BOOK I.

THE FOREST OF LA SAUDRAIE

BOOK II.

THE CORVETTE "CLAYMORE."

I. ENGLAND AND FRANCE UNITED

II. NIGHT WITH THE SHIP AND THE PASSENGER

III. PATRICIAN AND PLEBEIAN UNITED

IV. TORMENTUM BELLI

V. VIS ET VIR

VI. THE TWO ENDS OF THE SCALE

VII. HE WHO SETS SAIL INVESTS IN A LOTTERY

VIII. 9 : 380

IX. SOME ONE ESCAPES

X. DOES HE ESCAPE?

BOOK III.

HALMALO.

I. SPEECH IS WORD

II. A PEASANT'S MEMORY IS WORTH AS MUCH AS THE CAPTAIN'S SCIENCE

BOOK IV.

TELLMARCH.

I. ON THE TOP OF THE DUNE

II. AURES HABET, ET NON AUDIET

III. THE USEFULNESS OF BIG LETTERS

IV. THE CAIMAND

V. WHEN HE AWOKE IT WAS DAYLIGHT

VI. THE VICISSITUDES OF CIVIL WAR

VII. NO MERCY! NO QUARTER!

PART II.

AT PARIS.

BOOK I.

CIMOURDAIN.

I. THE STREETS OF PARIS AT THAT TIME

II. CIMOURDAIN

III. A CORNER NOT DIPPED INTO THE STYX

BOOK II.

THE POT-HOUSE OF THE RUE DU PAON.

I. MINOS, ÆACUS, AND RHADAMANTHUS

II. MAGNA TESTANTUR VOCE PER UMBRAS

III. A QUIVERING OF THE INMOST FIBRES

BOOK III.

THE CONVENTION.

I. THE CONVENTION

II. MARAT IN THE GREEN-ROOM

PART III.

IN THE VENDÉE.

BOOK I.

THE VENDÉE.

I. THE FORESTS

II. MEN

III. CONNIVANCE OF MEN AND FORESTS

IV. THEIR LIFE UNDER GROUND

V. THEIR LIFE IN WARFARE

VI. THE SOUL OF THE EARTH PASSES INTO MAN

VII. THE VENDÉE HAS RUINED BRITTANY

BOOK II.

THE THREE CHILDREN.

I. PLUS QUAM CIVILIA BELLA

II. DOL

III. SMALL ARMIES AND GREAT BATTLES

IV. A SECOND TIME

V. A DROP OF COLD WATER

VI. A HEALED BREAST, BUT A BLEEDING HEART

VII. THE TWO POLES OF TRUTH

VIII. DOLOROSA

IX. A PROVINCIAL BASTILE

I. LA TOURGUE

II. THE BREACH

III. THE OUBLIETTE

IV. THE BRIDGE-CASTLE

V. THE IRON DOOR

VI. THE LIBRARY

VII. THE GRANARY

X. THE HOSTAGES

XI. TERRIBLE AS THE ANTIQUE

XII. THE RESCUE PLANNED

XIII. WHAT THE MARQUIS IS DOING

XIV. WHAT THE IMÂNUS IS DOING

BOOK III.

THE MASSACRE OF SAINT BARTHOLOMEW.

I. THE MASSACRE OF SAINT BARTHOLOMEW

BOOK IV.

THE MOTHER.

I. DEATH PASSES

II. DEATH SPEAKS

III. MUTTERINGS AMONG THE PEASANTS

IV. A MISTAKE

V. VOX IN DESERTO

VI. THE SITUATION

VII. PRELIMINARIES

VIII. THE SPEECH AND THE ROAR

IX. TITANS AGAINST GIANTS

X. RADOUB

XI. THE DESPERATE

XII. THE DELIVERER

XIII. THE EXECUTIONER

XIV. THE IMÂNUS ALSO ESCAPES

XV. NEVER PUT A WATCH AND KEY IN THE SAME POCKET

BOOK V.

IN DÆMONE DEUS.

I. FOUND, BUT LOST

II. FROM THE DOOR OF STONE TO THAT OF IRON

III. WHERE THE SLEEPING CHILDREN WAKE

BOOK VI.

AFTER VICTORY, STRUGGLE BEGINS.

I. LANTENAC TAKEN

II. GAUVAIN MEDITATING

III. THE COMMANDER'S HOOD

BOOK VII.

FEUDALITY AND REVOLUTION.

I. THE ANCESTOR

II. THE COURT-MARTIAL

III. THE VOTES

IV. AFTER CIMOURDAIN THE JUDGE, CIMOURDAIN THE MASTER

V. THE DUNGEON

VI. STILL THE SUN RISES

Illustrations

They are obtained from the French 1876 edition, published in Paris

by E. Hugues.

Drawings are by: Émile Bayard, G. Brion, Karl Bodmer, Férat, Ferdinandus,

Gilbert, Godefroy-Durand, Victor Hugo, Lançon, Lix,

D. Maillart, Edmond Morin, Miss Patterson, Riou,

H. Scott, Daniel Vierge.

Etchings are by: Bellenger, Chapon, Froment, Hildibrand, Laplante,

Léveillé, Martin, Méaulle, Moller, Morand, Stéphane

Pannemaker, Perrichon, Poeget, Quenel, Soupey, Tilly.

NINETY-THREE

[Illustration: At Sea. 002]

PART I.

AT SEA.

[Illustration: The Forest of La Saudraie. 003]

BOOK I.

THE FOREST OF LA SAUDRAIE.

[Illustration: 004]

During the last days of May, 1793, one of the Parisian battalions

introduced into Brittany by Santerre was reconnoitring the formidable

La Saudraie Woods in Astillé. Decimated by this cruel war, the

battalion was reduced to about three hundred men. This was at the time

when, after Argonne, Jemmapes, and Valmy, of the first battalion of

Paris, which had numbered six hundred volunteers, only twenty-seven

men remained, thirty-three of the second, and fifty-seven of the

third,--a time of epic combats. The battalion sent from Paris into La

Vendée numbered nine hundred and twelve men. Each regiment had three

pieces of cannon. They had been quickly mustered. On the 25th of April,

Gohier being Minister of Justice, and Bouchotte Minister of War, the

section of Bon Conseil had offered to send volunteer battalions into

La Vendée; the report was made by Lubin, a member of the Commune. On

the 1st of May, Santerre was ready to send off twelve thousand men,

thirty field-pieces, and one battalion of gunners. These battalions,

notwithstanding they were so quickly formed, serve as models even at

the present day, and regiments of the line are formed on the same plan;

they altered the former proportion between the number of soldiers and

that of non-commissioned officers.

On the 28th of April the Paris Commune had given to the volunteers of

Santerre the following order: "No mercy, no quarter." Of the twelve

thousand that had left Paris, at the end of May eight thousand were

dead. The battalion which was engaged in La Saudraie held itself on its

guard. There was no hurrying: every man looked at once to right and to

left, before him, behind him. Kléber has said: "The soldier has an eye

in his back." They had been marching a long time. What o'clock could it

be? What time of the day was it? It would have been hard to say; for

there is always a sort of dusk in these wild thickets, and it was never

light in that wood. The forest of La Saudraie was a tragic one. It was

in this coppice that from the month of November, 1792, civil war began

its crimes; Mousqueton, the fierce cripple, had come forth from those

fatal thickets; the number of murders that had been committed there

made one's hair stand on end. No spot was more terrible.

The soldiers forced cautiously. Everything was in full bloom; they

were surrounded by a quivering wall of branches, whose leaves diffused

a delicious freshness. Here and there sunbeams pierced, these green

shades. At their feet the gladiolus, the German iris, the wild

narcissus, the wood-daisy, that tiny flower, forerunner of the warm

weather, the spring crocus,--all these embroidered and adorned a thick

carpet of vegetation, abounding in every variety of moss, from the kind

that looks like a caterpillar to that resembling a star.

The soldiers advanced silently, step by step, gently pushing aide the

underbrush. The birds twittered above the bayonets.

La Saudraie was one of those thickets where formerly, in time of peace,

they had pursued the Houicheba,--the the hunting of birds by night; now

it was a place for hunting men.

The coppice consisted entirely of birch-trees, beeches, and oaks; the

ground was level; the moss and the thick grass deadened the noise of

footsteps; no paths at all, or paths no sooner found than lost; holly,

wild sloe, brakes, hedges of rest-harrow, and tall brambles; it was

impossible to see a man ten paces distant.

Now and then a heron or a moor-hen flew through the branches, showing

the vicinity of a swamp. They marched along at haphazard, uneasy, and

fearing lest they might find what they sought.

From time to time they encountered traces of encampments,--a burnt

place, trampled grass, sticks arranged in the form of a cross, or

branches spattered with blood. Here, soup had been made; there, Mass

had been said; yonder, wounds had been dressed. But whoever had passed

that way had vanished. Where were they? Far away, perhaps; and yet

they might be very near, hiding, blunderbuss in hand. The wood seemed

deserted. The battalion redoubled its precaution. Solitude, therefore

distrust. No one was to be seen; all the more reason to fear some one.

They had to do with a forest of ill-repute.

[Illustration 005]

An ambush was probable.

Thirty grenadiers, detached as scouts and commanded by a sergeant,

marched ahead, at a considerable distance from the main body. The

vivandière of the battalion accompanied them. The vivandières like to

join the vanguard; they run risks, but then they stand a chance of

seeing something. Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine courage.

