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- Author: Rafael Sabatini
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M. dâOrmesson had sprung to the side of his principal.
âYou are hurt!â he had cried stupidly.
âIt is nothing,â said La Tour dâAzyr. âA scratch.â But his lip writhed, and the torn sleeve of his fine cambric shirt was full of blood.
DâOrmesson, a practical man in such matters, produced a linen kerchief, which he tore quickly into strips to improvise a bandage.
Still Andre-Louis continued to stand there, looking on as if bemused. He continued so until Le Chapelier touched him on the arm. Then at last he roused himself, sighed, and turned away to resume his garments, nor did he address or look again at his late opponent, but left the ground at once.
As, with Le Chapelier, he was walking slowly and in silent dejection towards the entrance of the Bois, where they had left their carriage, they were passed by the caleche conveying La Tour dâAzyr and his second - which had originally driven almost right up to the spot of the encounter. The Marquisâ wounded arm was carried in a sling improvised from his companionâs sword-belt. His sky-blue coat with three collars had been buttoned over this, so that the right sleeve hung empty. Otherwise, saving a certain pallor, he looked much his usual self.
And now you understand how it was that he was the first to return, and that seeing him thus returning, apparently safe and sound, the two ladies, intent upon preventing the encounter, should have assumed that their worst fears were realized.
Mme. de Plougastel attempted to call out, but her voice refused its office. She attempted to throw open the door of her own carriage; but her fingers fumbled clumsily and ineffectively with the handle. And meanwhile the caleche was slowly passing, La Tour dâAzyrâs fine eyes sombrely yet intently meeting her own anguished gaze. And then she saw something else. M. dâOrmesson, leaning back again from the forward inclination of his body to join his own to his companionâs salutation of the Countess, disclosed the empty right sleeve of M. de La Tour dâAzyrâs blue coat. More, the near side of the coat itself turned back from the point near the throat where it was caught together by single button, revealed the slung arm beneath in its blood-sodden cambric sleeve.
Even now she feared to jump to the obvious conclusion feared lest perhaps the Marquis, though himself wounded, might have dealt his adversary a deadlier wound.
She found her voice at last, and at the same moment signalled to the driver of the caleche to stop.
As it was Pulled to a standstill, M. dâOrmesson alighted, and so met madame in the little space between the two carriages.
âWhere is M. Moreau?â was the question with which she surprised him.
âFollowing at his leisure, no doubt, madame,â he answered, recovering.
âHe is not hurt?â
âUnfortunately it is we who⊠â M. dâOrmesson was beginning, when from behind him M. de La Tour dâAzyrâs voice cut in crisply:
âThis interest on your part in M. Moreau, dear Countess⊠â
He broke off, observing a vague challenge in the air with which she confronted him. But indeed his sentence did not need completing.
There was a vaguely awkward pause. And then she looked at M. dâOrmesson. Her manner changed. She offered what appeared to be an explanation of her concern for M. Moreau.
âMademoiselle de Kercadiou is with me. The poor child has fainted.â
There was more, a deal more, she would have said just then, but for M. dâOrmessonâs presence.
Moved by a deep solicitude for Mademoiselle de Kertadiou, de La Tour dâAzyr sprang up despite his wound.
âI am in poor case to render assistance, madame,â he said, an apologetic smile on his pale face. âBut⊠â
With the aid of dâOrmesson, and in spite of the latterâs protestations, he got down from the caleche, which then moved on a little way, so as to leave the road clear - for another carriage that was approaching from the direction of the Bois.
And thus it happened that when a few moments later that approaching cabriolet overtook and passed the halted vehicles, Andre-Louis beheld a very touching scene. Standing up to obtain a better view, he saw Aline in a half-swooning condition - she was beginning to revive by now - seated in the doorway of the carriage, supported by Mme. de Plougastel. In an attitude of deepest concern, M. de La Tour dâAzyr, his wound notwithstanding, was bending over the girl, whilst behind him stood M. dâOrmesson and madameâs footman.
The Countess looked up and saw him as he was driven past. Her face lighted; almost it seemed to him she was about to greet him or to call him, wherefore, to avoid a difficulty, arising out of the presence there of his late antagonist, he anticipated her by bowing frigidly - for his mood was frigid, the more frigid by virtue of what he saw - and then resumed his seat with eyes that looked deliberately ahead.
Could anything more completely have confirmed him in his conviction that it was on M. de La Tour dâAzyrâs account that Aline had come to plead with him that morning? For what his eyes had seen, of course, was a lady overcome with emotion at the sight of blood of her dear friend, and that same dear friend restoring her with assurances that his hurt was very far from mortal. Later, much later, he was to blame his own perverse stupidity. Almost is he too severe in his self-condemnation. For how else could he have interpreted the scene he beheld, his preconceptions being what they were?
