Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution

by Rafael Sabatini

  CHAPTER II. QUOS DEUS VULT PERDERE

  Once again, precisely as he had done when he joined the Binet troupe,did Andre-Louis now settle down whole-heartedly to the new professioninto which necessity had driven him, and in which he found effectiveconcealment from those who might seek him to his hurt. This professionmight--although in fact it did not--have brought him to consider himselfat last as a man of action. He had not, however, on that account ceasedto be a man of thought, and the events of the spring and summer monthsof that year 1789 in Paris provided him with abundant matter forreflection. He read there in the raw what is perhaps the most amazingpage in the history of human development, and in the end he was forcedto the conclusion that all his early preconceptions had been at fault,and that it was such exalted, passionate enthusiasts as Vilmorin who hadbeen right.

  I suspect him of actually taking pride in the fact that he had beenmistaken, complacently attributing his error to the circumstance that hehad been, himself, of too sane and logical a mind to gauge the depths ofhuman insanity now revealed.

  He watched the growth of hunger, the increasing poverty and distress ofParis during that spring, and assigned it to its proper cause, togetherwith the patience with which the people bore it. The world of France wasin a state of hushed, of paralyzed expectancy, waiting for the StatesGeneral to assemble and for centuries of tyranny to end. And because ofthis expectancy, industry had come to a standstill, the stream of tradehad dwindled to a trickle. Men would not buy or sell until they clearlysaw the means by which the genius of the Swiss banker, M. Necker, was todeliver them from this morass. And because of this paralysis of affairsthe men of the people were thrown out of work and left to starve withtheir wives and children.

  Looking on, Andre-Louis smiled grimly. So far he was right. Thesufferers were ever the proletariat. The men who sought to makethis revolution, the electors--here in Paris as elsewhere--were menof substance, notable bourgeois, wealthy traders. And whilst these,despising the canaille, and envying the privileged, talked largely ofequality--by which they meant an ascending equality that should confusethemselves with the gentry--the proletariat perished of want in itskennels.

  At last with the month of May the deputies arrived, Andre-Louis'friend Le Chapelier prominent amongst them, and the States General wereinaugurated at Versailles. It was then that affairs began to becomeinteresting, then that Andre-Louis began seriously to doubt thesoundness of the views he had held hitherto.

  When the royal proclamation had gone forth decreeing that the deputiesof the Third Estate should number twice as many as those of the othertwo orders together, Andre-Louis had believed that the preponderance ofvotes thus assured to the Third Estate rendered inevitable the reformsto which they had pledged themselves.

  But he had reckoned without the power of the privileged orders overthe proud Austrian queen, and her power over the obese, phlegmatic,irresolute monarch. That the privileged orders should deliver battlein defence of their privileges, Andre-Louis could understand. Man beingwhat he is, and labouring under his curse of acquisitiveness, will neverwillingly surrender possessions, whether they be justly or unjustlyheld. But what surprised Andre-Louis was the unutterable crassness ofthe methods by which the Privileged ranged themselves for battle. Theyopposed brute force to reason and philosophy, and battalions of foreignmercenaries to ideas. As if ideas were to be impaled on bayonets!

  The war between the Privileged and the Court on one side, and theAssembly and the People on the other had begun.

  The Third Estate contained itself, and waited; waited with the patienceof nature; waited a month whilst, with the paralysis of business nowcomplete, the skeleton hand of famine took a firmer grip of Paris;waited a month whilst Privilege gradually assembled an army inVersailles to intimidate it--an army of fifteen regiments, nine ofwhich were Swiss and German--and mounted a park of artillery beforethe building in which the deputies sat. But the deputies refused to beintimidated; they refused to see the guns and foreign uniforms; theyrefused to see anything but the purpose for which they had been broughttogether by royal proclamation.

  Thus until the 10th of June, when that great thinker and metaphysician,the Abbe Sieyes, gave the signal: "It is time," said he, "to cut thecable."

  And the opportunity came soon, at the very beginning of July. M. duChatelet, a harsh, haughty disciplinarian, proposed to transfer theeleven French Guards placed under arrest from the military gaol of theAbbaye to the filthy prison of Bicetre reserved for thieves and felonsof the lowest order. Word of that intention going forth, the people atlast met violence with violence. A mob four thousand strong broke intothe Abbaye, and delivered thence not only the eleven guardsmen, but allthe other prisoners, with the exception of one whom they discovered tobe a thief, and whom they put back again.