Suddenly the soldiers of this little advanced guard received that shock

familiar to hunters, which shows them that they are close upon the lair

of their prey. They heard something like breathing in the middle of the

thicket, and it seemed as if they caught sight of some commotion among

the leaves. The soldiers made signs to each other.

When this mode of watching and reconnoitring is confided to the scouts,

officers have no need to interfere; what has to be done is done

instinctively.

In less than a minute the spot where the movement had been observed

was surrounded by a circle of levelled muskets, aimed simultaneously

from every side at the dusky centre of the thicket; and the soldiers,

with finger on trigger and eye on the suspected spot, awaited only the

sergeant's command to fire.

Meanwhile, the vivandière ventured to peer through the underbush;

and just as the sergeant was about to cry, "Fire!" this woman cried,

"Halt!"

And turning to the soldiers, "Do not fire!" she cried, and rushed into

the thicket, followed by the men.

There was indeed some one there.

In the thickest part of the copse on the edge of one of those small

circular clearings made in the woods by the charcoal-furnaces that

are used to burn the roots of trees, in a sort of hole formed by

the branches,--a bower of foliage, so to speak, half-open, like an

alcove,--sat a woman on the moss, with a nursing child at her breast

and the fair heads of two sleeping children resting against her knees.

[Illustration 006]

This was the ambush.

"What are you doing here?" called out the vivandière.

The woman raised her head, and the former added angrily,--

"Are you insane to remain there!"

She went on,--

"A little more, and you would have been blown to atoms!" Then

addressing the soldiers, she said, "It's a woman."

"Pardieu! That's plain to be seen," replied a grenadier.

The vivandière continued,--"To come into the woods to get oneself

massacred. Can you conceive of any one so stupid as that?"

The woman, surprised, bewildered, and stunned, was gazing around, as

though in a dream, at these muskets, sabres, bayonets, and savage

faces. The two children awoke and began to cry.

"I am hungry," said one.

"I am afraid," said the other.

The baby went on nursing.

The vivandière addressed it.

"You are the wise one," she said.

The mother was dumb with terror.

"Don't be afraid," exclaimed the sergeant, "we are the battalion of the

Bonnet Rouge."

The woman trembled from head to foot. She looked at the sergeant, of

whose rough face she could see only the eyebrows, moustache, and eyes

like two coals of fire.

"The battalion formerly known as the Red-Cross," added the vivandière.

The sergeant continued,--

"Who are you, madam?"

The woman looked at him in terror. She was thin, young, pale, and

in tatters. She wore the large hood and woollen cloak of the Breton

peasants, fastened by a string around her neck. She left her bosom

exposed with the indifference of an animal. Her feet, without shoes or

stockings, were bleeding.

"It's a beggar," said the sergeant.

The vivandière continued in her martial yet womanly voice,--a gentle

voice withal,--

"What is your name?"

The woman stammered in a scarce audible whisper:

"Michelle Fléchard."

Meanwhile the vivandière stroked the little head of the nursing baby

with her large hand.

"How old is this midget?" she asked.

The mother did not understand. The vivandière repeated,--"I ask you how

old it is?"

"Oh, eighteen months," said the mother.

"That's quite old," said the vivandière; "it ought not to nurse any

longer, you must wean it. We will give him soup."

The mother began to feel more at ease. The two little ones, who had

awakened, were rather interested than frightened; they admired the

plumes of the soldiers.

"Ah, they are very hungry!" said the mother.

And she added,--

"I have no more milk."

"We will give them food," cried the sergeant, "and you also. But there

is something more to be settled. What are your political opinions?"

The woman looked at him and made no reply.

"Do you understand my question?"

She stammered,--

"I was put into a convent when I was quite young, but I married; I am

not a nun. The Sisters taught me to speak French. The village was set

on fire. We escaped in such haste that I had no time to put my shoes

on."

"I ask you what are your political opinions?"

"I don't know anything about that."

The sergeant continued,--

"There are female spies. That kind of person we shoot. Come, speak. You

are not a gypsy, are you? What is your native land?"

She still looked at him as though unable to comprehend.

The sergeant repeated,--

"What is your native land?"

"I do not know," she said.

"How is that? You do not know your country?"

"Ah! Do you mean my country? I know that."

"Well, what is your country?"

The woman replied,--

"It is the farm of Siscoignard, in the parish of Azé."

It was the sergeant's turn to be surprised. He paused for a moment,

lost in thought; then he went on,--

"What was it you said?"

"Siscoignard."

"You cannot call that your native land."

"That is my country."

Then after a minute's consideration she added,--

"I understand you, sir. You are from France, but I am from Brittany."

"Well?"

"It is not the same country."

"But it is the same native land," exclaimed the sergeant.

The woman only replied,--

"I am from Siscoignard."

"Let it be. Siscoignard, then," said the sergeant. "Your family belong

there, I suppose?"

"Yes!"

"What is their business?"

"They are all dead. I have no one left."

The sergeant, who was quite loquacious, continued to question her.

"Devil take it, every one has relations, or one has had them! Who are

you? Speak!"

The woman listened bewildered; this "or one has had them" sounded more

like the cry of a wild beast than the speech of a human being.

The vivandière felt obliged to interfere. She began to caress the

nursing child, and patted the other two on the cheeks.

"What is the baby's name? It's a little girl, isn't it?"

The mother replied, "Georgette."

"And the oldest one? For he is a man, the rogue!"

"René-Jean."

"And the younger one? For he is a man too, and a chubby one into the

bargain."

"Gros-Alain," replied the mother.

"They are pretty children," said the vivandière. "They look already as

if they were somebody."

Meanwhile the sergeant persisted.

"Come! Speak, madam! Have you a house?"

"I had one once."

"Where was it?"

"At Azé."

"Why are you not at home?"

"Because my house was burned."

"Who burned it?"

"I do not know. There was a battle."

"Were do you come from?"

"From over there."

"Where are you going?"

"I do not know."

"Come, to the point! Who are you?"

"I do not know."

"Don't know who you are?"

"We are people running away."

"To what party do you belong?"

"I do not know."

"To the Blues, or the Whites? Which side are you on?"

"I am with my children."

There was a pause. The vivandière spoke.

"For my part I never had any children. I have not had time."

The sergeant began again.

"But what about your parents? See here, madam, tell me the facts about

your parents. Now, my name is Radoub. I am a sergeant. I live on the

Rue Cherche-Midi. My father and my mother lived there. I can talk of my

parents. Tell us about yours. Tell us who your parents were."

"Their name was Fléchard. That's all."

"Yes. The Fléchards are the Fléchards, just as the Radoubs are the

Radoubs. But people have a trade. What was your parents' trade? What

did they do, these Fléchards of yours?"[1]

"They were laborers. My father was feeble and could not work, on

account of a beating which the lord, his lord, our lord, gave him: it

was really a mercy, for my father had poached a rabbit, a crime of

which the penalty is death; but the lord was merciful and said, 'You

may give him only a hundred blows with a stick;' and my father was

left a cripple."

"And then?"

"My grandfather was a Huguenot. The curé had him sent to the galleys. I

was very young then."

"And then?"

"My husband's father was a salt smuggler. The king had him hung."

"And what did your husband do?"

"He used to fight in those times."

"For whom?"

"For the king."

"And after that?"

"Ah! For his lord."

"And then?"

"For the curé."

"By all the names of beasts!" cried the grenadier. The woman jumped in

terror.

"You see, madam, we are Parisians," said the vivandière, affably.

The woman clasped her hands, exclaiming,--

"Oh, my God and Lord Jesus!"

"No superstitions here!" rejoined the sergeant.

The vivandière sat down beside the woman and drew the oldest child

between her knees; he yielded readily. Children are quite as easily

reassured as they are frightened, with no apparent reason. They seem

to possess instinctive perceptions. "My poor worthy woman of this

neighborhood, you have pretty little children, at all events. One can

guess their age. The big one is four years, and his brother is three.

Just see how greedily the little rascal sucks. The wretch! Stop eating

up your mother! Come madam, do not be frightened. You ought to join the

battalion. You should do as I do. My name is Housarde. It's a nickname,

but I had rather be called Housarde than Mamzelle Bicorneau, like my

mother. I am the canteen woman, which is the same as saying, she who

gives the men to drink when they are firing grape-shot and killing each

other. The devil and all his train. Our feet are about the same size. I

will give you a pair of my shoes. I was in Paris on the 10th of August.

I gave Westerman a drink. Everything went with a rush in those days! I

saw Louis XVI. guillotined,--Louis Capet, as they call him. I tell you

he didn't like it. You just listen now. To think that on the 13th of

January he was roasting chestnuts and enjoying himself with his family!

When he was made to lie down on what is called the see-saw, he wore

neither coat nor shoes; only a shirt, a quilted waistcoat, gray cloth

breeches, and gray silk stockings. I saw all that with my own eyes.

The fiacre which he rode in was painted green. Now then, you come with

us; they are kind lads in the battalion; you will be canteen number

two; I will teach you the trade. Oh, it's very simple! You will have

a can and a bell; you are right in the racket, amid the firing of the

platoons and the cannons, in all that hubbub, calling out, 'Who wants

a drink, my children?' It is no harder task than that. I offer a drink

to all, you may take my word for it,--to the Whites as well as to the

Blues, although I am a Blue, and a true Blue at that. But I serve them

all alike. Wounded men are thirsty. People die without difference of

opinions. Dying men ought to shake hands. How foolish to fight! Come

with us. If I am killed you will fill my place. You see I am not much

to look at, but I am a kind woman, and a good fellow. Don't be afraid."

