Two days later a tumultuous carnival animated Paris. Crowds jostled each other in the streets and gazed upon the procession of the Bull crowned with flowers and the triumphal car freighted with maidens in gala clothes and singing their applause. One of these maidens, a Versailles laundress, was a shining mark, by reason of the brilliancy of her complexion and the gleaming of her hair. On passing the Gate of Saint-Denis, seeing a small man of puny frame and bilious skin she called merrily out to him:
"Hello, Louis Pierre, old owl, de profundis face, don't you want to sup tonight with some happy people at the Inn Mariscale?"
The masks and students near laughed to split their throats, and the interrogated man hastened to conceal himself amid the crowd. He took refuge in his lodgings and devoured his dinner with an almost savage hunger, a strange action, for he was usually abstemious. Then he went out again and mingled with the crowd. He leaned against the glass windows of the royal theatre and watched the brilliant concourse within. A great festival was in progress. The program announced the "Carnival of Venice" and "The Marriage of Camacho." Carriages rolled, torches gleamed, the crowd surged. The Court was arriving. Louis Pierre felt his head swim. "Now, now!" a voice seemed mockingly to whisper. But in spite of the mandate, he remained inert. Action refused to travel from brain to hands.
"What ails me?" he asked himself. "Is it fear? Is it that I should not? Am I about to perpetrate an act of justice or a crime? Have not my warnings remained unheeded? I could do no more than I have done, unless, indeed, I should deliver myself into their hands—"
While thus he vacillated, Prince Ferdinand and his wife the Princess Caroline descended from their carriage and entered the theatre.
"Another opportunity lost! Vacillations, scruples, absurd perplexities, culpable weaknesses! Have not these people given entrance to the Cossacks and oppressed and rifled the innocent Naundorff? De Brezé's blood cries for vengeance. This besotted city steeped in a Carnival orgie! What is the Association doing? The Knights seem to sleep on their arms. But Brutus keeps vigil—. Notwithstanding my numerous letters, they have set no watch on me. 'Tis that Destiny protects me. I was born to put my project into execution.—Let us wait, and then—the ax to the trunk."
He walked away objectless through the royal gardens, stumbling at every moment upon groups who sang bacchanalian refrains and prurient couplets from Beranger. Women, with painted faces wearing flowers and greens, flung cynical jests in his face. A drunkard insulted him. He heeded nothing, thirsting only for the fresh night air, which in his feverish condition he inhaled voraciously. Incoherent words rumbling through his brain seemed to urge him to the deed.
"I must obey, I must obey!" he kept saying. "Then I shall find rest. Indecision and torture will be over."
He computed the moments with burning anxiety.
"It must be tonight. When again shall I have the opportunity? Tomorrow I must return to Versailles."
He walked stealthily back and forth, between the garden and the theatre. The night advanced and the streets were growing deserted; the taverns were being emptied of their occupants; the great clock sounded two, then the half hour; the royal carriages drew up. The Carbonaro glided along the solitary street of Louvois and made his way amid a group of lackeys. His insignificant stature enabled him to remain there unmolested. He was supposed to be some hackney coachman or an assistant placed there for the purpose of guarding horses. Louis Pierre stood motionless close to the wall.
He had not long to wait. Prince Ferdinand descended the steps, accompanying his wife, who was leaving early, being fatigued from a ball which she had attended the previous night. The Prince intended remaining longer,—perchance to hover around some fair face. But, in order to forestall any jealous pangs, he whispered to her gallantly and affectionately, according to his winning nature:
"I shall be with you very soon."
The suspicious, ardent Italian wife and the impulsive, gallant husband were a happy devoted pair. Caroline had warned him, as they left the box, not to remain late.
"Don't wait for the sun to chase you home," she had said, half playfully, half seriously. "I must go now, myself, in order to—be careful of—our secret—the heir we are to give to France."
He reassured her tenderly, solicitously, pressing her arm to his side. On reaching the carriage, he spoke the words we have already reproduced and which are recorded in history as the last words of Ferdinand: "I shall be with you very soon."
She stepped lightly into the carriage and turned her head at the window to have a last look at her husband as he started towards the theatre. He was walking along the pavement of Rameau street, beneath the gay buntings. Louis Pierre stood among the lackeys and sentinels. When later, in the solitude of the dungeon, he lived again the tragic moments of his deed,—he could not understand how he accomplished with such admirable dexterity that which a half hour earlier seemed so difficult of execution. An invisible hand seemed to have guided him and sent his own hand unflinchingly to its task. That powerful man, surrounded by courtiers, friends and sentinels, who, drawn up on each side, presented arms; that man whose splendid physique was revealed through his elegant dress and who with one hand could have hurled to earth the puny creature inflicting death:—that man, Louis Pierre assured himself, had been delivered helpless and unsuspicious into his hands by Fate. He was no longer overpowered by the consciousness of his insignificance; no longer did he regard himself a despicable atom; within him was a species of lucid inebriation, a glorious wave of pride and confidence. His moment shone. The obscure plebeian had written his page of history.
"Before that moment, my life had amounted to naught. My latent self suddenly sprang into being. To be satisfied with killing a spy! What puerility! So little sufficed the inferior nature of Giacinto."
