At the same hour, almost at the same moment, a different scene, though one which owed its existence to the trial now concluded, was being enacted at St. Germain, where the Court now was.
Seated in his chair, advanced three feet from the brilliant circle that surrounded him, Le Roi Soleil witnessed the representation ofCinna, that superb tragedy which Corneille--stung by the criticisms onLe Cidof those who were deemed his rivals, and doubly stung by the criticisms of those who could by no possibility whatever possess the right of deeming themselves his rivals--had determined should outvie the former masterpiece. By connivance with those who fondly hoped that this play--written immediately after a preceding Norman Rebellion had been crushed--might soften the King's heart towards his whilom companion, it had been selected by the chamberlains for that evening's representation. Never, perhaps, had a greater tribute been paid to genius than this now paid to the dramatist!
Throughout the play, Louis had sat unmoved in his chair, though all present remarked that no word or action of the players was lost by him.
But when, at the end, Augustus Cæsar, having, discovered the treachery of Cinna, resolved to pardon the latter and thus win back his fidelity, the King was observed to move restlessly.
As Monvel, the actor who played the part of Cæsar, speaking with deep impressiveness uttered the superb speech commencing:--
Soyons amis, Cinna.Tu trahis mes bienfaits, je les veux redoubler.Je t'en avois comblé, je t'en veux accabler,
Soyons amis, Cinna.Tu trahis mes bienfaits, je les veux redoubler.Je t'en avois comblé, je t'en veux accabler,
Louis' hand was raised to his head and it seemed as though he swiftly brushed away some tears that had sprung to his eyes.
While, a moment later, those seated next to him heard him, or thought they heard him, mutter the words:--
"For the treachery to myself I might have pardoned him. For that against France, for making a pact with her enemies, I can never pardon him."
The royal supper,au grand couvert, was that night a melancholy one. Surrounded, as was always the case, by the sons and daughters of his royal house as well as the grandsons and granddaughters, and also by those ladies of highest rank to whom the right was accorded of supping at the royal table, the King sat silent and meditative. It was observed, too, that his Majesty's fine appetite had failed him to-night and that he scarcely ate anything, in spite of this being the meal for which he cared most. The thirty violins that usually played nightly in the gallery of the antechamber were, on this occasion, silent, since the King had ordered that there should be no music; the talk and chatter that, in discreet limitation, usually went on at the second table was now almost entirely suppressed; a gloom had fallen over the Court which, from the august ruler downwards, none seemed able to shake off. Rousing himself, however, from the melancholy that had obtained possession of him to-night--a melancholy produced more by the knowledge that there was no possibility of pardon for his early playmate than by even the reflection that, on the morrow, this playmate was to atone for his treachery on the scaffold--Louis rose from his seat and left the table, while all present rose at the same moment.
"De Brissac," the King said to that officer, who now filled and, until the new Colonel of Guards should be appointed, would fill the place of the unhappy man who was to die to-morrow at three o'clock; "there will be no audience to-night in my bedchamber. Inform the Court," after which the King bowed to all who were present and retired. Yet, so strong was habit that, as he passed a little antechamber on his way to his bedroom he stopped and, going into it alone, saw that his pet spaniels had been fed and were comfortable for the night.
"De la Ruffardière," he said to a young nobleman present in the bedroom, to whom at this time had fallen the privilege of removing the King's coat, waistcoat and shirt before handing his Majesty over to the care of thepremier valet, "I will dispense with your attendance to-night, and yours," addressing the valet. "I am--fatigued--and would be alone. Bid De Brissac have the guard set at once in the corridor and changed as quietly as possible. Good-night. Heaven have you in its holy keeping."
"Sire," the Marquis de la Ruffardière ventured to say. "I--I--there is a----"
"What is it?" the King asked, looking fixedly at the young man. "What is it----?"
"Sire, a--a lady has arrived to-night. She begs audience of your Majesty. She----"
"Who is the lady?"
"Sire, it is the Princesse de Beaurepaire."
"The Princesse de Beaurepaire! Here! At St. Germain."
"Here, sire. In the blue antechamber. On her arrival your Majesty's Intendant had a suite of rooms prepared for her. But, sire, she implores leave to speak with your Majesty."
"This is the bitterest stroke of all," the King murmured to himself. "Hismother and almost mine. Heaven!" Then, addressing the Marquis aloud, he said: "I will, I must, go to her. No," he said, seeing that the other made as if he would accompany him. "No. Remain here. This is--I--I--must go alone." Passing through the door which the Marquis rushed forward to open, Louis went down a small passage and, softly turning the handle of the door, entered the blue antechamber. "Madame," he said very gently, as he perceived the Princess rise suddenly from the fauteuil on which she had been seated, or, rather, huddled, "Madame. Ah! that we should meet thus. Oh! madame!" and taking her hand he bent over it and kissed it.
