by Eugène Sue
“It is I, father, who can give you the explanation you seek of my mother. I shall not falter in doing so,” said Charlotte; and after a momentary pause she continued:
“I shall not recall to you how many times you have uttered yourself in terms of friendship and esteem for Monsieur Lebrenn. The good opinion you held of him was merited, and I dare vouch that he will continue to show himself worthy of it. I shall not recall to you the proofs of devotion Monsieur Lebrenn has given you, notably at the time of your election. It is not willingly that I bring back to your memory the incident of the outrage of which you were the victim at the instigation of Monsieur the Count of Plouernel, and which you communicated to Monsieur Lebrenn in confidence one evening about two months ago. It costs me much to reopen in your heart that rankling wound. But do you remember the generous choler with which Monsieur Lebrenn was seized at your revelation? ‘I am but a mechanic, and without doubt this great lord will consider me unworthy to raise a sword against him,’ said Monsieur John to you, ‘but I swear to God, I shall punish the wretch with these stout arms that heaven has bestowed upon me.’ Already he was bounding towards the door to be off to avenge your insult, when you and my mother stopped him with great difficulty, plying your supplications to make him promise not to attack your enemy. And then, clasping him in your arms, you said to him, your voice quivering with emotion, and your eyes filled with tears, ‘Ah, my friend, you shall be my son; for no otherwise than as a son did you feel the insult I received. This mark of attachment, joined to all the other proofs of your affection, renders you so dear to my heart that from this moment I shall look upon you as one of the members of our family. You have won all our hearts—’”
“And what has all this to do with the excesses which Monsieur Lebrenn has been one of the instigators of, and with the assassinations which I have witnessed? Come, speak clearly, explain yourself. I understand nothing of all this pathos.”
“By what right, father, do you render Monsieur Lebrenn responsible for a murder to which he was an entire stranger?”
“But whence this great interest, my daughter, in taking the part of Monsieur Lebrenn against your father?”
“In spite of my ignorance of politics, dear father, I know that in attacking the Bastille the people wished to destroy the house of durance where shuddered so many innocent victims. And perhaps Monsieur Lebrenn, in joining himself with the insurgents, hoped to find his father in one of the dungeons of the fortress.”
“And if by chance he should discover him!” exclaimed advocate Desmarais, more and more surprised and irritated at his daughter’s persistence in defending Lebrenn. “Does that chance absolve him from the excesses for which the taking of the Bastille was the signal? Ought not the responsibility for these acts fall upon those who took part in the attack, among others on Monsieur Lebrenn, who, it seems, is one of the leaders of the insurrection?”
“Does the memory of services rendered, father, weigh so heavily upon you that you seek to evade all recollection of them, under the pretext of a responsibility which you endeavor to load on a generous man for the crimes committed by others?”
“Do you know, Charlotte,” answered the advocate severely, after a few moments’ reflection, “that your persistence in defending that man would justly give me strange suspicions regarding your conduct?”
“My friend,” interrupted Madam Desmarais, “do not attach any importance to a few words which have escaped our daughter in a moment of excitement.”
“You are mistaken, dear mother. I am perfectly calm. But I can not submit to hearing a man of heart and honor calumniated without protesting against what I regard as a great wrong to him. Why should I not say to father what I have just said to you, mother — that for two months my faith has been pledged to Monsieur John Lebrenn, that I have sworn to him to have no other husband than he? And I shall add, before you, my father, and you, my mother, that I shall be true to my promise.”
“Great God!” cried the advocate, stunned with amazement, “that miserable workman has dared to raise his eyes to my daughter! He has stolen my child from me! Death and damnation, I shall have vengeance!”
“You are in error, father; your daughter has not been stolen away,” proudly returned Charlotte. “That miserable workingman in whose presence you have so many times argued against the privileges of birth, against the artificial distinctions which separate the classes in society — that miserable workingman whom you treated as a friend, an equal, when you judged his support necessary to your ambition — that miserable workingman placed his faith in the sincerity of your professions, father, he saw in me his equal — and his love has been as pure, as respectful as it has been deep — and devoted — and my heart — is given to him—”
“You are a brazen hussy!” yelled the lawyer, pale with rage. “Leave my presence! You disgrace my name!”
