THE DAY OF GLORY HAS ARRIVED
“Well now,” said he who had once been the Marquis Egmont de St. Angel,
but who now called himself Colonel Egmont, addressing Diane, “here I
find you, my very proper young lady, in bad company. How long have you
been down here living with these two men?”
“Nineteen days,” answered Diane, coming a little closer to Egmont and
fixing her eyes, sparkling with rage, upon him. “Nineteen days ago
these two men came here wounded. I have lived in this place with them
ever since--do you understand?”
“Perfectly well,” responded Egmont with an elaborate bow. “Now they and
you shall share the fate of the enemies of the Commune. Come with me,
all of you.”
He turned and climbed the narrow stone steps again, followed by Diane
and Jean and François and old Marie. The mob in the garden had already
begun to drink the champagne, and they were so keen to get into the
cellar that they scarcely allowed their commander to come up with his
prisoners.
“Here,” said Egmont, calling to some National Guards already drunk and
trying to get drunker, “find a cart to take these prisoners to the
Mazas prison.”
Not the slightest attention was paid to this order until Egmont,
drawing his pistol, covered half a dozen National Guards, who then,
with champagne bottles tucked under their arms, surrounded Diane and
Jean and François. Then Egmont sent one of them to stop a cart rumbling
by.
“I can’t trust these fellows,” said Egmont, stroking his mustache; “I
shall have to go with you, myself, to see that you are landed safe in
the Mazas just around the corner. As for you, Mademoiselle, do you
remember the blow you struck me in the face six years ago?”
“With the greatest pleasure,” responded Diane sweetly; “I have never
thought of that blow without a thrill of joy.”
“Very well,” replied Egmont, smiling, “perhaps you have not found out,
in your retirement with these gentlemen, what has happened to women who
are the enemies of the Commune? Twelve Dominican sisters disappeared a
week ago. They have never been heard from, and never will be. Now, I
intend to make you pay for that blow, not once, but a thousand times
over.”
“But you can’t deprive me of the satisfaction I have had all these
years in the thought that I struck it,” was Diane’s response, while
François remarked:
“I always thought that you, my Marquis of the Holy Angels, were a cad
and not a gentleman. Now I know it.”
At this, Jean, who had said nothing, cast a warning glance at Diane and
François.
“I know what you mean by that look, Jean,” said Diane, carefully
smoothing her hair. “But prudence is of no use when you are in the
tiger’s clutch--or rather the rhinoceros--for this fat, ugly creature
looks more like a rhinoceros than a tiger. He means to murder us all,
and will do it, no matter how polite we might be. Dear me! I really
am not properly dressed for a drive through the streets. No hat--no
gloves--no parasol.”
Jean sighed heavily for her, but François only grinned.
“I declare, Skinny,” he said, “I believe you really are a descendant of
the Oriani family of ancient Rome. You have such a glorious spirit.”
“Oh, no, I am not,” answered Diane, with a demure smile. “My father was
only the village hatter. Like Napoleon, I am the first of my family.”
“Come you,” cried Egmont, “and bundle into the cart. I shall go with
you for the pleasure of your company.”
Then they were all thrown into a cart, and a National Guard, less drunk
than the rest, took the reins, while Egmont sat on the tail-board,
laughing and jeering at his prisoners.
The night sky was of a frightful crimson, while a gigantic blanket of
black smoke many miles in length lay over the city which was blazing
on both sides of the river that ran red like blood. On the spot where
Diane and Jean had sung La Marseillaise ten months before was a
great blazing pyre, the Palace of the Tuilleries, and a ring of huge
buildings for miles on either side were sending up enormous masses of
smoke and flames. The heat in the May night was terrific, and the smoke
was like the smoke of hell.
Jean, who had said nothing, spoke a word to Diane.
“Remember,” he said, “we can die but once.”
“I know that,” responded Diane. “And after all, I have found out one
thing before I die, and that is, how much I love you.”
