114CHAPTER XVIII“THERE IS NO LAW––”
The wild and drunken madness of the triumphant people expended itself in many strange forms, of which none was stranger, more awesome, more ludicrous and yet more tragic than the Carmagnole.
This was a dance that seized whole multitudes in its rhythmic, swaying clutch. The tune was “Ca Ira!” that mad measure of the sansculottes, meaning roughly––
“Here it goes––“And there it goes!”
––and go forever it did till all the world of Paris seemed a heaving, throbbing vortex of werewolves and witches, things lower than animals in their topsyturvydom, drunken frenzy and frequent obscenity.
The throng through which Henriette now directed her steps was verging on this madness, though not yet at the pitch of it.
Henriette managed to find her way to two sansculotte troopers stationed in the centre of the Place, to whom she told her story. Reasonable fellows they seemed, offering to conduct her presently to the new115authorities and get a search warrant for the Frochard clan. But the madder swirl of the Carmagnole came along, and presto! swallowed them up. It happened on this wise:
As the locust swarms of the dancers enveloped them in shortening circles, two young and attractive maenads broke from the throng and literally entwined themselves with the troopers. Military dignity, assaulted in burlesque, tried to keep its post. But the bold nymphs were clinging, not to be “shaken”; as the mad whirl of the dancers touched the centre, the troopers and their female captors were borne away in the ricocheting, plunging motions, disappearing thenceforward from our story. Little Henriette dived to a place of safety, the side wall of the nearest building. Straightening herself after the unexpected knocks and bruises, she looked aghast at the scene before her.
Whole streets of them, plazas of them, these endlessly gyrating male and female loons; swirls of gayety, twisting, upsetting passers-by like a cyclone;––arms, bodies and legs frantically waving, as at the very brink of Dante’s Inferno!
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Strange little dramas of lust and conquest punctuated the cyclonic panorama. Here, a girl’s snapping black eyes, winking devilishly, and pursed-up Cupid mouth invited a new swain to master her. There, a short-skirted beauty, whose sways and kicks revealed bare thighs, was dancing wildly a solo intended to infatuate further two rival admirers. Again, a half-crazed sansculotte had won a girl and in token of triumph was spinning her body horizontally around like a top, upheld by the open palm of his huge right arm.
But what might be this comic figure, quite unpartnered––knocked and shoved from human pillar to human post––winning the deep curses of the dancers, and their hearty wallops when not o’er-busied with Terpsichore?
Picard, the ex-valet of aristocracy, finally let out from the Salpetriere mock-court, had stumbled into this bedlam of sansculotte craziness, the rhythm and procedure of which were as foreign to him as a proposition in Euclid.
But the Jolly Baker, from the Ile de Paris, was his match. The bare-armed, lean-legged pleasurer had equipped himself117(by way of disguise) with a large false moustache, and evading the close watch of his hatchet-faced, middle-aged spouse, had come forth to celebrate. Neither dancer nor vocalist, the Jolly Baker had other little entertaining ways all his own.
As the foolscap-crowned, white-and-red-trousered Picard bumped the pave, he saw squatting opposite him a figure whose gleaming eyes, ferocious whiskerage and lean-wiry frame suggested the canine rather than the human species. The Jolly Baker was a bum werewolf, but a “hot dog.”
The gleaming eyes never left Picard’s face, the dog-like body jumped whichever way he did, Picard half expected the dog-man to bite or snap the next instant and take a chunk out of him. Both had got to their feet now; the stranger still silent and nosey, Picard looking out of the corner of his eye for a way of escape. But just then the Baker spied a maenad with a drum.
One could beat drum in celebration, if naught else. Lo and behold, the posterior of the foolscapped one would serve for a drum very nicely! The Jolly Baker twisted118Picard around, bending him half double as he did so.
With a rear thrust and firm shoulder grip, the Jolly Baker leaped upon Picard’s back. Emulating the young woman’s beating of the drum, he rained a shower of blows on the valet’s hind quarters.
The new “drum”-beater was now quite the cynosure of admiring attention. He had captured the centre of the stage. He gloried in it. With a more elaborate, fanciful and complexive “rat-tat-tat-rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat––”
He suddenly lost his grip of the “human drum,” Picard wriggled out from under, and the drummer bumped his own posterior on the pave.
Calmly, quite undisturbed, the foolish Baker continued to “rat-tat-tat” with a stick on the curb, then as the “Ca Ira” beats resounded above him, his own squatting body began to sway with the music in a heightened absurdity. Picard had run off. He was convinced these people were crazier than any of those in the mad cells of Salpetriere....