"Mercy, sire," the Princess cried, flinging herself at once at the King's feet. "Mercy! Mercy for my unhappy son. Nay," she said, as Louis endeavoured with extreme gentleness to raise her to her feet, "nay, nay, let me stay here. Here until you have granted my prayer. Louis!" throwing aside all ceremony in her agony, "spare him. Spare him. Ah! you cannot, you will not, slay him, evil as he has been, evilly as he has acted towards you Louis," she cried again as, releasing his hand now, she placed both hers upon her bosom. "Louis, even as he when a child lay on this breast, so, too, did you. As your mother would take you from her bosom to place on mine, so have I taken him from mine to place on hers. We were almost foster mothers as you were almost foster brothers! Ah! sire, as there is One above and He the only One from whom you can sue for mercy, so let me sue for and win mercy on earth from the only one who can accord it." "I am not the only one. He is condemned by his judges. Doomed. If I spare him, then must I spare all who henceforth conspire against me; then have I been merciless to all whom I have hitherto refused to spare for their treachery. For their infidelity."
"Their treachery! Their infidelity! And his! His treachery and infidelity! Do you deem that I do not see it, know it, hate and despise it? Do you think that I, Anne de Beaurepaire--that I, who was the proudest woman in your father's Court, that I whom your father--who hated all other women--alone loved, do not hate and despise my son's acts? Ah! Ah!" she sobbed, "I hate and loathe his infidelity but, God help and pity me! I love the infidel, and he is--my--child. Ah! Louis, Louis," she continued, and now not only had she possessed herself of the King's hand but, with her other disengaged hand, had grasped him above the elbow so that he could not free himself from her; "think of it. Think. Think. Short of making me his Queen, which he could not do, while on my part I would be naught else than that to him, your father loved me so well that there was nothing I could ask that he would not have granted. He who detested all other women; he, the woman hater! It cannot be that his child will not spare my child. My only child, since his brother, Léon, is imbecile. Ah! I have but one; do not deprive me of that only one."
"Madame," the King replied, while still endeavouring to lift the unhappy Princess to her feet and while the tears streamed from his own eyes as he witnessed her tears falling. "I--I--it rests not with me. There are others to whom are confided----"
"Others," she wailed, yet still with some of her haughty contempt left in her tones. "Others. What others? De Louvois, who reeks of theroture. De Louvois the plebeian; La Reynie whose name should be Le Renard; that woman who weaves her toils----"
"Madame, silence! I command--nay, nay, I beg of you to be silent. Not a word of----"
"Ah! I am distraught. I know not what I say. Yet if you will not hear me nor have mercy on me, at least have mercy on my grief and sorrow. See--see--Louis de Bourbon--I kneel at your feet in supplication even as once your father knelt at mine, and--God help me!--you are as inexorable to me as I was to him; yet I kneel in a better, a nobler hope. Sire!" she continued in her misery. "Sire, look on me! If you will not pity me, pity my tears, my supplications; see how abject I am. I--I--Anne de Beaurepaire, who never thought to sue to mortal man. Ah! be not so pitiless, Louis! You! of whom it has been said that you are never wantonly cruel."
"Nor am I now," the King exclaimed, his face convulsed with grief and emotion. "It is not I, but France. Had Lou--the Prince de Beaurepaire--and I been simple gentlemen; had he but aimed his treacherous shaft against me and my life, then he might have gone in peace for the sake of our childhood together, for the sake of the noble Anne, his mother, whom," his voice sinking to a murmur, "my austere father could not refrain from loving. But it was against France. France and her ancient laws and rights; her throne; all that makes France what she is, all that makes your proud race--a race as proud as my own, or as the race of Guise, or Bretagne, or Montmorenci, or Courtenai--what it is. France, for which I stand here the symbol and representative; France which has but one other name--Bourbon."
"Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!" the Princess wailed. "As you are great, as you are Louis the Bourbon, be great in your pardon. Show mercy to a broken-hearted woman."
"If I might I would. But if I spare him, having spared none other who conspired against France, will France spare me? Will she pardon her unjust steward? And there are others. The Council, the great Ministers----"
"Yet," the Princess cried, "it is you who have said, 'L'Etat c'est moi'. You, whose 'Je le veux' none have ever dared to question and still live."
"Nevertheless," the King said, still very gently while sick at heart at being forced to so reply, "hedared----"
"And," she sobbed, loosing her grasp on his hand and arm as she fell an inert mass to the floor; "therefore must die."
After which she lay motionless, her superb grey hair, which, in her emotion had become dishevelled, making a white patch upon the rich, blood-red Segoda carpet.
Kneeling now by the side of the unhappy mother upon whose breast, as she had said, he had so often been soothed in infancy, the King endeavoured in every way to restore her to sensibility and raise her from the position to which she had fallen. He kissed and rubbed her hands again and again; he whispered words of comfort and affection into her now deaf ears, and said all that one might say to comfort a broken-hearted woman, except that which alone might have called her back to sense and happiness--a promise of pardon for her son.
After which, finding that it was impossible to restore her by his own efforts, the King left the room quietly, went back to his bedroom and, summoning the Marquis de la Ruffardière to assist him, returned to the blue antechamber.
