Title: Scaramouche The Kingmaker: A Romance
Author: Rafael Sabatini
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Language:  English
Date first posted: January 2008
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Title: Scaramouche The Kingmaker: A Romance
Author: Rafael Sabatini



CONTENTS

I.        THE TRAVELLERS
II.       SCHÖNBORNLUST
III.      BARON DE BATZ
IV.       THE REVOLUTIONARY
V.        THE RESCUE
VI.       THE APOLOGY
VII.      MADAME DE BALBI
VIII.     VALMY
IX.       PROPOSAL
X.        DISPOSAL
XI.       THE SPLENDID FAILURE
XII.      THE VULNERABLE POINT
XIII.     DEPARTURE
XIV.      MOLOCH
XV.       PRELUDE
XVI.      IN THE RUE CHARLOT
XVII.     AT CHARONNE
XVIII.    LANGÉAC'S REPORT
XIX.      REPAYMENT
XX.       MAMMON
XXI.      THE TEMPTING OF CHABOT
XXII.     BRIBERY
XXIII.    THE BROTHERS FREY
XXIV.     THE GENIUS OF D'ENTRAGUES
XXV.      THE INTERDICT
XXVI.     CHABOT TRIUMPHANT
XXVII.    MATCHMAKING
XXIII.    LEOPOLDINE
XXIX.     THE BAIT
XXX.      THE INDIA COMPANY
XXXI.     GERMINATION
XXXII.    UNMASKED
XXXIII.   THE INCORRUPTIBLE
XXXIV.    THORIN'S LETTER
XXXV.     MESSENGERS
XXXVI.    THE INTERRUPTION
XXXVII.   THE CANDID MARQUIS
XXXVIII.  THE CITIZEN-AGENT
XXXIX.    EVIDENCE
XL.       THE DOSSIER
XLI.      THE THUNDERBOLT
XLII.     PRINCELY GRATITUDE
XLIII.    ON THE BRIDGE
XLIV.     ACCOUNT RENDERED
XLV.      BACK TO HAMM





CHAPTER I - THE TRAVELLERS


It was suspected of him by many that he had no heart.

Repeatedly he allows this suspicion to be perceived in the course of
those confessions of his upon which I drew so freely for the story of the
first part of his odd life. In the beginning of that story we see him
turning his back, at the dictates of affection, upon an assured career in
the service of Privilege. At the end of it we see him forsaking the cause
of the people in which he had prospered and, again at the dictates of
affection, abandoning the great position won.

Of the man who twice within the first twenty-eight years of his life,
deliberately, in the service of others, destroys his chances of success,
it is foolish to say that he has no heart. But it was the whim of
André-Louis Moreau to foster this illusion. His imagination had early
been touched by the teaching of Epictetus, and deliberately he sought to
assume the characteristics of a Stoic: one who would never permit his
reason to be clouded by sentiment, or his head to be governed by his
heart.

He was, of course, by temperament an actor. It was as Scaramouche, and as
author, player and organizer of the Binet Troupe that he had found his
true vocation. Persisting in it his genius might have won him a renown
greater than the combined renowns of Beaumarchais and Talma. Desisting
from it, however, he had carried his histrionic temperament into such
walks of life as he thereafter trod, taking the world for his stage.

Such temperaments are common enough, and commonly they are merely
tiresome.

André-Louis Moreau, however, succeeds in winning our interest by the
unexpectedness of what he somewhere frankly and fantastically calls his
exteriorizations. His gift of laughter is responsible for this. The comic
muse is ever at his elbow, though not always obvious. She remained with
him to the end, although in this, the second part of his history, his
indulgence of the old humour is fraught with a certain bitterness in a
measure as the conviction is borne in upon him that in the madness of the
world there is more evil than was perceived even by those philosophers
who have sought to teach it sanity.

His flight from Paris at a moment when, as a man of State, a great career
was opening before him, was a sacrifice dictated by the desire to procure
the safety of those he loved: Aline de Kercadiou, whom he hoped to marry
Monsieur de Kercadiou, his godfather and Madame de Plougastel, whose
natural son it had been so lately discovered to him that he was. That
flight was effected without adventure. Every barrier was removed by the
passport carried by the Representative André-Louis Moreau, which
announced that he travelled on the business of the National Assembly,
commanded all to lend him such assistance as he might require, and warned
all that they hindered him at their peril.

The berline conveying them travelled by way of Rheims but continuing
eastward it began to find the roads increasingly encumbered by troops,
gun-carriages, service-wagons and commissariat trains and all the
unending impedimenta of an army on the march.

So as to make progress, they were constrained to turn north, towards
Charleville, and thence east again, crossing the lines of the National
Army, still commanded by Luckner and La Fayette, which awaited the enemy
who for over a month now had been massing on the banks of the Rhine.

It was this definite movement of invasion which had driven the populace
of France to frenzy. The storming of the Tuileries by the mob, and the
horrors of the 10th of August gave the answer of the populace to the
pompous minatory ill-judged manifesto bearing the signature of the Duke
of Brunswick, but whose real authors were Count Fersen and the rash
Queen. By its intemperate menaces this manifesto contributed more perhaps
than any other cause to the ruin of the King whom it was framed to save
for the Duke of Brunswick's threats to the people of France made the King
appear in the guise of a public danger.

This, however, was not the point of view of Monsieur de Kercadiou, Lord
of Gavrillac, travelling under the revolutionary aegis of his godson to
safety beyond the Rhine. In the uncompromising expressions of the Duke,
Quentin de Kercadiou heard the voice of the man who is master of the
situation, who promises no more than it is within his power to perform.
What resistance could those raw, ill-clad, ill-nourished, ill-equipped,
ill-trained, ill-armed troops through whose straggling lines they had
passed, offer to the magnificent army of seventy thousand Prussians and
fifty thousand Austrians, fortified by twenty-five thousand French
émigrés, including the very flower of French chivalry?

The Bréton nobleman's squat figure reclined at greater ease on the
cushions of the travelling carriage after his glimpse of the a ragged
ill-conditioned forces of the Nation. Peace entered his soul, and cast
out anxiety. Before the end of the month the allies would be in Paris.
The revolutionary carnival was all but at an end. There would follow for
those gentlemen of the gutter a period of Lent and penitence. He
expressed himself freely in these terms, his glance upon the
Citizen-Representative Moreau, as if challenging contradiction.

"If ordnance were all," said André-Louis, "I should agree with you. But
battles are won by wits as well as guns and the wits of the man who
uttered the Duke's manifesto do not command my respect."

"Ah! And La Fayette, then? Is that a man of genius?" The Lord of
Gavrillac sneered.

"We do not know. He has never commanded an army in the field. It may be
that he will prove no better than the Duke of Brunswick."

They came to Diekirch, and found themselves in a swarm of HHssians, the
advance-guard of the Prince of Hohenlohe's division which was to move
upon Thionville and Metz, soldiers, these well-equipped, masterful,
precisely disciplined, different indeed from those poor straggling
ragamuffins who were to dispute their passage.

André-Louis had removed the tricolour sash from his olive-green
riding-coat and the tricolour cockade from his conical black hat. His
papers, a passport to service in France, but here a passport to the
gallows, were bestowed in an inner pocket of his tightly-buttoned
waistcoat, and now it was Monsieur de Kercadiou who took the initiative,
announcing his name and quality to the allied officers, so as to obtain
permission to pass on. It was readily yielded. Challenges were little
more than an empty formality. Emigres were still arriving, although no
longer in their former numbers, and, anyway, the allies had nothing to
apprehend from anyone passing behind their lines.

The weather had broken, and by sodden roads which almost hourly grew
heavier, the horses fetlocks deep in mud, they came by Wittlieb, where
they lay a night at a fair inn, and then with clearer skies overhead and
a morass underfoot they trailed up the fertile valley of the Moselle by
miles of dripping vineyards, whose yield that year gave little promise.

And so, at long length, a full week after setting out, the berline rolled
past the Ehrenbreitstein with its gloomy fortress, and rumbled over the
bridge of boats into the city of Coblentz.

And now it was Madame de Plougastel's name that proved their real
passport for hers was a name well-known in Coblentz. Her husband,
Monsieur de Plougastel, was a prominent member of the excessive household
by means of which the Princes maintained in exile an ultra-royal state,
rendered possible by a loan from Amsterdam bankers and the bounty of the
Elector of Treves.

The Lord of Gavrillac pursuing habits which had become instinct alighted
his party at the town's best inn, the Three Crowns. True the National
Convention, which was to confiscate the estates of emigrated noblemen,
had not yet come into being but meanwhile those estates and their
revenues were inaccessible and the Lord of Gavrillac's possessions
amounted to some twenty Louis which chance had left him at the moment of
departure. To this might be added the clothes in which he stood and some
trinkets upon the person of Aline. The berline itself belonged to Madame
de Plougastel, as did the trunks in the boot. Madame practising foresight
had brought away a casket containing all her jewels, which at need should
realize a handsome sum. André-Louis had left with thirty louis in his
purse. But he had borne all the expenses of the journey and these had
already consumed a third of that modest sum.

Money, however, had never troubled the easy-going existence of the Lord
of Gavrillac. It had never been necessary for him to do more than command
whatever he required. So he commanded now the best that the inn could
provide in accommodation, food and wine.

Had they arrived in Coblentz a month ago, they must have conceived
themselves still in France, for so crowded had the place been with
émigrés that hardly any language but French was to be heard in the
streets, whilst the suburb of Thal, across the river, had been an armed
camp of Frenchmen. Now that the army had at last departed on its errand
of extinguishing the revolution and restoring to the monarchy all its
violated absolutism, the French population of Coblentz, as of other
Rhineland towns, had been reduced by some thousands. Many, however, still
remained with the Princes. They were temporarily back at Schönbornlust,
the handsome, magnificent Electoral summer residence which Clemens
Wenceslaus had placed at the disposal of his royal nephews: the two
brothers of the King, the Comte de Provence and the Comte d'Artois, and
the King's uncle, the Prince de Conde.

In return the Elector's generosity had been abused and his patience
sorely tried.

Each of the three Princes had come accompanied by his mistress, and one
by his wife as well and they had brought into Saxony, together with the
elegancies, all the ribaldries, the gallantries and the intriguings of
Versailles.

Condé, the only one of any military worth--and his military worth and
reputation were considerable--had established himself at Worms and had
organized there into an army the twenty-live thousand Frenchmen who had
gone to range themselves under his banner for the crusade on behalf of
Throne and Altar.

Monsieur and his brother the Comte d'Artois, however, were not only the
true representatives of royalty to these exiles, but the enemies of the
constitution which the King had accepted, and the champions of all the
ancient privileges the abolition of which had been the whole aim of the
original revolutionists. It was about these Princes at Coblentz that a
Court had assembled itself, maintained at enormous cost at Schönbornlust
for his royal nephews by their long-suffering host. Their followers with
their wives and families disposed themselves in such lodgings as the town
offered and their means afforded. At first money had been comparatively
plentiful amongst them, and they had spent it with the prodigality of
folk who had never learnt to take thought for the morrow. In that time of
waiting they had beguiled their leisure in the care-free occupations that
were habitual to them. They had turned the Bonn Road into an image of the
Cours la Reine they rode and walked, gossiped, danced, gambled, made
love, intrigued, and even fought duels in despite of the Electoral
edicts. Nor was that all the scandal they gave. The license they
permitted themselves was so considerable that the kindly old Elector had
been driven to complain that the morals of his own people were being
corrupted by the unseemly conduct, the insolent bearing, the debauched
habits and the religious indifference of the French nobility. He even
ventured to suggest to the Princes that, example being so much more
powerful than precept they should set their own houses in order.

With eyebrows raised at an outlook so narrow and provincial, his nephews
pointed out to him in turn that the life of a prince is never so orderly
as when he has acquired a maîtresse-en-titre. And the gentle, indulgent
old archbishop could not find it in his heart to distress his royal
nephews by further insistence.

Monsieur de Kercadiou and his party reached Coblentz at noon on the 18th
of August. Having dined and made such toilet as was possible to men
without change of garments, they reentered the still bespattered berline,
and set out for the Château, a mile away.

The fact that they came straight from Paris, whence there had been no
news for the past ten days, ensured them instant audience. By a broad
staircase kept by glittering gold-laced officers and a spacious gallery
above, where courtiers sauntered, elegant of manner, vivacious of speech,
and ready of laughter as in the Oeil de Boeuf at Versailles of old, the
newcomers were brought to an ante-chamber by a gentleman usher, who went
forward to announce them.

Even now that the majority of men had departed with the army, there still
remained here a sufficient throng, made up of the outrageous retinue
which these Princes insisted upon maintaining. Prudence in expenditure,
the husbanding of their borrowed resources, was not for them.

After all, they still believed that the insubordination of the French
masses was but a fire of straw which even now the Duke of Brunswick was
marching to extinguish, a fire which could never have been kindled but
for the supineness, the incompetence, the jacobinism of the King, to whom
in their hearts these émigrés were no longer loyal. Their fealty was to
their own order, which within a few weeks now would be restored. The
Duke's manifesto told the canaille what to expect. It should be to them
as the writing on the wall to the Babylonians.

Our travellers made for a while a little group apart. André-Louis, slight
and straight in his olive-green riding-coat with silver buttons, the
sword through the pocket, his buckskins and knee-boots, his black hair
gathered into a queue that was innocent of any roll; Monsieur de
Kercadiou, in black and silver, rather crumpled, squat of figure, and
middle-aged with the slightly furtive manner of a man who had never
accustomed himself to numerous assemblies Madame de Plougastel, tall and
calm, dressed with a care that set off her fading beauty, her gentle
wistful eyes more observant of her natural son André-Louis than of her
surroundings and Aline de Kercadiou, slight, virginal and lovely in a
rose brocade, her golden hair dressed high, her blue eyes half-shyly
taking stock of her surroundings.

