"And died in his duty," I said rather tartly.
"Amen," Father Benôit answered.
Yet it was not until we were sat down in the Chestnut Parlour (which the servants called the English Room), and, with candles between us, were busy with our cheese and fruit, that I appreciated to the full the impression which the news had made on the Curé. Then, as he talked, as he told and listened, his long limbs and lean form trembled with excitement; his thin face worked. "It is the end," he said. "You may depend upon it, M. le Vicomte, it is the end. Your father told me many times that in money lay the secret of power. Money, he used to say, pays the army, the army secures all. A while ago the money failed. Now the army fails. There is nothing left."
"The King?" I said, unconsciously quoting Madame la Marquise.
"God bless his Majesty!" the Curé answered heartily. "He means well, and now he will be able to do well, because the nation will be with him. But without the nation, without money or an army--a name only. And the name did not save the Bastille."
Then, beginning with the scene at Madame de St. Alais' reception, I told him all that had happened to me; the oath of the sword, the debate in the Assembly, the tumult in the Square--last of all, the harsh words with which Madame had given me my congé; all. As he listened he was extraordinarily moved. When I described the scene in the Chamber, he could not be still, but in his enthusiasm, walked about the parlour, muttering. And, when I told him how the crowd had cried "Vive Saux!" he repeated the words softly and looked at me with delighted eyes. But when I came--halting somewhat in my speech, and colouring and playing with my bread to hide my disorder--to tell him my thoughts on the way home, and the choice that, as it seemed to me, was offered to me, he sat down, and fell also to crumbling his bread and was silent.
CHAPTER V.
[THE DEPUTATION.]
He sat silent so long, with his eyes on the table, that presently I grew nettled; wondering what ailed him, and why he did not speak and say the things that I expected. I had been so confident of the advice he would give me, that, from the first, I had tinged my story with the appropriate colour. I had let my bitterness be seen; I had suppressed no scornful word, but supplied him with all the ground he could desire for giving me the advice I supposed to be upon his lips.
And yet he did not speak. A hundred times I had heard him declare his sympathy with the people, his hatred of the corruption, the selfishness, the abuses of the Government; within the hour I had seen his eye kindle as he spoke of the fall of the Bastille. It was at his word I had burned the carcan; at his instance I had spent a large sum in feeding the village during the famine of the past year. Yet now--now, when I expected him to rise up and bid me do my part, he was silent!