You are interrupting M.l'abbe, and I should like to hear him further.

He interests me profoundly." In the background Andre-Louis, too, had risen, brought to his feet by alarm, by the evil that he saw written on the handsome face of M.de La Tour d'Azyr.

He approached, and touched his friend upon the arm.
"Better be going, Philippe," said he.
But M.de Vilmorin, caught in the relentless grip of passions long repressed, was being hurried by them recklessly along.
"Oh, monsieur," said he, "consider what you are and what you will be.
Consider how you and your kind live by abuses, and consider the harvest that abuses must ultimately bring." "Revolutionist!" said M.le Marquis, contemptuously.

"You have the effrontery to stand before my face and offer me this stinking cant of your modern so-called intellectuals!" "Is it cant, monsieur?
Do you think--do you believe in your soul--that it is cant?
Is it cant that the feudal grip is on all things that live, crushing them like grapes in the press, to its own profit?
Does it not exercise its rights upon the waters of the river, the fire that bakes the poor man's bread of grass and barley, on the wind that turns the mill?
The peasant cannot take a step upon the road, cross a crazy bridge over a river, buy an ell of cloth in the village market, without meeting feudal rapacity, without being taxed in feudal dues.

Is not that enough, M.le Marquis?
Must you also demand his wretched life in payment for the least infringement of your sacred privileges, careless of what widows or orphans you dedicate to woe?
Will naught content you but that your shadow must lie like a curse upon the land?
And do you think in your pride that France, this Job among the nations, will suffer it forever ?" He paused as if for a reply.