They attracted no attention until a gentleman issuing from the presence
chamber, the salon d'honneur, made his way briskly towards them. This
gentleman, no longer young, of middle height, inclining to portliness,
moved even in his present haste with an air of consequence which left no
doubt of the opinion which he held himself. He was resplendent in yellow
brocade and glittered at several points.

André-Louis had an intuition of his identity before he reached them
before he was bending formally over the hand of Madame de Plougastel, and
announcing in an utterly emotionless voice his satisfaction at beholding
her at last in safety.

"It was by no wish of mine, madame, as I think you are aware, that you
remained so long in Paris. It would have been better, I think, for both
of us had you decided to make the journey sooner. Now it was scarce worth
the trouble. For very soon, following in Monsieur's train, I should have
come to you. However, I give you welcome. I hope that you are well. I
trust that you will have traveled comfortably."

Thus, in stilted, pompous phrases, did the Count of Plougastel receive
his Countess. Without pausing for any reply from her, lie swung
half-aside. "Ah, my dear Gavrillac! Ever the attentive cousin, the
faithful cavalier, is it not?"

André-Louis wondered was he sneering, watched him narrowly as he pressed
Kercadiou's hand, and found himself there and then moved to a profound
dislike for this consequential gentleman with the big head on its short
thick neck, the big nose that was Bourbon in shape and the chin too big
for strength but not for obstinacy when considered with the stupid mouth.

"And this is your adorable niece," the gentleman was continuing. He had a
curiously purring voice and an affected enunciation. "You have grown in
beauty and in stature, Mademoiselle Mine, since last we met." He looked
at André-Louis, and checked, frowning, as if in question.

"This is my godson," said the Lord of Gavrillac shortly, withholding a
name that had become a thought too famous.

"Your godson?" The black eyebrows were raised on that shallow brow. "Ah!"

Then others, having realized Madame de Plougastel's identity, came
crowding chattering about them, with rustle of silken skirts and tapping
of red-heeled shoes, until the Count, remembering the august personage
awaiting the travellers, rescued them from that frivolous throng, and
ushered them into the presence.



CHAPTER II - SCHÖNBORNLUST


Wondering was his own attendance either necessary or desirable, but
yielding to Monsieur de Kercadiou's gentle insistence, André-Louis found
himself in a spacious pillared room that was lighted by very tall
windows. A beam of pallid sunshine, breaking through heavy clouds,
touched into vividness the colours of the soft Aubusson carpet, glinted
on the profuse gildings against their white background, and sparkled in
the great crystal chandelier that hung from the painted ceiling.

In a gilded armchair, from either side of which a flock of courtiers of
both sexes was spread fanwise athwart the chamber, André-Louis observed a
portly florid man in the middle thirties, dressed in grey velvet finely
laced in gold with the blue ribbon of the Holy Ghost across his breast.

Without having yet reached the pronounced obesity of his brother Louis
XVI, which in time he was to exceed, the Count of Provence already showed
every sign of the same tendency. He had the big Bourbon nose, a narrow
brow, whence his face widened downwards to a flabby double chin, and the
full, excessively curling lips of the sensualist. The blue eyes were full
and fine under heavy smoothly arching eyebrows. He had a look of
alertness without intelligence, of importance without dignity. And
observing him, André-Louis read him accurately for stupid, obstinate and
vain.

The slight woman in white and blue sarcenet with the pumpkin head-dress,
hovering on his right was the Countess of Provence. At no time
attractive, her countenance now almost repelled by its sneering air of
discontent. The younger woman on his left, who if also without
conspicuous beauty of features was agreeably formed and of a lively
expression, was the Countess of Balbi, his recognized mistress.

Monsieur de Plougastel led his Countess forward. Monsieur inclined his
powdered head, mumbling a greeting, his eyes dull. They quickened,
however, when Mademoiselle de Kercadiou was presented. They seemed to
glow as they took stock of her delicate golden loveliness, and the curl
of the gross lips was increased into a smile.

"We give you welcome, mademoiselle. Soon we shall hope to welcome you to
a worthier court, such as you were born to grace."

Mademoiselle curtsied again with a murmured "Monseigneur," and would have
withdrawn but that he detained her.

It was amongst his vanities to conceive himself something of a poet, and
he chose now to be poetical.

How was it possible, he desired to know, that so fair a bloom from the
garden of French nobility should never yet have come to adorn the court?

She answered him with commendable composure that five years ago, under
the sponsorship of her uncle, Etienne de Kercadiou, she had spent some
months at Versailles.

His highness protested his annoyance with himself and Fate that he should
have been unaware of this. He desired Heaven to inform him how such a
thing should ever have come to pass. And then he spoke of her uncle
Etienne, whom he had so greatly esteemed and whose death he had never
ceased to deplore. In this he was truthful enough. There was a weakness
in him which made him ever seek to lean upon some particular person in
his following, rendering a favourite as much a necessity to him as a
mistress. For a time this place had been filled by Etienne de Kercadiou,
who, had he lived, might have continued to fill it, for Monsieur had this
virtue that he was loyal and steadfast in his friendships.

He detained her yet a while in aimless talk, whilst those about him,
perceiving here no more than an exhibition of gallantry in a man whose
callow ambition it was ever to appear in the guise of a gallant, grew
impatient for the news from Paris which was expected from the men
accompanying her.

Madame smiled sourly, and whispered in the ear of her reader, the elderly
Madame de Gourbillon. The Countess of Balbi smiled too but it was the
indulgent, humorous smile of a woman who if without illusions is also
without bitterness.

In the immediate background the Lord of Gavrillac waited with his hands
behind him, nodding his great head, the light of satisfaction on his
rugged pock-marked countenance to see his niece honoured by so much royal
notice. At his side André-Louis stood stiff and grim, inwardly damning
the impudence with which his highness smirked and leered at Aline before
the entire court. It was, he supposed, within the exercise of a royal
prerogative to be reckless of what scandal he might cause.

It may have resulted from this that when at last the Lord of Gavrillac
having been presented and required to announce the latest news from
Paris, begged leave to depute the task to his godson, there sprang from
André-Louis' resentment a self-possession so hard and cold as to be
almost ruffling to the feelings of those present.

His bow in acknowledgment of Monsieur's nod was scarcely more than
perfunctory. Then erect, the lean keen face impassive, his voice
metallic, he delivered the brutal news without any softening terms.

"A week yesterday, on the tenth of the month, the populace of Paris,
goaded to frenzy by the manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick and driven to
terror by the news of a foreign army already on the soil of France,
turned with the blind ferocity of an animal at bay. It stormed the Palace
of the Tuileries and massacred to a man the Swiss. Guard and the
gentleman who had remained there to defend the person of his Majesty."

An outcry of horror interrupted him. Monsieur had heaved himself to his
feet. His countenance had lost much of its high colour.

"And the King?" he quavered. "The King?"

"His Majesty and the royal family found shelter under the protection of
the National Assembly."

An awed silence ensued, broken presently by Monsieur's impatience.

"What else, sir? What else?"

"The Sections of Paris appear to be at present the masters of the State.
It is doubtful if the National Assembly can stand against them. They
control the populace. They direct its fury into such channels as seems
best to them."

"And that is all you know, sir? All you can tell us?"

"That is all, monseigneur."

The large prominent eyes continued to survey him, if without hostility,
without kindliness.

"Who are you, sir? What is your name?"

"Moreau, highness. André-Louis Moreau."

It was a plebeian name, awakening no memories in that elegant, frivolous
world of woefully short memories.

"Your condition, sir?"

For Kercadiou, Aline and Madame de Plougastel the moment was charged with
suspense. It was so easy for André-Louis to avoid, as they hoped, full
revelation. But he showed himself contemptuous of subterfuge.

"Until lately, until a week ago, I represented the Third Estate of
Ancenis in the National Assembly."

He felt rather than perceived the horrified inward recoil from him of
every person present.

"A patriot!" said Monsieur. much as he might have said "a pestilence".

Monsieur de Kercadiou came breathlessly to his godson's rescue. "Ah, but,
Monsieur, one who has seen the error of his ways. One who is now
proscribed. He has sacrificed everything to his sense of duty to me, his
godfather. He has rescued Madame de Plougastel, my niece and myself from
that shambles."

Monsieur looked at the Lord of Gavrillac, at the Countess of Plougastel,
and lastly at Aline. He found Mademoiselle de Kerrcadiou's glance full of
intercession, and it seemed to soften him.

"You would add, mademoiselle?" he invited gently.

She was troubled. "Why...why only that considering his sacrifice, I hope
that Monsieur Moreau will deserve well of your Highness. He cannot now
return to France."

Monsieur inclined his fleshly head. "We will remember that only. That we
are in his debt for this. It will lie with Monsieur Moreau to make it
possible for us in the time that is fast approaching to discharge this
debt."

André-Louis said nothing. In the hostile eyes that were bent upon him
from every side his calm seemed almost insolent. Yet two eyes in that
assembly considered him with interest and without hostility. They
belonged to a stiffly-built man of middle height and not more than thirty
years of age, plainly dressed without fripperies: a man with a humorous
mouth above an aggressive chin, and a prominent nose flanked by lively,
quick-moving dark eyes under heavy brows.

Presently, when the court had broken into groups to discuss this dreadful
news from Paris, and André-Louis, ignored, had withdrawn into one of the
window embrasures, this man approached him.

He carried a three-cornered hat with a white cockade, tucked under his
right arm. His left hand rested on the steel hilt of his slim sword.

He came to a halt before André-Louis.

"Ah, Monsieur Moreau! Or is it Citizen Moreau?"

"Why, which you please, monsieur," said André-Louis, alert.

"'Monsieur' will accord better with our environment." He spoke with a
soft, slurred accent, almost like a Spaniard, thus proclaiming his Gascon
origin. "Once, unless my memory betrays me, you were better known by yet
another title. The Paladin of the Third Estate, was it not?"

André-Louis was not abashed. "That was in 'eighty-nine, at the time of
the spadassinicides."

"Ah!" The Gascon smiled. "Your admission is of a piece with the rest. I
am of those who can admire gallantry wherever found. I love a gallant
enemy as I loathe a flabby friend."

"You have also a taste for paradox."

"If you will. You made me regret that I was not a member of the
Constituent Assembly, so that I might have crossed blades with you when
you made yourself the militant champion of the Third Estate."

"You are tired of life?" said André-Louis, who began to mistrust the
gentleman's motives.

"On the contrary, mon petit. I love life so intensely that I must be
getting its full savour; and that is only to be got when it is placed in
hazard. Without that"--he shrugged--"as well might one be born an ox."

The declaration, thought André-Louis, was one that went excellently with
the man's accent.

"You are from Gascony, monsieur," he said.

Mock gravity overspread the other's intrepid countenance. "Po' Cap de
Diou!" he swore as if to leave no doubt on the score of his origin. "Now
that is an innuendo."

"I am always accommodating. It is to help you on your way."

"On my way? But on my way to what, name of God?"

"To live intensely by the thrill of placing your life in hazard."

"You suppose that that is what I seek?" The Gascon fell to fanning
himself with his hat. "Almost you put me in a heat, sir." He smiled. "I
see the train of thought: this enemy camp; the general hostility to your
opinions overriding even the generous thing you have done. There is no
graciousness at court, sir, as any fool may perceive once his eyes cease
to be dazzled by its superficial glitter. You gather that I am no man of
courts. Let me add that I am certainly not the bully-lackey of any party.
I desired, sir, to become acquainted with you. That is all. I am a
monarchist to the marrow of my bones, and I detest your republican
principles. Yet I admired your championship of the Third even more than I
abhorred the cause you championed. Paradoxical, as you say. I am like
that. You bore yourself as I should have wished to bear myself in your
place. Where the devil is the paradox after all?"

André-Louis was brought to the point of laughter. "You meet my stupidity
with graciousness, sir."

"Pish! I am not gracious. I but desire our better acquaintance. My name
is de Batz; Colonel Jean de Batz, Baron of Armanthieu, by Gontz, which Is
in Gascony, as you have guessed. Though how the devil you guessed it, God
alone knows."

Monsieur de Kercadiou was ambling towards them. The Baron made a leg,
valedictorily. "Monsieur!"

And, "Serviteur!" said André-Louis. with an answering courtesy.



CHAPTER III - BARON DE BATZ


André-Louis was annoyed; not hotly annoyed; he was never that; but coldly
bitter. He expressed it without tact considering his audience.

"The more I see of the nobility, the better I like the canaille; the more
I see of royalty, the more I admire the roture."

They sat--André-Louis, Aline and M. de Kercadiou--in the long narrow room
appropriated by the Lord of Gavrillac on the first floor of the Three
Crowns. It was a room entirely Saxon in character. There was no carpet on
the waxed floor. The walls were lined in polished pine adorned with some
trophies of the chase a half-dozen stags' heads, with melancholy glass
eyes, the mask of a boar with enormous tusks, a hunting horn, an
antiquated fowling-piece and some other kindred odds and ends. On the oak
table, from which a waiter had lately removed the remains of breakfast,
stood a crystal bowl containing a great sheaf of roses with which some
lilies had been intermingled.

