s making chorus
to Le Chapelier, who was bidding Andre-Louis to seek shelter.

"Come down! Come down at once! They'll murder you as they murdered La
Riviere."

"Let them!" He flung wide his arms in a gesture supremely theatrical,
and laughed. "I stand here at their mercy. Let them, if they will, add
mine to the blood that will presently rise up to choke them. Let them
assassinate me. It is a trade they understand. But until they do so,
they shall not prevent me from speaking to you, from telling you what
is to be looked for in them." And again he laughed, not merely in
exaltation as they supposed who watched him from below, but also in
amusement. And his amusement had two sources. One was to discover how
glibly he uttered the phrases proper to whip up the emotions of a crowd:
the other was in the remembrance of how the crafty Cardinal de Retz, for
the purpose of inflaming popular sympathy on his behalf, had been in the
habit of hiring fellows to fire upon his carriage. He was in just such
case as that arch-politician. True, he had not hired the fellow to fire
that pistol-shot; but he was none the less obliged to him, and ready to
derive the fullest, advantage from the act.

The group that sought to protect that man was battling on, seeking to
hew a way out of that angry, heaving press.

"Let them go!" Andre-Louis called down..."What matters one assassin more
or less? Let them go, and listen to me, my countrymen!"

And presently, when some measure of order was restored, he began his
tale. In simple language now, yet with a vehemence and directness
that drove home every point, he tore their hearts with the story of
yesterday's happenings at Gavrillac. He drew tears from them with
the pathos of his picture of the bereaved widow Mabey and her three
starving, destitute children--"orphaned to avenge the death of a
pheasant"--and the bereaved mother of that M. de Vilmorin, a student of
Rennes, known here to many of them, who had met his death in a noble
endeavour to champion the cause of an esurient member of their afflicted
order.

"The Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr said of him that he had too dangerous a
gift of eloquence. It was to silence his brave voice that he killed
him. But he has failed of his object. For I, poor Philippe de Vilmorin's
friend, have assumed the mantle of his apostleship, and I speak to you
with his voice to-day."

It was a statement that helped Le Chapelier at last to understand, at
least in part,