Lord Tonys Wife | Page 2

pigeon
ahd had their fill of them.
Whereupon Antoine was arrested for poaching and thieving: he was
tried at Nantes under the presidency of M. le duc de Kernogan, and ten
minutes ago while the man in the tattered coat was declaiming to a
number of peasant lads in the coffee-room of the auberge des Trois
Vertus on the subject of their rights as men and citizens, some one
brought the news that Antoine Melus had just been condemned to death
and would be hanged on the morrow.
That was the spark which had fanned Pierre Adet's hatred of the
aristocrats to a veritable conflagration: the news of Antoine Melun's
fate was the bleat which rallied all those human sheep around their
leader. For Pierre had naturally become their leader because his hatred
of M. le duc was more tangible, more powerful than theirs. Pierre had
had more education than they. His father, Jean Adet the miller, had sent
him to a school in Nantes, and when Pierre came home M. le curé of
Vertou took an interest in him and taught him all he knew himself--

which was not much-- in the way of philosophy and the classics. But
later on Pierre took to reading and writings of M. Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and soon knew the Contrat Social almost by heart. He had
also read the articles in M. Marat's newspaper L'ami du Peuple! and
like Antoine Melun, the wheelwright, he had got it into his head that it
was not God, nor yet Nature who had intended one man to starve while
another gorged himself on all the good things of this world.
He did not, however, speak of these matters, either to his father or to
his sister or to M. le curé, but he brooded over them, and when the
price of bread rose to four sous he muttered curses against M. le duc de
Kernogan, and when famine prices ruled throughout the district those
curses became overt themes; and by the time that the pinch of hunger
was felt in Vertou Pierre's passion of fury against the duc de Kernogan
had turned to a frenzy of hate against the entire noblesse of France.
Still he said nothing to his father, nothing to his mother and sister. But
his father knew. Old Jean would watch the storm-clouds which
gathered on Pierre's lowering brow; he heard the muttered curses which
escaped from Pierre's lips whilst he worked for the liege-lord whom he
hated. But Jean was a wise man and knew how useless it is to put out a
feeble hand in order to stem the onrush of a torrent. He knew how
useless are the words of wisdom from an old man to quell the
rebellious spirit of the young.
Jean was on the watch. And evening after evening when the work on
the farm was done, Pierre would sit in the small low room of the
auberge with other lads from the village talking, talking of their wrongs,
of the arrogance of the aristocrats, the sins of M. le duc and his family,
the evil conduct of the King and the immorality of the Queen: and men
in ragged coats and tattered breeches came in from Nantes, and even
from Paris, in order to harangue these village lads and told them yet
further tales of innumerable wrongs suffered by the people at the hands
of the aristos, and stuffed their heads full of schemes for getting even
once and for all with those men and women who fattened on the sweat
of the poor and drew their luxury from the hunger and the toil of the
peasantry.

Pierre sucked in these harangues through every pore: they were meat
and drink to him. His hate and passions fed upon these effusions till his
whole being was consumed by a maddening desire for reprisals, for
vengeance-- for the lust of triumph over those whom he had been
taught to fear.
And in the low, narrow room of the auberge the fevered heads of
village lads were bent together in conclave, and the ravings and
shoutings of a while ago were changed to whisperings and low
murmurings behind barred doors and shuttered windows. Men
exchanged cryptic greetings when they met in the village street,
enigmatical signs passed between them while they worked: strangers
came and went at dead of night to and from the neighbouring villages.
M. le duc's overseers saw nothing, heard nothing, guessed nothing. M.
le curé saw much and old Jean Adet guessed a great deal, but they said
nothing, for nothing then would have availed.
Then came the catastrophe.
II
Pierre pushed open the outer door of the auberge des Trois Vertus and
stepped out under the porch. A gust of wind caught him in the face.