his although it was some  sixteen years since last he had
seen  her. The  sight of her  now brought  it all back to him -  a treasured
memory that had never permitted itself to be entirely overlaid by subsequent
events.
     When he was a boy of ten, on the eve of being sent to school at Rennes,
she  had come  on a visit to his godfather, who was  her cousin. It happened
that at  the time he was  taken by Rabouillet to the Manor of Gavrillac, and
there he had been presented to Mme. de  Plougastel. The great  lady, in  all
the glory then of her youthful beauty, with her gentle, cultured voice -  so
cultured that she had  seemed to  speak  a  language almost  unknown to  the
little Breton lad - and her majestic  air of the great world, had scared him
a little  at first.  Very gently had she allayed those fears of  his, and by
some  mysterious  enchantment she  had completely  enslaved  his  regard. He
recalled now the terror in which he  had gone to the embrace to which he was
bidden, and the  subsequent  reluctance  with  which he  had left those soft
round  arms.  He remembered, too, how sweetly she  had smelled and  the very
perfume she had used,  a perfume as of  lilac  - for  memory  is  singularly
tenacious in these matters.
     For three days whilst she had been at Gavrillac,  he had  gone daily to
the manor, and so had spent hours in her company. A childless woman with the
maternal  instinct  strong  within  her,  she  had  taken  this precociously
intelligent, wide-eyed lad to her heart.
     "Give him to me, Cousin  Quintin," he remembered her saying on the last
of those days to his godfather.  "Let me take him back with me to Versailles
as my adopted child."
     But the  Seigneur had  gravely shaken  his head in silent  refusal, and
there had been no further question of such a thing. And then,  when she said
good-bye to him - the thing came flooding back to him now
     - there had been tears in her eyes.
     "Think of me sometimes, Andre-Louis," had been her last words.
     He  remembered how flattered he had  been to have won within so short a
time the affection  of this great lady. The thing had given him  a  sense of
importance that  had  endured  for  months thereafter, finally  to fade into
oblivion.
     But  all was  vividly remembered  now upon beholding her  again,  after
sixteen years, profoundly changed  and matured, the girl - for she had  been
no more in those old days - sunk in  this worldly woman with the air of calm
dignity and complete self-possession. Yet, he insisted, he  must  have known
her anywhere again.
     Aline embraced her  affectionately, and  then answering the questioning
glance  with  faintly  raised  eyebrows  that madame  was directing  towards
Aline's companion -
     "This is Andre-Louis," she said. "You remember Andre-Louis, madame?"
     Madame  checked. Andre-Louis saw  the  surprise  ripple over her  face,
taking with it some of her colour, leaving her for a moment breathless.
     And then the voice  - the well-remembered rich, musical voice  - richer
and deeper now than of yore, repeated his name:
     "Andre-Louis!"
     Her manner of uttering it suggested that it awakened memories, memories
perhaps of the departed youth with which it was associated. And she paused a
long moment, considering him, a little wide-eyed, what  time he bowed before
her.
     "But of course I remember him," she said at last, and came towards him,
putting  out  her hand. He kissed it dutifully, submissively, instinctively.
"And this  is what you  have grown into?" She appraised him, and he  flushed
with pride at  the  satisfaction  in her tone. He seemed to  have  gone back
sixteen years,  and  to be again the  little Breton  lad  at Gavrillac.  She
turned  to  Aline.  "How mistaken Quintin  was  in his  assumptions.  He was
pleased to see him again, was he not?"
     "So pleased, madame, that he has shown me the door," said Andre-Louis.
     "Ah!" She frowned, conning him still  with those dark, wistful  eyes of
hers. "We must change  that, Aline. He is of course very angry with you. But
it is not the  way to make converts. I will plead for you, Andre-Louis. I am
a good advocate."
     He thanked her and took his leave.
     "I leave my case in your hands with gratitude. My homage, madame."
     And  so  it  happened  that  in  spite of  his  godfather's  forbidding
reception of  him, the  fragment  of a  song  was on  his lips as his yellow
chaise whirled him  back  to Paris and the Rue  du Hasard. That meeting with
Mme. de Plougastel  had  enheartened him; her promise to plead  his  case in
alliance with Aline gave him assurance that all would be well.
     That he was justified of this was proved when on the following Thursday
towards  noon his academy was invaded  by  M. de Kercadiou. Gilles, the boy,
brought him  word of  it, and breaking off at once the lesson upon  which he
was engaged, he  pulled  off his mask, and went  as he was  -  in a  chamois
Waistcoat buttoned to the chin and with his foil under his arm to the modest
salon below, where his godfather awaited him.
     The florid little Lord of Gavrillac stood  almost defiantly to  receive
him.
     "I have been over-persuaded to forgive you," he announced aggressively,
seeming thereby to  imply that he  consented to this merely so as to put  an
end to tiresome importunities.
     Andre-Louis  was not misled.  He  detected  a  pretence adopted  by the
Seigneur so as to enable him to retreat in good order.
     "My  blessings  on the  persuaders,  whoever they may  have  been.  You
restore me my happiness, monsieur my godfather."
     He took  the hand that  was proffered and  kissed  it, yielding to  the
impulse of the unfailing habit of his boyish days.  It was an act symbolical
of his complete submission, reestablishing between himself and his godfather
the bond of protected  and protector, with all the  mutual claims and duties
that  it carries.  No mere words could more  completely have  made his peace
with this man who loved him.
     M.  de Kercadiou's  face flushed a  deeper pink, his lip  trembled, and
there  was  a  huskiness in the voice that murmured "My  dear boy!" Then  he
recollected  himself,  threw  back his great  head  and  frowned.  His voice
resumed its habitual shrillness. "You realize, I hope, that you have behaved
damnably... damnably, and with the utmost ingratitude?"
     "Does not that depend upon the point of view?"  quoth Andre-Louis,  but
his tone was studiously conciliatory.
     "It depends upon  a fact,  and not upon any point of view. Since I have
been persuaded to overlook it, I trust that at least you have some intention
of reforming."
     "I... I will abstain  from politics,"  said Andre-Louis, that being the
utmost he could say with truth.
     "That  is something, at least." His  godfather permitted himself to  be
mollified, now that a concession - or a  seeming  concession - had been made
to his just resentment.
     "A chair, monsieur."
     "No, no. I have come to  carry you off to  pay a visit with me. You owe
it  entirely  to Mme. de  Plougastel that I consent to  receive you again. I
desire that you come with me to thank her."
     "I have my engagements here... " began Andre-Louis, and then broke off.
"No matter! I will arrange it. A moment." And he was turning away to reenter
the academy.
     "What    are   your   engagements?    You   are   not   by   chance   a
fencing-instructor?" M. de  Kercadiou had observed the leather waistcoat and
the foil tucked under Andre-Louis' arm.
     "I am the master of this academy - the academy of the late Bertrand des
Amis, the most flourishing school of arms in Paris to-day."
     M. de Kercadiou's brows went up.
     "And you are master of it?"
     "Maitre  en fait  d'Armes. I succeeded to the academy upon the death of
des Amis."
     He  left  M.  Kercadiou  to  think  it  over,  and  went  to  make  his
arrangements and effect the necessary changes in his toilet.
     "So  that is  why  you have  taken  to wearing  a  sword," said  M.  de
Kercadiou, as they climbed into his waiting carriage.
     "That and the need to guard one's self in these times."
     "And do you mean to tell me that a man who lives  by what  is after all
an honourable profession, a profession mainly supported by the nobility, can
at  the  same time associate  himself with these peddling attorneys and  low
pamphleteers who are spreading dissension and insubordination?"
     "You forget that I am a peddling  attorney myself, made so  by your own
wishes, monsieur."
     M.  de  Kercadiou  grunted,  and  took  snuff.  "You  say  the  academy
flourishes?" he asked presently.
     "It does. I  have two assistant instructors. I could employ a third. It
is hard work."
     "That should mean that your circumstances are affluent."
     "I have reason to be satisfied. I have far more than I need."
     "Then  you'll be  able to  do  your share  in paying  off this national
debt," growled the nobleman, well content that as he conceived it
     - some of  the  evil Andre-Louis had helped to  sow should  recoil upon
him.
     Then  the  talk  veered  to  Mme.  de  Plougastel.   M.  de  Kercadiou,
Andre-Louis gathered, but not  the  reason for it, disapproved most strongly
of this visit. But then Madame la Comtesse was a headstrong woman whom there
was no denying, whom all  the world  obeyed. M. de Plougastel was at present
absent in Germany,  but would shortly  be  returning.  It was an  indiscreet
admission from which it was easy to infer  that M. de Plougastel  was one of
those  intriguing  emissaries who came  and went between the Queen of France
and her brother, the Emperor of Austria.
     The  carriage  drew  up  before  a  handsome  hotel  in   the  Faubourg
Saint-Denis, at the corner of the  Rue Paradis, and they  were ushered by  a
sleek servant into  a little boudoir, all gilt and brocade, that opened upon
a terrace above a garden that was a park in miniature.  Here madame  awaited
them. She rose, dismissing the young person who had been reading to her, and
came forward with both hands outheld to greet her cousin Kercadiou.
     "I almost feared you  would  not  keep your word,"  she said.  "It  was
unjust. But then I hardly hoped that you would succeed in bringing him." And
her glance, gentle, and smiling welcome upon him, indicated Andre-Louis.
     The young man made answer with formal gallantry.
     "The memory of you, madame, is too deeply imprinted on my heart for any
persuasions to have been necessary."
     "Ah, the courtier!" said madame, and abandoned him her hand. "We are to
have a little talk, Andre-Louis," she informed him, with a gravity that left
him vaguely ill at ease.
     They sat down, and for a while the conversation was of general matters,
chiefly concerned, however, with Andre-Louis, his occupations and his views.
And  all the while  madame was studying  him  attentively with those gentle,
wistful eyes, until again that sense of uneasiness began to  pervade him. He
realized instinctively that he had been brought here for some purpose deeper
than that which had been avowed.
     At last, as  if the thing  were concerted -  and  the  clumsy  Lord  of
Gavrillac was the last man in the world  to cover his tracks - his godfather
rose and, upon a pretext of desiring to survey the garden, sauntered through
the  windows  on  to  the terrace, over  whose  white  stone  balustrade the
geraniums trailed in a scarlet  riot.  Thence he vanished  among the foliage
below.
     "Now we can  talk more intimately," said  madame. "Come here,  and  sit
beside me." She indicated the empty half of the settee she occupied.
     Andre-Louis went  obediently, but a little uncomfortably.  "You  know,"
she said gently, placing a hand upon his  arm, "that  you have behaved  very
ill, that your godfather's resentment is very justly founded?"
     "Madame,  if  I knew that, I  should  be the  most  unhappy,  the  most
despairing  of men.". And he explained himself, as he  had explained himself
on Sunday to his godfather. "What I did, I did because it was the only means
to my  hand in a country in which justice was paralyzed by Privilege to make
war upon  an infamous  scoundrel who had killed my best  friend  - a wanton,
brutal act of murder, which there was no law to punish. And as if that  were
not enough - forgive me if I speak  with  the utmost frankness, madame -  he
afterwards debauched the woman I was to have married."
     "Ah, mon Dieu!" she cried out.
     "Forgive me. I know that it is  horrible. You perceive, perhaps, what I
suffered,  how I came to be driven. That last affair of  which I am guilty -
the riot that began in the Feydau Theatre and afterwards enveloped the whole
city of Nantes - was provoked by this."
     "Who was she, this girl?"
     It was like a woman, he thought, to fasten upon the unessential.
