The priest made no effort to stem an outburst for which indeed he was thankful, and which left Louis spent and shaken, so that he threw himself down at last on the window-seat and looked out of the window. M. des Graves, who had stood without moving during the storm, began to pace slowly up and down in his accustomed fashion, to give the young man time to recover himself. At last he came and sat down beside him. “Do you want me to say anything to you, Louis?” Slowly, very slowly, the set profile turned towards him. A gleam of humour flickered for a moment in the angry grey eyes. “I have said a good deal to you,” was all Saint-Ermay’s answer, but he leaned his head back against the window-frame as though he were waiting. CHAPTER XXXV OUT OF NIGHT INTO THE NIGHT “Willst du, dass trotz Sturm und Graus In die Nacht ich muss hinaus— Willst du, dass ich geh’?” —LEMCKE And while M. des Graves was saying to Louis de Chantemerle, on that Saturday morning, the 2nd of March, what he had it in his mind to say, there was travelling rapidly to Fontenay a special courier from Paris with a thunderbolt in his pocket. That explosive he should the same evening deliver to the Directory, and these seven individuals should then and there proceed to give effect to the measure that was to be the match to fire the waiting tinder. And before they slept the printing presses of the town should be busy on it, and on Isnard’s “Address to the French People,” setting up with approbation, for all their haste, those rolling phrases: “France is about to fight alone against an enslaved Europe. . . . Let the country districts retain none of their sons but such as are indispensable. . . . Before our fields can be improved they must be set free. . . .” In such language did the Convention commend its decree for the levying of three hundred thousand conscripts.