“On the contrary, father, I hope I do honor to your name, in putting into practise those principles of equality and fraternity whose generous promoter you have made yourself.”
At that moment the noise of many voices was heard under the windows of the Desmarais apartment, crying enthusiastically: “Long live Citizen Desmarais! Long live the friend of the people! Long live our representative!” These eloquent testimonies of the popular affection for Monsieur Desmarais offered so strange a contradiction to the reproaches which he had just addressed to Charlotte, that under the impression of the contrast the lawyer, his wife and his daughter fell silent.
“Do you hear them, father?” Charlotte at last ventured. “These brave people believe, the same as I, in the sincerity of your principles of equality. They acclaim you as the friend of the people.”
At the same instant Gertrude ran into the room breathless with excitement, exclaiming: “A troop of the vanquishers of the Bastille, with Monsieur John Lebrenn at their head, has halted before the house. They want monsieur to appear on the balcony and address them.”
“Death of my life! This is too much,” snarled the advocate, at the moment that new cries resounded from without:
“Long live Citizen Desmarais. Long live the friend of the people! Come out! Come out! Long live the Nation! Down with the King! Death to the aristocrats!”
“My friend, you can not hesitate. You will run the greatest danger by not appearing and saying a few good words to these maniacs. In bad fortune we must show a good heart,” said Madam Desmarais, alarmed; then addressing Gertrude: “Quick, quick, open the window to the balcony.”
CHAPTER XI.
LIONS AND JACKALS.
GERTRUDE HASTENED TO execute her mistress’s order, and revealed to the deputy’s family St. Honoré Street, packed, as far as the eye could reach, with a dense crowd. The windows of the houses bordering on it were filled by their inhabitants, drawn thither by the commotion. The column of the vanquishers of the Bastille was stationed in front and to both sides of the Desmarais domicile; it was composed for the most part of men of the people, clad in their working clothes. Some carried guns, pikes, or swords; several among them were armed with the implements of their trade. All, bourgeois, mechanics, soldiers, acclaimed the victory of the people with the cry, a thousand times repeated:
“Long live the Nation!”
In the center of the column glowered two pieces of light artillery captured in the courtyard of the redoubtable prison. On the caisson of one of these cannon, erect, majestically leaning on a pike-staff from which floated the tricolor, stood a woman of massive stature, a red kerchief half concealing the heavy tresses which fell down upon her shoulders. Her dark robe disclosed her robust arms. She held her pike in one hand — in the other a shattered chain. Woman of the people as she was, she seemed the genius of Liberty incarnate.
To the rear of the cannon rested a cart trimmed with green branches and surrounded by men who bore at the end of long poles or of pikes chains, garrottes, gags, iron boots, iron corsets, pincers, and other strange and horrible instruments of torture gathered up in the subterranean chambers of the B
astille. In the car were three of the prisoners delivered by the people. One of these was the Provost of Beaumont, imprisoned fifteen years before for having denounced the famine agreement. Another, who seemed to have lost his reason in the sufferings of a long and drear captivity, was the Count of Solange, imprisoned by lettre de cachet during the reign of Louis XV. The last of the three prisoners was broken, bent to the ground, tottering. He lifted to heaven his colorless eyes — alas, the unfortunate man had become blind in his dungeon. It was the father of John Lebrenn. Poor victim of tyranny! He feebly supported himself by the arm of his son, wounded though the latter was.
Such was the picture that met the gaze of advocate Desmarais as he stepped out upon the balcony of his dwelling, his wife and daughter on either side of him. Charlotte’s first glances went in search of, and as soon found, John Lebrenn. With a woman’s intuition she divined that the aged figure beside him, snatched from the cells of the Bastille was indeed his father.
The appearance of advocate Desmarais and his family was greeted with a new outburst of acclaim:
“Long live the friend of the people!”
