Gauvain walked slowly back and forth in this shadow in front of the breach. Now and then he clasped both his hands behind his head, covered by his military hood. He was thinking. [Illustration 131] II. GAUVAIN MEDITATING. His reverie was fathomless. An unheard of change had taken place. The Marquis de Lantenac had been transfigured, and Gauvain had seen it with his own eyes. He would never have believed it possible that such a state of things could have come to pass from any complication of events whatsoever. Even in a dream he could not have imagined such a condition of affairs. The Unforeseen, that inexplicable force that makes a man the plaything of its capricious will, had seized Gauvain and held him fast. Before his eyes he beheld the realization of the impossible,--visible, palpable, inevitable, inexorable. And what did he think of it? This was no time for evasion; he must make up his mind. A question had been presented to him; he must meet it fairly. Who had asked this question? It had come to him in the course of events, but not through events alone. For when events, which are ever changing, ask us a question, immutable justice summons us to answer. Behind the cloud that casts the shadow is the star that sheds the light. We can no more escape the light than the shadow. Gauvain was undergoing an interrogatory. He had been arraigned before a judge. An awe-inspiring presence. His own conscience. His entire being was vacillating within him; his firmest resolutions, his most solemn promises, his most irrevocable determinations, were all shaken to their foundations. The soul has its earthquakes. The more he reflected upon what he had just witnessed, the more confused he grew. Gauvain, Republican as he was, believed himself to be and was just; but a superior law had been revealed. Human law takes a higher stand than the law of revolutions. This affair now in progress could not be evaded; it was a serious matter, and Gauvain formed a part of it; he was involved in it, and could not extricate himself; and however much Cimourdain might say, "This matter no longer concerns you," he felt all the sensations of a tree torn up by its roots. Every man has a basis; a shock to this basis produces a serious disturbance; and this was what Gauvain now felt. He pressed his head between his hands, as if to express from it the truth. It was no easy task to gain a clear idea of a situation like his: nothing could be more uncomfortable; he saw before him a formidable array of ciphers to be added up. To add up the columns of human destiny! The bare thought made him dizzy. And yet he was endeavoring to do this; he was trying to explain matters to himself, to collect his ideas, to subdue the resistance that he felt within him, and to review the facts. He revolved them again and again in his mind.