and for those who, without  being men of birth themselves, were nevertheless
attached to the party of the nobles.
     La Tour d'Azyr had quitted  the front of the box to meet those who came
to  join  him. And now in the  pit  one group  of  infuriated  gentlemen, in
attempting to reach the stage across the empty orchestra, so that they might
deal  with  the  audacious comedian who was  responsible for this explosion,
found themselves opposed and  held back by another group composed  of men to
whose feelings Andre-Louis had given expression.
     Perceiving this, and remembering the chandelier, he turned  to Leandre,
who had remained beside him.
     "I think it is time to be going," said he.
     Leandre,  looking ghastly under his  paint, appalled by the storm which
exceeded   by  far   anything  that  his   unimaginative  brain  could  have
conjectured, gurgled an  inarticulate agreement. But it looked as if already
they were too late, for in that moment they were assailed from behind.
     M. Binet had succeeded  at  last  in  breaking  past  Polichinelle  and
Rhodomont,  who  in  view  of his  murderous rage  had been  endeavouring to
restrain him. Half a dozen  gentlemen, habitues  of the green-room, had come
round to the stage to disembowel the knave who had created this riot, and it
was they who had flung aside those  two comedians who hung upon Binet. After
him they came now, their swords out; but after them again came Polichinelle,
Rhodomont, Harlequin, Pierrot, Pasquariel, and Basque the artist, armed with
such implements  as they could hastily snatch up, and intent upon saving the
man with whom  they sympathized in spite of all,  and  in whom now all their
hopes were centred.
     Well ahead rolled Binet, moving faster than any had ever seen him move,
and swinging the long cane from which Pantaloon is inseparable.
     "Infamous scoundrel!" he roared. "You  have ruined me!  But, name  of a
name, you shall pay!"
     Andre-Louis turned to face him.  "You confuse cause  with effect," said
he. But he got  no farther... Binet's cane, viciously driven, descended  and
broke upon his shoulder. Had he not moved swiftly  aside as the blow fell it
must have taken him across the head,  and possibly stunned him. As he moved,
he dropped his  hand to  his pocket, and swift upon the cracking  of Binet's
breaking cane came the crack of the pistol with which Andre-Louis replied.
     "You had your warning, you filthy pander!" he cried. And on the word he
shot him through the body.
     Binet went down screaming, whilst the fierce Polichinelle, fiercer than
ever in that moment of fierce reality, spoke quickly into Andre-Louis' ear:
     "Fool! So  much was  not necessary! Away with you now,  or you'll leave
your skin here! Away with you!"
     Andre-Louis thought it good advice, and took  it. The gentlemen who had
followed Binet in that punitive rush upon the stage, partly held in check by
the  improvised weapons  of  the  players,  partly intimidated by the second
pistol that Scaramouche presented, let him go. He gained the wings, and here
found  himself faced  by  a couple of sergeants  of  the watch, part of  the
police that was already invading the theatre with a view to restoring order.
The sight of them reminded him unpleasantly of how he must stand towards the
law  for this  night's  work,  and more particularly for  that bullet lodged
somewhere in Binet's obese body. He flourished his pistol.
     "Make  way,  or  I'll  burn  your  brains!"  he  threatened  them,  and
intimidated, themselves  without firearms, they fell back and  let him pass.
He slipped by the door of the  green-room, where the  ladies  of the company
had shut  themselves in until  the  storm should be over, and  so gained the
street behind the theatre.  It was deserted.  Down  this he  went at  a run,
intent  on reaching the inn for clothes and  money, since it  was impossible
that he should take the road in the garb of Scaramouche.

         * BOOK III: THE SWORD * 

        CHAPTER I. TRANSITION


     "You may  agree," wrote  Andre-Louis from  Paris to  Le Chapelier, in a
letter which survives, "that it is to be regretted I should  definitely have
discarded the livery of Scaramouche, since clearly there could be  no livery
fitter for my wear. It seems to be my part always to stir up strife and then
to slip away before I am caught in the crash of the  warring elements I have
aroused.  It is a humiliating reflection. I seek consolation in the reminder
of  Epictetus (do you ever read Epictetus?) that we are but actors in a play
of such a  part  as it  may please the Director to assign  us. It does  not,
however, console me  to have been cast  for  a part so contemptible, to find
myself  excelling ever in the art of running away. But if I am not brave, at
least I  am prudent;  so that  where  I  lack one virtue I may  lay claim to
possessing another almost  to excess. On a previous  occasion they wanted to
hang me for sedition. Should I have stayed to be hanged? This time they  may
want to  hang  me  for several things, including murder; for  I do not  know
whether that scoundrel Binet be alive or dead from the dose of lead I pumped
into his fat paunch. Nor can I  say that I  very greatly care. If  I  have a
hope  at  all in the  matter it is that  he is dead - and damned. But  I  am
really indifferent. My own concerns are troubling me enough.  I have all but
spent the  little money that I contrived to conceal  about  me before I fled
from Nantes on that dreadful night;  and both of the only two professions of
which  I can claim to know anything - the  law and the stage - are closed to
me, since I cannot  find employment in either without revealing myself as  a
fellow  who  is urgently  wanted by the hangman.  As things are  it is  very
possible that I may die of hunger, especially  considering the present price
of  victuals  in this ravenous city. Again I have  recourse to Epictetus for
comfort.  'It is better,' he says, 'to die  of  hunger having  lived without
grief and fear, than to live  with a troubled spirit amid abundance.' I seem
likely  to perish  in the  estate that he accounts so enviable. That it does
not seem exactly enviable to me merely  proves  that  as a Stoic I am  not a
success.
     There is also another letter of  his written at about  the same time to
the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr - a letter since published by M. Emile Quersac
in his "Undercurrents of the Revolution in Brittany," unearthed  by him from
the  archives  of  Rennes,  to  which  it  had  been   consigned  by  M.  de
Lesdiguieres, who had received it for justiciary purposes from the Marquis.
     "The Paris newspapers," he writes  in  this,  "which have  reported  in
considerable detail the fracas  at the Theatre Feydau and disclosed the true
identity of  the Scaramouche who provoked it, inform me also  that  you have
escaped the  fate I  had intended for you when I raised that storm of public
opinion and public  indignation. I would not have you  take satisfaction  in
the thought  that I regret  your  escape. I do not. I rejoice in it. To deal
justice by death has this disadvantage that the victim has no knowledge that
justice has overtaken him. Had  you died, had  you been torn  limb from limb
that  night,  I  should  now  repine  in  the thought  of  your  eternal and
untroubled slumber. Not in euthanasia, but  in torment of  mind  should  the
guilty atone. You  see,  I  am not  sure that hell hereafter is a certainty,
whilst I am quite sure that it can be a certainty in this life; and I desire
you  to  continue to live  yet awhile  that you may taste something  of  its
bitterness.
     "You  murdered  Philippe  de  Vilmorin  because  you  feared  what  you
described as his  very dangerous gift of eloquence,  I took an oath that day
that your evil deed should be fruitless; that I would render it so; that the
voice you had done murder  to stifle  should  in spite of  that  ring like a
trumpet through the land. That was my  conception of revenge. Do you realize
how I have been fulfilling it, how I shall continue to fulfil it as occasion
offers? In the speech  with which  I fired the people  of Rennes on the very
morrow of  that  deed, did you not  hear the  voice of Philippe  de Vilmorin
uttering the ideas that were his  with a fire and a passion greater  than he
could have commanded because Nemesis lent me her inflaming aid? In the voice
of  Omnes  Omnibus at  Nantes my voice again  - demanding  the petition that
sounded the knell of your  hopes  of coercing the Third Estate, did  you not
hear again the voice  of  Philippe de  Vilmorin? Did you not reflect that it
was  the mind of the man  you had murdered, resurrected  in me his surviving
friend, which made necessary  your  futile attempt under  arms last January,
wherein your  order,  finally  beaten, was driven to  seek  sanctuary in the
Cordelier Convent? And that night when from the stage of the Feydau you were
denounced to  the  people,  did you not  hear  yet  again,  in the  voice of
Scaramouche, the voice of Philippe de Vilmorin, using that dangerous gift of
eloquence  which  you  so  foolishly  imagined  you  could  silence  with  a
sword-thrust? It is becoming a  persecution - is it  not?  - this voice from
the grave  that  insists upon making itself heard, that will not rest  until
you have been  cast into the pit. You will be regretting by now that you did
not kill  me too, as I invited you on that occasion. I can picture to myself
the  bitterness  of this  regret, and  I contemplate it  with  satisfaction.
Regret  of neglected opportunity is  the  worst hell that a living soul  can
inhabit, particularly such a soul  as yours. It is because of this that I am
glad to know that you survived the riot at the Feydau,  although at the time
it was no part of my intention that you should. Because of this I am content
that  you should live to enrage and suffer in the shadow of your evil  deed,
knowing at  last  - since you  had  not hitherto the wit  to  discern it for
yourself  - that  the  voice  of Philippe  de  Vilmorin will follow  you  to
denounce you ever more loudly, ever  more insistently, until having lived in
dread  you shall go  down  in blood under the just rage  which your victim's
dangerous gift of eloquence is kindling against you."
     I find it odd  that he should have omitted from this letter all mention
of  Mlle.  Binet,  and I  am  disposed  to  account it  at  least a  partial
insincerity  that  he  should  have assigned  entirely  to  his self-imposed
mission, and not at all to his lacerated feelings in the matter  of Climene,
the action which he had taken at the Feydau.
     Those  two letters,  both written in April of that  year  1789, had for
only immediate effect to increase the activity with which Andre-Louis Moreau
was being sought.
     Le Chapelier would have found him so as to lend him assistance, to urge
upon him once again that he should  take up a political career. The electors
of  Nantes would have found  him  -  at least,  they would have  found Omnes
Omnibus, of whose identity with  himself  they were still in  ignorance - on
each of the several occasions when a vacancy occurred in their body. And the
Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr and  M. de Lesdiguieres  would have found him that
they might send him to the gallows.
     With a purpose no less  vindictive was he being sought by M. Binet, now
unhappily recovered from his  wound to face completest ruin. His troupe  had
deserted him during  his illness, and  reconstituted under the direction  of
Polichinelle it was now striving with tolerable success to continue upon the
lines which Andre-Louis  had laid down. M. le Marquis, prevented by the riot
from  expressing in person to Mlle. Binet his  purpose  of  making an end of
their relations, had been  constrained  to write to her  to that effect from
Azyr a few days later. He tempered the blow by enclosing in discharge of all
liabilities  a  bill  on  the  Caisse   d'Escompte  for   a  hundred  louis.
Nevertheless it  almost crushed the unfortunate  and  it enabled her  father
when he recovered to enrage her by pointing out  that  she owed this turn of
events  to  the  premature surrender she had made  in  defiance of his sound
worldly advice. Father  and daughter alike were left to  assign the Marquis'
desertion, naturally enough, to the riot at the Feydau. They  laid that with
the rest  to the account of  Scaramouche, and were  forced  in bitterness to
admit that the scoundrel had taken  a superlative revenge. C1imene may  even
have  come to  consider  that it would have  paid  her  better to have run a
straight course with Scaramouche and by marrying him to have  trusted to his
undoubted talents  to  place her on  the summit to  which her ambition urged
her,  and  to  which  it  was now  futile for  her  to  aspire. If so,  that
reflection  must have been her sufficient punishment. For, as Andre-Louis so
truly  says, there is no worse hell than that provided  by the  regrets  for
wasted opportunities.
