*XV*
_How Francois finds Despard and has a lesson in politics, and of whatcame of it._
At evening he ventured to enter an inn at Soluce. A good bed and amplediet restored his courage; but he learned that the citizen with a wart,and an escort of a dozen soldiers, had passed the day before, on theirway to Bvreux. Would he remain there, this friendly commissioner? Noone knew. Evreux was Jacobin to the core. Then he thought of themarquis; it was well to be informed.
Yes; the Citizen Ste. Luce lived beyond Musillon.
The citizen juggler declared that he had once been in his service, butnow that all men were equal, he could not lower the dignity of anequalized nation by serving him longer. He learned that the chateau ofthe marquis had not suffered, nor he, as he was never known to beabsent, and no one molested him. This did not surprise Francois. Inthe South, at an earlier date, the peasants had burned hundreds ofchateaux, but these riots had been mercilessly put down. The Jacobinsmeant to have peace in France, and at cost of blood, if that wasrequisite. To have peace at home was essential to the success ofnational defense on the frontier. In many parts of France, throughoutthe whole of the Terror, very many large land-owners were undisturbed.In fact, the Terror, and its precedent punishments, fell with strangeirregularity on the provinces. The Dukes de Bethune-Charost, de Luynes,de Nivernais, and others who had not been active in politics, remainedunhurt on their estates. For the _emigres_ was reserved a bitter hatred.Nor can we wonder at this result of the vast exodus which took placefrom '89 to '91--"_l'emigration joyeuse_," as it was called by those whocarried off means enough to live gay lives in Brussels while theircountry was in the convulsions of great social and political change.
Francois made haste to leave at dawn, and by nightfall was close to thetown of Musillon. He found a wood road, and was soon deep in one of themarquis's forests. In a quiet glade among rocks he put his effects insecurity, and, charging Toto to guard them, set out to inspect the town.The poodle did not like it. He ran back and forth, whining.
"Oh, stop that!" cried Francois. "Go back! Dost thou hear?"
Toto lay down, and set himself to secure what comfort the situationafforded.
Meanwhile Francois took to the main road until close to the village, andthen left it for the fields, cautiously nearing the town, a small placeof some twelve hundred souls. A monotonous double line of scatteredone-story stone houses lay along the highway. Avoiding the village,Francois moved past and around the red-roofed Norman farm-houses whichlay off from the main highway. Mounds of earth set around the houseswalled in an orchard and an inclosure of many acres, so that, seen fromthe exterior, they had the appearance of being fortified. The lightswere out, and Francois saw no one. Now and then a sentinel dog barkedas the wanderer went by the gateways, in wonder at this unusual style offence. At last he turned again toward the road.
The town was quiet. It was after nine at night. Having purposelylingered thus long, Francois approached the back of the inn, and becamesure that it was empty of guests. A little beyond it was the villagechurch, and as this was lighted, he approached it with care. Thecrosses of the burial-ground were gone. He stumbled over graves, and atlast, standing on a tomb, got a fair glimpse of the interior of thechurch, for many of its windows were broken. It was full of people, andthe murmur of noisy debate came to his ears. He felt that he must learnwhat was going on. With this in view, he kept under the deep shadow ofthe wall, and soon saw that the outer porch was crowded with men andwomen, listening through the open door. Favored by the darkness, he gotunobserved into this mass of deeply occupied people, and was able atlast to catch a little of what was going on. Yes; this was the club ofJacobins which his partner Despard had been sent to organize, one of thehundreds which soon conquered and led opinion all through the provinces.
He caught the usual denunciation of _emigres_ and of the _ci-devant_aristocrats. He had heard it all before; it did not help him.
