THE WILD DOGS.
It was on a night of middle Vendémiaire in the year two (to affect
the whimsical jargon of the _sans-culottes_) that I issued from my
burrow with an intrepidity that was nothing more nor less than a
congestion of the sensibilities. Fear at that time having fed upon
itself till all was devoured, was converted in very many to a humorous
stoicism that only lacked to be great because it could not boast a
splendid isolation. “Suspect of being suspect”--Citizen Chaumette’s
last slash at the hamstrings of hope--had converted all men of humane
character to that religion of self-containment that can alone
spiritually exalt above the caprices of the emotions. Thousands, in a
moment, through extreme of fear became fearless; hence no man of them
could claim a signal inspiration of courage, but only that
subscription to the terms of it which unnatural conditions had
rendered necessary to all believers in the ultimate ethical triumph of
the human race.
I do not mean to say that I was tired of life, but simply that it came
to me at once that I must not hold that test of moral independence at
the mercy of any temporal tyranny whatsoever. Indeed I was still so
far in love with existence physically, as to neglect no precaution
that was calculated to contribute to the present prolonging of it. I
wore my frieze night-cap, carmagnole, sabots, and black shag spencer
with all the assumption I could muster of being to the shoddy born. I
had long learned the art of slurring a sigh into a cough or
expectoration. I could curse the stolid spectres of the tumbrils so as
to deceive all but the recording angel, and, possibly, Citizen
Robespierre.
Nevertheless, with me, as with others, precaution seemed but a
condition of the recklessness whose calculations never extended beyond
the immediate day or hour. We lived posthumous lives, so to speak, and
would hardly have resented it, should an arbitrary period have been
put to our revisiting of the “glimpses of the moon.”
On this night, then, of early September (as I will prefer calling it)
I issued from my burrow, calm under the intolerable tyranny of
circumstance. Desiring to reconstruct myself on the principle of an
older independence, I was mentally discussing the illogic of a system
of purgation that was seeking to solve the problem of existence by
emptying the world, when I became aware that my preoccupied ramblings
had brought me into the very presence of that sombre engine that was
the concrete expression of so much and such detestable false
reasoning. In effect, and to speak without circumbendibus, I found
myself to have wandered into the Faubourg St Antoine--into the place
of execution, and to have checked my steps only at the very foot of
the guillotine.
It was close upon midnight, and, overhead, very wild and broken
weather. But the deeps of atmosphere, with the city for their ocean
bed, as it were, lay profoundly undisturbed by the surface turmoil
above; and in the tranquil _Place_, for all the upper flurry, one
could hear oneself breathe and think.
I could have done this with the more composure, had not another sound,
the import of which I was a little late in recognising, crept into my
hearing with a full accompaniment of dismay. This sound was like
licking or lapping, very bestial and unclean, and when I came to
interpret it, it woke in me a horrible nausea. For all at once I knew
that, hidden in that dreadful conduit that strong citizens of late had
dug from the Place St Antoine to the river, to carry away the ponded
blood of the executed, the wild dogs of Paris were slaking their
wolfish thirst. I could hear their filthy gutturising and the scrape
of their lazy tongues on the soil, and my heart went cold, for
latterly, and since they had taken to hunting in packs, these ravenous
brutes had assailed and devoured more than one belated citizen whom
they had scented traversing the Champs Elysées, or other lonely
space; and I was aware a plan for their extermination was even now
under discussion by the Committee of Public Safety.
Now, to fling scorn to the axe in that city of terror was to boast
only that one had adjusted oneself to a necessity that did not imply
an affectation of indifference to the fangs of wild beasts--for such,
indeed, they were. So, a suicide, who goes to cast himself headlong
into the river, may run in a panic from a falling beam, and be
consistent, too; for his compact is with death--not mutilation.
Be that as it may, I know that for the moment terror so snapped at my
heel that, under the very teeth of it, I leaped up the scaffold
steps--with the wild idea of swarming to the beam above the knife and
thence defying my pursuers, should they nose and bay me seated there
at refuge--and stood with a white desperate face, scarcely daring to
pant out the constriction of my lungs.
There followed no sound of concentrated movement; but only that
stealthy licking went on, with the occasional plash of brute feet in a
bloody mire; and gradually my turbulent pulses slowed, and I thought
myself a fool for my pains in advertising my presence on a platform of
such deadly prominence.