Besides the tumult that raged around them, the noise of the heavy-laden
cart traversing the streets was great, but Diane, accustomed to raising
her voice so it could be heard afar, could yet be heard clearly. She
turned toward Jean with ineffable tenderness in her voice and smile,
while the Marquis Egmont de St. Angel heard every word.
“I think I always loved you, Jean, but after I came to Paris and saw
the other men, and compared them with you, then I fell in love with
you. Don’t you remember last July, the first time you came to my house
with me, what I said to you in the garden? I meant it every word. I
want you to love me in the way that I love you.”
Egmont, raising his hand, struck Diane’s white cheek a hard blow.
“That,” he said, “for the blow you gave me and for your boldness, you
shameless creature, toward this man.”
Jean raised his foot and gave Egmont a kick which knocked him off the
tail-board and sent him spinning to the street. He got up and dusted
his clothes, and, smiling, climbed back into the cart.
“Wait,” he said, “see who wins the game of life and death. As for you,
Diane, you shall pay for the kick as well as the slap.”
“Really, my dear Marquis of the Holy Angels,” said François in his
musical drawl, “you make me ashamed of our class. These people are very
humble, but their manners are better than yours.”
Egmont laughed, and his eyes, filled with the savage joy of a murderer
who can murder in safety, were fixed with amused contempt on François.
The noise in the streets grew deafening. The cordon was being tightened
every moment around the Communards. They were being driven in from
every quarter, and a great mass of drunken, shrieking, howling,
laughing, singing men and women choked the streets.
When the cart reached the prison of the Mazas, the way was blocked by
a crowd surrounding a group of drunken women dancing, and shrieking as
they danced. As Egmont and his three prisoners got out of the cart,
Egmont said to Diane:
“Come now, tuck up your skirts and dance like those ladies.”
“No, I thank you,” sweetly responded Diane, “I am not a dancer, but a
singer, and I am not in good voice to-night.”
“Then follow me,” said Egmont.
They followed him into the great, gloomy prison, and a jailer led
them into a long corridor with iron doors. There were several vacant
cells, and in the first one François was thrust. Before the door closed
upon him, he caught Diane’s hand, and suddenly, without the slightest
premonition, burst into passionate weeping. She had seen him always
laughing, joking, drinking, fighting, dancing, and singing, but never
before, weeping. Even Egmont was stunned into silence at this strange
burst of grief. In a moment or two François had recovered himself, and
with an actor’s command of countenance, his face suddenly shone with
smiles.
“You see, Diane, it’s rather hard to say good-by to you after all we
have been through together, and then not seeing you for so many years,
and being nursed and tended by you in the cellar. I think it’s those
infernal wounds that have weakened me.”
“Why, François,” answered Diane, “now I come to think of it, you were
always kind to me. You taught me all my stage tricks, and always let
me take the curtain calls, and when I was in a hurry to get to the
theatre, you often helped me wash the dishes; and when we were living
on the boat, you carried many heavy parcels back and forth for me,
and had always been good-natured and laughing and joking. After all,
whether we are to live or whether we are to die, we shall meet again.
Good-by, dear François.”
Diane leaned her cheek toward François, who kissed it.
“By the way,” said, Egmont, himself once more, “an old friend of yours,
the Bishop of Bienville, is a fellow-lodger in the same corridor. The
old scoundrel got caught in Paris, and we nabbed him as an enemy of the
Commune. I think the order for his shooting is already given, but you
won’t be far behind him, I can promise you.”
With that, the jailer thrust François back into a cell, and Egmont
marched ahead, his two prisoners in the middle and a couple of armed
guards behind.
When they reached a room which Egmont called his quarters, he very
politely ushered Diane and Jean into it and closed the door. The armed
guards remained outside, but Egmont notified them when he gave two raps
on the floor with his heel that they were to enter.
“Now,” said he to his prisoners, addressing them both, “this young
woman once treated me with great scorn. I tell her, and I tell you,
Jean Leroux, that you shall be shot anyhow, and so shall Mademoiselle
Diane Dorian, unless she agrees now and here to become my mistress.”
