"Thank you, Mademoiselle; now you can go," he said.

But he need not have spoken, for the moment his sister had done his bidding she turned from us; before two words had passed his lips she was hurrying back to the house in a passion of grief, her face covered, and her slight figure shaken by sobs that came back to us on the summer air.

The sight stung me to rage; yet for a moment, and by a tremendous effort I restrained myself. I would hear him out.

But he either did not, or would not see the effect he had produced. "There, Messieurs," he said, his face somewhat pale. "I am obliged to your patience. Now you know what I think of your tricolour and your services. It shall shelter neither me nor mine! I hold no parley with assassins."

I sprang forward, I could contain myself no longer. "And I!" I cried, "I, M. le Marquis, have something to say, too! I have something to declare! A moment ago I refused that tricolour! I rejected the overtures of those who brought it to me. I was resolved to stand by you and by my brethren against my better judgment. I was of your party, though I did not believe in it; and you might have tied me to it. But this gentleman is right, you are yourself the strongest argument against yourself. And I do this! I do this!" I repeated passionately. "See, M. le Marquis, and know that it is your doing!"

With the word I snatched up the ribbon, on which Mademoiselle had trodden, and with fingers that trembled scarcely less than hers had trembled, when she unfastened it, I pinned it on my breast.

He bowed, with a sardonic smile. "A cockade is easily changed," he said. But I could see that he was livid with rage; that he could have slain me for the rebuke.

"You mean," I said hotly, "that I am easily turned."

"You put on the cap, M. le Vicomte," he retorted.

The other three had withdrawn a little--not without open signs of disgust--and left us face to face on the spot on which we had stood three weeks before on the eve of his mother's reception. Still raging with anger on Mademoiselle's account, and minded to wound him, I recalled that to him, and the prophecies he had then uttered, prophecies which had been so ill-fulfilled.

He took me up at the second word. "Ill-fulfilled?" he said grimly. "Yes, M. le Vicomte, but why? Because those who should support me, those who from one end of France to the other should support the King, are like you--waverers who do not know their own minds! Because the gentlemen of France are proving themselves churls and cravens, unworthy of the names they bear! Yes, ill-fulfilled," he continued bitterly, "because you, M. de Saux, and men like you, are for this to-day, and for that to-morrow, and cry one hour, 'Reform,' and the next, 'Order!'"

The denial stuck in my throat, and my passion dying down I could only glower at him. He saw this, and taking advantage of my momentary embarrassment, "But enough," he continued in a tone of dignity very galling to me, since it was he who had behaved ill, not I. "Enough of this. While it was possible I courted your aid, M. de Saux; and I acknowledge, I still acknowledge, and shall be the last to disclaim, the obligation under which you last night placed us. But there can never be true fellowship between those who wear that"--and he pointed to the tricolour I had assumed--"and those who serve the King as we serve him. You will pardon me, therefore, if I take my leave, and without delay withdraw my sister from a house in which her presence may be misunderstood, as mine, after what has passed, must be unwelcome."

He bowed again with that, and led the way into the house; while I followed, tongue-tied and with a sudden chill at my heart. There was no one in the hall except AndrÉ, who was hovering about the farther door; but in the avenue beyond were three or four mounted servants waiting for M. de St. Alais, and half-way down the avenue a party of three were riding towards the gates. It needed but a glance to show me that the foremost of these was Mademoiselle, and that she rode low in the saddle, as if she still wept. And I turned in a hot fit to M. de St. Alais.

But I found his eye fixed on me in such a fashion that the words died on my lips. He coughed drily. "Ah!" he said. "So Mademoiselle has herself felt the propriety of leaving. You will permit me, then, to make her acknowledgments, M. de Saux, and to take leave for her."

He saluted me with the words and turned. He already had his foot raised to the stirrup when I muttered his name.

