“Of your charity, spare me a sermon, M. l’abbe!”

“You mock, monsieur.  You laugh.  Will you laugh, I wonder, when God presents His reckoning to you for the blood and plunder with which your hands are full?”

“Monsieur!” The word, sharp as the crack of a whip, was from M. de Chabrillane, who bounded to his feet.  But instantly the Marquis repressed him.

“Sit down, Chevalier.  You are interrupting M. l’abbe, and I should like to hear him further.  He interests me profoundly.”

In the background Andre-Louis, too, had risen, brought to his feet by alarm, by the evil that he saw written on the handsome face of M. de La Tour d’Azyr.  He approached, and touched his friend upon the arm.

“Better be going, Philippe,” said he.

But M. de Vilmorin, caught in the relentless grip of passions long repressed, was being hurried by them recklessly along.

“Oh, monsieur,” said he, “consider what you are and what you will be.  Consider how you and your kind live by abuses, and consider the harvest that abuses must ultimately bring.”

“Revolutionist!” said M. le Marquis, contemptuously.  “You have the effrontery to stand before my face and offer me this stinking cant of your modern so-called intellectuals!”

“Is it cant, monsieur?  Do you think — do you believe in your soul — that it is cant?  Is it cant that the feudal grip is on all things that live, crushing them like grapes in the press, to its own profit?  Does it not exercise its rights upon the waters of the river, the fire that bakes the poor man’s bread of grass and barley, on the wind that turns the mill?  The peasant cannot take a step upon the road, cross a crazy bridge over a river, buy an ell of cloth in the village market, without meeting feudal rapacity, without being taxed in feudal dues.  Is not that enough, M. le Marquis?  Must you also demand his wretched life in payment for the least infringement of your sacred privileges, careless of what widows or orphans you dedicate to woe?  Will naught content you but that your shadow must lie like a curse upon the land?  And do you think in your pride that France, this Job among the nations, will suffer it forever?”

He paused as if for a reply.  But none came.  The Marquis considered him, strangely silent, a half smile of disdain at the corners of his lips, an ominous hardness in his eyes.

Again Andre-Louis tugged at his friend’s sleeve.

“Philippe.”

Philippe shook him off, and plunged on, fanatically.

“Do you see nothing of the gathering clouds that herald the coming of the storm?  You imagine, perhaps, that these States General summoned by M. Necker, and promised for next year, are to do nothing but devise fresh means of extortion to liquidate the bankruptcy of the State?  You delude yourselves, as you shall find.  The Third Estate, which you despise, will prove itself the preponderating force, and it will find a way to make an end of this canker of privilege that is devouring the vitals of this unfortunate country.”