33CHAPTER VIIN THE FROCHARDS’ DEN
One hundred and fifty years of outlawry had made the Frochard clan a wolfish breed; battening on crime, thievery and beggary. The head of the house had suffered the extreme penalty meted out to highwaymen. The precious young hopeful, Jacques, was a chip of the old block––possibly a shade more drunken and a shade less enterprising.
But the real masterful figure was the Widow Frochard, his mother, a hag whose street appearance nurses used to frighten naughty children. Hard masculine features, disheveled locks and piercing black eyes gave her a fearsome look enhanced by a very vigorous moustache, a huge wart near the mouth, the ear-hoops and tobacco pipe that she sported, and the miscellaneous mass of rags that constituted her costume.
In this menage of the begging Frochards, the crippled scissors-grinder Pierre was the only individual worth his salt, and he was34heartily despised by his brother Jacques and his mother.
The hag’s black eyes snapped as she saw Louise whom the hunchback had saved from the water.
“Pretty––blind––she’ll beg us lots of money!” she said gleefully to Jacques. But to the girl she pretended aid, and her leathern, liquor-coated voice proclaimed:
“No friends, eh, Dearie? Then I’ll take care of you!”
Only poor Pierre sympathized with Louise’s awful grief in being thrown adrift on Paris through the violent disappearance of her beloved sister. He trembled to think what knavery his wicked kinsfolk meant, though he himself was their helpless slave; the target of kicks, cuffs, and the robbery of all his earnings.
La Frochard led the way to their dank and noisome den, opening from a street trap-door and giving at the other extremity on a sort of water-rat exit underneath the pier. She handed Louise down the steps and taking her things remarked in a self-satisfied tone: “Here are your lodgings, Dearie!”
The old woman arrayed herself in35Louise’s shawl, and grinned as she tried on the girl’s widespread garden hat. She flung the girl about roughly, even choking her. To heighten the rosy picture of great wealth to accrue, she took a deep draught of cognac from her loved black bottle. Poor Louise sank down to deep slumber, from which neither the noisy potations of La Frochard and Jacques, nor their cursing and abuse of the hunchback Pierre, sufficed to awaken her.
Next morning the hag pulled the blind girl out of the rough bed and dressed her in beggar’s garments.
“You must go out now on the street with us and sing!” she said.
“... But you promised to help me find Henriette....” said the poor girl, piteously.
“We’ll find her for you one of these days, but in the meantime you must earn your keep. No––I don’t mean, actually beg! You do the singing, and I’ll do the begging.”
“Never!” cried Louise. “You may kill me if you will, but I’ll not be a street beggar. Why, the very first person we meet, I’ll ask to save me and inform the police!”
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“I’ll fix you, my fine lady!” screamed La Frochard, throwing her from her. “Come, Jacques,” she said to her ruffian son, “we’ll trying a means of making her mind!” Together they seized and started dragging her to the steps of a sub-cellar. Tremblingly Pierre urged them to desist, but they cast him aside.
Louise was thrust into the dungeon and the trap closed. Black bread and a cup of water was to be her prison fare. Still moaning “Henriette! Henriette!” she groped along the slimy walls and tried the footing of the mingled mud and straw.
Horrors! What were the creeping things she sensed, though sightless? Two raced under her petticoat, one nibbled at her shoe. She jumped high in air and screamed outright.
Rats! They were upon her again, almost swarming. She fled to a corner, leaped on a pile of rags, literally fought them off with both hands! Her screams echoed through the upper den, to the anguish of Pierre and the mocking laughter of La Frochard and Jacques....
Pitiably broken, Louise was pulled out of the vile sink a few hours later, pledging37wildly to obey the least of the hag’s commands.
La Frochard knew that her conquest was complete.
Henceforth the girl would be but as a clay figure in her hands––a decoy to lure the golden charity of the rich and sympathetic.
As for Jacques, that ruffian was now eyeing the blind lass closely, and muttering:
“Not bad-looking––I’ll see to it no other man gets her!”
He slapped his knife villainously.
38CHAPTER VIITANGLED SKEINS
Henriette Girard had not only been saved from dishonor by Chevalier de Vaudrey, but she had won a devoted friend. Through his connections, the Chevalier knew much that was passing in the half-world. The mystery of the happenings at the coach house was cleared by him.
