The Historical Nights' Entertainment: First Series
Page 10
VIII, THE NIGHT OF TERROR--The Drownings At Nantes Under Carrier
The Revolutionary Committee of the city of Nantes, reinforced by someof the administrators of the district and a few members of the People'sSociety, sat in the noble hall of the Cour des Comptes, whichstill retained much of its pre-republican sumptuousness. They satexpectantly--Goullin, the attorney, president of the committee, afrail, elegant valetudinarian, fierily eloquent; Grandmaison, thefencing-master, who once had been a gentleman, fierce of eye andinflamed of countenance; Minee, the sometime bishop, now departmentalpresident; Pierre Chaux, the bankrupt merchant; the sans-culotte Forget,of the People's Society, an unclean, ill-kempt ruffian; and some thirtyothers called like these from every walk of life.
Lamps were lighted, and under their yellow glare the huddledcompany--for the month was December, and the air of the vast room waschill and dank--looked anxious and ill at ease.
Suddenly the doors were thrown open by an usher; and his voice rang loudin announcement--
"The Citizen Representative Carrier."
The great man came in, stepping quickly. Of middle height, very frailand delicate, his clay-colored face was long and thin, with archedeyebrows, a high nose, and a loose, coarse mouth. His deeply sunken darkeyes glared fiercely, and wisps of dead-black hair, which had escapedthe confining ribbon of his queue, hung about his livid brow. He waswrapped in a riding-coat of bottle-green, heavily lined with fur, theskirts reaching down to the tops of his Hessian boots, and the enormousturned-up collar almost touching the brim of his round hat. Under thecoat his waist was girt with the tricolour of office, and there weregold rings in his ears.
Such at the age of five-and-thirty was Jean Baptiste Carrier,Representative of the Convention with the Army of the West, the attorneywho once had been intended by devout parents for the priesthood. He hadbeen a month in Nantes, sent thither to purge the body politic.
He reached a chair placed in the focus of the gathering, which sat in asemicircle. Standing by it, one of his lean hands resting upon the back,he surveyed them, disgust in his glance, a sneer curling his lip, soterrible and brutal of aspect despite his frailness that more than oneof those stout fellows quailed now before him.
Suddenly he broke into torrential speech, his voice shrill and harsh:
"I do not know by what fatality it happens, but happen it does, thatduring the month that I have been in Nantes you have never ceased togive me reason to complain of you. I have summoned you to meet me herethat you may justify yourselves, if you can, for your ineptitude!" Andhe flung himself into the chair, drawing his fur-lined coat about him."Let me hear from you!" he snapped.
Minee, the unfrocked bishop, preserving still a certain episcopalportliness of figure, a certain episcopal oiliness of speech,respectfully implored the representative to be more precise.
The invitation flung him into a passion. His irascibility, indeed,deserved to become a byword.
"Name of a name!" he shrilled, his sunken eyes ablaze, his faceconvulsed. "Is there a thing I can mention in this filthy city of yoursthat is not wrong? Everything is wrong! You have failed in your duty toprovide adequately for the army of Vendee. Angers has fallen, and nowthe brigands are threatening Nantes itself. There is abject want in thecity, disease is rampant; people are dying of hunger in the streets andof typhus in the prisons. And sacre nom!--you ask me to be precise! I'llbe precise in telling you where lies the fault. It lies in your lousyadministration. Do you call yourselves administrators? You--" He becameunprintable. "I have come here to shake you out of your torpor, andby--I'll shake you out of it or I'll have the blasted heads off the lotof you."
They shivered with chill fear under the wild glare of his sunken eyes.
"Well?" he barked after a long pause. "Are you all dumb as well asidiots?"
It was the ruffian Forget who had the courage to answer him:
"I have told the People's Society that if the machine works badly it isbecause the Citizen Carrier refuses to consult with the administration."
"You told them that, did you, you--liar?" screeched Carrier. "Am I nothere now to consult with you? And should I not have come before had yousuggested it? Instead, you have waited until, of my own accord, I shouldcome to tell you that your administration is ruining Nantes."
Goullin, the eloquent and elegant Goullin, rose to soothe him:
"Citizen Representative, we admit the truth of all that you have said.There has been a misunderstanding. We could not take it upon ourselvesto summon the august representative of the Sacred People. I We haveawaited your own good pleasure, and now that you have made thismanifest, there is no reason why the machine should not workeffectively. The evils of which you speak exist, alas! But they are notso deeply rooted that, working under your guidance and advice, we cannotuproot them, rendering the soil fertile once more of good under thebeneficent fertilizing showers of liberty."
Mollified, Carrier grunted approval.
"That is well said, Citizen Goullin. The fertilizer needed by thesoil is blood--the bad blood of aristocrats and federalists, and Ican promise you, in the name of the august people, that it shall beabundantly provided."
The assembly broke into applause, and his vanity melted to it. He stoodup, expressed his gratification at being so completely understood,opened his arms, and invited the departmental president, Minee, to comedown and receive the kiss of brotherhood.
