call you to witness that I surrendered willingly and am now under the
protection of the Nation. On what charges do you, without warrants,
arrest an officer of the National Guard?"
Javogues unwillingly dropped his weapon. But immediately, his anger
rising at being so thwarted, he advanced and, as though to crush his
enemy, thundered out:
"Dog of an aristocrat! I'll tell you. I arrest you for firing on the
Nation from the Tuileries."
"What, Citoyen Javogues!" Barabant cried indignantly. "If you have
taken this step on the evidence you gave me, I declare it an outrage!"
One of the band spoke up:
"I saw him, too,--I, with my own eyes,--firing on us with the Swiss."
"Citoyen, you are mistaken," Dossonville replied. Then realizing the
danger he ran, he continued rapidly, "At what hour?"
"Nine o'clock."
"At nine you have said!" Dossonville cried triumphantly, extending his
arms. "Citoyens, I demand to be taken at once to prison. The moment
such an accusation is made I insist upon my right to vindicate myself.
At nine o'clock I was in the presence of the Citoyen Marat. Take me
to the Abbaye and let the Friend of the People answer for me. Citoyen
Barabant, I shall need you too."
The effect of that powerful name was tremendous; even Javogues was
stunned at the sudden counter, and sullenly gave the order to descend.
Even Nicole, tortured by the crisis, remained still in doubt. She made
a step forward as though to reveal what she had seen, but meeting the
eye of the prisoner, she halted before its eloquence, and, bowing her
head, allowed them to pass. Dossonville signaled Barabant to place
himself behind him, and thus they plunged down the pit, where twice
Barabant thought he caught the sound of a chuckle. But when they
emerged into daylight, the face of Dossonville remained inscrutable.
At the prison of the Abbaye they entered without difficulty. There the
gate stood open day and night. At the desk, when the accusation had
been read and the alibi announced, Dossonville extended his hand to
Barabant and said:
"Thanks, citoyen. You need trouble yourself no more."
"No more!" Barabant exclaimed, in astonishment, for he had expected to
testify to the meeting with Santerre.
Dossonville smiled grimly and, with a curious twist of his back, said:
"My back itched a little in such company, especially in that devil's
descent of yours, where little slips might occur. You were necessary to
my peace of mind! Thanks, citoyen."
Then, as he was about to be led away, he turned to the turnkey and
cried rapidly.
"Citoyen, it is useless to disturb the good Friend of the People. He
will pardon me if I used his name to insure a hearing before a properly
constituted court of justice." Then with his silent, parted grin, he
added, "My true defense I shall present at the proper time."
He disappeared in custody, not before he had sent a glance of malicious
enjoyment toward his enemy, who, astounded, did not immediately
recover. When he did, it was with the rage of the wounded lion suddenly
surprised by the trap.
X
A TRIUMPH OF INSTINCT
"Holà above, Barabant."
"Holà below, Goursac."
"Come down."
"What for?"
"Collenot is condemned. We're going to the execution."
"What, at eight o'clock at night?"
"Immediately. I am just back from the trial."
"I'm coming."
The Revolutionary Tribunal, inaugurated two days before, had
deliberated ever since upon the fate of Collenot d'Agremont, seeking
to fasten on the King and the Court the onus of the battle of the
Tuileries. But beyond Barabant's desire to see the execution of this
first victim of the anger of the Nation, was his curiosity to witness
the second installation of that strange machine which had carried the
name of Dr. Guillotin beyond the boundaries of France.
"And your Nicole?" Goursac asked when Barabant had joined them. "Why
don't you bring her?"
"She's not in her room."
"You called her?"
"Yes, yes." Barabant, not wishing to discover their estrangement,
hastened on: "Did Collenot implicate the Court?"
"He would say nothing. To do him justice, he was very firm."
"And the Tribunal?"
"Impressive. The people were awed. The judge pronounced an eloquent
harangue,--they always do." He flung out his arm and repeated
sarcastically: "'Victim of the law, could you but read the hearts
of your judges you would find them crushed and saddened. Go to your
death courageously. The Nation demands from you nothing but a sincere
repentance.'"
"That's well put!"
"Repentance--and your head!" Goursac amended sarcastically. "What an
absurdity!"
"Not at all," retorted Barabant, disciple of Rousseau and the
sentimentalists. "The Nation mourning and forgiving its enemies, even
when pronouncing sentence, is a spectacle, I say, that is sublime."
