for the opportunity to depart unscathed."
"I am, then, to understand, monsieur, that there will be no inquiry
into this case? That nothing that I can say will move you?"
"You are to understand that if you are still there in two minutes it
will be very much the worse for you." And M. de Lesdiguieres tinkled the
silver hand-bell upon his table.
"I have informed you, monsieur, that a duel - so-called - has been
fought, and a man killed. It seems that I must remind you, the administrator
of the King's justice, that duels are against the law, and that it is your
duty to hold an inquiry. I come as the legal representative of the bereaved
mother of M. de Vilmorin to demand of you the inquiry that is due."
The door behind Andre-Louis opened softly. M. de Lesdiguieres, pale
with anger, contained himself with difficulty.
"You seek to compel us, do you, you impudent rascal?" he growled. "You
think the King's justice is to be driven headlong by the voice of any
impudent roturier? I marvel at my own patience with you. But I give you a
last warning, master lawyer; keep a closer guard over that insolent tongue
of yours, or you will have cause very bitterly to regret its glibness." He
waved a jewelled, contemptuous hand, and spoke to the usher standing behind
Andre. "To the door!" he said, shortly.
Andre-Louis hesitated a second. Then with a shrug he turned. This was
the windmill, indeed, and he a poor knight of rueful countenance. To attack
it at closer quarters would mean being dashed to pieces. Yet on the
threshold he turned again.
"M. de Lesdiguieres," said he, "may I recite to you an interesting fact
in natural history? The tiger is a great lord in the jungle, and was for
centuries the terror of lesser beasts, including the wolf. The wolf, himself
a hunter, wearied of being hunted. He took to associating with other wolves,
and then the wolves, driven to form packs for self-protection, discovered
the power of the pack, and took to hunting the tiger, with disastrous
results to him. You should study Buffon, M. de Lesdiguieres."
"I have studied a buffoon this morning, I think," was the punning sneer
with which M. de Lesdiguieres replied. But that he conceived himself witty,
it is probable he would not have condescended to reply at all. "I don't
understand you," he added.
"But you will, M. de Lesdiguieres. You will," said Andre-Louis, and so
departed.
He had broken his futile lance with the windmill - the image suggested
by M. de Kercadiou persisted in his mind - and it was, he perceived, by
sheer good fortune that he had escaped without hurt. There remained the wind
itself - the whirlwind. And the events in Rennes, reflex of the graver
events in Nantes, had set that wind blowing in his favour.
He set out briskly to retrace his steps towards the Place Royale, where
the gathering of the populace was greatest, where, as he judged, lay the
heart and brain of this commotion that was exciting the city.
But the commotion that he had left there was as nothing to the
commotion which he found on his return. Then there had been a comparative
hush to listen to the voice of a speaker who denounced the First and Second
Estates from the pedestal of the statue of Louis XV. Now the air was vibrant
with the voice of the multitude itself, raised in anger. Here and there men
were fighting with canes and fists; everywhere a fierce excitement raged,
and the gendarmes sent thither by the King's Lieutenant to restore and
maintain order were so much helpless flotsam in that tempestuous human
ocean.
There were cries of "To the Palais! To the Palais! Down with the
assassins! Down with the nobles! To the Palais!"
An artisan who stood shoulder to shoulder with him in the press
enlightened Andre-Louis on the score of the increased excitement.
"They've shot him dead. His body is lying there where it fell at the
foot of the statue. And there was another student killed not an hour ago
over there by the cathedral works. Pardi! If they can't prevail in one way
they'll prevail in another." The man was fiercely emphatic. "They'll stop at
nothing. If they can't overawe us, by God, they'll assassinate us. They are
determined to conduct these States of Brittany in their own way. No
interests but their own shall be considered."
Andre-Louis left him still talking, and clove himself a way through
that human press.
At the statue's base he came upon a little cluster of students about
the body of the murdered lad, all stricken with fear and helplessness.
"You here, Moreau!" said a voice.
He looked round to find himself confronted by a slight, swarthy man of
little more than thirty, firm of mouth and impertinent of nose, who
considered him with disapproval. It was Le Chapelier, a lawyer of Rennes, a
prominent member of the Literary Chamber of that city, a forceful man,
fertile in revolutionary ideas and of an exceptional gift of eloquence.
"Ah, it is you, Chapelier! Why don't you speak to them? Why don't you
tell them what to do? Up with you, man!" And he pointed to the plinth.
Le Chapelier's dark, restless eyes searched the other's impassive face
for some trace of the irony he suspected. They were as wide asunder as the
poles, these two, in their political views; and mistrusted as Andre-Louis
was by all his colleagues of the Literary Chamber of Rennes, he was by none
mistrusted so thoroughly as by this vigorous republican. Indeed, had Le
Chapelier been able to prevail against the influence of the seminarist
Vilmorin, Andre-Louis would long since have found himself excluded from that
assembly of the intellectual youth of Rennes, which he exasperated by his
eternal mockery of their ideals.
So now Le Chapelier suspected mockery in that invitation, suspected it
even when he failed to find traces of it on Andre-Louis' face, for he had
learnt by experience that it was a face not often to be trusted for an
indication of the real thoughts that moved behind it.
"Your notions and mine on that score can hardly coincide," said he.
"Can there be two opinions?" quoth Andre-Louis.
"There are usually two opinions whenever you and I are together, Moreau
- more than ever now that you are the appointed delegate of a nobleman. You
see what your friends have done. No doubt you approve their methods." He was
coldly hostile.
Andre-Louis looked at him without surprise. So invariably opposed to
each other in academic debates, how should Le Chapelier suspect his present
intentions?
"If you won't tell them what is to be done, I will," said he.
"Nom de Dieu! If you want to invite a bullet from the other side, I
shall not hinder you. It may help to square the account."
Scarcely were the words out than he repented them; for as if in answer
to that challenge Andre-Louis sprang up on to the plinth. Alarmed now, for
he could only suppose it to be Andre-Louis' intention to speak on behalf of
Privilege, of which he was a publicly appointed representative, Le Chapelier
clutched him by the leg to pull him down again.
"Ah, that, no!" he was shouting. "Come down, you fool. Do you think we
will let you ruin everything by your clowning? Come down!"
Andre-Louis, maintaining his position by clutching one of the legs of
the bronze horse, flung his voice like a bugle-note over the heads of that
seething mob.
"Citizens of Rennes, the motherland is in danger!"
The effect was electric. A stir ran, like a ripple over water, across
that froth of upturned human faces, and completest silence followed. In that
great silence they looked at this slim young man, hatless, long wisps of his
black hair fluttering in the breeze, his neckcloth in disorder, his face
white, his eyes on fire.
Andre-Louis felt a sudden surge of exaltation as he realized by
instinct that at one grip he had seized that crowd, and that he held it fast
in the spell of his cry and his audacity.
Even Le Chapelier, though still clinging to his ankle, had ceased to
tug. The reformer, though unshaken in his assumption of Andre-Louis'
intentions, was for a moment bewildered by the first note of his appeal.
And then, slowly, impressively, in a voice that travelled clear to the
ends of the square, the young lawyer of Gavrillac began to speak.
"Shuddering in horror of the vile deed here perpetrated, my voice
demands to be heard by you. You have seen murder done under your eyes - the
murder of one who nobly, without any thought of self, gave voice to the
wrongs by which we are all oppressed. Fearing that voice, shunning the truth
as foul things shun the light, our oppressors sent their agents to silence
him in death."
Le Chapelier released at last his hold of Andre-Louis' ankle, staring
up at him the while in sheer amazement. It seemed that the fellow was in
earnest; serious for once; and for once on the right side. What had come to
him?
"Of assassins what shall you look for but assassination? I have a tale
to tell which will show that this is no new thing that you have witnessed
here to-day; it will reveal to you the forces with which you have to deal.
Yesterday... "
There was an interruption. A voice in the crowd, some twenty paces,
perhaps, was raised to shout:
"Yet another of them!"
Immediately after the voice came a pistol-shot, and a bullet flattened
itself against the bronze figure just behind Andre-Louis.
Instantly there was turmoil in the crowd, most intense about the spot
whence the shot had been fired. The assailant was one of a considerable
group of the opposition, a group that found itself at once beset on every
side, and hard put to it to defend him.
>From the foot of the plinth rang the voice of the students making
chorus to Le Chapelier, who was bidding Andre-Louis to seek shelter.
"Come down! Come down at once! They'll murder you as they murdered La
Riviere."
"Let them!" He flung wide his arms in a gesture supremely theatrical,
and laughed. "I stand here at their mercy. Let them, if they will, add mine
to the blood that will presently rise up to choke them. Let them assassinate
me. It is a trade they understand. But until they do so, they shall not
prevent me from speaking to you, from telling you what is to be looked for
in them." And again he laughed, not merely in exaltation as they supposed
who watched him from below, but also in amusement. And his amusement had two
sources. One was to discover how glibly he uttered the phrases proper to
whip up the emotions of a crowd: the other was in the remembrance of how the
crafty Cardinal de Retz, for the purpose of inflaming popular sympathy on
his behalf, had been in the habit of hiring fellows to fire upon his
carriage. He was in just such case as that arch-politician. True, he had not
hired the fellow to fire that pistol-shot; but he was none the less obliged
to him, and ready to derive the fullest, advantage from the act.
