was entreated to stay, at whatever cost, but nevertheless rose early
one morning and left the house and left Paris; he had come to the
humiliation of flight and concealment, not yet to the humiliation of
dragging others with him in his piteous downfall.
For two weeks he had lurked round Paris, hiding in thickets and
quarries, living on the food he had with him in his pocket and a few
crusts begged from a farmhouse and a few scraps purchased by a day’s
labour in turning the ground.
These two weeks had served to bring him to the last stage of extremity;
the aristocrat, the philosopher, had only two desires–a little food and
a little sleep.
Goaded by this intolerable need of food he had left the disused quarry
where he had lain hidden for the last two days and stumbled on to the
high-road where he sat now, blinking at the sun.
Yesterday he had found an unsuspected treasure, in the shape of two
silver pieces, in the inner pocket of his coat, and he resolved to
reach the nearest inn and lay this out in food.
What he should do afterwards he was too sick to think; everything had
narrowed to that desire for food and rest–the rest that could only come
of hunger satisfied; for at present the pangs of starvation would not
let him sleep or, for one instant, forget his outraged body.
Yet prudence still whispered in his ear that he meditated a foolish
thing; they were looking for him–even the half-witted peasants on the
farm where he had worked had suspected him–and at an inn where some one
of better intelligence might any moment enter, surely he was not safe.
Then he considered his appearance; certainly the Marquis de Condorcet
was well disguised now; his clothes had been at best poor, for he had
passed as a servant in his friend’s house, and now there was not one
sign or mark of anything save the most abject poverty and want about
his person; he thought he could defy recognition.
He watched the sun mounting above the hawthorn trees that were clouded
with white blossoms, and there seemed to be two orbs of gold fire
changing and mingling and slipping giddily about the heavens.
He staggered to his feet and walked stiffly and slowly down the long
dusty road, each step an agony, for his feet were chafed raw in his
rough hard boots.
He passed a poor cottage standing in an untidy garden; it was the
beginning of the village of Clamars.
The winding street led to the inn; though it was still so early the
place was open; a boy was whistling while he rubbed down a horse, his
plump aspect had something grotesque in it to the famished man.
A woman came out of the inn and threw a pail of dirty water across the
street; the Marquis stupidly noticed the long dark trails of wet across
the dust that were trickling slowly to his feet. The boy looked up and
saw him as he stood hesitating.
“Good morning, citizen.”
“Good morning, citizen,” answered the Marquis in a voice feeble from
weakness and long silence. “Can I get some food here?”
“If you can pay for it, citizen.”
“Yes, I can pay.”
The boy straightened himself and looked at the wild and miserable
figure advancing towards him.
“Who are you, citizen?” he asked, and the Marquis saw suspicion creep
into his common dull face.
“I am a servant looking for a place; my last was in Paris–I have walked
a long way–I mean to get to Bourg-la-Reine to-night.”
“Well, it is not far,” answered the peasant with an instant insolence
of the poor towards the ragged.
“I must have breakfast first,” said the Marquis, putting a great
restraint on himself to speak gently and humbly; it was natural to him
to be brief and cold with his inferiors.
The youth jerked his head towards the open door.
The Marquis entered the low dark passage and stepped into the common
parlour in the front, which was roughly furnished but filled with
beauty by the chestnut tree that pressed its load of young clear green
leaves against the panes of the small low window.
The Marquis sank on to a chair by this window, with his back to the
light and rested his elbows on the stained table in front of him.
The woman whom he had seen with the pail entered, wiping her hands
on her rough blue apron; she did not appear to notice his desperate
appearance; the light was not good and probably she was used enough to
wild and haggard figures stopping here for a moment’s respite on some
bitter journey.
He asked her briefly for food; she nodded and looked at him, not
unkindly. Few indeed could have looked at him unmoved, so obviously had
everything left him save mere fainting humanity that cried for succour.
“You are hungry?” she said.
He answered her with an effort; repeated his story of a servant out of
place.
“What became of your master?” she asked.
“Dead,” he replied, hardly knowing what he said. “The guillotine—”
“Ah, the guillotine–he was, then, an aristocrat?” She put bread, cheese
and a bottle of wine on the table, having taken them from a cupboard in
the wall.