He looked round. "Pardon!" he said. "Is there anything----"

I beckoned to the servants to stand back. I was in misery between rage and shame, the hot fit gone. "Monsieur," I said, "there is one more thing to be said. This does not end all between Mademoiselle and me. For Mademoiselle----"

"We will not speak of her!" he exclaimed.

But I was not to be put down. "For Mademoiselle, I do not know her sentiments," I continued, doggedly disregarding his interruption, "nor whether I am agreeable to her. But for myself, M. de St. Alais, I tell you frankly that I love her; nor shall I change because I wear one tricolour or another. Therefore----"

"I have only one thing to say," he cried, raising his hand to stay me.

I gave way, breathing hard. "What is it?" I said.

"That you make love like a bourgeois!" he answered, laughing insolently. "Or a mad Englishman! And as Mademoiselle de St. Alais is not a baker's daughter, to be wooed after that fashion, I find it offensive. Is that enough or shall I say more, M. le Vicomte?"

"That will not be enough to turn me from my path!" I answered. "You forget that I carried Mademoiselle hither in my arms last night. But I do not forget it, and she will not forget it. We cannot be henceforth as we were, M. le Marquis."

"You saved her life and base a claim upon it?" he said scornfully. "That is generous and like a gentleman!"

"No, I do not!" I answered passionately. "But I have held Mademoiselle in my arms, and she has laid her head on my breast, and you can undo neither the one nor the other. Henceforth I have a right to woo her, and I shall win her."

"While I live you never shall!" he answered fiercely. "I swear that, as she trod on that ribbon--at my word, at my word, Monsieur!--so she shall tread on your love. From this day seek a wife among your friends. Mademoiselle de St. Alais is not for you."

I trembled with rage. "You know, Monsieur, that I cannot fight you!" I said.

"Nor I you," he answered. "I know it. Therefore," he continued, pausing an instant and reverting with marvellous ease to his former politeness, "I will fly from you. Farewell, Monsieur--I do not say, until we meet again; for I do not think that we shall meet much in future."

I found nothing wherewith to answer that, and he turned and moved' away down the avenue. Mademoiselle and her escort had disappeared; his servants, obeying my gesture, were almost at the gates. I watched his figure as he rode under the boughs of the walnuts, that meeting low over his head let the sun fall on him through spare rifts; and, sore and miserable at heart myself, I marvelled at the gallant air he maintained, and the careless grace of his bearing.

Certainly he had force. He had the force his fellows lacked; and he had it so abundantly, that as I gazed after him the words I had used to him seemed weak and foolish, the resolution I had flung in his teeth childish. After all, he was right; this, to which my feelings had impelled me on the spur of anger and love and the moment, was no French or proper way of wooing, nor one which I should have relished in my sister's case. Why then had I degraded Mademoiselle by it, and exposed myself? Men wooed mistresses that way, not wives!

So that I felt very wretched as I turned to go into the house. But there my eye alighted on the pistols which still lay on the table in the hall, and with a sudden revulsion of feeling I remembered that others' affairs were out of order too; that the ChÂteaux of St. Alais and Marignac lay in ashes, that last night I had saved Mademoiselle from death, that beyond the walnut avenue with its cool, long shade and dappled floor, beyond the quiet of this summer day, lay the seething, brawling world of Quercy and of France--the world of maddened peasants and frightened townsfolk, and soldiers who would not fight, and nobles who dared not.

Then, Vive le Tricolor! the die was cast. I went through the house to find Father BenÔit and his companions, meaning to throw in my lot and return with them. But the terrace was empty; they were nowhere to be seen. Even of the servants I could only find AndrÉ, who came pottering to me with his lips pursed up to grumble. I asked him where the CurÉ was.

"Gone, M. le Vicomte."

"And Buton?"

"He too. With half the servants, for the matter of that."

"Gone?" I exclaimed. "Whither?"

"To the village to gossip," he answered churlishly. "There is not a turnspit now but must hear the news, and take his own leave and time to gather it. The world is turned upside down, I think. It is time his Majesty the King did something."

"Did not M. le CurÉ leave a message?"

