You could not see the soldiers’ faces, the smoke of that deadly volley
had rolled back and hung low, topping the living wall of steel and
flesh. But as it lifted, and they saw, by the light of the lamps in
the courtyard behind them, the bloody heaps of dead and wounded men
and women, mingled with children not a few, that made a shambles of
the thoroughfare, upon whose gory stones the drum lay flattened, a
hollow groan burst from the wavering ranks, and oaths and threats
were uttered. Some wept, others were violently sick, as dying
fellow-creatures crept to their feet to call them murderers, as fallen
torches hissed and sputtered in the blood that ran down the gutters and
lay in puddles on the pavement of the boulevard.
Confusion reigned in the Hotel, a Babel of voices clamored in the
courtyard that was seething with excited humanity and littered with
broken glass and bits of plaster knocked from the walls by ricocheting
bullets. As Dunoisse returned on foot, leading his limping, bleeding
mare through the dead and dying; de Roux, Colonel commanding the 999th,
a plethoric pursy _bon-vivant_, who had been dining with the unpopular
Minister in his private cabinet that looked upon the gardens, and
had been snatched from the enjoyment of an _entrée_ of _canard à la,
Rouennaise_ by the crash of the discharge, burst out of the Hotel,
thrust his way through the huddled ranks, bore down on the supposed
culprit, gesticulating and raving:
“Death and damnation! Hell and furies!----”
The purple, glaring Colonel struck his breast with his clenched hand,
and though the action smacked of tragedy, the napkin, still tucked
between the military stock and the gold-encrusted collar that had
preserved the gray-blue uniform field-frock from spatterings of soup
or splashes of gravy--no less than the silver fork the warrior yet
grasped, imparted an air of farce to his passionate harangue.
* * * * *
--“Madman!” he spluttered out; “what crazy impulse induced you to
give the word to fire?... Insensate homicide!--do you know what you
have done? Take his _parole_, Lieutenant Mangin. Not a word, sir! You
shall reply to the interrogations of a military tribunal, as to this
evening’s bloody work!”
Dunoisse, forbidden to explain or exonerate himself, saluted the
blotchy, wild-eyed Colonel, and gave up his sword to his junior. You
saw him apparently calm, if livid under his Red Indian’s skin, and
bleeding from a bullet-graze that burned upon his cheek like red-hot
iron. The leather peak of his red shako had been partly shot away, the
skirt of the tight-waisted gray-blue field-frock had a bullet-rent
in it. His throat seemed as though compressed by the iron collar of
the _garotte_, his heart beat as though it must burst from the breast
that caged it. But his head was held stiff and high, and his black
eyes never blinked or shifted, though his lips, under the little black
mustache with the curved and pointed ends, made a thin white line
against the deep sienna-red of his richly-tinted skin.
“Sacred thunder!... Return to your quarters, sir!”
De Roux, becoming alive to the napkin, plucked it from his bemedaled
bosom and, realizing the fact of the fork, whipped it smartly behind
his back. Dunoisse saluted stiffly, gave up his bleeding charger to his
orderly, saluted again, wheeled, and deliberately stepped out of the
radius of the Hotel gas-lamps, flaring still, though their massive
globes had been broken by ricocheting bullets, into the dense gray fog
that veiled the boulevard, where dimly-seen figures moved, groping
among the dead, in search of the living....
“The Monarchy will pay dearly for this act of criminal folly!... How
came he to give the order?” de Roux demanded.
And the subaltern officer, whose glance had followed the retreating
figure of Dunoisse, withdrew it to reply:
“My Colonel, he gave no order. A pistol-shot came from behind us--a
voice that was a stranger’s cried ‘Fire!’ The discharge followed
instantly, and the people fled, leaving their dead behind them.”
“Why did he not defend himself?” de Roux muttered, glancing over his
shoulder at the huge broken-windowed façade of the Hotel rising beyond
the imposing carriage-entrance, the enclosing wall and the gateway and
the tall spear-headed railings that backed the huddled figures and
lowering, sullen faces of the unlucky half-battalion.
“Because, my Colonel, you had ordered him to be silent, and to return
to his quarters. They are in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin. And he has
gone to them by that route.”
The Lieutenant’s sword pointed the direction in which the slim,
upright, soldierly figure had vanished. The Colonel growled:
“Why should he choose that route?...”
And the Lieutenant thought, but did not answer:
“Possibly because he hopes to meet Death upon the way!...”
Colonel de Roux, with clank of trailing scabbard and jingle of gilt
spurs, stormed up the double line of abashed and drooping red _képis_.
Interrogated, Monsieur the Captain in command of the company posted at
the eastern angle of the courtyard enclosure, gave in substance the
information already supplied.