“Do aristocrats only go to the guillotine?” he replied, while his hand
went out to the bread. “No, there are no longer any aristocrats, and
now we execute the good republicans, citizeness.”
“Yes,” she answered; “but you spoke as if you had lived with
aristocrats, citizen.”
The Marquis shuddered: so she had noticed it, this stupid woman; his
speech stamped him, he could not disguise that.
“I was in a good place,” he said.
She left him, and he began eating and drinking, not thinking for the
moment of anything but that, the gratification of his necessity.
He ate all the bread and cheese she had brought him before he dare
touch the wine; when he did drink it, poor and thin as it was, it
restored his blood to nearer its normal beat and heat; his brain began
to work more clearly and sanely, his strong intelligence reasserted its
sway; he began to form plans, to make resolves.
The woman came in and brought him meat and more bread; he asked her if
he could rest there till noon, and she answered that he could stay in
the room till then, he would not trouble her, and she was not likely to
have more customers before the evening.
Again he was alone; the peace of the dark parlour, the delicious green
of the softly-waving leaves outside, the silence and a certain homely
perfume from the herbs hanging in bunches from the dark raftered
ceiling affected him like a spell.
It was probably foolish to remain here; it would probably be wise to
take advantage of his luck and slip away while the inn was quiet, but
he could not. The pain of hunger ceased, his great fatigue asserted
itself; if they had been galloping red-hot from Paris after him with
certain news that he was at this very spot, he must still have done as
he did; drop on to the worn chintz settle and sleep.
The gratification of his utter bodily weariness was more exquisite than
the gratification of his hunger had been; the humble couch was like
down pillows after stones and hedges, and the pursued and hunted man
abandoned himself without resistance to the helplessness of sleep.
When he awoke it was about three hours later; he was racked with pain
and still exhausted, but he made a violent effort to rouse himself;
his mind was quite clear; he knew what he was risking and he would
risk it no longer; he forced back the desire to again fall into a
stupor of sleep and sat up on the couch.
There was a great noise outside; some one was arriving with loud and
angry commands, jingle of harness, clatter of horses’ hoofs.
The Marquis guessed that this noise was what had roused him; he rose
softly, went to the window and peeped through the screen of leaves.
A well-dressed man was dismounting and another was ordering about the
stable-boy with an air of great importance.
The Marquis dropped into his former seat with his back to the light–had
he stayed too long?–was there some possible way of immediate escape?
Only by the common passage through which he had come; and it was too
late for that, for he could hear the two men already there calling for
wine.
Who were they? Was he caught? Could he play his part through and cheat
the accursed of their prey?
He asked himself these questions in swift succession, and every nerve
in his being braced itself to avoid the final misery of facing the
humiliation of falling into his enemies’ hands after undergoing every
other humiliation of flight, concealment and degradation. He could not
have put into words the hatred he felt towards the tyrants with whom
for a while he had in his blindness joined, forsaking his own order,
believing in his folly that he was leaguing with the right, that he was
to be one of the prophets of a new era of liberty and light and hope.
Believing, too, that he and they could forget his gentle blood, that
they could forgive it and he ignore it; but it had been the strongest
of all strong things; now, when everything else was stripped away it
remained: his birth, his blood, his traditions, and the great hate
between him and the plebeian that had been for a while cloaked and
disguised, now sprang actively to life.
He could not repent too bitterly of his mistaken ideals of patriotism
and the general good, his unfortunate ambitions of governing his
country, of doing some service to his kind that had led him to this
pass of despair, that had made him another figure of tragedy to blend
in the bloody carnival being daily enacted; and in this moment of
anguish he would rather have died as others of his class had died–at
once hating the people and by them hated, tyrants perhaps and men who
had done nothing with their lives, but to be envied by men like Marie
Jean Caritat who had forsaken his order only to come to this.
The two new-comers entered the room; which was now so light by reason
of the level rays of the sun piercing the chestnut leaves that but
little part of it was in shadow, and the Marquis, even with his back to
the light was clear enough in every detail, as he well felt.
He sat upright, with nothing of the pose of the character he was
assuming in his bearing, and looked at the new-comers.
