Very soon an elderly man in peasant dress arose near the door. He spoke of something which they had considered as well to be done soon. He thought it better to wait until Citizen Commissioner Grégoire arrived. To arrest a ci-devant aristocrat like Ste. Luce was of course proper; but the people were excited, and might do mischief, and they knew that the Great Committee did not approve of riots. France must have rest. These outbreaks had ended elsewhere in the deaths of hundreds of peasants. He bade them wait, and, in fact, spoke with rare good sense. He was roughly interrupted. His speech was received with laughter and contemptuous cries, and, to François's amazement, there was Despard on his feet, not twenty feet away. His old partner was somber-looking and red-eyed, but seemed to have lost his shyness of speech. He broke out into violent invectives, charging the previous speaker with indifference to the good of France. This man was no doubt a traitor. He had been in the service of the ci-devant. He had advised the people to wait. Were they not the rulers? The Jacobin clubs would see to this rat of a commissioner; let him come. Then, leaping on a chair, he began to contrast the luxury in which Ste. Luce lived with the meager life of the peasant. He talked of the great noble's younger life, of his debauchery and hardness. All knew what he meant. Not he alone had suffered. How many of the children men liked to call their own were of noble blood?
His fluent passion, his ease of speech, his apparent freedom from his usual mood of fear, astonished François. At last Despard became more excited, raved wildly, grew incoherent, paused, burst into horrors of blasphemous allusion, and, utterly exhausted, reeled, and dropped into his chair, amid wild applauding cries and a dozen vain efforts of speakers eager to be heard. As if satisfied, the crowd waited no longer to listen, and issued out in just the mood Despard had desired to create. François stepped aside, unnoticed. Among the last, surrounded by a gesticulating group, came Despard, silent, exhausted, his head bent down. A voice cried out: "To-night! Let us do it to-night!" Despard said slowly: "No, not to-night. He is not there—he is not there. Perhaps to-morrow; we shall see. I must have rest—rest."
"Is he mad?" thought François. "Diable! How he hates him! Why is he not afraid?" He had once heard the choir-master tell of a feeble, timid nun who had killed two people; and this man, he supposed, might be, like her, crazed. No matter; he must use him. The crowd dispersed, and, following Despard at a distance, François saw him enter the house of the village priest, who had long since said his last prayer in the garden of the Carmelites.
For an hour, and until all was still, François walked to and fro behind the house. Suddenly a door opened and closed. François moved around the house. He saw Despard go out on the road. After looking about him, the Jacobin walked swiftly away, and was soon past the farthest houses.
"Dame!" said François, "let us go after him. What can he mean? It becomes amusing." Moving with care in the shadows at the side of the road, he followed Despard, who walked down the middle of the highway, now and then stopping short and cracking his finger-joints, as he used to do when worried, or clasping his hands over the back of his neck.
The thief smiled as he went. He was again the savage of the streets, with all his keen wits in play, and vaguely aware of pleasure in the use of his training. He looked about him, or stole noiselessly from one depth of gloom to another across some less shadowed place. He put out with care one long leg and then the other tentatively, like great feelers, and yet got over the ground with speed, as was required, for Despard walked at a rate which was unusual. The great ears of his pursuer were on guard. Once, when Despard stopped of a sudden, François was near enough to hear him crack his knuckles as he pulled at them. As Pierre stood, he threw up a hand as it were in the eager gesture of a speech, or in silent, custom-born attestation of some mentally recorded vow. Then he went onward, silent, and was for a moment lost to view in the aisles of the forest into which he turned. François moved faster, dimly seeing him again. The Jacobin hurried on. The man who followed him was smiling in the darkness, and was feeding curiosity with the keen satisfaction he felt in a chase which was not without a purpose.
Despard seemed to know the great forest well. It soon became more open. He came to a low garden wall, and, climbing it, was heard to tumble on the farther side with a crash of breaking earthenware. He had come down on a pile of garden pots. The thief reflected for a moment that his partner must have lost the agility of his former business, and himself approached the wall with care. Moving to one side, he dropped to the ground, as quiet as a prowling cat.
There was no moon, but the night was clear, and over against the star-lit space he saw the silhouette of a vast château—angles, gables, turrets with vanes. The man whom he hunted moved across the garden, through rose-hedges, under trees, as if reckless as to being heard. Once he fell, but got up without even an exclamation; and so on and on in stumbling haste until he stood upon the broad terrace in front of the building.
François was for a little while at leisure to look about him. Despard, with a sudden movement, strode to the foot of the broad steps which led up to the lofty doorway of the château. Here again he stayed motionless. François, now used to the partial obscurity of the night, took quick note of the white gleam of vases, of a fountain's monotonous murmur, of statues, dim gray blurs seen against the dark wood-spaces beyond; the great size of the house he saw, and that three or four windows showed lights within.
What was Despard about to do? François waited. Then he heard now and then, rising and falling, the faint notes of a violoncello. At this moment he saw that Pierre was gesticulating, and at last caught sound of speech. He was too far away to be clearly seen or distinctly heard. François sat down, took off his shoes, tied them over his neck, and went down on all fours. It was one of his old tricks to amuse thus the children gathered before the show-booth. He could become a bear or an elephant, and knew how to simulate the walk of beasts. Now he approached Despard on his hands and feet, and, seen in the partial gloom, would have seemed a queer-looking animal. A closely clipped row of box lay between them and bordered the broad roadway leading to the portal.