     Meanwhile the  fiercely  sought Andre-Louis  Moreau  had gone to  earth
completely for  the present. And the brisk police of Paris, urged on by  the
King's Lieutenant from  Rennes, hunted for him in  vain. Yet  he  might have
been found in a house in  the Rue  du Hasard within a stone's  throw of  the
Palais Royal, whither purest chance had conducted him.
     That which in his letter to Le Chapelier he represents as a contingency
of the near future was, in fact, the case in which already he found himself.
He was destitute. His money  was  exhausted, including that procured by  the
sale of such articles of adornment as were not of absolute necessity.
     So desperate was his case that strolling one gusty April  morning  down
the Rue du Hasard with his nose in the wind looking for what might be picked
up, he stopped to read a notice outside the door of a house on the left side
of the street as you approach  the Rue de Richelieu. There was no reason why
he should have gone down the Rue du Hasard. Perhaps its name attracted  him,
as appropriate to his case.
     The notice written  in  a  big round hand announced that a young man of
good  address  with  some  knowledge  of  swordsmanship was required  by  M.
Bertrand des  Amis on the second floor. Above this notice was a black oblong
board, and on this  a  shield, which in vulgar terms may be described as red
charged with two swords crossed and four fleurs de lys, one in each angle of
the saltire. Under the shield, in letters of gold, ran the legend:
     BERTRAND DES AMIS
     Maitre en fait d'Armes des Academies du Roi
     Andre-Louis stood considering.  He could claim, he  thought, to possess
the  qualifications demanded. He was certainly  young  and  he  believed  of
tolerable  address, whilst the fencing-lessons he had received in Nantes had
given  him at  least an  elementary  knowledge of  swordsmanship. The notice
looked  as if  it had  been  pinned  there  some days ago,  suggesting  that
applicants for the  post were not  very numerous.  In that  case perhaps  M.
Bertrand des Amis would not be too exigent. And anyway,  Andre-Louis had not
eaten for four-and-twenty  hours, and whilst the  employment  here offered -
the  precise nature of which he was yet to ascertain - did not appear to  be
such as Andre-Louis would deliberately have chosen, he was in no case now to
be fastidious.
     Then, too, he  liked  the name of Bertrand des  Amis.  It  felicitously
combined suggestions of chivalry and friendliness. Also the man's profession
being of  a kind that  is  flavoured with  romance  it was  possible that M.
Bertrand des Amis would not ask too many questions.
     In the  end he climbed  to  the second floor.  On the landing he paused
outside a door, on which was written  "Academy  of M. Bertrand des Amis." He
pushed this  open, and  found  himself in  a sparsely  furnished, untenanted
antechamber.  From  a room  beyond, the  door of which was closed,  came the
stamping of feet, the click and slither of steel upon  steel, and dominating
these sounds a vibrant sonorous voice speaking a language that was certainly
French; but such French as is never heard outside a fencing-school.
     "Coulez!   Mais,   coulez  donc!....So!  Now   the   flanconnade  -  en
carte....And here is the  riposte....Let us begin  again. Come! The ward  of
fierce....Make  the coupe, and then  the quinte par  dessus les  armes....0,
mais allongez! Allongez!  Allez au fond!"  the voice cried in expostulation.
"Come, that was better." The blades ceased.
     "Remember: the hand in pronation, the elbow not too far out.  That will
do for to-day.  On  Wednesday  we shall see  you  tirer  au mur. It  is more
deliberate. Speed will follow  when the mechanism of the movements  is  more
assured."
     Another voice murmured in answer. The steps moved aside. The lesson was
at an end. Andre-Louis tapped on the door.
     It  was  opened by a  tall,  slender, gracefully  proportioned  man  of
perhaps  forty. Black silk breeches  and  stockings  ending  in light  shoes
clothed him from  the  waist down.  Above he was encased  to  the chin  in a
closely  fitting plastron of leather, His face was aquiline and swarthy, his
eyes full  and dark, his  mouth firm and  his clubbed hair was of a lustrous
black with here and there a thread of silver showing.
     in  the  crook of his  left arm he carried  a fencing-mask, a thing  of
leather with a wire grating to protect the eyes. His keen glance played over
Andre-Louis from head to foot.
     "Monsieur?" he inquired, politely.
     It  was clear  that  he  mistook  Andre-Louis'  quality, which  is  not
surprising,  for despite  his  sadly  reduced  fortunes,  his  exterior  was
irreproachable, and M. des Amis was not to  guess that  he carried upon  his
back the whole of his possessions.
     "You  have  a  notice below,  monsieur," he  said, and from  the  swift
lighting of the fencing-master's eyes he saw that he had been correct in his
assumption  that  applicants for the  position had  not  been  jostling  one
another on his threshold. And then that  flash of satisfaction  was followed
by a look of surprise.
     "You are come in regard to that?"
     Andre-Louis shrugged and half smiled. "One must live," said he.
     "But come in. Sit down there. I shall be at  your....I shall be free to
attend to you in a moment."
     Andre-Louis took  a  seat  on the  bench  ranged  against  one  of  the
whitewashed walls. The room was long and low, its floor entirely bare. Plain
wooden  forms  such as  that which  he  occupied were placed here and  there
against the wall.  These last  were  plastered with fencing trophies, masks,
crossed  foils,  stuffed plastrons, and a  variety  of swords,  daggers, and
targets, belonging to a variety of  ages and countries.  There  was  also  a
portrait  of an obese,  big-nosed  gentleman in  an elaborately  curled wig,
wearing the blue ribbon of the Saint Esprit, in whom  Andre-Louis recognized
the King.  And there was a framed parchment - M. des  Amis' certificate from
the King's  Academy. A  bookcase occupied one corner, and near  this, facing
the  last of the  four windows that abundantly lighted  the long room, there
was a small  writing-table and an  armchair. A plump and beautifully dressed
young gentleman stood by this table  in the act of resuming coat and wig. M.
des  Amis  sauntered  over  to  him  -  moving,  thought  Andre-Louis,  with
extraordinary grace and elasticity - and stood  in talk with him whilst also
assisting him to complete his toilet.
     At last the young gentleman took his  departure, mopping himself with a
fine  kerchief that left a trail of perfume on the air. M.  des Amis  closed
the door, and turned to the applicant, who rose at once.
     "Where have you studied?" quoth the fencing-master abruptly.
     "Studied?" Andre-Louis  was taken aback by the  question. "Oh, at Louis
Le Grand."
     M.  des  Amis  frowned, looking  up sharply as  if to see  whether  his
applicant was taking the liberty of amusing himself.
     "In Heaven's name! I am not asking you where  you did  your humanities,
but in what academy you studied fencing."
     "Oh  - fencing!" It  had  hardly ever occurred to Andre-Louis  that the
sword ranked seriously as a study. "I never studied it very much. I had some
lessons in... in the country once.
     The master's eyebrows  went up.  "But then?"  he cried. "Why trouble to
come up two flights of stairs?" He was impatient.
     "The notice does not demand a high degree of  proficiency. If  I am not
proficient enough, yet knowing the rudiments  I  can easily improve. I learn
most  things readily,"  Andre-Louis  commended  himself.  "For  the rest:  I
possess the other qualifications.  I am young,  as you  observe: and I leave
you to judge whether I am wrong in assuming that my address is good. I am by
profession a man of the robe, though I realize that the motto here  is cedat
toga armis."
     M. des Amis  smiled  approvingly. Undoubtedly the young man had a  good
address, and a certain  readiness of wit, it would appear. He ran a critical
eye over his physical points. "What is your name?" he asked.
     Andre-Louis hesitated a moment. "Andre-Louis," he said.
     The dark, keen eyes conned him more searchingly.
     "Well? Andre-Louis what?"
     "Just Andre-Louis. Louis is my surname."
     "Oh! An odd surname. You come from Brittany by your accent. Why did you
leave it?"
     "To save my skin," he answered, without reflecting. And then made haste
to cover the blunder. "I have an enemy," he explained.
     M. des Amis frowned, stroking his square chin. "You ran away?"
     "You may say so.
     "A coward, eh?"
     "I don't  think so." And  then he  lied romantically. Surely  a man who
lived by the  sword should have a  weakness for the  romantic. "You  see, my
enemy is a swordsman of great strength - the best  blade in the province, if
not the best blade in France. That is his  repute. I thought I would come to
Paris to learn something of the art, and then go back and kill him. That, to
be frank, is why your notice attracted me.  You see, I have not the means to
take lessons  otherwise. I thought to  find work here in the law. But I have
failed. There are too many lawyers in Paris as it is, and  whilst waiting  I
have consumed the little money that  I had,  so that... so that, enfin, your
notice  seemed  to me something to  which a special  providence had directed
me."
     M. des Amis gripped him by the shoulders, and looked into his face.
     "Is this true, my friend?" he asked.
     "Not  a word  of it," said  Andre-Louis, wrecking  his  chances  on  an
irresistible impulse to say the unexpected. But he didn't wreck them. M. des
Amis  burst  into laughter; and having laughed  his  fill, confessed himself
charmed by his applicant's fundamental honesty.
     "Take off your coat," he said, "and let us see what you can do. Nature,
at  least, designed  you for a swordsman. You are light, active, and supple,
with a good length of arm, and you seem intelligent. I may make something of
you, teach  you enough for  my purpose, which is that  you should  give  the
elements of the art to new pupils before I take them in hand to finish them.
Let us try. Take that mask and foil, and come over here.
     He led him to the end of the room, where the bare floor was scored with
lines of chalk to guide the beginner in the management of his feet.
     At the  end  of  a  ten  minutes' bout,  M.  des  Amis offered  him the
situation,  and explained it.  In addition to imparting the rudiments of the
art to  beginners, he was to brush out the fencing-room  every morning, keep
the foils furbished, assist  the gentlemen who came for lessons to dress and
undress, and make himself generally  useful. His  wages for the present were
to be  forty livres a  month, and he  might  sleep in an  alcove behind  the
fencing-room if he had no other lodging.
     The position, you  see, had its humiliations. But, if Andre-Louis would
hope to dine, he must begin by eating his pride as an hors d'oeuvre.
     "And so," he said, controlling a grimace, "the robe yields  not only to
the sword, but to the broom as well. Be it so. I stay."
     lt is  characteristic of  him that, having made that choice,  he should
have thrown himself into the work with enthusiasm. It was ever his way to do
whatever he did with all the resources of his mind and energies of his body.
When he was not instructing very young gentlemen in the elements of the art,
showing them  the elaborate and intricate salute -  which with  a few  days'
hard  practice he had  mastered to perfection - and the eight guards, he was
himself hard at work on those same guards, exercising eye, wrist, and knees.
     Perceiving  his  enthusiasm, and seeing  the  obvious possibilities  it
opened out  of  turning  him into a really effective assistant,  M. des Amis
presently took him more seriously in hand.
     "Your application and zeal, my friend, are deserving of more than forty
livres a month," the  master  informed him  at the  end of a week.  "For the
present,  however, I  will  make  up what  else  I consider due  to  you  by
imparting to you secrets of this noble art. Your future depends upon how you
profit by your exceptional good fortune in receiving instruction from me."
