ted to revolutionary action
of the most desperate kind. The representative and delegate of a nobleman in
the States of Brittany, he found himself simultaneously and incongruously
the representative and delegate of the whole Third Estate of Rennes.
It is difficult to determine to what extent, in the heat of passion and
swept along by the torrent of his own oratory, he might yesterday have
succeeded in deceiving himself. But it is at least certain that, looking
back in cold blood now he had no single delusion on the score of what he had
done. Cynically he had presented to his audience one side only of the great
question that he propounded.
But since the established order of things in France was such as to make
a rampart for M. de La Tour d'Azyr, affording him complete immunity for this
and any other crimes that it pleased him to commit, why, then the
established order must take the consequences of its wrong-doing. Therein he
perceived his clear justification.
And so it was without misgivings that he came on his errand of sedition
into that beautiful city of Nantes, rendered its spacious streets and
splendid port the rival in prosperity of Bordeaux and Marseilles.
He found an inn on the Quai La Fosse, where he put up his horse, and
where he dined in the embrasure of a window that looked out over the
tree-bordered quay and the broad bosom of the Loire, on which argosies of
all nations rode at anchor. The sun had again broken through the clouds, and
shed its pale wintry light over the yellow waters and the tall-masted
shipping.
Along the quays there was a stir of life as great as that to be seen on
the quays of Paris. Foreign sailors in outlandish garments and of
harsh-sounding, outlandish speech, stalwart fishwives with baskets of
herrings on their heads, voluminous of petticoat above bare legs and bare
feet, calling their wares shrilly and almost inarticulately, watermen in
woollen caps and loose trousers rolled to the knees, peasants in goatskin
coats, their wooden shoes clattering on the round kidney-stones, shipwrights
and labourers from the dockyards, bellows-menders, rat-catchers,
water-carriers, ink-sellers, and other itinerant pedlars. And, sprinkled
through this proletariat mass that came and went in constant movement,
Andre-Louis beheld tradesmen in sober garments, merchants in long, fur-lined
coats; occasionally a merchant-prince rolling along in his two-horse
cabriolet to the whip-crackings and shouts of "Gare!" from his coachman;
occasionally a dainty lady carried past in her sedan-chair, with perhaps a
mincing abbe from the episcopal court tripping along in attendance;
occasionally an officer in scarlet riding disdainfully; and once the great
carriage of a nobleman, with escutcheoned panels and a pair of
white-stockinged, powdered footmen in gorgeous liveries hanging on behind.
And there were Capuchins in brown and Benedictines in black, and secular
priests in plenty - for God was well served in the sixteen parishes of
Nantes - and by way of contrast there were lean-jawed, out-at-elbow
adventurers, and gendarmes in blue coats and gaitered legs, sauntering
guardians of the peace.
Representatives of every class that went to make up the seventy
thousand inhabitants of that wealthy, industrious city were to be seen in
the human stream that ebbed and flowed beneath the window from which
Andre-Louis observed it.
Of the waiter who ministered to his humble wants with soup and bouilli,
and a measure of vin gris, Andre-Louis enquired into the state of public
feeling in the city. The waiter, a staunch supporter of the privileged
orders, admitted regretfully that an uneasiness prevailed. Much would depend
upon what happened at Rennes. If it was true that the King had dissolved the
States of Brittany, then all should be well, and the malcontents would have
no pretext for further disturbances. There had been trouble and to spare in
Nantes already. They wanted no repetition of it. All manner of rumours were
abroad, and since early morning there had been crowds besieging the portals
of the Chamber of Commerce for definite news. But definite news was yet to
come. It was not even known for a fact that His Majesty actually had
dissolved the States.
It was striking two, the busiest hour of the day upon the Bourse, when
Andre-Louis reached the Place du Commerce. The square, dominated by the
imposing classical building of the Exchange, was so crowded that he was
compelled almost to fight his way through to the steps of the magnificent
Ionic porch. A word would have sufficed to have opened a way for him at
once. But guile moved him to keep silent. He would come upon that waiting
multitude as a thunderclap, precisely as yesterday he had come upon the mob
at Rennes. He would lose nothing of the surprise effect of his entrance.