“A pistol-shot came from behind us--a stranger’s voice gave the order
‘Fire!’--the discharge followed.... One would have said it was an
arranged thing. One would----”
“Chut!”
De Roux glanced over his gold-encrusted shoulder at the façade of
broken windows and chipped stone ornaments. The Captain, the same
lively de Kerouatte who had paid Dunoisse that ancient moss-grown debt
of three thousand francs upon the steps of Rothschild’s, continued, as
though the note of warning had not reached his ear:
“Madame de Roux would be able to corroborate. I saw Madame--previously
to the deplorable accident--in the Hotel vestibule, conversing with an
official in diplomatic uniform. She----”
“You are mistaken, sir!” said the Colonel, purple where he had been
crimson, mulberry-black where he had been purple, and screwing with
a rasping sound at his bristling mustache: “Madame de Roux is on
a visit to some young relatives at Bagneres. This perturbed and
disaffected capital is no place for a soul so sensitive, a nature so
impressionable as Madame’s. I have begged her to remain absent until
these disturbances are calmed.”
“A hundred thousand pardons! My Colonel, how idiotic of me not to have
remembered that I had the honor of meeting Madame de Roux upon the
Public Promenade at Bagneres only yesterday.... I ventured to accost
Madame, and asked her whether I could have the honor to convey any
message to you? Madame said ‘None,’ but added that she felt deliciously
well. And to judge by appearances, there is no doubt but that the air
of Bagneres agrees with her to a marvel!”
De Kerouatte reeled off this unblushing fabrication with an air of
innocence ineffably insulting, inconceivably fraught with offense. De
Roux could grow no blacker--against the congested duskiness of his face
his little red wild-boar’s eyes showed pale pink. They routed savagely
in the large blue orbs of the speaker, guileless and unruffled as
pools upon a Mediterranean shore, found nothing there; were wrenched
away.... He gobbled out the beginning of an incoherent sentence--and
then a messenger came with a hurried summons from the Minister, and
the Colonel clanked and jingled back into the Hotel, from the gates of
which pedestrians were unobtrusively gliding, while coupés, chariots,
barouches, and landaus, driven by nervous coachmen and with pale faces
peeping from their windows, or hidden behind their close-drawn blinds,
or concealed behind thick veils, or upturned collars of cloaks and
overcoats, were rolling hurriedly away.
The Colonel’s gilt spurs had not long jingled over the tesselated
pavement of the vestibule, before, from one of the smaller, private
waiting-rooms, the figure of a lady emerged. A tall, rounded shape
moving with a swaying supple grace “as though on clouds,” wrapped in
an evening mantle of sumptuous ermines, its snowy folds drawn close
as though its wearer were desirous of silencing even the whisper of
silken skirts; a thick veil of creamy lace wrapped about her head.
She beckoned with a little hand, that had great blazing rubies on its
slender finger and childlike wrist; and from a corner of the wide
courtyard, crashing over the broken glass and shattered fragments
of the carved stone wreaths that garlanded the high windows, came
a little, dark brougham lined with gray velvet, a vehicle of the
unpretending kind in which ladies who gambled on the Bourse were wont
to drive to their stockbrokers, or in which ladies who gambled with
their reputations were accustomed to be conveyed elsewhere....
A nondescript official, neither lackey nor porter, still mottled and
streaky in complexion from the recent alarm of the fusillade, emerged
from some unlighted corner of the tall portico into the flaring yellow
gaslight, followed the lady of the ermine mantle down the wide steps,
and with zealous clumsiness suggestive of the Police, pushed forward
to open the carriage door. Recoiling from his assiduous civility with
palpable uneasiness, the lady shook her veiled head. The intruder
persisted, prevailed; and in that instant found himself thrust aside by
the vigorous arm and powerful shoulder of a tall, heavily-built young
man in the chocolate, gold-buttoned, semi-military undress frock that
distinguished secretaries and _attachés_ of the Ministry.
“You presume, my friend!” said a voice the lady knew; and she rustled
to her seat, and settled there with nestling, birdlike movements, a
light brown, carefully-curled head bent towards her. The scent of
cigars and the fashionable red jasmine came to her with the entreaty:
“There may be peril for you in these streets.... Will you not let me
accompany you home?”
“In that coat.... Not for the world!” said a soft voice through
the intervening veil, and the warm perfumed darkness of the little
brougham. “You would expose me to the very peril you are anxious to
avert.”
“True!” he said, repentant. “I was a fool not to remember! Grant but a
moment and the coat is changed!”
“I would grant more than a moment,” she answered in a voice of strange,
ineffable cadences, “to the wearer, were the coat of the right color!”
A little trill of laughter, ending the sentence, robbed it of weight
while adding subtlety. But its meaning went to the quick. De Moulny
sighed out into the fragrant darkness:
“Oh,--Henriette! Henriette!”
