which were Swiss and
German - and mounted a park of  artillery before  the  building in which the
deputies sat.  But the  deputies refused to be  intimidated; they refused to
see  the  guns and foreign uniforms; they refused  to  see anything but  the
purpose for which they had been brought together by royal proclamation.
     Thus until the 10th of June, when that great thinker and metaphysician,
the Abbe Sieyes, gave the signal: "It is time," said he, "to cut the cable."
     And  the  opportunity came soon, at the  very beginning  of July. M. du
Chatelet, a harsh, haughty  disciplinarian, proposed to  transfer the eleven
French  Guards placed under arrest  from the  military gaol of the Abbaye to
the  filthy prison of Bicetre reserved for thieves and felons  of the lowest
order.  Word of that intention going forth,  the people at last met violence
with  violence.  A  mob  four  thousand strong broke into  the  Abbaye,  and
delivered thence not only the eleven guardsmen, but all the other prisoners,
with the exception of one whom they discovered to be a thief, and  whom they
put back again;
     That was open  revolt at last, and  with revolt  Privilege knew how  to
deal. It would strangle this mutinous Paris in  the iron grip of the foreign
regiments. Measures  were  quickly  concerted.  Old Marechal  de Broglie,  a
veteran  of the  Seven Years'  War,  imbued  with a  soldier's contempt  for
civilians, conceiving that the sight of a uniform would be enough to restore
peace and  order, took control  with Besenval as his second-in-command.  The
foreign regiments were  stationed in the environs of Paris,  regiments whose
very names were an irritation to  the Parisians, regiments  of  Reisbach, of
Diesbach, of  Nassau, Esterhazy, and Roehmer. Reenforcements  of Swiss  were
sent to  the Bastille between  whose crenels already since the 30th  of June
were to be seen the menacing mouths of loaded cannon.
     On  the 10th of  July  the electors  once  more  addressed the  King to
request the withdrawal  of  the troops. They were answered next day that the
troops served the purpose of defending the liberties of the Assembly! And on
the next day to that, which was a Sunday, the philanthropist Dr. Guillotin -
whose philanthropic engine of painless death was before  very long to find a
deal  of work, came from the Assembly, of  which he was a member,  to assure
the electors of Paris that all  was well, appearances notwithstanding, since
Necker was more firmly in the saddle than  ever. He did not know that at the
very moment in which he was speaking so confidently, the  oft-dismissed  and
oft-recalled M. Necker  had  just been dismissed  yet again  by  the hostile
cabal about the Queen. Privilege  wanted conclusive measures, and conclusive
measures it would have - conclusive to itself.
     And at  the same time  yet  another philanthropist, also a doctor,  one
Jean-Paul  Mara,  of  Italian  extraction  -  better  known  as  Marat,  the
gallicized form  of name he  adopted - a man of letters, too,  who had spent
some years in England, and there published several works  on  sociology, was
writing:
     "Have a  care! Consider what  would be the  fatal effect of a seditious
movement. If you should have the misfortune to give way to that, you will be
treated as people in revolt, and blood will flow."
     Andre-Louis was in the gardens of the Palais Royal, that place of shops
and puppet-shows, of  circus and cafes, of gaming  houses and brothels, that
universal  rendezvous,  on  that Sunday  morning when  the news  of Necker's
dismissal spread, carrying with it dismay and fury. Into Necker's  dismissal
the people  read the triumph of the party hostile to themselves. It  sounded
the knell of all hope of redress of their wrongs.
     He beheld a slight young  man with  a pock-marked face,  redeemed  from
utter ugliness by  a pair  of magnificent eyes, leap to a table outside  the
Caf‚ de Foy, a drawn sword in his hand, crying, "To arms!" And then upon the
silence of astonishment that cry imposed, this young  man poured a  flood of
inflammatory eloquence, delivered in a voice marred at moments by a stutter.
He told  the people that the Germans  on the Champ de Mars would enter Paris
that night to butcher  the inhabitants. "Let us mount a  cockade!" he cried,
and  tore  a  leaf from a tree to serve his  purpose - the green cockade  of
hope.