Very soon an elderly man in peasant dress arose near the door. He spokeof something which they had considered as well to be done soon. Hethought it better to wait until Citizen Commissioner Gregoire arrived.To arrest a _ci-devant_ aristocrat like Ste. Luce was of course proper;but the people were excited, and might do mischief, and they knew thatthe Great Committee did not approve of riots. France must have rest.These outbreaks had ended elsewhere in the deaths of hundreds ofpeasants. He bade them wait, and, in fact, spoke with rare good sense.He was roughly interrupted. His speech was received with laughter andcontemptuous cries, and, to Francois's amazement, there was Despard onhis feet, not twenty feet away. His old partner was somber-looking andred-eyed, but seemed to have lost his shyness of speech. He broke outinto violent invectives, charging the previous speaker with indifferenceto the good of France. This man was no doubt a traitor. He had been inthe service of the _ci-devant_. He had advised the people to wait.Were they not the rulers? The Jacobin clubs would see to this rat of acommissioner; let him come. Then, leaping on a chair, he began tocontrast the luxury in which Ste. Luce lived with the meager life of thepeasant. He talked of the great noble's younger life, of his debaucheryand hardness. All knew what he meant. Not he alone had suffered. Howmany of the children men liked to call their own were of noble blood?
His fluent passion, his ease of speech, his apparent freedom from hisusual mood of fear, astonished Francois. At last Despard became moreexcited, raved wildly, grew incoherent, paused, burst into horrors ofblasphemous allusion, and, utterly exhausted, reeled, and dropped intohis chair, amid wild applauding cries and a dozen vain efforts ofspeakers eager to be heard. As if satisfied, the crowd waited no longerto listen, and issued out in just the mood Despard had desired tocreate. Francois stepped aside, unnoticed. Among the last, surroundedby a gesticulating group, came Despard, silent, exhausted, his head bentdown. A voice cried out: "To-night! Let us do it to-night!" Despardsaid slowly: "No, not to-night. He is not there--he is not there.Perhaps to-morrow; we shall see. I must have rest--rest."
"Is he mad?" thought Francois. "_Diable_! How he hates him! Why is henot afraid?" He had once heard the choir-master tell of a feeble, timidnun who had killed two people; and this man, he supposed, might be, likeher, crazed. No matter; he must use him. The crowd dispersed, and,following Despard at a distance, Francois saw him enter the house of thevillage priest, who had long since said his last prayer in the garden ofthe Carmelites.
For an hour, and until all was still, Francois walked to and fro behindthe house. Suddenly a door opened and closed. Francois moved aroundthe house. He saw Despard go out on the road. After looking about him,the Jacobin walked swiftly away, and was soon past the farthest houses.
"_Dame!_" said Francois, "let us go after him. What can he mean? Itbecomes amusing." Moving with care in the shadows at the side of theroad, he followed Despard, who walked down the middle of the highway,now and then stopping short and cracking his finger-joints, as he usedto do when worried, or clasping his hands over the back of his neck.
The thief smiled as he went. He was again the savage of the streets,with all his keen wits in play, and vaguely aware of pleasure in the useof his training. He looked about him, or stole noiselessly from onedepth of gloom to another across some less shadowed place. He put outwith care one long leg and then the other tentatively, like greatfeelers, and yet got over the ground with speed, as was required, forDespard walked at a rate which was unusual. The great ears of hispursuer were on guard. Once, when Despard stopped of a sudden, Francoiswas near enough to hear him crack his knuckles as he pulled at them. AsPierre stood, he threw up a hand as it were in the eager gesture of aspeech, or in silent, custom-born attestation of some mentally recordedvow. Then he went onward, silent, and was for a moment lost to view inthe aisles of the forest into which he turned. Francois moved faster,dimly seeing him again. The Jacobin hurried on. The man who followedhim was smiling in the darkness, and was feeding curiosity with the keensatisf
action he felt in a chase which was not without a purpose.
Despard seemed to know the great forest well. It soon became more open.He came to a low garden wall, and, climbing it, was heard to tumble onthe farther side with a crash of breaking earthenware. He had come downon a pile of garden pots. The thief reflected for a moment that hispartner must have lost the agility of his former business, and himselfapproached the wall with care. Moving to one side, he dropped to theground, as quiet as a prowling cat.
