t 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 below him.
     Soon  the  president  came,  others  following,  crowding  out into the
portico, jostling one another in their eagerness to hear the news.
     "You are a messenger from Rennes?"
     "I am the delegate sent by the Literary Chamber  of that city to inform
you here in Nantes of what is taking place."
     "Your name?"
     Andre-Louis paused. "The less we mention names perhaps the better."
     The president's eyes grew big with gravity. He was a corpulent,  florid
man, purse-proud, and self-sufficient.
     He hesitated a moment. Then - "Come into the Chamber," said he.
     "By your leave, monsieur, I  will deliver my  message from  here - from
these steps."
     "From here?" The great merchant frowned.
     "My message  is for the people  of Nantes, and from here I can speak at
once to the greatest number of  Nantais of all ranks,  and it is my desire -
and the  desire  of those  whom  I represent -  that as  great  a number  as
possible should hear my message at first hand."
     "Tell me, sir, is it true that the King has dissolved the States?"
     Andre-Louis  looked at him. He smiled apologetically, and waved a  hand
towards the crowd,  which by  now  was  straining for a glimpse of this slim
young man who had brought forth the president and more than half the numbers
of the Chamber, guessing already, with that curious instinct of crowds, that
he was the awaited bearer of tidings.
     "Summon the  gentlemen  of  your Chamber, monsieur," said he,  "and you
shall hear all."
     "So be it."
     A word, and forth they  came to crowd upon the steps, but leaving clear
the topmost step and a half-moon space in the middle.
     To  the spot  so indicated, Andre-Louis now advanced very deliberately.
He took his stand there, dominating the entire assembly. He removed his hat,
and  launched  the  opening  bombshell of  that address  which is  historic,
marking as it does  one of the  great  stages of  France's  progress towards
revolution.
     "People  of  this great  city  of Nantes, I have come to summon you  to
arms!"
     In the  amazed and rather scared silence that followed he surveyed them
for a moment before resuming.
     "I am a delegate  of the people of Rennes, charged to announce  to  you
what  is taking  place, and to invite  you in  this  dreadful  hour  of  our
country's peril to rise and march to her defence."
     "Name! Your name!" a voice  shouted, and instantly the cry was taken up
by others, until the multitude rang with the question.
     He could not answer that excited mob as  he had answered the president.
It was necessary to compromise, and  he did so, happily. "My name," said he,
"is Omnes Omnibus - all for all. Let that suffice you now. I am a  herald, a
mouthpiece, a  voice;  no more. I come  to announce to  you that  since  the
privileged orders, assembled for the States of Brittany in Rennes,  resisted
your will - our will
     - despite the King's plain hint to  them, His Majesty has dissolved the
States."
     There  was a burst of delirious applause. Men  laughed and shouted, and
cries of "Vive le Roi!" rolled  forth like thunder. Andre-Louis waited,  and
gradually the preternatural gravity of his  countenance came to be observed,
and  to beget the suspicion  that there might be more  to  follow. Gradually
silence was restored, and at last Andre Louis was able to proceed.
     "You  rejoice  too soon. Unfortunately, the  nobles, in their  insolent
arrogance, have elected  to ignore the royal dissolution,  and in despite of
it persist in sitting and in conducting matters as seems good to them."
     A silence  of  utter dismay greeted that  disconcerting epilogue to the
announcement  that had  been so  rapturously received. Andre-Louis continued
after a moment's pause:
     "So that these men who were already rebels against the  people, rebels,
against justice  and  equity, rebels against humanity itself, are  now  also
rebels  against their King. Sooner than yield an  inch of the unconscionable
privileges by which too long  already they have flourished, to the misery of
a whole  nation, they will make a mock of  royal authority, hold up the King
himself  to contempt. They are  determined  to prove  that there is  no real
sovereignty   in   France   but  the  sovereignty  of  their  own  parasitic
faineantise."
     There  was  a  faint splutter  of applause,  but  the  majority of  the
audience remained silent, waiting.
     "This  is no new thing. Always has it been the same. No minister in the
last ten years, who, seeing the  needs and perils of  the State,  counselled
the  measures  that we  now demand  as  the  only  means  of  arresting  our
motherland in its  ever-quickening progress to the abyss,  but found himself
as a consequence cast out of office by the influence which Privilege brought
to  bear  against  him. Twice  already has M.  Necker  been  called  to  the
ministry, to  be twice  dismissed  when  his  insistent counsels  of  reform
threatened the privileges of clergy and nobility. For the third time now has
he been called to office, and at last it seems we are to have States General
in spite of Privilege. But what the privileged orders can no longer prevent,
they are determined to stultify.  Since it is now a settled thing that these
States General are to meet, at least the nobles and  the clergy  will see to
it - unless we  take measures to prevent them -  by packing the Third Estate
with their own creatures, and  denying it all effective representation, that
they convert.  the States General into an  instrument of their own will  for
the  perpetuation of the abuses by which they live. To achieve this end they
will stop at nothing. They have flouted the authority  of the King, and they
are silencing by assassination those who raise their voices to condemn them.
Yesterday  in  Rennes two  young  men  who  addressed  the  people  as I  am
addressing  you were done  to  death in the  streets  by  assassins  at  the
instigation of the nobility. Their blood cries out for vengeance."
     Beginning in a sullen mutter,  the  indignation that  moved his hearers
swelled up to express itself in a roar of anger.
     "Citizens of  Nantes, the motherland is in peril.  Let us  march to her
defence. Let us proclaim it to the world that we recognize that the measures
to liberate the  Third Estate from the slavery in which for centuries it has
groaned find only obstacles in those orders  whose phrenetic egotism sees in
the tears and suffering  of  the unfortunate  an odious  tribute  which they
would  pass  on  to  their  generations  still unborn.  Realizing  from  the
barbarity  of the means employed by our enemies to perpetuate our oppression
that we  have everything to fear from the aristocracy they would set up as a
constitutional  principle  for  the  governing  of  France, let  us  declare
ourselves at once enfranchised from it.
     "The establishment of liberty and equality should be  the aim of  every
citizen  member  of the Third  Estate; and  to  this  end  we  should  stand
indivisibly united, especially the young and vigorous,  especially those who
have had the good fortune to be  born late  enough to  be able to gather for
themselves  the  precious  fruits  of  the  philosophy  of  this  eighteenth
century."
     Acclamations broke out unstintedly now. He had caught them in the snare
of his oratory. And he pressed his advantage instantly.
     "Let us all swear," he cried in a great voice, "to raise up in the name
of humanity and of liberty a rampart against our enemies, to oppose to their
bloodthirsty  covetousness the calm perseverance of men whose cause is just.
And let  us protest here and in advance against any  tyrannical decrees that
should  declare us seditious when we have none but pure and just intentions.
Let us make oath upon the  honour of our motherland that should any of us be
seized by an unjust tribunal, intending against us one of  those acts termed
of political expediency - which are, in effect, but  acts of despotism - let
us swear, I say, to give a full expression to the strength that is in us and
do that in self-defence which nature, courage, and despair dictate to us."
     Loud and long rolled the applause  that greeted his  conclusion, and he
observed with satisfaction and  even some  inward  grim  amusement that  the
wealthy merchants who had been congregated upon the steps, and  who now came
crowding  about him  to  shake him by  the hand and to acclaim him, were not
merely  participants  in,  but  the  actual leaders  of,  this  delirium  of
enthusiasm.
     It confirmed him, had he needed  confirmation, in  his conviction  that
just as the philosophies  upon which this new  movement was based  had their
source in  thinkers extracted from  the bourgeoisie,  so  the need to  adopt
those  philosophies  to the practical purposes of life was most acutely felt
at  present  by  those bourgeois who found themselves  debarred by Privilege
from  the expansion  their wealth  permitted them.  If  it  might be said of
Andre-Louis that  he  had that  day  lighted  the torch of the Revolution in
Nantes,  it might  with even greater truth be said that the torch itself was
supplied by the opulent bourgeoisie.
     I need not  dwell at  any length upon the sequel.  It  is a  matter  of
history  how  that oath which Omnes Omnibus administered to  the citizens of
Nantes  formed the backbone of the  formal protest which  they  drew  up and
signed in their thousands. Nor were the results of  that powerful protest  -
which, after all, might already be said to harmonize with the expressed will
of the sovereign himself - long  delayed. Who shall say how far it  may have
strengthened  the hand  of Necker,  when on the  27th of  that same month of
November  he  compelled  the  Council  to  adopt the  most  significant  and
comprehensive of all those measures to which clergy and nobility had refused
their consent? On that date was  published the royal  decree  ordaining that
the deputies to be elected to the  States General should number at least one
thousand,  and that  the deputies  of  the  Third  Estate  should  be  fully
representative by numbering as many as the deputies  of clergy and  nobility
together.

