the groom waiting a full hour while composing his answer. Brief
though it was, it cost him very considerable effort and several unsuccessful
attempts. In the end this is what he wrote:
     Monsieur my  godfather - You make refusal singularly  hard  for me when
you appeal to me upon the ground of affection. It is a thing of which all my
life I shall  hail the opportunity  to give  you proofs,  and I am therefore
desolated beyond anything I could hope to express that I cannot give you the
proof you ask to-day. There is too much between M. de La Tour d'Azyr and me.
Also you  do me and my class  -  whatever it may be - less than justice when
you say that obligations of honour are not binding upon us. So binding  do I
count them, that, if I would, I could not now draw back.
     If hereafter  you should persist in the harsh intention  you express, I
must suffer it. That I shall suffer be assured.
     Your affectionate and grateful godson
     Andre-Louis
     He dispatched  that  letter by  M.  de Kercadiou's groom, and conceived
this to be  the end of the matter.  It cut him keenly; but he bore the wound
with that outward stoicism he affected.
     Next morning, at a quarter past eight,  as with Le Chapelier - who  had
come to break his fast with  him  - he was rising from  table to set out for
the  Bois,  his  housekeeper  startled him  by  announcing  Mademoiselle  de
Kercadiou.
     He looked at his watch. Although his cabriolet was already at the door,
he  had a  few minutes to spare. He  excused himself  from Le Chapelier, and
went briskly out to the anteroom.
     She advanced to meet him, her manner eager, almost feverish.
     "I will not affect ignorance of why you have come," he said quickly, to
make short work. "But time presses, and  I warn you that only the most solid
of reasons can be worth stating."
     It surprised  her. It amounted to a rebuff at the  very  outset, before
she had uttered a word;  and that  was the last thing she  had expected from
Andre-Louis. Moreover,  there  was about  him  an air of  aloofness that was
unusual where  she was concerned, and his voice had been singularly cold and
formal.
     It wounded  her.  She was not to guess the  conclusion to  which he had
leapt. He made with regard to her - as was but natural, after all - the same
mistake  that  he  had  made  with  regard  to yesterday's  letter from  his
godfather.  He  conceived  that  the  mainspring of  action here was  solely
concern for M. de La Tour d'Azyr. That it might be concern for himself never
entered  his mind. So absolute was his own conviction of what  must  be  the
inevitable issue  of  that meeting  that  he could  not conceive of  any one
entertaining a fear on his behalf.
     What he  assumed to be  anxiety on the score of the  predestined victim
had  irritated him in  M. de Kercadiou; in Aline it  filled him with  a cold
anger; he argued from  it that she  had hardly been  frank  with  him;  that
ambition was urging her  to consider with favour the  suit of M. de  La Tour
d'Azyr. And  than  this  there was  no  spur  that  could  have driven  more
relentlessly in  his purpose,  since to save her was in his  eyes  almost as
momentous as to avenge the past.
     She conned him searchingly, and the complete calm of him at such a time
amazed her. She could not repress the mention of it.
     "How calm you are, Andre!"
     "I am not easily disturbed. It is a vanity of mine."
     "But... Oh, Andre, this meeting must not take place!" She came close up
to him, to set her hands upon his shoulders, and stood so, her face within a
foot of his own.
     "You know, of course, of some good reason why it should not?" said he.
     "You may be killed," she  answered  him, and  her  eyes dilated as  she
spoke.
     It was so far from anything that he  had expected that for  a moment he
could only stare at her. Then he thought he had understood. He laughed as he
removed her hands from  his shoulders, and stepped back.  This was a shallow
device, childish and unworthy in her.
     "Can you really think  to prevail  by attempting  to  frighten me?"  he
asked, and almost sneered.
     "Oh,  you  are  surely mad!  M.  de  La Tour d'Azyr is reputed the most
dangerous sword in France."
     "Have   you  never  noticed  that  most  reputations  are   undeserved?
Chabrillane was a  dangerous swordsman, and  Chabrillane  is underground. La
Motte-Royau was an even more dangerous swordsman,  and  he is in a surgeon's
hands. So are the other spadassinicides who dreamt of skewering a poor sheep
of a provincial  lawyer. And here to-day comes the chief, the fine flower of
these bully-swordsmen. He comes, for wages long overdue. Be sure of that. So
if you have no other reason to urge.
     It was  the  sarcasm of him  that mystified her.  Could  he possibly be
sincere in his assurance  that he must prevail against M. de La Tour d'Azyr?
To her in  her limited knowledge, her mind filled with  her uncle's contrary
conviction, it seemed that  Andre-Louis was only acting; he would act a part
to the very end.
     Be that as it might, she shifted her ground to answer him.
     "You had my uncle's letter?"
     "And I answered it."
     "I know.  But what  he  said, he will fulfil. Do not dream that he will
relent if you carry out this horrible purpose."
     "Come, now, that is a better reason than the other," said he. "If there
is a reason in  the world that could move me it would  be that. But there is
too much between La Tour d'Azyr and me. There is an oath I swore on the dead
hand of Philippe de Vilmorin. I could never have hoped that God would afford
me so great an opportunity of keeping it."
     "You have not kept it yet," she warned him.
     He smiled at her. "True!" he said. "But nine o'clock will soon be here.
Tell me,"  he  asked  her suddenly, "why did  you not carry this request  of
yours to M. de La Tour d'Azyr?"
     "I  did,"  she  answered  him,  and  flushed  as  she   remembered  her
yesterday's rejection. He interpreted the flush quite otherwise.
     "And he?" he asked.
     "M. de La Tour  d'Azyr's obligations... " she  was beginning: then  she
broke off to answer shortly: "Oh, he refused."
     "So, so. He must, of course, whatever it  may have cost him. Yet in his
place I should have counted the cost as  nothing. But men are different, you
see." He sighed. "Also in  your place, had that been so,  I  think  I should
have left the matter there. But then... "
     "I don't understand you, Andre."
     "I am not so very obscure. Not nearly so obscure  as  I can be. Turn it
over in  your mind. It may help to comfort you presently." He  consulted his
watch again. "Pray use this house as your own. I must be going."
     Le Chapelier put his head in at the door.
     "Forgive the intrusion. But we shall be late, Andre, unless you... "
     "Coming," Andre answered him. "If you will await my  return, Aline, you
will oblige me deeply. Particularly in view of your uncle's resolve."
     She did not answer him. She was numbed. He took her silence for assent,
and,  bowing, left  her. Standing there she heard his steps  going  down the
stairs  together with Le Chapelier's. He was speaking to his friend, and his
voice was calm and normal.
     Oh, he was mad - blinded by self-confidence and vanity. As his carriage
rattled away, she sat down limply, with a sense  of  exhaustion and  nausea.
She  was  sick and faint with  horror.  Andre-Louis was going  to his death.
Conviction of it - an unreasoning conviction, the result, perhaps, of all M.
de Kercadiou's rantings - entered her soul. Awhile she  sat  thus, paralyzed
by hopelessness. Then  she sprang up again, wringing her hands. She  must do
something to avert this horror.  But what could she do? To follow him to the
Bois  and intervene  there would be to make  a scandal for no  purpose.  The
conventions of conduct were all against her, offering a barrier that was not
to be overstepped. Was there no one could help her?
     Standing  there, half-frenzied  by her helplessness, she caught again a
sound of vehicles and hooves  on the cobbles of the street below. A carriage
was approaching. It drew up with a clatter before the fencing-academy. Could
it  be Andre-Louis  returning? Passionately she  snatched  at that  straw of
hope. Knocking, loud and urgent, fell upon  the door. She heard Andre-Louis'
housekeeper, her  wooden shoes  clanking  upon the  stairs, hurrying down to
open.
     She  sped  to  the  door  of  the anteroom, and pulling  it  wide stood
breathlessly  to listen.  But the  voice that floated  up to her was not the
voice she  so  desperately  hoped to  hear. It was a woman's voice asking in
urgent tones for  M. Andre-Louis - a voice  at first  vaguely familiar, then
clearly recognized, the voice of Mme. de Plougastel.
     Excited, she ran to the  head of the  narrow staircase  in time to hear
Mme. de Plougastel exclaim in agitation:
     "He has gone already! Oh, but how long since? Which way did he take?"
     It  was enough to inform Aline that Mme. de Plougastel's errand must be
akin to her own. At the moment, in the general distress and confusion of her
mind, her mental vision focussed entirely on the one vital  point, she found
in this no matter for astonishment. The singular regard conceived by Mme. de
Plougastel for Andre-Louis seemed to her then a sufficient explanation.
     Without  pausing  to  consider,  she  ran  down that  steep  staircase,
calling:
     "Madame! Madame!"
     The portly,  comely housekeeper drew  aside,  and the two  ladies faced
each other on that threshold. Mme. de Plougastel looked white and haggard, a
nameless dread staring from her eyes.
     "Aline!  You here!" she  exclaimed. And  then  in  the urgency sweeping
aside all minor considerations, "Were you also too late?" she asked.
     "No, madame. I saw him. I implored him. But he would not listen."
     "Oh, this is horrible!"  Mme. de  Plougastel shuddered as she spoke. "I
heard of it only half an  hour ago, and I came at once, to prevent it at all
costs."
     The  two  women  looked  blankly, despairingly,  at each other.  In the
sunshine-flooded street  one  or two shabby idlers  were pausing to eye  the
handsome equipage with its magnificent bay horses, and the  two great ladies
on the doorstep of the fencing-academy. From across the way came the raucous
voice of an itinerant bellows-mender raised in the cry of his trade:
     "A raccommoder les vieux soufflets!"
     Madame swung to the housekeeper.
     "How long is it since monsieur left?"
     "Ten minutes, maybe; hardly more."  Conceiving these great ladies to be
friends of her invincible master's latest victim, the good woman preserved a
decently stolid exterior.
     Madame wrung her hands. "Ten minutes! Oh!" It was almost a moan. "Which
way did he go?"
     "The  assignation is for nine o'clock in  the  Bois de Boulogne," Aline
informed her. "Could we follow? Could we prevail if we did?"
     "Ah,  my God! The question is should we come in time? At  nine o'clock!
And it wants but little more than a quarter of an hour. Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!"
Madame clasped and unclasped her hands in anguish. "Do you  know,  at least,
where in the Bois they are to meet?"
     "No - only that it is in the Bois."
     "In the Bois!" Madame was flung into a frenzy. "The Bois is nearly half
as large as Paris." But she swept breathlessly on, "Come, Aline: get in, get
in!"
     Then to her  coachman. "To the Bois de Boulogne by way of the Cours  Ia
Reine," she commanded, "as fast as you can drive. There are ten pistoles for
you if we are in time. Whip up, man!"
     She  thrust Aline into  the  carriage, and  sprang  after her with  the
energy of a girl. The heavy  vehicle - too heavy by  far for this race  with
time - was  moving before she had  taken her seat.  Rocking  and lurching it
went, earning the maledictions of more than  one pedestrian whom it narrowly
avoided crushing against a wall or trampling underfoot.
     Madame  sat back with closed  eyes and trembling lips. Her  face showed
very white and drawn. Aline watched her in  silence. Almost it seemed to her
that  Mme. de  Plougastel was suffering as deeply as  herself,  enduring  an
anguish of apprehension as great as her own.
     Later Aline was to wonder at this. But at the moment all the thought of
which her half-numbed mind  was capable was bestowed  upon  their  desperate
errand.
