"To be sure I have. I have taken lessons at their hands." He
laughed. He was in excellent good-humour. And Kersain was
enrolled in the ranks of those who accounted Andre-Louis a man
without heart or conscience.
But in his "Confessions" he tells us - and this is one of the
glimpses that reveal the true man under all that make-believe
- that on that night he went down on his knees to commune with
his dead friend Philippe, and to call his spirit to witness that
he was about to take the last step in the fulfilment of the oath
sworn upon his body at Gavrillac two years ago.
CHAPTER IX
TORN PRIDE
M. de La Tour d'Azyr's engagement in the country on that Sunday
was with M. de Kercadiou. To fulfil it he drove out early in the
day to Meudon, taking with him in his pocket a copy of the last
issue of "Les Actes des Apotres," a journal whose merry sallies
at the expense of the innovators greatly diverted the Seigneur de
Gavrillac. The venomous scorn it poured upon those worthless
rapscallions afforded him a certain solatium against the
discomforts of expatriation by which he was afflicted as a result
of their detestable energies.
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