Over the heads of the crowd Andre-Louis caught a few of the phrases flung forth by that eager voice.

“It was the promise of the King...  It is the King’s authority they flout...  They arrogate to themselves the whole sovereignty in Brittany.  The King has dissolved them...  These insolent nobles defying their sovereign and the people... "

Had he not known already, from what Philippe had told him, of the events which had brought the Third Estate to the point of active revolt, those few phrases would fully have informed him.  This popular display of temper was most opportune to his need, he thought.  And in the hope that it might serve his turn by disposing to reasonableness the mind of the King’s Lieutenant, he pushed on up the wide and well-paved Rue Royale, where the concourse of people began to diminish.  He put up his hired horse at the Come de Cerf, and set out again, on foot, to the Palais de Justice.

There was a brawling mob by the framework of poles and scaffoldings about the building cathedral, upon which work had been commenced a year ago.  But he did not pause to ascertain the particular cause of that gathering.  He strode on, and thus came presently to the handsome Italianate palace that was one of the few public edifices hat had survived the devastating fire of sixty years ago.

He won through with difficulty to the great hall, known as the Salle des Pas Perdus, where he was left to cool his heels for a full half-hour after he had found an usher so condescending as to inform the god who presided over that shrine of Justice that a lawyer from Gavrillac humbly begged an audience on an affair of gravity.

That the god condescended to see him at all was probably due to the grave complexion of the hour.  At long length he was escorted up the broad stone staircase, and ushered into a spacious, meagrely furnished anteroom, to make one of a waiting crowd of clients, mostly men.

There he spent another half-hour, and employed the time in considering exactly what he should say.  This consideration made him realize the weakness of the case he proposed to set before a man whose views of law and morality were coloured by his social rank.

At last he was ushered through a narrow but very massive and richly decorated door into a fine, well-lighted room furnished with enough gilt and satin to have supplied the boudoir of a lady of fashion.

It was a trivial setting for a King’s Lieutenant, but about the King’s Lieutenant there was — at least to ordinary eyes — nothing trivial.  At the far end of the chamber, to the right of one of the tall windows that looked out over the inner court, before a goat-legged writing-table with Watteau panels, heavily encrusted with ormolu, sat that exalted being.  Above a scarlet coat with an order flaming on its breast, and a billow of lace in which diamonds sparkled like drops of water, sprouted the massive powdered head of M. de Lesdiguieres.  It was thrown back to scowl upon this visitor with an expectant arrogance that made Andre-Louis wonder almost was a genuflexion awaited from him.