I
Ah, monsieur! the pity of it, the pity! Surely there are sins which le
bon Dieu Himself will condone. And if not--well, I had to risk His
displeasure anyhow. Could I see them both starve, monsieur? I ask you!
and M. le Vicomte had become so thin, so thin, his tiny, delicate bones
were almost through his skin. And Mme. la Marquise! an angel, monsieur!
Why, in the happy olden days, before all these traitors and assassins
ruled in France, M. and Mme. la Marquise lived only for the child, and
then to see him dying--yes, dying, there was no shutting one's eyes to
that awful fact--M. le Vicomte de Mortain was dying of starvation and of
disease.
There we were all herded together in a couple of attics--one of which
little more than a cupboard--at the top of a dilapidated half-ruined
house in the Rue des Pipots--Mme. la Marquise, M. le Vicomte and I--just
think of that, monsieur! M. le Marquis had his chateau, as no doubt you
know, on the outskirts of Lyons. A loyal high-born gentleman; was it
likely, I ask you, that he would submit passively to the rule of those
execrable revolutionaries who had murdered their King, outraged their
Queen and Royal family, and, God help them! had already perpetrated
every crime and every abomination for which of a truth there could be no
pardon either on earth or in Heaven? He joined that plucky but, alas!
small and ill-equipped army of royalists who, unable to save their King,
were at least determined to avenge him.
Well, you know well enough what happened. The counter-revolution failed;
the revolutionary army brought Lyons down to her knees after a siege of
two months. She was then marked down as a rebel city, and after the
abominable decree of October 9th had deprived her of her very name, and
Couthon had exacted bloody reprisals from the entire population for its
loyalty to the King, the infamous Laporte was sent down in order finally
to stamp out the lingering remnants of the rebellion. By that time,
monsieur, half the city had been burned down, and one-tenth and more of
the inhabitants--men, women, and children--had been massacred in cold
blood, whilst most of the others had fled in terror from the appalling
scene of ruin and desolation. Laporte completed the execrable work so
ably begun by Couthon. He was a very celebrated and skilful doctor at
the Faculty of Medicine, now turned into a human hyena in the name of
Liberty and Fraternity.
M. le Marquis contrived to escape with the scattered remnant of the
Royalist army into Switzerland. But Mme la Marquise throughout all these
strenuous times had stuck to her post at the chateau like the valiant
creature that she was. When Couthon entered Lyons at the head of the
revolutionary army, the whole of her household fled, and I was left
alone to look after her and M. le Vicomte.
Then one day when I had gone into Lyons for provisions, I suddenly
chanced to hear outside an eating-house that which nearly froze the
marrow in my old bones. A captain belonging to the Revolutionary Guard
was transmitting to his sergeant certain orders, which he had apparently
just received.
The orders were to make a perquisition at ten o'clock this same evening
in the chateau of Mortaine as the Marquis was supposed to be in hiding
there, and in any event to arrest every man, woman, and child who was
found within its walls.
"Citizen Laporte," the captain concluded, "knows for a certainty that
the ci-devant Marquise and her brat are still there, even if the Marquis
has fled like the traitor that he is. Those cursed English spies who
call themselves the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel have been very
active in Lyons of late, and citizen Laporte is afraid that they might
cheat the guillotine of the carcase of those aristos, as they have
already succeeded in doing in the case of a large number of traitors."
I did not, of course, wait to hear any more of that abominable talk. I
sped home as fast as my old legs would carry me. That self-same evening,
as soon as it was dark, Mme. la Marquise, carrying M. le Vicomte in her
arms and I carrying a pack with a few necessaries on my back, left the
ancestral home of the Mortaines never to return to it again: for within
an hour of our flight a detachment of the revolutionary army made a
descent upon the chateau; they ransacked it from attic to cellar, and
finding nothing there to satisfy their lust of hate, they burned the
stately mansion down to the ground.