        CHAPTER XI. THE AFTERMATHX


     Dusk  of the following  day  was falling  when  the homing  Andre-Louis
approached  Gavrillac.  Realizing  fully  what a  hue  and  cry  there would
presently be  for the apostle of revolution who had  summoned the people  of
Nantes to arms, he desired as far as  possible to  conceal the fact that  he
had  been in that  maritime city. Therefore he made a  wide detour, crossing
the  river at  Bruz, and  recrossing  it a  little above  Chavagne, so as to
approach Gavrillac from  the north, and  create the impression  that he  was
returning from Rennes, whither he was known to have gone two days ago.
     Within a mile or so of the village  he  caught in the  fading light his
first glimpse of a figure on horseback pacing slowly towards him. But it was
not until they  had come within a few  yards of each  other, and he observed
that this cloaked figure  was leaning forward to  peer  at him, that he took
much notice of it. And  then he found himself challenged almost at once by a
woman's voice.
     "It is you, Andre - at last!"
     He drew rein,  mildly surprised, to be assailed  by  another  question,
impatiently, anxiously asked.
     "Where have you been?"
     "Where have I been, Cousin Aline? Oh... seeing the world."
     "I have been patrolling  this  road since noon to-day waiting for you."
She  spoke breathlessly, in haste to explain.  "A troop of the  marechaussee
from Rennes  descended  upon Gavrillac this  morning in quest of  you.  They
turned the  chateau and the village inside out, and  at last discovered that
you were due to return with a horse hired from the Breton arme. So they have
taken up their quarters at the inn to wait for you. I have been here all the
afternoon on the lookout to warn you against walking into that trap."
     "My dear Aline! That I  should have  been  the cause of so much concern
and trouble!"
     "Never mind that. It is not important."
     "On the contrary; it is the most important part of what you tell me. It
is the rest that is unimportant."
     "Do you realize that they have come to arrest you?" she asked him, with
increasing impatience. "You are wanted for sedition, and upon a warrant from
M. de Lesdiguieres."
     "Sedition?" quoth he, and his thoughts flew to that business at Nantes.
It was impossible they could have had news of it in Rennes and acted upon it
in so short a time.
     "Yes,  sedition.  The sedition of that wicked speech of yours at Rennes
on Wednesday."
     "Oh,  that!"  said he. "Pooh!" His note of relief might have told  her,
had she  been  more attentive, that  he had  to  fear the consequences  of a
greater wickedness committed since. "Why, that was nothing."
     "Nothing?"
     "I  almost  suspect that  the real intentions of these gentlemen of the
marechaussee have been misunderstood. Most probably  they have come to thank
me  on M.  de Lesdiguieres' behalf. I restrained the people when they  would
have burnt the Palais and himself inside it."
     "After you had first  incited them to do  it. I suppose you were afraid
of your work. You drew back at the last moment. But you said things of M. de
Lesdiguieres, if you are correctly reported, which he will never forgive."
     "I see," said Andre-Louis, and he fell into thought.
     But Mlle.  de Kercadiou  had already done  what thinking was necessary,
and her alert young mind had settled all that was to be done.
     "You must  not go into Gavrillac," she told him, "and you must get down
from your  horse, and  let me  take  it.  I will stable  it at  the  chateau
to-night. And sometime to morrow afternoon, by when you should be well away,
I will return it to the Breton arme."
     "Oh, but that is impossible."
     "Impossible? Why?"
     "For  several reasons. One of them is  that you haven't considered what
will happen to you if you do such a thing."
     "To  me? Do you  suppose I am afraid of that pack of  oafs  sent  by M.
Lesdiguieres? I have committed no sedition."
     "But it is almost as bad to give aid  to  one who  is  wanted  for  the
crime. That is the law."
     "What do I care  for the  law? Do you imagine that the law will presume
to touch me?"
     "Of course there is that. You are  sheltered  by  one of  the  abuses I
complained of at Rennes. I was forgetting."
     "Complain of  it as  much  as  you please, but  meanwhile profit by it.
Come, Andre, do  as I tell  you. Get down from  your horse." And then, as he
still hesitated, she stretched  out and caught him by the arm. Her voice was
vibrant  with earnestness. "Andre, you  don't  realize how serious  is  your
position.  If these people  take you, it is almost certain  that you will be
hanged. Don't you realize it? You must not go to Gavrillac. You must go away
at  once, and lie completely lost for a time until  this blows over. Indeed,
until  my uncle can bring influence  to bear to obtain your pardon, you must
keep in hiding."
     "That will be a long time, then," said Andre-Louis. M. de Kercadiou has
never cultivated friends at court."
     "There is M. de La Tour d'Azyr," she reminded him, to his astonishment.
     "That man!" he cried, and then he laughed. "But it was  chiefly against
him that I aroused the resentment of  the  people of Rennes.  I should  have
known that all my speech was not reported to you.
     "It was, and that part of it among the rest."
     "Ah!  And yet you are concerned to save me, the man who seeks  the life
of your future husband at  the hands either of the  law or of the people? Or
is it, perhaps,  that  since you have seen his true nature  revealed in  the
murder of  poor  Philippe,  you have changed  your views  on  the subject of
becoming Marquise de La Tour d'Azyr?"
     "You often show yourself without any faculty of deductive reasoning."
     "Perhaps.  But hardly to  the  extent of imagining that  M. de  La Tour
d'Azyr will ever lift a finger to do as you suggest."
     "In which, as usual,  you are  wrong. He will certainly do  so if I ask
him."
     "If you ask him?" Sheer horror rang in his voice.
     "Why, yes. You see,  I have not yet said that I will  be Marquise de La
Tour  d'Azyr.  I am  still  considering.  It  is  a position  that  has  its
advantages. One of them is that it ensures a suitor's complete obedience."
     "So, so. I see the  crooked logic of  your mind. You might go so far as
to say to him: 'Refuse me this, and I shall refuse to be your marquise.' You
would go so far as that?"
     "At need, I might."
     "And do you  not see the converse implication? Do you not see that your
hands  would then be tied, that you would be wanting in honour if afterwards
you  refused  him? And do you think that I  would  consent to  anything that
could so tie your hands? Do you think I want to see you damned, Aline?"
     Her hand fell away from his arm.
     "Oh, you are mad!" she exclaimed, quite out of patience.
     "Possibly. But I like my  madness.  There is a thrill  in it unknown to
such sanity as yours.  By your leave,  Aline,  I think  I  will  ride on  to
Gavrillac."
     "Andre, you must not! It  is death to you!" In her alarm she backed her
horse, and pulled it across the road to bar his way.
     It was  almost completely night by  now; but from behind  the wrack  of
clouds overhead a crescent moon sailed out to alleviate the darkness.
     "Come, now,"  she enjoined  him. "Be reasonable.  Do as I bid you. See,
there  is  a carriage  coming  up behind  you. Do not let us  be  found here
together thus."
     He made up his mind quickly. He was not the man to be actuated by false
heroics about dying, and he had no fancy whatever  for the gallows  of M. de
Lesdiguieres' providing. The immediate task that he had set himself might be
accomplished. He had  made heard - and ringingly  - the voice  that M. de La
Tour  d'Azyr imagined he had silenced. But he was very far  from having done
with life.
     "Aline, on one condition only."
     "And that?"
     "That  you  swear to  me  you will never seek the aid of M. de La  Tour
d'Azyr on my behalf."
     "Since you insist, and as time presses, I consent. And now ride on with
me as far as the lane. There is that carriage coming up."
     The lane to which she referred was one that branched off the road  some
three  hundred yards nearer the village and led straight up the  hill to the
chateau itself. In silence they rode together towards it, and  together they
turned into that thickly hedged and narrow bypath. At a depth of fifty yards
she halted him.
     "Now!" she bade him.
     Obediently he swung down from his horse,  and surrendered the reins  to
her.
     "Aline," he said, "I haven't words in which to thank you."
     "It isn't necessary," said she.
     "But I shall hope to repay you some day."
     "Nor is  that necessary. Could I do less than I am doing? I do not want
to hear  of you  hanged, Andre;  nor does my  uncle, though he is very angry
with you.
     "I suppose he is.
     "And  you   can  hardly  be  surprised.  You  were  his  delegate,  his
representative.  He depended upon you, and  you have turned your coat. He is
rightly  indignant, calls you a traitor, and swears that he will never speak
to you again. But he doesn't want you hanged, Andre."