"Poor lady," he said, looking down at the Princess, "she has swooned at learning that there is no hope of pardon for him. Can we convey her to the rooms the Intendant has set apart for her?"
"Doubtless, sire, if your Majesty will permit yourself----"
"Permit myself! In my childhood she has often rocked me to sleep in her arms!"
"Perhaps one of her women, sire, might also assist----"
"When we have conveyed her to her apartments. But, first, go out to the corridor and bid the guard retire for a quarter of an hour. There must be no prying eyes to witness the weakness of the noble Anne de Beaurepaire."
So, when the Marquis had obeyed this order and bidden the sentries leave the principal corridor till he summoned them back, he and the King lifted the Princess gently from the floor and conveyed her to the rooms set apart for her, after which they handed her over to the care of the women she had brought with her on the long, swift journey from Nancy.
Followed by the Marquis, the King returned to his bedchamber and prepared to retire, the assistance of the former being now accepted. Yet, while Louis was gradually undressed by De la Ruffardière who removed his shoes and stockings as well as his clothes, since thepremier valethad long since departed on receiving his dismissal for the night, the King sighed heavily more than once; and more than once, too, the Marquis observed that the tears stood in his eyes. And, once also, he murmured to himself: "It is his last night on earth. His last night. Stay with me," he commanded as, after rising from his prayers, he prepared to get into his bed. "Stay with me, De la Ruffardière. You can sleep here on the lounge or in the antechamber, can you not?"
"Sire, I will not sleep. Rather may I crave to be allowed to keep guard in the antechamber."
"Nay! nay! Sleep. Rest is needful to all. Extinguish all light, except the night-lamp. Good-night, De la Ruffardière."
"Good-night, your Majesty. God bless your Majesty and grant you a peaceful night's rest."
"Amen," the King said, sighing deeply.
When, however, the guard was being changed in front of the château, and the exchange of sign and countersign could be plainly heard by the Marquis who was lying wide awake on the lounge at the foot of the greatruelleof the King's bed, Louis spoke and called him by name.
"Here, sire," the other said, springing off the couch. "How fares it with your Majesty?"
"Sad at heart. Sad. Sad. De la Ruffardière, tell me frankly; here to-night and alone as we are--tell me as man to man--what is the character I bear with my people? Do they deem me a cruel ruler?"
"Ah, sire! The noblest King who has ever adorned a throne. Bountiful, magnanimous----"
"What," the king continued, scarcely pausing to hear the answer he knew must come from a courtier, "what is thought of De Beaurepaire's punishment? Am I deemed implacable?"
"Sire," the other said, hardly daring to answer him, yet forcing himself to do so, "if he should go free what shall be the reward of those who have never wavered in their loyalty to, and love of, your Majesty?"
"Ah," Louis said. "Ah, 'tis true."
After this, the King seemed to sleep, yet, ere the time came for him to awake and give the usual audience in bed to all the courtiers, he spoke to the Marquis a second time.
"You are a friend of De Courtenai?" he asked.
"I am, sire."
"Does he, do all of his family, regret the Byzantine throne they once sat on? Do they who were once Kings, they who are akin to the throne of France, regret their present poverty and lowliness?"
"They have never said so, sire, to my knowledge. They are content to be simple gentlemen. The men are plain soldiers, giving their swords to France, the women to rearing their children as children having the blood of De Courtenai in them. Sire,bon sang ne peut mentir."
"They should be happy, very happy," Louis murmured. "The throne they lost could not outvie the gentle, simple life, nor the absence of trouble, care and heartache. De la Ruffardière, pray God that none whom you love may ever attain to a throne."
It was, as the King had whispered to himself, De Beaurepaire's last night on earth, as it was also of those others. Of the woman he loved; of the vagabond who, bully though he might be, had been staunch and inflexible; of the old man who, the chief conspirator of all, was now to suffer the most ignominious of deaths.
In the chamber in the Bastille allotted to De Beaurepaire the prisoner sat now before the fire musing on what all would say when they knew of his end; of what his friends who had loved him well would feel, and of how his enemies, of whom he had so many, would gloat over his downfall. Naturally he thought also of the women who had loved him once and the women who loved him now, in this his darkest hour.
"The women who love me now!" he said to himself. "Who are they? Who? My mother and--and--Emérance. Emérance who is not fifty paces away from me, Emérance who dies by my side to-morrow, yet whom I may not see until, to-morrow, we stand on the same scaffold together. And then but for a moment ere the axe falls."
"Whom I may not see until to-morrow," he repeated. "Not until to-morrow."
And again he said to himself, "Not until to-morrow," while adding: "And there are so many long hours until three o'clock to-morrow!"
As though to corroborate this thought there boomed out the tones of the prison clock striking midnight, the sound being followed an instant later by the deeper boom of the great bell of Notre Dame and then by that of the other clocks in the city.
"Midnight," De Beaurepaire said. "Midnight. Fifteen hours yet of life, fifteen hours spent apart from her! And she here, close by. Ah! it is hard."