Thereafter they passed to the consideration of measures of improvement,of measures to combat famine and disease. In Carrier's view there wasonly one way of accomplishing this--the number of mouths to be fed mustbe reduced, the diseased must be eliminated. It was the direct, theradical, the heroic method.
That very day six prisoners in Le Bouffay had been sentenced to deathfor attempting to escape.
"How do we know," he asked, "that those six include all the guilty? Howdo we know that all in Le Bouffay do not share the guilt? The prisonersare riddled with disease, which spreads to the good patriots of Nantes;they eat bread, which is scarce, whilst good patriots starve. We musthave the heads off all those blasted swine!" He took fire at his ownsuggestion. "Aye, that would be a useful measure. We'll deal with it atonce. Let some one fetch the President of the Revolutionary Tribunal."
He was fetched--a man of good family and a lawyer, named FrancoisPhelippes.
"Citizen President," Carrier greeted him, "the administration of Nanteshas been considering an important measure. To-day you sentenced todeath six prisoners in Le Bouffay for attempting to escape. You are topostpone execution so as to include all the Bouffay prisoners in thesentence."
Although an ardent revolutionary, Phelippes was a logically mindedman with a lawyer's reverence for the sacredness of legal form. Thiscommand, issued with such cynical coldness, and repudiated by noneof those present, seemed to him as grotesque and ridiculous as it washorrible.
"But that is impossible, Citizen Representative," said he.
"Impossible!" snarled Carrier. "A fool's word. The administrationdesires you to understand that it is not impossible. The sacred will ofthe august people--"
Phelippes interrupted him without ceremony.
"There is no power in France that can countermand the execution of asentence of the law."
"No--no power!"
Carrier's loose mouth fell open. He was too amazed to be angry.
"Moreover," Phelippes pursued calmly, "there is the fact that all theother prisoners in Le Bouffay are innocent of the offence for which thesix are to die."
"What has that to do with it?" roared Carrier. "Last year I rode ashe-ass that could argue better than you! In the name of--, what hasthat to do with it?"
But there were members of the assembly who thought with Phelippes, andwho, whilst lacking the courage to express themselves, yet found courageto support another who so boldly expressed them.
Carrier sprang up quivering with rage before that opposition. "It seemsto me," he snarled, "that there are more than the scoundrels in LeBouffay who need to be shortened
by a head for the good of the nation.I tell you that you are slaying the commonweal by your slowness andcircumspection. Let all the scoundrels perish!"
A handsome, vicious youngster named Robin made chorus.
"Patriots are without bread! It is fitting that the scoundrels shoulddie, and not eat the bread of starving patriots."
Carrier shook his fist at the assembly.
"You hear, you--! I cannot pardon whom the law condemns."
It was an unfortunate word, and Phelippes fastened on it.
"That is the truth, Citizen Representative," said Phelippes. "And as forthe prisoners in Le Bouffay, you will wait until the law condemns them."
And without staying to hear more, he departed as firmly as he had come,indifferent to the sudden uproar.
When he had gone, the Representative flung himself into his chair again,biting his lip.
"There goes a fellow who will find his way to the guillotine in time,"he growled.
But he was glad to be rid of him, and would not have him broughtback. He saw how the opposition of Phelippes had stiffened the weakeropposition of some of those in the assembly. If he was to have hisway he would contrive better without the legal-minded President of theRevolutionary Tribunal. And his way he had in the end, though notuntil he had stormed and cursed and reviled the few who dared to offerremonstrances to his plan of wholesale slaughter.
When at last he took his departure, it was agreed that the assemblyshould proceed to elect a jury which was to undertake the duty ofdrawing up immediately a list of those confined in the prisons ofNantes. This list they were to deliver when ready to the committee,which would know how to proceed, for Carrier had made his meaningperfectly clear. The first salutary measure necessary to combat theevils besetting the city was to wipe out at once the inmates of all theprisons in Nantes.
In the chill December dawn of the next day the committee--which had satall night under the presidency of Goullin forwarded a list of somefive hundred prisoners to General Boivin, the commandant of the city ofNantes, together with an order to collect them without a moment's delay,take them to L'Eperonniere, and there have them shot.
But Boivin was a soldier, and a soldier is not a sans-culotte. He tookthe order to Phelippes, with the announcement that he had no intentionof obeying it. Phelippes, to Boivin's amazement, agreed with him.He sent the order back to the committee, denouncing it as flagrantlyillegal, and reminding them that it was illegal to remove any prisoner,no matter by whose order, without such an order as might follow upon adecision of the Tribunal.
The committee, intimidated by this firmness on the part of the Presidentof the Revolutionary Tribunal, dared not insist, and there the matterremained.
When Carrier learnt of it the things he said were less than ever fit forpublication. He raved like a madman at the very thought that a quibblinglawyer should stand in the very path of him, the august representativeof the Sacred People.