“Your cousin M. Martin,” he said, “was found drugged in a wineshop to which presumably the man La Fleur had enticed him. It was easy then for La Fleur to pose as Martin and kidnap you.
“I grieve to say it, abductions of the poor and friendless are common with the roues of fashion. Their families are of such influence that the police rarely interfere.
“But there will be an end of this––if I mistake not,” said the Chevalier, “the people mean to put an end to these seignorial ‘privileges’!”
THE MARQUIS DE PRAILLE IS ENRAPTURED BY THE LITTLE VISIONFROM THE STAGE COACH (HENRIETTE PLAYED BY LILLIAN GISH.)
THE MARQUIS DE PRAILLE IS ENRAPTURED BY THE LITTLE VISIONFROM THE STAGE COACH (HENRIETTE PLAYED BY LILLIAN GISH.)
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It was in one of his frequent talks at the simple lodgings to which he had conducted her the night of Bel-Air. Swiftly they had retraced the steps of the stricken Louise even to the pier edge over the darkling Seine. Horrified and trembling, Henriette feared the worst.
“It is not likely she was drowned,” said the Chevalier gravely. “Someone must have been about, to save her. Do not be discouraged, Mademoiselle, if our search for Louise takes several days. We are without a clew––groping, like her, in the dark. But we shall find her, never fear!”
The confident words gave tiny comfort to the elder girl as he bade his adieux in the parlor of the respectable lodging house he had found for her––the same caravansary (had they but known it) that housed the then obscure Maximilien Robespierre.
She strove to thank him for his kindness when he interrupted her: “Don’t thankme, Mademoiselle, I oweyoua debt of gratitude, for you have restored to me ideals sweet as childhood!”
Unconsciously the young people standing there, drew closer to one another until their lips met. Each was almost too astonished for words. Fine breeding came to de Vaudrey’s aid. He apologized––and promised not to let it happen again!
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Sincerity spoke in the young man’s earnest eyes and his respectful kiss of her small hand at parting.
Was indeed this youthful cynic transformed by the flower-like influence of the girl?
He went away all eagerness to pursue the lost sister’s quest, promising that no stone––police or other––should be left unturned in the search.
And here––where the orphans’ eventful epoch becomes entwined with the lives of the great and with the darkening storm and impending passion of the Revolution––it is well to acquaint our readers further with the de Vaudreys.
Count de Linieres of Touraine had been married––many years before the date of this story––to Mlle. de Vaudrey, the heiress of a great fortune. A skeleton (’twas rumored) rattled in the Vaudrey closet. Certainly there was heritage of hates as well as gold.
A tenant Jean Setain, who came to the Paris mansion to pay his rent, made a scene. He told of the cruelties long ago inflicted on his father by the Countess’41father––for some trifling trespass on seigniorage,boiling lead in the unfortunate’s veins––and the angry Count, after a stern rebuke, had him ejected. Jacques-Forget-Not (such was his queer nickname) departed, vowing vengeance.
Having ample wealth, the Count desired preferment. The post of Minister of Police was a steppingstone. He accepted it whilst visions of a grand alliance for his nephew, Chevalier de Vaudrey, pointed to dukedom or even princely rank as the family’s goal. It thus vexed Linieres exceedingly that the Chevalier should have been mixed up in a duel about an unknown girl. He believed it a clever stroke to hire Picard, the Chevalier’s own valet, to spy upon him.
“How is your master’s conduct?” asked the Count.
“Scandalous, perfectly scandalous!” replied Picard in a tone of deep dejection. “Once indeed he had a few gentleman associates and went to gay parties, but now he is quite moral, and just as studious as a lawyer’s clerk. Really I must leave the Chevalier,” continued Picard, “his principles are such as I cannot accept!”
“Then I will re-engage you––on one condition.42That is, that you remain a while with my nephew and tell me everything he does. I have heard, on the contrary, that––”
Picard almost danced a pas seul. “Oh, that is the way the wind lies! The sly dog!––And I thought of leaving him. She must be a saucy and jaunty little minx, whoever she is! Oh, yes, I will find out everything that you require.”