He could see at once that they were of a type particularly hateful to
him: the small official of no birth or culture whom chance had thrown
to the surface in the turmoil of the revolution, and whom chance might,
and probably would, throw to-morrow to the guillotine; but while their
power lasted they used it brutally, these men, and enjoyed to deal
fiercely with those of the old _régime_.
One wore the tricolour sash round his rusty black cloth coat, and the
tricolour in his cockade; he was perhaps president of the Committee
of Public Safety in Bourg-la-Reine, or perhaps the Public Prosecutor;
it was obvious that he considered himself a great man; in his native
town he was probably bowed down to, being no doubt for the moment a
potent instrument for death and terror. His companion seemed a kind of
secretary or attendant, subservient and truckling to the more important
man; both of them had the loose ungraceful air of low breed in a
position of authority.
On their entry both glanced instantly at the Marquis; it was no more
than a glance from either of them; he drew a broken breath of relief to
think that they passed his appearance.
The woman came hurrying in to wait on them; they ordered wine lavishly
and began talking noisily together about local politics.
The Marquis foresaw no difficulty in making an easy escape, but he
waited, considering what to do.
He dare not go back to Paris, he dare not go on to Bourg-la-Reine;
there was nothing but to creep back to the disused quarries and hide
there till perhaps the Robespierre tyranny fell; he had hoped at first
to find means to fly to England, but without money that had proved
impossible.
Still, the idea returned to him now; it would be better to risk all
on that than to return to the quarries; he resolved to push on to the
coast; there were several people on the way who would help him could he
but reach them; the food and rest had put new daring into him; under
the very eyes of two of the men who would deliver him to instant and
horrible death if they knew him did he plan calmly his future means of
escape.
It occurred to him that this might be the last chance of food for some
while and he was again hungry.
When the woman re-entered, attending to the wants of the citizens of
Bourg-la-Reine, he beckoned to her and asked her in a low tone to
prepare him an omelette before he set out on his journey.
Then, fearful that she might deny him, under the impression that he
could not pay, he took one of his silver pieces out of his pocket and
laid it on the table.
The woman looked at the money and at him.
“You can stay the night, if you wish, for that,” she said.
“No, citizeness,” he answered. “I must get on.”
“Lodging is dearer in Bourg-la-Reine,” she said. “And what is your need
to hasten?”
“I was told of a possible place,” he said.
“Likely they will take you!” she glanced at him pityingly.
Looking beyond her he saw that the two men had stopped their
conversation and were watching him. The woman moved away and one of the
men (he of the tricolour) stopped her.
“The citizen over there is not very prosperous looking,” he remarked.
“Who is he?”
“A servant looking for a place, citizen.”
“He speaks,” was the answer, “like an aristocrat.”
“He has lived with them, I believe, citizen.”
“Has he?” The important man glanced at his companion, who struck his
knee softly and cried–
“‘Suspect!’–on the face of it! What did he order–an omelette?”
The other stroked his rough chin and spoke to the woman.
“Ask the citizen-servant how many eggs go to his omelette!”
She stared. “_I_ know, citizen.”
“Certainly, citizeness, but does he? Ask him.”
Condorcet had not heard this conversation which was spoken very low and
in the patois of the neighbourhood; he feared, however, that it might
be about him, and was therefore relieved to hear the simple question
the woman put to him when she returned to his little table by the
window.
“How many eggs will you have to your omelette, citizen?”
“A dozen,” answered the Marquis.
He saw instantly by the expression of the woman’s face that he had said
the wrong thing.
“A dozen eggs!” she echoed.
“Is not that the right number, citizeness?”
She retreated from him and went to the other two men with amazement and
suspicion in her face.
“He said–a dozen eggs,” she repeated.
The official smiled.
“He is clearly of the people, this citizen, since he has been able to
be so lavish with his omelettes!”
He rose and crossed over to where the Marquis sat.
“So you want a dozen eggs for your breakfast, eh?” he said.
Condorcet looked at him and hated him; he was furious with himself for
the slip that had brought this attention on himself, but he answered
calmly.
“I have seen omelettes made with as many, I thought, citizen.”
The other eyed him closely.
“You are a servant looking for a place?”
“Yes, citizen.”