Still, not a soul seemed to be abroad. As I trod the fateful quarter
ten minutes earlier, the last squalid roysterers had staggered from
the wine-shops--the last gleams of light been shut upon the emptied
streets. I was alone with the dogs and the guillotine.
Tiptoeing very gently, very softly, I was preparing to descend the
steps once more, when I drew back with a muttered exclamation, and
stood staring down upon an apparition that, speeding at that moment
into the _Place_, paused within ten paces of the scaffold on which I
stood.
Above the scudding clouds was a moon that pulsed a weak intermittent
radiance through the worn places of the drift. Its light was always
more suggested than revealed; but it was sufficient to denote that the
apparition was that of a very pale young woman--a simple child she
looked, whose eyes, nevertheless, wore that common expression of the
dramatic intensity of her times.
She stood an instant, tense as Corday, her fingers bent to her lips;
her background a frouzy wall with the legend _Propriété Nationale_
scrawled on it in white chalk. Significant to the inference, the cap
of scarlet wool was drawn down upon her young _blondes_ curls--the
gold of the coveted perukes.
Suddenly she made a little movement, and in the same instant gave out
a whistle clear and soft.
Yes, it was she from whom it proceeded; and I shuddered. There below
me in the ditch were the dogs; here before me was this fearless child.
For myself, even in the presence of this angel, I dared scarcely stir.
It was unnatural; it was preposterous--came a scramble and a rush; and
there, issued from the filthy sewer, was a huge boar-hound, that
fawned on the little citoyenne, and yelped (under her breath) like a
thing of human understanding.
She cried softly, “Down, Radegonde!” and patted the monster’s head
with a pretty manner of endearment.
“Ah!” she murmured, “hast thou broken thy faith with thy hunger?
Traitor!--but I will ask no questions. Here are thy comfits. My sweet,
remember thy pedigree and thy mistress.”
She thrust a handful of sugar-plums into the great jaws. I could hear
the hound crunching them in her teeth.
What was I to do?--what warning to give? This child--this frail
wind-flower of the night--the guillotine would have devoured her at a
snap, and laughed over the tit-bit! But I, and the nameless gluttons
of the ditch!
They were there--part at least of one of those packs (recruited by
gradual degrees from the desolated homes of the proscribed--of
_émigrés_) that now were swollen to such formidable proportions as
to have become a menace and a nightly terror. The dogs were there, and
should they scent this tender quarry, what power was in a single
faithful hound to defend her against a half hundred, perhaps, of her
fellows.
Sweating with apprehension, I stole down the steps. She was even then
preparing to retreat hurriedly as she had come. Her lips were pressed
to the beast’s wrinkled head. The sound of her footstep might have
precipitated the catastrophe I dreaded.
“Citoyenne! citoyenne!” I whispered in an anguished voice.
She looked up, scared and white in a moment. The dog gave a rolling
growl.
“Radegonde!” she murmured, in a faint warning tone.
The brute stood alert, her hair bristling.
“Bid her away!” I entreated. “You are in danger.”
She neither answered nor moved.
“See, I am in earnest!” I cried, loud as I durst. “The wild dogs are
below there.”
“Radegonde!” she murmured again.
“Ah, mademoiselle! What are two rows of teeth against a hundred. Send
her away, I implore you, and accept my escort out of this danger.”
“My faith!” she said at last, in a queer little moving voice, “it may
be as the citizen says; but I think dogs are safer than men.”
I urged my prayer. The beauty and courage of the child filled my heart
with a sort of rapturous despair.
“God witness I am speaking for your safety alone! Will this prevail
with you? I am the Comte de la Muette. I exchange you that confidence
for a little that you may place in me. I lay my life in your hands,
and I beg the charge of yours in return.”
I could hear her breathing deep where she stood. Suddenly she bent and
spoke to her companion.
“To the secret place, Radegonde--and to-morrow again for thy
_confiture_, thou bad glutton. Kiss thy Nanette, my baby; and, oh,
Radegonde! not what falls from the table of Sainte Guillotine!”
She stood erect, and held up a solemn finger. The hound slunk away,
like a human thing ashamed; showed her teeth at me as she passed, and
disappeared in the shadows of the scaffold.
I took a hurried step forward. Near at hand the pure loveliness of
this citoyenne was, against its surroundings, like a flower floating
on blood.