With eye to keyhole the valet reporter saw the frequent innocent parleys of Maurice and Henriette, which he construed as an intrigue. He was quite ecstatic with happiness now. The police Prefect, finding his suspicions privately confirmed, bluntly refused police aid to the Chevalier’s hunt for Louise. He spoke pointedly and (as he hoped) with effect:
“Monsieur, you must give up your association with these common people. I have other plans for you that will shortly mature.”
The angry Count could not be crossed. De Vaudrey’s sole hope lay in his Aunt.
Ceaselessly Henriette spent her days in trying to trace Louise. Her quest became43the neighborhood gossip. Strangers interested themselves and offered clues to herself and the Chevalier––clues that proved quite futile.
To her doorstep a great pock-marked man, bushy-browed and of knob-like visage, was walking one day with her finicky dandified neighbor M. Robespierre. As he passed, the titan turned and inquired kindly:
“Are you the little girl who lost her sister?”
He spoke with a gentle sympathy that touched her and even his cursing reference to the abductions: “Damned aristocrats! The people are going to stop that sort of thing!” did not phase her, for she looked up into his face and trustfully replied:
“You are such a big man I should think you could do almost anything!”
Robespierre was pawing at the pock-marked one’s coat, and finally succeeded in yanking him around. The broad back of the giant being turned to her, our little sparrow of a Henriette noiselessly departed––to the evident disappointment of the big man who looked yet again and found her place empty!
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The big man had run across Chevalier de Vaudrey also, and the two had struck up a friendship. Moved by the pitiful sight of a starveling crowd gazing into a bakery, Maurice had rushed in and bought an armful of loaves which he distributed, adding gold louis for the wretched mothers of families. The pock-marked one had been a spectator. He stopped the Chevalier, shook his hand warmly, and remarked: “If more of the aristocrats were likeyou, things would be different!”
From these scenes of low life, let the reader pass for a few moments to the Salon de la Paix at Versailles, where King Louis XVI received petitioners.
We in America who have no awe of royalty perceive that the luckless King was simply a square peg in a round hole. He loved locksmithy, hunting, and home; would have been a successful inventor, pioneer, or bourgeois parent. In the chair of State, on this day of petitions, his head and hand busied themselves with a wonderful new doorlock he had devised.
“Sire,” said the suppliant de Linieres, “in the matter of the grand alliance betwixt my45nephew Chevalier de Vaudrey and your ward Princesse de Acquitaine––”
The monarch nodded absentmindedly.
“Oh, yes, yes! Of course. As you say––” With a courtly wave of the hand, the monarch indicated the waiting heiress on his right. She curtsied low in acceptance of the royal command.
“Let the young man marry her, and accept a place in my royal entourage––But now that this little matter is settled,” continued the King with a return to his former animation, “I invite you to examine my latest invention, an unpickable lock, which I have here!”
The grave comedy of eulogy on the royal locksmithing was played by the delighted suppliant according to all the rules.
46CHAPTER VIIITHE HONOR OF THE FAMILY
Daily the young Chevalier developed a warmer interest in the sweet and pure young girl at the faubourg lodgings. Always his visits brought a little delicious heart-flutter to Henriette, though not unmixed with mourning o’er lost sister. And as a result of these idyllic meetings, ambitious plans appeared to him abhorrent.
About this time the Countess de Linieres, calling one day at her husband’s ministerial offices, learned of his purposes.
“I was about to come to you,” said the Count, “but you have anticipated me. I desire to speak with you on the subject of your nephew, the Chevalier de Vaudrey, and to ask you to prepare him for the marriage which the King––”
“Wishes to impose on him,” interrupted the Countess bitterly.
“Impose on him?” repeated de Linieres. “It is a magnificent alliance, which will complete the measure of the distinguished47honors with which His Majesty deigns to favor us.”
“Have you spoken to the Chevalier yet?”
“No, but I am expecting him every moment, and I wished to talk with him in your presence.”
As if this conversation had some influence over him, de Vaudrey entered at this moment.
“Ah, Chevalier!” exclaimed the Count. “I am glad to see you. The Countess and myself have an important communication to make to you.”
