Marquis sighed wearily. “What have I to do with the laws of humanity?” he wondered.
M. de Vilmorin looked at him a moment in speechless amazement.
“Nothing, M. le Marquis. That is — alas! — too obvious. I hope you will remember it in the hour when you may wish to appeal to those laws which you now deride.”
M. de La Tour d’Azyr threw back his head sharply, his high-bred face imperious.
“Now what precisely shall that mean? It is not the first time to-day that you have made use of dark sayings that I could almost believe to veil the presumption of a threat.”
“Not a threat, M. le Marquis — a warning. A warning that such deeds as these against God’s creatures . . . Oh, you may sneer, monsieur, but they are God’s creatures, even as you or I— neither more nor less, deeply though the reflection may wound your pride, In His eyes . . . ”
“Of your charity, spare me a sermon, M. l’abbe!”
“You mock, monsieur. You laugh. Will you laugh, I wonder, when God presents His reckoning to you for the blood and plunder with which your hands are full?”
“Monsieur!” The word, sharp as the crack of a whip, was from M. de Chabrillane, who bounded to his feet. But instantly the Marquis repressed him.
“Sit down, Chevalier. You are interrupting M. l’abbe, and I should like to hear him further. He interests me profoundly.”
In the background Andre–Louis, too, had risen, brought to his feet by alarm, by the evil that he saw written on the handsome face of M. de La Tour d’Azyr. He approached, and touched his friend upon the arm.
“Better be going, Philippe,” said he.
But M. de Vilmorin, caught in the relentless grip of passions long repressed, was being hurried by them recklessly along.
“Oh, monsieur,” said he, “consider what you are and what you will be. Consider how you and your kind live by abuses, and consider the harvest that abuses must ultimately bring.”
“Revolutionist!” said M. le Marquis, contemptuously. “You have the effrontery to stand before my face and offer me this stinking cant of your modern so-called intellectuals!”
“Is it cant, monsieur? Do you think — do you believe in your soul — that it is cant? Is it cant that the feudal grip is on all things that live, crushing them like grapes in the press, to its own profit? Does it not exercise its rights upon the waters of the river, the fire that bakes the poor man’s bread of grass and barley, on the wind that turns the mill? The peasant cannot take a step upon the road, cross a crazy bridge over a river, buy an ell of cloth in the village market, without meeting feudal rapacity, without being taxed in feudal dues. Is not that enough, M. le Marquis? Must you also demand his wretched life in payment for the least infringement of your sacred privileges, careless of what widows or orphans you dedicate to woe? Will naught content you but that your shadow must lie like a curse upon the land? And do you think in your pride that France, this Job among the nations, will suffer it forever?”
He paused as if for a reply. But none came. The Marquis considered him, strangely silent, a half smile of disdain at the corners of his lips, an ominous hardness in his eyes.
Again Andre–Louis tugged at his friend’s sleeve.
“Philippe.”
Philippe shook him off, and plunged on, fanatically.
“Do you see nothing of the gathering clouds that herald the coming of the storm? You imagine, perhaps, that these States General summoned by M. Necker, and promised for next year, are to do nothing but devise fresh means of extortion to liquidate the bankruptcy of the State? You delude yourselves, as you shall find. The Third Estate, which you despise, will prove itself the preponderating force, and it will find a way to make an end of this canker of privilege that is devouring the vitals of this unfortunate country.”
M. le Marquis shifted in his chair, and spoke at last.
“You have, monsieur,” said he, “a very dangerous gift of eloquence. And it is of yourself rather than of your subject. For after all, what do you offer me? A rechauffe of the dishes served to out-at-elbow enthusiasts in the provincial literary chambers, compounded of the effusions of your Voltaires and Jean–Jacques and such dirty-fingered scribblers. You have not among all your philosophers one with the wit to understand that we are an order consecrated by antiquity, that for our rights and privileges we have behind us the authority of centuries.”
“Humanity, monsieur,” Philippe replied, “is more ancient than nobility. Human rights are contemporary with man.”
The Marquis laughed and shrugged.
“That is the answer I might have expected. It has the right note of cant that distinguishes the philosophers.”
And then M. de Chabrillane spoke.
“You go a long way round,” he criticized his cousin, on a note of impatience.
“But I am getting there,” he was answered. “I desired to make quite certain first.”
“Faith, you should have no doubt by now.”
“I have none.” The Marquis rose, and turned again to M. de Vilmorin, who had understood nothing of that brief exchange. “M. l’abbe,” said he once more, “you have a very dangerous gift of eloquence. I can conceive of men being swayed by it. Had you been born a gentleman, you would not so easily have acquired these false views that you express.”
M. de Vilmorin stared blankly, uncomprehending.
“Had I been born a gentleman, do you say?” quoth he, in a slow, bewildered voice. “But I was born a gentleman. My race is as old, my blood as good as yours, monsieur.”
From M. le Marquis there was a slight play of eyebrows, a vague, indulgent smile. His dark, liquid eyes looked squarely into the face of M. de Vilmorin.
“You have been deceived in that, I fear.”
“Deceived?”
“Your sentiments betray the indiscretion of which madame your mother must have been guilty.”
The brutally affronting words were sped beyond recall, and the lips that had uttered them, coldly, as if they had been the merest commonplace, remained calm and faintly sneering.
A dead silence followed. Andre–Louis’ wits were numbed. He stood aghast, all thought suspended in him, what time M. de Vilmorin’s eyes continued fixed upon M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s, as if searching there for a meaning that eluded him. Quite suddenly he understood the vile affront. The blood leapt to his face, fire blazed in his gentle eyes. A convulsive quiver shook him. Then, with an inarticulate cry, he leaned forward, and with his open hand struck M. le Marquis full and hard upon his sneering face.
In a flash M. de Chabrillane was on his feet, between the two men.
Too late Andre–Louis had seen the trap. La Tour d’Azyr’s words were but as a move in a game of chess, calculated to exasperate his opponent into some such counter-move as this — a counter-move that left him entirely at the other’s mercy.
M. le Marquis looked on, very white save where M. de Vilmorin’s finger-prints began slowly to colour his face; but he said nothing more. Instead, it was M. de Chabrillane who now did the talking, taking up his preconcerted part in this vile game.
“You realize, monsieur, what you have done,” said he, coldly, to Philippe. “And you realize, of course, what must inevitably follow.”
M. de Vilmorin had realized nothing. The poor young man had acted upon impulse, upon the instinct of decency and honour, never counting the consequences. But he realized them now at the sinister invitation of M. de Chabrillane, and if he desired to avoid these consequences, it was out of respect for his priestly vocation, which strictly forbade such adjustments of disputes as M. de Chabrillane was clearly thrusting upon him.
He