The group that sought to protect that man was battling on, seeking to
hew a way out of that angry, heaving press.
"Let them go!" Andre-Louis called down... "What matters one assassin
more or less? Let them go, and listen to me, my countrymen!"
And presently, when some measure of order was restored, he began his
tale. In simple language now, yet with a vehemence and directness that drove
home every point, he tore their hearts with the story of yesterday's
happenings at Gavrillac. He drew tears from them with the pathos of his
picture of the bereaved widow Mabey and her three starving, destitute
children - "orphaned to avenge the death of a pheasant" - and the bereaved
mother of that M. de Vilmorin, a student of Rennes, known here to many of
them, who had met his death in a noble endeavour to champion the cause of an
esurient member of their afflicted order.
"The Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr said of him that he had too dangerous a
gift of eloquence. It was to silence his brave voice that he killed him. But
he has failed of his object. For I, poor Philippe de Vilmorin's friend, have
assumed the mantle of his apostleship, and I speak to you with his voice
to-day."
It was a statement that helped Le Chapelier at last to understand, at
least in part, this bewildering change in Andre-Louis, which rendered him
faithless to the side that employed him.
"I am not here," continued Andre-Louis, "merely to demand at your hands
vengeance upon Philippe de Vilmorin's murderers. I am here to tell you the
things he would to-day have told you had he lived."
So far at least he was frank. But he did not add that they were things
he did not himself believe, things that he accounted the cant by which an
ambitious bourgeoisie - speaking through the mouths of the lawyers, who were
its articulate part - sought to overthrow to its own advantage the present
state of things. He left his audience in the natural belief that the views
he expressed were the views he held.
And now in a terrible voice, with an eloquence that amazed himself, he
denounced the inertia of the royal justice where the great are the
offenders. It was with bitter sarcasm that he spoke of their King's
Lieutenant, M. de Lesdiguieres.
"Do you wonder," he asked them, "that M. de Lesdiguieres should
administer the law so that it shall ever be favourable to our great nobles?
Would it be just, would it be reasonable that he should otherwise administer
it?" He paused dramatically to let his sarcasm sink in. It had the effect of
reawakening Le Chapelier's doubts, and checking his dawning conviction in
Andre-Louis' sincerity. Whither was he going now?
He was not left long in doubt. Proceeding, Andre-Louis spoke as he
conceived that Philippe de Vilmorin would have spoken. He had so often
argued with him, so often attended the discussions of the Literary Chamber,
that he had all the rant of the reformers - that was yet true in substance -
at his fingers' ends.
"Consider, after all, the composition of this France of ours. A million
of its inhabitants are members of the privileged classes. They compose
France. They are France. For surely you cannot suppose the remainder to be
anything that matters. It cannot be pretended that twenty-four million souls
are of any account, that they can be representative of this great nation, or
that they can exist for any purpose but that of servitude to the million
elect."
Bitter laughter shook them now, as he desired it should. "Seeing their
privileges in danger of invasion by these twenty-four millions - mostly
canailles; possibly created by God, it is true, but clearly so created to be
the slaves of Privilege - does it surprise you that the dispensing of royal
justice should be placed in the stout hands of these Lesdiguieres, men
without brains to think or hearts to be touched? Consider what it is that
must be defended against the assault of us others - canaille. Consider a few
of these feudal rights that are in danger of being swept away should the
Privileged yield even to the commands of their sovereign; and admit the
Third Estate to an equal vote with themselves.
"What would become of the right of terrage on the land, of parciere on
the fruit-trees, of carpot on the vines? What of the corvees by which they
command forced labour, of the ban de vendage, which gives them the first
vintage, the banvin which enables them to control to their own advantage the
sale of wine? What of their right of grinding the last liard of taxation out
of the people to maintain their own opulent estate; the cens, the
lods-et-ventes, which absorb a fifth of the value of the land, the blairee,
which must be paid before herds can feed on communal lands, the pulverage to
indemnify them for the dust raised on their roads by the herds that go to
market, the sextelage on everything offered for sale in the public markets,
the etalonnage, and all the rest? What of their rights over men and animals
for field labour, of ferries over rivers, and of bridges over streams, of
sinking wells, of warren, of dovecot, and of fire, which last yields them a
tax on every peasant hearth? What of their exclusive rights of fishing and
of hunting, the violation of which is ranked as almost a capital offence?
"And what of other rights, unspeakable, abominable, over the lives and
bodies of their people, rights which, if rarely exercised, have never been
rescinded. To this day if a noble returning from the hunt were to slay two
of his serfs to bathe and refresh his feet in their blood, he could still
claim in his sufficient defence that it was his absolute feudal right to do
so.
"Rough-shod, these million Privileged ride over the souls and bodies of
twenty-four million contemptible canaille existing but for their own
pleasure. Woe betide him who so much as raises his voice in protest in the
name of humanity against an excess of these already excessive abuses. I have
told you of one remorselessly slain in cold blood for doing no more than
that. Your own eyes have witnessed the assassination of another here upon
this plinth, of yet another over there by the cathedral works, and the
attempt upon my own life.
"Between them and the justice due to them in such cases stand these
Lesdiguieres, these King's Lieutenants; not instruments of justice, but
walls erected for the shelter of Privilege and Abuse whenever it exceeds its
grotesquely excessive rights.
"Do you wonder that they will not yield an inch; that they will resist
the election of a Third Estate with the voting power to sweep all these
privileges away, to compel the Privileged to submit themselves to a just
equality in the eyes of the law with the meanest of the canaille they
trample underfoot, to provide that the moneys necessary to save this state
from the bankruptcy into which they have all but plunged it shall be raised
by taxation to be borne by themselves in the same proportion as by others?
"Sooner than yield to so much they prefer to resist even the royal
command."
A phrase occurred to him used yesterday by Vilmorin, a phrase to which
he had refused to attach importance when uttered then. He used it now. "In
doing this they are striking at the very foundations of the throne. These
fools do not perceive that if that throne falls over, it is they who stand
nearest to it who will be crushed."
A terrific roar acclaimed that statement. Tense and quivering with the
excitement that was flowing through him, and from him out into that great
audience, he stood a moment smiling ironically. Then he waved them into
silence,, and saw by their ready obedience how completely he possessed them.
For in the voice with which he spoke each now recognized the voice of
himself, giving at last expression to the thoughts that for months and years
had been inarticulately stirring in each simple mind.
Presently he resumed, speaking more quietly, that ironic smile about
the corner of his mouth growing more marked:
"In taking my leave of M. de Lesdiguieres I gave him warning out of a
page of natural history. I told him that when the wolves, roaming singly
through the jungle, were weary of being hunted by the tiger, they banded
themselves into packs, and went a-hunting the tiger in their turn. M. de
Lesdiguieres contemptuously answered that he did not understand me. But your
wits are better than his. You understand me, I think? Don't you?"
Again a great roar, mingled now with some approving laughter, was his
answer. He had wrought them up to a pitch of dangerous passion, and they
were ripe for any violence to which he urged them. If he had failed with the
windmill, at least he was now master of the wind.
"To the Palais!" they shouted, waving their hands, brandishing canes,
and - here and there - even a sword. "To the Palais! Down with M. de
Lesdiguieres! Death to the King's Lieutenant!"
He was master of the wind, indeed. His dangerous gift of oratory
- a gift nowhere more powerful than in France, since nowhere else are
men's emotions so quick to respond to the appeal of eloquence
- had given him this mastery. At his bidding now the gale would sweep
away the windmill against which he had flung himself in vain. But that, as
he straightforwardly revealed it, was no part of his intent.
"Ah, wait!" he bade them. "Is this miserable instrument of a corrupt
system worth the attention of your noble indignation?"
He hoped his words would be reported to M. de Lesdiguieres. He thought
it would be good for the soul of M. de Lesdiguieres to hear the undiluted
truth about himself for once.
"It is the system itself you must attack and overthrow; not a mere
instrument - a miserable painted lath such as this. And precipitancy will
spoil everything. Above all, my children, no violence!"
My children! Could his godfather have heard him!
"You have seen often already the result of premature violence elsewhere
in Brittany, and you have heard of it elsewhere in France. Violence on your
part will call for violence on theirs. They will welcome the chance to
assert their mastery by a firmer grip than heretofore. The military will be
sent for. You will be faced by the bayonets of mercenaries. Do not provoke
that, I implore you. Do not put it into their power, do not afford them the
pretext they would welcome to crush you down into the mud of your own
blood."
Out of the silence into which they had fallen anew broke now the cry of
"What else, then? What else?"
"I will tell you," he answered them. "The wealth and strength of
Brittany lies in Nantes - a bourgeois city, one of the most prosperous in
this realm, rendered so by the energy of the bourgeoisie and the toil of the
people. It was in Nantes that this movement had its beginning, and as a
result of it the King issued his order dissolving the States as now
constituted - an order which those who base their power on Privilege and
Abuse do not hesitate to thwart. Let Nantes be informed of the precise
situation, and let nothing be done here until Nantes shall have given us the
lead. She has the power - which we in Rennes have not - to make her will
prevail, as we have seen already. Let her exert that power once more, and
until she does so do you keep the peace in Rennes. Thus shall you triumph.