There was no moon, but the night was clear, and over against thestar-lit space he saw the silhouette of a vast chateau--angles, gables,turrets with vanes. The man whom he hunted moved across the garden,through rose-hedges, under trees, as if reckless as to being heard.Once he fell, but got up without even an exclamation; and so on and onin stumbling haste until he stood upon the broad terrace in front of thebuilding.
Francois was for a little while at leisure to look about him. Despard,with a sudden movement, strode to the foot of the broad steps which ledup to the lofty doorway of the chateau. Here again he stayedmotionless. Francois, now used to the partial obscurity of the night,took quick note of the white gleam of vases, of a fountain's monotonousmurmur, of statues, dim gray blurs seen against the dark wood-spacesbeyond; the great size of the house he saw, and that three or fourwindows showed lights within.
What was Despard about to do? Francois waited. Then he heard now andthen, rising and falling, the faint notes of a violoncello. At thismoment he saw that Pierre was gesticulating, and at last caught sound ofspeech. He was too far away to be clearly seen or distinctly heard.Francois sat down, took off his shoes, tied them over his neck, and wentdown on all fours. It was one of his old tricks to amuse thus thechildren gathered before the show-booth. He could become a bear or anelephant, and knew how to simulate the walk of beasts. Now heapproached Despard on his hands and feet, and, seen in the partialgloom, would have seemed a queer-looking animal. A closely clipped rowof box lay between them and bordered the broad roadway leading to theportal.
His approach was noiseless. Even if it had not been, it is unlikelythat Despard would have noticed it. The quadruped knelt, and set hiseyes to see and his ears to hear, being now only six feet away. His ownfate was deeply involved. He cared little for the marquis, but up outof the dark of memory came the tender sweetness of the face of thewidowed daughter. No word of her brief pleading was forgotten by thisman who craved regard, affection, respect, consideration--all that hehad not. It was only a flash of thought, and again he was intentlyreceptive.
Despard stood, shaking his arms wildly, looking here and there, up anddown. At last he spoke, and so loud that Francois watched him, amazedat his unnatural lack of caution.
"To-morrow I, Pierre Despard, shall be master. I shall no more beafraid. I shall see thee tremble on the tumbrel. I shall see theeshudder at the knife."
Francois had an uncontrollable shiver, predictive, sympathetic. Couldhe trust this creature? There was no help for it. He recalled with asmile one of the Crab's proverbs: "Monsieur Must is a man to trust."She had many and vile sayings; this was one of the few that were notswine-wisdom.
As the man went on speaking, his hands threatened the silent house orsnatched at some unseen thing. He stood again moveless for a moment, andthen threw out his hands as if in appeal, and called aloud: "Renee!Renee! art thou here? Oh, could he not have spared thee to me--to me,who had so little? And he had so much! Oh, for the name he should havespared thee! For the shame--the shame. Renee, his own child's name. MyRenee is dead, and his--his Renee lives; but not long--not long."
"_Dieu!_" murmured Francois. "Let him have the man. _Dame_! I shouldhave killed him long ago."
Pierre was raving, and was only at times to be understood. He seemed tobe seeing this lost Renee, and was now rational and again incoherent orfoolishly vague.
Francois hesitated; but at this moment a window on the second floor wascast open, and a man, who may have heard Despard, showed himself.Francois looked up, and saw a slight figure framed in the window-spaceclear against the light behind him.
Despard cried out in tones of terror: "The marquis! the marquis!" and,turning, fled down the terrace and along the avenue.
"Queer, that," muttered Francois. "He is afraid. I must have him." Heput on his shoes in haste, and with great strides pursued the retreatingfigure, hearing, as he ran, the servant crying from the window, "Whogoes there?"