We were obliged to take refuge in Lyons, at any rate for a time. Great
as was the danger inside the city, it was infinitely greater on the high
roads, unless we could arrange for some vehicle to take us a
considerable part of the way to the frontier, and above all for some
sort of passports--forged or otherwise--to enable us to pass the various
toll-gates on the road, where vigilance was very strict. So we wandered
through the ruined and deserted streets of the city in search of
shelter, but found every charred and derelict house full of miserable
tramps and destitutes like ourselves. Half dead with fatigue, Mme. la
Marquise was at last obliged to take refuge in one of these houses which
was situated in the Rue des Pipots. Every room was full to overflowing
with a miserable wreckage of humanity thrown hither by the tide of
anarchy and of bloodshed. But at the top of the house we found an attic.
It was empty save for a couple of chairs, a table and a broken-down
bedstead on which were a ragged mattress and pillow.
Here, monsieur, we spent over three weeks, at the end of which time M.
le Vicomte fell ill, and then there followed days, monsieur, through
which I would not like my worst enemy to pass.
Mme. la Marquise had only been able to carry away in her flight what
ready money she happened to have in the house at the time. Securities,
property, money belonging to aristocrats had been ruthlessly confiscated
by the revolutionary government in Lyons. Our scanty resources rapidly
became exhausted, and what was left had to be kept for milk and
delicacies for M. le Vicomte. I tramped through the streets in search of
a doctor, but most of them had been arrested on some paltry charge or
other of rebellion, whilst others had fled from the city. There was only
that infamous Laporte--a vastly clever doctor, I knew--but as soon take
a lamb to a hungry lion as the Vicomte de Mortaine to that bloodthirsty
cut-throat.
Then one day our last franc went and we had nothing left. Mme. la
Marquise had not touched food for two days. I had stood at the corner of
the street, begging all the day until I was driven off by the gendarmes.
I had only obtained three sous from the passers-by. I bought some milk
and took it home for M. le Vicomte. The following morning when I entered
the larger attic I found that Mme. la Marquise had fainted from
inanition.
I spent the whole of the day begging in the streets and dodging the
guard, and even so I only collected four sous. I could have got more
perhaps, only that at about midday the smell of food from an
eating-house turned me sick and faint, and when I regained consciousness
I found myself huddled up under a doorway and evening gathering in fast
around me. If Mme. la Marquise could go two days without food I ought to
go four. I struggled to my feet; fortunately I had retained possession
of my four sous, else of a truth I would not have had the courage to go
back to the miserable attic which was the only home I knew.
I was wending my way along as fast as I could--for I knew that Mme. la
Marquise would be getting terribly anxious--when, just as I turned into
the Rue Blanche, I spied two gentlemen--obviously strangers, for they
were dressed with a luxury and care with which we had long ceased to be
familiar in Lyons--walking rapidly towards me. A moment or two later
they came to a halt, not far from where I was standing, and I heard the
taller one of the two say to the other in English--a language with which
I am vaguely conversant: "All right again this time, what, Tony?"
Both laughed merrily like a couple of schoolboys playing truant, and
then they disappeared under the doorway of a dilapidated house, whilst I
was left wondering how two such elegant gentlemen dared be abroad in
Lyons these days, seeing that every man, woman and child who was dressed
in anything but threadbare clothes was sure to be insulted in the
streets for an aristocrat, and as often as not summarily arrested as a
traitor.
However, I had other things to think about, and had already dismissed
the little incident from my mind, when at the bottom of the Rue Blanche
I came upon a knot of gaffers, men and women, who were talking and
gesticulating very excitedly outside the door of a cook-shop. At first I
did not take much notice of what was said: my eyes were glued to the
front of the shop, on which were displayed sundry delicacies of the kind
which makes a wretched, starved beggar's mouth water as he goes by; a
roast capon especially attracted my attention, together with a bottle of
red wine; these looked just the sort of luscious food which Mme. la
Marquise would relish.
Well, sir, the law of God says: "Thou shalt not covet!" and no doubt
that I committed a grievous sin when my hungry eyes fastened upon that
roast capon and that bottle of Burgundy. We also know the stories of
Judas Iscariot and of Jacob's children who sold their own brother Joseph
into slavery--such a crime, monsieur, I took upon my conscience then;
for just as the vision of Mme. la Marquise eating that roast capon and
drinking that Burgundy rose before my eyes, my ears caught some
fragments of the excited conversation which was going on all around me.