These flowers provided one source of André-Louis' ill-humour. They had
been brought from Schönbornlust an hour ago by a very elegant, curled and
pomaded gentleman, who announced himself as Monsieur de Jaucourt. He had
delivered them with expressions of homage from Monsieur to Mademoiselle
de Kercadiou, in the hope--so ran the royal message--that they might
brighten the lodging graced by Mademoiselle until more suitable quarters
should be found for her. The quarters in prospect were disclosed by a
note of which M. de Jaucourt was also the bearer, a note from Madame to
Mademoiselle de Kercadiou. And this was the second source of André-Louis'
annoyance. The note announced that Mademoiselle de Kercadiou was
appointed a lady-in-waiting to Madame. Aline's bright transport at this
signal and unexpected honour had supplied André-Louis' annoyance with yet
a third source.

With deliberate rudeness upon apprehending M. de Jaucourt's mission, he
had gone to take his stand by the window, with his back to his
companions, watching the rain that fell in sheets upon the churned mud of
Coblentz. He had not even troubled to turn when M. de Jaucourt had taken
ceremonious leave. It was M. de Kercadiou who had held the door for the
departing messenger.

And now when at last André-Louis condescended to speak, his slight,
agile, well-knit body moving restlessly in the gloom and damp chill of
that long chamber, it was to interrupt Aline's delighted chatter in those
uncompromising terms.

She was startled, astounded. Her uncle was scandalized. In the old days
for the half of those words he would have risen up in wrath, stormed upon
his godson, and banished him from his presence. But in the course of that
journey from Paris a lethargy had been settling upon the Lord of
Gavrillac. His spirit was reduced. It was as if, bending under the strain
of the grim events of some ten days ago, he had suddenly grown old.
Nevertheless, he reared his great head to combat this outrageous
statement, and there was a note of anger in his voice.

"While you live under the protection of the one and the other it were
more decent to repress these republican insolences." Aline surveyed him
with a little frown above her candid eyes.

"What has disgruntled you, André?"

He looked down upon her across the table at which she was seated, and
worship rose in him, as it ever did when he considered her, so fresh, so
pure, so delicate, so dainty, her golden hair dressed high, but innocent
of powder, a heavy curl resting on the right of her milk-white neck.

"I am fearful of all that approach you lest they go unaware of the holy
ground upon which they tread."

"And now we are to have the Song of Songs," her uncle mocked him. Whilst
Aline's eyes were tender, the Lord of Gavrillac pursued his raillery.

"You think that M. de Jaucourt should have removed his shoes before
entering this shrine?"

"I should have preferred him to have stayed away M. de Jaucourt is the
lover of Madame de Balbi, who is the mistress of Monsieur. In what
relationship those two gentleman stand to each other as a consequence
I'll not inquire. But their brows would help to adorn that wall." And he
flung out a hand to indicate the antlered heads that gazed down upon
them.

The Lord of Gavrillac shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "If you would
practise towards my niece half the respect you demand for her from others
it would be more decent." Severely he added: "You stoop to scandal."

"No need to stoop. It comes breast-high. It assails the nostrils."

Aline, whose innocence had been pierced at last by his allusion, coloured
a little and looked away from him. Meanwhile he pursued his theme.

"Madame de Balbi is a lady-in-waiting upon Madame. And that, monsieur, is
the honour proposed for your niece and my future wife."

"My God!" ejaculated M. de Kercadiou. "What will you insinuate? You are
horrible."

"It is the fact, sir, that is horrible. I merely interpret it. It but
remains for you to ask yourself if that vicious simulacrum of a Court is
a fitting environment for your niece."

"It would not be if I believed you.

"You don't believe me?" André-Louis seemed surprised. "Do you believe
your own senses, then? Can you recall how the news was received
yesterday? How slight a ripple it made on the face of waters which it
should have lashed into a storm?"

"Well-bred people do not abandon themselves in their emotions."

"But they are grave at least. Did you observe much gravity after the
first gasp of consternation? Did you, Aline?" Without giving her time to
answer, he went on. "Monsieur held you in talk for some time; longer
perhaps than Madame de Balbi relished..."

"André! What are you saying? This is outrageous."

"Infamous!" said her uncle.

"I was about to ask you of what he talked. Was it of the horrors of last
week? Of the fate of the King, his brother?"

"No."

"Of what, then? Of what?"

"I scarcely remember. He talked of...oh, of nothing. He was very
kind...rather flattering...What would you? I...I...talked...Oh, he talked
as a gentleman talks to a lady, I suppose."

"You suppose?" He was grim. The lean face with its prominent nose and
cheek-bones was almost wolfish. "You are a lady, and you have talked with
gentlemen before. Did they all talk to you as he talked?"

"Why, in some such fashion. André, what is in your mind?"

"Ay, in God's name, what?" barked M. de Kercadiou.

"It is in my mind that at such a time Monsieur might have found other
occupation than to talk to a lady merely as gentlemen talk to ladies."

"You make one lose patience." said M. de Kercadiou gruffly. "Once the
shock of the news was spent, where was the cause for anxiety? Within a
month the allies will be at the gates of Paris, and the King will be
delivered."

"Unless the provocation makes the people kill him in the meantime. There
was always that for Monsieur to consider. And anyway, it is in my mind
that Aline should not be a lady-in-waiting in a group that includes
Madame de Balbi."

"But in Heaven's name, André!" cried the Lord of Gavrillac. "What can I
do? This is not an invitation. It is a command."

"Madame is not the Queen. Not yet."

"As good as the Queen here. Monsieur is regent de posse, and may soon be
so de facto."

"So that," said André slowly, almost faltering, "the appointment is not
to be refused?"

Mine looked at him wistfully, but said nothing. He got up abruptly,
stalked to the window again, and stood there tapping the pane and looked
out as before upon the melancholy rain, a queer oppression at his heart.
Kercadiou, whose scowl bore witness to his annoyance, would have spoken
but that Aline signalled silence to him.

She rose and crossed to André's side. She set her muslin-clad arm about
his neck, drew down his head and laid her smooth, softly-rounded white
cheek against his own. "André! Are you not being very foolish? Very
difficult? Surely, surely, you do not do me the honour of being jealous
of Monsieur? Of Monsieur!"

He was softened by the caress, by the intoxicating touch of her so new to
him still, so rarely savoured yet in this odd week of their betrothal.

"My dear, you are so much to me that I am full of fears for you. I dread
the effect upon you of life in that Court. where corruption is made to
wear a brave exterior."

"But I have been to Court before," she reminded him.

To Versailles, yes. But this is not Versailles, although it strives to
put on the same appearance."

"Do you lack faith in me?"

"Ah, not that. Not that!"

"What then?"

He frowned; searched his mind; found nothing definite there. "I do not
know," he confessed. "I suppose love makes me fearful, foolish."

"Continue to be fearful and foolish, then." She kissed his cheek and
broke from him with a laugh, and thereby put an end to the discussion.

That same afternoon Mademoiselle de Kercadiou entered upon her exalted
duties, and when later M. de Kercadiou and his godson presented
themselves at Schönbornlust, and stood once more amid the courtiers in
that white-and-gold salon, Aline, a vision of loveliness in coral
taffetas and silver lace, told them of the graciousness of Madame's
welcome and of the condescension of Monsieur.

"He spoke to me at length of you, André."

"Of me?" André-Louis was startled.

"Your manner yesterday made him curious about you. He inquired in what
relationship we stood. I told him that we are affianced. Then, because he
seemed surprised, I told him something of your history. How once you had
represented your godfather in the States of Brittany, where you were the
most powerful advocate of the nobility. How the killing of your friend
Philippe de Vilmorin had turned you into a revolutionary. How in the end
you had turned again, and at what sacrifice you had saved us and brought
us out of France. He regards you very favourably, André."

"Ah? He said so?"

She nodded. "He said that you have a very resolute an, and that he had
judged you to be a bold, enterprising man."

"He meant to say that I am impudent and do not know my place."

"André!" she reproached him.

"Oh, he is right. I don't. I refuse to know it until it is a place worth
knowing."

A tall, spare gentleman in black approached them, a swarthy man in the
middle thirties, calm and assured of manner. His cheeks were deeply
scored with lines, and hollow, as if from loss of teeth. This and the
close set of his eyes lent a sinister air to the not unhandsome face. He
came, he announced, to seek the acquaintance of Monsieur Moreau. Aline
presented him as Monsieur le Comte d'Entragues, a name already well-known
for that of a daring, resolute royalist agent, a man saturated with the
spirit of intrigue.

He made amiable small talk until the Countess of Provence, a foolish
artificial smile on her plain face, descended upon them. Archly scolding
them for seducing her new lady-in-waiting from her duties, she swept Mine
away and left the two men together. But they were not long alone. M. le
Comte d'Artois very deliberately approached them, a tall, handsome man of
thirty-five, so elegant of shape and movement that it was difficult to
believe that he sprang from the same stock as his ponderous brothers,
King Louis and Monsieur de Provence.

He was attended by a half-dozen gentlemen, two of whom wore the
glittering green and silver with scarlet collars which was the uniform of
his own bodyguard. Among the others André-Louis beheld the sturdy,
sardonic M. de Batz, who flashed him a smile of friendly recognition, and
the pompous countenance of M. de Plougastel, who nodded frigidly.

Monsieur d'Artois, gravely courteous, his fine eyes intent, expressed
satisfaction at the presence here of Monsieur Moreau in the happy
circumstances which brought him. Soon André-Louis began to suspect that
there was calculation in all this. For after M. de Artois' compliments
came a shrewd questioning from M. d'Entragues on affairs in Paris and the
movements and immediate aims of the revolutionary circles.

André-Louis answered frankly and freely where he could and with no sense
of betraying anyone. In his heart he believed that the information he
supplied could no more change the course of destiny than a
weather-prophet's judgments can control the elements. This frankness
conveyed the impression that he served the cause of the monarchists, and
Monsieur d'Artois commended him for it.

"You will permit me to rejoice, Monsieur Moreau, in that a gentleman of
your parts should have seen at last the error of his ways."

"It is not the error of my ways that matter: or was deplorable."

The dry answer startled them. "What then, monsieur?" asked the King's
brother, as dryly.

"The circumstance that those whose duty it is to enforce the constitution
so laboriously achieved, should be allowing their power to slip into the
hands of scoundrels who will enlist a desperate rabble to gain them the
ascendancy."

"So that you are but half a convert, Monsieur Moreau?" His highness spoke
slowly. He sighed. "A pity! You draw between two sets of canaille a
distinction too fine for me. I had thought to offer you employment in the
army. But since its aim is to sweep away without discrimination your
constitutional friends as well as the others, I will not distress you
with the offer."

He swung abruptly on his heel and moved away, his gentlemen followed him,
with the exception of Plougastel and de Batz; and of these Monsieur de
Plougastel at once made it plain that he had lingered to condemn.

"You were ill-advised," he said, gloomily self-sufficient. "To come to
Coblentz, do you mean, monsieur?"

"To take that tone with his highness. It was...unwise. You have ruined
yourself."

"I am used to that. I have often done it."

Considering how André-Louis had last ruined himself with the
revolutionaries and that Madame de Plougastel was one of those for whose
sake he had done it, the hit, if sly, was shrewd and palpable.

"Ah, we know. We know your generosity, monsieur," Plougastel made haste
to amend in some slight confusion. "But this was...wanton. A little tact,
monsieur. A little reticence."

André-Louis looked him between the eyes. "I'll practise it now with you,
monsieur."

He wondered why he disliked so much this husband of the lady whose
natural son he knew himself to be. His first glimpse of him had been
almost enough to make André-Louis understand and excuse his mother's
frailty. This dull, pompous, shallow man, who lived by forms and
ready-made opinions, incapable of independent thought, could never have
commanded the fidelity of any woman. The marvel was not that Madame de
Plougastel should have had a lover, but that she should have confined
herself to one. It was, thought André-Louis, a testimonial to her innate
purity.

Meanwhile Monsieur de Plougastel was being immensely, ludicrously
dignified.

"I suspect, sir, that you laugh at me. I am too deeply in your debt to be
in a position to resent it. You should remember that, sir. You should
remember that." And he sidled away, a man offended.

"It's an ungrateful task, the giving of advice," said de Batz, ironical.

"Too ungrateful to be worth undertaking uninvited."

De Batz checked, stared, then frankly laughed. "You are quick. Sometimes
too quick. As now. And it's as bad to be too soon as too late. As a
fencing-master, you should know that. The secret of success in life as in
swordsmanship lies in a proper timing."

"All this will have a meaning," said André-Louis.

"Why, that I had no notion of offering advice. I never give unless I am
sure of being thanked."

"I hope that you do yourself less than justice."

"Faith, I hope so too. You goad a man. You would make it almost a
pleasure to quarrel with you."

"Few have found it so. Is that your aim, Monsieur de Batz?"

"Oh! Far from it, I assure you." The Gascon smiled. "From what you said
to M. d'Artois just now I gather that you are at least a monarchist,"

"If I am anything at all, monsieur, which I sometimes doubt. I wrought,
of course, with those who sought to give France a constitution, to set up
a constitutional monarchy akin to that which governs England. There was
nothing hostile to the King in this. Indeed, his majesty, himself, has
always professed to favour the idea."

"Whereby his majesty became unpopular with Messieurs his brothers here
and with the nobles, so that some thirty thousand of them who support
absolutism and privilege have emigrated and have set up here a new court.
France to-day is a little like the Papacy when it had two sees, one in
Rome and one in Avignon. This is the stronghold of absolutism, and since
you not only are an enemy of absolutism but have actually divulged the
fact, there is nothing for you to do here. You have, in fact been told so
by M. d'Artois.

"Now it is not good for an able and enterprising young man to be without
employment. And for a monarchist abundant work is waiting at this
moment."

The Baron paused, his keen eyes on André-Louis' face "Continue, pray,
monsieur."