     "Then we are agreed on that at least, for I don't want it myself."
     "I'll make  your peace with him.  And now - good-bye,  Andre. Send me a
word when you are safe."
     She held out a hand that looked ghostly  in the faint light. He took it
and bore it to his lips.
     "God bless you, Aline."
     She was gone,  and he stood  listening to  the receding clopper-clop of
hooves until  it grew  faint in  the distance.  Then slowly,  with shoulders
hunched and head sunk on his breast, he retraced his steps to the main road,
cogitating whither he should go. Quite suddenly he checked, remembering with
dismay that he was almost entirely without money. In Brittany itself he knew
of no dependable hiding-place,  and as long as he  was in Brittany his peril
must remain imminent. Yet to leave the province, and to leave  it as quickly
as prudence  dictated, horses would be  necessary. And how was he to procure
horses, having no money  beyond  a  single louis  d'or and  a few pieces  of
silver?
     There was also the fact that he was very weary. He had had little sleep
since Tuesday night, and not very much then;  and much of  the time had been
spent in  the  saddle, a  wearing thing to one  so little accustomed to long
rides. Worn as he was, it was unthinkable that he should go far to-night. He
might get as far as Chavagne, perhaps. But there he  must sup and sleep; and
what, then, of to-morrow?
     Had he but thought of  it before, perhaps Aline might have been able to
assist him with the loan of a few louis. His first impulse now was to follow
her to the chateau. But prudence dismissed the notion. Before he could reach
her, he must be seen by servants, and word of his presence would go forth.
     There was  no choice for him; he must  tramp as far as Chavagne, find a
bed there, and leave to-morrow until it dawned. On  the  resolve he  set his
face in the direction whence he had come. But again he paused.  Chavagne lay
on the road to Rennes. To go that way was to plunge further into  danger. He
would strike south  again. At the  foot of some meadows on this side  of the
village there was a ferry that would put him across the river. Thus he would
avoid the  village;  and  by  placing  the river  between  himself  and  the
immediate danger, he would obtain an added sense of security.
     A lane, turning  out of the highroad, a quarter  of a mile this side of
Gavrillac, led down  to that ferry. By  this lane some twenty  minutes later
came  Andre-Louis with  dragging feet. He avoided the  little cottage of the
ferryman, whose  window was alight, and in  the dark crept down to the boat,
intending if possible to put himself across. He  felt for the chain by which
the boat  was moored, and ran his fingers along  this to the point where  it
was fastened. Here to his dismay he found a padlock.
     He stood up in the  gloom and laughed silently. Of course he might have
known it. The ferry was the property of M. de La Tour d'Azyr, and not likely
to  be left unfastened so that  poor devils  might cheat him  of seigneurial
dues.
     There being no possible alternative, he walked back to the cottage, and
rapped on the door. When it opened,  he stood  well back, and  aside, out of
the shaft of light that issued thence.
     "Ferry!" he rapped out, laconically.
     The ferryman, a burly scoundrel well known to him, turned aside to pick
up a lantern, and came forth as he was bidden. As he stepped from the little
porch, he levelled the  lantern so that its light fell on the  face  of this
traveller.
     "My God!" he ejaculated.
     "You realize,  I see, that I am pressed," said Andre-Louis, his eyes on
the fellow's startled countenance.
     "And well you may  be with  the  gallows  waiting  for you at  Rennes,"
growled  the ferryman. "Since you've been  so  foolish  as  to come back  to
Gavrillac, you had better go again as quickly as you can. I will say nothing
of having seen you."
     "I thank you,  Fresnel. Your  advice accords with my intention. That is
why I need the boat."
     "Ah, that, no," said Fresnel, with determination. "I'll hold my  peace,
but it's as much as my skin is worth to help you.
     "You need not have seen my face. Forget that you have seen it."
     "I'll do  that, monsieur.  But that is  all I will do. I cannot put you
across the river."
     "Then give me the key of the boat, and I will put myself across."
     "That is the same thing. I cannot. I'll  hold my tongue, but I will not
- I dare not - help you."
     Andre-Louis  looked  a  moment  into that sullen,  resolute  face,  and
understood. This man,  living under  the  shadow of La  Tour  d'Azyr,  dared
exercise no will that might he in conflict with the will of his dread lord.
     "Fresnel," he said, quietly, "if, as you say, the gallows claim me, the
thing that has brought me to this  extremity arises out  of the  shooting of
Mabey.  Had not Mabey been murdered  there would have been no need for me to
have  raised my voice as I have done. Mabey  was  your friend, I think. Will
you for his sake lend me the little help I need to save my neck?"
     The man kept his glance averted,  and the cloud  of sullenness deepened
on his face.
     "I would  if I dared, but I  dare not." Then, quite suddenly  he became
angry. It was as if in anger he sought support. "Don't you understand that I
dare not? Would you have a poor man risk his life for you? What have  you or
yours ever done for me  that you should ask that? You do not cross  to-night
in  my  ferry.  Understand that, monsieur, and  go  at  once -  go before  I
remember that it may be dangerous even  to have  talked to  you and not give
information. Go!"
     He  turned  on  his  heel  to  reenter  his  cottage,  and  a  wave  of
hopelessness swept over Andre-Louis.
     But in a second it was gone. The man must be compelled, and  he had the
means. He bethought  him of a pistol pressed upon him by Le Chapelier at the
moment  of his  leaving Rennes,  a  gift which at  the  time  he had  almost
disdained. True,  it was  not loaded, and he had no ammunition. But how  was
Fresnel to know that?
     He acted quickly. As with  his right hand he pulled it from his pocket,
with his left he caught the ferryman by the shoulder, and swung him round.
     "What do you want  now?" Fresnel demanded angrily. "Haven't I  told you
that I... "
     He  broke off short. The muzzle of the pistol was  within a foot of his
eyes.
     "I want the key of  the boat.  That is all, Fresnel. And you can either
give it me at once, or I'll take it after I have burnt your brains. I should
regret to kill you, but I shall not hesitate. It is your life against  mine,
Fresnel; and you'll not find it strange that if  one of us must die I prefer
that it shall be you."
     Fresnel  dipped a hand into his pocket, and  fetched thence  a  key. He
held it  out to  Andre-Louis in fingers that  shook - more in anger than  in
fear.
     "I yield to violence," he said,  showing his teeth like a snarling dog.
"But don't imagine that it will greatly profit you."
     Andre-Louis took the key. His pistol remained levelled.
     "You threaten me, I think," he said. "It  is not difficult to read your
threat.  The moment I am gone, you  will run to inform against me.  You will
set the marechaussee on my heels to overtake me."
     "No,  no!" cried the other. He perceived his peril. He read his doom in
the cold, sinister note on which Andre-Louis addressed him, and grew afraid.
"I swear to you, monsieur, that I have no such intention."
     "I think I had better make quite sure of you."
     "0 my God! Have mercy,  monsieur!" The knave was in  a palsy of terror.
"I mean you no harm - I swear to Heaven I mean you no harm. I will not say a
word. I will not... "
     "I would rather depend upon your  silence  than your assurances. Still,
you shall have your chance. I am a fool, perhaps, but I have a reluctance to
shed blood. Go into the house, Fresnel. Go, man. I follow you."
     In the shabby main room of that dwelling, Andre-Louis halted him again.
"Get me a length of rope," he commanded, and was readily obeyed.
     Five  minutes  later  Fresnel  was  securely  bound  to  a  chair,  and
effectively silenced by a very uncomfortable  gag improvised out  of a block
of wood and a muffler.
     On the threshold the departing Andre-Louis turned.
     "Good-night,  Fresnel," he said. Fierce eyes glared mute hatred at him.
"It  is unlikely  that your ferry will be  required again to-night. But some
one is sure  to come to your  relief  quite early in the morning. Until then
bear  your discomfort with what fortitude you can, remembering that you have
brought it entirely upon yourself by your uncharitableness. If you spend the
night considering that,  the lesson should not be lost upon  you. By morning
you may even have grown  so charitable as not to know  who it  was that tied
you up. Good-night."
     He stepped out and closed the door.
     To unlock the  ferry, and pull himself across the swift-running waters,
on  which the faint moonlight was making a silver ripple,  were matters that
engaged not  more than six or seven minutes.  He  drove the nose of the boat
through the decaying sedges that fringed the southern  bank  of  the stream,
sprang ashore, and made the  little craft secure. Then, missing the footpath
in the dark, he struck out across a sodden meadow in quest of the road.