     "Oh, a theatre girl, a  poor fool of whom I  have no regrets.  La Binet
was her name.  I was a player at the time in her father's troupe.  That  was
after the Rennes business, when it was  necessary to hide  from such justice
as  exists in  France -  the gallows' justice for unfortunates who  are  not
'born.' This added wrong led me to provoke a riot in the theatre."
     "Poor boy," she said  tenderly. "Only a woman's heart can  realize what
you must  have  suffered; and because of that I  can so readily forgive you.
But now... "
     "Ah, but you don't understand, madame. If  to-day I thought that  I had
none  but personal  grounds  for  having lent  a hand  in  the  holy work of
abolishing Privilege, I think I should cut my throat. My  true justification
lies in the insincerity of those who intended  that  the  convocation of the
States General should be a sham, mere dust in the eyes of the nation."
     "Was it not, perhaps, wise to have been insincere in such a matter?"
     He looked at her blankly.
     "Can it ever be wise, madame, to be insincere?"
     "Oh, indeed  it can; believe me, who am  twice your  age,  and  know my
world."
     "I should say, madame, that nothing is wise that complicates existence;
and I  know of nothing  that  so complicates  it as  insincerity. Consider a
moment the complications that have arisen out of this."
     "But  surely,  Andre-Louis, your views have not  been so perverted that
you do not see that a governing class is a necessity in any country?"
     "Why, of course. But not necessarily a hereditary one."
     "What else?"
     He answered her with an epigram. "Man, madame, is  the child of his own
work.  Let there  be no inheriting of rights but from such  a parent. Thus a
nation's best will  always  predominate,  and  such  a nation  will  achieve
greatly."
     "But do you account birth of no importance?"
     "Of none, madame - or else my own  might  trouble  me."  From  the deep
flush  that stained her face, he feared  that  he had  offended  by what was
almost an  indelicacy. But the reproof that  he was expecting did not  come.
Instead -
     "And does it not?" she asked. "Never, Andre?"
     "Never, madame. I am content."
     "You have never.., never regretted your lack of parents' care?"
     He laughed,  sweeping aside her  sweet  charitable concern that was  so
superfluous.  "On the contrary, madame,  I tremble to  think what they might
have made of me, and I am grateful to have had the fashioning of myself."
     She looked at him for  a moment  very sadly,  and then, smiling, gently
shook her head.
     "You do  not want self-satisfaction...  Yet I could wish  that you  saw
things differently, Andre. It is a moment of great opportunities for a young
man of talent and spirit. I could help you; I could help you, perhaps, to go
very far if you would permit yourself to be helped after my fashion."
     "Yes," he thought, "help  me to a halter by sending me  on  treasonable
missions to Austria on the Queen's behalf, like M. de Plougastel. That would
certainly end in a high position for me."
     Aloud he answered more as politeness prompted. "I  am grateful, madame.
But you  will see that, holding  the ideals I  have expressed,  I could  not
serve any cause that is opposed to their realization."
     "You are misled by prejudice, Andre-Louis, by personal grievances. Will
you allow them to stand in the way of your advancement?"
     "If what I call ideals were really prejudices, would it be honest of me
to run counter to them whilst holding them?"
     "If I could  convince you that you are  mistaken!  I could  help you so
much to find a worthy employment for the talents you possess. In the service
of the King you would prosper quickly.  Will  you think of it,  Andre-Louis,
and let us talk of this again?"
     He answered her with formal, chill politeness.
     "I fear that it would be idle, madame. Yet  your interest in me is very
flattering,  and I  thank you.  It  is unfortunate  for  me  that  I  am  so
headstrong."
     "And now who deals in insincerity?" she asked him.
     "Ah, but you see, madame, it is an insincerity that does not mislead."
     And  then  M.  de Kercadiou  came in  through  the  window  again,  and
announced fussily that he must be  getting back to Meudon, and that he would
take his godson with him and set him down at the Rue du Hasard.
     "You must bring him  again,  Quintin," the  Countess said, as they took
their leave of her.
     "Some day, perhaps,"said M. de Kercadiou vaguely, and swept his  godson
out.
     In the carriage he asked him bluntly of what madame had talked.
     "She was very kind - a sweet woman," said Andre-Louis pensively.
     "Devil take you, I didn't ask you  the opinion that you presume to have
formed of her. I asked you what she said to you.
     "She strove to point out to me the error of my ways. She spoke of great
things that I might do - to which she would very kindly help me - if I  were
to come to my senses.  But  as miracles  do not happen,  I  gave her  little
encouragement to hope."
     "I see. I see. Did she say anything else?"
     He was so peremptory that Andre-Louis turned to look at him.
     "What else did you expect her to say, monsieur my godfather?"
     "Oh, nothing."
     "Then she fulfilled your expectations."
     "Eh?  Oh,  a thousand devils,  why  can't  you  express  yourself  in a
sensible manner that  a plain  man can understand  without  having to  think
about it?"
     He sulked after that  most of  the way to the Rue du Hasard, or  so  it
seemed to  Andre-Louis. At least he sat silent, gloomily thoughtful to judge
by his expression.
     "You may come and see us soon again at Meudon," he  told Andre-Louis at
parting. "But please  remember - no revolutionary politics  in future, if we
are to remain friends."

        CHAPTER VI. POLITICIANSI


     One morning in  August the  academy in the Rue du Hasard was invaded by
Le Chapelier accompanied by a  man of remarkable appearance, whose herculean
stature and disfigured  countenance seemed vaguely familiar  to Andre-Louis.
He was  a man  of  little, if anything, over thirty, with  small bright eyes
buried in an enormous  face. His  cheek-bones were prominent, his nose awry,
as  if  it  had been  broken by a blow, and his  mouth  was  rendered almost
shapeless by the scars of another injury. (A bull had horned him in the face
when he was but a lad.) As if that were not enough to render  his appearance
terrible,  his cheeks were deeply  pock-marked. He was dressed untidily in a
long  scarlet  coat  that descended almost to his  ankles,  soiled  buckskin
breeches and boots with reversed tops. His  shirt, none too  clean, was open
at  the  throat,  the  collar  hanging  limply  over  an  unknotted  cravat,
displaying fully the muscular  neck that rose like a pillar from his massive
shoulders. He swung  a cane that  was almost a club in  his left  hand,  and
there was a cockade in his biscuit-coloured, conical hat. He carried himself
with an aggressive, masterful air, that great head of his  thrown back as if
he were eternally at defiance.
     Le Chapelier, whose manner was very grave, named him to Andre-Louis.
     "This is M.  Danton, a brother-lawyer, President  of the Cordeliers, of
whom you will have heard."
     Of course Andre-Louis had heard of him. Who had not, by then?
     Looking at him now with interest, Andre-Louis wondered how it came that
all,  or nearly all the leading innovators,  were pock-marked. Mirabeau, the
journalist Desmoulins,  the  philanthropist  Marat, Robespierre  the  little
lawyer  from  Arras,  this formidable fellow Danton,  and several others  he
could call to mind all bore upon them the scars of smallpox. Almost he began
to wonder  was  there  any  connection between the  two. Did  an  attack  of
smallpox produce certain moral results which found expression in this way?
     He  dismissed the idle speculation, or rather  it  was shattered by the
startling thunder of Danton's voice.
     "This -- Chapelier has told me of you. He says that you are a patriotic
-- ."
     More than by the tone was Andre-Louis startled by  the obscenities with
which the Colossus did not hesitate to interlard his first speech to a total
stranger. He laughed outright. There was nothing else to do.
     "If he has  told you that, he has told you more  than the truth! I am a
patriot. The rest my modesty compels me to disavow."
     "You're  a  joker  too, it seems,"  roared the  other, but  he  laughed
nevertheless, and the volume of it shook the windows. "There's no offence in
me. I am like that."
     "What a pity," said Andre-Louis.
     It  disconcerted the king of the  markets. "Eh? what's this, Chapelier?
Does he give himself airs, your friend here?"
     The spruce Breton,  a very  petit-maitre in appearance by contrast with
his  companion,  but  nevertheless  of  a down-right  manner quite  equal to
Danton's  in  brutality,  though dispensing  with the  emphasis of foulness,
shrugged as he answered him:
     "It is merely that he  doesn't like your manners, which  is not  at all
surprising. They are execrable."
     "Ah, bah! You are all like that, you - Bretons. Let's come to business.
You'll have heard what took place in the Assembly yesterday? You haven't? My
God, where do you live? Have you heard that this scoundrel who calls himself
King of  France gave  passage across  French soil the  other day to Austrian
troops going to crush those who fight for liberty in Belgium? Have you heard
that, by any chance?"
     "Yes,"  said  Andre-Louis coldly,  masking  his  irritation before  the
other's hectoring manner. "I have heard that."
     "Oh! And what do you  think  of it?" arms akimbo,  the Colossus towered
above him.
     Andre-Louis turned aside to Le Chapelier.
     "I  don't think I  understand. Have you brought  this gentleman here to
examine my conscience?"
     "Name of a name! He 's prickly as a - porcupine!" Danton protested.
     "No, no." Le Chapelier was conciliatory, seeking to provide an antidote
to the irritant administered by his companion. "We require your help, Andre.
Danton here thinks that you are the very man for us. Listen now... "
     "That's  it.  You  tell him,"  Danton  agreed.  "You both talk the same
mincing - sort of French. He'll probably understand you."
     Le Chapelier went on without heeding the interruption. "This  violation
by  the  King  of  the  obvious rights of a  country  engaged in  framing  a
constitution  that  shall  make it  free has  shattered  every philanthropic
illusion we  still cherished.  There  are those who go so far as to proclaim
the King the vowed enemy of France. But that, of course, is excessive.
     "Who  says  so?" blazed Danton, and swore horribly by way of  conveying
his total disagreement.
     Le Chapelier waved him into silence, and proceeded.
     "Anyhow, the matter has been more than  enough, added to all the  rest,
to set us by the ears again  in  the Assembly.  It is  open war  between the
Third Estate and the Privileged."
     "Was it ever anything else?"
     "Perhaps not; but it has assumed a  new character. You'll have heard of
the duel between Lameth and the Duc de Castries?"
     "A trifling affair."
     "In  its  results.  But  it  might have  been far  other.  Mirabeau  is
challenged  and  insulted  now  at  every sitting.  But  he  goes  his  way,
cold-bloodedly wise. Others are not  so  circumspect; they meet insult  with
insult,  blow with blow, and blood is being shed in private duels. The thing
is reduced by these swordsmen of the nobility to a system."
     Andre-Louis nodded. He was thinking of Philippe de Vilmorin.  "Yes," he
said, "it  is an old trick  of theirs. It is  so simple and  direct  -  like
themselves. I wonder only that  they didn't hit upon  this system sooner. In
the early days of  the States General,  at  Versailles, it might have had  a
better effect. Now, it comes a little late."
     "But they mean to make up  for  lost time - sacred name!" cried Danton.
"Challenges are flying right and left  between these bully-swordsmen,  these
spadassinicides,  and poor devils of the robe who have never learnt to fence
with anything but a quill. It's just -- murder. Yet if I were to go  amongst
messieurs  les  nobles and crunch an addled head or two with  this stick  of
mine, snap a few aristocratic necks between these fingers which the good God
has given  me  for  the  purpose, the  law  would  send me to atone upon the
gallows. This in a land that is striving after  liberty. Why, Dieu me damne!
I am not even  allowed to  keep my hat  on in the theatre. But they  - these
--s!"
