The Devil’s Laughter

by Frank Yerby

  “Oh, I think not!” Lucienne said airily. “Don’t you see, Jeannot, that is merely to make a diversion? A magnificent yellow coach, with plumes and glass, and all the canaille riding like mad after it in wild pursuit in the wrong direction, while some shabby vehicle, old and black, creaks away to safety unpursued—you see?”

  Jcan stared at her. “Damn my eyes, Lucienne!” he roared; “I believe you’re right!”

  “Of course I’m right, darling,” she laughed; “now pass me the letter-opener. I must read my mail. . . .”

  “You’ve been getting many letters lately,” Jean said sourly; “from what city do they come?”

  “Why, Jeannot! How suspicious you have become. You never used to ask me things like that.”

  “From where do those letters come?” Jean said with grim quietness.

  “If you must know, they’re from Austria. But they are not from Gervais, my jealous one! Look—this is a feminine hand, you see?”

  “I see,” Jean said; “but how is it that you have letters from Austria at all?”

  “Silly, they’re from la Marquise de Foretvert. She’s a friend of mine. Many of the great ladies had become quite democratic before the Revolution. Poor Sophie envied and adored me. I do believe she would have changed places with me in an instant. Now lately she has been dying for news of Paris, and writes me constantly; I keep her posted as best I can—fashions, you comprehend, and other such female follies: who has a new lover, whether or not fashionable life can be renewed under such trying conditions. . . .”

  “But not a word about Gervais la Moyte, eh?” Jean said drily.

  “Of course not! Sometimes you make me awfully tired, Jeannot! Austria is a big country. She has never even seen him.”

  “Forgive me,” Jean said gently; “jealousy is a pitiful emotion. Anyway, I must go back to that miserable hail of sound and fury where nothing is ever accomplished. . . .”

  But Lucienne looked up suddenly from the letter, her face drained of colour. “Jean,” she whispered, “when does Renoir Gerade return?”

  At that moment Jean was not looking at her; but something in her voice caused him to raise his eyes. He was too late, she already had had time to recover. She was very good at things like that.

  “I don’t know,” Jean said; “it’s impossible to communicate with him directly. But we expect him any day now. Why do you ask that?”

  “Sophie—mentions him in her letter—that’s all. It just—just seemed a little strange that she should. . . .”

  “Strange,” Jean said; “it’s worse than that—rather a bad slip on Renoir’s part to let himself become identified. She mentioned him by name?”

  “Yes. She said that the police were becoming suspicious of him. You—you want to read her letter?”

  “No,” Jean said; “it would only bore me. . .” But this time he did not miss the quick relief that flared in her eyes.

  Something’s afoot here, he thought grimly; I’ll wager she’s writing la Moyte through this woman. No time to go into it now, though. Tonight will serve. . . .

  But that night was June twentieth, 1791, and what it served for was quite other than he had expected.

  He was sitting in his place in the Assembly when an usher brought him the note. It was already late, but the windy sessions of the National Assembly often dragged on for as long as twelve to eighteen hours at a stretch. He unfolded the note and read: “Waiting for you outside. Highest importance that I see you at once.” It was signed, “R. Gerade.”

  Jean picked up his hat and his cane and went out at once.

  Renoir Gerade had not even dismounted. He swayed there in the saddle, drunken with fatigue, even his face dust-covered, so that his teeth flashed brilliantly in contrast as he smiled.

  “You’ve a horse?” he croaked.

  “Yes, but not here,” Jean said; “I left him at home, and came by fiacre. However, it will take only a short time, to. . . .”

  “Then up behind me, man! For this night we must ride like hell!”

  Jean stared at him.

  “You’re in no state to ride,” he declared. “Tell me what’s to be done, and I’ll do it.”

  “No—both of us, and as many others as we can muster. We have to cover all the roads leading out of Paris like a fan.” He leaned forward, his mouth almost brushing Jean’s ear.

  “The royal family,” he whispered, “has this night fled Paris!”

  “My God!” Jean got out. “But, Renoir, isn’t that precisely what we wanted them to do?”

