by Eugène Sue
“Here is the proclamation,” said the Mayor, preparing to read, “which is about to be placarded on the streets of Paris:
“Citizens, the country is more than ever in danger. Scoundrels dictate laws to the Convention, which they overmaster. They pursue Robespierre, who declares for the consoling principles of the existence of the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul; St. Just and Lebas, those two apostles of virtue; Couthon, who has but his heart and head alive, though they are glowing with the ardor of patriotism; Robespierre the younger, who presided over the victories of the army in Italy.
People, arise! Lose not the fruit of the 10th of August and the 31st of May. Let us hurl all the traitors into their tomb!
Signed, FLEURIOT-LESCOT,
Mayor,
BLIN,
Secretary.”
As the Mayor’s proclamation was declared adopted by the session, John Lebrenn, who had approached one of the windows, remarked that not only had the number of armed Section representatives in the square diminished, but that the place was almost deserted. Soon the whole City Hall Place, with the exception of a group here and there, lay silent and empty. John had barely returned to his seat at the table when the doors were flung open with a crash by the press of people who sought to enter. They carried in Robespierre the elder, Robespierre the younger, Lebas, St. Just and Couthon, borne aloft in chairs. At the sight of the liberated Representatives of the people, surrounded by their Jacobin friends, the members of the Council rose spontaneously with cries of “Long live the Republic!” Gradually the tumult died down, and the Mayor of Paris began to speak:
“Citizens — from this moment the functions of the General Council of the Commune should undergo a change. I move that it be transformed into a committee of action, and that the presidency of it be conferred upon Maximilien Robespierre. The Revolution now commences!”
Robespierre responded in the following words:
“Citizens, I long resisted the entreaties of the patriots who sought to deliver me from prison. I wished to respect the law, for the very reason that our enemies make of it a football. I wished, in Marat’s steps, to appear before the revolutionary tribunal. Had they pronounced me innocent, the villains of the Convention would have been confounded, and honest folks would triumph; on the contrary, had they pronounced my death sentence, I would have drunk the hemlock calmly. But I yield to events. I accept the presidency. The era of the Revolution has begun.”
On the instant there rushed into the hall General Henriot, pale, excited, his clothing in disorder. “All is lost!” he cried.
Leonard Bourdon and Barras, delegates of the Convention, and escorted by half a hundred gendarmes with pistols and muskets, burst in at Henriot’s heels. The soldiers covered with their guns the members of the Council of the Commune and the five Representatives of the people, all of whom remained standing; calm; impassible.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE NINTH THERMIDOR.
IN THE EARLY morning of the 10th Thermidor, Charlotte Lebrenn and Madam Desmarais, pale from a night of sleeplessness, silent, worried, listened anxiously at their garden windows, which had been left open through the beautiful, balmy July night. From their nests in the trees the birds greeted with their chirping the first glow of the sun, which lighted up the eastern azure. Nature was smiling, with repose and calm in every lineament.
“Not a sound, absolutely nothing!” said Madam Desmarais, the first to break the silence. “It is more than an hour since the tocsin ceased clanging.”
“If that is so, mother, have courage! If the tocsin has ceased, the Commune is worsted. The Convention triumphs,” replied the younger woman in a tense voice. Then, unable to withstand the emotion which seized her, Charlotte burst into tears, raised her hands heavenward, and cried, “Just God, spare my husband!”
At this moment Gertrude entered and said to her mistress: “Madam, there is a citizen in the ante-chamber who says he is sent by your husband to bring you news of him.”
“Let him enter,” answered Charlotte gladly. “I wonder what the news will be,” she added, to her mother.
No sooner had she spoken than Jesuit Morlet appeared in the room. His hypocritical countenance at once caused Charlotte a revulsion of feeling; but immediately reproaching herself for what was perhaps an involuntary injustice to the man, she came a few steps toward the Jesuit, saying: “Citizen, you come from my husband?”
“Aye, citizeness; to reassure you, and inform you that he is in a safe place.”
“You hear, my poor child,” cried Madam Desmarais, weeping with joy as she embraced her daughter. “He is out of danger.”
