BOOK I
THE ROBE
I. THE REPUBLICAN
II. THE ARISTOCRAT
III. THE ELOQUENCE OF M. DE VILMORIN
IV. THE HERITAGE
V. THE LORD OF GAVRILLAC
VI. THE WINDMILL
VII. THE WIND
VIII. OMNES OMNIBUS
IX. THE AFTERMATH
BOOK II
THE BUSKIN
I. THE TRESPASSERS
II. THE SERVICE OF THESPIS
III. THE COMIC MUSE
IV. EXIT MONSIEUR PARVISSIMUS
V. ENTER SCARAMOUCHE
VI. CLIMENE
VII. THE CONQUEST OF NANTES
VIII. THE DREAM
IX. THE AWAKENING
X. CONTRITION
XI. THE FRACAS AT THE THEATRE FEYDAU
BOOK III
THE SWORD
I. TRANSITION
II. QUOS DEUS VULT PERDERE
III. PRESIDENT LE CHAPELIER
IV. AT MEUDON
V. MADAME DE PLOUGASTEL
VI. POLITICIANS
VII. THE SPADASSINICIDES
VIII. THE PALADIN OF THE THIRD
IX. TORN PRIDE
X. THE RETURNING CARRIAGE
XI. INFERENCES
XII. THE OVERWHELMING REASON
XIII. SANCTUARY
XIV. THE BARRIER
XV. SAFE-CONDUCT
XVI. SUNRISE
SCARAMOUCHE
* BOOK I: THE ROBE *
CHAPTER 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 Andre-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.
Andre-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 Lycee 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.
Andre-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 cheek-bones, 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 Breton 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 Andre-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 Andre-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 Andre-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?" Andre-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 Andre-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.
Andre-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,
Andre," 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 to-day."
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," Andre-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 ship-owners 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."
Andre-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?"
Andre-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,
Andre, 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.
Andre-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 Andre-Louis. "It shall be as you please. But nothing
shall prevent me at least from walking with you as far as the chateau, 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.
CHAPTER II. THE ARISTOCRATI
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 Chateau 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, Etienne, 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 metayers. 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 Etienne,
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 Andre-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.
Andre-Louis and M. de Vilmorin had been known to her from childhood.
The three had been playmates once, and Andre-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'abbe," 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 Andre-Louis. "You haven't thought of that."
"I wonder what you mean, Cousin Andre."
"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 chateau. 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?" Andre-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, Andre" There was an arch
mysteriousness about her, a latent something that may have been elation or
amusement, or perhaps both. Andre-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 Andre-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 Andre-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 court-ship 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, Andre-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 Andre 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, Andre-Louis trembled for
Aline. Here was a practised, irresistible wooer, whose bonnes fortunes were
become a by-word, 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 Andre-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 Andre-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 to-morrow? 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. To-morrow 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 Andre-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. To-morrow 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
Andre-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 Andre Louis, and said
to him, "Come, Andre."
"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, Andre?"
"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.
CHAPTER III. THE ELOQUENCE OF M. DE VILMORINII
As they walked down the hill together, it was now M. de Vilmorin who
was silent and preoccupied, Andre-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 abbe of his day, M. de
Vilmorin was not interested in Woman. Poor Philippe was in several ways
exceptional. Opposite the Breton arme - 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 Andre-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,
Andre. 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 Andre-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. Andre-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. Andre-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 Chateau 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."
Andre-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
to-morrow. 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 Andre-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 to-day
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'abbe!"
"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'abbe, and I should like
to hear him further. He interests me profoundly."
In the background Andre-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 Andre-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'abbe," 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. Andre-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 Andre-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 counter-move as this - a counter-move that left him entirely at
the other's mercy.
M. le Marquis looked on, very white save where M. de Vilmorin's
finger-prints 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 Andre Louis, aghast.
"That is easily amended. He may have the loan of mine."
"I mean, messieurs," Andre-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 Andre-Louis. Then he
recovered himself, though the other's haughty stare had no part in that
recovery. "0 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, Andre. M.
le Marquis is entirely in the right."
"M. le Marquis is in the right?" Andre-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 Andre-Louis in that moment he seemed a
singularly tragic figure. Noble, perhaps, but very pitiful.
CHAPTER VI. THE HERITAGEV
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
Andre-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 cheek-bones 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 Andre-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. Andre-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 sword-play 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.
Andre-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 Andre-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, Andre-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 Andre-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 Andre-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 Andre-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 Andre-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 Andre-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? 0 God
of Heaven! Philippe!"
At a glance they saw that here neither priest nor doctor could avail.
