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They disapproved of the rashness of the new recruit to their body. Some openly condemned his lack of circumspection. Very few and those only the little group in Le Chapelier's confidence ever expected to see him again. It was, therefore, as much in amazement as in relief that at a few minutes after ten they saw him enter, calm, composed, and bland, and thread his way to his seat.
"Your name, monsieur?" Almost had Andre-Louis answered him when he remembered Le Chapelier's warning of the danger with which his mission was fraught, and Le Chapelier's parting admonition to conceal his identity. "My name is unknown to him; it matters nothing; I am the mouthpiece of a people, no more. Go."
He went to seek Le Chapelier, who had been one of the founders of the club, a man of great prominence now, president of the Assembly in this important season when it was deliberating upon the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Le Chapelier's importance was reflected in the sudden servility of the shirt-sleeved, white-aproned waiter of whom Andre-Louis inquired for the representative.
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.
Since he could not be found, the delegations had been made up without him. But now it happened that one or two vacancies had occurred in the Nantes representation; and it was the business of filling these vacancies that had brought Le Chapelier to Nantes. Andre-Louis firmly shook his head in answer to Le Chapelier's proposal. "You refuse?" the other cried. "Are you mad?
"Do you wonder," he asked them, "that M. de Lesdiguieres should administer the law so that it shall ever be favourable to our great nobles? Would it be just, would it be reasonable that he should otherwise administer it?" He paused dramatically to let his sarcasm sink in. It had the effect of reawakening Le Chapelier's doubts, and checking his dawning conviction in Andre-Louis' sincerity.
"If you will await my return, Aline, you will oblige me deeply. Particularly in view of your uncle's resolve." She did not answer him. She was numbed. He took her silence for assent, and, bowing, left her. Standing there she heard his steps going down the stairs together with Le Chapelier's. He was speaking to his friend, and his voice was calm and normal.
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