Half blinded by tears Andre-Louis stumbled after them
when they bore the body into the inn. Upstairs
in the little room to which they conveyed it, he knelt
by the bed, and holding the dead man’s hand
in both his own, he swore to him out of his impotent
rage that M. de La Tour d’Azyr should pay a
bitter price for this.
“It was your eloquence he feared, Philippe,”
he said. “Then if I can get no justice
for this deed, at least it shall be fruitless to him.
The thing he feared in you, he shall fear in me.
He feared that men might be swayed by your eloquence
to the undoing of such things as himself. Men
shall be swayed by it still. For your eloquence
and your arguments shall be my heritage from you.
I will make them my own. It matters nothing
that I do not believe in your gospel of freedom.
I know it — every word of it; that is all that
matters to our purpose, yours and mine. If all
else fails, your thoughts shall find expression in
my living tongue. Thus at least we shall have
frustrated his vile aim to still the voice he feared.
It shall profit him nothing to have your blood upon
his soul. That voice in you would never half
so relentlessly have hounded him and his as it shall
in me — if all else fails.”
It was an exulting thought. It calmed him; it
soothed his grief, and he began very softly to pray.
And then his heart trembled as he considered that
Philippe, a man of peace, almost a priest, an apostle
of Christianity, had gone to his Maker with the sin
of anger on his soul. It was horrible.
Yet God would see the righteousness of that anger.
And in no case — be man’s interpretation
of Divinity what it might — could that one sin
outweigh the loving good that Philippe had ever practised,
the noble purity of his great heart. God after
all, reflected Andre-Louis, was not a grand-seigneur.
CHAPTER V
THE LORD OF GAVRILLAC
For the second time that day Andre-Louis set out for
the chateau, walking briskly, and heeding not at all
the curious eyes that followed him through the village,
and the whisperings that marked his passage through
the people, all agog by now with that day’s
event in which he had been an actor.
He was ushered by Benoit, the elderly body-servant,
rather grandiloquently called the seneschal, into
the ground-floor room known traditionally as the library.
It still contained several shelves of neglected volumes,
from which it derived its title, but implements of
the chase — fowling-pieces, powder-horns, hunting-bags,
sheath-knives — obtruded far more prominently
than those of study. The furniture was massive,
of oak richly carved, and belonging to another age.
Great massive oak beams crossed the rather lofty
whitewashed ceiling.
Here the squat Seigneur de Gavrillac was restlessly
pacing when Andre-Louis was introduced. He was
already informed, as he announced at once, of what
had taken place at the Breton arme. M. de Chabrillane
had just left him, and he confessed himself deeply
grieved and deeply perplexed.
