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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. 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.
To meet them, there stepped from the carriage a very elegant young gentleman, the Chevalier de Chabrillane, M. 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. The Marquis took the hand that mademoiselle extended to him, and bowing over it, bore it to his lips.
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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. You almost frighten me.
It was not for nothing that she had graduated in the Versailles school of artificialities. It follows that I shall be honoured to receive you. 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.
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. He had spoken a word of farewell to M. The carriage rolled away, the powdered footman in blue-and-gold very stiff behind it, M. He had no subtleties, good soul that he was. He was very stiff and formal. Oh, I share the appointment, godfather," he lied, "and I have a superstition against toasts. He was angry with Aline for her smiling reception of M. He was suffering from the loss of an illusion. As they walked down the hill together, it was now M. 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. Singular though it may seem in a young French abbe of his day, M. Poor Philippe was in several ways exceptional.
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Opposite the Breton arme—the inn and posting-house at the entrance of the village of Gavrillac—M. The fact is, you disappoint me, Andre. You seem to have forgotten what we went for. I have an appointment here with M. 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. Provide for the widow and the orphans. Why else should he desire to hear me further? Into a room on the right, rendered private to M. A fire of logs was burning brightly at the room's far end, and by this sat now M.
Both rose as M. Andre-Louis following, paused to close the door. 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. Andre-Louis thought him easily moved to mirth, and almost envied him the faculty.
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The Marquis looked from Vilmorin to the Chevalier, and again the Chevalier laughed, slapping his leg this time. 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. 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. Rather is it aggravated.
Am I to understand that you are no longer as convinced as you appeared to be of its infamy? That is distinctly better. 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. 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. And that is precisely what it did. I hope you will remember it in the hour when you may wish to appeal to those laws which you now deride.
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. 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 Will you laugh, I wonder, when God presents His reckoning to you for the blood and plunder with which your hands are full?
But instantly the Marquis repressed him. You are interrupting M. 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. He approached, and touched his friend upon the arm. Consider how you and your kind live by abuses, and consider the harvest that abuses must ultimately bring. 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. 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. The Marquis considered him, strangely silent, a half smile of disdain at the corners of his lips, an ominous hardness in his eyes.
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. 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. Human rights are contemporary with man. It has the right note of cant that distinguishes the philosophers. 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.
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My race is as old, my blood as good as yours, monsieur. His dark, liquid eyes looked squarely into the face of M.
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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.
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. 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. Instead, it was M. 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. Let that content him. Thereafter he was suavity itself, but very firm. I think I am correct in saying that such a thing has never happened before to M. 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. 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. He is a seminarist—a postulant for holy orders, already half a priest, and so forbidden from such an engagement as you propose. Then he recovered himself, though the other's haughty stare had no part in that recovery.
How is one to argue against a purpose formed! Don't you see the trap 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.
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.
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.
Tall, lithe, and athletic, he stood to face the no less tall, but very delicate and frail, M. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
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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. The Marquis ran a lace handkerchief along his blade to wipe it. As he let the dainty fabric fall, he explained himself. And he turned away, leaving completest understanding with Andre-Louis.
Still supporting the limp, draining body, the young man called to him. The Marquis half turned, his face dark with anger. 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. You did it because you feared him. 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. 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:. 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. 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.
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. 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. Ah, this La Tour d'Azyr is a hard man, and he feels very strongly in these matters. He may be right. 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. From what I am told, Vilmorin went so far as to strike M. 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. Andre-Louis felt a tightening of his heart, a lessening of the hopes, never too sanguine, which he had founded upon his godfather. It does not seem possible that you should be in sympathy with such a crime. I cannot permit it. I may deplore it. But I have no right to condemn it. It is a common way of adjusting differences between gentlemen.
Should I say a thing that I don't believe? You begin to make me angry. 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. Dominated a little by the young man's earnestness, M. He turned with a shrug, and sauntered over to the window. And we have no courts of honour," he said. With returning testiness the seigneur swung round to face him again. 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. Perhaps you didn't know that. It does not at all surprise me that the Marquis should have desired satisfaction. 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. You'll come to no good by it if you persist. You've read 'Don Quixote,' and what happened to him when he went tilting against windmills. It's what will happen to you, neither more nor less. Leave things as they are, my boy.
I wouldn't have a mischief happen to you. Go to the devil! He was very angry now. Good-bye, monsieur my godfather. He was gone, and M. 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. 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 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. 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.
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. 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. The black eyebrows rose. 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.
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. 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.
How dare you speak of him as a coward. 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. 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. 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. I am a lawyer, pleading a case—the case of M. It is for his assassination that I have come to beg the King's justice. There is a distinction, as I shall show, if you will condescend to hear me out.
Andre-Louis took him literally. 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. I refer to the case of M. It put forward just such arguments as now obtain against M. As you will remember, the judges held that the provocation had proceeded of intent from M. 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.
The menace of him grew more fierce. That nothing that I can say will move you? 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. The door behind Andre-Louis opened softly. 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.
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. 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. But that he conceived himself witty, it is probable he would not have condescended to reply at all. He had broken his futile lance with the windmill—the image suggested by M. 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! Down with the assassins! Down with the nobles! An artisan who stood shoulder to shoulder with him in the press enlightened Andre-Louis on the score of the increased excitement. 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. If they can't prevail in one way they'll prevail in another. 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. 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.
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.
Why don't you speak to them? Why don't you tell them what to do? Up with you, man! 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. You see what your friends have done. No doubt you approve their methods. 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 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. Do you think we will let you ruin everything by your clowning? 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.
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. 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? 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.
There was an interruption. A voice in the crowd, some twenty paces, perhaps, was raised to shout:. 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. 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 his amusement had two sources. One was to discover how glibly he uttered the phrases proper to whip up the emotions of a crowd: 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, 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. 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 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. Would it be just, would it be reasonable that he should otherwise administer it? 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. A million of its inhabitants are members of the privileged classes. 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. 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 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? 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. 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. 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. 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:.
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. But your wits are better than his. You understand me, I think? 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. 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. He hoped his words would be reported to M. He thought it would be good for the soul of M. And precipitancy will spoil everything.
Above all, my children, no violence! 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.