72CHAPTER XIILOVE, MASTER OF HEARTS
The Count’s demands brought to a head a resolve that had taken possession of Chevalier de Vaudrey’s heart and soul. Always the picture of the sweet Norman girl he had saved from de Praille’s foul clutches was in his waking thoughts, of nights he dreamed a blessed romance! He recked not of the Count’s displeasure, sorrowed that he must displease his Aunt as sorely. The only bar was that a vision of the lost Louise stood, as it were, between him and his beloved Henriette.
Now that he had come to her to speak of his proposal, the little heart still quested for the lost sister.
“Don’t you ever think of anyone but her?” he asked.
A negative shake of the golden head and ringleted curls was the answer, though the cupid mouth and the blue eyes smiled with tenderness. They stood very close to another, like poles of a magnet twixt which a spark flashes.
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Silently Maurice drew from his pocket a ring. ’Twas of pure gold, a lovely and exquisite bauble, whereof the two little claws clasped a golden heart. He handed it to Henriette, who took it with a happy smile till she realized its meaning as betrothal.
A wave of color overspread her cheek. The heir of the de Vaudreys to give himself to her! Pride and love mingled in her thoughts.
Yes, to throw himself away on a Commoner girl––he meant it. Flashed the picture on her mental retina of the little solemn oath to Louise. What he asked was impossible––for him and for her.
Henriette handed back the ring.
“Marry you––an aristocrat! Why, that would ruin you in the eyes ofall the world!”
He was down on his knees, pleading, agonized, distressed, looking for some sign of relentment from the beauteous little head that seemed rigidly to repress emotion.
“Then you d-o-n-’t l-o-v-e m-e?” he faltered at last, rising.
“No!” was the reply, in a firm but very small voice.
The broken Chevalier started slowly for74the door. He turned slightly and caught the sound of sobs.
Wheeling around, he saw her arms half stretched towards him. He bounded back.
He was now kissing the hem of her garments, her gloves, her roses, her fingertips, and crying extravagantly, almost shouting the words: “You DO love me!”
Gently Henriette imparted a maiden’s delicate kiss on his cheek. “When Louise is found––” she was half sobbing in his arms, “––dreams––yes––perhaps you might find a way to bring them true!”
But the gallant gentleman jumps forward to the end of the dream. Youthfully swearing that Louise will soon be found, he visions their exquisite happiness as of tomorrow or the day after. He holds her delightedly, then draws her closer. The kindred magnets are one.
Lips meet lips in soul-kiss that cause the maidenly head to hide under elbow in confusion. Kissing almost every part and furnishing of that dear second self––vowing never to rest till he brings Louise and takes Henriette––the ecstatic cavalier is gone!
Alas for the quickly visioned dream-facts of twenty-four! Full long shall be the interval75betwixt the bright Utopia and the heavenly reality:––the dungeon, the Storm, the death chamber and e’en the shining axe shall intervene.
A great Nation shall have thrown off its old tyrants and weltered in the blood of new tyranny. What matter? The souls of the girl and the man are one, they shall be faithful unto the End!
76CHAPTER XIIITHE RECOGNITION
The Chevalier de Vaudrey sought his Aunt and begged her to see his beloved before finally siding with the Count against him. The incident of the chance encounter with the blind girl had stirred the Countess, awakened renewed pity for hapless love such as she herself had once experienced. She decided to visit Henriette, if only to divert her from the seemingly mad project of a union with the Chevalier.
Meantime Count Linieres had decided to exercise the power of the dread lettres de cachet. In the France of that day, personal rights were unknown. Subject only to the King’s will, no other warrant than the Prefect’s signature was required to send anyone into exile or to life imprisonment. The means that Linieres now had in mind were often used to quell rebellious lovers.
He would brand this inconvenient, presumptuous Henriette Girard as a fallen woman, imprison her at La Salpetriere, and then ship her as a convict to Louisiana. That would get rid of her, truly!
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In the meanwhile the Chevalier, if disobedient, could cool his heels in the prison tower of the royal fortress at Caen. After a while, he might indeed see reason and think better of marrying the Princesse de Acquitaine!
He summoned the Chevalier. The autocratic Count brooked no words; he commanded marriage with the State heiress––or exile!
His nephew refusing, the guards were summoned, the young man gave up his sword, and under their escort he was presently on his way to Caen prison.
