Calvert would have been vastly astonished to know that the lifting of his hat and his courteous tone had contrived to make a popular hero of him; as much astonished, perhaps, as Beaufort to know that his careless, impertinent compliment to Madame Danton's charming head had sealed the fate of his own. But 'tis in this hap-hazard fashion that the destiny of mortals is decided. We are but the victims of chance or mischance. Of all vainglorious philosophies, that of predestination is the vainest.
Outside, the night had fallen, and the shops, arcades, and gardens of the Palais Royal were ablaze with innumerable candles and illuminated Chinese lanterns. Before the entrance Monsieur de Beaufort's groom was walking his half-frozen and restless horses up and down the icy street.
Beaufort laid his hand on Calvert's arm. "Come," he said, gloomily, "the place is become insufferable. Let me take you back to the Legation." Springing in he turned his horses' heads once more toward the Place Louis XV. and the Champs Elysées, and, while he guided them through the crowded and badly lighted thoroughfare, Calvert had leisure to think upon the events of the last hour. It was with resentment and shame he reflected upon his friend's airy insolence to the pretty caissière of the Café de l'École. That it should have been offered in her husband's presence was a gratuitous aggravation of the offence. That it should have been offered her with such disdainful contempt for any objection on her part or her husband's, with such easy assurance that there could be no objections on their part, was another gratuitous aggravation of the offence. In that noble insolence Calvert read a sign of the times more legible than the clearest writing in the pamphlets flooding the book-stalls of the Palais Royal.
CHAPTER V
THE PRIVATE SECRETARY
They drove in silence almost to the rue Neuve de Berry, Calvert musing on the strange glimpse he had had of life in Paris, Beaufort busy with his restless horses. At the grille of the Legation Calvert alighted and Beaufort bade him good-by, still with the gloomy, foreboding look on his handsome face.
When Calvert had mounted the great stairway, with the carved salamanders on the balustrade ever crawling their way up and down, he found Mr. Jefferson sitting alone before the bright fire in his library. As soon as he heard the young man's step he looked up eagerly.
"At last!" he cried. "I was wishing that you would come in. Mr. Morris has just been despatched in my carriage to the rue Richelieu, and I was beginning to wonder what that wild Beaufort had done with you to keep you so late."
"We are but just returned from a sight of the Palais Royal," said Calvert, throwing off his great-coat and sitting down beside Mr. Jefferson, who rang for candles and a box of his Virginia tobacco. "And a strange enough sight it was—a turbulent crowd, and much political speaking from hoarse-throated giants held aloft on their friends' shoulders." "A strange enough place, indeed," said Mr. Jefferson, shaking his head and smiling a little at Calvert's wholesale description of it. "'Tis the political centre of Paris, in fact, and though the crowds may be turbulent and the orators windy, yet 'tis there that the fruitful seed of the political harvest, which this great country will reap with such profit, is being sown. 'Despise not the day of small things,'" he went on, cheerfully. "These rude, vehement orators, with their narrow, often erroneous, ideas, are nevertheless doing a good work. They are opening the minds of the ignorant, clearing a way for broader, higher ideals to lodge therein; they are the pioneers, in this hitherto undiscovered country for France, of civil liberty, and of freedom of thought and action."
"And these vehement orators, with their often erroneous ideas—will they do no harm? Will these pioneers not lead their fellows astray in that undiscovered country?" suggested Calvert, not without a blush to think that he had the temerity to question the soundness of Mr. Jefferson's views.