“Your criticisms,” he said, “are all for the conduct of the dead, and none for that of the murderer. It does not seem possible that you should be in sympathy with such a crime.”
“Crime?” shrilled M. de Kercadiou. “My God, boy, you are speaking of M. de La Tour d’Azyr.”
“I am, and of the abominable murder he has committed …”
“Stop!” M. de Kercadiou was very emphatic. “I cannot permit that you apply such terms to him. I cannot permit it. M. le Marquis is my friend, and is likely very soon to stand in a still closer relationship.”
“Notwithstanding this?” asked André-Louis.
M. de Kercadiou was frankly impatient.
“Why, what has this to do with it? I may deplore it. But I have no right to condemn it. It is a common way of adjusting differences between gentlemen.”
“You really believe that?”
“What the devil do you imply, André? Should I say a thing that I don’t believe? You begin to make me angry.”
“ ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ is the King’s law as well as God’s.”
“You are determined to quarrel with me, I think. It was a duel …”
André-Louis interrupted him. “It is no more a duel than if it had been fought with pistols of which only M. le Marquis’s was loaded. He invited Philippe to discuss the matter further, with the deliberate intent of forcing a quarrel upon him and killing him. Be patient with me, monsieur my godfather. I am not telling you of what I imagine but what M. le Marquis himself admitted to me.”
Dominated a little by the young man’s earnestness, M. de Kercadiou’s pale eyes fell away. He turned with a shrug, and sauntered over to the window.
“It would need a court of honour to decide such an issue. And we have no courts of honour,” he said.
“But we have courts of justice.”
With returning testiness the seigneur swung round to face him again. “And what court of justice, do you think, would listen to such a plea as you appear to have in mind?”
“There is the court of the King’s Lieutenant at Rennes.”
“And do you think the King’s Lieutenant would listen to you?”
“Not to me, perhaps, Monsieur. But if you were to bring the plaint …”
“I bring the plaint?” M. de Kercadiou’s pale eyes were wide with horror of the suggestion.
“The thing happened here on your domain.”
“I bring a plaint against M. de La Tour d’Azyr! You are out of your senses, I think. Oh, you are mad; as mad as that poor friend of yours who has come to this end through meddling in what did not concern him. The language he used here to M. le Marquis on the score of Mabey was of the most offensive. Perhaps you didn’t know that. It does not at all surprise me that the Marquis should have desired satisfaction.”
“I see,” said André-Louis, on a note of hopelessness.
“You see? What the devil do you see?”
“That I shall have to depend upon myself alone.”
“And what the devil do you propose to do, if you please?”
“I shall go to Rennes, and lay the facts before the King’s Lieutenant.”
“He’ll be too busy to see you.” And M. de Kercadiou’s mind swung a trifle inconsequently, as weak minds will. “There is trouble enough in Rennes already on the score of these crazy States General, with which the wonderful M. Necker is to repair the finances of the kingdom. As if a peddling Swiss bank-clerk, who is also a damned Protestant, could succeed where such men as Calonne and Brienne have failed.”
“Good afternoon, monsieur my godfather,” said André-Louis.
“Where are you going?” was the querulous demand.
“Home at present. To Rennes in the morning.”
“Wait, boy, wait!” The squat little man rolled forward, affectionate concern on his great ugly face, and he set one of his podgy hands on his godson’s shoulder. “Now listen to me, André,” he reasoned. “This is sheer knight-errantry—moonshine, lunacy. You’ll come to no good by it if you persist. You’ve read Don Quixote, and what happened to him when he went tilting against windmills. It’s what will happen to you, neither more nor less. Leave things as they are, my boy. I wouldn’t have a mischief happen to you.”
André-Louis looked at him, smiling wanly.
“I swore an oath today which it would damn my soul to break.”
“You mean that you’ll go in spite of anything that I may say?” Impetuous as he was inconsequent, M. de Kercadiou was bristling again. “Very well, then, go … Go to the devil!”
“I will begin with the King’s Lieutenant.”
“And if you get into the trouble you are seeking, don’t come whimpering to me for assistance,” the seigneur stormed. He was very angry now. “Since you choose to disobey me, you can break your empty head against the windmill, and be damned to you.”
André-Louis bowed with a touch of irony, and reached the door.
“If the windmill should prove too formidable,” said he, from the threshold, “I may see what can be done with the wind. Goodbye, monsieur my godfather.”
He was gone, and M. de Kercadiou was alone, purple in the face, puzzling out that last cryptic utterance, and not at all happy in his mind, either on the score of his godson or of M. de La Tour d’Azyr. He was disposed to be angry with them both. He found these headstrong, wilful men who relentlessly followed their own impulses very disturbing and irritating. Himself, he loved his ease, and to be at peace with his neighbours; and that seemed to him so obviously the supreme good of life that he was disposed to brand them as fools who troubled to seek other things.
VI
The Windmill
There was between Nantes and Rennes an established service of three stagecoaches weekly in each direction, which for a sum of twenty-four livres—roughly, the equivalent of an English guinea—would carry you the seventy and odd miles of the journey in some fourteen hours. Once a week one of the diligences going in each direction would swerve aside from the highroad to call at Gavrillac,