In stepping forth upon the balcony, Desmarais had yielded merely to policy. He made a virtue of necessity. Condescending, gracious, complaisant, he began by greeting with smile, look, and gesture the populace assembled beneath his windows. Then he bowed, and placed his hand on his heart as if to express by that pantomime the emotion, the gratitude, which he experienced at the demonstration of which he was the object.
Silence was re-established among the crowd. John Lebrenn, still standing in the cart beside his father, addressed the attorney in a voice clear and sonorous:
“Citizen Desmarais, defender of the rights of the people, thanks to you, our representative in the National Assembly! Your acts, your speeches, have responded to all that we expected of you. Honor to the friend of the people!”
The advocate signified that he wished to reply. The tumult was hushed, and the deputy of the Third Estate delivered himself as follows:
“Citizens! my friends, my brothers! I can not find words in which to express the admiration your victory inspires me with. Thanks to your generous efforts, the most formidable rampart of despotism is overthrown! Be assured, citizens, that your representatives know the significance of the taking of the Bastille. The Assembly has declared that the ministers and the councillors of his Majesty, whatever their rank in the state, are responsible for the present evils and those which may follow. Responsibility shall be demanded of the ministers and all functionaries!”
“Bravo! Long live Desmarais! Long live the Assembly! Long live the Nation! Death to the King! Death to the Queen! Down with the aristocrats!”
“Nothing could be more pleasing to me, citizens,” continued Desmarais, “than the choice you have made of Citizen Lebrenn as the spokesman of the sentiments that animate you. Honor to this young and valiant artisan, the son of one of the victims rescued from the Bastille!”
This allocution, pronounced by advocate Desmarais with every appearance of great tenderness, moved the people. Tears dimmed the eyes of all. The father of John Lebrenn seized his son in his arms, and Charlotte, unable to restrain her tears, murmured as she cast a look of gratitude toward heaven, “Thanks to you, my God! My father is his true old noble self again. He sees the injustice of his opposition to John!”
When the emotion produced by his last words had somewhat subsided, advocate Desmarais resumed: “Adieu till we meet again, citizens, my friends — my brothers! I return to Versailles. The Assembly has despatched three of my colleagues and myself to learn at first hand how it fares with the good people of Paris. When our report is called for, we shall be ready. Long live the Nation!”
With a final farewell gesture to the throng, Desmarais quitted the balcony and re-entered his apartment. In a few moments the column took up its interrupted march, and disappeared. Almost immediately there disgorged itself tumultuously into St. Honoré Street a band of men of an aspect strangely contrasting with that of the populace just addressed by Monsieur Desmarais. Some were dressed in rags, others wore a garb less sordid, but nearly all bore on their faces the stamp of vice and crime. The band was composed of men without occupation; do-nothing workmen; debauched laborers; petty business men ruined by misconduct, become pickpockets, sharpers, infesters of houses of ill fame and other evil resorts; robbers and convicts, assassins — a hideous crowd, capable of every crime; an execrable crowd, whom our eternal enemies keep in fee and easily egg on to these saturnalia, for which the people is but too often held culpable; wretches in the hire of the priests, the nobles and the police.
At the head of these bandits marched a man with the face of a brigand, of gigantic stature and herculean frame, and conspicuously well clad. Once a “cadet,” then a gaming-house proprietor, then usher of the Church of St. Medard, Lehiron, for such was the name of the leader of the band, had been expelled from his last employment for the theft of the poor-box. Around his waist a sash of red wool held two horse-pistols and a cutlass that had parted company with its sheath. His coat and the cuffs of his shirt rolled back to the elbow, he gesticulated wildly with his bare hands, which were clotted with blood. At the end of a pike he still bore the head of Monsieur Flesselles, and from time to time, while brandishing the hideous trophy, he would cry out in a stentorian voice:
“Long live the Nation! To the lamp-post with the aristocrats! Death to all the nobles!”