That which he had already been suspecting, he now accounted proven to him. Aline had been wanting in candour on the subject of her feelings towards M. de La Tour dâAzyr. It was, he supposed, a womanâs way to be secretive in such matters, and he must not blame her. Nor could he blame her in his heart for having succumbed to the singular charm of such a man as the Marquis - for not even his hostility could blind him to M. de La Tour dâAzyrâs attractions. That she had succumbed was betrayed, he thought, by the weakness that had overtaken her upon seeing him wounded.
âMy God!â he cried aloud. âWhat must she have suffered, then, if I had killed him as I intended!â
If only she had used candour with him, she could so easily have won his consent to the thing she asked. If only she had told him what now he saw, that she loved M. de La Tour dâAzyr, instead of leaving him to assume her only regard for the Marquis to be based on unworthy worldly ambition, he would at once have yielded.
He fetched a sigh, and breathed a prayer for forgiveness to the shade of Vilmorin.
âIt is perhaps as well that my lunge went wide,â he said.
âWhat do you mean?â wondered Le Chapelier.
âThat in this business I must relinquish all hope of recommencing.â
M. de La Tour dâAzyr was seen no more in the Manege - or indeed in Paris at all - throughout all the months that the National Assembly remained in session to complete its work of providing France with a constitution. After all, though the wound to his body had been comparatively slight, the wound to such a pride as his had been all but mortal.
The rumour ran that he had emigrated. But that was only half the truth. The whole of it was that he had joined that group of noble travellers who came and went between the Tuileries and the headquarters of the emigres at Coblenz. He became, in short, a member of the royalist secret service that in the end was to bring down the monarchy in ruins.
As for Andre-Louis, his godfatherâs house saw him no more, as a result of his conviction that M. de Kercadiou would not relent from his written resolve never to receive him again if the duel were fought.
He threw himself into his duties at the Assembly with such zeal and effect that when - its purpose accomplished - the Constituent was dissolved in September of the following year, membership of the Legislative, whose election followed immediately, was thrust upon him.
He considered then, like many others, that the Revolution was a thing accomplished, that France had only to govern herself by the Constitution which had been given her, and that all would now be well. And so it might have been but that the Court could not bring itself to accept the altered state of things. As a result of its intrigues half Europe was arming to hurl herself upon France, and her quarrel was the quarrel of the French King with his people. That was the horror at the root of all the horrors that were to come.
Of the counter-revolutionary troubles that were everywhere being stirred up by the clergy, none were more acute than those of Brittany, and, in view of the influence it was hoped he would wield in his native province, it was proposed to Andre-Louis by the Commission of Twelve, in the early days of the Girondin ministry, that he should go thither to combat the unrest. He was desired to proceed peacefully, but his powers were almost absolute, as is shown by the orders he carried - orders enjoining all to render him assistance and warning those who might hinder him that they would do so at their peril.
He accepted the task, and he was one of the five plenipotentiaries despatched on the same errand in that spring of 1792. It kept him absent from Paris for four months and might have kept him longer but that at the beginning of August he was recalled. More imminent than any trouble in Brittany was the trouble brewing in Paris itself; when the political sky was blacker than it had been since â89. Paris realized that the hour was rapidly approaching which would see the climax of the long struggle between Equality and Privilege. And it was towards a city so disposed that Andre-Louis came speeding from the West, to find there also the climax of his own disturbed career.
Mlle. de Kercadiou, too, was in Paris in those days of early August, on a visit to her uncleâs cousin and dearest friend, Mme. de Plougastel. And although nothing could now be plainer than the seething unrest that heralded the explosion to come, yet the air of gaiety, indeed of jocularity, prevailing at Court - whither madame and mademoiselle went almost daily - reassured them. M. de Plougastel had come and gone again, back to Coblenz on that secret business that kept him now almost constantly absent from his wife. But whilst with her he had positively assured her that all measures were taken, and that an insurrection was a thing to be welcomed, because it could have one only conclusion, the final crushing of the Revolution in the courtyard of the Tuileries. That, he added, was why the King remained in Paris. But for his confidence in that he would put himself in the centre of his Swiss and his knights of the dagger, and quit the capital. They would hack a way out for him easily if his departure were opposed. But not even that would be necessary.
Yet in those early days of August, after her husbandâs departure the effect of his inspiring words was gradually dissipated by the march of events under madameâs own eyes. And finally on the afternoon of the ninth, there arrived at the Hotel Plougastel a messenger from Meudon bearing
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