He shook his head gravely. "Every one is enrolled in the National Guards--that, for one. Here in Quercy, the corps which M. Hugues took it in hand to form numbers some thousands. Every one is armed, therefore. Then, the game laws being abolished, every one is a sportsman. And so many nobles have emigrated, that either there are no nobles or all are nobles." "But who governs?" "The Municipalities. Or, where there are none, Committees." I could not help smiling. "And your Committee, M. le Curé?" I said. "I do not attend it," he answered, wincing visibly. "To be plain, they go too fast for me. But I have worse yet to tell you!" "What?" "On the Fourth of August the Assembly abolished the tithes of the Church; early in this month they proposed to confiscate the estates of the Church! By this time it is probably done." "What! And the clergy are to starve?" I cried in indignation. "Not quite," he answered, smiling sadly. "They are to be paid by the State--as long as they please the State!" He went soon after he had told me that; and I lay in amazement, looking through the window, and striving to picture the changed world that existed round me. Presently André came in with my broth. I thought it weak, and said so; the strong gust of outside life, which the news had brought into my chamber, had roused my appetite, and given me a distaste for _tisanes_ and slops. But the old fellow took the complaint very ill. "Well," he grumbled, "and what else is to be expected, Monsieur? With little rent paid, and half the pigeons in the cot slaughtered, and scarcely a hare left in the country side? With all the world shooting and snaring, and smiths and tailors cocked up on horses--ay, and with swords by their sides--and the gentry gone, or hiding their heads in beds, it is a small thing if the broth is weak! If M. le Vicomte liked strong broth, he should have been wise enough to keep the cow himself, and not----" "Tut, tut, man!" I said, wincing in my turn. "What of Buton?" "Monsieur means M. le Capitaine Buton?" the old man answered with a sneer. "He is at Cahors." "And was any one punished for--for the affair at St. Alais?" "No one is punished now-a-days," André replied tartly. "Except sometimes a miller, who is hung because corn is dear." "Then even Petit Jean----" "Petit Jean went to Paris. Doubtless he is now a Major or a Colonel." With this shot the old man left me--left me writhing. For through all I had not dared to ask the one thing I wished to know; the one thing that, as my strength increased, had grown with it, from a vague apprehension of evil, which the mind, when bidden do its duty, failed to grasp, to a dreadful anxiety only too well understood and defined; a brooding fear that weighed upon me like an evil dream, and in spite of youth sapped my life, and retarded my recovery.