vilmorin tossed his long arms to Heaven in dis­gust. He was a tall, slender young gen­tle­man, a year or two younger than André-Louis. He was very soberly dressed in black, as be­came a sem­in­ar­ist, with white bands at wrists and throat and sil­ver buckles to his shoes. His neatly clubbed brown hair was in­no­cent of powder.

“You talk like a law­yer,” he ex­ploded.

“Nat­ur­ally. But don’t waste an­ger on me on that ac­count. Tell me what you want me to do.”

“I want you to come to M. de Ker­ca­diou with me, and to use your in­flu­ence to ob­tain justice. I sup­pose I am ask­ing too much.”

“My dear Phil­ippe, I ex­ist to serve you. I warn you that it is a fu­tile quest; but give me leave to fin­ish my break­fast, and I am at your or­ders.”

M. de Vilmorin dropped into a winged arm­chair by the well-swept hearth, on which a piled-up fire of pine logs was burn­ing cheer­ily. And whilst he waited now he gave his friend the latest news of the events in Rennes. Young, ar­dent, en­thu­si­astic, and in­spired by Uto­pian ideals, he pas­sion­ately de­nounced the re­bel­li­ous at­ti­tude of the priv­ileged.

André-Louis, already fully aware of the trend of feel­ing in the ranks of an or­der in whose de­lib­er­a­tions he took part as the rep­res­ent­at­ive of a no­ble­man, was not at all sur­prised by what he heard. M. de Vilmorin found it ex­as­per­at­ing that his friend should ap­par­ently de­cline to share his own in­dig­na­tion.

“Don’t you see what it means?” he cried. “The nobles, by dis­obey­ing the King, are strik­ing at the very found­a­tions of the throne. Don’t they per­ceive that their very ex­ist­ence de­pends upon it; that if the throne falls over, it is they who stand nearest to it who will be crushed? Don’t they see that?”

“Evidently not. They are just gov­ern­ing classes, and I never heard of gov­ern­ing classes that had eyes for any­thing but their own profit.”

“That is our griev­ance. That is what we are go­ing to change.”

“You are go­ing to ab­ol­ish gov­ern­ing classes? An in­ter­est­ing ex­per­i­ment. I be­lieve it was the ori­ginal plan of cre­ation, and it might have suc­ceeded but for Cain.”

“What we are go­ing to do,” said M. de Vilmorin, curb­ing his ex­as­per­a­tion, “is to trans­fer the gov­ern­ment to other hands.”

“And you think that will make a dif­fer­ence?”

“I know it will.”

“Ah! I take it that be­ing now in minor or­ders, you already pos­sess the con­fid­ence of the Almighty. He will have con­fided to you His in­ten­tion of chan­ging the pat­tern of man­kind.”

M. de Vilmorin’s fine as­cetic face grew over­cast. “You are pro­fane, André,” he re­proved his friend.

“I as­sure you that I am quite ser­i­ous. To do what you im­ply would re­quire noth­ing short of di­vine in­ter­ven­tion. You must change man, not sys­tems. Can you and our va­pour­ing friends of the Lit­er­ary Cham­ber of Rennes, or any other learned so­ci­ety of France, de­vise a sys­tem of gov­ern­ment that has never yet been tried? Surely not. And can they say of any sys­tem tried that it proved other than a fail­ure in the end? My dear Phil­ippe, the fu­ture is to be read with cer­tainty only in the past. Ab actu ad posse valet con­secu­tio. Man never changes. He is al­ways greedy, al­ways ac­quis­it­ive, al­ways vile. I am speak­ing of Man in the bulk.”

“Do you pre­tend that it is im­possible to ameli­or­ate the lot of the people?” M. de Vilmorin chal­lenged him.

“When you say the people you mean, of course, the popu­lace. Will you ab­ol­ish it? That is the only way to ameli­or­ate its lot, for as long as it re­mains popu­lace its lot will be dam­na­tion.”

“You ar­gue, of course, for the side that em­ploys you. That is nat­ural, I sup­pose.” M. de Vilmorin spoke between sor­row and in­dig­na­tion.

“On the con­trary, I seek to ar­gue with ab­so­lute de­tach­ment. Let us test these ideas of yours. To what form of gov­ern­ment do you as­pire? A re­pub­lic, it is to be in­ferred from what you have said. Well, you have it already. France in real­ity is a re­pub­lic today.”

Phil­ippe stared at him. “You are be­ing para­dox­ical, I think. What of the King?”

“The King? All the world knows there has been no king in France since Louis XIV. There is an obese gen­tle­man at Ver­sailles who wears the crown, but the very news you bring shows for how little he really counts. It is the nobles and clergy who sit in the high places, with the people of France har­nessed un­der their feet, who are the real rulers. That is why I say that France is a re­pub­lic; she is a re­pub­lic built on the best pat­tern—the Ro­man pat­tern. Then, as now, there were great pa­tri­cian fam­il­ies in lux­ury, pre­serving for them­selves power and wealth, and what else is ac­coun­ted worth pos­sess­ing; and there was the popu­lace crushed and groan­ing, sweat­ing, bleed­ing, starving, and per­ish­ing in the Ro­man ken­nels. That was a re­pub­lic; the migh­ti­est we have seen.”

Phil­ippe strove with his im­pa­tience. “At least you will ad­mit—you have, in fact, ad­mit­ted it—that we could not be worse gov­erned than we are?”

“That is not the point. The point is should we be bet­ter gov­erned if we re­placed the present rul­ing class by an­other? Without some guar­an­tee of that I should be the last to lift a fin­ger to ef­fect a change. And what guar­an­tees can you give? What is the class that aims at gov­ern­ment? I will tell you. The bour­geoisie.”

“What?”

“That startles you, eh? Truth is so of­ten dis­con­cert­ing. You hadn’t thought of it? Well, think of it now. Look well into this Nantes mani­festo. Who are the au­thors of it?”

“I can tell you who it was con­strained the mu­ni­cip­al­ity of Nantes to send it to the King. Some ten thou­sand work­men—ship­wrights, weavers, la­bour­ers, and ar­tis­ans of every kind.”

“Stim­u­lated to it, driven to it, by their em­ploy­ers, the wealthy traders and shipown­ers of that city,” André-Louis replied. “I have a habit of ob­serving things at close quar­ters, which is why our col­leagues of the Lit­er­ary Cham­ber dis­like me so cor­di­ally in de­bate. Where I delve they but skim. Be­hind those la­bour­ers and ar­tis­ans of Nantes, coun­selling them, ur­ging on these poor, stu­pid, ig­nor­ant toil­ers to shed their blood in pur­suit of the will o’ the wisp of free­dom, are the sail-makers, the spin­ners, the shipown­ers and the slave-traders. The slave-traders! The men who live and grow rich by a traffic in hu­man flesh and blood in the colon­ies, are con­duct­ing at home a cam­paign in the sac­red name of liberty! Don’t you see that the whole move­ment is a move­ment of huck­sters and traders and ped­dling vas­sals swollen by wealth into envy of the power that lies in birth alone? The money-changers in Paris who hold the bonds in the na­tional debt, see­ing the par­lous fin­an­cial con­di­tion of the State, tremble at the thought that it may lie in the power of a single man to can­cel the debt by bank­ruptcy. To se­cure them­selves they are bur­row­ing un­der­ground to over­throw a state and build upon its ru­ins a new one in which they shall be the mas­ters. And to ac­com­plish this they in­flame the people. Already in Dauph­iny we have seen blood run like wa­ter—the blood of the popu­lace, al­ways the blood of the popu­lace. Now in Brit­tany we may see the like. And if in the end the new ideas pre­vail? if the sei­gneur­ial rule is over­thrown, what then? You will have ex­changed an ar­is­to­cracy for a plu­to­cracy. Is that worth while? Do you think that un­der money-changers and slave-traders and men who have waxed rich in other ways by the ig­noble arts of buy­ing and selling, the lot of the people will be any bet­ter than un­der their priests and nobles? Has it ever oc­curred to you, Phil­ippe, what it is that makes the rule of the nobles so in­tol­er­able? Ac­quis­it­ive­ness. Ac­quis­it­ive­ness is the curse of man­kind. And shall you ex­pect less ac­quis­it­ive­ness in men who have built them­selves up by ac­quis­it­ive­ness? Oh, I am ready to ad­mit that the present gov­ern­ment is ex­ec­rable, un­just, tyr­an­nical—what you will; but I beg you to look ahead, and to see that the gov­ern­ment for which it is aimed at ex­chan­ging it may be in­fin­itely worse.”

Phil­ippe sat thought­ful a mo­ment. Then he re­turned to the at­tack.

“You do not speak of the ab­uses, the hor­rible, in­tol­er­able ab­uses of power un­der which we la­bour at present.”

“Where there is power there will al­ways be the ab­use of it.”

“Not if the ten­ure of power is de­pend­ent upon its equit­able ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

“The ten­ure of power is power. We can­not dic­tate to those who hold it.”

“The people can—the people in its might.”

“Again I ask you, when you say the people do you mean the popu­lace? You do. What power can the popu­lace wield? It can run wild. It can burn and slay for a time. But en­dur­ing power it can­not wield, be­cause power de­mands qual­it­ies which the popu­lace does not pos­sess, or it would not be popu­lace. The in­ev­it­able, tra­gic co­rol­lary of civil­iz­a­tion is popu­lace. For the rest, ab­uses can be cor­rec­ted by equity; and equity, if it is not found in the en­lightened, is not to be found at all. M. Necker is to set about cor­rect­ing ab­uses, and lim­it­ing priv­ileges. That is de­cided. To that end the States Gen­eral are to as­semble.”

“And a prom­ising be­gin­ning we have made in Brit­tany, as Heaven hears me!” cried Phil­ippe.

“Pooh! That is noth­ing. Nat­ur­ally the nobles will not yield without a struggle. It is a fu­tile and ri­dicu­lous struggle—but then … it is hu­man nature, I sup­pose, to be fu­tile and ri­dicu­lous.”

M. de Vilmorin be­came with­er­ingly sar­castic. “Prob­ably you will also qual­ify the shoot­ing of Mabey as fu­tile and ri­dicu­lous. I should even be pre­pared to hear you ar­gue in de­fence of the Mar­quis de La Tour d’Azyr that his game­keeper was mer­ci­ful in shoot­ing Mabey, since the al­tern­at­ive would have been a life-sen­tence to the gal­leys.”

André-Louis drank the re­mainder of his chocol­ate; set down his cup, and pushed back his chair, his break­fast done.

“I con­fess that I have not your big char­ity, my dear Phil­ippe. I am touched by Mabey’s fate. But, hav­ing conquered the shock of this news to my emo­tions, I do not for­get that, after all, Mabey was thiev­ing when he met his death.”

M. de Vilmorin heaved him­self up in his in­dig­na­tion.

“That is the point of view to be ex­pec­ted in one who is the as­sist­ant fiscal in­tend­ant of a no­ble­man, and the del­eg­ate of a no­ble­man to the States of Brit­tany.”

“Phil­ippe, is that just? You are angry with me!” he cried, in real so­li­citude.

“I am hurt,” Vilmorin ad­mit­ted. “I am deeply hurt by your at­ti­tude. And I am not alone in re­sent­ing your re­ac­tion­ary tend­en­cies. Do you know that the Lit­er­ary Cham­ber is ser­i­ously con­sid­er­ing your ex­pul­sion?”

André-Louis shrugged. “That neither sur­prises nor troubles me.”

M. de Vilmorin swept on, pas­sion­ately: “So­me­times I think that you have no heart. With you it is al­ways the law, never equity. It oc­curs to me, André, that I was mis­taken in com­ing to you. You are not likely to be of as­sist­ance to me in my in­ter­view with M. de Ker­ca­diou.” He took up his hat, clearly with the in­ten­tion of de­part­ing.

André-Louis sprang up and caught him by the arm.

“I vow,” said he, “that this is the last time ever I shall con­sent to talk law or polit­ics with you, Phil­ippe. I love you too well to quar­rel with you over other men’s af­fairs.”

“But I make them my own,” Phil­ippe in­sisted vehe­mently.

“Of course you do, and I love you for it. It is right that you should. You are to be a priest; and every­body’s busi­ness is a priest’s busi­ness. Whereas I am a law­yer—the fiscal in­tend­ant of a no­ble­man, as you say—and a law­yer’s busi­ness is the busi­ness of his cli­ent. That is the dif­fer­ence between us. Never­the­less, you are not go­ing to shake me off.”

“But I tell you frankly, now that I come to think of it, that I should prefer you did not see M. de Ker­ca­diou with me. Your duty to your cli­ent can­not be a help to me.”

His wrath had passed; but his de­term­in­a­tion re­mained firm, based upon the reason he gave.

“Very well,” said André-Louis. “It shall be as you please. But noth­ing shall pre­vent me at least from walk­ing with you as far as the château, and wait­ing for you while you make your ap­peal to M. de Ker­ca­diou.”

And so they left the house good friends, for the sweet­ness of M. de Vilmorin’s nature did not ad­mit of ran­cour, and to­gether they took their way up the steep main street of Gav­ril­lac.

II The Aristocrat

The sleepy vil­lage of Gav­ril­lac, a half-league re­moved from the main road to Rennes, and there­fore un­dis­turbed by the world’s traffic, lay in a curve of the River Meu, at the foot, and strag­gling halfway up the slope, of the shal­low hill that was crowned by the squat manor. By the time Gav­ril­lac had paid trib­ute to its sei­gneur—partly in money and partly in ser­vice—tithes to the Church, and im­posts to the King, it was hard put to it to keep body and soul to­gether with what re­mained. Yet, hard as con­di­tions were in Gav­ril­lac, they were not so hard as in many other parts of France, not half so hard, for in­stance, as with the wretched feud­at­or­ies of the great Lord of La Tour d’Azyr, whose vast pos­ses­sions were at one point sep­ar­ated from this little vil­lage by the wa­ters of the Meu.

The Château de Gav­ril­lac owed such sei­gneur­ial airs as might be claimed for it to its dom­in­ant po­s­i­tion above the vil­lage rather than to any fea­ture of its own. Built of gran­ite, like all the rest of Gav­ril­lac, though mel­lowed by some three cen­tur­ies of ex­ist­ence, it was a squat, flat-fron­ted edi­fice of two stor­ies, each lighted by four win­dows with ex­ternal wooden shut­ters, and flanked at either end by two square towers or pa­vil­ions un­der ex­tin­guisher roofs. Stand­ing well back in a garden, de­nuded now, but very pleas­ant in sum­mer, and im­me­di­ately fron­ted by a fine sweep of bal­us­traded ter­race, it looked, what in­deed it was, and al­ways had been, the res­id­ence of un­pre­ten­tious folk who found more in­terest in hus­bandry than in ad­ven­ture.

Quintin de Ker­ca­diou, Lord of Gav­ril­lac—Seigneur de Gav­ril­lac was all the vague title that he bore, as his fore­fath­ers had borne be­fore him, de­rived no man knew whence or how—con­firmed the im­pres­sion that his house con­veyed. Rude as the gran­ite it­self, he had never sought the ex­per­i­ence of courts, had not even taken ser­vice in the armies of his King. He left it to his younger brother, Étienne, to rep­res­ent the fam­ily in those ex­al­ted spheres. His own in­terests from earli­est years had been centred in his woods and pas­tures. He hunted, and he cul­tiv­ated his acres, and su­per­fi­cially he ap­peared to be little bet­ter than any of his rus­tic métay­ers. He kept no state, or at least no state com­men­sur­ate with his po­s­i­tion or with the tastes of his niece Aline de Ker­ca­diou. Aline, hav­ing spent some two years in the court at­mo­sphere of Ver­sailles un­der the ae­gis of her uncle Étienne, had ideas very dif­fer­ent from those of her uncle Quintin of what was be­fit­ting sei­gneur­ial dig­nity. But though this only child of a third Ker­ca­diou had ex­er­cised, ever since she was left an orphan at the early age of four, a tyr­an­nical rule over the Lord of Gav­ril­lac, who had been father and mother to her, she had never yet suc­ceeded in beat­ing down his stub­born­ness on that score. She did not yet des­pair—per­sist­ence be­ing a dom­in­ant note in her char­ac­ter—al­though she had been as­sidu­ously and fruit­lessly at work since her re­turn from the great world of Ver­sailles some three months ago.

She was walk­ing on the ter­race when André-Louis and M. de Vilmorin ar­rived. Her slight body was wrapped against the chill air in a white pe­lisse; her head was en­cased in a close-fit­ting bon­net, edged with white fur. It was caught tight in a knot of pale-blue rib­bon on the right of her chin; on the left a long ring­let of corn-col­oured hair had been per­mit­ted to es­cape. The keen air had whipped so much of her cheeks as was presen­ted to it, and seemed to have ad­ded sparkle to eyes that were of darkest blue.

