CHAPTER VIICITIZENESS BELGARDE
IN the long days and months and years Trimousette spent at Boury she was forced to employ herself. She had no great taste for books beyond books of poetry, but she practiced on the cracked harpsichord which had belonged to the duke’s mother, and she developed a pretty little voice in which she sang to herself songs of love and longing. One day, during the winter of 1794, Trimousette got some news from Paris. Queen Marie Antoinette hadfollowed King Louis to the guillotine, and the Duke of Belgarde was once more in the prison of the Temple. He got there by one of the few acts of stupidity he ever committed in his life. He had slipped into Paris after the execution of Queen Marie Antoinette, determined to save the little Dauphin if the wit of man and the sacrifice of many lives could contrive it. Then came in the stupidity. This duke, who could do everything superlatively well except to write and spell, undertook to pass himself off as a schoolmaster! Moreover, he wore a shabby brocade coat, the last remnant of his wardrobe. Robespierre and St. Just then had France by the throat and were wolfishly devouring her children. It did not take them long to discover that this schoolmaster who could not spell was Fernand, Duke of Belgarde, and they promptly clapped him into prison. For those unfortunates imprisoned by these two men there was but one exit and that was in the arms of Madame Guillotine, whoheld a well-attended court at sunset every day in the Place de la Révolution.
Within a fortnight Trimousette heard this grim news of her husband. It was February, the ground was covered with snow, and for a duchess to go to Paris was like putting one’s head in the lion’s mouth. All this was urged upon Trimousette by herdame de compagnie. It had no more effect upon her than the soft falling snow upon the Breton rocks. Before midnight on the day she heard the heartbreaking news Trimousette was on her way to Paris. She was not in her own ducal traveling chariot, but in the commondiligence, for this inexperienced creature seemed gifted with a kind of prescience, nay, a genius of common sense, which stood her in place of actual knowledge of the world. She traveled as Madame Belgarde, wisely dropping thede, and absolutely alone, refusing even to take a maid.
Three days afterwards, on a March morning,Robespierre, the apostle of murder, had just finished arraying himself in the sky-blue coat and cream-colored breeches which he loved, when a lady was announced in the anteroom. Robespierre loved the society of ladies, and one of the privileges of his position as chief murderer was the sight of dainty women prostrate before him, begging and imploring him for the lives of their husbands, fathers, or sons.
The lady in this case neither prostrated herself, nor begged, nor implored. She was quite calm and self-possessed, and although not beautiful had fine black eyes. After making Robespierre a charming curtsey, she said, smiling:
“Citizen Robespierre, I am Citizeness Belgarde, once known as the Duchess of Belgarde, and I have come to ask that I be admitted to share the imprisonment of my husband, once Duke of Belgarde.”
Robespierre, who dearly loved a duchess,motioned Trimousette to be seated, then said in his croaking voice after a moment:
“There is no doubt your husband has conspired against the liberties of the people, and the only way in which those liberties can be secured is by the death of all those who would have destroyed liberty, like that tyrant Louis Capet.”
Now, thought Robespierre, she will begin to sob and beg for her husband’s life. But not so. Trimousette reflected a moment, and then said, softly and clearly:
“The killing of his Most Christian Majesty and of the blessed Queen Marie Antoinette was barbarous murder.”
Robespierre started violently. No man, much less a woman, had dared before to say so much to him. He looked with scowling green eyes at Trimousette composed and even smiling slightly.
“The National Assembly long since decreed the death of all who should advancesuch treason,” he said, as soon as he could catch breath.
“So I supposed,” replied Trimousette; “but if I can but be allowed in my husband’s prison——”
A light leaped into her black eyes as she spoke. Robespierre, stroking his chin, regarded her critically. How would she go to the guillotine? Probably quite quietly, without making the least outcry of resistance.
“Now, Citizen Robespierre,” said Trimousette, rising and coming toward him, “surely, you cannot refuse the request of a lady. I came to you not only because you have all power, but because I knew you to be gallant—a gentleman, in short.”