     "He is right," said Le  Chapelier.  "The thing has  become unendurable,
insufferable.  Two  days  ago M. d'Ambly threatened  Mirabeau with his  cane
before the whole Assembly. Yesterday M.  de Faussigny leapt up and harangued
his order by inviting murder.  'Why don't we fall on these scoundrels, sword
in hand?' he asked.  Those  were his very words: 'Why don't we fall on these
scoundrels, sword in hand.'"
     "It is so much simpler than lawmaking," said Andre-Louis.
     "Lagron, the deputy from Ancenis  in the Loire,  said something that we
did not hear  in answer. As he was leaving the  Manege  one of these bullies
grossly insulted him. Lagron no  more than used his elbow to  push past when
the fellow cried out that he had been struck, and issued his challenge. They
fought this morning early in the Champs Elysees, and Lagron was  killed, run
through  the stomach deliberately by a man who fought like a fencing-master,
and  poor Lagron did not even own a sword. He had to borrow one to go to the
assignation."
     Andre-Louis - his mind ever on  Vilmorin, whose case was here repeated,
even to the details - was swept by a gust of passion. He clenched his hands,
and his jaws set. Danton's little eyes observed him keenly.
     "Well? And what do you think of that? Noblesse oblige, eh? The thing is
we must oblige them  too, these --s. We must pay them back in the same coin;
meet  them with the same weapons. Abolish  them; tumble these assassinateurs
into the abyss of nothingness by the same means.
     "But how?"
     "How? Name of God! haven't I said it?"
     "That is where we require your help," Le  Chapelier put in. "There must
be men of  patriotic  feeling among the  more advanced  of  your  pupils. M.
Danton's  idea is  that  a  little band  of these  - say  a half-dozen, with
yourself at their head - might read these bullies a sharp lesson."
     Andre-Louis frowned.
     "And how, precisely, had M. Danton thought that this might be done?"
     M. Danton spoke for himself, vehemently.
     "Why, thus: We post you in the Manege, at the hour when the Assembly is
rising. We  point out the  six  leading phlebotomists, and let  you loose to
insult them before they have time to insult any of the representatives. Then
to-morrow morning, six  --  phlebotomists themselves  phlebotomized secundum
artem. That will give the others something to think about. It will give them
a great deal to think about, by --! If necessary the dose may be repeated to
ensure a cure. If you kill the --s, so much the better."
     He  paused,  his  sallow  face flushed with the enthusiasm of his idea.
Andre-Louis stared at him inscrutably.
     "Well, what do you say to that?"
     "That it  is most ingenious." And Andre-Louis  turned aside to look out
of the window.
     "And is that all you think of it?"
     "I will not tell you what else I think of it because you probably would
not understand. For you, M.  Danton, there is  at least this excuse that you
did not know me.  But you, Isaac - to  bring this gentleman here with such a
proposal!"
     Le Chapelier  was overwhelmed in confusion. "I confess I hesitated," he
apologized. "But M. Danton  would  not take my word for it that the proposal
might not be to your taste."
     "I would not!" Danton broke in, bellowing.  He swung upon Le Chapelier,
brandishing his great arms. "You told me monsieur  was a patriot. Patriotism
knows no scruples. You call this mincing dancing-master a patriot?"
     "Would you, monsieur, out of patriotism consent to become an assassin?"
     "Of  course I would. haven't I told  you  so? haven't I told you that I
would  gladly  go among  them  with my club, and crack them like  so  many -
fleas?"
     "Why not, then?"
     "Why not? Because I should get myself hanged. Haven't I said so?"
     "But what of that-being a patriot? Why not,  like another Curtius, jump
into the gulf,  since you believe that  your country would  benefit by  your
death?"
     M.  Danton showed signs  of  exasperation.  "Because  my  country  will
benefit more by my life."
     "Permit me, monsieur, to suffer from a similar vanity."
     "You? But where would be the  danger  to you? You would  do  your  work
under the cloak of duelling - as they do."
     "Have you  reflected,  monsieur, that  the law  will  hardly  regard  a
fencing-master who kills his opponent as an ordinary combatant, particularly
if it can be shown that the fencing-master himself provoked the attack?"
     "So!  Name of  a  name!"  M. Danton  blew out his  cheeks and delivered
himself with withering scorn. "It comes to this, then: you are afraid!"
     "You  may  think so if you choose -  that I am afraid to  do  slyly and
treacherously that  which a thrasonical  patriot like yourself is afraid  of
doing frankly and openly. I have other reasons. But  that one should suffice
you."
     Danton gasped. Then he swore more amazingly and variedly than ever.
     "By --!  you are right,"  he admitted, to Andre-Louis'  amazement. "You
are right,  and I am wrong.  I am  as bad a patriot as  you are,  and I am a
coward  as  well."  And  he  invoked  the  whole  Pantheon  to  witness  his
self-denunciation. "Only,  you see,  I count for something: and if they take
me and  hang  me, why, there  it  is! Monsieur, we must find some other way.
Forgive the intrusion. Adieu!" He held out his enormous hand..
     Le Chapelier stood hesitating, crestfallen.
     "You understand, Andre? I am sorry that... "
     "Say no more, please. Come and see me  soon again. I would press you to
remain, but it is striking  nine, and  the first  of  my pupils is about  to
arrive."
     "Nor would I permit  it,". said Danton. "Between us we must resolve the
riddle of how to extinguish M. de La Tour d'Azyr and his friends."
     "Who?"
     Sharp as a pistol-shot came that question,  as Danton was turning away.
The tone of it brought him up short. He turned again, Le Chapelier with him.
     "I said M. de La Tour d'Azyr."
     "What has he to do with the proposal you were making me?"
     "He? Why, he is the phlebotomist in chief."
     And Le Chapelier added. "It is he who killed Lagron."
     "Not a friend of yours, is he?" wondered Danton.
     "And it  is La  Tour d'Azyr you desire  me  to kill?" asked Andre-Louis
very slowly,  after the manner of one whose thoughts are meanwhile pondering
the subject.
     "That's  it," said Danton. "And  not a job for  a prentice hand,  I can
assure you.
     "Ah,  but this alters things," said Andre-Louis,  thinking  aloud.  "It
offers a great temptation."
     "Why, then... ?" The Colossus took a step towards him again.
     "Wait!" He put up his hand. Then with chin sunk on his breast, he paced
away to the window, musing.
     Le Chapelier  and Danton  exchanged glances, then watched him, waiting,
what time he considered.
     At first  he  almost wondered why he should not  of his own accord have
decided upon some  such course as this to settle  that long-standing account
of M. de La Tour d'Azyr. What was the  use of this great skill in fence that
he  had  come  to  acquire, unless  he could  turn it to account  to  avenge
Vilmorin, and to make Aline safe from the lure of her own ambition? It would
be an easy thing to seek out La Tour d'Azyr, put a  mortal affront upon him,
and thus  bring him to the  point.  To-day this  would be murder,  murder as
treacherous as that which La Tour d'Azyr had done upon Philippe de Vilmorin;
for to-day the old positions were reversed, and it was Andre-Louis who might
go  to such  an assignation  without a doubt  of the issue. It  was  a moral
obstacle of which he made short work. But there remained  the legal obstacle
he had expounded to Danton.  There was  still a law  in France; the same law
which  he had found it impossible to move against La Tour  d'Azyr, but which
would move briskly  enough against himself in like case. And then, suddenly,
as if by inspiration, he saw the way - a way which if adopted would probably
bring La Tour d'Azyr to a poetic justice, bring him, insolent, confident, to
thrust himself upon Andre-Louis' sword, with all the odium of provocation on
his own side.
     He turned to them again, and they saw that he was  very pale,  that his
great dark eyes glowed oddly.
     "There will probably be some difficulty in finding a suppleant for this
poor Lagron," he said. "Our fellow-countrymen will be none so eager to offer
themselves to the swords of Privilege.
     "True enough,"  said  Le Chapelier gloomily; and  then, as if  suddenly
leaping to the thing in Andre-Louis' mind: "Andre!" he cried.  "Would you...
"
     "It is what I was considering. It  would  give me a legitimate place in
the  Assembly. If your Tour d'Azyrs  choose to seek me out then,  why, their
blood be  upon their own heads. I shall certainly  do nothing to  discourage
them." He smiled curiously. "I am  just a rascal who tries  to be  honest  -
Scaramouche  always, in fact; a creature  of sophistries. Do you think  that
Ancenis would have me for its representative?"
     "Will it have Omnes Omnibus for its representative?"  Le Chapelier  was
laughing, his countenance eager.  "Ancenis will be convulsed  with pride. It
is not Rennes or  Nantes, as  it might have been had  you wished it. But  it
gives you a voice for Brittany."
     "I should have to go to Ancenis... "
     "No  need  at  all.  A  letter  from me  to the  Municipality, and  the
Municipality  will  confirm you at once. No  need  to move from here.  In  a
fortnight at most the thing can be accomplished. It is settled, then?"
     Andre-Louis  considered yet a moment.  There was his  academy.  But  he
could make  arrangements  with  Le Duc and Galoche to carry it  on  for  him
whilst himself directing  and  advising. Le  Duc,  after  all, was  become a
thoroughly  efficient  master,  and he was a trustworthy fellow.  At  need a
third assistant could be engaged.
     "Be it so," he said at last.
     Le  Chapelier  clasped  hands  with  him  and  became  congratulatorily
voluble, until interrupted by the red-coated giant at the door.
     "What exactly does it mean to our business, anyway?" he asked. "Does it
mean that when you are a representative you will not scruple to skewer M. le
Marquis?"
     "If M. le  Marquis  should offer himself to be skewered, as he no doubt
will."
     "I perceive the distinction," said M.  Danton,  and sneered. "You've an
ingenious  mind." He turned  to  Le  Chapelier. "What did you say  he was to
begin with - a lawyer, wasn't it?"
     "Yes, I was a lawyer, and afterwards a mountebank."
     "And this is the result!"
     "As you  say. And do you know that we are  after all not so dissimilar,
you and I?"
     "What?"
     "Once like you I went about  inciting other people to go  and  kill the
man I wanted dead. You'll say I was a coward, of course."
     Le Chapelier prepared to  slip between  them  as the clouds gathered on
the giant's  brow.  Then these  were  dispelled again, and  the great  laugh
vibrated through the long room.
     "You've touched me for the second  time, and in the same place. Oh, you
can fence,  my  lad. We should be friends. Rue des Cordeliers is my address.
Any  -  scoundrel  will  tell  you where  Danton  lodges.  Desmoulins  lives
underneath.  Come  and visit  us  one evening. There's always a bottle for a
friend."

        CHAPTER VII. THE SPADASSINICIDESII


     After  an absence of rather more than a week, M. le  Marquis de La Tour
d'Azyr  was back  in his  place on the Cote Droit of the National  Assembly.
Properly  speaking,  we should already at  this date  allude  to  him as the
ci-devant Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr, for the time was September of 1790, two
months after  the passing - on the motion of that downright Breton leveller,
Le Chapelier - of the decree that nobility should no more be hereditary than
infamy; that just  as the brand of the gallows must not defile the  possibly
worthy descendants of one who had been convicted of evil, neither should the
blazon advertising achievement glorify the  possibly unworthy descendants of
one  who  had  proved himself  good.  And  so  the  decree  had been  passed
abolishing  hereditary  nobility and consigning  family  escutcheons to  the
rubbish-heap  of  things  no  longer  to  be  tolerated  by  an  enlightened
generation of philosophers. M. le  Comte de Lafayette, who had supported the
motion, left  the  Assembly  as  plain  M.  Motier, the great  tribune Count
Mirabeau became plain M. Riquetti, and  M. le Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr just
simple M. Lesarques. The thing was done in one of those exaltations produced
by the approach of the great National  Festival of the Champ de Mars, and no
doubt it was thoroughly  repented  on the  morrow  by  those  who  had  lent
themselves to  it. Thus,  although  law by now,  it was a  law  that no  one
troubled just yet to enforce.