Neither Diane nor Jean turned pale. They had lived through so many
horrors in the last frightful ten months, that they had come to regard
terrible catastrophies as the every-day incidents of life.
Jean fixed his eyes on Diane, who turned to him with a radiant smile.
“You see, Jean,” she said, “how little this wretch knows me! I would
rather die ten times over than be his mistress. People are dying all
around us all the time, and we shall go anyhow, a little sooner or a
little later, and it doesn’t matter, particularly as you are to go too.”
“Certainly,” replied Jean with equal coolness. “You never were a
coward, Diane, and most women, I think, would die rather than become
this man’s mistress. As for myself”--Jean snapped his fingers in the
air--“I have been looking death in the eye for ten months. It isn’t so
bad, I assure you.”
Egmont, looking at them, flew into a maniacal rage. He reviled them,
using horrible language. He cursed them; he laughed at them like a
fiend. His revenge was not complete, because he could not conquer their
souls and destroy their courage as he could kill and mutilate their
bodies.
Two raps on the floor brought the guards.
“Take this scoundrel,” he said, “and put him in a cell. Lock this woman
up. Twenty-four hours will see the end of all of them.”
“Have courage, Jean,” cried Diane, as she walked away between her
jailers. “I promise you to die before I become the mistress of this man
or any other man.”
The next day at noon a shuffling procession of a jailer and two
National Guards opened the door of François’ cell, and walked in. The
jailer, a good-natured ruffian, read the name and number written on the
door, and then said to François:
“You, Jean Leroux, are to be shot at six o’clock this evening.”
“All right,” answered François, cheerfully. “I ask one thing--I should
like to see the Bishop of Bienville, who is in this corridor. He can’t
help me to escape, he is too fat, but I should like to see him.”
There are as many kinds of murderers as there are murders, and the
jailer in this case was an amiable murderer.
“I must take you to another cell,” he said. “On the way you can stop
long enough to make your confession if that is what you want, you
superstitious fool, to the fat old fellow from Bienville.”
“Thank you very much,” answered François; “I thought to myself the
first time I saw you yesterday, ‘He is an obliging person.’”
“Then come along with me now,” said the jailer.
François got up nimbly, in spite of his wounded leg, and followed the
guard along the corridor, chatting agreeably with him.
“I swear,” said the jailer when they got to the Bishop’s door, “I am
sorry such a pleasant fellow as you is to be shot.”
“If you could only have known me in my past days, and seen some of my
juggling tricks and heard me sing, you would be sorrier still,” replied
François, affably. “You are quite a decent fellow, and if circumstances
had permitted, I should have been glad to cultivate your further
acquaintance.”
The jailer laughed, and unlocking the door of a cell, opened it,
saying:
“Half an hour is all I can give you.”
François found himself in the cell with the Bishop, and the door locked.
The Bishop was not so stout and ruddy as he had been, but pinched and
sallow, for he had been prisoner for a month. He was, however, just as
glad to see François, and kissed him on both cheeks.
“Now, your Grace,” said François, squatting on the cot, and refusing to
take the only chair in the cell, “I have no time to sing the old songs
for you. I have only time to do what you often urged me in the old days
in Bienville. That is, to confess.”
“Heaven be praised!” piously responded the Bishop; “I always told my
brother, the General, and Mathilde that you were really an excellent
person, and that some day you would become a penitent.”
“I have not much time to lose,” said François, “as I am to be shot at
six o’clock this afternoon. By the way, what has become of the General
and Mathilde? I always hated her.”
“My brother is in a Prussian prison. Mathilde is, I suppose, still
at Bienville. I wish the next bishop joy of her if he gets her for a
housekeeper. For I hardly think that I shall ever leave Paris alive.”
“It has indeed become a cursed place,” replied François. “I never
thought that I should weary of Paris, but I assure your Grace I shall
be glad to get out of it on almost any terms, even being shot. But as I
have only a half hour in which to confess the sins of thirty years, I
think I had better begin.”
