Part 51 (2/2)
”What exactly does it mean to our business, anyway?” he asked ”Does it mean that when you are a representative you will not scruple to skewer M le Marquis?”
”If M le Marquis should offer himself to be skewered, as he no doubt will”
”I perceive the distinction,” said M Danton, and sneered ”You've an ingenious mind” He turned to Le Chapelier ”What did you say he was to begin with--a lawyer, wasn't it?”
”Yes, I was a lawyer, and afterwards a mountebank”
”And this is the result!”
”As you say And do you know that we are after all not so dissimilar, you and I?”
”What?”
”Once like you I went about inciting other people to go and kill the man I wanted dead You'll say I was a coward, of course”
Le Chapelier prepared to slip between theiant's brow Then these were dispelled again, and the great laugh vibrated through the long room
”You've touched me for the second time, and in the same place Oh, you can fence, my lad We should be friends Rue des Cordeliers is es Des There's always a bottle for a friend”
CHAPTER VII THE SPADassINICIDES
After an absence of rather more than a week, M le Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr was back in his place on the Cote Droit of the National asse, we should already at this date allude to him as the ci-devant Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr, for the ti--on the ht Breton leveller, Le Chapelier--of the decree that nobility should no more be hereditary than infaallows must not defile the possibly worthy descendants of one who had been convicted of evil, neither should the blazon advertising achievelorify the possibly unworthy descendants of one who had proved hi hereditary nobility and consigning faer to be tolerated by an enlightened generation of philosophers M le Comte de Lafayette, who had supported the reat tribune Count Mirabeau became plain M Riquetti, and M le Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr just si was done in one of those exaltations produced by the approach of the great National Festival of the Chahly repented on the h law by now, it was a law that no one troubled just yet to enforce
That, however, is by the way The time, as I have said, was Septelooe, where on their eight rows of green benches elliptically arranged in ascending tiers about the space known as La Piste, sat soht or nine hundred of the representatives of the three orders that composed the nation
The matter under debate by the constitution-builders hether the deliberating body to succeed the Constituent asse, whether it should be periodic or perovern by two chambers or by one
The Abbe Maury, son of a cobbler, and therefore in these days of antitheses orator-in-chief of the party of the Right--the Blacks, as those who fought Privilege's losing battles were knoas in the tribune He appeared to be urging the adoption of a two-cha, uments assumed more and more the form of a sermon; the tribune of the National assembly became more and more like a pulpit; but the rew restive under that steady flow of poe, and it was in vain that the four ushers in black satin breeches and carefully powdered heads, chain of office on their breasts, gilded sword at their sides, circulated in the Piste, clapping their hands, and hissing,
”Silence! En place!”
Equally vain was the interreen-covered table facing the tribune The Abbe Maury had talked too long, and for so it at last, he ceased, whereupon the hueneral And then it fell abruptly There was a silence of expectancy, and a turning of heads, a craning of necks Even the group of secretaries at the round table below the president's dais roused thethe tribune of the assembly for the first time
”M Andre-Louis Moreau, deputy suppleant, vice Eron, deceased, for Ancenis in the Department of the Loire”
M de La Tour d'Azyr shook hiloomy abstraction in which he had sat The successor of the deputy he had slain rihtened when he heard hinized indeed in this Andre-Louis Moreau the young scoundrel as continually crossing his path, continually exerting against hiret that he should have spared his life that day at Gavrillac two years ago That he should thus have stepped into the shoes of Lagron seemed to M de La Tour d'Azyr too apt for e in itself
He looked at the youngat hiue, almost a premonitory, uneasiness
At the very outset, the presence which in itself he conceived to be a challenge was to demonstrate itself for this in no equivocal teran, ”as a deputy-suppleant to fill the place of one asopening that instantly provoked an indignant outcry fro a little, a singularly self-confident young man