She smiled, and looked me earnestly in the face. We were but phantoms
to one another in that moony twilight; but in those fearful times men
had learned to adapt their eyesight to the second plague of darkness.
“Is it true?” she said, softly. “Monsieur le Comte, it must be long
since you have received a curtsey.”
She dropped me one there, bending to her own prettiness like a rose;
and then she gave a little low laugh. Truly that city of Paris saw
some strange meetings in the year of terror.
“I, too,” she said, “was born of the _noblesse_. That is a secret,
monsieur, to set against yours.”
I could but answer, with some concern--
“Mademoiselle, these confessions, if meet for the holy saint yonder,
are little for the ears of the devil’s advocates. I entreat let us be
walking, or those in the ditch may anticipate upon us his
benediction.”
“_Ma foi!_” she said, “it is true. Come, then!”
We went off together, stealing from the square like thieves.
Presently, when I could breathe with a half relief, “You will not go
to-morrow?” I said.
“To feed Radegonde! Ah, monsieur! I would not for the whole world lose
the little sweet-tooth her goodies. Each of us has only the other to
love in all this cruel city.”
“So, my child! And they have taken the rest?”
“Monsieur, my father was the rest. He went on the seventeenth
Fructidor; and since, my veins do not run blood, I think, but only
ice-water, that melts from my heart and returns to freeze again.”
I sighed.
“Nay,” she said, “for I can laugh, as you see.”
“And the dog, my poor child?”
“She ran under the tumbril, and bit at the heels of the horses. She
would not leave him, monsieur; and still--and still she haunts the
place. I go to her,--when all the city is silent I go to her, if I can
escape, and take her the sweetmeats that she loves. What of that? It
is only a little while and my turn must come, and then Radegonde will
be alone. My hair, monsieur will observe, is the right colour for the
perukes.”
She stayed me with a touch.
“I am arrived. A thousand thanks for your escort, Monsieur le Comte.”
We were by a low casement with a ledge before it--an easy climb from
the street. She pushed the lattice open, showing me it was unbolted
from within.
“She thinks me fast and asleep,” she said. “Some day soon, perhaps,
but not yet.”
I did not ask her who _she_ was. I seemed all mazed in a silent dream
of pity.
“It is quite simple,” she said, “when no cavalier is by to look. Will
the citizen turn his head?”
She was up in an instant, and stepping softly into the room beyond,
leaned out towards me. On the moment an evil thing grew out of the
shadow of a buttress close by, and a wicked insolent face looked into
mine with a grin.
“A sweet good-night to Monsieur le Comte,” it said, and vanished.
Shocked and astounded, I stood rooted to the spot. But there came a
sudden low voice in my ear:
“Quick, quick! have you no knife? You must follow!”
I had taken but a single uncertain step, when, from a little way down
the street we had traversed, there cut into the night a sharp
attenuated howl; and, in a moment, on the passing of it, a chorus of
hideous notes swept upon me standing there in indecision.
“My God!” I cried--“the dogs!”
She made a sound like a plover. I scrambled to the ledge and dropped
into the room beyond. There in the dark she clutched and clung to me.
For though the cry had been bestial, there had seemed to answer to it
something mortal--an echo--a human scream of very dreadful
fear,--there came a rush of feet like a wind, and, with ashy faces, we
looked forth.
They had him--that evil thing. An instant we saw his sick white face
thrown up like a stone in the midst of a writhing sea; and the jangle
was hellish. Then I closed the lattice, and pressed her face to my
breast.
He had run from us to his doom, which meeting, he had fled back in his
terror to make us the ghastly sport he had designed should be his.
How long we stood thus I know not. The noise outside was unnameable,
and I closed her ears with her hair, with my hands--nay, I say it with
a passionate shame, with my lips. She sobbed a little and moaned; but
she clung to me, and I could feel the beating of her heart. We had
heard windows thrown open down the street--one or two on the floors
above us. I had no heed or care for any danger. I was wrapt in a
fearful ecstasy.
By-and-by she lifted her face. Then the noise had ceased for some
time, and a profound silence reigned about us.
“Ah!” she said, in a faint reeling voice. “Radegonde was there; I saw
her!”
“Mademoiselle--the noble creature--she hath won us a respite.”
Her breath caught in the darkness.
“Yes,” she said. “There is a peruke that must wait.”
