.

THE WIND.
He had broken his futile lance with the windmill--the image suggested by M.de Kercadiou persisted in his mind--and it was, he perceived, by sheer good fortune that he had escaped without hurt.

There remained the wind itself--the whirlwind.

And the events in Rennes, reflex of the graver events in Nantes, had set that wind blowing in his favour.
He set out briskly to retrace his steps towards the Place Royale, where the gathering of the populace was greatest, where, as he judged, lay the heart and brain of this commotion that was exciting the city.
But the commotion that he had left there was as nothing to the commotion which he found on his return.

Then there had been a comparative hush to listen to the voice of a speaker who denounced the First and Second Estates from the pedestal of the statue of Louis XV.