     The  carriage rolled across the Place Louis XV and out on to  the Cours
Ia Reine  at  last. Along that beautiful, tree-bordered  avenue between  the
Champs Elysees and  the Seine,  almost empty at this hour  of the  day, they
made better speed, leaving now a cloud of dust behind them.
     But  fast to danger-point as  was  the  speed, to  the  women  in  that
carriage  it  was  too slow. As  they reached the barrier at the end  of the
Cours, nine o'clock was striking  in the city behind  them, and every stroke
of it seemed to sound a note of doom.
     Yet  here at  the  barrier the regulations compelled  a momentary halt.
Aline enquired  of the sergeant-in-charge how long it  was since a cabriolet
such as she described had gone  that way. She was answered that  some twenty
minutes  ago a  vehicle had passed the barrier containing  the  deputy M. le
Chapelier and the  Paladin of the Third Estate, M.  Moreau. The sergeant was
very well informed. He could make a shrewd  guess, he said, with a  grin, of
the business that took M. Moreau that way so early in the day.
     They left him, to  speed on now through the open country, following the
road that  continued to hug  the  river.  They  sat back mutely  despairing,
staring hopelessly ahead,  Aline's hand clasped  tight  in madame's. In  the
distance,  across  the meadows on their right, they could  see  already  the
long, dusky  line  of  trees of  the  Bois, and presently the carriage swung
aside following a branch of the road that turned to the right, away from the
river and heading straight for the forest.
     Mademoiselle broke at last the silence of hopelessness that had reigned
between them since they had passed the barrier.
     "Oh, it is impossible that we should come in time! Impossible!"
     "Don't say it! Don't say it!" madame cried out.
     "But  it is  long  past  nine,  madame!  Andre  would be punctual,  and
these... affairs do not take long. It... it will be all over by now.
     Madame shivered,  and closed  her  eyes. Presently, however, she opened
them again, and stirred. Then she put her head from the window. "A  carriage
is approaching," she announced, and her tone conveyed the thing she feared.
     "Not already!  Oh,  not already!" Thus  Aline  expressed  the  silently
communicated  thought. She  experienced a difficulty  in breathing, felt the
sudden  need of  air. Something in her  throat  was throbbing as if it would
suffocate her; a mist came and went before her eyes.
     In a cloud  of  dust an open caleche was  speeding towards them, coming
from the  Bois.  They  watched it, both  pale,  neither  venturing to speak,
Aline, indeed, without breath to do so.
     As it  approached,  it  slowed down, perforce, as they did, to effect a
safe  passage  in that narrow  road. Aline  was at the window with  Mme.  de
Plougastel,  and  with fearful eyes both looked into this open carriage that
was drawing abreast of them.
     "Which of them is it, madame? Oh, which of  them?" gasped Aline, scarce
daring to look, her senses swimming.
     Qn the near side sat a swarthy young gentleman unknown to either of the
ladies. He was smiling as he spoke to his companion. A moment  later and the
man  sitting beyond came into view. He was  not  smiling. His face was white
and set, and it was the face of the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr.
     For  a long moment, in  speechless  horror, both  women stared at  him,
until, perceiving them, blankest surprise invaded his stern face.
     In that moment, with  a long shuddering sigh Aline sank swooning to the
carriage floor behind Mme. de Plougastel.

        CHAPTER XI. INFERENCESI


     By fast driving  Andre-Louis had reached the ground some  minutes ahead
of time, notwithstanding the slight delay in setting out. There he had found
M. de La Tour  d'Azyr already awaiting him,  supported by a M. d'Ormesson, a
swarthy  young gentleman in the blue uniform of a  captain in the  Gardes du
Corps.
     Andre-Louis had been silent and  preoccupied throughout  that drive. He
was perturbed by  his last interview with Mademoiselle de Kercadiou  and the
rash inferences which he had drawn as to her motives.
     "Decidedly," he had said, "this man must be killed."
     Le  Chapelier had  not  answered  him.  Almost, indeed,  had the Breton
shuddered at his compatriot's cold-bloodedness. He had often of late thought
that   this  fellow  Moreau  was  hardly  human.  Also  he  had  found   him
incomprehensibly inconsistent.  When first this spadassinicide  business had
been proposed to him, he had been so very lofty  and disdainful. Yet, having
embraced it,  he went about it at times  with  a ghoulish flippancy that was
revolting, at times with a detachment that was more revolting still.
     Their preparations were  made quickly and in silence, yet without undue
haste or other sign of nervousness on either side. In both men the same grim
determination  prevailed. The  opponent must  be  killed; there could be  no
half-measures here. Stripped each of coat and  waistcoat, shoeless  and with
shirt-sleeves rolled  to the elbow, they faced each  other at last, with the
common resolve of paying in full the long score that  stood between  them. I
doubt  if  either  of  them  entertained a misgiving as to what must  be the
issue.
     Beside them, and opposite each other, stood Le Chapelier and  the young
captain, alert and watchful.
     "Allez, messieurs!"
     The  slender, wickedly delicate  blades clashed  together,  and after a
momentary glizade were whirling,  swift and bright as lightnings, and almost
as  impossible  to  follow  with  the  eye.  The  Marquis  led  the  attack,
impetuously and vigorously, and almost at once Andre-Louis realized  that he
had  to  deal  with  an opponent  of  a  very  different mettle  from  those
successive duellists of last week, not excluding La Motte-Royau, of terrible
reputation.
     Here was a  man whom much and constant practice had given extraordinary
speed and a technique that was almost  perfect. In addition, he enjoyed over
Andre-Louis  physical  advantages  of strength and  length  of  reach, which
rendered  him  altogether  formidable.  And  he  was  cool,  too;  cool  and
self-contained;  fearless  and purposeful. Would anything  shake that  calm,
wondered Andre-Louis?
     He desired the  punishment to be  as  full  as he could  make  it.  Not
content to kill  the Marquis as the Marquis had killed Philippe, he  desired
that  he  should  first know himself  as  powerless to avert that  death  as
Philippe  had been.  Nothing  less would content Andre-Louis.  M. le Marquis
must begin by tasting of that cup of despair. It was in the account; part of
the quittance due.
     As with a breaking  sweep Andre-Louis parried  the heavy lunge in which
that first series of passes culminated, he actually laughed
     - gleefully, after the fashion of a boy at a sport he loves.
     That extraordinary,  ill-timed  laugh  made  M.  de  La  Tour  d'Azyr's
recovery hastier  and less correctly dignified  than it would otherwise have
been. It startled and discomposed him, who had already  been  discomposed by
the  failure to  get home with a lunge so  beautifully timed  and  so  truly
delivered.
     He, too, had realized that his opponent's force was above anything that
he  could  have  expected, fencing-master though he might  be, and  on  that
account he had put forth his utmost energy to make an end at once.
     More  than the actual  parry,  the  laugh by which it  was  accompanied
seemed to make of that end no more than a beginning.  And yet it was the end
of something. It was the end of  that  absolute confidence that had hitherto
inspired M. de La Tour d'Azyr. He no longer looked upon the issue as a thing
forgone. He realized that if he was to prevail in this encounter, he must go
warily and fence as he had never fenced yet in all his life.
     They  settled down again; and again - on the principle  this  time that
the  soundest defence is  in attack - it was the  Marquis who made the game.
Andre-Louis allowed him to do so, desired him to do so; desired him to spend
himself and  that  magnificent speed of  his against the greater  speed that
whole days  of  fencing  in  succession for nearly two years  had given  the
master. With a beautiful, easy pressure  of forte on foible Andre-Louis kept
himself completely covered in  that  second bout, which once more culminated
in a lunge.
     Expecting it  now, Andre-Louis parried it by no more than a  deflecting
touch.  At the  same moment he  stepped suddenly forward, right  within  the
other's guard,  thus placing  his man so completely at his mercy that, as if
fascinated, the Marquis did not even attempt to recover himself.
     This time Andre-Louis did  not laugh:  He just smiled into the dilating
eyes of M. de La Tour d'Azyr, and made no shift to use his advantage.
     "Come,  come, monsieur!" he  bade  him  sharply. "Am I to run my  blade
through  an uncovered  man?" Deliberately he  fell  back, whilst his  shaken
opponent recovered himself at last.
     M. d'Ormesson released the breath which horror had for a moment caught.
Le Chapelier swore softly, muttering:
     "Name of  a name! It  is tempting  Providence to play the  fool in this
fashion!"
     Andre-Louis observed the  ashen pallor that now over spread the face of
his opponent.
     "I think you begin to realize, monsieur, what Philippe de Vilmorin must
have  felt that day  at Gavrillac. I  desired that you should first  do  so.
Since that is accomplished, why, here's to make an end."
     He went in with lightning rapidity. For a moment his point seemed to La
Tour d'Azyr to be everywhere at once,  and  then from  a low  engagement  in
sixte,  Andre-Louis stretched forward with swift  and vigorous ease to lunge
in tierce. He drove his  point to  transfix his opponent  whom a  series  of
calculated  disengages  uncovered  in that line. But to  his  amazement  and
chagrin, La Tour d'Azyr  parried the stroke;  infinitely more to his chagrin
La Tour d'Azyr parried it just too late.  Had he completely parried it,  all
would yet have been well.  But striking the blade  in the last fraction of a
second, the Marquis  deflected the point  from the line of his body, yet not
so completely  but that  a couple of  feet  of that hard-driven  steel  tore
through the muscles of his sword-arm.
     To the seconds  none  of these details  had been visible. All that they
had  seen had  been  a swift whirl of flashing blades, and then  Andre-Louis
stretched  almost to the  ground in an  upward  lunge  that  had pierced the
Marquis' right arm just below the shoulder.
     The  sword fell  from the suddenly  relaxed grip  of La  Tour  d'Azyr's
fingers,  which had been rendered powerless, and he stood now disarmed,  his
lip  in his teeth, his  face white, his chest  heaving, before his opponent,
who had at once recovered. With the blood-tinged tip of his sword resting on
the  ground, Andre-Louis  surveyed  him grimly,  as we  survey the prey that
through our own clumsiness has escaped us at the last moment.
     In the Assembly  and  in the newspapers this might be hailed as another
victory for  the Paladin  of the Third  Estate; only himself could  know the
extent and the bitternest of the failure.
     M. d'Ormesson had sprung to the side of his principal.
     "You are hurt!" he had cried stupidly.
     "It is nothing," said La Tour d'Azyr. "A scratch." But his lip writhed,
and the torn sleeve of his fine cambric shirt was full of blood.
     D'Ormesson, a practical man in such matters, produced a linen kerchief,
which he tore quickly into strips to improvise a bandage.
     Still  Andre-Louis continued to  stand there, looking on as if bemused.
He continued  so until Le Chapelier touched him on  the arm. Then at last he
roused himself,  sighed, and turned away to resume his garments, nor  did he
address or look again at his late opponent, but left the ground at once.
     As, with Le  Chapelier,  he was walking slowly and in silent  dejection
towards the entrance  of the Bois, where  they had left their carriage, they
were passed  by the caleche conveying  La Tour d'Azyr and his second - which
had originally  driven almost  right up to  the  spot of the  encounter. The
Marquis' wounded arm was carried in a sling improvised  from his companion's
sword-belt.  His sky-blue  coat with three collars  had  been  buttoned over
this,  so  that the  right  sleeve hung  empty.  Otherwise, saving a certain
pallor, he looked much his usual self.
