“Here!” answered Sonia, and she strode out and joined the other condemned prisoners standing waiting between the bayonets of the guards.
The cell door was closed. Mlle Lydia de la Morlière still slept.
Afterwards it was assumed that the Tribunal had reconsidered its decision and sentenced Sonia Liskinne to death.
The condemned prisoners were prepared for their doom that morning in the guard-room. Only the sound of the scissors could be heard.
Sonia was facing a registrar’s clerk whom in the past she had often “tipped” — a man endowed with a shy and poetic temperament.
His hands shook as he touched her bare neck and he could scarcely lift her magnificent hair. He hesitated to introduce his hideous scissors into that golden fleece and fumbled.
In her softest voice Sonia begged him to show more nerve, for she wished her hair to be cut off as far as possible without being “spoiled.”
“I want to make a present of it, so cut it off neatly,” she said.
The clerk gave a gasp and followed her instructions, not without emotion.
“Am I so much to be pitied?” asked Sonia.
“Madame, if you do not wish me to be sorry for you, at least let me be sorry for those who will never see you again,” he returned courteously.
His answer greatly pleased her, and she ventured to ask him to take her hair as a souvenir to the prisoner still occupying her cell.
The clerk promised to carry out her wishes, and at once took the precaution to move the golden treasure which had been entrusted to him to a place of safety.
Not far from Sonia, M. Lavobourg, the ex-President of the Chamber, was bending his head and shuddering at the contact of the scissors.
Hilaire, Florent and Barkimel were not uninteresting to contemplate. All they had seen in the Court Room was a jostling crowd. They came away from it suffering from the butt-ends of revolvers, which had terribly wounded their pride. They doomed to perdition a body which did not know how to respect its victims, and they regretted nothing so much as the fact that they would not be alive to witness the discomfiture which might have saved them.
As the last few touches were being put to their toilet they listened attentively to the remarks whispered in the semi-darkness of the Gothic hall.
Well-informed persons, whose shirt-collars had just been very neatly opened, declared that the reason why the Commune was “dispatching” them with such great haste was to be found in the ultimatum received the previous evening from Versailles.
It was stated that Coudry had massed two hundred guns on the Place de la Revolution on chance.
“We must resign ourselves to our fate and try to die like others with fitting dignity.” Thus the two friends expressed themselves, mutually sustaining each other. When the shutter of the wicket gate was opened they hastily dabbed their eyes and concentrated themselves on keeping together.
Four tumbrils stood waiting in the courtyard. The three men were hurried into the first one. M. Barkimel helped M. Florent to get in, and next M. Florent helped M. Hilaire. M. Hilaire seemed preoccupied, paying no attention to his friends, but allowing his gaze to wander into the distance.
He was brought to attention by the sound of Sonia’s voice. She stood next to Him, and asked if it were true that Subdamoun was dead. M. Hilaire made answer that he hoped not, and that, to his knowledge, Subdamoun had a good chance of eluding his enemies.
Sonia changed countenance at these words and it would have been difficult to say whether from joy or sorrow — joy to think that Subdamoun was still alive or sorrow at having made so heroic a sacrifice of herself when she might have rejoined him.
Just then the outer wicket gate was opened and the grim procession started its progress along the quay.
When the first tumbril came out — it was a cart requistioned at the last moment the “funeral cars” themselves being full — a tumult of insults and curses went up against it. The tumbril contained the chief figures of our story.
Moreover, disorder, fighting, incendiarism, turmoil, singing, curses seemed that morning to have taken possession of the town and formed a sort of escort for these last victims of the new Revolution.
Beyond the flames on the river’s bank, already consuming buildings age-old and hallowed by history, which had been set alight by a rabble let loose by the fury and incapacity of a committee of revolt beaten at the start, the condemned prisoners could hear the dull boom of the guns from Versailles, already on their way perhaps to liberate them.