Thus shall the outrages that are being perpetrated under your eyes be fully
and finally avenged."
As abruptly as he had leapt upon the plinth did he now leap down from
it. He had finished. He had said all - perhaps more than all - that could
have been said by the dead friend with whose voice he spoke. But it was not
their will that he should thus extinguish himself. The thunder of their
acclamations rose deafeningly upon the air. He had played upon their
emotions - each in turn - as a skilful harpist plays upon the strings of his
instrument. And they were vibrant with the passions he had aroused, and the
high note of hope on which he had brought his symphony to a close.
A dozen students caught him as he leapt down, and swung him to their
shoulders, where again he came within view of all the acclaiming crowd.
The delicate Le Chapelier pressed alongside of him with flushed face
and shining eyes.
"My lad," he said to him, "you have kindled a fire to-day that will
sweep the face of France in a blaze of liberty." And then to the students he
issued a sharp command. "To the Literary Chamber -at once. We must concert
measures upon the instant, a delegate must be dispatched to Nantes
forthwith, to convey to our friends there the message of the people of
Rennes."
The crowd fell back, opening a lane through which the students bore the
hero of the hour. Waving his hands to them, he called upon them to disperse
to their homes, and await there in patience what must follow very soon.
"You have endured for centuries with a fortitude that is a pattern to
the world," he flattered them. "Endure a little longer yet. The end, my
friends, is well in sight at last."
They carried him out of the square and up the Rue Royale to an old
house, one of the few old houses surviving in that city that had risen from
its ashes, where in an upper chamber lighted by diamond-shaped panes of
yellow glass the Literary Chamber usually held its meetings. Thither in his
wake the members of that chamber came hurrying, summoned by the messages
that Le Chapelier had issued during their progress.
Behind closed doors a flushed and excited group of some fifty men, the
majority of whom were young, ardent, and afire with the illusion of liberty,
hailed Andre-Louis as the strayed sheep who had returned to the fold, and
smothered him in congratulations and thanks.
Then they settled down to deliberate upon immediate measures, whilst
the doors below were kept by a guard of honour that had improvised itself
from the masses. And very necessary was this. For no sooner had the Chamber
assembled than the house was assailed by the gendarmerie of M. de
Lesdiguieres, dispatched in haste to arrest the firebrand who was inciting
the people of Rennes to sedition. The force consisted of fifty men. Five
hundred would have been too few. The mob broke their carbines, broke some of
their heads, and would indeed have torn them into pieces had they not beaten
a timely and well-advised retreat before a form of horseplay to which they
were not at all accustomed.
And whilst that was taking place in the street below, in the room
abovestairs the eloquent Le Chapelier was addressing his colleagues of the
Literary Chamber. Here, with no bullets to fear, and no one to report his
words to the authorities, Le Chapelier could permit his oratory a full,
unintimidated flow. And that considerable oratory was as direct and brutal
as the man himself was delicate and elegant.
He praised the vigour and the greatness of the speech they had heard
from their colleague Moreau. Above all he praised its wisdom. Moreau's words
had come as a surprise to them. Hitherto they had never known him as other
than a bitter critic of their projects of reform and regeneration; and quite
lately they had heard, not without misgivings, of his appointment as
delegate for a nobleman in the States of Brittany. But they held the
explanation of his conversion. The murder of their dear colleague Vilmorin
had produced this change. In that brutal deed Moreau had beheld at last in
true proportions the workings of that evil spirit which they were vowed to
exorcise from France. And to-day he had proven himself the stoutest apostle
among them of the new faith. He had pointed out to them the only sane and
useful course. The illustration he had borrowed from natural history was
most apt. Above all, let them pack like the wolves, and to ensure this
uniformity of action in the people of all Brittany, let a delegate at once
be sent to Nantes, which had already proved itself the real seat of
Brittany's power. It but remained to appoint that delegate, and Le Chapelier
invited them to elect him.
Andre-Louis, on a bench near the window, a prey now to some measure of
reaction, listened in bewilderment to that flood of eloquence.
As the applause died down, he heard a voice exclaiming:
"I propose to you that we appoint our leader here, Le Chapelier, to be
that delegate."
Le Chapelier reared his elegantly dressed head, which had been bowed in
thought, and it was seen that his countenance was pale. Nervously he
fingered a gold spy-glass.
"My friends," he said, slowly, "I am deeply sensible of the honour that
you do me. But in accepting it I should be usurping an honour that rightly
belongs elsewhere. Who could represent us better, who more deserving to be
our representative, to speak to our friends of Nantes with the voice of
Rennes, than the champion who once already to-day has so incomparably given
utterance to the voice of this great city? Confer this honour of being your
spokesman where it belongs - upon Andre-Louis Moreau."
Rising in response to the storm of applause that greeted the proposal,
Andre-Louis bowed and forthwith yielded. "Be it so," he said, simply. "It is
perhaps fitting that I should carry out what I have begun, though I too am
of the opinion that Le Chapelier would have been a worthier representative.
I will set out to-night."
"You will set out at once, my lad," Le Chapelier informed him, and now
revealed what an uncharitable mind might account the true source of his
generosity. "It is not safe after what has happened for you to linger an
hour in Rennes. And you must go secretly. Let none of you allow it to be
known that he has gone. I would not have you come to harm over this,
Andre-Louis. But you must see the risks you run, and if you are to be spared
to help in this work of salvation of our afflicted motherland, you must use
caution, move secretly, veil your identity even. Or else M. de Lesdiguieres
will have you laid by the heels, and it will be good-night for you."
Andre-Louis rode forth from Rennes committed to a deeper adventure than
he had dreamed of when he left the sleepy village of Gavrillac. Lying the
night at a roadside inn, and setting out again early in the morning, he
reached Nantes soon after noon of the following day.
Through that long and lonely ride through the dull plains of Brittany,
now at their dreariest in their winter garb, he had ample leisure in which
to review his actions and his position. From one who had taken hitherto a
purely academic and by no means friendly interest in the new philosophies of
social life, exercising his wits upon these new ideas merely as a fencer
exercises his eye and wrist with the foils, without ever suffering himself
to be deluded into supposing the issue a real one, he found himself suddenly
converted into a revolutionary firebrand, committed to revolutionary action
of the most desperate kind. The representative and delegate of a nobleman in
the States of Brittany, he found himself simultaneously and incongruously
the representative and delegate of the whole Third Estate of Rennes.
It is difficult to determine to what extent, in the heat of passion and
swept along by the torrent of his own oratory, he might yesterday have
succeeded in deceiving himself. But it is at least certain that, looking
back in cold blood now he had no single delusion on the score of what he had
done. Cynically he had presented to his audience one side only of the great
question that he propounded.
But since the established order of things in France was such as to make
a rampart for M. de La Tour d'Azyr, affording him complete immunity for this
and any other crimes that it pleased him to commit, why, then the
established order must take the consequences of its wrong-doing. Therein he
perceived his clear justification.
And so it was without misgivings that he came on his errand of sedition
into that beautiful city of Nantes, rendered its spacious streets and
splendid port the rival in prosperity of Bordeaux and Marseilles.
He found an inn on the Quai La Fosse, where he put up his horse, and
where he dined in the embrasure of a window that looked out over the
tree-bordered quay and the broad bosom of the Loire, on which argosies of
all nations rode at anchor. The sun had again broken through the clouds, and
shed its pale wintry light over the yellow waters and the tall-masted
shipping.
Along the quays there was a stir of life as great as that to be seen on
the quays of Paris. Foreign sailors in outlandish garments and of
harsh-sounding, outlandish speech, stalwart fishwives with baskets of
herrings on their heads, voluminous of petticoat above bare legs and bare
feet, calling their wares shrilly and almost inarticulately, watermen in
woollen caps and loose trousers rolled to the knees, peasants in goatskin
coats, their wooden shoes clattering on the round kidney-stones, shipwrights
and labourers from the dockyards, bellows-menders, rat-catchers,
water-carriers, ink-sellers, and other itinerant pedlars. And, sprinkled
through this proletariat mass that came and went in constant movement,
Andre-Louis beheld tradesmen in sober garments, merchants in long, fur-lined
coats; occasionally a merchant-prince rolling along in his two-horse
cabriolet to the whip-crackings and shouts of "Gare!" from his coachman;
occasionally a dainty lady carried past in her sedan-chair, with perhaps a
mincing abbe from the episcopal court tripping along in attendance;
occasionally an officer in scarlet riding disdainfully; and once the great
carriage of a nobleman, with escutcheoned panels and a pair of
white-stockinged, powdered footmen in gorgeous liveries hanging on behind.
And there were Capuchins in brown and Benedictines in black, and secular
priests in plenty - for God was well served in the sixteen parishes of
Nantes - and by way of contrast there were lean-jawed, out-at-elbow
adventurers, and gendarmes in blue coats and gaitered legs, sauntering
guardians of the peace.