It had happened that fifty-three priests, who had been brought to Nantesa few days before, were waiting in the sheds of the entrepot for prisonaccommodation, so that their names did not yet appear upon any of theprison registers. As a solatium to his wounded feelings, he ordered hisfriends of the Marat Company to get rid of them.
Lamberty, the leader of the Marats, asked him how it should be done.
"How?" he croaked. "Not so much mystery, my friend. Fling the swine intothe water, and so let's be rid of them. There will be plenty of theirkind left in France."
But he seems to have explained himself further, and what precisely werehis orders, and how they were obeyed, transpires from a letter whichhe wrote to the Convention, stating that those fifty-three wretchedpriests, "being confined in a boat on the Loire, were last nightswallowed up by the river." And he added the apostrophe, "What arevolutionary torrent is the Loire!"
The Convention had no illusions as to his real meaning; and when Carrierheard that his letter had been applauded by the National Assembly, hefelt himself encouraged to break down all barriers of mere legalitythat might obstruct his path. And, after all, what the RevolutionaryCommittee as a body--intimidated by Phelippes--dared not do could bedone by his faithful and less punctilious friends of the Marat Company.
This Marat Company, the police of the Revolutionary Committee, enrolledfrom the scourings of Nantes' sans-culottism, and captained by a ruffiannamed Fleury, had been called into being by Carrier himself with theassistance of Goullin.
On the night of the 24th Frimaire of the year III (December 14, 1793,old style), which was a Saturday, Fleury mustered some thirty of hismen, and took them to the Cour des Comptes, where they were awaited byGoullin, Bachelier, Grandmaison, and some other members of the committeeentirely devoted to Carrier. From these the Marats received their formalinstructions.
"Plague," Goullin informed them, "is raging in the gaols, and itsravages must be arrested. You will therefore proceed this evening to theprison of Le Bouffay in order to take over the prisoners whom you willmarch up to the Quay La Fosse, whence they will be shipped to BelleIsle."
In a cell of that sordid old building known as Le Bouffay lay acocassier, an egg and poultry dealer, arrested some three years beforeupon a charge of having stolen a horse, and since forgotten. His ownversion was that a person of whom he knew very little had entrustedhim with the sale of the stolen animal in possession of which he wasdiscovered.
The story sounds familiar; it is the sort of story that must have doneduty many times; and it is probable that the cocassier was no betterthan he should have been. Nevertheless Fate selected him to be one ofher unconscious instruments. His name was Leroy, and we have his ownword for it that he was a staunch patriot. The horse business wascertainly in the best vein of sans-culottism.
Leroy was awakened about ten o'clock that night by sounds that were veryunusual in that sombre, sepulchral prison. They were sounds of unbridledrevelry--snatches of ribald song, bursts of coarse, reverberatinglaughter and they proceeded, as it seemed to him, from the courtyard andthe porter's lodge.
He crawled from the dank straw which served him for a bed, andapproached the door to listen. Clearly the porter Laqueze wasentertaining friends and making unusually merry. It was also to begathered that Laqueze's friends were getting very drunk. What the devildid it mean?
His curiosity was soon to be very fully gratified. Came heavy steps upthe stone staircase, the clatter of sabots, the clank of weapons, andthrough the grille of his door an increasing light began to beat.
Some one was singing the "Carmagnole" in drunken, discordant tones.Keys rattled, bolts were drawn; doors were being flung open. The noiseincreased. Above the general din he heard the detestable voice of theturnkey.
"Come and see my birds in their cages. Come and see my pretty birds."
Leroy began to have an uneasy premonition that the merrymaking portendedsinister things.
"Get up, all of you!" bawled the turnkey. "Up and pack your traps.You're to go on a voyage. No laggards, now. Up with you!"
The door of Leroy's cell was thrown open in its turn, and he foundhimself confronting a group of drunken ruffians. One of these--ared-capped giant with long, black mustaches and a bundle of ropes overone arm suddenly pounced upon him. The cocassier was an active, vigorousyoung man. But, actuated by fear and discretion, he permitted himselftamely to be led away.
Along the stone-flagged corridor he went, and on every hand beheld hisfellow-prisoners in the same plight, being similarly dragged from theircells and similarly hurried below. At the head of the stairs one fellow,perfectly drunk, was holding a list, hiccupping over names which hegarbled ludicrously as he called them out. He was lighted in his task bya candle held by another who was no less drunk. The swaying pair seemedto inter-support one another grotesquely.
Leroy suffered himself to be led down the stairs, and so came to theporter's lodge, where he beheld a half-dozen Marats assembled round atable, with bumpers of wine before them, bawling, singing, cursing, andcracking lewd jests at the expense of each prisoner
as he entered. Theplace was in a litter. A lamp had been smashed, and there was a puddleof wine on the floor from a bottle that had been knocked over. On abench against the wall were ranged a number of prisoners, others layhuddled on the floor, and all of them were pinioned.