The old servant hesitated. "Well, he did," he said grudgingly. "He said that if M. le Vicomte would stay at home until the afternoon, he should hear from him."

"But he was going to Cahors!" I said. "He is not returning to-day?"

"He went by the little alley to the village," AndrÉ answered obstinately. "I do not know anything about Cahors."

"Then go to the village now," I said, "and learn whether he took the Cahors road."

The old man went grumbling, and I remained alone on the terrace. An abnormal quietness, as of the afternoon, lay on the house this summer morning. I sat down on a stone seat against the wall, and began to go over the events of the night, recalling with the utmost vividness things to which at the time I had scarcely given a glance, and shuddering at horrors that in the happening had barely moved me. Gradually my thoughts passed from these things which made my pulses beat; and I began to busy myself with Mademoiselle. I saw her again sitting low in the saddle and weeping as she went. The bees hummed in the warm air, the pigeons cooed softly in the dovecot, the trees on the lawn below me shaped themselves into an avenue over her head, and, thinking of her, I fell asleep.

After such a night as I had spent it was not unnatural. But when I awoke, and saw that it was high noon, I was wild with vexation. I sprang up, and darting suspicious glances round me, caught AndrÉ skulking away under the house wall. I called him back, and asked him why he had let me sleep.

"I thought that you were tired, Monsieur," he muttered, blinking in the sun. "M. le Vicomte is not a peasant that he may not sleep when he pleases."

"And M. le CurÉ? Has he not returned?"

"No, Monsieur."

"And he went--which way?"

He named a village half a league from us; and then said that my dinner waited.

I was hungry, and for a moment asked no more, but went in and sat down to the meal. When I rose it was nearly two o'clock. Expecting Father BenÔit every moment, I bade them saddle the horses that I might be ready to go; and then, too restless to remain still, I went into the village. Here I found all in turmoil. Three-fourths of the inhabitants were away at St. Alais inspecting the ruins, and those who remained thought of nothing so little as doing their ordinary work; but, standing in groups at their doors, or at the cross-roads, or the church gates, were discussing events. One asked me timidly if it was true that the King had given all the land to the peasants; another, if there were to be any more taxes; a third, a question still more simple. Yet with this, I met with no lack of respect; and few failed to express their joy that I had escaped the ruffians lÀ-bas. But as I approached each group a subtle shade of expectation, of shyness and suspicion seemed to flit across faces the most familiar to me. At the moment I did not understand it, and even apprehended it but dimly. Now, after the event, now that it is too late, I know that it was the first symptom of the social poison doing its sure and deadly work.

With all this, I could hear nothing of M. le CurÉ; one saying that he was here, another there, a third that he had gone to Cahors; and, in the end, I returned to the ChÂteau in a state of discomfort and unrest hard to describe. I would not again leave the front of the house lest I should miss him; and for hours I paced the avenue, now listening at the gates or looking up the road, now walking quickly to and fro under the walnuts. In time evening fell, and night; and still I was here awaiting the CurÉ's coming, chained to the silent house; while my mind tortured me with pictures of what was going forward outside. The restless demon of the time had hold of me; the thought that I lay here idle, while the world heaved, made me miserable, filled me with shame. When AndrÉ came at last to summon me to supper, I swore at him; and the moment I had done, I went up to the roof of the ChÂteau and watched the night, expecting to see again a light in the sky, and the far-off glare of burning houses.

I saw nothing, however, and the CurÉ did not come; and, after a wakeful night, seven in the morning saw me in the saddle and on the road to Cahors. AndrÉ complained of illness and I took Gil only. The country round St. Alais seemed to be deserted; but, half a league farther on, over the hill, I came on a score of peasants trudging sturdily forward. I asked them whither they were going, and why they were not in the fields.

"We are going to Cahors, Monseigneur, for arms," they said.

"For arms! Whom are you going to fight?"

"The brigands, Monseigneur. They are burning and murdering on every side. By the mercy of God they have not yet visited us. And to-night we shall be armed."