A hundred yards away from the house, Despard, terrified at the nearingsteps, turned into a side alley, and at last tore through a thicket tothe left.
In an instant Francois had him by the collar. The captured man screamedlike a child in a panic of alarm, while Francois shook him as a terriershakes a rat.
"_Mille tonnerres!_ idiot, keep quiet! Don't kick; it is no use. Thouwilt have the whole house after thee. 'T is I--Francois. Keep quiet!Look at me--Francois. Dost not hear?" At last he was quieted.
"What scared thee, _mon ami_?"
"I saw him--I saw the marquis! I saw him!"
"Monsieur--the marquis? He is thrice that fellow's size."
They were now seated on the ground, Despard panting, and darting quickglances to right and left like a frightened animal.
"Come, Pierre, tell me what all this means. Art gone clean out of thywits?"
"Why dost thou ask? Thou dost know well enough. I have waited--waited.Now I have him."
"_Dame_! Thou? Thou wilt never face him. Thou art afraid."
"I am now. I shall not be to-morrow night. There will be hundreds. Ishall look! I shall see!"
"For Heaven's sake," cried Francois, "talk a little sense. A man whofears a mouse to talk of killing this terrible fellow!"
"The law will kill him, not I. The law--the knife."
"Stuff! A certain commissioner, Gregoire, is after thee, and, worse,after me. He hath a wart on his nose. I ran away to avoid those cursedJacobins. Passport all right--name of Jean Francois. Mind thee! Myfather is old and failing. Thou wilt have to find me a papa. Gregoirehas--he has doubts, this Gregoire. So have I. When I told him you weremy friend, he shut me up in a cellar, and that I liked not. I was afool to run away; but, _mon Dieu!_ there was my errand--to see that poorfather--all set out on my passport, and the man with the wartinquisitive. I had to get here and find my papa."
Another man's difficulties took off Pierre's mind from his own. He wasclear enough now, and asked questions, some hard to answer, but allreasonable.
Francois related his story. The fencing-master had fallen undersuspicion and run away. He, Francois, likewise suspected, had got apassport from a Jacobin fencing-pupil, and come hither to fall on theneck of his dear friend Pierre. It was neat, and hung together well.It had many omissions, and as a whole lacked the fundamental quality oftruth, but it answered. When a man's head is set to save his head, itmay not always be desirable to be accurate.
Pierre reflected; then he cried out suddenly: "This Gregoire! That forhim! Let him take care. Art thou still a Royalist?"
Francois was a Jacobin of the best, unjustly suspected. He was eager toknow what deviltry was in Pierre's mind as to this marquis; and there,too, was the daughter. If he meant to stir these peasants to riot inorder to gratify himself and his well-justified hatred, that might sadlyinfluence Francois's fate. The central power in Paris was merciless tolawless violence which did not aid its own purposes.
Francois talked on and on slackly, getting time to think. Pierre'sspeech had troubled him. He was puzzled as he saw more distinctly thenature of the man whom he was forced to trust. He did not analyze him.He merely apprehended and distrusted one who was to-day a shrinkingcoward and to-morrow a man to be feared less for what he might do thanfor what he might lead others to do when himself remote from sources ofimmediate physical fear. Francois did not--could not--fully know thathe was now putting himself in the power of one who was the victim ofincreasing attacks of melancholy, with intervals of excitement duringwhich the victim was eag
erly homicidal, and possessed for a time therecklessness and the cunning of the partly insane.
"Come," said Francois, at last; "you must hide me until you can find methat papa, or until Citizen Gregoire has come and gone. I like himnot."
"Nor I," said Pierre. "But let him take care; I am not a man to beplayed with."
Francois said he should think not, but that if he meditated an attack onthat miserable _ci-devant_ yonder, it were better to wait until Gregoirehad come and gone.
This caution seemed to awaken suspicion. Pierre turned, and caughtFrancois's arm. "Thou art a spy--a spy of the Convention!"
