curiosity. You must stop it. It is dangerous. It will become a mania.
Already you seem at times inhuman."
"Others are there every day," she protested.
"But not like you. You must stop. What, does it please you to be called
the daughter of the guillotine?"
"I don't know. It is always pleasant to be known."
"It is repellent."
"Don't come, then."
For a fortnight he absented himself, angry and disturbed. But in
measure as she ceased to appeal to his interest she perplexed his
curiosity, and he was impelled more and more to study her, seeking
to understand the reasons of her indifference to suffering and the
evident absence of emotion. At the end of two weeks, she met him on the
boulevards with an amused smile.
"Since you persist in regarding me as a curiosity," she said, "you
might try what you can discover. Mama is back."
Dossonville, without waiting to be urged twice, made a trip to the
shop of the wig-maker and discovered that la Mère Baudrier had indeed
returned from the provinces. So that night, toward eleven o'clock, he
led his watch-dogs back, relying on a plan of campaign which he had
imagined to force a revelation. Stationing Sans-Chagrin at the door,
under which showed a slit of light, he knocked and entered without
awaiting permission.
A woman, shading a candle, came precipitately down the stairs, crying:
"Who's there, and what do you want?"
"Are you la Mère Baudrier?"
"Well?"
"Are you?"
"Yes."
"Descend; I wish to speak with you."
She came down slowly, regarding him with alarmed surprise.
"Who are you?"
"The Citoyen Dossonville. I represent the Nation."
Then, while the look changed to one of dismay, she blurted:
"But what has the Nation to do with me?"
"Do not fear, citoyenne, you will have every chance to excuse yourself."
"Then I am to be arrested?"
Dossonville, without replying, said:
"Lead the way to the back; I must speak with you alone."
She obeyed, repeating:
"Am I under arrest? Am I? There's some mistake. I'm the Citoyenne
Baudrier. Of what can I be accused?"
"Exactly on that point I am to interrogate you. It may be long; sit
down."
La Mère Baudrier, trembling, took a chair, never ceasing her mumbling.
"But what? I don't understand. Why, every one will tell you that I am a
patriot."
Dossonville, who had been a moment interested in the resemblance of
daughter and mother, seized upon the last word.
"Citoyenne, there's the point: what constitutes a patriot? Do you know
the law of suspects?" He tilted back his head and closed his eyes, not
so tightly though as to miss the expression of her face. "These are
declared suspects:
"All aristocrats.
"All priests.
"All Moderates.
"All those who, although they have done nothing against the Nation,
have done nothing for it."
He examined the prisoner carefully as he continued, emphasizing each
word:
"All those who correspond with the enemies of the country.
"All who habitually entertain strangers.
"All those who in the past have been associated with the aristocrats,
whether as servant, mistress, or friend."
"She does not seem to fear the word aristocrat," Dossonville added to
himself. Then aloud: "Citoyenne Baudrier, you are accused of favoring
the aristocrats."
A look of amazement overspread the woman's features, which was so
complete an answer to the charge that he added quickly:
"Citoyenne, you are said to have been very intimate in the past with
the ci-devant nobles."
The blank look of astonishment gave place to one of indignation.
"I? I, the Citoyenne Baudrier? Come, that's a joke!"
"Citoyenne Baudrier, listen to me," Dossonville said, checking the
explosion, "you are accused of having a daughter whose parentage you
will not reveal, because the father is a ci-devant aristocrat and an
enemy of his country."
At this point-blank accusation, to his surprise, she rose and said
scornfully, with her hands on her hips:
"Ah, I see this is a trick of Louison's."
For answer he displayed the shield of an agent de sûreté. La Mère
Baudrier, overwhelmed, fell back, covering her face with her hands,
while a single word escaped her:
"Never!"
"Citoyenne," Dossonville cried sternly, "I warn you that only by
proving the parentage of your daughter can you clear yourself. If you
refuse, you must answer before the Tribunal to the accusation."
The woman shook her head without looking up.
"Le Corbeau! Sans-Chagrin!" he called.
At the noise of their entrance into the hall she sprang up, crying:
"Wait! Wait!"
Giving them an order to halt, Dossonville returned, saying roughly:
"Well, have you decided to speak?"
For a moment the woman remained swaying, babbling to herself; then
suddenly she sank back, crying:
"No, no!"
"Undoubtedly it is an aristocrat, and some one formidable," Dossonville
thought, seeing the pallor of her face. Then, raising his voice, he
called his men.