“Death to the enemies of the people! The aristocrats to the lamp-post!” repeated all the bandits, brandishing their pikes, their sabers, or their guns blackened with powder.
“To the lamp-post with the aristocrats!” also cried the shrill and piercing voice of an urchin who gave his hand to a miserably clad character, the man of the false beard of whom Desmarais had spoken. It was the Jesuit Morlet, and the boy his god-son, little Rodin. At the moment that the band hove in sight of the lawyer’s dwelling, the Jesuit drew close to Lehiron, and spoke a few words to him in a low voice. The latter stopped, signed to his followers for silence and cried at the top of his leathern lungs:
“Death to the bourgeois! Death to the traitors! To the lamp-post with Desmarais!”
Then the band resumed its way; and Abbot Morlet, posted at the head of the troop, made haste to bring it up to the last straggling files of the vanquishers of the Bastille. Then, upon the carriage of the cannon whence she dominated the throng, he beheld the woman with the red handkerchief and the dark robe. In spite of the change which her costume imparted to her features, the Jesuit was stupefied to recognize — Marchioness Aldini!
Barely had he recovered from his surprise when the Marchioness descended from the piece of artillery. As hastily, the Jesuit quitted his companions in order to trace her, and, if possible, clear up the suspicions which in his mind surrounded this one-time Marchioness, now heroine of the people. Little Rodin followed his dear god-father, and the two, elbowing their way through the people of the quarter, who were seized with surprise and affright at the murderous cries uttered by the sinister band which approached, inquired, as they went, for the beautiful dark woman coiffed in a red handkerchief who had just leaped down from the cannon — having, so the Abbot pretended, a message for her. Finally a woman haberdasher, drawn to the threshold of her booth, replied to Abbot Morlet’s interrogations:
“Yes, the beautiful young woman you seek has entered house No. 17, along with our neighbor John Lebrenn. That is all I can tell you.”
“Then the Lebrenn family lives in this street, my dear woman?”
“Certainly. Mother Lebrenn and her family occupy two rooms on the fourth floor of No. 17.”
“Thank you for your information, my dear woman,” replied the Jesuit, with difficulty concealing the joy that the unexpected discovery caused him. “Many thanks!”
“And so,” continued the Abbot, “I recover the traces of that family whom we have lost from sight for over a century. What a lucky chance! Two woodcocks in one springe — Marchioness Aldini
and the family of Lebrenn. An enemy spotted, is one-half throttled. Let us train our batteries to suit.”
“Dear god-father,” put in little Rodin at that moment, with a determined air, “I am not afraid to look at heads mowed off.”
“My child,” replied the Jesuit with fatherly pride and happiness, “it is not enough to have no fear; one must actually feel his heart grow lightened when he sees the enemies of our holy mother, the Church of Rome, put to death.”
“Dear god-father, was Monsieur Flesselles, then, an enemy of our holy mother, the Church?”
“My child, the death of Monsieur Flesselles, innocent or guilty, was useful to the good cause.”
Meanwhile, Lehiron’s band, just then passing under the windows of Desmarais’s home, continued to shriek, “Death to the enemies of the people! Death to the bourgeois! To the lamp-post with Desmarais!”
The cries had not yet reached the ears of the attorney, who had no sooner withdrawn from the balcony than his daughter, throwing herself into his arms, said to him in a voice broken with sobs of joy:
“Thanks, Oh, thanks, father, for what you have just said!”
“What are you thanking me for now?”
“For the noble utterances you have just addressed to Monsieur John Lebrenn,” replied Charlotte delighted, not noticing the brusque transformation which came over the face of the advocate at her words.
“How! You have the presumption to abuse the necessity I found myself reduced to, in speaking a few words of good will to that laborer in order to save my house from pillage, and perhaps to protect my own life and that of my wife and daughter — you presume to abuse that necessity to oblige me to give my consent to your union with an ironsmith’s apprentice? You are an unworthy daughter!”
“Then — your cordial words, your touching protestations, were but lies!” murmured the young girl, crushed by her father’s rough speech. “It was all comedy and imposture!”