He rose from the chair he sat in and went across to the other side of the great fireplace where, in another chair, was seated the Père Bourdaloue reading his breviary. Some time before this the priest had prayed with him and would do so again at intervals during the night, while later--before the end came to-morrow--he would confess and absolve the condemned man as his brother priest would confess and absolve the others, with the exception of Van den Enden, who was resolute not to see either priest or minister of any faith. Now, however, as has been said, the good man read his breviary.
"Father," the condemned man said, standing before him and waiting to speak until he looked up from his book, "Father, help me to see her. I must see her ere we meet there. Below. Help me to bid her a last, a long farewell."
"To see her, my son! The woman who has brought you to this?"
"Nay! nay! Never. None has brought me to this but my own self; my own wickedness, my treachery and ambition. Above all, not she. Instead, her undoing lies heavy at my charge. Had she not loved me with a love passing the love of women, she might have gone free, have escaped. But--but--she grappled herself to me out of that great love and, as I fell, she fell with me. Let me see her once more. Here. To-night."
"What has this love of yours and hers been, Louis de Beaurepaire? The love that honours a woman in its choice, or the mad frenzy, the wild passion, the evil desires that sweep all boundaries and obstacles and laws aside even as the torrent sweeps aside all that stands in its way?"
"An honest love, heaven be praised. On my part the love of the captor for the poor maimed thing he has caught in his hand, and, even in bruising, soothes and comforts too. The love of one who cannot put aside that which, in capturing, he has thus come to love. Yet, further----"
"Yes. What?"
"Our love was not evil. For even as it quickened in our hearts we saw before us a pure, a nobler life that might, that should, be ours. If we had escaped from this our doom; had we never been taken, or, being taken, had we by chance been let go free--we should have wed. Our vows were sworn and deeply, too; they would have been kept."
"You would have kept them knowing what she was?"
"As she would have kept hers knowing what I was. What better am I than she? An intriguer, a traitor, even as she is anintrigante, a traitress; yet without her reasons, without her love of her own province as excuse, as extenuation. Had we wedded, our marriage would have but made us more akin and equal."
"If this is in your heart, the chance is still yours. Your vows may still be fulfilled. Louis de Beaurepaire, remembering who and what you are, remembering also who and what she is--as all learnt who were in the Arsenal at your confrontations--are you willing to make this woman your wife to-night?"
"Willing! To-night! Ay! willing a thousandfold. God help her! she has had no return for her attachment to such as I am; if this be an expiation, an atonement from me to her--even at this our last hour--it shall be hers. And--and--" he murmured so low that scarcely could the priest hear him, "for me it will be happiness extreme. To die by her side though only as her lover might have brought its little share of comfort; to die by her side--I her husband, she my wife--will make death happiness. Yet," he exclaimed, looking down suddenly at the priest from his great height, "can you do this? Can this be lawful? Without flaw or blemish?"
"In our holy Church's eyes? Yes."
"And in the law's eyes?"
"The law cannot over-rule us."
"Hasten then, father, to make us one."
"I will go seek the Lieutenant du Roi, yet it needs not even that. Alas! too often have I passed the last night in this place with other prisoners to make any permission necessary for what I do. Yet this I must do," he said, withdrawing the key of the door from his pocket, putting it in the lock and then opening the door itself.
And De Beaurepaire, observing, smiled grimly.
"I could not escape if I would, yet I have no thought of that," he said. "He who awaits at the altar steps the woman he loves seeks flight no more than I who now await her."
After he had heard the key turned in the lock outside, he sat down in his chair again and gave himself up to further meditation. Perhaps--it might well be!--he thought in those moments of all that he had thrown away, with, last of all, his life: perhaps he thought how he, who had once been the chosen comrade of the King, was now to meet his death for his treachery to that King. Above all he must have thought of the proud, handsome woman who was his mother; the woman who, haughty, disdainful of all others, had worshipped and idolised him. And she was not yet old, he remembered; in spite of the early blanching of her hair she was not yet fifty, and he had entailed upon her so bitter a shame that, henceforth, her once great life must be passed in grey, dull obscurity. Her life that had hitherto been so splendid and bright!
"Almost," he whispered, "I could bring myself to pray that God may see fit to take her soon. How shall she continue to live when I am dead, and dead in such a way; for such a sin?"
He thought also of others now, on whom, perhaps, in different circumstances, he would scarcely have bestowed a thought or memory.
He thought of Humphrey West whose death had been so treacherously attempted--thanking heaven devoutly, fervently, as he did so, that in this, at least, he had had no hand or knowledge; and he recalled, too, the gentle loving girl who was, as the Père Bourdaloue had told him only an hour or so earlier, to become Humphrey's bride within a month. That it was not in this man's nature to pray for the happiness of any human being, is not, perhaps, strange, remembering what his own existence had been; yet now, with more gentle, more humane thoughts possessing that nature it was also not strange that he should be able to hope their lives together would be long and pleasant.