     Enthusiasm swept the crowd, a motley crowd  made up of men and women of
every class,  from  vagabond  to nobleman, from harlot to  lady  of fashion.
Trees were  despoiled of their leaves, and the  green  cockade  was flaunted
from almost every head.
     "You are  caught between two  fires," the incendiary's stuttering voice
raved  on. "Between the Germans  on  the Champ de  Mars and the Swiss in the
Bastille. To arms, then! To arms!"
     Excitement  boiled  up and over. From a neighbouring waxworks show came
the  bust of Necker, and presently  a  bust  of that  comedian the  Duke  of
Orleans,  who  had a party and who was as ready  as any other of the budding
opportunists of those  days  to  take  advantage of  the moment for  his own
aggrandizement. The bust of Necker was draped with crepe.
     Andre-Louis looked on, and  grew afraid. Marat's pamphlet had impressed
him. It had  expressed what himself  he had expressed more than  half a year
ago  to the  mob  at Rennes. This crowd,  he felt must be  restrained.  That
hot-headed, irresponsible stutterer would have the  town in a blaze by night
unless something  were done. The  young  man,  a  causeless advocate  of the
Palais named Camille Desmoulins, later to become famous, leapt down from his
table  still  waving  his  sword,  still  shouting, "To  arms!  Follow  me!"
Andre-Louis advanced to occupy the  improvised rostrum,  which the stutterer
had  just  vacated,  to make  an effort at  counteracting that  inflammatory
performance. He  thrust through the crowd,  and came  suddenly  face to face
with  a tall man beautifully dressed, whose handsome countenance was sternly
set, whose great sombre eyes mouldered as if with suppressed anger.
     Thus face to face, each looking  into the eyes of the other, they stood
for a  long moment,  the jostling  crowd streaming past them, unheeded. Then
Andre-Louis laughed.
     "That  fellow, too,  has  a  very  dangerous  gift of eloquence, M.  le
Marquis," he said. "In fact there  are a number of such  in  France  to-day.
They grow from the soil, which  you and yours have  irrigated with the blood
of the martyrs  of liberty. Soon it  may be your  blood instead. The soil is
parched, and thirsty for it."
     "Gallows-bird!" he was answered. "The  police will  do your affair  for
you.  I  shall  tell the,  Lieutenant-General that  you are  to be  found in
Paris."
     "My God,  man!" cried Andre-Louis, "will you never  get sense? Will you
talk like  that of Lieutenant-Generals when Paris itself is likely to tumble
about  your ears or  take  fire under  your feet? Raise  your  voice, M.  le
Marquis. Denounce me  here,  to these. You will make a hero of me in such an
hour as this. Or shall I denounce you?  I think I  will. I think it is  high
time you received your wages. Hi! You  others,  listen to me! Let me present
you to... "
     A rush of men hurtled  against him, swept  him along with them, do what
he would, separating him from M. de La Tour d'Azyr, so oddly met. He  sought
to breast that human torrent; the Marquis, caught in an eddy of it, remained
where he had been, and Andre-Louis' last glimpse of him was of a man smiling
with tight lips, an ugly smile.
     Meanwhile the gardens  were emptying in  the wake  of  that  stuttering
firebrand  who had mounted the green cockade. The human  torrent  poured out
into the Rue de Richelieu, and  Andre-Louis  perforce must suffer himself to
be borne along by it, at  least as far as the Rue du Hasard. There he sidled
out of it, and having no wish to be crushed to death or to take further part
in the madness that was afoot, he  slipped down the  street, and so got home
to the deserted academy.  For there were no pupils to-day,  and even  M. des
Amis, like Andre-Louis,  had gone out to seek for news of what was happening
at Versailles.
     This was no normal state of things at the Academy of Bertrand des Amis.