  That was open revolt at last, and with revolt Privilege knew how todeal. It would strangle this mutinous Paris in the iron grip of theforeign regiments. Measures were quickly concerted. Old Marechal deBroglie, a veteran of the Seven Years' War, imbued with a soldier'scontempt for civilians, conceiving that the sight of a uniform wouldbe enough to restore peace and order, took control with Besenval as hissecond-in-command. The foreign regiments were stationed in theenvirons of Paris, regiments whose very names were an irritation to theParisians, regiments of Reisbach, of Diesbach, of Nassau, Esterhazy, andRoehmer. Reenforcements of Swiss were sent to the Bastille between whosecrenels already since the 30th of June were to be seen the menacingmouths of loaded cannon.

  On the 10th of July the electors once more addressed the King to requestthe withdrawal of the troops. They were answered next day that thetroops served the purpose of defending the liberties of the Assembly!And on the next day to that, which was a Sunday, the philanthropist Dr.Guillotin--whose philanthropic engine of painless death was before verylong to find a deal of work--came from the Assembly, of which he was amember, to assure the electors of Paris that all was well, appearancesnotwithstanding, since Necker was more firmly in the saddle than ever.He did not know that at the very moment in which he was speaking soconfidently, the oft-dismissed and oft-recalled M. Necker had just beendismissed yet again by the hostile cabal about the Queen. Privilegewanted conclusive measures, and conclusive measures it wouldhave--conclusive to itself.

  And at the same time yet another philanthropist, also a doctor, oneJean-Paul Mara, of Italian extraction--better known as Marat, thegallicized form of name he adopted--a man of letters, too, who had spentsome years in England, and there published several works on sociology,was writing:

  "Have a care! Consider what would be the fatal effect of a seditiousmovement. If you should have the misfortune to give way to that, youwill be treated as people in revolt, and blood will flow."

  Andre-Louis was in the gardens of the Palais Royal, that place of shopsand puppet-shows, of circus and cafes, of gaming houses and brothels,that universal rendezvous, on that Sunday morning when the news ofNecker's dismissal spread, carrying with it dismay and fury. IntoNecker's dismissal the people read the triumph of the party hostile tothemselves. It sounded the knell of all hope of redress of their wrongs.

  He beheld a slight young man with a pock-marked face, redeemed fromutter ugliness by a pair of magnificent eyes, leap to a table outsidethe Cafe de Foy, a drawn sword in his hand, crying, "To arms!" And thenupon the silence of astonishment that cry imposed, this young manpoured a flood of inflammatory eloquence, delivered in a voice marred atmoments by a stutter. He told the people that the Germans on the Champde Mars would enter Paris that night to butcher the inhabitants. "Letus mount a cockade!" he cried, and tore a leaf from a tree to serve hispurpose--the green cockade of hope.

  Enthusiasm swept the crowd, a motley crowd made up of men and women ofevery class, from vagabond to nobleman, from harlot to lady of fashion.Trees were despoiled of their leaves, and the green cockade was flauntedfrom almost every head.

  "You are caught between two fires," the incendiary's stuttering voiceraved on. "Between the Germans on the Champ de Mars an
d the Swiss in theBastille. To arms, then! To arms!"

  Excitement boiled up and over. From a neighbouring waxworks show camethe bust of Necker, and presently a bust of that comedian the Dukeof Orleans, who had a party and who was as ready as any other of thebudding opportunists of those days to take advantage of the moment forhis own aggrandizement. The bust of Necker was draped with crepe.

  Andre-Louis looked on, and grew afraid. Marat's pamphlet had impressedhim. It had expressed what himself he had expressed more than half ayear ago to the mob at Rennes. This crowd, he felt must be restrained.That hot-headed, irresponsible stutterer would have the town in a blazeby night unless something were done. The young man, a causeless advocateof the Palais named Camille Desmoulins, later to become famous, leaptdown from his table still waving his sword, still shouting, "To arms!Follow me!" Andre-Louis advanced to occupy the improvised rostrum, whichthe stutterer had just vacated, to make an effort at counteracting thatinflammatory performance. He thrust through the crowd, and came suddenlyface to face with a tall man beautifully dressed, whose handsomecountenance was sternly set, whose great sombre eyes mouldered as ifwith suppressed anger.