Then, summoning a detail of military police, the Count moved to carry out the other part of his plan.
“You are Mademoiselle Henriette Girard?” inquired the Countess kindly on entering the girl’s lodgings.
Henriette greeted the distinguished and aristocratic lady with due respect. Making her comfortable in a guest chair, she resumed her sewing and listened.
“I am the aunt of the Chevalier Maurice de Vaudrey.” The girl, startled, looked up78from her work. “Marriage between you and the Chevalier is impossible.”
“I love him, Madame,” replied Henriette, simply.
“Then it is your duty to give him up, since it is the will of the King that he marry Princesse de Acquitaine––”
Henriette paled. For an instant the blue eyes looked near-tigerish, with green and yellow lights. Yet she must save Maurice from the King’s wrath.
“If you will make this sacrifice,” continued the Countess, “I shall not prove ungrateful with any reward that is in my power.”
“Oh, yes, there is!” replied Henriette earnestly. She showed the Countess her sampler, on which she was working the word––
LOUISE
“Louise––that name is very dear to me,” replied the Lady softly. She visioned a scene of long ago when an infant Louise had been snatched from her young arms––the arms of a mother deprived of her offspring.
“She is my sister,” resumed Henriette––“lost,79wandering and alone, on the streets of Paris. Oh, help me find her, and I––I will do anything you say!” The poor creature sobbed in her double misery.
She pointed to her own eyes in gesture to portray Louise’s misfortune: “Blind––so helpless––it was just like taking care of a baby.” She told the story of her abduction and the loss of her sister, then of Chevalier de Vaudrey’s vain efforts and hers to trace her.
The Countess de Linieres leaned forward in intense sympathy conjoined with a certain weird premonition.
“She isn’t really my sister,” went on Henriette, “but I owe her the love of a mother and sister combined. She saved us from want and death. My father found her on the steps of Notre Dame––”
A low cry escaped the Countess.
“––where he was about to put me as a foundling, there not being a morsel of food in our wretched home. This other baby was half buried under the snow. He warmed the little bundle against his body and mine––and, rather than let us perish there of the cold, returned homeward with both infants in his arms. Suspended from80the other baby’s neck were a bag of gold and this locket––”
The Countess gasped. She put a hand to her heart and seemed about to faint before recovering strength to examine the locket that Henriette handed to her.
It was a miniature that the Prefect’s wife recognized as her own!
Opened, it disclosed an aged and yellowed bit of paper, on which the writing was still visible:
HER NAME IS LOUISESAVE HER
“My child! My own Louise!” she cried, “––lost, wandering and blind in Paris. Tell me, tell me––” She had almost fainted. The floodgate of tears relieved her pent heart.
Henriette was bending over her now, her arm around her shoulders, trying to comfort.
But the girl herself was near the breaking point. The voice of the loved and absent one seemed to sound in her ears.
Was it an hallucination?
“Singing,––don’t you hear?” said Henriette, softly, to the Mother.
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The girl brushed a hand across her eyes and tapped her temple.
“In my dreams oft I hear it, my sister’s voice. I must be losing my reason!”
Again swelled the notes of the Norman melody, and this time the Mother heard too.
The two sprang to their feet.
Henriette dashed to balcony window. At the end of the street she saw a figure clad in beggar’s rags that she thought she knew.
“LOUISE!”
Henriette’s cry echoed down the street and impinged on the blind beggar’s brain. The outcast ran groping and stumbling forward, no longer singing, but calling “Henriette!” Her keeper, Widow Frochard, was not in sight.
The blind girl came nearer. Frochard emerged from a ginshop and tried to head her off. The Mother followed Henriette to the window. The latter encouraged Louise with little cries:
“Don’t get excited!”
“It’s all right!”
“Wait there!”
“I’ll be down in one instant!”
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She rushed past the Countess across the room and flung wide the door, on the very brink of happiness.
But a troop of guards stood there to her astonished gaze. The Count de Linieres, standing at their head, pronounced her name as if reading a warrant: “Henrietta Girard!”
The girl drew back, then charged like a little fury on the gunstocks and bosoms of the troopers, pounding them with her fists.
Unable to move this granite-like wall, she dashed back to the balcony eyrie, imploring Louise with both hands.
“Arrest her!” said de Linieres to the soldiers.