Representatives of every class that went to make up the seventy
thousand inhabitants of that wealthy, industrious city were to be seen in
the human stream that ebbed and flowed beneath the window from which
Andre-Louis observed it.
Of the waiter who ministered to his humble wants with soup and bouilli,
and a measure of vin gris, Andre-Louis enquired into the state of public
feeling in the city. The waiter, a staunch supporter of the privileged
orders, admitted regretfully that an uneasiness prevailed. Much would depend
upon what happened at Rennes. If it was true that the King had dissolved the
States of Brittany, then all should be well, and the malcontents would have
no pretext for further disturbances. There had been trouble and to spare in
Nantes already. They wanted no repetition of it. All manner of rumours were
abroad, and since early morning there had been crowds besieging the portals
of the Chamber of Commerce for definite news. But definite news was yet to
come. It was not even known for a fact that His Majesty actually had
dissolved the States.
It was striking two, the busiest hour of the day upon the Bourse, when
Andre-Louis reached the Place du Commerce. The square, dominated by the
imposing classical building of the Exchange, was so crowded that he was
compelled almost to fight his way through to the steps of the magnificent
Ionic porch. A word would have sufficed to have opened a way for him at
once. But guile moved him to keep silent. He would come upon that waiting
multitude as a thunderclap, precisely as yesterday he had come upon the mob
at Rennes. He would lose nothing of the surprise effect of his entrance.
The precincts of that house of commerce were jealously kept by a line
of ushers armed with staves, a guard as hurriedly assembled by the merchants
as it was evidently necessary. One of these now effectively barred the young
lawyer's passage as he attempted to mount the steps.
Andre-Louis announced himself in a whisper.
The stave was instantly raised from the horizontal, and he passed and
went up the steps in the wake of the usher. At the top, on the threshold of
the chamber, he paused, and stayed his guide.
"I will wait here," he announced. "Bring the president to me."
"Your name, monsieur?"
Almost had Andre-Louis answered him when he remembered Le Chapelier's
warning of the danger with which his mission was fraught, and Le Chapelier's
parting admonition to conceal his identity.
"My name is unknown to him; it matters nothing; I am the mouthpiece of
a people, no more. Go."
The usher went, and in the shadow of that lofty, pillared portico
Andre-Louis waited, his eyes straying out ever and anon to survey that
spread of upturned faces immediately below him.
Soon the president came, others following, crowding out into the
portico, jostling one another in their eagerness to hear the news.
"You are a messenger from Rennes?"
"I am the delegate sent by the Literary Chamber of that city to inform
you here in Nantes of what is taking place."
"Your name?"
Andre-Louis paused. "The less we mention names perhaps the better."
The president's eyes grew big with gravity. He was a corpulent, florid
man, purse-proud, and self-sufficient.
He hesitated a moment. Then - "Come into the Chamber," said he.
"By your leave, monsieur, I will deliver my message from here - from
these steps."
"From here?" The great merchant frowned.
"My message is for the people of Nantes, and from here I can speak at
once to the greatest number of Nantais of all ranks, and it is my desire -
and the desire of those whom I represent - that as great a number as
possible should hear my message at first hand."
"Tell me, sir, is it true that the King has dissolved the States?"
Andre-Louis looked at him. He smiled apologetically, and waved a hand
towards the crowd, which by now was straining for a glimpse of this slim
young man who had brought forth the president and more than half the numbers
of the Chamber, guessing already, with that curious instinct of crowds, that
he was the awaited bearer of tidings.
"Summon the gentlemen of your Chamber, monsieur," said he, "and you
shall hear all."
"So be it."
A word, and forth they came to crowd upon the steps, but leaving clear
the topmost step and a half-moon space in the middle.
To the spot so indicated, Andre-Louis now advanced very deliberately.
He took his stand there, dominating the entire assembly. He removed his hat,
and launched the opening bombshell of that address which is historic,
marking as it does one of the great stages of France's progress towards
revolution.
"People of this great city of Nantes, I have come to summon you to
arms!"
In the amazed and rather scared silence that followed he surveyed them
for a moment before resuming.
"I am a delegate of the people of Rennes, charged to announce to you
what is taking place, and to invite you in this dreadful hour of our
country's peril to rise and march to her defence."
"Name! Your name!" a voice shouted, and instantly the cry was taken up
by others, until the multitude rang with the question.
He could not answer that excited mob as he had answered the president.
It was necessary to compromise, and he did so, happily. "My name," said he,
"is Omnes Omnibus - all for all. Let that suffice you now. I am a herald, a
mouthpiece, a voice; no more. I come to announce to you that since the
privileged orders, assembled for the States of Brittany in Rennes, resisted
your will - our will
- despite the King's plain hint to them, His Majesty has dissolved the
States."
There was a burst of delirious applause. Men laughed and shouted, and
cries of "Vive le Roi!" rolled forth like thunder. Andre-Louis waited, and
gradually the preternatural gravity of his countenance came to be observed,
and to beget the suspicion that there might be more to follow. Gradually
silence was restored, and at last Andre Louis was able to proceed.
"You rejoice too soon. Unfortunately, the nobles, in their insolent
arrogance, have elected to ignore the royal dissolution, and in despite of
it persist in sitting and in conducting matters as seems good to them."
A silence of utter dismay greeted that disconcerting epilogue to the
announcement that had been so rapturously received. Andre-Louis continued
after a moment's pause:
"So that these men who were already rebels against the people, rebels,
against justice and equity, rebels against humanity itself, are now also
rebels against their King. Sooner than yield an inch of the unconscionable
privileges by which too long already they have flourished, to the misery of
a whole nation, they will make a mock of royal authority, hold up the King
himself to contempt. They are determined to prove that there is no real
sovereignty in France but the sovereignty of their own parasitic
faineantise."
There was a faint splutter of applause, but the majority of the
audience remained silent, waiting.
"This is no new thing. Always has it been the same. No minister in the
last ten years, who, seeing the needs and perils of the State, counselled
the measures that we now demand as the only means of arresting our
motherland in its ever-quickening progress to the abyss, but found himself
as a consequence cast out of office by the influence which Privilege brought
to bear against him. Twice already has M. Necker been called to the
ministry, to be twice dismissed when his insistent counsels of reform
threatened the privileges of clergy and nobility. For the third time now has
he been called to office, and at last it seems we are to have States General
in spite of Privilege. But what the privileged orders can no longer prevent,
they are determined to stultify. Since it is now a settled thing that these
States General are to meet, at least the nobles and the clergy will see to
it - unless we take measures to prevent them - by packing the Third Estate
with their own creatures, and denying it all effective representation, that
they convert. the States General into an instrument of their own will for
the perpetuation of the abuses by which they live. To achieve this end they
will stop at nothing. They have flouted the authority of the King, and they
are silencing by assassination those who raise their voices to condemn them.
Yesterday in Rennes two young men who addressed the people as I am
addressing you were done to death in the streets by assassins at the
instigation of the nobility. Their blood cries out for vengeance."
Beginning in a sullen mutter, the indignation that moved his hearers
swelled up to express itself in a roar of anger.
"Citizens of Nantes, the motherland is in peril. Let us march to her
defence. Let us proclaim it to the world that we recognize that the measures
to liberate the Third Estate from the slavery in which for centuries it has
groaned find only obstacles in those orders whose phrenetic egotism sees in
the tears and suffering of the unfortunate an odious tribute which they
would pass on to their generations still unborn. Realizing from the
barbarity of the means employed by our enemies to perpetuate our oppression
that we have everything to fear from the aristocracy they would set up as a
constitutional principle for the governing of France, let us declare
ourselves at once enfranchised from it.
"The establishment of liberty and equality should be the aim of every
citizen member of the Third Estate; and to this end we should stand
indivisibly united, especially the young and vigorous, especially those who
have had the good fortune to be born late enough to be able to gather for
themselves the precious fruits of the philosophy of this eighteenth
century."
Acclamations broke out unstintedly now. He had caught them in the snare
of his oratory. And he pressed his advantage instantly.
"Let us all swear," he cried in a great voice, "to raise up in the name
of humanity and of liberty a rampart against our enemies, to oppose to their
bloodthirsty covetousness the calm perseverance of men whose cause is just.
And let us protest here and in advance against any tyrannical decrees that
should declare us seditious when we have none but pure and just intentions.
Let us make oath upon the honour of our motherland that should any of us be
seized by an unjust tribunal, intending against us one of those acts termed
of political expediency - which are, in effect, but acts of despotism - let
us swear, I say, to give a full expression to the strength that is in us and
do that in self-defence which nature, courage, and despair dictate to us."
Loud and long rolled the applause that greeted his conclusion, and he
observed with satisfaction and even some inward grim amusement that the
wealthy merchants who had been congregated upon the steps, and who now came
crowding about him to shake him by the hand and to acclaim him, were not
merely participants in, but the actual leaders of, this delirium of
enthusiasm.
It confirmed him, had he needed confirmation, in his conviction that
just as the philosophies upon which this new movement was based had their
source in thinkers extracted from the bourgeoisie, so the need to adopt
those philosophies to the practical purposes of life was most acutely felt
at present by those bourgeois who found themselves debarred by Privilege
"I am, then, to understand, monsieur, that there will be no inquiry
into this case? That nothing that I can say will move you?"