The precincts of that house of commerce were jealously kept by a line
of ushers armed with staves, a guard as hurriedly assembled by the merchants
as it was evidently necessary. One of these now effectively barred the young
lawyer's passage as he attempted to mount the steps.
Andre-Louis announced himself in a whisper.
The stave was instantly raised from the horizontal, and he passed and
went up the steps in the wake of the usher. At the top, on the threshold of
the chamber, he paused, and stayed his guide.
"I will wait here," he announced. "Bring the president to me."
"Your name, monsieur?"
Almost had Andre-Louis answered him when he remembered Le Chapelier's
warning of the danger with which his mission was fraught, and Le Chapelier's
parting admonition to conceal his identity.
"My name is unknown to him; it matters nothing; I am the mouthpiece of
a people, no more. Go."
The usher went, and in the shadow of that lofty, pillared portico
Andre-Louis waited, his eyes straying out ever and anon to survey that
spread of upturned faces immediately below him.
Soon the president came, others following, crowding out into the
portico, jostling one another in their eagerness to hear the news.
"You are a messenger from Rennes?"
"I am the delegate sent by the Literary Chamber of that city to inform
you here in Nantes of what is taking place."
"Your name?"
Andre-Louis paused. "The less we mention names perhaps the better."
The president's eyes grew big with gravity. He was a corpulent, florid
man, purse-proud, and self-sufficient.
He hesitated a moment. Then - "Come into the Chamber," said he.
"By your leave, monsieur, I will deliver my message from here - from
these steps."
"From here?" The great merchant frowned.
"My message is for the people of Nantes, and from here I can speak at
once to the greatest number of Nantais of all ranks, and it is my desire -
and the desire of those whom I represent - that as great a number as
possible should hear my message at first hand."
"Tell me, sir, is it true that the King has dissolved the States?"
Andre-Louis looked at him. He smiled apologetically, and waved a hand
towards the crowd, which by now was straining for a glimpse of this slim
young man who had brought forth the president and more than half the numbers
of the Chamber, guessing already, with that curious instinct of crowds, that
he was the awaited bearer of tidings.
"Summon the gentlemen of your Chamber, monsieur," said he, "and you
shall hear all."
"So be it."
A word, and forth they came to crowd upon the steps, but leaving clear
the topmost step and a half-moon space in the middle.
To the spot so indicated, Andre-Louis now advanced very deliberately.
He took his stand there, dominating the entire assembly. He removed his hat,
and launched the opening bombshell of that address which is historic,
marking as it does one of the great stages of France's progress towards
revolution.
"People of this great city of Nantes, I have come to summon you to
arms!"
In the amazed and rather scared silence that followed he surveyed them
for a moment before resuming.
"I am a delegate of the people of Rennes, charged to announce to you
what is taking place, and to invite you in this dreadful hour of our
country's peril to rise and march to her defence."
"Name! Your name!" a voice shouted, and instantly the cry was taken up
by others, until the multitude rang with the question.
He could not answer that excited mob as he had answered the president.
It was necessary to compromise, and he did so, happily. "My name," said he,
"is Omnes Omnibus - all for all. Let that suffice you now. I am a herald, a
mouthpiece, a voice; no more. I come to announce to you that since the
privileged orders, assembled for the States of Brittany in Rennes, resisted
your will - our will
- despite the King's plain hint to them, His Majesty has dissolved the
States."
There was a burst of delirious applause. Men laughed and shouted, and
cries of "Vive le Roi!" rolled forth like thunder. Andre-Louis waited, and
gradually the preternatural gravity of his countenance came to be observed,
and to beget the suspicion that there might be more to follow. Gradually
silence was restored, and at last Andre Louis was able to proceed.
"You rejoice too soon. Unfortunately, the nobles, in their insolent
arrogance, have elected to ignore the royal dissolution, and in despite of
it persist in sitting and in conducting matters as seems good to them."
A silence of utter dismay greeted that disconcerting epilogue to the
announcement that had been so rapturously received. Andre-Louis continued
after a moment's pause:
"So that these men who were already rebels against the people, rebels,
against justice and equity, rebels against humanity itself, are now also
rebels against their King. Sooner than yield an inch of the unconscionable
privileges by which too long already they have flourished, to the misery of
a whole nation, they will make a mock of royal authority, hold up the King
himself to contempt. They are determined to prove that there is no real
sovereignty in France but the sovereignty of their own parasitic
faineantise."