François went down on his knees, and began a rapid confession of many
and grievous sins. The last item was:
“And I propose to tell a lie and to say that I am Jean Leroux, for whom
I am mistaken and numbered and put down in a book, and to be shot in
the place of Leroux, an excellent fellow and an old comrade of mine,
who is loved by a woman whom I love. So I think it is better to tell
the lie and to die in the place of Leroux.”
The Bishop, who had been leaning back, quietly listening with closed
eyes to the most remarkable confession he had ever heard, sat up
straight and looked sternly at François.
“I shall not permit it,” he said. “It is suicide.”
“But your Grace can’t help yourself,” responded François, still on his
knees. “It was told you in confession, and you are not permitted to
reveal the secrets of the confessional either to save your own life or
anybody else’s life.”
The Bishop fell back in his chair, his good-natured, sallow, pinched
face grown more sallow.
“I can refuse to give you absolution,” he said.
“But if a man dies to save the life of another man, he is absolved
by his blood,” said François, triumphantly. “You see, I am a better
theologian than your Grace.”
The Bishop leaned forward, and, opening his arms, drew to his breast
the kneeling François.
“You will be absolved,” he said. “Make a good act of contrition, and
pray for me.”
The half hour was soon over, but long before that François had
finished his confession, and he and the Bishop were chatting together
pleasantly, and even laughing.
When the door was opened, and the time came for the last farewell, they
kissed each other on the cheek affectionately.
“Thanks for all your kindness,” said François, “and make my apologies
to Mathilde for all the trouble I gave her. Now, your Grace knows that
I am a true penitent.”
“I think,” replied the Bishop, smiling and blinking, “that I stand no
more chance of seeing Mathilde than you. We shall both be called upon
to make our apologies to the Most High, shortly. Meanwhile, pray that
when my time comes I may be as cool and unconcerned as you. I cannot
say that I would wish to live as you have lived, Monsieur François le
Bourgeois, as you call yourself, but I would certainly wish to die like
you.”
“Ah!” cried François, gayly. “Living is much more important than dying.
_Au revoir_ to your Grace. These Communards are such fools, they won’t
find out for a week that they got the wrong pig by the ear.”
With that, the door closed, and François marched off cheerfully with
his jailers to another cell in which he was to spend the three hours of
life that remained to him. The cell was much larger and brighter than
the one he had left, but cold and damp, in spite of the May heat and
the fiercely burning city.
Of this, François complained bitterly.
“What do you mean,” he said, “by putting me in this place where I shall
be certain to catch cold?”
The jailer, who had a rudimentary sense of humor, grinned at this.
“I have heard a good many condemned persons grumble at their fate, but
you are the first one I have seen who is afraid of catching cold three
hours before he is introduced to a firing squad.”
“My friend,” replied François, “I am a gentleman, although somewhat in
eclipse, and I want a fire made in this place, because I wish to be
comfortable as long as I live.”
The jailer, still laughing, opened the door and called to a colleague,
who brought a brazier and some charcoal, of which François secured
several lumps.
“I feel in the vein for poetry,” he said, “and I wish to write some
verses on this wall.”
While the jailer made a little fire in the brazier, François stood
in meditation before the whitewashed wall, writing a few words, then
rubbing them out with his sleeve, sometimes finishing a whole line
with many corrections, just as poets usually do.
He was so absorbed in his composition that an hour passed, and he was
surprised by the jailer bringing in supper at five o’clock. The jailer,
who was more and more disposed to be friendly with his prisoner,
laughed at the way in which François drew up his stool, surveyed the
rude fare, and turned up his nose at it.
In the crises of life, men revert to their original type; so François,
who called himself Le Bourgeois, suddenly and naturally became an
aristocrat, such as he had been thirty years before. He tasted some
potatoes, and then eyed them disdainfully.
“It isn’t the fare I mind, my good friend,” he said to the jailer, “nor
yet the austere simplicity with which you serve it, but these potatoes
are only half boiled, and will certainly make me ill. You should have
some care for the health of your prisoners.”
The jailer sat down and laughed with unrestrained enjoyment.
“I swear,” he said, “you are such an entertaining fellow, it is a
shame you are to be shot this afternoon.”
