"Yes, by the nobles, for the people."
"But the nobles have cast me out!" I answered. "Because I have gone a yard, I have lost all. Shall I not go two, and win all back?"
"Win all," he said softly--"but lose how much?"
"Yet if the people win? And you say they will?"
"Even then, Tribune of the People," he answered gently, "and an outcast!"
They were the very words I had applied to myself as I rode; and I started. With sudden vividness I saw the picture they presented; and I understood why Father Benôit had hesitated so long in my case. With the purest intentions and the most upright heart, I could not make myself other than what I was; I should rise, were my efforts crowned with success, to a point of splendid isolation; suspected by the people, whose benefactor I had been, hated and cursed by the nobles whom I had deserted.
Such a prospect would have been far from deterring some; and others it might have lured. But I found myself, in this moment of clear vision, no hero. Old prejudices stirred in the blood, old traditions, born of centuries of precedence and privilege, awoke in the memory. A shiver of doubt and mistrust--such as, I suppose, has tormented reformers from the first, and caused all but the hardiest to flinch--passed through me, as I gazed across the candles at the Curé. I feared the people--the unknown. The howl of exultation, that had rent the air in the Market-place at Cahors, the brutal cries that had hailed Gontaut's fall, rang again in my ears. I shrank back, as a man shrinks who finds himself on the brink of an abyss, and through the wavering mist, parted for a brief instant by the wind, sees the cruel rocks and jagged points that wait for him below.
It was a moment of extraordinary prevision, and though it passed, and speedily left me conscious once more of the silent room and the good Curé--who affected to be snuffing one of the long candles--the effect it produced on my mind continued. After Father Benôit had taken his leave, and the house was closed, I walked for an hour up and down the walnut avenue; now standing to gaze between the open iron gates that gave upon the road; now turning my back on them, and staring at the grey, gaunt, steep-roofed house with its flanking tower and round tourelles.
Henceforth, I made up my mind, I would stand aside. I would welcome reform, I would do in private what I could to forward it; but I would not a second time set myself against my fellows. I had had the courage of my opinions. Henceforth, no man could say that I had hidden them, but after this I would stand aside and watch the course of events.
A cock crowed at the rear of the house--untimely; and across the hushed fields, through the dusk, came the barking of a distant dog. As I stood listening, while the solemn stars gazed down, the slight which St. Alais had put upon me dwindled--dwindled to its true dimensions. I thought of Mademoiselle Denise, of the bride I had lost, with a faint regret that was almost amusement. What would she think of this sudden rupture? I wondered. Of this strange loss of her fiancé? Would it awaken her curiosity, her interest? Or would she, fresh from her convent school, think that things in the world went commonly so--that fiancés came and passed, and receptions found their natural end in riot?