“Can you, citizen, conduct me at once to where my husband is?”
“Such a trip would be very imprudent, citizeness. My friend John Lebrenn has sent me to you, first to reassure you as to his situation; next, to post you on the course of events. The City Hall is in the power of the troops of the Convention, commanded by Leonard Bourdon and Barras. Lebas is a suicide. Robespierre the younger has flung himself from a window and broken both legs. Robespierre the elder has his jaw broken by a pistol fired at him by a gendarme; St. Just and Couthon are arrested, they will be executed in the course of the day, without any form of trial, having been outlawed by the Convention; the same decree has been passed upon the members of the General Council of the Commune, who will also, accordingly — all except my friend John, who escaped in the melee, and is now in safe hiding with me — be guillotined without trial. In short, to tell you all in two words, the Republic is lost. The brigands triumph!”
For a moment Charlotte’s tears flowed in silence. Reassured as to her husband, she wept for the first five victims of the 9th Thermidor, those illustrious and virtuous citizens.
“My eternal thanks are yours,” she at length replied; and added: “Take me to my husband, I implore you. I long to see him.”
“To do as you request, citizeness, would be to commit a great imprudence. Perhaps its only result would be to put the police on his track. As to the gratitude you believe you owe me, let us speak no more of it. Between patriots there should be mutual aid and protection; in concealing John from the searches of our enemies I did my duty, nothing more. But time is fleeting, and I must get to the end of the errand your husband sent me on: It is that you give me a certain casket, containing, he told me, some precious legends which it is of importance to carry away from here, lest they fall into the hands of our enemies; the latter will not delay descending with a search party upon your house.”
“My husband has already given me his advice on that subject,” answered Charlotte. “Foreseeing that in the struggle against the Convention the Commune might be worsted, my husband arrested, and the house searched, I already have had the casket carried to the home of one of our friends.” A slight spasm of anger contracted the brows of the Jesuit; the young woman caught the expression, and the thought flashed over her mind: “Careful! This man may be a false friend!”
“Madam,” said Gertrude, coming in leading a young boy by the hand, “here is a poor child who asked to speak to this gentleman; I brought him up to you.”
The Jesuit’s god-son — who else but he? — respectfully greeted Charlotte, at the same moment that the latter whispered to her mother: “My anxiety for John is still lively, despite this man’s reassurances. Something tells me he is deceiving us.”
“Gentle god-father,” Rodin was whispering to the Jesuit, “I just saw John Lebrenn hurry down a street at the end of Anjou Street, and turn in this direction.”
“The devil!” thought the Jesuit to himself, “our man will land at home sooner than I counted on. I shall have to double my audacity; nothing is lost as yet.” And then, sotto voice to his pupil, “Are the police agents placed, and in sufficient number?”
“They are watching all around the building — I counted twenty. John Lebrenn will be caught like a mouse in a trap, Ad majorem Dei gloriam!”
“While the house is being searched from cellar to garret, f
ollow you the agents, and try to put your hand on that casket you know of.”
“Mother,” whispered Charlotte, on her part, “they are plotting some treachery.” Then, suddenly dashing toward the door, which just then opened, she cried,
“Husband!”
Charlotte’s husband, into whose arms his wife joyfully threw herself, was pale, his clothing in disorder; his face was bathed in sweat, and he panted for breath. In a gasping voice he said to his wife, as he returned her embrace, “Charlotte, I could not resist the craving to see you an instant, and to reassure you and mother of my fate, before I flee. The Commune is defeated, I am outlawed; but I hope to escape our enemies. Have courage—” Then his eyes falling upon the Jesuit and little Rodin, he recognized in them the two spies he had arrested before Weissenburg; he recalled that Victoria had designated Morlet to him as an enemy of the Lebrenn family; hence, struck with astonishment, he said to his wife as he stared at the reverend, “What does this fellow here? How did he get entrance to my house?”
“He professed to be sent by you, my friend. He demanded in your name the chest with the family legends.”
“Ah, my reverend! The Society of Jesus never lets the scent of those it seeks to run down grow cold!” cried John. “Wretched, infamous spy — hence!”