         * BOOK II: THE BUSKIN * 

        CHAPTER I. HE TRESPASSERS


     Coming  presently  upon the Redon  road, Andre-Louis,  obeying instinct
rather than reason, turned  his  face to  the south, and plodded wearily and
mechanically forward. He had no clear idea of whither  he  was going,  or of
whither he should go. All that imported at the moment was to put as  great a
distance as possible between Gavrillac and himself.
     He had a vague, half-formed notion  of  returning to Nantes; and there,
by employing the newly  found  weapon of his oratory, excite the people into
sheltering him as  the first victim of the persecution  he had foreseen, and
against which he had sworn them to take  up arms. But the idea was one which
he entertained  merely  as an indefinite possibility  upon which he felt  no
real impulse to act.
     Meanwhile he chuckled  at the thought of  Fresnel  as he  had last seen
him,  with his muffled face and glaring  eyeballs. "For one who was anything
but a man of action," he writes, "I felt that I had acquitted myself none so
badly."  It  is   a  phrase  that  recurs  at  intervals   in   his  sketchy
"Confessions." Constantly is he reminding you that he is a man of mental and
not  physical  activities, and apologizing when dire  neccessity drives  him
into  acts  of  violence. I suspect  this  insistence  upon his  philosophic
detachment - for which I confess he had justification enough - to betray his
besetting vanity.
     With  increasing  fatigue came  depression  and  self-criticism. He had
stupidly overshot his mark in insultingly denouncing M. de Lesdiguieres. "It
is much better," he says somewhere, "to be wicked than to be stupid. Most of
this world's misery is the  fruit not  as priests tell us of wickedness, but
of stupidity." And  we know that of all stupidities  he considered anger the
most deplorable. Yet he had permitted himself  to  be angry with a  creature
like  M. de  Lesdiguieres  - a  lackey,  a fribble,  a nothing, despite  his
potentialities for evil. He could perfectly have discharged his self-imposed
mission without arousing the vindictive resentment of the King's Lieutenant.
     He  beheld himself  vaguely launched upon life with the  riding-suit in
which  he stood, a single  louis d'or and  a few  pieces  of silver  for all
capital, and  a knowledge of  law which had been inadequate to  preserve him
from the consequences of infringing it.
     He  had, in addition  - but  these  things  that  were to  be  the real
salvation of him he  did  not reckon - his gift of laughter, sadly repressed
of late, and the philosophic outlook and mercurial temperament which are the
stock-in-trade of your adventurer in all ages.
     Meanwhile  he tramped mechanically on through the night, until  he felt
that he could tramp no more. He had skirted the little  township of Guichen,
and now within a half-mile of Guignen, and with Gavrillac a good seven miles
behind him, his legs refused to carry him any farther.
     He  was midway across  the vast common to the north of Guignen  when he
came to a halt. He had left  the road,  and taken heedlessly to the footpath
that struck across the waste of indifferent pasture interspersed with clumps
of gorse. A  stone's  throw away  on  his right the common was bordered by a
thorn hedge. Beyond this loomed  a tall building which he knew to be an open
barn, standing  on  the  edge of  a long stretch of meadowland.  That  dark,
silent  shadow  it  may  have  been that had brought  him  to  a standstill,
suggesting shelter to his  subconsciousness. A moment he hesitated; then  he
struck across towards  a  spot where a  gap in  the hedge  was  closed  by a
five-barred gate. He pushed the gate open, went through  the gap,  and stood
now before the barn. It was as big as a house, yet consisted of no more than
a roof carried upon half a  dozen  tall,  brick  pillars. But densely packed
under that roof was a great  stack  of hay that promised a warm couch on  so
cold a  night. Stout timbers had been  built  into  the brick  pillars, with
projecting ends to serve as  ladders by which the labourer  might  climb  to
pack or  withdraw hay. With what  little strength remained him,  Andre-Louis
climbed by one of these and landed safely at the top, where he was forced to
kneel, for lack of room to stand upright. Arrived there, he removed his coat
and neckcloth, his sodden boots and stockings. Next he cleared a  trough for
his body, and lying down in it, covered himself  to the neck with the hay he
had  removed. Within  five  minutes he  was lost  to  all worldly  cares and
soundly asleep.
     When  next  he awakened, the sun was already  high in the heavens, from
which he concluded that  the  morning was  well advanced; and this before he
realized  quite where he was or  how  he came there.  Then  to his awakening
senses  came a  drone  of voices close at  hand, to which at  first he  paid
little   heed.   He  was   deliciously  refreshed,  luxuriously  drowsy  and
luxuriously warm.
     But  as  consciousness  and  memory grew more full, he raised his  head
clear  of the hay that he might free both ears to listen, his pulses faintly
quickened by the nascent fear that those voices might bode him no good. Then
he caught the reassuring accents  of a woman,  musical  and silvery,  though
laden with alarm.
     "Ah, mon Dieu, Leandre,  let us  separate at once. If  it  should be my
father... "
     And upon this a man's voice broke in, calm and reassuring:
     "No,  no, Climene; you are mistaken. There is  no one  coming.  We  are
quite safe. Why do you start at shadows?"
     "Ah, Leandre, if he should find us here together! I tremble at the very
thought."
     More was not needed to reassure Andre-Louis. He had overheard enough to
know that this was but the case of a pair of lovers who, with less  to  fear
of life,  were yet - after the  manner of their kind  - more timid  of heart
than he.  Curiosity drew  him from his  warm trough  to the edge of the hay.
Lying prone, he advanced his head and peered down.
     In the  space of cropped meadow between the  barn and the hedge stood a
man and a woman, both  young. The man was a well-set-up, comely fellow, with
a fine head of  chestnut hair tied in a queue by a broad bow of black satin.
He was dressed with  certain tawdry attempts at ostentatious embellishments,
which  did not prepossess one at  first glance in his  favour. His coat of a
fashionable cut  was of faded plum-coloured velvet edged  with silver  lace,
whose glory had  long since  departed. He affected  ruffles, but for want of
starch  they  hung  like  weeping  willows over hands  that  were  fine  and
delicate. His breeches  were of plain black  cloth, and  his black stockings
were of cotton  - matters entirely out of harmony with his magnificent coat.
His  shoes,  stout  and  serviceable,  were decked with  buckles  of  cheap,
lack-lustre   paste.  But  for   his  engaging  and  ingenuous  countenance,
Andre-Louis must have set  him down as  a  knight of  that order which lives
dishonestly by  its wits.  As it was, he suspended  judgment  whilst pushing
investigation further by a study of the girl. At the outset, be it confessed
that   it  was  a  study   that  attracted   him   prodigiously.   And  this
notwithstanding the fact that, bookish and studious as were his ways, and in
despite of his years, it was far  from his habit to waste  consideration  on
femininity.
     The child - she was no more than that, perhaps twenty at the most
     - possessed, in addition to the allurements of face and shape that went
very near perfection, a sparkling vivacity and a  grace of movement the like
of  which Andre-Louis did not remember ever before to have beheld  assembled
in  one person.  And her  voice too  - that musical, silvery voice  that had
awakened him - possessed  in its exquisite modulations an allurement of  its
own that must have been irresistible, he thought, in the ugliest of her sex.
She wore a hooded mantle of green cloth, and the hood being thrown back, her
dainty head was all revealed to him. There were glints of gold struck by the
morning sun from her  light nut-brown hair  that hung in a cluster  of curls
about her oval face.  Her complexion was of a delicacy that he could compare
only with a rose petal. He could  not at that distance discern the colour of
her  eyes, but he guessed them blue, as he admired the sparkle of them under
the fine, dark line of eyebrows.
     He could not  have told you why, but he was conscious that it aggrieved
him to find her so  intimate with this pretty young fellow, who  was  partly
clad, as it appeared, in the cast-offs of a nobleman. He could not guess her
station, but the speech that  reached  him was cultured in tone and word. He
strained to listen.
     "I shall  know no peace, Leandre, until we are  safely wedded," she was
saying. "Not until then shall I count myself beyond his reach. And yet if we
marry without his consent, we but make trouble for ourselves, and of gaining
his consent I almost despair."
     Evidently, thought Andre-Louis, her  father was a man of sense, who saw
through the shabby finery of M. Leandre, and was not to be  dazzled by cheap
paste buckles.
     "My dear  Climene," the  young man was answering her, standing squarely
before her, and holding both her hands, "you are wrong  to  despond. If I do
not reveal to you all the stratagem that I have  prepared to win the consent
of your  unnatural parent,  it  is because  I  am  loath to rob  you  of the
pleasure  of the surprise that is in store. But place your faith  in me, and
in that  ingenious  friend of whom I have spoken, and who  should be here at
any moment."