Whatever else in Paris might have been at  a standstill  lately, the fencing
academy had flourished as never hitherto. Usually both  the master  and  his
assistant were busy  from  morning until dusk, and already  Andre-Louis  was
being paid now by the lessons that he gave, the master allowing him one half
of  the fee in  each case for  himself,  an arrangement which the  assistant
found  profitable.  On  Sundays the academy made half-holiday;  but  on this
Sunday such had been the state  of  suspense and ferment in the city that no
one having appeared by eleven o'clock both des Amis and Andre-Louis had gone
out. Little they thought as they lightly took leave of each other
     - they were very  good friends  by now -  that they were  never to meet
again in this world.
     Bloodshed  there  was  that  day  in  Paris.  On  the  Place  Vendome a
detachment  of dragoons  awaited  the crowd  out  of  which Andre-Louis  had
slipped. The  horsemen  swept down upon the  mob, dispersed  it, smashed the
waxen effigy of M. Necker,  and killed one man on  the spot - an unfortunate
French  Guard  who stood his ground. That was a beginning.  As a consequence
Besenval brought up his Swiss from the  Champ de Mars and marshalled them in
battle order  on  the Champs Elysees  with  four  pieces  of  artillery. His
dragoons he stationed in the Place Louis XV. That evening an enormous crowd,
streaming along  the  Champs Elysees and  the Tuileries  Gardens, considered
with  eyes of  alarm that warlike  preparation. Some insults were cast  upon
those foreign mercenaries and some stones were  flung. Besenval,  losing his
head, or  acting  under orders, sent for  his dragoons  and ordered  them to
disperse the  crowd,  But that crowd was  too  dense to be dispersed in this
fashion; so dense that it was  impossible  for the  horsemen to move without
crushing some one. There were several crushed, and as a consequence when the
dragoons, led by the Prince de Lambesc, advanced into the Tuileries Gardens,
the outraged crowd met them  with a fusillade of stones and bottles. Lambesc
gave  the  order  to  fire.  There was a stampede.  Pouring  forth  from the
Tuileries through  the city went those indignant people with their story  of
German cavalry  trampling  upon  women and  children,  and  uttering now  in
grimmest earnest the call  to  arms, raised at  noon  by Desmoulins  in  the
Palais Royal.
     The  victims  were  taken up  and  borne  thence, and amongst them  was
Bertrand  des  Amis, himself - like all who lived by the  sword -  an ardent
upholder of the noblesse, trampled to death under hooves of foreign horsemen
launched by the noblesse and led by a nobleman.
     To Andre-Louis, waiting  that evening on the second floor of No. 13 Rue
du Hasard  for the return  of  his friend and master, four men of the people
brought that  broken body of one  of the earliest victims of the  Revolution
that was now launched in earnest.

        CHAPTER III. PRESIDENT LE CHAPELIERII


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

        CHAPTER IV. AT MEUDONV


     Later in the  week he  received  a visit from  Le Chapelier just before
noon.
     "I  have news for you,  Andre. Your godfather is at Meudon. He  arrived
there two days ago. Had you heard?"
     "But no. How should I hear? Why is he at Meudon?" He was conscious of a
faint excitement, which he could hardly have explained.
     "I don't know. There have been fresh  disturbances in Brittany. It  may
be due to that."
     "And so he has come for shelter to his brother?" asked Andre-Louis.
     "To his brother's house, yes; but not to his brother. Where do you live
at all, Andre?  Do you never  hear any of  the  news? Etienne  de  Gavrillac
emigrated years ago. He was of the household of M.  d'Artois, and he crossed
the  frontier  with  him.  By  now, no  doubt,  he is  in Germany  with him,
conspiring against France. For  that is  what  the emigres are  doing.  That
Austrian woman at the Tuileries will end by destroying the monarchy."
     "Yes,  yes," said Andre-Louis impatiently. Politics  interested him not
at all this morning. "But about Gavrillac?"
     "Why, haven't I  told you that Gavrillac is at Meudon, installed in the
house his brother has left? Dieu de Dieu! Don't I  speak French or don't you
understand the language?  I  believe  that  Rabouillet, his intendant, is in
charge of Gavrillac. I have brought you the news the moment I received it. I
thought you would probably wish to go out to Meudon."
