The great man tossed aside his pen, and rose as the door closed after the entering visitor. Pushing his horn-rimmed spectacles up on to his forehead he stretched out his hand to La Boulaye.
“It is you, Caron,” he murmured in that plaintive voice of his. It was a voice that sorted well with the humane man who had resigned a judgeship at Arras sooner than pass a death-sentence, but hardly so well with him who, as Public Prosecutor in Paris, had brought some hundreds of heads to the sawdust. “I have been desiring to congratulate you upon your victory of yesterday,” he continued, “even as I have been congratulating myself upon the fact that it was I who found you and gave you to the Nation. I feared that I might not see you ere I left.”
“You are leaving Paris?” asked La Boulaye, without heeding the compliments in the earlier part of the other’s speech.
“For a few days. Business of the Nation, my friend. But you — let us talk of you. Do you know that I am proud of you, cher Caron? Your eloquence turned Danton green with jealousy, and as for poor Vergniaud, it extinguished him utterly. Ma foi! If you continue as you have begun, the day may not be far distant when you will become the patron and I the Protege.” And his weak eyes beamed pleasantly from out of that unhealthy pale face.
Outwardly he had changed little since his first coming to Paris, to represent the Third Estate of Artoise, saving, his cheeks were grown more hollow. Upon his dress he still bestowed the same unpretentious care that had always characterised it, which, in one of the most prominent patriots of the Mountain, amounted almost to foppishness. Blue coat, white waistcoat, silk hose and shoes buckled with silver, gave him an elegant exterior that must have earned him many a covert sneer from his colleagues. His sloping forehead was crowned by a periwig, sedulously curled and powdered — for all that with the noblesse this was already a discarded fashion.
La Boulaye replied to his patron’s compliments with the best grace he could command considering how full of another matter was his mind.
“I may congratulate myself, Maximilien,” he added, “upon my good fortune in coming before you took your departure. I have a request to prefer, a favour to ask.”
“Tut! Who talks of favours? Not you, Caron, I hope. You have but to name what you desire, and so that it lies within my power to accord it, the thing is yours.”
“There is a prisoner in the Luxembourg in whom I am interested. I seek his enlargement.”
“But is that all?” cried the little man, and, without more ado, he turned to his writing-table and drew a printed form from among the chaos of documents. “His name?” he asked indifferently, as he dipped his quill in the ink-horn and scratched his signature at the foot of it.
“An aristocrat,” said Caron, with some slight hesitancy.
“Eh?” And the arched brows drew together for an instant. “But no matter. There are enough and to spare even for Fouquier-Tinvillle’s voracious appetite. His name?”
“The ci-devant Vicomte Antole d’Ombreval.”
“Qui-ca?” The question rang sharp as a pistol-shot, sounding the more fearful by virtue of the contrast with the gentle tones in which Robespierre had spoken hitherto. The little man’s face grew evil. “d’Ombreval?” he cried. “But what is this man to you? It is by your favour alone that I have let him live so long, but now—” He stopped short. “What is your interest in this man?” he demanded, and the question was so fiercely put as to suggest that it would be well for La Boulaye that he should prove that interest slight indeed.
But whatever feelings may have been swaying Caron at the moment, fear was not one of them.
“My interest in him is sufficiently great to cause me to seek his freedom at your hands,” he answered, with composure.
Robespierre eyed him narrowly for a moment, peering at him over his spectacles which he had drawn down on to his tip-tilted nose. Then the fierceness died out of his mien and manner as suddenly as it had sprung up. He became once more the weak-looking, ineffectual man that had first greeted La Boulaye: urbane and quiet, but cold-cold as ice.