At their entrance a trembling seized the body of the woman, but at the
sight of the mocking face of Sans-Chagrin she recoiled as before a
vision, and a scream escaped her.
"The Curé Sans-Souci! The Curé Sans-Souci!"
"Who calls me by that name?" Sans-Chagrin cried, his face assuming a
look of amazement. "Tiens! but I know that woman!"
Suddenly he struck his head.
"Of course!" he cried. "Pardi! what is there so terrible about me? I
was always a good friend to you, La Glorieuse."
"You knew it, then, all the while?" the woman cried, turning fiercely
to Dossonville.
"I know nothing," Dossonville answered; and seeing that chance had come
in somehow to his aid, he demanded curtly of Sans-Chagrin: "What do you
know of her?"
"A good deal," Sans-Chagrin began, with a smile. "I confessed her when
I was a ci-devant curé in the days of fanaticism and error."
La Mère Baudrier, very white, extended her hand for permission to
Dossonville, who said encouragingly:
"Allons, you are going to be reasonable now?"
"I will speak." She turned to Sans-Chagrin. "Citoyen Sans-Souci--"
"I am Sans-Chagrin now."
"Citoyen Sans-Chagrin, they accuse me of having a daughter by an
aristocrat--Louison, the bouquetière."
"But your little one was called Rose."
"I changed the name afterward." For a moment she was thrown into
confusion, but rallying, she continued: "You can say if the father was
an aristocrat."
"I should hope so: it was I that baptized her. Come, now, what was he
called? La Gloire--la, le--no, Lajoie, Simon Lajoie, that's it."
"Simon Lajoie!"
The thunderclap was Dossonville's, who, thrown off his guard, caught
Sans-Chagrin by the shoulder, repeating:
"Simon Lajoie!"
But immediately, by a violent effort, he controlled himself, and
dismissing them hurriedly, turned his back on the frightened woman,
seeking to regain his composure. When he turned, it was with the calm
of intense excitement.
"Is that the Simon Lajoie who used to frequent the Café Procopé?"
The woman remained dumb.
"Is it?"
"Yes."
"Good. Your explanations are sufficient. You are released."
He watched the look of immense relief that spread over her countenance
as she rose, with a mumbled thanks, and started for the door.
"By the way, citoyenne," he cried carelessly; "one moment. Come back.
Sit down. Could the Citoyen Lajoie have been any one in disguise?"
Terrified and trapped, the woman sprang up.
"For instance, the good Citoyen Charles Sanson?"
Her answer was a shriek and the thud of her body falling in a swoon to
the floor.
XIII
DAUGHTER OF THE GUILLOTINE
"Certainly, he is demented," Le Corbeau cried when, after a dozen
zigzags, Dossonville continued to plunge furiously ahead up street
after street.
"Decidedly so," grumbled Sans-Chagrin. "Here's three times we've passed
the Tour St. Jacques."
"What the devil could have happened?"
"You know Lajoie?"
"Why, of course--a little insignificant man."
"It was perhaps his brother."
"He hadn't the look."
"Anyhow, I say it's time to rest."
"My legs are worn out."
"If we suggested a halt?"
"I don't dare."
"Neither do I."
Oblivious to their fatigue, Dossonville wandered on in absurd circles,
heedless of his surroundings, while if he passed a corner three times
he did not notice it once. Vain and proud in his imperturbability,
for the first time he was completely unnerved by this vision of the
executioner that rose up at the side of the girl whom he had been on
the verge of loving. All at once the mystery of her character was
revealed, the insensibility to suffering, the unnatural curiosity, and
the sang-froid beyond a woman.
"What an inheritance! What a curse!" he repeated.
Under the broken silhouettes of the housetops across the luminous sky,
from out the mysterious, vague corners of the night, there started up,
more ghostly and more sinister, the shadowy dynasty of the Sansons,
the pariahs accursed, isolated, loathed, flinging themselves in
vain against the barriers of prejudice, striving to escape into the
obscurity of their fellows, always discovered, always driven back on
the fingers of the crowd, that shrank away even as it pursued.
Back of the furtive figure of Sanson appeared the troop of malign
ancestors, masked in scarlet or in black, nonchalant in their blood
service, while behind hovered the red cloud of victims,--men, women,
priests, nuns, children and gray-heads,--in long danse macabre around
the ax, the gallows, and the guillotine; and among the Sansons, he
saw, calm and uncomprehending, the figure of Louison.
Suddenly above his head rose the twin shafts of the guillotine,
dominating the desert of the night. Then trembling, aghast at this
sinister menace, Dossonville, with a cry of horror, turned and fled
from the inanimate thing that waited there relentlessly the coming of
the day.