"You are to understand that if you are still there in two minutes it
will be very much the worse for you." And M. de Lesdiguieres tinkled the
silver hand-bell upon his table.
"I have informed you, monsieur, that a duel - so-called - has been
fought, and a man killed. It seems that I must remind you, the administrator
of the King's justice, that duels are against the law, and that it is your
duty to hold an inquiry. I come as the legal representative of the bereaved
mother of M. de Vilmorin to demand of you the inquiry that is due."
The door behind Andre-Louis opened softly. M. de Lesdiguieres, pale
with anger, contained himself with difficulty.
"You seek to compel us, do you, you impudent rascal?" he growled. "You
think the King's justice is to be driven headlong by the voice of any
impudent roturier? I marvel at my own patience with you. But I give you a
last warning, master lawyer; keep a closer guard over that insolent tongue
of yours, or you will have cause very bitterly to regret its glibness." He
waved a jewelled, contemptuous hand, and spoke to the usher standing behind
Andre. "To the door!" he said, shortly.
Andre-Louis hesitated a second. Then with a shrug he turned. This was
the windmill, indeed, and he a poor knight of rueful countenance. To attack
it at closer quarters would mean being dashed to pieces. Yet on the
threshold he turned again.
"M. de Lesdiguieres," said he, "may I recite to you an interesting fact
in natural history? The tiger is a great lord in the jungle, and was for
centuries the terror of lesser beasts, including the wolf. The wolf, himself
a hunter, wearied of being hunted. He took to associating with other wolves,
and then the wolves, driven to form packs for self-protection, discovered
the power of the pack, and took to hunting the tiger, with disastrous
results to him. You should study Buffon, M. de Lesdiguieres."
"I have studied a buffoon this morning, I think," was the punning sneer
with which M. de Lesdiguieres replied. But that he conceived himself witty,
it is probable he would not have condescended to reply at all. "I don't
understand you," he added.
"But you will, M. de Lesdiguieres. You will," said Andre-Louis, and so
departed.
He had broken his futile lance with the windmill - the image suggested
by M. de Kercadiou persisted in his mind - and it was, he perceived, by
sheer good fortune that he had escaped without hurt. There remained the wind
itself - the whirlwind. And the events in Rennes, reflex of the graver
events in Nantes, had set that wind blowing in his favour.
He set out briskly to retrace his steps towards the Place Royale, where
the gathering of the populace was greatest, where, as he judged, lay the
heart and brain of this commotion that was exciting the city.
But the commotion that he had left there was as nothing to the
commotion which he found on his return. Then there had been a comparative
hush to listen to the voice of a speaker who denounced the First and Second
Estates from the pedestal of the statue of Louis XV. Now the air was vibrant
with the voice of the multitude itself, raised in anger. Here and there men
were fighting with canes and fists; everywhere a fierce excitement raged,
and the gendarmes sent thither by the King's Lieutenant to restore and
maintain order were so much helpless flotsam in that tempestuous human
ocean.
There were cries of "To the Palais! To the Palais! Down with the
assassins! Down with the nobles! To the Palais!"
An artisan who stood shoulder to shoulder with him in the press
enlightened Andre-Louis on the score of the increased excitement.
"They've shot him dead. His body is lying there where it fell at the
foot of the statue. And there was another student killed not an hour ago
over there by the cathedral works. Pardi! If they can't prevail in one way
they'll prevail in another." The man was fiercely emphatic. "They'll stop at
nothing. If they can't overawe us, by God, they'll assassinate us. They are
determined to conduct these States of Brittany in their own way. No
interests but their own shall be considered."
Andre-Louis left him still talking, and clove himself a way through
that human press.
At the statue's base he came upon a little cluster of students about
the body of the murdered lad, all stricken with fear and helplessness.
"You here, Moreau!" said a voice.
He looked round to find himself confronted by a slight, swarthy man of
little more than thirty, firm of mouth and impertinent of nose, who
considered him with disapproval. It was Le Chapelier, a lawyer of Rennes, a
prominent member of the Literary Chamber of that city, a forceful man,
fertile in revolutionary ideas and of an exceptional gift of eloquence.
"Ah, it is you, Chapelier! Why don't you speak to them? Why don't you
tell them what to do? Up with you, man!" And he pointed to the plinth.
Le Chapelier's dark, restless eyes searched the other's impassive face
for some trace of the irony he suspected. They were as wide asunder as the
poles, these two, in their political views; and mistrusted as Andre-Louis
was by all his colleagues of the Literary Chamber of Rennes, he was by none
mistrusted so thoroughly as by this vigorous republican. Indeed, had Le
Chapelier been able to prevail against the influence of the seminarist
Vilmorin, Andre-Louis would long since have found himself excluded from that
assembly of the intellectual youth of Rennes, which he exasperated by his
eternal mockery of their ideals.
So now Le Chapelier suspected mockery in that invitation, suspected it
even when he failed to find traces of it on Andre-Louis' face, for he had
learnt by experience that it was a face not often to be trusted for an
indication of the real thoughts that moved behind it.
"Your notions and mine on that score can hardly coincide," said he.
"Can there be two opinions?" quoth Andre-Louis.
"There are usually two opinions whenever you and I are together, Moreau
- more than ever now that you are the appointed delegate of a nobleman. You
see what your friends have done. No doubt you approve their methods." He was
coldly hostile.
Andre-Louis looked at him without surprise. So invariably opposed to
each other in academic debates, how should Le Chapelier suspect his present
intentions?
"If you won't tell them what is to be done, I will," said he.
"Nom de Dieu! If you want to invite a bullet from the other side, I
shall not hinder you. It may help to square the account."
Scarcely were the words out than he repented them; for as if in answer
to that challenge Andre-Louis sprang up on to the plinth. Alarmed now, for
he could only suppose it to be Andre-Louis' intention to speak on behalf of
Privilege, of which he was a publicly appointed representative, Le Chapelier
clutched him by the leg to pull him down again.
"Ah, that, no!" he was shouting. "Come down, you fool. Do you think we
will let you ruin everything by your clowning? Come down!"
Andre-Louis, maintaining his position by clutching one of the legs of
the bronze horse, flung his voice like a bugle-note over the heads of that
seething mob.
"Citizens of Rennes, the motherland is in danger!"
The effect was electric. A stir ran, like a ripple over water, across
that froth of upturned human faces, and completest silence followed. In that
great silence they looked at this slim young man, hatless, long wisps of his
black hair fluttering in the breeze, his neckcloth in disorder, his face
white, his eyes on fire.
Andre-Louis felt a sudden surge of exaltation as he realized by
instinct that at one grip he had seized that crowd, and that he held it fast
in the spell of his cry and his audacity.
Even Le Chapelier, though still clinging to his ankle, had ceased to
tug. The reformer, though unshaken in his assumption of Andre-Louis'
intentions, was for a moment bewildered by the first note of his appeal.
And then, slowly, impressively, in a voice that travelled clear to the
ends of the square, the young lawyer of Gavrillac began to speak.
"Shuddering in horror of the vile deed here perpetrated, my voice
demands to be heard by you. You have seen murder done under your eyes - the
murder of one who nobly, without any thought of self, gave voice to the
wrongs by which we are all oppressed. Fearing that voice, shunning the truth
as foul things shun the light, our oppressors sent their agents to silence
him in death."
Le Chapelier released at last his hold of Andre-Louis' ankle, staring
up at him the while in sheer amazement. It seemed that the fellow was in
earnest; serious for once; and for once on the right side. What had come to
him?
"Of assassins what shall you look for but assassination? I have a tale
to tell which will show that this is no new thing that you have witnessed
here to-day; it will reveal to you the forces with which you have to deal.
Yesterday... "
There was an interruption. A voice in the crowd, some twenty paces,
perhaps, was raised to shout:
"Yet another of them!"
Immediately after the voice came a pistol-shot, and a bullet flattened
itself against the bronze figure just behind Andre-Louis.
Instantly there was turmoil in the crowd, most intense about the spot
whence the shot had been fired. The assailant was one of a considerable
group of the opposition, a group that found itself at once beset on every
side, and hard put to it to defend him.
>From the foot of the plinth rang the voice of the students making
chorus to Le Chapelier, who was bidding Andre-Louis to seek shelter.
"Come down! Come down at once! They'll murder you as they murdered La
Riviere."
"Let them!" He flung wide his arms in a gesture supremely theatrical,
and laughed. "I stand here at their mercy. Let them, if they will, add mine
to the blood that will presently rise up to choke them. Let them assassinate
me. It is a trade they understand. But until they do so, they shall not
prevent me from speaking to you, from telling you what is to be looked for
in them." And again he laughed, not merely in exaltation as they supposed
who watched him from below, but also in amusement. And his amusement had two
sources. One was to discover how glibly he uttered the phrases proper to
whip up the emotions of a crowd: the other was in the remembrance of how the
crafty Cardinal de Retz, for the purpose of inflaming popular sympathy on
his behalf, had been in the habit of hiring fellows to fire upon his
carriage. He was in just such case as that arch-politician. True, he had not
hired the fellow to fire that pistol-shot; but he was none the less obliged
to him, and ready to derive the fullest, advantage from the act.
