THE AFFAIR OF THE CANDLES.
Gardel--one of the most eminent and amusing rascals of my
experience--is inextricably associated with my memories of the prison
of the Little Force. He had been runner to the Marquis de Kercy; and
that his vanity would by no means deny, though it should procure his
conviction ten times over. He was vivacious, and at all expedients as
ingenious as he was practical; and, while he was with us, the
common-room of La Force was a theatre of varieties.
By a curious irony of circumstance, it fell to Madame, his former
châtelaine, to second his extravagances. For he was her
fellow-prisoner; and, out of all that motley, kaleidoscopic
assemblage, an only representative of the traditions of her past. She
indulged him, indeed, as if she would say, “In him, _mes amis_, you
see exemplified the gaieties that I was born to patronise and
applaud.”
She was a small, faded woman, of thirty-five or so--one of those
colourless aristocrats who, lying under no particular ban, were
reserved to complete the tale of any _fournée_ that lacked the
necessary number of loaves. It is humiliating to be guillotined
because fifty-nine are not sixty. But that, in the end, was her fate.
I recall her the first evening of my incarceration, when I was
permitted to descend, rather late, to the _salle de récréation_ of
the proscribed. She was seated, with other ladies, at the long table.
The music of their voices rippled under the vaulted ceiling. They
worked, these dear creatures--the decree depriving prisoners of all
implements and equipments not yet being formulated. Madame la Marquise
stitched proverbs into a sampler in red silk. She looked, perhaps, a
morsel slatternly for a _grande dame_, and her fine lace was torn. But
the sampler must not be neglected, for all that. Since the days she
had played at “Proverbs” (how often?) in the old paternal château,
her little philosophy of life had been all maxims misapplied. Her
sampler was as eloquent to her as was their knitting to the ladies in
the _Place du Trône_. Endowed with so noble a fund of sentiments, how
could they accuse her of inhumanity? I think she had a design to plead
“sampler” before Fouquier Tinville by-and-by.
I had an opportunity presently to examine her work. “_A laver la tête
d’un Maure on perd sa lessive._” She had just finished it--in Roman
characters, too, as a concession to the Directory. It was a
problem-axiom the Executive had resolved unanswerably--as I was bound
to tell her.
“_Comment?_” she asked, with a little sideling perk of her head, like
a robin.
“Can madame doubt? It requests the black thing to sneeze once into the
basket; and, behold! the difficulty is surmounted.”
“_Fi donc!_” she cried, and stole me a curious glance. Was I delirious
with the Revolution fever?
“Of what do they accuse you, my friend?” she said kindly, by-and-by.
“A grave offence, surely. There is little hope for me. I gave a
citizen ‘you’ instead of ‘thou.’”
“So? But how men are thoughtless! Alas!” (She treated me to a little
proverb again.) “‘The sleeping cat needs not to be aroused.’”
This was late in the evening, a little before the “lock up” hour was
arrived.
Earlier, as I had entered, she lifted her eyebrows to Gardel, who
stood, her _chevalier d’honneur_, behind her chair. The man advanced
at once, with infinite courtesy, and bade me welcome, entirely in the
grand manner, to the society of La Force.
“I have the honour to represent madame. This kiss I impress upon
monsieur’s hand is to be returned.”
The ladies laughed. I advanced gravely and saluted the Marquise.
“I restore it, like a medal blessed of the holy father, sanctified a
hundredfold,” I said.
There was a mignonne seated near who was critical of my gallantry.
“But monsieur is enamoured of his own lips,” she said in a little
voice.
“Cruel!” I cried. “What should I mean but that I breathed into it all
that I have of reverence for beauty? If the citoyenne----”
There was a general cry--“A fine! a fine!”
The hateful word was interdicted under a penalty.
“I pay it!” I said, and stooped and kissed the fair cheek.
Its owner flushed and looked a little vexed, for all the general
merriment.
“Monsieur cheapens his own commodities,” she said.
“Ah, mademoiselle! I know the best investments for my heart. I am a
very merchant of love. If you keep my embrace, I am well advertised.
If you return it, I am well enriched.”
The idea was enough. Gardel invented a new game from it on the spot.
In a moment half the company was rustling and chattering and romping
about the room.