Brawny troopers pulled her back as she would have jumped out of the window to the flagging below––and her Louise. Vainly the Countess de Linieres entreated for mercy. They dragged the girl downstairs.
Here again she made a frantic appeal and wild effort to join her blind charge, who was being hurried away in the vise-like grip of La Frochard.
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, have pity––let me go to my sister, or I shall lose her again!”
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Deaf to her entreaties, they took her to La Salpetriere, this loveliest of virgins, to be immured among the foul characters there!
END OF PART ONE
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CHAPTER XIVDOWN IN THE DEPTHS
With Henrietta condemned to the cruel fate of immurement in a prison for the fallen, the Chevalier trussed up in royal Caen, and his aunt the Countess prostrated by the hag’s recapture of and disappearance with the noblewoman’s long-lost daughter, blind Louise, ’twould seem as if our characters faced indeed blank walls of ruin, misery and despair, from which no power could rescue them.
In those times, the utter vanishing of persons who incurred police disfavor was no uncommon incident. Often no public charge was made; merely the gossiped whisper that So-and-So lay in Bastille or La Salpetriere “at the royal pleasure,” kept the unfortunate faintly in memory till the lapse of years caused him or her to be forgotten. And, sometimes, even, at the prison gate, identity vanished. Did not the celebrated and mysterious Man in the Iron85Mask carry his baffling secret through decades of dungeon death-in-life to the prisoner’s dark grave?
Others were silently transported to exile overseas. As England had her Botany Bay, so France had Louisiana. Let us take a glance at La Salpetriere (as Henriette is being dragged there by Count de Linieres’ troopers) to look at the sights and scenes of the famous female prison, and contemplate what the inmates had in store.
There was no interesting toil to relieve their unhappy lot, and no distinction was made of the insane, the law-breaking criminal, and the wretched streetwalker or demimondaine. In the courtyard, during the exercise periods, the only talk was of the terms of imprisonment and of the chances of Louisiana. In that gray monotony the ministrations of the charitable Sisters, headed by the saintly Sister Genevieve (who had been born within the walls of the prison), furnished the one bright spot.
“Do not grieve so!” said one of the older inmates who had begged a little needlework, to a novice who was seated on a bench, weeping convulsively with her head in her arms.
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“Oh, I can never live such a life as this!” replied the poor girl, giving way to new grief.
“Try to do something or other, ’twill make you forget your troubles.”
“I’ve never done anything in my life––except amuse myself!” replied the ex-grisette.
“That would be precious hard work in this place,” said a third speaker, who had passed several years of the dreary inactions of prison life.
“Well, anyhow, I’ve had my fling!” remarked the newcomer, drying her eyes. “Scores of admirers crowded around me, willing to ruin themselves for my amusement––” she said in a vivacious manner, as she recalled her past triumphs.
“And it all peters down to prison, eating gruel with a wooden spoon,” said the cynical old-timer; “then, some day, we shall be treated as those poor creatures were yesterday––hurried off with a guard of soldiers to see us safe on our weary exile––”
“Does the idea of exile frighten you?”
ONE OF THE BEAUTIES OF THE GARDEN FETE OF BEL-AIR.
ONE OF THE BEAUTIES OF THE GARDEN FETE OF BEL-AIR.
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“Who would not be frightened at the idea of being led off amid insults and jeers––condemned to a two months’ voyage in the vilest company––and at the end of it be landed in a wild country to face the alternatives of slavery or a runaway into the savage swamps?”
“Plenty of work to relieve monotony––”
“They say women are scarce out there in Louisiana. Perhaps I shall get a husband, and revenge myself on the male creation that way––”
Their speculations were cut short by the entry of a squad of troopers literally dragging tiny Henriette Girard within the prison walls. Cold and unfeeling at best, these men had no sympathy with their young charge whom they naturally believed to be one of the harpies or half-wits caught in the police dragnet. They thrust her mid the crowd in the courtyard and departed. The great iron doors clanged shut. The gatekeeper turned the massive key. Henriette––without a friend in the world to appeal to––was an inmate of dread La Salpetriere!
Like a flock of magpies the imprisoned demi-mondaines, petty thieves, and grosser criminals for love or for hate, crowded around the girl, inquiring what offence had brought her amongst them.
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“I am innocent!”
Her little sobbing cry of self-justification was received with jibes and winks. Was not such the formula of every prisoner? They pressed her for her story. Looking at these ignoble spirits, the girl could not bear to acquaint them with her pure and holy romance.