Two or three of the Marats lurched up to Leroy, and ran their handsover him, turning out his pockets, and cursing him foully for theiremptiness. He saw the same office performed upon others, and saw themstripped of money, pocket-books, watches, rings, buckles, and whateverelse of value they happened to possess. One man, a priest, was evendeprived of his shoes by a ruffian who was in want of foot-gear.
As they were pinioning his wrists, Leroy looked up. He confesses that hewas scared.
"What is this for?" he asked. "Does it mean death?"
With an oath he was bidden to ask no questions.
"If I die," he assured them, "you will be killing a good republican."
A tall man with an inflamed countenance and fierce, black eyes, thatwere somewhat vitreous, now leered down upon him.
"You babbling fool! It's not your life, it's your property we want."
This was Grandmaison, the fencing-master, who once had been a gentleman.He had been supping with Carrier, and he had only just arrived at LeBouffay, accompanied by Goullin. He found the work behind time, and toldthem so.
"Leave that fellow now, Jolly. He's fast enough. Up and fetch the rest.It's time to be going... time to be going."
Flung aside now that he was pinioned, Leroy sat down on the floor andlooked about him. Near him an elderly man was begging for a cup ofwater. They greeted the prayer with jeering laughter.
"Water! By Sainte Guillotine, he asks for water!" The drunkensans-culottes were intensely amused. "Patience, my friend--patience, andyou shall drink your fill. You shall drink from the great cup."
Soon the porter's lodge was crowded with prisoners, and they wereoverflowing into the passage.
Came Grandmaison cursing and swearing at the sluggishness of the Marats,reminding them--as he had been reminding them for the last hour--that itwas time to be off, that the tide was on the ebb.
Stimulated by him, Jolly--the red-capped giant with the blackmustaches--and some others of the Marat Company, set themselves to tiethe prisoners into chains of twenty, further to ensure againstpossible evasion. They were driven into the chilly courtyard, and thereGrandmaison, followed by a fellow with a lantern, passed along the rankscounting them.
The result infuriated him.
"A hundred and five!" he roared, and swore horribly. "You have been herenearly five hours, and in all that time you have managed to truss uponly a hundred and five. Are we never to get through with it? I tell youthe tide is ebbing. It is time to be off."
Laqueze, the porter of Le Bouffay, with whose food and wine thosemyrmidons of the committee had made so disgracefully free, came toassure him that he had all who were in the prison.
"All?" cried Grandmaison, aghast. "But according to the list thereshould have been nearer two hundred." And he raised his voice to call:"Goullin! Hola, Goullin! Where the devil is Goullin?"
"The list," Laqueze told him, "was drawn up from the register. But youhave not noted that many have died since they came--we have had thefever here--and that a few are now in hospital."
"In hospital! Bah! Go up, some of you, and fetch them. We are takingthem somewhere where they will be cured." And then he hailed the elegantGoullin, who came up wrapped in a cloak. "Here's a fine bathing-party!"he grumbled. "A rare hundred of these swine!"
Goullin turned to Laqueze.
"What have you done with the fifteen brigands I sent you this evening?"
"But they only reached Nantes to-day," said Laqueze, who understoodnothing of these extraordinary proceedings. "They have not yet beenregistered, not even examined."
"I asked you what you have done with them?" snapped Goullin.
"They are upstairs."
"Then fetch them. They are as good as any others."
With these, and a dozen or so dragged from sick-beds, the total was madeup to about a hundred and thirty.
The Marats, further reinforced now by half a company of National Guards,set out from the prison towards five o'clock in the morning; urgingtheir victims along with blows and curses.
Our cocassier found himself bound wrist to wrist with a young Capuchinbrother, who stumbled along in patient resignation, his head bowed, hislips moving as if he were in prayer.
"Can you guess what they are going to do with us?" murmured Leroy.
He caught the faint gleam of the Capuchin's eyes in the gloom.
"I do not know, brother. Commend yourself to God, and so be prepared forwhatever may befall."
The answer was not very comforting to a man of Leroy's temperament. Hestumbled on, and they came now upon the Place du Bouffay, where thered guillotine loomed in ghostly outline, and headed towards the QuaiTourville. Thence they were marched by the river the whole length of theQuai La Fosse. Fear spreading amongst them, some clamours were raised,to be instantly silenced by blows and assurances that they were to beshipped to Belle Isle, where they were to be set to work to build afort.
The cocassier thought this likely enough, and found it more comfortingthan saying his prayers--a trick which he had long since lost.
As they defiled along the quays, an occasional window was thrown up, andan inquisitive head protruded, to be almost instantly withdrawn again.
On the Cale Robin at last they were herded into a shed which opened onto the water. Here they found a large lighter alongside, and they beheldin the lantern-light the silhouettes of a half-dozen shipwrights busilyat work upon it, whilst the place rang with the blows of hammers and thescream of saws.