  “Not now—not in this fashion. Our royal idiots are for Metz, despite all our counselling! The émigrés have prevailed. They gained the ear of the Queen. From the day I learned of Mirabeau’s death I knew we hadn’t a chance; I was playing for time; but they forestalled me. . . .”

  Jean stepped out into the street and signalled a passing fiacre. “Get in,” he said; “we can tie your mount behind. Poor animal—completely blown. I have another to lend you and a draught of wine besides. And we can talk better as we ride. You said the émigrés got the better of you?”

  “Not all of them,” Gerade said grimly; “just one: your old friend Gervais la Moyte.”

  “De Gravereau!” Jean whispered; “but, Name of God, Renoir—how?”

  “He had some source of information here in Paris, I know not who, or how; but, damn my infernal eyes, Jean—he knew what the Assembly was going to do before I did, and what was worse, he knew the plans of our group! That is what confounds me; a man might have a dozen ways of learning the political trends—the sessions are public, as you know; but how, in the name of everything unholy, did he know our plans?”

  Jean sat very still, looking straight ahead. He did not move or speak. He simply sat there in a fiacre, riding through one of the splendid boulevards of Paris, and died inside his own heart of slow and fiendish torture.

  Her lips against mine whispering nameless, terrible, glorious things. Her hands, her hands, the whole snow-covered flame-cored length of her, against me moving slow, soft-moving, sweet-moving, gentle-tender, against me swift-moving, wild-moving, terrible-wild, anguished-exquisite, lava-filled, scalding-volcanic, surrounding me, enveloping me, destroying me into death, into hell, into agony of too great pleasure, into insupportable ecstasy, drawing the life from me, the sense, the very soul, swift-jetting, leaving me drunken, numb, between sleep and waking—for what?

  For those questions, so lightly, so airily asked, with that skilful feminine pretence at misunderstanding, drawing it all out of me, so easily, so damnably easily, laughing inside her insatiate body at this great and clumsy fool twice betrayed, once before in the flesh, and now worse, a million times worse, in the spirit. . . .

  If she is there, he thought with terrible calm, I shall kill her. If I am hanged for it, it shall be no more than I deserve; for I am as guilty as she—nay more, for by lust and stupidity, by surrendering to my weakness, to the base animal within, I, Jean Paul Marin, have betrayed France!

  “Why are you so still?” Renoir Gerade asked.

  “I,” Jean said, “am lost in thought. But don’t worry, I shall arrange things. . . .”

  She was not there. As soon as he entered the apartment, he saw that. She was gone—not merely to the Opéra, but fled, out of Paris by now—in two more days out of France. Several of her simpler frocks were gone from the cupboard. The armoire had been ravished: stockings, petticoats, had all vanished. Her valises, and his own. . . .

  Then he saw the note on the mantel. He took it up and pocketed it without opening it. Then, in a voice flat, dead level, calm, he commanded the servant to heat water for Renoir Gerade, bring razors, and prepare a simple meal.

  “There is no time,” Renoir declared; “they——”

  “Oh yes,” Jean said, “there is time. They will not travel fast.”

  “You seem sure,” Gerade sighed. “Very well, then I shall wash.”

  He went into the bathroom, and after he had gone Jean opened the note.

&nb
sp; “Mon Jeannot,” it read, “whom I shall never cease to love, and of whom now I cannot even beg forgiveness, believe this: I love you. I betrayed you again, yes; but for reasons that match your own: I love France—the old France, the great France, that you, whom I love, have helped destroy. I hated what I was doing, but it had to be done. For I was fighting for something grander than us, something more important than any man’s happiness, or even his life. Had I been ordered to, I would have killed you, or even myself. You, misguided as you are, are a true patriot, and will understand this, I think.

  “I weep as I write this, my tears blind me; they come from my heart, and seem almost of blood. Believe, as long as you live, this one thing: when I came to you, when I held you in my arms, took you inside my body, that was neither lies nor betrayals but me, myself, loving you, wanting you as I shall go on wanting you until I am dead and freed of all desire. Not even what I did afterwards—the questioning, the seeking for information, the hideous betrayal of your calm, manly trust in me—could ever profane that.

