power once more,
and until she does so do you keep the peace in Rennes. Thus shall you
triumph. Thus shall the outrages that are being perpetrated under your
eyes be fully and finally avenged."

As abruptly as he had leapt upon the plinth did he now leap down from
it. He had finished. He had said all--perhaps more than all--that could
have been said by the dead friend with whose voice he spoke. But it was
not their will that he should thus extinguish himself. The thunder of
their acclamations rose deafeningly upon the air. He had played upon
their emotions--each in turn--as a skilful harpist plays upon the strings
of his instrument. And they were vibrant with the passions he had
aroused, and the high note of hope on which he had brought his symphony
to a close.

A dozen students caught him as he leapt down, and swung him to their
shoulders, where again he came within view of all the acclaiming crowd.

The delicate Le Chapelier pressed alongside of him with flushed face and
shining eyes.

"My lad," he said to him, "you have kindled a fire to-day that will
sweep the face of France in a blaze of liberty." And then to the
students he issued a sharp command. "To the Literary Chamber--at once. We
must concert measures upon the instant, a delegate must be dispatched
to Nantes forthwith, to convey to our friends there the message of the
people of Rennes."

The crowd fell back, opening a lane through which the students bore
the hero of the hour. Waving his hands to them, he called upon them to
disperse to their homes, and await there in patience what must follow
very soon.

"You have endured for centuries with a fortitude that is a pattern to
the world," he flattered them. "Endure a little longer yet. The end, my
friends, is well in sight at last."

They carried him out of the square and up the Rue Royale to an old
house, one of the few old houses surviving in that city that had risen
from its ashes, where in an upper chamber lighted by diamond-shaped
panes of yellow glass the Literary Chamber usually held its meetings.
Thither in his wake the members of that chamber came hurrying, summoned
by the messages that Le Chapelier had issued during their progress.

Behind closed doors a flushed and excited group of some fifty men, the
majority of whom were young, ardent, and afire with the illusion of
liberty, hailed Andre-Louis as the strayed sheep who had returned to the
fold, and smothered him in congratulations and thanks