The group that sought to protect that man was battling on, seeking to
hew a way out of that angry, heaving press.
"Let them go!" Andre-Louis called down... "What matters one assassin
more or less? Let them go, and listen to me, my countrymen!"
And presently, when some measure of order was restored, he began his
tale. In simple language now, yet with a vehemence and directness that drove
home every point, he tore their hearts with the story of yesterday's
happenings at Gavrillac. He drew tears from them with the pathos of his
picture of the bereaved widow Mabey and her three starving, destitute
children - "orphaned to avenge the death of a pheasant" - and the bereaved
mother of that M. de Vilmorin, a student of Rennes, known here to many of
them, who had met his death in a noble endeavour to champion the cause of an
esurient member of their afflicted order.
"The Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr said of him that he had too dangerous a
gift of eloquence. It was to silence his brave voice that he killed him. But
he has failed of his object. For I, poor Philippe de Vilmorin's friend, have
assumed the mantle of his apostleship, and I speak to you with his voice
to-day."
It was a statement that helped Le Chapelier at last to understand, at
least in part, this bewildering change in Andre-Louis, which rendered him
faithless to the side that employed him.
"I am not here," continued Andre-Louis, "merely to demand at your hands
vengeance upon Philippe de Vilmorin's murderers. I am here to tell you the
things he would to-day have told you had he lived."
So far at least he was frank. But he did not add that they were things
he did not himself believe, things that he accounted the cant by which an
ambitious bourgeoisie - speaking through the mouths of the lawyers, who were
its articulate part - sought to overthrow to its own advantage the present
state of things. He left his audience in the natural belief that the views
he expressed were the views he held.
And now in a terrible voice, with an eloquence that amazed himself, he
denounced the inertia of the royal justice where the great are the
offenders. It was with bitter sarcasm that he spoke of their King's
Lieutenant, M. de Lesdiguieres.
"Do you wonder," he asked them, "that M. de Lesdiguieres should
administer the law so that it shall ever be favourable to our great nobles?
Would it be just, would it be reasonable that he should otherwise administer
it?" He paused dramatically to let his sarcasm sink in. It had the effect of
reawakening Le Chapelier's doubts, and checking his dawning conviction in
Andre-Louis' sincerity. Whither was he going now?
He was not left long in doubt. Proceeding, Andre-Louis spoke as he
conceived that Philippe de Vilmorin would have spoken. He had so often
argued with him, so often attended the discussions of the Literary Chamber,
that he had all the rant of the reformers - that was yet true in substance -
at his fingers' ends.
"Consider, after all, the composition of this France of ours. A million
of its inhabitants are members of the privileged classes. They compose
France. They are France. For surely you cannot suppose the remainder to be
anything that matters. It cannot be pretended that twenty-four million souls
are of any account, that they can be representative of this great nation, or
that they can exist for any purpose but that of servitude to the million
elect."
Bitter laughter shook them now, as he desired it should. "Seeing their
privileges in danger of invasion by these twenty-four millions - mostly
canailles; possibly created by God, it is true, but clearly so created to be
the slaves of Privilege - does it surprise you that the dispensing of royal
justice should be placed in the stout hands of these Lesdiguieres, men
without brains to think or hearts to be touched? Consider what it is that
must be defended against the assault of us others - canaille. Consider a few
of these feudal rights that are in danger of being swept away should the
Privileged yield even to the commands of their sovereign; and admit the
Third Estate to an equal vote with themselves.
"What would become of the right of terrage on the land, of parciere on
the fruit-trees, of carpot on the vines? What of the corvees by which they
command forced labour, of the ban de vendage, which gives them the first
vintage, the banvin which enables them to control to their own advantage the
sale of wine? What of their right of grinding the last liard of taxation out
of the people to maintain their own opulent estate; the cens, the
lods-et-ventes, which absorb a fifth of the value of the land, the blairee,
which must be paid before herds can feed on communal lands, the pulverage to
indemnify them for the dust raised on their roads by the herds that go to
market, the sextelage on everything offered for sale in the public markets,
the etalonnage, and all the rest? What of their rights over men and animals
for field labour, of ferries over rivers, and of bridges over streams, of
sinking wells, of warren, of dovecot, and of fire, which last yields them a
tax on every peasant hearth? What of their exclusive rights of fishing and
of hunting, the violation of which is ranked as almost a capital offence?
"And what of other rights, unspeakable, abominable, over the lives and
bodies of their people, rights which, if rarely exercised, have never been
rescinded. To this day if a noble returning from the hunt were to slay two
of his serfs to bathe and refresh his feet in their blood, he could still
claim in his sufficient defence that it was his absolute feudal right to do
so.
"Rough-shod, these million Privileged ride over the souls and bodies of
twenty-four million contemptible canaille existing but for their own
pleasure. Woe betide him who so much as raises his voice in protest in the
name of humanity against an excess of these already excessive abuses. I have
told you of one remorselessly slain in cold blood for doing no more than
that. Your own eyes have witnessed the assassination of another here upon
this plinth, of yet another over there by the cathedral works, and the
attempt upon my own life.
"Between them and the justice due to them in such cases stand these
Lesdiguieres, these King's Lieutenants; not instruments of justice, but
walls erected for the shelter of Privilege and Abuse whenever it exceeds its
grotesquely excessive rights.
"Do you wonder that they will not yield an inch; that they will resist
the election of a Third Estate with the voting power to sweep all these
privileges away, to compel the Privileged to submit themselves to a just
equality in the eyes of the law with the meanest of the canaille they
trample underfoot, to provide that the moneys necessary to save this state
from the bankruptcy into which they have all but plunged it shall be raised
by taxation to be borne by themselves in the same proportion as by others?
"Sooner than yield to so much they prefer to resist even the royal
command."
A phrase occurred to him used yesterday by Vilmorin, a phrase to which
he had refused to attach importance when uttered then. He used it now. "In
doing this they are striking at the very foundations of the throne. These
fools do not perceive that if that throne falls over, it is they who stand
nearest to it who will be crushed."
A terrific roar acclaimed that statement. Tense and quivering with the
excitement that was flowing through him, and from him out into that great
audience, he stood a moment smiling ironically. Then he waved them into
silence,, and saw by their ready obedience how completely he possessed them.
For in the voice with which he spoke each now recognized the voice of
himself, giving at last expression to the thoughts that for months and years
had been inarticulately stirring in each simple mind.
Presently he resumed, speaking more quietly, that ironic smile about
the corner of his mouth growing more marked:
"In taking my leave of M. de Lesdiguieres I gave him warning out of a
page of natural history. I told him that when the wolves, roaming singly
through the jungle, were weary of being hunted by the tiger, they banded
themselves into packs, and went a-hunting the tiger in their turn. M. de
Lesdiguieres contemptuously answered that he did not understand me. But your
wits are better than his. You understand me, I think? Don't you?"
Again a great roar, mingled now with some approving laughter, was his
answer. He had wrought them up to a pitch of dangerous passion, and they
were ripe for any violence to which he urged them. If he had failed with the
windmill, at least he was now master of the wind.
"To the Palais!" they shouted, waving their hands, brandishing canes,
and - here and there - even a sword. "To the Palais! Down with M. de
Lesdiguieres! Death to the King's Lieutenant!"
He was master of the wind, indeed. His dangerous gift of oratory
- a gift nowhere more powerful than in France, since nowhere else are
men's emotions so quick to respond to the appeal of eloquence
- had given him this mastery. At his bidding now the gale would sweep
away the windmill against which he had flung himself in vain. But that, as
he straightforwardly revealed it, was no part of his intent.
"Ah, wait!" he bade them. "Is this miserable instrument of a corrupt
system worth the attention of your noble indignation?"
He hoped his words would be reported to M. de Lesdiguieres. He thought
it would be good for the soul of M. de Lesdiguieres to hear the undiluted
truth about himself for once.
"It is the system itself you must attack and overthrow; not a mere
instrument - a miserable painted lath such as this. And precipitancy will
spoil everything. Above all, my children, no violence!"
My children! Could his godfather have heard him!
"You have seen often already the result of premature violence elsewhere
in Brittany, and you have heard of it elsewhere in France. Violence on your
part will call for violence on theirs. They will welcome the chance to
assert their mastery by a firmer grip than heretofore. The military will be
sent for. You will be faced by the bayonets of mercenaries. Do not provoke
that, I implore you. Do not put it into their power, do not afford them the
pretext they would welcome to crush you down into the mud of your own
blood."
Out of the silence into which they had fallen anew broke now the cry of
"What else, then? What else?"
"I will tell you," he answered them. "The wealth and strength of
Brittany lies in Nantes - a bourgeois city, one of the most prosperous in
this realm, rendered so by the energy of the bourgeoisie and the toil of the
people. It was in Nantes that this movement had its beginning, and as a
result of it the King issued his order dissolving the States as now
constituted - an order which those who base their power on Privilege and
Abuse do not hesitate to thwart. Let Nantes be informed of the precise
situation, and let nothing be done here until Nantes shall have given us the
lead. She has the power - which we in Rennes have not - to make her will
prevail, as we have seen already. Let her exert that power once more, and
until she does so do you keep the peace in Rennes. Thus shall you triumph.