M. Damézague’s “_Que ferons-nous demain matin?_”--that should have
been this vivacious Gardel’s epitaph. He could not be monotonous; he
could not be unoriginal; he could not rest anywhere--not even in his
grave. It was curious to see how he deluded la Marquise into the
belief that she was his superior.
Indeed, these prisons afforded strange illustration of what I may call
the process of natural adjustments. Accidents of origin deprived of
all significance, one could select without any difficulty the souls to
whom a free Constitution would have ensured intellectual prominence. I
take Gardel as an instance. Confined within arbitrary limits under the
old _régime_, his personality here discovered itself masterful. His
resourcefulness, his intelligence, overcrowed us all, irresistibly
leaping to their right sphere of action. He had a little learning
even; but that was no condition of his emancipation. Also, he was not
wanting in that sort of courage with which one had not condescended
hitherto to accredit lackeys. No doubt in those days one was rebuked
by many discoveries.
Yet another possession of his endeared him to all _misérables_ in
this casual ward of the guillotine. He had a mellow baritone voice,
and a _répertoire_ of playful and tender little folk-songs. Clélie
(it was she I had kissed; I never knew her by any other name) would
accompany him on the harp, till her head drooped and the _poudre
maréchale_ from her hair would glitter red on the strings--not to
speak of other gentle dew that was less artificial.
Then she would look up, with a pitiful mouth of deprecation. “_La
paix, pour Dieu, la paix!_” she would murmur. “My very harp weeps to
hear thee.”
The pathos of his songs was not in their application. Perhaps he was
quit of worse grievances than those the Revolution presented to him.
Perhaps he was happier proscribed than enslaved. At any rate, he never
fitted music to modern circumstance. His subjects were sweet,
archaic--the mythology of the woods and pastures. It was in their
allusions to a withered spring-time that the sadness lay. For, believe
me, we were all Punchinellos, grimacing lest the terror of tears
should overwhelm us.
There was a _chansonnette_ of his, the opening words of which ran
somewhat as follows:--
“Oh, beautiful apple-tree!
Heavy with flowers
As my heart with love!
As a little wind serveth
To scatter thy blossom,
So a young lover only
Is needed to ravish
The heart from my bosom.”
This might be typical of all. We convinced ourselves that we caught in
them echoes of a once familiar innocence, and we wept over our lost
Eden. Truly the indulging of introspection is the opportunity of the
imagination.
To many brave souls Gardel’s peasant ballads were the requiem--
“Passez, la Dormette,
Passez par chez nous!”--
and so comes the rascal Cabochon, our jailer, with his lowering
_huissiers_, and the ‘Evening Gazette’ in his hand.
“So-and-so, and So-and-so, and So-and-so, to the Conciergerie.”
Then, if the runner had been singing, would succeed some little
emotions of parting--moist wistful eyes, and the echo of sobs going
down the corridor.
Yet, more often, Cabochon would interrupt a romp, to which the
condemned would supplement a jocund exit.
“_Adieu, messieurs! adieu! adieu!_ We cannot keep our countenances
longer. We kneel to Sanson, who shall shrive us--Sanson, the Abbé,
the exquisite, in whose presence we all lose our heads!”
And so the wild hair and feverish eyes vanish.
But it is of Gardel and the Marquise I speak. While many went and many
took their places, these two survived for a time. To the new, as to
the old, the rogue was unflagging in his attentions. His every respite
inspired him with fresh audacity; from each condemned he seemed to
take a certain toll of animation.
Presently Madame and her emancipated servant, with Clélie and I,
would make a nightly habit of it to join forces in a bout of
“Quadrille.” We appropriated an upper corner of the long table, and
(for the oil lamps on the walls were dismally inadequate) we had our
four wax candles all regular--but in burgundy bottles for sconces. A
fifth bottle, with no candle, but charged with the ruddier light that
illuminates the heart, was a usual accompaniment.
We chattered famously, and on many subjects. Hope a little rallied,
maybe, as each night brought Cabochon with a list innocent of our
names.
Also we had our eccentricities, that grew dignified by custom. If, in
the game, “_Roi rendu_” was called, we paid, not with a fish, but with
a hair plucked from the head. It made Clélie cry; but not all from
loyalty. So, if the King of Hearts triumphed, its owner drank “_rubis
sur l’ongle_,” emptying his glass and tapping the edge of it three
times on his left thumb-nail.