André-Louis and M. de Vilmorin had been known to her from child­hood. The three had been play­mates once, and André-Louis—in view of his spir­itual re­la­tion­ship with her uncle—she called her cousin. The cousinly re­la­tions had per­sisted between these two long after Phil­ippe de Vilmorin had out­grown the earlier in­tim­acy, and had be­come to her Mon­sieur de Vilmorin.

She waved her hand to them in greet­ing as they ad­vanced, and stood—an en­tran­cing pic­ture, and fully con­scious of it—to await them at the end of the ter­race nearest the short av­enue by which they ap­proached.

“If you come to see mon­sieur my uncle, you come in­op­por­tunely, messieurs,” she told them, a cer­tain fe­ver­ish­ness in her air. “He is closely—oh, so very closely—en­gaged.”

“We will wait, ma­demois­elle,” said M. de Vilmorin, bow­ing gal­lantly over the hand she ex­ten­ded to him. “Indeed, who would haste to the uncle that may tarry a mo­ment with the niece?”

“M. l’abbé,” she teased him, “when you are in or­ders I shall take you for my con­fessor. You have so ready and sym­path­etic an un­der­stand­ing.”

“But no curi­os­ity,” said André-Louis. “You haven’t thought of that.”

“I won­der what you mean, Cousin André.”

“Well you may,” laughed Phil­ippe. “For no one ever knows.” And then, his glance stray­ing across the ter­race settled upon a car­riage that was drawn up be­fore the door of the château. It was a vehicle such as was of­ten to be seen in the streets of a great city, but rarely in the coun­try. It was a beau­ti­fully sprung two-horse cab­ri­olet of wal­nut, with a var­nish upon it like a sheet of glass and little pas­toral scenes ex­quis­itely painted on the pan­els of the door. It was built to carry two per­sons, with a box in front for the coach­man, and a stand be­hind for the foot­man. This stand was empty, but the foot­man paced be­fore the door, and as he emerged now from be­hind the vehicle into the range of M. de Vilmorin’s vis­ion, he dis­played the resplen­dent blue-and-gold liv­ery of the Mar­quis de La Tour d’Azyr.

“Why!” he ex­claimed. “Is it M. de La Tour d’Azyr who is with your uncle?”

“It is, mon­sieur,” said she, a world of mys­tery in voice and eyes, of which M. de Vilmorin ob­served noth­ing.

“Ah, par­don!” he bowed low, hat in hand. “Ser­viteur, ma­demois­elle,” and he turned to de­part to­wards the house.

“Shall I come with you, Phil­ippe?” André-Louis called after him.

“It would be un­gal­lant to as­sume that you would prefer it,” said M. de Vilmorin, with a glance at ma­demois­elle. “Nor do I think it would serve. If you will wait …”

M. de Vilmorin strode off. Ma­demois­elle, after a mo­ment’s blank pause, laughed rip­plingly. “Now where is he go­ing in such a hurry?”

“To see M. de La Tour d’Azyr as well as your uncle, I should say.”

“But he can­not. They can­not see him. Did I not say that they are very closely en­gaged? You don’t ask me why, André.” There was an arch mys­ter­i­ous­ness about her, a lat­ent some­thing that may have been ela­tion or amuse­ment, or per­haps both. André-Louis could not de­term­ine it.

“Since ob­vi­ously you are all eager­ness to tell, why should I ask?” quoth he.

“If you are caustic I shall not tell you even if you ask. Oh, yes, I will. It will teach you to treat me with the re­spect that is my due.”

“I hope I shall never fail in that.”

“Less than ever when you learn that I am very closely con­cerned in the visit of M. de La Tour d’Azyr. I am the ob­ject of this visit.” And she looked at him with spark­ling eyes and lips par­ted in laughter.

“The rest, you would seem to im­ply, is ob­vi­ous. But I am a dolt, if you please; for it is not ob­vi­ous to me.”

“Why, stu­pid, he comes to ask my hand in mar­riage.”

“Good God!” said André-Louis, and stared at her, chap­fal­len.

She drew back from him a little with a frown and an up­ward tilt of her chin. “It sur­prises you?”

“It dis­gusts me,” said he, bluntly. “In fact, I don’t be­lieve it. You are amus­ing your­self with me.”

For a mo­ment she put aside her vis­ible an­noy­ance to re­move his doubts. “I am quite ser­i­ous, mon­sieur. There came a formal let­ter to my uncle this morn­ing from M. de La Tour d’Azyr, an­noun­cing the visit and its ob­ject. I will not say that it did not sur­prise us a little …”

“Oh, I see,” cried André-Louis, in re­lief. “I un­der­stand. For a mo­ment I had al­most feared …” He broke off, looked at her, and shrugged.

“Why do you stop? You had al­most feared that Ver­sailles had been wasted upon me. That I should per­mit the court­ship of me to be con­duc­ted like that of any vil­lage wench. It was stu­pid of you. I am be­ing sought in proper form, at my uncle’s hands.”

“Is his con­sent, then, all that mat­ters, ac­cord­ing to Ver­sailles?”

“What else?”

“There is your own.”

She laughed. “I am a du­ti­ful niece … when it suits me.”

“And will it suit you to be du­ti­ful if your uncle ac­cepts this mon­strous pro­posal?”

“Mon­strous!” She bridled. “And why mon­strous, if you please?”

“For a score of reas­ons,” he answered ir­rit­ably.

“Give me one,” she chal­lenged him.

“He is twice your age.”

“Hardly so much,” said she.

“He is forty-five, at least.”

“But he looks no more than thirty. He is very hand­some—so much you will ad­mit; nor will you deny that he is very wealthy and very power­ful; the greatest no­ble­man in Brit­tany. He will make me a great lady.”

“God made you that, Aline.”

“Come, that’s bet­ter. So­me­times you can al­most be po­lite.” And she moved along the ter­race, André-Louis pa­cing be­side her.

“I can be more than that to show reason why you should not let this beast be­foul the beau­ti­ful thing that God has made.”

She frowned, and her lips tightened. “You are speak­ing of my fu­ture hus­band,” she re­proved him.

His lips tightened too; his pale face grew paler.

“And is it so? It is settled, then? Your uncle is to agree? You are to be sold thus, love­lessly, into bond­age to a man you do not know. I had dreamed of bet­ter things for you, Aline.”

“Bet­ter than to be Mar­quise de La Tour d’Azyr?”

He made a ges­ture of ex­as­per­a­tion. “Are men and wo­men noth­ing more than names? Do the souls of them count for noth­ing? Is there no joy in life, no hap­pi­ness, that wealth and pleas­ure and empty, high-sound­ing titles are to be its only aims? I had set you high—so high, Aline—a thing scarce earthly. There is joy in your heart, in­tel­li­gence in your mind; and, as I thought, the vis­ion that pierces husks and shams to claim the core of real­ity for its own. Yet you will sur­render all for a par­cel of make-be­lieve. You will sell your soul and your body to be Mar­quise de La Tour d’Azyr.”

“You are in­del­ic­ate,” said she, and though she frowned her eyes laughed. “And you go head­long to con­clu­sions. My uncle will not con­sent to more than to al­low my con­sent to be sought. We un­der­stand each other, my uncle and I. I am not to be bartered like a turnip.”

He stood still to face her, his eyes glow­ing, a flush creep­ing into his pale cheeks.

“You have been tor­tur­ing me to amuse your­self!” he cried. “Ah, well, I for­give you out of my re­lief.”

“Again you go too fast, Cousin André I have per­mit­ted my uncle to con­sent that M. le Mar­quis shall make his court to me. I like the look of the gen­tle­man. I am flattered by his pref­er­ence when I con­sider his em­in­ence. It is an em­in­ence that I may find it de­sir­able to share. M. le Mar­quis does not look as if he were a dullard. It should be in­ter­est­ing to be wooed by him. It may be more in­ter­est­ing still to marry him, and I think, when all is con­sidered, that I shall prob­ably—very prob­ably—de­cide to do so.”

He looked at her, looked at the sweet, chal­len­ging love­li­ness of that child­like face so tightly framed in the oval of white fur, and all the life seemed to go out of his own coun­ten­ance.

“God help you, Aline!” he groaned.

She stamped her foot. He was really very ex­as­per­at­ing, and some­thing pre­sump­tu­ous too, she thought.

“You are in­solent, mon­sieur.”

“It is never in­solent to pray, Aline. And I did no more than pray, as I shall con­tinue to do. You’ll need my pray­ers, I think.”

“You are in­suf­fer­able!” She was grow­ing angry, as he saw by the deep­en­ing frown, the heightened col­our.

“That is be­cause I suf­fer. Oh, Aline, little cousin, think well of what you do; think well of the real­it­ies you will be bar­ter­ing for these shams—the real­it­ies that you will never know, be­cause these cursed shams will block your way to them. When M. de La Tour d’Azyr comes to make his court, study him well; con­sult your fine in­stincts; leave your own noble nature free to judge this an­imal by its in­tu­itions. Con­sider that …”

“I con­sider, mon­sieur, that you pre­sume upon the kind­ness I have al­ways shown you. You ab­use the po­s­i­tion of tol­er­a­tion in which you stand. Who are you? What are you, that you should have the in­solence to take this tone with me?”

He bowed, in­stantly his cold, de­tached self again, and re­sumed the mock­ery that was his nat­ural habit.

“My con­grat­u­la­tions, ma­demois­elle, upon the read­i­ness with which you be­gin to ad­apt your­self to the great role you are to play.”

“Do you ad­apt your­self also, mon­sieur,” she re­tor­ted an­grily, and turned her shoulder to him.

“To be as the dust be­neath the haughty feet of Ma­dame la Mar­quise. I hope I shall know my place in fu­ture.”

The phrase ar­res­ted her. She turned to him again, and he per­ceived that her eyes were shin­ing now sus­pi­ciously. In an in­stant the mock­ery in him was quenched in con­tri­tion.

“Lord, what a beast I am, Aline!” he cried, as he ad­vanced. “For­give me if you can.”

Al­most had she turned to sue for­give­ness from him. But his con­tri­tion re­moved the need.

“I’ll try,” said she, “provided that you un­der­take not to of­fend again.”

“But I shall,” said he. “I am like that. I will fight to save you, from your­self if need be, whether you for­give me or not.”

They were stand­ing so, con­front­ing each other a little breath­lessly, a little de­fi­antly, when the oth­ers is­sued from the porch.

First came the Mar­quis of La Tour d’Azyr, Count of Solz, Knight of the Orders of the Holy Ghost and Saint Louis, and Bri­gadier in the armies of the King. He was a tall, grace­ful man, up­right and sol­dierly of car­riage, with his head dis­dain­fully set upon his shoulders. He was mag­ni­fi­cently dressed in a full-skir­ted coat of mul­berry vel­vet that was laced with gold. His waist­coat, of vel­vet too, was of a golden apricot col­our; his breeches and stock­ings were of black silk, and his lacquered, red-heeled shoes were buckled in dia­monds. His powdered hair was tied be­hind in a broad rib­bon of watered silk; he car­ried a little three-cornered hat un­der his arm, and a gold-hil­ted slender dress-sword hung at his side.

Con­sid­er­ing him now in com­plete de­tach­ment, ob­serving the mag­ni­fi­cence of him, the el­eg­ance of his move­ments, the great air, blend­ing in so ex­traordin­ary a man­ner dis­dain and gra­cious­ness, André-Louis trembled for Aline. Here was a prac­tised, ir­res­ist­ible wooer, whose bonnes for­tunes were be­come a by­word, a man who had hitherto been the des­pair of dow­agers with mar­riage­able daugh­ters, and the des­ol­a­tion of hus­bands with at­tract­ive wives.

He was im­me­di­ately fol­lowed by M. de Ker­ca­diou, in com­pletest con­trast. On legs of the shortest, the Lord of Gav­ril­lac car­ried a body that at forty-five was be­gin­ning to in­cline to cor­pu­lence and an enorm­ous head con­tain­ing an in­dif­fer­ent al­lot­ment of in­tel­li­gence. His coun­ten­ance was pink and blotchy, lib­er­ally branded by the small­pox which had al­most ex­tin­guished him in youth. In dress he was care­less to the point of un­tidi­ness, and to this and to the fact that he had never mar­ried—dis­reg­ard­ing the first duty of a gen­tle­man to provide him­self with an heir—he owed the char­ac­ter of miso­gyn­ist at­trib­uted to him by the coun­tryside.

After M. de Ker­ca­diou came M. de Vilmorin, very pale and self-con­tained, with tight lips and an over­cast brow.

To meet them, there stepped from the car­riage a very el­eg­ant young gen­tle­man, the Cheva­lier de Ch­ab­ril­lane, M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s cousin, who whilst await­ing his re­turn had watched with con­sid­er­able in­terest—his own pres­ence un­sus­pec­ted—the per­am­bu­la­tions of André-Louis and ma­demois­elle.

Per­ceiv­ing Aline, M. de La Tour d’Azyr de­tached him­self from the oth­ers, and length­en­ing his stride came straight across the ter­race to her.

To André-Louis the Mar­quis in­clined his head with that mix­ture of court­li­ness and con­des­cen­sion which he used. So­cially, the young law­yer stood in a curi­ous po­s­i­tion. By vir­tue of the the­ory of his birth, he ranked neither as noble nor as simple, but stood some­where between the two classes, and whilst claimed by neither he was used fa­mil­iarly by both. Coldly now he re­turned M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s greet­ing, and dis­creetly re­moved him­self to go and join his friend.

The Mar­quis took the hand that ma­demois­elle ex­ten­ded to him, and bow­ing over it, bore it to his lips.

“Ma­demois­elle,” he said, look­ing into the blue depths of her eyes, that met his gaze smil­ing and un­troubled, “mon­sieur your uncle does me the hon­our to per­mit that I pay my homage to you. Will you, ma­demois­elle, do me the hon­our to re­ceive me when I come to­mor­row? I shall have some­thing of great im­port­ance for your ear.”

“Of im­port­ance, M. le Mar­quis? You al­most frighten me.” But there was no fear on the se­rene little face in its furred hood. It was not for noth­ing that she had gradu­ated in the Ver­sailles school of ar­ti­fi­ci­al­it­ies.

“That,” said he, “is very far from my design.”

“But of im­port­ance to your­self, mon­sieur, or to me?”

“To us both, I hope,” he answered her, a world of mean­ing in his fine, ar­dent eyes.

“You whet my curi­os­ity, mon­sieur; and, of course, I am a du­ti­ful niece. It fol­lows that I shall be hon­oured to re­ceive you.”

“Not hon­oured, ma­demois­elle; you will con­fer the hon­our. To­mor­row at this hour, then, I shall have the fe­li­city to wait upon you.”

He bowed again; and again he bore her fin­gers to his lips, what time she curt­sied. Thereupon, with no more than this formal break­ing of the ice, they par­ted.

She was a little breath­less now, a little dazzled by the beauty of the man, his princely air, and the con­fid­ence of power he seemed to ra­di­ate. In­vol­un­tar­ily al­most, she con­tras­ted him with his critic—the lean and im­pudent André-Louis in his plain brown coat and steel-buckled shoes—and she felt guilty of an un­par­don­able of­fence in hav­ing per­mit­ted even one word of that pre­sump­tu­ous cri­ti­cism. To­mor­row M. le Mar­quis would come to of­fer her a great po­s­i­tion, a great rank. And already she had derog­ated from the in­crease of dig­nity ac­cru­ing to her from his very in­ten­tion to trans­late her to so great an em­in­ence. Not again would she suf­fer it; not again would she be so weak and child­ish as to per­mit André-Louis to ut­ter his rib­ald com­ments upon a man by com­par­ison with whom he was no bet­ter than a lackey.

Thus ar­gued van­ity and am­bi­tion with her bet­ter self and to her vast an­noy­ance her bet­ter self would not ad­mit en­tire con­vic­tion.

Mean­while, M. de La Tour d’Azyr was climb­ing into his car­riage. He had spoken a word of farewell to M. de Ker­ca­diou, and he had also had a word for M. de Vilmorin in reply to which M. de Vilmorin had bowed in as­sent­ing si­lence. The car­riage rolled away, the powdered foot­man in blue-and-gold very stiff be­hind it, M. de La Tour d’Azyr bow­ing to ma­demois­elle, who waved to him in an­swer.

Then M. de Vilmorin put his arm through that of André-Louis, and said to him, “Come, André.”