His questioner stood over him in the attitude, of a judge and thrust
his thumbs into his tricolour sash; he was noticing the make and look
of this haggard, ragged figure, the shape of his hands, the pose of the
head, the steady gaze of the eyes unknown in one born in servitude.
“Where have you come from?”
“Paris.”
“You are very tattered, citizen, to have come such a short way.”
Condorcet moved his arms on the table, and put up the right hand to
rest his chin in; this attitude, so unconscious, so easy, so coolly
reflective and authoritative betrayed him utterly; the fact that he
had not risen when spoken to had in itself been almost sufficient to
confirm the official’s suspicion.
“I have been out of a place,” said the Marquis, “some time. I have
hopes of another at Bourg-la-Reine.”
The other laughed.
“You are a ‘suspect,’” he said. “And you lie very badly.”
Condorcet’s eyes flashed hell-fire for an instant: thereby he further
betrayed himself. “Who do you think I am?” he asked.
“An aristocrat.”
“You flatter me, citizen.” Condorcet’s face was dark and violent; he
could not keep his tone humble; he could not forget that this man might
have been his servant a few years ago–a creature who would never have
presumed to address him; all the lessons of the Revolution had not
killed his heritage of aristocratic pride.
“Stand up,” said the man from Bourg-la-Reine.
The Marquis kept his seat.
“I stand up when I rise to leave the inn, citizen,” he answered.
The other man was standing watchfully by the door; the woman had
summoned others; they might be seen in the passage, a rough hovering
group.
Condorcet knew that he was trapped; his nostrils dilated and his thin
lips compressed; he eyed his enemy steadily.
“Now I will go on my way,” he said, and rose–a gaunt, ragged figure
against the background of sunny chestnut leaves tapping at the thick
glass window-panes. He came round the table and he walked easily
despite his bleeding feet and the rough boots that galled them. The
heavy person of the official barred his way.
“Will you not wait for your dozen eggs?” he sneered and put out a thick
hand to seize the Marquis’ shoulder, but Condorcet moved swiftly aside.
“Your insolence—” he breathed. “You have no right to detain me.”
The people round the door began laughing; Condorcet gave them a bitter
look, and in that instant when his eyes were directed his opponent
seized him and thrust him backwards against the wall, while he plunged
a hand into his torn pocket.
Condorcet shuddered and the blood surged up into his hollow face while
the official pulled out a small old book with a discoloured calf cover.
“A foreign language!” he cried, fluttering over the leaves. “I smell
treason!”
“Is it treason to read Horace?” asked the Marquis fiercely.
“Do you–a servant–_read_ this?” was the triumphant counter question.
“Eh, do you _read_ this, then?”
The people at the door began to crowd into the room; the Marquis took
a step forward; there was no possible supposing that he would escape
the malice and fury fronting him; he did not for an instant hope it;
instinctively, his right hand went round to his left hip where his
sword should have been.
The unmistakable gesture was instantly noticed and excited murmurs went
up from the gathered peasants.
“By God, you are an aristocrat!” cried the man from Bourg-la-Reine,
seizing him roughly.
“By God I am!” answered Condorcet, and struck him across the face.…
They fell on him with quick and hideous noises; he felt himself seized,
struck, shaken, pushed, dragged, insulted; he kept his head high and
was silent.
They found a rope and tied his arms behind him, and with the ends of
this rope struck him across the shoulders. The important official,
nursing a smarting face, was incoherent in the coarse violence of his
abuse.
The woman trembled at the edge of the group, stupidly afraid.
“Who is he?” she asked again and again.
They took the question up.
“Who are you? _Scélérat!_”
“One who has served the Republic,” he replied, white with the pain of
his close-bound arms.
They pushed him into the centre of the room while they paused to
consider what they should do with their prize, and as he stood there,
swaying a little, but upright, the light was full on his face, which
had once been so famous in Paris.
The stern outlines, the dark colouring, the fiery expression were the
same; unwashed, unshaven, starved as he was, the little timid man, who
had lived in Paris, recognised him.
“Deauville! Deauville!” he shrieked to his master, dancing in his
excitement, “it is Condorcet! Condorcet!”