There was a faint splutter of applause, but the majority of the
audience remained silent, waiting.
"This is no new thing. Always has it been the same. No minister in the
last ten years, who, seeing the needs and perils of the State, counselled
the measures that we now demand as the only means of arresting our
motherland in its ever-quickening progress to the abyss, but found himself
as a consequence cast out of office by the influence which Privilege brought
to bear against him. Twice already has M. Necker been called to the
ministry, to be twice dismissed when his insistent counsels of reform
threatened the privileges of clergy and nobility. For the third time now has
he been called to office, and at last it seems we are to have States General
in spite of Privilege. But what the privileged orders can no longer prevent,
they are determined to stultify. Since it is now a settled thing that these
States General are to meet, at least the nobles and the clergy will see to
it - unless we take measures to prevent them - by packing the Third Estate
with their own creatures, and denying it all effective representation, that
they convert. the States General into an instrument of their own will for
the perpetuation of the abuses by which they live. To achieve this end they
will stop at nothing. They have flouted the authority of the King, and they
are silencing by assassination those who raise their voices to condemn them.
Yesterday in Rennes two young men who addressed the people as I am
addressing you were done to death in the streets by assassins at the
instigation of the nobility. Their blood cries out for vengeance."
Beginning in a sullen mutter, the indignation that moved his hearers
swelled up to express itself in a roar of anger.
"Citizens of Nantes, the motherland is in peril. Let us march to her
defence. Let us proclaim it to the world that we recognize that the measures
to liberate the Third Estate from the slavery in which for centuries it has
groaned find only obstacles in those orders whose phrenetic egotism sees in
the tears and suffering of the unfortunate an odious tribute which they
would pass on to their generations still unborn. Realizing from the
barbarity of the means employed by our enemies to perpetuate our oppression
that we have everything to fear from the aristocracy they would set up as a
constitutional principle for the governing of France, let us declare
ourselves at once enfranchised from it.
"The establishment of liberty and equality should be the aim of every
citizen member of the Third Estate; and to this end we should stand
indivisibly united, especially the young and vigorous, especially those who
have had the good fortune to be born late enough to be able to gather for
themselves the precious fruits of the philosophy of this eighteenth
century."
Acclamations broke out unstintedly now. He had caught them in the snare
of his oratory. And he pressed his advantage instantly.
"Let us all swear," he cried in a great voice, "to raise up in the name
of humanity and of liberty a rampart against our enemies, to oppose to their
bloodthirsty covetousness the calm perseverance of men whose cause is just.
And let us protest here and in advance against any tyrannical decrees that
should declare us seditious when we have none but pure and just intentions.
Let us make oath upon the honour of our motherland that should any of us be
seized by an unjust tribunal, intending against us one of those acts termed
of political expediency - which are, in effect, but acts of despotism - let
us swear, I say, to give a full expression to the strength that is in us and
do that in self-defence which nature, courage, and despair dictate to us."
Loud and long rolled the applause that greeted his conclusion, and he
observed with satisfaction and even some inward grim amusement that the
wealthy merchants who had been congregated upon the steps, and who now came
crowding about him to shake him by the hand and to acclaim him, were not
merely participants in, but the actual leaders of, this delirium of
enthusiasm.
It confirmed him, had he needed confirmation, in his conviction that
just as the philosophies upon which this new movement was based had their
source in thinkers extracted from the bourgeoisie, so the need to adopt
those philosophies to the practical purposes of life was most acutely felt
at present by those bourgeois who found themselves debarred by Privilege
from the expansion their wealth permitted them. If it might be said of
Andre-Louis that he had that day lighted the torch of the Revolution in
Nantes, it might with even greater truth be said that the torch itself was
supplied by the opulent bourgeoisie.