“But you’ll stay to dine, both of you!” cried the hos­pit­able Lord of Gav­ril­lac. “We’ll drink a cer­tain toast,” he ad­ded, wink­ing an eye that strayed to­wards ma­demois­elle, who was ap­proach­ing. He had no sub­tleties, good soul that he was.

M. de Vilmorin de­plored an ap­point­ment that pre­ven­ted him do­ing him­self the hon­our. He was very stiff and formal.

“And you, André?”

“I? Oh, I share the ap­point­ment, god­father,” he lied, “and I have a su­per­sti­tion against toasts.” He had no wish to re­main. He was angry with Aline for her smil­ing re­cep­tion of M. de La Tour d’Azyr and the sor­did bar­gain he saw her set on mak­ing. He was suf­fer­ing from the loss of an il­lu­sion.

III The Eloquence of M. De Vilmorin

As they walked down the hill to­gether, it was now M. de Vilmorin who was si­lent and pre­oc­cu­pied, André-Louis who was talk­at­ive. He had chosen Wo­man as a sub­ject for his present dis­course. He claimed—quite un­jus­ti­fi­ably—to have dis­covered Wo­man that morn­ing; and the things he had to say of the sex were un­flat­ter­ing, and oc­ca­sion­ally al­most gross. M. de Vilmorin, hav­ing as­cer­tained the sub­ject, did not listen. Sin­gu­lar though it may seem in a young French abbé of his day, M. de Vilmorin was not in­ter­ested in Wo­man. Poor Phil­ippe was in sev­eral ways ex­cep­tional.

Op­pos­ite the Bréton Armé—the inn and post­ing-house at the en­trance of the vil­lage of Gav­ril­lac—M. de Vilmorin in­ter­rup­ted his com­pan­ion just as he was soar­ing to the diz­zi­est heights of caustic in­vect­ive, and André-Louis, re­stored thereby to ac­tu­al­it­ies, ob­served the car­riage of M. de La Tour d’Azyr stand­ing be­fore the door of the hostelry.

“I don’t be­lieve you’ve been listen­ing to me,” said he.

“Had you been less in­ter­ested in what you were say­ing, you might have ob­served it sooner and spared your breath. The fact is, you dis­ap­point me, André. You seem to have for­got­ten what we went for. I have an ap­point­ment here with M. le Mar­quis. He de­sires to hear me fur­ther in the mat­ter. Up there at Gav­ril­lac I could ac­com­plish noth­ing. The time was ill-chosen as it happened. But I have hopes of M. le Mar­quis.”

“Hopes of what?”

“That he will make what re­par­a­tion lies in his power. Provide for the widow and the orphans. Why else should he de­sire to hear me fur­ther?”

“Unusual con­des­cen­sion,” said André-Louis, and quoted “Timeo Danaos et dona fer­entes.”

“Why?” asked Phil­ippe.

“Let us go and dis­cover—un­less you con­sider that I shall be in the way.”

Into a room on the right, rendered private to M. le Mar­quis for so long as he should elect to hon­our it, the young men were ushered by the host. A fire of logs was burn­ing brightly at the room’s far end, and by this sat now M. de La Tour d’Azyr and his cousin, the Cheva­lier de Ch­ab­ril­lane. Both rose as M. de Vilmorin came in. André-Louis fol­low­ing, paused to close the door.

“You ob­lige me by your prompt cour­tesy, M. de Vilmorin,” said the Mar­quis, but in a tone so cold as to be­lie the po­lite­ness of his words. “A chair, I beg. Ah, Mor­eau?” The note was fri­gidly in­ter­rog­at­ive. “He ac­com­pan­ies you, mon­sieur?” he asked.

“If you please, M. le Mar­quis.”

“Why not? Find your­self a seat, Mor­eau.” He spoke over his shoulder as to a lackey.

“It is good of you, mon­sieur,” said Phil­ippe, “to have offered me this op­por­tun­ity of con­tinu­ing the sub­ject that took me so fruit­lessly, as it hap­pens, to Gav­ril­lac.”

The Mar­quis crossed his legs, and held one of his fine hands to the blaze. He replied, without troub­ling to turn to the young man, who was slightly be­hind him.

“The good­ness of my re­quest we will leave out of ques­tion for the mo­ment,” said he, darkly, and M. de Ch­ab­ril­lane laughed. André-Louis thought him eas­ily moved to mirth, and al­most en­vied him the fac­ulty.

“But I am grate­ful,” Phil­ippe in­sisted, “that you should con­des­cend to hear me plead their cause.”

The Mar­quis stared at him over his shoulder. “Whose cause?” quoth he.

“Why, the cause of the widow and orphans of this un­for­tu­nate Mabey.”

The Mar­quis looked from Vilmorin to the Cheva­lier, and again the Cheva­lier laughed, slap­ping his leg this time.

“I think,” said M. de La Tour d’Azyr, slowly, “that we are at cross-pur­poses. I asked you to come here be­cause the Château de Gav­ril­lac was hardly a suit­able place in which to carry our dis­cus­sion fur­ther, and be­cause I hes­it­ated to in­com­mode you by sug­gest­ing that you should come all the way to Azyr. But my ob­ject is con­nec­ted with cer­tain ex­pres­sions that you let fall up there. It is on the sub­ject of those ex­pres­sions, mon­sieur, that I would hear you fur­ther—if you will hon­our me.”

André-Louis began to ap­pre­hend that there was some­thing sin­is­ter in the air. He was a man of quick in­tu­itions, quicker far than those of M. de Vilmorin, who evinced no more than a mild sur­prise.

“I am at a loss, mon­sieur,” said he. “To what ex­pres­sions does mon­sieur al­lude?”

“It seems, mon­sieur, that I must re­fresh your memory.” The Mar­quis crossed his legs, and swung side­ways on his chair, so that at last he dir­ectly faced M. de Vilmorin. “You spoke, mon­sieur—and how­ever mis­taken you may have been, you spoke very elo­quently, too elo­quently al­most, it seemed to me—of the in­famy of such a deed as the act of sum­mary justice upon this thiev­ing fel­low Mabey, or whatever his name may be. In­famy was the pre­cise word you used. You did not re­tract that word when I had the hon­our to in­form you that it was by my or­ders that my game­keeper Benet pro­ceeded as he did.”

“If,” said M. de Vilmorin, “the deed was in­fam­ous, its in­famy is not mod­i­fied by the rank, how­ever ex­al­ted, of the per­son re­spons­ible. Rather is it ag­grav­ated.”

“Ah!” said M. le Mar­quis, and drew a gold snuff­box from his pocket. “You say, ‘if the deed was in­fam­ous,’ mon­sieur. Am I to un­der­stand that you are no longer as con­vinced as you ap­peared to be of its in­famy?”

M. de Vilmorin’s fine face wore a look of per­plex­ity. He did not un­der­stand the drift of this.

“It oc­curs to me, M. le Mar­quis, in view of your read­i­ness to as­sume re­spons­ib­il­ity, that you must be­lieve jus­ti­fic­a­tion for the deed which is not ap­par­ent to my­self.”

“That is bet­ter. That is dis­tinctly bet­ter.” The Mar­quis took snuff del­ic­ately, dust­ing the frag­ments from the fine lace at his throat. “You real­ize that with an im­per­fect un­der­stand­ing of these mat­ters, not be­ing your­self a landowner, you may have rushed to un­jus­ti­fi­able con­clu­sions. That is in­deed the case. May it be a warn­ing to you, mon­sieur. When I tell you that for months past I have been an­noyed by sim­ilar de­pred­a­tions, you will per­haps un­der­stand that it had be­come ne­ces­sary to em­ploy a de­terrent suf­fi­ciently strong to put an end to them. Now that the risk is known, I do not think there will be any more prowl­ing in my cov­erts. And there is more in it than that, M. de Vilmorin. It is not the poach­ing that an­noys me so much as the con­tempt for my ab­so­lute and in­vi­ol­able rights. There is, mon­sieur, as you can­not fail to have ob­served, an evil spirit of in­sub­or­din­a­tion in the air, and there is one only way in which to meet it. To tol­er­ate it, in how­ever slight a de­gree, to show le­ni­ency, how­ever le­ni­ently dis­posed, would en­tail hav­ing re­course to still harsher meas­ures to­mor­row. You un­der­stand me, I am sure, and you will also, I am sure, ap­pre­ci­ate the con­des­cen­sion of what amounts to an ex­plan­a­tion from me where I can­not ad­mit that any ex­plan­a­tions were due. If any­thing in what I have said is still ob­scure to you, I refer you to the game laws, which your law­yer friend there will ex­pound for you at need.”

With that the gen­tle­man swung round again to face the fire. It ap­peared to con­vey the in­tim­a­tion that the in­ter­view was at an end. And yet this was not by any means the in­tim­a­tion that it con­veyed to the watch­ful, puzzled, vaguely un­easy André-Louis. It was, thought he, a very curi­ous, a very sus­pi­cious ora­tion. It af­fected to ex­plain, with a po­lite­ness of terms and a cal­cu­lated in­solence of tone; whilst in fact it could only serve to stim­u­late and goad a man of M. de Vilmorin’s opin­ions. And that is pre­cisely what it did. He rose.

“Are there in the world no laws but game laws?” he de­man­ded, an­grily. “Have you never by any chance heard of the laws of hu­man­ity?”

The Mar­quis sighed wear­ily. “What have I to do with the laws of hu­man­ity?” he wondered.

M. de Vilmorin looked at him a mo­ment in speech­less amazement.

“Noth­ing, M. le Mar­quis. That is—alas!—too ob­vi­ous. I hope you will re­mem­ber it in the hour when you may wish to ap­peal to those laws which you now de­ride.”

M. de La Tour d’Azyr threw back his head sharply, his high-bred face im­per­i­ous.

“Now what pre­cisely shall that mean? It is not the first time today that you have made use of dark say­ings that I could al­most be­lieve to veil the pre­sump­tion of a threat.”

“Not a threat, M. le Mar­quis—a warn­ing. A warn­ing that such deeds as these against God’s creatures … Oh, you may sneer, mon­sieur, but they are God’s creatures, even as you or I—neither more nor less, deeply though the re­flec­tion may wound your pride, In His eyes …”

“Of your char­ity, spare me a ser­mon, M. l’abbé!”

“You mock, mon­sieur. You laugh. Will you laugh, I won­der, when God presents His reck­on­ing to you for the blood and plun­der with which your hands are full?”

“Mon­sieur!” The word, sharp as the crack of a whip, was from M. de Ch­ab­ril­lane, who bounded to his feet. But in­stantly the Mar­quis repressed him.

“Sit down, Cheva­lier. You are in­ter­rupt­ing M. l’abbé, and I should like to hear him fur­ther. He in­terests me pro­foundly.”

In the back­ground André-Louis, too, had risen, brought to his feet by alarm, by the evil that he saw writ­ten on the hand­some face of M. de La Tour d’Azyr. He ap­proached, and touched his friend upon the arm.

“Bet­ter be go­ing, Phil­ippe,” said he.

But M. de Vilmorin, caught in the re­lent­less grip of pas­sions long repressed, was be­ing hur­ried by them reck­lessly along.

“Oh, mon­sieur,” said he, “con­sider what you are and what you will be. Con­sider how you and your kind live by ab­uses, and con­sider the har­vest that ab­uses must ul­ti­mately bring.”

“Re­volu­tion­ist!” said M. le Mar­quis, con­temp­tu­ously. “You have the ef­frontery to stand be­fore my face and of­fer me this stink­ing cant of your mod­ern so-called in­tel­lec­tu­als!”

“Is it cant, mon­sieur? Do you think—do you be­lieve in your soul—that it is cant? Is it cant that the feudal grip is on all things that live, crush­ing them like grapes in the press, to its own profit? Does it not ex­er­cise its rights upon the wa­ters of the river, the fire that bakes the poor man’s bread of grass and bar­ley, on the wind that turns the mill? The peas­ant can­not take a step upon the road, cross a crazy bridge over a river, buy an ell of cloth in the vil­lage mar­ket, without meet­ing feudal ra­pa­city, without be­ing taxed in feudal dues. Is not that enough, M. le Mar­quis? Must you also de­mand his wretched life in pay­ment for the least in­fringe­ment of your sac­red priv­ileges, care­less of what wid­ows or orphans you ded­ic­ate to woe? Will naught con­tent you but that your shadow must lie like a curse upon the land? And do you think in your pride that France, this Job among the na­tions, will suf­fer it forever?”

He paused as if for a reply. But none came. The Mar­quis con­sidered him, strangely si­lent, a half smile of dis­dain at the corners of his lips, an omin­ous hard­ness in his eyes.

Again André-Louis tugged at his friend’s sleeve.

“Phil­ippe.”

Phil­ippe shook him off, and plunged on, fan­at­ic­ally.

“Do you see noth­ing of the gath­er­ing clouds that her­ald the com­ing of the storm? You ima­gine, per­haps, that these States Gen­eral summoned by M. Necker, and prom­ised for next year, are to do noth­ing but de­vise fresh means of ex­tor­tion to li­quid­ate the bank­ruptcy of the State? You de­lude yourselves, as you shall find. The Third Estate, which you des­pise, will prove it­self the pre­pon­der­at­ing force, and it will find a way to make an end of this canker of priv­ilege that is de­vour­ing the vi­tals of this un­for­tu­nate coun­try.”

M. le Mar­quis shif­ted in his chair, and spoke at last.

“You have, mon­sieur,” said he, “a very dan­ger­ous gift of elo­quence. And it is of your­self rather than of your sub­ject. For after all, what do you of­fer me? A re­chauffe of the dishes served to out-at-el­bow en­thu­si­asts in the pro­vin­cial lit­er­ary cham­bers, com­poun­ded of the ef­fu­sions of your Voltaires and Jean-Jacques and such dirty-fingered scrib­blers. You have not among all your philo­soph­ers one with the wit to un­der­stand that we are an or­der con­sec­rated by an­tiquity, that for our rights and priv­ileges we have be­hind us the au­thor­ity of cen­tur­ies.”

“Hu­man­ity, mon­sieur,” Phil­ippe replied, “is more an­cient than no­bil­ity. Hu­man rights are con­tem­por­ary with man.”

The Mar­quis laughed and shrugged.

“That is the an­swer I might have ex­pec­ted. It has the right note of cant that dis­tin­guishes the philo­soph­ers.”

And then M. de Ch­ab­ril­lane spoke.

“You go a long way round,” he cri­ti­cized his cousin, on a note of im­pa­tience.

“But I am get­ting there,” he was answered. “I de­sired to make quite cer­tain first.”

“Faith, you should have no doubt by now.”

“I have none.” The Mar­quis rose, and turned again to M. de Vilmorin, who had un­der­stood noth­ing of that brief ex­change. “M. l’abbé,” said he once more, “you have a very dan­ger­ous gift of elo­quence. I can con­ceive of men be­ing swayed by it. Had you been born a gen­tle­man, you would not so eas­ily have ac­quired these false views that you ex­press.”

M. de Vilmorin stared blankly, un­com­pre­hend­ing.

“Had I been born a gen­tle­man, do you say?” quoth he, in a slow, be­wildered voice. “But I was born a gen­tle­man. My race is as old, my blood as good as yours, mon­sieur.”

From M. le Mar­quis there was a slight play of eye­brows, a vague, in­dul­gent smile. His dark, li­quid eyes looked squarely into the face of M. de Vilmorin.

“You have been de­ceived in that, I fear.”

“De­ceived?”

“Your sen­ti­ments be­tray the in­dis­cre­tion of which ma­dame your mother must have been guilty.”

The bru­tally af­front­ing words were sped bey­ond re­call, and the lips that had uttered them, coldly, as if they had been the merest com­mon­place, re­mained calm and faintly sneer­ing.

A dead si­lence fol­lowed. André-Louis’ wits were numbed. He stood aghast, all thought sus­pen­ded in him, what time M. de Vilmorin’s eyes con­tin­ued fixed upon M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s, as if search­ing there for a mean­ing that eluded him. Quite sud­denly he un­der­stood the vile af­front. The blood leapt to his face, fire blazed in his gentle eyes. A con­vuls­ive quiver shook him. Then, with an in­ar­tic­u­late cry, he leaned for­ward, and with his open hand struck M. le Mar­quis full and hard upon his sneer­ing face.

In a flash M. de Ch­ab­ril­lane was on his feet, between the two men.

Too late André-Louis had seen the trap. La Tour d’Azyr’s words were but as a move in a game of chess, cal­cu­lated to ex­as­per­ate his op­pon­ent into some such coun­ter­move as this—a coun­ter­move that left him en­tirely at the other’s mercy.