     "Of  course. I will go  at  once  - that is, as  soon as I can. I can't
to-day, nor yet to-morrow. I am too busy here." He waved  a hand towards the
inner room, whence proceeded the click-click of blades, the quick moving  of
feet, and the voice of the instructor, Le Duc.
     "Well, well, that is your  own affair. You  are busy. I leave you  now.
Let us dine this evening at the Caf‚ de Foy. Kersain will be of the party."
     "A moment!" Andre-Louis' voice arrested him on the threshold. "Is Mlle.
de Kercadiou with her uncle?"
     "How the devil should I know? Go and find out."
     He was gone, and Andre-Louis stood there a moment deep in thought. Then
he turned and went back to resume with his pupil, the Vicomte de Villeniort,
the interrupted exposition of the demi-contre of Danet, illustrating  with a
small-sword the advantages to be derived from its adoption.
     Thereafter he fenced  with the Vicomte,  who was perhaps the ablest  of
his  pupils at the time,  and all the while his thoughts were on the heights
of Meudon, his mind casting up the lessons he had to give that afternoon and
on  the  morrow,  and  wondering  which of  these he might  postpone without
deranging the academy.  When  having  touched the  Vicomte  three  times  in
succession, he  paused  and  wrenched himself back to the present, it was to
marvel at the precision  to be gained by purely  mechanical action.  Without
bestowing  a thought upon what he was doing, his wrist and arm and knees had
automatically performed their  work,  like the accurate fighting engine into
which constant practice for a year and more had combined them.
     Not until  Sunday  was  Andre-Louis  able to satisfy  a wish which  the
impatience  of the intervening  days had converted into a yearning.  Dressed
with more than ordinary care, his head elegantly coiffed
     -  by one of those hairdressers to the nobility  of  whom so many  were
being  thrown out of employment  by the stream  of  emigration which was now
flowing freely -  Andre-Louis mounted his  hired carriage, and  drove out to
Meudon.
     The  house of the younger Kercadiou no more resembled that of  the head
of the family than did his person. A man of the Court, where his brother was
essentially a man of the  soil,  an officer of the  household of M. le Comte
d'Artois, he had built for himself and his  family an  imposing villa on the
heights of Meudon in a miniature  park, conveniently situated for him midway
between Versailles and Paris, and easily accessible from either. M. d'Artois
-  the royal  tennis-player  - had  been amongst the very first to emigrate.
Together  with  the Condes,  the Contis, the  Polignacs, and  others  of the
Queen's intimate  council, old Marshal de Broglie and the Prince de Lambesc,
who realized that  their very  names had become odious to the people, he had
quitted France  immediately after the fall of the Bastille.  He had  gone to
play tennis beyond the frontier -  and there consummate the  work of ruining
the  French  monarchy upon which he and those  others  had  been engaged  in
France. With him, amongst several members  of his  household went Etienne de
Kercadiou, and with Etienne  de Kercadiou went his  family, a wife  and four
children. Thus it was that the Seigneur  de Gavrillac, glad to escape from a
province  so peculiarly disturbed as that of Brittany - where the nobles had
shown themselves the most intransigent of all France - had come to occupy in
his brother's absence the courtier's handsome villa at Meudon.
     That he was quite happy  there  is  not  to be supposed. A  man  of his
almost Spartan habits, accustomed to plain fare and self-help, was  a little
uneasy in this sybaritic abode, with its soft carpets, profusion of gilding,
and battalion of sleek, silent-footed servants
     - for Kercadiou the younger had left his entire household behind. Time,
which at Gavrillac  he had kept so fully employed in agrarian concerns, here
hung heavily  upon his hands. In self-defence he slept a great deal, and but
for Aline,  who made no attempt to  conceal her delight at this proximity to
Paris  and the  heart  of things, it is possible  that he  would have beat a
retreat almost at once from surroundings that sorted so ill with his habits.