     The stilted ass!  Had he learnt that speech by heart in advance, or was
he by  nature a pedantic idiot who expressed himself in  this set and formal
manner? How  came so sweet  a blossom to  waste her perfumes on such a prig?
And what a ridiculous name the creature owned!
     Thus Andre-Louis  to  himself from  his observatory. Meanwhile, she was
speaking.
     "That  is what  my heart desires, Leandre, but I am beset by fears lest
your  stratagem should be too late. I am to  marry this horrible  Marquis of
Sbrufadelli this very day. He arrives by noon. He comes to sign the contract
- to make me the Marchioness of Sbrufadelli. Oh!" It was a cry of pain  from
that tender  young heart.  "The very name burns my lips. If  it were mine  I
could never utter  it - never! The man  is so  detestable. Save me, Leandre.
Save me! You are my only hope."
     Andre-Louis  was conscious of a pang  of disappointment. She  failed to
soar to  the  heights he had expected of her. She was  evidently infected by
the stilted manner of her ridiculous lover. There was an  atrocious  lack of
sincerity  about her  words.  They  touched  his mind, but  left  his  heart
unmoved. Perhaps this was because  of his antipathy to M. Leandre and to the
issue involved.
     So her father was marrying her to a marquis! That  implied birth on her
side. And yet she was content to pair off with this dull young adventurer in
the tarnished lace! It was, he supposed, the sort of thing to be expected of
a sex that all philosophy had taught him to regard as  the maddest part of a
mad species.
     "It shall  never be!" M. Leandre  was storming  passionately. "Never! I
swear it!" And he shook his puny fist at the blue vault of heaven
     -  Ajax defying Jupiter. "Ah, but  here  comes  our subtle  friend... "
(Andre-Louis did not catch the name, M. Leandre having at that moment turned
to face the gap in the hedge.) "He will bring us news, I know."
     Andre-Louis looked also in the direction of the gap. Through it emerged
a lean, slight man in a rusty cloak and a  three-cornered hat worn well down
over his nose so as to shade his face. And when presently he doffed this hat
and  made a  sweeping  bow to  the  young  lovers, Andre-Louis  confessed to
himself  that  had he been  cursed with such a  hangdog countenance he would
have worn his hat in precisely such a manner, so as to conceal as much of it
as  possible.  If M. Leandre appeared to be wearing, in part  at least,  the
cast-offs of nobleman, the newcomer appeared to be wearing  the cast-offs of
M.  Leandre. Yet despite  his vile clothes and  viler  face,  with its three
days'  growth of beard, the fellow  carried himself with a  certain air;  he
positively strutted as he advanced,  and he made a  leg in a manner that was
courtly and practised.
     "Monsieur," said he,  with  the air  of a  conspirator, "the  time  for
action has arrived, and so has the Marquis... That is why."
     The young lovers sprang apart  in consternation;  Climene  with clasped
hands, parted  lips, and  a bosom  that raced  distractingly under its white
fichu-menteur; M. Leandre agape, the very picture of foolishness and dismay.
     Meanwhile the newcomer rattled  on. "I was  at the inn an hour ago when
he  descended  there,  and  I  studied  him  attentively  whilst he  was  at
breakfast. Having done so, not a single doubt remains  me of our success. As
for what he looks like, I could entertain  you at length upon the fashion in
which nature has designed  his gross fatuity.  But that is no matter. We are
concerned with what he is, with the wit of him. And  I tell you  confidently
that I find him so dull  and stupid that you may be confident he will tumble
headlong into each and all of  the traps I have  so  cunningly prepared  for
him."
     "Tell  me, tell me! Speak!" Climene implored him, holding out her hands
in a supplication no man of sensibility could have resisted. And then on the
instant she caught her breath on a faint scream. "My father!" she exclaimed,
turning  distractedly from one to the other of those two. "He is  coming! We
are lost!"
     "You must fly, Climene!" said M. Leandre.
     "Too late!" she sobbed. "Too late! He is here."
     "Calm,  mademoiselle,  calm!" the subtle  friend  was urging her. "Keep
calm and trust to me. I promise you that all shall be well."
     "Oh!" cried M. Leandre, limply.  "Say what you will, my friend, this is
ruin -  the end of all  our  hopes. Your wits will  never extricate us  from
this. Never!"
     Through the gap strode now an enormous man with an inflamed  moon  face
and a great nose, decently dressed after the  fashion  of a solid bourgeois.
There was no mistaking his anger,  but the expression  that it found was  an
amazement to Andre-Louis.
     "Leandre, you're an  imbecile! Too much  phlegm, too much  phlegm! Your
words wouldn't  convince a ploughboy! Have you considered what they  mean at
all? Thus," he cried, and casting his round hat from him in a broad gesture,
he  took  his stand at M. Leandre's  side, and repeated the very  words that
Leandre had lately  uttered,  what time the three  observed  him coolly  and
attentively.
     "Oh, say what you will, my  friend, this is  ruin - the end of all  our
hopes. Your wits will never extricate us from this. Never!"
     A frenzy of despair vibrated in his  accents. He swung again to face M.
Leandre.  "Thus,"  he bade  him  contemptuously.  "Let  the passion of  your
hopelessness express itself in your voice. Consider  that you are not asking
Scaramouche here whether he has put  a  patch  in  your breeches. You  are a
despairing lover expressing... "
     He checked abruptly, startled. Andre-Louis, suddenly realizing what was
afoot, and  how duped he had been,  had loosed his laughter. The sound of it
pealing and booming  uncannily  under  the  great  roof  that so immediately
confined him was startling to those below.
     The fat man was the first to recover, and he announced it after his own
fashion in one of the ready sarcasms in which he habitually dealt.
     "Hark!"  he  cried, "the  very  gods  laugh  at  you, Leandre." Then he
addressed the roof of the barn and its invisible tenant. "Hi! You there!"
     Andre-Louis  revealed himself by a  further  protrusion  of his tousled
head.
     "Good-morning,"  said  he, pleasantly.  Rising now  on  his  knees, his
horizon  was suddenly extended to include the broad common beyond the hedge.
He beheld  there an enormous  and  very  battered  travelling chaise, a cart
piled up with timbers partly visible  under the sheet  of  oiled canvas that
covered  them, and  a sort of house on  wheels equipped with a tin  chimney,
from which  the  smoke was slowly curling. Three heavy  Flemish horses and a
couple  of donkeys  - all of them hobbled  - were  contentedly cropping  the
grass in the neighbourhood  of these vehicles.  These, had he perceived them
sooner, must have given him the clue to the queer scene that had been played
under  his eyes. Beyond the hedge other  figures were  moving. Three at that
moment came  crowding into the gap  -  a saucy-faced girl with  a tip-tilted
nose,  whom  he supposed  to be  Columbine,  the soubrette; a  lean,  active
youngster, who  must be  the lackey Harlequin;, and  another rather  loutish
youth who might be a zany or an apothecary.
     All this he took in  at  a comprehensive glance that  consumed no  more
time  than  it  had taken him  to  say  good-morning.  To that  good-morning
Pantaloon replied in a bellow:
     "What the devil are you doing up there?"
     "Precisely  the same  thing  that  you are  doing down  there," was the
answer. "I am trespassing."
     "Eh?"  said Pantaloon,  and  looked  at  his  companions, some  of  the
assurance beaten out of his  big red  face.  Although the thing was one that
they did habitually, to hear it called by its proper name was disconcerting.
     "Whose land is this?" he asked, with diminishing assurance.
     Andre-Louis answered, whilst drawing on his stockings. "I believe it to
be the property of the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr."
     "That's a high-sounding name. Is the gentleman severe?"
     "The  gentleman," said Andre-Louis, "is the  devil; or rather, I should
prefer to say upon reflection, that the devil is a gentleman by comparison.
     "And   yet,"  interposed   the  villainous-looking  fellow  who  played
Scaramouche,  "by  your  own  confessing  you  don't hesitate,  yourself, to
trespass upon his property."
     "Ah,  but then,  you  see, I am a  lawyer. And lawyers  are notoriously
unable to observe the law,  just  as actors are notoriously  unable  to act.
Moreover,  sir,  Nature  imposes  her limits upon us,  and  Nature  conquers
respect for law as  she  conquers all  else. Nature  conquered me last night
when I had  got as far as this. And so I slept here  without regard  for the
very  high and  puissant  Marquis de La  Tour d'Azyr.  At the  same time, M.
Scaramouche, you'll observe  that  I did not  flaunt  my  trespass  quite as
openly as you and your companions.
