“Read him, Monsieur? There is scarce a line in all his ‘Discourses’ that I do not know by heart, and that I do not treasure, vaguely hoping and praying that some day such a state as he dreamt of may find itself established, and may sweep aside these corrupt, tyrannical conditions.”
Maximilien’s eyes kindled.
“Boy,” he answered impressively, “Your hopes are on the eve of fruition, your prayers are about to be heard. Yes — even though it should entail trampling the Lilies of France into the very dust.
“Who are you, Monsieur?” asked La Boulaye, eyeing this prophet with growing interest.
“Robespierre is my name,” was the answer, and to La Boulaye it conveyed no enlightenment, for the name of Maximilien Marie Isidore de Robespierre, which within so very short a time was to mean so much in France, as yet meant nothing.
La Boulaye inclined his head as if acknowledging an introduction, then turned his attention to Duhamel who was offering him a cup of wine. He drank gratefully, and the invigorating effects were almost instantaneous.
“Now let us see to your hurts,” said the schoolmaster, who had taken some linen and a pot of unguents from a cupboard. La Boulaye sat up, and what time Duhamel was busy dressing his lacerated back, the young man talked with Robespierre.
“You are going to Paris, you say, Monsieur?”
“Yes, to the States-General,” answered Maximilien.
“As a deputy?” inquired Caron, with ever-heightening interest.
“As a deputy, Monsieur. My friends of Arras have elected me to the Third Estate of Artois.”
“Dieu! How I envy you!” exclaimed La Boulaye, to cry out a moment later in the pain to which Duhamel’s well-intentioned operations were subjecting him. “I would it might be mine,” he added presently, “to take a hand in legislation, and the mending of it; for as it stands at present it is inferior far to the lawless anarchy of the aborigines. Among them, at least, the conditions are more normal, they offer better balance between faculty and execution; they are by far more propitious to happiness and order than is this broken wreck of civilisation that we call France. It is to equality alone,” he continued, warming to his subject, “that Nature has attached the preservation of our social faculties, and all legislation that aims at being efficient should be directed to the establishment of equality. As it is, the rich will always prefer their own fortune to that of the State, whilst the poor will never love — nor can love — a condition of laws that leaves them in misery.”
Robespierre eyed the young man in some surprise. His delivery was impassioned, and although in what he said there was perhaps nothing that was fresh to the lawyer of Arras, yet the manner in which he said it was impressive to a degree.
“But Duhamel,” he cried to the schoolmaster, “you did not tell me this young patriot was an orator.”
“Nor am I, Monsieur,” smiled La Boulaye. “I am but the mouthpiece of the great Rousseau. I have so assimilated his thoughts that they come from me as spontaneously as if they were my own, and often I go so far as to delude myself into believing that they are.”
No better recommendation than this could he have had to the attention of Robespierre, who was himself much in the same case, imbued with and inspired by those doctrines, so ideal in theory, but, alas! so difficult, so impossible in practice. For fully an hour they sat and talked, and each improved in his liking of the other, until at last, bethinking him of the flight of time, Robespierre announced that he must start.
“You will take him to Paris with you, Maximilien?” quoth the old pedagogue.
“Ma foi, yes; and if with such gifts as Nature appears to have given him, and such cultivation of them as, through the teachings of Rousseau, he has effected, I do not make something of him, why, then, I am unworthy of the confidence my good friends of Arras repose in me.”
They made their adieux, and the schoolmaster, opening his door, peered out. The street was deserted save for de Robespierre’s berline and his impatient postillion. Between them Duhamel and Maximilien assisted Caron to the door of the carriage. The moving subjected him to an excruciating agony, but he caught his nether lip in his teeth, and never allowed them to suspect it. As they raised him into the berline, however, he toppled forward, fainting. Duhamel hastened indoors for a cordial, and brought also some pillows with which to promote the young man’s comfort on the journey that was before him — or, rather, to lessen the discomfort which the jolting was likely to occasion him.
