No, indeed! she had no cause to think that the untamed bear would not be ready to dance the moment she began to pipe; but here, in the foundries where he ruled as lord and master, where thousands of men obeyed at a word or sign from him, she first realized that between enslaving a man like de Maurel, through his passions or his sensibilities, to the chariot wheel of her beauty, and gaining a real mastery over his thoughts and actions, there was the immeasurable gulf of ingrained convictions and of the fetish of intellectual freedom.
That de Maurel was the real master in the foundries of La Frontenay Fernande could not doubt for a moment.
"Keep your eyes and ears open, child," Madame la Marquise had said to her, when she at last expressed reluctant approval of her niece's plan to visit the ogre in his lair. "We hear many rumours of discontent at the works--of insubordination--of open revolt. It would serve an abominable democrat like my son Ronnay right, if the proletariat which he upholds against his own traditions and his own caste were to turn against him now as they turned against us in '89. Keep your eyes and ears open, Fernande; the discontent of which we hear may prove a splendid card in our hands."
Fernande had not altogether understood what Madame la Marquise was driving at.
"Of what use can discontent among M. de Maurel's workmen be to us?" she had asked, wondering.
"If they were to turn against their master, my dear," quoth Madame dryly.
"More than likely. Laurent and your father and I have a plan ..." said Madame with some hesitation; "we have put it before de Puisaye and our other leaders.... I can't speak of it just yet, child," she added somewhat impatiently, "but it is most important that you should keep your eyes and ears open to-day. We must reckon, remember, that King Mob, in whose name these execrable revolutionists have murdered their King and hundreds of innocent men, women and children, has felt the power of his own will. He has tasted the sweets of open revolt against constituted authority, and he has been given a free hand to murder, to pillage and to outrage. He is not likely to be so easily curbed again; he will rebel as he has rebelled before. His so-called Emperor has placed an iron heel upon his neck ... and Ronnay de Maurel and his like think that they can quench the flame of lawlessness which they themselves have kindled. Bah! methinks that it is King Mob who will avenge us all one day, by turning against the hands that first led him to strike against imaginary tyrants, and then forged the chains that made a slave of him."