When the vivandière ceased speaking, the woman muttered to herself,--

"Our neighbor's name was Marie-Jeanne, and it was our servant who was

Marie-Claude."

Meanwhile Sergeant Radoub was reprimanding the grenadier.

"Silence! You frighten madam. A man should not swear before ladies."

"I say this is a downright butchery for an honest man to hear

about," replied the grenadier; "and to see Chinese Iroquois, whose

father-in-law was crippled by the lord, whose grandfather was sent to

the galleys by the curé, and whose father was hung by the king, and who

fight,--zounds!--and who get entangled in revolts, and are crushed for

the sake of the lord, the curé, and the king!"

"Silence in the ranks!" exclaimed the sergeant.

"One may be silent, sergeant," continued the grenadier; "but it is all

the same provoking to see a pretty woman like that running the risk of

getting her neck broken for the sake of a calotin."[2]

"Grenadier," said the sergeant, "we are not in the Pike Club. Save your

eloquence!" And turning to the woman, "And your husband, madam? What

does he do? What has become of him?"

"Nothing; since he was killed."

"Where was that?"

"In the hedge."

"When?"

"Three days ago."

"Who killed him?"

"I do not know."

"How is that? You don't know who killed your husband?"

"No."

"Was it a Blue, or a White?"

"It was a bullet."

"Was that three days ago?"

"Yes."

"In what direction?"

"Towards Ernée. My husband fell. That was all."

"And since your husband died, what have you been doing?"

"I have been taking my little ones along."

"Where are you taking them?"

"Straight along."

"Where do you sleep?"

"On the ground."

"What do you eat?"

"Nothing."

The sergeant made that military grimace which elevates the moustache to

the nose. "Nothing?"

"Well, nothing but sloes, blackberries when I found any left over from

last year, whortle-berries, and fern-shoots."

"Yes, you may well call it nothing."

The oldest child, who seemed to understand, said:

"I am hungry."

The sergeant pulled from his pocket a piece of ration bread, and handed

it to the mother.

Taking the bread, she broke, it in two and gave it to the children, who

bit into it greedily.

"She has not saved any for herself," growled the sergeant.

"Because she is not hungry," remarked a soldier.

"Because she is a mother," said the sergeant.

The children broke in.

"Give me something to drink," said one.

"To drink," repeated the other.

"Is there no brook in this cursed wood?" said the sergeant.

The vivandière took the copper goblet suspended at her belt together

with a bell, turned the cock of the can that was strapped across her

shoulder, and pouring several drops into the goblet, held it to the

children's lips.

The first drank and made a grimace.

The second drank and spit it out

"It is good, all the same," said the vivandière.

"Is that some of the old cut-throat?" asked the sergeant.

"Yes, some of the best. But they are peasants."

She wiped the goblet.

"And so, madam, you are running away?" resumed the sergeant.

"I couldn't help it."

"Across the fields? With no particular object?"

"Sometimes I run with all my might, and then I walk, and once in a

while I fall."

"Poor countrywoman!" said the vivandière.

"They were fighting," stammered the woman. "I was in the middle of the

firing. I don't know what they want. They killed my husband,--that was

all I know about it."

The sergeant banged the butt of his musket on the ground, exclaiming,--

"What a beast of a war! In the name of all that is idiotic!"

The woman continued,---

"Last night we went to bed in an _émousse._"

"All four of you?"

"All four."

"Went to bed?"

"Went to bed."

"Then you must have gone to bed standing." And he turned to the

soldiers.

"Comrades, a dead tree, old and hollow, wherein a man can sheathe

himself like a sword in a scabbard, is what these savages call

an _émousse._ But what would you have? All are not obliged to be

Parisians."

"The idea of sleeping in the hollow of a tree,--and with three

children!" exclaimed the vivandière.

"And when the little one bawled, it must have seemed queer to the

passers-by, who could see nothing, to hear the tree calling out, 'Papa!

mamma!'"

"Fortunately, it is summer-time," said the woman, with a sigh.

She looked down resigned, with an expression in her eyes of one who had

known surprising calamities.

The silent soldiers surrounded this wretched group. A widow, three

orphans, flight, desolation, solitude, the rumblings of war on the

horizon, hunger, thirst, no food but herbs, no roof but the sky.

The sergeant drew near the woman and gazed upon the nursing infant. The

baby left the breast, turned her head, and looked with her lovely blue

eyes on the dreadful hairy face, bristling and fierce, that was bending

over her, and began to smile.

The sergeant drew back, and a large tear was seen to roll down his

cheek, clinging to the end of his moustache like a pearl.

He raised his voice.

"Comrades, I have come to the conclusion that this battalion is about

to become a father. Are you willing? We adopt these three children."

"Hurrah for the Republic!" shouted the grenadiers.

"So be it!" exclaimed the sergeant; and he stretched out both hands

over the mother and the children.

"Behold the children of the battalion of the Bonnet-Rouge!" he said.

The vivandière jumped for joy.

"Three heads under one cap!" she cried.

Then she burst out sobbing, and embraced the widow excitedly, saying,--

"She looks like a rogue already, that little girl!"

"Hurrah for the Republic!" repeated the soldiers.

"Come, citizeness," said the sergeant to the mother.

[Footnote 1: The sergeant makes a pun on the name Fléchard which is

untranslatable. Flèche means arrow, and he asks whether the Fléchards

made arrows.--TR.]

[Footnote 2: An opprobrious epithet for an ecclesiastic.--TR.]

[Illustration: The Corvette "Claymore" 007]

BOOK II.

THE CORVETTE "CLAYMORE."

[Illustration 008]

I.

ENGLAND AND FRANCE UNITED.

In the spring of 1793, when France, attacked at one and the same

time on all her frontiers, experienced the pathetic diversion of the

downfall of the Girondists, the following events were taking place

in the Channel Islands. In Jersey, one evening on the first of June,

about an hour before sunset, from the lovely little Bay of Bonnenuit,

a corvette set sail in that foggy kind of weather dangerous for

navigation, and for that very reason better suited for escape than for

pursuit. The ship, although it was manned by a French crew, belonged

to the English squadron which had been stationed to watch the eastern

point of the island. The prince of Tour d'Auvergne, of the house of

Bouillon, commanded the English fleet, and it was by his order, and for

a special and pressing service, that the corvette had been detached.

This corvette entered at the Trinity House under the name of the

"Claymore," and, apparently a freight vessel, was in point of fact a

man-of-war. She looked like a heavy and peaceable merchant-ship; but

it would not have been wise to trust to that, for she had been built

to serve two purposes,--cunning and strength; to deceive if possible,

to fight if necessary. For the service on hand that night the freight

between decks had been replaced by thirty carronades of heavy caliber.

Either for the sake of giving the ship a peaceable appearance, or

possibly because a storm was anticipated, these thirty carronades were

housed; that is, they were firmly fastened inside by triple chains,

with their muzzles tightly braced against the port-holes. Nothing could

be seen from the outside. The port-holes were closed. It was as though

the corvette wore a mask. These guns were mounted on old-fashioned

bronzed wheels, called the "radiating model." The regular naval

corvettes carry their guns on the upper deck; but this ship, built

for surprise and ambush, had its decks clear, having been arranged,

as we have just seen, to carry a masked battery between decks.

The "Claymore," although built in a heavy and clumsy fashion, was

nevertheless a good sailer, her hull being one of the strongest in the

English Navy; and in an engagement she was almost equal to a frigate,

although her mizzen-mast was only a small one, with a fore and aft

rig. Her rudder, of an odd and scientific shape, had a curved frame,

quite unique, which had cost fifty pounds sterling in the Southampton

shipyards. The crew, entirely French, was composed of refugee officers

and sailors who were deserters. They were experienced men; there was

not one among them who was not a good sailor, a good soldier, and a

good royalist. A threefold fanaticism possessed them,--for the ship,

the sword, and the king.

Half a battalion of marines, which could in case of necessity be

disembarked, was added to the crew.

The captain of the "Claymore" was a chevalier of Saint-Louis, Count

Boisberthelot, one of the best officers of the old Royal Navy; the

first officer was the Chevalier de la Vieuville, who had commanded in

the French Guards the company of which Hoche was sergeant; and the

pilot, Philip Gacquoil, was one of the most experienced in Jersey.

It was easy to guess that the ship had some unusual work to do.

In fact, a man had just stepped on board, who had the look of one

starting out for an adventure. He was an old man, tall, upright, and

strong, with a severe countenance,--a man whose age it would have been

difficult to determine, for he seemed both young and old, advanced

in years yet abounding in vigor; one of those men whose eyes flash

lightning though the hair is white. Judging from his energy, he was

about forty years old; his air of authority was that of a man of eighty.