     Thereafter every morning before the opening of the academy,  the master
would  fence  for half an  hour  with his new  assistant.  Under this really
excellent  tuition  Andre-Louis improved at a rate that both  astounded  and
flattered M. des Amis. He would have  been less flattered and more astounded
had he known that at least  half the secret of Andre-Louis' amazing progress
lay  in the fact that he was devouring the contents of the master's library,
which was  made up  of  a dozen or so  treatises on  fencing by  such  great
masters  as  La  Bessiere,  Danet, and  the  syndic  of the King's  Academy,
Augustin  Rousseau. To M.  des  Amis, whose swordsmanship was  all  based on
practice and  not at all on theory, who was indeed no theorist or student in
any  sense,  that  little  library  was  merely  a  suitable  adjunct  to  a
fencing-academy,  a  proper  piece   of   decorative  furniture.  The  books
themselves  meant nothing to him in any other sense. He had not the  type of
mind that could have read  them  with profit nor  could  be understand  that
another should do so.  Andre-Louis, on the contrary, a man with the habit of
study, with the acquired  faculty of  learning  from books, read those works
with enormous profit, kept their precepts in mind, critically set  off those
of one  master against those of another, and made for himself a choice which
he proceeded to put into practice.
     At the end  of a month it suddenly  dawned  upon  M. des Amis that  his
assistant had developed into a fencer of very considerable force, a man in a
bout  with  whom it became necessary  to exert  himself if he were to escape
defeat.
     "I said from the first," he told him one day, "that Nature designed you
for a swordsman. See how justified I was, and see also how well I have known
how to mould the material with which Nature has equipped you."
     "To the master be the glory," said Andre-Louis.
     His relations with M. des Amis had meanwhile become of the friendliest,
and  he  was  now  beginning to  receive  from him  other pupils  than  mere
beginners.  In  fact Andre-Louis was becoming an assistant in a much  fuller
sense of the  word. M. des Amis, a chivalrous,  open-handed fellow, far from
taking advantage of what he had guessed  to be the young man's difficulties,
rewarded his zeal by increasing his wages to four louis a month.
     >From the' earnest  and thoughtful study of the theories of others,  it
followed now - as not uncommonly happens - that Andre-Louis came to  develop
theories of his own. He lay one June morning  on his little truckle  bed  in
the alcove behind the  academy,  considering a passage that he had read last
night in Danet on  double and  triple  feints.  It  had  seemed to him  when
reading  it  that  Danet  had stopped short on  the  threshold  of  a  great
discovery  in the  art  of  fencing.  Essentially  a  theorist,  Andre-Louis
perceived the theory suggested, which Danet himself in suggesting it had not
perceived. He  lay now on his back,  surveying the cracks in the ceiling and
considering this matter further  with the lucidity that  early morning often
brings to an acute intelligence. You are to remember that for close upon two
months now the sword  had been Andre-Louis' daily exercise and almost hourly
thought. Protracted  concentration  upon  the  subject  was  giving  him  an
extraordinary penetration of vision.  Swordsmanship as  he learnt and taught
and saw  it daily practised consisted of a series of attacks  and parries, a
series of disengages from  one  line  into  another.  But  always  a limited
series.  A  half-dozen  disengages  on either  side  was, strictly speaking,
usually as  far as any engagement went. Then  one  recommenced. But even so,
these disengages were fortuitous. What if from first to last they should  be
calculated?
     That was part of the thought - one of  the two legs on which his theory
was to stand; the other was:  what would happen if one so elaborated Danet's
ideas  on  the triple  feint  as to  merge  them  into  a  series of  actual
calculated  disengages  to culminate  at the fourth or fifth  or even  sixth
disengage? That is to say, if one were  to make a series of attacks inviting
ripostes  again to be countered, each of  which was not intended to go home,
but simply  to  play the opponent's  blade  into a line  that must  open him
ultimately, and as predetermined, for an irresistible lunge. Each counter of
the opponent's would have to be preconsidered in this widening of his guard,
a  widening so gradual  that he should  himself be  unconscious  of it,  and
throughout intent upon getting home his own point on one of those counters.
     Andre-Louis had been in his time a  chess-player of some  force, and at
chess  he had  excelled by virtue  of his capacity for  thinking ahead. That
virtue applied to fencing  should  all but revolutionize the art. It  was so
applied  already,  of course, but  only  in an elementary  and  very limited
fashion,  in  mere  feints, single,  double, or triple.  But even the triple
feint should  be a  clumsy  device compared  with this method  upon which he
theorized.
     He considered further, and the  conviction grew that he held the key of
a discovery. He was impatient to put his theory to the test.
     That morning  he was given a pupil of some force, against whom  usually
he was hard  put to it to defend  himself.  Coming on guard, he  made up his
mind to hit him on the fourth disengage, predetermining the four passes that
should lead up to it. They engaged in tierce, and Andre-Louis led the attack
by a beat and a straightening of the arm. Came the demi-contre  he expected,
which he  promptly countered  by a  thrust  in quinte;  this being countered
again, he reentered still  lower, and being again correctly parried,  as  he
had calculated, he lunged swirling his point into  carte, and  got home full
upon his opponent's breast. The ease of it surprised him.
     They  began  again.  This  time  he  resolved  to go  in on  the  fifth
disengage, and in on that he went with the same ease. Then, complicating the
matter further, he decided to try the sixth,  and worked out in his mind the
combination of the  five  preliminary  engages. Yet  again  he  succeeded as
easily as before.
     The  young  gentleman opposed  to  him  laughed  with just a  tinge  of
mortification in his voice.
     "I am all to pieces this morning," he said.
     "You  are not of  your  usual force," Andre-Louis politely agreed.  And
then greatly daring, always to test that theory of his to the uttermost: "So
much so," he  added, "that I could almost be sure of hitting you as and when
I declare."
     The capable pupil looked at him with a half-sneer. "Ah, that, no," said
he.
     "Let us  try. On the fourth disengage I  shall  touch  you. Allons!  En
garde!"
     And as he promised, so it happened.
     The  young gentleman  who,  hitherto,  had  held  no great  opinion  of
Andre-Louis'  swordsmanship,  accounting  him well  enough for  purposes  of
practice  when the master  was otherwise engaged, opened wide his eyes. In a
burst of mingled generosity  and intoxication,  Andre-Louis  was almost  for
disclosing  his  method  - a method  which a little  later  was  to become a
commonplace of the fencing-rooms. Betimes he  checked himself. To reveal his
secret  would  be  to  destroy  the prestige that must  accrue to  him  from
exercising it.
     At noon, the academy being empty, M. des Amis called Andre-Louis to one
of the occasional lessons which he still received. And for the first time in
all his experience with Andre-Louis, M. des Amis received  from him  a  full
hit in the course of the  first bout.  He  laughed, well  pleased, like  the
generous fellow he was.
     "Aha! You are improving very fast, my friend." He still laughed, though
not  so  well pleased, when he was  hit  in the second bout. After  that  he
settled  down to fight in earnest with the result that  Andre-Louis  was hit
three times in succession. The speed and accuracy of the fencing-master when
fully exerting himself disconcerted Andre-Louis'  theory, which  for want of
being exercised in practice still demanded too much consideration.
     But that his theory was sound he accounted fully  established, and with
that,  for  the  moment, he was content.  It  remained  only  to  perfect by
practice  the  application of it. To this he  now  devoted  himself with the
passionate enthusiasm of the discoverer. He confined himself to a half-dozen
combinations, which  he practised assiduously until  each had  become almost
automatic.  And  he  proved  their infallibility upon the best  among M. des
Amis' pupils.
     Finally, a week  or so after that last bout of his  with  des Amis, the
master called him once more to practice.
     Hit again in the first  bout,  the master set himself to exert all  his
skill against  his assistant.  But to-day  it  availed  him  nothing  before
Andre-Louis' impetuous attacks.
     After the third hit, M. des Amis stepped back and pulled off his mask.
     "What's  this?"  he  asked. He  was  pale,  and  his  dark  brows  were
contracted in a frown. Not in years had he been so wounded in his self-love.
"Have you been taught a secret botte?"
     He had always boasted that he knew too much about the sword to  believe
any nonsense about secret bottes; but  this performance  of Andre-Louis' had
shaken his convictions on that score.
     "No," said Andre-Louis. "I have been working hard; and it  happens that
I fence with my brains."
     "So  I  perceive.  Well,  well,  I think I  have taught  you enough, my
friend. I have no intention of  having  an  assistant  who  is  superior  to
myself."
     "Little  danger  of that,"  said Andre-Louis, smiling  pleasantly. "You
have been fencing hard all morning, and you are tired, whilst I, having done
little, am entirely fresh. That is the only secret of my momentary success.
     His tact and the fundamental good-nature of M. des  Amis  prevented the
matter from going  farther along the road it was almost threatening to take.
And thereafter, when they fenced together, Andre-Louis, who  continued daily
to  perfect his  theory into  an almost infallible system, saw to it that M.
des Amis always scored against  him at  least two hits  for every one of his
own. So  much he would grant to discretion, but no  more. He desired that M.
des Amis should be conscious of his strength, without,  however, discovering
so much of its  real extent as would  have  excited  in him  an  unnecessary
degree of jealousy.
     And so  well did  he contrive that  whilst  he  became ever  of greater
assistance  to  the master  -  for his style  and general fencing, too,  had
materially improved - he  was  also a  source  of pride  to him as the  most
brilliant of all the pupils that had ever  passed through his academy. Never
did Andre-Louis disillusion him by revealing the fact that his skill was due
far more to M. des Amis' library and his own mother  wit than to any lessons
received.

        CHAPTER II. QUOS DEUS VULT PERDEREI


     Once again, precisely as he had done when he  joined the Binet  troupe,
did Andre-Louis now settle  down whole-heartedly to  the new profession into
which necessity had driven him, and in which he  found effective concealment
from those who might seek him to his hurt.  This profession might - although
in fact it did  not - have brought him to consider himself  at last as a man
of  action.  He had not, however, on  that  account  ceased to be  a man  of
thought, and the events of the spring and summer months of that year 1789 in
Paris provided him with abundant matter for reflection. He read there in the
raw  what  is  perhaps  the most  amazing  page  in  the  history  of  human
development, and  in  the end he was forced  to  the conclusion that all his
early  preconceptions  had  been  at  fault, and that  it was  such exalted,
passionate enthusiasts as Vilmorin who had been right.
     I suspect him of actually taking pride  in the  fact  that he  had been
mistaken, complacently attributing his error to the circumstance that he had
been,  himself, of too sane and logical a mind to gauge the depths  of human
insanity now revealed.
     He watched the growth of hunger, the increasing poverty and distress of
Paris during that spring, and assigned it to its proper cause, together with
the  patience  with  which the people  bore it. The world of France was in a
state of hushed,  of paralyzed expectancy, waiting for the States General to
assemble  and  for  centuries  of  tyranny  to  end.  And  because  of  this
expectancy,  industry had  come to  a  standstill, the stream of  trade  had
dwindled to a trickle. Men would  not buy or sell until they clearly saw the
means by which the genius of the  Swiss  banker,  M. Necker, was to  deliver
them from this morass.  And because  of this paralysis of affairs the men of
the people were thrown out of work and  left to starve  with their wives and
children.
     Looking  on,  Andre-Louis smiled  grimly. So  far  he  was  right.  The
sufferers were  ever  the  proletariat.  The  men  who sought  to make  this
revolution,  the  electors  - here  in  Paris  as  elsewhere  - were men  of
substance, notable bourgeois, wealthy  traders.  And whilst these, despising
the canaille, and envying the privileged,  talked largely  of equality  - by
which they meant an ascending  equality that should  confuse themselves with
the gentry - the proletariat perished of want in its kennels.
