He had passed the group by now, and he left that last sentence of his to trail behind him, and after it sent laughter, insolent and provoking.
He had not long to wait. Came a quick step behind him, and a hand falling upon his shoulder, spun him violently round. He was brought face to face with M. de La Tour d’Azyr, whose handsome countenance was calm and composed, but whose eyes reflected something of the sudden blaze of passion stirring in him. Behind him several members of the group were approaching more slowly. The others — like Andre–Louis’ two companions — remained at gaze.
“You spoke of me, I think,” said the Marquis quietly.
“I spoke of an assassin — yes. But to these my friends.” Andre–Louis’ manner was no less quiet, indeed the quieter of the two, for he was the more experienced actor.
“You spoke loudly enough to be overheard,” said the Marquis, answering the insinuation that he had been eavesdropping.
“Those who wish to overhear frequently contrive to do so.”
“I perceive that it is your aim to be offensive.”
“Oh, but you are mistaken, M. le Marquis. I have no wish to be offensive. But I resent having hands violently laid upon me, especially when they are hands that I cannot consider clean, In the circumstances I can hardly be expected to be polite.”
The elder man’s eyelids flickered. Almost he caught himself admiring Andre–Louis’ bearing. Rather, he feared that his own must suffer by comparison. Because of this, he enraged altogether, and lost control of himself.
“You spoke of me as the assassin of Lagron. I do not affect to misunderstand you. You expounded your views to me once before, and I remember.”
“But what flattery, monsieur!”
“You called me an assassin then, because I used my skill to dispose of a turbulent hot-head who made the world unsafe for me. But how much better are you, M. the fencing-master, when you oppose yourself to men whose skill is as naturally inferior to your own!”
M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s friends looked grave, perturbed. It was really incredible to find this great gentleman so far forgetting himself as to descend to argument with a canaille of a lawyer-swordsman. And what was worse, it was an argument in which he was being made ridiculous.
“I oppose myself to them!” said Andre–Louis on a tone of amused protest. “Ah, pardon, M. le Marquis; it is they who chose to oppose themselves to me — and so stupidly. They push me, they slap my face, they tread on my toes, they call me by unpleasant names. What if I am a fencing-master? Must I on that account submit to every manner of ill-treatment from your bad-mannered friends? Perhaps had they found out sooner that I am a fencing-master their manners would have been better. But to blame me for that! What injustice!”
“Comedian!” the Marquis contemptuously apostrophized him. “Does it alter the case? Are these men who have opposed you men who live by the sword like yourself?”
“On the contrary, M. le Marquis, I have found them men who died by the sword with astonishing ease. I cannot suppose that you desire to add yourself to their number.”
“And why, if you please?” La Tour d’Azyr’s face had flamed scarlet before that sneer.
“Oh,” Andre–Louis raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips, a man considering. He delivered himself slowly. “Because, monsieur, you prefer the easy victim — the Lagrons and Vilmorins of this world, mere sheep for your butchering. That is why.”
And then the Marquis struck him.
Andre–Louis stepped back. His eyes gleamed a moment; the next they were smiling up into the face of his tall enemy.
“No better than the others, after all! Well, well! Remark, I beg you, how history repeats itself — with certain differences. Because poor Vilmorin could not bear a vile lie with which you goaded him, he struck you. Because you cannot bear an equally vile truth which I have uttered, you strike me. But always is the vileness yours. And now as then for the striker there is . . . ” He broke off. “But why name it? You will remember what there is. Yourself you wrote it that day with the point of your too-ready sword. But there. I will meet you if you desire it, monsieur.”
“What else do you suppose that I desire? To talk?”
Andre–Louis turned to his friends and sighed. “So that I am to go another jaunt to the Bois. Isaac, perhaps you will kindly have a word with one of these friends of M. le Marquis’, and arrange for nine o’clock to-morrow, as usual.”
“Not to-morrow,” said the Marquis shortly to Le Chapeher. “I have an engagement in the country, which I cannot postpone.”
Le Chapelier looked at Andre–Louis.
“Then for M. le Marquis’ convenience, we will say Sunday at the same hour.”
“I do not fight on Sunday. I am not a pagan to break the holy day.”
“But surely the good God would not have the presumption to damn a gentleman of M. le Marquis’ quality on that account? Ah, well, Isaac, please arrange for Monday, if it is not a feast-day or monsieur has not some other pressing engagement. I leave it in your hands.”
He bowed with the air of a man wearied by these details, and threading his arm through Kersain’s withdrew.
“Ah, Dieu de Dieu! But what a trick of it you have,” said the Breton deputy, entirely unsophisticated in these matters.
“To be sure I have. I have taken lessons at their hands.” He laughed. He was in excellent good-humour. And Kersain was enrolled in the ranks of those who accounted Andre–Louis a man without heart or conscience.
But in his “Confessions” he tells us — and this is one of the glimpses that reveal the true man under all that make-believe — that on that night he went down on his knees to commune with his dead friend Philippe, and to call his spirit to witness that he was about to take the last step in the fulfilment of the oath sworn upon his body at Gavrillac two years ago.
CHAPTER 9
TORN PRIDE
M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s engagement in the country on that Sunday was with M. de Kercadiou. To fulfil it he drove out early in the day to Meudon, taking with him in his pocket a copy of the last issue of “Les Actes des Apotres,” a journal whose merry sallies at the expense of the innovators greatly diverted the Seigneur de Gavrillac. The venomous scorn it poured upon those worthless rapscallions afforded him a certain solatium against the discomforts of expatriation by which he was afflicted as a result of their detestable energies.
Twice in the last month, had M. de La Tour d’Azyr gone to visit the Lord of Gavrillac at Meudon, and the sight of Aline, so sweet and fresh, so bright and of so lively a mind, had caused those embers smouldering under the ashes of the past, embers which until now he had believed utterly extinct, to kindle into flame once more. He desired her as we desire Heaven. I believe that it was the purest passion of his life; that had it come to him earlier he might have been a vastly different man. The cruelest wound that in all his selfish life he had taken was when she sent him word, quite definitely after the affair at the Feydau, that she could not again in any circumstances receive him. At one blow — through that disgraceful riot — he had been robbed of a mistress he prized and of a wife who had become a necessity to the very soul of him. The sordid love of La Binet might have consoled him for the compulsory renunciation of his exalted love of Aline, just as to his exalted love of Aline he had been ready to sacrifice his attachment to La Binet. But that ill-timed riot had robbed him at once of both. Faithful to his word to Sautron he had definitely broken with La