Now, I am to tell you of the black evening that at the last broke up
our coterie--of the frantic _abandon_ of the scene, and the tragedy of
farce with which it closed.
On that afternoon Gardel sparkled beyond his wont. He made the air
electric with animation. The company was vociferous for a romp, but at
present we four sat idly talkative over the disused cards.
“M. Gardel, you remind me of a gnat-maggot.”
“How, sir?” says Gardel.
“It is without offence. Once, as a boy, I kept a tub of gold-fish. In
this the eggs of the little insect would be found to germinate. I used
to watch the tiny water-dragons come to the surface to take the air
through their tails--my faith! but that was comically like the France
of to-day. Now touch the water with a finger, and _pouf!_ there they
were all scurried to the bottom in a panic, not to rise again till
assured of safety.”
“That is not my way,” says Gardel.
“Wait, my friend. By-and-by, nearing their transformation, these mites
plump out and lose their gravity. Then, if one frights them, they try
to wriggle down; their buoyancy resists. They may sink five--six
inches. It is no good. Up they come again, like bubbles in champagne,
to burst on the surface presently and fly away.”
“And shall I fly, monsieur?”
“To the stars, my brave Gardel. But is it not so? One cannot drive you
down for long.”
“To-night, M. Thibaut” (such was my name in the prison
register)--“to-night, I confess, I am like a ‘Montgolfier.’ I rise, I
expand. I am full of thoughts too great for utterance. My
transformation must be near.”
The Marquise gave a little cry--
“_Je ne puis pas me passer de vous, François!_”
The servant--the master--looked kindlily into the faded eyes.
“I will come back and be with you in spirit,” he said.
“No, no!” she cried, volubly. “It is old-wives’ tales--the vapourings
of poets and mystics. Of all these murdered thousands, which haunts
the murderers?”
I gazed in astonishment. This passive _douillette_, with the torn
lace! I had never known her assert herself yet but through the mouth
of her henchman.
“Oh yes!” she went on shrilly, nodding her head. “Death, death, death!
But, if the dead return, this Paris should be a city of ghosts.”
“Perhaps it is,” said Gardel.
“Fie, then!” she cried. “You forget your place; you presume upon my
condescension. It is insolent so to put me to school. ‘_Ma demeure
sera bientôt le néant._’ It was Danton--yes, Danton--who said that.
He was a devil, but he could speak truth.”
Suddenly she checked herself and gave a little artificial titter. She
was not transfigured, but debased. A jealous scepticism was revealed
in every line of her features.
“And what is death to M. Gardel?” she said ironically.
“It is an interruption, madame.”
She burst forth again excitedly--
“But Danton saw further than thee, thou fool, who, like a crab,
lookest not whither thou art going, and wilt run upon a blind wall
while thine eyes devour the landscape sidelong. I will not have it. I
do not desire any continuance. My faith is the faith of eyes and ears
and lips. Man’s necessities die with him; and, living, mine are for
thy strong arm, François, and for thy fruitful service. My God! what
we pass through! And then for a hereafter of horrible retrospection!
No, no. It is infamous to suggest, foolish to insist on it.”
“But, for all that, I do,” said Gardel, steadily.
He took her outburst quite coolly--answered her with gaiety even.
I cried “_Malepeste!_” under my breath. And, indeed, my amazement was
justified. For who would have dreamed that this little colourless
draggle-tail had one sentiment in her that amounted to a conviction?
Madame Placide an atheist! And what was there of dark and secret in
her past history that drove her to this desire of extinction?
At Gardel’s answer she fell back in her chair with defiant eyes and
again that little artificial laugh. In the noisy talk of the room we
four sat and spoke apart.
“_Malappris!_” she said. “You shall justify yourself of that boldness.
Come back to me, if you go first, and I will believe.”
“Agreed!” he cried. “And for the sign, madame?”
She thought; and answered, with the grateful womanliness that redeemed
her,--
“Do me a little service--something, anything--and I shall know it is
you.”
The candles were burned half-way down in their bottles. He rose and
one by one blew them out.
“_Voilà!_” he cried gaily. “To save your pocket!”
