“Oh, and by the way, you will find your brother-in-law, Mr. Butler, in the guard-room yonder, awaiting my orders. Provide him with a uniform and bid him rejoin his regiment at once. Recommend him to be more prudent in future if he wishes me to forget his escapade at Tavora. And in future, O’Moy, trust your wife. Again, good-bye. Come, Grant! — I have instructions for you too. But you must take them as we ride.”
And thus Sir Terence O’Moy found sanctuary at the altar of his country’s need. They left him incredulously to marvel at the luck which had so enlisted circumstances to save him where all had seemed so surely lost an hour ago.
He sent a servant to fetch Mr. Butler, the prime cause of all this pother — for all of it can be traced to Mr. Butler’s invasion of the Tavora nunnery — and with him went to bear the incredible tidings of their joint absolution to the three who waited so anxiously in the dining-room.
POSTSCRIPTUM
The particular story which I have set myself to relate, of how Sir Terence O’Moy was taken in the snare of his own jealousy, may very properly be concluded here. But the greater story in which it is enshrined and with which it is interwoven, the story of that other snare in which my Lord Viscount Wellington took the French, goes on. This story is the history of the war in the Peninsula. There you may pursue it to its very end and realise the iron will and inflexibility of purpose which caused men ultimately to bestow upon him who guided that campaign the singularly felicitous and fitting sobriquet of the Iron Duke.
Ciudad Rodrigo’s Spanish garrison capitulated on the 10th of July of that year 1810, and a wave of indignation such as must have overwhelmed any but a man of almost superhuman mettle swept up against Lord Wellington for having stood inactive within the frontiers of Portugal and never stirred a hand to aid the Spaniards. It was not only from Spain that bitter invective was hurled upon him; British journalism poured scorn and rage upon his incompetence, French journalism held his pusillanimity up to the ridicule of the world. His own officers took shame in their general, and expressed it. Parliament demanded to know how long British honour was to be imperilled by such a man. And finally the Emperor’s great marshal, Massena, gathering his hosts to overwhelm the kingdom of Portugal, availed himself of all this to appeal to the Portuguese nation in terms which the facts would seem to corroborate.
He issued his proclamation denouncing the British for the disturbers and mischief-makers of Europe, warning the Portuguese that they were the cat’s-paw of a perfidious nation that was concerned solely with the serving of its own interests and the gratification of its predatory ambitions, and finally summoning them to receive the French as their true friends and saviours.
The nation stirred uneasily. So far no good had come to them of their alliance with the British. Indeed Wellington’s policy of devastation had seemed to those upon whom it fell more horrible than any French invasion could have been.
But Wellington held the reins, and his grip never relaxed or slackened. And here let it be recorded that he was nobly and stoutly served in Lisbon by Sir Terence O’Moy. Pressure upon the Council resulted in the measures demanded being carried out. But much time had been lost through the intrigues of the Souza faction, with the result that those measures, although prosecuted now more vigorously, never reached the full extent which Wellington had desired. Treachery, too, stepped in to shorten the time still further. Almeida, garrisoned by Portuguese and commanded by Colonel Cox and a British staff, should have held a month. But no sooner had the French appeared before it, on the 26th August, than a powder magazine traitorously fired exploded and breached the wall, rendering the place untenable.
To Wellington this was perhaps the most vexatious of all things in that vexatious time. He had hoped to detain Massena before Almeida until the rains should have set in, when the French would have found themselves struggling through a sodden, water-logged country, through bridgeless floods and a land bereft of all that could sustain the troops. Still, what could be done Wellington did, and did it nobly. Fighting a rearguard action, he fell back upon the grim and naked ridges of Busaco, where at the end of September he delivered battle and a murderous detaining wound upon the advancing hosts of France. That done, he continued the retreat through Coimbra. And now as he went he saw to it that the devastation was completed along the line of march. What corn and provisions could not be carried off were burnt or buried, and the people forced to quit their dwellings and march with the army — a pathetic, southward exodus of men and women, old and young, flocks of sheep, and herds of cattle, creaking bullock-carts laden with provender and household goods, leaving behind them a country bare as the Sahara, where hunger before long should grip the French army too far committed now to pause. In advancing and overtaking must lie Massena’s hope. Eventually in Lisbon he must bring the British to bay, and, breaking them, open out at last his way into a land of plenty.