De Vaudrey looked at his uncle in surprise. The latter was positively beaming. Big with the prospective grandeur of his house, he hesitated momentarily over the manner of delivering it.
“My dear Maurice,” said the Count finally, “the King did me the honor to receive me yesterday, and he spoke of you.”
“Of me?” asked de Vaudrey in surprise.
“He takes a great interest in you,” continued de Linieres, now speaking quickly. “He wishes you to accept a position at court, and desires at the same time that you should marry.”
“Marry?” asked de Vaudrey, as though48he could not believe his uncle really meant what he said.
The Countess waited as anxiously for de Vaudrey’s answer as did her husband, though for a different reason. She loved the young man before her, and his happiness and well-being were very dear to her.
“My dear nephew,” she said kindly, “I see that this news surprises you. Yet there is no fear that the King’s choice will do violence to your feelings. The lady whom His Majesty has chosen, has youth, beauty and fortune.”
“In proof of which I have only to tell you that his choice is Princesse––” the Count attempted to say, but was interrupted by the Chevalier.
“Do not name her,” he said excitedly.
“Why not?” asked his uncle in astonishment.
“Because I refuse to marry!”
The effect of these momentous words was quite diverse upon the uncle and the aunt of the young man.
For the moment the haughty nobleman could not understand why his nephew-by-marriage should reject the flattering proposal, such an easy and agreeable road to49place and fortune. Soon rising anger got the better of his surprise, and minding Picard’s reports on the Chevalier’s conduct, his thought was:
“Ah, that’s the secret––he prefers his libertine courses to assured fortune!”
But the Aunt, with a woman’s ready wit, understood there could be but one reason to such a decided refusal, and knew that he must be already in love.
Countess de Linieres loved the Chevalier as if he were her own son. Quickly she shot the youth a warning look to prevent if possible a verbal passage of arms. But it was already too late.
“You dare to disobey the King––” thundered Count de Linieres, in righteous wrath, backed (as the others well knew) by the triple authority of household, police and royal cachet.
“My sword is my King’s,” flashed the handsome youth resolutely, “but my will must remain my own!
“I will go to His Majesty,” he continued passionately. “I will thank him for his goodness, place my services at his disposal. My devotion, my life are his, but my affections50are my own, and I wish to remain––free!”
“Free!” exclaimed the Count scornfully. “Free to lead a life of dissipation which you may not always be able to hide from the world.”
These words, which implied so much, stung the noble-hearted de Vaudrey more than any words of anger or reproach could have done.
“There is nothing in my life to hide,” he said proudly but impatiently, “nothing for which I have reason to blush.”
“Are you sure of that, Chevalier?” asked the Count, in a tone that plainly said the speaker knew differently. Conscious of his own uprightness, this doubt cast upon his word was more than the Chevalier could bear, and he advanced toward his uncle with a menacing air.
“Monsieur!” he began, boldly, “I cannot––”
“Maurice! my husband!” exclaimed the Countess, as she stepped between the two men to prevent those words being spoken which would have led to an encounter. “Defer the conversation for the present. Permit me to speak to Maurice.”
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“Very well,” said de Linieres sternly. Then turning to the Chevalier he said, in a voice which he had never before used to his nephew: “We will return to this another time. You will remember that as head of the family its honor is confided to my care, and I will not suffer any one to sully it with a stain.”
De Vaudrey had nearly lost all control of his temper. In a moment the outbreak which the Countess was so anxious to avoid would have broken forth, had not the Count without giving his nephew time to speak said quickly:
“I leave you with the Countess. I hope that your respect and affection for her will cause you to lend more weight to her counsels than you are disposed to give to mine.”
As if fearing that he might have tried the young man’s temper too far, or that he did not wish to prolong a useless scene, the Count left the room. De Vaudrey was alone with his Aunt.
The Countess went up to the noble-looking young man, and taking his hand in hers, asked in a sweet, winning voice:
“Who is this woman you love? What obstacle prevents the avowal of your passion?52If it is only a matter of fortune, take mine; it is all at your disposal, and I will give it to you cheerfully.”