The cheek that lay against Andre-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 Andre-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 Andre-Louis, was not a grand-seigneur.
M. de Kercadiou stared at him blankly out of his pale
CHAPTER V. THE LORD OF GAVRILLAC
For the second time that day Andre-Louis set out for the chateau,
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 Benoit, 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
Andre-Louis was introduced. He was already informed, as he announced at
once, of what had taken place at the Breton arme. 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 Andre-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, Andre; 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, Andre.
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.
Andre-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 Andre-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, Andre? 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... "
Andre-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
god-father. 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 Andre-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 Andre-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, Andre," he reasoned. "This is sheer
knight-errantry - moonshine, lunacy. You'11 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."
Andre-Louis looked at him, smiling wanly.
"I swore an oath to-day 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."
Andre-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. Good-bye, 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.
CHAPTER VI. THE WINDMILLI
There was between Nantes and Rennes an established service of three
stage-coaches 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 Andre-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 Breton arme 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 Andre-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 hat 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 Lesdiguieres. It was thrown back to scowl upon this visitor
with an expectant arrogance that made Andre-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
Lesdiguieres 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.
Andre-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.
Andre-Louis stood forward boldly - impudently, thought M. de
Lesdiguieres.
"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!" Andre-Louis' tone was peremptory. M. de
Lesdiguieres checked in sheer amazement at its impudence. "I can state it
very briefly... "
"Haven't I said already... "
"And when you have heard it," Andre-Louis went on, relentlessly,
interrupting the interruption, "you will agree with me as to its character."
M. de Lesdiguieres considered him very sternly.
"What is your name?" he asked.
"Andre-Louis Moreau."
"Well, Andre-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 Andre-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 Lesdiguieres 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 Lesdiguieres, whose
tenure of office had never yet held anything that remotely resembled this
experience.
Andre-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 Lesdiguieres 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 Lesdiguieres 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 Lesdiguieres 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 Andre-Louis opened softly. M. de Lesdiguieres, 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
Andre. "To the door!" he said, shortly.
Andre-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 Lesdiguieres," 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 Lesdiguieres."
"I have studied a buffoon this morning, I think," was the punning sneer
with which M. de Lesdiguieres 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 Lesdiguieres. You will," said Andre-Louis, and so
departed.
CHAPTER VII. THE WINDII
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 Andre-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."
Andre-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 Andre-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, Andre-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 Andre-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 Andre-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.
Andre-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 Andre-Louis sprang up on to the plinth. Alarmed now, for
he could only suppose it to be Andre-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!"
Andre-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.
Andre-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 Andre-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 Andre-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 to-day; 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 Andre-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 Andre-Louis to seek shelter.
"Come down! Come down at once! They'll murder you as they murdered La
Riviere."
"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!" Andre-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
to-day."
It was a statement that helped Le Chapelier at last to understand, at
least in part, this bewildering change in Andre-Louis, which rendered him
faithless to the side that employed him.
"I am not here," continued Andre-Louis, "merely to demand at your hands
vengeance upon Philippe de Vilmorin's murderers. I am here to tell you the
things he would to-day 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 Lesdiguieres.
"Do you wonder," he asked them, "that M. de Lesdiguieres 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
Andre-Louis' sincerity. Whither was he going now?
He was not left long in doubt. Proceeding, Andre-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 Lesdiguieres, 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 corvees 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 blairee,
which must be paid before herds can feed on communal lands, the pulverage to
indemnify them for the dust raised on their roads by the herds that go to
market, the sextelage on everything offered for sale in the public markets,
the etalonnage, 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.
"Rough-shod, 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
Lesdiguieres, 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 Lesdiguieres 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
Lesdiguieres 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
Lesdiguieres! 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 Lesdiguieres. He thought
it would be good for the soul of M. de Lesdiguieres 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 to-day 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 Andre-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
Lesdiguieres, 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 to-day 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.
Andre-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 spy-glass.
"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 to-day has so incomparably given
utterance to the voice of this great city? Confer this honour of being your
spokesman where it belongs - upon Andre-Louis Moreau."
Rising in response to the storm of applause that greeted the proposal,
Andre-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 to-night."
"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,
Andre-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 Lesdiguieres
will have you laid by the heels, and it will be good-night for you."
CHAPTER VII. OMNES OMNIBUSIII
Andre-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 wrong-doing. 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 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,
Andre-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 abbe 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
Andre-Louis observed it.
Of the waiter who ministered to his humble wants with soup and bouilli,
and a measure of vin gris, Andre-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
Andre-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.
Andre-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 Andre-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
Andre-Louis waited, his eyes straying out ever and anon to survey that
spread of upturned faces immediately belo
