body in the delight of discovering one who was bound to him by such
bonds of sympathy as old Rousseau established.

"Read him, Monsieur? There is scarce a line in all his 'Discourses' that
I do not know by heart, and that I do not treasure, vaguely hoping
and praying that some day such a state as he dreamt of may find itself
established, and may sweep aside these corrupt, tyrannical conditions."

Maximilien's eyes kindled.

"Boy," he answered impressively, "Your hopes are on the eve of fruition,
your prayers are about to be heard. Yes--even though it should entail
trampling the Lilies of France into the very dust.

"Who are you, Monsieur?" asked La Boulaye, eyeing this prophet with
growing interest.

"Robespierre is my name," was the answer, and to La Boulaye it
conveyed no enlightenment, for the name of Maximilien Marie Isidore de
Robespierre, which within so very short a time was to mean so much in
France, as yet meant nothing.

La Boulaye inclined his head as if acknowledging an introduction, then
turned his attention to Duhamel who was offering him a cup of wine.
He drank gratefully, and the invigorating effects were almost
instantaneous.

"Now let us see to your hurts," said the schoolmaster, who had taken
some linen and a pot of unguents from a cupboard. La Boulaye sat up, and
what time Duhamel was busy dressing his lacerated back, the young man
talked with Robespierre.

"You are going to Paris, you say, Monsieur?"

"Yes, to the States-General," answered Maximilien.

"As a deputy?" inquired Caron, with ever-heightening interest.

"As a deputy, Monsieur. My friends of Arras have elected me to the Third
Estate of Artois."

"Dieu! How I envy you!" exclaimed La Boulaye, to cry out a moment
later in the pain to which Duhamel's well-intentioned operations were
subjecting him. "I would it might be mine," he added presently, "to
take a hand in legislation, and the mending of it; for as it stands at
present it is inferior far to the lawless anarchy of the aborigines.
Among them, at least, the conditions are more normal, they offer better
balance between faculty and execution; they are by far more propitious
to happiness and order than is this broken wreck of civilisation that
we call France. It is to equality alone," he continued, warming to
his subject, "that Nature has attached the preservation of our social
faculties, and all legislation that aims at being efficient should
be directed to the establishmen