At the moment when he stepped on board the corvette, his sea-cloak

was half-open, revealing beneath wide breeches called _bragoubras_,

high boots, and a goat-skin waistcoat embroidered with silk on the

right side, while the rough and bristling fur was left on the wrong

side,--the complete costume of a Breton peasant. These old-fashioned

Breton waist-coats answered two purposes, being worn both on holidays

and week-days, and could be reversed at the option of the wearer,

with either the hairy or the smooth side out,--fur on a week-day, and

gala attire for holidays. And as if to increase a carefully studied

resemblance, the peasant dress worn by the old man was well worn on the

knees and elbows, showing signs of long usage, and his cloak, made of

coarse cloth, looked like the garb of a fisherman. He wore the round

hat of the period, tall and broad-brimmed, which when turned down looks

countrified, but when caught up on one side by a loop and a cockade has

quite a military effect. He wore it turned down, country fashion, with

neither loop nor cockade.

Lord Balcarras, the governor of the island, and the Prince de La Tour

d'Auvergne had in person escorted him on board. The secret agent of

the Prince Gélambre, an old body-guard of the Count d'Artois, himself

a nobleman, had personally superintended the arrangement of his cabin,

showing his attention and courtesy even so far as to carry the old

man's valise. When about to leave him, to return to the land, M. de

Gélambre had made a deep bow to this peasant; Lord Balcarras exclaimed,

"Good luck to you, general;" and the Prince de La Tour d'Auvergne said,

"Au revoir, cousin."

"The peasant" was the name by which the sailors at once called their

passenger in the short dialogues which sailors hold among themselves;

yet, without further information on the subject, they understood that

this peasant was no more a genuine peasant than the man-of-war was a

merchantman.

There was scarcely any wind. The "Claymore" left Bonnenuit, passed

Boulay Bay, remaining for some time in sight, tacking, gradually

diminishing in the gathering darkness, and finally disappeared.

All hour later, Gélambre, having returned home to Saint-Hélier, sent

to the Count d'Artois, at the headquarters of the Duke of York, by the

Southampton express, the following lines:--

"MY LORD,--The departure has just taken place. Success is certain. In

eight days the whole coast, from Granville to St. Malo, will be ablaze."

Four days previously the representative of the Marne, Prieur, on a

mission to the army on the coast of Cherbourg, and just then stopping

at Granville, received by a secret emissary the following message, in

the same handwriting as the previous one:--

"CITIZEN REPRESENTATIVE,--The 1st of June, at high tide, the war

corvette 'Claymore,' with a masked battery, will set sail, to land on

the coast of France a man who answers to the following description:

Tall, aged, gray-haired, dressed like a peasant, and with the hands of

an aristocrat. To-morrow I will send you further details. He will land

on the morning of the 2d. Communicate this to the cruiser, capture the

corvette, guillotine the man."

[Illustration 008b]

II.

NIGHT WITH THE SHIP AND THE PASSENGER.

[Illustration 009]

The corvette, instead of sailing south, in the direction of St.

Catherine, headed to the north, then, veering towards the west, had

boldly entered that arm of the sea between Sark and Jersey called the

Passage of the Déroute. There was then no lighthouse, at any point

on either coast. It had been a clear sunset: the night was darker

than summer nights usually are; it was moonlight, but large clouds,

rather of the equinox than of the solstice, overspread the sky, and,

judging by appearances the moon would not be visible until she reached

the horizon at the moment of setting. A few clouds hung low near the

surface of the sea and covered it with vapor.

All this darkness was favorable. Gacquoil, the pilot, intended to

leave Jersey on the left, Guernsey on the right, and by boldly sailing

between Hanois and Dover, to reach some bay on the coast near St. Malo,

a longer but safer route than the one through Minquiers; for the French

coaster had standing orders to keep an unusually sharp lookout between

St. Hélier and Granville.

If the wind were favorable, and nothing happened, by dint of setting

all sail Gacquoil hoped to reach the coast of France at daybreak.

All went well. The corvette had just passed Gros Nez. Towards nine

o'clock the weather looked sullen, as the sailors express it, both wind

and sea rising; but the wind was favorable, and the sea was rough, yet

not heavy, waves now and then dashing over the bow of the corvette.

"The peasant," whom Lord Balcarras had called general, and whom the

Prince de La Tour d'Auvergne had addressed as cousin, was a good

sailor, and paced the deck of the corvette with calm dignity. He did

not seem to notice that she rocked considerably. From time to time he

took out of his waistcoat pocket a cake of chocolate, and breaking off

a piece, munched it. Though his hair was gray, his teeth were sound.

He spoke to no one, except that from time to time he made a few

concise remarks in an undertone to the captain, who listened to him

deferentially, apparently regarding his passenger as the commander,

rather than himself. Unobserved in the fog, and skilfully piloted,

the "Claymore" coasted along the steep shore to the north of Jersey,

hugging the land to avoid the formidable reef of Pierres-de-Leeq, which

lies in the middle of the strait between Jersey and Sark. Gacquoil, at

the helm, sighting in turn Grove de Leeq, Gros Nez, and Plémont, making

the corvette glide in among those chains of reefs, felt his way along

to a certain extent, but with the self-confidence of one familiar with

the ways of the sea.

The corvette had no light forward, fearing to betray its passage

through these guarded waters. They congratulated themselves on the fog.

The Grande Étape was reached; the mist was so dense that the lofty

outlines of the Pinnacle were scarcely visible. They heard it strike

ten from the belfry of Saint-Ouen,--a sign that the wind was still aft.

All was going well; the sea grew rougher, because they were drawing

near La Corbière.

A little after ten, the Count Boisberthelot and the Chevalier de la

Vieuville escorted the man in the peasant garb to the door of his

cabin, which was the captain's own room. As he was about to enter, he

remarked, lowering his voice:--

"You understand the importance of keeping the secret, gentlemen.

Silence up to the moment of explosion. You are the only ones here who

know my name."

"We will carry it to the grave," replied Boisberthelot.

"And for my part, I would not reveal it were I face to face with

death," remarked the old man.

And he entered his state-room.

III.

PATRICIAN AND PLEBEIAN UNITED.

The commander and the first officer returned on deck, and began to

pace up and down side by side, talking as they walked. The theme

was evidently their passenger; and this was the substance of the

conversation which the wind wafted through the darkness. Boisberthelot

grumbled half audibly to La Vieuville,--

"It remains to be seen whether or no he is a leader."

La Vieuville replied,--

"Meanwhile he is a prince."

"Almost."

"A nobleman in France, but a prince in Brittany."

"Like the Trémoilles and the Rohans."

"With whom he is connected."

Boisberthelot resumed,--

"In France and in the carriages of the king he is a marquis,--as I am a

count, and you a chevalier."

"The carriages are far away!" exclaimed Vieuville. "We are living in

the time of the tumbril."

A silence ensued.

Boisberthelot went on,--

"For lack of a French prince we take one from Brittany."

"For lack of thrushes--No: since an eagle is not to be found, we take a

crow."

"I should prefer a vulture," remarked Boisberthelot.

La Vieuville replied,---

"Yes, indeed, with a beak and talons."

"We shall see."

"Yes," replied Vieuville, "it is time there was a leader. I agree

with Tinténiac,--a leader and gun-power! See here, commander, I know

nearly all the possible and impossible leaders,--those of yesterday,

those of to-day, and those of to-morrow. Not one of them has the head

required for war. In this cursed Vendée a general is needed who would

be a lawyer as well as a leader. He must harass the enemy, dispute

every bush, ditch, and stone; he must force unlucky quarrels upon him,

and take advantage of everything; vigilant and pitiless, he must watch

incessantly, slaughter freely, and make examples. Now, in this army of

peasants there are heroes, but no captains. D'Elbée is a nonentity,

Lescure an invalid; Bonchamps is merciful,--he is kind, and that

implies folly; La Rochejaquelein is a superb sub-lieutenant; Silz

is an officer good for the open field, but not suited for a war that

needs a man of expedients; Cathelineau is a simple teamster; Stofflet

is a crafty game-keeper; Bérard is inefficient; Boulainvilliers is

absurd; Charette is horrible. I make no mention of Gaston the barber.

Mordemonbleu! what is the use of opposing revolution, and what is the

difference between ourselves and the republicans, if we set barbers

over the heads of noblemen! The fact is, that this beastly revolution

has contaminated all of us."

"It is the itch of France."

"It is the itch of the Tiers État," rejoined Boisberthelot. "England

alone can help us."

"And she will, captain, undoubtedly."

"Meanwhile it is an ugly state of affairs."

"Yes,--rustics everywhere. A monarchy that has Stofflet, the

game-keeper of M. de Maulevrier, for a commander has no reason to envy

a republic whose minister is Pache, the son of the Duke de Castries'

porter. What men this Vendean war brings face to face,--.on one side

Santerre the brewer; on the other Gaston the hairdresser!"

"My dear La Vieuville, I feel some respect for this Gaston. He behaved

well in his command of Guéménée. He had three hundred Blues neatly shot

after making them dig their own graves."

"Well enough done; but I could have done quite as well as he."

"Pardieu, to be sure; and I too."

"The great feats of war," said Vieuville, "require noble blood in

those who perform them. These are matters for knights, and not for

hairdressers."

"But yet there are estimable men in this 'Third Estate,'" rejoined

Vieuville. "Take that watchmaker, Joly, for instance. He was formerly

a sergeant in a Flanders regiment; he becomes a Vendean chief and

commander of a coast band. He has a son, a republican; and while the

father serves in the ranks of the Whites, the son serves in those of

the Blues. An encounter, a battle: the father captures the son and

blows out his brains."

[Illustration 010]

"He did well," said La Vieuville.