“I am desolated, my dear Caron, but you have asked me for the one man in the prisons of France whose life I cannot yield you. He is from Artois, and there is an old score ‘twixt him and me, ‘twixt his family and mine. They were the grands seigneurs of the land on which we were born, these Ombrevals, and I could tell you of wrongs committed by them which would make you shudder in horror. This one shall atone in the small measure we can enforce from him. It was to this end that I ordered you to effect his capture. Have patience, dear Caron, and forgive me that I cannot grant your request. As I have said, I am desolated that it should be so. Ask me, if you will, the life of any other — or any dozen others — and they are yours. But Ombreval must die.”
Caron stood a moment in silent dismay. Here was an obstacle upon which he had not counted when he had passed his word to Suzanne to effect the release of her betrothed. At all costs he must gain it, he told himself, and to that end he now set himself to plead, advancing, as his only argument — but advancing it with a fervour that added to its weight — that he stood pledged to save the ci-devant Vicomte. Robespierre looked up at him with a shade of polite regret upon his cadaverous face, and with polite regret he deplored that Caron should have so bound himself.
So absorbed were they, the one in pleading, the other in resisting, that neither noticed the opening of the door, nor yet the girl who stood observing them from the threshold.
“If this man dies,” cried La Boulaye at last, “I am dishonoured.
“It is regrettable,” returned Robespierre, “that you should have pledged your word in the matter. You will confess, Caron, that it was a little precipitate. Enfin,” he ended, crumpling the document he had signed and tossing it under the table, “you must extricate yourself as best you can. I am sorry, but I cannot give him to you.”
Caron’s face was very white and his hands were clenched convulsively. It is questionable whether in that moment he had not flung himself upon the Incorruptible, and enforced that which hitherto he had only besought, but that in that instant the girl stepped into the room.
“And is it really you, Caron?” came the melodious voice of Cecile.
La Boulaye started round to confront her, and stifled a curse at the untimely interruption which Robespierre was blessing as most timely.
“It is — it is, Citoyenne,” he answered shortly, to add more shortly still: “I am here on business with the Citizen, your uncle.”
But before the girl could so much as appreciate the rebuke he levelled at her intrusion, her uncle had come to the rescue.
“The business, however, is at an end. Take charge of this good Caron, Cecile, whilst I make ready for my journey.”
Thus, sore at heart, and chagrined beyond words, La Boulaye was forced to realise his defeat, and to leave the presence of the Incorruptible. But with Cecile he went no farther than the landing.
“If you will excuse me, Citoyenne,” he said abstractedly, “I will take my leave of you.”
“But I shall not excuse you, Caron,” she said, refusing to see his abstraction. “You will stay to dinner—”
“I am sorry beyond measure, but—”
“You shall stay,” she interrupted. “Come, Caron. It is months since you were with us. We will make a little fete in honour of your yesterday’s triumph,” she promised him, sidling up to him with a bewitching glance of blue eyes, and the most distracting toss of golden curls upon an ivory neck.
But to such seductions Caron proved as impervious as might a man of stone. He excused himself with cold politeness. The Nation’s business was awaiting him; he might not stay.
“The Nation’s business may await you a little longer,” she declared, taking hold of his arm with both hands, and had she left it at that it is possible that she had won her way with him. But most indiscreetly she added:
“Come, Caron, you shall tell me who was your yesterday’s visitor. Do you know that the sight of her made me jealous? Was it not fooli
sh in me?”
And now, from cold politeness, La Boulaye passed to hot impoliteness. Roughly he shook her detaining hands from him, and with hardly so much as a word of farewell, he passed down the stairs, leaving her white with passion at the slight he had thereby put upon her.
The beauty seemed to pass out of her face much as the meekness was wont to pass out of her uncle’s when he was roused. Her blue eyes grew steely and cruel as she looked after him.
“Wait, Caron,” she muttered to herself, “I will cry quits with you.” And then, with a sob of anger, she turned and mounted the stairs to her apartments.
CHAPTER XIX. THE THEFT
La Boulaye sat once more in the Rue Nationale and with his head in his hands, his elbows supported by the writing-table, he stared before him, his face drawn with the pain and anger of the defeat he had sustained where no defeat had been expected.