Thus shall the outrages that are being perpetrated under your eyes be fully
and finally avenged."
As abruptly as he had leapt upon the plinth did he now leap down from
it. He had finished. He had said all - perhaps more than all - that could
have been said by the dead friend with whose voice he spoke. But it was not
their will that he should thus extinguish himself. The thunder of their
acclamations rose deafeningly upon the air. He had played upon their
emotions - each in turn - as a skilful harpist plays upon the strings of his
instrument. And they were vibrant with the passions he had aroused, and the
high note of hope on which he had brought his symphony to a close.
A dozen students caught him as he leapt down, and swung him to their
shoulders, where again he came within view of all the acclaiming crowd.
The delicate Le Chapelier pressed alongside of him with flushed face
and shining eyes.
"My lad," he said to him, "you have kindled a fire to-day that will
sweep the face of France in a blaze of liberty." And then to the students he
issued a sharp command. "To the Literary Chamber -at once. We must concert
measures upon the instant, a delegate must be dispatched to Nantes
forthwith, to convey to our friends there the message of the people of
Rennes."
The crowd fell back, opening a lane through which the students bore the
hero of the hour. Waving his hands to them, he called upon them to disperse
to their homes, and await there in patience what must follow very soon.
"You have endured for centuries with a fortitude that is a pattern to
the world," he flattered them. "Endure a little longer yet. The end, my
friends, is well in sight at last."
They carried him out of the square and up the Rue Royale to an old
house, one of the few old houses surviving in that city that had risen from
its ashes, where in an upper chamber lighted by diamond-shaped panes of
yellow glass the Literary Chamber usually held its meetings. Thither in his
wake the members of that chamber came hurrying, summoned by the messages
that Le Chapelier had issued during their progress.
Behind closed doors a flushed and excited group of some fifty men, the
majority of whom were young, ardent, and afire with the illusion of liberty,
hailed Andre-Louis as the strayed sheep who had returned to the fold, and
smothered him in congratulations and thanks.
Then they settled down to deliberate upon immediate measures, whilst
the doors below were kept by a guard of honour that had improvised itself
from the masses. And very necessary was this. For no sooner had the Chamber
assembled than the house was assailed by the gendarmerie of M. de
Lesdiguieres, dispatched in haste to arrest the firebrand who was inciting
the people of Rennes to sedition. The force consisted of fifty men. Five
hundred would have been too few. The mob broke their carbines, broke some of
their heads, and would indeed have torn them into pieces had they not beaten
a timely and well-advised retreat before a form of horseplay to which they
were not at all accustomed.
And whilst that was taking place in the street below, in the room
abovestairs the eloquent Le Chapelier was addressing his colleagues of the
Literary Chamber. Here, with no bullets to fear, and no one to report his
words to the authorities, Le Chapelier could permit his oratory a full,
unintimidated flow. And that considerable oratory was as direct and brutal
as the man himself was delicate and elegant.
He praised the vigour and the greatness of the speech they had heard
from their colleague Moreau. Above all he praised its wisdom. Moreau's words
had come as a surprise to them. Hitherto they had never known him as other
than a bitter critic of their projects of reform and regeneration; and quite
lately they had heard, not without misgivings, of his appointment as
delegate for a nobleman in the States of Brittany. But they held the
explanation of his conversion. The murder of their dear colleague Vilmorin
had produced this change. In that brutal deed Moreau had beheld at last in
true proportions the workings of that evil spirit which they were vowed to
exorcise from France. And to-day he had proven himself the stoutest apostle
among them of the new faith. He had pointed out to them the only sane and
useful course. The illustration he had borrowed from natural history was
most apt. Above all, let them pack like the wolves, and to ensure this
uniformity of action in the people of all Brittany, let a delegate at once
be sent to Nantes, which had already proved itself the real seat of
Brittany's power. It but remained to appoint that delegate, and Le Chapelier
invited them to elect him.
Andre-Louis, on a bench near the window, a prey now to some measure of
reaction, listened in bewilderment to that flood of eloquence.
As the applause died down, he heard a voice exclaiming:
"I propose to you that we appoint our leader here, Le Chapelier, to be
that delegate."
Le Chapelier reared his elegantly dressed head, which had been bowed in
thought, and it was seen that his countenance was pale. Nervously he
fingered a gold spy-glass.
"My friends," he said, slowly, "I am deeply sensible of the honour that
you do me. But in accepting it I should be usurping an honour that rightly
belongs elsewhere. Who could represent us better, who more deserving to be
our representative, to speak to our friends of Nantes with the voice of
Rennes, than the champion who once already to-day has so incomparably given
utterance to the voice of this great city? Confer this honour of being your
spokesman where it belongs - upon Andre-Louis Moreau."
Rising in response to the storm of applause that greeted the proposal,
Andre-Louis bowed and forthwith yielded. "Be it so," he said, simply. "It is
perhaps fitting that I should carry out what I have begun, though I too am
of the opinion that Le Chapelier would have been a worthier representative.
I will set out to-night."
"You will set out at once, my lad," Le Chapelier informed him, and now
revealed what an uncharitable mind might account the true source of his
generosity. "It is not safe after what has happened for you to linger an
hour in Rennes. And you must go secretly. Let none of you allow it to be
known that he has gone. I would not have you come to harm over this,
Andre-Louis. But you must see the risks you run, and if you are to be spared
to help in this work of salvation of our afflicted motherland, you must use
caution, move secretly, veil your identity even. Or else M. de Lesdiguieres
will have you laid by the heels, and it will be good-night for you."
Andre-Louis rode forth from Rennes committed to a deeper adventure than
he had dreamed of when he left the sleepy village of Gavrillac. Lying the
night at a roadside inn, and setting out again early in the morning, he
reached Nantes soon after noon of the following day.
Through that long and lonely ride through the dull plains of Brittany,
now at their dreariest in their winter garb, he had ample leisure in which
to review his actions and his position. From one who had taken hitherto a
purely academic and by no means friendly interest in the new philosophies of
social life, exercising his wits upon these new ideas merely as a fencer
exercises his eye and wrist with the foils, without ever suffering himself
to be deluded into supposing the issue a real one, he found himself suddenly
converted into a revolutionary firebrand, committed to revolutionary action
of the most desperate kind. The representative and delegate of a nobleman in
the States of Brittany, he found himself simultaneously and incongruously
the representative and delegate of the whole Third Estate of Rennes.
It is difficult to determine to what extent, in the heat of passion and
swept along by the torrent of his own oratory, he might yesterday have
succeeded in deceiving himself. But it is at least certain that, looking
back in cold blood now he had no single delusion on the score of what he had
done. Cynically he had presented to his audience one side only of the great
question that he propounded.
But since the established order of things in France was such as to make
a rampart for M. de La Tour d'Azyr, affording him complete immunity for this
and any other crimes that it pleased him to commit, why, then the
established order must take the consequences of its wrong-doing. Therein he
perceived his clear justification.
And so it was without misgivings that he came on his errand of sedition
into that beautiful city of Nantes, rendered its spacious streets and
splendid port the rival in prosperity of Bordeaux and Marseilles.
He found an inn on the Quai La Fosse, where he put up his horse, and
where he dined in the embrasure of a window that looked out over the
tree-bordered quay and the broad bosom of the Loire, on which argosies of
all nations rode at anchor. The sun had again broken through the clouds, and
shed its pale wintry light over the yellow waters and the tall-masted
shipping.
Along the quays there was a stir of life as great as that to be seen on
the quays of Paris. Foreign sailors in outlandish garments and of
harsh-sounding, outlandish speech, stalwart fishwives with baskets of
herrings on their heads, voluminous of petticoat above bare legs and bare
feet, calling their wares shrilly and almost inarticulately, watermen in
woollen caps and loose trousers rolled to the knees, peasants in goatskin
coats, their wooden shoes clattering on the round kidney-stones, shipwrights
and labourers from the dockyards, bellows-menders, rat-catchers,
water-carriers, ink-sellers, and other itinerant pedlars. And, sprinkled
through this proletariat mass that came and went in constant movement,
Andre-Louis beheld tradesmen in sober garments, merchants in long, fur-lined
coats; occasionally a merchant-prince rolling along in his two-horse
cabriolet to the whip-crackings and shouts of "Gare!" from his coachman;
occasionally a dainty lady carried past in her sedan-chair, with perhaps a
mincing abbe from the episcopal court tripping along in attendance;
occasionally an officer in scarlet riding disdainfully; and once the great
carriage of a nobleman, with escutcheoned panels and a pair of
white-stockinged, powdered footmen in gorgeous liveries hanging on behind.
And there were Capuchins in brown and Benedictines in black, and secular
priests in plenty - for God was well served in the sixteen parishes of
Nantes - and by way of contrast there were lean-jawed, out-at-elbow
adventurers, and gendarmes in blue coats and gaitered legs, sauntering
guardians of the peace.