As she turned away, a new shock met her gaze.
Faugh! What was this physical weakness, this nausea-like repulsion, but the bodily reaction from the tense spiritual agony she had suffered?
Courage! She must look again. That wild woman––hair down, breath gasping, arms weaving threateningly––was coming at her like a murderess. Momentarily Henriette expected the long arms to seize her, the steel-like hands and wrists to choke her.
She looked yet a third time. The crazy “murderess” had veered her course, but what was that other object nearby? A Niobe weeping for her own and the world’s sorrows! Or this one over here––a shrieking maniac calling on all Hell’s legions for vengeance on fancied enemies! Beyond, gibbering victims of paresis, white-haired89idiots, wasted sufferers from senile dementia.
Not a friendly face, not a kind look nor an understanding eye! Crime, passion, foulness, insanity. The sheer horror of her situation mercifully blotted out consciousness. She sank, a crumpled heap to the floor.
“The girl is sick,” said Sister Genevieve, who had entered at this moment and was presently bending over her. “Here, two of you lift her and carry her into the hospital––we shall have the good Doctor from La Force attend her!” Two of the sturdier prisoners bore her away....
Beautiful, pitiful Henriette!
The horrors of the madwomen thou facest in Salpetriere; the obscene shouts and curses of the fallen; the fury of the female criminal; the misery of the poor distracted half-wits, where mad and sane are given the same cell:––these shall be but confused phantasmagoria projected on thy sick brain during this prison time before the awful Storm breaks––the lightning strikes––the thunder crashes, and the sharp female called La Guillotine holds thee in its embrace.
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From the tumbril shalt thou find and kiss the blind girl, and Maurice de Vaudrey shall accompany thee into the Valley of the Shadow!
91CHAPTER XVLIGHT RAYS IN THE DARKNESS
Henriette was nursed through a severe mental and bodily illness by Sister Genevieve directed by the visiting prison Doctor, none other than him who had examined the eyes of Louise before Notre Dame.
During this period it was quite impossible for the attendants to get her story. She herself in lucid moments could hardly realize her situation, nor in any wise remember how she had come to it.
But one day new strength seemed to be hers. Feverish and with hair unbound and a wild light in her eyes, she sprang out of her cot, sought Genevieve in the main prison, and knelt before her.
“Oh, Madame!” cried Henriette in imploring accents, “if you are the mistress here, have pity on me, and order them to set me free. I ask you on my knees!”
“You are still ill, my child,” said Sister Genevieve tenderly, stroking Henriette’s, long hair with a gentle, loving touch.
“Certainly you are,” confirmed the Doctor,92who was just then on his way to the hospital ward. “Why have you left your bed without my permission?”
“Oh, monsieur!” said the poor girl, turning to the gentle-voiced, pleasant-faced man who spoke so kindly, “have you attended me in my illness? Look––thanks to your care––I have recovered!” she affirmed confidently, though her hectic features and weak motions belied it.
“They left me alone for a few moments, and I arose and dressed myself. Now that you see I am quite well, you will tell them to let me go, will you not?”
The Doctor gazed at her compassionately before answering:
“That is impossible. To release you from this place requires a far greater power than mine.”
“This place?” asked the young girl in surprise. “Why, what is it? Is it not a hospital?”
“A hospital and a prison,” replied the physician gravely.
“A prison!” exclaimed Henriette in terror, striving to remember how she came to be in such a place.
At last the events that preceded her illness93gradually came back to her mind, until she understood all.
“Ah, I remember,” she said at length. “Yes, I remember the soldiers who dragged me here, and him who commanded.... And Maurice––was he too condemned? Alas, poor Louise––my last sight of her showed her in the power of vile, unscrupulous wretches! Oh, dear God, what have I done to be crushed like this!”
She dropped, weeping and wailing, to the floor.
“Sister,” said the Doctor, turning away to hide his tears, “this is not a case for my care. You must be the physician here.”
“I know virtue and innocence when I see it, surely this child has done nothing worthy of a term at Salpetriere!” replied the kind Genevieve softly, lifting up the stricken girl and embracing her.
“Come, dear, you must rest yet a little longer in order to acquire the full strength so as to be able to tell me everything. Assuredly we will help you!”