Thus thought Massena, knowing nothing of the lines of Torres Vedras; and thus, too, thought the British Government at home, itself declaring that Wellington was ruining the country to no purpose, since in the end the British must be driven out with terrible loss and infamy that must make their name an opprobrium in the world.
But Wellington went his relentless way, and at the end of the first week of October brought his army and the multitude of refugees safely within the amazing lines. The French, pressing hard upon their heels and confident that the end was near, were brought up sharply before those stupendous, unsuspected, impregnable fortifications.
After spending best part of a month in vain reconnoitering, Massena took up his quarters at Santarem, and thence the country was scoured for what scraps of victuals had been left to relieve the dire straits of the famished host of France. How the great marshal contrived to hold out so long in Santarem against the onslaught of famine and concomitant disease remains something of a mystery. An appeal to the Emperor for succour eventually brought Drouet with provisions, but these were no more than would keep his men alive on a retreat into Spain, and that retreat he commenced early in the following March, by when no less than ten thousand of his army had fallen sick.
Instantly Wellington was up and after him. The French retreat became a flight. They threw away baggage and ammunition that they might travel the lighter. Thus they fled towards Spain, harassed by the British cavalry and scarcely less by the resentful peasantry of Portugal, their line of march defined by an unbroken trail of carcasses, until the tattered remnants of that once splendid army found shelter across the Coira. Beyond this Wellington could not continue the pursuit for lack of means to cross the swollen river and also because provisions were running short.
But there for the moment he might rest content, his immediate object achieved and his stern strategy supremely vindicated.
On the heights above the yellow, turgid flood rode Wellington with a glittering staff that included O’Moy and Murray, the quartermaster-general. Through his telescope he surveyed with silent satisfaction the straggling columns of the French that were being absorbed by the evening mists from the sodden ground.
O’Moy, at his side, looked on without satisfaction. To him the close of this phase of the campaign which had justified his remaining in office meant the reopening of that painful matter that had been left in suspense by circumstances since that June day of last year at Monsanto. The resignation then refused from motives of expediency must again be tendered and must now be accepted.
Abruptly upon the general stillness came a sharply humming sound. Within a yard of the spot where Wellington sat his horse a handful of soil heaved itself up and fell in a tiny scattered shower. Immediately elsewhere in a dozen places was the phenomenon repeated. There was too much glitter about the staff uniforms and vindictive French sharpshooters were finding them an attractive mark.
“They are firing on us, sir!” cried O’Moy on a note of sharp alarm.
“So I perceive,” Lord Wellington answered calmly, and leisurely he closed his glass, so leisurely that O’Moy, in impatient fear of his
chief, spurred forward and placed himself as a screen between him and the line of fire.
Lord Wellington looked at him with a faint smile. He was about to speak when O’Moy pitched forward and rolled headlong from the saddle.
They picked him up unconscious but alive, and for once Lord Wellington was seen to blench as he flung down from his horse to inquire the nature of O’Moy’s hurt. It was not fatal, but, as it afterwards proved, it was grave enough. He had been shot through the body, the right lung had been grazed and one of his ribs broken.
Two days later, after the bullet had been extracted, Lord Wellington went to visit him in the house where he was quartered. Bending over him and speaking quietly, his lordship said that which brought a moisture to the eyes of Sir Terence and a smile to his pale lips. What actually were his lordship’s words may be gathered from the answer he received.
“Ye’re entirely wrong, then, and it’s mighty glad I am. For now I need no longer hand you my resignation. I can be invalided home.”
So he was; and thus it happens that not until now — when this chronicle makes the matter public — does the knowledge of Sir Terence’s single but grievous departure from the path of honour go beyond the few who were immediately concerned with it. They kept faith with him because they loved him; and because they had understood all that went to the making of his sin, they condoned it.