At that moment, M. Hilaire was undoubtedly the most dejected of them all. But three hundred yards farther on he seemed to come to life again.
“There he is!”
And indeed it was the peanut dealer marching ahead of the first tumbril in the centre of a gang of men of blood and rapine. He seemed to be in a state of mad intoxication, and his blind frenzy delighted the hideous mob, which spurred him on with its laughter.
He threw his wares here and there, shouting:
“Eat these peanuts. The Versailles people shan’t have ’em.”
The cortège turned to the left as usual to reach the grand boulevards by way of the Boulevard Sébastopol. M. Hilaire had no eyes nor ears for anything but the fantastic old man brandishing on high his empty basket.
Assuredly he had good reason to count on Chéri-Bibi. Chéri-Bibi should have known better, of course, than to throw the Dodger down the chimney seeing that he had so fortunately reached the top, but his gesture of rage, pardonable in the circumstances, would obviously be redeemed by some startling plan to wrest M. Hilaire from the hands of the executioner.
M. Hilaire, however, was growing a little impatient as he saw the procession take a “short cut” — terrible words that flashed across his mind causing him to make a wry face — when his attention was attracted by a body of curious-looking bakers’ boys selling cakes.
There were a number of pastry-cooks’ shops in this quarter which enjoyed considerable prosperity, despite the troublous times through which they were passing. It was the custom to send out extra boys on public holidays to sell “hot cakes” among the crowd.
On this particular morning the number of boys was larger than usual, and their voices could be heard above the tumult. When the peanut dealer threw his empty basket in the air towards them they suddenly stopped.
After that M. Hilaire no longer doubted that the crucial moment had come.
The place was well chosen. The tumbrils were passing the foot of a flight of steps from which rose, one above the other, a number of old streets whose aspect had not changed for more than two hundred years.
A body of determined confederates could make an attempt with some chance of success to rush the procession from the steps and, by taking it by surprise, effect their purpose.
Hilaire tried to convey some hint of what was about to happen to M. Florent, but he had collapsed on M. Barkimel’s shoulder. M. Barkimel himself seemed to be utterly exhausted.
Hilaire, glancing quickly round the cart, observed Sonia’s beaming face and was struck by the brightness of her eyes.
He followed her gaze, fixed on a particular spot, and descried at a window overlooking the noisy crowd in the narrow cross-roads a countenance whose appearance caused him to utter a faint exclamation:
“Subdamoun!”
It was he right enough. Major Jacques was there, and it was obvious from his presence there that he was not acting alone. Assistance could not be very far away.
“That’s a comfort,” thought M. Hilaire, who had never seriously believed that he would die on the scaffold, or at least rejected the thought from his mind as particularly repulsive.
And just as his hope of deliverance put new life into him Subdamoun gave a signal whereupon a great commotion broke forth.
The bakers’ boys, seemingly in command of the crowd, clambered up the balustrade at the top of the steps and rushed headlong to the causeway, followed by some hundred fierce-looking persons brandishing the most nond
escript weapons. Shots rang out on all sides; civic guards fell; a desperate struggle was fought round the first tumbril.
Sonia watched with bated breath the shifting fortunes of the fray. She could see Subdamoun himself standing near the flight of steps directing the operations.
The civic guards, taken by surprise, were forced to retreat. A certain lack of decision betrayed itself in the movement of the cortège. The first tumbril became cut off from the rest.
M. Hilaire was seeking how to fling himself out of the cart. The peanut dealer had vanished. Suddenly M. Hilaire found himself clutched violently by the shoulders by a hand from outside.
He made no attempt to struggle, allowing himself to be carried off by this irresistible force. But the civic guard near him made a lunge at him full in the chest with his bayonet, or at least he aimed full at his chest, but the blow glanced under his arm.
As M. Hilaire toppled over, legs upwards, the man assumed that his thrust had struck home and ripped up his prisoner, and paid no further attention to him.
