tes in such terms as poor Philippe might have employed, and
then because of a hue and cry he had fled like a cur and taken shelter
in the first kennel that offered, there to lie quiet and devote himself
to other things--self-seeking things. What a fine contrast between the
promise and the fulfilment!

Thus Andre-Louis to himself in his self-contempt. And whilst he trifled
away his time and played Scaramouche, and centred all his hopes in
presently becoming the rival of such men as Chenier and Mercier, M. de
La Tour d'Azyr went his proud ways unchallenged and wrought his will.
It was idle to tell himself that the seed he had sown was bearing fruit.
That the demands he had voiced in Nantes for the Third Estate had
been granted by M. Necker, thanks largely to the commotion which his
anonymous speech had made. That was not his concern or his mission. It
was no part of his concern to set about the regeneration of mankind, or
even the regeneration of the social structure of France. His concern
was to see that M. de La Tour d'Azyr paid to the uttermost liard for the
brutal wrong he had done Philippe de Vilmorin. And it did not increase
his self-respect to find that the danger in which Aline stood of
being married to the Marquis was the real spur to his rancour and to
remembrance of his vow. He was--too unjustly, perhaps--disposed to dismiss
as mere sophistries his own arguments that there was nothing he could
do; that, in fact, he had but to show his head to find himself going to
Rennes under arrest and making his final exit from the world's stage by
way of the gallows.

It is impossible to read that part of his "Confessions" without feeling
a certain pity for him. You realize what must have been his state of
mind. You realize what a prey he was to emotions so conflicting, and
if you have the imagination that will enable you to put yourself in his
place, you will also realize how impossible was any decision save the
one to which he says he came, that he would move, at the first moment
that he perceived in what direction it would serve his real aims to
move.

It happened that the first person he saw when he took the stage on
that Thursday evening was Aline; the second was the Marquis de La Tour
d'Azyr. They occupied a box on the right of, and immediately above, the
stage. There were others with them--notably a thin, elderly, resplendent
lady whom Andre-Louis supposed to be Madame la Comtesse de Sautron. But
at the time he ha