“Not before you,” replied the reverend with a bow and a smirk, indicating to John the commissioner of the Section, newly appointed by the Convention, who appeared in the door, accompanied by several of his agents.
“Search, the house from top to bottom,” ordered the magistrate; and to Lebrenn: “Citizen, here is a warrant of arrest issued against you. I am further ordered to seal your papers and carry them to the office of the revolutionary tribunal.”
Lebrenn read the warrant and replied to the magistrate, “I am ready to follow you, citizen.”
“I must first place the seals, in your presence, upon all your furniture, and especially on your papers.”
The agents of the police, in their search of the house, soon arrived at the retreat which sheltered advocate Desmarais. They incontinently broke open the door. The advocate was soon informed by the agents of the turn events had taken, and at once planned the new role he was to play in the business. Stepping briskly down the stairs, he strode into the parlor, and went straight to the commissioner:
“Citizen, in the name of the law, I denounce a plot of which I am victim. Since yesterday I have been sequestered in this house.”
While the advocate was speaking to the officer, Charlotte had given her surprised husband in a few words the history of the pretended sequestration, and added, “Now, my friend, for your own dignity, and out of regard for my mother and myself, maintain the silence of contempt. The wretched man is still my father.”
“Dear wife, now, and in your presence, I shall keep silence. But later — I shall speak,” answered Lebrenn, yielding to Charlotte’s plea; then, recollecting, he suddenly asked, softly, “And the casket?”
“It is safe. Yesterday I thought of burying it, with Castillon’s aid, in the cellar; but he suggested taking it to the house of one of his friends, a workman like himself, in the St. Antoine suburb. This latter course I adopted.”
“You did wisely. This Jesuit’s presence here proves to me that the Society of Jesus, which has so many a time and oft already sought the destruction of our family legends, will leave no stone unturned to ferret them out.”
John’s words were interrupted by an exclamation from Madam Desmarais. “Brother!” she cried as she ran toward the financier, who had just entered the room precipitately, “Hubert! You here! You are free!”
“Yes, free,” replied Hubert, embracing his sister effusively. “And my first visit is to you. The prisons are opened, and all the royalist suspects are giving place to the brigands and terrorists.”
“Ah, brother, you forget that we are under the roof of my son-in-law John Lebrenn, who has been accused, and has just fallen under arrest.”
“What!” exclaimed Hubert, not having noticed Lebrenn as he came in, “is that true?” Then, addressing the young man, to whom he extended his hand, “I was unaware of the misfortune which has fallen upon you, Monsieur Lebrenn; I know what interest you have always borne me, and if I can to-day in my turn prove useful to you, I am entirely at your service.”
The commissioner received the report of his agents. They had unearthed not a paper in the entire house, nor in the furniture, nor in the workshop. They had sounded the cellar floor, examined the earth in the garden, nothing gave suspicion of a secret hiding place. Little Rodin also confirmed this information to the Jesuit.
“Citizen,” said the magistrate to John, “a coach is at the door. Are you ready to follow me?”
“We are ready,” said Charlotte, hastily throwing a cloak over her shoulders. “Come, my friend, let us go. I shall accompany my husband to the prison door.”
“Adieu, good and dear mother,” said John to Madam Desmarais, embracing her. “Be of good heart, we shall see each other soon again, I hope. Adieu, Citizen Hubert. Revolutions have strange outcomes! You, the royalist, are free — I, the republican, go to prison!”
“Whatever your opinions, I have always found you a man of courage,” quoth the financier, in a voice of emotion. “If any consolation can temper the bitterness of your temporary separation, let it be the certainty that my sister and my niece, your wife, will find in me a most tender and devoted friend. I shall watch over them both.”
John Lebrenn and Charlotte left with the commissioner. Monsieur Hubert and Madam Desmarais accompanied them as far as the waiting carriage, and strained them in a last adieu.
CHAPTER XXXV.
DEATH OF ROBESPIERRE.
EIGHT MONTHS AFTER the events of Thermidor just described, I, John Lebrenn, write this chapter of the story of the Sword of Honor, on the 26th Germinal, year III of the Republic (April 15, 1795).