     And now you understand how it was that  he was the first to return, and
that seeing him thus returning,  apparently safe and sound,  the two ladies,
intent  upon  preventing the encounter, should have assumed that their worst
fears were realized.
     Mme. de Plougastel attempted  to call  out, but  her  voice refused its
office. She attempted to throw open the door  of her own  carriage; but  her
fingers fumbled  clumsily  and ineffectively with the handle.  And meanwhile
the caleche was  slowly  passing,  La  Tour d'Azyr's fine eyes sombrely  yet
intently meeting her own anguished gaze. And then she saw something else. M.
d'Ormesson, leaning back  again from the  forward inclination of his body to
join his own to his companion's  salutation of  the Countess,  disclosed the
empty right  sleeve of M. de La Tour d'Azyr's blue coat. More, the near side
of the coat itself turned back from the point  near the throat  where it was
caught  together by single button,  revealed the  slung  arm beneath  in its
blood. sodden cambric sleeve.
     Even  now she feared  to jump  to  the  obvious  conclusion feared lest
perhaps the Marquis,  though himself wounded, might have dealt his adversary
a deadlier wound.
     She found her voice at  last, and at  the same moment  signalled to the
driver of the caleche to stop.
     As it was Pulled to  a standstill,  M. d'Ormesson alighted, and so  met
madame in the little space between the two carriages.
     "Where is M. Moreau?" was the question with which she surprised him.
     "Following at his leisure, no doubt, madame," he answered, recovering.
     "He is not hurt?"
     "Unfortunately it is we who... " M. d'Ormesson was beginning, when from
behind him M. de La Tour d'Azyr's voice cut in crisply:
     "This interest on your part in M. Moreau, dear Countess... "
     He broke off, observing a vague  challenge  in  the air  with which she
confronted him. But indeed his sentence did not need completing.
     There  was  a  vaguely  awkward  pause.  And  then  she  looked  at  M.
d'Ormesson.  Her  manner  changed.  She  offered  what  appeared  to  be  an
explanation of her concern for M. Moreau.
     "Mademoiselle de Kercadiou is with me. The poor child has fainted."
     There was more,  a deal more, she would have said just then, but for M.
d'Ormesson's presence.
     Moved by a  deep solicitude for  Mademoiselle de Kertadiou, de  La Tour
d'Azyr sprang up despite his wound.
     "I  am  in  poor  case  to  render assistance,  madame,"  he  said,  an
apologetic smile on his pale face. "But... "
     With the aid of d'Ormesson, and in spite of the latter's protestations,
he  got down from the caleche,  which then  moved on a little  way, so as to
leave the  road clear - for another  carriage that was  approaching from the
direction of the Bois.
     And  thus it happened  that when a  few moments later that  approaching
cabriolet overtook and passed the halted vehicles, Andre-Louis beheld a very
touching  scene.  Standing up  to obtain a better view,  he saw  Aline in  a
half-swooning condition - she was beginning to revive by now - seated in the
doorway of the carriage, supported by Mme. de Plougastel. In  an attitude of
deepest  concern,  M. de La  Tour  d'Azyr,  his  wound notwithstanding,  was
bending over the  girl, whilst behind  him  stood M. d'Ormesson and madame's
footman.
     The Countess  looked  up and  saw  him as  he was driven past. Her face
lighted; almost it seemed to him she  was about to greet him or to call him,
wherefore, to avoid a difficulty, arising out of  the presence there  of his
late  antagonist, he anticipated her  by bowing frigidly  - for his mood was
frigid, the more frigid by virtue of what he saw - and then resumed his seat
with eyes that looked deliberately ahead.
     Could anything more completely  have  confirmed him  in his  conviction
that it  was on M. de La Tour d'Azyr's account that  Aline had come to plead
with him that  morning? For what his  eyes had seen, of  course,  was a lady
overcome  with emotion at the sight of blood  of  her dear friend,  and that
same dear  friend restoring  her with assurances that his  hurt was very far
from mortal. Later, much later,  he was to blame his own perverse stupidity.
Almost is he too severe in his self-condemnation. For how else could he have
interpreted the scene he beheld, his preconceptions being what they were?
     That which he had already been  suspecting, he now accounted proven  to
him. Aline  had been  wanting  in  candour  on the subject  of  her feelings
towards M. de La Tour d'Azyr.  It  was,  he supposed, a  woman's  way  to be
secretive in such matters, and he must not blame her. Nor could he blame her
in his heart for having succumbed to the singular charm of such a man as the
Marquis -  for  not  even his hostility could  blind  him to  M. de  La Tour
d'Azyr's  attractions.  That she had succumbed was betrayed, he  thought, by
the weakness that had overtaken her upon seeing him wounded.
     "My God!" he  cried aloud. "What must she have suffered, then, if I had
killed him as I intended!"
     If only she had used candour with him, she could so easily have won his
consent  to the thing she asked. If only she  had  told him what now he saw,
that she loved M. de La Tour d'Azyr, instead of leaving  him to  assume  her
only  regard for the Marquis to  be based on unworthy  worldly ambition,  he
would at once have yielded.
     He fetched  a sigh, and breathed a  prayer for forgiveness to the shade
of Vilmorin.
     "It is perhaps as well that my lunge went wide," he said.
     "What do you mean?" wondered Le Chapelier.
     "That in this business I must relinquish all hope of recommencing."

        CHAPTER XII. THE OVERWHELMING REASONII


     M.  de La Tour  d'Azyr was seen no more  in the  Manege - or  indeed in
Paris at all - throughout all the months that the National Assembly remained
in session  to complete its work of  providing France with  a  constitution.
After all,  though the wound to his body had  been comparatively slight, the
wound to such a pride as his had been all but mortal.
     The rumour ran that he had emigrated. But that was only half the truth.
The  whole of it was that he had joined that  group of  noble travellers who
came and went between the Tuileries and the headquarters  of the  emigres at
Coblenz. He became, in short, a  member of the royalist  secret service that
in the end was to bring down the monarchy in ruins.
     As for Andre-Louis, his godfather's house  saw him no more, as a result
of his  conviction that M. de  Kercadiou would  not relent from his  written
resolve never to receive him again if the duel were fought.
     He threw himself into  his duties  at the  Assembly with  such zeal and
effect that when - its purpose accomplished - the Constituent was  dissolved
in  September of the  following year, membership of  the  Legislative, whose
election followed immediately, was thrust upon him.
     He considered  then, like many  others, that the Revolution was a thing
accomplished, that France  had only  to  govern  herself by the Constitution
which  had been given her, and that all would  now be well. And so it  might
have been but  that the Court could not bring itself  to  accept the altered
state of things. As a result of its intrigues half Europe was arming to hurl
herself upon France, and her quarrel was the quarrel of the French King with
his people.  That was the horror at the root of all the horrors that were to
come.
     Of  the  counter-revolutionary  troubles  that  were  everywhere  being
stirred up by the clergy, none  were more acute than those of Brittany, and,
in view of the influence it was hoped he would wield in his native province,
it was  proposed  to Andre-Louis by the Commission  of Twelve,  in the early
days of  the  Girondin ministry, that  he should go  thither  to  combat the
unrest. He was desired  to proceed peacefully,  but  his powers  were almost
absolute, as  is shown  by the  orders he carried - orders enjoining all  to
render him assistance and warning those who might hinder him that they would
do so at their peril.
     He accepted  the task,  and  he  was one of the five  plenipotentiaries
despatched on the  same errand  in  that spring of 1792.  It kept him absent
from Paris for  four months and might  have kept him longer  but that at the
beginning  of  August he  was  recalled. More imminent  than any  trouble in
Brittany was the trouble brewing in Paris itself; when the political sky was
blacker than it had been since '89. Paris realized that the hour was rapidly
approaching which would see the climax of the long struggle between Equality
and Privilege. And it was towards a  city so disposed that Andre-Louis  came
speeding from  the West,  to find there also the climax of his own disturbed
career.
     Mlle. de Kercadiou, too, was in Paris in those days of early August, on
a visit to her uncle's cousin  and  dearest friend, Mme. de Plougastel.  And
although nothing could now be plainer than the seething unrest that heralded
the  explosion  to  come,  yet  the  air  of  gaiety, indeed  of jocularity,
prevailing  at  Court - whither madame and mademoiselle  went almost daily -
reassured them. M. de Plougastel had come and gone again, back to Coblenz on
that secret business  that kept him now  almost  constantly absent from  his
wife.  But  whilst with her he had positively assured  her that all measures
were taken, and that an insurrection was a  thing to be welcomed, because it
could have one only conclusion, the final crushing of the  Revolution in the
courtyard  of the Tuileries.  That, he added, was  why the King  remained in
Paris. But for his confidence  in that he would put himself in the centre of
his Swiss and  his knights of  the dagger,  and quit the capital. They would
hack  a way out for him easily  if his departure were opposed.  But not even
that would be necessary.
     Yet in  those early days of August, after  her husband's  departure the
effect of his  inspiring words  was  gradually dissipated  by the  march  of
events under madame's own eyes. And finally on the afternoon  of the  ninth,
there arrived at the Hotel Plougastel a messenger from Meudon bearing a note
from M. de Kercadiou in which he  urgently bade mademoiselle  join him there
at once, and advised her hostess to accompany her.
     You  may  have realized  that  M.  de Kercadiou  was of  those who make
friends with men  of all classes. His ancient lineage placed him on terms of
equality  with members  of  the  noblesse; his simple  manners  -  something
between the rustic and the bourgeois - and his natural affability placed him
on equally good terms  with those who by birth were his inferiors. In Meudon
he was known and esteemed of  all the simple  folk, and  it was Rougane, the
friendly  mayor,  who,  informed on  the 9th of August of the storm that was
brewing for the morrow, and knowing of mademoiselle's  absence in Paris, had
warningly advised him to withdraw her from what in the next  four-and-twenty
hours  might be a  zone of danger for all persons of  quality,  particularly
those suspected of connections with the Court party.
     Now there was no doubt whatever of Mme. de Plougastel's connection with
the Court.  It was not even  to be doubted - indeed, measure of proof  of it
was to be  forthcoming - that those vigilant and ubiquitous secret societies
that watched over the cradle  of the young revolution were fully informed of
the frequent journeyings  of M. de Plougastel to Coblenz, and entertained no
illusions on the score of the  reason for them. Given, then, a defeat of the
Court party in the struggle that  was  preparing,  the position in  Paris of
Mme. de  Plougastel could  not be other than fraught with danger,  and  that
danger would be shared by any guest of birth at her hotel.
     M. de Kercadiou's affection  for both those women quickened  the  fears
aroused  in him by Rougane's warning.  Hence that  hastily dispatched  note,
desiring his niece and imploring his friend to come at once to Meudon.
     The  friendly  mayor  carried  his  complaisance  a  step farther,  and
dispatched  the letter to Paris by  the hands of his own son, an intelligent
lad  of nineteen. It was late in the afternoon  of  that perfect  August day
when young Rougane presented himself at the Hotel Plougastel.
     He  was graciously received  by Mme. de  Plougastel in the salon, whose
splendours,  when  combined  with  the   great  air  of  the  lady  herself,
overwhelmed the lad's simple, unsophisticated soul. Madame made  up her mind
at once.
     M. de Kercadiou's urgent  message no more  than confirmed her own fears
and inclinations. She decided upon instant departure.
     "Bien,  madame," said the  youth. "Then  I  have  the honour to take my
leave."
