I had not seen Louis since the day of the duel at Cahors, when, parting from him at the door in the passage by the Cathedral, I had refused to take his hand. Then I had been sorely angry with him. But time and old memories and crowding events had long softened the feeling; and in the joy of meeting him again, of finding him in this unexpected stranger, nothing was further from my thoughts than to rake up old grudges. I held out my hand, therefore, with a laughing word. "VoilÀ l'Inconnu, Monsieur!" I said with a bow. "I am here to find you, and I find you!"

He stared at me a moment in the utmost astonishment, and then impulsively grasping my hand he held it, and stood looking at me, with the old affection in his eyes. "Adrien! Adrien!" he said, much moved. "Is it really you?"

"Even so, Monsieur."

"And here?"

"Here," I said.

Then, to my astonishment, he slowly dropped my hand; and his manner and his face changed--as a house changes when the shutters are closed. "I am sorry for it," he said slowly, and after a long pause. And then, with an unmistakable flash of anger, "My God, Monsieur! Why have you come?" he cried.

"Why have I come?"

"Ay, why?" he repeated bitterly. "Why? Why have you come--to trouble us? You do not know what evil you are doing! You do not know, man!"

"I know at least what good I am seeking," I answered, purely astounded by this sudden and inexplicable change. "I have made no secret of that, and I make no secret of it now. No man was ever worse treated than I have been by your family. Your attitude now impels me to say that. But when I see Madame la Marquise, to-morrow, I shall tell her that it will take more than this to change me. I shall tell her----"

"You will not see her!" he answered.

"But I shall!"

"You will not!" he retorted.

Before I could answer, Madame Catinot interposed. "Oh, no more!" she cried in a voice which sufficiently evinced her distress. "I thought that you and he were friends, M. Louis? And now--now that fortune has brought you together again----"

"Would to heaven it had not!" he cried, dropping his hand like a man in despair. And he took a turn this way and that on the floor.

She looked at him. "I do not think that you have ever spoken to me in that tone before, Monsieur," she said in a tone of keen reproach. "If it is due--if, I mean," she continued quietly, but with a sparkling eye, "it is because you found M. le Vicomte with me, you infer something unworthy of us. You insult me as well as your friend!"

"Heaven forbid!" he exclaimed.

But she was roused. "That is not enough," she answered firmly and proudly. "For one week more, this is my house, M. Louis. After that it will be yours. Perhaps then--perhaps then," she continued, with a pitiful break in her voice, "I shall think of to-night, and wonder I took no warning! Perhaps then, Monsieur, a word of kindness from you may be as rare as a rough word now!"

He was not proof against that, and the sadness in her voice. He threw himself on his knees before her and seized her hands. "Madame! Catherine! forgive me!" he cried passionately, kissing her hands again and again, and taking no heed of me at all. "Forgive me!" he continued, "I am miserable! You are my only comfort, my only compensation. I do not know, since I saw him, what I am saying. Forgive me!"

"I do!" she said hastily. "Rise, Monsieur!" and she furtively wiped away a tear, then looked at me, blushing but happy. "I do," she continued. "But, mon cher, I do not understand you. The other day you spoke so kindly of M. de Saux; and of--pardon me--your sister, and of other things. To-day M. de Saux is here, and you are unhappy."

"I am!" he said, casting a haggard, miserable look at me.

I shrugged my shoulders and spoke up. "So be it," I said proudly. "But because I have lost a friend, Monsieur, it does not follow that I need lose a mistress. I have come to NÎmes to win Mademoiselle de St. Alais' hand. I shall not leave until I have won it."

"This is madness!" he said, with a groan. "Why?"

"Because you talk of the impossible," he answered. "Because Madame de St. Alais is not at NÎmes--for you."

"She is at NÎmes!"

"You will have to find her."

"That is childishness!" I said. "Do you mean to say that at the first hotel I enter I shall not be told where Madame has her lodging?"

"Neither at the first, nor at the last."

"She is in retreat?"

"I shall not tell you."