Caron recovered before they started, and with tears in his eyes he thanked old Duhamel and voiced a hope that they might meet again ere long.
Then Robespierre jumped nimbly into the berline. The door closed, the postillion’s whip cracked briskly, and they set out upon a journey which to La Boulaye was to be as the passing from one life to another.
PART II. THE NEW RULE
Allons! Marchons!
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!
La Marseillaise.
CHAPTER V. THE SHEEP TURNED WOLVES
There were roars of anger and screams of terror in the night, and above the Chateau de Bellecour the inky blackness of the heavens was broken by a dull red glow, which the distant wayfarer might have mistaken for the roseate tint of dawn, were it possible for the dawn to restrict itself to so narrow an area.
Ever and anon a tongue of flame would lick up into the night towards that russet patch of sky, betraying the cause of it and proclaiming that incendiaries were at work. Above the ominous din that told of the business afoot there came now and again the crack of a musket, and dominating all other sounds was the sullen roar of the revolted peasants, the risen serfs, the rebellious vassals of the Siegneur de Bellecour.
For time has sped and has much altered in the speeding. Four years have gone by since the night on which the lacerated Caron la Boulaye was smuggled out of Bellecour in Robespierre’s berline and in that four years much of the things that were prophesied have come to pass — aye, and much more besides that was undreamt of at the outset by the revolutionaries. A gruesome engine that they facetiously called the National Razor — invented and designed some years ago by one Dr. Guillotin — is but an item in the changes that have been, yet an item that in its way has become a very factor. It stands not over-high, yet the shadow of it has fallen athwart the whole length and breadth of France, and in that shadow the tyrants have trembled, shaken to the very souls of them by the rude hand of fear; in that shadow the spurned and downtrodden children of the soil have taken heart of grace. The bonds of servile cowardice that for centuries had trammelled them have been shaken off like cobwebs, and they that were as sheep are now become the wolves that prey on those that preyed on them for generations.
There is, in the whole of France, no corner so remote but that, sooner or later, this great upheaval has penetrated to it. Louis XVI. — or Louis Capet, as he is now more generally spoken of — has been arraigned, condemned and executed. The aristocrats are in full emigratory flight across the frontiers — those that have not been rent by the vassals they had brought to bay, the people they had outraged. The Lilies of France lie trampled under foot in the shambles they have made of that fair land, whilst overhead the tricolour — that symbol of the new trinity, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity — is flaunted in the breeze.
A few of the more proud and obstinate — so proud and obstinate as to find it a thing incredible that the order should indeed change and the old regime pass away — still remain, and by their vain endeavours to lord it in their castles provoke such scenes as that enacted at Bellecour in February of ‘93 (by the style of slaves) or Pluviose of the year One of the French Republic, as it shall presently come to be known in the annals of the Revolution.
Bellecour, the most arrogant of arrogants, had stood firm, and desperately contrived through all these months of revolution to maintain his dominion in his corner of Picardy. But even he was beginning to realise that the end was at hand, and he made his preparations to emigrate. Too proud
, however, to permit his emigration to savour of a flight, he carried the leisureliness of his going to dangerous extremes. And now, on the eve of departure, he must needs pause to give a fete at once of farewell and in honour of his daughter’s betrothal to the Vicomte Anatole d’Ombreval. This very betrothal at so unpropitious a season was partly no more than contrived by the Marquis that he might mark his ignoring and his serene contempt of the upheaval and the new rule which it had brought.
All that was left of the noblesse in Picardy had flocked that day to the Chateau de Bellecour, and the company there assembled numbered perhaps some thirty gallants and some twenty ladies. A banquet there had been, which in the main was a gloomy function, for the King’s death was too recent a matter to be utterly lost sight of. Later, however, as the generous supply of wine did its work and so far thawed the ice of apprehension that bound their souls as to dispose them to enjoy, at least, the present hour in forgetfulness, there was a better humour in the air. This developed, and so far indeed did it go that in the evening a Pavane was suggested, and, the musicians being found, it was held in the great salon of the Chateau.