"It is kind of you to wish to hear me further." M. de Batz looked about
him. They stood in mid-apartment, cleaving as it were the stream of
sauntering courtiers. Away on their right, by the great marble fireplace,
Monsieur, in dark blue, with a star of diamonds sparkling on his breast,
sprawled untidily in an armchair. Idly he had thrust the ferrule of his
cane into the inner side of his left shoe, and he was prodding with it
there whilst entertaining a group of ladies in a conversation too gay and
lively to be concerned with the heavy matters of the hour. Ever and anon
his laugh would float across the room. It was the loud, unrestrained
laugh of a foolish man; such a laugh as that which in his brother Louis
XVI had offended the fine susceptibilities of the Marquise de Lâge, and
there was a false note in it to the sensitive ears of André-Louis. He
considered that he would not trust either the intelligence or the
sentiments of a man with such a laugh. He frowned to see Aline foremost
in the group, which included the Countess of Balbi, the Duchess of Caylus
and the Countess of Montléart; he was irritated by the expression in the
eyes which Monsieur continually bent upon Aline and by Mine's apparent
satisfaction in this royal notice.

Monsieur de Batz took him by the arm. "Let us move where we shall be less
in the way and better able to talk."

André-Louis suffered himself to be steered into the embrasure of a window
that overlooked the courtyard, where carriages of every kind and
description waited. The rain had ceased and again, as yesterday at this
hour, the sun was struggling to pierce the heavy clouds.

"The King's position," M. de Batz was saying, "is grown extremely
precarious. He will have come to realize the wisdom of the emigration of
his brothers and the nobles which he condemned when it took place. No
doubt he realized it when he attempted to follow them only to be turned
back at Varennes. He will be ready enough, therefore, to be fetched away
now if it can be contrived. As a monarchist, Monsieur Moreau, you should
desire to see the monarch out of peril. Would you be prepared to labour
to contrive it?"

André-Louis took time to reply.

"Such a labour as that should be well rewarded."

"Rewarded? You do not believe, then, that virtue is its own reward?"

"Experience has shown me that the virtuous commonly perish of want."

The Baron seemed disappointed. "For so young a man you are oddly
cynical."

"You mean that my perceptions are not clouded by emotionalism."

"I mean, sir, that you are not even consistent. You announce yourself a
monarchist, yet you remain indifferent to the fate of the monarch."

"Because my monarchism is not personal to Louis XVI. It is the office
that matters, not the holder. King Louis XVI may perish, but there will
still be a king in France, even if he does not reign."

The dark face of de Batz was grave. "You take a great many words, sir,
merely to say 'no'. You disappoint me. I had conceived you a man of
action a man of bold enterprises. You reveal yourself as
merely...academic."

"There must be theory behind all practice, M. de Batz. I do not quite
know what you propose to do or how you propose to do it. But the task is
not one for me."

De Batz looked sour. "So be it. But I'll not conceal my regret. It may
not surprise you, sir, incredible though it may seem, that I cannot find
here a dozen gentlemen to engage with me in this enterprise. When I heard
you announce yourself a monarchist I took heart, for you would be worth a
score of these fribbles to me. I might rake all France and never find a
man more apt to my need."

"You are pleased to flatter me, M. de Batz."

"Indeed, no. You have the qualities which the task demands. And you will
not lack for friends among those in power, who would help you out of a
difficult situation if you should fall into one."

But André-Louis shook his head. "You overrate both my qualities and my
influence with my late associates As I have said, sir, the task is not
one for me."

"Ah! A pity!" said de Batz frigidly, and moved away, leaving André-Louis
with the impression that he had missed the only chance of making a friend
that was offered him at Schönbornlust.



CHAPTER IV - THE REVOLUTIONARY.


THE days dragged on at Coblentz--days of waiting in which the hours were
leaden-footed--their monotony intensified for André-Louis by the
persistent foulness of the weather, which kept him within doors.

Mademoiselle de Kercadiou, however, was scarcely aware of it. Her beauty,
liveliness and amiability, winning the commendation of all, had justified
the warmth of her welcome at court. With Monsieur and Madame alike she
was in high favour and even Madame de Balbi was observed to use her with
great consideration, whilst of the men about the Princes it was said that
one-half at least were in love with her and in hot rivalry to serve her.

It was a state of things that made for the happiness of everybody but
André-Louis, doomed to idleness and aimlessness in this environment into
which he had been thrust, but in which there seemed to be no place or
part for him. And then abruptly something happened which at last provided
him with occupation for his wits.

He was taking the air one evening when it was so foul underfoot that only
his restlessness could have sent him abroad. The wind had dropped and the
air was close. On the heights of Pfaffendorf, across the Rhine, the green
of the woods was lividly metallic against a sullen background of
storm-clouds. He trudged on, following the yellow, swollen river, past
the bridge of boats, with the mass of Ehrenbreitstein beyond and the grim
fortress, like some grey, sprawling, ever-vigilant monster. He reached
the confluence that gives Coblentz its name, and turning to the left
followed now the tributary Moselle. Dusk was upon the narrow ways of the
Alter Graben when he reached them. He turned a corner into a street that
led directly to the Liebfrauenkirche, and came face to face with a man
who at close quarters checked in his stride, to pause for an instant,
then brushed swiftly past him and went on at an accelerated pace.

It was so odd that André-Louis halted there and swung about. Four things
he had sensed: that this man, whoever he might be, had recognized him;
that the meeting had taken him by surprise; that he had been about to
speak; and that he had changed his mind, and then quickened his step so
as to avoid a disclosure of himself. Nor was this all. Whilst
André-Louis' face under the narrow-brimmed conical hat was still
discernible in the fading daylight, the other's was in the masking shadow
of a wide castor, and as if that were not enough he wore a cloak that
muffled him to the nose.

Moved by curiosity and suspicion to go after him, André-Louis overtook
him in a dozen swift strides, and was tapping him on the shoulder.

"A word with you, my friend. I think we should know each other."

The man bounded forward and round, loosening his cloak and disengaging
his arms from its folds. In the very act of turning he whipped out a
small sword, and presented the point at André-Louis' breast.

"At your peril!" His voice was muffled by the cloak. "Be off, you
footpad, before I put half a yard of steel in your entrails."

Being unarmed, André-Louis hesitated for a couple of heartbeats. Then he
played a trick that he had practised and taught in his fencing-master
days in the Rue du Hasard, an easy trick if resolutely performed, but
fatal to the performer if in the course of it he hesitates. With a rigid
extended arm he knocked aside the blade, engaging it at the level of his
elbow; swiftly continuing the movement, as if in a counterparry, he
partially enveloped it, seized the hilt by the quillons, and wrenched the
weapon away. Almost before the other could realize what had happened he
found the point of his own sword presented to his vitals.

"To take me for a footpad is a poor pretence. You wear too many clothes
for an honest man on so warm an evening. Let us look at this face of
yours, my friend." André-Louis leaned forward, and with his left hand
pulled away the masking cloak, peering into the face which showed white
under the shadow of the wide hat. Instantly, in recognition, he fell
back, dropping the point of the sword and exclaiming in his profound
amazement.

Before him stood the Representative Isaac Le Chapelier, that lawyer of
Rennes who, having begun by being amongst André-Louis' most active
enemies, had ended by being in many respects his closest friend, the
protector whose encouragement and sponsorship had resulted in his
election to the National Assembly. To meet this distinguished
revolutionary, who once had occupied the Assembly's presidential chair,
lurking here in a by-street of Coblentz in obvious fear of detection was
the last thing that André-Louis could have expected. When he had
conquered his astonishment he was moved to laughter.

"On my life, yours is an odd way to greet an old friend, Isaac! Half a
yard of steel in my entrails, eh?" On a sudden thought he asked: "Have
you come after me by any chance?"

Le Chapelier's answer was scornful. "After you? My God! You think
yourself of consequence if you suppose that a member of the Assembly is
sent to fetch you back."

"I did not ask you were you sent. I wondered if you had come out of the
love you bear me, or some such weakness. If that is not what brings you
to Coblentz, what does? And why are you afraid of recognition? Are you
spying here, Isaac?"

"Better and better," said the deputy. "Your wits, my dear, have grown
rusty since you left us. However, here I am; and a word from you can
destroy me. What are you going to do?"

"You disgust me," said André-Louis. "Here. Take your sword. You conceive
then that friendship carries no obligations. Take your sword I say. There
are people coming. We shall attract attention."

The deputy took the proffered weapon, and rapidly sheathed it. "I have
learnt," he said, "to mistrust even friendship in Political matters."

"Not from me. Our relations never taught you that lesson."

"Since you are here, I must suppose that you have turned your coat again;
that you've returned to the fold of privilege. That will have its duties.
It is what I realized the moment I set eyes on you. That is why I should
have preferred to avoid you."

"Let us walk," said André-Louis, and taking Le Chapelier by the arm he
persuaded him along the way he had been going before his progress was
interrupted.

The deputy, reassured by now that he had no betrayal to fear from this
man with whom for years he had been so closely associated, allowed
himself to talk freely. He was in Coblentz on a mission from the National
Assembly to the Elector of Treves. The Assembly viewed with the gravest
concern this massing of émigré forces, and this sheltering of émigré
intriguers and counter-revolutionary plotters in these limitrophe
provinces. Roused to action by the same influences which in the people
had produced the events of the 10th of August, the Assembly had
dispatched the Deputy Le Chapelier to inform the Elector that France must
regard this state of things as an act of calculated hostility, of which,
should it continue, the Nation must signify its resentment.

"I may appear to be a little late," Le Chapelier concluded, "since
already the émigrés may be said to be quitting Coblentz, and the armies
are on the march; but I am still in time to contrive that their retreat
shall be cut off, and that they shall not return here to resume their
activities. I am frank with you, André, because I care not how
widely-known may be the attitude of the Assembly. The only secrecy I ask
of you is on the subject of my presence. Your friends of the party of
privilege can be murderously vindictive. I must remain a day or two yet,
because I am to see the Elector again when he has considered his
position. Meanwhile, there is no profit in denouncing me to the French
nobles here."

"Profit or not, the recommendation is almost an impertinence." With this
André-Louis changed the subject to inquire what was known and said of his
own flight from Paris.

Le Chapelier shrugged. "It is not yet understood. When it is, you will
have ruined yourself: for Mademoiselle de Kercadiou, I suppose."

"For her and others."

"Quentin de Kercadiou has been proscribed as an émigré, his possessions
confiscated. So has Monsieur de Plougastel. Why you should have taken his
wife under your wing in your flight, Heaven alone knows. Have they made
you welcome here, at least?"

"Without excessive warmth," said André-Louis.

"Ah! And now what do you do? Do you join this army of invasion?"

"It has been signified to me that my views, which are merely monarchist,
preclude my serving in an army that is to fight in the cause of
privilege."

"Then why remain?"

"To pray for victory. My fortunes are bound up with it."

"Fool, André! Your fortunes are bound up with us. Come back with me
before it is too late. The Assembly thinks too well of you, remembers too
well your services, not to take a lenient view, not to accept whatever
explanation we concoct. Your return to your place will be easy if you are
well supported, and you can count upon my support, which is not
negligible."

It was not indeed. Le Chapelier in those days was a considerable power in
the Assembly. He was the author of that law which bears his name and
which reveals the clarity of view and purity of motives of the architects
of the constitution. Mirabeau, in the hour of need, as a measure of
resistance to the abuse of privilege, had shown the workers the power of
the strike.

"To render yourselves formidable," he had told them, "you need but to
become immobile."

Le Chapelier, when once privilege had been swept away, perceived the
danger to the state of that new-found power of one of its classes. The
statute for which he was responsible forbade any federation of workers
for purposes of exactions, on the ground that the Nation had not
abolished despotism in the palace to make way for despotism in the
gutter.

His aegis, therefore, was not an aegis to be despised. Nor did
André-Louis despise it, although he shook his head.

"You have a trick of turning up at moments of crisis, Isaac, and pointing
the way to me. But this time I do not follow it. I am committed."

They were now in a narrow street behind the Liebfraukirche. The dusk had
deepened almost into night. From an open doorway a shaft of light fell
athwart the moist, gleaming kidney stones with which the street was
paved. Le Chapelier came to a halt.

"It is, then, it seems, but ave atque vale. We have met, then, but to
part again. I am lodged here."

A woman of broad untidy shape loomed in the doorway, and, seeing who
came, surveyed both him and his companion as they stood revealed in the
light.

"I am lucky to leave you with my entrails whole," André mocked him. "May
you prosper, Isaac, until we meet again."

They shook hands. Le Chapelier went in. The door was dosed by the woman,
who muttered a greeting to her lodger, and André-Louis set out to return
to the Three Crowns.



CHAPTER V - THE RESCUE


The afternoon of the following day saw André-Louis at Schönbornlust,
drawn thither by Aline as by a magnet. But this time when he presented
himself the gentleman-usher who had passed him into the presence on the
two former occasions affected not to know him. He inquired his name and
sought it in a list he held of those who had the entrée. He announced
that it was not there. Could he serve Monsieur Moreau? Whom particularly
did Monsieur Moreau seek? There was a sly insolence in his manner that
stung André-Louis. He perceived in it that, like half these courtiers,
the fellow had the soul of a lackey. But he dissembled his vexation,
pretended not to observe the nudges, glances and smiles of those others
who, like himself now, must not aspire beyond the ante-chamber and who
were enjoying the rebuff of one who had so confidently gone forward.

He desired, he announced after a moment's thought, a word with Madame de
Plougastel. The gentleman-usher beckoned a page, a pert lad in white
satin, and dispatched him to bear the name of Monsieur Moreau--Moreau,
was it not?--to Madame la Comtesse de Plougastel. The page looked at
Monsieur Moreau as if he were a tradesman who had come to collect a bill,
and vanished beyond the sacred portal which was guarded by two officers
in gold-laced scarlet coats, white waistcoats and blue breeches.