"Bah! What good is sentiment when you lack a head? No, no. These
grandiloquent harangues of mercy and advice disgust me. They are
nothing but self-advertisement. If I were a judge, I'd say:
"'Collenot, my friend, the Nation has proved you guilty; I pronounce
upon you sentence of death; for further details consult Monsieur de
Paris. Bon voyage!'"
"And the guillotine, Citoyen Goursac: do you find it insincere to
despatch an enemy with the least pain?"
"Ah, the guillotine! There is a tremendous advance in human thought!"
Goursac exclaimed, without deigning to open an argument. "There is
something to be proud of. I foresee great innovations from this simple
invention. To have learned to suppress human life painlessly is a true
sentimental advance. We shall go further."
Barabant, seeing that he was started on his theories, said
good-humoredly:
"Well, what next?"
"The day will come when society will regard it as a crime to allow
children to grow up who are hopelessly destined to suffering--such as
weaklings, monsters, hunchbacks, and the other deformed. The State will
suppress them."
His companion groaned in horror.
"More than that," Goursac contended, "the day will come when the aged,
the infirm, the decrepit, the mortally stricken, will be painlessly
released from their suffering. Yes, death, when inevitable, will be
made instantaneous, and society will approve."
"And how soon do you expect this magnificent idea to fructify?"
Barabant asked scornfully.
"In about two thousand years," Goursac answered, with a hitch of his
head. "That is the time necessary for an idea to conquer society."
"My dear friend, you are either joking or mad."
"The condition of prophecy is to be scorned," the theorist said dryly.
"You remember Cassandra."
They entered the Place du Carrousel, where the guillotine, whether by
conscious or unconscious irony, was established under the frowning
shadows of the abode of kings. The dim square was hidden by a loose,
shifting network of variegated colors dominated by the bright flecks
of countless liberty-caps, which, in measure, as new groups arrived,
contracted into mists of red. Above this bobbing field of heads two
thin shafts started upward, nearly lost in the descending dusk.
Goursac, extending his hand in the direction of these, said:
"There is the guillotine."
"It does not seem very terrible," answered Barabant. "Let us stay here;
it is, perhaps, a false report. In ten minutes it will be too dark."
Others with the same idea lingered on the outskirts of the crowd or
turned away. The faces of the throng could no longer be distinguished,
when suddenly afar there sprang up a circle of torches, and the
scaffold emerged from the night.
The two friends hastily made their way through the crowd until, at the
end of twenty minutes' patient endeavor, they reached the foremost
ranks. A calm spread among the unseen throng, broken by sudden tensions
at each new alarm. The people, who had greeted the first appearance of
the guillotine with cries of disappointment and demands for the more
spectacular gallows, were now impressed by the cloak of mystery the
night drew about the scaffold. The machine was no longer mere wood and
iron; it had tasted blood: it was human.
Barabant, from his position of vantage, could distinguish the upright
shafts, where from time to time, as Goursac explained the mechanism,
some reflection from a torch falling on the knife above, there appeared
the dull display of steel like the sudden threat of a brutish fang.
Turning from the scaffold, Barabant examined the crowd, where, seeking
for Nicole, he perceived Louison worming her way toward them.
Suddenly a whisper ran over the heads and rose to a breeze of
exclamations. The masses tightened. Those in front were swept against
the guards as those behind surged forward, stretching to tiptoe.
Louison, caught in the press, was imprisoned not twenty feet away. This
time the alarm was not vain. From all sides burst the growl of the mob.
"Hu! hu! hu!"
A long, tedious moment succeeded, then suddenly the scaffold swarmed
with dark figures. The hooting and the screeching gave place to a burst
of hand-clapping. Barabant, astonished at the implacable ferocity of
the crowd, turned to examine it, but his eye encountering Louison,
remained there.
The radiance of a neighboring torch redeemed her figure from the
obscurity. Her head was strained slightly forward, while one hand
clutched the kerchief at her throat as though to restrain her
eagerness. The lips were parted, the eyes glowed with the intensity
of fascinated contemplation, but her whole figure, in contrast to the
unbridled passions of the crowd, remained, as during the attack on the
Tuileries, controlled and insensible.
So unnatural was her attitude that Barabant could not have averted his
eyes had not the hand of Goursac recalled him to the drama before him.
He sought in the gloom and the shadows, seeing nothing, until suddenly
out of the darkness came the shoot and the thud of the knife.
A woman, with a cry, caught his arm, burying her head in his sleeve.
Another woman, holding a baby, was shouting wildly:
"Bravo! Bravo!"
A tottering veteran, in the costume of the Invalides, questioned him
eagerly:
"Is it over? Tell me, citoyen, is it over?"
The woman on his arm continued to gasp hysterically. Himself recoiling
at this death out of the darkness, he returned to the contemplation of
Louison.
Her pose had relaxed, while a slight smile of disdain appeared as she
watched the frantic crowd acclaim the head which a _bourreau_ held to
them. On her face was neither horror nor anger, neither disgust nor
passion. As calmly as though before her own mirror, she smoothed out
her dress and replaced the cockade, torn by the contact of the crowd,
with a fresh one from her basket, scenting first its perfume. She
raised her eyes, and her glance met that of Barabant, overcome with
disgust. She frowned, and turning her shoulder, was lost in the crowd
which now flowed out in widening circles.
"What is there about her!" Barabant exclaimed, turning to Goursac.
"About whom?"
"Louison," he said impatiently. "You did not see her? She made me
shiver!"
"She affects me like a snake," Goursac answered. "She is a creature of
the night, in her element at such a time. They say she never misses an
execution. Well, citoyen, what of the machine?"
"Horrible!"
"You are wrong," Goursac protested. "It does not take life: it
suppresses it, and that by a process more charitable than natural
death. That is the way a nation should avenge itself." He repeated
several times in a transport of enthusiasm, "Magnificent!"
"There, look at it now!"
At Barabant's summons they paused at the gate, looking back at the
dim circle of lights around the guillotine unseen but divined, while
Barabant continued:
"The first time did not count--it was only a thief. To-night is the
true beginning of the guillotine--a sinister and ominous beginning."
"Still, what a spectacle!" Goursac exclaimed. "What could be more
dramatic?"
"Too much so," Barabant retorted. "I admit I am impressionable, but
to-night the blow seemed to fall from above our own heads."
"You are superstitious. You will be telling me next that you had a
premonition about your own neck."
"Hardly; but, my friend, yours is so long and the chances of politics
are so many--"
"Don't trouble yourself," replied Goursac, laughing, and with a mock
gesture he extended his fist. "As for my neck, Madame Guillotine, I
defy you to take it." He turned to Barabant. "You, my friend, are so
gallant that I won't answer for yours."
They passed into the Rue Royale, Goursac slightly in advance. Barabant,
rubbing shoulders with the departing crowd, felt a pull on his arm and
heard the voice of Nicole saying mischievously:
"Barabant, are you very angry with me?"
Too astonished to make answer, he remained dumbly gazing into the
teasing countenance; but at that moment Goursac, perceiving them,
called out indulgently:
"That's right, children; we don't live long enough for lovers to
quarrel. I'll keep discreetly ahead."
Barabant persisting in his silence, Nicole continued pleadingly:
"Then you are still angry?"
"Yes."
"I am sorry."
She said it in such a gentle tone, sighing slightly, that Barabant's
anger held no longer; still, as a measure of policy, he kept silent.
Goursac, preparing to wheel into a side street, called back, with a
laugh of which only Nicole could guess the cost:
"Good-by, my children; I leave you in peace. Love-making is
disconcerting to the older generation. Reconcile yourselves quickly."
Barabant and Nicole, thus left to themselves, continued arm in arm
silently homeward, avoiding the thronged thoroughfares, the noise
and the lights, plunging by preference down quiet ways where only an
occasional window reddened the sides of the night. Barabant struggled
to maintain his just anger; Nicole, who had yielded to an impulse in
accosting him, searched for some means to regain the ground which she
felt she had surrendered.
"You don't answer," she said at last, withdrawing her arm half-way.
"You want me to go?"
He freed himself brusquely and faced her with the angry cry:
"Coquette!"
"No, that I am not!" she cried, and seizing his arm, she said rapidly:
"Barabant, it is not true. You have no right to say that!"
"You have a right to be what you wish."
Nicole, checking herself, said sadly:
"You still believe I am playing with you?"
"I do."
She withdrew a step and shook her head.
"No, it is not you I am playing with."