JACQUES FORGET-NOT, SWEARS VENGEANCE ON THE FAMILY OF THE DE VAUDREYS.THE COUNT DE LINIERES AND THE CHEVALIER DE VAUDREY HEAR HIS THREATS.
JACQUES FORGET-NOT, SWEARS VENGEANCE ON THE FAMILY OF THE DE VAUDREYS.THE COUNT DE LINIERES AND THE CHEVALIER DE VAUDREY HEAR HIS THREATS.
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Long since Henriette had evaded the worse sights and sounds by creeping as best she could along the side walls of the buildings, watching her chance to get away from the revelers. Again, at the street corner, another swirl passed over her, knocking her down. Ruefully she picked herself up again.
The throng had passed by completely, leaving but a drunken fool prancing here and there, or a scant winrow of half-prostrate figures. Henriette ran with all her might to the only refuge she knew––her old faubourg lodgings.
The middle-aged landlady who in days agone had fetched the guard to subdue Danton’s would-be assassins, and who likewise had resented Robespierre’s prying as to the identity of Henriette’s visitor, studied the girl at first a bit quizzically. Released from Salpetriere, eh? Was she the same sweet, pure Henriette she knew? Yes, the little Girard––la petite Girard––looked to be the same hard-working, respectable seamstress person of yore, only that she seemed very weak and about to collapse!
The landlady folded Henriette within one stout arm.
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She pointed with her free hand to the bedchamber immediately above.
“Your old room up there awaits you,” she remarked kindly. “As soon as you have recovered strength a bit, I have no doubt the old sewing job will be yours too!”
... Jacques-Forget-Not and his men arrived too late at the Prefect’s palace for complete vengeance on the de Vaudreys.
Around the historic Fourteenth of July, there was a pell-mell exodus of aristocrats from the city. A panic-stricken servant brought the Count de Linieres tidings of the people’s victory.
“Fly, monsieur! Fly, madame!” he cried. “The troops are overthrown, the Bastille surrounded, before nightfall the mob will surely attack here and try to kill your excellencies. Fly, I implore you!”
Other messengers confirmed the news, and thus it happened that the erstwhile proud and arrogant Minister of Police who but yesterday had ruled France was reduced to making the most hurried preparations for flight, aided by the distracted Countess.
The latter realized with a pang that the121hegira meant farewell, perhaps forever, to the chance of recovering her lost daughter Louise from this welter of Paris. How mysterious the ways of the Higher Power! Her beloved nephew the Chevalier, at least, was safe in the distant fortress to which the Count her husband had condemned him. Pray God Louise might be saved––, yes! and her foster-sister Henrietta, beloved of the Chevalier––Henriette whom her husband had branded by unjust accusation....
The de Linieres party succeeded in evading the fate of numbers of the runaway aristocrats, who were bodily pulled out of their coaches and trampled upon or strung up by the infuriated mobs. They managed to make their way to the northeastern borders of France. There thousands of emigres were received under the protection of foreign powers, awaiting the ripe moment for the impact of foreign armies on French soil and the hoped-for reconquest of the monarchists....
That night the beautiful Hotel de Vaudrey––home of the Vaudrey and Linieres family and fortune––was given up to sack and pillage. Enraged that the objects of122his vengeance had fled, the leader Forget-Not ordered a general demolition.
Priceless works of art were hurled about and destroyed. The cellars of old wines were quickly emptied by drunken revelers. The kitchen and pantries catered to the mob’s gluttony. Wenches arrayed themselves in the Countess’s costly silks and linens; perfumed, powdered and painted with the cosmetics; preened and perked in the cheval mirrors.
Among the motley crew of destroyers, drunkards, gluttons, satyrs and sirens, our friend the Jolly Baker was on the job––unfortunately for him, accompanied this time by his hatchet-faced spouse.
He started a flirtation with a new-made vamp, all tricked out in stolen finery. The Jolly Baker had found a new use for his eyes and eyebrows, i.e., to convey love messages. He was making the most alarming motions and succeeding most prodigiously in evoking the new vamp’s answering smiles when––
“Ker-plunk!”
––Dame Baker fetched him a tremendous slap directly on the face that caused him to see innumerable little stars.
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Gradually coming back to this mundane world, the Jolly Baker resolved to devote his strict attention to the bottle....
124CHAPTER XIXKNIFE DUEL AND ESCAPE
The bundle on the cellar floor of the Frochards den stirred again, this time more actively.