     At last with the month of May the deputies arrived, Andre-Louis' friend
Le Chapelier prominent amongst them, and the States General were inaugurated
at  Versailles.  It was then that affairs began  to become interesting, then
that Andre-Louis began seriously to doubt the  soundness of the views he had
held hitherto.
     When the royal proclamation had gone forth decreeing  that the deputies
of the  Third  Estate should number twice as many as  those of the other two
orders together,  Andre-Louis had believed  that the preponderance  of votes
thus assured to the Third Estate  rendered inevitable  the  reforms to which
they had pledged themselves.
     But he had reckoned without the power of the privileged orders over the
proud Austrian queen, and her power  over the obese, phlegmatic,  irresolute
monarch. That  the privileged  orders  should deliver battle  in defence  of
their  privileges, Andre-Louis could understand. Man being what  he  is, and
labouring under his curse of acquisitiveness, will never willingly surrender
possessions,  whether they be justly or  unjustly  held. But what  surprised
Andre-Louis  was  the  unutterable crassness of  the  methods by  which  the
Privileged ranged themselves for battle. They opposed  brute force to reason
and  philosophy, and battalions of foreign mercenaries to ideas. As if ideas
were to be impaled on bayonets!
     The  war  between  the  Privileged and  the Court on one side, and  the
Assembly and the People on the other had begun.
     The Third Estate contained itself, and waited; waited with the patience
of nature;  waited  a  month  whilst, with  the  paralysis of  business  now
complete, the skeleton hand of famine took a firmer grip of Paris; waited  a
month  whilst  Privilege  gradually  assembled  an  army  in  Versailles  to
intimidate it - an army of fifteen regiments,  nine of  which were Swiss and
German - and mounted a park of  artillery before  the  building in which the
deputies sat.  But the  deputies refused to be  intimidated; they refused to
see  the  guns and foreign uniforms; they refused  to  see anything but  the
purpose for which they had been brought together by royal proclamation.
     Thus until the 10th of June, when that great thinker and metaphysician,
the Abbe Sieyes, gave the signal: "It is time," said he, "to cut the cable."
     And  the  opportunity came soon, at the  very beginning  of July. M. du
Chatelet, a harsh, haughty  disciplinarian, proposed to  transfer the eleven
French  Guards placed under arrest  from the  military gaol of the Abbaye to
the  filthy prison of Bicetre reserved for thieves and felons  of the lowest
order.  Word of that intention going forth,  the people at last met violence
with  violence.  A  mob  four  thousand strong broke into  the  Abbaye,  and
delivered thence not only the eleven guardsmen, but all the other prisoners,
with the exception of one whom they discovered to be a thief, and  whom they
put back again;
     That was open  revolt at last, and  with revolt  Privilege knew how  to
deal. It would strangle this mutinous Paris in  the iron grip of the foreign
regiments. Measures  were  quickly  concerted.  Old Marechal  de Broglie,  a
veteran  of the  Seven Years'  War,  imbued  with a  soldier's contempt  for
civilians, conceiving that the sight of a uniform would be enough to restore
peace and  order, took control  with Besenval as his second-in-command.  The
foreign regiments were  stationed in the environs of Paris,  regiments whose
very names were an irritation to  the Parisians, regiments  of  Reisbach, of
Diesbach, of  Nassau, Esterhazy, and Roehmer. Reenforcements  of Swiss  were
sent to  the Bastille between  whose crenels already since the 30th  of June
were to be seen the menacing mouths of loaded cannon.
     On  the 10th of  July  the electors  once  more  addressed the  King to
request the withdrawal  of  the troops. They were answered next day that the
troops served the purpose of defending the liberties of the Assembly! And on
the next day to that, which was a Sunday, the philanthropist Dr. Guillotin -
whose philanthropic engine of painless death was before  very long to find a
deal  of work, came from the Assembly, of  which he was a member,  to assure
the electors of Paris that all  was well, appearances notwithstanding, since
Necker was more firmly in the saddle than  ever. He did not know that at the
very moment in which he was speaking so confidently, the  oft-dismissed  and
oft-recalled M. Necker  had  just been dismissed  yet again  by  the hostile
cabal about the Queen. Privilege  wanted conclusive measures, and conclusive
measures it would have - conclusive to itself.
     And at  the same time  yet  another philanthropist, also a doctor,  one
Jean-Paul  Mara,  of  Italian  extraction  -  better  known  as  Marat,  the
gallicized form  of name he  adopted - a man of letters, too,  who had spent
some years in England, and there published several works  on  sociology, was
writing:
     "Have a  care! Consider what  would be the  fatal effect of a seditious
movement. If you should have the misfortune to give way to that, you will be
treated as people in revolt, and blood will flow."
     Andre-Louis was in the gardens of the Palais Royal, that place of shops
and puppet-shows, of  circus and cafes, of gaming  houses and brothels, that
universal  rendezvous,  on  that Sunday  morning when  the news  of Necker's
dismissal spread, carrying with it dismay and fury. Into Necker's  dismissal
the people  read the triumph of the party hostile to themselves. It  sounded
the knell of all hope of redress of their wrongs.
     He beheld a slight young  man with  a pock-marked face,  redeemed  from
utter ugliness by  a pair  of magnificent eyes, leap to a table outside  the
Caf' de Foy, a drawn sword in his hand, crying, "To arms!" And then upon the
silence of astonishment that cry imposed, this young  man poured a  flood of
inflammatory eloquence, delivered in a voice marred at moments by a stutter.
He told  the people that the Germans  on the Champ de Mars would enter Paris
that night to butcher  the inhabitants. "Let us mount a  cockade!" he cried,
and  tore  a  leaf from a tree to serve his  purpose - the green cockade  of
hope.
     Enthusiasm swept the crowd, a motley crowd  made up of men and women of
every class,  from  vagabond  to nobleman, from harlot to  lady  of fashion.
Trees were  despoiled of their leaves, and the  green  cockade  was flaunted
from almost every head.
     "You are  caught between two  fires," the incendiary's stuttering voice
raved  on. "Between the Germans  on  the Champ de  Mars and the Swiss in the
Bastille. To arms, then! To arms!"
     Excitement  boiled  up and over. From a neighbouring waxworks show came
the  bust of Necker, and presently  a  bust  of that  comedian the  Duke  of
Orleans,  who  had a party and who was as ready  as any other of the budding
opportunists of those  days  to  take  advantage of  the moment for  his own
aggrandizement. The bust of Necker was draped with crepe.
     Andre-Louis looked on, and  grew afraid. Marat's pamphlet had impressed
him. It had  expressed what himself  he had expressed more than  half a year
ago  to the  mob  at Rennes. This crowd,  he felt must be  restrained.  That
hot-headed, irresponsible stutterer would have the  town in a blaze by night
unless something  were done. The  young  man,  a  causeless advocate  of the
Palais named Camille Desmoulins, later to become famous, leapt down from his
table  still  waving  his  sword,  still  shouting, "To  arms!  Follow  me!"
Andre-Louis advanced to occupy the  improvised rostrum,  which the stutterer
had  just  vacated,  to make  an effort at  counteracting that  inflammatory
performance. He  thrust through the crowd,  and came  suddenly  face to face
with  a tall man beautifully dressed, whose handsome countenance was sternly
set, whose great sombre eyes mouldered as if with suppressed anger.
     Thus face to face, each looking  into the eyes of the other, they stood
for a  long moment,  the jostling  crowd streaming past them, unheeded. Then
Andre-Louis laughed.
     "That  fellow, too,  has  a  very  dangerous  gift of eloquence, M.  le
Marquis," he said. "In fact there  are a number of such  in  France  to-day.
They grow from the soil, which  you and yours have  irrigated with the blood
of the martyrs  of liberty. Soon it  may be your  blood instead. The soil is
parched, and thirsty for it."
     "Gallows-bird!" he was answered. "The  police will  do your affair  for
you.  I  shall  tell the,  Lieutenant-General that  you are  to be  found in
Paris."
     "My God,  man!" cried Andre-Louis, "will you never  get sense? Will you
talk like  that of Lieutenant-Generals when Paris itself is likely to tumble
about  your ears or  take  fire under  your feet? Raise  your  voice, M.  le
Marquis. Denounce me  here,  to these. You will make a hero of me in such an
hour as this. Or shall I denounce you?  I think I  will. I think it is  high
time you received your wages. Hi! You  others,  listen to me! Let me present
you to... "
     A rush of men hurtled  against him, swept  him along with them, do what
he would, separating him from M. de La Tour d'Azyr, so oddly met. He  sought
to breast that human torrent; the Marquis, caught in an eddy of it, remained
where he had been, and Andre-Louis' last glimpse of him was of a man smiling
with tight lips, an ugly smile.
     Meanwhile the gardens  were emptying in  the wake  of  that  stuttering
firebrand  who had mounted the green cockade. The human  torrent  poured out
into the Rue de Richelieu, and  Andre-Louis  perforce must suffer himself to
be borne along by it, at  least as far as the Rue du Hasard. There he sidled
out of it, and having no wish to be crushed to death or to take further part
in the madness that was afoot, he  slipped down the  street, and so got home
to the deserted academy.  For there were no pupils to-day,  and even  M. des
Amis, like Andre-Louis,  had gone out to seek for news of what was happening
at Versailles.
     This was no normal state of things at the Academy of Bertrand des Amis.
Whatever else in Paris might have been at  a standstill  lately, the fencing
academy had flourished as never hitherto. Usually both  the master  and  his
assistant were busy  from  morning until dusk, and already  Andre-Louis  was
being paid now by the lessons that he gave, the master allowing him one half
of  the fee in  each case for  himself,  an arrangement which the  assistant
found  profitable.  On  Sundays the academy made half-holiday;  but  on this
Sunday such had been the state  of  suspense and ferment in the city that no
one having appeared by eleven o'clock both des Amis and Andre-Louis had gone
out. Little they thought as they lightly took leave of each other
     - they were very  good friends  by now -  that they were  never to meet
again in this world.
     Bloodshed  there  was  that  day  in  Paris.  On  the  Place  Vendome a
detachment  of dragoons  awaited  the crowd  out  of  which Andre-Louis  had
slipped. The  horsemen  swept down upon the  mob, dispersed  it, smashed the
waxen effigy of M. Necker,  and killed one man on  the spot - an unfortunate
French  Guard  who stood his ground. That was a beginning.  As a consequence
Besenval brought up his Swiss from the  Champ de Mars and marshalled them in
battle order  on  the Champs Elysees  with  four  pieces  of  artillery. His
dragoons he stationed in the Place Louis XV. That evening an enormous crowd,
streaming along  the  Champs Elysees and  the Tuileries  Gardens, considered
with  eyes of  alarm that warlike  preparation. Some insults were cast  upon
those foreign mercenaries and some stones were  flung. Besenval,  losing his
head, or  acting  under orders, sent for  his dragoons  and ordered  them to
disperse the  crowd,  But that crowd was  too  dense to be dispersed in this
fashion; so dense that it was  impossible  for the  horsemen to move without
crushing some one. There were several crushed, and as a consequence when the
dragoons, led by the Prince de Lambesc, advanced into the Tuileries Gardens,
the outraged crowd met them  with a fusillade of stones and bottles. Lambesc
gave  the  order  to  fire.  There was a stampede.  Pouring  forth  from the
Tuileries through  the city went those indignant people with their story  of
German cavalry  trampling  upon  women and  children,  and  uttering now  in
grimmest earnest the call  to  arms, raised at  noon  by Desmoulins  in  the
Palais Royal.