Thus communed Pierre Louis, as the imperious face of Amélie, her mouth drawn in bitter disdain, with a terrible frown as of an avenging archangel, came to his mind's eye. She stood for the feminine suggestion there is in all tragedy. Great souls are lonely. They so love their ideals that they cannot compromise nor forgive. It seemed to him that the splendid eyes of Naundorff's daughter had fearlessly and unhesitatingly shown him the way to the Prince. As a somnambulist moves, he had accomplished the deed. With his small dagger, he had dealt a marvelously dexterous blow, rapid and to the spot. Ferdinand felt no wound, not even the coldness of the blade; he thought some one chanced to strike against him; suddenly he realized he was about to fall. None of the others suspected the truth. Meanwhile the assailant disappeared. On reaching the corner of Richelieu street, Louis Pierre nonchalantly slackened his speed and started toward the dark arcades, today in ruins, opposite the stupendous edifice of the library. He was safe from pursuit. None of those near whom he had stood before the theatre knew him. He told himself that his life had trembled on the edge of a blade.
Just then he passed an inn wherein coffee was being served. Fate ordained that a waiter carrying a tray upon which the fragrant beverage steamed should step out of the door and stumble against him, an accident occasioning the breaking of the dishes. The waiter turned infuriated upon the causer of the damage, and, chasing him into the darkness of an alley, caught him by the collar and shook him soundly. The Carbonaro was such a weakling! He seemed to hear an interior voice saying:
"You have wrought. Now 'tis this man's turn."
When Ferdinand reached the vestibule, he involuntarily put his hand to his side, over the unsuspected wound. He felt the projecting hilt of the dagger. The entire blade was buried in his body. He cried out in pain as the fine triangular weapon was extracted. The Princess Caroline hurried back from her carriage and threw her arms around him and those bare round arms were bathed in blood. Then followed tender heart-rending adieux. The dying Prince poured out his soul during his last hours even as his body delivered up its life. He spoke of glory, of patriotism, of Christian faith, of love, of past faults; but more insistently than ought else, did he plead for the assassin's pardon. As the King bent over him, his lips, livid with the approach of death, implored:
"Forgive him, forgive him! We are all sinners, having need of forgiveness. Sire and uncle, say yes!"
As the King maintained silence, he groaned:
"O my God, do you deny me this dying consolation?"
In his agony, as fever consumed his ebbing life, this descendant of Henry of Navarre, so like that glorious ancestor, even in the manner of his death, murmured:
"Forgive him, forgive him!"
Lecazes, meanwhile, amazed at the swiftness with which the trunk had fallen, approached Louis Pierre, who was a prisoner in one of the lower apartments, and whispered, as he drew him aside:
"Did you do this for money? Have you accomplices"
The Carbonaro cast upon the Minister a look of scorn, saying:
"Do men do these things for money? I am the avenger of my country and of Naundorff and his daughter. The race perishes. There will be no heir."
"Fool," replied the Minister, gloating over that somber soul's discomfiture, "the Princess is promised an heir."
Louis Pierre turned pale as the futility of the crime overwhelmed him.
"No matter," said he. "I did the deed and I would repeat it a thousand times."
Again he assumed the stoical air and supreme command of self which characterized him in such a high degree both during his trial and upon the scaffold.
The whispered dialogue between Lecazes and the assassin was remarked by the other occupants in the apartment and became the basis of the charge of complicity brought against the Baron, and was the cause of his removal and fall. It was said of him that:
"He slipped in the puddle of blood and fell."
CONTENTSEMILIA PARDO BAZÁNA GREAT GRANDSON OF LOUIS XVIBook I MARTIN, THE SEERChapter I—THE LOVERSChapter II—MEMORIESChapter III—THE EMPTY COFFINChapter IV—AMÉLIEChapter V—THE FIRST THREADS OF THE NETChapter VI—THE BAILIFFChapter VII—THE EPICUREANChapter VIII—THE SEERBook II—THE CASKETChapter I—THE MINIATUREChapter II—THE DAUPHIN'S SISTERChapter III—THE EMPTY COFFINChapter IV—MARIEChapter V—A COURTEOUS MANChapter VI—TORTUREChapter VII—THE BLACK HOLEChapter VIII—THE EXECUTIONChapter IX—THE ESCAPEChapter X—PRUSSIAChapter XI—NAUNDORFFChapter XII—THE DAUPHIN'S WIFEChapter XIII—THE INCENDIARYBook III THE KNIGHTS OF LIBERTYChapter I—LYING IN WAITChapter II—THE TRAPPED FOXChapter III—RENÉ WAITSChapter IV—MINE AND COUNTERMINEChapter V—THE CREAKING BOOTSChapter VI—THE PARDONChapter VII—THE REVELATIONChapter VIII—THE CAPTAINChapter IX—THE SCHOONERBook IV PICMORTChapter I—THE CASTLEChapter II—BAD NEWSChapter III—GIACINTO'S RETURNChapter IV—NIGHTChapter V—THE CHILDChapter VI—THE MARRIAGEChapter VII—DEATHBook V THE SISTERChapter I—PORTENTSChapter II—THE QUESTIONChapter III—REASONS OF STATEChapter IV—CONJUGAL LOVEChapter V—THE SISTERChapter VI—LOUIS PIERRE'S SISTERChapter VII—THE INTERVIEWChapter VIII—THE AMBUSHChapter IX—GIACINTO'S FATEChapter X—A DESCENDANT OF HENRI OF NAVARREChapter XI—FERDINAND'S FATE