of Andre-Louis'. Andre-Louis
laughed. In the silence everybody heard the laugh and the words that
followed.

"Oh, is that what you wanted? But why didn't you say so before? You
would have spared me the trouble of knocking you down. I thought
gentlemen of your profession invariably conducted these affairs with
decency, decorum, and a certain grace. Had you done so, you might have
saved your breeches."

"How soon shall we settle this?" snapped Chabrillane, livid with very
real fury.

"Whenever you please, monsieur. It is for you to say when it will
suit your convenience to kill me. I think that was the intention you
announced, was it not?" Andre-Louis was suavity itself.

"To-morrow morning, in the Bois. Perhaps you will bring a friend."

"Certainly, monsieur. To-morrow morning, then. I hope we shall have fine
weather. I detest the rain."

Chabrillane looked at him almost with amazement. Andre-Louis smiled
pleasantly.

"Don't let me detain you now, monsieur. We quite understand each other.
I shall be in the Bois at nine o'clock to-morrow morning."

"That is too late for me, monsieur."

"Any other hour would be too early for me. I do not like to have my
habits disturbed. Nine o'clock or not at all, as you please."

"But I must be at the Assembly at nine, for the morning session."

"I am afraid, monsieur, you will have to kill me first, and I have a
prejudice against being killed before nine o'clock."

Now this was too complete a subversion of the usual procedure for M.
de Chabrillane's stomach. Here was a rustic deputy assuming with him
precisely the tone of sinister mockery which his class usually dealt out
to their victims of the Third Estate. And to heighten the irritation,
Andre-Louis--the actor, Scaramouche always--produced his snuffbox, and
proffered it with a steady hand to Le Chapelier before helping himself.

Chabrillane, it seemed, after all that he had suffered, was not even to
be allowed to make a good exit.

"Very well, monsieur," he said. "Nine o'clock, then; and we'll see if
you'll talk as pertly afterwards."

On that he flung away, before the jeers of the provincial deputies. Nor
did it soothe his rage to be laughed at by urchins all the way down the
Rue Dauphine because of the mud and filth that dripped from his satin
breeches and the tails of his elegant, striped coat.

But though the members of the Third had jeered on the surface, they
trembled underneath with fear and indignation. It