He had been so assured that he had but to ask for Ombreval’s life, and it would be accorded him; he had promised Suzanne with such confidence — boasting almost — that he could do this, and to do it he had pledged his word. And now? For very shame he could not go to her and tell her that despite his fine promises despite his bold bargaining, he was as powerless to liberate Ombreval as was she herself.
And with reflection he came to see that even did he bear her such a tale she would not believe it. The infinite assurance of his power, implicit in everything that he had said to her, must now arise in her memory, and give the lie to his present confession of powerlessness. She would not believe him, and disbelieving him, she would seek a motive for the words that she would deem untrue. And that motive she would not find far to seek. She would account his present attitude the consummation of a miserable subterfuge by which he sought to win her confidence and esteem. She would — she must — believe that he had but made a semblance of befriending her so disinterestedly only that he might enlist her kindness and regard, and turn them presently to his own purposes. She would infer that he had posed as unselfish — as self-sacrificing, almost — only that he might win her esteem, and that by telling her now that Robespierre was inflexible in his resolve to send Ombreval to the guillotine, he sought to retain that esteem whilst doing nothing for it. That he had ever intended to save Ombreval she would not credit. She would think it all a cunning scheme to win his own ends. And now he bethought him of the grief that would beset her upon learning that her journey had indeed been fruitless. He smote the table a blow with his clenched hand, and cursed the whole Republic, from Robespierre down to the meanest sans-culotte that brayed the Ca ira in the streets of Paris.
He had pledged his word, and for all that he belonged to the class whose right to honour was denied by the aristocrats, his word he had never yet broken. That circumstance — as personified by Maximilien Robespierre — should break it for him now was matter enough to enrage him, for than this never had there been an occasion on which such a breach could have been less endurable.
He rose to his feet, and set himself to pace the chamber, driven to action of body by the agonised activity of his mind. From the street rose the cry of the pastry-cook going his daily rounds, as it had risen yesterday, he remembered, when Suzanne had been with him. And now of a sudden he stood still. His lips were compressed, his brows drawn together in a forbidding scowl, and his eyes narrowed until they seemed almost closed. Then with his clenched right hand he smote the open palm of the other. His resolve was taken. By fair means or foul, with Robespierre’s sanction or without it, he would keep his word. After not only the hope but the assurance he had given Suzanne that her betrothed should go free, he could do no less than accomplish the Vicomte’s enlargement by whatever means should present themselves.
And now to seek a way. He recalled the free pardon to which Robespierre had gone the length of appending his signature. He remembered that it had not been destroyed; Robespierre had crumpled it in his hand and tossed it aside. And by now Robespierre would have departed, and it should not be difficult for him — the protege and intimate of Robespierre — to gain access to the Incorruptible’s room.
If only he could find that document and fill in the name of Ombreval the thing would be as good as done. True, he would require the signatures of three other Deputies; but one of these he could supply himself, and another two were easily to be requisitioned, seeing that already it bore Robespierre’s.
And then as suddenly as the idea of the means had come to him, came now the spectre of the consequences to affright him. How would it fare with him on Robespierre’s return? How angered would not Robespierre be upon discovering that his wishes had been set at naught, his very measures contravened — and this by fraud? And than Robespierre’s anger there were few things more terrible in ‘93. It was an anger that shore away heads as recklessly as wayside flowers are flicked from their stems by the idler’s cane.
For a second it daunted him. If he did this thing he must seek refuge in flight; he must leave France, abandon the career which was so full of promise for him, and wander abroad, a penniless fortune-hunter. Well might the prospect give him pause. Well might it cause him to survey that pale, sardonic countenance that eyed him gloomily from the mirror above his mantel shelf, and ask it mockingly if it thought that Suzanne de Bellecour — or indeed, any woman living — were worthy of so great a sacrifice.