Some of those nearest the barge saw what was being done. Two greatports were being opened in the vessel's side, and over one of these thusopened the shipwrights were nailing planks. They observed that theseports, which remained above the water-line now that the barge was empty,would be well below it once she were laden, and conceiving that theyperceived at last the inhuman fate awaiting them, their terror roseagain. They remembered snatches of conversation and grim jests utteredby the Marats in Le Bouffay, which suddenly became clear, and the alarmspreading amongst them, they writhed and clamoured, screamed for mercy,cursed and raved.
Blows were showered upon them. In vain was it sought to quiet them againwith that fable of a fort to be constructed on Belle Isle. One of themin a frenzy of despair tore himself free of his bonds, profited by amoment of confusion, and vanished so thoroughly that Grandmaison andhis men lost a quarter of an hour seeking him in vain, and would haveso spent the remainder of the night but for a sharp word from a man ina greatcoat and a round hat who stood looking on in conversation withGoullin.
"Get on, man! Never mind that one! We'll have him later. It will bedaylight soon. You've wasted time enough already."
It was Carrier.
He had come in person to see the execution of his orders, and at hiscommand Grandmaison now proceeded to the loading. A ladder was setagainst the side of the lighter by which the prisoners were to descend.The cords binding them in chains were now severed, and they were leftpinioned only by the wrists. They were ordered to embark. But asthey were slow to obey, and as some, indeed, hung back wailing andinterceding, he and Jolly took them by their collars, thrust them to theedge, and bundled them neck and crop down into the hold, recking nothingof broken limbs. Finding this method of embarkation more expeditious,the use of the ladder was neglected thenceforth.
Among the last to be thus flung aboard was our cocassier Leroy. He fellsoft upon a heaving, writhing mass of humanity, which only graduallyshook down and sorted itself out on the bottom of the lighter when thehatches overhead were being nailed down. Yet by an odd chance the youngCapuchin and Leroy, who had been companions in the chain, were notseparated even now. Amid the human welter in that agitated place ofdarkness, the cries and wails that rang around him, Leroy recognized thevoice of the young friar exhorting them to
prayer.
They were in the stern of the vessel, against one of the sides, andLeroy, who still kept a grip on the wits by which he had lived, bade theCapuchin hold up his wrists. Then he went nosing like a dog, until atlast he found them, and his strong teeth fastened upon the cord thatbound them, and began with infinite patience to gnaw it through.
Meanwhile that floating coffin had left its moorings and was glidingwith the stream. On the hatches sat Grandmaison, with Jolly and twoother Marats, howling the "Carmagnole" to drown the cries of thewretches underneath, and beating time with their feet upon the deck.
Leroy's teeth worked on like a rat's until at last the cord was severed.Then, lest they should be parted in the general heaving and shifting ofthat human mass, those teeth of his fastened upon the Capuchin's sleeve.
"Take hold of me!" he commanded as distinctly as he could; and theCapuchin gratefully obeyed. "Now untie my wrists!"
The Capuchin's hands slid along Leroy's arms until they found his hands,and there his fingers grew busy, groping at the knots. It was no easymatter to untie them in the dark, guided by sense of touch alone. Butthe friar was persistent and patient, and in the end the last knot ranloose, and our cocassier was unpinioned.
It comforted him out of all proportion to the advantage. At least hishands were free for any emergency that might offer. That he depended insuch a situation, and with no illusions as to what was to happen, uponemergency, shows how tenacious he was of hope.
He had been released not a moment too soon. Overhead, Grandmaison andhis men were no longer singing. They were moving about. Something bumpedagainst the side of the vessel, near the bow, obviously a boat, andvoices came up from below the level of the deck. Then the lightershuddered under a great blow upon the planks of the forecastle port.The cries in the hold redoubled. Panting, cursing, wailing men hurtledagainst Leroy, and almost crushed him for a moment under their weight asthe vessel heaved to starboard. Came a succession of blows, not only onthe port in the bow, but also on that astern. There was a cracking andrending of timbers, and the water rushed in.
Then the happenings in that black darkness became indescribablyhorrible. In their frenzy not a few had torn themselves free of theirbonds. These hurled themselves towards the open ports through which thewater was pouring. They tore at the planks with desperate, laceratedhands. Some got their arms through, seeking convulsively to widen theopenings and so to gain an egress. But outside in the shipwrights' boatstood Grandmaison, the fencing-master, brandishing a butcher's sword.
With derision and foul objurgations he slashed at protruding arms andhands, thrust his sword again and again through the port into thatclose-packed, weltering mass, until at last the shipwrights backed awaythe boat to escape the suction of the sinking lighter.
The vessel, with its doomed freight of a hundred and thirty humanlives, settled down slowly by the head, and the wailing and cursingwas suddenly silenced as the icy waters of the Loire eddied over it andraced on.
Caught in the swirl of water, Leroy had been carried up against the deckof the lighter. Instinctively he had clutched at a crossbeam. The waterraced over his head, and then, to his surprise, receded, beat up once ortwice as the lighter grounded, and finally settled on a level with hisshoulders.