     Having  donned his boots,  Andre-Louis came nimbly to the ground in his
shirt-sleeves, his riding-coat over his arm. As he  stood  there to don  it,
the little cunning eyes  of the heavy father conned him in detail. Observing
that his  clothes, if plain, were of a good fashion, that  his shirt was  of
fine cambric, and that he expressed himself like  a man of culture, such  as
he claimed to be, M. Pantaloon was disposed to be civil.
     "I am very grateful to you for the warning, sir... " he was beginning.
     "Act upon it, my friend. The gardes-champetres of M. d'Azyr have orders
to fire on trespassers. Imitate me, and decamp."
     They followed him upon the instant through that gap in the hedge to the
encampment on the common.  There Andre-Louis took his leave  of them. But as
he  was turning away he perceived a young man of the company  performing his
morning toilet at a bucket placed upon one of the wooden steps  at the  tail
of the house on wheels. A moment he hesitated, then he turned frankly to  M.
Pantaloon, who was still at his elbow.
     "If  it   were  not  unconscionable  to  encroach  so  far   upon  your
hospitality,  monsieur,"  said he, "I would  beg leave  to imitate that very
excellent young gentleman before I leave you."
     "But, my dear sir!" Good-nature oozed out of every pore of the fat body
of  the  master player.  "It is nothing at all. But, by all means. Rhodomont
will  provide what you require. He is the dandy of the company in real life,
though a fire-eater on the stage. Hi, Rhodomont!"
     The young ablutionist straightened his long body from  the  right angle
in which it had been bent over the bucket,  and looked out through a foam of
soapsuds. Pantaloon issued an order, and Rhodomont, who was indeed as gentle
and amiable off  the stage as he was formidable and  terrible  upon it, made
the stranger free of the bucket in the friendliest manner.
     So Andre-Louis once more removed his neckcloth and his coat, and rolled
up the  sleeves of his fine  shirt,  whilst Rhodomont procured him  soap,  a
towel, and presently  a broken comb, and even a greasy hair-ribbon,  in case
the gentleman should have  lost his own. This last Andre-Louis declined, but
the comb  he gratefully accepted, and having presently washed himself clean,
stood, with the towel flung over his  left shoulder, restoring  order to his
dishevelled locks before a broken piece of mirror affixed to the door of the
travelling house.
     He was standing thus,  what time the gentle Rhodomont babbled aimlessly
at  his side when  his ears caught the sound of hooves. He  looked over  his
shoulder carelessly, and  then stood frozen, with uplifted comb and loosened
mouth.  Away  across the common, on the  road that  bordered it, he beheld a
party  of  seven  horsemen  in  the  blue coats  with  red  facings  of  the
marechaussee.
     Not  for a  moment did  he  doubt what was  the quarry of this prowling
gendarmerie.  It was as  if  the  chill  shadow  of the gallows  had  fallen
suddenly upon him.
     And then the troop halted, abreast with them, and the sergeant  leading
it sent his bawling voice across the common.
     "Hi, there! Hi!" His tone rang with menace.
     Every member of the company - and there were some twelve in all
     -  stood at  gaze. Pantaloon advanced a step or two, stalking, his head
thrown back, his manner that of a King's Lieutenant.
     "Now, what the devil's this?" quoth he,  but whether of  Fate or Heaven
or the sergeant, was not clear.
     There  was a brief colloquy among the horsemen, then they came trotting
across the common straight towards the players' encampment.
     Andre-Louis had remained standing at the tail of the travelling  house.
He was still passing the  comb through his straggling hair, but mechanically
and  unconsciously.  His  mind was all  intent upon the advancing troop, his
wits alert and gathered together for a leap  in whatever direction should be
indicated.
     Still  in the distance, but evidently impatient,  the sergeant bawled a
question.
     "Who gave you leave to encamp here?"
     It was  a  question that  reassured Andre-Louis not at all.  He was not
deceived by it into supposing or even hoping that the  business of these men
was merely to round up vagrants and trespassers.  That was no part of  their
real duty; it was something done in passing
     - done, perhaps, in the hope of levying a tax of their own. It was very
long odds  that they were from Rennes, and that their  real business was the
hunting down of a  young  lawyer charged  with sedition. Meanwhile Pantaloon
was shouting back.
     "Who gave us leave, do you say? What leave? This is communal land, free
to all."
     The sergeant laughed unpleasantly, and came on, his troop following.
     "There  is,"  said  a  voice  at  Pantaloon's  elbow, "no such thing as
communal land in the proper sense in all M. de La Tour d'Azyr's vast domain.
This is a terre censive, and his bailiffs collect his dues from all who send
their beasts to graze here."
     Pantaloon   turned  to   behold   at   his  side   Andre-Louis  in  his
shirt-sleeves,  and without a  neckcloth, the towel still trailing over  his
left shoulder, a comb in his hand, his hair half dressed.
     "God of God!" swore Pantaloon. "But  it is an ogre, this  Marquis de La
Tour d'Azyr!"
     "I have told you  already what I think of  him," said Andre-Louis.  "As
for these fellows you had better let me deal with them. I have experience of
their  kind."  And  without  waiting for  Pantaloon's  consent,  Andre-Louis
stepped  forward  to  meet  the advancing  men  of the marechaussee.  He had
realized that here boldness alone could save him.
     When a moment  later the sergeant pulled up his horse alongside of this
half-dressed  young man, Andre-Louis combed his hair what time he looked  up
with a half smile, intended to be friendly, ingenuous, and disarming.
     In spite of it the  sergeant hailed him gruffly: "Are you the leader of
this troop of vagabonds?"
     "Yes... that is to say, my father, there, is really the leader." And he
jerked a thumb  in the  direction of M. Pantaloon,  who stood at gaze out of
earshot in the background. "What is your pleasure, captain?"
     "My  pleasure is to  tell you that you are very likely to be gaoled for
this,  all the pack of  you."  His  voice was  loud and bullying. It carried
across  the common to the ears of every  member of the  company, and brought
them  all  to  stricken  attention where  they stood. The  lot  of strolling
players was hard enough without the addition of gaolings.
     "But how so, my captain? This is communal land free to all."
     "It is nothing of the kind."
     "Where are the fences?" quoth  Andre-Louis,  waving the hand that  held
the comb, as if to indicate the openness of the place.
     "Fences!" snorted the  sergeant.  "What have  fences  to  do  with  the
matter? This is terre censive. There is no grazing here  save by payment  of
dues to the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr."
     "But we are not grazing," quoth the innocent Andre-Louis.
     "To the devil  with you, zany! You are not grazing! But your beasts are
grazing!"
     "They  eat so  little," Andre-Louis apologized,  and  again essayed his
ingratiating smile.
     The sergeant  grew more terrible than ever. "That is not the point. The
point  is  that you are committing  what amounts to a theft, and there's the
gaol for thieves."
     "Technically, I suppose you are right," sighed Andre-Louis, and fell to
combing his hair again, still looking up into the sergeant's face.  "But  we
have sinned in ignorance. We are grateful to you for the warning." He passed
the  comb into his left hand,  and  with his right fumbled in his  breeches'
pocket, whence there came a faint jingle of coins. "We are desolated to have
brought you out of your way. Perhaps for their trouble your men would honour
us  by stopping  at the next inn to drink the health of... of  this M. de La
Tour d' Azyr, or any other health that they think proper.
     Some of the clouds lifted from the sergeant's brow. But not yet all.
     "Well, well," said he, gruffly. "But you must decamp, you  understand."
He  leaned from the saddle  to bring  his  recipient hand  to  a  convenient
distance. Andre-Louis placed in it a three-livre piece.
     "In half an hour," said Andre-Louis.
     "Why in half an hour? Why not at once?"
     "Oh, but time to break our fast."
     They looked at each other. The sergeant next considered the broad piece
of  silver in  his  palm.  Then  at last  his  features  relaxed from  their
sternness.
     "After all," said he, "it is none of our business to play the tipstaves
for  M.  de  La  Tour  d'Azyr.  We are  of  the  marechaussee from  Rennes."
Andre-Louis' eyelids played him false by  flickering.  "But  if  you linger,
look out for the  gardes-champetres  of the Marquis. You'll find them not at
all accommodating. Well, well
     - a good appetite to you, monsieur," said he, in valediction.
     "A pleasant ride, my captain," answered Andre-Louis.
     The sergeant wheeled his horse about, his  troop wheeled with him. They
were starting off, when he reined up again.
     "You, monsieur!" he  called over his shoulder.  In  a bound Andre-Louis
was beside his  stirrup. "We  are  in quest of a scoundrel named Andre-Louis
Moreau, from Gavrillac,  a fugitive from justice wanted for the gallows on a
matter of sedition. You've seen nothing, I suppose, of a man whose movements
seemed to you suspicious?"