  “You will never see me again, and knowing as I know that you can never, never forgive me this, I remain, your disconsolate,

  Lucienne.”

  Jean stood there staring at the page. Then, very slowly, he moved over to a candle, and held the edge of it to the flame. He watched it curl, turn brown, the yellow tongues of flame devouring it, and his eyes were steady, and very grave. He held it there in his hand until the flames licked around his finger-tips, insensible to the pain; then at long last he released it, watching it turn end over end in a slow spiral of smoke-wisp and tiny fire, until it drifted against the floor and crumbled into ash.

  Half an hour later he was in the saddle, riding towards the Flemish border, towards Brussels. In doing this, he followed Lucienne’s idea that the great yellow coach was but a blind. Renoir, who had an unshakable faith in the invincible stupidity of all men, even Kings, did not believe this. He, taking another road, galloped straight for Varennes in the direction of Metz. So it was that the indefatigable ex-Intendant of Provence arrived in time to see the capture of the King and Queen. For Renoir Gerade was right; fat Louis and his proud Queen were as incapable of departing from their accustomed patterns of thought as he had deemed them: even in flight they had been unable to dispense with lackeys, livery, a fine coach, escorts awakening the whole countryside, thundering to meet them, all the pomp and trappings of majesty, become for them at last a noose and a snare. They had not even thought of taking a circuitous route; and their disguises were pitiful. Old Dragoon Drouet, Post Master of Varennes, had only to search his pockets for a new assignat and compare the portrait thereon with this fat, sleepy visage, to recognise the King. And royalty from that moment was doomed in France.

  But Jean Paul Marin, believing them cleverer than this, thundered northward. And at last, when not one, but two shabby coaches of the kind he had expected creaked into a sleepy village, he recognised at once Monsieur le Comte de Provence, the King’s brother, in one of them, and Madame his wife in the other; superbly disciplined, they gazed straight at each other and gave not the slightest sign of recognition, as the horses were being changed.

  Jean stared at them, but made no move. Whether or not the Comte de Provence and his wife escaped had no bearing upon the fate of France. I, Jean thought, am glad to see them go. They are good people and nothing will be served by their dying. He mounted once more and was about to turn back towards Paris, when Madame, plagued by thirst, sent her maidservant towards the pump with a crystal goblet. The girl came straight towards him.

  Hell of a good-looking maid, Jean thought, seeing her walking towards him, tall, willow-slender, tawny-haired. . . .

  Then he froze, staring straight at her, straight into those hazel eyes widening in pure terror, her footsteps slowing, halting, until Madame, leaning out from the coach, called:

  “Do hurry, my girl!”

  “Ah, yes,” Jean mocked, “do!”

  Then he threw back his head, and loosed peal after peal of wild, demonic laughter, the sound of it washing over her in waves, bitter, mirthless, mocking—subhuman and superhuman, so that she stood there trembling under the impact of it, her face ghost-white, until Jean lifted his hat to her and said:

  “Come, wench—you must not keep Madame la Comtesse de Provence waiting!”

  Then he yanked at the reins so hard his mount reared, and whirled the beast southward, thundering away toward Paris, leaving only the echo of satanic laughter trailing behind him.

  Lucienne stood there a long time after he was gone. Then she went to the pump and came back with the water. It was crystalline, limpid, clear.

  But no clearer, and not half so bright—as her tears.

  12

  JEAN PAUL sat on the edge of the bed and cradled his head between his hands. The silence in the room crawled like a million tiny feet along his nerves. Nothing had been changed: the curtains, the drapes, the clock on the mantel, the fire-screen, any of two dozen other household furnishings reflected Lucienne’s exquisite taste, and cried out to him through the stillness, whispering her name.

  I should leave here, he thought. I should go back to my own place in Saint-Antoine, but that would mean seeing Pierre, Marianne, and Fleurette daily. . . . Dear God, what a thing of patchwork man is! I have been praised for my courage, because I care nothing for physical pain or even the danger of death. But this is a species of courage that I have not. Go back, say I’m sorry—I was wrong—that’s an easy thing, or it should be. But I cannot. . . .

