Part 10 (2/2)
”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 elcorip 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 theth of Brittany lies in Nantes--a bourgeois city, one of the y of the bourgeoisie and the toil of the people It was in Nantes that thisissued 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 infor be done here until Nantes shall have given us the lead She has the pohich 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 triu 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 hose voice he spoke But it was not their will that he should thus extinguish hily 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 syht hiain he ca crowd
The delicate Le Chapelier pressed alongside of hi 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 ate must be dispatched to Nantes forthwith, to convey to our friends there the e 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 theer yet The end, ht 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 frohted by dialass the Literary Chas
Thither in his wake the es that Le Chapelier had issued during their progress
Behind closed doors a flushed and excited group of so, ardent, and afire with the illusion of liberty, hailed Andre-Louis as the strayed sheep who had returned to the fold, and sratulations and thanks
Then they settled down to deliberate upon iuard of honour that had improvised itself from the masses And very necessary was this For no sooner had the Chaendaruieres, dispatched in haste to arrest the firebrand as 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 accusto place in the street below, in the roo 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 our and the greatness of the speech they had heard froue 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 reforeneration; and quite lately they had heard, not without ate for a nobleman in the States of Brittany
But they held the explanation of his conversion The ue Vile 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 hi 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 uniforate at once be sent to Nantes, which had already proved itself the real seat of Brittany's power It but reate, and Le Chapelier invited them to elect him
Andre-Louis, on a bench near the , 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 exclai:
”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 doan honour that rightly belongs elsewhere Who could represent us better, whoto be our representative, to speak to our friends of Nantes with the voice of Rennes, than the chaiven utterance to the voice of this great city? Confer this honour of being your spokess--upon Andre-Louis Moreau”