He had in fact other things to think about. The prisoners were like so many madmen, and though bound hand and foot, they fell with all their weight on their guards to prevent them from using their weapons.
The smallness of the space in which they were confined assisted their manœuvre, and some of the guards yelled with pain because they were bitten.
It is difficult to convey an impression of the confusion that reigned. The cries of the wounded and dying, of men trampled under foot, of mounted guards unhorsed, of the brigands of bakers’ boys in whom a practiced military eye would have recognized many men from the colonial regiment devoted to Subdamoun — all these things created a deafening uproar while the shooting of the guards went on apace.
All the same, the guards succeeded in reforming round the three remaining lorries, which were quickly driven towards the Place de la Revolution by a circuitous route.
It was assumed that the first tumbril was permanently in the hands of the assailants. For a few minutes, indeed, they held the upper hand. A wheel came off and its human freight rolled to the ground, with the exception of Sonia and Lavobourg, who instinctively clutched the rail nearest where they were standing. It was this movement that brought about their undoing.
Florent and Barkimel fell to the ground with the others. It was this movement that saved their lives.
They remained for a while stretched on the cobbles, and no more attention was paid to them than if they were dead.
The first tumbril was stranded against the pavement. Subdamoun, who had joined the fray, was preparing to dart forward, and Sonia might well believe that she was rescued, when the peanut dealer pushed him roughly and he stumbled and fell. Chéri-Bibi held him for a while on the ground, and at that very moment a volley of rifle fire blazed out.
It came from a party of soldiers under the command of General Flottard himself. Had not Chéri-Bibi prevented Subdamoun’s rush forward he would have been literally shot to pieces.
After that there could be no question of continuing the fight. Civic guards made a grab at the two remaining prisoners, Sonia and Lavobourg, and forced them into a closed car that had been abandoned, and Flottard himself mounted the box-seat and took the wheel.
He swore to drive his victims to the guillotine himself, and set off at a moderate but safe pace, escorted by two hundred mounted guards. No further incident occurred on the way to the Place de la Revolution.
And so destiny willed that at that supreme hour those two beings who might have hated each other should be united in death.
Their eyes met, and the light of forgiveness shone in them.
“Let us say a prayer,” said Sonia.
They both prayed.
“Forgive me as I forgive you.”
“I loved you, and it is for you to forgive me,” said Lavobourg.
Shouts of fury mingled with curses greeted them as they mounted the steps of the fatal platform. All those who remained faithful to the old regime, now more than half defeated, seemed to have met there while the sound of the guns from Versailles continued to draw nearer.
“If we had been brought here an hour later...” began Lavobourg.
It was obvious that he was about to add “we might have been saved,” but he had no time to finish his words, for the executioner’s assistants seized and threw him on the trap and the guillotine fell.
Sonia turned away her pale golden head. The shouting for a moment ceased. Then Sonia heard a sob from someone in the crowd.
“He is here,” she said to herself.
And she drew herself up to her full height, seemed still lovelier, and presently the executioner was to behead her....
It did not take long. Her head fell among the other heads in the horrible basket....
CHAPTER XXXV
THE BEST OF FRIENDS MUST PART
THREE WEEKS AFTERWARDS the revolutionary outbreak was but a memory.
It had been suppressed with no less dispatch than it had itself shown in satisfying its lust for universal destruction.
The victors took care to refrain from the excesses that followed the overthrow of the old “Commune.” They were the first to set their faces against reprisals and further executions; they spared the lives of the hostages in their hands; and they set about the restoration of the ancient buildings which fanatics had started to burn down.
Coudry’s men were allowed to decamp abroad, and Coudry himself was able to cross the frontier.
The National Assembly was to be succeeded by a newly elected Parliament, whose business it would be to revise the Constitution, and meantime Subdamoun was elected President.
The house in the Marais quarter assumed its normal aspect. Jacques found his mother at home. She had been taken there in circumstances still wrapped in mystery to her and them all.
