The red cockade

by Stanley John Weyman

"You would do as I have done," I said.

"No," he said firmly; "I would take him in. Nevertheless, when we meet at Nîmes, I hope to convert you."

"To what?" I said coldly.

"To having a little faith," he answered, with dryness. "To having a little faith in something--and risking somewhat for it, Monsieur. I stand here," he went on, with a gesture that was not without grandeur, "alone and homeless, to-day; I do not know where I shall lie to-night. And why, M. le Vicomte? Because I alone in France have faith! Because I alone believe in anything! Because I alone believe even in myself! Do you think," he continued with rising scorn, "that if you nobles believed in your nobility, you could be unseated? Never! Or that if you, who say 'Long live the King!' believed in your King, he could be unseated? Never! Or that if you who profess to obey the Church believed in her, she could be uprooted? Never! But you believe in nothing, you admire nothing, you reverence nothing--and therefore you are doomed! Yes, doomed; for even the men with whom you have linked yourself have a sort of bastard faith in their theories, their philosophy, their reforms, that are to regenerate the world. But you--you believe in nothing; and you shall pass, as you pass from me now!"

He waved his hand with a gesture of menace, and before I could answer, the carriage rolled on, and left him standing there; the grey landscape, cold and barren, took the place of his face at the door. The light was beginning to fail; we were still a league from Villeraugues. I was glad to feel the carriage moving, and to be free from him; my heart, too, was warm because Denise sat opposite me, and I loved her. But for all that--and though Madame, glowering at me from her corner, troubled me little--the thought that I had deserted him--that, and his words, and one word in particular, hummed in my head, and oppressed me with a sense of coming ill. "Doomed! Doomed!" He had said it as if he meant it. I could no longer question his eloquence. I could no longer be ignorant why they called him the firebrand of Nîmes. The hot breath of the southern city had come from him; the passion of world-old strifes had spoken in his voice. Uneasily I pondered over what he had said, and recalled the words spoken by Father Benôit, even by Géol, to the same effect; and so brooded in my corner, while the carriage jolted on and darkness fell, until presently we stopped in the village street.

I offered Madame St. Alais my arm to descend. "No, Monsieur," she said, repelling me with passion; "I will not touch you."

She meant, I think, to seclude herself and Mademoiselle, and leave me to sup alone. But in the inn there was only one great room for parlour, and kitchen, and all; and a little cupboard, veiled by a dingy curtain, in which the women might sleep if they pleased, but in which they could not possibly eat. The inn was, in fact, the worst in which I had stopped--the maid draggled and dirty, and smelling of the stable; the company three boors; the floor of earth; the windows unglazed. Madame, accustomed to travel, and supported by her anger, took all with the ease of a fine lady; but Denise, fresh from her convent, winced at the brawling and oaths that rose round her, and cowered, pale and frightened, on her stool.

A hundred times I was on the point of interfering to protect her from these outrages; but her eyes, when they made me happy by timidly seeking mine for an instant, seemed to pray me to abstain; and the men, as their senseless tirades showed, were delegates from Castres, who at a word would have raised the cry of "Aristocrats!" I refrained, therefore, and doubtless with wisdom; but even the arrival of Géol would have been a welcome interruption.

I have said that Madame heeded them little; but it presently appeared that I was mistaken. After we had supped, and when the noise was at its height, she came to me, where I sat a little apart, and, throwing into her tone all the anger and disgust which her face so well masked, she cried in my ear that we must start at daybreak.

"At daybreak--or before!" she whispered fiercely. "This is horrible! horrible!" she continued. "This place is killing me! I would start now, cold and dark as it is, if----"