"And," he said to himself, Pagan-like to the last, "had I served another as he served me, faithfully and honestly, as a friend, so would I, like him, have denounced that other as he denounced me when set upon and almost done to death by that other's myrmidons. He held the ace--he would have been more than man if he refused to throw it."
Of one other, however, he thought little and cared less. He had never loved the Duchesse de Castellucchio, beautiful as she was; he had regarded her only as a woman who might by a fortunate chance, if the Pope should prove yielding, be able to rehabilitate him in the eyes of the world--and able also to free him from the load of debt that bore him down. Able to assist him to regain the pinnacle to which by his birth and rank he was entitled, but from which by his own failings and errors he had been hurled headlong.
"Nor," he said, and once more he smiled bitterly, "did she love me. Has one of her family ever loved aught but himself or herself? But I served her turn, I enabled her to escape out of France and from her demoniac. While, had apis-allerbeen required, a De Beaurepaire might well have replaced a Ventura. Now she is safe in Italy and I am here. She should be content."
The key grated in the lock as the doomed man mused thus upon the woman whom he had helped to save from a hateful life; and the bitterness of his fate must stand as atonement for his thoughts of one who was far from being the hard, selfish creature he pronounced her.
A moment later the other woman, the woman he loved so fondly, was by his side. Behind her followed the Père Bourdaloue, who, after bidding two of the gendarmerie to remain outside until he called them, went to the farther end of the room and left the lovers as much alone as was possible.
"Louis!" Emérance exclaimed, as she drew near him. "Louis! Once more we are together. Louis! Louis! Oh! my love."
"Mon amour. Ma mie," he cried, clasping her in his arms, while, as he did so, he saw that, though her face was white--white as the long gown (tied round her waist with a cord) which she now wore, and in which to-morrow, nay, to-day! she would go to the scaffold--there was still upon that face, in those soft eyes, a look of happiness extreme. "Thank God it is so. And he," with a look at the priest at the farther end of the room, "has told you? We shall die, we shall go to our death together as man and wife."
"Nay," Emérance whispered, though as she did so her arms had sought his neck and enlaced it, "Nay, not as that. But----"
"Not as that! You--you who love me so--will not be my wife?"
"I am your wife. In heart, in soul, in every thought, in every fibre of my being. There is nought of me that is not you, that is not De Beaurepaire now. What would an idle ceremony, performed over us by him," with a glance towards the priest, "and witnessed by those soldiers outside, do for us? Could I love you more in the few hours that I should be your wife than I have loved you, not being your wife? Shall we sleep less calmly and peacefully in our graves to-morrow and for ever--yes, for ever!--because that ceremony has not been performed? Louis, there is no wedded wife in all this world to-night who loves her lawful husband more madly than I love you to whom no tie binds me. And--I was a wife once, and my husband beat and ill-used me, and I hated him. You are no husband of mine and I adore, I worship, you."
"But--but--once--we--spoke of marriage, of being wed. Of a life to be passed together."
"There is no life left to us to pass together. Only this hour, these moments--now. When we spoke of that wedded life which should, which might, be ours; when you thought of stooping from your high estate to marry such as I am, there was a hope for us. We might have escaped when we had failed in our attempt--succeed we never could!--and then have been together always. Always. Always. Now," and the soft, clear eyes were very close to the dark eyes of the man so near to her, "we may not be wedded but--I thank God for it--neither shall we ever more be parted. Together we have lived and loved for--how long? A month--six weeks--two months--ah! I cannot well recall. To-morrow brings us together for all eternity."
"You will not be my wife!" De Beaurepaire said again, his voice hoarse, lost in his throat. "You can be so--great--as to reject the one poor repayment I can make for your sweet, your precious, love?"
"Repayment! Does love need repayment? Can there be debtor and creditor in that? And--if so--why, then Louis, Louis,mon adore, have you not repaid? You--such as you--to me!"
"My children," the Père Bourdaloue said, turning round and advancing to them, "the night is passing. If you will be wed, now is the time. The Lieutenant du Roi granted you an hour together for that purpose, that hour is running through."
"Father," the woman said, advancing towards him, standing before him so white and pale, yet with, on her face, so calm, so happy a look that he could recall no other dying woman--even as she passed peacefully away surrounded by all who loved her and whom she loved--who had seemed as calm and happy as she. "Father, there is no need. We are wedded."
"Wedded!" he exclaimed. "Wedded! You are wedded?"
"Ay. As much as two need ever be who love each other as we love, who go hand in hand to their doom, to their grave; to that eternal parting which will be an eternal union. Take me," she said now, "back to my cell. To-morrow I shall come forth a bride."
"And you?" Bourdaloue asked, looking at De Beaurepaire. "Are you agreed?"
"As she will have it so let it be," De Beaurepaire answered.
"Come then," the priest said. "Come."
Following him, Emérance took two or three steps towards the door then, suddenly, she stopped and laid her hand on Bourdaloue's arm, although as she spoke her eyes were fixed upon her lover.