     But she would not let him go. First to  the kitchen to refresh himself,
whilst  she and  mademoiselle made  ready, and  then  a seat for him in  her
carriage as  far as Meudon. She could not suffer him to return on foot as he
had come.
     Though in  all the circumstances it  was  no more than his due, yet the
kindliness that in such a moment of agitation could take thought for another
was  presently  to be rewarded. Had she done less than  this, she would have
known - if nothing  worse - at least some hours of anguish even greater than
those that were already in store for her.
     It  wanted,  perhaps, a half-hour to sunset when they  set  out  in her
carriage  with  intent  to  leave  Paris  by the  Porte  Saint-Martin.  They
travelled with a single footman behind. Rougane - terrifying condescension -
was given a  seat inside the carriage with the ladies, and proceeded to fall
in love with  Mlle. de Kercadiou, whom he accounted the most beautiful being
he  had ever seen, yet who talked  to him simply and unaffectedly as with an
equal. The thing went to his head a little, and disturbed certain republican
notions which he had hitherto conceived himself to have thoroughly digested.
     The carriage  drew up at the barrier, checked  there by a picket of the
National Guard posted before the iron gates.
     The sergeant in command strode to the door of the vehicle. The Countess
put her head from the window.
     "The barrier is closed, madame," she was curtly informed.
     "Closed!" she echoed. The thing was incredible. "But... but do you mean
that we cannot pass?"
     Not unless you have a permit, madame." The sergeant leaned nonchalantly
on his pike. "The orders are that no one is to leave or enter without proper
papers."
     "Whose orders?"
     "Orders of the Commune of Paris."
     "But  I  must  go into the country  this  evening." Madame's voice  was
almost petulant. "I am expected."
     "In that case let madame procure a permit."
     "Where is it to be procured?"
     "At the Hotel de Ville or at the headquarters of madame's section."
     She considered a moment. "To the  section, then. Be  so good as to tell
my coachman to drive to the Bondy Section."
     He saluted her and stepped  back. "Section  Bondy,  Rue des Morts,"  he
bade the driver.
     Madame sank into  her seat again, in a state of  agitation fully shared
by  mademoiselle. Rougane set himself  to  pacify  and  reassure  them.  The
section would put the matter in order. They would most certainly be accorded
a  permit.  What  possible  reason  could there be for refusing them? A mere
formality, after all!
     His  assurance uplifted them merely to  prepare them for  a  still more
profound  dejection when  presently they met  with a  flat refusal  from the
president of the section who received the Countess.
     "Your name, madame?" he  had asked brusquely. A rude fellow of the most
advanced  republican  type, he  had not even  risen out  of deference to the
ladies when they entered. He was there,  he would have  told you, to perform
the duties of his office, not to give dancing-lessons.
     "Plougastel," he repeated after her,  without title, as if it  had been
the name of  a butcher or baker. He took down a heavy volume from a shelf on
his right, opened it and turned the pages. It was a sort of directory of his
section.  Presently he found  what  he  sought. "Comte  de Plougastel, Hotel
Plougastel, Rue du Paradis. Is that it?"
     "That is correct, monsieur," she answered, with what civility she could
muster before the fellow's affronting rudeness.
     There was  a long moment  of silence,  during  which he studied certain
pencilled entries  against  the name.  The sections  had been working in the
last few weeks much more systematically than was generally suspected.
     "Your husband  is with  you, madame?"  he asked  curtly, his eyes still
conning that page.
     "M. le Comte is not with me," she answered, stressing the title.
     "Not with you?"  He looked  up suddenly, and directed upon her a glance
in which suspicion seemed to blend with derision. "Where is he?"
     "He is not in Paris, monsieur.
     "Ab! Is he at Coblenz, do you think?"
     Madame  felt herself turning cold.  There was  something ominous in all
this. To what end  had the sections informed themselves so thoroughly of the
comings and goings of their inhabitants? What was preparing? She had a sense
of being trapped, of being taken in a net that had been cast unseen.
     "I do not know, monsieur," she said, her voice unsteady.
     "Of course not." He seemed to sneer. "No matter. And you  wish to leave
Paris also? Where do you desire to go?"
     "To Meudon."
     "Your business there?"
     The blood leapt to her  face. His  insolence was unbearable to a  woman
who in all  her life had never known anything but the utmost  deference from
inferiors  and equals alike. Nevertheless,  realizing that  she  was face to
face  with  forces  entirely  new,  she  controlled   herself,  stifled  her
resentment, and answered steadily.
     "I wish to conduct this lady, Mlle. de Kercadiou, back to her uncle who
resides there."
     "Is that all? Another day will do  for that, madame.  The matter is not
pressing."
     "Pardon, monsieur, to us the matter is very pressing."
     "You have not convinced me  of  it, and the barriers are closed to  all
who cannot  prove the  most urgent  and satisfactory reasons  for wishing to
pass.   You   will  wait,   madame,   until   the  restriction  is  removed.
Good-evening."
     "But, monsieur... "
     "Good-evening,  madame,"  he repeated significantly, a  dismissal  more
contemptuous and despotic than any royal "You have leave to go.
     Madame  went out  with  Aline. Both were quivering with  the anger that
prudence  had urged them  to suppress. They climbed  into the  coach  again,
desiring to be driven home.
     Rougane's  astonishment  turned into dismay when they told him what had
taken place. "Why not try the Hotel de Ville, madame?" he suggested.
     "After that? It would be useless. We must resign ourselves to remaining
in Paris until the barriers are opened again."
     "Perhaps it  will  not matter  to us either  way by then, madame," said
Aline.
     "Aline!" she exclaimed in horror.
     "Mademoiselle!" cried Rougane on the  same note. And then,  because  he
perceived that people detained in  this fashion  must  be in some danger not
yet discernible, but on that account more dreadful, he set his wits to work.
As they were approaching the  Hotel  Plougastel once more, he announced that
he had solved the problem.
     "A passport from without would do equally well," he announced. "Listen,
now, and trust to me. I will go back to Meudon at once. My father shall give
me two permits - one for myself alone, and another for  three persons - from
Meudon  to  Paris and back  to Meudon.  I reenter  Paris with my own permit,
which I  then  proceed to destroy,  and we leave together,  we three, on the
strength of the other one, representing ourselves as having come from Meudon
in the course of the day. It is quite simple,  after all. If I go at once, I
shall be back to-night."
     "But how will you leave?" asked Aline.
     "I? Pooh! As to  that, have no anxiety. My father  is Mayor  of Meudon.
There  are plenty who know  him. I will  go to  the Hotel de Ville, and tell
them what is, after all, true - that I am caught in  Paris by the closing of
the barriers,  and that my father is expecting  me home this  evening.  They
will pass me through. It is quite simple."
     His  confidence  uplifted  them again. The  thing seemed as easy as  he
represented it.
     "Then let  your  passport be for four, my friend,"  madame  begged him.
"There  is  Jacques,"  she explained, indicating  the footman  who had  just
assisted them to alight.
     Rougane departed confident of soon returning, leaving them to await him
with  the same confidence.  But the  hours  succeeded one another, the night
closed in, bedtime came, and still there was no sign of his return.
     They waited until midnight,  each pretending for the other's  sake to a
confidence  fully sustained, each invaded by vague premonitions of evil, yet
beguiling the time by playing tric-trac  in the great  salon, as if they had
not a single anxious thought between them.
     At last on the stroke of midnight, madame sighed and rose.
     "It will be for to-morrow morning," she said, not believing it.
     "Of course,"  Aline  agreed. "It would really have been impossible  for
him  to  have  returned  to-night.  And it  will  be  much better to  travel
to-morrow.  The journey  at so late an hour would  tire  you  so much,  dear
madame."
     Thus they made pretence.
     Early in the morning they were awakened by a din of bells - the tocsins
of the sections  ringing the alarm.  To their  startled  ears came later the
rolling  of drums, and at one time they heard the sounds of  a  multitude on
the march. Paris was  rising. Later still came the rattle of  small-arms  in
the distance  and  the deeper boom  of cannon. Battle was joined between the
men of  the  sections  and  the men of  the Court.  The  people  in arms had
attacked the Tuileries. Wildest rumours flew in  all directions, and some of
them found their way through the servants to the Hotel Plougastel,  of  that
terrible fight for the palace  which was to  end in the purposeless massacre
of all  those whom  the invertebrate monarch abandoned there, whilst placing
himself and his family under the protection of the Assembly.  Purposeless to
the end, ever adopting the course pointed out to him by evil counsellors, he
prepared for  resistance only  until the  need  for resistance really arose,
whereupon he ordered a surrender which  left  those who had stood by  him to
the last at the mercy of a frenzied mob.
     And  while this was  happening in the  Tuileries, the two women at  the
Hotel  Plougastel still waited for  the return of  Rougane,  though now with
ever-lessening  hope. And Rougane did not return. The affair  did not appear
so simple to the father as to the son. Rougane the elder was  rightly afraid
to lend himself to such a piece of deception.
     He went  with his  son  to inform M. de Kercadiou of what had happened,
and told him  frankly of the thing his son suggested, but which he dared not
do.
     M. de Kercadiou  sought to  move  him by intercessions and even  by the
offer of bribes. But Rougane remained firm.
     "Monsieur,"  he  said,  "if  it  were  discovered  against  me,  as  it
inevitably would be, I should, hang for it. Apart from that, and in spite of
my anxiety to do all in my power to serve you, it would be a breach of trust
such as I could not contemplate. You must not ask me, monsieur."
     "But what do  you conceive is going to happen?" asked the half-demented
gentleman.
     "It is war," said Rougane, who was well informed, as we have seen. "War
between the people and the Court. I am desolated that my warning should have
come too late.  But,  when  all is said, I do not think that you need really
alarm yourself. War will not  be made  on women. M.  de  Kercadiou clung for
comfort to  that assurance after the mayor and his son had  departed. But at
the back of his mind there remained the knowledge of the traffic in which M.
de  Plougastel was engaged. What if the  revolutionaries  were equally  well
informed? And most probably  they were. The  women-folk political  offenders
had  been known aforetime to suffer for the  sins of their men. Anything was
possible in a popular upheaval, and Aline would be exposed jointly with Mme.
de Plougastel.
     Late that night, as  he sat gloomily in his brother's library, the pipe
in which he had sought solace extinguished between his fingers, there came a
sharp knocking at the door.
     To the old seneschal of Gavrillac who went to open there stood revealed
upon the threshold a slim young  man in a dark olive surcoat,  the skirts of
which  reached  down  to  his  calves.  He  wore  boots,  buckskins,  and  a
small-sword, and  round his waist there was a tricolour sash,  in his hat  a
tricolour cockade, which gave him an official look extremely sinister to the
eyes of that old retainer of feudalism,  who shared to the full his master's
present fears.
     "Monsieur desires?" he asked, between respect and mistrust.
     And then a crisp voice startled him.
     "Why, Benoit! Name of a name! Have you completely forgotten me?"
     With a shaking hand the  old man raised the lantern he carried so as to
throw its light more fully upon that lean, wide-mouthed countenance.
     "M. Andre!" he cried. "M.Andre!" And then he looked at the sash and the
cockade, and hesitated, apparently at a loss.
     But  Andre-Louis stepped  past  him into the  wide vestibule, with  its
tessellated floor of black-and-white marble.
     "If my godfather has  not  yet  retired,  take  me  to him. If  he  has
retired, take me to him all the same."
     "Oh, but certainly, M. Andre - and I am sure he will be ravished to see
you. No, he  has  not yet retired.  This  way, M.  Andre;  this  way, if you
please."
