o
be done." He was quite calm and self-possessed, but very white.

M. de Kercadiou stared at him blankly out of his pale eyes.

"Why, what the devil is there to do? From what I am told, Vilmorin went
so far as to strike M. le Marquis."

"Under the very grossest provocation."

"Which he himself provoked by his revolutionary language. The poor
lad's head was full of this encyclopaedist trash. It comes of too much
reading. I have never set much store by books, Andre; and I have never
known anything but trouble to come out of learning. It unsettles a man.
It complicates his views of life, destroys the simplicity which makes
for peace of mind and happiness. Let this miserable affair be a warning
to you, Andre. You are, yourself, too prone to these new-fashioned
speculations upon a different constitution of the social order. You
see what comes of it. A fine, estimable young man, the only prop of
his widowed mother too, forgets himself, his position, his duty to that
mother--everything; and goes and gets himself killed like this. It is
infernally sad. On my soul it is sad." He produced a handkerchief, and
blew his nose with vehemence.

Andre-Louis felt a tightening of his heart, a lessening of the hopes,
never too sanguine, which he had founded upon his godfather.

"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 Andre-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, Andre? 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..."

Andre-Louis interrupted him. "It is no more a duel than if it had been
fought with pistols of which only M. le Marquis'