Part 11 (1/2)
Rising in response to the storreeted the proposal, Andre-Louis bowed and forthwith yielded ”Be it so,” he said, si 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 inforht 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 o 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, uieres will have you laid by the heels, and it will be good-night for you”
CHAPTER VIII OMNES OMNIBUS
Andre-Louis rode forth from Rennes committed to a deeper adventure than he had drea the night at a roadside inn, and setting out again early in theday
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 hi the issue a real one, he found himself suddenly converted into a revolutionary firebrand, committed to revolutionary action of the ate of a nobleman in the States of Brittany, he found hiruously the representative and delegate of the whole Third Estate of Rennes
It is difficult to deter by the torrent of his own oratory, hehi 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 tohim complete immunity for this and any other crimes that it pleased him to commit, why, then the established orderTherein he perceived his clear justification
And so it ithout s that he came on his errand of sedition into that beautiful city of Nantes, rendered by 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 athat looked out over the tree-bordered quay and the broad bosoosies of all nations rode at anchor The sun had again broken through the clouds, and shed its pale wintry light over the yelloaters and the tall- the quays there was a stir of life as great as that to be seen on the quays of Paris Foreign sailors in outlandish gar, outlandish speech, stalwart fishwives with baskets of herrings on their heads, volu 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, shi+pwrights 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 ar, fur-lined coats; occasionally ain 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 ain attendance; occasionally an officer in scarlet riding disdainfully; and once the great carriage of a nobleed, powdered foot on behind And there were Capuchins in brown and Benedictines in black, and secular priests in plenty--for God ell served in the sixteen parishes of Nantes--and by way of contrast there were lean-jawed, out-at-elbow adventurers, and gendaruardians 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 thefrom which Andre-Louis observed it
Of the waiter who ministered to his huris, Andre-Louis enquired into the state of public feeling in the city The waiter, a staunch supporter of the privileged orders, adretfully 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 Allthere had been crowds besieging the portals of the Chamber of Commerce for definite news But definite neas 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 Co classical building of the Exchange, was so crowded that he was coh to the steps of the nificent Ionic porch A ould have sufficed to have opened a way for hiuilemultitude as a thunderclap, precisely as yesterday he had co of the surprise effect of his entrance
The precincts of that house of commerce were jealously kept by a line of ushers aruard 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 chauide
”I ait here,” he announced ”Bring the president to me”
”Your name, monsieur?”
Almost had Andre-Louis answered hier hich hisadmonition to conceal his identity
”My na; 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 hi out into the portico, jostling one another in their eagerness to hear the news
”You are a ate sent by the Literary Chamber of that city to infor place”