The Marquis made no denial; his silence was confirmation and he meant
it to be; he knew that he was face to face with the end and he was
for no further subterfuge; he had tasted already of the depths of
humiliation, he was enduring the extreme of bitterness; there was
nothing further to lose or gain in this world for Marie Jean Nicolas de
Caritat.
Presently, while some were arguing about his identity, he said in his
rough broken voice, with the clear accent that they hated–
“I am Condorcet. Make an end of it.”
They had no more doubts; his face and his voice had betrayed him more
completely even than his twelve eggs and his Latin Horace; they were
elated at the capture of a man so long unsuccessfully searched for;
they drank together, congratulating each other.
Only the woman serving them noticed the prisoner–noticed the cords
cutting his wrists, the drop of pain on his brow, the effort he was
making to keep upright on his feet.
In a dim, vague way she was aware of the mental torture he was
enduring, compared to which the torture of cord and bleeding feet was
slight; she felt that this was a proud man enduring the extremity of
humiliation and that no more awful bitterness could be imagined in this
world.
“He suffers,” she said under her breath, “he suffers.”
Presently they started; four men and the two from Bourg-la-Reine,
towards which town’s prison they turned.
Condorcet was in the middle; the four with the prisoner went on foot,
the others on horseback.
Strange thoughts came to the Marquis de Condorcet as he walked bound
between his four rude guards, as he walked painfully, dragging his
fatigued body on bleeding feet along the hot dusty high-road that led
to his prison.
Thoughts strange because they were so incongruous to his present
situation, and because it was curious that in his misery he should be
filled with all the old burning pangs of ambition and desire for power
and glory.
And yet he could not even die gloriously; no man could have a more
ignominious end than he would have, he knew that. He cursed the body
that had failed him, that had broken like any peasant’s body, that
was dragging him down–demeaning him, bringing all his philosophy to
mockery. His mind flew back over the salient points of his life; yet
there was no need for him to consider his past years: one word covered
them all–that word was failure.
Failure–had any failure ever been more bitter, more complete?
For he had conceived loftily and dared greatly, and his fall was
terrible and his end abject.
Intolerable became the heat of the sun, intolerable the dust on his dry
lips, on his hot lids; intolerable the chafing of his feet, caked with
blood and dirt; intolerable the deep pain of his elbows and the cutting
of the rope round his wrists; intolerable the agony of fatigue in his
weak body, already worn to the last endurance.…
He concentrated all his mental powers on self-control; the man whose
mind had flown out into the widest realms of thought now brought that
same mind to bear on the terrible effort of holding himself upright, so
that he might not, before those whom he despised, fall face downwards
in the dust.
He dare not think how far it was to Bourg-la-Reine; he looked ahead of
him and could see nothing–no house, no sign of a town; only the dusty
hedges, the dusty road.…
“Let me keep upright,” he muttered to himself, “let me keep upright—”
The sky seemed to be burning–blue it was, but not gentle–he had never
understood before that the sky can be both blue and flaming, as bitter
and fierce as scarlet.
The grass, too, and the trees, they were not soothing nor peaceful but
harsh and glaring.
“How long can I keep upright? How long can I walk?”
He tried to snatch at old mathematical problems, to soothe and calm and
distract himself with that; he saw the figures range themselves before
him–but they were of fire, gigantic and flaming.
He thought that the trees had caught fire from the unsupportable sky,
that the hedgerows were singeing and smoking, that the road was rising
up before him in a column of white fire; that all this fiery world was
advancing on him; everything was scarlet, and there was a sound in his
ears like the beating of many drums.
“He will fall,” said the official on horseback, fanning himself with
his hat.
Condorcet heard the words, he saw them written before him in the same
acrid scarlet that was colouring the world. He tried to protest, to
draw himself erect, for he had heard them laughing; but he felt his
strength breaking like brittle dry straws; he fell head first as they
had meant him to fall, as he had dreaded to fall, and his mouth filled
with dust.
When they saw that he was indeed unconscious and that no blows nor
kicks could induce him to rise, they lifted him up and dragged him
between them to Bourg-la-Reine. As they entered the town he recovered
consciousness enough to know that his martyrdom was complete and that
he was the object of all the town idlers’ ridicule as he was drawn
along, ragged, bloody, with a distorted face, between two of his
peasant guards.