     The returning Andre-Louis,  reaching Meudon  a half-hour  ago, had gone
straight to the mayor for some definite news  of  what might be happening in
Paris  that should either  confirm or dispel the ominous rumours that he had
met in ever-increasing volume as he approached the capital. Rougane informed
him that insurrection was imminent, that already  the sections had possessed
themselves  of  the  barriers, and that it was impossible for any person not
fully accredited to enter or leave the city.
     Andre-Louis bowed his head,  his  thoughts of the  gravest. He  had for
some  time perceived  the danger of this second  revolution  from within the
first, which might destroy everything that had been done, and give the reins
of power to a villainous faction that would plunge the country into anarchy.
The thing he had feared was more than  ever on the point of taking place. He
would  go on  at  once,  that  very  night, and  see  for  himself what  was
happening.
     And then, as he was leaving, he turned again to Rougane to ask if M. de
Kercadiou was still at Meudon.
     "You know him, monsieur?"
     "He is my godfather."
     "Your  godfather!  And you a representative! Why, then,  you may be the
very man he needs." And Rougane told him of his son's errand into Paris that
afternoon and its result.
     No more  was required. That  two  years ago  his godfather should  upon
certain terms  have refused him his house weighed for nothing at the moment.
He left his travelling carriage at the little inn and went straight to M. de
Kercadiou.
     And  M.  de  Kercadiou,  startled  in  such  an  hour  by  this  sudden
apparition, of one against whom he nursed a bitter grievance, greeted him in
terms almost  identical with those in which in that same room he had greeted
him on a similar occasion once before.
     "What do you want here, sir?"
     "To serve you if possible, my godfather," was the disarming answer.
     But it did not disarm  M. de Kercadiou.  "You have stayed  away so long
that I hoped you would not again disturb me."
     "I should not have ventured to disobey you now were it not for the hope
that I can be of service. I have seen Rougane, the mayor... "
     "What's that you say about not venturing to disobey?"
     "You forbade me your house, monsieur."
     M. de Kercadiou stared at him helplessly.
     "And is that why you have not come near me in all this time?"
     "Of course. Why else?"
     M. de Kercadiou continued to stare. Then he swore under his breath.  It
disconcerted him to have to deal with  a man who insisted upon taking him so
literally.  He  had expected that Andre-Louis would have come  contritely to
admit his fault and beg to be taken back into favour. He said so.
     "But how could I hope that you meant less than  you said, monsieur? You
were  so  very definite in your declaration.  What expressions of contrition
could have served me without a purpose of  amendment? And I had no notion of
amending. We may yet be thankful for that."
     "Thankful?"
     "I am  a representative. I have  certain powers. I  am very opportunely
returning  to Paris.  Can  I serve  you  where  Rougane  cannot?  The  need,
monsieur, would appear to be  very urgent if the half of what  I  suspect is
true. Aline should be placed in safety at once."
     M.  de Kercadiou surrendered unconditionally.  He  came  over and  took
Andre-Louis' hand.
     "My boy," he said, and he was visibly moved, "there is in you a certain
nobility that is not to  be denied. If I seemed harsh with you, then, it was
because I was fighting against your evil proclivities. I desired to keep you
out of the evil path of politics that have brought  this unfortunate country
into so terrible a pass. The enemy on the frontier; civil war about to flame
out at home. That is what you revolution. aries have done."
     Andre-Louis did not argue. He passed on.
     "About Aline?" he asked. And himself answered his own question: "She is
in  Paris,  and she  must be brought  out of  it at  once, before  the place
becomes a shambles, as well it  may once the passions that have been brewing
all these months are let  loose. Young  Rougane's  plan is good. At least, I
cannot think of a better one."
     "But Rougane the elder will not hear of it."
     "You mean  he will  not do it  on his own  responsibility. But  he  has
consented to do it on mine. I have left him a note over my signature  to the
effect that a safe-conduct for Mlle. de Kercadiou to  go to Paris and return
is issued by him in  compliance with orders from me. The powers I carry  and
of which I have satisfied him are his sufficient  justification for  obeying
me in this. I have left him that note on the understanding that he is to use
it only in an extreme case, for his own protection. In exchange he has given
me this safe-conduct."
     "You already have it!"
     M. de Kercadiou took the sheet of paper that Andre-Louis  held out. His
hand  shook. He  approached  it  to the  cluster  of candles burning on  the
console and screwed up his short-sighted eyes to read.
     "If  you  send that  to Paris by young  Rougane in  the  morning," said
Andre-Louis, "Aline  should be  here  by noon. Nothing, of course,  could be
done to-night without provoking suspicion. The hour  is  too  late. And now,
monsieur my godfather,  you know  exactly why I intrude in violation of your
commands. If there is any other way  in which I can serve  you, you have but
to name it whilst I am here."
     "But  there  is,  Andre. Did  not Rougane  tell  you  that  there  were
others... "
     "He mentioned Mme. de Plougastel and her servant."
     "Then why... ?" M. de Kercadiou broke off, looking his question.
     Very solemnly Andre-Louis shook his head.
     "That is impossible," he said.
     M.  de  Kercadiou's mouth fell open  in astonishment. "Impossible!"  he
repeated. "But why?"
     "Monsieur, I  can  do what  I  am doing for Aline  without offending my
conscience. Besides, for Aline I  would offend my conscience and  do it. But
Mme.  de Plougastel is in very different case. Neither Aline nor any of hers
have been concerned in counter-revolutionary work, which is the  true source
of the calamity that now threatens to overtake us. I can procure her removal
from Paris without self-reproach, convinced that I am doing nothing that any
one could censure,  or  that might become the subject of enquiries. But Mme.
de Plougastel is the wife of M.  le Comte de Plougastel, whom  all the world
knows to be an agent between the Court and the emigres."
     "That  is  no  fault  of  hers,"  cried  M.  de  Kercadiou through  his
consternation.
     "Agreed. But she may be called upon at any moment to establish the fact
that she is not  a party to these  manoeuvres.  It is known that she was  in
Paris to-day. Should she be sought to-morrow and should it be found that she
has gone, enquiries will certainly be made, from which it must result that I
have betrayed my trust, and abused my powers to serve personal ends. I hope,
monsieur, that you will understand that the risk is too great to be run  for
the sake of a stranger."
     "A stranger?" said the Seigneur reproachfully.
     "Practically a stranger to me," said Andre-Louis.
     "But she is not a stranger to me, Andre. She is my cousin and very dear
and valued friend. And, mon Dieu, what you say but increases the urgency  of
getting her out  of Paris.  She must  be rescued,  Andre, at all costs - she
must be rescued! Why, her case is infinitely more urgent than Aline's!"
     He stood a  suppliant before his godson,  very different now  from  the
stern man who had greeted him on his arrival.  His face  was pale, his hands
shook, and there were beads of perspiration on his brow.
     "Monsieur my godfather, I would do anything in reason. But I  cannot do
this.  To rescue her might  mean ruin for Aline and yourself as  well as for
me."
     "We must take the risk."
     "You have a right to speak for yourself, of course."
     "Oh,  and for you, believe me,  Andre, for you!" He came  close  to the
young man. "Andre, I implore you  to take my word  for  that, and to  obtain
this permit for Mme. de Plougastel."
     Andre  looked at him mystified. "This is fantastic," he  said.  "I have
grateful memories  of  the lady's interest in me for a few days once  when I
was a child, and again more recently  in Paris when she sought to convert me
to what she accounts the true political religion. But I do not risk  my neck
for her - no, nor yours, nor Aline's."
     "Ah! But, Andre... "
     "That  is my last word,  monsieur. It is growing late, and  I desire to
sleep in Paris."
     "No,  no!  Wait!"  The  Lord  of  Gavrillac  was  displaying  signs  of
unspeakable distress. "Andre, you must!"
     There was in this insistence and, still more, in the frenzied manner of
it, something so  unreasonable that Andre could not fail to assume that some
dark and mysterious motive lay behind it.
     "I must?" he echoed. "Why must I? Your reasons,monsieur?"
     "Andre, my reasons are overwhelming."
     "Pray allow me to be the judge of that." Andre-Louis' manner was almost
peremptory.
     The demand  seemed to  reduce M.  de Kercadiou to despair. He paced the
room, his hands tight-clasped behind him, his brow wrinkled. At last he came
to stand before his godson.
     "Can't you take my word for  it that these reasons  exist?" he cried in
anguish.
     "In such a  matter  as  this -  a matter that may involve my neck?  Oh,
monsieur, is that reasonable?"
     "I violate my word of honour, my oath, if I tell  you." M. de Kercadiou
turned  away, wringing his hands, his condition visibly piteous; then turned
again to Andre.  "But in this extremity,  in  this  desperate extremity, and
since you  so ungenerously insist, I shall have to tell  you. God help me, I
have no  choice. She will realize that when she knows. Andre, my boy... " He
paused again, a man afraid. He  set a hand on  his godson's shoulder, and to
his  increasing  amazement  Andre-Louis  perceived  that  over  those  pale,
short-sighted  eyes there was  a film of tears. "Mme. de  Plougastel is your
mother."
     Followed, for a long moment, utter silence. This thing that he was told
was not immediately understood. When understanding came at last Andre-Louis'
first impulse was  to  cry  out.  But he  possessed himself, and  played the
Stoic. He must ever be playing something. That was in his nature. And he was
true  to  his nature even in this supreme moment. He continued silent until,
obeying  that  queer  histrionic  instinct, he could trust  himself to speak
without emotion. "I see," he said, at last, quite coolly.
     His mind  was  sweeping back over the past.  Swiftly  he  reviewed  his
memories of Mme. de Plougastel,  her  singular if sporadic interest in  him,
the curious blend of affection and wistfulness which  her manner towards him
had always presented, and  at  last  he understood so  much that hithert had
intrigued him.
     "I see," he said again; and added now, "Of course, any but a fool would
have guessed it long ago."
     It was M. de Kercadiou who cried out, M.  de Kercadiou who recoiled  as
from a blow.
     "My God, Andre, of what are you made? You can take such an announcement
in this fashion?".
     "And how would  you have  me take it? Should it surprise me to discover
that I had a mother?  After all, a  mother is an indispensable necessity  to
getting one's self born."
     He sat  down abruptly, to conceal the too-revealing fact that his limbs
were  shaking.  He pulled  a handkerchief  from his  pocket to mop his brow,
which had grown damp. And then,quite suddenly, he found himself weeping.
     At the sight  of those tears streaming silently down that face that had
turned  so pale, M.  de Kercadiou came quickly  across  to him. He sat  down
beside him and threw an arm affectionately over his shoulder.
     "Andre, my poor lad," he murmured. "I... I was fool enough  to think ou
had no  heart. You deceived me with your infernal pretence, and now I see...
I see... " He was not sure what it was that he  saw, or else he hesitated to
express it.
     "I: is nothing, monsieur. I am  tired out, and... and I have a  cold in
the head." And then, finding the part beyond his power, he abruptly threw it
up, utterly abandoned all  pretence. "Why...  why has  there been  all  this
mystery?" he asked. "Was it intended that I should never know?"
     "I: was, Andre. It... it had to be, for prudence' sake."
     "Eut  why? Complete your confidence, sir.  Surely  you cannot  leave it
there. Having told me so much, you must tell me all."
