thers to see him. There was only
one Abbe Touvent, for morning or afternoon, for church or fete, for the
chateau or the cottage. There were a dozen Albert de Chantonnays, fierce
or tender, gay or sad, a poet or a soldier--a light persifleur, who had
passed through the mill, and had emerged hard and shining, or a
young man of soul, capable of high ideals. To-night, he was the
politician--the conspirator--quick of eye, curt of speech.

He held out his hand for the letter.

"You are to read it, as Monsieur le Marquis instructs me, Monsieur
Albert," hazarded the Abbe, touching the breast pocket of his soutane,
where Monsieur de Gemosac's letter lay hidden, "to those assembled."

"But, surely, I am to read it to myself first," was the retort; "or else
how can I give it proper value?"

CHAPTER XI. A BEGINNING

There may be some who refuse to take seriously a person like Albert
de Chantonnay because, forsooth, he happened to possess a sense of
the picturesque. There are, as a matter of fact, thousands of sensible
persons in the British Isles who fail completely to understand the
average Frenchman. To the English comprehension it is, for instance,
surprising that in time of stress--when Paris was besieged by a German
army--a hundred franc-tireur corps should spring into existence, who
gravely decked themselves in sombreros and red waist-cloths, and called
themselves the "Companions of Death," or some claptrap title of a
similar sound. Nevertheless, these "Companions of Death" fought at
Orleans as few have fought since man walked this earth, and died as
bravely as any in a government uniform. Even the stolid German foe
forgot, at last, to laugh at the sombrero worn in midwinter.

It is useless to dub a Frenchman unreal and theatrical when he gaily
carries his unreality and his perception of the dramatic to the lucarne
of the guillotine and meets imperturbably the most real thing on earth,
Death.

Albert de Chantonnay was a good Royalist--a better Royalist, as many
were in France at this time, than the King--and, perhaps, he carried his
loyalty to the point that is reached by the best form of flattery.

Let it be remembered that when, on the 3rd of May, 1814, Louis XVIII.
was reinstated, not by his own influence or exertions, but by the
allied sovereigns who had overthrown Napoleon, he began at once to
issue declarations and decrees as of the nineteenth year of his reign,
ignoring the Revolution and Napoleon. Did