     "Indeed,  we have,"  said Andre-Louis, very boldly, his face eager with
consciousness of the ability to oblige.
     "You have?" cried the sergeant, in a ringing voice. "Where? When?"
     "Yesterday evening in the neighbourhood of Guignen... "
     "Yes, yes," the sergeant felt himself hot upon the trail.
     "There was  a fellow  who seemed very fearful of being recognized ... a
man of fifty or thereabouts... "
     "Fifty!" cried the sergeant, and his face fell. "Bah! This man of  ours
is no  older than yourself, a thin wisp of a fellow of about your own height
and of black hair, just like your own, by the description. Keep a lookout on
your  travels,  master player. The King's Lieutenant in Rennes has  sent  us
word  this morning that he will pay ten louis to any one  giving information
that  will  lead to  this scoundrel's arrest. So  there  's ten louis  to be
earned by keeping your eyes open, and sending  word to the nearest justices.
It would be a fine windfall for you, that."
     "A fine windfall, indeed, captain," answered Andre-Louis, laughing.
     But the sergeant had  touched his horse with the  spur, and was already
trotting off in the wake of his men. Andre-Louis continued to  laugh,  quite
silently, as he sometimes did when the humour of a jest was peculiarly keen.
     Then  he turned slowly about,  and came  back towards Pantaloon and the
rest of the company, who were now all grouped together, at gaze.
     Pantaloon advanced to meet him with both  hands out-held. For a  moment
Andre-Louis thought he was about to be embraced.
     "We hail you our saviour!" the  big  man declaimed. "Already the shadow
of the gaol was creeping over us, chilling us to the very marrow. For though
we be poor, yet  are we all  honest folk and not one of us has ever suffered
the indignity of  prison. Nor is  there one of us would  survive it. But for
you, my friend, it might have happened. What magic did you work?"
     "The  magic that is to be worked in France with  a King's portrait. The
French  are a very loyal nation, as you will have observed.  They love their
King  - and his  portrait even better  than himself, especially  when it  is
wrought in gold. But even in  silver  it  is respected. The sergeant was  so
overcome by the sight of that noble visage - on a  three-livre  piece - that
his anger vanished, and he has gone his ways leaving us to depart in peace."
     "Ah, true! He said we must decamp. About it, my lads! Come, come... "
     "But not  until after  breakfast," said Andre-Louis.  "A half-hour  for
breakfast  was conceded us by that loyal  fellow, so deeply was  he touched.
True,  he spoke of possible gardes-champetres. But he knows as well as I  do
that they are not  seriously to be feared, and that if  they came, again the
King's  portrait  -  wrought in  copper this  time -  would produce the same
melting effect upon them. So, my dear M. Pantaloon, break your fast at  your
ease. I  can smell your cooking from  here,  and from the smell I argue that
there is no need to wish you a good appetite."
     "My  friend, my saviour!" Pantaloon flung  a  great arm about the young
man's shoulders. "You shall stay to breakfast with us."
     "I confess to a hope that you would ask me," said Andre-Louis.

        CHAPTER II. THE SERVICE OF THESPISI


     They were, thought Andre-Louis, as he sat  down to  breakfast with them
behind the itinerant house, in the bright sunshine  that tempered  the  cold
breath of that  November morning, an  odd and yet an attractive crew. An air
of gaiety pervaded them. They affected to have no cares, and made merry over
the trials and tribulations of their nomadic life. They were curiously,  yet
amiably, artificial;  histrionic in  their  manner  of discharging  the most
commonplace  of  functions;  exaggerated  in  their  gestures;  stilted  and
affected in their speech. They seemed, indeed, to belong to a world apart, a
world of unreality  which became real  only on the planks of their stage, in
the glare of  their footlights. Good-fellowship bound them  one to  another;
and Andre-Louis reflected cynically that this harmony amongst them might  be
the cause  of their  apparent unreality.  In the real world, greedy striving
and  the  emulation of  acquisitiveness  preclude such  amity as was present
here.
     They  numbered  exactly  eleven,  three women and  eight men; and  they
addressed each other by their stage names: names which denoted their several
types, and never - or only very slightly - varied,  no matter what  might be
the play that they performed.
     "We are,"  Pantaloon informed him, "one of those few  remaining staunch
bands of real players, who uphold the traditions of the old Italian Commedia
dell'  Arte.  Not for  us to vex our memories and stultify our wit  with the
stilted phrases that are the fruit of a wretched author's lucubrations. Each
of us is in  detail his own author in  a  measure  as he develops  the  part
assigned to him.  We  are  improvisers - improvisers  of  the old and  noble
Italian school."
     "I had guessed  as  much,"  said  Andre-Louis, "when I  discovered  you
rehearsing your improvisations."
     Pantaloon frowned.
     "I  have observed, young sir, that your humour inclines to the pungent,
not to  say  the acrid.  It is very well. It is I suppose,  the  humour that
should go  with such a countenance. But it may lead you astray, as  in  this
instance.  That rehearsal - a most unusual  thing with us - was necessitated
by the histrionic rawness of  our Leandre. We  are seeking to inculcate into
him by training an art with which Nature neglected  to endow him against his
present  needs.  Should  he  continue  to  fail  in  doing  justice  to  our
schooling... But we will not disturb our present harmony with the unpleasant
anticipation  of misfortunes which  we  still  hope  to avert.  We love  our
Leandre, for all his faults. Let me make you acquainted with our company.
     And he proceeded to introduction in detail. He pointed out the long and
amiable Rhodomont, whom Andre-Louis already knew.
     "His length of limb and hooked nose were his superficial qualifications
to  play roaring  captains," Pantaloon explained. "His lungs  have justified
our choice.  You should  hear him  roar. At first we  called him Spavento or
Epouvapte. But that was unworthy of so great an artist. Not since the superb
Mondor amazed the world has so thrasonical a bully been seen upon the stage.
So we conferred upon him the name of Rhodomont  that Mondor made famous; and
I  give  you my word, as  an  actor and a gentleman -  for I am a gentleman,
monsieur, or was - that he has justified us."
     His little eyes beamed in his great swollen  face as  he  turned  their
gaze upon the object of his encomium. The terrible Rhodomont, confused by so
much praise,  blushed  like  a  schoolgirl as  he met the solemn scrutiny of
Andre-Louis.
     "Then here we have Scaramouche,  whom also you  already know. Sometimes
he is  Scapin  and sometimes Coviello, but in the main Scaramouche, to which
let me tell you he is best suited - sometimes  too well suited, I think. For
he is Scaramouche not only on  the  stage, but also  in the world. He has  a
gift of sly  intrigue,  an art of setting folk by the ears, combined with an
impudent aggressiveness  upon occasion when he considers himself  safe  from
reprisals. He is  Scaramouche,  the little skirmisher, to  the  very life. I
could  say  more. But  I am by  disposition  charitable  and  loving to  all
mankind."
     "As  the  priest  said  when  he  kissed  the  serving-wench,"  snarled
Scaramouche, and went on eating.
     "His  humour,  like  your  own,  you  will  observe,  is  acrid,"  said
Pantaloon.  He  passed  on. "Then that rascal  with the  lumpy nose  and the
grinning  bucolic countenance is,  of  course, Pierrot. Could  he  be  aught
else?"
     "I could play lovers a deal better," said the rustic cherub.
     "That   is   the   delusion   proper  to   Pierrot,"   said  Pantaloon,
contemptuously. "This  heavy,  beetle-browed ruffian, who  has grown  old in
sin, and whose appetite increases with his years, is Polichinelle. Each one,
as you perceive,  is designed by Nature  for the part he plays. This nimble,
freckled  jackanapes is  Harlequin; not  your  spangled Harlequin into which
modern degeneracy  has  debased that first-born of  Momus, but  the  genuine
original zany of the  Commedia, ragged and  patched, an  impudent, cowardly,
blackguardly clown."
     "Each one of us, as you perceive," said Harlequin, mimicking the leader
of the troupe, "is designed by Nature for the part he plays."
     "Physically,  my friend, physically  only,  else we should not have  so
much trouble in teaching this beautiful Leandre to become  a lover. Then  we
have Pasquariel  here,  who is sometimes an  apothecary, sometimes a notary,
sometimes  a  lackey  - an  amiable, accommodating  fellow. He  is  also  an
excellent cook, being a child  of Italy, that land of gluttons. And finally,
you have  myself, who as the father of the  company  very  properly play  as
Pantaloon the roles  of  father.  Sometimes,  it is  true,  I  am a  deluded
husband, and sometimes an ignorant, self-sufficient doctor. But it is rarely
that I find it necessary  to call myself other than Pantaloon. For the rest,
I am the only one who has a name - a real name. It is Binet, monsieur.