In the course of convalescence Henriette told her complete story to Sister Genevieve. The narrative included the girls’ journey to94Paris, her kidnapping and rescue, the disappearance of Louise, de Vaudrey’s suit and the objections of his family, the recognition of her sister as the Countess’s long-lost daughter, Louise’s recapture by the beggars, and the peremptory act of the Police Prefect whereby mother and daughter, and beloved foster-sisters, were cruelly parted, and Henriette branded with the mark of the fallen woman by incarceration in La Salpetriere.
Sister Genevieve was strangely moved by it, as was the Doctor to whom she repeated it.
“Against the will of the Police Prefect we can do nothing!” said the Doctor, soberly. “If only his wrath has cooled, we may possibly get her term shortened––”
“What monstrous wickedness!” interrupted the Sister, ordinarily mild and loyal, but worked up to near-democracy by these and other injustices. “To imprison a pure girl––her only offence a nobleman’s honorable suit and her own ceaseless search for her blind sister, lost in the streets of Paris!”
“This girl Henriette was her blind sister’s sole support,” suggested a nurse.
“I had found her––Louise––at the moment95when they arrested me,” exclaimed Henriette sorrowfully. “I heard her voice. I saw her. She was covered with rags. Her beautiful golden hair fell in disorder on her shoulders. She was being dragged along by a horrible old woman, who I know ill-treats her––beats her, perhaps, and they would not let me go to her. Now I have lost her forever––forever!”
“Wait a minute, my child,” exclaimed the physician, as a sudden thought flashed over him. “I believe I have met that very same girl.”
“You, monsieur?” exclaimed Henriette in surprise.
“Yes––yes, a young girl led by an old woman who calls her Louise––”
“Yes––yes, that’s her name,” and the young girl became breathless with excitement.
“I know the old woman, too,” continued the Doctor. “She is called La Frochard––an old hag who goes about whining for alms in the name of Heaven and seven small children.
“Where did I last see them?” he mused. Suddenly he recollected a little scene on the steps of Notre Dame one morning before96mass. “Oh, yes,” he continued, “they were begging for charity of the churchgoers at Notre Dame. I noticed that the young girl was blind––professionally interested, I examined her pupils and discovered she was merely suffering from cataracts which could be readily removed. I told the old woman so, asked her to bring the girl for treatment to La Force, but they have never shown up––”
“Quick! Quick!” cried Henriette. “Tell me, Doctor, where Mere Frochard lives?”
“Oh, they inhabit an old boathouse at the end of the Rue de Brissac down on the banks of the river Seine. There’s a cellar entrance to their hovel near the Paris-Normandy coach house. But what would you do?” he inquired solicitously.
“Oh, Sir,” said Henriette piteously, “if you could use your influence to get me out of here some way, I would––would run there and recover my little lost sister! You don’t know how I love her, nor my fears that they will kill her. Please, please––” The little voice broke off in sobs.
Patting the girl’s shoulder and smiling at her as if to try to impart confidence in a very difficult matter, the good Doctor drew97apart with Sister Genevieve and conferred earnestly for a few moments. On their return, the physician spoke again:
“’Twould be of no use to invoke the police, as the Count has probably instructed them not to hunt for Louise. Nor is it in our power to release you from here. But we shall get up a petition signed by all of us for your reprieve, very likely Count de Linieres will not venture to refuse it––”
Henriette was overjoyed even with this slender resource, and warmly thanked them. At once her busy little brain laid plans for invading the lair of the Frochards. And then––a most unexpected ray in the darkness––arrived at Salpetriere the quaint valet Picard and brought her comfort too.
No longer a spy for the Count, he had been converted from base suspicion by the Chevalier’s honorable suit and the exile the latter had suffered. He now delivered this little message from his master at Caen:
Dearest, never will I marry anyone but you, my heart’s desire! Should I escape, it will be to your arms. Picard knows my secret plan and will tell you––until then, courage! A thousand kisses from your Maurice.
Dearest, never will I marry anyone but you, my heart’s desire! Should I escape, it will be to your arms. Picard knows my secret plan and will tell you––until then, courage! A thousand kisses from your Maurice.
Henriette kissed the little paper fervently.
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Countess de Linieres decided to make a clean breast of her wretched past to her husband. “It was not that I––I sinned,” she sobbed, kneeling at his feet, “In the sight of God I am innocent, though erring!