“So do I think,” responded François, attacking a morsel of very tough
beef, “and I am very much surprised, too; but it is the unexpected,
you know, which happens. Life is made up of one infernal blunder after
another.”
The jailer was so pleased with his prisoner, he put his hand in his
pocket and drew out a little flask of brandy.
“Here,” he said; “it isn’t much, but it is enough for a swig.”
“Now, this is the first satisfactory thing I have known you to do since
our acquaintance began,” said François, putting the flask to his mouth
and draining it dry.
“It was not indeed much,” he said, “but it was a great deal better than
nothing. It will give me inspiration to finish my verses. Excuse me for
hurrying through with this luxurious meal. I don’t suppose you would
serve any better to Lucullus himself.”
“There is no person by that name in this prison,” replied the jailer
with simple good faith, “and the same food is served to all. That poor
bishop has evidently been accustomed to a good cook, and prison fare
goes hard with him.”
The jailer found the conversation of his prisoner so agreeable that he
remained until François had finished the beef. The potatoes he refused
to touch.
“I am taking a great risk of indigestion in eating this tough meat,” he
said, “but it would be tempting fate to touch those potatoes.”
The jailer went out, repeating that he was sorry that six o’clock would
end their acquaintance.
Through the small, heavily barred windows looking westward, François
could hear the roar of the battle in the city, the distant, incessant
thunder of the guns, and see the great waves of flame and smoke from
the burning city drifting slowly in the stagnant air. A dun light that
was not day nor night lay over Paris, and, although it was but a little
after five o’clock, the whitewashed cell was dusky.
François continued cheerfully absorbed in his poetic composition. When
he reached the fourth line and made a period, he stood off and read his
verses with even more than the average satisfaction of a poet.
“There may be time,” he said to himself aloud, “to write another
verse, so here goes.”
He then began another line, and wrote three and a half lines more. At
this point, while François was deeply reflecting on a word, the key was
turned in the door which was flung open, and the jailer, with a couple
of deputies, was standing outside.
“Very sorry, sir,” said the jailer, “but the time is up.”
“I can only say,” replied François, “that your visit is most
inopportune. I am just in the midst of the best line in my poem. Like
everything else, the Commune annoys everybody. Seven o’clock for my
exit would not have hurt the Commune, and would have enabled me to
finish my poem. Listen, and if you have any poetic instinct, you will
agree that this is the finest thing since Rouget de Lisle.”
The jailer knew no more about Rouget de Lisle than he did about
Lucullus, and frankly said so.
“Great poets,” complained François, “are as scarce as seventeen-year
locusts--and when at last I develop into a great poet, the Commune
proceeds to shoot me. If I were a bad poet now, shooting would be too
good for me. Listen.”
Then standing a little way off, he read his poem with all the force
and feeling of an actor. These were the lines--ordinary enough, but
François’ reading made them respectable:
“We dream a turbid dream, all strife,
Full of sharp pain and ecstasy,
Pale ghosts of Love and Joy we see,
And call our dreaming, Life.
“We waken in the darkling hour,
The last before the dawn appears,
Shuddering, we see the Gate of Tears,
When lo! Immortal Light--”
“If I had a little more time,” said François, “I could finish the
thing.”
The jailer and his two deputies had but a dim understanding of
François’ verses, but his practised and musical voice, his eloquent
eyes, made them feel something, and the jailer, who had a streak of
humanity in him, suddenly began winking his small, dull eyes.
“Excuse me,” said François, putting on his hat, “for wearing my hat
in your august presence, but I am determined not to catch cold. And
remember, I am Jean Leroux, the descendant, as the name indicates, of a
family of Spanish hidalgos with large possessions in the Philippines.”
The jailer knew enough to understand that this was a joke, and he said,
trying to laugh:
“Oh, yes, Jean Leroux, I won’t forget you, and I shall tell everybody
who asks for you, ‘That fellow Leroux was a cool hand.’”
The jailer then produced a rope and proceeded to tie François’ hands
behind his back. He was gentle about it, and asked François if it hurt.