He was quick to realize what had happened. The lighter had gone down bythe head on a shallow. Her stern remained slightly protruding, so thatin that part of her between the level of the water and the deck therewas a clear space of perhaps a foot or a foot and a half. Yet of thehundred and thirty doomed wretches on board he was the only one who hadprofited by this extraordinary chance.
Leroy hung on there; and thereafter for two hours, to use his ownexpression, he floated upon corpses. A man of less vigorous mettle,moral and physical, could never have withstood the ordeal of a twohours' immersion in the ice-cold water of that December morning. Leroyclung on, and hoped. I have said that he was tenacious of hope. And soonafter daybreak he was justified of his confidence in his luck. As thefirst livid gleams of light began to suffuse the water in which hefloated, a creaking of rowlocks and a sound of voices reached his ears.A boat was passing down the river.
Leroy shouted, and his voice rang hollow and sepulchral on the morningstillness. The creak of oars ceased abruptly. He shouted again, and wasanswered. The oars worked now at twice their former speed. The boat wasalongside. Blows of a grapnel tore at the planking of the deck untilthere was a hole big enough to admit the passage of his body.
He looked through the faint mist which he had feared never to see again,heaved himself up with what remained him of strength until his breastwas on a level with the deck, and beheld two men in a boat.
But, exhausted by the effort, his numbed limbs refused to support him.He sank back, and went overhead, fearing now, indeed, that help hadarrived too late. But as he struggled to the surface the bight of a ropesmacked the water within the hold. Convulsively he clutched it, wound itabout one arm, and bade them haul.
Thus they dragged him out and aboard their own craft, and put him ashoreat the nearest point willing out of humanity to do so much, but daringto do no more when he had told them how he came where they had foundhim.
Half naked, numbed through and through, with chattering teeth andfailing limbs, Leroy staggered into the guard-house at Chantenay.Soldiers of the Blues stripped him of his sodden rags, wrapped him in ablanket, thawed him outwardly before a fire and inwardly with gruel, andthen invited him to give an account of himself.
The story of the horse will have led you to suppose him a ready liar.He drew now upon that gift of his, represented himself as a marinerfrom Montoir, and told a harrowing tale of shipwreck. Unfortunately, heoverdid it. There was present a fellow who knew something of the sea,and something of Montoir, to whom Leroy's tale did not ring quite true.To rid themselves of responsibility, the soldiers carried him before theRevolutionary Committee of Nantes.
Even here all might have gone well with him, since there was no memberof that body with seacraft to penetrate his imposture. But asill-chance would have it, one of the members sitting that day was theblack-mustached sans-culotte Jolly, the very man who had dragged Leroyout of his cell last night and tied him up.
At sight of him Jolly's eyes bulged in his head.
"Where the devil have you come from?" he greeted him thunderously.
Leroy quailed. Jolly's associates stared. But Jolly explained to them:
"He was of last night's bathing party. And he has the impudence to comebefore us like this. Take him away and shove him back into the water."
But Bachelier, a man who, next to the President Goullin, exerted thegreatest influence in the committee, was gifted with a sense of humourworthy of the Revolution. He went off into peals of laughter as hesurveyed the crestfallen cocassier, and, perhaps because Leroy'ssituation amused him, he was disposed to be humane.
"No, no!" he said. "Take him back to Le Bouffay for the present. Let theTribunal deal with him."
So back to Le Bouffay went Leroy, back to his dungeon, his fetid strawand his bread and water, there to be forgotten again, as he had beenforgotten before, until Fate should need him.
It is to him that we owe most of the materials from which we are ableto reconstruct in detail that first of Carrier's drownings on a grandscale, conceived as an expeditious means of ridding the city ofuseless mouths, of easing the straitened circumstances resulting frommisgovernment.
Very soon it was followed by others, and, custom increasing Carrier'saudacity, these drownings--there were in all some twenty-threenoyades--ceased to be conducted in the secrecy of the night, or to beconfined to men. They were made presently to include women--of whom atone drowning alone, in Novose, three hundred perished under the mostrevolting circumstances--and even little children. Carrier himselfadmitted that during the three months of his rule some three thousandvictims visited the national bathing-place, whilst other, and no doubtmore veracious, accounts treble that number of those who received theNational Baptism.
Soon
these wholesale drownings had become an institution, a sort ofnational spectacle that Carrier and his committee felt themselves induty bound to provide.
But at length a point was reached beyond which it seemed difficult tocontinue them. So expeditious was the measure, that soon the obviousmaterial was exhausted. The prisons were empty. Yet habits, oncecontracted, are not easily relinquished. Carrier would be lookingelsewhere for material, and there was no saying where he might look,or who would be safe. Soon the committee heard a rumour that theRepresentative intended to depose it and to appoint a new one, whereuponmany of its members, who were conscious of lukewarmness, began to growuneasy.