"A royalist Brutus," answered Boisberthelot. "Nevertheless, it is

unendurable to be under the command of a Coquereau, a Jean-Jean, a

Moulin, a Focart, a Bouju, a Chouppes!"

"My dear chevalier, the opposite party is quite as indignant. We are

crowded with plebeians; they have an excess of nobles. Do you think

the sans-culottes like to be commanded by the Count de Canclaux, the

Viscount de Miranda, the Viscount de Beauharnais, the Count de Valence,

the Marquis de Custine, and the Duke de Biron?"

"What a combination!"

"And the Duke de Chartres!"

"Son of Égalité. By the way, when will he be king?"

"Never!"

"He aspires to the throne, and his very crimes serve to promote his

interests."

"And his vices will injure his cause," said Boisberthelot.

Then, after another pause, he continued,--

"Nevertheless, he was anxious to be reconciled. He came to see the

king. I was at Versailles when some one spit on his back."

"From the top of the grand staircase?"

"Yes."

"I am glad of it."

"We called him Bourbon le Bourbeux."

"He is bald-headed; he has pimples; he is a regicide. Poh!"

And La Vieuville added:--

"I was with him at Ouessant."

"On the 'Saint Esprit'?"

"Yes."

"Had he obeyed Admiral d'Orvillier's signal to keep to the windward, he

would have prevented the English from passing."

"True."

"Was he really hidden in the bottom of the hold?"

"No; but we must say so all the same."

And La Vieuville burst out laughing.

Boisberthelot continued:--

"Fools are plentiful. Look here, I have known this Boulainvilliers of

whom you were speaking; I knew him well. At first the peasants were

armed with pikes; would you believe it, he took it into his head to

form them into pike-men. He wanted to drill them in crossing pikes

and repelling a charge. He dreamed of transforming these barbarians

into regular soldiers. He undertook to teach them how to round in the

corners of their squares, and to mass battalions with hollow squares.

He jabbered the antiquated military dialect to them; he called the

chief of a squad a 'cap d'escade'--which was what corporals under

Louis XIV. were called. He persisted in forming a regiment of all

those poachers. He had regular companies whose sergeants ranged

themselves in a circle every evening, and, receiving the sign and

countersign from the colonel's sergeant, repeated it in a whisper to

the lieutenant's sergeant, who repeated it to his next neighbor, who

in his turn transmitted it to the next man, and so on from ear to ear

until it reached the last man. He cashiered an officer for not standing

bareheaded to receive the watchword from the sergeant. You may imagine

how he succeeded. This simpleton could not understand that peasants

have to be led peasant fashion, and that it is impossible to transform

rustics into soldiers. Yes, I have known Boulainvilliers."

They walked along a few steps, each one engrossed in his own thoughts.

Then the conversation was resumed:--

"By the way, has the report of Dampierre's death been confirmed?"

"Yes, commander."

"Before Condé?"

"At the camp of Pamars; he was hit by a cannon-ball."

Boisberthelot sighed.

"Count Dampierre,--another of our men, who took sides with them."

"May he prosper wherever he may be!" said Vieuville.

"And the ladies,--where are they?"

"At Trieste."

"Still there?"

"Yes."

"Ah, this republic!" exclaimed La Vieuville. "What havoc from so slight

a cause! To think that this revolution was the result of a deficit of

only a few millions!"

"Insignificant beginnings are not always to be trusted."

"Everything goes wrong," replied La Vieuville.

"Yes; La Rouarie is dead. Du Dresnay is an idiot. What wretched leaders

are all those bishops,--this Coucy, bishop of La Rochelle; Beaupoil

Saint-Aulaire, bishop of Poitiers; Mercy, bishop of Luzon, a lover of

Madame de l'Eschasserie--"

"Whose name is Servanteau, you know, commander. Eschasserie is the name

of an estate."

"And that false bishop of Agra, who is a curé of I know not what!"

"Of Dol. His name is Guillot de Folleville. But then he is brave, and

knows how to fight."

"Priests when one needs soldiers! bishops who are no bishops at all!

generals who are no generals!"

La Vieuville interrupted Boisberthelot.

"Have you the 'Moniteur' in your state-room, commander?"

"Yes."

"What are they giving now in Paris?"

"'Adèle and Pauline' and 'La Caverne.'"

"I should like to see that."

"You may. We shall be in Paris in a month." Boisberthelot thought a

moment, and then added:

"At the latest,--so Mr. Windham told Lord Hood."

"Then, commander, I take it affairs are not going so very badly?"

"All would go well, provided that the Breton war were well managed."

De Vieuville shook his head.

"Commander," he said, "are we to land the marines?"

"Certainly, if the coast is friendly, but not otherwise. In some cases

war must force the gates; in others it can slip through them. Civil war

must always keep a false key in its pocket. We will do all we can; but

one must have a chief."

And Boisberthelot added thoughtfully,--

"What do you think of the Chevalier de Dieuzie, La Vieuville?"

"Do you mean the younger?"

"Yes."

"For a commander?"

"Yes."

"He is only good for a pitched battle in the open field. It is only the

peasant who knows the underbrush."

"In that case, you may as well resign yourself to Generals Stofflet and

Cathelineau."

La Vieuville meditated for a moment; then he said,--

"What we need is a prince,--a French prince, a prince of the blood, a

real prince."

"How can that be? He who says 'prince'--"

"Says 'coward.' I know it, commander. But we need him for the

impression he would produce upon the herd."

"My dear chevalier, the princes don't care to come."

"We will do without them."

Boisberthelot pressed his hand mechanically against his forehead, as if

striving to evoke an idea. He resumed,--

"Then let us try this general."

"He is a great nobleman."

"Do you think he will do?"

"If he is one of the right sort," said La Vieuville.

"You mean relentless?" said Boisberthelot.

The count and the chevalier looked at each other.

"Monsieur Boisberthelot, you have defined the meaning of the word.

Relentless,--yes, that's what we need. This is a war that shows no

mercy. The bloodthirsty are in the ascendant The regicides have

beheaded Louis XVI.; we will quarter the regicides. Yes, the general

we need is General Relentless. In Anjou and Upper Poitou the leaders

play the magnanimous; they trifle with generosity, and they are always

defeated. In the Marais and the country of Retz, where the leaders are

ferocious, everything goes bravely forward. It is because Charette is

fierce that he stands his ground against Parrein,--hyena pitted against

hyena."

Boisberthelot had no time to answer. Vieuville's words were suddenly

cut short by a desperate cry, and at the same instant they heard a

noise unlike all other sounds. This cry and the unusual sounds came

from the interior of the vessel.

The captain and the lieutenant rushed to the gun-deck, but were unable

to enter. All the gunners came running up, beside themselves with

terror.

A frightful thing had just happened.

IV.

TORMENTUM BELLI.

[Illustration 011]

One of the carronades of the battery, a twenty-four pound cannon, had

become loose.

This is perhaps the most dreadful thing that can take place at sea.

Nothing more terrible can happen to a man-of-war under full sail.

A cannon that breaks loose from its fastenings is suddenly transformed

into a supernatural beast. It is a monster developed from a machine.

This mass runs along on its wheels as easily as a billiard ball; it

rolls with the rolling, pitches with the pitching, comes and goes,

stops, seems to meditate, begins anew, darts like an arrow from one end

of the ship to the other, whirls around, turns aside, evades, rears,

hits out, crushes, kills, exterminates. It is a ram battering a wall

at its own pleasure. Moreover, the battering-ram is iron, the wall is

wood. It is matter set free; one might say that this eternal slave is

wreaking its vengeance; it would seem as though the evil in what we

call inanimate objects had found vent and suddenly burst forth; it has

the air of having lost its patience, and of taking a mysterious, dull

revenge; nothing is so inexorable as the rage of the inanimate. The

mad mass leaps like a panther; it has the weight of an elephant, the

agility of a mouse, the obstinacy of the axe; it takes one by surprise,

like the surge of the sea; it flashes like lightning; it is deaf as the

tomb; it weighs ten thousand pounds, and it bounds like a child's ball;

it whirls as it advances, and the circles it describes are intersected

by right angles. And what help is there? How can it be overcome? A

calm succeeds the tempest, a cyclone passes over, a wind dies away, we

replace the broken mass, we check the leak, we extinguish the fire;

but what is to be done with this enormous bronze beast? How can it

be subdued? You can reason with a mastiff, take a bull by surprise,

fascinate a snake, frighten a tiger, mollify a lion; but there is no

resource with the monster known as a loosened gun. You cannot kill

it,--it is already dead; and yet it lives. It breathes a sinister life

bestowed on it by the Infinite. The plank beneath sways it to and fro;

it is moved by the ship; the sea lifts the ship, and the wind keeps the

sea in motion. This destroyer is a toy. Its terrible vitality is fed

by the ship, the waves, and the wind, each lending its aid. What is to

be done with this complication? How fetter this monstrous mechanism of

shipwreck? How foresee its comings and goings, its recoils, its halts,

its shocks? Any one of those blows may stave in the side of the vessel.

How can one guard against these terrible gyrations? One has to do with

a projectile that reflects, that has ideas, and changes its direction

at any moment. How can one arrest an object in its course, whose

onslaught must be avoided? The dreadful cannon rushes about, advances,

recedes, strikes to right and to left, flies here and there, baffles

their attempts at capture, sweeps away obstacles, crushing men like

flies.