     That, however,  is by the way. The time, as I have said, was September,
the  day dull and showery,  and some of  the damp and gloom  of it seemed to
have penetrated the long Hall of  the Manege, where on their  eight  rows of
green benches elliptically arranged in ascending tiers about the space known
as La Piste, sat some eight  or nine hundred of  the representatives  of the
three orders that composed the nation.
     The matter under  debate  by. the constitution-builders was whether the
deliberating  body  to  succeed  the  Constituent  Assembly  should work  in
conjunction  with  the King,  whether it  should be periodic  or  permanent,
whether it should govern by two chambers or by one.
     The Abbe  Maury, son of  a  cobbler, and therefore  in  these  days  of
antitheses orator-in-chief of the party of the Right - the Blacks,  as those
who fought Privilege's losing  battles were  known - was in the tribune.  He
appeared to  be urging the adoption  of a  two-chambers system framed on the
English model. He was, if anything, more long-winded and prosy even than his
habit; his arguments assumed more and more the form of a sermon; the tribune
of  the  National Assembly  became more  and  more  like  a pulpit; but  the
members, conversely,  less  and less like a congregation. They  grew restive
under that steady flow of pompous verbiage, and it was in vain that the four
ushers in black satin breeches and carefully powdered heads, chain of office
on  their breasts, gilded sword  at their  sides,  circulated in the  Piste,
clapping their hands, and hissing
     "Silence! En place!"
     Equally vain  was the intermittent ringing of the bell by the president
at his green-covered table facing the tribune. The Abbe Maury had talked too
long, and for some  time had failed to interest the members. Realizing it at
last, he ceased, whereupon the hum of conversation became general. And then.
it fell abruptly. There was a silence of expectancy, and a turning of heads,
a craning of necks. Even  the group  of secretaries at the round table below
the president's  dais roused themselves  from their usual apathy to consider
this young man who  was mounting the  tribune of the Assembly for the  first
time.
     "M.  Andre-Louis  Moreau,  deputy  suppleant,  vice   Emmanuel  Lagron,
deceased, for Ancenis in the Department of the Loire."
     M. de  La Tour  d'Azyr shook himself out  of  the gloomy abstraction in
which  he had sat.  The  successor of the deputy he had slain must,  in  any
event, be an object of grim interest to  him. You conceive how that interest
was heightened when he heard him  named, when, looking across, he recognized
indeed in  this  Andre-Louis Moreau  the young scoundrel who was continually
crossing his path, continually exerting against  him a deep-moving, sinister
influence to make him regret that he should have spared his life that day at
Gavrillac two years ago. That he should thus have  stepped into the shoes of
Lagron seemed to M. de La Tour d'Azyr too apt for mere coincidence, a direct
challenge in itself.
     He looked at the young man in wonder rather than in  anger, and looking
at him he was filled by a vague, almost a premonitory, uneasiness.
     At  the  very outset, the presence which in itself he conceived to be a
challenge was to demonstrate itself for this in no equivocal terms.
     "I come before  you," Andre-Louis began, "as a deputy-suppleant to fill
the place of one who was murdered some three weeks ago."
     It  was  a challenging  opening that  instantly  provoked an  indignant
outcry from the  Blacks. Andre-Louis paused, and  looked  at them, smiling a
little, a singularly self-confident young man.
     "The gentlemen of the  Right, M. le President, do not appear to like my
words. But that is not surprising. The gentlemen of the Right notoriously do
not like the truth."
     This time  there  was uproar.  The members  of  the  Left  roared  with
laughter, those  of the Right thundered menacingly. The ushers circulated at
a  pace beyond  their usual, agitated  themselves,  clapped their hands, and
called in vain for silence.
     The President rang his bell.
     Above  the  general din came  the  voice of  La  Tour  d'Azyr, who  had
half-risen from his seat: "Mountebank! This is not the theatre!"
     "No,  monsieur, it is  becoming a hunting-ground  for bully-swordsmen,"
was the answer, and the uproar grew.
     The deputy-suppleant looked round and waited. Near  at  hand he met the
encouraging grin of Le Chapelier, and the quiet, approving smile of Kersain,
another  Breton deputy of his acquaintance. A little farther off he saw  the
great head of Mirabeau thrown back,  the great eyes regarding him from under
a frown in a sort of wonder, and yonder, among all that moving sea of faces,
the sallow countenance of the Arras' lawyer Robespierre - or de Robespierre,
as  the little  snob  now  called himself, having assumed  the  aristocratic
particle as the prerogative  of a man of  his distinction in the councils of
his country. With  his tip-tilted nose in the air, his carefully curled head
on one side, the deputy for Arras was observing Andre-Louis attentively. The
horn-rimmed spectacles he used  for  reading were thrust up  on to  his pale
forehead, and it was  through a levelled  spy-glass  that  he considered the
speaker,  his thin-lipped mouth stretched  a little in that  tiger-cat smile
that was afterwards to become so famous and so feared.
     Gradually the uproar  wore itself out,  and diminished so that at  last
the  President  could  make  himself  heard.  Leaning  forward,  he  gravely
addressed the young man in the tribune:
     "Monsieur,  if  you  wish to  be heard, let me  beg  of you  not  to be
provocative in your language." And then to the others: "Messieurs, if we are
to  proceed,  I  beg  that  you  will  restrain  your  feelings   until  the
deputy-suppleant has concluded his discourse."
     "I shall endeavour to obey, M. le President, leaving provocation to the
gentlemen  of  the  Right. If the few  words  I have  used so far  have been
provocative, I  regret it. But  it  was necessary that I should refer to the
distinguished  deputy whose place  I come so unworthily to fill, and  it was
unavoidable that I should refer to  the event which has procured us this sad
necessity. The deputy  Lagron  was a  man of singular nobility  of  mind,  a
selfless,  dutiful,  zealous man, inflamed by the high purpose  of doing his
duty by  his electors and by this  Assembly. He possessed what his opponents
would call a dangerous gift of eloquence."
     La Tour d'Azyr writhed at the well-known phrase - his own phrase
     - the  phrase that he had used to  explain his action  in the matter of
Philippe de Vilmorin, the phrase that from time to time had been cast in his
teeth with such vindictive menace.
     And then the crisp voice of the witty Canales, that very rapier  of the
Privileged party, cut sharply into the speaker's momentary pause.
     "M.  le   President,"   he  asked   with  great  solemnity,  "has   the
deputy-suppleant mounted  the tribune for the purpose of taking  part in the
debate on the constitution of the legislative assemblies, or for the purpose
of pronouncing a funeral oration upon the departed deputy Lagron?"
     This time it was the Blacks who gave way to mirth, until checked by the
deputy-suppleant.
     "That  laughter is obscene!"  In this truly Gallic fashion he flung his
glove  into  the face  of  Privilege,  determined,  you see,  upon  no  half
measures;  and the  rippling laughter  perished on the  instant quenched  in
speechless fury.
     Solemnly he proceeded.
     "You all  know how Lagron died. To  refer  to his death at all requires
courage,  to laugh in referring  to  it requires something that I  will  not
attempt  to qualify. If I have alluded to his  decease, it is because my own
appearance among you  seemed to render  some such allusion necessary.  It is
mine to take up the burden which he set down. I do not  pretend  that I have
the strength, the courage, or the wisdom of Lagron; but  with every ounce of
such strength and courage and wisdom as  I possess  that burden will I bear.
And I  trust, for  the sake of those who might  attempt it, that  the  means
taken to impose silence upon that eloquent voice will not be taken to impose
silence upon mine.
     There was  a  faint  murmur  of  applause  from the  Left,  splutter of
contemptuous laughter from the Right.
     "Rhodomont!" a voice called to him.
     He  looked in the direction of that voice, proceeding from the group of
spadassins  amid the Blacks across the  Piste, and he  smiled. Inaudibly his
lips answered:
     "No, my friend - Scaramouche; Scaramouche, the subtle, dangerous fellow
who goes tortuously to his ends." Aloud, he resumed: "M. le President, there
are  those  who  will  not understand  that the  purpose  for which  we  are
assembled  here  is  the making  of laws by which France  may  be  equitably
governed, by which France may be lifted out of the morass of bankruptcy into
which she is in danger  of sinking. For there are  some  who want, it seems,
not laws,  but blood;  I solemnly warn  them that this  blood  will  end  by
choking them, if they do not learn in time to discard force and allow reason
to prevail."
     Again  in that phrase  there was something that stirred a  memory in La
Tour  d'Azyr.  He  turned  in  the  fresh  uproar  to  speak to  his  cousin
Chabrillane who sat beside him.
     "A daring rogue, this bastard of Gavrillac's," said he.
     Chabrillane looked  at him  with  gleaming eyes,  his face  white  with
anger.
     "Let him talk  himself out. I don't think he will be heard again  after
to-day. Leave this to me."
     Hardly could  La Tour have told you why, but he  sank back  in his seat
with a  sense of relief.  He had  been telling himself  that here was matter
demanding action, a challenge that he must take  up. But despite his rage he
felt a singular  unwillingness. This fellow had a trick of reminding him, he
supposed,  too unpleasantly of that young abbe done to  death in  the garden
behind  the"  Breton  arme" at Gavrillac.  Not that the death of Philippe de
Vilmorin lay  heavily upon  M.  de  La  Tour  d'Azyr's  conscience.  He  had
accounted himself fully justified of his action. It was that the whole thing
as his memory revived it for him made an unpleasant picture: that distraught
boy kneeling over the bleeding body of the friend he had  loved, and  almost
begging to  be slain with him,  dubbing the Marquis murderer and  coward  to
incite him.
     Meanwhile,  leaving  now  the  subject  of  the  death  of Lagron,  the
deputy-suppleant had at last  brought himself  into order, and was  speaking
upon  the question under debate. He  contributed nothing of value to it;  he
urged  nothing definite.  His speech on the subject was  very brief  -  that
being the pretext and not the purpose for which he had ascended the tribune.
     When  later he was leaving the hall at the end of the sitting, with  Le
Chapelier at his side, he found himself densely surrounded by deputies as by
a body-guard. Most of them were Bretons, who aimed at screening him from the
provocations which his own provocative words in the  Assembly could not fail
to bring  down  upon  his head. For a  moment the massive  form of  Mirabeau
brought up alongside of him.
     "Felicitations, M. Moreau," said the great man. "You acquitted yourself
very well. They  will want your blood, no doubt. But be  discreet, monsieur,
if  I may presume to advise you, and do not allow yourself  to  be misled by
any  false  sense  of quixotry. Ignore their  challenges. I do  so myself. I
place each challenger upon my list. There are some fifty  there already, and
there  they  will  remain.  Refuse  them  what  they  are  pleased  to  call
satisfaction, and all will be  well."  Andre-Louis smiled  and  sighed.  "It
requires courage," said the hypocrite.
     "Of course it does. But you would appear to have plenty."
     "Hardly enough, perhaps. But I shall do my best."
     They had  come through the vestibule, and although this  was lined with
eager Blacks waiting for the young man who had  insulted them so  flagrantly
from  the rostrum, Andre-Louis' body-guard had prevented  any  of them  from
reaching him.