I need not dwell at any length upon the sequel. It is a matter of
history how that oath which Omnes Omnibus administered to the citizens of
Nantes formed the backbone of the formal protest which they drew up and
signed in their thousands. Nor were the results of that powerful protest -
which, after all, might already be said to harmonize with the expressed will
of the sovereign himself - long delayed. Who shall say how far it may have
strengthened the hand of Necker, when on the 27th of that same month of
November he compelled the Council to adopt the most significant and
comprehensive of all those measures to which clergy and nobility had refused
their consent? On that date was published the royal decree ordaining that
the deputies to be elected to the States General should number at least one
thousand, and that the deputies of the Third Estate should be fully
representative by numbering as many as the deputies of clergy and nobility
together.
CHAPTER XI. THE AFTERMATHX
Dusk of the following day was falling when the homing Andre-Louis
approached Gavrillac. Realizing fully what a hue and cry there would
presently be for the apostle of revolution who had summoned the people of
Nantes to arms, he desired as far as possible to conceal the fact that he
had been in that maritime city. Therefore he made a wide detour, crossing
the river at Bruz, and recrossing it a little above Chavagne, so as to
approach Gavrillac from the north, and create the impression that he was
returning from Rennes, whither he was known to have gone two days ago.
Within a mile or so of the village he caught in the fading light his
first glimpse of a figure on horseback pacing slowly towards him. But it was
not until they had come within a few yards of each other, and he observed
that this cloaked figure was leaning forward to peer at him, that he took
much notice of it. And then he found himself challenged almost at once by a
woman's voice.
"It is you, Andre - at last!"
He drew rein, mildly surprised, to be assailed by another question,
impatiently, anxiously asked.
"Where have you been?"
"Where have I been, Cousin Aline? Oh... seeing the world."
"I have been patrolling this road since noon to-day waiting for you."
She spoke breathlessly, in haste to explain. "A troop of the marechaussee
from Rennes descended upon Gavrillac this morning in quest of you. They
turned the chateau and the village inside out, and at last discovered that
you were due to return with a horse hired from the Breton arme. So they have
taken up their quarters at the inn to wait for you. I have been here all the
afternoon on the lookout to warn you against walking into that trap."
"My dear Aline! That I should have been the cause of so much concern
and trouble!"
"Never mind that. It is not important."
"On the contrary; it is the most important part of what you tell me. It
is the rest that is unimportant."
"Do you realize that they have come to arrest you?" she asked him, with
increasing impatience. "You are wanted for sedition, and upon a warrant from
M. de Lesdiguieres."
"Sedition?" quoth he, and his thoughts flew to that business at Nantes.
It was impossible they could have had news of it in Rennes and acted upon it
in so short a time.
"Yes, sedition. The sedition of that wicked speech of yours at Rennes
on Wednesday."
"Oh, that!" said he. "Pooh!" His note of relief might have told her,
had she been more attentive, that he had to fear the consequences of a
greater wickedness committed since. "Why, that was nothing."
"Nothing?"
"I almost suspect that the real intentions of these gentlemen of the
marechaussee have been misunderstood. Most probably they have come to thank
me on M. de Lesdiguieres' behalf. I restrained the people when they would
have burnt the Palais and himself inside it."
"After you had first incited them to do it. I suppose you were afraid
of your work. You drew back at the last moment. But you said things of M. de
Lesdiguieres, if you are correctly reported, which he will never forgive."
"I see," said Andre-Louis, and he fell into thought.
But Mlle. de Kercadiou had already done what thinking was necessary,
and her alert young mind had settled all that was to be done.
"You must not go into Gavrillac," she told him, "and you must get down
from your horse, and let me take it. I will stable it at the chateau
to-night. And sometime to morrow afternoon, by when you should be well away,
I will return it to the Breton arme."
"Oh, but that is impossible."
"Impossible? Why?"
"For several reasons. One of them is that you haven't considered what
will happen to you if you do such a thing."
"To me? Do you suppose I am afraid of that pack of oafs sent by M.
Lesdiguieres? I have committed no sedition."
"But it is almost as bad to give aid to one who is wanted for the
crime. That is the law."
"What do I care for the law? Do you imagine that the law will presume
to touch me?"
"Of course there is that. You are sheltered by one of the abuses I
complained of at Rennes. I was forgetting."
"Complain of it as much as you please, but meanwhile profit by it.