"Brigands!" I said. "What brigands?"

But they could not answer that; and I left them in wonder at their simplicity and rode on. I had not yet done with these brigands, however. Half a league short of Cahors I passed through a hamlet where the same idea prevailed. Here they had raised a rough barricade at the end of the street towards the country, and I saw a man on the church tower keeping watch. Meanwhile every one in the place who could walk had gone to Cahors.

"Why?" I asked. "For what?"

"To hear the news."

Then I began to see that my imagination had not led me astray. All the world was heaving, all the world was astir. Every one was hurrying to hear and to learn and to tell; to take arms if he had never used arms before, to advise if all his life he had obeyed orders, to do anything and everything but his daily work. After this, that I should find Cahors humming like a hive of bees about to swarm, and the ValandrÉ bridge so crowded that I could scarcely force my way through its three gates, and the queue of people waiting for rations longer, and the rations shorter than ever before--after this, I say, all these things seemed only natural.

Nor was I much surprised to find that as I rode through the streets, wearing the tricolour, I was hailed here and there with cheers. On the other hand, I noticed that wearers of white cockades were not lacking. They kept the wall in twos and threes, and walked with raised chins, and hands on sword-knots, and were watched askance by the commonalty. A few of them were known to me, more were strangers; and while I blushed under the scornful looks of the former, knowing that I must seem to them a renegade, I wondered who the latter were. Finally I was glad to escape from both by alighting at Doury's, over whose door a huge tricolour flag hung limp in the sunshine.

M. le CurÉ de Saux? Yes, he was even then sitting with the Committee upstairs. Would M. le Vicomte walk up?

I did so, through a press of noisy people, who thronged the stairs and passages and lobbies, and talked, and gesticulated, and seemed to be settled there for the day. I worked my way through these at last, the door was opened, a fresh gust of noise came out to meet me, and I entered the room. In it, seated round a long table, I found a score of men, of whom some rose to meet me, while more kept their seats; three or four were speaking at once and did not stop on my entrance. I recognised at the farther end Father BenÔit and Buton, who came to meet me, and Capitaine Hugues, who rose, but continued to speak. Besides these there were two of the smaller noblesse, who left their chairs, and came to me in an ecstasy, and Doury, who rose and sat down half a dozen times; and one or two CurÉs and others of that rank, known to me by sight. The uproar was great, the confusion equal to it. Still, somehow, and after a moment of tumult, I found myself received and welcomed and placed in a chair at the end of the table, with M. le Capitaine on one side of me and a notary of Cahors on the other. Then, under cover of the noise, I stole a few words with Father BenÔit, who lingered a moment beside me.

"You could not join us yesterday?" he muttered, with a pathetic look that only I understood.

"But you left a message, bidding me wait for you!" I answered.

"I did?" he said. "No; I left a message asking you to follow us--if it pleased you."

"Then I never got it," I replied. "AndrÉ told me----"

"Ah! AndrÉ," he answered softly. And he shook his head.

"The rascal!" I said; "then he lied to me! And----"

But some one called the CurÉ to his place, and we had to part. At the same instant most of the talkers ceased; a moment, and only two were left speaking, who, without paying the least regard to one another, continued to hold forth to their neighbours, haranguing, one on the social contract; the other on the brigands--the brigands who were everywhere burning the corn and killing the people!

At last M. le Capitaine, after long waiting to speak, attacked the former speaker. "Tut, Monsieur!" he said. "This is not the time for theory. A halfpennyworth of fact----

"Is worth a pound of theory!" the man of the brigands--he was a grocer, I believe--cried eagerly; and he brought his fist down on the table.

"But now is the time!--the God-sent time, to frame the facts to the theory!" the other combatant screamed. "To form a perfect system! To regenerate the world, I say! To----"

"To regenerate the fiddlestick!" his opponent answered, with equal heat. "When brigands are at our very doors! when our crops are being burned and our houses plundered! when----"

"Monsieur," the Captain said harshly, commanding silence by the gravity of his tone--"if you please!"

