I Will Repay
Page 3
CHAPTER II
Citizen-Deputy.
When, presently, the young girl awoke, with a delicious feeling of restand well-being, she had plenty of leisure to think.
So, then, this was his house! She was actually a guest, a rescuedprotege, beneath the roof of Citoyen Deroulede.
He had dragged her from the clutches of the howling mob which she hadprovoked; his mother had made her welcome, a sweet-faced, young girlscarce out of her teens, sad-eyed and slightly deformed, had waited uponher and made her happy and comfortable.
Juliette de Marny was in the house of the man, whom she had sworn beforeher God and before her father to pursue with hatred and revenge.
Ten years had gone by since then.
Lying upon the sweet-scented bed which the hospitality of the Derouledeshad provided for her, she seemed to see passing before her the spectresof these past ten years--the first four, after her brother's death,until the old Duc de Marny's body slowly followed his soul to its grave.
After that last glimmer of life beside the deathbed of his son, the oldDuc had practically ceased to be. A mute, shrunken figure, he merelyexisted; his mind vanished, his memory gone, a wreck whom Naturefortunately remembered at last, and finally took away from the invalidchair which had been his world.
Then came those few years at the Convent of the Ursulines. Juliette hadhoped that she had a vocation; her whole soul yearned for a secluded, areligious, life, for great barriers of solemn vows and days spent inprayer and contemplation, to interpose between herself and the memory ofthat awful night when, obedient to her father's will, she had made thesolemn oath to avenge her brother's death.
She was only eighteen when she first entered the convent, directly afterher father's death, when she felt very lonely--both morally and mentallylonely--and followed by the obsession of that oath.
She never spoke of it to anyone except to her confessor, and he, asimple-minded man of great learning and a total lack of knowledge of theworld, was completely at a loss how to advise.
The Archbishop was consulted. He could grant a dispensation, and releaseher of that most solemn vow.
When first this idea was suggested to her, Juliette was exultant. Herentire nature, which in itself was wholesome, light-hearted, the veryreverse of morbid, rebelled against this unnatural task placed upon heryoung shoulders. It was only religion--the strange, warped religion ofthat extraordinary age--which kept her to it, which forbade her breakinglightly that most unnatural oath.
The Archbishop was a man of many duties, many engagements. He agreed togive this strange "cas de conscience" his most earnest attention. Hewould make no promises. But Mademoiselle de Marny was rich: a munificentdonation to the poor of Paris, or to some cause dear to the Holy Fatherhimself, might perhaps be more acceptable to God than the fulfilment ofa compulsory vow.
Juliette, within the convent walls, was waiting patiently for theArchbishop's decision at the very moment, when the greatest upheaval theworld has ever known was beginning to shake the very foundations ofFrance.
The Archbishop had other things now to think about than isolated casesof conscience. He forgot all about Juliette, probably. He was busyconsoling a monarch for the loss of his throne, and preparing himselfand his royal patron for the scaffold.
The Convent of the Ursulines was scattered during the Terror. Everyoneremembers the Thermidor massacres, and the thirty-four nuns, alldaughters of ancient families of France, who went so cheerfully to thescaffold.
Juliette was one of those who escaped condemnation. How or why, sheherself could not have told. She was very young, and still a postulant;she was allowed to live in retirement with Petronelle, her old nurse,who had remained faithful through all these years.
Then the Archbishop was prosecuted and imprisoned. Juliette made franticefforts to see him, but all in vain. When he died, she looked upon herspiritual guide's death as a direct warning from God, that nothing couldrelieve her of her oath.
She had watched the turmoils of the Revolution through the attic windowof her tiny apartment in Paris. Waited upon by faithful Petronelle, shehad been forced to live on the savings of that worthy old soul, as allher property, all the Marny estates, the _dot_ she took with her to theconvent--everything, in fact--had been seized by the RevolutionaryGovernment, self appointed to level fortunes, as well as individuals.
From that attic window she had seen beautiful Paris writhing under thepitiless lash of the demon of terror which it had provoked; she hadheard the rumble of the tumbrils, dragging day after day their load ofvictims to the insatiable maker of this Revolution of Fraternity--theGuillotine.
She had seen the gay, light-hearted people of this Star-City turned tohowling beasts of prey, its women changed to sexless vultures, withmurderous talons implanted in everything that is noble, high orbeautiful.
She was not twenty when the feeble, vacillating monarch and hisimperious consort were dragged back--a pair of humiliated prisoners--tothe capital from which they had tried to flee.
Two years later, she had heard the cries of an entire people exultingover a regicide. Then the murder of Marat, by a young girl like herself,the pale-faced, large-eyed Charlotte, who had committed a crime for thesake of a conviction. "Greater than Brutus!" some had called her.Greater than Joan of Arc, for it was to a mission of evil and of sinthat she was called from the depths of her Breton village, and not toone of glory and triumph.
"Greater than Brutus!"
Juliette followed the trial of Charlotte Corday with all the passionateardour of her exalted temperament.