     "'The reason, my boy, is that you were born some three years after your
mother's marriage with M.  de Plougastel,  some eighteen  months after M. de
Plougastel  had been away with the  army,  and some  four months before  his
return to his wife. It is a matter that M. de Plougastel has never suspeted,
and  for gravest family reasons must  never suspect.  That is why the utmost
secrecy has been preserved. That is why none was ever allowed to know.  Your
mother  came betimes  into  Brittany,  and under an assumed name spent  some
months  in the village of Moreau.  It was while she was there that  you were
born."
     Andre-Louis turned it over in his mind. He had dried his tears. And sat
now rigid and collected.
     "When  you say that none was ever  allowed to know, you are telling me,
of course, that you, monsieur... "
     "Oh, mon  Dieu, no!"  The  denial  came  in a violent  outburst. M.  de
Kercadiou sprang to his feet propelled from  Andre's side by the violence of
his emotions. It was as  if  the very suggestion filled him with  horror. "I
was the  only  other  one who knew. But it is not as you think,  Andre.  You
cannot imagine that I should lie to  you, that I should deny you if you were
my son?"
     "If you say that I am not, monsieur, that is sufficient."
     "You are not. I was Therese's cousin and also, as  she  well knew,  her
truest friend. She knew that she could  trust me; and it  was to me she came
for help  in her extremity. Once,  years  before, I  would have married her.
But, of  course, I am not the sort of man  a woman could love.  She trusted,
however, to my love for her, and I have kept her trust."
     "Then, who was my father?"
     "I don't know. She never told me. It was her secret, and I did not pry.
It is not in my nature, Andre."
     Andre-Louis got up, and stood silently facing M. de Kercadiou.
     "You believe me, Andre."
     "Naturally, monsieur;  and I am sorry, I am  sorry that  I am not  your
son.
     M. de Kercadiou gripped his godson's hand  convulsively,  and held it a
moment with no word spoken. Then as they fell away from each other again:
     "And now, what will you do, Andre?" he asked. "Now that you know?"
     Andre-Louis stood  awhile. considering,  then broke into  laughter. The
situation had its humours. He explained them.
     "What  difference  should  the knowledge make?  Is filial piety  to  be
called into existence by the mere announcement of relationship? Am I to risk
my  neck through lack  of circumspection  on  behalf of  a  mother  so  very
circumspect that  she  had  no  intention  of  ever  revealing herself?  The
discovery  rests upon the merest chance, upon a fall of the dice of Fate. Is
that to weigh with me?"
     "The decision is with you, Andre."
     "Nay, it is beyond me. Decide it who can, I cannot."
     "You mean that you refuse even now?"
     "I mean that I consent.  Since I cannot decide what it is that I should
do, it only remains for me to do what a son should. It is grotesque; but all
life is grotesque."
     "You will never, never regret it."
     "I hope not," said Andre. "Yet I think it very likely that I shall. And
now I had better see Rougane  again at once, and obtain from  him the  other
two permits required. Then perhaps it will be best that I take them to Paris
myself, in  the  morning. If you  will give me a  bed,  monsieur, I shall be
grateful. I... I confess that I am hardly in case to do more to-night."

        CHAPTER XIII. SANCTUARYIII


     Into  the  late  afternoon of  that  endless  day  of horror  with  its
perpetual  alarms,  its  volleying  musketry,  rolling  drums,  and  distant
muttering of angry multitudes, Mme. de Plougastel and  Aline sat  waiting in
that handsome house in the Rue du Paradis. It was no longer for Rougane they
waited. They realized  that, be  the reason what it might - and  by now many
reasons must no doubt exist - this friendly messenger would not return. They
waited without knowing for what. They waited for whatever might betide.
     At one time early in the afternoon the  roar of battle approached them,
racing swiftly  in their direction,  swelling each  moment  in volume and in
horror. It was the frenzied clamour of a multitude drunk with blood and bent
on destruction.  Near at hand that  fierce wave  of humanity checked in  its
turbulent progress. Followed blows of pikes upon  a door and imperious calls
to open, and thereafter came the rending of timbers, the shivering of glass,
screams of terror blending  with screams of rage, and, running through these
shrill sounds, the deeper diapason of bestial laughter.
     It was a  hunt of  two  wretched  Swiss  guardsmen  seeking blindly  to
escape. And they were  run to  earth  in a house in the  neighbourhood,  and
there cruelly done to death  by  that demoniac mob. The thing  accomplished,
the hunters,  male  and female, forming into a battalion, came swinging down
the Rue du Paradis, chanting the song of Marseilles - a song new to Paris in
those days:
     Allons, enfants de la patrie! Le jour de gloire est  arrive Contre nous
de la tyrannie L'etendard sanglant est 1eve.
     Nearer it came, raucously bawled  by some hundreds of  voices, a  dread
sound that had come so suddenly to displace at least temporarily the  merry,
trivial  air  of  the "Ca  ira!"  which hitherto had  been the revolutionary
carillon. Instinctively  Mme. de  Plougastel  and Aline clung to each other.
They had  heard the  sound  of  the  ravishing of  that other house  in  the
neighbourhood, without knowledge of the reason. What if now it should be the
turn of the Hotel Plougastel! There was no real cause to fear it, save  that
amid a  turmoil imperfectly understood and therefore the more awe-inspiring,
the worst must be feared always.
     The dreadful song so  dreadfully  sung, and the thunder of heavily shod
feet upon the roughly  paved street, passed on  and receded.  They  breathed
again, almost  as if a miracle  had saved them, to  yield  to fresh alarm an
instant later, when madame's young footman, Jacques, the most trusted of her
servants, burst  into their  presence  unceremoniously  with  a scared face,
bringing the announcement  that  a man who had  just climbed over the garden
wall professed  himself  a friend  of  madame's,  and desired to  be brought
immediately to her presence.
     "But  he looks  like  a sansculotte, madame," the staunch fellow warned
her.
     Her thoughts and hopes leapt at once to Rougane.
     "Bring him in," she commanded breathlessly.
     Jacques went out, to return presently accompanied by a  tall  man  in a
long, shabby, and very ample overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat that was turned
down all round,  and adorned  by an enormous tricolour cockade.  This hat he
removed as he entered.
     Jacques, standing behind him, perceived that his  hair, although now in
some disorder, bore signs of having been carefully dressed. It  was clubbed,
and it carried some lingering vestiges of powder. The young footman wondered
what it was in  the man's face, which was turned from him, that should cause
his mistress to out and recoil. Then he found himself dismissed abruptly  by
a gesture.
     The newcomer advanced to  the  middle of the salon, moving like  a  man
exhausted and breathing hard. There he leaned against a table,  across which
he  confronted  Mme. de Plougastel. And she  stood regarding him,  a strange
horror in her eyes.
     In  the  background, on  a settle  at  the  salon's far  end, sat Aline
staring  in  bewilderment and some fear  at a  face which, if unrecognizable
through the mask  of  blood and dust that smeared it, was  yet familiar. And
then the man spoke, and instantly she knew the voice for that of the Marquis
de La Tour d'Azyr.
     "My dear friend," he was saying, "forgive me if I startled you. Forgive
me if  I thrust myself in  here without  leave, at such  a time, in  such  a
manner. But... you see how  it is with me. I am a fugitive. In the course of
my distracted flight, not knowing which way to turn for safety, I thought of
you. I told myself that if I could but safely reach your house, I might find
sanctuary."
     "You are in danger?"
     "In danger?"  Almost he  seemed  silently to  laugh  at the unnecessary
question. "If I were to show myself openly  in the streets just now, I might
with luck  contrive  to  live for  five  minutes!  My friend,  it has been a
massacre. Some few of us escaped from the Tuileries at the end, to be hunted
to death  in the streets.  I doubt if by this time a  single Swiss survives.
They had the worst of it, poor devils. And as  for us - my God! they hate us
more than they hate the Swiss. Hence this filthy disguise."
     He  peeled off the  shaggy greatcoat, and casting it from  him  stepped
forth in the black  satin that had been  the general livery of  the  hundred
knights of  the dagger who had rallied in the Tuileries that  morning to the
defence of their king.
     His coat was rent across the back, his neckcloth and the ruffles at his
wrists  were  torn  and bloodstained; with  his  smeared face and disordered
headdress he was terrible to  behold. Yet he contrived to carry himself with
his habitual easy  assurance, remembered to kiss  the trembling  hand  which
Mme. de Plougastel extended to him in welcome.
     "You  did  well  to  come  to me,  Gervais,"  she said.  "Yes, here  is
sanctuary  for the present. You will be  quite safe, at least for as long as
we  are  safe. My servants are entirely  trustworthy. Sit down and  tell  me
all."
     He obeyed  her,  collapsing almost into the armchair  which she  thrust
forward,  a man  exhausted, whether by physical exertion or by nerve-strain,
or both. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped some of  the blood
and dirt from his face.
     "It is soon told." His tone was bitter with the  bitterness of despair.
"This,  my dear, is the end of us. Plougastel is lucky  in  being across the
frontier at  such a  time. Had  I not  been fool enough to trust  those  who
to-day have proved  themselves utterly  unworthy of  trust,  that is where I
should be myself. My remaining in Paris is the crowning folly of a life full
of follies and mistakes. That I should come to you in my hour of most urgent
need adds point to it." He laughed in his bitterness.
     Madame moistened her dry lips. "And... and now?" she asked him.
     "It  only  remains to get  away as  soon  as may  be,  if it  is  still
possible. Here in France there is  no longer any room for us - at least, not
above ground. To-day has proved it." And then he  looked up at her, standing
there beside  him  so pale and timid, and he smiled. He patted the fine hand
that rested  upon the  arm of his chair. "My dear  Therese, unless you carry
charitableness  to the length of giving me to drink, you will see me  perish
of thirst  under  your eyes before ever the  canaille has a chance to finish
me."
     She started. "I should have thought of it!" she cried in self-reproach,
and she turned quickly. "Aline," she begged, "tell Jacques to bring... "
     "Aline!" he echoed,interrupting, and swinging round in his  turn. Then,
as  Aline  rose into view,  detaching  from her  background, and  he at last
perceived her, he heaved himself abruptly to his weary legs again, and stood
there  stiffly   bowing  to  her   across  the  space  of  gleaming   floor.
"Mademoiselle, I had  not suspected your presence,"  he said, and  he seemed
extraordinarily ill-at-ease, a man startled, as if caught in an illicit act.
     "I  perceived  it,  monsieur,"  she  answered, as  she  advanced  to do
madame's  commission.  She paused before  him.  "From my  heart, monsieur, I
grieve that we should meet again in circumstances so very painful."
     Not since the day of his duel with Andre-Louis - the day which had seen
the  death and burial of his last hope of winning her  - had they stood face
to face.
     He checked as if on  the point of answering her. His glance strayed  to
Mme. de Plougastel, and,  oddly reticent for one who could  be very glib, he
bowed in silence.
     "But sit, monsieur, I beg. You are fatigued."
     "You  are  gracious to observe it. With your permission, then." And  he
resumed his seat.  She continued on her way to the door and  passed out upon
her errand.
     When  presently  she returned  they had  almost  unaccountably  changed
places. It was Mme. de Plougastel who was seated in that armchair of brocade
and gilt, and M. de  La Tour d'Azyr  who, despite his lassitude, was leaning
over the back of it talking earnestly, seeming by his attitude to plead with
her. On Aline's entrance he broke off instantly and moved  away, so that she
was  left with  a  sense of having  intruded. Further she observed that  the
Countess was in tears.