     Emerging now  into  the open, under the great awning at the head of the
Carriere, erected to  enable carriages to reach the  door under cover, those
in front of him dispersed a little, and there was a moment as he reached the
limit of the awning when his front was  entirely uncovered. Outside the rain
was falling  heavily, churning the ground  into thick mud, and for a  moment
Andre-Louis,  with Le Chapelier ever  at his side, stood hesitating  to step
out into the deluge.
     The watchful Chabrillane had seen his chance, and by a detour that took
him momentarily out into the rain, he came face to face with the  too-daring
young Breton. Rudely, violently, he thrust Andre-Louis back, as if  to  make
room for himself under the shelter.
     Not for a second was  Andre-Louis under  any delusion as  to  the man's
deliberate purpose, nor  were those who stood near  him, who  made a belated
and ineffectual  attempt to close about him. He was grievously disappointed.
It  was  not  Chabrillane  he had  been  expecting.  His disappointment  was
reflected on his countenance, to be mistaken for something very different by
the arrogant Chevalier.
     But  if Chabrillane  was the man appointed  to  deal with him, he would
make the best of it.
     "I think you are pushing against  me, monsieur," he said, very civilly,
and with elbow and shoulder he thrust M. de Chabrillane back into the rain.
     "I desire to take shelter, monsieur," the Chevalier hectored.
     "You may do so without standing on my feet.  I have a prejudice against
any one  standing on my feet. My feet  are  very tender. Perhaps you did not
know it, monsieur. Please say no more.
     "Why, I wasn't speaking,  you  lout!" exclaimed the Chevalier, slightly
discomposed.
     "Were you not? I thought perhaps you were about to apologize."
     "Apologize?" Chabrillane  laughed.  "To you! Do you  know  that you are
amusing?" He stepped under the awning for the second time, and again in view
of all thrust Andre-Louis rudely back.
     "Ahi!" cried Andre-Louis,  with a  grimace. "You hurt me,  monsieur.  I
have told  you not  to push against me." He raised  his voice that all might
hear him, and once more impelled M. de Chabrillane back into the rain.
     Now, for  all his  slenderness, his  assiduous daily sword-practice had
given Andre-Louis an arm of iron.  Also he threw his weight into the thrust.
His assailant reeled backwards a few steps, and then his heel struck a baulk
of  timber left on the ground by some workmen that morning, and he sat  down
suddenly in the mud.
     A roar of  laughter  rose from all who witnessed  the fine  gentleman's
downfall.  He rose, mud-bespattered, in  a fury,  and in that fury sprang at
Andre-Louis.
     Andre-Louis had made him ridiculous, which was altogether unforgivable.
     "You shall meet me for this!" he spluttered. "I shall kill you for it."
     His  inflamed  face  was  within a  foot of  Andre-Louis'.  Andre-Louis
laughed.  In  the  silence  everybody heard  the laugh  and the  words  that
followed.
     "Oh, is  that what you wanted? But why didn't you  say  so  before? You
would have spared me  the trouble of knocking  you down. I thought gentlemen
of your profession invariably conducted these affairs with decency, decorum,
and a certain grace. Had you done so, you might have saved your breeches."
     "How soon shall we settle  this?"  snapped Chabrillane, livid with very
real fury.
     "Whenever you please, monsieur. It is for you to  say when it will suit
your convenience to kill me. I think that was the intention  you  announced,
was it not?" Andre-Louis was suavity itself.
     "To-morrow morning, in the Bois. Perhaps you will bring a friend."
     "Certainly, monsieur. To-morrow  morning, then.  I  hope  we shall have
fine weather. I detest the rain."
     Chabrillane  looked  at him  almost with amazement  Andre-Louis  smiled
pleasantly.
     "Don't let me detain you now, monsieur. We quite understand each other.
I shall be in the Bois at nine o'clock to-morrow morning."
     "That is too late for me, monsieur."
     "Any other hour would be  too early for me.  I  do not like  to have my
habits disturbed. Nine o'clock or not at all, as you please."
     "But I must be at the Assembly at nine, for the morning session."
     "I am  afraid, monsieur, you will have  to kill me first,  and I have a
prejudice against being killed before nine o'clock."
     Now this was too complete a subversion of the usual procedure for M. de
Chabrillane's stomach. Here was a rustic deputy assuming with him  precisely
the tone of sinister mockery  which  his class usually  dealt  out  to their
victims  of the Third Estate. And to heighten the  irritation, Andre-Louis -
the actor, Scaramouche always - produced his snuffbox, and proffered it with
a steady hand to Le Chapelier before helping himself.
     Chabrillane, it seemed, after all that he had suffered, was not even to
be allowed to make a good exit.
     "Very well, monsieur," he said.  "Nine o'clock,  then; and we'll see if
you'll talk as pertly afterwards."
     On that he flung away, before the jeers of the provincial deputies. Nor
did it soothe his rage to be laughed at by urchins all the way down the  Rue
Dauphine  because of the mud and filth that dripped from  his satin breeches
and the tails of his elegant, striped coat.
     But though the members  of the  Third  had  jeered on the surface, they
trembled  underneath  with fear and  indignation.  It was too  much.  Lagron
killed by one of these bullies, and  now his successor challenged, and about
to be killed by another of them on the  very first day of his appearance  to
take the dead man's place. Several came now to implore Andre-Louis not to go
to the  Bois, to ignore the challenge and  the whole affair, which was but a
deliberate attempt to  put him out of  the way. He listened seriously, shook
his head gloomily, and promised at last to think it over.
     He  was  in  his  seat again for  the afternoon  session  as if nothing
disturbed him.
     But in the morning, when the Assembly met, his place was vacant, and so
was M. de Chabrillane's. Gloom and  resentment sat upon the  members  of the
Third, and  brought a more than usually acrid note  into their debates. They
disapproved of the  rashness of the new  recruit to their body. Some  openly
condemned his lack of circumspection.  Very  few - and those only the little
group in Le Chapelier's confidence - ever expected to see him again.
     It  was,  therefore, as  much in amazement as in  relief that  at a few
minutes after ten they saw him enter, calm, composed, and bland, and  thread
his  way to his seat.  The speaker occupying  the rostrum at that moment - a
member  of  the Privileged -  stopped short to stare  in incredulous dismay.
Here was something that he could not understand at all. Then from somewhere,
to satisfy  the amazement on both sides of  the assembly, a voice  explained
the phenomenon contemptuously.
     "They haven't met. He has shirked it at the last moment."
     It must  be  so,  thought  all; the mystification ceased,  and men were
settling  back  into their seats.  But now, having reached his place, having
heard the  voice that explained  the  matter to the  universal satisfaction,
Andre-Louis paused before taking his seat.  He felt it incumbent upon him to
reveal the true fact.
     "M.  le President, my  excuses  for  my  late  arrival."  There  was no
necessity for this. It was a mere piece of theatricality, such as it was not
in Scaramouche's nature to forgo. "I have  been detained by an engagement of
a pressing nature. I bring you also  the  excuses  of M. de Chabrillane. He,
unfortunately, will be permanently absent from this Assembly in future."
     The silence was complete. Andre-Louis sat down.

        CHAPTER VIII. THE PALADIN OF THE THIRDIII


     M. Le Chevalier  de Chabrillane  had been closely  connected,  you will
remember, with  the iniquitous affair in which Philippe de Vilmorin had lost
his life. We know enough to justify a surmise that he had not merely been La
Tour d'Azyr's  second  in the  encounter, but actually  an instigator of the
business. Andre-Louis may therefore have felt a  justifiable satisfaction in
offering up the Chevalier's life to the Manes of his murdered friend. He may
have  viewed it as an act of common justice  not to be procured by any other
means. Also  it is to be remembered that Chabrillane had gone confidently to
the meeting, conceiving that he,  a practised ferailleur, had to deal with a
bourgeois utterly  unskilled in  swordsmanship. Morally, then, he was little
better  than  a  murderer,  and that he should have tumbled into the pit  he
conceived that  he  dug  for Andre-Louis  was  a  poetic  retribution.  Yet,
notwithstanding  all  this,  I  should  find  the  cynical  note   on  which
Andre-Louis  announced  the issue to the Assembly  utterly detestable did  I
believe  it sincere. It would justify Aline  of the expressed opinion, which
she held in common with so many others who had come into close contact  with
him, that Andre-Louis was quite heartless.
     You have  seen something of the  same heartlessness in his conduct when
he discovered the faithlessness of  La  Binet although that is belied by the
measures he took to avenge himself.  His subsequent contempt  of the woman I
account  to be born of the  affection in which for a time he  held her. That
this affection was as deep  as he first imagined, I do not believe; but that
it  was as shallow as he would almost be at pains to  make it appear  by the
completeness with which he affects to have  put  her from  his  mind when he
discovered  her worthlessness, I do not believe; nor, as I have said, do his
actions encourage  that belief. Then, again, his callous cynicism in  hoping
that he had killed Binet is also an affectation. Knowing that such things as
Binet are better out of the world, he can have  suffered no compunction;  he
had, you must remember, that rarely level vision which  sees things in their
just proportions, and never either magnifies or reduces  them by sentimental
considerations. At the  same time,  that he should contemplate the taking of
life with such complete and cynical equanimity, whatever the  justification,
is quite incredible.
     Similarly now,  it is not to  be believed that in coming straight  from
the  Bois de  Boulogne, straight from  the killing of  a  man, he should  be
sincerely expressing his  nature  in alluding to the fact  in  terms of such
outrageous flippancy. Not quite to such an extent was he the incarnation  of
Scaramouche. But sufficiently was he so ever to mask his true feelings by an
arresting gesture,  his  true thoughts by an  effective  phrase. He  was the
actor  always, a  man ever calculating the  effect  he  would produce,  ever
avoiding self-revelation, ever concerned to overlay his real character by an
assumed and quite fictitious one. There was in this something of impishness,
and something of other things.
     Nobody laughed now at  his flippancy. He  did not  intend  that anybody
should. He intended to be terrible; and he  knew that the more  flippant and
casual his tone, the more terrible would be its effect. He  produced exactly
the effect he desired.
     What followed  in a place where feelings and practices had become  what
they had  become is not difficult to surmise.  When  the session rose, there
were a dozen spadassins awaiting him in the vestibule, and this time the men
of his  own party were  less concerned to guard  him. He  seemed so entirely
capable  of guarding himself;  he  appeared, for all his circumspection,  to
have  so completely carried the  war into the enemy's camp, so completely to
have  adopted their  own methods, that his fellows scarcely felt the need to
protect him as yesterday.
     As he  emerged,  he scanned  that hostile file,  whose air and garments
marked them  so clearly for what they  were. He paused, seeking  the  man he
expected,  the man he was  most anxious  to oblige. But M. de La Tour d'Azyr
was absent from those  eager ranks. This  seemed to him odd.  La Tour d'Azyr
was  Chabrillane's cousin  and  closest  friend. Surely  he should have been
among  the first  to-day.  The fact was that La  Tour d'Azyr was  too deeply
overcome by amazement and grief at  the utterly  unexpected  event. Also his
vindictiveness  was held curiously in leash. Perhaps he, too, remembered the
part played  by Chabrillane  in the  affair at  Gavrillac,  and saw in  this
obscure  Andre-Louis Moreau, who  had  so persistently  persecuted him  ever
since, an  ordained avenger. The repugnance he  felt  to come to  the point,
with him, particularly after this culminating provocation, was puzzling even
to himself. But it existed, and it curbed him now.