The crippled knife-grinder Pierre had entered. His mother was again busied with her potations. Under the half-lifted rags showed the tear-stained face of Louise. The heavy fatigue of street mendicancy had wrapped her in deep sleep, from which she woke with a start to her wretched surroundings. The misery of it all overwhelmed her. She sobbed, and the big tears descended from her blind eyes.
“Don’t cry, Louise!” begged the almost equally wretched Pierre. “There may yet be escape and the finding of your sister. Oh!” he said to himself. “If I had but the courage to lay down my life that I might make her happy!”
The ruffian Jacques Frochard was exhibiting a sinister interest in the blind girl.125He had forbidden Pierre to speak to her or come near her, and now as he entered, the crippled brother shrank away. “Get up and go to work!” said Mother Frochard to the girl roughly, yanking her to her feet.
“I’ll find a way to make her work!” laughed Jacques with fiendish coarseness. “You’ll slave for me, eh, my pretty? Yes, for you, no one but Jacques!”
He leered at her as he appropriated the coins of her singing.
Huddled in the corner, the silent cripple bit his finger knuckles until they bled....
Inflamed with liquor and lust, Jacques soon decided to carry out his purpose.
“Come with me, my little beauty!”
Mother Frochard chuckled at the sight of him mastering her. Struggle wildly as the poor blind creature would to avoid his grip, he was dragging her slowly to the stair while her screams were stifled by one rough hand over her mouth.
But as he was doing this, the huddled figure rose. “I have been a coward long enough,” said Pierre. “Don’t touch her!” laying a restraining hand on Jacques’ arm.
Astonished, Jacques turned. “Who’ll126stop me?” He flung his brother prostrate half way across the room.
The cripple had risen again. A dirk gleamed in his extended hand. His eyes blazed like coals. Fury distorted his features which were craned forward in hideous ugliness parallel with the knife.
“I will!”
“You misbegotten hunchback!” roared Jacques, letting loose of the girl and drawing his own knife. “She is mine. I tell you I will kill anyone who interferes with me!”
La Frochard tried to throw herself between the brothers. Louise groped away, and as by instinct found refuge behind Pierre. Jacques pushed the hag aside, saying savagely: “Let me look after this!”
Each brother stripped off his coat, holding it as a buckler whilst the right hand gripped a knife.
“You are right, Jacques,” said the frenzied cripple. “We Frochards come of a race that kills!”
The adversaries feinted around each other in circles, in the Latin mode of fighting that was their heritage. Coats or sidesteps127parried or evaded blows. The knives gleamed, but did not go quickly home.
If Jacques had the superior strength, Pierre was the more cat-like. His frail body was a slight target, so that the other’s great lunges missed. Then, leaping like a puma, he was behind and under Jacques’ guard, and stabbed him in the back.
The great hulk of a man fell back into La Frochard’s arms, the blood oozing from a cut that was not mortal though fearsome. The hag-mother wailed and crooned as if he were in death agony.
“Quick!” cried the hunchback to Louise, “the road to liberty is open.” Taking Louise by the hand, he ran with her up the steps out of the cellar....
But Henriette did not meet––not until one fateful hour––the itinerant grinder and her loved sister whom he protected. They were in many of the scenes of the later Revolution. Louise ate off the de Vaudrey plate, and Pierre perforce sharpened the knives of the September Massacre. Tramps of the boiling, tempestuous City, spectators but not participants of the great events, they looked ceaselessly for her.
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Nor did the wicked Frochards abide in the den of Louise’s imprisonment and sufferings. They too were swallowed up in the vast maelstrom––to reappear at one ludicrous moment of tragic times.
129CHAPTER XXTHE NEW TYRANNY
Before telling you how the Chevalier de Vaudrey got out of Caen and how he fared forth to his love, it is meet that the reader should understand the rapidly changing conditions that converted the New France into a veritable Hell on earth.
After the Fall of the Bastille, and even after the mob’s sortie on Versailles which enforced the royal family’s return to Paris where they lived in the Tuileries, it was the hope of the moderate patriots that constitutional monarchy might prevail.
These hopes were dashed, first, by royalty’s intrigues and double-dealing, and, secondly, through the pressure of the revolting emigres and the threat of foreign invasion that welded all the defenders of France, willy-nilly, into a traitor-crushing and invader-defying Republic.
Of all the personages of that unhappy time, the locksmithing King Louis XVI least understood what was going on about him.