If I have done my duty as a faithful chronicler, you who read, understanding too, will take satisfaction in that it was so.
SCARAMOUCHE
A ROMANCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
This historical adventure novel, first published in 1921, was Sabatini’s first significant commercial success. It became a worldwide best-seller and one of his best-known works. It tells the story of a young lawyer during the French Revolution. In the course of his adventures he becomes an actor portraying “Scaramouche” (a roguish buffoon character from the Italian commedia dell’arte). He also becomes a revolutionary, politician and fencing-master, confounding his enemies with his powerful orations and swordsmanship. He is forced by circumstances to change sides several times. The book also depicts his transformation from cynic to idealist.
The novel opens with the memorable line: “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” This line was to become Sabatini’s epitaph on his gravestone in Adelboden, Switzerland.
Sabatini’s sequel, Scaramouche the Kingmaker, was published in 1931.
The cover of the first edition
Title page of an early American edition
CONTENTS
BOOK I: THE ROBE
CHAPTER I. THE REPUBLICAN
CHAPTER II. THE ARISTOCRAT
CHAPTER III. THE ELOQUENCE OF M. DE VILMORIN
CHAPTER IV. THE HERITAGE
CHAPTER V. THE LORD OF GAVRILLAC
CHAPTER VI. THE WINDMILL
CHAPTER VII. THE WIND
CHAPTER VIII. OMNES OMNIBUS
CHAPTER IX. THE AFTERMATH
BOOK II: THE BUSKIN
CHAPTER I. THE TRESPASSERS
CHAPTER II. THE SERVICE OF THESPIS
CHAPTER II. THE COMIC MUSE
CHAPTER IV. EXIT MONSIEUR PARVISSIMUS
CHAPTER V. ENTER SCARAMOUCHE
CHAPTER VI. CLIMENE
CHAPTER VII. THE CONQUEST OF NANTES
CHAPTER VIII. THE DREAM
CHAPTER IX. THE AWAKENING
CHAPTER X. CONTRITION
CHAPTER XI. THE FRACAS AT THE THEATRE FEYDAU
BOOK III: THE SWORD
CHAPTER I. TRANSITION
CHAPTER II. QUOS DEUS VULT PERDERE
CHAPTER III. PRESIDENT LE CHAPELIER
CHAPTER IV. AT MEUDON
CHAPTER V. MADAME DE PLOUGASTEL
CHAPTER VI. POLITICIANS
CHAPTER VII. THE SPADASSINICIDES
CHAPTER VIII. THE PALADIN OF THE THIRD
CHAPTER IX. TORN PRIDE
CHAPTER X. THE RETURNING CARRIAGE
CHAPTER XI. INFERENCES
CHAPTER XII. THE OVERWHELMING REASON
CHAPTER XIII. SANCTUARY
CHAPTER XIV. THE BARRIER
CHAPTER XV. SAFE-CONDUCT
CHAPTER XVI. SUNRISE
A still from Rex Ingram’s 1923 silent film adaptation
Poster for George Sidney’s 1952 film adaptation
BOOK I: THE ROBE
CHAPTER I. THE REPUBLICAN
He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony. His very paternity was obscure, although the village of Gavrillac had long since dispelled the cloud of mystery that hung about it. Those simple Brittany folk were not so simple as to be deceived by a pretended relationship which did not even possess the virtue of originality. When a nobleman, for no apparent reason, announces himself the godfather of an infant fetched no man knew whence, and thereafter cares for the lad’s rearing and education, the most unsophisticated of country folk perfectly understand the situation. And so the good people of Gavrillac permitted themselves no illusions on the score of the real relationship between Andre-Louis Moreau — as the lad had been named — and Quintin de Kercadiou, Lord of Gavrillac, who dwelt in the big grey house that dominated from its eminence the village clustering below.