With that we stood facing one another; Madame Catinot watching us a little aside. Clearly the events of the last few months, which had so changed, so hardened Madame St. Alais, had not been lost on Louis. I could fancy, as I confronted him, that it was M. le Marquis, the elder, and not the younger brother, who withstood me; only--only from under Louis' mask of defiance, there peeped, I still fancied, the old Louis' face, doubting and miserable.

I tried that chord. "Come," I said, making an effort to swallow my wrath, and speak reasonably, "I think that you are not in earnest, M. le Comte, in what you say, and that we are both heated. Time was when we agreed well enough, and you were not unwilling to have me for your brother-in-law. Are we, because of these miserable differences----"

"Differences!" he cried, interrupting me harshly. "My mother's house in Cahors is an empty shell. My brother's house at St. Alais is a heap of ashes. And you talk of differences!"

"Well, call them what you like!"

"Besides," Madame Catinot interposed quickly, "pardon me, Monsieur--besides, M. St. Alais, you know our need of converts. M. le Vicomte is a gentleman, and a man of sense and religion. It needs but a little--a very little," she continued, smiling faintly at me, "to persuade him. And if your sister's hand would do that little, and Madame were agreeable?"

"He could not have it!" he answered sullenly, looking away from me.

"But a week ago," Madame Catinot answered in a startled tone, "you told me----"

"A week ago is not now," he said. "For the rest, I have only this to say. I am sorry to see you here, M. le Vicomte, and I beg you to return. You can do no good, and you may do and suffer harm. By no possibility can you gain what you seek."

"That remains to be seen," I answered stubbornly, roused in my turn. "To begin with, since you say that I cannot find Mademoiselle, I shall adopt a very simple plan. I shall wait here until you leave, Monsieur, and then accompany you home."

"You will not!" he said.

"You may depend upon it I shall!" I answered defiantly.

But Madame interposed. "No, M. de Saux," she said with dignity. "You will not do that; I am sure that you will not; it would be an abuse of my hospitality."

"If you forbid it?"

"I do," she answered.

"Then, Madame, I cannot," I replied. "But----"

"But nothing! Let there be a truce now, if you please," she said firmly. "If it is to be war between you, it shall not begin here. I think, too--I think that I had better ask you to retire," she continued, with an appealing glance at me.

I looked at Louis. But he had turned away, and affected to ignore me. And on that I succumbed. It was impossible to answer Madame, when she spoke to me in that way; and equally impossible to remain in the house, against her will. I bowed, therefore, in silence; and with the best grace I could, though I was sore and angry, I took my cloak and hat, which I had laid on a chair.

"I am sorry," Madame said kindly. And she held out her hand.

I raised it to my lips. "To-morrow--at twelve--here!" she breathed.

I started. I rather guessed than heard the words, so softly were they spoken; but her eyes made up for the lack of sound, and I understood. The next moment she turned from me, and with a last reluctant glance at Louis, who still had his back to me, I went out.

The man who had admitted me was in the hall. "You will find your horse at the Louvre, Monsieur," he said, as he opened the door.

I rewarded him, and going out, without a thought whither I was going, walked along the street, plunged in reflection; until marching on blindly I came against a man. That awoke me, and I looked round. I had been in the house little more than three hours, and in NÎmes scarcely longer; yet so much had happened in the time that it seemed strange to me to find the streets unfamiliar, to find myself alone in them, at a loss which way to turn. Though it was hard on ten o'clock, and only a swaying lantern here and there made a ring of smoky light at the meeting of four ways, there were numbers of people still abroad; a few standing, but the majority going one way, the men with cloaks about their necks, the women with muffled heads.

Feeling the necessity, since I must get myself a lodging, of putting away for the moment my one absorbing thought--the question of Louis' behaviour--I stopped a man who was not going with the stream, and asked him the way to the HÔtel de Louvre. I learned not only that but the cause of the concourse.

"There has been a procession," he answered gruffly. "I should have thought that you would know that!" he added, with a glance at my hat. And he turned on his heel.