M. le Mar­quis looked on, very white save where M. de Vilmorin’s fin­ger­prints began slowly to col­our his face; but he said noth­ing more. In­stead, it was M. de Ch­ab­ril­lane who now did the talk­ing, tak­ing up his pre­con­cer­ted part in this vile game.

“You real­ize, mon­sieur, what you have done,” said he, coldly, to Phil­ippe. “And you real­ize, of course, what must in­ev­it­ably fol­low.”

M. de Vilmorin had real­ized noth­ing. The poor young man had ac­ted upon im­pulse, upon the in­stinct of de­cency and hon­our, never count­ing the con­sequences. But he real­ized them now at the sin­is­ter in­vit­a­tion of M. de Ch­ab­ril­lane, and if he de­sired to avoid these con­sequences, it was out of re­spect for his priestly vo­ca­tion, which strictly for­bade such ad­just­ments of dis­putes as M. de Ch­ab­ril­lane was clearly thrust­ing upon him.

He drew back. “Let one af­front wipe out the other,” said he, in a dull voice. “The bal­ance is still in M. le Mar­quis’s fa­vour. Let that con­tent him.”

“Im­possible.” The Cheva­lier’s lips came to­gether tightly. There­after he was suav­ity it­self, but very firm. “A blow has been struck, mon­sieur. I think I am cor­rect in say­ing that such a thing has never happened be­fore to M. le Mar­quis in all his life. If you felt your­self af­fron­ted, you had but to ask the sat­is­fac­tion due from one gen­tle­man to an­other. Your ac­tion would seem to con­firm the as­sump­tion that you found so of­fens­ive. But it does not on that ac­count render you im­mune from the con­sequences.”

It was, you see, M. de Ch­ab­ril­lane’s part to heap coals upon this fire, to make quite sure that their vic­tim should not es­cape them.

“I de­sire no im­munity,” flashed back the young sem­in­ar­ist, stung by this fresh goad. After all, he was nobly born, and the tra­di­tions of his class were strong upon him—stronger far than the sem­in­ar­ist school­ing in hu­mil­ity. He owed it to him­self, to his hon­our, to be killed rather than avoid the con­sequences of the thing he had done.

“But he does not wear a sword, messieurs!” cried André-Louis, aghast.

“That is eas­ily amended. He may have the loan of mine.”

“I mean, messieurs,” André-Louis in­sisted, between fear for his friend and in­dig­na­tion, “that it is not his habit to wear a sword, that he has never worn one, that he is un­tutored in its uses. He is a sem­in­ar­ist—a pos­tu­lant for holy or­ders, already half a priest, and so for­bid­den from such an en­gage­ment as you pro­pose.”

“All that he should have re­membered be­fore he struck a blow,” said M. de Ch­ab­ril­lane, po­litely.

“The blow was de­lib­er­ately pro­voked,” raged André-Louis. Then he re­covered him­self, though the other’s haughty stare had no part in that re­cov­ery. “O my God, I talk in vain! How is one to ar­gue against a pur­pose formed! Come away, Phil­ippe. Don’t you see the trap …”

M. de Vilmorin cut him short, and flung him off. “Be quiet, André. M. le Mar­quis is en­tirely in the right.”

“M. le Mar­quis is in the right?” André-Louis let his arms fall help­lessly. This man he loved above all other liv­ing men was caught in the snare of the world’s in­san­ity. He was bar­ing his breast to the knife for the sake of a vague, dis­tor­ted sense of the hon­our due to him­self. It was not that he did not see the trap. It was that his hon­our com­pelled him to dis­dain con­sid­er­a­tion of it. To André-Louis in that mo­ment he seemed a sin­gu­larly tra­gic fig­ure. Noble, per­haps, but very pi­ti­ful.

IV The Heritage

It was M. de Vilmorin’s de­sire that the mat­ter should be settled out of hand. In this he was at once ob­ject­ive and sub­ject­ive. A prey to emo­tions sadly at con­flict with his priestly vo­ca­tion, he was above all in haste to have done, so that he might re­sume a frame of mind more proper to it. Also he feared him­self a little; by which I mean that his hon­our feared his nature. The cir­cum­stances of his edu­ca­tion, and the goal that for some years now he had kept in view, had robbed him of much of that spir­ited bru­tal­ity that is the birth­right of the male. He had grown timid and gentle as a wo­man. Aware of it, he feared that once the heat of his pas­sion was spent he might be­tray a dis­hon­our­ing weak­ness in the or­deal.

M. le Mar­quis, on his side, was no less eager for an im­me­di­ate set­tle­ment; and since they had M. de Ch­ab­ril­lane to act for his cousin, and André-Louis to serve as wit­ness for M. de Vilmorin, there was noth­ing to delay them.

And so, within a few minutes, all ar­range­ments were con­cluded, and you be­hold that sin­isterly in­ten­tioned little group of four as­sembled in the af­ter­noon sun­shine on the bowl­ing-green be­hind the inn. They were en­tirely private, screened more or less from the win­dows of the house by a ramage of trees, which, if leaf­less now, was at least dense enough to provide an ef­fect­ive lat­tice.

There were no form­al­it­ies over meas­ure­ments of blades or se­lec­tion of ground. M. le Mar­quis re­moved his sword-belt and scab­bard, but de­clined—not con­sid­er­ing it worth while for the sake of so neg­li­gible an op­pon­ent—to di­vest him­self either of his shoes or his coat. Tall, lithe, and ath­letic, he stood to face the no less tall, but very del­ic­ate and frail, M. de Vilmorin. The lat­ter also dis­dained to make any of the usual pre­par­a­tions. Since he re­cog­nized that it could avail him noth­ing to strip, he came on guard fully dressed, two hec­tic spots above the cheekbones burn­ing on his oth­er­wise grey face.

M. de Ch­ab­ril­lane, lean­ing upon a cane—for he had re­lin­quished his sword to M. de Vilmorin—looked on with quiet in­terest. Fa­cing him on the other side of the com­batants stood André-Louis, the palest of the four, star­ing from fevered eyes, twist­ing and un­twist­ing clammy hands.

His every in­stinct was to fling him­self between the ant­ag­on­ists, to protest against and frus­trate this meet­ing. That sane im­pulse was curbed, how­ever, by the con­scious­ness of its fu­til­ity. To calm him, he clung to the con­vic­tion that the is­sue could not really be very ser­i­ous. If the ob­lig­a­tions of Phil­ippe’s hon­our com­pelled him to cross swords with the man he had struck, M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s birth com­pelled him no less to do no ser­i­ous hurt to the un­fledged lad he had so griev­ously pro­voked. M. le Mar­quis, after all, was a man of hon­our. He could in­tend no more than to ad­min­is­ter a les­son; sharp, per­haps, but one by which his op­pon­ent must live to profit. André-Louis clung ob­stin­ately to that for com­fort.

Steel beat on steel, and the men en­gaged. The Mar­quis presen­ted to his op­pon­ent the nar­row edge of his up­right body, his knees slightly flexed and con­ver­ted into liv­ing springs, whilst M. de Vilmorin stood squarely, a full tar­get, his knees wooden. Hon­our and the spirit of fair play alike cried out against such a match.

The en­counter was very short, of course. In youth, Phil­ippe had re­ceived the tu­tor­ing in sword­play that was given to every boy born into his sta­tion of life. And so he knew at least the rudi­ments of what was now ex­pec­ted of him. But what could rudi­ments avail him here? Three dis­en­gages com­pleted the ex­changes, and then without any haste the Mar­quis slid his right foot along the moist turf, his long, grace­ful body ex­tend­ing it­self in a lunge that went un­der M. de Vilmorin’s clumsy guard, and with the ut­most de­lib­er­a­tion he drove his blade through the young man’s vi­tals.

André-Louis sprang for­ward just in time to catch his friend’s body un­der the armpits as it sank. Then, his own legs bend­ing be­neath the weight of it, he went down with his bur­den un­til he was kneel­ing on the damp turf. Phil­ippe’s limp head lay against André-Louis’ left shoulder; Phil­ippe’s re­laxed arms trailed at his sides; the blood welled and bubbled from the ghastly wound to sat­ur­ate the poor lad’s gar­ments.

With white face and twitch­ing lips, André-Louis looked up at M. de La Tour d’Azyr, who stood sur­vey­ing his work with a coun­ten­ance of grave but re­morse­less in­terest.

“You have killed him!” cried André-Louis.

“Of course.”

The Mar­quis ran a lace handker­chief along his blade to wipe it. As he let the dainty fab­ric fall, he ex­plained him­self. “He had, as I told him, a too dan­ger­ous gift of elo­quence.”

And he turned away, leav­ing com­pletest un­der­stand­ing with André-Louis. Still sup­port­ing the limp, drain­ing body, the young man called to him.

“Come back, you cow­ardly mur­derer, and make your­self quite safe by killing me too!”

The Mar­quis half turned, his face dark with an­ger. Then M. de Ch­ab­ril­lane set a re­strain­ing hand upon his arm. Al­though a party through­out to the deed, the Cheva­lier was a little ap­palled now that it was done. He had not the high stom­ach of M. de La Tour d’Azyr, and he was a good deal younger.

“Come away,” he said. “The lad is rav­ing. They were friends.”

“You heard what he said?” quoth the Mar­quis.

“Nor can he, or you, or any man deny it,” flung back André-Louis. “Your­self, mon­sieur, you made con­fes­sion when you gave me now the reason why you killed him. You did it be­cause you feared him.”

“If that were true—what, then?” asked the great gen­tle­man.

“Do you ask? Do you un­der­stand of life and hu­man­ity noth­ing but how to wear a coat and dress your hair—oh, yes, and to handle weapons against boys and priests? Have you no mind to think, no soul into which you can turn its vis­ion? Must you be told that it is a cow­ard’s part to kill the thing he fears, and doubly a cow­ard’s part to kill in this way? Had you stabbed him in the back with a knife, you would have shown the cour­age of your vile­ness. It would have been a vile­ness un­dis­guised. But you feared the con­sequences of that, power­ful as you are; and so you shel­ter your cow­ardice un­der the pre­text of a duel.”

The Mar­quis shook off his cousin’s hand, and took a step for­ward, hold­ing now his sword like a whip. But again the Cheva­lier caught and held him.

“No, no, Ger­vais! Let be, in God’s name!”

“Let him come, mon­sieur,” raved André-Louis, his voice thick and con­cen­trated. “Let him com­plete his cow­ard’s work on me, and thus make him­self safe from a cow­ard’s wages.”

M. de Ch­ab­ril­lane let his cousin go. He came white to the lips, his eyes glar­ing at the lad who so reck­lessly in­sul­ted him. And then he checked. It may be that he re­membered sud­denly the re­la­tion­ship in which this young man was pop­ularly be­lieved to stand to the Seigneur de Gav­ril­lac, and the well-known af­fec­tion in which the Seigneur held him. And so he may have real­ized that if he pushed this mat­ter fur­ther, he might find him­self upon the horns of a di­lemma. He would be con­fron­ted with the al­tern­at­ives of shed­ding more blood, and so em­broil­ing him­self with the Lord of Gav­ril­lac at a time when that gen­tle­man’s friend­ship was of the first im­port­ance to him, or else of with­draw­ing with such hurt to his dig­nity as must im­pair his au­thor­ity in the coun­tryside here­after.

Be it so or oth­er­wise, the fact re­mains that he stopped short; then, with an in­co­her­ent ejac­u­la­tion, between an­ger and con­tempt, he tossed his arms, turned on his heel and strode off quickly with his cousin.

When the land­lord and his people came, they found André-Louis, his arms about the body of his dead friend, mur­mur­ing pas­sion­ately into the deaf ear that res­ted al­most against his lips:

“Phil­ippe! Speak to me, Phil­ippe! Phil­ippe … Don’t you hear me? O God of Heaven! Phil­ippe!”

At a glance they saw that here neither priest nor doc­tor could avail. The cheek that lay against André-Louis’s was leaden-hued, the half-open eyes were glazed, and there was a little froth of blood upon the vacu­ously par­ted lips.

Half blinded by tears André-Louis stumbled after them when they bore the body into the inn. Up­stairs in the little room to which they con­veyed it, he knelt by the bed, and hold­ing the dead man’s hand in both his own, he swore to him out of his im­pot­ent rage that M. de La Tour d’Azyr should pay a bit­ter price for this.

“It was your elo­quence he feared, Phil­ippe,” he said. “Then if I can get no justice for this deed, at least it shall be fruit­less to him. The thing he feared in you, he shall fear in me. He feared that men might be swayed by your elo­quence to the un­do­ing of such things as him­self. Men shall be swayed by it still. For your elo­quence and your ar­gu­ments shall be my her­it­age from you. I will make them my own. It mat­ters noth­ing that I do not be­lieve in your gos­pel of free­dom. I know it—every word of it; that is all that mat­ters to our pur­pose, yours and mine. If all else fails, your thoughts shall find ex­pres­sion in my liv­ing tongue. Thus at least we shall have frus­trated his vile aim to still the voice he feared. It shall profit him noth­ing to have your blood upon his soul. That voice in you would never half so re­lent­lessly have houn­ded him and his as it shall in me—if all else fails.”

It was an ex­ult­ing thought. It calmed him; it soothed his grief, and he began very softly to pray. And then his heart trembled as he con­sidered that Phil­ippe, a man of peace, al­most a priest, an apostle of Chris­tian­ity, had gone to his Maker with the sin of an­ger on his soul. It was hor­rible. Yet God would see the right­eous­ness of that an­ger. And in no case—be man’s in­ter­pret­a­tion of Di­vin­ity what it might—could that one sin out­weigh the lov­ing good that Phil­ippe had ever prac­tised, the noble pur­ity of his great heart. God after all, re­flec­ted André-Louis, was not a grand-sei­gneur.

V The Lord of Gavrillac

For the second time that day André-Louis set out for the château, walk­ing briskly, and heed­ing not at all the curi­ous eyes that fol­lowed him through the vil­lage, and the whis­per­ings that marked his pas­sage through the people, all agog by now with that day’s event in which he had been an actor.

He was ushered by Bénoît, the eld­erly body-ser­vant, rather grandi­loquently called the sen­eschal, into the ground-floor room known tra­di­tion­ally as the lib­rary. It still con­tained sev­eral shelves of neg­lected volumes, from which it de­rived its title, but im­ple­ments of the chase—fowl­ing-pieces, powder-horns, hunt­ing-bags, sheath-knives—ob­truded far more prom­in­ently than those of study. The fur­niture was massive, of oak richly carved, and be­long­ing to an­other age. Great massive oak beams crossed the rather lofty white­washed ceil­ing.

Here the squat Seigneur de Gav­ril­lac was rest­lessly pa­cing when André-Louis was in­tro­duced. He was already in­formed, as he an­nounced at once, of what had taken place at the Bréton Armé. M. de Ch­ab­ril­lane had just left him, and he con­fessed him­self deeply grieved and deeply per­plexed.

“The pity of it!” he said. “The pity of it!” He bowed his enorm­ous head. “So es­tim­able a young man, and so full of prom­ise. Ah, this La Tour d’Azyr is a hard man, and he feels very strongly in these mat­ters. He may be right. I don’t know. I have never killed a man for hold­ing dif­fer­ent views from mine. In fact, I have never killed a man at all. It isn’t in my nature. I shouldn’t sleep of nights if I did. But men are dif­fer­ently made.”

“The ques­tion, mon­sieur my god­father,” said André-Louis, “is what is to be done.” He was quite calm and self-pos­sessed, but very white.

M. de Ker­ca­diou stared at him blankly out of his pale eyes.

“Why, what the devil is there to do? From what I am told, Vilmorin went so far as to strike M. le Mar­quis.”

“Under the very grossest pro­voca­tion.”

“Which he him­self pro­voked by his re­volu­tion­ary lan­guage. The poor lad’s head was full of this en­cyc­lo­paed­ist trash. It comes of too much read­ing. I have never set much store by books, André; and I have never known any­thing but trouble to come out of learn­ing. It un­settles a man. It com­plic­ates his views of life, des­troys the sim­pli­city which makes for peace of mind and hap­pi­ness. Let this miser­able af­fair be a warn­ing to you, André. You are, your­self, too prone to these new-fash­ioned spec­u­la­tions upon a dif­fer­ent con­sti­tu­tion of the so­cial or­der. You see what comes of it. A fine, es­tim­able young man, the only prop of his wid­owed mother too, for­gets him­self, his po­s­i­tion, his duty to that mother—everything; and goes and gets him­self killed like this. It is in­fernally sad. On my soul it is sad.” He pro­duced a handker­chief, and blew his nose with vehe­mence.