It was then that the first alarm had penetrated to their midst. It had found them a recklessly merry crew, good to behold in their silks and satins, powder and patches, gold lace and red heels, moving with waving fans, or hand on sword, and laced beaver under elbow, through the stately figures of the gavotte.
Scared, white-faced lackeys had brought the news, dashing wildly in upon that courtly assembly. The peasants had risen and were marching on Bellecour.
Some of his sudden rage the Marquis vented by striking the servants’ spokesman in the face.
“Dare you bring me such a message?” he cried furiously.
“But, my lord, what are we to do?” gasped the frightened lackey.
“Do, fool?” returned Bellecour. “Why, close the gates and bid them return home as they value their lives. For if they give me trouble I’ll hang a round dozen of them.”
Still was there that same big talk of hanging men. Still did it seem that the Marquis of Bellecour accounted himself the same lord of life and death that he and his forbears had been for generations. But there were others who thought differently. The music had ceased abruptly, and a little knot of gentlemen now gathered about the host, and urged him to take some measures of precaution. In particular they desired to ensure the safety of the ladies who were being thrown into a great state of alarm, so that of some of these were the screams that were heard in that night of terror. Bellecour’s temper was fast gaining, and as he lost control of himself the inherent brutality of his character came uppermost.
“Mesdames,” he cried rudely, “this screeching will profit us nothing. Even if we must die, let us die becomingly, not shrieking like butchered geese.”
A dozen men raised their voices angrily against him in defence of the women he had slighted. But he waved them impatiently away.
“Is this an hour in which to fall a-quarrelling among ourselves?” he exclaimed. “Or do you think it one in which a man can stop to choose his words? Sang-dieu! That screaming is a more serious matter than at first may seem. If these rebellious dogs should chance to hear it, it will be but so much encouragement to them. A fearless front, a cold contempt, are weapons unrivalled if you would prevail against these mutinous cravens.”
But his guests were insistent that something more than fearless fronts and cold contempts should be set up as barriers between themselves and the advancing peasantry. And in the end Bellecour impatiently quitted the room to give orders for the barricading of the gates and the defending of the Chateau, leaving behind him in the salon the very wildest of confusions.
From the windows the peasantry could now be seen, by the light of their torches, marching up the long avenue that fronted the Chateau, and headed by a single drum on which the bearer did no more than beat the step. They were a fierce, unkempt band, rudely armed — some with scythes, some with sickles, some with hedge-knives, and some with hangers; whilst here and there was one who carried a gun, and perhaps a bayonet as well. Nor were there men only in the rebellious ranks. There were an almost equal number of women in crimson caps, their bosoms bare, their heads dishevelled, their garments filthy and in rags — for the tooth of poverty had bitten deeply into them during the past months.
As they swung along to the rhythmical thud of the drum, their voices were raised in a fearful chorus that must have made one think of the choirs of hell, and the song they sang was the song of Rouget de l’Isle, which all France had been singing these twelve months past:
“Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons.
Allons, marchons!
Qu’un sang inpur
Abreuve nos sillons!”
Ever swelling as they drew nearer came the sound of that terrible hymn to the ears of the elegant, bejewelled, bepowdered company in the Chateau. The gates were reached and found barred. An angry roar went up to Heaven, followed by a hail of blows upon the stout, ironbound oak, and an imperious call to open.
In the courtyard below the Marquis had posted the handful of servants that remained faithful — for reasons that Heaven alone may discern — to the fortunes of the house. He had armed them with carbines and supplied them with ammunition. He had left them orders to hold off the mob from the outer gates as long as possible; but should these be carried, they were to fall back into the Chateau itself, and make fast the doors. Meanwhile, he was haranguing the gentlemen — some thirty of them, as we have seen — in the salon and urging them to arm themselves so that they might render assistance.
His instances were met with a certain coldness, which at last was given expression by the most elegant Vicomte d’Ombreval — the man who was about to become his son-in-law.