“No,” replied François, “but I hope it won’t take the skin off.”
Then began a march through the dim corridor at the end of which were
found half a dozen other unfortunates to be stood up against the wall
before a firing squad.
All were calm except an old priest, who said with a tremulous smile to
François, standing next him:
“I don’t see why I should tremble so, because I am already
seventy-seven years old, and could not live much longer.”
“Well, then,” answered François, “you should not mind a little thing
like a bullet, which will send you to heaven.”
“True,” said the old man, suddenly straightening himself up; “your
words are words of wisdom.”
“Now,” continued François, ranging himself by the side of the old
priest as the sombre procession marched two and two down the stone
stairs, “I have a great deal to answer for in the next half hour, but,
I tell you, I believe God is a good deal easier on His poor children
than men are to each other. The devil is a _sans culotte_. I chummed
with him, but I never mistook him for a gentleman.”
“Really,” said the old priest as he clumped feebly down the stairs worn
by the feet of many prisoners, “you do for me what I should do for you.”
The grewsome procession, headed and flanked and enclosed by guards and
jailers, passed through the courtyard until they came to a garden. On
one side was a long, lately opened trench.
Around them, afar off, was a gigantic circle of leaping flames. Over
them hung the greatest smoke bank the world ever saw, while the stench
of powder and blood polluted the soft May air. The place was full of
National Guards, many of them drunk, all of them bewildered, stunned,
and terrified by the cordon of fire and steel that was tightening
around them every hour. But they were murdering to the last.
When the procession was halted, and the prisoners were stood up against
the stone wall of the garden, the officer in command was the Marquis
Egmont de St. Angel. He grinned when he saw François.
“Here you are,” he said. “Come now, before we spoil your beauty, give
us a song and dance.”
“My regular price for a performance,” said François, “is five hundred
francs, and you probably have not that much about you. Besides,
although, like you, my Marquis Egmont of the Holy Angels, I have not
lived as a gentleman, unlike you, I mean to die as a gentleman.”
“Forward!” cried Egmont to the firing squad, which marched out and took
their places.
The old priest lifted his bound hands and blessed and absolved them
all, prisoners and murderers alike. Egmont laughed loudly at this,
but François bent his head. Then he raised it and fixed his bright,
dark eyes full on Egmont. The gaze seemed to fascinate, to accuse, to
condemn, and to terrify him. Just then, a sudden, sharp, vagrant wind
cleft the dun cloud of smoke, and a ray of pale splendor shone for
a moment on the face of François. Egmont, in desperation, to escape
the piercing eyes of François, shouted, “Fire!” A straggling volley
rang out, and François and the old priest and the other four men fell
forward prone to the ground. The little spark of life left their
mangled bodies and sped with ever increasing light and glory to the
other world.
The bodies were rolled in canvas, and thrown into the trench and
hastily covered with earth, but the jailer, who had seen it all,
observed that François was laid at the head of the trench.
Then was heard a quick, wild thunder of guns as if coming from the
ground under their feet, and from two streets they saw a disorderly
multitude of National Guards being driven before two red-legged columns
of soldiers. The jailer, who was not without sense, saw that all was
over. He ran back to the prison, raced up the stairs, and along the
corridor, unlocking every door. Some of the prisoners, he thought,
would save his life for that one act.
When he reached Diane’s door, it was the last, and he flung it wide.
She was standing calmly in the middle of the cell, and asked:
“Have you come for me?”
“No,” replied the jailer. “The soldiers are here; listen to the wheels
of the mitrailleuse down in the courtyard. I am trying to turn these
prisoners loose before a fire breaks out.”
The man’s face was deadly pale, and with his hand he wiped drops from
his dirty forehead. He had seen enough of the death of others not to
like the prospect for himself.
“Such a pity,” he mumbled nervously; “not ten minutes ago six prisoners
were shot, one of them an old, tottering priest, and another, Jean
Leroux, the bravest--”
“Jean Leroux, did you say?” asked Diane, coming up close to him.