* * * * *
In the first recoil from his personal association, he had promised
himself never again to encounter Louison; but with the morning she
seemed so expelled from his past that, yielding to an overpowering
desire to study her in the light of his new knowledge, he drifted,
almost unconsciously, to the Place de la Revolution.
The crowd in which he sheltered himself was loose, not very attentive,
nor very large: the spectacle was old; there was not enough variety in
the performers. In front, scores of women, seated indolently on their
chairs, suspended their knitting at each fall of the ax, counting:
"Twenty."
"Twenty-one."
At each execution a murmur wandered through the crowd--a conventional,
listless, slurred cry:
"Vive la Nation!"
Louison, never still, moved among the tricoteuses, nodding and
chatting. As each hum announced the arrival of a victim on the scaffold
she turned for a momentary, prying glance; then, without interest,
wheeling about, she cried her cockades, seeking in the crowd a likely
customer.
Absorbed in the girl, marveling at the strange and terrible forces that
drew her back to the parent scaffold, Dossonville fell into so deep an
abstraction that it cost him his concealment. Before he could retire
with the departing crowd, Louison, perceiving him, had hastened to his
side.
"What happened last night?" she said, with an imperious gesture. "What
did you say to my mother?"
"How do you know I saw her?" he said, unable to control a slight
movement of recoil.
"I know it. What happened?" she demanded impatiently. "I was there this
morning, but she was gone--gone during the night. What passed between
you?"
"You have been misinformed."
"Dossonville, you are deceiving me," she said, looking in his face.
"You saw her, and you learned the name of my father."
Without allowing time for denial, she took his arm and led him toward
the Cours la Reine, turning among the bypaths of the luxuriant woods.
There, amid the joyous gaiety of the spring, under the soft foliage of
the chestnuts, she faced him with a peremptory question:
"You saw her?"
"No."
"She told you?"
"No."
Louison examined his face attentively.
"What is the matter with you to-day, and why do you conceal it from me?
Did you not promise to tell me?"
"Yes."
"Then?"
"Nothing has happened."
"Dossonville, you are lying lamely," she said; then she added, with a
frown: "My father was a great scoundrel, then?"
Dossonville did not reply.
"How stupid you are! You think it would make a difference. How does it
affect me? Come, I am not responsible, no matter who it is. Tell me. It
cannot affect me."
"It will."
"Then you know," she said instantly.
Dossonville shrugged his shoulders. He desired the appearance of
resistance more than to resist, for his curiosity was stronger than his
pity. But having thus betrayed himself, he added impressively:
"Do not force me to tell you."
She began to laugh.
"Louison, I warn you, do not demand to know."
"I do demand it. I insist."
"You will curse me."
"No."
"I cannot tell you."
"Who is it?" she cried, with a laugh. "Philippe Egalité, a
farmer-general, Bailly, Capet even,--I mention the worst."
"Louison," he said shortly, "they call you the daughter of the
guillotine."
She stopped, perplexed.
"You are well named."
"Don't return to that," she said irritably. "It was agreed we were not
to mention that. Come, don't keep me waiting. I tell you it will make
no difference."
"You absolve me?"
"Of course."
"Even if Sanson were your father?"
Louison burst out laughing, but suddenly she broke off at the sight of
his face.
"Is that serious?"
"Yes."
She repeated, "Is that serious?"
"Yes."
"I am the daughter of Sanson?"
Dossonville inclined his head, awaiting the explosion. To his surprise,
she remained quiet, withdrawing a little, while her eyes still waited
on him, as though expecting a denial.
"How curious!" she said at length. "I never thought of that. Ah, I
understand why she hid it. Now tell me all."
Seeing that she did not realize the extent of the revelation,
Dossonville quickly related the facts, astonished at her calm,
wondering what force was working beneath the surface.
Louison, in fact, unable immediately to comprehend the situation,
continued to watch Dossonville, as though to estimate from his behavior
the force of the change to her. Remembering his attempted escape on the
Place de la Revolution, and alarmed at a new reserve in his manner, she
asked herself angrily, albeit anxiously, what difference the knowledge
would make in him. To test him, she advanced a step and said, holding
out her arms as though to embrace him:
"Thanks, my friend; you have kept your promise."
He withdrew but a step and only for an instant, but that involuntary
shrinking was her sentence.
With a cry of despair, she bounded back, transformed with hot,
revolting anger, her fingers struggling against the temptation of the
dagger, crying to him:
"Go! Go quickly! Go now!"
