In both, however, the changes were purely superficial, as each was soon to reveal to the other.  Le Chapelier was ever the same direct and downright Breton, abrupt of manner and of speech.  He stood smiling a moment in mingled surprise and pleasure; then opened wide his arms.  They embraced under the awe-stricken gaze of the waiter, who at once effaced himself.

“Andre-Louis, my friend!  Whence do you drop?”

“We drop from above.  I come from below to survey at close quarters one who is on the heights.”

“On the heights!  But that you willed it so, it is yourself might now be standing in my place.”

“I have a poor head for heights, and I find the atmosphere too rarefied.  Indeed, you look none too well on it yourself, Isaac.  You are pale.”

“The Assembly was in session all last night.  That is all.  These damned Privileged multiply our difficulties.  They will do so until we decree their abolition.”

They sat down.  “Abolition!  You contemplate so much?  Not that you surprise me.  You have always been an extremist.”

“I contemplate it that I may save them.  I seek to abolish them officially, so as to save them from abolition of another kind at the hands of a people they exasperate.”

“I see.  And the King?”

“The King is the incarnation of the Nation.  We shall deliver him together with the Nation from the bondage of Privilege.  Our constitution will accomplish it.  You agree?”

Andre-Louis shrugged.  “Does it matter?  I am a dreamer in politics, not a man of action.  Until lately I have been very moderate; more moderate than you think.  But now almost I am a republican.  I have been watching, and I have perceived that this King is — just nothing, a puppet who dances according to the hand that pulls the string.”

“This King, you say?  What other king is possible?  You are surely not of those who weave dreams about Orleans?  He has a sort of party, a following largely recruited by the popular hatred of the Queen and the known fact that she hates him.  There are some who have thought of making him regent, some even more; Robespierre is of the number.”

“Who?” asked Andre-Louis, to whom the name was unknown.

“Robespierre — a preposterous little lawyer who represents Arras, a shabby, clumsy, timid dullard, who will make speeches through his nose to which nobody listens — an ultra-royalist whom the royalists and the Orleanists are using for their own ends.  He has pertinacity, and he insists upon being heard.  He may be listened to some day.  But that he, or the others, will ever make anything of Orleans... pish!  Orleans himself may desire it, but the man is a eunuch in crime; he would, but he can’t.  The phrase is Mirabeau’s.”

He broke off to demand Andre-Louis’ news of himself.

“You did not treat me as a friend when you wrote to me,” he complained.  “You gave me no clue to your whereabouts; you represented yourself as on the verge of destitution and withheld from me the means to come to your assistance.  I have been troubled in mind about you, Andre.  Yet to judge by your appearance I might have spared myself that.  You seem prosperous, assured.  Tell me of it.”