     Following her came presently the diligent Jacques, bearing a tray laden
with food and wine. Madame poured for her guest, and he drank a long draught
of the Burgundy, then begged,  holding forth  his grimy hands, that he might
mend his appearance before sitting down to eat.
     He was led away  and valeted by  Jacques,  and when  he returned he had
removed  from  his  person the  last vestige  of  the rough  handling he had
received.  He looked almost  his  normal  self, the disorder  in his  attire
repaired, calm and dignified and courtly in his bearing, but  very pale  and
haggard  of  face,  seeming suddenly to  have increased  in  years,  to have
reached in appearance the age that was in fact his own.
     As  he  ate and drank - and this  with appetite, for as he told them he
had not tasted food since early morning - he entered into the details of the
dreadful events of the  day, and gave them the particulars of his own escape
from the  Tuileries when all was seen to be lost and when  the Swiss, having
burnt  their last  cartridge, were submitting to  wholesale massacre at  the
hands of the indescribably furious mob.
     "Oh,  it was all most ill  done," he ended  critically. "We were  timid
when we  should  have  been  resolute,  and resolute at last when it was too
late.  That is the  history of our side from the beginning of this  accursed
struggle. We  have lacked proper leadership throughout, and now - as  I have
said already - there is an end  to us. It but remains  to escape, as soon as
we can discover how the thing is to be accomplished."
     Madame told him of the hopes that she had centred upon Rougane.
     It lifted him out of his gloom. He was disposed to be optimistic.
     "You are wrong to have  abandoned that hope," he assured  her. "If this
mayor is so well disposed, he certainly can do as his son promised. But last
night it would have  been too late for him to have reached you,  and to-day,
assuming that  he had come to Paris, almost impossible for him to win across
the streets from the other side. It  is most likely that he will yet come. I
pray that he may; for the knowledge that you and Mlle. de  Kercadiou are out
of this would comfort me above all."
     "We should take you with us," said madame.
     "Ah! But how?"
     "Young  Rougane  was  to bring  me permits for  three persons -  Aline,
myself, and my footman, Jacques. You would take the place of Jacques."
     "Faith, to get  out of Paris, madame,  there is  no  man whose  place I
would not take." And he laughed.
     Their  spirits  rose with his  and their flagging hopes revived. But as
dusk descended again upon  the city,  without any sign of the deliverer they
awaited, those hopes began to ebb once more.
     M. de  La  Tour  d'Azyr  at  last pleaded weariness,  and begged  to be
permitted  to withdraw  that he might  endeavour to  take  some rest against
whatever might have to  be faced in  the immediate future. When he had gone,
madame persuaded Aline to go and lie down.
     "I will  call you, my  dear, the  moment he arrives," she said, bravely
maintaining  that  pretence  of  a  confidence  that  had  by  now  entirely
evaporated.
     Aline kissed her  affectionately, and departed,  outwardly so  calm and
unperturbed as to  leave  the  Countess wondering whether  she  realized the
peril by  which  they were surrounded, a peril  infinitely increased by  the
presence  in that house of a  man  so  widely known and detested as M. de La
Tour d'Azyr, a  man who was probably being sought for by his enemies at this
moment.
     Left alone, madame lay down on a couch in the salon itself, to be ready
for any emergency.  It  was a hot  summer night, and the glass doors opening
upon  the luxuriant garden  stood  wide to admit  the air. On that  air came
intermittently  from  the  distance   sounds  of  the  continuing   horrible
activities of the populace, the aftermath of that bloody day.
     Mme.  de Plougastel lay there, listening to those sounds for upwards of
an hour, thanking Heaven that for the present at least the disturbances were
distant, dreading lest at any moment they should occur nearer at hand,  lest
this  Bondy section in which her hotel was situated should  become the scene
of  horrors  similar  to  those  whose echoes  reached  her ears  from other
sections away to the south and west.
     The couch occupied by the Countess lay in shadow; for all the lights in
that  long salon had  been extinguished with  the exception  of a cluster of
candles in a massive silver candle branch placed  on a round marquetry table
in the middle of the room - an island of light in the surrounding gloom.
     The timepiece on the overmantel chimed melodiously the hour of ten, and
then, startling in the suddenness with which it broke the immediate silence,
another sound vibrated through the house, and brought madame to her feet, in
a  breathless mingling of hope and dread. Some one  was knocking  sharply on
the door  below. Followed  moments of  agonized suspense, culminating in the
abrupt  invasion  of the room by the footman Jacques. He  looked round,  not
seeing his mistress at first.
     "Madame! Madame!" he panted, out of breath.
     "What  is  it, Jacques!"  Her voice was steady now  that  the  need for
self-control seemed thrust upon her. She advanced from the shadows into that
island of light about the table. "There  is a  man below. He is asking... he
is demanding to see you at once."
     "A man?" she questioned.
     "He...  he seems  to  be an  official; at least  he  wears the sash  of
office. And he refuses to give any name; he says that  his name would convey
nothing to you. He insists that he must see you in person and at once."
     "An official?" said madame.
     "An  official," Jacques repeated. "I  would not  have admitted him, but
that he demanded it  in the name of the Nation. Madame, it is for you to say
what  shall be done.  Robert is  with me. If you wish it... whatever it  may
be... "
     "My good  Jacques,  no,  no." She was  perfectly composed. If  this man
intended  evil, surely he  would not come alone. Conduct him to me, and then
beg Mlle. de Kercadiou to join me if she is awake."
     Jacques departed, himself partly  reassured. Madame  seated herself  in
the armchair by the table well within the light. She smoothed her dress with
a mechanical  hand. If, as it would seem, her  hopes had been futile, so had
her momentary fears. A  man on any but an errand of peace would have brought
some following with him, as she had said.
     The door  opened  again, and  Jacques reappeared;  after  him, stepping
briskly past him,  came a slight  man in a  wide-brimmed  hat,  adorned by a
tricolour cockade. About the waist of  an olive-green riding-coat  he wore a
broad tricolour sash; a sword hung at his side.
     He swept  off his hat, and the candlelight glinted on the  steel buckle
in front of it. Madame found  herself silently regarded  by a pair of large,
dark eyes set in a lean,  brown face, eyes  that were most singularly intent
and searching.
     She leaned  forward, incredulity swept across her countenance. Then her
eyes kindled, and the  colour came creeping back into her  pale  cheeks. She
rose suddenly. She was trembling.
     "Andre-Louis!" she exclaimed.

        CHAPTER XIV. THE BARRIERIV


     That  gift  of laughter of his  seemed  utterly  extinguished. For once
there  was no  gleam of humour in those  dark  eyes, as  they  continued  to
consider her with that queer stare of scrutiny. And yet, though his gaze was
sombre, his  thoughts were not. With his  cruelly true  mental vision  which
pierced through shams,  and his capacity  for  detached  observation - which
properly applied might have carried him very far, indeed -  he perceived the
grotesqueness,  the artificiality  of  the emotion  which in that  moment he
experienced, but by  which he refused to be  possessed. It  sprang  entirely
from  the  consciousness  that  she  was  his  mother;  as  if,  all  things
considered, the more or less accidental fact that she had brought  him  into
the world could establish between them any real bond  at this time  of  day!
The  motherhood that  bears  and  forsakes  is  less  than  animal.  He  had
considered  this; he had  been given ample leisure in  which  to consider it
during those long, turbulent  hours in which  he had  been forced  to  wait,
because it  would  have  been  almost  impossible  to  have won across  that
seething city, and certainly unwise to have attempted so to do.
     He had reached the conclusion that by consenting to go to her rescue at
such  a time he stood committed to  a piece of purely sentimental  quixotry.
The  quittances which the  Mayor  of Meudon had  exacted from  him before he
would  issue  the  necessary safe-conducts placed the  whole of  his future,
perhaps  his very life, in jeopardy. And he had consented to do this not for
the  sake of a reality, but out of regard  for an idea - he who all his life
had avoided the false lure of worthless and hollow sentimentality.
     Thus  thought  Andre-Louis as  he  considered  her now  so searchingly,
finding  it,  naturally enough, a matter  of extraordinary interest  to look
consciously  upon  his   mother  for   the   first  time  at   the   age  of
eight-and-twenty.
     >From her he  looked at  last  at Jacques,  who  remained at attention,
waiting by the open door.
     "Could we be alone, madame?" he asked her.
     She waved the footman  away,  and the door closed. In agitated silence,
unquestioning, she waited for  him to  account for his presence there at  so
extraordinary a time.
     "Rougane  could  not  return,"  he  informed  her  shortly.  At  M.  de
Kercadiou's request, I come instead."
     "You! You  are sent to  rescue us!" The  note of amazement in her voice
was stronger than that of het relief.
     "That, and to make your acquaintance, madame."
     "To make my acquaintance? But what do you mean, Andre-Louis?"
     "This letter from M. de Kercadiou will tell you." Intrigued  by his odd
words and odder manner, she took the folded  sheet. She broke the  seal with
shaking  hands,  and with shaking hands  approached the  written page to the
light.  Her  eyes  grew  troubled as  she read;  the  shaking  of her  hands
increased,  and midway through  that reading a  moan escaped her. One glance
that  was almost terror  she  darted  at the slim, straight man  standing so
incredibly impassive upon the edge of the light, and then she endeavoured to
read on. But the  crabbed characters  of  M.  de  Kercadiou swam distortedly
under her eyes. She could not read. Besides, what could  it matter what else
he  said.  She had read  enough. The sheet fluttered  from  her hands to the
table, and out of a face that was like a face of wax, she looked now with  a
wistfulness, a sadness indescribable, at Andre-Louis.
     "And so you know, my child?" Her voice was stifled to a whisper.
     "I know, madame my mother."
     The  grimness, the subtle blend  of merciless  derision and reproach in
which it was uttered completely escaped her.  She cried out at the new name.
For  her in that moment  time and the  world stood still. Her peril there in
Paris as the wife of an intriguer at Coblenz was  blotted out, together with
every other consideration
     - thrust  out of a consciousness that could  find room for nothing else
beside  the fact that she  stood  acknowledged  by her only son,  this child
begotten in  adultery,  borne  furtively  and in shame in a  remote Brittany
village eight-and-twenty  years ago. Not even a thought for  the betrayal of
that inviolable secret, or the con-  sequences  that might follow, could she
spare in this supreme moment.
     She took  one or two faltering  steps towards him, hesitating. Then she
opened her arms. Sobs suffocated her voice.
     "Won't you come to me, Andre-Louis?"
     A  moment  yet he  stood hesitating,  startled by that  appeal, angered
almost by his heart's response to it, reason and sentiment at  grips  in his
soul. This  was not real, his reason postulated; this poignant  emotion that
she displayed and that he experienced was fantastic. Yet  he went.  Her arms
enfolded him; her wet cheek was  pressed hard against  his  own;  her frame,
which the years had not yet succeeded in robbing of its grace, was shaken by
the passionate storm within her.
     "Oh, Andre-Louis, my child, if you knew how I have hungered to hold you
so! If  you knew  how in denying myself  this I have  atoned  and  suffered!
Kercadiou should  not  have told you  -  not even now. It  was wrong  - most
wrong, perhaps, to you. It would  have  been better that he should have left
me here to my fate, whatever that may be. And  yet - come what may of this -
to be able to hold you  so, to be able to acknowledge you, to hear you  call
me mother -  oh! Andre-Louis, I cannot now regret it.  I cannot...  I cannot
wish it otherwise."