Come, Andre, do as I tell you. Get down from your horse." And then, as he
still hesitated, she stretched out and caught him by the arm. Her voice was
vibrant with earnestness. "Andre, you don't realize how serious is your
position. If these people take you, it is almost certain that you will be
hanged. Don't you realize it? You must not go to Gavrillac. You must go away
at once, and lie completely lost for a time until this blows over. Indeed,
until my uncle can bring influence to bear to obtain your pardon, you must
keep in hiding."
"That will be a long time, then," said Andre-Louis. M. de Kercadiou has
never cultivated friends at court."
"There is M. de La Tour d'Azyr," she reminded him, to his astonishment.
"That man!" he cried, and then he laughed. "But it was chiefly against
him that I aroused the resentment of the people of Rennes. I should have
known that all my speech was not reported to you.
"It was, and that part of it among the rest."
"Ah! And yet you are concerned to save me, the man who seeks the life
of your future husband at the hands either of the law or of the people? Or
is it, perhaps, that since you have seen his true nature revealed in the
murder of poor Philippe, you have changed your views on the subject of
becoming Marquise de La Tour d'Azyr?"
"You often show yourself without any faculty of deductive reasoning."
"Perhaps. But hardly to the extent of imagining that M. de La Tour
d'Azyr will ever lift a finger to do as you suggest."
"In which, as usual, you are wrong. He will certainly do so if I ask
him."
"If you ask him?" Sheer horror rang in his voice.
"Why, yes. You see, I have not yet said that I will be Marquise de La
Tour d'Azyr. I am still considering. It is a position that has its
advantages. One of them is that it ensures a suitor's complete obedience."
"So, so. I see the crooked logic of your mind. You might go so far as
to say to him: 'Refuse me this, and I shall refuse to be your marquise.' You
would go so far as that?"
"At need, I might."
"And do you not see the converse implication? Do you not see that your
hands would then be tied, that you would be wanting in honour if afterwards
you refused him? And do you think that I would consent to anything that
could so tie your hands? Do you think I want to see you damned, Aline?"
Her hand fell away from his arm.
"Oh, you are mad!" she exclaimed, quite out of patience.
"Possibly. But I like my madness. There is a thrill in it unknown to
such sanity as yours. By your leave, Aline, I think I will ride on to
Gavrillac."
"Andre, you must not! It is death to you!" In her alarm she backed her
horse, and pulled it across the road to bar his way.
It was almost completely night by now; but from behind the wrack of
clouds overhead a crescent moon sailed out to alleviate the darkness.
"Come, now," she enjoined him. "Be reasonable. Do as I bid you. See,
there is a carriage coming up behind you. Do not let us be found here
together thus."
He made up his mind quickly. He was not the man to be actuated by false
heroics about dying, and he had no fancy whatever for the gallows of M. de
Lesdiguieres' providing. The immediate task that he had set himself might be
accomplished. He had made heard - and ringingly - the voice that M. de La
Tour d'Azyr imagined he had silenced. But he was very far from having done
with life.
"Aline, on one condition only."
"And that?"
"That you swear to me you will never seek the aid of M. de La Tour
d'Azyr on my behalf."
"Since you insist, and as time presses, I consent. And now ride on with
me as far as the lane. There is that carriage coming up."
The lane to which she referred was one that branched off the road some
three hundred yards nearer the village and led straight up the hill to the
chateau itself. In silence they rode together towards it, and together they
turned into that thickly hedged and narrow bypath. At a depth of fifty yards
she halted him.
"Now!" she bade him.
Obediently he swung down from his horse, and surrendered the reins to
her.
"Aline," he said, "I haven't words in which to thank you."
"It isn't necessary," said she.
"But I shall hope to repay you some day."
"Nor is that necessary. Could I do less than I am doing? I do not want
to hear of you hanged, Andre; nor does my uncle, though he is very angry
with you.
"I suppose he is.
"And you can hardly be surprised. You were his delegate, his
representative. He depended upon you, and you have turned your coat. He is
rightly indignant, calls you a traitor, and swears that he will never speak
to you again. But he doesn't want you hanged, Andre."
"Then we are agreed on that at least, for I don't want it myself."
"I'll make your peace with him. And now - good-bye, Andre. Send me a
word when you are safe."