     To  Andre-Louis,  since La  Tour was not one  of that  waiting pack, it
mattered little on that Tuesday morning who should be the next. The next, as
it  happened, was the young Vicomte de La Motte-Royau, one of the  deadliest
blades in the group.
     On the Wednesday  morning,  coming  again  an hour  or  so  late to the
Assembly, Andre-Louis announced - in much the same terms as he had announced
the death of Chabrillane - that  M. de  La  Motte-Royau would  probably  not
disturb the harmony of the Assembly for some weeks to come, assuming that he
were so fortunate as to recover ultimately from the effects of an unpleasant
accident with which he  had quite  unexpectedly  had the  misfortune to meet
that morning.
     On Thursday he made an identical announcement with regard to the Vidame
de  Blavon. On  Friday  he  told  them that he  had been  delayed by  M.  de
Troiscantins,  and  then  turning  to the members  of  the  Cote  Droit, and
lengthening his face to a sympathetic gravity:
     "I am glad to inform you, messieurs, that M. des Troiscantins is in the
hands of a very competent surgeon who hopes with care to restore him to your
councils in a few weeks' time."
     It  was  paralyzing,  fantastic,  unreal; and  friend and foe  in  that
assembly sat alike stupefied under those bland daily announcements. Four  of
the most redoubtable spadassinicides put away for a time, one of them dead -
and  all this  performed with  such an air of indifference and  announced in
such casual terms by a wretched little provincial lawyer!
     He began to  assume in their eyes a romantic aspect. Even that group of
philosophers  of the Cote Gauche, who  refused to worship any force  but the
force  of reason, began to look  upon  him  with a respect and consideration
which no oratorical triumphs could ever have procured him.
     And from the Assembly  the fame of him oozed out gradually over  Paris.
Desmoulins wrote  a panegyric  upon  him  in  his  paper  "Les Revolutions,"
wherein he dubbed him the "Paladin of  the Third Estate," a name that caught
the fancy of the people, and clung to him for some time. Disdainfully was he
mentioned in the "Actes  des Apotres,"  the mocking  organ of the Privileged
party, so light-heartedly and provocatively  edited by a group  of gentlemen
afflicted by a singular mental myopy.
     The  Friday  of  that very busy week in the life of this  young man who
even thereafter is to persist  in reminding us that he is not in any sense a
man of action,  found the vestibule of the Manege empty of swordsmen when he
made his leisurely and expectant egress between Le Chapelier and Kersain.
     So surprised was he that he checked in his stride.
     "Have  they had  enough?" he  wondered,  addressing the  question to Le
Chapelier.
     "They  have had enough of  you, I should  think," was the answer. "They
will prefer to turn their  attention to some one less able to take  care  of
himself."
     Now  this  was  disappointing.  Andre-Louis  had lent  himself  to this
business  with  a  very  definite object in view. The slaying of Chabrillane
had, as far as it went, been satisfactory. He had regarded that as a sort of
acceptable hors  d'oeuvre. But the three who had followed were no affair  of
his at all. He had met them with  a certain amount of repugnance,  and dealt
with each  as lightly as consideration of his own safety permitted.  Was the
baiting of  him  now to  cease  whilst the  man  at  whom he  aimed had  not
presented himself? In that case it would be necessary to force the pace!
     Out there under the awning a group  of gentlemen stood in earnest talk.
Scanning the group in a rapid glance, Andre-Louis  perceived  M.  de La Tour
d'Azyr  amongst them. He tightened his lips. He  must afford no provocation.
It must be for  them to fasten their quarrels upon him.  Already the  "Actes
des Apotres" that  morning had torn the  mask from his face, and  proclaimed
him the fencing-master of the Rue du Hasard, successor to Bertrand des Amis.
Hazardous  as it had been  hitherto for a man of his  condition to engage in
single  combat it  was rendered  doubly so by  this exposure, offered to the
public as an aristocratic apologia.
     Still, matters could not be left where they were, or he should have had
all  his  pains  for nothing. Carefully  looking  away  from  that group  of
gentlemen, he raised his voice so that his words must carry to their ears.
     "It begins to look as if my  fears of having to spend the  remainder of
my days in the Bois were idle."
     Out of the corner of his  eye he caught the  stir his  words created in
that group. Its members had turned to  look at him; but for the  moment that
was  all. A little  more was  necessary. Pacing  slowly  along  between  his
friends he resumed:
     "But is  it  not remarkable that the assassin of Lagror  should make no
move  against Lagron's successor? Or perhaps  it is not  remarkable. Perhaps
there are good reasons. Perhaps the gentleman is prudent."
     He bad passed the group  by now, and he left that  last sentence of his
to trail behind him, and after it sent laughter, insolent and provoking.
     He had not long  to  wait.  Came  a quick  step behind him,  and a hand
falling upon his shoulder, spun him violently round.  He was brought face to
face with M. de La  Tour d'Azyr, whose  handsome countenance  was  calm  and
composed, but whose eyes reflected something  of the sudden blaze of passion
stirring in  him. Behind him  several members of the group  were approaching
more slowly. The  others -  like Andre-Louis' two  companions  - remained at
gaze.
     "You  spoke of me, I  think," said the Marquis quietly. "I  spoke of an
assassin - yes. But to these my friends."  Andre-Louis' manner was  no  less
quiet, indeed the quieter of the two, for he was the more experienced actor.
     "You spoke loudly  enough to be overheard," said the Marquis, answering
the insinuation that he had been eavesdropping.
     "Those who wish to overhear frequently contrive to do so."
     "I perceive that it is your aim to be offensive."
     "Oh,  but  you  are mistaken,  M.  le Marquis.  I  have no wish  to  be
offensive. But I resent having hands violently laid upon me, especially when
they  are  hands that I cannot consider  clean, In the  circumstances I  can
hardly be expected to be polite."
     The elder  man's eyelids flickered.  Almost he  caught himself admiring
Andre-Louis'  bearing.  Rather,  he  feared  that  his  own  must  suffer by
comparison. Because  of this,  he  enraged altogether, and  lost control  of
himself.
     "You spoke  of  me  as  the  assassin of  Lagron. I do  not  affect  to
misunderstand  you.  You expounded your  views  to  me  once  before,  and I
remember."
     "But what flattery, monsieur!"
     "You called me an assassin then,  because I used my skill to dispose of
a turbulent hot-head who made the world unsafe for me. But  how  much better
are you, M. the fencing-master, when you oppose  yourself to men whose skill
is as naturally inferior to your own!"
     M. de La Tour d'Azyr's friends  looked grave,  perturbed. It was really
incredible  to  find this great  gentleman so far forgetting  himself as  to
descend to argument  with  a  canaille  of a lawyer-swordsman.  And what was
worse, it was an argument in which he was being made ridiculous.
     "I  oppose  myself  to  them!" said  Andre-Louis  on  a tone of  amused
protest.  "Ah,  pardon, M. le Marquis;  it  is  they  who  chose  to  oppose
themselves  to me - and so stupidly. They  push me, they slap my face,  they
tread on  my  toes, they call  me  by unpleasant  names.  What  if  I  am  a
fencing-master?  Must  I  on  that  account  submit  to  every   manner   of
ill-treatment  from  your  bad-mannered friends? Perhaps  had they found out
sooner that I am a fencing-master  their manners would have been better. But
to blame me for that! What injustice!"
     "Comedian!"  the  Marquis  contemptuously apostrophized him.  "Does  it
alter the case? Are these men who have opposed you men who live by the sword
like yourself?"
     "On the contrary, M. le Marquis,  I have found them men who died by the
sword  with  astonishing  ease.  I cannot suppose that  you  desire  to  add
yourself to their number."
     "And  why,  if you  please?" La  Tour d'Azyr's  face had flamed scarlet
before that sneer.
     "Oh,"  Andre-Louis  raised  his  eyebrows  and  pursed  his lips, a man
considering. He delivered himself slowly. "Because, monsieur, you prefer the
easy victim - the Lagrons and Vilmorins of  this world,  mere sheep for your
butchering. That is why."
     And then the Marquis struck him.
     Andre-Louis stepped back. His eyes gleamed a moment; the next they were
smiling up into the face of his tall enemy.
     "No better than the others, after all! Well, well! Remark,  I  beg you,
how history repeats itself - with certain differences. Because poor Vilmorin
could not bear a  vile lie with which you goaded him, he struck you. Because
you cannot bear  an equally vile truth which I  have uttered, you strike me.
But always is the  vileness yours.  And now as  then for the  striker  there
is... " He  broke off.  "But why name it?  You will  remember what there is.
Yourself  you wrote it that day with the point  of your too-ready sword. But
there. I will meet you if you desire it, monsieur."
     "What else do you suppose that I desire? To talk?"
     Andre-Louis turned  to  his friends  and  sighed. "So that  I  am to go
another jaunt  to the Bois. Isaac, perhaps you will  kindly have a word with
one  of  these friends  of  M. le Marquis',  and arrange  for  nine  o'clock
to-morrow, as usual."
     "Not  to-morrow,"  said the Marquis  shortly to Le Chapeher. "I have an
engagement in the country, which I cannot postpone."
     Le Chapelier looked at Andre-Louis.
     "Then for M. le Marquis' convenience,  we will  say Sunday  at the same
hour."
     "I do not fight on Sunday. I am not a pagan to break the holy day."
     "But surely  the good God  would  not  have the presumption to  damn  a
gentleman of M. le Marquis' quality on that account? Ah, well, Isaac, please
arrange for Monday, if it is not a  feast-day or monsieur has not some other
pressing engagement. I leave it in your hands."
     He bowed with the air of a man wearied by  these details, and threading
his arm through Kersain's withdrew.
     "Ah, Dieu de  Dieu! But  what a trick of it you have," said  the Breton
deputy, entirely unsophisticated in these matters.
     "To be sure I  have. I have taken lessons at their hands."  He laughed.
He was in excellent good-humour. And Kersam was  enrolled in  the  ranks  of
those who accounted Andre-Louis a man without heart or conscience.
     But in his "Confessions" he tells us - and this is  one of the glimpses
that reveal the true man under all that make-believe
     - that on that night he went down on his knees to commune with his dead
friend Philippe, and to call his spirit to witness that he was about to take
the last step in the fulfilment of the oath sworn upon his body at Gavrillac
two years ago.

        CHAPTER XI. TORN PRIDEX


     M.  de La Tour  d'Azyr's  engagement in the country on that Sunday  was
with M. de Kercadiou. To fulfil it he drove out early in the day to  Meudon,
taking  with him  in his  pocket a copy of  the last issue of "Les Actes des
Apotres," a journal whose merry  sallies  at the expense  of the  innovators
greatly diverted  the Seigneur de  Gavrillac. The  venomous  scorn it poured
upon those worthless  rapscallions afforded him a certain  solatium  against
the discomforts  of expatriation by  which  he was  afflicted as a result of
their detestable energies.
     Twice in the last month,  had  M. de La Tour  d'Azyr gone to visit  the
Lord of Gavrillac at Meudon,  and the sight of Aline, so sweet and fresh, so
bright and of so lively  a mind,  had caused  those embers smouldering under
the  ashes  of the  past, embers which  until  now  he had  believed utterly
extinct, to kindle into flame once more. He desired her as we desire Heaven.