André-Louis took a turn in that spacious ante-chamber among the members
of the lesser nobility and the subaltern officers who peopled it. They
made up an oddly assorted crowd. Most of the officers glittered in
uniforms, the purchase of which had rendered them bankrupt. The others
and their womenfolk were in garments which showed every stage of wear,
from some that were modishly cut and still bore the bloom of freshness,
to others which, rubbed and soiled and threadbare, were at the last point
of shabbiness. But those who wore them had in common with the rest at
least the same assumptions of haughtiness, the same air of quiet,
well-bred insolence, the same trick of looking down their aristocratic
noses. All the airs and graces of the Oeuil de Boeuf were to be found
here.

André-Louis suffered with indifference the cool stares and the levelling
of quizzing glasses to scan his unpowdered hair, his plain long
riding-coat and the knee-boots from which yesterday's mud had been
laboriously removed. But he was not required to endure it long. Madame de
Plougastel did not keep him waiting, and by her friendly wistful smile of
welcome this great lady shattered the scorn with which those lesser folk
had presumed to regard her visitor.

"My good André!" She set a fine hand upon his arm. "You bring me news of
Quentin?"

"He is better to-day, madame. He shows signs, too, of a recovery of
spirit. I came, madame...Oh, to be frank, I came with the hope to see
Aline."

"And me, André?" There was gentle reproach in the tone. "Madame!" he said
on a low note of protest.

She understood and sighed. "Ah yes, my dear. And they would not let you
pass. You are out of favour. M. d'Artois was not pleased with your
politics, and Monsieur does not regard you with too friendly an eye. But
soon this will cease to matter, and you will be safely back at.
Gavrillac. Perhaps in the years to come I shall see you there
sometimes..." She broke off. Her eyes dwelt upon his lean, keen, resolute
face, and they were sadly tender. "Wait here. I'll bring Aline to you."

When Aline came a ripple of fresh interest almost of mild excitement ran
through the antechamber. There were whisperings, and from one woman whose
whisper was not hushed enough André-Louis caught the words: "...the
Kercadiou...and Madame de Balbi will need to look to herself. She will
require all her wit to make up for her fading beauty. Not that she was
ever beautiful."

The allusion to Mademoiselle de Kercadiou was obscure. But André-Louis
was moved to inward anger by a suspicion that already the scandalmongers
of the court were preying upon her name.

She stood before him radiant in her gown of coral taffetas with rich
pointe de Venise about its décolletage. She was a little out of breath.
She had but a moment, she declared. She had slipped away for just a word
with him. She was in attendance upon Madame, and must not neglect her
duties. Kindly she deplored in him the indiscretion which had procured
his exclusion from the presence. But he could depend upon her to do her
best to make his peace for him with the Princes.

He received the proposal coldly.

"I would not have you in any man's debt on my account, Aline."

She laughed at him. "Faith, sir, you must learn to curb this lordly
independence. I have already spoken to Monsieur. though not yet with much
result. The moment is not propitious. It is of..." She broke off. "But no.
I must not tell you that."

If his lips smiled the crooked half-mocking smile she knew so well, his
eyes were grave. "So that now you are to have secrets from me."

"Why, no. What does it matter, after all? Their highnesses are more
mistrustful than usual because there is an emissary from the Assembly
secretly in Coblentz at present."

André-Louis' face betrayed nothing. "Secretly?" said he. "A secret of
Polichinelle, it seems."

"Hardly that, and, anyway, the emissary believes that no one knows save
the Elector with whom he has come to treat." "And the Elector has
betrayed him 2"

Mine appeared to be very well informed. "The Elector is in a dilemma. He
confided in Monsieur d'Entragues. Monsieur d'Entragues, of course, has
told the Prince."

"I don't perceive the need for mystery. Who is the man? Do you know?"

"I believe he is a person of some consequence in the Assembly."

"Naturally, if he comes as an ambassador to the Elector." With assumed
idleness he asked: "They intend him no harm I suppose? Messieurs the
émigrés, I mean."

"You do not imagine that they will allow him to depart again. Only M. de
Batz is so squeamish as to advocate that. I h has reasons of his own."

"Do they know then where to find this man?"

"Of course. He has been tracked."

André-Louis continued with his air of half-interest. °But what can they
do? After all, he is in ambassador Therefore his person is sacred."

"To the Elector, André. But not to Messieurs the émigrés,"

"We are in the Electorate, are we not? What can the émigrés do here?"

Aline's sweet face was solemn. "They will deal with him, I suppose, as
his kind deals with ours."

"By way of showing that there is no fundamental difference between the
two." He laughed to dissemble the depth of his interest and concern.
"Well, well! It's a piece of wanton stupidity for which they may pay
bitterly, and it's a gross breach of the Elector's hospitality, since it
may bring down grave consequences upon him. Do you say, Aline, that the
Princes are in this murder business? Or is it just the intention of some
reckless hotheads?"

She became alarmed. Although he kept his voice low an undertone of
vehemence, of indignation, quivered in it.

"I have talked too freely André. You have led me on. Forget what I have
said."

He dismissed the matter with a careless shrug. "What difference if I
remember?"

He was to display that difference the moment she had left him to return
to her duties. He quitted the palace on the instant, and rode back into
the town at the gallop. Leaving his horse at the stable of the Three
Crowns, from which he had hired it, he made his way at speed through the
thickening dusk to the little street behind the Liebfraukirche, praying
that already he might not come too late.

He had assurance almost as soon as lie had entered the street that he was
in time, but no more than in time; already the assassins were at their
post. At his appearance three shadows melted into the archway of a
porte-cochere almost opposite Le Chapelier's lodging.

He reached the door, and knocked with the butt of his riding-whip. This
whip was his only weapon, and he blamed himself now for having neglected
to arm himself.

The door was opened by the same broad woman whom yesterday he had seen.

"Monsieur...The gentleman who is lodged with you? Is he within?"

She scanned him by the light of the lamp in the passage behind her.

"I don t know. But if he is, he will receive no visitors.

"Tell him," said' André-Louis "that it is the friend who walked home with
him last evening. You know me again, don't you?"

"Wait there." She closed the door in his face.

Presently whilst waiting, André-Louis dropped his whip. He stooped to
recover it, and was some time about it. This because he was looking
between his legs at the porte-cochere behind him. The three heads were
there in view peering out, to watch him.

At last he was admitted. In the front room above stairs, Le Chapelier,
neat of apparel as a petit-maitre, a gold-rimmed spy-glass dangling from
a ribbon round his neck smiled a welcome.

"You've come to tell me that you have changed your mind that you will
return with me."

"A bad guess, Isaac. I've come to tell you that there is more than a
doubt about your own return."

The tired eyes flamed into alertness, the fine arched brows were raised
in surprise. 'What's that? The émigrés, do you mean?"

"Messieurs the émigrés. Three of their assassins--at least three--are at
this moment lying in wait for you in the street."

Le Chapelier lost colour "But how do they know? Have you...?"

"No I haven't. If I had I should not now be here. Your visit has placed
the Elector in a delicate position. Clemens Wenceslaus has a nice sense
of hospitality. He found himself between the wall of that and the sword
of your demand. In his perplexity he sent for M. d'Entragues and told him
of it in confidence. In confidence M. d'Entragues passed on the
information to the Princes. In confidence the Princes appear to have told
the whole court, and in confidence a member of it told me an hour ago,
Has it ever occurred to you, Isaac, that but for confidential
communications one would never get at any of the facts of history?"

"And you have come to warn me?"

"Isn't that what you gather?"

"This is very friendly, André." Le Chapelier was gravely emphatic. "But
why should you suppose that they intend to murder me?"

"Isn't it what you would suppose, yourself?"

Le Chapelier sat down in the only armchair that plainly furnished room
afforded. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped the sweat
which had gathered in cold beads upon his brow.

"You are taking some risk," he said. "It is noble, but in the
circumstances, foolish."

"Most noble things are foolish."

"If they are posted there as you say..." Le Chapelier shrugged. "Your
warning comes too late. But I thank you for it none the less, my friend."

"Nonsense. Is there no back way out of this?"

A wan smile crossed the face of the deputy, which showed pale in the
candlelight.

"If there were they would be guarding it."

"Very well, then. I'll seek the Elector. He shall send his guards to
clear a way for you."

"The Elector has gone to Oberkirch. Before you could reach him and return
it would be daylight. Do you imagine that those murderers will wait all
night? When they perceive that I am not coming forth again they'll knock.
The woman will open, and..." He shrugged, and left the sentence there.
Then in hot, distressed anger he broke out: "It's an infamy! I am an
ambassador, and my person is sacred. But these vindictive devils care
nothing for that. In their eyes I am vermin to be exterminated, and
they'll exterminate me without a thought for the vengeance they will
bring down upon their host the Elector." He got to his feet again,
raging. "My God! What a vengeance that will be! This foolish archbishop
shall realize the rashness of having harboured such guests."

"That won't slake the thirst you'll have in Hell," said André Louis.
"And, anyway, you're not dead yet."

"Why, no. Merely under sentence."

"Come, man. To be warned is already something. It's the unsuspecting who
walks foolishly into the trap. If, now, we were to make a sally, both
together, the odds are none so heavy. Two against three. We might bring
you off."

Hope dawned in Le Chapelier's face. Doubt followed. "Do you know that
there are but three? Can you be sure?"

André-Louis sighed. "Ah! That, I confess, is my own misgiving."

"Depend upon it, there will be more at hand. Go your way, my friend,
while you may still depart. I'll await them here with my pistols. They
will not know that I am warned. I may get one of them before they get
me."

"A poor consolation." André-Louis stood in thought. Then: "Yes, I might
go my way," he said. "They've seen me enter. They will hardly hinder my
departure, lest by so doing they should alarm you." His eyes grew bright
with inspiration. Abruptly he asked a question. "If you were out of this
house, what should you do?"

"Do? I should make for the frontier. My travelling chaise is at the Red
Hat." Despondently he added "But what's that to the matter?"

"Are your papers in order? Could you pass the guard at the bridge?"

"Oh yes. My passport is countersigned by the Electoral Chancellor."

"Why then, it's easy, I think."

"Easy?"

"We're much of a height and shape. You will take this riding-coat, these
white breeches and these boots. With my hat on your head and my whip
tucked under your arm, the woman of the house will light Monsieur
André-Louis Moreau to the door. On the doorstep you will pause, turning
your back upon that gateway across the street; so that whilst your figure
is clear in the light, your face will not be seen. You will say to the
woman something like this: 'You had better tell the gentleman upstairs
that if I do not return within an hour he need not wait for me.' Then you
plunge abruptly from the light into the gloom and make off, a hand in
each pocket, a pistol in each hand for emergencies."

The colour was stirring again in the deputy's pale cheeks. "But you?"

"I?" André-Louis shrugged. "They will let you go because they will
suppose that you are not Isaac Le Chapelier. They will let me go because
they will see that I am not Isaac Le Chapelier."

The deputy wrung his hands nervously. He was white again. "You tempt me
damnably."

André-Louis began to unbutton his coat. "Off with your clothes."

"But the risk to you is more than you represent it."

"It is negligible, and merely a risk. Your death, if you wait, is a
certainty. Come, man. To work!"

The change was effected, and at least the back view presented I y Le
Chapelier in André-Louis' clothes must in an uncertain light be
indistinguishable from that of the man whom those watching eyes had seen
enter the house a half-hour ago.

"Now call your woman. Dab your lips with a handkerchief as you emerge.
It will help to mask your face until you've turned."

Le Chapelier gripped both his hands. His myopic eyes were moist. "I have
no words my friend."

"Praised be Heaven! Away with you You have an hour in which to be out of
Coblentz."

A few minutes later when the door opened, something stirred in the
archway across the street. The watching eyes beheld the man in the
riding-coat and sugar-loaf hat who had entered a half-hour before. They
heard his parting message, loudly spoken, and saw him go striding down
the street. They made no move to hinder or to follow.

André-Louis above, peering past the edge of the blind, his ears
attentive, was content.

A full hour he waited, and whilst waiting he considered. What if these
gentlemen issued no challenge, made no covert attack, but, persuaded that
he was Le Chapelier, shot him as he walked down the street? It was a risk
he had not counted. Counting it now, he decided that it would be better
to receive them here in the light where, face to face, they would
perceive their error.

Another hour he waited now sitting, now pacing the length of the narrow
chamber in a state of nervousness induced by the suspense, conjecture
chasing conjecture through his mind. Then, at long last, towards ten
o'clock, a rattle of approaching steps on the kidney stones of the street
below a mutter of voices directly under the window, announced that the
enemy was moving to the assault.

Considering what the odds would be, André-Louis wished that he had
pistols. But Le Chapelier had taken the only pair. He fingered the cut
steel hilt of the light delicate sword which Le Chapelier had left him;
but he did not draw it. A loud knock fell on the door, and was twice
repeated.

He heard the shuffling steps of the woman, the click of the lifted latch,
her voice raised in challenge, deeper voices answering her, then her
voice again, in an outcry of alarm, and at last a rush of heavy feet
along the passage and upon the stairs.

When the door was flung rudely open, the three men who thrust into the
room beheld an apparently calm young gentleman standing beyond the
barrier of the table, with brows interrogatively raised, considering them
with a glance no more startled than the intrusion warranted.

"What's this?" he asked. "Who are you? What do you want here?"