"Father," she said, "my life has not been all evil, yet--yet--God help and pity me!--it has not been that of an upright woman, but of one who has been a spy, a conspirator. Not that which my mother prayed it might be as she lay dying. But--if--if--there is aught of atonement for that life, it is that I freely, gladly, yield it up so that as I leave the world I leave it with him whom, of all men alone, I have loved."
A moment later she was back by her lover's side, once more her arms were around his neck, once more she was clasped to his heart.
"To-morrow. To-morrow. To-morrow, we shall be together," she whispered. "Ah!mon amour adoré, to-morrow I shall be yours only. To-morrow and for ever."
"You will be brave?" he murmured back. "You will not fear?"
"Be brave!" she repeated. "Brave! Why! what should I fear when you are by my side? When I have all I ask."
The crowd outside the Bastille had begun to form even before the dawn of the gloomy November day which was to witness the execution of the four principal conspirators in the Norman plot; the four conspirators whom alone, of many others of high and low degree, it had been thought advisable to bring to trial. This was because, amongst those others, were names of such importance that, coupled with the name of De Beaurepaire, they would have revealed the existence of so deep-rooted a conspiracy against France and the King as to absolutely threaten the existence of France as a monarchy, as well as the existence of Le Roi Soleil. Therefore, since justice was now to be done upon those four, it had been deemed the highest policy to ignore all others concerned, and thus veil in obscurity the wide-spreading roots of the wicked scheme.
By mid-day the crowd was so augmented that one-eighth of the population of Paris was calculated to be present; the mass of people was so closely wedged that any movement had become impossible. If women fainted from the pressure they were subjected to, they had to remain standing insensible or be supported by others until they recovered, since there was not room for them to fall to the ground. If infants in arms--of which, as always at any public "spectacle," many had been brought--fell or were dropped, it was in most cases impossible to recover them: several old as well as very young persons were trampled to death, and more than one birth took place amongst that crowd.
And still the mob continued to swell and increase until three o'clock, while some hundreds of persons helped to add farther to it long after the "spectacle" was over.
In front of the great door of the prison, above which was carved a bas-relief representing two slaves manacled together, a long scaffold had been erected on which were placed three blocks. Some short distance off was a small movable rostrum, or smaller scaffold, above which was reared a gallows with the rope hanging loosely from it. On this rostrum Van den Enden would later take his stand until, the rope being fastened tightly round his neck, the rostrum would be pushed from under his feet and he would be left hanging. Still a farther distance off was a brazier, the fire in which was not yet ignited. At three o'clock it would be lit and, into it, a huge bundle of papers would be cast. These papers were those which had been found in La Truaumont's possession after death, and contained not only innumerable letters and other documents dealing with the plot, but also his birth certificate and his parchment commissions andbrevets. As far as was possible his memory, as well as the records of his association with the conspiracy, were to be effaced for ever.
Early in the morning three sides of a square had been formed round the scaffolds and the brazier--the prison wall and the great door of the prison making the fourth side--by a large body of troops. These troops consisted of three lines, the innermost one, which was composed of several companies of the Regiment de Rouen, being so placed owing partly to the fact that the regiment happened at the moment to be quartered in Paris, and partly because it was thought well that its men should witness what had befallen those who had endeavoured to stir up rebellion in the particular province to which it belonged.
Behind these soldiers were those of the Garde du Corps du Roi under the command of De Brissac who, from dawn, had sat his horse statue-like. Behind this were the Mousquetaires, both black and grey.
"How slowly that clock moves," a sandy-haired, good-looking girl of the people said as, at last, the clock of the Bastille struck two and the final hour of waiting was at hand. "Have you ever seen this handsome Prince who is to die?" she asked, turning to a big, brawny man who stood by her side.
"Ay, often," the man, who was totally unknown to the girl, replied, looking down at her. "Often. I was a soldier myself until six months ago. And in the Garde du Corps. Are you an admirer of handsome men?"
"I have heard so much of his beauty. And of his loves. They say all the aristocratic women loved him."
"Vertu dieu!" the man said with a laugh; "I wonder then that he did not disfigure himself. One can be fed too full on love as well as other things,ma belle," he added with a hoarse laugh, while recalling perhaps some of his owngalanteries de caserne.
"There is one who dies with him to-day," a dark, pale woman struck in now, "whom they say he loved passing well, as she him.Dieu!what is sweeter than to die with those we love!"
"To live for them,bonne femme," the soldier replied, still jeeringly. Then, seeing that this woman's face had clouded with a look of pain, he said in a gentler voice, "Ah! pardon. I have not wounded you?"
"Nay. Not much. But I have loved and been left behind. I would I might have gone too."
"They say he and the woman and the old Jew who is to hang," a cripple exclaimed, "sought to kill the King.Oh-é! Oh-é!" the creature grunted, "I would I were tall enough to see the Jew swinging.Mon brave," looking up at the ex-soldier, "will you not lift me to your shoulder when they come out?"