I believe that it was the purest  passion  of his life; that had  it come to
him earlier  he might  have been a vastly different  man. The cruelest wound
that in all his selfish life he  had taken was when she sent him word, quite
definitely after the affair at the Feydau, that she  could not again in  any
circumstances receive him. At one blow -  through that disgraceful riot - he
had  been  robbed of a mistress  he prized  and of a  wife  who had become a
necessity to the very soul of  him.  The sordid love of  La Binet might have
consoled him  for the compulsory renunciation of his exalted  love of Aline,
just as to his exalted  love of Aline  he had  been ready  to sacrifice  his
attachment to La Binet.  But  that ill-timed riot had robbed  him at once of
both.  Faithful to  his word  to Sautron he  had  definitely broken  with La
Binet, only to find that Aline had definitely broken  with  him.  And by the
time that he had sufficiently recovered from his  grief to think again of La
Binet, the comedienne had vanished beyond discovery.
     For all this he blamed,  and  most  bitterly blamed,  Andre-Louis. That
low-born provincial lout pursued him like  a Nemesis, was become indeed  the
evil genius of his  life. That was it - the  evil genius of his life! And it
was  odds that on Monday... He did not like to think  of Monday. He  was not
particularly afraid  of death. He was as brave as his  kind in that respect,
too brave in the  ordinary  way,  and  too confident of  his skill, to  have
considered even remotely such a possibility as that of  dying  in a duel. It
was only that it would seem like a proper  consummation of all the evil that
he had  suffered directly or indirectly through this Andre-Louis Moreau that
he should  perish ignobly by his  hand. Almost he could hear  that insolent,
pleasant  voice  making the flippant announcement to the Assembly on  Monday
morning.
     He  shook off the mood, angry with himself for entertaining it.  It was
maudlin. After all  Chabrillane and La  Motte-Royau  were  quite exceptional
swordsmen, but neither of them really approached his own formidable calibre.
Reaction began to flow, as he drove out  through country lanes  flooded with
pleasant  September sunshine. His spirits  rose.  A premonition  of  victory
stirred  within  him  Far  from  fearing  Monday's  meeting, as  he  had  so
unreasonably  been doing;  he began  to look forward to it. It should afford
him the means of setting a definite term to this persecution of which he had
been the  victim. He  would crush this insolent and persistent flea that had
been  stinging  him  at every  opportunity.  Borne  upward on that  wave  of
optimism, he took presently a more hopeful view of his case with Aline.
     At their  first  meeting a month ago he had used the  utmost  frankness
with her. He had told her the whole truth of his motives in going that night
to the Feydau; he had  made her realize that she had acted  unjustly towards
him. True he had gone no farther.
     But that was very far to  have gone as a beginning. And in  their  last
meeting, now a fortnight old, she had  received him with frank friendliness.
True,  she  had  been a little aloof. But  that was to be  expected until he
quite explicitly  avowed that he had revived the hope of winning her. He had
been a fool not to have returned before to-day.
     Thus  in that mood of new-born confidence - a confidence risen from the
very ashes of despondency - came he on that Sunday morning to Meudon. He was
gay and jovial with M.  de Kercadiou what time  he waited in  the salon  for
mademoiselle to show herself. He pronounced with confidence on the country's
future. There were signs already
     - he wore the rosiest spectacles that morning - of a change of opinion,
of a more moderate  note. The Nation began to  perceive whither  this lawyer
rabble was leading it. He pulled  out "The Acts of the Apostles"  and read a
stinging paragraph. Then, when  mademoiselle at last made her appearance, he
resigned the journal into the hands of M. de Kercadiou.
     M.  de Kercadiou, with his niece's future to consider, went to read the
paper in the  garden,  taking up there a  position whence  he could keep the
couple  within  sight - as his obligations seemed to demand of him  - whilst
being discreetly out of earshot.
     The Marquis made the most  of an  opportunity that might be  brief.  He
quite frankly  declared himself, and begged, implored to  be taken back into
Aline's good graces, to be admitted at least to the hope that one day before
very long she would bring herself to consider him in a nearer relationship.
     "Mademoiselle," he told  her,  his voice vibrating with  a feeling that
admitted of no doubt, "you cannot lack conviction of my utter sincerity. The
very  constancy  of  my devotion should  afford you  this. It is just that I
should  have  been  banished  from  you,  since I  showed myself so  utterly
unworthy  of the great  honour to which I aspired.  But this banishment  has
nowise diminished my devotion. If  you could conceive what I have  suffered,
you would agree that I have fully expiated my abject fault."
     She  looked  at  him with a curious, gentle wistfulness on  her  lovely
face.
     "Monsieur, it is not you whom I doubt. It is myself."
     "You mean your feelings towards me?"
     "Yes."
     "But that I can understand. After what has happened... "
     "It was always so, monsieur," she interrupted quietly. "You speak of me
as  if lost  to you by your own action. That is to  say too much.  Let me be
frank with  you. Monsieur, I was  never yours to lose. I am conscious of the
honour that you do me. I esteem you very deeply... "
     "But, then,"  he cried,  on a  high note  of  confidence, "from  such a
beginning... "
     "Who shall  assure me that it is a beginning? May it not be the  whole?
Had I held you in affection, monsieur, I should have sent for you after  the
affair of which  you have spoken.  I should  at least not have condemned you
without  hearing  your explanation. As  it  was... "  She shrugged,  smiling
gently, sadly. "You see... "
     But his optimism far from being crushed was stimulated. "But it  is  to
give me hope, mademoiselle. If already I possess  so  much, I may look  with
confidence to win more. I shall prove myself worthy. I swear to do that. Who
that is permitted  the privilege of being near you could  do other than seek
to render himself worthy?"
     And then before she  could add a word, M. de  Kercadiou came blustering
through  the  window,  his spectacles  on  his forehead, his  face inflamed,
waving  in his hand  "The Acts  of the Apostles,"  and apparently reduced to
speechlessness.
     Had the Marquis  expressed himself aloud he would have been profane. As
it was he bit his lip in vexation at this most inopportune interruption.
     Aline sprang up, alarmed by her uncle's agitation.
     "What has happened?"
     "Happened?" He found speech at last. "The scoundrel! The faithless dog!
I consented to overlook the past on the clear condition that he should avoid
revolutionary politics in future. That  condition he accepted, and now" - he
smacked the  news-sheet  furiously - "he has played me false again. Not only
has he gone into politics, once more, but he  is actually  a  member of  the
Assembly, and  what  is  worse  he has been  using his assassin's skill as a
fencing-master, turning himself into  a bully-swordsman. My God Is there any
law at all left in France?"
     One doubt M. de La Tour d'Azyr had entertained, though only faintly, to
mar the perfect  serenity of his growing optimism. That doubt concerned this
man Moreau and his relations with M. de Kercadiou.  He knew  what once  they
had  been,  and  how changed  they subsequently were by  the ingratitude  of
Moreau's own behavior in turning against  the  class to which his benefactor
belonged. What he did not know was that a reconciliation  had been effected.
For in the  past month - ever  since circumstances had driven Andre-Louis to
depart  from his undertaking to  steer clear of politics - the young man had
not ventured to  approach Meudon, and as it happened his name  had  pot been
mentioned in La Tour d'Azyr's hearing on  the occasion of either of  his own
previous visits. He learnt of that reconciliation now; but he learnt at  the
same  time that the  breach  was  now  renewed, and  rendered wider and more
impassable  than  ever.  Therefore  he did  not hesitate  to  avow  his  own
position.
     "There  is  a law," he answered.  "The law  that this  rash  young  man
himself evokes. The law of the sword." He spoke very gravely, almost  sadly.
For he realized  that  after all  the ground was  tender. "You  are  not  to
suppose that  he  is  to  continue  indefinitely his  career  of evil and of
murder. Sooner  or later he will meet a  sword that will avenge the  others.
You  have observed that my cousin Chabrillane is among the  number  of  this
assassin's victims; that he was killed on Tuesday last."
     "If  I  have  not  expressed my  condolence,  Azyr,  it  is because  my
indignation  stifles at  the moment every other feeling. The  scoundrel! You
say that sooner or later he will meet a sword that will avenge the others. I
pray that it may be soon."
     The  Marquis answered him quietly, without anything but  sorrow in  his
voice. "I think your  prayer is likely to be heard. This wretched  young man
has an  engagement  for  to-morrow,  when  his  account  may  be  definitely
settled."
     He spoke with such calm conviction that his words had all the  sound of
a  sentence of death. They suddenly  stemmed the flow  of M.  de Kercadiou's
anger.  The  colour receded from his inflamed face;  dread looked out of his
pale eyes, to inform M. de La Tour d'Azyr, more clearly than any words, that
M. de Kercadiou's hot speech had been the expression of unreflecting  anger,
that his  prayer  that retribution might soon overtake  his godson had  been
unconsciously insincere. Confronted now by  the  fact that this  retribution
was about to be  visited upon that scoundrel, the fundamental gentleness and
kindliness of his nature asserted itself; his anger was suddenly whelmed  in
apprehension;  his  affection for  the  lad beat  up to  the surface, making
Andre-Louis' sin, however hideous, a  thing of no account by comparison with
the threatened punishment.
     M. de Kercadiou moistened his lips.
     "With whom  is this engagement?"  he asked in a voice that by an effort
he contrived to render steady.
     M.  de La  Tour  d'Azyr  bowed  his handsome head,  his eyes  upon  the
gleaming  parquetry  of  the  floor.  "With  myself," he  answered  quietly,
conscious  already with  a  tightening of the heart that his answer must sow
dismay.  He caught the sound of a faint outcry from Aline; he saw the sudden
recoil of M. de Kercadiou. And then he plunged headlong into the explanation
that he deemed necessary.
     "In view of  his relations with you, M. de Kercadiou, and because of my
deep regard for  you,  I did my best to avoid  this, even though as you will
understand  the death of my  dear friend  and  cousin Chabrillane seemed  to
summon me to action,  even though I knew that my circumspection was becoming
matter  for  criticism among my friends.  But yesterday this unbridled young
man made further restraint impossible to me. He provoked me deliberately and
publicly. He put upon me the very grossest affront, and... to-morrow morning
in the Bois... we meet."
     He  faltered a  little  at the end,  fully  conscious  of  the  hostile
atmosphere  in  which  he  suddenly  found  himself.  Hostility  from  M. de
Kercadiou,  the latter's  earlier  change of  manner had already led him  to
expect; the hostility of mademoiselle came more in the nature of a surprise.
     He began  to understand  what difficulties  the course  to which he was
committed must raise up for him. A fresh obstacle was to be flung across the
path which he  had just cleared, as he imagined. Yet his pride and his sense
of the justice due to be done admitted of no weakening.
     In bitterness he realized now, as he looked from uncle to niece
     -  his glance, usually  so  direct and bold, now  oddly  furtive - that
though  to-morrow  he  might  kill  Andre-Louis,   yet  even  by  his  death
Andre-Louis would take  vengeance  upon him.  He  had exaggerated nothing in
reaching the conclusion that this Andre-Louis Moreau  was the evil genius of
his life. He saw now that do what  he would, kill  him even though he might,
he could never conquer him. The last word  would always be with  Andre-Louis
Moreau. In bitterness, in rage, and  in humiliation - a thing almost unknown
to  him - did he realize it, and the realization steeled his purpose for all
that he perceived its futility.
     Outwardly   he  showed  himself   calm  and   self-contained,  properly
suggesting a man regretfully accepting the inevitable. It would have been as
impossible to find fault with his bearing as to attempt to turn him from the
matter to which he was committed. And so M. de Kercadiou perceived.
     "My  God!" was all that he  said, scarcely above his breath, yet almost
in a groan.