"We want you sir," said the foremost, under whose half-open cloak
André-Louis perceived the green and silver of the guards of M. d'Artois.
He was tall and authoritative, in air and voice a gentleman. The other
two wore the blue coats with yellow facings and fleur-de-lys buttons of
the Auvergne Regiment.

"You are to come with us, if you please," said green-and-silver.

So! It was not proposed to butcher him on the spot. They were to lead him
forth. Down to the river, perhaps. Blow his brains out and thrust his
body into the stream. Thus the Deputy Le Chapelier would simply
disappear.

"Come with you?" André-Louis echoed the words like a man who has not
understood them.

"At once, if you please. You are wanted at the Electoral Palace."

Deeper showed the surprise on André-Louis' face. "At the Electoral
Palace? Odd! However, I come, of course." He turned aside to take up hat
and cloak. "Faith, you are only just in time. I was about to depart,
tired of waiting for Monsieur Le Chapelier." In the act of flinging the
cloak about his shoulders, he added: "I suppose that it was he who sent
you?"

The question stirred them sharply. The three of them were craning their
necks to scrutinize him.

"Who the devil are you?" demanded one of the Auvergnats. "If it comes to
that, who the devil may you be?"

"I've told you, sir," said green-and-silver, "that we are--" He was
interrupted by an oath from one of his companions. "This is not our man."

The colour deepened in green-and-silver's face. He advanced a step.
"Where is Le Chapelier?"

"Where is he?" André-Louis looked blank. "Where is he?" he repeated.
"Then he hasn't sent you?"

"I tell you we are seeking him."

"But if you come from the Electoral Palace, then? It is very odd."
André-Louis assumed an air of mistrust. "Le Chapelier left me two hours
ago to go there. He was to have returned in an hour. If you want him, you
had better wait here for him. I can wait no longer."

"Two hours ago!" the Auvergnat was saying. "Then it was the man who..."

Green-and-silver cut sharply across the question which must betray the
watch they had kept. "How long have you been here?"

"Three hours at least."

"Ah!" Green-and-silver was concluding that the man in the riding-coat
whom they had supposed a visitor must have been the deputy himself. It
was bewildering. "Who are you?" he asked aggressively. "What was your
business with the deputy?"

"Faith! I don't know what concern that may be of yours. But there's no
secret. I had no business with him. He's an old friend met here by
chance, that's all. As to whom I am, I am named André-Louis Moreau."

"What? You are Kercadiou's bastard?"

The next moment green-and-silver received André-Louis' hand full and hard
upon his cheek. There was a twisted smile on André-Louis' white face.

"To-morrow," said he coldly, "there will be one liar the less in the
world. To-night if honour spurs you fiercely."

The officer, white in his turn, his lip in his teeth, bowed formally. The
other two stood at gaze, startled. The entire scene and their respective
roles in it had abruptly changed.

"To-morrow will serve," said the officer, and added: "My name is Tourzel,
Clement de Tourzel."

"Your friends will know where to find me. I am lodged at the Three Crowns
with my godfather--my godfather, gentlemen, be good enough to
remember--Monsieur de Kercadiou."

His glance for a moment challenged the two Auvergnats. Then, finding the
challenge unanswered, he flung one wing of the cloak over his left
shoulder and stalked past them, out of the room, down the stairs and so
out of the house.

The officers made no attempt to detain him. The Auvergnats stared
gloomily at green-and-silver.

"Here's a nice blunder," said one of them.

"You fool, Tourzel!" cried the other. "You're a dead man."

"Peste!" swore Tourzel. "The words slipped out of me before I knew what I
was saying."

"And it must be a lie, anyway," said the first. "Does anyone suppose that
Kercadiou would allow his bastard to marry his niece?"

Tourzel shrugged and attempted a laugh of bravado. "We'll leave to-morrow
till it dawn. Meanwhile we have this rat of a patriot to settle to-night.
It will be better after all to await him in the street."

Meanwhile André-Louis was walking briskly back to the Three Crowns.

"You are late, André," his godfather greeted him. Then, as André-Louis
loosed his cloak, and the Lord of Gavrillac perceived his black satin
breeches and buckled shoes, "Parbleau! You're neat," he said.

"In all my undertakings," answered André-Louis.



CHAPTER VI - THE APOLOGY


In the course of the following morning, as André-Louis sat expecting
Monsieur de Tourzel's friends, he was visited by an equerry with a
command to wait instantly upon Monsieur at Schönbornlust. The carriage
which had brought the equerry waited at the door of the inn. The matter
had almost the air of an arrest.

André-Louis, who had no taste for wearing another man's clothes longer
than he must, and who was spurred in addition on this occasion by less
personal considerations, had sought a tailor early that morning, and was
once more characteristically arrayed in a long fawn riding-coat with wide
lapels. He professed himself ready, and took leave of the Lord of
Gavrillac, who, suffering from a chill, was constrained to keep the
house.

At Schönbornlust he was received in the ante-chamber, almost empty at
this early hour, by the swarthy, hollow-cheeked Monsieur d'Entragues,
whose narrow close-set eyes looked him over coldly. André-Louis', of
course, was not a proper dress in which to come to court, and was of a
kind tolerated there only because the impecunious state of many of the
émigrés had perforce relaxed the etiquette in these matters.

Monsieur d'Entragues surprised him with questions on the subject of his
relations with Le Chapelier. André-Louis made no mystery. Le Chapelier
and he had been friends, and at various times associates, from the days
of the Assembly of the States of Brittany at Rennes, five or six years
ago, He had met him by chance in the street two evenings ago, and last
night he had called at Le Chapelier's lodging to pay him a friendly
visit.

"And then 2" quoth Monsieur d'Entragues, peremptory.

"And then? Oh, when I had been with him an hour or so, he informed me
that he was expected at the Electoral Palace, and begged me to await his
return, saying that he would not be more than an hour away. I waited two
hours, and then, when a Monsieur de Tourzel and two other gentlemen
called to see him, I departed."

M. d'Entragues' dark eyes had shifted from André-Louis', "It is all very
odd."

"Very odd, indeed, to leave me waiting there like that."

"Especially as he can have had no intention of returning."

"But what do you tell me?"

"This man Le Chapelier left his lodging at nine o'clock."

"Yes. That would he the time."

"At a quarter past nine he was at the Red Hat Inn where he kept his
travelling chaise. At half-past nine the guard at the bridge passed him
over. He Was on his way to France. Clearly he must have been acting upon
intentions formed before he left you, as you tell me, to await his
return."

"It must have been so if your information is correct. It is very odd, as
you say."

"You did not know that he would not return?" d'Entragues' eyes were like
gimlets.

André-Louis met their searching glance with a crooked smile.

"Oh, but I am honoured. You take me for a half-wit. I sit for two hours
awaiting the return of a man who I know will not return. Ah, but that is
droll." And he laughed outright.

M. d'Entragues did not join in the laugh. "If you intended, for instance.
to cover his retreat?"

"His retreat?" André-Louis was suddenly grave again. "His retreat? But
from what then, was he retreating? Was he threatened? Peste, Monsieur
d'Entragues, you'll not mean that the visit of Monsieur de Tourzel and
his friends--"

"Bah!" snapped d'Entragues to interrupt him. "What are you assuming?"
There was a flush on his dark face. He was uncomfortably conscious that
his zeal of investigation had half betrayed a design which, having failed
in execution, must never now be known.

But André-Louis, maliciously vindictive, pursued him. 'It is you,
monsieur, who make assumptions, I think. If you assume that I stayed to
cover a retreat, you must know that there was cause for it. That is plain
enough."

"I know nothing of the kind, sir. I only fear lest Monsieur Le Chapelier
should have suspected some danger, and so have been led to make a
departure which looks like a flight. Naturally Monsieur Le Chapelier as
an agent of these revolutionaries would know that here he has only
enemies, and this may have made him start at shadows. Enough, sir! I'll
conduct you to his highness."

In a small room communicating with the white-and-gold pillared salon that
served as presence chamber, the King's brother was seated quill in hand
at a table strewn with papers. He was attended by the Comte d'Avaray, his
favourite, a slight, pale, delicate-looking man of thirty, with thin fair
hair, who in appearance, dress and manner affected the airs of an
Englishman. He was a protégé of Madame de Balbi, to whom he owed a
position which his own talents had very materially strengthened.

Devoted to Monsieur, it was his wit and resource which had made possible
the Prince's timely escape from Paris. Gentle, courteous and affable, he
had earned the esteem of the entire court if we except the ambitious
Monsieur d'Entragues, who beheld in him a dangerous rival for Monsieur's
favour.

His highness slewed himself half round in his chair to confront
André-Louis. André-Louis bowed profoundly. The Comte d'Entragues remained
watchful in the background.

"Ah, Monsieur Moreau." There was a smile on Monsieur's full lips, but his
prominent eyes under their heavy arched brows were hardly friendly.
"Considering your services to some persons we esteem, I must deplore that
my brother, M. d'Artois, should have found your opinions and principles
of such a complexion that he has not been able to offer you any post in
the army which is about to deliver Throne and Altar from the enemy."

He paused there, and André-Louis felt it incumbent upon him to say
something in reply.

"Perhaps I did not make it sufficiently clear to his highness that my
principles are strictly monarchical, monseigneur."

"Strictly perhaps, but inadequately. You are, I understand, a
constitutionalist. That, however, is by the way." He paused a moment.
"What was that officer's name d'Entragues?"

"Tourzel, monseigneur. Captain Clement de Tourzel."

"Ah, yes. Tourzel. I understand, Monsieur Moreau, that you had the
misfortune to enter into a quarrel last night with Captain de Tourzel."

"Captain de Tourzel had that misfortune, monseigneur."

The great eyes bulged at him. Monsieur d'Avaray looked startled.
D'Entragues in the background clicked softly with his tongue.

"To be sure, you have been a fencing-master," said Monsieur. "A
fencing-master of considerable repute, I understand." His tone was cold
and distant. "Do you think, Monsieur Moreau, that it is quite proper,
quite honourable, for a fencing-master to engage in duels? Is it not a
little like...like gaming with cogged dice?"

"That circumstance, monseigneur, should prevent unpardonable utterances.
A fencing-master is not to be insulted with impunity because he is a
fencing-master."

"But I understand, sir, that you were the aggressor: that you struck
Monsieur de Tourzel. That is so d'Entragues, is it not? A blow was
struck?"

André-Louis saved the Count the trouble of answering. "I certainly struck
Monsieur de Tourzel. But the blow was not the aggression. It was the
answer to an insult that admitted of no other answer."

"Is this so, d'Entragues?" His highness became peevish. "You did not tell
me this, d'Entragues."

"Naturally, monseigneur, there must have been some provocation for the
blow."

"Then why am I not told? Why am I but half informed? Monsieur Moreau,
what was this provocation?"

André-Louis told him, adding: "It is a lie, monseigneur, that peculiarly
defames my godfather since I am to marry his niece. I could not let it
pass even if I am a fencing-master."

Monsieur breathed noisily. He showed signs of discomfort, of distress.
"But this is very grave, d'Entragues. Almost...almost it touches the
honour of Mademoiselle de Kercadiou." It annoyed André-Louis that his
highness should make this the reason for his change of attitude. "You
agree that it is grave, d'Entragues?"

"Most grave, monseigneur."

Did this lantern-jawed fellow smile covertly, wondered André-Louis in
suppressed fury.

"You will say two words from me to this Captain de Tourzel. You will tell
him that I am not pleased with him. That I censure his conduct in the
severest terms. That I regard it as disgraceful in a gentleman. Tell him
this from me, d'Entragues; and see that he does not approach us again for
at least a month."

He turned once more to André-Louis. "He shall make you an apology,
Monsieur Moreau. Let him know that, too, d'Entragues: that he must
formally retract to Monsieur Moreau, and this at once. You understand,
Monsieur Moreau, that this matter can go no further. For one thing, there
is an edict in the Electorate against duelling and we who are the
Elector's guests must scrupulously respect his laws. For another, the
time is not one in which it consorts with honour that gentlemen should
engage in private quarrels. The King needs--urgently needs--every blade
in his own cause. You understand, sir?"

André-Louis bowed. "Perfectly, monseigneur."

"Then that is all, I think. I thank you for your attention. You may
retire, Monsieur Moreau." The plump white hand waved him away, the heavy
lips parted in a cold half-smile.

In the ante-chamber Monsieur Moreau was desired to wait until Monsieur
d'Entragues should have found Captain de Tourzel.

It was whilst he was cooling his heels there, the only tenant of that
spacious, sparsely-furnished hall, that Aline, accompanied Icy Madame de
Plougastel, entered by the folding doors from the salon. He started
towards them.

"Aline!"

But her expression checked his eagerness. There was a pallor about the
lower half of her face, a little pucker between the fine brows, a general
look of hurt sternness.

"Oh, how could you? How could you?"

"How could I what?"

"Break faith with me so. Betray what I told you in secret!"

He understood, and was not abashed. "It was to save a man's life: the
life of a friend. Chapelier was my friend."

"But you did not know that when you drew from me the confidence."

"I did. I knew that Le Chapelier was in Coblentz, and, therefore, that he
must be the man concerned."

"You knew? You knew?" She looked at him in deepening anger. Behind her
stood Madame de Plougastel, sad-eyed after her little smile of greeting.
"And you said nothing of your knowledge. You led me on to talk. You drew
it all from me with pretended indifference. That was sly, André. Horribly
sly. I'd not have believed it of you."

André-Louis was almost impatient. "Will you tell me what harm is done? Or
do you tell me that you are angry because a man, a friend of mine, has
not been assassinated?"

"That is not the point."

"It is very much the point."