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A true Bourbon with an ancestry of nearly a thousand years’ possession of the French throne, he never learned anything and never forgot anything. He played at being a limited monarch but his sympathies were naturally with the riffled aristocrats––the nobility whose privileges had been taken away, their estates commandeered, their chateaux fired or sacked, and themselves obliged to flee for their lives to the protection of the foreigner.
Not comprehending the nature of the Storm that wiped out old tyranny, Louis dangerously rode the Storm, he could not guide it. His lack of understanding is sadly shown in the closing scene at Versailles when they brought him news of the people’s coming.
“Mais, c’est une revolte. Why, that is a revolt!” exclaimed the bewildered monarch.
“No, Sire,” replied the Minister gravely, “’tis not a revolt. It is a revolution!”
Within a few hours the yelling maenads and bold satyrs of the sansculottes possessed the gorgeous Salon de la Paix, whilst the King and his family were on their way to Paris....
Then followed many weary months of131royalist intrigue, plot and counter plot, secret dickers with foreign Powers, attempts at escape, fresh indignities by the mob, until at last Royalty is suspended from its function, becomes the prisoner instead of the ruler. Turned out of the Tuileries, Louis and Marie Antoinette are no longer King and Queen––henceforth Citizen and Citizeness Capet. At the end of dreadful imprisonments, looms for the hapless pair the dread Scaffold....
A real Republic teeters for a short period on the crest of the Revolutionary wave. Men are mad with the joy over the new thought of universal brotherhood. Little do Danton and the other Utopians realize that the Pageant of Brotherhood is but the prelude of a new Despotism.
For a dark ring of foes––spurred to invasion by the King’s misfortunes––surrounds France on every side. Within, the cry re-echoes: “The traitors to the prisons!” and all the aristocrats as yet at large are hunted down and put in durance.
As Minister of Justice, Danton, the idol of the people, acts quickly to subdue aristocracy, and ceaselessly organizes––organizes––organizes the raw republican levies132into troops fit to resist the advancing Prussians, Austrians and Savoyards.
Lashed to uncontrollable rage by the preliminary successes of the invading Prussians, the Paris proletariat break into the prisons and massacre the unfortunate members of the nobility there immured. Few are spared. Young equally with the old––girls and women no less than the sterner sex––the noble, the wise, the cultivated, the beautiful, are murdered in cold blood. The September Massacres shock moderates everywhere with the feeling that France is at last running amuck––the mad dog of the Nations.
Yes, France now is running amuck––’ware of her when she strikes! Lafayette and other moderates––indeed, several of the Generals commanding the patriot armies have fled over the border, disgusted with the national rabies, utterly unable to quench it.
The patriot ranks close up. The wilder element of the sansculottes grasps the helm of State. In the desperate need of a dictatorship to cope against the foreign invasion, Danton procures from the Legislature absolute133power for a little inner group, the Committee of Public Safety.
Working on the passions of the people, worming himself into favor by denouncing moderate suspects and advocating the extremest measures, our sly acquaintance of the faubourg lodgings––Maximilien Robespierre––becomes the head of this Committee––thereby the Tyrant of France.
The foreign foe is indeed driven back, but at what a cost! The rule of Robespierre’s fanatical minority that has seized the State, inaugurates the dreadful Reign of Terror. The great Revolutionary leader Danton––Minister of Justice in the earlier time––has himself caused to be established the Revolutionary Tribunal for the quick trial of the public’s foes, and the guillotine for the guilty. Robespierre uses it as a ready forged weapon for destroying all who do not think as he does.
In this storm-wracked world Jacques-Forget-Not is now a great judge and a most fanatical patriot. The avenger of the de Vaudreys heads the Revolutionary Tribunal. He is in his glory now, for the aristocrats that the mobs overlooked are sent in batches to the guillotine––on the most134trifling charges, or finally without accusation at all. The mere fact of being an aristocrat is a capital offence!
And in and among these slaughters is intermixed the destruction of Robespierre’s personal and political rivals––a work in which the vengeful Jacques-Forget-Not studies and obeys every whim of his master, for does not Jacques also have private grudges as yet unpaid?
... But Danton remains a popular hero. For his work in driving back the foreign foe, he is upraised in chair of state by the multitudes, heading a huzzaing procession and preceded by young girls strewing flowers.
None of the bloody butchery has been Danton’s. He has been too busy fighting Prussia, Austria and Savoy. Today, as he sits in the chair of state acknowledging the acclamations, his heart wells in gratitude to Henriette who had once saved his life––no face of treasured memory so dear as hers!