"Ay! will I, and fling you at the Jew's head afterwards. If you miss him mayhap you will fall into the brazier. And, so, an end to you."
"Is there a brazier! And for the Jew! Oh! Oh! Oh! To burn him all up. Oh! Oh!" and the cripple, in his efforts to caper about, trod so on his neighbours' feet that they kicked and cuffed him till he was almost senseless.
"The Dutch fleet was off Havre a week ago," one old man remarked to another in solemn, almost awestruck, whispers. "Ah! if the Normans had been ready. If the enemy had landed. If France had been invaded. Oh,mon Dieu!"
"Pschut!" exclaimed the other old man, one of different mettle from his companion. "The Normans ready!Fichtre pour les Normans!There were none who had the power to cause a single village to rise. France might have slept in peace."
"Attention!" rang out the voice of the officer in command of the Mousquetaires a little while later, and, as it did so, the crowd roared like so many beasts of prey; then, gradually, yet quickly, too, the roar subsided into a deep, hoarse murmur, and an indescribable tremor, or movement, passed through the thousands present.
For, now, the great bell of the Bastille that had, in days past, so often sounded the tocsin over St. Antoine--and was so often to sound it again in days to come--was tolling slowly: the huge doors were open, they were coming forth.
Ahead of all walked some bareheaded and barefooted Carmelites chanting theSalve Regina: following them, the Governor of the Bastille and the Lieutenant du Roi marched side by side. Next, came the headsman and his assistants, masked, the former carrying his axe over his shoulder.
Behind them the condemned ones came forth. First, with the Père Bourdaloue by his side, appeared De Beaurepaire, superb and stately, his head bare. He was dressed all in black velvet but, underneath his outer coat might be caught the gleam of his handsomejustaucorps. Yet, noble as his presence was, there was missing from his face to-day the look of arrogance and haughty contempt that had hitherto been the one disfigurement of his manly beauty. Now, he walked calmly and solemnly and resigned, as one might walk who followed another to his grave instead of as one who, with every step he took, drew nearer to his own.
Behind him came the woman he loved, the woman who loved him so, the woman whose eyes were fixed upon him as he preceded her and who, it seemed to those who were in a position to observe her, would have drawn closer to him had it been possible.
But still there were the others. Fleur de Mai, big, stalwart, burly, marching with a firm, well-assured step; with an eye that seemed to roam in pride and satisfaction over the vast crowd that was assembled there to see them die; with lips pursed out as though in contempt of what he was about to suffer.
Last of all came Van den Enden, supported, almost dragged along, between two jailers, and muttering as he went: "An old man. So old. So old and feeble!"
That the crowd should make its comments even at such a moment of supreme solemnity was not to be doubted, and that those comments should come principally from the female portion of it was equally certain. The men, excepting only those of the more base and contemptible kind, were mostly silent while, perhaps, feeling within their hearts some satisfaction that the two principal sufferers of their own sex were representing that sex so fearlessly.
From the women there issued, however, almost universal sobbing and weeping, coupled with many exclamations on the splendid bearing of De Beaurepaire as well as the resignation and calm, placid beauty of his companion. "How pale yet brave she is," some said. "How happy she should be to die with him--by his side," said others.
All were now at the foot of the scaffold, Van den Enden going on to the gallows waiting for him, where, when the heads of the others were struck off, he would be hanged. Already the executioner's chief assistant had commenced to cut off the hair from the back of the head and neck of Emérance; another was tucking the long locks of Fleur de Mai up above his neck and tying it with a piece of cord, while the headsman, observing that De Beaurepaire's wavy hair was cut quite short behind, muttered that "it would not interfere."
"Has monseigneur a piece of this to spare?" he asked, pointing to the dark ribbon with which De Beaurepaire's jacket was tied in front.
"Nay," the doomed man said quietly, while uttering the words which were long afterwards remembered and, when repeated to his mother, brought some solace to her bruised heart. "Nay. Bind me with cord. He Who never sinned was thus bound; shall I go to my death better than He?" Then, putting his purse into the man's hand, he said: "Strike quick and hard. Also be merciful to her," turning his eyes towards Emérance as he spoke.
"Never fear," the man said under his breath.
By this time the others were ready.La toilette des mortswas made for all. The hair was now all cut away from the neck of Emérance; the executioner had gently turned down the collar of her white robe so that her neck was bare to her shoulders, her wrists were tied together behind. As regards Fleur de Mai, he also was prepared and stood calmly regarding the enormous concourse of people, as though endeavouring to discover among it some friends or acquaintances who might be able to testify how he had died. Later, when the executioner was interrogated by La Reynie as to the events of that day, the man stated that Fleur de Mai hummed a tune as he was being made ready.
It had been ordained that De Beaurepaire's head was to fall first, Fleur de Mai's the second, and that of Emérance the third, and, though the latter had pleaded against this refinement of cruelty to a woman, she was told that her prayer to be executed first could not be granted.
And now the time had come.