“Yes,” replied the jailer, “an actor and singer, and Colonel Egmont,
as he calls himself now, though he was a marquis the other day, taunted
Jean Leroux thirty seconds before he was shot.”
“Where is Colonel Egmont, as you call him?” asked Diane, still calmly,
and without a tremor in her voice.
“God knows,” answered the jailer. “He was in the courtyard a moment
ago.”
Diane rushed by the jailer, and ran along the corridor, down the
stairs, and bareheaded into the courtyard. Egmont was there trying to
subdue the panic among his men and to induce them to make a last stand,
but no one heeded him. There was running to and fro and throwing down
of arms and the steady cracking rifles of skilled soldiers.
Egmont, cursing and swearing, turned, and was faced by Diane.
“So,” she said, “you have killed the man I love. Well, then, I can love
him just as much dead as when he was living. Did you not know that?”
“I know,” responded Egmont, “that women are great fools where men are
concerned. I didn’t know that Jean Leroux had been shot, but I am glad
of it. François le Bourgeois has just been put to sleep.”
Behind them a string of prisoners was trooping out. One of them, a big
man, came up and caught Diane around the waist and began dragging her
down the steps and into a blind alley that opened upon the courtyard,
for bullets were now flying and cracking, and a gun was being trained
down either street.
As Diane turned and saw that it was Jean Leroux whose arm was around
her, she suddenly became as a dead woman in his arms. She was so slim
that it was easy enough for Jean to pick her up and carry her into the
blind alley, where he was about to lay her flat upon the cold stones
when she revived and stood upon her feet, for Diane was a strong woman
and not given to fainting.
“They told me you were shot,” she said.
“Not yet,” answered Jean. “Come, let us find a cellar. We have been in
cellars before, and found them pleasant enough.”
The soldiers did not make as short work as they expected of Egmont
and his crew. For an hour, Jean and Diane, listening in a black and
slimy cellar, heard desperate fighting going on around them, the few
wretches who remained dying hard, like wild animals at bay. Half a
dozen smouldering fires were put out in that time, and the soldiers, at
their leisure and without burning anything, finally got possession of
the prison of the Mazas.
It was black night, but the sky was still illuminated with a dreadful
and appalling glory when Diane and Jean finally crept once more into
the blind alley. The soldiers were carrying off a badly wounded man,
cursing and denouncing all men and their Maker. It was he who was once
the Marquis Egmont de St. Angel.
The officer in command was surprised, if anything could surprise one in
those frightful hours, to see a woman in such a place. Diane showed an
admirable calmness, and Jean, as usual, had little to say. The jailer,
hovering around and seeing Diane, came up cringing.
“This lady will tell you, sir,” he said to the officer, “that I opened
the doors of all the cells as soon as I could, fearing a fire.”
“True,” answered Diane, “but why did you tell me that Jean Leroux was
shot?”
“Because he told me so himself,” cried the jailer, nervously. “When I
showed him the warrant for the shooting of Jean Leroux, he said, ‘I am
Jean Leroux,’ and he told me so a dozen times. The Bishop that was in
the prison knows the man who was shot. The Bishop has gone back to his
cell, because he has nowhere else to go until to-morrow, and if this
officer will let us, I will take you to him.”
Ten minutes later, Diane and Jean were in the Bishop’s cell, which was
lighted only by a lantern carried by the jailer, for prisoners were not
allowed lights.
“Will your Grace bear me out,” said the jailer, who had decided to
recognize the Bishop’s dignity, since the Commune was at an end, “that
the man who was shot this afternoon gave his name as Jean Leroux?”
“Did he?” cried the Bishop with animation, rising. “Well, then, that
man, whatever his name may be, or whatever his life may have been, died
nobly.”
A silence which the jailer could not understand prevailed in the
cell. The two men and the woman looked at each other with a strange
understanding and eloquence in the eyes of all.
The jailer, very anxious to make favor for himself, continued:
“If you will come with me to the cell that the dead man occupied, I
will show you his handwriting on the wall.”