“Ah, where shall I find a heart like yours?” exclaimed the Chevalier in a voice trembling with emotion. “You have divined my secret. I adore a young girl as charming as she is pure. Yet never have I dared to whisper my passion!”
“Her name––her family?” asked the Countess eagerly.
“She was born of the people,” said de Vaudrey proudly, yet tenderly. “She is an orphan and lives by the labor of her hands.”
The Countess, who had never for a moment imagined such an answer to her question, was surprised, and she showed plainly that grief was mingled with her surprise.
“And you would make such a woman your wife?” she asked reproachfully.
“Do not judge her until you have seen her,” entreated the Chevalier. “Consent to see her, and then advise me.”
The young man took the Countess’s hands in his, and looked imploringly into her face.
But his Aunt turned away from him with a gesture of sorrow.
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“In such a marriage,” she said sadly, “there can be no happiness for you, and for her, only misery. Alas! I know too well the result of those unequal unions. You must renounce her. You owe obedience to your family and your King.” She burst into a flood of tears.
Diffidently the young man sought to comfort the Countess whose emotion seemed to have its spring in some hidden sorrow. He promised at last for her sake to consider again the horribly odious proposal of a State marriage, and drying her tears as well as he could, went his way, a victim of torn desires and intensest anguish....
54CHAPTER IXFRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE
The giant stranger who had talked to Henriette and made friends with de Vaudrey was Jacques Danton. He and his colleague, Maximilien Robespierre, were destined to be the outstanding figures of the French Revolution. It is worth while to stop here for a little and consider these two men in their historical aspects and for the profound influence which they exerted on the lives of our characters.
As the storm clouds blacken the sky and the sullen sea (not yet lashed to fury) is ridged in deep, advancing breakers, the mariner’s eye discerns these stormy petrels flying about or momentarily perched on the masts of the Ship of State.
Mark them well––Danton and Robespierre: today, merely “esurient advocates,” petty men of law come up from the provinces to win their fortunes in Paris; tomorrow, leaders of faction; some months or years later, the rulers of France!
PIERRE BECOMES THE DEVOTED WORSHIPPER OFLOUISE WHOM HE HAS SAVED FROM THE RIVER
PIERRE BECOMES THE DEVOTED WORSHIPPER OFLOUISE WHOM HE HAS SAVED FROM THE RIVER
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Danton––“the huge, brawny figure, through whose black brows and rude flattened face there looks a waste energy as of Hercules not yet furibund.”
Robespierre––aptly described as the meanest man of the Tiers Estat: “that anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles; his eyes, troubled, careful; with upturned face, snuffing dimly the uncertain future-time; complexion of a multiplex atrabiliar color, the final shade of which may be the pale sea-green!”
Such were they, afterwards to be known respectively as “the pock-marked Thunderer” and the “sea-green Incorruptible” of the Revolution. The slight, fox-like man had got himself elected to the States-General which in May, 1789, convened at Versailles to take up the troubled state of the country, whilst the lion-like and fiery Danton was the president of the Cordeliers electoral district of Paris––the head of a popular faubourg faction, not yet of power in the State.
The new helmsmen of the State, headed by Mirabeau, steered with considerable success among waters as yet but partly roiled. At Versailles an outward and visible Liberalism triumphed. The Third Estate or56Commons, consolidating its authority as a permanent assembly, took measures to end the national bankruptcy and tried to cope with the awful menace of starvation. It was a bourgeois body, thinly sprinkled with members of the nobility and clergy; its aim, to abolish the worst seigniorial abuses, restore prosperity, and support the throne by a system of constitutional guarantees.
But when the Storm broke, it was not at Versailles where these lawgiving Six Hundred debated the state of the Nation, but at Paris that the group known as “Friends of the People” lashed the popular discontents to unmeasured and ungovernable fury.
It begins in the Palais Royal where “there has been erected, apparently by subscription, a kind of Wooden Tent, most convenient––where select Patriotism can now redact resolutions, deliver harangues, with comfort, let the weather be as it will. Lively is that Satan-at-Home! On his table, on his chair, in every cafe, stands a patriotic orator; a crowd round him within; a crowd listening from without, open-mouthed, through open door and window; with ‘thunders of applause for every sentiment of more than common hardiness.’”