André-Louis felt a tight­en­ing of his heart, a lessen­ing of the hopes, never too san­guine, which he had foun­ded upon his god­father.

“Your cri­ti­cisms,” he said, “are all for the con­duct of the dead, and none for that of the mur­derer. It does not seem pos­sible that you should be in sym­pathy with such a crime.”

“Crime?” shrilled M. de Ker­ca­diou. “My God, boy, you are speak­ing of M. de La Tour d’Azyr.”

“I am, and of the ab­om­in­able murder he has com­mit­ted …”

“Stop!” M. de Ker­ca­diou was very em­phatic. “I can­not per­mit that you ap­ply such terms to him. I can­not per­mit it. M. le Mar­quis is my friend, and is likely very soon to stand in a still closer re­la­tion­ship.”

“Not­with­stand­ing this?” asked André-Louis.

M. de Ker­ca­diou was frankly im­pa­tient.

“Why, what has this to do with it? I may de­plore it. But I have no right to con­demn it. It is a com­mon way of ad­just­ing dif­fer­ences between gen­tle­men.”

“You really be­lieve that?”

“What the devil do you im­ply, André? Should I say a thing that I don’t be­lieve? You be­gin to make me angry.”

“ ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ is the King’s law as well as God’s.”

“You are de­term­ined to quar­rel with me, I think. It was a duel …”

André-Louis in­ter­rup­ted him. “It is no more a duel than if it had been fought with pis­tols of which only M. le Mar­quis’s was loaded. He in­vited Phil­ippe to dis­cuss the mat­ter fur­ther, with the de­lib­er­ate in­tent of for­cing a quar­rel upon him and killing him. Be pa­tient with me, mon­sieur my god­father. I am not telling you of what I ima­gine but what M. le Mar­quis him­self ad­mit­ted to me.”

Dom­in­ated a little by the young man’s earn­est­ness, M. de Ker­ca­diou’s pale eyes fell away. He turned with a shrug, and sauntered over to the win­dow.

“It would need a court of hon­our to de­cide such an is­sue. And we have no courts of hon­our,” he said.

“But we have courts of justice.”

With re­turn­ing test­i­ness the sei­gneur swung round to face him again. “And what court of justice, do you think, would listen to such a plea as you ap­pear to have in mind?”

“There is the court of the King’s Lieu­ten­ant at Rennes.”

“And do you think the King’s Lieu­ten­ant would listen to you?”

“Not to me, per­haps, Mon­sieur. But if you were to bring the plaint …”

“I bring the plaint?” M. de Ker­ca­diou’s pale eyes were wide with hor­ror of the sug­ges­tion.

“The thing happened here on your do­main.”

“I bring a plaint against M. de La Tour d’Azyr! You are out of your senses, I think. Oh, you are mad; as mad as that poor friend of yours who has come to this end through med­dling in what did not con­cern him. The lan­guage he used here to M. le Mar­quis on the score of Mabey was of the most of­fens­ive. Per­haps you didn’t know that. It does not at all sur­prise me that the Mar­quis should have de­sired sat­is­fac­tion.”

“I see,” said André-Louis, on a note of hope­less­ness.

“You see? What the devil do you see?”

“That I shall have to de­pend upon my­self alone.”

“And what the devil do you pro­pose to do, if you please?”

“I shall go to Rennes, and lay the facts be­fore the King’s Lieu­ten­ant.”

“He’ll be too busy to see you.” And M. de Ker­ca­diou’s mind swung a trifle in­con­sequently, as weak minds will. “There is trouble enough in Rennes already on the score of these crazy States Gen­eral, with which the won­der­ful M. Necker is to re­pair the fin­ances of the king­dom. As if a ped­dling Swiss bank-clerk, who is also a damned Prot­est­ant, could suc­ceed where such men as Calonne and Bri­enne have failed.”

“Good af­ter­noon, mon­sieur my god­father,” said André-Louis.

“Where are you go­ing?” was the quer­ulous de­mand.

“Home at present. To Rennes in the morn­ing.”

“Wait, boy, wait!” The squat little man rolled for­ward, af­fec­tion­ate con­cern on his great ugly face, and he set one of his podgy hands on his god­son’s shoulder. “Now listen to me, André,” he reasoned. “This is sheer knight-er­rantry—moon­shine, lun­acy. You’ll come to no good by it if you per­sist. You’ve read Don Quix­ote, and what happened to him when he went tilt­ing against wind­mills. It’s what will hap­pen to you, neither more nor less. Leave things as they are, my boy. I wouldn’t have a mis­chief hap­pen to you.”

André-Louis looked at him, smil­ing wanly.

“I swore an oath today which it would damn my soul to break.”

“You mean that you’ll go in spite of any­thing that I may say?” Im­petu­ous as he was in­con­sequent, M. de Ker­ca­diou was brist­ling again. “Very well, then, go … Go to the devil!”

“I will be­gin with the King’s Lieu­ten­ant.”

“And if you get into the trouble you are seek­ing, don’t come whim­per­ing to me for as­sist­ance,” the sei­gneur stormed. He was very angry now. “Since you choose to dis­obey me, you can break your empty head against the wind­mill, and be damned to you.”

André-Louis bowed with a touch of irony, and reached the door.

“If the wind­mill should prove too for­mid­able,” said he, from the threshold, “I may see what can be done with the wind. Good­bye, mon­sieur my god­father.”

He was gone, and M. de Ker­ca­diou was alone, purple in the face, puzz­ling out that last cryptic ut­ter­ance, and not at all happy in his mind, either on the score of his god­son or of M. de La Tour d’Azyr. He was dis­posed to be angry with them both. He found these head­strong, wil­ful men who re­lent­lessly fol­lowed their own im­pulses very dis­turb­ing and ir­rit­at­ing. Him­self, he loved his ease, and to be at peace with his neigh­bours; and that seemed to him so ob­vi­ously the su­preme good of life that he was dis­posed to brand them as fools who troubled to seek other things.

VI The Windmill

There was between Nantes and Rennes an es­tab­lished ser­vice of three stage­coaches weekly in each dir­ec­tion, which for a sum of twenty-four livres—roughly, the equi­val­ent of an Eng­lish guinea—would carry you the sev­enty and odd miles of the jour­ney in some four­teen hours. Once a week one of the di­li­gences go­ing in each dir­ec­tion would swerve aside from the highroad to call at Gav­ril­lac, to bring and take let­ters, news­pa­pers, and some­times pas­sen­gers. It was usu­ally by this coach that André-Louis came and went when the oc­ca­sion offered. At present, how­ever, he was too much in haste to lose a day await­ing the passing of that di­li­gence. So it was on a horse hired from the Bréton Armé that he set out next morn­ing; and an hour’s brisk ride un­der a grey wintry sky, by a half-ruined road through ten miles of flat, un­in­ter­est­ing coun­try, brought him to the city of Rennes.

He rode across the main bridge over the Vil­aine, and so into the up­per and prin­cipal part of that im­port­ant city of some thirty thou­sand souls, most of whom, he opined from the seeth­ing, clamant crowds that every­where blocked his way, must on this day have taken to the streets. Clearly Phil­ippe had not over­stated the ex­cite­ment pre­vail­ing there.

He pushed on as best he could, and so came at last to the Place Roy­ale, where he found the crowd to be most dense. From the plinth of the eques­trian statue of Louis XV, a white-faced young man was ex­citedly ad­dress­ing the mul­ti­tude. His youth and dress pro­claimed the stu­dent, and a group of his fel­lows, act­ing as a guard of hon­our to him, kept the im­me­di­ate pre­cincts of the statue.

Over the heads of the crowd André-Louis caught a few of the phrases flung forth by that eager voice.

“It was the prom­ise of the King … It is the King’s au­thor­ity they flout … They ar­rog­ate to them­selves the whole sov­er­eignty in Brit­tany. The King has dis­solved them … These in­solent nobles de­fy­ing their sov­er­eign and the people …”

Had he not known already, from what Phil­ippe had told him, of the events which had brought the Third Estate to the point of act­ive re­volt, those few phrases would fully have in­formed him. This pop­u­lar dis­play of tem­per was most op­por­tune to his need, he thought. And in the hope that it might serve his turn by dis­pos­ing to reas­on­able­ness the mind of the King’s Lieu­ten­ant, he pushed on up the wide and well-paved Rue Roy­ale, where the con­course of people began to di­min­ish. He put up his hired horse at the Come de Cerf, and set out again, on foot, to the Pal­ais de Justice.

There was a brawl­ing mob by the frame­work of poles and scaf­fold­ings about the build­ing cathed­ral, upon which work had been com­menced a year ago. But he did not pause to as­cer­tain the par­tic­u­lar cause of that gath­er­ing. He strode on, and thus came presently to the hand­some Itali­anate palace that was one of the few pub­lic edi­fices that had sur­vived the dev­ast­at­ing fire of sixty years ago.

He won through with dif­fi­culty to the great hall, known as the Salle des Pas Per­dus, where he was left to cool his heels for a full half-hour after he had found an usher so con­des­cend­ing as to in­form the god who presided over that shrine of Justice that a law­yer from Gav­ril­lac humbly begged an audi­ence on an af­fair of grav­ity.

That the god con­des­cen­ded to see him at all was prob­ably due to the grave com­plex­ion of the hour. At long length he was es­cor­ted up the broad stone stair­case, and ushered into a spa­cious, mea­grely fur­nished ante­room, to make one of a wait­ing crowd of cli­ents, mostly men.

There he spent an­other half-hour, and em­ployed the time in con­sid­er­ing ex­actly what he should say. This con­sid­er­a­tion made him real­ize the weak­ness of the case he pro­posed to set be­fore a man whose views of law and mor­al­ity were col­oured by his so­cial rank.

At last he was ushered through a nar­row but very massive and richly dec­or­ated door into a fine, well-lighted room fur­nished with enough gilt and satin to have sup­plied the bou­doir of a lady of fash­ion.

It was a trivial set­ting for a King’s Lieu­ten­ant, but about the King’s Lieu­ten­ant there was—at least to or­din­ary eyes—noth­ing trivial. At the far end of the cham­ber, to the right of one of the tall win­dows that looked out over the in­ner court, be­fore a goat-legged writ­ing-table with Wat­teau pan­els, heav­ily en­crus­ted with or­molu, sat that ex­al­ted be­ing. Above a scar­let coat with an or­der flam­ing on its breast, and a bil­low of lace in which dia­monds sparkled like drops of wa­ter, sprouted the massive powdered head of M. de Les­diguières. It was thrown back to scowl upon this vis­itor with an ex­pect­ant ar­rog­ance that made André-Louis won­der al­most was a gen­u­flex­ion awaited from him.

Per­ceiv­ing a lean, lan­tern-jawed young man, with straight, lank black hair, in a caped rid­ing-coat of brown cloth, and yel­low buck­skin breeches, his knee-boots splashed with mud, the scowl upon that au­gust vis­age deepened un­til it brought to­gether the thick black eye­brows above the great hooked nose.

“You an­nounce your­self as a law­yer of Gav­ril­lac with an im­port­ant com­mu­nic­a­tion,” he growled. It was a per­emp­tory com­mand to make this com­mu­nic­a­tion without wast­ing the valu­able time of a King’s Lieu­ten­ant, of whose im­mense im­port­ance it con­veyed some­thing more than a hint. M. de Les­diguières ac­coun­ted him­self an im­pos­ing per­son­al­ity, and he had every reason to do so, for in his time he had seen many a poor devil scared out of all his senses by the thun­der of his voice.

He waited now to see the same thing hap­pen to this youth­ful law­yer from Gav­ril­lac. But he waited in vain.

André-Louis found him ri­dicu­lous. He knew pre­ten­tious­ness for the mask of worth­less­ness and weak­ness. And here he be­held pre­ten­tious­ness in­carn­ate. It was to be read in that ar­rog­ant poise of the head, that scowl­ing brow, the in­flex­ion of that re­ver­ber­at­ing voice. Even more dif­fi­cult than it is for a man to be a hero to his valet—who has wit­nessed the dis­persal of the parts that make up the im­pos­ing whole—is it for a man to be a hero to the stu­dent of Man who has wit­nessed the same in a dif­fer­ent sense.

André-Louis stood for­ward boldly—im­pudently, thought M. de Les­diguières.

“You are His Majesty’s Lieu­ten­ant here in Brit­tany,” he said—and it al­most seemed to the au­gust lord of life and death that this fel­low had the in­cred­ible ef­frontery to ad­dress him as one man speak­ing to an­other. “You are the dis­penser of the King’s high justice in this province.”

Sur­prise spread on that hand­some, sal­low face un­der the heav­ily powdered wig.

“Is your busi­ness con­cerned with this in­fernal in­sub­or­din­a­tion of the ca­naille?” he asked.

“It is not, mon­sieur.”

The black eye­brows rose. “Then what the devil do you mean by in­trud­ing upon me at a time when all my at­ten­tion is be­ing claimed by the ob­vi­ous ur­gency of this dis­grace­ful af­fair?”

“The af­fair that brings me is no less dis­grace­ful and no less ur­gent.”

“It will have to wait!” thundered the great man in a pas­sion, and toss­ing back a cloud of lace from his hand, he reached for the little sil­ver bell upon his table.

“A mo­ment, mon­sieur!” André-Louis’ tone was per­emp­tory. M. de Les­diguières checked in sheer amazement at its im­pudence. “I can state it very briefly …”

“Haven’t I said already …”

“And when you have heard it,” André-Louis went on, re­lent­lessly, in­ter­rupt­ing the in­ter­rup­tion, “you will agree with me as to its char­ac­ter.”

M. de Les­diguières con­sidered him very sternly.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“André-Louis Mor­eau.”

“Well, André-Louis Mor­eau, if you can state your plea briefly, I will hear you. But I warn you that I shall be very angry if you fail to jus­tify the im­per­tin­ence of this in­sist­ence at so in­op­por­tune a mo­ment.”

“You shall be the judge of that, mon­sieur,” said André-Louis, and he pro­ceeded at once to state his case, be­gin­ning with the shoot­ing of Mabey, and passing thence to the killing of M. de Vilmorin. But he with­held un­til the end the name of the great gen­tle­man against whom he de­man­ded justice, per­suaded that did he in­tro­duce it earlier he would not be al­lowed to pro­ceed.

He had a gift of oratory of whose full powers he was him­self hardly con­scious yet, though destined very soon to be­come so. He told his story well, without ex­ag­ger­a­tion, yet with a force of simple ap­peal that was ir­res­ist­ible. Gradu­ally the great man’s face re­laxed from its for­bid­ding sever­ity. In­terest, warm­ing al­most to sym­pathy, came to be re­flec­ted on it.

“And who, sir, is the man you charge with this?”

“The Mar­quis de La Tour d’Azyr.”

The ef­fect of that for­mid­able name was im­me­di­ate. Dis­mayed an­ger, and an ar­rog­ance more ut­ter than be­fore, took the place of the sym­pathy he had been be­trayed into dis­play­ing.

“Who?” he shouted, and without wait­ing for an an­swer, “Why, here’s im­pudence,” he stormed on, “to come be­fore me with such a charge against a gen­tle­man of M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s em­in­ence! How dare you speak of him as a cow­ard. …”

“I speak of him as a mur­derer,” the young man cor­rec­ted. “And I de­mand justice against him.”

“You de­mand it, do you? My God, what next?”

“That is for you to say, mon­sieur.”

It sur­prised the great gen­tle­man into a more or less suc­cess­ful ef­fort of self-con­trol.

“Let me warn you,” said he, acidly, “that it is not wise to make wild ac­cus­a­tions against a no­ble­man. That, in it­self, is a pun­ish­able of­fence, as you may learn. Now listen to me. In this mat­ter of Mabey—as­sum­ing your state­ment of it to be ex­act—the game­keeper may have ex­ceeded his duty; but by so little that it is hardly worth com­ment. Con­sider, how­ever, that in any case it is not a mat­ter for the King’s Lieu­ten­ant, or for any court but the sei­gneur­ial court of M. de La Tour d’Azyr him­self. It is be­fore the ma­gis­trates of his own ap­point­ing that such a mat­ter must be laid, since it is mat­ter strictly con­cern­ing his own sei­gneur­ial jur­is­dic­tion. As a law­yer you should not need to be told so much.”

“As a law­yer, I am pre­pared to ar­gue the point. But, as a law­yer I also real­ize that if that case were pro­sec­uted, it could only end in the un­just pun­ish­ment of a wretched game­keeper, who did no more than carry out his or­ders, but who none the less would now be made a scape­goat, if scape­goat were ne­ces­sary. I am not con­cerned to hang Benet on the gal­lows earned by M. de La Tour d’Azyr.”