LOVE, MASTER OF HEARTS.
LOVE, MASTER OF HEARTS.
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Confessedly, under the New Tyranny, there is nothing to engage the great heart and soul. Sick of the murderous scramble for pelf and power, he withdraws from most political activity, though still able to exert a wide influence.
About this time twenty-two political rivals of Robespierre––the Girondists––were sent by one decree to the guillotine. Danton, vainly pleading for mercy, saw that the Committee of Safety machine was being made an instrument of slaughter. “France must be purged of all vice!” was Robespierre’s sanctimonious reply to his passionate protest. Not long after, the rival masters of France faced one another in the hall of the Revolutionary Tribunal, whereof Jacques-Forget-Not was President.
“Well works this Tribunal you established, Danton!” said Robespierre, in glee at the increasing number of executions.
“It was established,” replied the pock-marked man solemnly, “to punish the enemies of the people. Now through you––Robespierre––France rivers with innocent blood!”
... God help our hero and heroine if they should encounter its dread fury!
136CHAPTER XXIADVENTURES OF A PILGRIM
Some parts of France continued to be held by the royalists after the establishment of the Republic.
Insurrectionary war raged in the provinces, particularly the stubborn war of La Vendee, and certain loyal fortresses like Caen managed to resist capture.
It was thus as a prisoner of the royalist faction, and quite out of touch with worldshaking events, that our young hero Chevalier Maurice de Vaudrey lived through the earlier period of the Revolution.
A love-message from him through Picard to Henriette––an unsuccessful attempt to escape; a glimpse of the still handsomely frizzed and powdered head gazing through trefoil Gothic window on the outer sunshine and liberty:––such is all that we may see of de Vaudrey’s strangely trussed up life during this time.
He was still enshrined in the heart of the little seamstress in the Paris faubourg, still dear to his aunt the Countess who with her137husband was an emigre beyond the borders. Otherwise, no hermit nor solitary was more completely effaced from the world.
The first light of hope was brought to Caen by a messenger from the Countess, who had managed to smuggle through a letter or two and a small box of gold.
“I dare not advise you,” his kind Aunt wrote. “Escape into France would invite your death as an aristocrat. On the other hand, if you make use of the accompanying pardon signed by your uncle the Count, the Governor of Caen will probably enroll you for the inhuman and useless war of La Vendee. Take the money, my dear Nephew, and use it as you deem best––the messenger will secure it for you outside the prison until you need it!”
De Vaudrey pondered, as his Aunt advised. But, really, there was but the one course for him! To win through, disguised, at whatever peril, to Henriette; to find her and Louise; to save them from that black welter of the Revolution, and guide them out of the country to the loving care of the Countess and the repentant Count: yes, such was the course that both Love and Duty dictated. He would begin it that138night, aided by his faithful friend the messenger.
“Hand part of the gold,” he whispered the Countess’s agent, “to some rustic carter on whom you can rely. Bring another part here and give it to a keeper whom I shall point out to you!”
The impromptu little plot worked perfectly. The friendly keeper, having gotten a peep at the ex-Police Prefect’s letter of pardon, needed but the clincher argument of the gold in order to aid de Vaudrey’s escape. A rope over the wall, and even a plank across the moat, were mysteriously provided. In the last silent watch of the night, the go-between (who had been waiting) conducted the escaped prisoner to the carter’s cavern. Already the East was showing the ghostly light of the first faint streaks of dawn.
Having breakfasted in the cave and put his few belongings into a pack, de Vaudrey with the two others stepped out of the dark hole into the growing light.
The carter pointed to the Chevalier’s frizzled locks and elegant if faded dress. “They would take you up at the first village139crossing on that!” he remarked. “Your get-up gives you away.”
The Chevalier retired to a new toilette. Within, were the primitive resources of rustic wardrobe. As he emerged again from the cavern, old boon companions would indeed have been startled by the guise he now wore.
Beautiful apparel, cane, wig, lorgnette and snuffbox were in the discard. The frizzled locks were gone, revealing long straight black hair which was crowned by a shabby tricorne hat. The Chevalier’s elegant form was covered by an ill-fitting ragged black suit, which a pair of dusty shoes well matched. Across one shoulder he carried a pack stick, to which a thoroughly disreputable-looking small black bundle was fastened.
“You’ll do now,” said the rustic. “Remember you’re only a helper on a carter’s journey to Paris.”