"He went this way!" someone said.
"No; that!" protested another.
"There's no sign of him now, anyway."
The owner of the shop was standing on his own doorstep, his legs wide
apart, one arm on his wide hip, the other still brandishing the knife
wherewith he had been carving for his customers.
"He can't have gone far," he said, as he smacked his thick lips.
"The impudent rascal, flaunting such fine clothes--like the aristo that
he is."
"Bah! these cursed English! They are aristos all of them! And this one
with his followers is no better than a spy!"
"Paid by that damned English Government to murder all our patriots and
to rob the guillotine of her just dues."
"They say he had a hand in the escape of the ci-devant Duc de Sermeuse
and all his brats from the very tumbril which was taking them to
execution."
A cry of loathing and execration followed this statement. There was
vigorous shaking of clenched fists and then a groan of baffled rage.
"We almost had him this time. If it had not been for these confounded,
ill-lighted streets--"
"I would give something," concluded the shopkeeper, "if we could lay him
by the heels."
"What would you give, citizen Dompierre?" queried a woman in the crowd,
with a ribald laugh, "one of your roast capons?"
"Aye, little mother," he replied jovially, "and a bottle of my best
Burgundy to boot, to drink confusion to that meddlesome Englishman and
his crowd and a speedy promenade up the steps of the guillotine."
Monsieur, I assure you that at that moment my heart absolutely stood
still. The tempter stood at my elbow and whispered, and I deliberately
smothered the call of my conscience. I did what Joseph's brethren did,
what brought Judas Iscariot to hopeless remorse. There was no doubt that
the hue and cry was after the two elegantly dressed gentlemen whom I had
seen enter the dilapidated house in the Rue Blanche. For a second or two
I closed my eyes and deliberately conjured up the vision of Mme. la
Marquise fainting for lack of food, and of M. le Vicomte dying for want
of sustenance; then I worked my way to the door of the shop and accosted
the burly proprietor with as much boldness as I could muster.
"The two Englishmen passed by me at the top of the Rue Blanche," I said
to him. "They went into a house ... I can show you which it is---"
In a moment I was surrounded by a screeching, gesticulating crowd. I
told my story as best I could; there was no turning back now from the
path of cowardice and of crime. I saw that brute Dompierre pick up the
largest roast capon from the front of his shop, together with a bottle
of that wine which I had coveted; then he thrust both these treasures
into my trembling hands and said:
"En avant!"
And we all started to run up the street, shouting: "Death to the English
spies!" I was the hero of the expedition. Dompierre and another man
carried me, for I was too weak to go as fast as they wished. I was
hugging the capon and the bottle of wine to my heart; I had need to do
that, so as to still the insistent call of my conscience, for I felt a
coward--a mean, treacherous, abominable coward!
When we reached the house and I pointed it out to Dompierre, the crowd
behind us gave a cry of triumph. In the topmost storey a window was
thrown open, two heads appeared silhouetted against the light within,
and the cry of triumph below was answered by a merry, prolonged laugh
from above.
I was too dazed to realise very clearly what happened after that.
Dompierre, I know, kicked open the door of the house, and the crowd
rushed in, in his wake. I managed to keep my feet and to work my way
gradually out of the crowd. I must have gone on mechanically, almost
unconsciously, for the next thing that I remember with any distinctness
was that I found myself once more speeding down the Rue Blanche, with
all the yelling and shouting some little way behind me.
With blind instinct, too, I had clung to the capon and the wine, the
price of my infamy. I was terribly weak and felt sick and faint, but I
struggled on for a while, until my knees refused me service and I came
down on my two hands, whilst the capon rolled away into the gutter, and
the bottle of Burgundy fell with a crash against the pavement,
scattering its precious contents in every direction.
There I lay, wretched, despairing, hardly able to move, when suddenly I
heard rapid and firm footsteps immediately behind me, and the next
moment two firm hands had me under the arms, and I heard a voice saying:
"Steady, old friend. Can you get up? There! Is that better?"
The same firm hands raised me to my feet. At first I was too dazed to
see anything, but after a moment or two I was able to look around me,
and, by the light of a street lanthorn immediately overhead, I
recognised the tall, elegantly dressed Englishman and his friend, whom I
had just betrayed to the fury of Dompierre and a savage mob.