So said the most sincere of women glancing at Robespierre with a look dangerously near to coquetry as well as flattery, and nobody had ever suspected this taciturn woman of being either a coquette or a flatterer. Yet, being a woman, she could be bothcoquette and flatterer for the man she loved. What perjuries will women commit for love! Robespierre reflected and Trimousette smiled. He spoke and she answered him with soft, insinuating words; and at last she got out of him the written commitment, charging her, too, with conspiring against the liberties of the people, and condemning her to be imprisoned with her husband, Citizen Fernand Belgarde, in the prison of the Temple.
Trimousette almost laughed aloud with joy when this grim document was made out, and again gave Robespierre a bewitching little curtsey, such as the most finished coquette might have done. She climbed joyfully into the dirty cab with the dirtier gendarmes who were to deliver her to the jailers in the Temple.
It was a mild March afternoon when he who had once been Duke of Belgarde sat at his prison window, looking down into the dreary old garden of the Temple. The window was semicircular, reaching from the floorhalf way to the low ceiling, and gave not much of sun or even light. The duke was thinking, strangely enough, of his duchess. She was a good little thing; shy, but not a born coward like the Valençay woman—nay, somewhat indifferent to danger and, for a woman, averse from shrieking and screaming, but timid in her attitude toward life. She had certainly showed some ingenuity in forwarding his escape three years and a half ago. The duke had made up his mind upon his arrest that there was not much chance of a duke and peer of France escaping the guillotine, and so quite coolly accepted the certainty that his name would soon be in the list which was posted up every morning, of those for whom the tumbrils would wait at seven o’clock in the evening. As his inexpertness with the pen had got him into his present plight, the duke determined to remedy that defect in his education. He had on his incarceration gravely explained to the turnkey thatthere might not be much use for writing in purgatory, where he declared all gentlemen went—the revolutionists going to eternal punishment, and the ladies to heaven. Nevertheless, he meant to improve his handwriting. On this March afternoon the duke, seated at a rickety table, was busy practicing his new accomplishment of writing, when he heard the door of his cell open behind him. He did not turn his head. This Citizen Belgarde was a disdainful fellow, and never saw his jailers until they stood before him. In spite of this, and perhaps because of it, he was a favorite with turnkey Duval, who often frankly expressed his regret that the day was not far off when Citizen Belgarde would be started in a tumbril on his way to the Place de la Révolution.
Trimousette, standing just within the door, which was closed behind her, had a good look at her duke—as good, that is, as her fast-beating heart would permit to her yearningtear-filled eyes. Upon his profile, clearly silhouetted against the window’s dim light, she saw the pallor of a prisoner. He still wore his shabby brocade coat and an embroidered waistcoat, but both were threadbare and dingy. His hair, long and curling, was tied with a black ribbon to distinguish him from the cropped heads which the revolutionists affected. But his eyes, the eyes of a fighter, were undaunted, and his mouth still knew how to smile. The Duke of Belgarde considered that he had lost the game of life, and the only thing left was to pay like a gentleman. As Trimousette watched, he threw down his pen, pushed his chair back, cocked his feet upon the table, and began to whistle quite jovially “Vive Henri Quatre.”
Still he had not looked toward her, and Trimousette’s courage, having brought her alone in night and storm from Brittany, and strongly sustained her when she went to see Robespierre of the green eyes and croaking voice,and got herself condemned to prison upon a capital charge—could not carry her the yard or two between her and her soul’s desire.
But then the duke turned, recognized her, rose, and, obeying a sudden impulse, opened his arms to her. True, he would have rejoiced to see a dog, even broken-legged Diane, anything which was connected with the splendid dream of the past. Yet was the duke actually glad to see the only woman who could love him without worrying him.
Trimousette did not fly into his arms. Poor soul, even at that moment rose the undying instinct of womanhood not to yield too quickly. The duke came forward and, by the same impulse, swept her into his arms. At once, in the twinkling of an eye, love was born within him, and he kissed her as a lover for the first time in their married life. A glory, as of the morning, rose before Trimousette’s eyes. She had lost all, even her life was a forfeit, but she had gained all—her husband’s love.