"Thou must be more fond of a joke than was once thy way. Nonsense! Icould go back and warn the marquis. That would serve the republic, andwell, too; for, by Heaven! if thou art of a mind to burn houses,Robespierre will shorten thee by a head in no time."
"Who talks of burning houses? Am I a fool? I--Despard?"
"No, indeed. Thou--" Francois needed the man's help, and felt that hewas risking his own safety. He must at least seem to trust him. "Dostthou mean to arrest Ste. Luce?"
"I do."
"But when?"
"Oh, in a day or two; no hurry."
Francois knew that he was hearing a lie. "Good," he said. "But Iadvise thee against violence."
"There will be none. I control these people. Thou shouldst see; thoushouldst hear me speak."
"Let us go," said Francois, and they returned to the village without aword on either side. The hamlet was quiet. At the priest's doorFrancois said: "Wait for me. I must fetch my bundle and Toto. I leftthem in the wood." Pierre would wait. In an hour his ex-partner cameback, and before he could knock was admitted by the anxious Jacobin.
When they were within the house, he told Francois that he lived alone.An old woman cooked for him, and came in the morning and went away atdusk. He, Francois, should have the garret; and, this being settled,they carried thither cold meats, bread, cheese, wine, and water, so asto provision the thief for a few days. There would be time to talklater. Francois asked a single question, saying frankly that he hadheard Pierre speak to his club. Certainly he had power over the people.What was it he had meant to do, and when? Despard hesitated. Then thecunning of a crumbling mind came to his aid, and he replied lightly:
"We shall wait till Gregoire has gone. I told thee so already. Thyadvice was good. I do not know. We shall see--we shall see." The doorclosed after him. The man, descending the stair, paused of a sudden,the prey of suspicion. Why did Francois come hither? Was he a spy ofthe marquis--of the Convention? He feared Francois. To one in hisstate of mind little obstacles seem large, great obstacles small. Hemust watch him. He was in his power.
The man left within the room was not less suspicious. He hung a coverover the single window, locked the door, and lay down, with Toto at hisfeet, and at his side his rapier and pistols. He slept a tranquilsleep. Most of the next day he sat at the window, watching through aslit in the curtain the street below him. People came and went; groupsgathered about the desecrated church; there was much excitement, but hecould hear nothing. At dusk he saw a number of men, some with sticksand pikes, come toward the priest's house. Owing to his position, helost sight of them as they came nearer, but from the noise below hepresumed them to have entered. He was, for many reasons, indisposed toremain uninformed. He waited. The noise increased. Pierre had not cometo visit him, as he had said he would; and where was that much-desiredfather? He laughed. "Ah, Toto, one must needs be his own papa." Hehad gone about all day in his stocking-feet to avoid being overheard.Now he bade Toto be quiet, and, opening the door, went cautiously downthe stone stairway. It was quite dark. On the last landing he stood,intently listening. The hallway below was full of men, and evidentlythe two rooms on the ground floor were as crowded. He overheardDespard's voice, angry and strenuous. The words he could not catch, butthe comments of those in the wide hall were enough. The commissionerwas coming, and would interfere. Despard was right. The marquis wasabout to fly, to emigrate. He must be arrested. They poured out,shouting, tumultuous, to join the excited mob in the street.
Francois went quickly up the stair. He cared little for the marquis,but he cared much for the pale lady whose face was stamped in hismemory. Moreover, all this ruin and threatened bloodshed were not tohis mind. A day's reflection had enabled him to conclude that, betweenGregoire and Despard, the situation was perilous, and that he had betterdisappear from the scene. Meanwhile he would warn the marquis, and thengo his way.
He put on his shoes, took his bundle, his arms, and Toto, and, with hiscloak on his shoulder, slipped quietly down-stairs. The house wasempty. He went out the back way unseen, observing that the church waslighted, and seeing a confused mass of noisy peasants about the door.
The Adventures of François Page 17