I remembered the red cockade I wore, and before I went farther paused to take it out. As I moved on again, a man came quickly up behind me, and as he passed thrust a paper into my hand. Before I could speak he was gone; but the incident and the bustle of the streets, strange at this late hour, helped to divert my thoughts; and I was not surprised when, on reaching the inn, I was told that every room was full.

"My horse is here," I said, thinking that the landlord, seeing me walk in on foot, might distrust the weight of my purse.

"Yes, Monsieur; and if you like you can lie in the eating-room," he answered very civilly. "You are welcome, and you will do no better elsewhere. It is as if the fair were being held at Beaucaire. The city is full of strangers. Almost as full as it is of those things!" he continued querulously, and he pointed to the paper in my hand.

I looked at it, and saw that it was a manifesto headed "Sacrilege! Mary Weeps!" "It was thrust into my hand a minute ago," I said.

"To be sure," he answered. "One morning we got up and found the walls white with them. Another day they were flying loose about the streets."

"Do you know," I asked, seeing that he had been supping, and was inclined to talk, "where the Marquis de St. Alais is living?"

"No, Monsieur," he said. "I do not know the gentleman."

"But he is here with his family."

"Who is not here," he answered, shrugging his shoulders. Then in a lower tone, "Is he red, or--or the other thing, Monsieur?"

"Red," I said boldly.

"Ah! Well, there have been two or three gentlemen going to and fro between our M. Froment, and Turin and Montpellier. It is said that our Mayor would have arrested them long ago if he had done his duty. But he is red too, and most of the councillors. And I don't know, for I take no side. Perhaps the gentleman you want is one of these?"

"Very likely," I said. "So M. Froment is here?"

"Monsieur knows him?"

"Yes," I said drily, "a little."

"Well, he is here, or he is not," the landlord answered, shaking his head. "It is impossible to say."

"Why?" I asked. "Does he not live here?"

"Yes, he lives here; at the Port d'Auguste on the old wall near the Capuchins. But----" he looked round and then continued mysteriously, "he goes out, where he has never gone in, Monsieur! And he has a house in the Amphitheatre, and it is the same there. And some say that the Capuchins is only another house of his. And if you go to the Cabaret de la Vierge, and give his name--you pay nothing."

He said this with many nods, and then seemed on a sudden to think that he had said too much, and hurried away. Asking for them, I learned that M. de GÉol and Buton, failing to get a room there, had gone to the Ecu de France; but I was not very sorry to be rid of them for the time, and accepting the host's offer, I went to the eating-room, and there made myself as comfortable as two hard chairs and the excitement of my thoughts permitted.

The one thing, the one subject that absorbed me was Louis' behaviour, and the strange and abrupt change I had marked in it. He had been glad to see me, his hand had leaped to meet mine, I had read the old affection in his eyes; and then--then on a sudden, in a moment he had frozen into surly, churlish antagonism, an antagonism that had taken Madame Catinot by surprise, and was not without a touch of remorse, almost of horror. It could not be that she was dead? It could not be that Denise--no, my mind failed to entertain it. But I rose, trembling at the thought, and paced the room until daylight; listening to the watchman's cry, and the mournful hours, and the occasional rush of hurrying feet, that spoke of the perturbed city. What to me were Froment, or the red or the white or the tricolour, veto or no veto, endowment or disendowment, in comparison to that?

The house stirred at last, but I had still to wait till noon before I could see Madame Catinot. I spent the interval in an aimless walk through the town. At another time the things I saw must have filled me with wonder; at another time the hoary, gloomy ring of the ArÈnes, rising in tiers of frowning arches, high above the squalid roofs that leaned against it--and choked within by a Ghetto of the like, huddled where prefects once sat, and the Emperor's colours flew victorious round the circle--must have won my admiration by its vastness; the Maison CarrÉe by its fair proportions; the streets by the teeming crowds that filled them, and stood about the cabarets, and read the placards on the walls. But I had only thought for Louis, and my love, and the lagging minutes. At the first stroke of twelve I knocked at Madame Catinot's door; the last saw me in her presence.