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Strange that in a Royalist garden should sprout the seeds of a great Revolution! Stranger the crowds that gathered there, and the leaders both popular and Royalist––among the former, our fiery friend Danton, our cautious, snuffling Robespierre, and the boy of genius Camille Desmoulins, Danton’s “slight-built comrade and craft-brother, he with the long curling locks, with the face of dingy blackguardism, wondrously irradiated with genius!”
General Lafayette and Minister from America Thomas Jefferson came there too now and again, to watch the crowds and hear the speeches. Symbols of America’s newly won freedom, they were objects of almost superstitious veneration to the agitators for an enfranchised France. Danton, Desmoulins and the rest crowded around them, eager to shake their hands and listen to their comments. In particular, Lafayette’s sword––the gift of the American Congress a decade before, excited their admiration.
“From America’s Congress!” repeated Danton fervently as he eyed the inscription on the scabbard. “Why, that’s the kind of Government we want over here!” Tears58came into the Frenchman’s eyes, to think of the Liberty that Lafayette had helped to win.
The Palais Royal gardens were the property of the King’s cousin, Louis Phillipe. Disgusted with not being in the councils of the monarch and leaning to democracy, he permitted the place to be used for public promenades, lovers’ meetings––and popular harangues. Friends of the People, Friends of Phillipe, and Friends of the King freely rubbed elbows. The popular tide set so strongly that none dared openly oppose the demagogic orators. A bread famine had descended upon Paris. The scarcity of wheat and flour was an ever-present theme; the oppression of autocracy and seigniorage, another. The cry for direct action always woke echo in the popular breast, sick over the delays of the Versailles lawgivers, and nourishing the hope of seizing pelf and power, rescuing their kinsfolk from the prisons, and beating down the Kingship and aristocracy to relinquish privileges and abate the hardships of the Common Man!
Plain, embittered envy stalked abroad, too––envy of the aristocrats’ grand homes and unparalleled luxury, their fine equipages59and clothing, costly foods and wines, their trains of lackeys and menials, the beauty and joie-de-vivre of their sons and daughters! The mechanic, the storekeeper, the unskilled laborer, the ranks of unemployed, and the submerged tenth obliged to live by their wits or starve, were as fuel to the spark of the orators’ lightning.
’Twas unlike a well-ordered land wherein each one receives the well-merited reward of toil. Justice was not in the body politic. Tyranny, extravagance and bankruptcy on the part of the ruling class had wiped out the margin of plenty. Black ruin seemed to impend for all. It was a case of starve––or unite against the rulers and oppressors of society. Danton, the thunderer of mighty speech, dominated these gatherings, aided and abetted by the eagle-like Desmoulins and the crafty Robespierre.
“With the People’s government,” his swelling periods resounded, “there shall be no common man, no aristocrat––no rich nor poor––but all brothers––brothers––brothers!” Imagine if you can the fire-drama of his recital of generations of cruelties and wrongs––his picture of their miserable lot and of the envied aristocrats’ pleasures––and60then consider the pitch of frenzied republicanism to which this wonderful fraternal climax uplifted them! With crash of thunder and wrack of the elements the Storm must break, directly the popular feeling found immediate object of its ire.
61CHAPTER XTHE ATTACK ON DANTON
But the royalists were not idle. Their spies attended the meetings. Their swordsmen provoked street encounters with popular leaders.
They had always coped with popular ferments by picking off the individual leaders, and they did not doubt their ability to do the same thing now. As Danton spoke, an influential Royalist, pretending to handclap his sentiments, privately signaled to a number of these “spadassins” or killers.
On his way home from the meeting Danton was attacked in the lonely street. He backed up to a house porch, quickly drew his own sword, and with herculean strength managed to cut down five or six spadassins of the advance party.
Then he fled to the house where Henriette and also Robespierre lodged, rushed in and up the stairs. The following company were almost upon him. Their shouts and cries could be heard below.
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Danton plumped into the first door at the left of the stair-head. He was there when Henriette, who had been momentarily away, returned to her room.
“The spies––spadassins––they would take my life––” He was wounded. It was with a difficult hoarseness that he spoke.
