which only M. le Marquis’s was loaded. He invited Philippe to discuss the matter further, with the deliberate intent of forcing a quarrel upon him and killing him. Be patient with me, monsieur my god-father. I am not telling you of what I imagine but what M. le Marquis himself admitted to me.”
Dominated a little by the young man’s earnestness, M. de Kercadiou’s pale eyes fell away. He turned with a shrug, and sauntered over to the window.
“It would need a court of honour to decide such an issue. And we have no courts of honour,” he said.
“But we have courts of justice.”
With returning testiness the seigneur swung round to face him again. “And what court of justice, do you think, would listen to such a plea as you appear to have in mind?”
“There is the court of the King’s Lieutenant at Rennes.”
“And do you think the King’s Lieutenant would listen to you?”
“Not to me, perhaps, Monsieur. But if you were to bring the plaint . . . ”
“I bring the plaint?” M. de Kercadiou’s pale eyes were wide with horror of the suggestion.
“The thing happened here on your domain.”
“I bring a plaint against M. de La Tour d’Azyr! You are out of your senses, I think. Oh, you are mad; as mad as that poor friend of yours who has come to this end through meddling in what did not concern him. The language he used here to M. le Marquis on the score of Mabey was of the most offensive. Perhaps you didn’t know that. It does not at all surprise me that the Marquis should have desired satisfaction.”
“I see,” said Andre–Louis, on a note of hopelessness.
“You see? What the devil do you see?”
“That I shall have to depend upon myself alone.”
“And what the devil do you propose to do, if you please?”
“I shall go to Rennes, and lay the facts before the King’s Lieutenant.”
“He’ll be too busy to see you.” And M. de Kercadiou’s mind swung a trifle inconsequently, as weak minds will. “There is trouble enough in Rennes already on the score of these crazy States General, with which the wonderful M. Necker is to repair the finances of the kingdom. As if a peddling Swiss bank-clerk, who is also a damned Protestant, could succeed where such men as Calonne and Brienne have failed.”
“Good-afternoon, monsieur my godfather,” said Andre–Louis.
“Where are you going?” was the querulous demand.
“Home at present. To Rennes in the morning.”
“Wait, boy, wait!” The squat little man rolled forward, affectionate concern on his great ugly face, and he set one of his podgy hands on his godson’s shoulder. “Now listen to me, Andre,” he reasoned. “This is sheer knight-errantry — moonshine, lunacy. You’ll come to no good by it if you persist. You’ve read ‘Don Quixote,’ and what happened to him when he went tilting against windmills. It’s what will happen to you, neither more nor less. Leave things as they are, my boy. I wouldn’t have a mischief happen to you.”
Andre–Louis looked at him, smiling wanly.
“I swore an oath to-day which it would damn my soul to break.”
“You mean that you’ll go in spite of anything that I may say?” Impetuous as he was inconsequent, M. de Kercadiou was bristling again. “Very well, then, go . . . Go to the devil!”
“I will begin with the King’s Lieutenant.”
“And if you get into the trouble you are seeking, don’t come whimpering to me for assistance,” the seigneur stormed. He was very angry now. “Since you choose to disobey me, you can break your empty head against the windmill, and be damned to you.”
Andre–Louis bowed with a touch of irony, and reached the door.
“If the windmill should prove too formidable,” said he, from the threshold, “I may see what can be done with the wind. Good-bye, monsieur my godfather.”
He was gone, and M. de Kercadiou was alone, purple in the face, puzzling out that last cryptic utterance, and not at all happy in his mind, either on the score of his godson or of M. de La Tour d’Azyr. He was disposed to be angry with them both. He found these headstrong, wilful men who relentlessly followed their own impulses very disturbing and irritating. Himself he loved his ease, and to be at peace with his neighbours; and that seemed to him so obviously the supreme good of life that he was disposed to brand them as fools who troubled to seek other things.
Chapter 6
The Windmill
There was between Nantes and Rennes an established service of three stage-coaches weekly in each direction, which for a sum of twenty-four livres — roughly, the equivalent of an English guinea — would carry you the seventy and odd miles of the journey in some fourteen hours. Once a week one of the diligences going in each direction would swerve aside from the highroad to call at Gavrillac, to bring and take letters, newspapers, and sometimes passengers. It was usually by this coach that Andre–Louis came and went when the occasion offered. At present, however, he was too much in haste to lose a day awaiting the passing of that diligence. So it was on a horse hired from the Breton arme that he set out next morning; and an hour’s brisk ride under a grey wintry sky, by a half-ruined road through ten miles of flat, uninteresting country, brought him to the city of Rennes.
He rode across the main bridge over the Vilaine, and so into the upper and principal part of that important city of some thirty thousand souls, most of whom, he opined from the seething, clamant crowds that everywhere blocked his way, must on this day have taken to the streets. Clearly Philippe had not overstated the excitement prevailing there.
He pushed on as best he could, and so came at last to the Place Royale, where he found the crowd to be most dense. From the plinth of the equestrian statue of Louis XV, a white-faced young man was excitedly addressing the multitude. His youth and dress proclaimed the student, and a group of his fellows, acting as a guard of honour to him, kept the immediate precincts of the statue.
Over the heads of the crowd Andre–Louis caught a few of the phrases flung forth by that eager voice.
“It was the promise of the King . . . It is the King’s authority they flout . . . They arrogate to themselves the whole sovereignty in Brittany. The King has dissolved them . . . These insolent nobles defying their sovereign and the people . . . ”
Had he not known already, from what Philippe had told him, of the events which had brought the Third Estate to the point of active revolt, those few phrases would fully have informed him. This popular display of temper was most opportune to his need, he thought. And in the hope that it might serve his turn by disposing to reasonableness the mind of the King’s Lieutenant, he pushed on up the wide and well-paved Rue Royale, where the concourse of people began to diminish. He put up his hired horse at the Come de Cerf, and set out again, on foot, to the Palais de Justice.
There was a brawling mob by the framework of poles and scaffoldings about the building cathedral, upon which work had been commenced a year ago. But he did not pause to ascertain the particular cause of that gathering. He strode on, and thus came presently to the handsome Italianate palace that was one of the few public edifices that had survived the devastating fire of sixty years ago.
He won through with difficulty to the great hall, known as the Salle des Pas Perdus, where he was left to cool his heels for a full half-hour after he had found an usher so condescending as to inform the god who presided over that shrine of Justice that a lawyer from Gavrillac humbly begged an audience on an affair of gravity.
That the god condescended to see him at all