Part 43 (1/2)
thesehis enelooht lead us to suppose, he must have found it idle What if two hundred thousand men under arms--men without uniforms and with the most extraordinary motley of weapons ever seen--awaited hiuard of honour
Mayor Bailly at the barrier presented him with the keys of the city
”These are the same keys that were presented to Henri IV He had reconquered his people Now the people have reconquered their King”
At the Hotel de Ville Mayor Bailly offered him the new cockade, the tricoloured syiven his royal confireoise and to the appointain for Versailles amid the shouts of ”Vive le Roi!” froe--before the cannon'sat last, where had they subht have saved oceans of blood--chiefly their own They coy, to join the National assembly, to labour with it upon this constitution that is to regenerate France But the reunion is a mockery--asthe Te Deurotesque and incredible of all these grotesque and incredible events All that has happened to the National assembly is that it has introduced five or six hundred enemies to hamper and hinder its deliberations
But all this is an oft-told tale, to be read in detail elsewhere I give you here just so s, ales that were operated in his s in which he had not believed when earlier he had preached thee in his fortune had coht about by the other changes wrought around hier need he hide hirotesque charge of sedition for what he had done in Brittany? What court would dare to send hi said in advance what all France was saying now? As for that other possible charge of murder, who should concern himself with the death of the miserable Binet killed by him--if, indeed, he had killed him, as he hoped--in self-defence
And so one fine day in early August, Andre-Louis gave hi smoothly under his assistants, hired a chaise and drove out to Versailles to the Cafe d'A-place of the Club Breton, the seed fro that Society of the Friends of the Constitution better known as the Jacobins He went to seek Le Chapelier, who had been one of the founders of the club, a reat prominence now, president of the asse upon the Declaration of the Rights of Man
Le Chapelier's importance was reflected in the sudden servility of the shi+rt-sleeved, white-aproned waiter of whom Andre-Louis inquired for the representative
M Le Chapelier was above-stairs with friends The waiter desired to serve the gentleman, but hesitated to break in upon the asseave hie him to make the attempt Then he sat down at aout over the wide tree-encircled square There, in that common-rooreat o he had yielded precedence to Andre-Louis in a hts, one of the great leaders of the Nation in travail, and Andre-Louis was deep down in the shadows of the general ht was in thein the other the ht
In Le Chapelier, Andre-Louis observed certain heightened refinements of dress that ith certain subtler refinements of countenance He was thinner than of old, his face was pale and there was a weariness in the eyes that considered his visitor through a gold-ri eyes of the Breton deputy noted changes even more marked The aliven Andre-Louis a grace of nity, of command He seeance which if quiet was none the less rich He wore a small silver-hilted sword, and wore it as if used to it, and his black hair that Le Chapelier had never seen other than fluttering lank about his bony cheeks was glossy now and gathered into a club Almost he had the air of a petit-es were purely superficial, as each was soon to reveal to the other Le Chapelier was ever the saht Breton, abrupt of led surprise and pleasure; then opened wide his araze of the waiter, who at once effaced himself
”Andre-Louis, my friend! Whence do you drop?”
”We drop from above I come frohts”
”On the heights! But that you willed it so, it is yourselfin hts, and I find the atmosphere too rarefied
Indeed, you look none too well on it yourself, Isaac You are pale”
”The asseht That is all These daed multiply our difficulties They will do so until we decree their abolition”
They sat down ”Abolition! You contemplate so much? Not that you surprise me You have always been an extremist”
”I contemplate it that I may save them I seek to abolish them officially, so as to save them from abolition of another kind at the hands of a people they exasperate”
”I see And the King?”
”The King is the incarnation of the Nation We shall deliver hie Our constitution will accoed ”Does it matter? I am a dreamer in politics, not a man of action Until lately I have been very moderate; more moderate than you think But now al, and I have perceived that this King is--just nothing, a puppet who dances according to the hand that pulls the string”
”This King, you say? What other king is possible? You are surely not of those eave dreaely recruited by the popular hatred of the Queen and the known fact that she hates hient, some even more; Robespierre is of the number”
”Who?” asked Andre-Louis, to whom the name was unknown
”Robespierre--a preposterous little laho represents Arras, a shabby, cluh his nose to which nobody listens--an ultra-royalist who for their own ends He has pertinacity, and he insists upon being heard He may be listened to so of Orleans pish!+ Orleans himself may desire it, but the man is a eunuch in crime; he would, but he can't The phrase is Mirabeau's”