It needed but a look at her face, and my heart sank; the thanks I was preparing to utter died on my lips as I gazed at her. She on her part was agitated. For a moment we were both silent.

At last, "I see that you have bad news for me, Madame," I said, striving to smile, and bear myself bravely.

"The worst, I fear," she said pitifully, smoothing her skirt. "For I have none, Monsieur."

"Yet I have heard it said that no news is good news?" I said, wondering.

Her lip trembled, but she did not look at me.

"Come, Madame," I persisted, though I was sick at heart. "Surely you are going to tell me more than that? At least you can tell me where I can see Madame St. Alais."

"No, Monsieur, I cannot tell you," she said in a low voice.

"Nor why M. Louis has so suddenly become hostile to me?"

"No, Monsieur, nor that. And I beg--as you are a gentleman," she continued hurriedly, "that you will spare me questions! I thought that I could help you, and I asked you to see me to-day. I find that I can only give you pain."

"And that is all, Madame?"

"That is all," she said, with a gesture that told more than her words.

I looked round the silent room, I walked half way to the door. And then I turned back. I could not go. "No!" I cried vehemently, "I will not go so! What is it you have learned, that has closed your lips, Madame? What are they plotting against her--that you fear to tell me? Speak, Madame! You did not bring me here to hear this! That I know."

But she only looked at me, her face full of reproach. "Monsieur," she said, "I meant kindly. Is this my reward?"

And that was too much for me. I turned without a word, and went out--of the room and the house.

Outside I felt like a child in darkness, on whom the one door leading to life and liberty had closed, as his hand touched it. I felt a dead, numbing disappointment that at any moment might develop into sharp pain. This change in Madame Catinot, resembling so exactly the change in Louis St. Alais, what could be the cause of it? What had been revealed to her? What was the mystery, the plot, the danger that made them all turn from me, as if I had the plague?

For awhile I was in the depths of despair. Then the warm sunshine that filled the streets, and spoke of coming summer, kindled lighter thoughts. After all it could not be hard to find a person in NÎmes! I had soon found M. Louis. And this was the eighteenth century and not the sixteenth. Women were no longer exposed to the pressure that had once been brought to bear on them; nor men to the violence natural in old feuds.

And then--as I thought of that and strove to comfort myself with it--I heard a noise burst into the street behind me, a roar of voices and a sudden trampling of hundreds of feet; and turning I saw a dense press of men coming towards me, waving aloft blue banners, and crucifixes, and flags with the Five Wounds. Some were singing and some shouting, all were brandishing clubs and weapons. They came along at a good pace, filling the street from wall to wall; and to avoid them I stepped into an archway, that opportunely presented itself.

They came up in a moment, and swept past me with deafening shouts. It was difficult to see more than a forest of waving arms and staves over swart excited faces; but through a break in the ranks I caught a glimpse of three men walking in the heart of the crowd, quiet themselves, yet the cause and centre of all; and the middle man of the three was Froment. One of the others wore a cassock, and the third had a reckless air, and a hat cocked in the military fashion. So much I saw, then only rank upon rank of hurrying shouting men. After these again followed three or four hundred of the scum of the city, beggars and broken rascals and homeless men.

As I turned from staring after them I found a man at my elbow; by a strange coincidence the very same man who, the night before, had directed me to the HÔtel de Louvre. I asked him if that was not M. Froment.

"Yes," he said with a sneer. "And his brother."

"Oh, his brother! What is his name, Monsieur?"

"Bully Froment, some call him."

"And what are they going to do?"

"Groan outside a Protestant church to-day," he answered pithily. "To-morrow break the windows. The next day, or as soon as they can get their courage to the sticking point, fire on the worshippers, and call in the garrison from Montpellier. After that the refugees from Turin will come, we shall be in revolt, and there will be dragoonings. And then--if the Cevennols don't step in--Monsieur will see strange things."

"But the Mayor?" I said. "And the National Guards? Will they suffer it?"

"The first is red," the man answered curtly. "And two-thirds of the last. Monsieur will see."