[Illustration 012]

The extreme danger of the situation comes from the unsteadiness of

the deck. How is one to cope with the caprices of an inclined plane?

The ship had within its depths, so to speak, imprisoned lightning

struggling for escape; something like the rumbling of thunder during

an earthquake. In an instant the crew was on its feet. It was the

chief gunner's fault, who had neglected to fasten the screw-nut of

the breeching chain, and had not thoroughly chocked the four trucks

of the carronade, which allowed play to the frame and bottom of the

gun-carriage, thereby disarranging the two platforms and parting the

breeching. The lashings were broken, so that the gun was no longer firm

on its carriage. The stationary breeching which prevents the recoil was

not in use at that time. As a wave struck the ship's side the cannon,

insufficiently secured, had receded, and having broken its chain, began

to wander threatningly over the deck. In order to get an idea of this

strange sliding, fancy a drop of water sliding down a pane of glass.

When the fastening broke, the gunners were in the battery, singly and

in groups, clearing the ship for action. The carronade, thrown forward

by the pitching, dashed into a group of men, killing four of them at

the first blow; then, hurled back by the rolling, it cut in two an

unfortunate fifth man, and struck and dismounted one of the guns of the

larboard battery. Hence the cry of distress which had been heard. All

the men rushed to the ladder. The gun-deck was empty in the twinkling

of an eye.

The monstrous gun was left to itself. It was its own mistress, and

mistress of the ship. It could do with it whatsoever it wished.

This crew, accustomed to laugh in battle, now trembled. It would be

impossible to describe their terror.

Captain Boisberthelot and Lieutenant la Vieuville, brave men though

they were, paused at the top of the ladder, silent, pale, and

undecided, looking down on the deck. Some one pushed them aside with

his elbow, and descended. It was their passenger, the peasant, the man

about whom they were talking a moment ago.

Having reached the bottom of the ladder he halted.

V.

VIS ET VIR.

[Illustration 013]

The cannon was rolling to and fro on the deck. It might have been

called the living chariot of the Apocalypse. A dim wavering of lights

and shadows was added to this spectacle by the marine lantern, swinging

under the deck. The outlines of the cannon were indistinguishable, by

reason of the rapidity of its motion; sometimes it looked black when

the light shone upon it, then again it would cast pale, glimmering

reflections in the darkness.

It was still pursuing its work of destruction. It had already

shattered four other pieces, and made two breaches in the ship's side,

fortunately above the water-line, but which would leak in case of rough

weather. It rushed frantically against the timbers; the stout riders

resisted,--curved timbers have great strength; but one could hear them

crack under this tremendous assault brought to bear simultaneously on

every side, with a certain omnipresence truly appalling.

A bullet shaken in a bottle could not produce sharper or more rapid

sounds. The four wheels were passing and repassing over the dead

bodies, cutting and tearing them to pieces, and the five corpses had

become five trunks rolling hither and thither; the heads seemed to cry

out; streams of blood flowed over the deck, following the motion of the

ship. The ceiling, damaged in several places, had begun to give way.

The whole ship was filled with a dreadful tumult.

The captain, who had rapidly recovered his self-possession, had given

orders to throw down the hatchway all that could abate the rage and

check the mad onslaught of this infuriated gun; mattresses, hammocks,

spare sails, coils of rope, the bags of the crew, and bales of false

assignats, with which the corvette was laden,--that infamous stratagem

of English origin being considered a fair trick in war.

But what availed these rags? No one dared to go down to arrange them,

and in a few moments they were reduced to lint.

There was just sea enough to render this accident as complete as

possible. A tempest would have been welcome. It might have upset the

cannon, and with its four wheels once in the air, it could easily have

been mastered. Meanwhile the havoc increased. There were even incisions

and fractures in the masts, that stood like pillars grounded firmly in

the keel, and piercing the several decks of the vessel. The mizzen-mast

was split, and even the main-mast was damaged by the convulsive blows

of the cannon. The destruction of the battery still went on. Ten out of

the thirty pieces were useless. The fractures in the side increased,

and the corvette began to leak.

The old passenger, who had descended to the gun-deck, looked like one

carved in stone as he stood motionless at the foot of the stairs and

glanced sternly over the devastation. It would have been impossible to

move a step upon the deck.

Each bound of the liberated carronade seemed to threaten the

destruction of the ship. But a few moments longer, and shipwreck would

be inevitable.

They must either overcome this calamity or perish; some decisive action

must be taken. But what?

What a combatant was this carronade!

Here was this mad creature to be arrested, this flash of lightning

to be seized, this thunderbolt to be crushed. Boisberthelot said to

Vieuville:--

"Do you believe in God, chevalier?"

"Yes and no, sometimes I do!" replied La Vieuville.

"In a tempest?"

"Yes, and in moments like these."

"Truly God alone can save us," said Boisberthelot.

All were silent, leaving the carronade to its horrible uproar.

The waves beating the ship from without answered the blows of the

cannon within, very much like a couple of hammers striking in turn.

Suddenly in the midst of this inaccessible circus, where the escaped

cannon was tossing from side to side, a man appeared, grasping an iron

bar. It was the author of the catastrophe, the chief gunner, whose

criminal negligence had caused the accident,--the captain of the gun.

Having brought about the evil, his intention was to repair it. Holding

a handspike in one hand, and in the other a tiller rope with the

slip-noose in it, he had jumped through the hatchway to the deck below.

Then began a terrible struggle; a titanic spectacle; a combat between

cannon and cannoneer; a contest between mind and matter; a duel between

man and the inanimate. The man stood in one corner in an attitude of

expectancy, leaning on the rider and holding in his hands the bar and

the rope; calm, livid, and tragic, he stood firmly on his legs, that

were like two pillars of steel.

He was waiting for the cannon to approach him.

The gunner knew his piece, and he felt as though it must know him. They

had lived together a long time. How often had he put his hand in its

mouth. It was his domestic monster. He began to talk to it as he would

to a dog. "Come," said he. Possibly he loved it.

He seemed to wish for its coming, and yet its approach meant sure

destruction for him. How to avoid being crushed was the question. All

looked on in terror.

Not a breath was drawn freely, except perhaps by the old man, who

remained on the gun-deck gazing sternly on the two combatants.

He himself was in danger of being crushed by the piece; still he did

not move.

Beneath them the blind sea had command of the battle. When, in the act

of accepting this awful hand-to-hand struggle, the gunner approached

to challenge the cannon, it happened that the surging sea held the gun

motionless for an instant, as though stupefied. "Come on!" said the

man. It seemed to listen.

Suddenly it leaped towards him. The man dodged. Then the struggle

began,--a contest unheard of; the fragile wrestling with the

invulnerable; the human warrior attacking the brazen beast; blind force

on the one side, soul on the other.

All this was in the shadow. It was like an indistinct vision of a

miracle.

A soul!--strangely enough it seemed as if a soul existed within the

cannon, but one consumed with hate and rage. The blind thing seemed

to have eyes. It appeared as though the monster were watching the

man. There was, or at least one might have supposed it, cunning in

this mass. It also chose its opportunity. It was as though a gigantic

insect of iron was endowed with the will of a demon. Now and then this

colossal grasshopper would strike the low ceiling of the gun-deck, then

falling back on its four wheels, like a tiger on all fours, rush upon

the man. He--supple, agile, adroit--writhed like a serpent before these

lightning movements. He avoided encounters; but the blows from which he

escaped fell with destructive force upon the vessel. A piece of broken

chain remained attached to the carronade. This bit of chain had twisted

in some incomprehensible way around the breech-button.

One end of the chain was fastened to the gun-carriage; the other end

thrashed wildly around, aggravating the danger with every bound of

the cannon. The screw held it as in a clenched hand, and this chain,

multiplying the strokes of the battering-ram by those of the thong,

made a terrible whirlwind around the gun,--a lash of iron in a fist of

brass. This chain complicated the combat.

Despite all this, the man fought. He even attacked the cannon at times,

crawling along by the side of the ship and clutching his handspike and

the rope; the cannon seemed to understand his movements, and fled as

though suspecting a trap. The man, nothing daunted, pursued his chase.

Such a struggle must necessarily be brief. Suddenly the cannon seemed

to say to itself: Now, then, there must be an end to this. And it

stopped. A crisis was felt to be at hand. The cannon, as if in

suspense, seemed to meditate, or--for to all intents and purposes it

was a living creature--it really did meditate, some furious design.

All at once it rushed on the gunner, who sprang aside with a laugh,

crying out, "Try it again!" as the cannon passed him. The gun in its

fury smashed one of the larboard carronades; then, by the invisible

sling in which it seemed to be held, it was thrown to the starboard,

towards the man, who escaped. Three carronades were crushed by its

onslaught; then, as though blind and beside itself, it turned from the

man, and rolled from stern to stem, splintering the latter, and causing

a breach in the walls of the prow. The gunner took refuge at the foot

of the ladder, a short distance from the old man, who stood watching.

He held his handspike in readiness. The cannon seemed aware of it, and

without taking the trouble to turn, it rushed backward on the man, as

swift as the blow of an axe. The gunner, if driven up against the side

of the ship, would be lost.

One cry arose from the crew.