Madame de Plougastel sought to make peace. "Indeed, Aline, if it was a
friend of André's--"

But Aline interrupted her. "That is not the point at all, madame, between
André and me. Why was he not frank? Why did he use me so slyly, luring me
into betraying a confidence Monsieur had reposed in me, using me as
if...as if I were a spy."

"Aline!"

"Did you do less? Will it appear less when it becomes known that this
man, this dangerous agent of your revolutionary friends, made his escape
because I betrayed the intentions concerning him?"

"It will never become known," said André-Louis. "I've talked to Monsieur
d'Entragues. I've stopped his questions. His mind is satisfied."

"There, Aline. You see," said Madame de Plougastel. "All is well, after
all."

"All is very far from well How can there be any confidence between us
after this? I must keep a guard upon my tongue. How can I be sure when I
talk to André whether I am talking to my lover or to a revolutionary
agent? If Monsieur knew what would he think of me?"

"That, of course, is important,'' said André-Louis, unable now to repress
his irony.

"Do you sneer? Certainly it is important. If Monsieur honours me with his
confidence, am I to betray it? I am to appear in his eyes either as a
traitress or a little fool who cannot set a guard upon her tongue. A
pleasant choice. This man has escaped. He has gone back to Paris to work
evil against the Princes, against the King."

"It comes to this then that you are sorry he was not assassinated."

Being true, and yet not the whole truth, his put her further out of
patience.

"It is not true that he was to have been assassinated. And if it were
that is but the effect and I am dealing with the cause. Why wilt you
confuse them?"

"Because they are always inseparable. Cause and effect are but the two
sides of a fact. And in justice to me remember that he was my friend."

"You mean that you think more of him than you do of me," she said with
feminine perversity. "For his sake you lied to me; for your silence
amounted to no less. You duped me, tricked me by your seemingly idle
questions and your false air of indifference. You are too clever for me,
André."

"I wish that I were clever enough to make you see the folly of all this."

Madame de Plougastel put a hand on her shoulder. "Aline my dear can you
find no excuse for him?"

"Can you, madame?"

"Why every excuse since hearing that this man was his friend. I would not
have had him behave otherwise. Neither should you."

"It was not upon you he exercised his slyness, madame, or you might think
differently. Nor is that all, as you know. What is this of a duel on your
hands, André?"

"Oh, that!" André-Louis was airy, welcoming the change of subject. "That
arranges itself."

"Arranges itself! You've ruined yourself completely with Monsieur."

"There at least, I can prove you wrong. I've seen Monsieur. His highness
is tolerably pleased with me. It is my opponent who is out of favour."

"You ask me to believe this?"

"You may ascertain it for yourself. Monsieur pays attention to facts;
permits a connection between cause and effect which you deny. When I had
told him why I smacked M. de Tourzel's face he gave me reason. Monsieur
de Tourzel is to apologize to me. I am waiting for him now."

"Monsieur de Tourzel is to apologize to you because you smacked his
face?"

"No, my sweet perversity. But for the reason he gave me to do it."

"What reason?"

He told them, and saw distress in both their faces. "Monsieur," he added,
"does not consider that a buffet suffices to extinguish the offence. That
may be out of tenderness for you, because he perceived, as he said, that
in a sense it touched your honour."

He saw her eyes soften at last, and winced to see it, accounting it the
reflection of her gratitude to Monsieur. "That was gracious of his
highness. You see, André, how gracious, how generous he can be."

Monsieur d'Entragues came in accompanied by Monsieur de Tourzel.
André-Louis looked over his shoulder at them.

"I am wanted. Shall I see you again before I go, Aline?"

She had resumed her coldness. "Not to-day, André. I must consider all
this. I am shaken. Hurt."

Madame de Plougastel leaned towards him. "Leave me to make your peace,
André."

He kissed her hand, and then Aline's, which was very coldly yielded.
Then, having held the door for them, he turned to meet the newcomers.

The tall, offending young officer was looking pale and vicious. No doubt
he had received the messages intimating Monsieur's displeasure, and he
saw his advancement imperilled by the events. He came stiffly to
attention before André-Louis, and bowed formally. André-Louis returned
the bow as formally.

"I am commanded by Monsieur to retract the words I used to you last
night, sir, and to apologize for them."

André-Louis disliked the studiously offensive tone.

"I am commanded by Monsieur to accept the apology. I gather that we make
this exchange of civilities with mutual regret."

"Certainly with regret on my side," said the officer.

"You may temper it, then, with the reflection that once your duty to his
majesty no longer claims your sword, you may call upon me for anything
that you may conceive I owe you."

Only Monsieur d'Entragues' intervention at that moment saved Captain de
Tourzel's countenance.

"Messieurs. what is this? Will you build a new quarrel out of the old
one? There is no more to be said between you. This affair must go no
further, nor must it be resumed under pain of Monsieur's severe
displeasure. You understand me, gentlemen?"

They bowed and separated and André-Louis went back to his inn in an
indifferent humour.



CHAPTER VII - MADAME DE BALBI



At long last the great Prussian and Austrian legions, reinforced by the
chivalry of France, were moving forward. Longwy was being invested and
the campaign for Throne and Altar was beginning in earnest, just one
month later than it should have begun but for the vagaries of the King of
Prussia the Agamemnon of this invading host.

A month ago, when all was ready and the weather fine, this Prussian giant
had descended upon Coblentz and upon Charles William of
Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who was the real commander-in-chief and a soldier
of repute. Suspending all effective movement, his Majesty had wasted
precious time upon reviews, parades and fetes to celebrate a victory
which had yet to be won.

The brothers of the King of France possessing no greater military acumen
than his majesty of Prussia were content enough to co-operate in these
junketings, and to waste upon them large sums of the borrowed money which
already was running woefully short. Condé, the only soldier among the
Princes, fretted the while in his camp at Worms over a delay that was all
in favour of the unready enemy, and grumbled--not without reason--that an
invisible hand withheld them perilously from attempting an assured
success.

Now, at last, all delays were ended; now that the rains had converted the
Rhineland into a world of mud. The Princes were at once to rejoin the
army of the émigrés, and make a pretence at least of commanding it, under
the mentorship of Condé and the Maréchal de Broglie. Their ladies--that
is to say, the wife of one of them and the mistresses of both--were to
leave Coblentz at once.

Madame was to repair to her father's court at Turin. But because the King
of Sardinia had already experienced the prodigality of his sons-in-law
(for each of the sons of France had married a princess of Savoy) he
strictly delimited the suite that was to attend her highness. Some
ladies-in-waiting, however, she must have, and to Madame de Balbi and
Madame de Gourbillon she would have added Mademoiselle de Kercadiou but
for certain activities on the part of Madame de Balbi, activities
which--so badly do we sometimes blunder when we seek to shape our
destinies--were to precipitate in the end the very situation which with
such clear reckoning they were calculated to avert.

An Electoral carriage brought Madame de Balbi, in the pursuit of these
activities, one afternoon to the door of the Three Crowns.

Now it happened that Monsieur de Kercadiou, complaining of the cold and
damp and of a general weariness resulting from his condition, had put
himself to bed, and André-Louis was sitting alone over a book when a
footman, ushered by a waiting-maid, brought the startling announcement of
Madame la Comtesse de Balbi's presence.

In bewildered conjecture André-Louis consented to act as his godfather's
deputy, and desired that the Countess be brought up.

She came, throwing back her gossamer light cloak and wimple, and her
presence and personality seemed to bring a radiance into that long,
low-ceilinged room. Her crisp, melodious tones offered apologies for her
intrusion and regrets for the condition and absence of Monsieur de
Kercadiou.

"But the matter is almost more personal to yourself than to pair
godfather, Monsieur Moreau."

"I am honoured by your memory, madame," said André-Louis, surprised to
hear his name so glibly from her lips. He I owed as he spoke, and offered
her the armchair by the stove which Monsieur de Kercadiou had lately
vacated.

She laughed as she advanced to take it, a rich musical laugh that
reminded one of the note of a thrush.

"I suspect you guilty of modesty, Monsieur Moreau."

"You account it a guilt madame?"

"Of course, since it fetters expression." She sat down, and arranged her
skirts.

Anne de Caumont La Force, unhappily married to that eccentric libertine
Count de Balbi, who had brutally ill-treated her before he went mad and
fortunately died, might from her appearance have been of any age from
twenty-five to thirty-five. In reality she was already forty. She was
small and elegantly dainty. Not beautiful, in spite of a pair of superb
eyes, alluring in their glances, but endowed with an irresistible
witchery to which all her contemporaries bear witness.

The glance of those magnificent dark eyes seemed now to envelop
André-Louis, to challenge him, almost to woo him.

"I had remarked you at Schönbornlust monsieur, on the day of your
arrival, and I remarked you let me say frankly, with admiration for your
superb aplomb. I know no quality that better becomes a gentleman."

He would have answered her but the sparkling, voluble lady gave him no
time. She swept on. "It is really on your account that I am here and as a
result of the interest you inspire in me. Ah, but reassure yourself,
Monsieur Moreau, I am not one of those greedy women who must find their
every interest reciprocated and desire in addition to arouse interest
which they cannot reciprocate."

"I should not crave reassurance, madame, from an amiable illusion."

You turn a phrase. Monsieur Moreau. But, indeed, it was to be expected in
you. You have been an author I am told."

"I have been so many things, madame."

"And now you are the greatest thing of all: a lover. Ah believe one who
knows. No man can aspire to more, for it brings him nearer Heaven than is
otherwise possible on earth."

"Your lovers, madame, will have discovered that."

"My lovers! Ah, that! You speak as if I measured them by the bushel."

"It will ever rest with you, madame, how you measure them."

"Oh, I cry your mercy. This is a duel in which I risk defeat." She was as
grave as her roguish eye and the tilt of her nose permitted. "It is to
the lover that I have come to speak. For this is even more his affair
than it is an uncle's. Therefore, we may leave Monsieur de Kercadiou in
peace. Besides, it is not very easy to say what I have come to say, and
it may be less difficult to say it to you alone. You will prove as
understanding as I hope you will prove discreet."

"Discreet as a confessor, be sure of that, Madame," said André-Louis,
inwardly a little impatient.

The Countess considered a moment, her perfect hands smoothing her
petticoat of striped taffeta the while.

"When I shall have told you my errand you will be in danger of supposing
me just a jealous woman. I warn you against it. I have much for which to
answer. But jealousy is a vulgarity which I leave to the vulgar."

"It is inconceivable, madame, that you should ever have had occasion for
it."

She flashed him a smile. "That may be the reason. Remember it when you
come to judge me. I am to speak, sir, of the lady whom I am told you are
to marry. Frankly, it is not on her own account that her fate concerns
me, but because of the...let us say regard... which you, monsieur,
inspire me."

André-Louis was stirred. "Her fate, madame? Is she, then, in danger?"

She shrugged, thrust out a full sensual nether lip, and showed two
dimples in a smile. "Some would not account it danger. It depends upon
the point of view. In your eyes, Monsieur Moreau, site certainly cannot
be accounted safe. Do you even suspect at whose desire she was appointed
lady-in-waiting to Madame?"

"You will tell me that it was at Monsieur's," he replied frowning.

She shook her head. "It was at the desire of Madame herself."

He was suddenly at a loss. "But in that case, madame..." He broke off

"In that case you imagine that there is no more to say. You do not think
it may be necessary to discover Madame's object. You assume it naturally
to be a sympathy for that very charming person Mademoiselle de Kercadiou.
That is because you do not know Madame. Mademoiselle de Kercadiou is
singularly attractive. There is about her an air of sweetness of
freshness, of innocence that arouses tenderness even in women. What,
then, must it do in men? So far, for instance, as Monsieur is concerned,
I have seldom seen his highness in such a state of deliquescence." There
was something contemptuous in her smile, as if she found the susceptible
side of Monsieur's nature entirely ridiculous. "Disabuse your mind of the
thought that jealousy makes me see what is not present. The Count of
Provence might trail a seraglio at his heels without perturbing me."

"But you bewilder me, madame...Am I to believe that because
Monsieur...discovered attractions in Mademoiselle de Kercadiou that is a
reason why Madame should appoint her to a position that will throw her in
his way? Surely not that?"

"Just that, monsieur. Just that. Madame's nature is peculiar; it is
warped, soured, malicious. For the satisfaction of contemplating injury
to another she will endure even injury to herself. It happens with such
natures. I have the distinction of being detested by Madame. This is all
the more bitter in her because she is constrained to suffer my attendance
and to be civil to me. Now do you understand?"

André-Louis was visibly troubled. "I seem to. And yet..."

"Madame would give her eyes to see me supplanted in the regard, the
affection of Monsieur. Does that help you?"

"You mean that to achieve this object, although the exchange can nothing
profit her, her highness desires to use Mademoiselle de Kercadiou?"

"That is as concise as it is accurate."

"It is also infamous."

The Countess shrugged. "I should not use so fine a word. It is just the
petty malice of a stupid, parasitic woman who is without useful thoughts
to engage her."

"I perceive your good intentions, madame." André-Louis was very formal.
"You desire to warn me. I am deeply grateful."

"The warning, my friend is hardly uttered yet. Madame sets out to-morrow
for Turin. I am to accompany her highness. My position at court demands
it. I beg that you will not laugh, Monsieur Moreau."

"I am not laughing, madame."

"You have great self-restraint. I had already observed it." The dimples
showed again in her cheeks. Then she swept on: "Madame's train has been
reduced to vanishing point by the King of Sardinia, who looks upon us as
locusts. Her only ladies besides myself were to be the Duchess of Caylus
and Madame de Gourbillon. But now, at the last moment, her highness has
insisted that Mademoiselle de Kercadiou be added. Do you perceive the
aim, and what must follow? If she leaves Mademoiselle de Kercadiou in
Coblentz, that may well be the last that she will ever see of her. You
may be married you two, or other circumstances may arise to prevent her
from ever returning to court. But if Mademoiselle remains at her side, in
a month--in two months at most--when this campaign is ended, we shall be
back at Versailles, and your Aline will again be dangled before Monsieur,
whose heart may have grown fonder in the absence. You understand me, I
think, Monsieur Moreau."