Representatives of every class that went to make up the seventy
thousand inhabitants of that wealthy, industrious city were to be seen in
the human stream that ebbed and flowed beneath the window from which
Andre-Louis observed it.
Of the waiter who ministered to his humble wants with soup and bouilli,
and a measure of vin gris, Andre-Louis enquired into the state of public
feeling in the city. The waiter, a staunch supporter of the privileged
orders, admitted regretfully that an uneasiness prevailed. Much would depend
upon what happened at Rennes. If it was true that the King had dissolved the
States of Brittany, then all should be well, and the malcontents would have
no pretext for further disturbances. There had been trouble and to spare in
Nantes already. They wanted no repetition of it. All manner of rumours were
abroad, and since early morning there had been crowds besieging the portals
of the Chamber of Commerce for definite news. But definite news was yet to
come. It was not even known for a fact that His Majesty actually had
dissolved the States.
It was striking two, the busiest hour of the day upon the Bourse, when
Andre-Louis reached the Place du Commerce. The square, dominated by the
imposing classical building of the Exchange, was so crowded that he was
compelled almost to fight his way through to the steps of the magnificent
Ionic porch. A word would have sufficed to have opened a way for him at
once. But guile moved him to keep silent. He would come upon that waiting
multitude as a thunderclap, precisely as yesterday he had come upon the mob
at Rennes. He would lose nothing of the surprise effect of his entrance.
The precincts of that house of commerce were jealously kept by a line
of ushers armed with staves, a guard as hurriedly assembled by the merchants
as it was evidently necessary. One of these now effectively barred the young
lawyer's passage as he attempted to mount the steps.
Andre-Louis announced himself in a whisper.
The stave was instantly raised from the horizontal, and he passed and
went up the steps in the wake of the usher. At the top, on the threshold of
the chamber, he paused, and stayed his guide.
"I will wait here," he announced. "Bring the president to me."
"Your name, monsieur?"
Almost had Andre-Louis answered him when he remembered Le Chapelier's
warning of the danger with which his mission was fraught, and Le Chapelier's
parting admonition to conceal his identity.
"My name is unknown to him; it matters nothing; I am the mouthpiece of
a people, no more. Go."
The usher went, and in the shadow of that lofty, pillared portico
Andre-Louis waited, his eyes straying out ever and anon to survey that
spread of upturned faces immediately below him.
Soon the president came, others following, crowding out into the
portico, jostling one another in their eagerness to hear the news.
"You are a messenger from Rennes?"
"I am the delegate sent by the Literary Chamber of that city to inform
you here in Nantes of what is taking place."
"Your name?"
Andre-Louis paused. "The less we mention names perhaps the better."
The president's eyes grew big with gravity. He was a corpulent, florid
man, purse-proud, and self-sufficient.
He hesitated a moment. Then - "Come into the Chamber," said he.
"By your leave, monsieur, I will deliver my message from here - from
these steps."
"From here?" The great merchant frowned.
"My message is for the people of Nantes, and from here I can speak at
once to the greatest number of Nantais of all ranks, and it is my desire -
and the desire of those whom I represent - that as great a number as
possible should hear my message at first hand."
"Tell me, sir, is it true that the King has dissolved the States?"
Andre-Louis looked at him. He smiled apologetically, and waved a hand
towards the crowd, which by now was straining for a glimpse of this slim
young man who had brought forth the president and more than half the numbers
of the Chamber, guessing already, with that curious instinct of crowds, that
he was the awaited bearer of tidings.
"Summon the gentlemen of your Chamber, monsieur," said he, "and you
shall hear all."
"So be it."
A word, and forth they came to crowd upon the steps, but leaving clear
the topmost step and a half-moon space in the middle.
To the spot so indicated, Andre-Louis now advanced very deliberately.
He took his stand there, dominating the entire assembly. He removed his hat,
and launched the opening bombshell of that address which is historic,
marking as it does one of the great stages of France's progress towards
revolution.
"People of this great city of Nantes, I have come to summon you to
arms!"
In the amazed and rather scared silence that followed he surveyed them
for a moment before resuming.
"I am a delegate of the people of Rennes, charged to announce to you
what is taking place, and to invite you in this dreadful hour of our
country's peril to rise and march to her defence."
"Name! Your name!" a voice shouted, and instantly the cry was taken up
by others, until the multitude rang with the question.
He could not answer that excited mob as he had answered the president.
It was necessary to compromise, and he did so, happily. "My name," said he,
"is Omnes Omnibus - all for all. Let that suffice you now. I am a herald, a
mouthpiece, a voice; no more. I come to announce to you that since the
privileged orders, assembled for the States of Brittany in Rennes, resisted
your will - our will
- despite the King's plain hint to them, His Majesty has dissolved the
States."
There was a burst of delirious applause. Men laughed and shouted, and
cries of "Vive le Roi!" rolled forth like thunder. Andre-Louis waited, and
gradually the preternatural gravity of his countenance came to be observed,
and to beget the suspicion that there might be more to follow. Gradually
silence was restored, and at last Andre Louis was able to proceed.
"You rejoice too soon. Unfortunately, the nobles, in their insolent
arrogance, have elected to ignore the royal dissolution, and in despite of
it persist in sitting and in conducting matters as seems good to them."
A silence of utter dismay greeted that disconcerting epilogue to the
announcement that had been so rapturously received. Andre-Louis continued
after a moment's pause:
"So that these men who were already rebels against the people, rebels,
against justice and equity, rebels against humanity itself, are now also
rebels against their King. Sooner than yield an inch of the unconscionable
privileges by which too long already they have flourished, to the misery of
a whole nation, they will make a mock of royal authority, hold up the King
himself to contempt. They are determined to prove that there is no real
sovereignty in France but the sovereignty of their own parasitic
faineantise."
There was a faint splutter of applause, but the majority of the
audience remained silent, waiting.
"This is no new thing. Always has it been the same. No minister in the
last ten years, who, seeing the needs and perils of the State, counselled
the measures that we now demand as the only means of arresting our
motherland in its ever-quickening progress to the abyss, but found himself
as a consequence cast out of office by the influence which Privilege brought
to bear against him. Twice already has M. Necker been called to the
ministry, to be twice dismissed when his insistent counsels of reform
threatened the privileges of clergy and nobility. For the third time now has
he been called to office, and at last it seems we are to have States General
in spite of Privilege. But what the privileged orders can no longer prevent,
they are determined to stultify. Since it is now a settled thing that these
States General are to meet, at least the nobles and the clergy will see to
it - unless we take measures to prevent them - by packing the Third Estate
with their own creatures, and denying it all effective representation, that
they convert. the States General into an instrument of their own will for
the perpetuation of the abuses by which they live. To achieve this end they
will stop at nothing. They have flouted the authority of the King, and they
are silencing by assassination those who raise their voices to condemn them.
Yesterday in Rennes two young men who addressed the people as I am
addressing you were done to death in the streets by assassins at the
instigation of the nobility. Their blood cries out for vengeance."
Beginning in a sullen mutter, the indignation that moved his hearers
swelled up to express itself in a roar of anger.
"Citizens of Nantes, the motherland is in peril. Let us march to her
defence. Let us proclaim it to the world that we recognize that the measures
to liberate the Third Estate from the slavery in which for centuries it has
groaned find only obstacles in those orders whose phrenetic egotism sees in
the tears and suffering of the unfortunate an odious tribute which they
would pass on to their generations still unborn. Realizing from the
barbarity of the means employed by our enemies to perpetuate our oppression
that we have everything to fear from the aristocracy they would set up as a
constitutional principle for the governing of France, let us declare
ourselves at once enfranchised from it.
"The establishment of liberty and equality should be the aim of every
citizen member of the Third Estate; and to this end we should stand
indivisibly united, especially the young and vigorous, especially those who
have had the good fortune to be born late enough to be able to gather for
themselves the precious fruits of the philosophy of this eighteenth
century."
Acclamations broke out unstintedly now. He had caught them in the snare
of his oratory. And he pressed his advantage instantly.
"Let us all swear," he cried in a great voice, "to raise up in the name
of humanity and of liberty a rampart against our enemies, to oppose to their
bloodthirsty covetousness the calm perseverance of men whose cause is just.
And let us protest here and in advance against any tyrannical decrees that
should declare us seditious when we have none but pure and just intentions.
Let us make oath upon the honour of our motherland that should any of us be
seized by an unjust tribunal, intending against us one of those acts termed
of political expediency - which are, in effect, but acts of despotism - let
us swear, I say, to give a full expression to the strength that is in us and
do that in self-defence which nature, courage, and despair dictate to us."
Loud and long rolled the applause that greeted his conclusion, and he
observed with satisfaction and even some inward grim amusement that the
wealthy merchants who had been congregated upon the steps, and who now came
crowding about him to shake him by the hand and to acclaim him, were not
merely participants in, but the actual leaders of, this delirium of
enthusiasm.
It confirmed him, had he needed confirmation, in his conviction that
just as the philosophies upon which this new movement was based had their
source in thinkers extracted from the bourgeoisie, so the need to adopt
those philosophies to the practical purposes of life was most acutely felt
at present by those bourgeois who found themselves debarred by Privilege