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For three days whilst she had been at Gavrillac, he had gone daily to the manor, and so had spent hours in her company. A childless woman with the maternal instinct strong within her, she had taken this precociously intelligent, wide-eyed lad to her heart. "Give him to me, Cousin Quintin," he remembered her saying on the last of those days to his godfather.
Gilles, the boy, brought him word of it, and breaking off at once the lesson upon which he was engaged, he pulled off his mask, and went as he was in a chamois waistcoat buttoned to the chin and with his foil under his arm to the modest salon below, where his godfather awaited him. The florid little Lord of Gavrillac stood almost defiantly to receive him.
On that date was published the royal decree ordaining that the deputies to be elected to the States General should number at least one thousand, and that the deputies of the Third Estate should be fully representative by numbering as many as the deputies of clergy and nobility together. Dusk of the following day was falling when the homing Andre-Louis approached Gavrillac.
But you seem very reluctant with your explanations." "Oh, no. It is only that they are so unimportant. But be you the judge. Her uncle, M. de Kercadiou, is my godfather, and she and I have been playmates from infancy as a consequence. It is popularly believed in Gavrillac that M. de Kercadiou is my father.
Do you think I want to see you damned, Aline?" Her hand fell away from his arm. "Oh, you are mad!" she exclaimed, quite out of patience. "Possibly. But I like my madness. There is a thrill in it unknown to such sanity as yours. By your leave, Aline, I think I will ride on to Gavrillac." "Andre, you must not! It is death to you!"
Yet, hard as conditions were in Gavrillac, they were not so hard as in many other parts of France, not half so hard, for instance, as with the wretched feudatories of the great Lord of La Tour d'Azyr, whose vast possessions were at one point separated from this little village by the waters of the Meu.
By now, no doubt, he is in Germany with him, conspiring against France. For that is what the emigres are doing. That Austrian woman at the Tuileries will end by destroying the monarchy." "Yes, yes," said Andre-Louis impatiently. Politics interested him not at all this morning. "But about Gavrillac?" "Why, haven't I told you that Gavrillac is at Meudon, installed in the house his brother has left?
Perceiving a lean, lantern-jawed young man, with straight, lank black hair, in a caped riding-coat of brown cloth, and yellow buckskin breeches, his knee-boots splashed with mud, the scowl upon that august visage deepened until it brought together the thick black eyebrows above the great hooked nose. "You announce yourself as a lawyer of Gavrillac with an important communication," he growled.
Can you wonder? These delays at such a time, with famine in the land? Chateaux have been going up in smoke during the last fortnight. The peasants took their cue from the Parisians, and treated every castle as a Bastille. Order is being restored, there as here, and they are quieter now." "What of Gavrillac? Do you know?" "I believe all to be well.
The Chateau de Gavrillac owed such seigneurial airs as might be claimed for it to its dominant position above the village rather than to any feature of its own.
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