Suddenly she backed from me, and put the hair from her eyes.
“If you dare, monsieur, it necessitates that we make our adieux.”
“Au revoir, citoyenne. It must be that, indeed.”
She held out her hand, that was like a rose petal. I put my lips to it
and lingered.
“Monsieur, monsieur!” she entreated.
The next moment I was in the street.
* * * * * * *
Who was my little citoyenne? Ah! I shall never know. The terror
gripped us, and these things passed. Incidents that would make the
passion of sober times, the spirit of revolution dismisses with a
shrug. To die in those days was such a vulgar complaint.
But I saw her once more, and then when my heart nestled to her image
and my veins throbbed to her remembered touch.
I was strolling, on the morning following my strange experience, in
the neighbourhood of the Champs Elysées, when I was aware of a great
press of people all making in the direction of that open ground.
“What arrives, then, citizen?” I cried to one who paused for breath
near me.
He gasped, the little morose. To ask any question that showed one
ignorant of the latest caprice of the Executive was almost to be
“suspect.”
“Has not the citizen heard? The Committee of Safety has decreed the
destruction of the dogs.”
“The dogs?”
“Sacred Blood!” he cried. “Is it not time, when they take, as it is
said they did last night, a good friend of the Republic to supper?”
He ran on, and I followed. All about the Champs Elysées was a
tumultuous crowd, and posted within were two battalions of the
National Guard, their blue uniforms resplendent, their flint-locks
shining in their hands. They, the soldiers, surrounded the area, save
towards the Rue Royale, where a gap occurred; and on this gap all eyes
were fixed.
Scarcely was I come on the scene when on every side a laughing hubbub
arose. The dogs were being driven in, at first by twos and threes, but
presently in great numbers at a time. For hours, I was told, had half
the _gamins_ of Paris been beating the coverts and hallooing their
quarry to the toils.
At length, when many hundreds were accumulated in the free space, the
soldiers closed in and drove the skulking brutes through the gap
towards the Place Royale. And there they made a battue of it, shooting
them down by the score.
With difficulty I made my way round to the _Place_, the better to view
the sport. The poor trapped _fripons_ ran hither and thither, crying,
yelping--some fawning on their executioners, some begging to the
bullets, as if these were crusts thrown to them. And my heart woke to
pity; for was I not witnessing the destruction of my good friends?
The noise--the volleying, the howling, the shrieking of the
_canaille_--was indescribable.
Suddenly my pulses gave a leap. I knew her--Radegonde. She was driven
into the fire and stood at bay, bristling.
“Nanette!” cried a quick acid voice; “Nanette--imbecile--my God!”
It all passed in an instant. There, starting from the crowd, was the
figure of a tall sour-featured woman, the tiny tricolour bow in her
scarlet cap; there was the thin excited musketeer, his piece to his
shoulder; there was my citoyenne flung upon the ground, her arms about
the neck of the hound.
* * * * * * *
Whether his aim was true or false, who can tell? He shot her through
her dog, and his sergeant brained him. And in due course his sergeant
was invited for his reward to look through the little window.
These were a straw or two in the torrent of the revolution.
* * * * * * *
It was Citizen Gaspardin who accepted the contract to remove the
carcasses (some three thousand of them) that encumbered the Place
Royale as a result of this drastic measure. However, his eye being
bigger than his stomach, as the saying is, he found himself short of
means adequate to his task and so applied for the royal equipages to
help him out of his difficulty. And these the Assembly, entering into
the joke, was moved to lend him; and the dead dogs, hearsed in gilt
and gingerbread as full as they could pack, made a rare procession of
it through Paris, thereby pointing half-a-dozen morals that it is not
worth while at this date to insist on.
I saw the show pass amidst laughter and clapping of hands; and I saw
Radegonde, as I thought, her head lolling from the roof of the
stateliest coach of all. But her place should have been on the seat of
honour.
And the citoyenne, the dark window, the ripping sound in the street,
and that bosom bursting to mine in agony? Episodes, my friend--mere
travelling sparks in dead ashes, that glowed an instant and vanished.
The times bristled with such. Love and hate, and all the kaleidoscope
of passion--pouf! a sigh shook the tube, and form and colour were
changed.
But--but--but--ah! I was glad thenceforth not to shudder for my heart
when a _blonde perruque_ went by me.