Then, distrusting the murder in her heart, she fled into the woods;
but in a moment, crazed with the cruel injustice of her fate, she came
running back, her lips trembling with passion, her breath cut and
quick. With his accustomed prudence, Dossonville had retired by another
direction, leaving Louison to tire herself out among the fragrant paths
in fruitless, maddened rushings.
* * * * *
Gradually among the tricoteuses, the bouquetières, and the clientèle of
the Cabaret de la Guillotine it began to be whispered that something
extraordinary had happened to Louison. Her manner had changed. She
was no longer indifferent, mocking, and careless under the scaffold.
Instead, her companions began to be alarmed at the cloud on her brow,
the brooding fixity of her glance, the abruptness and the poverty of
her speech. Her questions were even stranger than her moods. One day
she asked of her companion, thrusting her hand toward the guillotine:
"Does that affect you to see them die like that?"
"I dream sometimes at nights," the girl answered.
Then Louison, turning on her an uncomprehending glance, exclaimed:
"True?"
Another time she said:
"Doesn't that make you curious?"
"Of what?"
"Curious to know what you would do."
Those who repeated her remarks exclaimed in apprehension and tapped
their foreheads. As a natural consequence, the most extraordinary
rumors arose. One declared that she had been seen thrice at midnight
prowling about the vicinity of the scaffold. Another affirmed that he
on whom she looked with anger would perish. Others, scorning these
absurd rumors, gave it as their opinion that her mind was shaken by her
unnatural obsession. The girl did not fail to notice the change in the
demeanor of her companions, and, in her tortured imagination, ascribed
to it a different cause.
"Why do they draw away from me?" she said once.
"It's your imagination."
"Are you superstitious?" she said disjointedly.
"I? A little."
"Why do they call me the daughter of the guillotine? Doesn't that
strike you as odd?"
And she threw upon her companion a quick, cunning glance, as though to
surprise the momentary confusion that would expose her real knowledge.
Thermidor began with the hecatombs from the pretended Conspiracy of the
Prisons, and the transfer of the guillotine to the Barrière du Trône
Renversé. The great rolling biers, attended by the scum of the city,
bore each day to the scaffold their thirty, forty, sixty victims. Even
the Faubourg St. Antoine, satiated and appalled, began to grumble,
while from time to time voices broke out in protestation, willing from
mere lassitude to end the spectacle by their own sacrifice.
On the 6th of Thermidor, almost at the side of Louison, a bouquetière,
her comrade, cried out:
"I am sick of it! Robespierre is a scoundrel. They kill too many
people. I want to die."
The next day she was on the scaffold, looking down indifferently,
contented to end the fatigue of surfeited disgust.
Louison laughed aloud.
"Why do you laugh?" her neighbor said. "What has she done to you?"
"I do not laugh at her," she answered impatiently. "I laughed because
I told her I would go first."
Her companion edged away. The tricoteuses, stopping their needles,
counted:
"Forty-eight!"
At that moment Louison beheld Dossonville on the outskirts of the
crowd. Seizing the girl nearest to her, a child of fifteen, by the
shoulder, she cried, with a furious gesture:
"Jeanneton, do you see that fellow over there? He thinks I can't see
him, the fool! As though I cared!"
The child struggled to free herself, but Louison, without relaxing her
hold, transferred her look to the scaffold. Twice again the murmur rose:
"Forty-nine!"
"Fifty!"
"Do you know what I am wondering?" Louison said suddenly to the child
whimpering in her clutch. "How strange it must feel to be there."
All at once, releasing the frightened Jeanneton, she advanced toward
the guillotine, as though irresistibly sucked into the maelstrom,
stopped, drew her hand across her forehead, then, facing the crowd,
flung away her basket of flowers and shouted:
"Vive le Roi!"
In an instant she was surrounded, while everywhere the cries went up:
"She is mad!"
"She is drunk!"
"We have seen it for weeks."
"She is not responsible."
"She is a patriot."
Others insisted:
"Arrest her!"
"The Nation is insulted!"
"No favor!"
About the fringes of the crowd they questioned excitedly, running to
and fro:
"Who is it?"
"Louison."
"Impossible!"
"Yes, Louison."
"She is mad!"
About her the mass struggled and swayed, some crying to her to simulate
drunkenness, others clamoring for her arrest. In the center, Louison,
alone calm and indifferent, secure in the knowledge of what must
follow, continued to regard the silhouette of the guillotine, while
about her lips was that curious smile which is seen only on the face of
the martyr or the insane.