  To have gone of mine own volition and humbly asked forgiveness would have been one thing, and in its way, very fine.

  But to crawl back now, defeated, betrayed, deserted—exactly as they predicted; to say in effect to my friends: “I left you proudly, wilfully; but now I come back to you, my second choices, because I have nothing left, because I find my loneliness insupportable—what greater insult could I offer them? No—I must find another place that will not always remind me; build another, emptier life, which, lacking both joys and great sorrows, will supply its measure of peace.

  He got up and walked to the window. Sunday, July 17, he mused; less than a month since Lucienne’s flight, but centuries, ages of silence, loneliness to me. A man must have some measure of contentment in his life, I know that. But throughout my days ‘tis one thing I’ve achieved only at the rarest intervals: an hour, a day, with Nicole; talking with poor little Fleurette; my months with Lucienne—and even that has proved counterfeit now, false, robbed of everything that gave it beauty or dignity or joy.

  My work? Ah! what a snare and a delusion that was: all those conspiratorial meetings with Pierre, those night-long rides, wild with the excitement of being a part of destiny, of history, of risking everything—wealth, liberty, even life itself for the cause; what headier wine has there ever been than that?

  But, Name of a Pig! Look at it now! The tyranny of Kings ended, perhaps only to have a worse raised in its stead. For with all his bumbling incompetence, fat Louis was a good man; but what of goodness lives in the heart of Danton, sprouting Desmoulins, slimy Robespierre, tormented Marat? Better to have left things as they were; for every evil we had then, we have loosed ten thousand new ones. Then it took a bad harvest to make bread dear—now everything is dear, bad harvests or good, the country flooded with worthless assignats, the roads infested with patriotic brigands, so that the very necessities of life trickle into Paris under guard. . . . Now every man deems himself a statesman-king; and murder and violence are daily commonplaces. . . .

  And for this I, and men like me, are responsible—nay even guilty. In our vanity we loosed the hurricane, thinking ourselves gods, able to rebuke the winds. And in the end the very forces we invoked will destroy us one by one, which is only just; but they will also destroy France, which is monstrous.

  He sighed, turned away from the window. All life’s efforts were bent towards the end of resigning a man towards death.

  Down below, the street was packed with people. H
e knew where they were going—to the Champs de Mars, where the Cordeliers and Jacobins had erected a rude wooden Altar of Federation. On it a huge scroll had been laid, upon which they hoped to gain thousands of signatures, and tens of thousands of crosses laboriously scrawled by those who could not write.

  Before June twenty-first, such a scroll would have been unthinkable: but now, after the monumental folly of the King’s attempted flight, Hébert, Danton, Marat, Robespierre and the rest could come out boldly with the dream that had possessed them from the first. Depose the King! Make France a republic!

  A good idea in the abstract, Jean thought as he picked up his hat, his cane, and his pistols; but wanting this, I think: to have a republic you must have republicans, and neither these power-drunk madmen at the fore nor this screeching unwashed rabble fills that bill. Dignity, calm, foresight, resolution—control of self and of emotions—where are those things in France today? Where are real disinterest, and negation of self? Each of these bloodthirsty ones, these rabid republicans, cares nothing truly for republicanism, but only for the opportunities it presents to clutch power, wealth, fame into their unsavoury paws. And this, too, damn my foolish soul, I have helped to arrange!

  He clapped his tall hat on his head and went down the stairs. Once in the street, he was caught up in the surging mob; his nose was assaulted by a thousand evil smells, each worse than the last; he was buffeted, elbowed by dirty, vermin-infested louts, cackling, toothless harridans, most of them wearing the red cap, all of them decorated with tricolour cockades hidden in various degrees by plain dirt. He caught references to his fine clothes and aristocratic bearing; but he shoved back with such force of arm and turned upon them a visage so terrible that they shrank from him and made way. This evil face of mine, he thought with wry self-mockery, is the best weapon that I have.

  The mob poured into the Champs de Mars, roaring out their terrible hymn Ça Ira: