Achille Cazaio on the Taunenfels did not sleep that night....
The two essays [Footnote: The twenty-first chapter of Du Maillot's _Hommes
Illustres_; and the fifth of d'Avranches's _Ancêtres de la Révolution_.
Löwe has an excellent digest of this data.] dealing with the man have
scarcely touched his capabilities. His exploits in and about Paris and
his Gascon doings, while important enough in the outcome, are but the
gesticulations of a puppet: the historian's real concern is with the hands
that manoeuvered above Cazaio; and whether or no Achille Cazaio organized
the riots in Toulouse and Guienne and Béarn is a question with which, at
this late day, there can be little profitable commerce.
One recommends this Cazaio rather to the spinners of romance: with his
morality--a trifle buccaneerish on occasion--once discreetly palliated,
history affords few heroes more instantly taking to the fancy....One casts
a hankering eye toward this Cazaio's rumored parentage, his hopeless and
life-long adoration of Claire de Puysange, his dealings with d'Argenson and
King Louis le Bien-Aimé, the obscure and mischievous imbroglios in Spain,
and finally his aggrandizement and his flame-lit death, as du Maillot,
say, records these happenings: and one finds therein the outline of an
impelling hero, and laments that our traffic must be with a stolid and less
livelily tinted Bulmer. And with a sigh one passes on toward the labor
prearranged....
To-night Cazaio's desires were astir, and consciousness of his own power
was tempting him. He had never troubled Poictesme much: the Taunenfels were
accessible on that side, and so long as he confined his depredations to
the frontier, the Duc de Puysange merely shrugged and rendered his annual
tribute; it was not a great sum, and the Duke preferred to pay it rather
than forsake his international squabbles to quash a purely parochial
nuisance like a bandit, who was, too, a kinsman....
Meanwhile Cazaio had grown stronger than de Puysange knew. It was a time
of disaffection: the more violent here and there were beginning to assert
that before hanging a superfluous peasant or two de Puysange ought to bore
himself with inquiries concerning the abstract justice of the action. For
everywhere the irrational lower classes were grumbling about the very
miseries and maltreatments that had efficiently disposed of their fathers
for centuries: they seemed not to respect tradition: already they were
posting placards in the Paris boulevards,--"Shave the King for a monk, hang
the Pompadour, and break Machault on the wheel,"--and already a boy of
twelve, one Joseph Guillotin, was running about the streets of Saintes
yonder. So the commoners flocked to Cazaio in the Taunenfels until, little
by little, he had gathered an army about him.
And at Bellegarde, de Soyecourt had only a handful of men, Cazaio meditated
to-night. And the woman was there,--the woman whose eyes were blue and
incurious, whose face was always scornful.
In history they liken Achille Cazaio to Simon de Montfort, and the Gracchi,
and other graspers at fruit as yet unripe; or, if the perfervid word of
d'Avranches be accepted, you may regard him as "_le Saint-Jean de la
Révolution glorieuse_." But I think you may with more wisdom regard him as
a man of strong passions, any one of which, for the time being, possessed
him utterly.
Now he struck his palm upon the table.
"I have never seen a woman one-half so beautiful, Dom Michel. I am more
than ever in love with her."
"In that event," the Friar considered, "it is, of course, unfortunate she
should have a brand-new husband. Husbands are often thought much of when
they are a novelty."
"You bungled matters, you fat, mouse-hearted rascal. You could quite easily
have killed him."
The Dominican spread out his hands, and afterward reached for the bottle.
"Milanese armor!" said Dom Michel Frégose. [Footnote: The same ecclesiastic
who more lately dubbed himself, with Maréchal de Richelieu's encouragement,
l'Abbé de Trans, and was discreditably involved in the forgeries of Madame
de St. Vincent.]
"Yet I am master of Poictesme," Cazaio thundered, "I have ten men to de
Soyecourt's one. Am I, then, lightly to be thwarted?"
"Undoubtedly you could take Bellegarde--and the woman along with the
castle,--if you decided they were worth the price of a little killing. I
think they are not worth it, I strongly advise you to have up a wench from
the village, to put out the light, and exercise your imagination."
Cazaio shook his head. "No, Dom Michel, you churchmen live too lewdly to
understand the tyranny of love."
"--Besides, there is that trifling matter of your understanding with de
Puysange,--and, besides, de Puysange will be here in two days."
Cazaio snapped his fingers. "He will arrive after the fair." Cazaio
uncorked the ink-bottle with an august gesture.
"Write!" said Achille Cazaio.