The little homekeeper put a warning finger to mouth. Running past him to the door, she slipped out and closed it. She withdrew to the back of the hall, and came forward nonchalantly as the assassins reached the hallway.
Rapier at her throat, the leader put the silent but terrible question. Henriette’s heart jumped. She managed not to show her terror.
“I saw a man going up those stairs three steps at a time!” she lied superbly, pointing to the floor above.
The company ran up the third-floor stairs on the double jump. As they vanished, she was inside her rooms again and with the quarry.
Minutes passed. The spadassins searched the top garrets. They sought the roof, saw escape was impossible that way. Then they63clattered down the stairs. The leader hesitated at Henriette’s door.
“Faugh!” he said. “The girl is just a simpleton, she couldn’t have tricked us!”
At his command the men marched down––to encounter unexpectedly a company of national gendarmes that had been hurriedly summoned to the scene of the disturbance.
In the porch melee Danton’s side had been painfully slashed. Despite the pain, he recognized his little preserver and thanked her. Still holding his hand to his side and half-reeling, he moved to go. Now that all seemed quiet, he proposed to rid her of the compromising presence of a man in her room.
Henriette seized him with her little arms.
“No, no, you can’t go!” she said with a little smile of divine pity. “Better a little gossip about me than that you should lose your life.” Henriette locked the door!
She strove to carry the disabled giant to the nearest chair. Leaning heavily on her, he walked with an effort and plumped down on it. One of his arms was around her. She tried to free it, but it clung. With hands and knees she crawled out backward from the unconscious embrace.
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It was the work of but a few minutes to wash and bind his wound. Next she spread a pallet on the floor, assisted him to it, wrapped him warmly, and with a kind “Good night!” left him to go to her little boudoir....
That same night the spadassins were met and disarmed by the gendarmes who (largely owing to Danton’s eloquence) espoused the people’s side. And that is why Monsieur Robespierre, his confrere, was abroad very early, without fear of assassins, and nosing for news.
“I hear Danton was in a little trouble last night!” gossiped the slick citizen with his landlady. “The fight was in this very house, was it not?”
The landlady, it seemed, was ignorant of Danton’s refuge. But Robespierre suspected. He decided to investigate, being a stickler for propriety. Mounting the stairs stealthily, he knocked at Henriette’s door.
The girl and the man were at their leave-taking. Few words were spoken. The giant clasped both her little hands in his great paws.
“What you have done for me I shall never forget!” he was saying.
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“Oh, if I had a great kind brother like this!” was her sudden thought.
“Whisht!” she whispered vocally as the knock was heard. Again the little gesture of warning finger to mouth.
She stole to the keyhole and thought she recognized the habiliments of her neighbor the dandy. Motioning Danton back out of sight she opened the door on the crack, closed it as she slipped through, and encountered the bowing and smirking Robespierre.
“A man escaped from the spadassins here last night-did he find refuge with you?”
“You are mistaken, Monsieur. I am quite alone.”
“May I just see? Very intimate friend of mine, I am sure.”
“No, youmay not!” Henriette quickly reentered, and slammed and locked the door on the future Dictator of France. ’Twas only a little door slam, but it re-echoed later, even at the Gates of Death! Rubbing his long nose Robespierre took snuff.
“Sh-h, he is still there!” whispered the girl to Danton, with another look through keyhole. Presently steps were heard going downstairs.
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“I think he is gone!” she said, verifying her statement by again opening the door and finding the coast clear.
Danton, with a final good-by, went his way.
The sneak, however, had retraced his downstairs steps with cat-like tread. In an alcove of the back hall he had found a hiding post.
As Danton’s broad back descended down the steps, a vulpine head peered out of the alcove, and Robespierre’s cunning, self-satisfied look showed that he recognized Henriette’s visitant.
67CHAPTER XILOUISE BEFORE NOTRE DAME
In the days following her immurement in the dreadful sub-cellar, Louise became the Frochards’ breadwinner. Her pathetic blindness, lovely face and form, and sweet young voice attracted sympathy from each passer-by. The offerings all went into the capacious pocket of La Frochard, whence indeed most of them were stolen or cajoled by her worthless scamp of a Jacques.
The old hag feared only lest she lose her precious acquisition of the blind girl. She guarded her ceaselessly, and warded off dangerous questioners.