What had she done for him that he should cast away everything for her sake? Once she had told him that she loved him, only to betray him. Was that a woman for whom a man should wanton his fortunes? And then he smiled derisively, mocking his reflections in the mirror even as he mocked himself.
“Poor fool,” he muttered, “it is not for the sake of what you are to her. Were it for that alone, you would not stir a finger to gratify her wishes. It is for the sake of what she is to you, Caron.”
He turned from the mirror, his resolve now firm, and going to the door he called his official. Briefly he instructed Brutus touching the packing of a valise, which he would probably need that night.
“You are going a journey, Citizen?” inquired Brutus, to which La Boulaye returned a short answer in the affirmative. “Do I accompany you?” inquired the official, to which La Boulaye shook his head.
At that Brutus, who, for all his insolence of manner, was very devotedly attached to his employer, broke into remonstrances, impertinent of diction but affectionate of tenor. He protested that La Boulaye had left him behind, and lonely, during his mission to the army in Belgium, and he vowed that he would not be left behind again.
“Well, well; we shall see, Brutus,” answered the Deputy, laying his hand upon the fellow’s shoulder. “But I am afraid that this time I am going farther than you would care to come.”
The man’s ferrety eyes were raised of a sudden to La Boulaye’s face in a very searching glance. Caron’s tone had been laden with insinuation.
“You are running way,” cried the official.
“Sh! My good Brutus, what folly! Why should I run away — and from whom, pray?”
“I know not that. But you are. I heard it in your voice. And you do not trust me, Citizen La Boulaye,” the fellow added, in a stricken voice. “I have served you faithfully these two years, and yet you have not learnt to trust me.”
“I do, I do, my friend. You go too fast with your conclusions. Now see to my valise, and on my return perhaps I’ll tell you where I am going, and put your fidelity to the test.”
“And you will take me with you?”
“Why, yes,” La Boulaye promised him, “unless you should prefer to remain in Paris.”
With that he got away and leaving the house, he walked briskly up the street, round the corner, and on until he stood once more before Duplay’s.
“Has the Citizen Robespierre departed yet?” he inquired of the woman who answered his peremptory knock.
“He has been gone this hour, Citizen La Boulaye,” she answered. “He started almost immediately after you left him.”
“Diable!” grumbled Caron, with well-feigned an
noyance. “Quel contretemps! I have left a most important document in his room, and, of course, it will be locked.”
“But the Citoyenne Cecile has the key,” answered the woman, eager to oblige him.
“Why, yes — naturally! Now that is fortunate. Will you do me the favour to procure the key from he Citoyenne for a few moments, telling her, of course, that it is I who need it?”
“But certainly, Montez, Citoyen.” And with a wave of the hand towards the stairs she went before him.
He followed leisurely, and by the time he had reached Robespierre’s door her voice floated down to him from above, calling the Incorruptible’s niece. Next he heard Cecile’s voice replying, and then a whispered conference on the landing overhead, to the accompaniment of the occasional tinkle of a bunch of keys.
Presently the domestic returned, and unlocking the door, she held it open for La Boulaye to pass. From her attitude it seemed to Caron as if she were intentioned — probably she had been instructed — to remain there while he obtained what he sought. Now he had no mind that she should see him making his quest among the wasted papers on the floor, and so:
“I shall not be more than a few minutes,” he announced quietly. “I will call you when I am ready to depart.”
Thus uncompromisingly dismissed, she did not venture to remain, and, passing in, La Boulaye closed the door. As great as had been his deliberation hitherto was now the feverish haste with which he crossed to the spot where he had seen the document flung. He caught up a crumpled sheet and opened it out It was not the thing he sought. He cast it aside and took up another with no better luck. To crumple discarded papers seemed the habit of the Incorruptible, for there was a very litter of them on the ground. One after another did Caron investigate without success. He was on his knees now, and his exploration had carried him as far as the table; another moment and he was grovelling under it, still at his search, which with each fresh disappointment grow more feverish.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 80