"Yes."

"Then, to be plain, I do not believe any more in your brigands than in M. l'AvouÉ's theories."

This time it was the grocer's turn to scream. "What?" he cried. "When they have been seen at Figeac, and Cajarc, and Rodez, and----

"By whom?" the soldier asked sharply, interrupting him.

"By hundreds."

"Name one."

"But it is notorious!"

"Yes, Monsieur--it is a notorious lie!" M. le Capitaine answered bluntly. "Believe me, the brigands with whom we have to deal are nearer home. Allow us to arrange with them first, and do not deafen M. le Vicomte with your chattering."

"Hear! hear!" the lawyer cried.

But this insult proved too much for the man of the brigands. He began again, and others joined in, for him and against him; to my despair, it seemed as if the quarrel were only beginning--as if peace would have to be made afresh.

How all this noise, tumult, and disputation, this absence of the politeness to which I had been accustomed all my life, this vulgar jostling and brawling depressed me I need not say. I sat deafened, lost in the scramble; of no more account, for the moment, than Buton. Nay of less; for while I gazed about me and listened, sunk in wonder at my position at a table with people of a class with whom I had never sat down before--save at the chance table of an inn, where my presence kept all within bounds--it was Buton who, by coming to the officer's aid, finally gained silence.

"Now you have had your say, perhaps you will let me have mine," the Captain said, with acerbity, taking advantage of the hearing thus gained for him. "It is very well for you, M. l'AvouÉ, and you, Monsieur--I have forgotten your name--you are not fighting men, and my difficulty does not affect you. But there are half a dozen at this table who are placed as I am, and they understand. You may organise; but if your officers are carried off every morning, you will not go far."

"How carried off?" the lawyer cried, puffing out his thin cheeks. "Members of the Committee of----"

"How?" M. le Capitaine rejoined, cutting him short without ceremony--"by the prick of a small sword! You do not understand; but, for some of us, we cannot go three paces from this door without risk of an insult and a challenge."

"That is true!" the two gentlemen at the foot of the table cried with one voice.

"It is true, and more," the Captain continued, warming as he spoke. "It is no chance work, but a plan. It is their plan for curbing us. I have seen three men in the streets to-day, who, I can swear, are fencing-masters in fine clothes."

"Assassins!" the lawyer cried pompously.

"That is all very well," Hugues said more soberly. "You can call them what you please. But what is to be done? If we cannot move abroad without a challenge and a duel, we are helpless. You will have all your leaders picked off."

"The people will avenge you!" the lawyer said, with a grand air.

M. le Capitaine shrugged his shoulders. "Thank you for nothing," he said.

Father BenÔit interposed. "At present," he said anxiously, "I think that there is only one thing to be done. You have said, M. le Capitaine, that some of the committee are not fighting men. Why, I would ask, should any fight, and play into our opponents' hands?"

"Par Dieu! I think that you are right!" Hugues answered frankly. And he looked round as if to collect opinions. "Why should we? I am sure that I do not wish to fight. I have given my proofs."

There was a short pause, during which we looked at one another doubtfully. "Well, why not?" the Captain said at last. "This is not play, but business. We are no longer gentlemen at large, but soldiers under discipline."

"Yes," I said stiffly, for I found all looking at me. "But it is difficult, M. le Capitaine, for men of honour to divest themselves of certain ideas. If we are not to protect ourselves from insult, we sink to the level of beasts."

"Have no fear, M. le Vicomte!" Buton cried abruptly. "The people will not suffer it!"

"No, no; the people will not suffer it!" one or two echoed; and for a moment the room rang with cries of indignation.

"Well, at any rate," the Captain said at last, "all are now warned. And if, after this, they fight lightly, they do it with full knowledge that they are playing their adversaries' game. I hope all understand that. For my part," he continued, shrugging his shoulders with a dry laugh, "they may cane me; I shall not fight them! I am no fool!"