M. de Les­diguières smote the table vi­ol­ently. “My God!” he cried out, to add more quietly, on a note of men­ace, “You are sin­gu­larly in­solent, my man.”

“That is not my in­ten­tion, sir, I as­sure you. I am a law­yer, plead­ing a case—the case of M. de Vilmorin. It is for his as­sas­sin­a­tion that I have come to beg the King’s justice.”

“But you your­self have said that it was a duel!” cried the Lieu­ten­ant, between an­ger and be­wil­der­ment.

“I have said that it was made to ap­pear a duel. There is a dis­tinc­tion, as I shall show, if you will con­des­cend to hear me out.”

“Take your own time, sir!” said the iron­ical M. de Les­diguières, whose ten­ure of of­fice had never yet held any­thing that re­motely re­sembled this ex­per­i­ence.

André-Louis took him lit­er­ally. “I thank you, sir,” he answered, sol­emnly, and sub­mit­ted his ar­gu­ment. “It can be shown that M. de Vilmorin never prac­tised fen­cing in all his life, and it is no­tori­ous that M. de La Tour d’Azyr is an ex­cep­tional swords­man. Is it a duel, mon­sieur, where one of the com­batants alone is armed? For it amounts to that on a com­par­ison of their meas­ures of re­spect­ive skill.”

“There has scarcely been a duel fought on which the same trumpery ar­gu­ment might not be ad­vanced.”

“But not al­ways with equal justice. And in one case, at least, it was ad­vanced suc­cess­fully.”

“Suc­cess­fully? When was that?”

“Ten years ago, in Dauph­iny. I refer to the case of M. de Ges­vres, a gen­tle­man of that province, who forced a duel upon M. de la Roche Jean­nine, and killed him. M. de Jean­nine was a mem­ber of a power­ful fam­ily, which ex­er­ted it­self to ob­tain justice. It put for­ward just such ar­gu­ments as now ob­tain against M. de La Tour d’Azyr. As you will re­mem­ber, the judges held that the pro­voca­tion had pro­ceeded of in­tent from M. de Ges­vres; they found him guilty of pre­med­it­ated murder, and he was hanged.”

M. de Les­diguières ex­ploded yet again. “Death of my life!” he cried. “Have you the ef­frontery to sug­gest that M. de La Tour d’Azyr should be hanged? Have you?”

“But why not, mon­sieur, if it is the law, and there is pre­ced­ent for it, as I have shown you, and if it can be es­tab­lished that what I state is the truth—as es­tab­lished it can be without dif­fi­culty?”

“Do you ask me, why not? Have you temer­ity to ask me that?”

“I have, mon­sieur. Can you an­swer me? If you can­not, mon­sieur, I shall un­der­stand that whilst it is pos­sible for a power­ful fam­ily like that of La Roche Jean­nine to set the law in mo­tion, the law must re­main in­ert for the ob­scure and un­in­flu­en­tial, how­ever bru­tally wronged by a great no­ble­man.”

M. de Les­diguières per­ceived that in ar­gu­ment he would ac­com­plish noth­ing against this im­pass­ive, res­ol­ute young man. The men­ace of him grew more fierce.

“I should ad­vise you to take your­self off at once, and to be thank­ful for the op­por­tun­ity to de­part un­scathed.”

“I am, then, to un­der­stand, mon­sieur, that there will be no in­quiry into this case? That noth­ing that I can say will move you?”

“You are to un­der­stand that if you are still there in two minutes it will be very much the worse for you.” And M. de Les­diguières tinkled the sil­ver hand-bell upon his table.

“I have in­formed you, mon­sieur, that a duel—so-called—has been fought, and a man killed. It seems that I must re­mind you, the ad­min­is­trator of the King’s justice, that duels are against the law, and that it is your duty to hold an in­quiry. I come as the legal rep­res­ent­at­ive of the be­reaved mother of M. de Vilmorin to de­mand of you the in­quiry that is due.”

The door be­hind André-Louis opened softly. M. de Les­diguières, pale with an­ger, con­tained him­self with dif­fi­culty.

“You seek to com­pel us, do you, you im­pudent ras­cal?” he growled. “You think the King’s justice is to be driven head­long by the voice of any im­pudent ro­tur­ier? I mar­vel at my own pa­tience with you. But I give you a last warn­ing, mas­ter law­yer; keep a closer guard over that in­solent tongue of yours, or you will have cause very bit­terly to re­gret its glib­ness.” He waved a jew­elled, con­temp­tu­ous hand, and spoke to the usher stand­ing be­hind André. “To the door!” he said, shortly.

André-Louis hes­it­ated a second. Then with a shrug he turned. This was the wind­mill, in­deed, and he a poor knight of rue­ful coun­ten­ance. To at­tack it at closer quar­ters would mean be­ing dashed to pieces. Yet on the threshold he turned again.

“M. de Les­diguières,” said he, “may I re­cite to you an in­ter­est­ing fact in nat­ural his­tory? The ti­ger is a great lord in the jungle, and was for cen­tur­ies the ter­ror of lesser beasts, in­clud­ing the wolf. The wolf, him­self a hunter, wear­ied of be­ing hunted. He took to as­so­ci­at­ing with other wolves, and then the wolves, driven to form packs for self-pro­tec­tion, dis­covered the power of the pack, and took to hunt­ing the ti­ger, with dis­astrous res­ults to him. You should study Buffon, M. de Les­diguières.”

“I have stud­ied a buf­foon this morn­ing, I think,” was the pun­ning sneer with which M. de Les­diguières replied. But that he con­ceived him­self witty, it is prob­able he would not have con­des­cen­ded to reply at all. “I don’t un­der­stand you,” he ad­ded.

“But you will, M. de Les­diguières. You will,” said André-Louis, and so de­par­ted.

VII The Wind

He had broken his fu­tile lance with the wind­mill—the im­age sug­ges­ted by M. de Ker­ca­diou per­sisted in his mind—and it was, he per­ceived, by sheer good for­tune that he had es­caped without hurt. There re­mained the wind it­self—the whirl­wind. And the events in Rennes, re­flex of the graver events in Nantes, had set that wind blow­ing in his fa­vour.

He set out briskly to re­trace his steps to­wards the Place Roy­ale, where the gath­er­ing of the popu­lace was greatest, where, as he judged, lay the heart and brain of this com­mo­tion that was ex­cit­ing the city.

But the com­mo­tion that he had left there was as noth­ing to the com­mo­tion which he found on his re­turn. Then there had been a com­par­at­ive hush to listen to the voice of a speaker who de­nounced the First and Se­cond Estates from the ped­es­tal of the statue of Louis XV. Now the air was vi­brant with the voice of the mul­ti­tude it­self, raised in an­ger. Here and there men were fight­ing with canes and fists; every­where a fierce ex­cite­ment raged, and the gen­darmes sent thither by the King’s Lieu­ten­ant to re­store and main­tain or­der were so much help­less flot­sam in that tem­pes­tu­ous hu­man ocean.

There were cries of “To the Pal­ais! To the Pal­ais! Down with the as­sas­sins! Down with the nobles! To the Pal­ais!”

An ar­tisan who stood shoulder to shoulder with him in the press en­lightened André-Louis on the score of the in­creased ex­cite­ment.

“They’ve shot him dead. His body is ly­ing there where it fell at the foot of the statue. And there was an­other stu­dent killed not an hour ago over there by the cathed­ral works. Pardi! If they can’t pre­vail in one way they’ll pre­vail in an­other.” The man was fiercely em­phatic. “They’ll stop at noth­ing. If they can’t over­awe us, by God, they’ll as­sas­sin­ate us. They are de­term­ined to con­duct these States of Brit­tany in their own way. No in­terests but their own shall be con­sidered.”

André-Louis left him still talk­ing, and clove him­self a way through that hu­man press.

At the statue’s base he came upon a little cluster of stu­dents about the body of the murdered lad, all stricken with fear and help­less­ness.

“You here, Mor­eau!” said a voice.

He looked round to find him­self con­fron­ted by a slight, swarthy man of little more than thirty, firm of mouth and im­per­tin­ent of nose, who con­sidered him with dis­ap­proval. It was Le Chape­lier, a law­yer of Rennes, a prom­in­ent mem­ber of the Lit­er­ary Cham­ber of that city, a force­ful man, fer­tile in re­volu­tion­ary ideas and of an ex­cep­tional gift of elo­quence.

“Ah, it is you, Chape­lier! Why don’t you speak to them? Why don’t you tell them what to do? Up with you, man!” And he poin­ted to the plinth.

Le Chape­lier’s dark, rest­less eyes searched the other’s im­pass­ive face for some trace of the irony he sus­pec­ted. They were as wide asun­der as the poles, these two, in their polit­ical views; and mis­trus­ted as André-Louis was by all his col­leagues of the Lit­er­ary Cham­ber of Rennes, he was by none mis­trus­ted so thor­oughly as by this vig­or­ous re­pub­lican. Indeed, had Le Chape­lier been able to pre­vail against the in­flu­ence of the sem­in­ar­ist Vilmorin, André-Louis would long since have found him­self ex­cluded from that as­sembly of the in­tel­lec­tual youth of Rennes, which he ex­as­per­ated by his eternal mock­ery of their ideals.

So now Le Chape­lier sus­pec­ted mock­ery in that in­vit­a­tion, sus­pec­ted it even when he failed to find traces of it on André-Louis’ face, for he had learnt by ex­per­i­ence that it was a face not of­ten to be trus­ted for an in­dic­a­tion of the real thoughts that moved be­hind it.

“Your no­tions and mine on that score can hardly co­in­cide,” said he.

“Can there be two opin­ions?” quoth André-Louis.

“There are usu­ally two opin­ions whenever you and I are to­gether, Mor­eau—more than ever now that you are the ap­poin­ted del­eg­ate of a no­ble­man. You see what your friends have done. No doubt you ap­prove their meth­ods.” He was coldly hos­tile.

André-Louis looked at him without sur­prise. So in­vari­ably op­posed to each other in aca­demic de­bates, how should Le Chape­lier sus­pect his present in­ten­tions?

“If you won’t tell them what is to be done, I will,” said he.

“Nom de Dieu! If you want to in­vite a bul­let from the other side, I shall not hinder you. It may help to square the ac­count.”

Scarcely were the words out than he re­pen­ted them; for as if in an­swer to that chal­lenge André-Louis sprang up on to the plinth. Alarmed now, for he could only sup­pose it to be André-Louis’ in­ten­tion to speak on be­half of Priv­ilege, of which he was a pub­licly ap­poin­ted rep­res­ent­at­ive, Le Chape­lier clutched him by the leg to pull him down again.

“Ah, that, no!” he was shout­ing. “Come down, you fool. Do you think we will let you ruin everything by your clown­ing? Come down!”

André-Louis, main­tain­ing his po­s­i­tion by clutch­ing one of the legs of the bronze horse, flung his voice like a bugle-note over the heads of that seeth­ing mob.

“Cit­izens of Rennes, the moth­er­land is in danger!”

The ef­fect was elec­tric. A stir ran, like a ripple over wa­ter, across that froth of up­turned hu­man faces, and com­pletest si­lence fol­lowed. In that great si­lence they looked at this slim young man, hat­less, long wisps of his black hair flut­ter­ing in the breeze, his neck­cloth in dis­order, his face white, his eyes on fire.

André-Louis felt a sud­den surge of ex­al­ta­tion as he real­ized by in­stinct that at one grip he had seized that crowd, and that he held it fast in the spell of his cry and his au­da­city.

Even Le Chape­lier, though still cling­ing to his ankle, had ceased to tug. The re­former, though un­shaken in his as­sump­tion of André-Louis’ in­ten­tions, was for a mo­ment be­wildered by the first note of his ap­peal.

And then, slowly, im­press­ively, in a voice that trav­elled clear to the ends of the square, the young law­yer of Gav­ril­lac began to speak.

“Shud­der­ing in hor­ror of the vile deed here per­pet­rated, my voice de­mands to be heard by you. You have seen murder done un­der your eyes—the murder of one who nobly, without any thought of self, gave voice to the wrongs by which we are all op­pressed. Fear­ing that voice, shun­ning the truth as foul things shun the light, our op­press­ors sent their agents to si­lence him in death.”

Le Chape­lier re­leased at last his hold of André-Louis’ ankle, star­ing up at him the while in sheer amazement. It seemed that the fel­low was in earn­est; ser­i­ous for once; and for once on the right side. What had come to him?

“Of as­sas­sins what shall you look for but as­sas­sin­a­tion? I have a tale to tell which will show that this is no new thing that you have wit­nessed here today; it will re­veal to you the forces with which you have to deal. Yes­ter­day …”

There was an in­ter­rup­tion. A voice in the crowd, some twenty paces, per­haps, was raised to shout:

“Yet an­other of them!”

Im­me­di­ately after the voice came a pis­tol-shot, and a bul­let flattened it­self against the bronze fig­ure just be­hind André-Louis.

In­stantly there was tur­moil in the crowd, most in­tense about the spot whence the shot had been fired. The as­sail­ant was one of a con­sid­er­able group of the op­pos­i­tion, a group that found it­self at once be­set on every side, and hard put to it to de­fend him.

From the foot of the plinth rang the voice of the stu­dents mak­ing chorus to Le Chape­lier, who was bid­ding André-Louis to seek shel­ter.

“Come down! Come down at once! They’ll murder you as they murdered La Rivière.”

“Let them!” He flung wide his arms in a ges­ture su­premely the­at­rical, and laughed. “I stand here at their mercy. Let them, if they will, add mine to the blood that will presently rise up to choke them. Let them as­sas­sin­ate me. It is a trade they un­der­stand. But un­til they do so, they shall not pre­vent me from speak­ing to you, from telling you what is to be looked for in them.” And again he laughed, not merely in ex­al­ta­tion as they sup­posed who watched him from be­low, but also in amuse­ment. And his amuse­ment had two sources. One was to dis­cover how glibly he uttered the phrases proper to whip up the emo­tions of a crowd: the other was in the re­mem­brance of how the crafty Car­dinal de Retz, for the pur­pose of in­flam­ing pop­u­lar sym­pathy on his be­half, had been in the habit of hir­ing fel­lows to fire upon his car­riage. He was in just such case as that arch-politi­cian. True, he had not hired the fel­low to fire that pis­tol-shot; but he was none the less ob­liged to him, and ready to de­rive the fullest, ad­vant­age from the act.

The group that sought to pro­tect that man was bat­tling on, seek­ing to hew a way out of that angry, heav­ing press.

“Let them go!” André-Louis called down … “What mat­ters one as­sas­sin more or less? Let them go, and listen to me, my coun­try­men!”

And presently, when some meas­ure of or­der was re­stored, he began his tale. In simple lan­guage now, yet with a vehe­mence and dir­ect­ness that drove home every point, he tore their hearts with the story of yes­ter­day’s hap­pen­ings at Gav­ril­lac. He drew tears from them with the pathos of his pic­ture of the be­reaved widow Mabey and her three starving, des­ti­tute chil­dren—“orphaned to avenge the death of a pheas­ant”—and the be­reaved mother of that M. de Vilmorin, a stu­dent of Rennes, known here to many of them, who had met his death in a noble en­deav­our to cham­pion the cause of an esur­i­ent mem­ber of their af­flic­ted or­der.

“The Mar­quis de La Tour d’Azyr said of him that he had too dan­ger­ous a gift of elo­quence. It was to si­lence his brave voice that he killed him. But he has failed of his ob­ject. For I, poor Phil­ippe de Vilmorin’s friend, have as­sumed the mantle of his apostle­ship, and I speak to you with his voice today.”

It was a state­ment that helped Le Chape­lier at last to un­der­stand, at least in part, this be­wil­der­ing change in André-Louis, which rendered him faith­less to the side that em­ployed him.

“I am not here,” con­tin­ued André-Louis, “merely to de­mand at your hands ven­geance upon Phil­ippe de Vilmorin’s mur­der­ers. I am here to tell you the things he would today have told you had he lived.”

So far at least he was frank. But he did not add that they were things he did not him­self be­lieve, things that he ac­coun­ted the cant by which an am­bi­tious bour­geoisie—speak­ing through the mouths of the law­yers, who were its ar­tic­u­late part—sought to over­throw to its own ad­vant­age the present state of things. He left his audi­ence in the nat­ural be­lief that the views he ex­pressed were the views he held.

And now in a ter­rible voice, with an elo­quence that amazed him­self, he de­nounced the in­er­tia of the royal justice where the great are the of­fend­ers. It was with bit­ter sar­casm that he spoke of their King’s Lieu­ten­ant, M. de Les­diguières.

