Part 7 (2/2)
”I will begin with the King's Lieutenant”
”And if you get into the trouble you are seeking, don't coneur storry now
”Since you choose to disobey ainst the windmill, and be damned to you”
Andre-Louis boith a touch of irony, and reached the door
”If the windmill should prove too formidable,” said he, from the threshold, ”I may see what can be done with the wind Good-bye, one, and M de Kercadiou was alone, purple in the face, puzzling out that last cryptic utterance, and not at all happy in his mind, either on the score of his Godson or of M de La Tour d'Azyr He was disposed to be angry with the, wilful men who relentlessly followed their own i Hihbours; and that seeood of life that he was disposed to brand thes
CHAPTER VI THE WINDMILL
There was between Nantes and Rennes an established service of three stage-coaches weekly in each direction, which for a sulish guinea--would carry you the seventy and odd miles of the journey in so in each direction would swerve aside fro and take letters, newspapers, and soers It was usually by this coach that Andre-Louis came and hen the occasion offered At present, however, he was tooof that diligence So it was on a horse hired fro; and an hour's brisk ride under a grey wintry sky, by a half-ruined road through ten ht hie over the Vilaine, and so into the upper and principal part of that important city of some thirty thousand souls, , clamant crowds that everywhere blocked his way, must on this day have taken to the streets
Clearly Philippe had not overstated the excite there
He pushed on as best he could, and so came at last to the Place Royale, where he found the crowd to be most dense From the plinth of the equestrian statue of Louis XV, a white-faced youngthe multitude His youth and dress proclaiuard of honour to him, kept the immediate precincts of the statue
Over the heads of the crowd Andre-Louis caught a few of the phrases flung forth by that eager voice
”It was the pro's authority they flout They arrogate to the has dissolved then and the people”
Had he not known already, froht the Third Estate to the point of active revolt, those few phrases would fully have informed him This popular display of teht And in the hope that itto reasonableness the 's Lieutenant, he pushed on up the wide and well-paved Rue Royale, where the concourse of people began to diminish He put up his hired horse at the Coain, on foot, to the Palais de Justice
There was a brawling s about the building cathedral, upon which work had been coo But he did not pause to ascertain the particular cause of that gathering He strode on, and thus came presently to the handsome Italianate palace that was one of the few public edifices that had survived the devastating fire of sixty years ago
He won through with difficulty to the great hall, known as the Salle des Pas Perdus, where he was left to cool his heels for a full half-hour after he had found an usher so condescending as to inform the God who presided over that shrine of Justice that a lawyer froravity
That the God condescended to see hirave coth he was escorted up the broad stone staircase, and ushered into a spacious,crowd of clients, mostly men
There he spent another half-hour, and e exactly what he should say This consideration made him realize the weakness of the case he proposed to set before a man whose views of law and morality were coloured by his social rank
At last he was ushered through a narrow but very hted rooilt and satin to have supplied the boudoir of a lady of fashi+on
It was a trivial setting for a King's Lieutenant, but about the King's Lieutenant there was--at least to ordinary eyes--nothing trivial At the far end of the chaht of one of the tall s that looked out over the inner court, before a goat-legged writing-table with Watteau panels, heavily encrusted with or
Above a scarlet coat with an order fla on its breast, and a billow of lace in which diamonds sparkled like drops of water, sprouted the uieres It was thrown back to scowl upon this visitor with an expectant arrogance that enuflexion awaited fro -coat of brown cloth, and yellow buckskin breeches, his knee-boots splashed with ht together the thick black eyebrows above the great hooked nose
”You announce yourself as a lawyer of Gavrillac with an irowled It was a pere the valuable ti's Lieutenant, of whose i more than a hint M