  Thus face to face, each looking into the eyes of the other, they stoodfor a long moment, the jostling crowd streaming past them, unheeded.Then Andre-Louis laughed.

  "That fellow, too, has a very dangerous gift of eloquence, M. leMarquis," he said. "In fact there are a number of such in France to-day.They grow from the soil, which you and yours have irrigated with theblood of the martyrs of liberty. Soon it may be your blood instead. Thesoil is parched, and thirsty for it."

  "Gallows-bird!" he was answered. "The police will do your affair foryou. I shall tell the Lieutenant-General that you are to be found inParis."

  "My God, man!" cried Andre-Louis, "will you never get sense? Will youtalk like that of Lieutenant-Generals when Paris itself is likely totumble about your ears or take fire under your feet? Raise your voice,M. le Marquis. Denounce me here, to these. You will make a hero of me insuch an hour as this. Or shall I denounce you? I think I will. I thinkit is high time you received your wages. Hi! You others, listen to me!Let me present you to..."

  A rush of men hurtled against him, swept him along with them, do what hewould, separating him from M. de La Tour d'Azyr, so oddly met. He soughtto breast that human torrent; the Marquis, caught in an eddy of it,remained where he had been, and Andre-Louis' last glimpse of him was ofa man smiling with tight lips, an ugly smile.

  Meanwhile the gardens were emptying in the wake of that stutteringfirebrand who had mounted the green cockade. The human torrent pouredout into the Rue de Richelieu, and Andre-Louis perforce must sufferhimself to be borne along by it, at least as far as the Rue du Hasard.There he sidled out of it, and having no wish to be crushed to death orto take further part in the madness that was afoot, he slipped downthe street, and so got home to the deserted academy. For there were nopupils to-day, and even M. des Amis, like Andre-Louis, had gone out toseek for news of what was happening at Versailles.

  This was no normal state of things at the Academy of Bertrand des Amis.Whatever else in Paris might have been at a standstill lately, thefencing academy had flourished as never hitherto. Usually both themaster and his assistant were busy from morning until dusk, and alreadyAndre-Louis was being paid now by the lessons that he gave, themaster allowing him one half of the fee in each case for himself, anarrangement which the assistant found profitable. On Sundays theacademy made half-holiday; but on this Sunday such had been the state ofsuspense and ferment in the city that no one having appeared by eleveno'clock both des Amis and Andre-Louis had gone out. Little they thoughtas they lightly took leave of each other--they were very good friends bynow--that they were never to meet again in this world.

  Bloodshed there was that day in Paris. On the Place Vendome a detachmentof dragoons awaited the crowd out of which Andre-Louis had slipped. Thehorsemen swept down upon the mob, dispersed it, smashed the waxen effigyof M. Necker, and killed one man on the spot--an unfortunate French Guardwho stood his ground. That was a beginning. As a consequence Besenvalbrought up his Swiss from the Champ de Mars and marshalled them inbattle order on the Champs Elysees with four pieces of artillery. Hisdragoons he stationed in the Place Louis XV. That evening an enormouscrowd, streaming along the Champs Elysees and the Tuileries Gardens,considered with eyes of alarm that warlike preparation. Some insultswere cast upon those foreign mercenaries and some stones were flung.Besenval, losing his head, or acting under orders, sent for his dragoonsand ordered them to disperse the crowd, But that crowd was too dense tobe dispersed in this fashion so dense that it was impossible for thehorsemen to move without crushing some one. There were several crushed,and as a consequence when the dragoons, led by the Prince de Lambesc,advanced into the Tuileries Gardens, the outraged crowd met them with afusillade of stones and bottles. Lambesc gave the order to fire. Therewas a stampede. Pouring forth from the Tuileries through the city wentthose indignant people with their story of German cavalry trampling uponwomen and children, and uttering now in grimmest earnest the call toarms, raised at noon by Desmoulins in the Palais Royal.

  The victims were taken up and borne thence, and amongst them wasBertrand des Amis, himself--like all who lived by the sword--an ardentupholder of the noblesse, trampled to death under hooves of foreignhorsemen launched by the noblesse and led by a nobleman.

  To Andre-Louis, waiting that evening on the second floor of No. 13Rue du Hasard for the return of his friend and master, four men of thepeople brought that broken body of one of the earliest victims of theRevolution that was now launched in earnest.