Still silent, the Bishop walking heavily, they went down the corridor,
and the jailer opened the door of the cell, large and with many
windows, and swung the lantern so that its yellow gleam fell upon the
whitewashed wall.
The Bishop read the first two lines, and then his voice broke. Neither
Diane nor Jean took up the reading.
The jailer, still obsequious, chattered on.
“He was the coolest hand I ever saw, and making jokes until the very
last, complaining that he would catch cold if he didn’t wear his hat
on the way to be shot. He was very proud of his poetry, and complained
only that he had not time to finish the last verse.”
The Bishop, a man of simple mind, went down on his knees, and Diane and
Jean knelt, too. So did the jailer, who did not mind a little thing
like that in order to keep the good-will of his recent prisoners.
The Bishop made a prayer for the soul of François, known as Le
Bourgeois, a prayer that came from the heart of an honest man.
When they rose, Jean said to the Bishop:
“Now we know that François, whom the world reckoned a rapscallion, was
a better man than most. He stood up against the wall, and was huddled
into the trench in my place, not so much for my sake as for this woman,
whom, I know now, he loved well.”
“Is he then buried in the trench?” asked the Bishop. “He must be taken
out this night and given Christian burial.”
A heavy silence had fallen over the quarter where lately there had been
the shrieking of bullets and the thunder of guns. Still the city was
burning and shrouded in smoke, but the Commune was throttled and dead.
In finding François, everything was done quite as informally as
shooting him. The Bishop stood by the trench in the darkness, which was
lighted only by the jailer’s lantern.
The trench was the last one dug by the Communards, and was so hastily
filled that the dirt was easily thrown aside by a couple of soldiers
hired to do the work, Jean helping with a spade. They lifted François
out, looking strangely young and natural when the canvas in which his
body was wrapped was removed.
Diane was a little way off,--it was no sight for a woman,--but at that
moment she entered the garden in the dusk, carrying something in her
hand.
“Here,” she said, “is something in which to wrap François. I went to
the officer commanding at the jail, and told him that François was a
soldier of France who had died bravely, and that he was entitled to
have the tricolor laid upon him dead.”
It was a small flag, such as batteries of artillery carry in case they
should lose or be separated from their colors.
Diane, kneeling on the ground, wrapped François’ body in it, and then
leaned over and kissed his dead face.
There was a little half-wrecked church in the neighborhood, and
there François was carried by the soldiers, with the jailer and Jean
assisting, and followed by the Bishop. They laid him down on the
pavement before the desecrated altar, and there Jean watched by him the
whole night through.
The church was dark, although the windows were broken out and a shell
had made a great gaping hole in the roof, but the light of the moon and
the stars was quenched by the great pall of smoke that enveloped the
vast city.
Occasionally Jean would rise and go near the altar and look down at
François, mute and meek, for even François le Bourgeois was meek in
death.
Jean’s memory, travelling back slowly but accurately to the beginning
of things, recalled that François had loved Diane from the first, but
had been clever enough to keep the preposterous thing to himself. Well,
François was ever a mystery and a contradiction, and so his death
contradicted his whole life, and atoned for it.
* * * * *
Two weeks later, on a beautiful June morning, the Bishop had what was
left of François le Bourgeois interred close to the walls of the little
old cathedral of Bienville.
“Because,” said the Bishop, to Diane and Jean Leroux, who were
present, “when I die, they will put me in the church on the other side
of the wall, and I think I should like to be near François, for, to
tell you the truth, I loved him better than I ever acknowledged. He was
such an amusing fellow, you know, and I had known him when he was the
child of greatness and I was the boy who tended the cows. François and
I, having been together in our boyhood, will be close together at the
end, and I am sure when the last trump sounds, François will rise with
a joke upon his lips; otherwise, it would not be François at all.”
After François had finally been laid to rest, Diane and Jean went into
a side chapel of the cathedral, and were married by the Bishop. When
the ceremony was over, the new-made wife of Jean Leroux went out and
laid her bridal bouquet upon the grave of François; who called himself
Le Bourgeois.
Dramatic and all other rights reserved.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.