“In early girlhood,” she continued, “I loved and was loved by a Commoner, a man of the people. The good Cure married us secretly. We were blessed by an infant daughter.
“The family pride of the de Vaudreys was outraged by the so-called dishonor. Two of the clan found our hiding-place and slew my husband, then took my baby Louise from my helpless arms. I was brought back to the chateau and given in marriage to you, after threats of death if I should ever divulge the secret! Twenty years after, I saw my daughter as Louise the blind singer––the girl Henriette, whom you sent to Salpetriere, is her foster-sister. Oh, forgive, forgive––put me away if you wish, but consider what I have suffered!...”
The strong man, whom neither the fate of Maurice nor of Henriette had melted, was crying. Gently he lifted up the Countess and clasped her sobbing in his arms.
“If you had only told me before––” was99the only word to which he could give utterance.
The hellish aspect of his persecutions now stood revealed. Count de Linieres, in the act of divine forgiveness, resolved to undo wrongs.
But History struck faster.
The avenger Jacques-Forget-Not annihilated pardons. The Linieres and the other aristocrats were soon to flee for their lives.
100CHAPTER XVIREVOLUTION IS HERE!
The ex-retainer nicknamed “Forget-Not” bore a baleful grudge because of the cruelties inflicted on his own father many years before by the Countess’s father––the cruel punishment of pouring boiling lead into the unfortunate tenant’s veins: a procedure on which the boy Chevalier had been taught to look approvingly.
In fact ever since the elder Jean Setain displeased the then Seigneur of the de Vaudrey estate, the affairs of the tenant family had gone to wrack and ruin until the middle-aged son was little more than a landless beggar and an embodied voice calling for vengeance.
The original parties of the quarrel were dead. But the feud (on the part of Jacques-Forget-Not) had taken on a more personal aspect, because his own sufferings were involved as well as the memory of his father’s. He had determined to kill the Chevalier, the Countess and the Count.
In normal times the monomaniac’s designs101would never have reached fruition. Now the vast public discontents converted the cringing ex-tenant or shrieking beggar into a gaunt, long-haired, ferocious agitator––one of the outstanding crazy figures of Great Crises!
For the Storm––long brewing in seditious Palais Royal or seething faubourg, in the heart and conscience of patriot Dantons, the cunning of Robespierres, the wildness of Desmoulins fire-eaters, the starvation and misery of the people––struck the doomed country with full force.
In the outcome the fat King Louis XVI, the hapless royal family, and the whole supporting system of parasitic aristocracy, were hurled down into black nothingness! The upset released our characters from the horrors of prison immurement, only to plunge them in the more awful tyranny of the New Terror.
Early in midsummer the wildest rumors reached Paris that the Versailles government intended to put down the discontents by weight of sword. Armies were advancing on the city, ’twas averred––cannon and arms were being parked in the commanding102squares; the King’s faithful Allemands and Swiss were about to attack the representatives of the people and mow them down.
As a beehive, stirred by over-curious bear or by an invader’s stick, seethes and swarms in milling fury before the myriads of angry occupants attack and overwhelm the intruder with their stings, so the seething populace mills in widening and ever widening circles, out to destroy––burn––slay. The ominous drum murmurs to the people of their ancient wrongs. Artisans pick up their nearest implements, the butcher his axe, the baker his rolling pin, the joiner his saw, the iron worker his mallet or crowbar, rushing to join the homicidal throngs. Vengeful leaders like Forget-Not urge them on, directing the milling masses to the central places of the city.
At the Palais Royal gardens, later from the Cafe de Foy, Camille Desmoulins is in his glory. See him rushing out, sibylline in face; his hair streaming, in each hand a pistol! He springs to a table: the police satellites are eyeing him; alive they shall not take him; not they alive, him alive.
DANTON WELCOMES LAFAYETTE AND JEFFERSON,THE REPRESENTATIVES OF AMERICA’S NEW-WON FREEDOM.
DANTON WELCOMES LAFAYETTE AND JEFFERSON,THE REPRESENTATIVES OF AMERICA’S NEW-WON FREEDOM.
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“‘Friends, shall we die like hunted hares? Us, meseems, only one cry befits: To arms! Let universal Paris, universal France, as with the throat of the whirlwind, resound: To arms! Friends (continues Camille) some rallying sign! Cockades, green one; the color of hope!’ As with the flight of locusts, these green leaves; green ribands from the neighboring shops; all green things are snatched and made cockades of.... And now to Curtius’ image shop there; to the boulevards; to the four winds, and rest not until France be on fire!”