After all, she and her son and his betrothed had escaped with their lives, which was the main thing. Frederic Héloni, too, had come to live in the house as well as Marie Thérèse, his betrothed, and they might all have been quite happy had not Subdamoun, upon whom fortune seemed to smile, worn a look of deep depression which grew darker every day.
Lydia did not venture to question him. Like the Marchioness and Frederic, she assumed that the tragic end of Mlle Sonia Liskinne was responsible for his gloomy demeanor.
And yet Subdamoun had never mentioned Sonia’s name even to Frederic, nor had he made a pilgrimage to the house in the Boulevard Periere, which remained closed and was treated by Parisians when passing it with every mark of respect as if it were a tomb.
Life had assumed its former aspect in that quarter. Only the shutters of one shop remained closed — Little Buddha junior’s famous cabaret. No one knew what had become of its proprietor. After the arrival of the troops from Versailles his forbidding face was no longer seen.
About two o’clock on that particular night two dark forms, hugging the walls, drew nearer to each other. The first, seemingly the shorter and shriveled up, came from the fortifications; the second walked down from the Rue de Rome and crossed the iron bridge. They reached the cabaret door almost simultaneously and with one accord came to a stand.
The neighborhood was deserted. The shorter figure began to pick the lock, the other kept watch.
At last the door opened; the two men slipped into the cabaret, and the door closed behind them. A dark lantern cast a ray of light, and Chéri-Bibi said:
“Sit down, Dodger. I’ll have a look round.”
“If anyone is here he must be dead, for there isn’t a sound,” returned the Dodger.
The Dodger heard Chéri-Bibi’s shuffling footsteps mounting the stairs from the room at the back; he heard doors being opened and closed above him: then a silence followed, and Chéri-Bibi appeared once more.
“I have had a look round as far as Sonia’s house. Everything is quiet. We can talk.”
“What’s happened to Little Buddha?” asked the Dodger.
“I was going to ask you that!”
The Dodger coughed: “May I ask you, monsieur le Marquis,” he said, “why you chose to meet your servant in this God-forsaken spot and at this late hour when honest grocers have long been in bed?”
“I didn’t want to compromise you, my dear Dodger,” returned Chéri-Bibi, sitting down opposite his pal and patting his hand.
“You are very good, monsieur le Marquis.”
“Call me Chéri-Bibi as in the old days. The voice of a friend is sweet to hear.”
The Dodger shrank back a little. He had no love for these exhibitions of feeling from the man who for so many years had never ceased in reality to be his master. What demand was he about to make on him now? Was it not understood that everything was over and done with? Had not Chéri-Bibi said to him with a sigh after rescuing him from the executioner:— “It’s all right now, my dear Dodger. You deserve to live happily and in peace. Our adventures are finished.”
Chéri-Bibi rose from his chair and walked away in a curious state of excitement. He returned with a bottle of old brandy and poured out a glass for the Dodger.
“How’s business with you?” he asked in a friendly voice.
“Well, it’s looking up again slowly,” returned the Dodger. “But we sadly miss poor Mme Hilaire.”
“Are you still without any definite news?” asked Chéri-Bibi in a tone of sincere pity for the Dodger.
“Oh, yes. I know what happened, and that’s what is grieving me,” said M. Hilaire, sighing. “It’s a great calamity. There’s no doubt she’s dead.”
“Good heavens, you don’t say so!”
“It’s a certainty she was burnt alive, poor child.”
“Don’t take it too much to heart, Dodger.”
“The only things I found were the half-charred part of one of her boots and her ‘bun’ of hair almost burnt. The rest of her made up a very small quantity of ashes which I reverently collected in an urn and placed on the marble top of my bedside table. Such a good woman, monsieur le Marquis, and what a head for business! It’s awful. Believe me or not, I spend the time before my urn bewailing her loss.”
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 235