“My dear Marquis,” protested the young man, his habitually supercilious mouth looking even more supercilious than usual as he now spoke, “I beg that you will consider what you are proposing. We are your guests, we others, and you ask us to defend your gates against your own people for you! Surely, surely, sir, your first duty should have been to have ensured our safety against such mutinies on the part of the rabble of Bellecour.”
The Seigneur angrily stamped his foot. In his choler he was within an ace of striking Ombreval, and might have done so had not the broad-minded and ever-reasonable old Des Cadoux interposed at that moment to make clear to the Marquis’s guests a situation than which nothing could have been clearer. He put it to them that the times were changed, and that France was no longer what France had been; that allowances must be made for M. de Bellecour, who was in no better case than any other gentleman in that unhappy country! and finally, that either they must look to arming and defending themselves or they must say their prayers and submit to being butchered with the ladies.
“For ourselves,” he concluded calmly, tapping his gold snuffbox and holding it out to Bellecour, for all the world with the air of one who was discussing the latest fashion in wigs, “I can understand your repugnance at coming to blows with this obscene canaille. It is doing them an honour of which they are not worthy. But we have these ladies to think of, Messieurs, and—” he paused to apply the rappee to his nostrils— “and we must exert ourselves to save them, however disagreeable the course we may be compelled to pursue. Messieurs, I am the oldest here; permit that I show you the way.”
His words were not without effect; they kindled chivalry in hearts that, after all, were nothing if not prone to chivalry — according to their own lights — and presently something very near enthusiasm prevailed. But the supercilious and very noble Ombreval still grumbled.
“To ask me to fight this scum!” he ejaculated in horror “Pardi! It is too much. Ask me to beat them off with a whip like a pack of curs, and I’ll do it readily. But fight them — !”
“Nothing could delight us more, Vicomte, than to see you beat them off with a whip,” Des Cadoux assured him. “Arm yourself with a whip, by all means, my friend, and let us witness th
e prodigies you can perform with it.”
“See what valour inflames the Vicomte, Suzanne,” sneered a handsome woman into Mademoiselle’s ear. “With what alacrity he flies to arms that he may defend you, even with his life.”
“M. d’Ombreval is behaving according to his lights,” answered Suzanne coldly.
“Ma foi, then his lights are unspeakably dim,” was the contemptuous answer.
Mademoiselle gave no outward sign of the deep wound her pride was receiving. The girl of nineteen, who had scorned the young secretary-lover in the park of Bellecour that morning four years ago, was developed into a handsome lady of three-and-twenty.
“It would be beneath the dignity of his station to soil his hands in such a conflict as my father has suggested,” she said at last.
“I wonder would it be beneath the dignity of his courage,” mused the same caustic friend. “But surely not, for nothing could be beneath that.”
“Madame!” exclaimed Suzanne, her cheeks reddening; for as of old, and like her father, she was quickly moved to anger. “Will it please you to remember that M. d’Ombreval is my affianced husband?”
“True,” confessed the lady, no whit abashed. “But had I not been told so I had accounted him your rejected suitor, who, broken-hearted, gives no thought either to his own life or to yours.”
In a pet, Mademoiselle gave her shoulder to the speaker and turned away. In spite of the words with which she had defended him, Suzanne was disappointed in her betrothed, and yet, in a way, she understood his bearing to be the natural fruit of that indomitable pride of which she had observed the outward signs, and for which, indeed as much as for the beauty of his person, she had consented to become his wife. After all, it was the outward man she knew. The marriage had been arranged, and this was but their third meeting, whilst never for an instant had they been alone together. By her mother she had been educated up to the idea that it was eminently desirable she should become the Vicomtesse d’Ombreval. At first she had endured dismay at the fact that she had never beheld the Vicomte, and because she imagined that he would be, most probably, some elderly roue, as did so often fall to the lot of maidens in her station. But upon finding him so very handsome to behold, so very noble of bearing, so lofty and disdainful that as he walked he seemed to spurn the very earth, she fell enamoured of him out of very relief, as well as because he was the most superb specimen of the other sex that it had ever been hers to observe.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 67