Ancient flint-locks, pikes and lances are replevined, and dance high, minatory, over the heads of the mob. Storerooms of powder and musketry are broken into and swept clean. Behold, now, a still more astonishing sight; a rushing tide of women, impetuous, all-devouring, equipped with brooms and household tools, descending like a snowbreak from all directions upon the Hotel de Ville. “And now doors fly under hatchets; the Judiths have broken the armory; have seized guns and cannon, three money-bags,” and have fired the beautiful City Hall of King Henry the Fourth’s time!
... And where the Storm breaks104fiercest and the cry “Down with Tyrants!” most loudly sounds, there Danton the revolutionist, the pock-marked Thunderer, leads the way, whipping up new fury and moulding them to his will with his appeal ’gainst “Starvation––oppression––ages of injustice––vile prisons where innocent ones die under autocracy!”
Danton’s voice shakes the world.
Thousands upon thousands of commoners gather for the attack on the hated symbol of royal authority, the prison fortress of Bastille.
Look! His impassioned eloquence touches the popular sympathies of the common soldiers who constitute the royal guard. They lower their opposing bayonets, identify their cause with the people’s, the exultant throng rushes past.
Hurrah! The Revolution shall sweep on. The King’s foreign soldiery are the only loyal ones now. At the side of the Place de Greve the populace throw up barricades. The conflict twixt Kingship and democracy has begun.
The people have won more cannon and more small arms. They rake the loyalist Swiss and Germans with a murderous fire.105The foreign troops fight to the last. They are killed or overwhelmed as the victorious commonalty take possession of the Square. Danton who has directed the proletariat is the popular hero.
Forget-Not has his share of the triumph too. “Come, my men,” he yells. “On to the Police Prefect’s palace––let us avenge the wrongs of police tyranny!” For in this dreadful hour the baleful Jacques-Forget-Not remembers a private vengeance––his followers need no second urging to haste with him to sack and slaughter....
Fox-like, Maximilien Robespierre, the “people’s advocate,” has watched from a safe recess the issue of the battle. Not for him, the risking of his precious skin! Later, in the councils of the new democratic State, he shall sway men to his purposes....
And now the mob, re-enforced by many of the popular soldiery, seeks the Bastille. Our previous description of the system of lettres de cachet and the wholesale imprisonments without warrant of law, will have given readers some idea of the hate with which this fortress of injustice was commonly regarded. Many of the attackers,106no doubt, had friends or relatives immured there. ’Twas the monstrous and visible crime of the Kingship––the object all had immediately in view when crying “Down with tyranny!”
In less than a day the Bastille falls. ’Tis but feebly defended by a few aged veterans and a handful of valiant Swiss. Their first fire kills some of the commoners and lashes the mob to fury. Up on the walls, bastions and parapets, away from the guns at the port holes, crawl some of the more daring attackers. Others bring cannon, preparing to carry the siege by cannonade, investiture and starvation.
The governor, seeing that it is a losing fight, parleys and yields. But, instead of observing the terms of the honorable surrender and safe-conduct, the inrushing mob slays and mutilates a number of the officers and defenders––the first inkling of what murder and rapine the Wild Beast of the Proletariat will commit!
“Set free the victims of the tyrants!” is the sole thought after the lust of blood is satiated. The dungeons are opened, the prisoners brought forth, joy of reunion or pathos of sorrow is the result of these107strange meetings, many of the victims being but the wrecks or shadows of their old selves.
“Set free the victims of tyranny!”
After the Bastille La Salpetriere, the famous female prison, is summoned. Already the inmates are on the qui vive of expectation. Mad and sane are flying about from cells to courtyard, and courtyard to barred windows, like birds in storm-flight.
Impatient, restless little Henriette, between the bars of her cage, is looking out wonderingly on a re-made world. What does it mean? Release? the easy path to her lost Louise?
Pray Heaven it does––
108CHAPTER XVIIPRISON DELIVERY––AND AN ENCOUNTER
The jailers deliver the keys; the mob pours tumultuously into the female prison. What cries of joy, what sobs of relief from the saner inmates, as they try tothinktheir new, almost incredible jail delivery! What stony, uncomprehending glances or what wild shrieks from the maniacal! Amid this confused throng Picard, who has entered with the crowd to wait upon his mistress, presents a comic figure. He has arrayed himself in the red-and-white striped garb of the proletariat, is trying his best to look a Revolutionary, though all he gets for it are kicks and wallops!