“Do you won­der,” he asked them, “that M. de Les­diguières should ad­min­is­ter the law so that it shall ever be fa­vour­able to our great nobles? Would it be just, would it be reas­on­able that he should oth­er­wise ad­min­is­ter it?” He paused dra­mat­ic­ally to let his sar­casm sink in. It had the ef­fect of reawaken­ing Le Chape­lier’s doubts, and check­ing his dawn­ing con­vic­tion in André-Louis’ sin­cer­ity. Whither was he go­ing now?

He was not left long in doubt. Pro­ceed­ing, André-Louis spoke as he con­ceived that Phil­ippe de Vilmorin would have spoken. He had so of­ten ar­gued with him, so of­ten at­ten­ded the dis­cus­sions of the Lit­er­ary Cham­ber, that he had all the rant of the re­formers—that was yet true in sub­stance—at his fin­gers’ ends.

“Con­sider, after all, the com­pos­i­tion of this France of ours. A mil­lion of its in­hab­it­ants are mem­bers of the priv­ileged classes. They com­pose France. They are France. For surely you can­not sup­pose the re­mainder to be any­thing that mat­ters. It can­not be pre­ten­ded that twenty-four mil­lion souls are of any ac­count, that they can be rep­res­ent­at­ive of this great na­tion, or that they can ex­ist for any pur­pose but that of ser­vitude to the mil­lion elect.”

Bit­ter laughter shook them now, as he de­sired it should. “See­ing their priv­ileges in danger of in­va­sion by these twenty-four mil­lions—mostly ca­nailles; pos­sibly cre­ated by God, it is true, but clearly so cre­ated to be the slaves of Priv­ilege—does it sur­prise you that the dis­pens­ing of royal justice should be placed in the stout hands of these Les­diguières, men without brains to think or hearts to be touched? Con­sider what it is that must be de­fen­ded against the as­sault of us oth­ers—ca­naille. Con­sider a few of these feudal rights that are in danger of be­ing swept away should the Priv­ileged yield even to the com­mands of their sov­er­eign; and ad­mit the Third Estate to an equal vote with them­selves.

“What would be­come of the right of ter­rage on the land, of par­ci­ere on the fruit-trees, of car­pot on the vines? What of the cor­vées by which they com­mand forced la­bour, of the ban de vend­age, which gives them the first vin­tage, the ban­vin which en­ables them to con­trol to their own ad­vant­age the sale of wine? What of their right of grind­ing the last liard of tax­a­tion out of the people to main­tain their own op­u­lent es­tate; the cens, the lods-et-ventes, which ab­sorb a fifth of the value of the land, the blairée, which must be paid be­fore herds can feed on com­munal lands, the pul­vérage to in­dem­nify them for the dust raised on their roads by the herds that go to mar­ket, the sex­télage on everything offered for sale in the pub­lic mar­kets, the étalon­nage, and all the rest? What of their rights over men and an­im­als for field la­bour, of fer­ries over rivers, and of bridges over streams, of sink­ing wells, of war­ren, of dove­cot, and of fire, which last yields them a tax on every peas­ant hearth? What of their ex­clus­ive rights of fish­ing and of hunt­ing, the vi­ol­a­tion of which is ranked as al­most a cap­ital of­fence?

“And what of other rights, un­speak­able, ab­om­in­able, over the lives and bod­ies of their people, rights which, if rarely ex­er­cised, have never been res­cin­ded. To this day if a noble re­turn­ing from the hunt were to slay two of his serfs to bathe and re­fresh his feet in their blood, he could still claim in his suf­fi­cient de­fence that it was his ab­so­lute feudal right to do so.

“Rough­shod, these mil­lion Priv­ileged ride over the souls and bod­ies of twenty-four mil­lion con­tempt­ible ca­naille ex­ist­ing but for their own pleas­ure. Woe betide him who so much as raises his voice in protest in the name of hu­man­ity against an ex­cess of these already ex­cess­ive ab­uses. I have told you of one re­morse­lessly slain in cold blood for do­ing no more than that. Your own eyes have wit­nessed the as­sas­sin­a­tion of an­other here upon this plinth, of yet an­other over there by the cathed­ral works, and the at­tempt upon my own life.

“Between them and the justice due to them in such cases stand these Les­diguières, these King’s Lieu­ten­ants; not in­stru­ments of justice, but walls erec­ted for the shel­ter of Priv­ilege and Abuse whenever it ex­ceeds its grot­esquely ex­cess­ive rights.

“Do you won­der that they will not yield an inch; that they will res­ist the elec­tion of a Third Estate with the vot­ing power to sweep all these priv­ileges away, to com­pel the Priv­ileged to sub­mit them­selves to a just equal­ity in the eyes of the law with the mean­est of the ca­naille they trample un­der­foot, to provide that the moneys ne­ces­sary to save this state from the bank­ruptcy into which they have all but plunged it shall be raised by tax­a­tion to be borne by them­selves in the same pro­por­tion as by oth­ers?

“Sooner than yield to so much they prefer to res­ist even the royal com­mand.”

A phrase oc­curred to him used yes­ter­day by Vilmorin, a phrase to which he had re­fused to at­tach im­port­ance when uttered then. He used it now. “In do­ing this they are strik­ing at the very found­a­tions of the throne. These fools do not per­ceive that if that throne falls over, it is they who stand nearest to it who will be crushed.”

A ter­rific roar ac­claimed that state­ment. Tense and quiv­er­ing with the ex­cite­ment that was flow­ing through him, and from him out into that great audi­ence, he stood a mo­ment smil­ing iron­ic­ally. Then he waved them into si­lence, and saw by their ready obed­i­ence how com­pletely he pos­sessed them. For in the voice with which he spoke each now re­cog­nized the voice of him­self, giv­ing at last ex­pres­sion to the thoughts that for months and years had been in­ar­tic­u­lately stir­ring in each simple mind.

Presently he re­sumed, speak­ing more quietly, that ironic smile about the corner of his mouth grow­ing more marked:

“In tak­ing my leave of M. de Les­diguières I gave him warn­ing out of a page of nat­ural his­tory. I told him that when the wolves, roam­ing singly through the jungle, were weary of be­ing hunted by the ti­ger, they ban­ded them­selves into packs, and went a-hunt­ing the ti­ger in their turn. M. de Les­diguières con­temp­tu­ously answered that he did not un­der­stand me. But your wits are bet­ter than his. You un­der­stand me, I think? Don’t you?”

Again a great roar, mingled now with some ap­prov­ing laughter, was his an­swer. He had wrought them up to a pitch of dan­ger­ous pas­sion, and they were ripe for any vi­ol­ence to which he urged them. If he had failed with the wind­mill, at least he was now mas­ter of the wind.

“To the Pal­ais!” they shouted, wav­ing their hands, bran­dish­ing canes, and—here and there—even a sword. “To the Pal­ais! Down with M. de Les­diguières! Death to the King’s Lieu­ten­ant!”

He was mas­ter of the wind, in­deed. His dan­ger­ous gift of oratory—a gift nowhere more power­ful than in France, since nowhere else are men’s emo­tions so quick to re­spond to the ap­peal of elo­quence—had given him this mas­tery. At his bid­ding now the gale would sweep away the wind­mill against which he had flung him­self in vain. But that, as he straight­for­wardly re­vealed it, was no part of his in­tent.

“Ah, wait!” he bade them. “Is this miser­able in­stru­ment of a cor­rupt sys­tem worth the at­ten­tion of your noble in­dig­na­tion?”

He hoped his words would be re­por­ted to M. de Les­diguières. He thought it would be good for the soul of M. de Les­diguières to hear the un­di­luted truth about him­self for once.

“It is the sys­tem it­self you must at­tack and over­throw; not a mere in­stru­ment—a miser­able painted lath such as this. And pre­cip­it­ancy will spoil everything. Above all, my chil­dren, no vi­ol­ence!”

My chil­dren! Could his god­father have heard him!

“You have seen of­ten already the res­ult of pre­ma­ture vi­ol­ence else­where in Brit­tany, and you have heard of it else­where in France. Vi­olence on your part will call for vi­ol­ence on theirs. They will wel­come the chance to as­sert their mas­tery by a firmer grip than here­to­fore. The mil­it­ary will be sent for. You will be faced by the bay­on­ets of mer­cen­ar­ies. Do not pro­voke that, I im­plore you. Do not put it into their power, do not af­ford them the pre­text they would wel­come to crush you down into the mud of your own blood.”

Out of the si­lence into which they had fallen anew broke now the cry of

“What else, then? What else?”

“I will tell you,” he answered them. “The wealth and strength of Brit­tany lies in Nantes—a bour­geois city, one of the most pros­per­ous in this realm, rendered so by the en­ergy of the bour­geoisie and the toil of the people. It was in Nantes that this move­ment had its be­gin­ning, and as a res­ult of it the King is­sued his or­der dis­solv­ing the States as now con­sti­tuted—an or­der which those who base their power on Priv­ilege and Abuse do not hes­it­ate to thwart. Let Nantes be in­formed of the pre­cise situ­ation, and let noth­ing be done here un­til Nantes shall have given us the lead. She has the power—which we in Rennes have not—to make her will pre­vail, as we have seen already. Let her ex­ert that power once more, and un­til she does so do you keep the peace in Rennes. Thus shall you tri­umph. Thus shall the out­rages that are be­ing per­pet­rated un­der your eyes be fully and fi­nally avenged.”

As ab­ruptly as he had leapt upon the plinth did he now leap down from it. He had fin­ished. He had said all—per­haps more than all—that could have been said by the dead friend with whose voice he spoke. But it was not their will that he should thus ex­tin­guish him­self. The thun­der of their ac­clam­a­tions rose deaf­en­ingly upon the air. He had played upon their emo­tions—each in turn—as a skil­ful harp­ist plays upon the strings of his in­stru­ment. And they were vi­brant with the pas­sions he had aroused, and the high note of hope on which he had brought his sym­phony to a close.

A dozen stu­dents caught him as he leapt down, and swung him to their shoulders, where again he came within view of all the ac­claim­ing crowd.

The del­ic­ate Le Chape­lier pressed along­side of him with flushed face and shin­ing eyes.

“My lad,” he said to him, “you have kindled a fire today that will sweep the face of France in a blaze of liberty.” And then to the stu­dents he is­sued a sharp com­mand. “To the Lit­er­ary Cham­ber—at once. We must con­cert meas­ures upon the in­stant, a del­eg­ate must be dis­patched to Nantes forth­with, to con­vey to our friends there the mes­sage of the people of Rennes.”

The crowd fell back, open­ing a lane through which the stu­dents bore the hero of the hour. Wav­ing his hands to them, he called upon them to dis­perse to their homes, and await there in pa­tience what must fol­low very soon.

“You have en­dured for cen­tur­ies with a forti­tude that is a pat­tern to the world,” he flattered them. “En­dure a little longer yet. The end, my friends, is well in sight at last.”

They car­ried him out of the square and up the Rue Roy­ale to an old house, one of the few old houses sur­viv­ing in that city that had risen from its ashes, where in an up­per cham­ber lighted by dia­mond-shaped panes of yel­low glass the Lit­er­ary Cham­ber usu­ally held its meet­ings. Thither in his wake the mem­bers of that cham­ber came hur­ry­ing, summoned by the mes­sages that Le Chape­lier had is­sued dur­ing their pro­gress.

Be­hind closed doors a flushed and ex­cited group of some fifty men, the ma­jor­ity of whom were young, ar­dent, and afire with the il­lu­sion of liberty, hailed André-Louis as the strayed sheep who had re­turned to the fold, and smothered him in con­grat­u­la­tions and thanks.

Then they settled down to de­lib­er­ate upon im­me­di­ate meas­ures, whilst the doors be­low were kept by a guard of hon­our that had im­pro­vised it­self from the masses. And very ne­ces­sary was this. For no sooner had the Cham­ber as­sembled than the house was as­sailed by the gen­darm­erie of M. de Les­diguières, dis­patched in haste to ar­rest the firebrand who was in­cit­ing the people of Rennes to sedi­tion. The force con­sisted of fifty men. Five hun­dred would have been too few. The mob broke their car­bines, broke some of their heads, and would in­deed have torn them into pieces had they not beaten a timely and well-ad­vised re­treat be­fore a form of horse­play to which they were not at all ac­cus­tomed.

And whilst that was tak­ing place in the street be­low, in the room abovestairs the elo­quent Le Chape­lier was ad­dress­ing his col­leagues of the Lit­er­ary Cham­ber. Here, with no bul­lets to fear, and no one to re­port his words to the au­thor­it­ies, Le Chape­lier could per­mit his oratory a full, un­in­tim­id­ated flow. And that con­sid­er­able oratory was as dir­ect and bru­tal as the man him­self was del­ic­ate and el­eg­ant.

He praised the vigour and the great­ness of the speech they had heard from their col­league Mor­eau. Above all he praised its wis­dom. Mor­eau’s words had come as a sur­prise to them. Hitherto they had never known him as other than a bit­ter critic of their pro­jects of re­form and re­gen­er­a­tion; and quite lately they had heard, not without mis­giv­ings, of his ap­point­ment as del­eg­ate for a no­ble­man in the States of Brit­tany. But they held the ex­plan­a­tion of his con­ver­sion. The murder of their dear col­league Vilmorin had pro­duced this change. In that bru­tal deed Mor­eau had be­held at last in true pro­por­tions the work­ings of that evil spirit which they were vowed to ex­or­cise from France. And today he had proven him­self the stoutest apostle among them of the new faith. He had poin­ted out to them the only sane and use­ful course. The il­lus­tra­tion he had bor­rowed from nat­ural his­tory was most apt. Above all, let them pack like the wolves, and to en­sure this uni­form­ity of ac­tion in the people of all Brit­tany, let a del­eg­ate at once be sent to Nantes, which had already proved it­self the real seat of Brit­tany’s power. It but re­mained to ap­point that del­eg­ate, and Le Chape­lier in­vited them to elect him.

André-Louis, on a bench near the win­dow, a prey now to some meas­ure of re­ac­tion, listened in be­wil­der­ment to that flood of elo­quence.

As the ap­plause died down, he heard a voice ex­claim­ing:

“I pro­pose to you that we ap­point our leader here, Le Chape­lier, to be that del­eg­ate.”

Le Chape­lier reared his el­eg­antly dressed head, which had been bowed in thought, and it was seen that his coun­ten­ance was pale. Ner­vously he fingered a gold spy­glass.

“My friends,” he said, slowly, “I am deeply sens­ible of the hon­our that you do me. But in ac­cept­ing it I should be usurp­ing an hon­our that rightly be­longs else­where. Who could rep­res­ent us bet­ter, who more de­serving to be our rep­res­ent­at­ive, to speak to our friends of Nantes with the voice of Rennes, than the cham­pion who once already today has so in­com­par­ably given ut­ter­ance to the voice of this great city? Con­fer this hon­our of be­ing your spokes­man where it be­longs—upon André-Louis Mor­eau.”

Rising in re­sponse to the storm of ap­plause that greeted the pro­posal, André-Louis bowed and forth­with yiel­ded. “Be it so,” he said, simply. “It is per­haps fit­ting that I should carry out what I have be­gun, though I too am of the opin­ion that Le Chape­lier would have been a wor­thier rep­res­ent­at­ive. I will set out to­night.”

“You will set out at once, my lad,” Le Chape­lier in­formed him, and now re­vealed what an un­char­it­able mind might ac­count the true source of his gen­er­os­ity. “It is not safe after what has happened for you to linger an hour in Rennes. And you must go secretly. Let none of you al­low it to be known that he has gone. I would not have you come to harm over this, André-Louis. But you must see the risks you run, and if you are to be spared to help in this work of sal­va­tion of our af­flic­ted moth­er­land, you must use cau­tion, move secretly, veil your iden­tity even. Or else M. de Les­diguières will have you laid by the heels, and it will be good night for you.”

VIII Omnes Omnibus

André-Louis rode forth from Rennes com­mit­ted to a deeper ad­ven­ture than he had dreamed of when he left the sleepy vil­lage of Gav­ril­lac. Ly­ing the night at a road­side inn, and set­ting out again early in the morn­ing, he reached Nantes soon after noon of the fol­low­ing day.

Through that long and lonely ride through the dull plains of Brit­tany, now at their drear­i­est in their winter garb, he had ample leis­ure in which to re­view his ac­tions and his po­s­i­tion. From one who had taken hitherto a purely aca­demic and by no means friendly in­terest in the new philo­sophies of so­cial life, ex­er­cising his wits upon these new ideas merely as a fen­cer ex­er­cises his eye and wrist with the foils, without ever suf­fer­ing him­self to be de­luded into sup­pos­ing the is­sue a real one, he found him­self sud­denly con­ver­ted into a re­volu­tion­ary firebrand, com­mit­ted to re­volu­tion­ary ac­tion of the most des­per­ate kind. The rep­res­ent­at­ive and del­eg­ate of a no­ble­man in the States of Brit­tany, he found him­self sim­ul­tan­eously and in­con­gru­ously the rep­res­ent­at­ive and del­eg­ate of the whole Third Estate of Rennes.