Barabant, who did not fathom the allusion, started to ask her what she
meant; but Nicole, immediately perceiving the danger, retreated from
her serious mood, and slipping her arm through his, said imperiously as
they started on:
"Barabant, have you ever been in love--seriously in love?"
"Oh!"
"But seriously?"
"No."
"I was sure of it."
"And why?" Barabant demanded, nettled at her assumption.
"Because you understand nothing of a woman." She continued rapidly:
"Listen to reason, my friend. You assume rights over me and my actions,
and yet what right have you? You have never once told me that you love
me. Yet you are angry because I insist upon being wooed, foolish,
ignorant fellow!"
Her reproof, which she designed to be heavy, weakened despite herself,
until at the end she pronounced it almost caressingly.
"Is that just, Nicole?" Barabant cried, seizing the opening. "Why am
I angry? Because you will not give me the opportunity." He drew her
closer to him. "Nicole, listen to me but once."
"No, no," she checked him imperiously, "I do not wish to. You are too
headlong. Barabant, I tell you, you do not know yourself."
"I--I don't know what I feel?"
She checked him again.
"If you do, then respect my wishes." She added almost pleadingly: "Not
too fast, Barabant. Be reasonable and I will not avoid you again." Then
peremptorily changing the subject: "Did you see Louison? She is always
at an execution."
He accepted the turn reluctantly.
"I saw her."
"How did she affect you?"
"Like a snake," he answered, using Goursac's expression. "There is
something about her that repels me."
"I was afraid she might attract you," she confessed, with a laugh, in
which showed a little relief.
At No. 38 they groped into the entrance, feeling the walls with their
hands. The crow set up a raucous crying, while la Mère Corniche
appeared at the door, shading her candle to discover their approach.
They passed on through the first court to the bottom of the staircase,
where a single torch flickered in its bracket. Nicole held out her
hand, averting her face.
"Good night, Barabant, and until to-morrow."
The hour, the place, the torch that allowed her body to melt into the
shadow and illuminated only the eyes, the lips, and the smile that
tempted him with the mystery of what it hid, overcame his resolutions.
He caught her by the wrists and drew her toward him. Nicole gave a
little cry, resisting feebly.
"I cannot understand you," he cried fiercely. "What are you? What do
you feel? Do you love me or do you not?"
She answered faintly, struggling against his arms:
"Let me go."
"Nicole, dear Nicole, I love you, I adore you."
"No, no, no!"
He released her, and throwing himself at her feet, he stretched up his
hands to her, crying:
"Look, look!"
Nicole, with her hand to her cheek half turned from him, could not
but believe. In his eyes she saw the tears appear, and moved, despite
herself, by his emotion, she took his forehead between her palms,
saying softly:
"Calm thyself, Barabant."
"You love me; you do, you do!" he cried. He caught her hand in his and
repeated, as only the lover knows how: "I love you! I love you! I love
you!"
She pressed her hands to her eyes to steady herself.
"And how long will it last?" she said solemnly, her voice reverberating
in the hollow of the silent hall. "Three months, Barabant? And then--"
"For life--forever!"
Nicole shook her head incredulously, but her breast rose in long,
tumultuous breaths, trembling with the memory of the word.
He mounted the stairs, turned and held out his hand to her. She dared
not look at him, for victory was in his eyes.
"Nicole, Nicole!"
Then she looked at him, her hands to her throat, fallen back against
the wall. He smiled to her, waiting confidently. Up the dark ascent was
love, mystery, anguish, jealousy, doubt,--but always love.
She moved a step toward him, fascinated and drawn on, until their
fingers touched. Then suddenly she shrank away, and with a cry,
spreading out her hands to screen him from her sight, she fled. Only
the instinct had survived, but the instinct had conquered.
XI
THE MAN WITH THE LANTERN
Then between Nicole and Barabant began one of those subtle conflicts of
the sexes in which the one who loves the more unselfishly is foredoomed
to defeat. Until the night of the execution Nicole had combated the
very thought of love. Her flight at the staircase was the last spark of
resistance. She had drunk of the cup, the poison was in her veins. The
next morning she resigned herself to the bitter, determined, cost what
it might, to have her hour of happiness.
She gave up the struggle against herself, but began another to
safeguard her happiness. Her intuitions told her to resist--that
the longer he was compelled to woo, the more he would prize her. In
her uneasy doubts she had recourse to coquetry, but that coquetry
which is unselfish and pathetic, and is nothing but the instinct of
self-preservation.
