Page:Scaramouche.djvu/264

252 "The gallows, probably."

"Pish! Be serious.  Why not the toga of the senator in senatorial France?  It might be yours now if you had willed it so."

"The surest way to the gallows of all," laughed André-Louis.

At the moment Le Chapelier manifested impatience. I wonder did the phrase cross his mind that day four years later when himself he rode in the death-cart to the Grève.

"We are sixty-six Breton deputies in the Assembly. Should a vacancy occur, will you act as suppleant?  A word from me together with the influence of your name in Rennes and Nantes, and the thing is done."

André-Louis laughed outright. "Do you know, Isaac, that I never meet you but you seek to thrust me into politics?"

"Because you have a gift for politics. You were born for politics."

"Ah, yes—Scaramouche in real life. I've played it on the stage. Let that suffice.  Tell me, Isaac, what news of my old friend, La Tour d'Azyr?"

"He is here in Versailles, damn him—a thorn in the flesh of the Assembly. They've burnt his château at La Tour d'Azyr. Unfortunately he was n't in it at the time.  The flames have n't even singed his insolence.  He dreams that when this philosophic aberration is at an end, there will be serfs to rebuild it for him."

"So there has been trouble in Brittany?" André-Louis had become suddenly grave, his thoughts swinging to Gavrillac.

"An abundance of it, and elsewhere too. Can you wonder?  These delays at such a time, with famine in the land?  Châteaux have been going up in smoke during the last fortnight.  The peasants took their cue from the Parisians, and treated every castle as a Bastille. Order is being restored, there as here, and they are quieter now."

"What of Gavrillac? Do you know?"