Sense and nonsense mix strangely in the proceedings of the mob. They set up a rude court headed by two horny-handed butchers, the object of which is to separate the innocent from the guilty. But the new red-and-white cockade––superseding the green cockades of the first battle––is the best passport to their favor. Inmates whose friends have provided them with109these Revolutionary badges, are generally turned loose. Shouting and laughing in their glee, they dance out of the prison.
Picard has provided Henriette with his badge, whilst Sister Genevieve and the Doctor vouch to her good character. Henriette kisses the cockade as a sign of fealty to the new order. The brawny judges let her pass. She runs merrily out past the harmless gauntlet of the friendly pikes and lances.
Not so Picard––That luckless valet tries to sneak out past the big chopper of the brawny butcher-judge.
Whir-r! The chopper descends in front of him, almost taking his head off!
Picard executes a strategic retirement to the rear. There! Isn’t there seemingly a good chance to crawl out between the other guardian’s legs, and thus escape?
Picard tries it.
Alas! the first butcher catches sight of Picard’s be-tufted head protruding in this strange manner from under the crotch of his fellow. The Man of Meat grasps Picard firmly by the collar and pulls him forth.
With the other hand he raises the axe to chop the offender’s head off, thinks better110of it, twirls Picard swiftly around, and using the flat of the chopper spanks the rear of the Picard anatomy, sending him sprawling into the limbo.
So that little Henriette’s excursion into Freedom is unattended and alone. It is quite unlikely that she bothers about Picard at all. “Louise! Rue de Brissac!” is the sole thought of her whirling little brain, as she speeds on.
Just where is the Frochards’ cellar door? Certainly she has never noticed it in her frequent searches of the Pont Neuf district. But perhaps some one can tell her––She is in the Rue de Brissac now, almost at the spot where she herself was kidnapped and Louise was lost.
A good-looking daughter of the people comes hurrying by.
“Can you tell me where the Frochards live?” inquires Henriette eagerly.
The girl points to an almost indistinguishable trap-door, nearly covered with straw, in front of one of the houses. “There!” she says. Henriette presses the newcomer to accompany her. “Sorry, I haven’t a minute!” negatives the other, hastening111off in spite of Henriette’s efforts to detain her.
Henriette opens the trap-door of the cellar where the Frochards lodged, and peers within. Courageously she goes down the steps. Sympathy and horror struggle in the thought of Louise being an inmate of this foul place.
What is her disgust then to encounter the wart-faced and moustachioed hag who is its proprietor! Quickly Henriette tells La Frochard of her information, and demands Louise.
“I don’t know any such person,” the hag lies, with ready effrontery. “You must be mistaken!”
But Henriette’s eyes are gazing at the Frochard’s neck, sensing something or other vaguely familiar. The old woman, who has been drinking, has unloosened her nondescript rig. The girl’s gaze sees a well-remembered object.
“My sister’s shawl!”
The blue eyes are gleaming now in astonishment––with a hint of coming fury. She snatches the shawl from La Frochard’s shoulders, fondles and caresses it. Then112like a small tigress robbed of whelp she advances on the beggar, shaking her in paroxysmal rage.
It would have been a comical sight if not so very serious a one; the tiny Henrietta shaking a woman twice her size, pummeling her, brow-beating her till La Frochard sinks to her knees and begs for mercy.
“You have been lying, and that shawl proves it,” cries Henriette. “Where is she?”
The old woman gets up. She changes her tone to a whine, and tries to pat Henriette in pretended sympathy. “Well, if you must know the truth––”
“Yes, yes,” cries Henriette, “go on!”
“––shewaswith us, but alas!––poor thing––with the hard life we have to lead––she––she died!”
The searcher for Louise reels as if about to faint.
She collects herself with difficulty, and stares at La Frochard. A distraught look is on the girl’s face.
It is a look of utter misery, compounded with mistrustfulness of the deceiving hag.
She leaves the cellar, fully resolved to113invoke the Law––if Law––in this wild time––there can be found...
A bundle of rags, on which Henrietta has almost stepped in passing, moves very slightly.