She continued as though she had not heard:
“And I hope to see you wearing it--a little later on. Good-night, my
friend. Do not be anxious for my safety. My coachman will be cautious.
All will be well!” She added: “You see I am becoming prudent, rather
late in the day.”
He said, and his tone grated:
“They will mark the day in the calendar with red.”
A sob set the warm sweet air within the enchanted brougham vibrating.
“You are too cruel. I have been guilty of an act of unpardonable folly.
But who would have dreamed of so terrible a result?”
“Anyone,” he answered her in a bitter undertone, “who has ever set a
kindled match to gunpowder, or poured alcohol upon a blazing fire!”
The light from the carriage-lamps showed his white face plainly. His
hard blue eyes frightened her,--his forehead seemed that of a judge.
She shivered, and her whisper was as piercing as a scream:
“Or dared a woman to commit an act of rashness. Do not you in your
heart condemn me as a murderess? Your tongue may deny it, but your
eyes have told me that instead of rolling in a carriage over those
bloodstained stones beyond these gates, I should crawl over them upon
my hands and knees. Is it not so, Alain?”
Between the thick frosted flowers of her veil, her brilliant glance
penetrated. A cold little creeping shudder stiffened the hair upon
his scalp and trickled down between his broad shoulders like melted
snow.... Her breath came to him as a breeze that has passed over a
field of flowering clover. Her lips, as they uttered his name, stung
him to the anguished longing for their kiss.
“I have not condemned you!” he muttered. “Do not be unjust to me!”
She breathed in a whisper that touched his forehead like a caress:
“Had you reproached me, you would have been in the right. Well, dare me
again!--to denounce the person guilty of this massacre.... I am quite
capable of doing it, I give you my word!... Perhaps they would send me
to Ham!... Who knows?”
A nervous titter escaped her. She bent her head, trying to stifle it,
but it would have its way. She caught the lace of her veil in her
little white teeth and nipped it. De Moulny saw the creamy rounded
throat that was clasped by a chain of diamonds, swell within the ermine
collar. He knew, as he inhaled the seductive fragrance that emanated
from her, the exquisite allure of whiteness against white. Visions so
poignant were evoked, that he remained spellbound, leaning to her,
drinking her in. She continued, and now with real agitation:
“I shall see them in my dreams, those dead men in blouses,--if ever I
sleep again!... Ah, bah! Horrible!... Please tell the coachman home.
Rue de Sèvres.” She added before he withdrew his head to obey her:
“Unless I take the Prefecture of Police upon my way?...”
He retorted with violence:
“Be silent! You shall not torture me as you are doing!”
“Then,” she said, with another hysterical stifled titter, “pray tell
the coachman to take me home.”
He told the man, who leaned a haggard face from the box to listen; and
added a warning to drive through the most unfrequented streets and to
be careful of Madame. To Madame he said, hovering over her for another
fascinated instant before he shut the carriage door upon the warm
seductive sweetness:
“Remember, you are not to be held accountable for a moment of madness.
You never meant to pull the trigger. I swear that you did not!”
He drew back his head and shut the door. The window was down, and he
looked in over it to say again: “Remember!” A whisper caught his ear:
“The pistol.... Where is it?”
He touched himself significantly upon the breast.
“I have it here. I shall keep it! You are not to be trusted with such
dangerous things, impulsive and excitable as you are.”
“Dear friend, such weapons are to be bought where one will, and those
who sell them do not inquire into the temperament of the buyer. Tell me
something, Alain!...”
He said in the passionate undertone:
“I love you to madness!... Henriette!...”
“Ah, not that now, dear friend, I beg of you!”
“Henriette, I implore you”
A small warm velvet hand alighted on de Moulny’s mouth. He kissed it
devouringly. It was drawn away, and next instant the sweet, sighing
voice launched a poisoned dart that pierced him to the marrow:
“Tell me, Alain! If I pulled the trigger of the pistol in a moment of
madness, were you quite sane when you cried out ‘Fire!’?”
She pulled up the window as de Moulny, with a deathly face, fell back
from it. The coachman, taking the sound as a signal, whipped up the
eager horse. The little brougham rolled through the tall gateway into
the frosty fog that hung down like a gray curtain over the bloody
pavement, and was swallowed up in the mad whirlpool of Insurrection, to
be cast up again on the shores of the Second Republic of France.
* * * * *
Follow, not the furtive little brougham, but Dunoisse, rejected of
Death, perhaps because he courted the grim mower.... Follow him through
the populous fog to the corner of the Rue Lafitte, where the scattered
units of the shattered column of bloused men and wild-eyed women had
assembled in front of the Café Tortoni, occupying the angle between
this street and the boulevard.