Uneasy, too, became the members of the People's Society. They had senta deputation to Carrier with suggestions for the better conduct ofthe protracted campaign of La Vendee. This was a sore point with theRepresentative. He received the patriots with the foulest abuse, and hadthem flung downstairs by his secretaries.
Into this atmosphere of general mistrust and apprehension came the mostridiculous Deus ex machina that ever was in the person of the very youngand very rash Marc Antoine Jullien. His father, the Deputy Jullien,was an intimate of Robespierre's, by whose influence Marc Antoine wasappointed to the office of Agent of the Committee of Public Safety,and sent on a tour of inspection to report upon public feeling and theconduct of the Convention's Representatives.
Arriving in Nantes at the end of January of '94, one of Marc Antoine'sfirst visits happened to be to the People's Society, which was stillquivering with rage at the indignities offered by Carrier to itsdeputation.
Marc Antoine was shocked by what he heard, so shocked that instead ofgoing to visit the Representative on the morrow, he spent the morninginditing a letter to Robespierre, in which he set forth in detail theabuses of which Carrier was guilty, and the deplorable state of miseryin which he found the city of Nantes.
That night, as Marc Antoine was sinking into the peaceful slumber of theman with duty done, he was rudely aroused by an officer and a coupleof men of the National Guard, who announced to him that he was underarrest, and bade him rise and dress.
Marc Antoine flounced out of bed in a temper, and flaunted hiscredentials. The officer remained unmoved. He was acting upon ordersfrom the Citizen Representative.
Still in a temper, Marc Antoine hurriedly dressed himself. He would soonshow this Representative that it is not safe to trifle with Agents ofthe Public Safety. The Citizen Representative should hear from him. Theofficer, still unimpressed, bundled him into a waiting carriage, andbore him away to the Maison Villetreux, on the island where Carrier hadhis residence.
Carrier had gone to bed. But he was awake, and he sat up promptly whenthe young muscadin from Paris was roughly thrust into his room by thesoldiers. The mere sight of the Representative sufficed to evaporateMarc Antoine's anger, and with it his courage.
Carrier's pallor was of a grey-green from the rage that possessed him.His black eyes smouldered like those of an animal seen in the gloom, andhis tumbled black hair, fluttering about his moist brow, increased theterrific aspect of his countenance. Marc Antoine shrank and was dumb.
"So," said Carrier, regarding him steadily, terribly, "you are the thingthat dares to denounce me to the Safety, that ventures to find faultwith my work!" From under his pillow he drew Marc Antoine's letter toRobespierre. "Is this yours?"
At the sight of this violation of his correspondence with theIncorruptible, Marc Antoine's indignation awoke, and revived hiscourage.
"It is mine," he answered. "By what right have you intercepted it?"
"By what right?" Carrier put a leg out of bed. "So you question myright, do you? You have so imposed yourself upon folk that you are givenpowers, and you come here to air them, by--"
"You shall answer to the Citizen Robespierre for your conduct," MarcAntoine threatened him.
"Aha!" Carrier revealed his teeth in a smile of ineffable wickedness. Heslipped from the bed, and crouching slightly as if about to spring, hepointed a lean finger at his captive.
"You are of those with whom it is dangerous to deal publicly, and youpresume upon that. But you can be dealt with privily, and you shall. Ihave you, and, by--, you shall not escape me, you--!"
Marc Antoine looked into the Representative's face, and saw there thewickedness of his intent. He stiffened. Nature had endowed him withwits, and he used them now.
"Citizen Carrier," he said, "I understand. I am to be murdered to-nightin the gloom and the silence. But you shall perish after me in daylight,and amid the execrations of the people. You may have intercepted myletters to my father and to Robespierre. But if I do not leave Nantes,my father will come to ask an account of you, and you will end your lifeon the scaffold like the miserable assassin that you are."
Of all that tirade, but one sentence had remained as if corroded intothe mind of Carrier. "My letters to my father and to Robespierre," theastute Marc Antoine had said. And Marc Antoine saw the Representative'smouth loosen, saw a glint of fear replace the ferocity in his dark eyes.
What Marc Antoine intended to suggest had instantly leapt to Carrier'smind--that there had been a second letter which his agents had missed.They should pay for that. But, meanwhile, if it were true, he dare notfor his neck's sake go further in this matter. He may have suspectedthat it was not true. But he had no means of testing that suspicion.Marc Antoine, you see, was subtle.
"Your father?" growled the Representative. "Who is your father?"
"The Deputy Jullien."
"What?" Carrier straightened himself, affecting an immense astonishment."You are the son of the Deputy Julien?" He burst into a laugh. He cameforward, holding out both his hands. He could be subtle, too, you see."My friend, why did you not say so sooner? See in what a ghastly mistakeyou have let me flounder. I imagined you--of course, it was foolish ofme--to be a proscribed rascal from Angers, of the same name."
He had fallen upon Marc Antoine's neck, and was embracing him.
"Forgive me, my friend!" he besought him. "Come and dine with meto-morrow, and we will laugh over it together."