So the little scene ended.
“M. Gardel,” I said to him presently, “you come (you will pardon me)
of the makers of the Revolution. I am curious to learn your experience
of the premonitory symptoms of that disease to which at last you have
fallen a victim.”
“Monsieur! ‘A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse.’ It is an
early remembrance with me how my father cursed me that I passed my
eighth year, and so was liable to the salt-tax. My faith! I do not
blame him. Things were hard enough. But it was unreasonable to beat me
because I could not stop the march of Time. Yet we had not then
learned to worship Reason.”
“The Moloch that devours her children!”
“So it appears. But there were signs and omens for long years before.
I am of the territory of Berri, monsieur; and there all we learned to
read was between the lines. I will tell you that I heard--for I was in
service at the time” (he bowed with infinite complaisance to his
Marquise)--“how, all during the chill, dark spring that preceded the
September Massacres, _Les laveuses de la nuit_ were busy at their
washing.”
“And who are they, my friend?”
“Strange, inhuman women, monsieur, who wash in the moonlight by lonely
tarns. And while they wash they wail.”
“Wash? But what?”
“Some say the winding-sheets of those who are to die during the year.”
La Marquise broke into shrill laughter.
“Poor, poor imbecile!” she cried. “Thy credulity would make but one
gulp of a gravestone. You must know these things are not, my friend.
I tell thee so--I, thy mistress. Miserable! have you nothing in your
life that not mountains of eternity could crush out the memory of?”
Again she checked herself.
“It is the one virtue of the Revolution to have decreed annihilation.”
A deputation approached us. She jumped to her feet, her pale eyes
flickering.
“But, yes!” she cried, “a game, a game! I acquit myself of these
follies. It is present life I desire. Messieurs, what is it to be? To
the front, François!”
The man responded at a leap. The veins of all received the infection
of his wild humour. In a moment, chattering and pushing and giggling,
we were to take our places for “_Shadow Buff_.”
We had no sheet. The dirty drab of the wall must suffice. A stool was
placed for the guesser--not yet appointed; and la Marquise’s four
candles, relighted, were placed on the table over against it, in a
receding row like a procession of acolytes. Between the candles and
the back of the guesser the company were to pass one by one, for
identification by means of the shadows cast on the wall.
“Who shall take the stool?”
The clamour echoed up to the vaulted stonework of the roof--and died.
Cabochon’s evil face was visible at the grille.
He saw what we were at; the dull brute was sopped with drink and
bestially amiable. His key grated in the door and he stood before us,
his bodyguard supporting him, the fatal list in his hand.
“Ah!” he said, “but ‘_Shadow Buff_’ again? It is well timed. Yet I
could name some citizen shadows without sitting on the stool.”
His voice guttered like a candle. It seemed to run into greasy drops.
A wild inspiration seized me.
“_Voilà, citoyen!_” I cried. “You shall join us. You shall take your
victims from the wall!”
In a moment I had snatched the dirty rag of paper out of his hand, and
had retreated with it a few paces. I had an instant to glance down the
list before he slouched at me in sodden anger. My heart gave a queer
little somersault and came upright again.
“_Sang Dieu!_” he growled, thickly. “You do well to jest. Give me the
paper, or I’ll brain you with my keys!”
I dropped laughing upon the stool, and held the list between and under
my knees. With an oath he fell upon me. The company applauded it all
with a frenzy of mad mirth and frolic.
The struggle was brief. He rose directly, puffing and cursing, the
paper in his hand.
I affected a crestfallen good-humour.
“You might have let us have our game out,” I protested.
With his recovered authority in his hand, the rascal condescended to
some facetious tolerance.
“So!” he said; “you play a good part. They should have you for King
George in ‘Le Dernier Jugement des Rois.’ But rest content. You shall
appear on a notable stage yet, and before an audience more
appreciative than that of the Théâtre de la République.”
“And I shall know how to bow my thanks, citizen.”
“Ah!” he crowed. “I love thee! Thou shalt have thy game and sit here;
and I will pick from the flock as thou numberest its tale.”
It fell in with the reckless, dreadful humour of the times. I would
have withdrawn from the cruel jest, but it was the company of _les
misérables_ that prevented me.
Who should go first? There was a little hesitation and reluctance.