A bearded man, the same who had carried the Red Flag, was addressing
the people from the steps of the Café. He had been wounded, the blood
dripped from the clenched hand he shook above his head, as he denounced
the perfidy of Ministers, the ingratitude of Kings, and the blood-lust
of the Army, who for gold spilled their brothers’ lives. A sullen roar
went up at each of his phrases, the vast crowd of listeners about his
impromptu rostrum heaved and billowed, and whitened with furious faces
constantly tossed up, like patches of foam upon a sinister sea.
Dunoisse, like a striving swimmer, battled in the muddy waves of that
same sea, in the endeavor to reach the steps where raved the orator.
It was too dark for the owners of those bodies between which he forced
his way to distinguish that he was in uniform, and, so, realizing his
desperate determination, they aided him.
But when at last he gained the steps, and the mingling glare and flare
of the oil-lamps and the gas showed up the loathed gray-blue and red of
the Line--though the Staff shako bore no number to identify its wearer
as an officer of the regiment that had fired upon them--the cry that
went up from all those hot and steaming throats was as the howl of
ravening wolves:
“Murderer! Accursed! Back to your corps! Down with the Ministry! Down
with the Line!”...
A hundred hands, some of them stained with red, thrust out to seize
Dunoisse and tear and rend him. A hundred voices demanded his blood in
expiation, his life for all those lives spilled on the paving-stones of
the Boulevard des Capucines....
“Take it if you will!” cried Dunoisse at the fullest pitch of his clear
hard ringing voice, “but let me speak!”
The flaring lamps threw pale patches of light and black patches of
shadow on his face, but there was no fear there. He snatched off the
bullet-pierced shako and showed them the peak that had been partly shot
away; tugged at the Staff epaulet hanging by a waxed thread or two;
lifted the full skirt of the tight-waisted gray-blue field-frock and
showed the bullet-holes in the cloth....
“What is it to me what you do?” he cried. “Death comes to all sooner
or later. But upon the honor of a gentleman!--on the parole of an
officer!--I gave no order to fire. The shot came from behind! The
voice that cried ‘Fire!’ was not mine. I swear it upon the faith of a
Catholic!”
This was not a popular asseveration. The voice of the speaker was
drowned in execrations:
“Ah, malefactor! Assassin! Down with him! Down with the priests! Death
to the Army! Long live Reform!”
His voice was no longer audible.... He made signs, entreating a
hearing; the bellowing, hooting, yelling redoubled. Stones flew,
banging on the shutters of the restaurant, denting its barred and
bolted doors, smashing unshuttered upper windows. A man with a musket
leaped on the steps, and leveled the loaded weapon; the unfortunate
young officer looked at him with a smile. Death would have been so
simple a way out of the _cul-de-sac_ in which Dunoisse now found
himself. For if the People would not believe, neither would the Army.
He was, thanks to this cruel freak of Fate, a broken, ruined man.
Perhaps his face conveyed his horrible despair, for the fury of the
crowd abated; they ceased to threaten, but they would not listen, they
turned sullenly away. And the bearded man who had carried the Red
Flag, tapped him on the epaulet, made a significant gesture, and said
contemptuously:
“Be off with you!”
Dunoisse, abandoned even by Death, looked at the speaker blankly. He
was burnt out; the taste of ashes was bitter in his mouth. His head
fell upon his breast and the world grew dim about him. There was a
cloud of thick darkness within his brain, compared with which the
frosty fog of that February night was clarity itself.
Then the fog lifted, and he was alone. The boulevard was deserted, the
chairs and little marble-topped tables used by drinkers of absinthes
and vermouths, lay tumbled all about upon the stones.... Shops and
restaurants had their shutters up; windows that had no shutters had
been blocked with mattresses and chests of drawers. A body of mounted
Chausseurs galloped down the Rue Lafitte, posted a piquet at the corner
of its junction with the Boulevard, and galloped away again into the
fog. Out of which came back the clatter of iron-shod hoofs, and the
ring and clink of steel on steel, and drifts of the _Marseillaise_ and
cries of vengeance.
Dunoisse went to his rooms in the paternal hotel in the Rue de la
Chaussée d’Antin, and sat in the dark, and saw a pair of cold blue
eyes, and the thick-lipped supercilious smile he knew of old painted
upon the shadowy blackness, and the ceaseless roaring of voices and
rolling of wheels through the streets of Paris, mingled with the
roaring of the blood in his ears.
He knew that this meant black ruin if the Monarchy stood, and ruin
blacker still if Red Revolution swept the Monarchy into the gutter.
Whose was the hand that had been guilty of the fatal pistol-shot?
He knew, or thought he knew--for the voice that had cried out “Fire!”
had been undoubtedly de Moulny’s. And the anguish he tasted was of the
poignant, exquisite quality that we may only know when the hand that
has stabbed us under cover of the dark has been proved to be that of a
friend.