     The  victims  were  taken up  and  borne  thence, and amongst them  was
Bertrand  des  Amis, himself - like all who lived by the  sword -  an ardent
upholder of the noblesse, trampled to death under hooves of foreign horsemen
launched by the noblesse and led by a nobleman.
     To Andre-Louis, waiting  that evening on the second floor of No. 13 Rue
du Hasard  for the return  of  his friend and master, four men of the people
brought that  broken body of one  of the earliest victims of the  Revolution
that was now launched in earnest.

        CHAPTER III. PRESIDENT LE CHAPELIERII


     The ferment of Paris which, during the two following days, resembled an
armed camp rather than a city, delayed the burial of Bertrand des Amis until
the Wednesday of that  eventful week. Amid events that were shaking a nation
to its foundations the death  of  a  fencing-master passed almost  unnoticed
even  among his pupils, most of whom did not  come to the academy during the
two days that his  body  lay  there. Some few,  however, did come, and these
conveyed the news to others, with the result that the master was followed to
Pere Lachaise  by a score of young men at the head  of whom as chief mourner
walked Andre-Louis.
     There were no relatives to be advised so  far as Andre-Louis was aware,
although within a week of M.  des  Amis' death a sister turned up from Passy
to claim his heritage. This  was considerable, for the  master had prospered
and  saved money, most  of which was  invested in the Compagnie des Eaux and
the National Debt. Andre-Louis consigned her to the  lawyers, and saw her no
more.
     The death  of des Amis left him with so profound  a sense of loneliness
and desolation  that  he had no  thought or care  for  the sudden  access of
fortune  which it automatically procured him.  To the  master's sister might
fall such wealth as he  had amassed, but  Andre-Louis succeeded  to the mine
itself  from which that wealth  had  been  extracted,  the fencing-school in
which by now  he was himself so well established as an  instructor  that its
numerous pupils looked to him to carry it forward successfully as its chief.
And never was there a season in which fencing-academies knew such prosperity
as in these  troubled  days, when every  man was  sharpening  his  sword and
schooling himself in the uses of it.
     It was not until a couple of weeks later that Andre-Louis realized what
had  really happened  to  him,  and  he  found himself at  the  same time an
exhausted man, for during that fortnight he had been doing the work  of two.
If he had not hit upon the happy expedient of pairing-off  his more advanced
pupils to fence with each other, himself  standing by to criticize,  correct
and otherwise instruct, he  must have  found  the  task  utterly  beyond his
strength.  Even so,  it was necessary for him to fence some six hours daily,
and every day he brought arrears of lassitude from yesterday until he was in
danger of succumbing under the  increasing burden  of fatigue. In the end he
took an assistant to deal with beginners,  who  gave  the  hardest work.  He
found him readily enough  by good fortune in one of his own pupils  named Le
Duc. As the summer advanced, and the concourse of pupils steadily increased,
it  became necessary for  him to take yet another assistant  - an able young
instructor named Galoche - and another room on the floor above.
     They were strenuous days for  Andre-Louis, more strenuous  than  he had
ever known, even when he had been at work to build up the Binet Company; but
it follows that they  were  days of  extraordinary  prosperity.  He comments
regretfully  upon the  fact  that Bertrand  des Amis  should  have  died  by
ill-chance on the very eve of so profitable a vogue of sword-play.
     The arms  of the Academie du Roi,  to which  Andre-Louis had no  title,
still  continued  to  be  displayed  outside  his door. He had overcome  the
difficulty in a manner worthy of Scaramouche. He left the escutcheon and the
legend "Academie de  Bertrand des Amis, Maitre en fait d'Armes des Academies
du Roi," appending to it the further legend: "Conducted by Andre-Louis."
     With little time now in which to go abroad it  was from his  pupils and
the newspapers - of which a flood had risen in Paris with the  establishment
of the freedom of  the Press - that he learnt of the revolutionary processes
around  him, following  upon, as a measure of anticlimax,  the  fall of  the
Bastille.  That had happened whilst M. des Amis  lay dead, on the day before
they buried him, and was indeed the chief reason of the delay in his burial.
It was  an event  that had  its inspiration in that ill-considered charge of
Prince Lambesc in which the fencing-master had been killed.
     The  outraged  people  had besieged the electors in the Hotel de Ville,
demanding arms with which to defend their lives from these foreign murderers
hired by despotism. And in the end the electors  had consented  to give them
arms,  or,  rather  - for arms it had none to give -  to  permit them to arm
themselves. Also it had  given them a cockade, of red and blue,  the colours
of Paris. Because these colours were also those of the liveries of the  Duke
of Orleans, white was added to them - the white  of  the ancient standard of
France - and thus was the tricolour born. Further, a permanent  committee of
electors was appointed to watch over public order.
     Thus empowered  the  people  went  to work  with such good effect  that
within thirty-six  hours sixty  thousand  pikes  had  been  forged. At  nine
o'clock on Tuesday morning thirty thousand men were before the Invalides. By
eleven  o'clock they had ravished it of its  store of arms amounting to some
thirty thousand muskets, whilst others had seized the Arsenal and  possessed
themse1ves of powder.
     Thus they prepared to resist the attack  that from seven points was  to
be launched that  evening  upon the city.  But  Paris did  not wait  for the
attack. It took the  initiative. Mad with enthusiasm it conceived the insane
project of  taking that terrible menacing fortress, the  Bastille, and, what
is more, it succeeded, as you know, before five o'clock that night, aided in
the enterprise by the French Guards with cannon.
     The news  of  it, borne to  Versailles  by Lambesc in flight  with  his
dragoons  before  the   vast  armed  force   that  had  sprouted   from  the
paving-stones  of Paris, gave the Court pause. The people were in possession
of the guns captured from the Bastille. They were erecting barricades in the
streets, and mounting  these guns upon  them.  The attack had been too  long
delayed. It  must be abandoned  since now it could  lead  only to  fruitless
slaughter that  must  further shake  the  already  sorely shaken prestige of
Royalty.
     And  so the Court, growing momentarily  wise again  under  the spur  of
fear,  preferred to temporize. Necker should be brought back yet once again,
the three orders should sit united as the National Assembly demanded. It was
the completest surrender of force to force, the only argument. The King went
alone to inform the National Assembly of that eleventh-hour  resolve, to the
great comfort of  its members,  who viewed with pain and alarm the  dreadful
state  of things in Paris. "No force but the force  of reason  and argument"
was their watchword, and  it was so  to  continue for two years  yet, with a
patience  and  fortitude  in  the  face of ceaseless  provocation  to  which
insufficient justice has been done.
     As the  King was  leaving the  Assembly,  a woman, embracing his knees,
gave tongue to what might well be the question of all France:
     "Ah, sire, are you really sincere? Are  you sure they will not make you
change your mind?"
     Yet  no such question was  asked when  a couple of days later the King,
alone and unguarded save by the representatives of the Nation, came to Paris
to  complete the peacemaking,  the surrender  of  Privilege. The  Court  was
filled with  terror  by  the adventure.  Were they  not the  "enemy,"  these
mutinous Parisians?  And  should  a King  go  thus among his  enemies? If he
shared some of that fear, as the gloom of him might  lead us to suppose,  he
must  have found it idle. What  if two hundred thousand men under arms - men
without uniforms and with the most extraordinary motley of weapons ever seen
- awaited him? They awaited him as a guard of honour.
     Mayor  Bailly at the  barrier presented him  with the keys of the city.
"These are the same keys that were presented to Henri IV. He had reconquered
his people. Now the people have reconquered their King."
     At the Hotel de Ville Mayor  Bailly offered  him  the  new cockade, the
tricoloured symbol of constitutional France, and when he had given his royal
confirmation  to  the  formation   of   the  Garde  Bourgeoise  and  to  the
appointments  of Bailly and Lafayette, he departed again for Versailles amid
the shouts of "Vive le Roi!" from his loyal people.
     And now you see Privilege - before the cannon's mouth, as it were
     - submitting at last, where had they  submitted  sooner they might have
saved oceans of blood - chiefly their own. They  come, nobles and clergy, to
join the National Assembly, to labour with it upon this constitution that is
to  regenerate France. But  the reunion is a  mockery - as much a mockery as
that of  the Archbishop of  Paris singing  the Te Deum  for the  fall of the
Bastille  -  most  grotesque  and incredible  of  all  these  grotesque  and
incredible events. All that has happened to the National Assembly is that it
has  introduced  five  or  six  hundred  enemies  to  hamper and hinder  its
deliberations.
     But  all this is  an oft-told  tale, to be read  in detail elsewhere. I
give  you  here  just so  much  of  it as I  have  found in Andre-Louis' own
writings, almost in his own words, reflecting the changes that were operated
in his mind.  Silent now, he came fully to believe  in those things in which
he had not believed when earlier he had preached them.
     Meanwhile  together with the change in his fortune had come a change in
his  position towards the law, a change brought  about by the other  changes
wrought around him. No  longer need he hide himself. Who in these days would
prefer against  him the grotesque charge of sedition for what he had done in
Brittany? What court  would dare to send him to the gallows for  having said
in advance what all France was saying now? As for that other possible charge
of murder, who should concern himself  with the death of the miserable Binet
killed  by him  -  if,  indeed,  he  had  killed  him,  as  he  hoped  -  in
self-defence.
     And so one fine day in early August, Andre-Louis gave himself a holiday
from the academy, which was now working smoothly under his assistants, hired
a chaise and drove out to Versailles to the Caf' d'Amaury, which he knew for
the meeting-place of the Club Breton, the seed from which was to spring that
Society of the Friends of the Constitution  better known as the Jacobins. He
went to  seek Le Chapelier,  who had been one of the founders of the club, a
man  of great prominence now, president  of the Assembly  in this  important
season when it was deliberating upon the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
     Le Chapelier's importance was reflected  in the sudden servility of the
shirt-sleeved,  white-aproned  waiter  of whom Andre-Louis  inquired for the
representative.
     M. Le Chapelier was above-stairs  with  friends. The waiter desired  to
serve the gentleman, but hesitated to break in upon the assembly in which M.
le Depute found himself.
     Andre-Louis  gave  him a piece of silver to encourage him  to make  the
attempt. Then he sat down at a marble-topped table by the window looking out
over the wide tree-encircled square. There, in that common-room of the caf',
deserted at this hour of mid-afternoon, the great man came to him. Less than
a year  ago he had yielded precedence to Andre-Louis in a matter of delicate
leadership; to-day he stood on the heights,  one of the great leaders of the
Nation  in travail, and  Andre-Louis was  deep  down in the  shadows  of the
general mass.