Rustic and helper took their leave of the go-between by plunging through a wide but shallow stream. When they had emerged at the farther bank, they felt secure that their steps could not be traced. Waving good-byes to the other, the rustic140and his man hastened to a stable where they loaded a provision wagon and attached a country Dobbin to the thills. Presently de Vaudrey, in his new character of the carter’s assistant, was on the first stage of the long journey to the storm-wracked metropolis.
The carter’s load was of so little value, the whole outfit so poverty-stricken, that neither country Royalist nor provincial Revolutionary saw fit to bother them.
Gradually the carter sold his wares in the smaller villages en route. They wisely avoided the larger towns. The cart was nearly empty now. Saleables had all been disposed of except a few apples.
“How are you and I going to get into Paris?” said the distinguished young aristocrat, whose respect for the Reuben had increased daily.
“Trust me!” said the other. His broad, moon-faced physiognomy masked the cunning of the fox. “I have this apple here––”
The carter eyed his assistant intently and winked solemnly as if to say: “That will do the trick!”
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As they leave the open country behind and jog through the better settled regions immediately north of Paris, let us take our stand beside the “barrier” or outer gate which they are slowly approaching.
Judge Forget-Not and his fellows are inspecting the barriers. The voice of the Chief is heard speaking.
“Watch strictly that no aristocrats escape. Our newlawalso condemns to death all who harbor an aristocrat.”
The Inquisitor’s face assumes a yet harsher expression as he addresses the guards: “Beware lest you yourselves be suspect!––Remember the sharp female ‘Guillotine’!”
Forget-Not draws a significant hand across the throat. A shudder passes through the more timid folk.
The coarse-faced guards applaud and promise to use the utmost precautions. The judges move on, inspecting another part of the barrier.
142CHAPTER XXIIADVENTURES OF A PILGRIM (CONTINUED)
The farmer’s cart nears the gate. The moon-faced Reuben is as impassive as ever. Though the tall assistant manages to keep his expression fairly immobile too, ’tis evident to us who know him that he labors under suppressed excitement. For the prize of his Great Quest is Henriette; the penalty of discovery and capture, Death!
The gallant young man does not hesitate, however. He has never shrunk from Danger’s bright face, least of all would he shrink now when the passing of a brief ordeal may well mean reunion with his beloved and her rescue from the welter of Paris. The Pilgrim’s soul hungers and thirsts for her. After the great Sahara of imprisoned loneliness, how near the Oasis of love and rapture! How beautiful the prospect, if not indeed Mirage!
The rustic’s helper dismounts with the farmer at the gate, and follows him into the office of the registrar. The farmer presents a pass.
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“This is for one only,” says the registrar at the gate, roughly. “The other cannot go through,” he says, pointing to de Vaudrey, who tries to look as stupid and uncomprehending as possible.
The farmer hands a big red apple to the functionary. But the latter makes a gesture of refusal.
“Bite into it!” says the Rustic ingratiatingly.
The official bites at the top which comes off––a smooth and even slice. The centre of the apple is hollow. Within it are several gold coins.
Quickly the gatekeeper covers the golden apple with his hairy paw. “Your papers are all right,” he says gruffly, rapidly converting the figure 1 into a 2, and viseing the pass for two. He motions for both the man and the youth to go through.
The farmer and his follower drive in and mix with the crowd on the inside of the barrier. At this stage the farmer disappears from our history. But the face of the youth is noted by an eagle eye and recognized by a brain that does not forget!
The prowling Judge sees the Chevalier, though the Chevalier does not see him.
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“Follow that man!” he says quietly to his deputies. “We shall catch him red-handed in some plot!”
Our little heroine had lived quietly for many months in the faubourg lodgings to which, perforce, she had to return after her vain visit to the Frochard cellar and her rough handling by the Carmognole rioters. The little sparrow of a seamstress was quite undisturbed by the great events of the French Revolution, except as they had put everything at sixes and sevens and whirled away her own intimates in the mad whirligig.
The pock-marked man (whom she had sheltered overnight in this very place) was the Savior of the Country; the prying lodger Robespierre was the Chief of State. Of course she never saw them now, her small self would hardly dare address them! Sister Genevieve and the Doctor, who had told her about the Frochards’ den, were no longer within her ken.
The weary months had dragged along. Notwithstanding the cheering message conveyed by Picard, her knight the Chevalier––so far as she knew––was still a prisoner145of Caen. And the weary months had dragged their ball and chain of silence and despair still more wearingly in the failure of her many renewed attempts to find Louise. The blind sister was again swallowed up in the devouring city––the Frochards were fled.