But Marc Antoine had no mind to dine with Carrier, although he promisedto do so readily enough. Back at his inn, scarce believing that he hadgot away alive, still sweating with terror at the very thought of hisnear escape, he packed his valise, and, by virtue of his commission,obtained post-horses at once.
On the morrow from Angers, safe beyond the reach of Carrier, he wroteagain to Robespierre, and this time also to his father.
"In Nantes," he wrote, "I found the old regime in its worst form." Heknew the jargon of Liberty, the tune that set the patriots a-dancing."Carrier's insolent secretaries emulate the intolerable haughtiness ofa ci-devant minister's lackeys. Carrier himself lives surrounded byluxury, pampered by women and parasites, keeping a harem and a court. Hetramples justice in the mud. He has had all those who filled the prisonsflung untried into the Loire. The city of Nantes," he concluded, "needssaving. The Vendean revolt must be suppressed, and Carrier the slayer ofLiberty recalled."
The letter had its effect, and Carrier was recalled to Paris, but notin disgrace. Failing health was urged as the solicitous reason for hisretirement from the arduous duties of governing Nantes.
In the Convention his return made little stir, and even when early inthe following July he learnt that Bourbotte, his successor at Nantes,had ordered the arrest of Goullin, Bachelier, Grandmaison, and hisother friends of the committee, on the score of the drownings and theappropriation of national property confiscated from emigres, he remainedcalm, satisfied that his own position was unassailable.
But the members of the Committee of Nantes were sent to Paris for trial,and their arrival there took place on that most memorable date in theannals of the Revolution, the 10th Thermidor (July 29, 1794, O.S.), theday on which Robespierre fell and the floodgates of vengeance upon theterrorists were flung open.
You have seen in the case of Marc Antoine Jullien how quick Carriercould be to take a cue. In a coach he followed the tumbril th
at boreRobespierre to execution, radiant of countenance and shouting with theloudest, "Death to the traitor!" On the morrow from the rostrum ofthe Convention, he passionately represented himself as a victim ofthe fallen tyrant, cleverly turning to his own credit the Marc Antoineaffair, reminding the Convention how he had himself been denouncedto Robespierre. He was greeted with applause in that atmosphere ofThermidorean reaction.
But Nemesis was stalking him relentlessly if silently.
Among a batch of prisoners whom a chain of curious chances had broughtfrom Nantes to Paris was our old friend Leroy the cocassier, requirednow as a witness against the members of the committee.
Having acquainted the court with the grounds of his arrest, and thefact that for three years he had lain forgotten and without trial in thepestilential prison of Le Bouffay, Leroy passed on to a recital of hissufferings on that night of terror when he had gone down the Loire inthe doomed lighter. He told his tale with an artlessness that renderedit the more moving and convincing. The audience crowding the chamberof justice shuddered with horror, and sobbed over the details of historments, wept for joy over his miraculous preservation. At the closehe was applauded on all sides, which bewildered him a little, for he hadnever known anything but abuse in all his chequered life.
And then, at the promptings of that spirit of reaction that was abroadin those days when France was awakening from the nightmare of terror,some one made there and then a collection on his behalf, and came tothrust into his hands a great bundle of assignats and bank bills, whichto the humble cocassier represented almost a fortune. It was his turn toweep.
Then the crowd in the court which had heard his story shouted for thehead of Carrier. The demand was taken up by the whole of Paris,and finally his associates of the Convention handed him over to theRevolutionary Tribunal.
He came before it on November 25th, and he could not find counsel todefend him. Six advocates named in succession by the President refusedto plead the cause of so inhuman a monster. In a rage, at last Carrierannounced that he would defend himself. He did.
He took the line that his business in Nantes had been chiefly concernedwith provisioning the Army of the West; that he had had little to dowith the policing of Nantes, which he left entirely to the RevolutionaryCommittee; and that he had no knowledge of the things said to have takenplace. But Goullin, Bachelier, and the others were there to flingback the accusation in their endeavours to save their own necks at theexpense of his.
He was sentenced on the very anniversary of that terrible night on whichthe men of the Marat Company broke into the prison of Le Bouffay, and hewas accompanied in the tumbril by Grandmaison the pitiless, who was nowfilled with self-pity to such an extent that he wept bitterly.
The crowd, which had hooted and insulted him from the Conciergerie tothe Place de Greve, fell suddenly silent as he mounted the scaffold, hisstep firm, but his shoulders bowed, and his eyes upon the ground.
Suddenly upon the silence, grotesquely, horribly merry, broke the soundof a clarinet playing the "Ca ira!"
Jerking himself erect, Carrier turned and flung the last of his terribleglances at the musician.
A moment later the knife fell with a thud, and a bleeding head rolledinto the basket, the eyes still staring, but powerless now to inspireterror.
Upon the general silence broke an echo of the stroke.
"Vlan!" cried a voice. "And there's a fine end to a great drowner!"
It was Leroy the cocassier. The crowd took up the cry.