"Oh, perfectly, madame." His tone was stern and not without a touch of
reproof. "Even that in your calculations you leave out of all account
Mademoiselle de Kercadiou's strength of character and virtue."

The Countess de Balbi shrugged, pursed her full lips and smiled.

"Yes. You have the fine spirit of a lover: to regard the virtue of his
mistress as a rock. But I, who am a mere woman, and who, therefore, know
women, who have lived a little longer than you, and who have spent this
life of mine in courts, I tell you that it is imprudent to ground your
faith on nothing more. Virtue, when all is said, is an idea. And ideas
are governed by environment. The environment of a court plays havoc with
virtue, my friend. Accept my word for it. You know, at least, that
nothing will so quickly wilt a woman's reputation as the attentions of a
prince. There is a glamour about the office which no cloddishness in the
holder can completely extinguish. Princes in a woman's eyes are heirs to
all the romance of the ages, even when they are as unromantic in
themselves as our poor King Louis."

"You tell me nothing that I do not know, madame."

"Ah, true!" her irony flashed out again. "I had almost forgotten that you
are a republican."

"Not so. I am a constitutional monarchist."

"Faith, that's accounted even worse here at Coblentz." She rose abruptly.
"I have said all that I came to say. The rest is for you."

"And for Mademoiselle de Kercadiou."

She looked at him, and shook her head. She set a dainty hand upon his
arm. Her smile broke dazzlingly upon her roguish face. "Are you so much
the gentle, serving, docile lover? This will not answer. A woman needs to
be ordered by the man to whom she has given the right. If you cannot
prevent Mademoiselle de Kercadiou from going to Turin, why, faith, you do
not deserve to win her, and you were better not to do so."

André-Louis considered her gravely. "I do not think that I am very clever
with women, madame," he confessed, and so far as I can discover it is the
only lack of cleverness to which he aver did confess.

"You'll lack experience. Indeed, you have the air of it."

She drew still nearer to him. Her superb eyes glowed upon him,
magnetically disturbing. "Do you reserve for men all your audacity? Your
enterprise?"

He laughed, ill at ease, bewildered, almost struggling with an odd
intoxication.

She sighed. "Why, yes. I fear you do. Well, well! Time may instruct you
better. You shall be remembered in my prayers, Monsieur Moreau."

She held out her hand to him. He took it and bent to kiss it. Almost, he
says--which is fantastic--he was conscious of a response in it to the
pressure of his lips.

"Madame," he murmured, "you leave me conscious of an obligation."

"Repay me by your friendship, monsieur. Think kindly of Anne de Balbi, if
only because she thinks kindly of you."

She rustled out, flashed him a last smile as he held the door, and was
gone, leaving him deeply perturbed and thoughtful.

Her judgment of him had been quite accurate, he knew. Masterful in all
else, he had no masterfulness in love. And this because in love he saw no
place for mastery. Love was not a thing to be snatched, constrained,
compelled. To be worth possessing it must be freely given.

Intensely practical in all else, in love he was entirely idealistic. How
could he assume the master's tone, the overseer's whip, and command where
he desired to worship? He could pray and plead. But if Aline should
desire to go to Turin--and he could well understand her wish to see the
world--upon what grounds was he to plead with her against it? What
grounds existed? Had he so little faith in her that he must suppose her
unable to withstand temptation? And what, after all, was the temptation?
He smiled at the mental picture of the Comte de Provence as a wooer. To
Aline in such a guise the Prince could only be ridiculous.

In his utter trust in Aline, André-Louis would have found peace, but for
another thought that assailed him. However Mine might be proof against
temptation, he could not endure the thought of her being subjected to the
pain and annoyance of an amorous persecution. Because of this possibility
he must oppose her journey to Turin. Since he could not hope to succeed
by prayers and pleas which would appear to be merely selfish and
unreasonable he would have recourse to Scaramouche's weapons of intrigue.

He sought his godfather, and stood by the bedside. "You are desperately
ill, sir," he informed him.

The great night-capped head was agitated on its pillows; alarm dawned n
the eyes. "What do you tell me André?"

"What we must both tell Aline. I have just learnt that it is Madame's
intention to bear her off in her train to Turin I know of no other way to
oppose her going saw by arousing her concern for you. Therefore be good
enough to become very ill indeed."

The greying eyebrows came together. "To Turin Ah! And you do not wish her
to go?"

"Do you, monsieur?"

Monsieur de Kercadiou hesitated. The notion of parting with Aline was a
little desolating. It would leave him very lonely in this exile amid his
makeshift surroundings. But Monsieur de Kercadiou's life had been spent
in preferring the wishes of others to his own.

"It it should be her desire...life here would be so dull tor the child...

"But infinitely healthier, monsieur." André-Louis spoke of the perilous
frivolity of court-life. If Madame de Plougastel had also been in
Madame's train, things would have been different. Rut in the
circumstances Aline would be utterly alone Her very inexperience would
render her vulnerable to the vexations that lie in wait for a young lady
of her attractions. And it was possible that however eager she might now
be at the prospect, once she found herself away from them in distant
Savoy, she might be unhappy and they would not be at hand to avail her.

Monsieur de Kercadiou sat up in bed, and gave him reason. Thus it fell
out that when Aline arrived a little later she found two conspirators
awaiting her.

André-Louis received her in the living-room. It was their first meeting
since that sub-acid parting at Schönbornlust.

"I am so glad you have come, Aline. Monsieur de Kercadiou is not well at
all. His condition gives me anxiety. It is fortunate that you are about
to be relieved of your duties with Madame, for your uncle requires more
attention than can be expected from strangers or than a clumsy fellow
like myself is able to supply."

He saw the dismay that overspread her face, and guessed that it sprang
from more than concern for her uncle, however deep this might be in her
tender heart. Her resolve to continue on her dignity with André-Louis was
blotted out.

"I was to have accompanied Madame to Turin," she said, in tones of
deepest disappointment.

His heart leapt at the tense she already used.

"It's an ill wind that blows no good at all," said he gently. "You will
be saved the discomforts of a tedious journey."

"Tedious! Oh, André!"

He feigned astonishment. "You do not think it would be tedious? Oh, but I
assure you that it would be. And then the court of Turin! It is
notoriously drab and dull. My dear, you have had a near escape. You are
fortunate to be provided with so sound a reason for begging Madame to
excuse you. Come and see Monsieur de Kercadiou, and tell me if you think
a doctor should be summoned."

Thus he swept her away, the matter settled without discussion. Monsieur
de Kercadiou, a bad actor and a little shamefaced, played his part none
too well. He feared unnecessarily to alarm his niece, and she would have
departed entirely reassured but for André-Louis.

"It is necessary," he said, when they were outside the invalid's door,
"to persuade him that he is none so ill. He must not be alarmed. I have
done my best, as you see. But I certainly think that we must have a
doctor to him, and I shall be glad when you are here, Aline. So will he,
I know, although he would be the last to let you suspect it."

And so there was no further mention of Turin. In her anxiety on Monsieur
de Kercadiou's behalf, Aline did not even await Madame's departure to
come and install herself at the Three Crowns. If Madame did not dissemble
her vexation, at least she could not withhold the leave which was sought
upon such dutiful grounds.

André-Louis congratulated himself upon a victory cheaply bought. Neither
he nor Madame de Balbi who had inspired it was to guess how the battle of
Valmy and its sequel were to falsify their every calculation.



CHAPTER VIII - VALMY


The army of twenty-five thousand émigrés grew impatient with the
dwindling of restricted resources, the greater part of which had been
laid out on handsome uniforms, fine horses and other equipment to render
them dazzling on parade. The Princes had taken their place at the head of
these glittering troops, a matter of considerable distress to Monsieur,
who, of sedentary habits, detested all form of physical exertion.
Destiny, however, had cast him for a definite part, and that part he must
play, however much Nature, indifferent to Destiny's requirements, might
have denied him the necessary endowments.

In the rear of this fine host came the long train of lumbering army
wagons and among these two great wooden structures on wheels which
contained the Princes' mint; the printing press for the manufacture of
the false assignats which already were flooding and distressing Europe.
Monsieur solemnly promised that the King of France would honour this
paper currency. He had also promised that it should not be put into
circulation until France was reached. But this promise had not been kept;
and by his foreign hosts and allies Monsieur was at last to be
constrained to abandon this facile method of supplementing the dwindling
millions he had borrowed.

Side by side with the émigrés marched the Prussian and Austrian armies.
The émigrés fondly believed that these legions marched solely to liberate
the King, to purge France of anarchy and restore her to her rightful
owners; marched, in fact--in that phrase which had been coined in
Coblentz--to the deliverance of Throne and Altar. Fatuous assumptions,
these, of men who believed themselves to be the elect of Europe, in whose
service humanity was ready altruistically to immolate her children. They
had not heard the Austrian Emperor's epigram when invoked to rescue Marie
Antoinette: "It is true that I have a sister in France; but France is not
my sister." Austria had produced too many archduchesses to be deeply
perturbed about the fate of one of them, even although this one should
have become Queen of France. What really interested Austria was that
Lorraine had once belonged to her princes and might now be re-possessed,
just as Prussia was intent upon the annexation of Franche-Comté. Here was
an excellent opportunity for both to readjust the accounts which had been
disturbed by that megalomaniac Louis XIV when he ravaged the Palatinate.

Of this, however, nothing was yet said, and there was as yet no suspicion
in émigré breasts that the aims of their allies were not identical with
their own. But there were signs. The King of Prussia doomed the Princes
to nullity in the command. They and their followers were to be observers
rather than auxiliaries. One of the things they observed was that in a
measure as the armies advanced, the Austrians planted their
black-and-yellow frontier posts surmounted by the double-headed Austrian
eagle.

Longwy was taken, and the Prussians thrust upon Verdun, devouring the
contents of every village on their way and then setting them on fire, in
fulfilment of the threat in the Duke of Brunswick's manifesto against all
those who ventured to resist the invasion.

The Princes had assured their allies that once they were upon French
soil, the French masses, emancipated by their presence from the fear of
the revolutionaries, would make haste to range themselves on the side of
Throne and Altar.

If the inclination existed at all the conduct of the Prussians did not
foster it.

On the 30th August they were before Verdun, which they occupied after a
short bombardment and the road to Paris lay now open before them.

News of this reaching Paris two days later produced the September
massacres.

La Fayette was gone. He perceived that constitutionalism was ended that
an attainder of treason awaited him, and that nothing remained for him
but to depart. He crossed the frontier, intending by way of Holland to
reach the United States. But he fell into enemy hands, and against all
the usages of nations was to suffer years of miserable imprisonment.

Dumouriez was sent to replace him, and to oppose to the steady,
magnificent troops of Austria and Prussia, to the fine flower of French
chivalry and three hundred guns, a ragged host barely twenty-five
thousand strong, ill-armed, untrained and undisciplined, supported by
forty pieces of ordnance.

That futile inter-cannonade ensued which is magniloquently known as the
Battle of Valmy, in which there were three hundred French, and less than
two hundred allied casualties. A mysterious affair which profoundly
puzzled Bonaparte later. Incomprehensibly it marked the end of the
invasion. The Prussians who had depended upon living on the country were
almost entirely without food, they were knee-deep in mud, and ravaged by
dysentery attributed to the chalky water. The rain continued to distress
them. The horizon was black.

Brunswick advised retreat. The King of Prussia as web as the émigrés, who
were now desperate, opposed him. They wanted to risk a battle with the
object of seizing Chalons. But Brunswick objected that they would be
setting too much upon the board in such a gamble. He argued that a defeat
would mean the loss of the entire army, and that upon he, army depended
the fate of the Prussian monarchy.

His Majesty was persuaded, and on the thirtieth of September began the
dreadful retreat of that great host, attended by rain mud famine and
dysentery.

To the émigrés, as you may read in the memoirs which some of them have
left, this abrupt eclipse of their confident hopes, almost without a real
battle having been fought represented the end of the world and was a
thing inexplicable. Unanimously, almost in these mémoirs they declare
themselves bought and sold betrayed by their allies or else that
Brunswick was a Freemason and the march on Paris had been forbidden him
by the lodges The first part of the accusation may be true. For it is a
fact that on his return to Germany the debt-ridden Duke of Brunswick paid
out eight millions to his creditors. If Bonaparte had known this the
victory of Valmy might have been less of a mystery to him.

The exhausted army struggled back through lands that avenged the ravages
they had suffered. They could offer now no sustenance to the starving
ravagers. Men and horses dropped exhausted in their tracks and lay to die
where they fell or to be massacred by the peasants who constantly
harassed them, thirsting to repay the destroyers of their homesteads. And
for the émigrés, as they toiled fainting through the white glutinous mud
of Champagne, the peasants were not the only enemies to be feared. The
very Prussians, starving like themselves turned upon them to pillage
their baggage, destroying, as is the way of pillagers, what they could
not carry off. And there were women and children with the émigrés,
families which had followed the army in carriages, so confident that they
were going home. Now these delicate ladies cumbered the retreat of that
routed host, shared the hardships and suffered indignities unspeakable
which did not end even at the Rhine. For having crossed it, they now
found themselves contemptuously in prey to the rapacity of the Germans,
who took every advantage of their misfortune to strip them by fraud if
not by violence of what little they might yet possess.

The dreadful news was borne by