Whither was Henriette to look––whither to turn?
A ray of light from the window glinted on the holy Book of books that the girl treasured. She opened it. A line read at random comforted her. Clasping the volume in her hands, she knelt in prayer, addressing God softly:
“Thou who hast said: ‘I am the Light!’ oh, show me the way!”
At the sound of a knock at the door, the girl rose from her supplications. Entered sad and dusty pilgrim, carrying his few belongings in bag suspended from shoulder stick. Now they dropped sharply to the floor, and the disguised Chevalier gazed long and earnestly upon his love.
Her eyes in turn were riveted on his sad, lean apparition, how terribly changed from the old debonair days! Kind sympathy spoke in her look and mien till the radiance146of love, beginning in little ghosts of welcoming smiles at the corners of her mouth, broke into clear effulgence.
The Chevalier tottered forward. He collapsed into the nearest chair.
She put her arms around him and hovered there, comforting him with affectionate little hand pats and soft kisses.
Jacques-Forget-Not, the avenger of the de Vaudreys, had not been far behind during the pilgrim’s tramp across the city. He had in fact sneaked back of him, seen the wanderer enter Henriette’s door. Standing at the head of the stair, he could almost overhear stray phrases of their talk, knew that they were quite within his power.
The shaggy-haired one fairly gloated in his triumph. “Number One!” he hissed, raising a forefinger in token that de Vaudrey––the first of his Trinity of Hate––was in the net. “Two and Three shall come next!” he whispered savagely, knuckling down two other fingers to mark his vengeance on the Count and Countess.
The shaggy-haired Forget-Not hurried down the stairs, his gaunt features baleful with unholy glee. Pointing significantly overhead, he ordered a detail of his guards:
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“Arrest de Vaudrey and all in that room!” The men at once proceeded to carry out the order.
The guard captain would have been equally at home in a pirate crew or at a land massacre. Enormous black brows and heavy moustache accentuated his ferocity, the particolored Revolutionary garb and in particular the red-and-white striped pantaloons gave him a bizarre appearance like a pirate chief.
The detail were armed with muskets and bayonets. They clattered up the stairs and burst into Henriette’s room.
The lovers seemed dazed rather than affrighted. They clasped each other again. With a little warning gesture Henriette bade Maurice say nothing when the captain addressed him as de Vaudrey.
The villain laid a heavy hand on his victim while two of the soldiers seized and pinioned his arms. “You are under arrest as a returned emigre!” the head pirate said.
Then he turned his attention to Henriette who made futile little efforts like a tiny mother wren.
“You are also under arrest, Citizeness,”148said the captain harshly, “for the crime of sheltering a returned aristocrat.”
“She cannot be blamed,” interrupted de Vaudrey. “I entered this place, uninvited.”
“Silence!” roared the Captain. “Your plea, if any, must be made to the Revolutionary Tribunal.”
149CHAPTER XXIIIBEFORE THE DREAD TRIBUNAL
That awful Tribunal sat daily. During the height of the Terror, no time was allowed to prisoners for the preparation of their cases––no interval elapsed between the prisoners’ arrest and their arraignment. Dispatch––dispatch––DISPATCH was the essence of the bloody business, the purpose being to strike terror upon all that opposed the little fanatical minority then in power.
Therefore the guard brought Henriette and Maurice directly from their arrest to their trial, and they gazed upon a sight for Gods and men––a travesty on the sacred name of justice. Such scenes would seem unbelievable to us but for the recent events of the Russian Revolution, which prove that in our age also a proletarian dictatorship can be senselessly wicked and cruel.
The trials––beside their Terror function of upholding a minority government––were great public shows for the howling rabble and leering sansculottes, the hoodlums of Paris whom even the masters dared not150offend. The riff-raff acted exactly as at any of their own celebrations and feastings.
Along the side benches and up on the “Mountain,” flirtation and sweethearting went on, of a rough-and-ready order. Some spectators coolly munched their dinners. Others, having brought along their bottles, indulged in drinking bouts. Everyone’s ideas of a good time cannot be the same. There was our eccentric acquaintance the Jolly Baker, for instance. The height of bliss for him, at one of these capital trials, was to lean far, far back with open mouth whilst a tilted bottle, held by a ministering Hebe, spilled ecstatic drops of damp and ruby “happiness” upon his “open-face” physiognomy.
