Who in these days would prefer against him the grotesque charge of
sedition for what he had done in Brittany? What court would dare
to send him to the gallows for having said in advance what all
France was saying now? As for that other possible charge of murder,
who should concern himself with the death of the miserable Binet
killed by him - if, indeed, he had killed him, as he hoped - in
self-defence.
And so one fine day in early August, Andre-Louis gave himself a
holiday from the academy, which was now working smoothly under his
assistants, hired a chaise and drove out to Versailles to the Caf?
d'Amaury, which he knew for the meeting-place of the Club Breton,
the seed from which was to spring that Society of the Friends of
the Constitution better known as the Jacobins. 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.
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