ain from politics. With still
greater pain and indignation do I learn that your name has become in a
few short days a byword, that you have discarded the weapon of false,
insidious arguments against my class--the class to which you owe
everything--for the sword of the assassin. It has come to my knowledge
that you have an assignation to-morrow with my good friend M. de La Tour
d'Azyr. A gentleman of his station is under certain obligations imposed
upon him by his birth, which do not permit him to draw back from an
engagement. But you labour under no such disadvantages. For a man of
your class to refuse an engagement of honour, or to neglect it when
made, entails no sacrifice. Your peers will probably be of the opinion
that you display a commendable prudence. Therefore I beg you, indeed,
did I think that I still exercise over you any such authority as the
favours you have received from me should entitle me to exercise, I would
command you, to allow this matter to go no farther, and to refrain from
rendering yourself to your assignation to-morrow morning. Having no such
authority, as your past conduct now makes clear, having no reason to
hope that a proper sentiment of gratitude to me will induce to give heed
to this my most earnest request, I am compelled to add that should you
survive to-morrow's encounter, I can in no circumstances ever again
permit myself to be conscious of your existence. If any spark survives
of the affection that once you expressed for me, or if you set any value
upon the affection, which, in spite of all that you have done to forfeit
it, is the chief prompter of this letter, you will not refuse to do as I
am asking."

It was not a tactful letter. M. de Kercadiou was not a tactful man. Read
it as he would, Andre-Louis--when it was delivered to him on that Sunday
afternoon by the groom dispatched with it into Paris--could read into it
only concern for M. La Tour d'Azyr, M. de Kercadiou's good friend, as he
called him, and prospective nephew-in-law.

He kept the groom waiting a full hour while composing his answer.
Brief though it was, it cost him very considerable effort and several
unsuccessful attempts. In the end this is what he wrote:

Monsieur my godfather--You make refusal singularly hard for me when you
appeal to me upon the ground of affection. It is a thing of which all my
life I shall hail the opportunity to give you proofs, and I am therefore
desolated beyond anything I could hope to ex