     M.  de  La  Tour d'Azyr  did,  as  always,  the  thing that sensibility
demanded of him.  He took his  leave. He understood that to linger where his
news  had  produced  such  an effect  would be impossible,  indecent.  So he
departed, in a bitterness  comparable only with his erstwhile optimism,  the
sweet fruit of hope turned to a thing  of  gall even as it touched his lips.
Oh, yes; the last word, indeed, was with Andre-Louis Moreau - always!
     Uncle  and niece looked at each  other as he  passed out, and there was
horror in the eyes of  both. Aline's pallor was deathly almost, and standing
there now she wrung her hands as if in pain.
     "Why did you not ask him - beg him... " She broke off.
     "To what end? He  was in  the right,  and...  and  there are things one
cannot ask; things it would be a useless  humiliation to ask." He  sat down,
groaning. "Oh, the poor boy - the poor, misguided boy."
     In the mind of neither, you see,  was  there any doubt of what must  be
the issue. The calm confidence in which La  Tour d'Azyr had spoken compelled
itself to be shared. He was no vainglorious boaster, and they knew of what a
force as a swordsman he was generally accounted.
     "What does humiliation matter? A life is at issue - Andre's life."
     "I  know.  My God, don't  I  know?  And I would humiliate myself if  by
humiliating myself  I could hope to prevail.  But Azyr is a hard, relentless
man, and... "
     Abruptly she left him.
     She overtook the Marquis as he was in the act of stepping his carriage.
He turned as she called, and bowed.
     "Mademoiselle?"
     At once he guessed her errand,  tasted in anticipation the unparalleled
bitterness of being  compelled  to  refuse  her.  Yet  at her invitation  he
stepped back into the cool of the hall.
     In the middle of the floor of chequered marbles, black and white, stood
a carved table of black oak. By this he halted, leaning  lightly against  it
whilst she sat enthroned in the great crimson chair beside it.
     "Monsieur, I cannot  allow you so  to depart," she  said.  "You  cannot
realize, monsieur,  what  a blow  would  be  dealt  my  uncle if... if evil,
irrevocable evil were to overtake his godson to-morrow. The expressions that
he used at first... "
     "Mademoiselle, I perceived their true value. Spare yourself. Believe me
I am profoundly desolated by circumstances which I had not expected to find.
You must believe me when I say that. It is all that I can say."
     "Must it really be all? Andre is very dear to his godfather."
     The  pleading tone cut him like a knife; and  then suddenly it  aroused
another emotion - an  emotion which he  realized to  be utterly unworthy, an
emotion which,  in his overwhelming pride  of race, seemed  almost sullying,
yet not to be repressed. He hesitated to give  it  utterance; hesitated even
remotely to suggest so  horrible  a thing as that  in a  man  of such  lowly
origin  he might conceivably  discover  a rival.  Yet  that  sudden pang  of
jealousy was stronger than his monstrous pride.
     "And to you, mademoiselle? What is this Andre-Louis Moreau to you?  You
will pardon the question. But I desire clearly to understand."
     Watching her he beheld the scarlet stain that  overspread her  face. He
read  in it  at first confusion, until the gleam  of her blue eyes announced
its source to lie in anger. That comforted him; since he had affronted  her,
he was reassured.  It did not occur to him that the anger might have another
source.
     "Andre and I have been playmates from infancy.  He  is very dear to me,
too; almost I regard him as a brother. Were I in  need  of help, and were my
uncle not available, Andre would be the first man to whom I should turn. Are
you sufficiently answered, monsieur? Or is there more of me you would desire
revealed?"
     He bit his  lip. He was unnerved,  he  thought, this morning; otherwise
the silly suspicion with which he had offended  could never have occurred to
him.
     He  bowed very low. "Mademoiselle, forgive  that I should have troubled
you with  such a question. You have answered more fully than  I  could  have
hoped or wished."
     He  said no more than that. He waited for her to resume. At a loss, she
sat  in  silence awhile,  a pucker on her white  brow, her fingers nervously
drumming on  the  table. At  last  she flung  herself headlong  against  the
impassive, polished front that he presented.
     "I have come, monsieur, to beg you to put off this meeting."
     She  saw the faint raising of  his dark eyebrows, the faintly regretful
smile that scarcely did more than tinge his fine lips,  and she hurried  on.
"What honour can await you in such an engagement, monsieur?"
     It  was  a shrewd thrust at the pride  of race that she  accounted  his
paramount sentiment, that had as often  lured him into error as it had urged
him into good.
     "I do not seek honour in it, mademoiselle, but - I must say it
     -  justice. The engagement, as I have explained, is  not of my seeking.
It has been thrust upon me, and in honour I cannot draw back."
     "Why, what dishonour would  there be in  sparing him? Surely, monsieur,
none  would  call your courage  in  question?  None could misapprehend  your
motives."
     "You are  mistaken, mademoiselle. My  motives would  most  certainly be
misapprehended. You forget that this young man has acquired in the past week
a certain reputation that might well make a man hesitate to meet him."
     She brushed that aside almost  contemptuously, conceiving it the merest
quibble.
     "Some men, yes. But not you, M. le Marquis."
     Her confidence in him on  every count was most sweetly  flattering. But
there was a bitterness behind the sweet.
     "Even I, mademoiselle, let me assure you. And there is more  than that.
This  quarrel which M.  Moreau has  forced upon  me is no new thing.  It  is
merely the culmination of a long-drawn persecution.
     "Which you invited," she cut in. "Be just, monsieur."
     "I hope that it is not in my nature to be otherwise, mademoiselle."
     "Consider, then, that you killed his friend."
     "I find in that nothing with which to reproach myself. My justification
lay in the circumstances - the  subsequent events in this distracted country
surely confirm it."
     "And... " She faltered a little, and looked away from him for the first
time. "And that you...  that you... And what of Mademoiselle Binet,  whom he
was to have married?"
     He stared at her for a moment in sheer surprise. "Was to have married?"
he repeated incredulously, dismayed almost.
     "You did not know that?"
     "But how do you?"
     "Did  I not  tell you that we are as brother  and sister almost? I have
his confidence. He told me, before... before you made it impossible."
     He looked away,  chin in hand, his glance thoughtful, disturbed, almost
wistful.
     "There is," he  said slowly, musingly.  "a singular  fatality  at  work
between that man and  me, bringing us ever each by turns athwart the other's
path... "
     He  sighed;  then  swung  to  face  her again, speaking  more  briskly:
"Mademoiselle, until this moment I had no knowledge -  no  suspicion of this
thing.  But..." He  broke off, considered, and  then shrugged. "If I wronged
him, I did so unconsciously. It would be unjust to blame  me, surely. In all
our actions it must be the intention alone that counts."
     "But does it make no difference?"
     "None that I can discern, mademoiselle. It gives me no justification to
withdraw from  that  to which I am irrevocably  committed. No justification,
indeed, could ever be greater than my  concern for the pain it must occasion
my good friend, your uncle, and perhaps yourself, mademoiselle."
     She rose suddenly, squarely  confronting him,  desperate now, driven to
play the only card upon which she thought she might count.
     "Monsieur," she said, "you did me the honour to-day to speak in certain
terms; to... to allude to certain hopes with which you honour me."
     He looked  at  her almost in fear. In silence, not daring to  speak, he
waited for her to continue.
     "I... I... Will you please to understand, monsieur, that if you persist
in  this  matter,  if...  unless  you can  break  this engagement  of  yours
to-morrow  morning  in the Bois, you  are  not  to  presume to mention  this
subject to me again, or, indeed, ever again to approach me."
     To put the matter in this negative way was as far as she could possibly
go. It was  for him to make  the positive  proposal  to  which she had  thus
thrown wide the door.
     "Mademoiselle, you cannot mean... "
     "I do, monsieur... irrevocably, please to understand." He looked at her
with eyes  of misery, his handsome, manly  face as pale as she had ever seen
it. The hand  he had been holding out in protest began to shake.  He lowered
it  to  his side again, lest  she  should perceive  its tremor. Thus a brief
second,  while  the  battle  was  fought  within  him, the bitter engagement
between  his desires and what he conceived to be the demands of  his honour,
never   perceiving   how  far  his  honour  was  buttressed   by  implacable
vindictiveness.  Retreat,  he  conceived, was impossible without  shame; and
shame  was to him an agony unthinkable. She  asked too  much. She could  not
understand what she was asking, else she would never be so unreasonable,  so
unjust.  But also  he saw that  it would  be futile to  attempt  to make her
understand.
     It was the end. Though he kill Andre-Louis  Moreau in the morning as he
fiercely  hoped he  would,  yet the  victory even  in death  must  lie  with
Andre-Louis Moreau.
     He  bowed profoundly, grave and sorrowful of face as he  was grave  and
sorrowful of heart.
     "Mademoiselle, my homage," he murmured, and turned to go.
     "But you have not answered me!" she called after him in terror.
     He checked  on the threshold, and turned; and there from the cool gloom
of the  hall she saw  him a black, graceful silhouette against the brilliant
sunshine beyond - a  memory of  him that was to cling as  something sinister
and menacing in the dread hours that were to follow.
     "What would you, mademoiselle?  I but spared myself and you the pain of
a refusal."
     He was  gone leaving her crushed and raging.  She sank down again  into
the  great red chair, and sat there  crumpled, her elbows on the  table, her
face  in her hands - a face that was on fire with shame and passion. She had
offered herself,  and she had  been refused!  The inconceivable had befallen
her.  The  humiliation  of it seemed  to her  something that could never  be
effaced.
     Startled,  appalled, she stepped back, her hand pressed to her tortured
breast.

        CHAPTER X. THE RETURNING CARRIAGE


     M. de Kercadiou wrote a letter.
     "Godson,"  he  began, without any  softening  adjective, "I have learnt
with  pain  and indignation  that  you  have dishonoured yourself  again  by
breaking the pledge you gave me to abstain from politics. With still greater
pain and indignation  do I learn that your  name has  become in a  few short
days a  byword,  that  you have  discarded the  weapon  of false,  insidious
arguments against my class - the class to which you owe everything - for the
sword of  the  assassin.  It  has  come to my  knowledge  that  you  have an
assignation to-morrow  with my good friend M. de La Tour d'Azyr. A gentleman
of his station is  under certain obligations imposed upon him  by his birth,
which do  not permit  him  to draw back from an  engagement.  But you labour
under no such disadvantages. For a man of your class to refuse an engagement
of honour, or to neglect it when made, entails no sacrifice. Your peers will
probably be  of  the  opinion  that  you  display  a  commendable  prudence.
Therefore I beg you, indeed, did I think that I still exercise over  you any
such authority as the favours you have received from me should entitle me to
exercise, I would command you, to allow this matter to go no farther, and to
refrain  from  rendering yourself  to  your assignation  to-morrow  morning.
Having no such authority, as  your  past conduct now makes clear, having  no
reason  to hope that  a proper sentiment of gratitude  to me  will induce to
give heed to this my most earnest request, I am compelled to add that should
you  survive to-morrow's  encounter, I can in  no circumstances  ever  again
permit  myself to be conscious of  your existence. If  any spark survives of
the affection that once you expressed for me, or if  you set any value  upon
the affection, which, in spite of all  that you have done  to forfeit it, is
the  chief  prompter of this  letter,  you  will not refuse  to do as  I  am
asking."
     It  was not a tactful  letter. M. de Kercadiou  was  not a tactful man.
Read it  as he  would, Andre-Louis -  when it was delivered  to him  on that
Sunday afternoon by the groom dispatched with it into Paris
     - could  read  into  it  only  concern for  M. La  Tour  d'Azyr,  M. de
Kercadiou's good friend, as he called him, and prospective nephew-in-law.
     He kept