But the commotion that he had left there was as nothing to the commotion which he found on his return.  Then there had been a comparative hush to listen to the voice of a speaker who denounced the First and Second Estates from the pedestal of the statue of Louis XV.  Now the air was vibrant with the voice of the multitude itself, raised in anger.  Here and there men were fighting with canes and fists; everywhere a fierce excitement raged, and the gendarmes sent thither by the King’s Lieutenant to restore and maintain order were so much helpless flotsam in that tempestuous human ocean.

There were cries of “To the Palais!  To the Palais!  Down with the assassins!  Down with the nobles!  To the Palais!”

An artisan who stood shoulder to shoulder with him in the press enlightened Andre-Louis on the score of the increased excitement.

“They’ve shot him dead.  His body is lying there where it fell at the foot of the statue.  And there was another student killed not an hour ago over there by the cathedral works.  Pardi!  If they can’t prevail in one way they’ll prevail in another.”  The man was fiercely emphatic.  “They’ll stop at nothing.  If they can’t overawe us, by God, they’ll assassinate us.  They are determined to conduct these States of Brittany in their own way.  No interests but their own shall be considered.”

Andre-Louis left him still talking, and clove himself a way through that human press.

At the statue’s base he came upon a little cluster of students about the body of the murdered lad, all stricken with fear and helplessness.

“You here, Moreau!” said a voice.

He looked round to find himself confronted by a slight, swarthy man of little more than thirty, firm of mouth and impertinent of nose, who considered him with disapproval.  It was Le Chapelier, a lawyer of Rennes, a prominent member of the Literary Chamber of that city, a forceful man, fertile in revolutionary ideas and of an exceptional gift of eloquence.

“Ah, it is you, Chapelier!  Why don’t you speak to them?  Why don’t you tell them what to do?  Up with you, man!” And he pointed to the plinth.

Le Chapelier’s dark, restless eyes searched the other’s impassive face for some trace of the irony he suspected.  They were as wide asunder as the poles, these two, in their political views; and mistrusted as Andre-Louis was by all his colleagues of the Literary Chamber of Rennes, he was by none mistrusted so thoroughly as by this vigorous republican.  Indeed, had Le Chapelier been able to prevail against the influence of the seminarist Vilmorin, Andre-Louis would long since have found himself excluded from that assembly of the intellectual youth of Rennes, which he exasperated by his eternal mockery of their ideals.

So now Le Chapelier suspected mockery in that invitation, suspected it even when he failed to find traces of it on Andre-Louis’ face, for he had learnt by experience that it was a face not often to be trusted for an indication of the real thoughts that moved behind it.