XIV
THE LAST ON THE LIST
As Nicole, in the hall of the Porte-Libre, stopped aghast at this
apparition of their enemy, Cramoisin perceived her, and scuttling
hurriedly forward, cried in triumph:
"Bonjour, Nicole. What luck, eh? Well, aren't you going to say good
day?"
"Bonjour," she answered hastily.
"And Barabant, too," he cried. "Better still, and so glad to see me!
Bonjour, Barabant."
"Ah, it's you, hypocrite!" Barabant answered scornfully.
There was a movement of incredulity and alarm among the prisoners, who
hastened to withdraw from them. Cramoisin, as though whipped across the
face, fell back, scowling and cursing, while Nicole, seizing Barabant's
arm, cried:
"Barabant, what have you done?"
"Nicole," he answered, "do you remember what Goursac said when they
arrested him?"
"No."
"'They are liberating me.' Well, I too wish to be free. I have lived
like a dog for months. That is ended. I will not cringe before this
bully, who will send us to-morrow to the guillotine."
"Then you are determined to die?"
"Yes."
"So be it."
They took their places at the long table, huddling among the famished
and the fever-racked, while the scullions brought in pails the
revolting food. Anxious to learn the position of Cramoisin, Nicole was
about to question her neighbor, an abbé whose kindly look encouraged
her, when Cramoisin, suddenly appearing at her shoulder, exclaimed:
"Eh, Nicole, my dear, if you want to know what I am doing here, ask me.
I'll tell you. I am the secretary of the Conspiration. I keep a list
of all the good conspirators and I see that they are rewarded. I bring
good luck. I've been here but a week and we've guillotined forty!"
"You know him?" the priest asked as the bully swaggered down the line,
and Nicole perceived the slight movement with which he drew away.
"He is our bitterest enemy."
"Pardon," he murmured, regarding her with compassion.
"We expect death," she answered quietly.
"What he says is true," he added in a whisper. "Since he has been here
they have taken forty of us. He makes out the lists every night. We
live at his pleasure."
"Does he live among us?" she asked, with a quickened interest.
Again Cramoisin returned, strutting with bombastic gestures, crying to
the room:
"I am the friend of Fouquier. Fouquier promised me to-day that in two
more weeks we could put out a sign, 'To let.' Isn't he kind to us,
though? He's very sympathetic, is Fouquier. And I am his friend--I,
Eugène Franz Cramoisin. He honors me with his confidence. Eat in peace.
I'll speak to him about you. Don't worry."
He swaggered on, vaunting his intimacy, loudly assuring them he brought
good luck.
Nicole anxiously repeated her question.
"He keeps up the farce of being a prisoner," her neighbor answered.
"Where does he lodge?"
"Near you, where the new arrivals are put."
"Sangdieu!" rose again the voice of Cramoisin, who, farther down, had
halted at the side of a woman. "The herring is rotten. Do you not see
it? Come, you must complain."
"It is all I need," came the faint answer. "I am not hungry."
"Bah, you aristocrats, you haven't the courage of dogs!" He returned
to another: "And you, young man, they treat you badly, eh? Shall I
complain to Fouquier?"
The youth, who had imprudently met his eye, instantly dropped his head;
but Cramoisin, amid the jeers of the turnkeys, with a pretense of
listening for his answer, exclaimed:
"What's that you say? Robespierre is a scoundrel?"
"I said nothing!"
"Then you thought it, and thoughts are offenses!"
Arrived opposite Barabant, he planted himself with folded arms and
cried:
"Well, Citoyen Barabant, the food's good, eh?"
Pushing back his plate, Barabant likewise folded his arms and answered
with a sneer:
"Do you think so?"
"To me it is delicious!"
"That's not astonishing,--it's the food of swine!"
A murmur rumbled over the hall, rising to weak cries of protests:
"No."
"He slanders it."
"We don't think so, citoyen."
Others implored Barabant to be silent, trembling at his rash speech,
that would suffice to empty the prison. Under pretense of upbraiding
him, they surrounded him, beseeching him to have a thought of their
danger. Yielding to their terror, Barabant remained silent; but when,
after the meal, they had dispersed to their rooms, he exclaimed:
"Ah, that did me good! I feel I am a man again. Nicole, to-night I
shall sleep soundly for the first time in months, knowing that after
to-morrow I may sleep more soundly."
Waiting barely long enough to assure herself of his unconsciousness,
Nicole withdrew from his side and stole down the corridor, seeking
until she found under a door a slit of light.