     The thought  was in the minds of both as they scanned each  other, each
noting in the other the marked change that  a few months had  wrought. In Le
Chapelier, Andre-Louis observed certain heightened refinements of dress that
went with certain subtler refinements of countenance. He was thinner than of
old, his face was pale and there was a weariness in the eyes that considered
his visitor through a gold-rimmed spy-glass. In Andre-Louis  those jaded but
quick-moving eyes of the Breton  deputy noted changes even  more marked. The
almost constant swordmanship  of these last months  had given  Andre-Louis a
grace of movement, a  poise,  and a  curious, indefinable air of dignity, of
command.  He seemed  taller by  virtue of this, and he  was  dressed with an
elegance  which  if  quiet  was  none  the  less   rich.  He  wore  a  small
silver-hilted sword,  and  wore it as if used to it, and his black hair that
Le Chapelier had never seen other than fluttering lank about his bony cheeks
was glossy  now  and  gathered  into a  club. Almost  he  had  the air  of a
petit-maitre.
     In both, however, the changes were purely superficial, as each was soon
to reveal to the other. Le Chapelier was ever the same direct  and downright
Breton, abrupt of manner and of speech. He stood smiling a moment in mingled
surprise and pleasure; then opened  wide his  arms.  They embraced under the
awe-stricken gaze of the waiter, who at once effaced himself.
     "Andre-Louis, my friend! Whence do you drop?"
     "We  drop from above. I come from below to survey at close quarters one
who is on the heights."
     "On the heights! But that you willed it so, it is yourself might now be
standing in my place."
     "I have  a  poor  head  for  heights, and  I  find the  atmosphere  too
rarefied. Indeed, you  look  none too  well on it yourself, Isaac.  You  are
pale."
     "The Assembly was in session all last night. That  is all. These damned
Privileged multiply our difficulties. They  will do so until we decree their
abolition."
     They  sat  down. "Abolition!  You  contemplate so  much?  Not that  you
surprise me. You have always been an extremist."
     "I contemplate it  that  I  may  save them.  I  seek  to  abolish  them
officially, so as to save them  from  abolition of another kind at the hands
of a people they exasperate."
     "I see. And the King?"
     "The  King  is  the  incarnation  of the  Nation. We shall  deliver him
together  with the Nation from the bondage  of  Privilege.  Our constitution
will accomplish it. You agree?"
     Andre-Louis shrugged. "Does it matter? I am a dreamer  in politics, not
a man of  action. Until lately I have been very moderate; more moderate than
you think.  But  now  almost I am  a republican. I have been watching, and I
have  perceived  that  this King  is -  just  nothing, a puppet  who  dances
according to the hand that pulls the string."
     "This King, you say? What other king is possible? You are surely not of
those who weave dreams about Orleans? He has  a sort  of party, a  following
largely recruited by the popular hatred of the Queen and the known fact that
she  hates him.  There are some who have thought of  making him regent, some
even more; Robespierre is of the number."
     "Who?" asked Andre-Louis, to whom the name was unknown.
     "Robespierre - a preposterous  little  lawyer  who  represents Arras, a
shabby,  clumsy,  timid dullard, who will make speeches  through his nose to
which  nobody listens  -  an  ultra-royalist  whom  the  royalists  and  the
Orleanists  are using for their own ends. He has pertinacity, and he insists
upon being  heard.  He may  be  listened  to some day.  But that he,  or the
others,  will ever make  anything  of Orleans... pish!  Orleans  himself may
desire it, but.  the  man is a eunuch in crime; he would,  but he can't. The
phrase is Mirabeau's."
     He broke off to demand Andre-Louis' news of himself.
     "You did not treat me as a friend when you wrote to me," he complained.
"You gave me no clue to your whereabouts; you represented yourself as on the
verge  of destitution and  withheld from  me  the  means  to  come  to  your
assistance. I have been troubled in mind  about  you, Andre. Yet to judge by
your  appearance I  might have  spared myself  that.  You  seem  prosperous,
assured. Tell me of it."
     Andre-Louis told him frankly all that there  was to  tell. "Do you know
that you are  an amazement  to me?" said the  deputy. "From the robe  to the
buskin, and now from the buskin to the sword! What will be the end of you, I
wonder?"
     "The gallows, probably."
     "Fish!  Be serious. Why  not  the toga of  the  senator  in  senatorial
France? It might be yours now if you had willed it so."
     "The surest way to the gallows of all," laughed Andre-Louis.
     At  the moment  Le  Chapelier manifested  impatience. I  wonder did the
phrase cross his mind that day four  years later when himself he rode in the
death-cart to the Greve.
     "We are  sixty-six  Breton deputies in the  Assembly.  Should a vacancy
occur, will you act as suppleant? A word from me together with the influence
of your name in Rennes and Nantes, and the thing is done."
     Andre-Louis laughed  outright. "Do you know, Isaac, that I  never  meet
you but you seek to thrust me into politics?"
     "Because you have a gift for politics. You were born for politics."
     "Ah, yes - Scaramouche  in real life.  I've played it on the stage. Let
that suffice. Tell me, Isaac, what news of my old friend, La Tour d'Azyr?"
     "He  is  here in Versailles, damn  him  -  a  thorn in the flesh of the
Assembly.  They've burnt his  chateau at  La Tour  d'Azyr.  Unfortunately he
wasn't  in it at the time. The flames haven't even  singed his insolence. He
dreams that  when  this philosophic aberration is at  an end, there  will be
serfs to rebuild it for him."
     "So  there has  been  trouble  in  Brittany?"  Andre-Louis  had  become
suddenly grave, his thoughts swinging to Gavrillac.
     "An abundance of it, and elsewhere too. Can you wonder? These delays at
such a time, with famine in the land?  Chateaux have been  going up in smoke
during the last fortnight. The  peasants took their  cue from the Parisians,
and  treated every castle  as  a Bastille. Order is being restored, there as
here, and they are quieter now."
     "What of Gavrillac? Do you know?"
     "I believe all to be well. M. de Kercadiou was not a Marquis de La Tour
d'Azyr. He was in sympathy with his people. It is not likely that they would
injure Gavrillac. But don't you correspond with your godfather?"
     "In the  circumstances  - no. What you tell me  would  make it now more
difficult than ever, for he must account me one of those who helped to light
the torch that has set fire to so much belonging to his class. Ascertain for
me that all is well, and let me know."
     "I will, at once."
     At  parting, when Andre-Louis  was  on  the  point of stepping into his
cabriolet to return to Paris, he sought information on another matter.
     "Do you happen to know if M. de La Tour d'Azyr has married?" he asked.
     "I don't; which really means that he hasn't. One would have heard of it
in the case of that exalted Privileged."
     "To  be  sure."  Andre-Louis spoke  indifferently. "Au  revoir,  Isaac!
You'll come and see me - 13 Rue du Hasard. Come soon."
     "As soon  and as often as my duties  will  allow. They keep me  chained
here at present."
     "Poor slave of duty with your gospel of liberty!"
     "True! And because  of that I will come. I have a duty to  Brittany: to
make Omnes Omnibus one of her representatives in the National Assembly."
     "That is a duty you will oblige me by neglecting," laughed Andre-Louis,
and drove away.

        CHAPTER IV. AT MEUDONV


     Later in the  week he  received  a visit from  Le Chapelier just before
noon.
     "I  have news for you,  Andre. Your godfather is at Meudon. He  arrived
there two days ago. Had you heard?"
     "But no. How should I hear? Why is he at Meudon?" He was conscious of a
faint excitement, which he could hardly have explained.
     "I don't know. There have been fresh  disturbances in Brittany. It  may
be due to that."
     "And so he has come for shelter to his brother?" asked Andre-Louis.
     "To his brother's house, yes; but not to his brother. Where do you live
at all, Andre?  Do you never  hear any of  the  news? Etienne  de  Gavrillac
emigrated years ago. He was of the household of M.  d'Artois, and he crossed
the  frontier  with  him.  By  now, no  doubt,  he is  in Germany  with him,
conspiring against France. For  that is  what  the emigres are  doing.  That
Austrian woman at the Tuileries will end by destroying the monarchy."
     "Yes,  yes," said Andre-Louis impatiently. Politics  interested him not
at all this morning. "But about Gavrillac?"
     "Why, haven't I  told you that Gavrillac is at Meudon, installed in the
house his brother has left? Dieu de Dieu! Don't I  speak French or don't you
understand the language?  I  believe  that  Rabouillet, his intendant, is in
charge of Gavrillac. I have brought you the news the moment I received it. I
thought you would probably wish to go out to Meudon."
     "Of  course. I will go  at  once  - that is, as  soon as I can. I can't
to-day, nor yet to-morrow. I am too busy here." He waved  a hand towards the
inner room, whence proceeded the click-click of blades, the quick moving  of
feet, and the voice of the instructor, Le Duc.
     "Well, well, that is your  own affair. You  are busy. I leave you  now.
Let us dine this evening at the Caf' de Foy. Kersain will be of the party."
     "A moment!" Andre-Louis' voice arrested him on the threshold. "Is Mlle.
de Kercadiou with her uncle?"
     "How the devil should I know? Go and find out."
     He was gone, and Andre-Louis stood there a moment deep in thought. Then
he turned and went back to resume with his pupil, the Vicomte de Villeniort,
the interrupted exposition of the demi-contre of Danet, illustrating  with a
small-sword the advantages to be derived from its adoption.
     Thereafter he fenced  with the Vicomte,  who was perhaps the ablest  of
his  pupils at the time,  and all the while his thoughts were on the heights
of Meudon, his mind casting up the lessons he had to give that afternoon and
on  the  morrow,  and  wondering  which of  these he might  postpone without
deranging the academy.  When  having  touched the  Vicomte  three  times  in
succession, he  paused  and  wrenched himself back to the present, it was to
marvel at the precision  to be gained by purely  mechanical action.  Without
bestowing  a thought upon what he was doing, his wrist and arm and knees had
automatically performed their  work,  like the accurate fighting engine into
which constant practice for a year and more had combined them.
     Not until  Sunday  was  Andre-Louis  able to satisfy  a wish which  the
impatience  of the intervening  days had converted into a yearning.  Dressed
with more than ordinary care, his head elegantly coiffed
     -  by one of those hairdressers to the nobility  of  whom so many  were
being  thrown out of employment  by the stream  of  emigration which was now
flowing freely -  Andre-Louis mounted his  hired carriage, and  drove out to
Meudon.
     The  house of the younger Kercadiou no more resembled that of  the head
of the family than did his person. A man of the Court, where his brother was
essentially a man of the  soil,  an officer of the  household of M. le Comte
d'Artois, he had built for himself and his  family an  imposing villa on the
heights of Meudon in a miniature  park, conveniently situated for him midway
between Versailles and Paris, and easily accessible from either. M. d'Artois
-  the royal  tennis-player  - had  been amongst the very first to emigrate.
Together  with  the Condes,  the Contis, the  Polignacs, and  others  of the
Queen's intimate  council, old Marshal de Broglie and the Prince de Lambesc,
who realized that  their very  names had become odious to the people, he had
quitted France  immediately after the fall of the Bastille.  He had  gone to
play tennis beyond the frontier -  and there consummate the  work of ruining
the  French  monarchy upon which he and those  others  had  been engaged  in
France. With him, amongst several members  of his  household went Etienne de
Kercadiou, and with Etienne  de Kercadiou went his  family, a wife  and four
children. Thus it was that the Seigneur  de Gavrillac, glad to escape from a
province  so peculiarly disturbed as that of Brittany - where the nobles had
shown themselves the most intransigent of all France - had come to occupy in
his brother's absence the courtier's handsome villa at Meudon.