It was not easy, however, to avoid the good Doctor from La Force, who gave them a donative and looked at the girl with deep professional interest. Despite the beggar’s tactics, he insisted on examining the pupils, then called La Frochard aside.
“Don’t encourage her too much,” said the old gentlemen kindly, “but bring her to me. I am quite sure that she can be cured.”
Rejoining Louise and smiling her wheedling68beggar’s smile at the departing Doctor, the features of Widow Frochard suddenly contorted in black rage––she shook her fist at the physician directly his back was turned. Monstrous––to restore sight, and thus make the girl worthless as object of charity! La Frochard felt she had good reason for her rage.
“Can the Doctor do anything?” ventured Louise to the hag, timidly.
“No, he said your case is hopeless.”
They were standing now near the snowy steps of Notre Dame, awaiting worshippers whose pity would be stirred by the girl’s misfortune. Half-drunken Jacques had reeled out of a cabaret to exact his share of the plunder. Mother and first-born cursed heartily the scissors-grinder Pierre who came limping up, saying he could get no jobs on account of the bitter cold, wintry day. Kicking the cripple and twisting Louise’s arm were the favorite pastimes of Jacques and the Widow.
On this occasion the hag snatched the covering from the wretched girl’s shoulders and put it around her own. “You’ll shiver better without that shawl!” she said, brutally69setting the scene for the worshippers’ charity.
“Jacques and I,” she continued, “are going to get a little drink to warm our frozen bodies.
“Guard her there, you good-for-nothing Pierre, or I’ll break every bone of your body!” They departed to spend the Doctor’s gold-piece.
Pierre tried vainly to comfort the girl. He could but find her a seat in a pile of snow! He warmed her hands with his own, strove to speak cheering words. But teeth were chattering, and her frail form was quivering as with the ague.
A great wave of pity and love overwhelmed the cripple. He peeled off his coat, beneath which were but the thinnest rags. He wrapped it around her, saying:
“There, there! this will help you keep warm. I really do not need it––I––I-am-not-c-c-cold!”
His own teeth were chattering now, and his pinched features were purple.
The blind girl touched his icy arm, half exposed by his ragged shirt, as she rose to sing for the charity of those who attended mass.
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“No, no, Pierre,” she cried, removing the coat from her shoulders, “I will not let you freeze. Oh, how selfish I am to permit you to suffer, who have been so kind to me!”
Rejecting his entreaties, she made him put it on again, hiding her own suffering.
“Hearken! there sounds the organ for the recessional!” she continued. “Soon the people will be coming out. I will sing the same songs that my sister Henriette and I used to sing. Perhaps some one will recognize the melody, and lead me back to her!”
A beautifully majestic, ermined figure stepped graciously out of the church, as La Frochard rejoined Louise and began whining: “Charity! In the name of God, Charity!” whilst the girl’s voice lifted up in an old plaintive melody.
The lady was the Countess de Linieres, returning from her devotions.
The song evoked memories of a bitter past and of a long lost daughter snatched from her in infancy. Bending over poor Louise, she asked: “My child, can you not see me?”
“No, Madame, I am blind,” was the low, sad answer.
MARQUIS DE PRAILLE PLYING HIS ART WITH THE LADIES.
MARQUIS DE PRAILLE PLYING HIS ART WITH THE LADIES.
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A strange sympathy stirred in the Countess for this girl. There seemed to be some hidden link between them, the nature of which baffled her. She felt the impulse to protect and cherish––was it the voice of Mother Love obscurely speaking?
“Alas!” said Louise. “Blindness is not the worst of my misfortunes. I––I––”
La Frochard administered a terrible pinch that pulled Louise away, then “mothered” her cutely. “We are starving, my beautiful lady,” she whined, “and the poor girl is out of her head. What is that you say?Not my daughter?Yes, indeed she is––the precious––and the youngest of seven. Charity, charity! In the name of God, charity!” she sniffled.
Reluctantly Countess de Linieres stifled the impulse to mother this kindred and hapless young being, averred to be the beggar’s daughter. She placed a golden louis on the palm of the singer, saying:
“Give this to your mother, child.”