ghter perished on the instant quenched in
speechless fury.

Solemnly he proceeded.

"You all know how Lagron died. To refer to his death at all requires
courage, to laugh in referring to it requires something that I will not
attempt to qualify. If I have alluded to his decease, it is because my
own appearance among you seemed to render some such allusion necessary.
It is mine to take up the burden which he set down. I do not pretend
that I have the strength, the courage, or the wisdom of Lagron; but with
every ounce of such strength and courage and wisdom as I possess that
burden will I bear. And I trust, for the sake of those who might attempt
it, that the means taken to impose silence upon that eloquent voice will
not be taken to impose silence upon mine."

There was a faint murmur of applause from the Left, splutter of
contemptuous laughter from the Right.

"Rhodomont!" a voice called to him.

He looked in the direction of that voice, proceeding from the group of
spadassins amid the Blacks across the Piste, and he smiled. Inaudibly
his lips answered:

"No, my friend--Scaramouche; Scaramouche, the subtle, dangerous fellow
who goes tortuously to his ends." Aloud, he resumed: "M. le President,
there are those who will not understand that the purpose for which
we are assembled here is the making of laws by which France may be
equitably governed, by which France may be lifted out of the morass of
bankruptcy into which she is in danger of sinking. For there are some
who want, it seems, not laws, but blood; I solemnly warn them that this
blood will end by choking them, if they do not learn in time to discard
force and allow reason to prevail."

Again in that phrase there was something that stirred a memory in
La Tour d'Azyr. He turned in the fresh uproar to speak to his cousin
Chabrillane who sat beside him.

"A daring rogue, this bastard of Gavrillac's," said he.

Chabrillane looked at him with gleaming eyes, his face white with anger.

"Let him talk himself out. I don't think he will be heard again after
to-day. Leave this to me."

Hardly could La Tour have told you why, but he sank back in his seat
with a sense of relief. He had been telling himself that here was matter
demanding action, a challenge that he must take up. But despite his rage
he felt a singular unwillingness. This fellow had a trick of reminding
him, he supposed, too unpleasantly of that young abbe done to death in
the garden behind the Bret