I thought that I was dreaming, and I suppose that my eyes betrayed the
horror which I felt, for the stranger looked at me scrutinisingly for a
moment or two, then he gave the quaintest laugh I had ever heard in all
my life, and said something to his friend in English, which this time I
failed to understand.
Then he turned to me:
"By my faith," he said in perfect French--so that I began to doubt if he
was an English spy after all--"I verily believe that you are the clever
rogue, eh? who obtained a roast capon and a bottle of wine from that
fool Dompierre. He and his boon companions are venting their wrath on
you, old compeer; they are calling you liar and traitor and cheat, in
the intervals of wrecking what is left of the house, out of which my
friend and I have long since escaped by climbing up the neighbouring
gutter-pipes and scrambling over the adjoining roofs."
Monsieur, will you believe me when I say that he was actually saying all
this in order to comfort me? I could have sworn to that because of the
wonderful kindliness which shone out of his eyes, even through the
good-humoured mockery wherewith he obviously regarded me. Do you know
what I did then, monsieur? I just fell on my knees and loudly thanked
God that he was safe; at which both he and his friend once again began
to laugh, for all the world like two schoolboys who had escaped a
whipping, rather than two men who were still threatened with death.
"Then it WAS you!" said the taller stranger, who was still laughing so
heartily that he had to wipe his eyes with his exquisite lace
handkerchief.
"May God forgive me," I replied.
The next moment his arm was again round me. I clung to him as to a rock,
for of a truth I had never felt a grasp so steady and withal so gentle
and kindly, as was his around my shoulders. I tried to murmur words of
thanks, but again that wretched feeling of sickness and faintness
overcame me, and for a second or two it seemed to me as if I were
slipping into another world. The stranger's voice came to my ear, as it
were through cotton-wool.
"The man is starving," he said. "Shall we take him over to your
lodgings, Tony? They are safer than mine. He may be able to walk in a
minute or two, if not I can carry him."
My senses at this partly returned to me, and I was able to protest
feebly:
"No, no! I must go back--I must--kind sirs," I murmured. "Mme. la
Marquise will be getting so anxious."
No sooner were these foolish words out of my mouth than I could have
bitten my tongue out for having uttered them; and yet, somehow, it
seemed as if it was the stranger's magnetic personality, his magic voice
and kindly act towards me, who had so basely sold him to his enemies,
which had drawn them out of me. He gave a low, prolonged whistle.
"Mme. la Marquise?" he queried, dropping his voice to a whisper.
Now to have uttered Mme. la Marquise de Mortaine's name here in Lyons,
where every aristocrat was termed a traitor and sent without trial to
the guillotine, was in itself an act of criminal folly, and yet--you may
believe me, monsieur, or not--there was something within me just at that
moment that literally compelled me to open my heart out to this
stranger, whom I had so basely betrayed, and who requited my abominable
crime with such gentleness and mercy. Before I fully realised what I was
doing, monsieur, I had blurted out the whole history of Mme. la
Marquise's flight and of M. le Vicomte's sickness to him. He drew me
under the cover of an open doorway, and he and his friend listened to me
without speaking a word until I had told them my pitiable tale to the
end.
When I had finished he said quietly:
"Take me to see Mme. la Marquise, old friend. Who knows? perhaps I may
be able to help."
Then he turned to his friend.
"Will you wait for me at my lodgings, Tony," he said, "and let Ffoulkes
and Hastings know that I may wish to speak with them on my return?"
He spoke like one who had been accustomed all his life to give command,
and I marvelled how his friend immediately obeyed him. Then when the
latter had disappeared down the dark street, the stranger once more
turned to me.
"Lean on my arm, good old friend," he said, "and we must try and walk as
quickly as we can. The sooner we allay the anxieties of Mme. la Marquise
the better."
I was still hugging the roast capon with one arm, with the other I clung
to him as together we walked in the direction of the Rue des Pipots. On
the way we halted at a respectable eating-house, where my protector gave
me some money wherewith to buy a bottle of good wine and sundry
provisions and delicacies which we carried home with us.