Open to the street in front, the locality known under the pretentious
title of "Cabaret de la Liberte" was a favoured one among the flotsam
and jetsam of the population of this corner of old Paris; men and
sometimes women, with nothing particular to do, no special means of
livelihood save the battening on the countless miseries and sorrows
which this Revolution, which was to have been so glorious, was bringing
in its train; idlers and loafers, who would crawl desultorily down the
few worn and grimy steps which led into the cabaret from the level of
the street. There was always good brandy or eau de vie to be had there,
and no questions asked, no scares from the revolutionary guards or the
secret agents of the Committee of Public Safety, who knew better than to
interfere with the citizen host and his dubious clientele. There was
also good Rhine wine or rum to be had, smuggled across from England or
Germany, and no interference from the spies of some of those countless
Committees, more autocratic than any ci-devant despot. It was, in fact,
an ideal place wherein to conduct those shady transactions which are
unavoidable corollaries of an unfettered democracy. Projects of
burglary, pillage, rapine, even murder, were hatched within this
underground burrow, where, as soon as evening drew in, a solitary, smoky
oil-lamp alone cast a dim light upon faces that liked to court the
darkness, and whence no sound that was not meant for prying ears found
its way to the street above. The walls were thick with grime and smoke,
the floor mildewed and cracked; dirt vied with squalor to make the place
a fitting abode for thieves and cut-throats, for some of those sinister
night-birds, more vile even than those who shrieked with satisfied lust
at sight of the tumbril, with its daily load of unfortunates for the
guillotine.
On this occasion the project that was being hatched was one of the most
abject. A young girl, known by some to be possessed of a fortune, was
the stake for which these workers of iniquity gambled across one of mine
host's greasy tables. The latest decree of the Convention, encouraging,
nay, commanding, the union of aristocrats with so-called patriots, had
fired the imagination of this nest of jail-birds with thoughts of
glorious possibilities. Some of them had collected the necessary
information; and the report had been encouraging.
That self-indulgent aristo, the ci-devant banker Amede Vincent, who had
expiated his villainies upon the guillotine, was known to have been
successful in abstracting the bulk of his ill-gotten wealth and
concealing it somewhere--it was not exactly known where, but thought to
be in England--out of the reach, at any rate, of deserving patriots.
Some three or four years ago, before the glorious principles of Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity had made short shrift of all such pestilential
aristocrats, the ci-devant banker, then a widower with an only daughter,
Esther, had journeyed to England. He soon returned to Paris, however,
and went on living there with his little girl in comparative retirement,
until his many crimes found him out at last and he was made to suffer
the punishment which he so justly deserved. Those crimes consisted for
the most part in humiliating the aforesaid deserving patriots with his
benevolence, shaming them with many kindnesses, and the simplicity of
his home-life, and, above all, in flouting the decrees of the
Revolutionary Government, which made every connection with ci-devant
churches and priests a penal offence against the security of the State.
Amede Vincent was sent to the guillotine, and the representatives of the
people confiscated his house and all his property on which they could
lay their hands; but they never found the millions which he was supposed
to have concealed. Certainly his daughter Esther--a young girl, not yet
nineteen--had not found them either, for after her father's death she
went to live in one of the poorer quarters of Paris, alone with an old
and faithful servant named Lucienne. And while the Committee of Public
Safety was deliberating whether it would be worth while to send Esther
to the guillotine, to follow in her father's footsteps, a certain number
of astute jail-birds plotted to obtain possession of her wealth.
The wealth existed, over in England; of that they were ready to take
their oath, and the project which they had formed was as ingenious as it
was diabolic: to feign a denunciation, to enact a pretended arrest, to
place before the unfortunate girl the alternative of death or marriage
with one of the gang, were the chief incidents of this inquitous
project, and it was in the Cabaret de la Liberte that lots were thrown
as to which among the herd of miscreants should be the favoured one to
play the chief role in the sinister drama.
The lot fell to Merri; but the whole gang was to have a share in the
putative fortune--even Rateau, the wretched creature with the hacking
cough, who looked as if he had one foot in the grave, and shivered as if
he were stricken with ague, put in a word now and again to remind his
good friend Merri that he, too, was looking forward to his share of the
spoils. Merri, however, was inclined to repudiate him altogether.
"Why should I share with you?" he said roughly, when, a few hours later,
he and Rateau parted in the street outside the Cabaret de la Liberte.
"Who are you, I would like to know, to try and poke your ugly nose into
my affairs? How do I know where you come from, and whether you are not
some crapulent spy of one of those pestilential committees?"
From which eloquent flow of language we may infer that the friendship
between these two worthies was not of very old duration. Rateau would,
no doubt, have protested loudly, but the fresh outer air had evidently
caught his wheezy lungs, and for a minute or two he could do nothing but
cough and splutter and groan, and cling to his unresponsive comrade for
support. Then at last, when he had succeeded in recovering his breath,
he said dolefully and with a ludicrous attempt at dignified reproach:
"Do not force me to remind you, citizen Merri, that if it had not been
for my suggestion that we should all draw lots, and then play hazard
as to who shall be the chosen one to woo the ci-devant millionairess,
there would soon have been a free fight inside the cabaret, a number of
broken heads, and no decision whatever arrived at; whilst you, who were
never much of a fighter, would probably be lying now helpless, with a
broken nose, and deprived of some of your teeth, and with no chance of
entering the lists for the heiress. Instead of which, here you are, the
victor by a stroke of good fortune, which you should at least have the
good grace to ascribe to me."
Whether the poor wretch's argument had any weight with citizen Merri, or
whether that worthy patriot merely thought that procrastination would,
for the nonce, prove the best policy, it were impossible to say. Certain
it is that in response to his companion's tirade he contented himself
with a dubious grunt, and without another word turned on his heel and
went slouching down the street.