“Come, hurry!” cried Cabochon, “or I must do my own guessing!”
Suddenly a shadow glided past upon the wall.
“No, no!” I muttered.
“Name it, name it!” chuckled the jailer. The grinning _sans-culottes_
at the door echoed his demand vociferously.
“Gardel!” I murmured faintly. The leading spirit had,
characteristically, been the first to enter the breach.
“Good,” croaked Cabochon, referring to his list. “Citizen shadow, you
are marked for judgment.”
I rose hurriedly from the stool.
“I will no more of it!” I cried.
“What!--already? My faith! a nerveless judge.”
Instantly a figure pressed forward and took my place.
“Pass, pass, good people!” it cried, “and _I_ will call the tale!”
She sat there--the Marquise--her lips set in an acrid smile. Neither
look nor word did she address to her forfeited servant.
Another shadow passed.
“Darviane!” she cried shrilly.
“_Encore bien_,” roared Cabochon amidst shrieks of laughter. My God,
what laughter!
Milet, De Mérode, Fontenay--she named them all. They took their
places by the door, skipping--half-hysterical.
D’Aubiers, Monville--I cannot recall a moiety of them. It was a
destructive list. Clélie also was in it--poor Clélie, the frail, I
fear, but with the big heart. I fancied I noticed a harder ring in
Madame’s voice as she identified her.
I stood stupidly in the background. Presently I heard Cabochon--
“Enough! enough! The virtuous citizens would forestall the Executive.”
He numbered up his list rapidly, counted his prisoners. They tallied.
“To be repeated to-morrow,” he said. “It is good sport. But the
guessers, it seems, remain.”
He treated us to a grin and a clumsy bow, gave the order to form, and
carried off his new batch to the baking.
As the door clanged upon them I gave a deep gasp. I could not believe
in the reality of my respite.
For the thinned company the reaction had set in immediately: women
were flung prostrate, on the table, over the benches, wailing out
their desperate loss and misery.
Madame made her way to me. The strange smile had not left her mouth.
“You were on the list. I saw it in your face.”
“I was at the bottom--the very last.”
“But how----?”
“As Cabochon struggled with me, I turned my name down and tore it
off.”
“But the number?”
“It tallied. It was enough for him.”
“They must find it out--to-morrow, when the prisoners are arraigned.”
“Probably. And in the meantime we will drink to our poor Gardel’s
acquittal.”
“No,” she said, shrinking back, with an extraordinary look. “If I wish
him well, I wish him eternal forgetfulness.”
It was the evening of the day succeeding. Shorn of our partners in
“Quadrille,” Madame and I had been playing “Piquet.”
We were only two, but the four lights flickered in their bottles.
La Marquise de Kercy had been musing. Suddenly she looked up. Her eyes
were full of an inhuman mockery.
“The candles!” she said, with a little laugh. “We are no longer using
them. To save my pocket, François!”
_Pouf!_ a candle went out--another, another, another; between each the
fraction of time occupied by something unseen moving round
systematically.
I started to my feet with a suppressed cry.
One or two sitting near us complained of this churlish economy of wax.
They imagined I was the culprit.
“Madame!” I muttered. “Look! she is indisposed!”
Her face was white and dreadful, like a skull. Hearing my voice she
sat up.
“So! He has been guillotined!” she said.
She articulated with difficulty, swallowing and panting without stop.
“M. Thibaut, it is true, then, they say! But it was he made me kill
the child. He has more need to forget than I. Is it not appalling? If
I tell them now how I have learnt to fear, they will surely spare me.
I cannot subscribe to their doctrines--that Club of the Cordeliers. If
I tell them so--Danton being gone----”
Her voice tailed off into a hurry of pitiful sobs and cries. I
welcomed the entrance of Cabochon with his list.
Her name was first on it.
As we stood arisen, dreading some hideous scene, she fell silent quite
suddenly, got to her feet, and walked to the door with a face of
stone.
“Death is an interruption.”
“_Ma demeure sera bientôt le néant._”
Which could one hope for her, pondering only that delirious outcry
from her lips?
Possibly, indeed, she had been mad from first to last.
I had time to collect my thoughts, for--from whatever cause--Citizen
Tinville had, it appeared, overlooked me.