The old passenger--who until this moment had stood motionless--sprang

forward more swiftly than all those mad whirls. He had seized a bale

of the false assignats, and at the risk of being crushed succeeded in

throwing it between the wheels of the carronade. This decisive and

perilous manoeuvre could not have been executed with more precision

and adroitness by an adept in all the exercises given in the work of

Durosel's "Manual of Naval Gunnery."

The bale had the effect of a plug. A pebble may block a log; a branch

sometimes changes the course of an avalanche. The carronade stumbled,

and the gunner, availing himself of the perilous opportunity, thrust

his iron bar between the spokes of the back wheels. Pitching forward,

the cannon stopped; and the man, using his bar for a lever, rocked it

backward and forward. The heavy mass upset, with the resonant sound of

a bell that crashes in its fall. The man, reeking with perspiration,

threw himself upon it, and passed the slip-noose of the tiller-rope

around the neck of the defeated monster.

The combat was ended. The man had conquered. The ant had overcome the

mastodon; the pygmy had imprisoned the thunderbolt.

The soldiers and sailors applauded.

The crew rushed forward with chains and cables, and in an instant the

cannon was secured.

Saluting the passenger, the gunner exclaimed,--

"Sir, you have saved my life!"

The old man had resumed his impassible attitude, and made no reply.

VI.

THE TWO ENDS OF THE SCALE.

The man had conquered; but it might be affirmed that the cannon also

had gained a victory. Immediate shipwreck was averted; but the corvette

was still in danger. The injuries the ship had sustained seemed

irreparable. There were five breaches in the sides, one of them--a

very large one--in the bow, and twenty carronades out of thirty lay

shattered in their frames. The recaptured gun, which had been secured

by a chain, was itself disabled. The screw of the breech-button being

wrenched, it would consequently be impossible to level the cannon. The

battery was reduced to nine guns; there was a leakage in the hold. All

these damages must be repaired without loss of time, and the pumps

set in operation. Now that the gun-deck had become visible, it was

frightful to look upon. The interior of a mad elephant's cage could not

have been more thoroughly devastated. However important it might be for

the corvette to avoid observation, the care for its immediate safety

was still more imperative. They were obliged to light the deck with

lanterns placed at intervals along the sides.

In the mean time, while this tragic entertainment had lasted, the crew,

entirely absorbed by a question of life and death, had not noticed what

was going on outside of the ship. The fog had thickened, the weather

had changed, the wind had driven the vessel at will; they were out of

their course, in full sight of Jersey and Guernsey, much farther to

the south than they ought to have been, and confronting a tumultuous

sea. The big waves kissed the wounded sides of the corvette with kisses

that savored of danger. The heaving of the sea grew threatening; the

wind had risen to a gale; a squall, perhaps a tempest, was brewing. One

could not see four oars' length before one.

While the crew made haste with their temporary repairs on the gun-deck,

stopping the leaks and setting up the cannons that had escaped

uninjured, the old passenger returned to the deck.

He stood leaning against the main-mast.

He had taken no notice of what was going on in the ship. The Chevalier

de la Vieuville had drawn up the marines on either side of the

main-mast, and at a signal-whistle of the boatswain the sailors,

who had been busy in the rigging, stood up on the yards. Count

Boisberthelot approached the passenger. The captain was followed by a

man, who, haggard and panting, with his dress in disorder, still wore

on his countenance an expression of content.

It was the gunner who had so opportunely displayed his power as a tamer

of monsters, and gained the victory over the cannon.

The count made a military salute to the old man in the peasant garb,

and said to him:--

"Here is the man, general."

The gunner, with downcast eyes, stood erect in a military attitude.

"General," resumed Count Boisberthelot, "considering what this man has

done, do you not think that his superiors have a duty to perform?"

"I think so," replied the old man.

"Be so good as to give your orders," resumed Boisberthelot.

"It is for you to give them; you are the captain."

"But you are the general," answered Boisberthelot.

The old man looked at the gunner.

"Step forward," he said.

The gunner advanced a step.

Turning to Count Boisberthelot, the old man removed the cross of Saint

Louis from the captain's breast, and fastened it on the jacket of the

gunner. The sailors cheered, and the marines presented arms.

Then pointing to the bewildered gunner he added:

"Now let the man be shot!"

Stupor took the place of applause.

Then, amid a tomb-like silence, the old man, raising his voice, said:--

[Illustration 014]

"The ship has been endangered by an act of carelessness, and may even

yet be lost. It is all the same whether one be at sea or face to face

with the enemy. A ship at sea is like an army in battle. The tempest,

though unseen, is ever present; the sea is an ambush. Death is the fit

penalty for every fault committed when facing the enemy. There is no

fault that can be retrieved. Courage must be rewarded and negligence

punished."

These words fell one after the other slowly and gravely, with a certain

implacable rhythm, like the strokes of the axe upon an oak-tree.

Looking at the soldiers, the old man added,--

"Do your duty!"

The man on whose breast shone the cross of Saint Louis bowed his

head, and at a sign of Count Boisberthelot two sailors went down to

the gun-deck, and presently returned bringing the hammock-shroud; the

two sailors were accompanied by the ship's chaplain, who since the

departure had been engaged in saying prayers in the officers' quarters.

A sergeant detached from the ranks twelve soldiers, whom he arranged

in two rows, six men in a row. The gunner placed himself between the

two lines. The chaplain, holding a crucifix, advanced and took his

place beside the man. "March!" came from the lips of the sergeant;

and the platoon slowly moved towards the bow, followed by two sailors

canning the shroud.

A gloomy silence fell on the corvette. In the distance a hurricane was

blowing. A few moments later, a report echoed through the gloom; one

flash, and all was still. Then came the splash of a body falling into

the water. The old passenger, still leaning against the main-mast, his

hands crossed on his breast, seemed lost in thought. Boisberthelot,

pointing towards him with the forefinger of his left hand, remarked in

an undertone to La Vieuville,--

"The Vendée has found a leader."

VII.

HE WHO SETS SAIL INVESTS IN A LOTTERY.

But what was to become of the corvette? The clouds that had mingled all

night with the waves had now fallen so low that they overspread the

sea like a mantle, and completely shut out the horizon. Nothing but

fog,--always a dangerous situation, even for a seaworthy vessel.

A heavy swell was added to the mist.

They had improved their time; the corvette had been lightened by

throwing into the sea everything that they had been able to clear

away after the havoc caused by the carronade,--dismantled cannons,

gun-carriages, twisted or loosened timbers, splintered pieces of wood

and iron; the port-holes were opened, and the corpses and parts of

human bodies, wrapped in tarpaulin, were slid down on planks into the

sea.

The sea was running high. Not that the tempest was imminent. On the

other hand, it seemed as if the hurricane, that was rumbling afar off

on the horizon, and the wind were both decreasing and moving northward;

but the waves were still high, showing an angry sea, and the corvette

in its disabled condition could with difficulty resist the shocks, so

that the high waves might prove fatal to it. Gacquoil, absorbed in

thought, remained at the helm. To show a bold front in the presence of

danger is the habit of commanders.

La Vieuville, whose spirits rose in time of trouble, addressed Gacquoil.

"Well, pilot," he said, "the squall has subsided. Its sneezing-fit came

to naught. We shall pull through. We shall get some wind, and nothing

more."

"We can't have wind without waves."

A true sailor, neither gay nor sad; and his reply was charged with

an anxious significance. For a leaking ship a high sea means a rapid

sinking. Gacquoil had emphasized this prediction by frowning. Perhaps

he thought that after the catastrophe with the cannon and the gunner,

La Vieuville had been too quick to use light-hearted, almost cheerful,

words. Certain things bring ill-luck at sea. The sea is reticent; one

never knows its intentions, and it is well to be on one's guard.

La Vieuville felt obliged to resume his gravity.

"Where are we, pilot?" he asked.

"In the hands of God," replied the pilot.

A pilot is a master; he must always be allowed to do what pleases him,

and often to say what he chooses. That kind of man is not apt to be

loquacious. La Vieuville left him, after asking a question to which the

horizon soon replied.

The sea had suddenly cleared.

The trailing fogs were rent; the dusky heaving waves stretched as far

as the eye could penetrate into the dim twilight, and this was the

sight that lay before them.

The sky was shut in by clouds, although they no longer touched the

water. The dawn had begun to illumine the east, while in the west

the setting moon still cast a pale glimmering light These two pallid

presences in opposite quarters of the sky outlined the horizon in two

narrow bands of light between the dark sea and the gloomy sky. Black

silhouettes were sketched against them, upright and motionless.

In the west, against the moonlit sky, three high cliffs stood forth,

like Celtic cromlechs.

In the east, against the pale horizon of the morning, eight sails drawn

up in a row in formidable array came in view. The three cliffs were a

reef, the eight sails a squadron. Behind them was Minquiers, a cliff

of ill-repute, and in front were the French cruisers. With an abyss on

the left hand, and carnage on the right, they had to choose between

shipwreck and a battle. The corvette must either encounter the cliffs

with a damaged hull, a shattered rigging, and broken masts, or face

a battle, knowing that twenty out of the thirty cannons of which her

artillery consisted were disabled, and the best of her gunners dead.

The dawn was still feint, and the night not yet ended. This darkness

might possibly last for quite a long time, as it was caused mostly by

the clouds that hung high in the air, thick and dense, looking like a

solid vault.

The wind had scattered the sea-fog, driving the corvette on Minquiers.