     That he was quite happy  there  is  not  to be supposed. A  man  of his
almost Spartan habits, accustomed to plain fare and self-help, was  a little
uneasy in this sybaritic abode, with its soft carpets, profusion of gilding,
and battalion of sleek, silent-footed servants
     - for Kercadiou the younger had left his entire household behind. Time,
which at Gavrillac  he had kept so fully employed in agrarian concerns, here
hung heavily  upon his hands. In self-defence he slept a great deal, and but
for Aline,  who made no attempt to  conceal her delight at this proximity to
Paris  and the  heart  of things, it is possible  that he  would have beat a
retreat almost at once from surroundings that sorted so ill with his habits.
Later  on,  perhaps,  he would  accustom himself and grow  resigned to  this
luxurious inactivity. In the meantime the novelty of  it fretted him, and it
was into the presence of a peevish and rather somnolent M. de Kercadiou that
Andre-Louis was ushered  in the  early hours of the afternoon of that Sunday
in June. He was unannounced, as had ever been the  custom at Gavrillac. This
because  Benoit,  M.  de  Kercadiou's  old seneschal,  had  accompanied  his
seigneur upon this soft  adventure, and was installed - to the ceaseless and
but  half-concealed hilarity of the impertinent  valetaille  that M. Etienne
had left - as his maitre d'hotel here at Meudon.
     Benoit had welcomed M. Andre with  incoherencies of delight; almost had
he gambolled about him like some faithful dog, whilst conducting him  to the
salon and the presence of the Lord of Gavrillac, who would - in the words of
Benoit - be ravished to see M. Andre again.
     "Monseigneur!  Monseigneur!" he cried in a quavering voice,  entering a
pace  or two in advance of the  visitor.  "It  is M. Andre... M. Andre, your
godson, who comes  to kiss your  hand. He is here... and  so  fine  that you
would hardly know him. Here he is, monseigneur! Is he not beautiful?"
     And the old servant rubbed his hands in conviction of  the delight that
he believed he was conveying to his master.
     Andre-Louis crossed the threshold of  that great room, soft-carpeted to
the foot, dazzling to  the eye. It  was immensely  lofty, and its  festooned
ceiling  was carried on fluted  pillars  with gilded capitals. The  door  by
which he entered, and  the windows that opened upon the garden,  were  of an
enormous height - almost, indeed, the full height of the room itself. It was
a room  overwhelmingly gilded, with an abundance of ormolu  encrustations on
the furniture, in which  it nowise  differed from what was  customary in the
dwellings of people of birth and wealth.  Never, indeed, was there a time in
which so much gold was employed decoratively as in this age when coined gold
was  almost unprocurable,  and paper money had been put into circulation  to
supply the lack. It was a saying of Andre-Louis' that if these people  could
only  have been  induced to put the  paper on their walls  and the gold into
their  pockets, the finances of the  kingdom might soon have been  in better
case.
     The  Seigneur  -  furbished  and  beruffled   to   harmonize  with  his
surroundings - had risen, startled by this exuberant invasion on the part of
Benoit, who had  been almost as forlorn as  himself  since  their  coming to
Meudon.
     "What is  it? Eh?" His pale, short-sighted  eyes peered at the visitor.
"Andre!" said he, between surprise and sternness; and the colour deepened in
his great pink face.
     Benoit, with his back to his master, deliberately winked and grinned at
Andre-Louis to encourage him not to be put off by  any apparent hostility on
the part of  his godfather. That done, the intelligent old fellow discreetly
effaced himself.
     "What do you want here?" growled M. de Kercadiou.
     "No more than to kiss your  hand, as Benoit  has  told you, monsieur my
godfather," said Andre-Louis submissively, bowing his sleek black head.
     "You have contrived without kissing it for two years."
     "Do not, monsieur, reproach me with my misfortune."
     The little man stood very stiffly  erect, his disproportionately  large
head thrown back, his pale prominent eyes very stern.
     "Did you think to  make your outrageous offence any better by vanishing
in  that heartless  manner, by leaving us without knowledge  of whether  you
were alive or dead?"
     "At  first it was dangerous -  dangerous to my  life  -  to disclose my
whereabouts. Then for  a time I  was in need, almost destitute, and my pride
forbade  me,  after what  I  had  done and the view you must take  of it, to
appeal to you for help. Later... "
     "Destitute?" The  Seigneur interrupted. For a moment his lip  trembled.
Then he steadied himself, and the frown deepened  as  he surveyed  this very
changed and elegant godson of his, noted the quiet richness of his  apparel,
the  paste  buckles  and red  heels  to  his  shoes,  the  sword  hilted  in
mother-o'-pearl  and  silver,  and  the carefully  dressed hair that he  had
always  seen  hanging  in  wisps  about his  face. "At least you do not look
destitute now," he sneered.
     "I am not. I have prospered since. In that, monsieur, I differ from the
ordinary prodigal,  who returns  only  when he needs  assistance.  I  return
solely because  I  love you, monsieur - to tell you so.  I  have come at the
very  first  moment  after  hearing  of  your  presence  here." He advanced.
"Monsieur my godfather!" he said, and held out his hand.
     But M. de Kercadiou remained unbending, wrapped in his cold dignity and
resentment.
     "Whatever tribulations you may  have  suffered or consider that you may
have suffered, they are far less than your disgraceful conduct deserved, and
I observe that  they have nothing  abated your impudence. You think that you
have but to come here and say, 'Monsieur my godfather!' and everything is to
be forgiven and  forgotten. That is your error. You have committed too great
a wrong; you  have offended against everything  by which I hold, and against
myself personally, by your betrayal of my trust in you. You are one of those
unspeakable scoundrels who are responsible for this revolution."
     "Alas, monsieur,  I  see that  you share  the  common  delusion.  These
unspeakable scoundrels  but  demanded  a constitution, as was promised  them
from the throne. They were not to  know that  the promise  was insincere, or
that its fulfilment would be baulked by the privileged  orders. The men  who
have  precipitated  this  revolution,  monsieur,  are  the  nobles  and  the
prelates."
     "You dare - and  at such a time as this - stand there and tell  me such
abominable  lies! You dare to say that  the nobles have made the revolution,
when scores of them, following  the example of  M. le  Duc d'Aiguillon, have
flung their privileges,  even their title-deeds, into the lap of the people!
Or perhaps you deny it?"
     "Oh, no. Having wantonly set fire  to their  house, they now try to put
it out by throwing  water on  it; and  where they fail  they put  the entire
blame on the flames."
     "I see that you have come here to talk politics."
     "Far from  it.  I  have  come,  if  possible,  to  explain  myself.  To
understand is always to forgive. That is a great saying of Montaigne's. If I
could make you understand... "
     "You  can't.  You'll  never make  me understand how you came to  render
yourself so odiously notorious in Brittany."
     "Ah, not odiously, monsieur!"
     "Certainly,  odiously - among those that matter.  It is  said even that
you were Omnes Omnibus, though that I cannot, will not believe."
     "Yet it is true."
     M. de Kercadiou choked. "And you confess it? You dare to confess it?"
     "What a man dares  to do, he should  dare to  confess - unless  he is a
coward."
     "Oh, and to be  sure you were very brave, running away each  time after
you  had done the  mischief, turning comedian to hide  yourself, doing  more
mischief as a comedian, provoking a riot  in  Nantes, and then  running away
again, to become  God knows  what - something dishonest by the affluent look
of you. My God, man,  I tell you that in these  past two  years I have hoped
that  you were dead, and you profoundly disappoint me  that you are not!" He
beat his  hands together, and raised his shrill voice to call - "Benoit!" He
strode away  towards the  fireplace, scarlet  in the face, shaking  with the
passion into which he had worked himself. "Dead,  I might have forgiven you,
as one who had paid for his evil, and his folly. Living, I never can forgive
you. You have gone too far. God alone knows where it will end.
     "Benoit, the door. M. Andre-Louis Moreau to the  door!" The tone argued
an irrevocable determination. Pale and self-contained, but with a queer pain
at his  heart, Andre-Louis  heard that dismissal, saw Benoit's white, scared
face and shaking hands half-raised as if he  were about to  expostulate with
his master. And then another voice, a crisp, boyish voice, cut in.
     "Uncle!"  it cried, a world of indignation and  surprise in  its pitch,
and  then: "Andre!" And this time  a note  almost of gladness,  certainly of
welcome, was blended with the surprise that still remained.
     Both turned, half the room between them at the moment, and beheld Aline
in one of the long, open windows, arrested there in the act of entering from
the garden, Aline in a milk-maid  bonnet of the latest mode, though  without
any of  the tricolour  embellishments that were  so commonly to be seen upon
them.
     The thin lips of Andre's long mouth  twisted into a  queer  smile. Into
his mind had flashed the memory of their last parting. He saw himself again,
standing burning with indignation upon the pavement of Nantes, looking after
her carriage as it receded down the Avenue de Gigan.
     She was  coming  towards  him now with outstretched hands, a heightened
colour  in  her cheeks, a smile of  welcome  on her lips.  He bowed  low and
kissed her hand in silence.
     Then  with a glance and  a  gesture  she  dismissed  Benoit, and in her
imperious fashion constituted herself Andre's advocate  against  that  harsh
dismissal which she had overheard.
     "Uncle," she said, leaving Andre and crossing to M. de Kercadiou,  "you
make me ashamed of you! To  allow a feeling of peevishness to  overwhelm all
your affection for Andre!"
     "I have no affection for him. I had once. He chose to extinguish it. He
can  go  to the  devil; and  please  observe  that I  don't  permit  you  to
interfere."
     "But if he confesses that he has done wrong... "
     "He confesses nothing of the kind. He comes here to argue with me about
these infernal Rights of Man. He proclaims himself unrepentant. He announces
himself with pride to have been, as all Brittany says, the scoundrel who hid
himself under the sobriquet of Omnes Omnibus. Is that to be condoned?"
     She turned to  look at Andre across the wide  space that  now separated
them.
     "But is this really so? Don't you repent,  Andre - now that you see all
the harm that has come?"
     It  was  a clear  invitation to him, a  pleading  to him to say that he
repented, to make his peace with his godfather. For a moment it almost moved
him. Then,  considering  the subterfuge  unworthy, he  answered  truthfully,
though the pain he was suffering rang in his voice.
     "To confess  repentance,"  he  said slowly,  "would  be to confess to a
monstrous  crime. Don't  you see that? Oh, monsieur, have patience  with me;
let me explain myself a  little. You say  that I am  in part responsible for
something of all this that has happened.  My exhortations  of the people  at
Rennes and twice afterwards at Nantes are  said to  have had  their share in
what followed there. It may be so. It would be beyond my power positively to
deny it. Revolution followed  and  bloodshed. More may  yet come.  To repent
implies a recognition that I  have done wrong. How  shall I say  that I have
done wrong, and thus take a share  of the responsibility for all  that blood
upon my soul? I will be quite  frank with you to show you how far, indeed, I
am from repentance. What I did, I actually did against all my convictions at
the  time.  Because  there was no justice  in  France  to  move against  the
murderer of  Philippe  de Vilmorin, I moved in the only way that  I imagined
could make the evil done  recoil upon the hand that did it, and  those other
hands that had  the power but not  the spirit to punish.  Since then  I have
come  to see that I was wrong, and  that Philippe  de Vilmorin and those who
thought with him were in the right.
     "You  must  realize, monsieur, that  it is with  sincerest thankfulness
that  I find  I  have done  nothing  calling for  repentance;  that,  on the
contrary, when France is given the inestimable  boon of  a  constitution, as
will shortly happen, I may take pride  in having played my  part in bringing
about the conditions that have made this possible."