It is dif­fi­cult to de­term­ine to what ex­tent, in the heat of pas­sion and swept along by the tor­rent of his own oratory, he might yes­ter­day have suc­ceeded in de­ceiv­ing him­self. But it is at least cer­tain that, look­ing back in cold blood now, he had no single de­lu­sion on the score of what he had done. Cyn­ic­ally he had presen­ted to his audi­ence one side only of the great ques­tion that he pro­pounded.

But since the es­tab­lished or­der of things in France was such as to make a ram­part for M. de La Tour d’Azyr, af­ford­ing him com­plete im­munity for this and any other crimes that it pleased him to com­mit, why, then the es­tab­lished or­der must take the con­sequences of its wrong­do­ing. Therein he per­ceived his clear jus­ti­fic­a­tion.

And so it was without mis­giv­ings that he came on his er­rand of sedi­tion into that beau­ti­ful city of Nantes, rendered by its spa­cious streets and splen­did port the rival in prosper­ity of Bordeaux and Mar­seilles.

He found an inn on the Quai La Fosse, where he put up his horse, and where he dined in the em­bras­ure of a win­dow that looked out over the tree-bordered quay and the broad bosom of the Loire, on which ar­gosies of all na­tions rode at an­chor. The sun had again broken through the clouds, and shed its pale wintry light over the yel­low wa­ters and the tall-masted ship­ping.

Along the quays there was a stir of life as great as that to be seen on the quays of Paris. For­eign sail­ors in out­land­ish gar­ments and of harsh-sound­ing, out­land­ish speech, stal­wart fish­wives with bas­kets of her­rings on their heads, vo­lu­min­ous of pet­ti­coat above bare legs and bare feet, call­ing their wares shrilly and al­most in­ar­tic­u­lately, wa­ter­men in wool­len caps and loose trousers rolled to the knees, peas­ants in goat­skin coats, their wooden shoes clat­ter­ing on the round kid­ney-stones, ship­wrights and la­bour­ers from the dock­yards, bel­lows-mend­ers, rat-catch­ers, wa­ter-car­ri­ers, ink-sellers, and other it­in­er­ant ped­lars. And, sprinkled through this pro­let­ariat mass that came and went in con­stant move­ment, André-Louis be­held trades­men in sober gar­ments, mer­chants in long, fur-lined coats; oc­ca­sion­ally a mer­chant-prince rolling along in his two-horse cab­ri­olet to the whip-crack­ings and shouts of “Gare!” from his coach­man; oc­ca­sion­ally a dainty lady car­ried past in her sedan-chair, with per­haps a min­cing abbé from the epis­copal court trip­ping along in at­tend­ance; oc­ca­sion­ally an of­ficer in scar­let rid­ing dis­dain­fully; and once the great car­riage of a no­ble­man, with es­cut­cheoned pan­els and a pair of white-stockinged, powdered foot­men in gor­geous liv­er­ies hanging on be­hind. And there were Capuchins in brown and Be­ne­dict­ines in black, and sec­u­lar priests in plenty—for God was well served in the six­teen par­ishes of Nantes—and by way of con­trast there were lean-jawed, out-at-el­bow ad­ven­tur­ers, and gen­darmes in blue coats and gaitered legs, saun­ter­ing guard­i­ans of the peace.

Re­p­res­ent­at­ives of every class that went to make up the sev­enty thou­sand in­hab­it­ants of that wealthy, in­dus­tri­ous city were to be seen in the hu­man stream that ebbed and flowed be­neath the win­dow from which André-Louis ob­served it.

Of the waiter who min­istered to his humble wants with soup and bouilli, and a meas­ure of vin gris, André-Louis en­quired into the state of pub­lic feel­ing in the city. The waiter, a staunch sup­porter of the priv­ileged or­ders, ad­mit­ted re­gret­fully that an un­eas­i­ness pre­vailed. Much would de­pend upon what happened at Rennes. If it was true that the King had dis­solved the States of Brit­tany, then all should be well, and the mal­con­tents would have no pre­text for fur­ther dis­turb­ances. There had been trouble and to spare in Nantes already. They wanted no re­pe­ti­tion of it. All man­ner of ru­mours were abroad, and since early morn­ing there had been crowds be­sieging the portals of the Cham­ber of Com­merce for def­in­ite news. But def­in­ite news was yet to come. It was not even known for a fact that His Majesty ac­tu­ally had dis­solved the States.

It was strik­ing two, the busiest hour of the day upon the Bourse, when André-Louis reached the Place du Com­merce. The square, dom­in­ated by the im­pos­ing clas­sical build­ing of the Ex­change, was so crowded that he was com­pelled al­most to fight his way through to the steps of the mag­ni­fi­cent Ionic porch. A word would have suf­ficed to have opened a way for him at once. But guile moved him to keep si­lent. He would come upon that wait­ing mul­ti­tude as a thun­der­clap, pre­cisely as yes­ter­day he had come upon the mob at Rennes. He would lose noth­ing of the sur­prise ef­fect of his en­trance.

The pre­cincts of that house of com­merce were jeal­ously kept by a line of ush­ers armed with staves, a guard as hur­riedly as­sembled by the mer­chants as it was evid­ently ne­ces­sary. One of these now ef­fect­ively barred the young law­yer’s pas­sage as he at­temp­ted to mount the steps.

André-Louis an­nounced him­self in a whis­per.

The stave was in­stantly raised from the ho­ri­zontal, and he passed and went up the steps in the wake of the usher. At the top, on the threshold of the cham­ber, he paused, and stayed his guide.

“I will wait here,” he an­nounced. “Bring the pres­id­ent to me.”

“Your name, mon­sieur?”

Al­most had André-Louis answered him when he re­membered Le Chape­lier’s warn­ing of the danger with which his mis­sion was fraught, and Le Chape­lier’s part­ing ad­mon­i­tion to con­ceal his iden­tity.

“My name is un­known to him; it mat­ters noth­ing; I am the mouth­piece of a people, no more. Go.”

The usher went, and in the shadow of that lofty, pillared por­tico André-Louis waited, his eyes stray­ing out ever and anon to sur­vey that spread of up­turned faces im­me­di­ately be­low him.

Soon the pres­id­ent came, oth­ers fol­low­ing, crowding out into the por­tico, jost­ling one an­other in their eager­ness to hear the news.

“You are a mes­sen­ger from Rennes?”

“I am the del­eg­ate sent by the Lit­er­ary Cham­ber of that city to in­form you here in Nantes of what is tak­ing place.”

“Your name?”

André-Louis paused. “The less we men­tion names, per­haps, the bet­ter.”

The pres­id­ent’s eyes grew big with grav­ity. He was a cor­pu­lent, florid man, purse-proud, and self-suf­fi­cient.

He hes­it­ated a mo­ment. Then—“Come into the Cham­ber,” said he.

“By your leave, mon­sieur, I will de­liver my mes­sage from here—from these steps.”

“From here?” The great mer­chant frowned.

“My mes­sage is for the people of Nantes, and from here I can speak at once to the greatest num­ber of Nantais of all ranks, and it is my de­sire—and the de­sire of those whom I rep­res­ent—that as great a num­ber as pos­sible should hear my mes­sage at first hand.”

“Tell me, sir, is it true that the King has dis­solved the States?”

André-Louis looked at him. He smiled apo­lo­get­ic­ally, and waved a hand to­wards the crowd, which by now was strain­ing for a glimpse of this slim young man who had brought forth the pres­id­ent and more than half the num­bers of the Cham­ber, guess­ing already, with that curi­ous in­stinct of crowds, that he was the awaited bearer of tid­ings.

“Sum­mon the gen­tle­men of your Cham­ber, mon­sieur,” said he, “and you shall hear all.”

“So be it.”

A word, and forth they came to crowd upon the steps, but leav­ing clear the top­most step and a half-moon space in the middle.

To the spot so in­dic­ated, André-Louis now ad­vanced very de­lib­er­ately. He took his stand there, dom­in­at­ing the en­tire as­sembly. He re­moved his hat, and launched the open­ing bomb­shell of that ad­dress which is his­toric, mark­ing as it does one of the great stages of France’s pro­gress to­wards re­volu­tion.

“People of this great city of Nantes, I have come to sum­mon you to arms!”

In the amazed and rather scared si­lence that fol­lowed he sur­veyed them for a mo­ment be­fore re­sum­ing.

“I am a del­eg­ate of the people of Rennes, charged to an­nounce to you what is tak­ing place, and to in­vite you in this dread­ful hour of our coun­try’s peril to rise and march to her de­fence.”

“Name! Your name!” a voice shouted, and in­stantly the cry was taken up by oth­ers, un­til the mul­ti­tude rang with the ques­tion.

He could not an­swer that ex­cited mob as he had answered the pres­id­ent. It was ne­ces­sary to com­prom­ise, and he did so, hap­pily. “My name,” said he, “is Omnes Om­nibus—all for all. Let that suf­fice you now. I am a her­ald, a mouth­piece, a voice; no more. I come to an­nounce to you that since the priv­ileged or­ders, as­sembled for the States of Brit­tany in Rennes, res­isted your will—our will—des­pite the King’s plain hint to them, His Majesty has dis­solved the States.”

There was a burst of de­li­ri­ous ap­plause. Men laughed and shouted, and cries of “Vive le Roi!” rolled forth like thun­der. André-Louis waited, and gradu­ally the preter­nat­ural grav­ity of his coun­ten­ance came to be ob­served, and to be­get the sus­pi­cion that there might be more to fol­low. Gradu­ally si­lence was re­stored, and at last André-Louis was able to pro­ceed.

“You re­joice too soon. Un­for­tu­nately, the nobles, in their in­solent ar­rog­ance, have elec­ted to ig­nore the royal dis­sol­u­tion, and in des­pite of it per­sist in sit­ting and in con­duct­ing mat­ters as seems good to them.”

A si­lence of ut­ter dis­may greeted that dis­con­cert­ing epi­logue to the an­nounce­ment that had been so rap­tur­ously re­ceived. André-Louis con­tin­ued after a mo­ment’s pause:

“So that these men who were already rebels against the people, rebels, against justice and equity, rebels against hu­man­ity it­self, are now also rebels against their King. Sooner than yield an inch of the un­con­scion­able priv­ileges by which too long already they have flour­ished, to the misery of a whole na­tion, they will make a mock of royal au­thor­ity, hold up the King him­self to con­tempt. They are de­term­ined to prove that there is no real sov­er­eignty in France but the sov­er­eignty of their own para­sitic fai­neantise.”

There was a faint splut­ter of ap­plause, but the ma­jor­ity of the audi­ence re­mained si­lent, wait­ing.

“This is no new thing. Al­ways has it been the same. No min­is­ter in the last ten years, who, see­ing the needs and per­ils of the State, coun­selled the meas­ures that we now de­mand as the only means of ar­rest­ing our moth­er­land in its ever-quick­en­ing pro­gress to the abyss, but found him­self as a con­sequence cast out of of­fice by the in­flu­ence which Priv­ilege brought to bear against him. Twice already has M. Necker been called to the min­istry, to be twice dis­missed when his in­sist­ent coun­sels of re­form threatened the priv­ileges of clergy and no­bil­ity. For the third time now has he been called to of­fice, and at last it seems we are to have States Gen­eral in spite of Priv­ilege. But what the priv­ileged or­ders can no longer pre­vent, they are de­term­ined to stul­tify. Since it is now a settled thing that these States Gen­eral are to meet, at least the nobles and the clergy will see to it—un­less we take meas­ures to pre­vent them—by pack­ing the Third Estate with their own creatures, and deny­ing it all ef­fect­ive rep­res­ent­a­tion, that they con­vert the States Gen­eral into an in­stru­ment of their own will for the per­petu­ation of the ab­uses by which they live. To achieve this end they will stop at noth­ing. They have flouted the au­thor­ity of the King, and they are si­len­cing by as­sas­sin­a­tion those who raise their voices to con­demn them. Yes­ter­day in Rennes two young men who ad­dressed the people as I am ad­dress­ing you were done to death in the streets by as­sas­sins at the in­stig­a­tion of the no­bil­ity. Their blood cries out for ven­geance.”

Be­gin­ning in a sul­len mut­ter, the in­dig­na­tion that moved his hear­ers swelled up to ex­press it­self in a roar of an­ger.

“Cit­izens of Nantes, the moth­er­land is in peril. Let us march to her de­fence. Let us pro­claim it to the world that we re­cog­nize that the meas­ures to lib­er­ate the Third Estate from the slavery in which for cen­tur­ies it has groaned find only obstacles in those or­ders whose phren­etic egot­ism sees in the tears and suf­fer­ing of the un­for­tu­nate an odi­ous trib­ute which they would pass on to their gen­er­a­tions still un­born. Real­iz­ing from the bar­bar­ity of the means em­ployed by our en­emies to per­petu­ate our op­pres­sion that we have everything to fear from the ar­is­to­cracy they would set up as a con­sti­tu­tional prin­ciple for the gov­ern­ing of France, let us de­clare ourselves at once en­fran­chised from it.

“The es­tab­lish­ment of liberty and equal­ity should be the aim of every cit­izen mem­ber of the Third Estate; and to this end we should stand in­di­vis­ibly united, es­pe­cially the young and vig­or­ous, es­pe­cially those who have had the good for­tune to be born late enough to be able to gather for them­selves the pre­cious fruits of the philo­sophy of this eight­eenth cen­tury.”

Ac­clam­a­tions broke out un­stin­tedly now. He had caught them in the snare of his oratory. And he pressed his ad­vant­age in­stantly.

“Let us all swear,” he cried in a great voice, “to raise up in the name of hu­man­ity and of liberty a ram­part against our en­emies, to op­pose to their bloodthirsty cov­et­ous­ness the calm per­sever­ance of men whose cause is just. And let us protest here and in ad­vance against any tyr­an­nical de­crees that should de­clare us sedi­tious when we have none but pure and just in­ten­tions. Let us make oath upon the hon­our of our moth­er­land that should any of us be seized by an un­just tribunal, in­tend­ing against us one of those acts termed of polit­ical ex­pedi­ency—which are, in ef­fect, but acts of des­pot­ism—let us swear, I say, to give a full ex­pres­sion to the strength that is in us and do that in self-de­fence which nature, cour­age, and des­pair dic­tate to us.”

Loud and long rolled the ap­plause that greeted his con­clu­sion, and he ob­served with sat­is­fac­tion and even some in­ward grim amuse­ment that the wealthy mer­chants who had been con­greg­ated upon the steps, and who now came crowding about him to shake him by the hand and to ac­claim him, were not merely par­ti­cipants in, but the ac­tual lead­ers of, this de­li­rium of en­thu­si­asm.

It con­firmed him, had he needed con­firm­a­tion, in his con­vic­tion that just as the philo­sophies upon which this new move­ment was based had their source in thinkers ex­trac­ted from the bour­geoisie, so the need to ad­opt those philo­sophies to the prac­tical pur­poses of life was most acutely felt at present by those bour­geois who found them­selves de­barred by Priv­ilege from the ex­pan­sion their wealth per­mit­ted them. If it might be said of André-Louis that he had that day lighted the torch of the Re­volu­tion in Nantes, it might with even greater truth be said that the torch it­self was sup­plied by the op­u­lent bour­geoisie.

I need not dwell at any length upon the se­quel. It is a mat­ter of his­tory how that oath which Omnes Om­nibus ad­min­istered to the cit­izens of Nantes formed the back­bone of the formal protest which they drew up and signed in their thou­sands. Nor were the res­ults of that power­ful protest—which, after all, might already be said to har­mon­ize with the ex­pressed will of the sov­er­eign him­self—long delayed. Who shall say how far it may have strengthened the hand of Necker, when on the 27th of that same month of Novem­ber he com­pelled the Coun­cil to ad­opt the most sig­ni­fic­ant and com­pre­hens­ive of all those meas­ures to which clergy and no­bil­ity had re­fused their con­sent? On that date was pub­lished the royal de­cree or­dain­ing that the depu­ties to be elec­ted to the States Gen­eral should num­ber at least one thou­sand, and that the depu­ties of the Third Estate should be fully rep­res­ent­at­ive by num­ber­ing as many as the depu­ties of clergy and no­bil­ity to­gether.