Escaped from my prison, I lay for several weeks in hiding in a retreat offered me by the friendship of Billaud-Varenne; to him I also owed a passport made out in another name, thanks to which I was enabled to leave Paris, gain Havre, and there take a coasting vessel for Vannes. I chose Vannes as a haven not alone because I was unknown in that retired community, but because it was close by the cradle of our family, towards which, after such excitement and such cruel political deception, I felt myself strongly attracted. At the end of about a month’s sojourn in Vannes, certain then that I could continue to dwell there without danger, I wrote to my wife to rejoin me in Brittany, with her mother and our son, whom she had named Marik, and who was born the 7th Vendemiaire, year III. Thus I had the joy of being soon reunited with my family. My wife brought with her the inestimable treasure of our domestic legends, happily preserved from the clutches of Jesuit Morlet. My wound, received at the battle of the Lines of Weissenburg, having reopened, I was for some time almost helpless, and was forced to give up my trade of ironsmith. Madam Desmarais was able to lay out for us some moneys, and Charlotte proposed that they be expended in setting up a linen-drapery and cloth store in Vannes.
This business afforded my wife and mother-in-law an occupation in line with their tastes and aptitudes. For my part I was able, although still very lame, to drive about in a carriage to the various markets and out into the country, to dispose of our cloth. Everything gave me to hope that my obscure name was forgotten in the hurly-burly of the Thermidorean reaction.
A short time after the arrival here of my cherished wife, we made a pilgrimage to the sacred stones of Karnak; we found them as they had lain for so many centuries. You will undertake that same pilgrimage for yourself when you have attained the age of reason, my son Marik, you to whom I bequeath this legend of the Sword of Honor, which I add to the relics of my family.
I conclude my recital of the events of the bourgeois revolution of 1789 with a few words on the last moments of the martyrs of the 9th Thermidor, the words of a hostile eye witness. What could be more touching than his account:
“Robespierre t
he elder was carried to the City Hall, to the Committee of Public Safety, on the 10th Thermidor, between the hours of one and two in the morning. He was carried in on a board, by several artillerymen and armed citizens. He was placed on a table in the audience hall which lay in front of the executive room of the committee. A pine box, which held some samples of bread sent from the Army of the North, was placed under his head and served in some sort as a pillow. He lay for the space of nearly an hour so immobile that one might think he had ceased to live. Then he began to open his eyes. Blood flowed freely from the wound in his lower left jaw. The jawbone was shattered by a pistol shot. His shirt was bloody; he was hatless and cravatless. He wore a sky-blue coat, and trousers of nankeen; his white stockings were rolled down to his shoes. Between three and four in the morning they noticed that he held in his hand a little bag of white skin, inscribed ‘At the Grand Monarch; Lecourt, outfitter to the King and his troops, St. Honoré Street, near Poulies Street, Paris.’ This sack he used to dispose of the clotted blood which came from his mouth. The citizens surrounded him, observing all his movements. Some of them even gave him a piece of white linen paper, which he put to the same use, keeping himself ever propped up on his left elbow, and using only his right hand. Two or three different times he was scolded at by citizens, but especially by a cannonier of the same district as himself, who reproached him, with military vigor, for his perfidy and scoundrelism. Towards six in the morning a surgeon who happened to be in the courtyard of the National Palace was called in to tend him. For precaution he placed a key in Robespierre’s mouth, and found that his jaw was fractured. He drew two or three teeth, bandaged the wound, and had a hand-basin with water placed beside him. Robespierre made use of this, and also of pieces of paper folded several times, to clean out his mouth, still employing only his right hand. At the moment when it was least expected, he sat up, raised his stockings, slid quickly from the table, and ran to seat himself in an arm-chair. As soon as seated he asked for water and some clean linen. During all the time he had lain on the table, after he regained consciousness, he fixedly regarded all who surrounded him, especially those employes of the Committee of Public Safety whom he recognized. He often raised his eyes toward the platform; but apart from some almost convulsive movements, the bystanders constantly remarked in him a great impassibility, even during the dressing of his wound, which must have caused him the severest pain. His complexion, habitually bilious, assumed the pallor of death.
