was very thoughtful. 'I understand a great deal that hitherto had not occurred to me,' he said slowly. 'When this movement first began, when I played my part in it, it was a movement of idealists who sought to correct abuses, to bring to men an equality of opportunity and an equality before the law which in the past had been denied them.'
'Nearly all those visionaries have been swept away by the tide from the gutter to which they opened the floodgates. A handful remains, perhaps. The men of the Gironde, lawyers all, and men of ability who make a great parade of republican virtue. But even they have shown themselves dishonest. They voted for the death of the King, against their principles, and merely so as to ensure that they might cling to power. Oh, believe me, I wrought no miracle in preserving myself in Paris, and it will require no miracle to safeguard me there again.'
'You are returning?'
'Of course. Shall I grow rusty in exile while there's work to be done at home? I may have failed to save the King, thanks to that blundering jealous fool d'Entragues who kept me wasting time in Coblentz when I should have been in Paris; but I shall hope to succeed better with the Queen.'
'You mean to attempt her rescue?'
'I do not think it offers difficulties that gold and steel will not overcome.'
The wine was finished. André-Louis stood up. His dark eyes considered the resolute, carelessly smiling countenance of the Baron.
'Monsieur de Batz,' he said, 'minimize it as you will, I think you are the bravest man I have ever known.'
'You honour me, Monsieur Moreau. Have you the ear of the Regent?'
'I! Indeed, no.'
'A pity! You might persuade him of the virtue you discern in me. He has no great opinion of me at present. But I shall hope to improve it. I owe it to myself.'
They talked no more that day, but they met again as if by mutual attraction on the morrow. And then it was André-Louis who talked, and the Baron who listened.
'I have been pondering what you told me yesterday, Monsieur de Batz. If you accurately represent the situation, this revolutionary stronghold is vulnerable, it seems to me, at several points. My interest springs from my own aims. That is common enough if not commonly admitted. I am frank, Monsieur le Baron. All my hopes in life have become bound up with the restoration of the monarchy, and I see no ground to expect that the restoration of the Bourbons will ever be brought about as a result of European intervention. If the monarchy is to be restored in France, the restoration must come as the result of a movement from the inside. Almost I perceive—or seem to perceive—from what you told me yesterday how this movement might be given an impetus.'
'How?' The Baron was alert.
André-Louis did not immediately answer. He sat in silence, considering, as if passing his ideas in review before giving them utterance. Then he looked round and up at the railed galleries above the common room. They were quite alone. It was still too early in the day for the inhabitants of Hamm to come there to their beer and cards and dice and backgammon.
He leaned across the narrow yellow table, directly facing the Baron, and there was a glitter in his dark eyes, a faint stir of blood on his prominent cheek-bones.
'You'll say this is a madman's dream.'
'I've dreamt a good many of them, myself. Take heart.'
'Two things that you said yesterday have remained with me to be the seed of thought. One was your exposition of the general dishonesty, the corruptibility of those in power today in France. The other was your assertion that, if the chaos existed there which abroad it is believed exists, the revolution would burn itself out in a few days.'
'Do you doubt either statement?'
'No, Monsieur le Baron. I perceive that power in France has been tossed like a ball from hand to hand until it is now grasped by the lowest men in the nation who can pretend to any governing ability. It can be tossed no farther; that is to say no farther down.'
'There are still the Girondins,' said de Batz slowly. 'They hardly fit your description.'
'But it follows, from what else you said, that they will be swept away by the natural processes of the revolution.'
'Yes. That seems inevitable.'
'The men of the National Convention maintain themselves by the confidence of the populace. The populace trusts them implicitly, believes in their stark honesty. Other governments have been pulled down because the men who formed them were exposed for corrupt self-seekers, plundering the Nation to their own personal profit. This corruption the populace believes to be responsible for the squalid misery of its own lot. Now all is changed. The people believe that those rogues have been cast out, driven from France, guillotined, destroyed; they believe that their places have been filled by these honest, incorruptible men who would open their veins to give drink to the thirsty people rather than misappropriate a liard of the national treasury.'
'A nice phrase,' said the Baron. 'Pitched in the right key for the mob.'
André-Louis let the interruption pass. 'If it could be revealed to the people that these last hopes of theirs are more corrupt than any that have gone before; if the people could be persuaded that by cant, hypocrisy, and lies these revolutionaries have imposed themselves upon the Nation merely so that they may fatten upon it, what would happen?'
'If that could be proved, it would of course destroy them. But how to prove it?'
'All things that are true are susceptible of proof.'
'As a general rule, no doubt. But these fellows are too secure to be assailed in that fashion.'
Again André-Louis was sententious. 'No man is secure who is dishonest in a position held upon faith in his honesty. Monsieur, as you have said, sits there in his wooden châlet composing reports for consumption in the courts of Europe. Would not his ends be better served by reports for consumption by the populace of France? Is it so difficult to arouse suspicion of men in power even when they are believed to be honest?'
The Baron was stirred. 'Name of a name of a name! But now you utter a truth, mon petit. The reputation of a man in power is as delicate as a woman's.'
'You see. Let scandal loose against these knaves. Support it by evidence of their dishonesties. Then one of two things must follow: either a reaction in favour of the return of the old governing classes, or else chaos, utter anarchy, and the complete collapse of all the machinery of State, with the inevitable result of famine and exhaustion. Thus the revolution burns itself out.'
'My God!' said de Batz in a voice of awe. He took his head in his hands, and sat brooding there, his eyes veiled. At last he flashed them upon the eager face of the man opposite. 'A madman's dream, as you say; and yet a dream that might be possible of fulfilment. The conception of a Dæmon.'
'I make you a gift of it.'
But the Baron shook his head. 'It would need the mind that conceived it to oversee its execution, to elaborate its details. The task is one for you, Monsieur Moreau.'
'Say, rather, for Scaramouche. It asks his peculiar gifts.'
'Regard that as you please. Consider the results to yourself if achievement were to crown the effort, as well it may, if boldly made. Yours will be the position of a king-maker.'
'Scaramouche the King-Maker!'
De Batz disregarded the sneer. 'And yours the great rewards that await a king-maker.'
'You believe, then, in the gratitude of princes, after all.'
'I believe in a king-maker's ability to enforce payment of his wages.'
André-Louis fell into a day-dream. It would be a sweet satisfaction to have these men who had treated him so cavalierly owe their restoration to his genius, and lie in his debt for it; sweet, too, to prevail by his own effort, and rise by it to the eminence which he accounted his natural place in a world of numskulls, an eminence which he need have no hesitation in inviting Aline to share.