     "Is there any need,  madame?" he asked her, his stoicism deeply shaken.
"There  is  no  occasion  to take  others into  our confidence. This is  for
to-night  alone. To-night  we are mother and  son. To-morrow we  resume  our
former places, and, outwardly at least, forget."
     "Forget? Have you no heart, Andre-Louis?"
     The question recalled him curiously to his attitude towards life
     - that histrionic attitude of his that  he accounted  true  philosophy.
Also he remembered what lay before them; and he realized that he must master
not only himself  but her; that to yield too far to sentiment at such a time
might be the ruin of them all.
     "It is a question  propounded to me so often that it  must  contain the
truth," said he. "My rearing is to blame for that."
     She tightened her clutch about his neck even as he would have attempted
to disengage himself from her embrace.
     "You do  not  blame  me  for your  rearing? Knowing  all,  as  you  do,
Andre-Louis, you cannot altogether  blame. You  must be merciful to me.  You
must forgive me. You must! I had no choice."
     "When  we know all of whatever it  may be, we can never do anything but
forgive, madame. That  is the  profoundest  religious  truth  that  was ever
written. It contains, in fact, a whole religion -  the  noblest religion any
man could have to guide him. I say this for your comfort, madame my mother."
     She sprang away from him with a startled cry. Beyond him in the shadows
by the door a pale figure shimmered ghostly. It advanced into the light, and
resolved itself into Aline. She had come in answer to that forgotten summons
madame  had  sent  her  by  Jacques.   Entering  unperceived  she  had  seen
Andre-Louis in the embrace of the woman whom  he addressed as  "mother." She
had recognized him  instantly by his voice, and she could not have said what
bewildered her more: his presence there or the thing she overheard.
     "You heard, Aline?" madame exclaimed.
     "I could not help it, madame. You sent  for me. I am  sorry if... " She
broke off, and  looked at Andre-Louis  long and curiously. She was pale, but
quite composed. She held out her hand to him. "And so you have come at last,
Andre," said she. "You might have come before."
     "I come when I am  wanted,"  was his answer. "Which is the only time in
which one can be sure of being received." He said it without bitterness, and
having said it stooped to kiss her hand.
     "You can  forgive  me  what is past,  I  hope,  since  I  failed of  my
purpose,"  he said gently, half-pleading.  "I  could  not  have come to  you
pretending  that  the  failure  was intentional - a  compromise between  the
necessities of the case and your own wishes.  For  it was not that. And yet,
you do not seem to have profited by my failure. You are still a maid."
     She turned her shoulder to him.
     "There are things," she said, "that you will never understand."
     "Life, for one,"  he  acknowledged.  "I confess that  I am  finding  it
bewildering. The  very  explanations calculated  to simplify it  seem but to
complicate it further." And he looked at Mme. de Plougastel.
     "You mean something, I suppose," said mademoiselle.
     "Aline!"  It was  the  Countess  who  spoke. She  knew  the  danger  of
half-discoveries.  "I can  trust you, child, I know,  and Andre-Louis, I  am
sure, will offer  no objection." She had  taken up the letter  to show it to
Aline. Yet first her eyes questioned him.
     "Oh, none,  madame," he  assured  her.  "It  is  entirely a matter  for
yourself."
     Aline looked from  one to the  other with troubled  eyes, hesitating to
take the  letter that was  now  proffered. When she had read it through, she
very  thoughtfully replaced it on  the table. A moment  she stood there with
bowed head,  the other two watching her. Then impulsively  she ran to madame
and put her arms about her.
     "Aline!"  It  was  a cry of wonder, almost of joy. "You do  not utterly
abhor me!"
     "My dear," said  Aline, and kissed the tear-stained face that seemed to
have grown years older in these last few hours.
     In the  background Andre-Louis,  steeling himself against emotionalism,
spoke with the voice of Scaramouche.
     "It would be well, mesdames, to  postpone all transports until they can
be indulged at greater leisure and in more security. It is growing late.  If
we  are to get out  of this shambles we  should  be  wise  to take  the road
without more delay."
     It was a tonic as effective as  it was necessary. It startled them into
remembrance of  their circumstances, and under the spur of it  they went  at
once to make their preparations.
     They left  him for perhaps a quarter of an hour, to pace that long room
alone, saved only from impatience by the turmoil of his mind. When at length
they returned, they were  accompanied by a tall man in a full-skirted shaggy
greatcoat  and a broad  hat the brim of which was turned down all around. He
remained respectfully by the door in the shadows.
     Between them  the  two women  had  concerted  it thus,  or  rather  the
Countess had so  concerted  it when Aline  had  warned her that Andre-Louis'
bitter hostility towards the Marquis made it unthinkable that he should move
a finger consciously to save him.
     Now despite the close friendship uniting M. de Kercadiou  and his niece
with Mme. de Plougastel, there were several matters concerning them of which
the  Countess was in ignorance.  One  of these was the project  at one  time
existing of a  marriage between Aline and M. de  La  Tour d'Azyr. It  was  a
matter that Aline  -  naturally enough in the state of  her  feelings -  had
never mentioned, nor had M. de Kercadiou ever alluded to it since his coming
to Meudon, by when he had perceived how unlikely it was ever to be realized.
     M. de La Tour  d'Azyr's concern for Aline  on  that morning of the duel
when  he had found  her  baif-swooning in Mme. de Plougastel's  carriage had
been of a circumspection that betrayed  nothing of his real interest in her,
and  therefore had  appeared  no more than natural in  one who  must account
himself  the cause of her  distress.  Similarly Mme. de Plougastel had never
realized nor did she  realize  now  -  for Aline  did not  trouble fully  to
enlighten her  -  that the hostility between  the two  men  was  other  than
political,  the  quarrel other than that which already had taken Andre-Louis
to the Bois on  every day of the preceding week. But, at least, she realized
that even if  Andre-Louis' rancour  should have no other  source,  yet  that
inconclusive duel was cause enough for Aline's fears.
     And so she had proposed this obvious deception; and Aline had consented
to  be  a  passive  party  to  it.  They  had made the  mistake of not fully
forewarning and persuading M. de La Tour d'Azyr.  They had  trusted entirely
to his  anxiety to escape from  Paris to keep  him rigidly  within the  part
imposed upon him. They had reckoned  without the queer sense  of honour that
moved such men as M. le Marquis, nurtured upon a code of shams.
     Andre-Louis,  turning  to  scan that muffled  figure, advanced from the
dark  depths of  the salon.  As  the light  beat on his white, lean face the
pseudo-footman  started.  The next  moment  he too stepped forward into  the
light,  and swept  his  broad-brimmed  hat  from  his  brow.  As  he did  so
Andre-Louis observed  that  his  hand  was  fine and white  and that a jewel
flashed from one of the fingers. Then he caught his breath, and stiffened in
every line as he recognized the face revealed to him.
     "Monsieur," that stern, proud man was saying, "I cannot  take advantage
of your ignorance. If these ladies can persuade you  to save me, at least it
is due to you that you shall know whom you are saving."
     He stood there by  the table  very erect and dignified, ready to perish
as he had lived - if perish he must - without fear and without deception.
     Andre-Louis came slowly forward until he reached the table on the other
side, and then at last the muscles of his set face relaxed, and he laughed.
     "You laugh?" said M. de La Tour dAzyr, frowning, offended.
     "It is so damnably amusing," said Andre-Louis.
     "You've an odd sense of humour, M. Moreau."
     "Oh, admitted. The unexpected always moves me so. I have found you many
things in the course of our acquaintance. To-night  you are the  one thing I
never expected to find you: an honest man."
     M. de La Tour d'Azyr quivered. But he attempted no reply.
     "Because of that, monsieur, I am disposed to be clement. It is probably
a foolishness. But you have surprised me  into it. I give you three minutes,
monsieur,  in which to leave this house, and to  take  your own measures for
your safety. What afterwards happens to you shall be no concern of mine.
     "Ah, no, Andre! Listen... " Madame began in anguish.
     "Pardon, madame.  It  is the utmost that I  will do, and  already I  am
violating what I conceive to be my duty. If M.  de La Tour d'Azyr remains he
not  only ruins himself, but he imperils you. For unless he departs at once,
he goes with  me to the  headquarters of the section,  and the section  will
have  his   head  on   a   pike   inside  the   hour.  He   is  a  notorious
counter-revolutionary,  a  knight  of  the  dagger, one  of  those  whom  an
exasperated  populace is determined to exterminate.  Now, monsieur, you know
what awaits you. Resolve yourself and at once, for these ladies' sake."
     "But you don't know, Andre-Louis!" Mme.  de  Plougastel's condition was
one of anguish indescribable. She came to him and clutched his arm. "For the
love of Heaven, Andre-Louis, be merciful with him! You must!"
     "But that is what I am being, madame - merciful; more merciful than  he
deserves. And  he knows it. Fate has meddled most oddly  in  our concerns to
bring us together to-night. Almost it is as if Fate were forcing retribution
at last upon him. Yet, for your sakes, I take no advantage  of it,  provided
that he does at once as I have desired him."
     And now  from beyond the table the Marquis spoke icily, and as he spoke
his right hand stirred under the ample folds of his greatcoat.
     "I am glad,  M. Moreau, that you take that tone with me. You relieve me
of the last scruple. You  spoke of Fate just  now, and I must agree with you
that Fate has meddled oddly, though perhaps not to the end that you discern.
For  years now  you  have chosen to stand in my path and  thwart me at every
turn, holding over  me a perpetual menace.  Persistently  you have sought my
life  in  various  ways,  first  indirectly  and  at  last  directly.   Your
intervention in my affairs has ruined my highest hopes -  more  effectively,
perhaps, than you  suppose. Throughout you have been my evil genius. And you
are even one  of the agents of this climax of despair that  has been reached
by me to-night."
     "Wait! Listen!" Madame was panting. She flung away from Andre-Louis, as
if  moved  by  some  premonition  of  what  was coming.  "Gervais!  This  is
horrible!"
     "Horrible, perhaps, but inevitable. Himself he has invited it. I  am  a
man  in despair,  the  fugitive of a lost cause. That  man holds the keys of
escape. And, besides, between him and me there is a reckoning to be paid."
     His hand  came from beneath the coat at  last, and it came armed with a
pistol.
     Mme. de  Plougastel screamed, and flung herself upon  him. On her knees
now, she clung to his arm with all her strength and might.
     Vainly he sought to shake himself free of that desperate clutch.
     "Therese!"  he cried. "Are you mad? Will you destroy me  and  yourself?
This creature has the safe-conducts that mean  our salvation. Himself, he is
nothing."
     >From the background Aline, a breathless,  horror-stricken spectator of
that  scene,  spoke  sharply,  her  quick  mind  pointing  out  the  line of
checkmate.
     "Burn  the  safe-conducts,  Andre-Louis.  Burn them  at once -  in  the
candles there."
     But  Andre-Louis  had taken advantage of that moment of  M. de La  Tour
d'Azyr's impotence to draw a pistol in his turn. "T think it will be  better
to burn his brains instead," he said. "Stand away from him, madame."
     Far from obeying that imperious command, Mme. de Plougastel rose to her
feet to  cover the Marquis with  her body. But she still clung to  his  arm,
clung  to  it with unsuspected strength  that continued to prevent  him from
attempting to use the pistol.
     "Andre! For God's sake, Andre!" she panted hoarsely over her shoulder.
     "Stand away, madame," he commanded her  again, more  sternly, "and  let
this murderer  ta