Later  on,  perhaps,  he would  accustom himself and grow  resigned to  this
luxurious inactivity. In the meantime the novelty of  it fretted him, and it
was into the presence of a peevish and rather somnolent M. de Kercadiou that
Andre-Louis was ushered  in the  early hours of the afternoon of that Sunday
in June. He was unannounced, as had ever been the  custom at Gavrillac. This
because  Benoit,  M.  de  Kercadiou's  old seneschal,  had  accompanied  his
seigneur upon this soft  adventure, and was installed - to the ceaseless and
but  half-concealed hilarity of the impertinent  valetaille  that M. Etienne
had left - as his maitre d'hotel here at Meudon.
     Benoit had welcomed M. Andre with  incoherencies of delight; almost had
he gambolled about him like some faithful dog, whilst conducting him  to the
salon and the presence of the Lord of Gavrillac, who would - in the words of
Benoit - be ravished to see M. Andre again.
     "Monseigneur!  Monseigneur!" he cried in a quavering voice,  entering a
pace  or two in advance of the  visitor.  "It  is M. Andre... M. Andre, your
godson, who comes  to kiss your  hand. He is here... and  so  fine  that you
would hardly know him. Here he is, monseigneur! Is he not beautiful?"
     And the old servant rubbed his hands in conviction of  the delight that
he believed he was conveying to his master.
     Andre-Louis crossed the threshold of  that great room, soft-carpeted to
the foot, dazzling to  the eye. It  was immensely  lofty, and its  festooned
ceiling  was carried on fluted  pillars  with gilded capitals. The  door  by
which he entered, and  the windows that opened upon the garden,  were  of an
enormous height - almost, indeed, the full height of the room itself. It was
a room  overwhelmingly gilded, with an abundance of ormolu  encrustations on
the furniture, in which  it nowise  differed from what was  customary in the
dwellings of people of birth and wealth.  Never, indeed, was there a time in
which so much gold was employed decoratively as in this age when coined gold
was  almost unprocurable,  and paper money had been put into circulation  to
supply the lack. It was a saying of Andre-Louis' that if these people  could
only  have been  induced to put the  paper on their walls  and the gold into
their  pockets, the finances of the  kingdom might soon have been  in better
case.
     The  Seigneur  -  furbished  and  beruffled   to   harmonize  with  his
surroundings - had risen, startled by this exuberant invasion on the part of
Benoit, who had  been almost as forlorn as  himself  since  their  coming to
Meudon.
     "What is  it? Eh?" His pale, short-sighted  eyes peered at the visitor.
"Andre!" said he, between surprise and sternness; and the colour deepened in
his great pink face.
     Benoit, with his back to his master, deliberately winked and grinned at
Andre-Louis to encourage him not to be put off by  any apparent hostility on
the part of  his godfather. That done, the intelligent old fellow discreetly
effaced himself.
     "What do you want here?" growled M. de Kercadiou.
     "No more than to kiss your  hand, as Benoit  has  told you, monsieur my
godfather," said Andre-Louis submissively, bowing his sleek black head.
     "You have contrived without kissing it for two years."
     "Do not, monsieur, reproach me with my misfortune."
     The little man stood very stiffly  erect, his disproportionately  large
head thrown back, his pale prominent eyes very stern.
     "Did you think to  make your outrageous offence any better by vanishing
in  that heartless  manner, by leaving us without knowledge  of whether  you
were alive or dead?"
     "At  first it was dangerous -  dangerous to my  life  -  to disclose my
whereabouts. Then for  a time I  was in need, almost destitute, and my pride
forbade  me,  after what  I  had  done and the view you must take  of it, to
appeal to you for help. Later... "
     "Destitute?" The  Seigneur interrupted. For a moment his lip  trembled.
Then he steadied himself, and the frown deepened  as  he surveyed  this very
changed and elegant godson of his, noted the quiet richness of his  apparel,
the  paste  buckles  and red  heels  to  his  shoes,  the  sword  hilted  in
mother-o'-pearl  and  silver,  and  the carefully  dressed hair that he  had
always  seen  hanging  in  wisps  about his  face. "At least you do not look
destitute now," he sneered.
     "I am not. I h