To Barabant, who neither knew the depth of her longings, nor could have
understood them had he known, the hesitation and delays of Nicole were
incomprehensible. Resolved to meet her with like tactics, he assumed
toward her the attitude of a comrade, avoiding all expression of
sentiment.
Nicole readily fathomed the artifice. She countered by an equal show
of indifference, leaving him always after a moment's conversation.
Barabant retaliated by devoting himself anew to Louison.
The manoeuver brought Nicole back. It was the one move she had not
foreseen. It threw her into a panic of jealousy. Not that she did not
understand his motive, but she feared, from his being thrown with
Louison, results of which he had no thought. She admitted her mistake
and relinquished the struggle. She returned uneasily to him, showing
him from time to time, by a word or gesture, that he had only to ask.
Barabant, blind to the extent of the change, though instinctively
perceiving its import, redoubled his attentions to Louison; treating
Nicole always as a comrade, hailing her joyfully, gay and charming
in her company, but saying never a word of what she now impatiently
sought.
Meanwhile events had been hurrying on the inevitable conflict between
the Commune and the Convention. On the 25th of August the news of the
treacherous surrender of Longwy to the Prussian army ran through the
arteries of Paris as an inflaming poison. The Nation rose from the
fall in the fury of its anger and wounded pride. From the windows of
the Hôtel de Ville an immense banner rolled its folds over the city,
bearing the inspiring inscription:
"The Fatherland is in danger!"
From all sides recruits rushed in to swell the legions of defense. The
city, as though the enemy were already at its gates, converted itself
into a camp, established posts and sentries, while at all hours the
streets shook under the footfall of passing patrols. Searching parties
ran from house to house, filling the prisons with suspected aristocrats.
The Convention, urged to abolish the monarchy and establish the
Republic, hesitated. Only the Commune was resolute, vociferous, and
implacable, shouting for the massacre of the traitors at home before
marching against those abroad.
Lafayette deserting, Verdun rumored betrayed, traitors everywhere,--in
the army of Brunswick, in the Assembly, in Paris,--nothing but a great
example could strike terror in the hearts of aristocrats at home and
abroad. What that example was, so clamorously demanded, few doubted
who beheld the frenzied crowds that infested the gates of the prisons,
gloating over the list of prisoners there exposed.
In the midst of these alarms, to the dismay of Goursac, Javogues took
up his residence in the landing below them. Shortly after, Nicole
reported another disquieting fact: la Mère Corniche had closed her
cellar, refusing admission to all. Occasionally Barabant saw Javogues
running the streets at the head of searching parties, in a whirlwind of
disheveled forms and rushing torches, while the room of the Marseillais
was filled with uncouth figures in secret gathering, of whose character
Barabant, knowing the temperament of Javogues, had no doubt.
On the night of the 1st of September Barabant, who had enrolled for
the defense of the city, began his patrol at the junction of the Rue
St. Antoine and the great, gloomy square where had stood the fortress
of the Bastille. The mass of citizens, foreseeing the massacre on the
morrow, had retired early, barring the doors, leaving the streets to
be swept by restless bands of the lawless: vultures stirred up by the
prospect of carrion.
The hours lagged, and the tramp of his step seemed endless to
Barabant. His reflections were bitter; for him, the Girondin, it was
not simply the massacre of aristocrats, but the fall of his party, that
he apprehended.
At twelve Nicole was to join him for the remaining hour. There was
still three quarters of an hour before she would come. The increasing
sound of voices restored him to the consciousness of his trust.
Soon a party of five emerged, preceded by a small muffled figure
gliding with feverish steps ahead, as a flame devours its path.
Barabant, following them on his beat, strove to recall the familiar
stride of the leader. The patrol approaching him from the opposite
direction cried:
"Is it you, Citoyen Sentry?"
The figure advancing assumed human shape.
"Hé, you are alone to-night?"
"Until twelve."
"You are lucky." He shifted his musket and laughed. "Mine leaves me
alone to-night. We had a bit of a quarrel. I had to break a bottle over
her head. And now, the devil take it! I have to stand guard alone." He
added angrily: "That's the way with women."
"One moment, citoyen. You saw the party pass just now?"
"Aye. Did you not recognize him?"
"Who?"
"Some one who'll be busy to-night,--the Citoyen Marat." He raised his
voice cheerily and sang: