.

Then they settled down to deliberate upon immediate measures, whilst the
doors below were kept by a guard of honour that had improvised itself
from the masses. And very necessary was this. For no sooner had the
Chamber assembled than the house was assailed by the gendarmerie of M.
de Lesdiguieres, dispatched in haste to arrest the firebrand who was
inciting the people of Rennes to sedition. The force consisted of fifty
men. Five hundred would have been too few. The mob broke their carbines,
broke some of their heads, and would indeed have torn them into pieces
had they not beaten a timely and well-advised retreat before a form of
horseplay to which they were not at all accustomed.

And whilst that was taking place in the street below, in the room
abovestairs the eloquent Le Chapelier was addressing his colleagues
of the Literary Chamber. Here, with no bullets to fear, and no one
to report his words to the authorities, Le Chapelier could permit his
oratory a full, unintimidated flow. And that considerable oratory was as
direct and brutal as the man himself was delicate and elegant.

He praised the vigour and the greatness of the speech they had heard
from their colleague Moreau. Above all he praised its wisdom. Moreau's
words had come as a surprise to them. Hitherto they had never known
him as other than a bitter critic of their projects of reform and
regeneration; and quite lately they had heard, not without misgivings,
of his appointment as delegate for a nobleman in the States of Brittany.
But they held the explanation of his conversion. The murder of their
dear colleague Vilmorin had produced this change. In that brutal deed
Moreau had beheld at last in true proportions the workings of that evil
spirit which they were vowed to exorcise from France. And to-day he had
proven himself the stoutest apostle among them of the new faith. He had
pointed out to them the only sane and useful course. The illustration he
had borrowed from natural history was most apt. Above all, let them pack
like the wolves, and to ensure this uniformity of action in the people
of all Brittany, let a delegate at once be sent to Nantes, which had
already proved itself the real seat of Brittany's power. It but remained
to appoint that delegate, and Le Chapelier invited them to elect him.

Andre-Louis, on a bench near the window, a prey now to some measure of
reaction, listened in bewilderment to that flood of eloquence.

As the applause die