     "And  now for the ladies...  First in order of seniority we have Madame
there." He waved one of  his great hands towards  a buxom, smiling blonde of
five-and-forty, who was seated on the lowest of the steps  of the travelling
house. "She is our Duegne, or Mother, or Nurse, as the case requires. She is
known quite  simply and royally  as  Madame. If she ever had  a name in  the
world, she has  long  since forgotten it,  which is perhaps as well. Then we
have  this pert jade with the tip-tilted nose and the wide mouth,  who is of
course  our  soubrette  Columbine,  and  lastly,  my  daughter  Climene,  an
amoureuse of talents not to  be matched  outside the  Comedie Francaise,  of
which she has the bad taste to aspire to become a member."
     The lovely Climene  - and lovely indeed she  was - tossed her nut-brown
curls  and  laughed  as she  looked across at Andre-Louis. Her eyes,  he had
perceived by now, were not blue, but hazel.
     "Do  not believe  him, monsieur. Here  I am queen,  and I prefer to  be
queen here rather than a slave in Paris."
     "Mademoiselle,"  said  Andre-Louis,  quite  solemnly,  "will  be  queen
wherever she condescends to reign."
     Her  only answer was a timid -  timid  and yet alluring  -  glance from
under fluttering lids. Meanwhile her father was  bawling at the comely young
man who played lovers - "You hear,  Leandre! That is  the sort of speech you
should practise."
     Leandre raised languid  eyebrows. "That?"  quoth he, and shrugged. "The
merest commonplace."
     Andre-Louis laughed approval. "M. Leandre  is of a readier wit than you
concede.  There is subtlety in  pronouncing  it a commonplace to call  Mlle.
Climene a queen.
     Some laughed, M. Binet amongst them, with good-humoured mockery.
     "You think he  has the wit to mean it thus? Bah! His subtleties are all
unconscious."
     The  conversation  becoming general, Andre-Louis  soon learnt what  yet
there  was  to  learn  of  this strolling band.  They were  on their way  to
Guichen, where they hoped to prosper at  the fair that was to open on Monday
next. They  would  make their triumphal  entry into the town  at  noon,  and
setting  up  their stage  in  the old market,  they would  give their  first
performance that same Saturday night, in a new canevas - or scenario - of M.
Binet's own, which should set the  rustics gaping. And then M. Binet fetched
a  sigh,  and  addressed  himself  to  the elderly,  swarthy,  beetle-browed
Polichinelle, who sat on his left.
     "But  we shall miss  Felicien," said he. "Indeed, I do not know what we
shall do without him."
     "Oh, we shall contrive," said Polichinelle, with his mouth full.
     "So you  always  say, whatever happens,  knowing that in  any  case the
contriving will not fall upon yourself."
     "He should not be difficult to replace," said Harlequin.
     "True, if  we were in a civilized land.  But where among the rustics of
Brittany are we to find a fellow of even his poor parts?" M. Binet turned to
Andre-Louis.  "He was our property-man,  our machinist, our stage-carpenter,
our man of affairs, and occasionally he acted."
     "The part of Figaro, I  presume,"  said  Andre-Louis, which elicited  a
laugh.
     "So you  are acquainted  with Beaumarchais!"  Binet eyed the  young man
with fresh interest.
     "He is tolerably well known, I think."
     "In Paris, to  be sure. But I had not dreamt his  fame  had reached the
wilds of Brittany."
     "But then  I was some years in Paris - at  the Lycee of Louis le Grand.
It was there I made acquaintance with his work."
     "A dangerous man," said Polichinelle, sententiously.
     "Indeed, and you are right,"  Pantaloon agreed. "Clever - I do not deny
him that,  although myself I  find little use for authors. But of a sinister
cleverness responsible for the dissemination of many of these subversive new
ideas. I think such writers should be suppressed."
     "M. de La Tour d'Azyr would probably agree with you - the gentleman who
by  the simple exertion of his  will turns this communal  land into his  own
property." And Andre-Louis drained his cup, which had been filled  with  the
poor vin gris that was the players' drink.
     It was  a  remark that might  have precipitated an argument  had it not
also reminded M. Binet  of the terms on which they were encamped there,  and
of the fact that the half-hour was more than past. In a moment he was on his
feet, leaping up  with an  agility surprising in so corpulent a man, issuing
his commands like a marshal on a field of battle.
     "Come, come, my lads! Are we to sit  guzzling here all day? Time flees,
and  there's a deal  to be done if we  are to make our entry into Guichen at
noon. Go, get you dressed. We strike camp in twenty minutes. Bestir, ladies!
To your chaise, and see that you contrive to look your  best. Soon  the eyes
of Guichen will be  upon you, and the condition of your  interior  to-morrow
will depend upon the impression made by your exterior to-day. Away! Away!"
     The implicit  obedience this  autocrat  commanded set them  in a whirl.
Baskets and  boxes were dragged forth to receive the platters and remains of
their meagre  feast.  In an instant the  ground was  cleared, and the  three
ladies  had taken  their departure to the chaise, which  was  set apart  for
their use.  The men were already  climbing  into the  house on  wheels, when
Binet turned to Andre-Louis.
     "We  part  here,  sir,"  said  he, dramatically,  "the  richer  by your
acquaintance; your debtors and your friends." He put forth his podgy hand.
     Slowly Andre-Louis took it  in his own. He had been thinking swiftly in
the last  few  moments. And remembering  the safety  he  had found  from his
pursuers in the bosom of this company, it occurred to him hat nowhere  could
he be better  hidden for the  present, until the  quest for him  should have
died down.
     "Sir," he  said, "the indebtedness is on my  side.  It is not every day
one  has  the  felicity to  sit down  with  so  illustrious and  engaging  a
company."
     Binet's little eyes peered suspiciously at the young man, in  quest  of
irony. He found nothing but candour and simple good faith.
     "I  part  from  you  reluctantly,"  Andre-Louis  continued.  "The  more
reluctantly since I do not perceive the absolute necessity for parting."
     "How?" quoth Binet, frowning, and slowly withdrawing the hand which the
other had already retained rather longer than was necessary.
     "Thus," Andre-Louis explained himself. "You may set me  down as a  sort
of knight of rueful countenance in quest of adventure, with no fixed purpose
in life at present. You will not marvel  that  what  I have seen of yourself
and  your  distinguished troupe  should  inspire  me  to  desire your better
acquaintance. On  your side you tell me that you are  in need of some one to
replace your Figaro  - your Felicien, I think  you called him. Whilst it may
be presumptuous of me to hope that I could discharge an office so varied and
so onerous... "
     "You are indulging that acrid humour  of yours again, my friend," Binet
interrupted him. "Excepting for  that," he  added, slowly, meditatively, his
little eyes screwed up, "we  might discuss this proposal that you seem to be
making."
     "Alas! we can except nothing. If you take me, you take me as I am. What
else is possible? As for this humour - such  as it is - which you decry, you
might turn it to profitable account."
     "How so?"
     "In several ways. I might, for instance, teach Leandre to make love."
     Pantaloon burst into laughter.  "You do  not  lack confidence  in  your
powers. Modesty does not afflict you."
     "Therefore I evince the first quality necessary in an actor."
     "Can you act?"
     "Upon  occasion,  I think," said  Andre-Louis,  his  thoughts upon  his
performance at Rennes and Nantes,  and wondering  when in all his histrionic
career Pantaloon's improvisations had so rent the heart of mobs.
     M. Binet was musing. "Do you know much of the theatre?" quoth he.
     "Everything," said Andre-Louis.
     "I said that modesty will prove no obstacle in your career."
     "But consider. I  know  the  work of Beaumarchais,  Eglantine, Mercier,
Chenier, and many others of our contemporaries. Then I have read, of course,
Moliere, Racine, Corneille, besides many other lesser French
     writers.  Of foreign  authors,  I am intimate  with the works of Gozzi,
Goldoni, Guarini, Bibbiena, Machiavelli, Secchi, Tasso, Ariosto, and Fedini.
Whilst  of  those  of  antiquity I  know  most of  the  work  of  Euripides,
Aristophanes, Terence, Plautus... "
     "Enough!" roared Pantaloon.
     "I am not nearly through with my list," said Andre-Louis.
     "You may keep the rest for another day. In Heaven's name, what can have
induced you to read so many dramatic authors?"
     "In my humble  way I am a student of m