Just think what an effect it must have had upon the mind of this younggirl, who for nine years--the best of her life--had also lived with theidea of a sublime mission pervading her very soul.
She watched Charlotte Corday at her trial. Conquering her naturalrepulsion for such scenes, and the crowds which usually watched them,she had forced her way into the foremost rank of the narrow gallerywhich overlooked the Hall of the Revolutionary Tribunal.
She heard the indictment, heard Tinville's speech and the calling of thewitnesses.
"All this is unnecessary. I killed Marat!"
Juliette heard the fresh young voice ringing out clearly above themurmur of voices, the howls of execration; she saw the beautiful youngface, clear, calm, impassive.
"I killed Marat!"
And there in the special space allotted to the Citizen-Deputies, sittingamong those who represented the party of the Moderate Gironde, was PaulDeroulede, the man whom she had sworn to pursue with a vengeance asgreat, as complete, as that which guided Charlotte Corday's hand.
She watched him during the trial, and wondered if he had anypresentiment of the hatred which dogged him, like unto the one which haddogged Marat.
He was very dark, almost swarthy a son of the South, with brown hair,free from powder, thrown back and revealing the brow of a student ratherthan that of a legislator. He watched Charlotte Corday earnestly, andJuliette who watched him saw the look of measureless pity, whichsoftened the otherwise hard look of his close-set eyes.
He made an impassioned speech for the defence: a speech which has becomehistoric. It would have cost any other man his head.
Juliette marvelled at his courage; to defend Charlotte Corday wasequivalent to acquiescing in the death of Marat: Marat, the friend ofthe people; Marat, whom his funeral orators had compared to the Great,the Sacred Leveller of Mankind!
But Deroulede's speech was not a defence, it was an appeal. The mosteloquent man of that eloquent age, his words seemed to find that hiddenbit of sentiment which still lurked in the hearts of these strangeprotagonists of Hate.
Everyone round Juliette listened as he spoke: "It is Citoyen Deroulede!"whispered the bloodthirsty Amazons, who sat knitting in the gallery.
But there was no further comment. A huge, magnificently-equippedhospital for sick children had been thrown open in Paris that verymorning, a gift to the nation from Citoyen Deroulede. Surely he wasprivileged to talk a little, if it pleased
him. His hospital would coverquite a good many defalcations.
Even the rabid Mountain, Danton, Merlin, Santerre, shrugged theirshoulders. "It is Deroulede, let him talk an he list. Murdered Maratsaid of him that he was not dangerous."
Juliette heard it all. The knitters round her were talking loudly. EvenCharlotte was almost forgotten whilst Deroulede talked. He had a finevoice, of strong calibre, which echoed powerfully through the hall.
He was rather short, but broad-shouldered and well knit, with anexpressive hand, which looked slender and delicate below the fine laceruffle.
Charlotte Corday was condemned. All Deroulede's eloquence could not saveher.
Juliette left the court in a state of mad exultation. She was veryyoung: the scenes she had witnessed in the past two years could not helpbut excite the imagination of a young girl, left entirely to her ownintellectual and moral resources.
What scenes! Great God!
And now to wait for an opportunity! Charlotte Corday, the half-educatedlittle provincial should not put to shame Mademoiselle de Marny, thedaughter of a hundred dukes, of those who had made France before shetook to unmaking herself.
But she could not formulate any definite plans. Petronelle, poor oldsoul, her only confidante, was not of the stuff that heroines are madeof. Juliette felt impelled by duty, and duty at best is not so prompt acounsellor as love or hate.
Her adventure outside Deroulede's house had not been premeditated.Impulse and coincidence had worked their will with her.
She had been in the habit, daily, for the past month, of wandering downthe Rue Ecole de Medecine, ostensibly to gaze at Marat's dwelling, ascrowds of idlers were wont to do, but really in order to look atDeroulede's house. Once or twice she saw him coming or going from home.Once she caught sight of the inner hall, and of a young girl in a darkkirtle and snow-white kerchief bidding him good-bye at his door. Anothertime she caught sight of him at the corner of the street, helping thatsame young girl over the muddy pavement. He had just met her, and shewas carrying a basket of provisions: he took it from her and carried itto the house.
Chivalrous--eh?--and innately so, evidently, for the girl was slightlydeformed: hardly a hunchback, but weak and unattractive-looking, withmelancholy eyes, and a pale, pinched face.
It was the thought of that little act of simple chivalry, witnessed theday before, which caused Juliette to provoke the scene which, but forDeroulede's timely interference, might have ended so fatally. But shereckoned on that interference: the whole thing had occurred to hersuddenly, and she had carried it through.
Had not her father said to her that when the time came, God would showher a means to the end?
And now she was inside the house of the man who had murdered her brotherand sent her sorrowing father, a poor, senseless maniac, tottering tothe grave.
Would God's finger point again, and show her what to do next, how bestto accomplish what she had sworn to do?