François had had enough of the small man's griefs. Contempt and pity were strangely mingled as he listened to his story.
"I shall let thee talk no more," he said. "But mille tonnerres! I cannot help thee to go mad. Let us go and wander in the country to-morrow, thou and I and Toto. It will comfort thee. But no more of this; I will not stand it."
The advice was wholesome, and, as usual, Pierre accepted the orders of his more sturdy-minded friend.
X
How Pierre became a Jacobin and how a nation became insane.
Although the marquis was not again upon the scene, as the months went by Despard became by degrees more gloomy. At night, in place of the gay little café, he went out to the club of the Jacobins, and fed full of its wild declamations against the émigrés and the aristocrats. It amused François, who saw no further ahead than other men. Despard came home loaded with gazettes and pamphlets, and on these he fed his excitement long after his partner was asleep.
When, as time went by, Pierre's vagaries increased, François found in them less subject for mirth. The fat little man sat up later and later at night. At times he read; at others he walked about muttering, or moving his lips without uttering a sound. What disturbed François most was that the poodle now and then showed fear of Pierre, and would no longer obey him as he had been used to do.
Meanwhile, as Pierre still attended sedulously to business, François could find no fault. He himself had become devoted to his art of palm-reading. He bought at the stalls old books, Latin and French, which treated of the subject, and tried to keep up the name his odd ways had made so profitable. Deceit was a part of his working capital; but deceit and credulity are apt to go together, as a great man has well said. Not for many louis would the conjurer have let any one read again the lines of his own hand. When Despard began to teach him the little he himself knew of palmistry, it had caused interest, and after a while a half-belief. This grew as he saw the evident disturbance to which the use of his art gave rise in certain of those who at first appeared to look upon it as an idle jest. The imaginative have need to be wary, and this man was imaginative, and had the usual notions of the gambler and thief as to omens and luck. I have said he had no definite working conscience. I have also said that he possessed an inborn kindness of heart; he had a long memory for benefits, and a short one for injuries. His courage was of fine quality: not even Quatre Pattes could terrify him.
The politics of the time were becoming month by month more troublous to such as kept their heads steady in the amazing tumble of what for centuries had been on top, and the rise of that which had been as long underneath. The increasing interest of Pierre in all that went on surprised François, and sometimes, as I have said, amused him. He could not comprehend why he should care whether the king ruled, or the Assembly. This mighty drama was nothing to him. He paid no taxes; he toiled not, nor spun, except nets of deceit; and whether or not commerce died and the plow stood idle in the furrow was to him of no moment. Meanwhile, before the eyes of a waiting, wondering world historic fate was shuffling the cards as neither war nor misrule had shifted them for many a day. Knave and king, spade and club, were now up, now down. Every one was in a new place. The old surnames were replaced by classical appellations. Streets, palaces, and cities were rebaptized with prenominal republican adjectives. Burgundy, Anjou, Navarre, and the other ancient provinces, knew no more their great names heroically famous.
All men were to be equal; all men were free to be what they could. But the freedom of natural or acquired inequality was not to be recognized. There were new laws without end. The Jacobin added a social creed. All men must tutoyer. "Your Majesty" was no more to be used. Because the gentles said "thou" and "thee" to one another and to an inferior, all men must "thou" as a sign that all are on a level.