Part 4 (1/2)

”The disturbance of to-day will become great enough to shake France to its centre,” said the chevalier.

”One would think that you possessed the gift of second sight,” laughed de Lacheville.

”I do,” replied the old man impressively.

”Give us an example of it, then,” demanded d'Arlincourt. ”What part am I to take in the new revolution?”

”I see behind you, my dear d'Arlincourt,” replied the chevalier, leaning back in his chair and looking in the count's direction through half-closed eyelids, ”the shadow of a scaffold.”

Unwittingly the count turned with a start, to see Blaise standing behind him in the act of filling his gla.s.s with wine. There was a general laugh.

”Madame de Remur will bare her white shoulders to the rude grasp of the executioner. De Lacheville will escape. No, he will not. He will die by his own hand to cheat the scaffold.”

”And I,” interrupted the Countess d'Arlincourt, ”shall I share their fate?”

The chevalier looked at her with a peculiar expression in his eyes. ”My sight fails here,” he said. ”I cannot foretell your fate. Yet you may live; your beauty should save you. People do not kill those who please them; those who bore them are less fortunate.” And he turned his snapping brown eyes in the direction of the gentle poet and the venerable philosopher.

”St. Hilaire's sudden and great interest in the people's welfare may prove of service to him,” remarked d'Arlincourt significantly.

”It will not save him,” replied the chevalier. ”He will finally come to the same end. The shadow of the scaffold is behind him also.”

St. Hilaire laughed as he cracked an almond. ”Though I may sympathize somewhat with a people who have been oppressed and robbed, I should feel unhappy indeed to be left out in the cold when so many of the ill.u.s.trious had gone before. But you have overlooked yourself. That is like you, chevalier, unselfish to the last.”

”Oh, I am too old to be of importance; I shall die of gout,” said the old n.o.bleman.

”You have disposed of us effectually,” said the poet, ”and I shall be greatly honored at being permitted to leave this world in such good company. But may I ask, are we to be the sole victims of your revolution?”

”Far from it,” answered the old chevalier, closing his eyes and speaking in an abstracted manner, as if talking to himself, while his friends listened in rapt attention, half inclined to smile at the affair as at a joke, and yet so serious was he that they could not escape the influence of his seriousness.

”I can see,” he continued, ”a long line of the most ill.u.s.trious in France. They are pa.s.sing onward to the block. They are princes of the blood; aye, even the king's head shall fall.”

”Enough!” cried out the voice of d'Arlincourt, above the general exclamations of horror that the chevalier's pretended vision called forth. ”You overstep the line, Chevalier de Creux. I do not object to a pleasantry, but when you go so far as to predict the execution of the king you carry a jest too far. It is time to call a halt.”

”But was it a jest?” asked the chevalier dryly.

”A very poor one,” said de Lacheville.

”My dear friend,” said the chevalier in his blandest tone, ”I am not predicting what I should like to have take place. Not what ought to be, but what will be.”

The count scowled and de Lacheville turned away with a shrug and began a conversation with Madame de Remur.

”We all know that the chevalier is a merry gentleman, yet no jester,”

said St. Hilaire. ”What will be, will be. I, for one, am willing to drink a toast to the chevalier's revolution. Blaise, bring out some of that wine I received from the Count de Beaujeu. I lost fifty thousand livres to him the night he made me a present of this wine; it will be like drinking liquid gold.”

Blaise filled the gla.s.ses amid general silence.

St. Hilaire rose to his feet, holding his wine-gla.s.s above his head.

”What, my friends, you are not afraid?” he exclaimed in a tone of surprise, looking about the table where only the chevalier and the philosopher had followed his example. ”Is it possible you have taken the chevalier's visions so much to heart?”

They all rose from their places, ashamed to have it thought that they had taken in too serious a vein the little comedy played by the chevalier.