And with a cool nod he went on his way; while I stood a moment looking idly after the procession. On a sudden, as I stood, it occurred to me that where Froment was, the St. Alais might be; and snatching at the idea, wondering hugely that I had not had it before, I started recklessly in pursuit of the mob. The last broken wave of the crowd was still visible, eddying round a distant corner; and even after that disappeared, it was easy to trace the course it had taken by closed shutters and scared faces peeping from windows. I heard the mob stop once, and groan and howl; but before I came up with it it was on again, and when I at last overtook it, where one of the streets, before narrowing to an old gateway, opened out into a little square--with high dingy buildings on this side and that, and a meshwork of alleys running into it--the nucleus of the crowd had vanished, and the fringe was melting this way and that.

My aim was Froment, and I had missed him. But I was at a loss only for a moment, for as I stood and scanned the people trooping back into the town, my eye alighted on a lean figure with stooping head and a scanty cassock, that, wishing to cross the street, paused a moment striving to pass athwart the crowd. It needed a glance only; then, with a cry of joy, I was through the press, and at the man's side.

It was Father BenÔit! For a moment we could not speak. Then, as we looked at one another, the first hasty joyful words spoken, I saw the very expression of dismay and discomfiture, which I had read on Louis St. Alais' face, dawn on his! He muttered, "O mon Dieu! mon Dieu!" under his breath, and wrung his hands stealthily.

But I was sick of this mystery, and I said so in hot words. "You at any rate shall tell me, father!" I cried.

Two or three of the passers-by heard me, and looked at us curiously. He drew me, to escape these, into a doorway; but still a man stood peering in at us. "Come upstairs," the father muttered, "we shall be quiet there." And he led the way up a stone staircase, ancient and sordid, serving many and cleaned by none.

"Do you live here?" I said.

"Yes," he answered; and then stopped short, and turned to me with an air of confusion. "But it is a poor place, M. le Vicomte," he continued, and he even made as if he would descend again, "and perhaps we should be wise to go----"

"No, no!" I said, burning with impatience. "To your room, man! To your room, if you live here! I cannot wait. I have found you, and I will not let another minute pass before I have learned the truth."

He still hesitated, and even began to mutter another objection. But I had only mind for one thing, and giving way to me, he preceded me slowly to the top of the house; where under the tiles he had a little room with a mattress and a chair, two or three books and a crucifix. A small square dormer-window admitted the light--and something else; for as we entered a pigeon rose from the floor and flew out by it.

He uttered an exclamation of annoyance, and explained that he fed them sometimes. "They are company," he said sadly. "And I have found little here."

"Yet you came of your own accord," I retorted brutally. I was choking with anxiety, and it took that form.

"To lose one more illusion," he answered. "For years--you know it, M. le Vicomte--I looked forward to reform, to liberty, to freedom. And I taught others to look forward also. Well, we gained these--you know it, and the first use the people made of their liberty was to attack religion. Then I came here, because I was told that here the defenders of the Church would make a stand; that here the Church was strong, religion respected, faith still vigorous. I came to gain a little hope from others' hope. And I find pretended miracles, I find imposture, I find lies and trickery and chicanery used on one side and the other. And violence everywhere."

"Then in heaven's name, man, why did you not go home again?" I cried.

"I was going a week ago," he answered. "And then I did not go. And----"

"Never mind that now!" I cried harshly. "It is not that I want. I have seen Louis St. Alais, and I know that there is something amiss. He will not face me. He will not tell me where Madame is. He will have nothing to do with me. He looks at me as if I were a death's head! Now what is it? You know and I must know. Tell me."

"Mon Dieu!" he answered. And he looked at me with tears in his eyes. Then, "This is what I feared," he said.

"Feared? Feared what?" I cried.

"That your heart was in it, M. le Vicomte."

"In what? In what? Speak plainly, man."

"Mademoiselle de St. Alais'--engagement," he said.

I stood a moment staring at him. "Her engagement?" I whispered. "To whom?"

"To M. Froment," he answered.