     There was a pause. M. de Kercadiou's face turned from pink to purple.
     "You have quite finished?" he said harshly.
     "If you have understood me, monsieur."
     "Oh, I have understood you, and... and I beg that you will go."
     Andre-Louis shrugged his shoulders and hung his head. He had come there
so  joyously,  in  such yearning,  merely to receive a final  dismissal.  He
looked at Aline. Her face was pale and troubled; but her  wit failed to show
her how she could  come to his  assistance. His excessive honesty  had burnt
all his boats.
     "Very well, monsieur. Yet this I would ask  you to remember after  I am
gone. I have not come to you as one seeking assistance, as one driven to you
by need. I am no returning prodigal,  as I have said. I am one  who, needing
nothing, asking nothing, master of his own destinies, has come to you driven
by  affection only, urged by  the love and gratitude  he bears  you and will
continue to bear you."
     "Ah, yes!" cried Aline,  turning now to her uncle. Here at least was an
argument in Andre's favour, thought she. "That is true. Surely that..."
     Inarticulately he hissed her into silence, exasperated.
     "Hereafter perhaps  that  will  help you to think  of  me more  kindly,
monsieur.
     "I see no occasion, sir, to think  of you at all. Again, I beg that you
will go."
     Andre-Louis looked at Aline an instant, as if still hesitating.
     She answered him by a glance at her furious uncle, a faint shrug, and a
lift of the eyebrows, dejection the while in her countenance.
     It was as if she said: "You see his mood. There is nothing to be done."
     He bowed with that singular  grace  the fencing-room had  given him and
went out by the door.
     "Oh, it is cruel!" cried Aline, in a stifled voice, her hands clenched,
and she sprang to the window.
     "Aline!" her uncle's voice arrested her. "Where are you going?"
     "But we do not know where he is to be found."
     "Who wants to find the scoundrel?"
     "We may never see him again."
     "That is most fervently to be desired."
     Aline said "Ouf!" and went out by the window.
     He called after her, imperiously commanding her return. But Aline
     - dutiful child  - closed her ears lest she  must disobey him, and sped
light-footed across the lawn to  the avenue there to intercept the departing
Andre-Louis.
     As he came forth wrapped in gloom, she stepped from the bordering trees
into his path.
     "Aline!" he cried, joyously almost.
     "I did not want you to go like this. I couldn't let you,  she explained
herself.  "I know  him  better than you  do, and I know that his great  soft
heart will presently  melt. He  will be filled with regret. He will  want to
send for you, and he will not know where to send."
     "You think that?"
     "Oh,  I  know  it!  You arrive  in a  bad  moment.  He  is  peevish and
cross-grained, poor man, since he came here. These soft surroundings are all
so strange to him. He wearies himself away from  his beloved  Gavrillac, his
hunting and tillage,  and  the truth is that  in his  mind  he very  largely
blames you for what has happened
     - for the necessity, or at least, the wisdom, of this change. Brittany,
you must  know, was  becoming  too  unsafe.  The chateau of La  Tour d'Azyr,
amongst others,  was  burnt to the ground some  months ago. At  any  moment,
given a fresh excitement, it may be the  turn of Gavrillac. And for this and
his present  discomfort he blames you  and  your  friends. But  he will come
round presently.  He will be sorry  that  he sent you away like this - for I
know that he loves you, Andre, in spite of all. I shall reason with him when
the time comes. And then we shall want to know where to find you."
     "At number 13, Rue  du Hasard.  The number is unlucky, the name of  the
street appropriate. Therefore both are easy to remember."
     She nodded. "I will walk with you to  the gates." And side by  side now
they proceeded at a leisurely pace down the long avenue in the June sunshine
dappled by the shadows of the bordering trees. "You are looking well, Andre;
and  do you know  that you have changed a  deal?  I am glad  that  you  have
prospered." And then,  abruptly changing the  subject before he had  time to
answer her, she came to the matter uppermost in her mind.
     "I have  so  wanted to see you in all these months, Andre. You were the
only one  who could help me; the only one who could tell me the truth, and I
was angry  with you for  never having  written to say where  you were  to be
found."
     "Of course you encouraged me to do so when last we met in Nantes."
     "What? Still resentful?"
     "I  am never resentful. You  should know that." He expressed one of his
vanities. He loved to think himself a Stoic. "But I still bear the scar of a
wound that would be the better for the balm of your retraction."
     "Why, then, I retract, Andre. And now tell me."
     "Yes, a self-seeking  retraction," said he. "You give me something that
you may obtain something." He laughed quite pleasantly. "Well, well; command
me."
     "Tell me, Andre." She  paused, as  if in some difficulty, and then went
on, her eyes  upon the ground: "Tell  me -  the truth of that event  at  the
Feydau."
     The request  fetched  a  frown to his brow.  He suspected  at once  the
thought  that prompted it. Quite simply and briefly he  gave her his version
of the affair.
     She  listened very attentively.  When  he had done she sighed; her face
was very thoughtful.
     "That is much  what I was told," she said. "But it was added that M. de
La Tour d'Azyr had gone to the theatre expressly for the purpose of breaking
finally with La Binet. Do you know if that was so?"
     "I don't; nor  of any reason why it should be so. La Binet provided him
the sort of amusement that he and his kind are forever craving... "
     "Oh,  there  was a reason,"  she interrupted him. "I was the  reason. I
spoke to Mme.  de Sautron.  I told her  that I would not continue to receive
one  who came  to me  contaminated in that fashion." She  spoke of  it  with
obvious difficulty, her colour rising as he watched her half-averted face.
     "Had  you  listened  to  me...  "  he  was  beginning,  when  again she
interrupted him.
     "M.  de Sautron conveyed my decision to him, and afterwards represented
him to me as a man in despair,  repentant, ready to give proofs - any proofs
- of his sincerity and  devotion to me. He told me that M. de La Tour d'Azyr
had sworn to him  that he  would cut short that affair, that he would see La
Binet no more. And then, on  the very next day I heard of his having all but
lost his life in that  riot  at the theatre. He had gone straight  from that
interview with  M. de Sautron,  straight from those protestations of  future
wisdom, to La Binet. I was indignant.  I pronounced myself finally. I stated
definitely  that  I  would not  in any circumstances  receive M.  de La Tour
d'Azyr  again!  And then they pressed this  explanation  upon me. For a long
time I would not believe it."
     "So that you believe it now," said Andre quickly. "Why?"
     "I have not  said that I believe it now.  But...  but... neither  can I
disbelieve. Since we  came to Meudon M. de La Tour d'Azyr has been here, and
himself he has sworn to me that it was so."
     "Oh, if M. de La Tour d'Azyr has sworn... " Andre-Louis was laughing on
a bitter note of sarcasm.
     "Have  you ever known  him lie?"  she cut in sharply. That checked him.
"M. de  La Tour  d'Azyr is, after all, a man of honour,  and  men of  honour
never deal  in  falsehood.  Have you  ever known him do so, that you  should
sneer as you have done?"
     "No," he confessed. Common justice demanded that  he should admit  that
virtue at least in his enemy. "I  have not known  him lie,  it is  true. His
kind  is too arrogant, too self-confident to have recourse to untruth. But I
have known him do things as vile... "
     "Nothing is as vile," she interrupted, speaking from the code by  which
she had been reared. "It is for liars only - who are first cousin to thieves
- that there is no hope. It  is in falsehood only that there is real loss of
honour."
     "You are defending that satyr, I think," he said frostily.
     "I desire to be just."
     "Justice may seem to you a different matter when at last you shall have
resolved yourself to become Marquise de La Tour d'Azyr." He spoke bitterly.
     "I don't think that I shall ever take that resolve."
     "But you are still not sure - in spite of everything."
     "Can one ever be sure of anything in this world?"
     "Yes. One can be sure of being foolish."
     Either she did not hear or did not heed him.
     "You do not of your own knowledge know that it was not as M. de La Tour
d'Azyr asserts - that he went to the Feydau that night?"
     "I don't," he admitted. "It is of course possible. But does it matter?"
     "It might matter. Tell me; what became of La Binet after all?"
     "I don't know."
     "You don't know?"  She turned to consider him. "And you can say it with
that indifference! I thought... I thought you loved her, Andre"
     "So did I, for a little while.  I was  mistaken. It required  a La Tour
d'Azyr to disclose the  truth to me. They have their  uses, these gentlemen.
They help stupid fellows like  myself to  perceive  important truths. I  was
fortunate that revelation in my case preceded marriage. I can now  look back
upon  the episode with  equanimity and thankfulness for my  near escape from
the consequences of what was no more than an aberration of the senses. It is
a thing commonly confused with  love. The experience,  as you see,  was very
instructive."
     She looked at him in frank surprise.
     "Do you know, Andre, I sometimes think that you have no heart."
     "Presumably  because  I  sometimes  betray intelligence.  And  what  of
yourself, Aline?  What of  your own attitude from the outset where M.  de La
Tour d'Azyr  is concerned? Does that show heart? If I  were to tell you what
it  really shows, we should end by quarrelling again, and  God knows I can't
afford to quarrel with you now. I... I shall take another way.
     "What do you mean?"
     "Why, nothing at the  moment, for you are not in any danger of marrying
that animal."
     "And if I were?"
     "Ah! In that case affection for you would discover to me some  means of
preventing it - unless.. ." He paused.
     "Unless?"  she demanded, challengingly,  drawn to the full  of her sort
height, her eyes imperious.
     "Unless you could  also tell  me that  you  loved him," said he simply,
whereat  she was  as  suddenly and  most oddly softened. And then he  added,
shaking his head: "But that of course is impossible."
     "Why?" she asked him, quite gently now.
     "Because you are what  you  are,  Aline -  utterly good  and  pure  and
adorable. Angels do not mate  with  devils. His wife you  might become,  but
never his mate, Aline - never."
     They had  reached the wrought-iron  gates  at  the  end of  the avenue.
Through these  they beheld  the  waiting yellow  chaise  which  had  brought
Andre-Louis. From  near at hand came the creak of other wheels, the  beat of
other  hooves,  and now  another  vehicle  came  in  sight,  and drew  to  a
stand-still  beside the  yellow  chaise -  a handsome equipage with polished
mahogany panels on  which  the gold and azure  of armorial  bearings flashed
brilliantly in  the sunlight. A  footman  swung to earth to  throw wide  the
gates; but in that  moment the lady  who  occupied the  carriage, perceiving
Aline, waved to her and issued a command.

        CHAPTER V. MADAME DE PLOUGASTEL


     The postilion drew rein, and  the footman opened the door, letting down
the steps  and proffering his  arm to his mistress to assist her  to alight,
since that was  the wish she had expressed. Then he opened  one wing  of the
iron gates, and  held it for  her. She  was a woman  of something  more than
forty,  who once must have  been very lovely, who was very lovely still with
the refining quality that age brings to  some women. Her dress and  carriage
alike advertised great rank.
     "I take my leave here, since you have a visitor," said Andre-Louis.
     "But it is an old acquaintance of your own, Andre. You remember Mme. la
Comtesse de Plougastel?"
     He looked at the approaching lady, whom Aline was now hastening forward
to  meet,  and because she was named to  him he recognized her.  He must, he
thought, had he  but looked, have recognized her without prompting  anywhere
at any time,  and t