He came forward to the table, with long, nervous strides. He was not exactly impressive, but his manner gave the assurance of a distinct earnestness of purpose. The majority of us are unfortunately situated toward the world, as regards personal appearance. Many could pass for great if their physical proportions were less mean. There are thousands of worthy and virtuous young men who never receive their due in social life because they have red hair or stand four-feet-six high, or happen to be the victim of an inefficient dentist. The world, it would seem, does not want virtue or solid worth. It prefers appearance to either. Albert de Chantonnay would, for instance, have carried twice the weight in Royalist councils if his neck had been thicker. He nodded to the Abbé. "I received your message," he said, in the curt manner of the man whose life is in his hand, or is understood, in French theatrical circles, to be thus uncomfortably situated. "The letter?" "It is here, Monsieur Albert," replied the Abbé, who was commonplace, and could not see himself as he wished others to see him. There was only one Abbé Touvent, for morning or afternoon, for church or fête, for the château or the cottage. There were a dozen Albert de Chantonnays, fierce or tender, gay or sad, a poet or a soldier--a light persifleur, who had passed through the mill, and had emerged hard and shining, or a young man of soul, capable of high ideals. To-night, he was the politician--the conspirator--quick of eye, curt of speech. He held out his hand for the letter. "You are to read it, as Monsieur le Marquis instructs me, Monsieur Albert," hazarded the Abbé, touching the breast pocket of his soutane, where Monsieur de Gemosac's letter lay hidden, "to those assembled." "But, surely, I am to read it to myself first," was the retort; "or else how can I give it proper value?" CHAPTER XI A BEGINNING There may be some who refuse to take seriously a person like Albert de Chantonnay because, forsooth, he happened to possess a sense of the picturesque. There are, as a matter of fact, thousands of sensible persons in the British Isles who fail completely to understand the average Frenchman. To the English comprehension it is, for instance, surprising that in time of stress--when Paris was besieged by a German army--a hundred _franc-tireur_ corps should spring into existence, who gravely decked themselves in sombreros and red waist-cloths, and called themselves the "Companions of Death," or some claptrap title of a similar sound. Nevertheless, these "Companions of Death" fought at Orleans as few have fought since man walked this earth, and died as bravely as any in a government uniform. Even the stolid German foe forgot, at last, to laugh at the sombrero worn in midwinter.