She held out a hand that looked ghostly in the faint light. He took it
and bore it to his lips.
"God bless you, Aline."
She was gone, and he stood listening to the receding clopper-clop of
hooves until it grew faint in the distance. Then slowly, with shoulders
hunched and head sunk on his breast, he retraced his steps to the main road,
cogitating whither he should go. Quite suddenly he checked, remembering with
dismay that he was almost entirely without money. In Brittany itself he knew
of no dependable hiding-place, and as long as he was in Brittany his peril
must remain imminent. Yet to leave the province, and to leave it as quickly
as prudence dictated, horses would be necessary. And how was he to procure
horses, having no money beyond a single louis d'or and a few pieces of
silver?
There was also the fact that he was very weary. He had had little sleep
since Tuesday night, and not very much then; and much of the time had been
spent in the saddle, a wearing thing to one so little accustomed to long
rides. Worn as he was, it was unthinkable that he should go far to-night. He
might get as far as Chavagne, perhaps. But there he must sup and sleep; and
what, then, of to-morrow?
Had he but thought of it before, perhaps Aline might have been able to
assist him with the loan of a few louis. His first impulse now was to follow
her to the chateau. But prudence dismissed the notion. Before he could reach
her, he must be seen by servants, and word of his presence would go forth.
There was no choice for him; he must tramp as far as Chavagne, find a
bed there, and leave to-morrow until it dawned. On the resolve he set his
face in the direction whence he had come. But again he paused. Chavagne lay
on the road to Rennes. To go that way was to plunge further into danger. He
would strike south again. At the foot of some meadows on this side of the
village there was a ferry that would put him across the river. Thus he would
avoid the village; and by placing the river between himself and the
immediate danger, he would obtain an added sense of security.
A lane, turning out of the highroad, a quarter of a mile this side of
Gavrillac, led down to that ferry. By this lane some twenty minutes later
came Andre-Louis with dragging feet. He avoided the little cottage of the
ferryman, whose window was alight, and in the dark crept down to the boat,
intending if possible to put himself across. He felt for the chain by which
the boat was moored, and ran his fingers along this to the point where it
was fastened. Here to his dismay he found a padlock.
He stood up in the gloom and laughed silently. Of course he might have
known it. The ferry was the property of M. de La Tour d'Azyr, and not likely
to be left unfastened so that poor devils might cheat him of seigneurial
dues.
There being no possible alternative, he walked back to the cottage, and
rapped on the door. When it opened, he stood well back, and aside, out of
the shaft of light that issued thence.
"Ferry!" he rapped out, laconically.
The ferryman, a burly scoundrel well known to him, turned aside to pick
up a lantern, and came forth as he was bidden. As he stepped from the little
porch, he levelled the lantern so that its light fell on the face of this
traveller.
"My God!" he ejaculated.
"You realize, I see, that I am pressed," said Andre-Louis, his eyes on
the fellow's startled countenance.
"And well you may be with the gallows waiting for you at Rennes,"
growled the ferryman. "Since you've been so foolish as to come back to
Gavrillac, you had better go again as quickly as you can. I will say nothing
of having seen you."
"I thank you, Fresnel. Your advice accords with my intention. That is
why I need the boat."
"Ah, that, no," said Fresnel, with determination. "I'll hold my peace,
but it's as much as my skin is worth to help you.
"You need not have seen my face. Forget that you have seen it."
"I'll do that, monsieur. But that is all I will do. I cannot put you
across the river."
"Then give me the key of the boat, and I will put myself across."
"That is the same thing. I cannot. I'll hold my tongue, but I will not
- I dare not - help you."
Andre-Louis looked a moment into that sullen, resolute face, and
understood. This man, living under the shadow of La Tour d'Azyr, dared
exercise no will that might he in conflict with the will of his dread lord.
"Fresnel," he said, quietly, "if, as you say, the gallows claim me, the
thing that has brought me to this extremity arises out of the shooting of
Mabey. Had not Mabey been murdered there would have been no need for me to
have raised my voice as I have done. Mabey was your friend, I think. Will
you for his sake lend me the little help I need to save my neck?"