Andre-Louis had learnt his letters at the village school, lodged the while with old Rabouillet, the attorney, who in the capacity of fiscal intendant, looked after the affairs of M. de Kercadiou. Thereafter, at the age of fifteen, he had been packed off to Paris, to the Lycee of Louis Le Grand, to study the law which he was now returned to practise in conjunction with Rabouillet. All this at the charges of his godfather, M. de Kercadiou, who by placing him once more under the tutelage of Rabouillet would seem thereby quite clearly to be making provision for his future.
Andre-Louis, on his side, had made the most of his opportunities. You behold him at the age of four-and-twenty stuffed with learning enough to produce an intellectual indigestion in an ordinary mind. Out of his zestful study of Man, from Thucydides to the Encyclopaedists, from Seneca to Rousseau, he had confirmed into an unassailable conviction his earliest conscious impressions of the general insanity of his own species. Nor can I discover that anything in his eventful life ever afterwards caused him to waver in that opinion.
In body he was a slight wisp of a fellow, scarcely above middle height, with a lean, astute countenance, prominent of nose and cheek-bones, and with lank, black hair that reached almost to his shoulders. His mouth was long, thin-lipped, and humorous. He was only just redeemed from ugliness by the splendour of a pair of ever-questing, luminous eyes, so dark as to be almost black. Of the whimsical quality of his mind and his rare gift of graceful expression, his writings — unfortunately but too scanty — and particularly his Confessions, afford us very ample evidence. Of his gift of oratory he was hardly conscious yet, although he had already achieved a certain fame for it in the Literary Chamber of Rennes — one of those clubs by now ubiquitous in the land, in which the intellectual youth of France foregathered to study and discuss the new philosophies that were permeating social life. But the fame he had acquired there was hardly enviable. He was too impish, too caustic, too much disposed — so thought his colleagues — to ridicule their sublime theories for the regeneration of mankind. Himself he protested that he merely held them up to the mirror of truth, and that it was not his fault if when reflected there they looked ridiculous.
All that he achieved by this was to exasperate; and his expulsion from a society grown mistrustful of him must already have followed but for his friend, Philippe de Vilmorin, a divinity student of Rennes, who, himself, was one of the most popular members of the Literary Chamber.
Coming to Gavrillac on a November morning, laden with news of the political storms which were then gathering over France, Philippe found in that sleepy Breton village matter to quicken his already lively indignation. A peasant of Gavrillac, named Mabey, had been shot dead that morning in the woods of Meupont, across the river, by a ga
mekeeper of the Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr. The unfortunate fellow had been caught in the act of taking a pheasant from a snare, and the gamekeeper had acted under explicit orders from his master.
Infuriated by an act of tyranny so absolute and merciless, M. de Vilmorin proposed to lay the matter before M. de Kercadiou. Mabey was a vassal of Gavrillac, and Vilmorin hoped to move the Lord of Gavrillac to demand at least some measure of reparation for the widow and the three orphans which that brutal deed had made.
But because Andre-Louis was Philippe’s dearest friend — indeed, his almost brother — the young seminarist sought him out in the first instance. He found him at breakfast alone in the long, low-ceilinged, white-panelled dining-room at Rabouillet’s — the only home that Andre-Louis had ever known — and after embracing him, deafened him with his denunciation of M. de La Tour d’Azyr.
“I have heard of it already,” said Andre-Louis.
“You speak as if the thing had not surprised you,” his friend reproached him.
“Nothing beastly can surprise me when done by a beast. And La Tour d’Azyr is a beast, as all the world knows. The more fool Mabey for stealing his pheasants. He should have stolen somebody else’s.”
“Is that all you have to say about it?”
“What more is there to say? I’ve a practical mind, I hope.”
“What more there is to say I propose to say to your godfather, M. de Kercadiou. I shall appeal to him for justice.”
“Against M. de La Tour d’Azyr?” Andre-Louis raised his eyebrows.
“Why not?”
“My dear ingenuous Philippe, dog doesn’t eat dog.”
“You are unjust to your godfather. He is a humane man.”
“Oh, as humane as you please. But this isn’t a question of humanity. It’s a question of game-laws.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 336