With a touch of his hand, a glance of his eyes through the hideous mask he wore, the executioner motioned each to their respective blocks. Fleur de Mai was placed before the outer block on the right of the scaffold, Emérance before the extreme one on the left, De Beaurepaire between them.
"Altesse," the headsman whispered. "It is the moment."
Amidst a silence such as perhaps no crowd--perhaps no French crowd!--had ever before maintained, De Beaurepaire turned towards the woman he had learnt to love so fondly.
"Adieu," he whispered, bending down to her so that, for the last time in life, their lips met--embrace they could not, since their hands were tied behind their backs. "Adieu for ever,ma adorée."
But from her lips as they met his, the word "Adieu" did not proceed, but, instead, the word "Wedded." As she spoke he saw that she smiled at him.
Advancing now towards the block, he was about to kneel by it; with a sign from his eyes he signalled to the executioner's assistant to give him his hand to assist him in doing so, when, to his astonishment, as well as to that of all in the vast concourse, De Brissac's powerful voice rang out on the dense silence. From his lips were heard to issue the order: "Stop. Defer your task. Proceed no farther in it as yet."
As he thus commanded, his eyes, glancing over the head of the crowd from where he sat above them on his horse, were directed towards a man clad in thesoutaneof a priest, one who was frantically waving a paper in the air. A priest who was seated by the side of the coachman on the box of one of the royal carriages.
"What does this mean?" De Beaurepaire asked in a hoarse tone, while, as he did so, his eyes were directed towards Emérance who had reeled back as she heard De Brissac's stern command and was now supported by one of the monks who had followed the condemned on to the scaffold. In that look he saw that she was white as marble, that her eyes had in them a strange unnatural glance, a glance perceptible even through their half-closed lids.
"Has the King relented at the last moment?" De Brissac muttered to himself. After which he cried to his men: "Make way through your ranks for the Reverend Father. Let him approach at once. It is," he whispered to the officer nearest to him, "the King's Confessor."
This order was easily to be obeyed in so far as the troops were concerned, but more difficult of accomplishment as regarded the crowd behind them. Nor--since it must be told!--was the majority of that crowd very willing to see any interruption ofle spectacletake place. They had stood here since the November dawn had broken, wet, cold and foggy to observe three men and a woman die, and now, it would appear, they were to be baulked of their sport.
Moreover, there was happening to them that which has always been, and still is, obnoxious to a large multitude of Parisians gathered together, either for their amusement or for the gratification of a sickly, a neurotic curiosity. The troops were dominating them; they were being dispersed, pushed away at the very moment when the great tableau was to have been presented to their gaze. Slowly backing their horses, the troopers of the Garde du Roi and of the two corps of Mousquetaires were driving back, and, above all, parting the mass of spectators; in a few moments the closely serried gathering was split apart--the priest escorted by some of the men of the Regiment de Rouen was nearing the steps of the scaffold.
"It is an infamy," many in the great gathering muttered. "Has the Splendid one become a Nero?" exclaimed others. "It is torture to them and an insult to us," said still more. "In what days are we living?" While one or two exclaimed, "It has never been done before."
"You are wrong, my son," the priest said, overhearing this last remark and turning round to look at one of the speakers. "I myself have stood on the scaffold and seen a man reprieved, set free; a man to whom I had already given the last absolution. And your mother could not have paid for you to learn the history of your own country. Did you never hear of Saint Vallier, father of Diane de Poitiers, who was spared as he stood on the scaffold through her prayers to the King, even as this man is saved from death--but death alone--through the prayers of his mother to our King?"
"His mother!" many of the dispersed assembly muttered now, a different chord struck by that word so sacred to all French. "His mother. Ah!Grand Dieu, c'est autre chose. His mother has saved him! The King has a heart within his bosom.Vive le Roi!"
By now the priest was upon the scaffold, the paper he had waved in the air was in the hands of the Lieutenant du Roi, who was scanning it hurriedly, A moment later he turned round to some of his warders and said: "Remove the Prince de Beaurepaire. His life is spared. To-morrow he goes to----"
"Spared!" De Beaurepaire exclaimed. "Spared, to go where? To imprisonment for life, doubtless. I will not have it so, not unless her life is spared too," and, as he spoke, he turned to where he knew Emérance was.
As he did so a hoarse cry broke from his lips, and, all bound as he was, he struggled towards her. What he saw had struck a more icy chill to his heart than the approach of his now avoided death. Upon his knees was the monk, on one arm he supported the form of Emérance; with the hand that was free he held the Cross above her.
"Emérance, Emérance. My love, my love," De Beaurepaire cried. "Emérance. Ah! speak to me."
But the woman's lips did not move. They would never move again.
"She is dead," the monk said, looking up. "She died but a moment ago. As the holy father mounted the steps."
"Dead," De Beaurepaire wailed. "Dead! Gone--and I am here. Emérance is dead! Without me! Gone without one word to me. I will not believe it. It cannot be."
"Not without one word," the monk replied. "As she died I heard her whisper 'Louis' once. A moment later she murmured 'Saved'. Be content, my son, she is at rest."