The man kept his glance averted, and the cloud of sullenness deepened
on his face.
"I would if I dared, but I dare not." Then, quite suddenly he became
angry. It was as if in anger he sought support. "Don't you understand that I
dare not? Would you have a poor man risk his life for you? What have you or
yours ever done for me that you should ask that? You do not cross to-night
in my ferry. Understand that, monsieur, and go at once - go before I
remember that it may be dangerous even to have talked to you and not give
information. Go!"
He turned on his heel to reenter his cottage, and a wave of
hopelessness swept over Andre-Louis.
But in a second it was gone. The man must be compelled, and he had the
means. He bethought him of a pistol pressed upon him by Le Chapelier at the
moment of his leaving Rennes, a gift which at the time he had almost
disdained. True, it was not loaded, and he had no ammunition. But how was
Fresnel to know that?
He acted quickly. As with his right hand he pulled it from his pocket,
with his left he caught the ferryman by the shoulder, and swung him round.
"What do you want now?" Fresnel demanded angrily. "Haven't I told you
that I... "
He broke off short. The muzzle of the pistol was within a foot of his
eyes.
"I want the key of the boat. That is all, Fresnel. And you can either
give it me at once, or I'll take it after I have burnt your brains. I should
regret to kill you, but I shall not hesitate. It is your life against mine,
Fresnel; and you'll not find it strange that if one of us must die I prefer
that it shall be you."
Fresnel dipped a hand into his pocket, and fetched thence a key. He
held it out to Andre-Louis in fingers that shook - more in anger than in
fear.
"I yield to violence," he said, showing his teeth like a snarling dog.
"But don't imagine that it will greatly profit you."
Andre-Louis took the key. His pistol remained levelled.
"You threaten me, I think," he said. "It is not difficult to read your
threat. The moment I am gone, you will run to inform against me. You will
set the marechaussee on my heels to overtake me."
"No, no!" cried the other. He perceived his peril. He read his doom in
the cold, sinister note on which Andre-Louis addressed him, and grew afraid.
"I swear to you, monsieur, that I have no such intention."
"I think I had better make quite sure of you."
"0 my God! Have mercy, monsieur!" The knave was in a palsy of terror.
"I mean you no harm - I swear to Heaven I mean you no harm. I will not say a
word. I will not... "
"I would rather depend upon your silence than your assurances. Still,
you shall have your chance. I am a fool, perhaps, but I have a reluctance to
shed blood. Go into the house, Fresnel. Go, man. I follow you."
In the shabby main room of that dwelling, Andre-Louis halted him again.
"Get me a length of rope," he commanded, and was readily obeyed.
Five minutes later Fresnel was securely bound to a chair, and
effectively silenced by a very uncomfortable gag improvised out of a block
of wood and a muffler.
On the threshold the departing Andre-Louis turned.
"Good-night, Fresnel," he said. Fierce eyes glared mute hatred at him.
"It is unlikely that your ferry will be required again to-night. But some
one is sure to come to your relief quite early in the morning. Until then
bear your discomfort with what fortitude you can, remembering that you have
brought it entirely upon yourself by your uncharitableness. If you spend the
night considering that, the lesson should not be lost upon you. By morning
you may even have grown so charitable as not to know who it was that tied
you up. Good-night."
He stepped out and closed the door.
To unlock the ferry, and pull himself across the swift-running waters,
on which the faint moonlight was making a silver ripple, were matters that
engaged not more than six or seven minutes. He drove the nose of the boat
through the decaying sedges that fringed the southern bank of the stream,
sprang ashore, and made the little craft secure. Then, missing the footpath
in the dark, he struck out across a sodden meadow in quest of the road.
* BOOK II: THE BUSKIN *
CHAPTER I. HE TRESPASSERS
Coming presently upon the Redon road, Andre-Louis, obeying instinct
rather than reason, turned his face to the south, and plodded wearily and
mechanically forward. He had no clear idea of whither he was going, or of
whither he should go. All that imported at the moment was to put as great a
distance as possible between Gavrillac and himself.
He had a vague, half-formed notion of returning to Nantes; and there,
by employing the newly found weapon of his oratory, excite the people into
sheltering him as the first victim of the persecution he had foreseen, and
against which he had sworn them to take up arms. But the idea was one which
he entertained merely as an indefinite possibility upon which he felt no
real impulse to act.
