For the second time that day Andre-Louis set out for the chateau, walking briskly, and heeding not at all the curious eyes that followed him through the village, and the whisperings that marked his passage through the people, all agog by now with that day's event in which he had been an actor.
He was ushered by Benoit, the elderly body-servant, rather grandiloquently called the seneschal, into the ground-floor room known traditionally as the library. It still contained several shelves of neglected volumes, from which it derived its title, but implements of the chase--fowling-pieces, powder-horns, hunting-bags, sheath-knives--obtruded far more prominently than those of study. The furniture was massive, of oak richly carved, and belonging to another age. Great massive oak beams crossed the rather lofty whitewashed ceiling.
Here the squat Seigneur de Gavrillac was restlessly pacing when Andre-Louis was introduced. He was already informed, as he announced at once, of what had taken place at the Breton arme. M. de Chabrillane had just left him, and he confessed himself deeply grieved and deeply perplexed.
"The pity of it!" he said. "The pity of it!" He bowed his enormous head. "So estimable a young man, and so full of promise. Ah, this La Tour d'Azyr is a hard man, and he feels very strongly in these matters. He may be right. I don't know. I have never killed a man for holding different views from mine. In fact, I have never killed a man at all. It isn't in my nature. I shouldn't sleep of nights if I did. But men are differently made."
"The question, monsieur my godfather," said Andre-Louis, "is what is to 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.