Another misfit of the grotesque crowds was Picard, foolishly trying to discover what ’twas all about, gazing soulful-eyed into hoodlum “mugs” that gave him the merry “ha! ha!” or sickened him with the likeness of the First Murderer. But “crime,” in one instance at least, was followed by “punishment,” for as the murderous citizen suddenly thrust out his roaring raucous mouth, Picard inadvertently leaned back.
LOUISE AND LA FROCHARD TRYING TO KEEP PIERRE,THE CRIPPLE, FROM FIGHTING HIS BROTHER JACQUES.
LOUISE AND LA FROCHARD TRYING TO KEEP PIERRE,THE CRIPPLE, FROM FIGHTING HIS BROTHER JACQUES.
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The huge sansculotte, to his own surprise, was eating the bushy horse-hair pigtail of Picard’s bobbing queue! The ex-valet made a quick duck. His murderous-looking neighbor, with a full swing, walloped the countenance of the sansculotte beyond....
On this day of our characters’ trial, the side benches and balconies of the great hall quickly fill with the howling, leering mobs––the fierce and grotesque chorus of the grim tragedy.
Interspersed with the rabid Jacobins are other––less partisan––spectators, and among the hurrying throngs a close observer might have noticed the luckless Pierre Frochard and the blind girl Louise entering. They found seats on a front bench.
“The judges are taking their places now,” said Pierre. “You will soon hear the trials. Over on their right sits Robespierre, the dictator of France!”
The judges, so-called, are five villainous individuals, wearing dirty-looking plumed hats, black jerkins and breeches, and tall jack boots. The shaggy-haired Jacques-Forget-Not presides.
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A frowsy public prosecutor––red, white and blue cockade affixed to his tousled hat plume––calls the names of the accused and presents the charge. From the background, the stripe-panted soldiery are bringing the victims up.
“They are arraigning them in batches,” says Pierre. “The judges make quick work!” Louise shudders, lays hold of his arm.
There is something horrible in the sound of the advancing footsteps; the harsh accusations and weak replies, oft drowned by the sansculottes’ roar; the sentences of doom, and the final scuffling of feet as the soldiers seize their prey and bear it off.
Innocence and guilt often go up together.
Unfortunate women of the street are arraigned next high-bred aristocrats, or moderates whose only crime has been to denounce such horrors. A gallant gentleman pleads vainly to the judges who are also the jury: “We have had no trial!” The mob howls “Guillotine!” and “Guillotine!” is Jacques-Forget-Not’s brief sentence !
A young Corsican lieutenant of artillery looks on meditatively. His silent thought153is sensed by a bystander who remarks: “I suppose, Napoleon, you think you could manage things better!” The man grins. But Napoleon Bonaparte––he who snuffed out Revolution later by whiff of grapeshot––nods gravely yes.
As the prisoners from the faubourg are brought in, Henriette sees the loved and long lost face of her dreams among the front row of the sansculottes.
Stupefied, unbelieving, she looks again and again. Yes, it is she––none other! Her own peril and that of Maurice are unthought of. Protective love of the blind one tides back in resistless strength.
She is trying now to escape from the guards, run to her sister––even to pantomime her love, gesticulate it with funny little motions and confidential fingers on lips––forgetting that the other cannot see! And then her wild, excited cry rings through the great hall:
“LOUISE! LOUISE!”
Louise jumps to her feet, groping wildly towards the cry. Her blind features are strained in agonized expectancy. Pierre has located the frenzied Henriette. He154guides the groping blind girl from the benches to her sister.
In this council chamber of hates and cruelty, rulers and attendants alike are steeled against shrieks of suffering or the outbursts of the accused. A fence of locked bayonets stops each advancing sister. Paying rather less heed to the incident than if it were a request for a drink of water, the soldiery push back Pierre and Louise to the seats and make ready to obey the prosecutor’s call.
“Citizen de Vaudrey and Henriette Girard to the bar!”
The Chevalier faces the dread quintet. The prosecutor reads the charge, demands the death penalty on the returned aristocrat. Poor Henriette is divided between her frenzied wish to clasp her sister and her horror about Maurice.
The young man defends himself.
“An emigre, yes!” he acknowledges, “but not an enemy of the people.”
Many a spectator of the scenes––even the wicked judges––could bear witness (did not prejudice blind!) to his kindness for the afflicted and fallen. Is there an undercurrent155of sympathy for him even amongst hard sansculottes?
But this is Jacques-Forget-Not’s great moment.
Vengeance’s hour has struck.
The wickedness of the old de Vaudreys is to be expiated at last!