Meanwhile he chuckled at the thought of Fresnel as he had last seen
him, with his muffled face and glaring eyeballs. "For one who was anything
but a man of action," he writes, "I felt that I had acquitted myself none so
badly." It is a phrase that recurs at intervals in his sketchy
"Confessions." Constantly is he reminding you that he is a man of mental and
not physical activities, and apologizing when dire neccessity drives him
into acts of violence. I suspect this insistence upon his philosophic
detachment - for which I confess he had justification enough - to betray his
besetting vanity.
With increasing fatigue came depression and self-criticism. He had
stupidly overshot his mark in insultingly denouncing M. de Lesdiguieres. "It
is much better," he says somewhere, "to be wicked than to be stupid. Most of
this world's misery is the fruit not as priests tell us of wickedness, but
of stupidity." And we know that of all stupidities he considered anger the
most deplorable. Yet he had permitted himself to be angry with a creature
like M. de Lesdiguieres - a lackey, a fribble, a nothing, despite his
potentialities for evil. He could perfectly have discharged his self-imposed
mission without arousing the vindictive resentment of the King's Lieutenant.
He beheld himself vaguely launched upon life with the riding-suit in
which he stood, a single louis d'or and a few pieces of silver for all
capital, and a knowledge of law which had been inadequate to preserve him
from the consequences of infringing it.
He had, in addition - but these things that were to be the real
salvation of him he did not reckon - his gift of laughter, sadly repressed
of late, and the philosophic outlook and mercurial temperament which are the
stock-in-trade of your adventurer in all ages.
Meanwhile he tramped mechanically on through the night, until he felt
that he could tramp no more. He had skirted the little township of Guichen,
and now within a half-mile of Guignen, and with Gavrillac a good seven miles
behind him, his legs refused to carry him any farther.
He was midway across the vast common to the north of Guignen when he
came to a halt. He had left the road, and taken heedlessly to the footpath
that struck across the waste of indifferent pasture interspersed with clumps
of gorse. A stone's throw away on his right the common was bordered by a
thorn hedge. Beyond this loomed a tall building which he knew to be an open
barn, standing on the edge of a long stretch of meadowland. That dark,
silent shadow it may have been that had brought him to a standstill,
suggesting shelter to his subconsciousness. A moment he hesitated; then he
struck across towards a spot where a gap in the hedge was closed by a
five-barred gate. He pushed the gate open, went through the gap, and stood
now before the barn. It was as big as a house, yet consisted of no more than
a roof carried upon half a dozen tall, brick pillars. But densely packed
under that roof was a great stack of hay that promised a warm couch on so
cold a night. Stout timbers had been built into the brick pillars, with
projecting ends to serve as ladders by which the labourer might climb to
pack or withdraw hay. With what little strength remained him, Andre-Louis
climbed by one of these and landed safely at the top, where he was forced to
kneel, for lack of room to stand upright. Arrived there, he removed his coat
and neckcloth, his sodden boots and stockings. Next he cleared a trough for
his body, and lying down in it, covered himself to the neck with the hay he
had removed. Within five minutes he was lost to all worldly cares and
soundly asleep.
When next he awakened, the sun was already high in the heavens, from
which he concluded that the morning was well advanced; and this before he
realized quite where he was or how he came there. Then to his awakening
senses came a drone of voices close at hand, to which at first he paid
little heed. He was deliciously refreshed, luxuriously drowsy and
luxuriously warm.
But as consciousness and memory grew more full, he raised his head
clear of the hay that he might free both ears to listen, his pulses faintly
quickened by the nascent fear that those voices might bode him no good. Then
he caught the reassuring accents of a woman, musical and silvery, though
laden with alarm.
"Ah, mon Dieu, Leandre, let us separate at once. If it should be my
father... "
And upon this a man's voice broke in, calm and reassuring:
"No, no, Climene; you are mistaken. There is no one coming. We are
quite safe. Why do you start at shadows?"
"Ah, Leandre, if he should find us here together! I tremble at the very
thought."
More was not needed to reassure Andre-Louis. He