quence so very dangerous a
gift? See, they would like a word with you; they do not believe me when
I tell them that you are here."

Now, whatever he may have been, and whatever the views held on the
subject by Andre-Louis, M. de La Tour d'Azyr was certainly not a coward.
To say that he was hiding in Nantes was not true. He came and went
there openly and unabashed. It happened, however, that the Nantais were
ignorant until this moment of his presence among them. But then he
would have disdained to have informed them of it just as he would have
disdained to have concealed it from them.

Challenged thus, however, and despite the ominous manner in which the
bourgeois element in the audience had responded to Scaramouche's appeal
to its passions, despite the attempts made by Chabrillane to restrain
him, the Marquis swept aside the curtain at the side of the box, and
suddenly showed himself, pale but self-contained and scornful as he
surveyed first the daring Scaramouche and then those others who at sight
of him had given tongue to their hostility.

Hoots and yells assailed him, fists were shaken at him, canes were
brandished menacingly.

"Assassin! Scoundrel! Coward! Traitor!"

But he braved the storm, smiling upon them his ineffable contempt. He
was waiting for the noise to cease; waiting to address them in his turn.
But he waited in vain, as he very soon perceived.

The contempt he did not trouble to dissemble served but to goad them on.

In the pit pandemonium was already raging. Blows were being freely
exchanged; there were scuffling groups, and here and there swords were
being drawn, but fortunately the press was too dense to permit of their
being used effectively. Those who had women with them and the timid by
nature were making haste to leave a house that looked like becoming a
cockpit, where chairs were being smashed to provide weapons, and parts
of chandeliers were already being used as missiles.

One of these hurled by the hand of a gentleman in one of the boxes
narrowly missed Scaramouche where he stood, looking down in a sort of
grim triumph upon the havoc which his words had wrought. Knowing of
what inflammable material the audience was composed, he had deliberately
flung down amongst them the lighted torch of discord, to produce this
conflagration.

He saw men falling quickly into groups representative of one side or the
other of this great quarrel that already was beginning to agitate the
whole of Fr