In her extreme weakness, and dilapidated as she was, she hardly obeyed

the helm as she rolled helplessly along, lashed onward by the force of

the waves.

The Minquiers--that tragic reef!--was more dangerous at that time

than it is now. Several of the turrets of this marine fortress have

been worn away by the incessant action of the sea. The form of reefs

changes; waves are fitly likened unto swords; each tide is like the

stroke of a saw. At that time, to be stranded on the Minquiers meant

certain death. The cruisers composed the squadron of Cancale,--the one

that afterwards became so famous under the command of Captain Duchesne,

called by Lequinio "Père Duchesne."

The situation was critical. During the struggle with the carronade the

ship had wandered unconsciously from her course, sailing more in the

direction of Granville than of St. Malo. Even had her sailing power

been unimpaired, the Minquiers would have barred her return to Jersey,

while the cruisers hindered her passage towards France. Although there

was no storm, yet, as the pilot had said, the sea was rough. Rolled by

the heavy wind over a rocky bottom, it had grown savage.

The sea never tells what it wants at the first onset. Everything lies

concealed in its abyss, even trickery. One might almost affirm that

it has a scheme. It advances and recedes; it offers and refuses; it

arranges for a storm, and suddenly gives up its intention; it promises

an abyss, and fails to keep its agreement; it threatens the north, and

strikes the south. All night long the corvette "Claymore" labored with

the fog and feared the storm; the sea had disappointed them in a savage

sort of way. It had drawn a storm in outline, and filled in the picture

with a reef.

[Illustration 015]

It was to be a shipwreck in any event, but it had assumed another form,

and with one enemy to supplement the work of the other, it was to

combine a wreck on the surf with destruction by battle.

"A shipwreck on the one hand and a fight on the other!" exclaimed

Vieuville amid his gallant laughter. "We have thrown double fives on

both sides!"

VIII.

9:380.

[Illustration 016]

The corvette was little better than a wreck.

A sepulchral solemnity pervaded the dim twilight, the darkness of

the clouds, the confused changes of the horizon, and the mysterious

sullenness of the waves. There was no sound except the hostile blasts

of the wind. The catastrophe rose majestic from the abyss. It looked

more like an apparition than an attack. No stir on the rocks, no stir

on the ships. The silence was overpowering beyond description. Were

they dealing with reality? It was like a dream passing over the sea.

There are legends that tell of such visions. The corvette lay, so to

speak, between a demon reef and a phantom fleet.

Count Boisberthelot in a low voice gave orders to La Vieuville, who

went down to the gun-deck, while the captain, seizing his telescope,

stationed himself behind the pilot. Gacquoil's sole effort was to keep

up the corvette to the wind; for if struck on her side by the sea and

the wind, she would inevitably capsize.

"Pilot, where are we?" said the captain.

"On the Minquiers."

"On which side?"

"On the worst one."

"What kind of bottom?"

"Small rocks."

"Can we turn broadside on?"

"We can always die."

The captain turned his spy-glass towards the west and examined the

Minquiers; then turning it to the east he watched the sails that were

in sight.

The pilot went on, as though speaking to himself:

"Yonder is the Minquiers. That is where the laughing sea-mew and the

great black-hooded gull stop to rest when they migrate from Holland."

Meanwhile the captain had counted the sails.

There were, indeed, eight ships drawn up in line, their warlike

profiles rising above the water. In the centre was seen the stately

outline of a three-decker.

The captain questioned the pilot.

"Do you know those ships?"

"Of course I do."

"What are they?"

"That's the squadron."

"Of the French?"

"Of the Devil."

A silence ensued; and again the captain resumed his questions.

"Are all the cruisers there?"

"No, not all."

In fact, on the 2d of April, Valazé had reported to the Convention that

ten frigates and six ships of the line were cruising in the Channel.

The captain remembered this.

"You are right," he said; "the squadron numbers sixteen ships, and only

eight are here."

"The others are straggling along the coast down below, on the lookout,"

said Gacquoil.

Still gazing through his spy-glass the captain murmured,--

"One three-decker, two first-class and five second-class frigates."

"I too have seen them close at hand," muttered Gacquoil. "I know them

too well to mistake one for the other."

The captain passed his glass to the pilot.

"Pilot, can you make out distinctly the largest ship?"

"Yes, commander. It is the 'Côte-d'Or.'"

"They have given it a new name. It used to be the 'États de

Bourgogne,'--a new ship of a hundred and twenty-eight cannon."

He took a memorandum-book and pencil from his pocket, and wrote down

the number "128."

"Pilot, what is the first ship on the port?"

"The 'Expérimentée.'"

"A frigate of the first class; fifty-two guns. She was fitting out at

Brest two months ago."

The captain put down on his note-book the number "52."

"What is the second ship to port, pilot?"

"The 'Dryade.'"

"A frigate of the first class; forty eighteen-pounders. She has been in

India, and has a glorious military record."

And below the "52" he wrote the number "40." Then, raising his head, he

said,--

"Now, on the starboard?"

"They are all second-class frigates, commander; there are five of

them."

"Which is the first one from the ship?"

"The 'Résolue.'"

"Thirty-two eighteen-pounders. The second?"

"The 'Richmond.'"

"Same. Next?"

"The 'Athée.'"

"A queer name to sail under. Next?"

"The 'Calypso.'"

"Next?"

"The 'Preneuse.'"

"Five frigates, each of thirty-two guns."

The captain wrote "160" under the first numbers.

"You are sure you recognize them, pilot?" he asked.

"You also know them well, commander. It is something to recognize them;

but it is better to know them."

The captain, with his eyes on the note-book, was adding up the column

to himself.

"One hundred and twenty-eight, fifty-two, forty, one hundred and sixty."

Just then La Vieuville came up on deck.

"Chevalier," exclaimed the captain, "we are facing three hundred and

eighty cannon."

"So be it," replied La Vieuville.

"You have just been making an inspection, La Vieuville: how many guns

have we fit for service?"

"Nine."

"So be it," responded Boisberthelot in his turn; and taking the

telescope from the pilot, he scanned the horizon.

The eight black and silent ships, though they appeared immovable,

continued to increase in size.

They were gradually drawing nearer.

La Vieuville saluted the captain.

"Commander," he said, "here is my report. I mistrusted this corvette

'Claymore.' It is never pleasant to be suddenly ordered on board a

ship that neither knows nor loves you. An English ship is a traitor

to the French. That slut of a carronade proved this. I have made the

inspection. The anchors are good; they are not made of inferior iron,

but hammered out of solid bars; the flukes are solid; the cables are

excellent, easy to pay out, and have the requisite length of one

hundred and twenty fathoms. Plenty of ammunition; six gunners dead;

each gun has one hundred and seventy-one rounds."

"Because there are only nine cannon left," grumbled the captain.

Boisberthelot levelled his glass to the horizon. The squadron continued

its slow approach. Carronades have one advantage: three men are

sufficient to man them. But they also have a disadvantage: they do

not carry as far, and shoot with less precision than cannon. It was

therefore necessary to let the squadron approach within the range of

the carronades.

The captain gave his orders in a low voice. Silence reigned on the

ship. No signal to clear the decks for action had been given, but still

it had been done. The corvette was as helpless to cope with men as with

the sea. They did their best with this remnant of a war-ship. Near

the tiller-ropes on the gangway were piled spare hawsers and cables,

to strengthen the mast in case of need. The quarters for the wounded

were put in order. According to the naval practice of those days, they

barricaded the deck,--which is a protection against balls, but not

against bullets. The ball-gauges were brought, although it was rather

late to ascertain the caliber; but they had not anticipated so many

incidents. Cartridge-boxes were distributed among the sailors, and

each one secured a pair of pistols and a dirk in his belt. Hammocks

were stowed away, guns were pointed, and muskets, axes, and grapplings

prepared. The cartridge and bullet stores were put in readiness; the

powder-magazine was opened; every man stood at his post. Not a word was

spoken while these preparations went on amid haste and gloom; and it

seemed like the room of a dying person.

Then the corvette was turned broadside on. She carried six anchors,

like a frigate, and all of them were cast,--the spare anchor forward,

the kedger aft, the sea-anchor towards the open, the ebb-anchor towards

the breakers, the bower-anchor to starboard, and the sheet-anchor to

port. The nine uninjured carronades were placed as a battery on the

side towards the enemy.

The squadron, equally silent, had also finished its evolutions. The

eight ships now stood in a semicircle, of which Minquiers formed

the chord. The "Claymore" enclosed within this semicircle, and held

furthermore by its own anchors, was backed by the reef,--signifying

shipwreck. It was like a pack of hounds surrounding a wild boar, not

giving tongue, but showing its teeth.

It seemed as if each side were waiting for something.

The gunners of the "Claymore" stood to their guns.

Boisberthelot said to La Vieuville,--

"I should like to be the first to open fire."

"A coquette's fancy," replied La Vieuville.

IX.

SOME ONE ESCAPES.

The passenger had not left the deck; he watched all that was going on

with his customary impassibility.

Boisberthelot went up to him.

"Sir," he said, "the preparations are completed. We are now clinging to

our grave; we shall not relax our hold. We must succumb either to the

squadron or to the reef. The alternative is before us: either shipwreck

among the breakers or surrender to the enemy. But the resource of death

is still left; better to fight than be wrecked. I would rather be shot

than drowned; fire before water, if the choice be left to me. But

where it is our duty to die it is not yours. You are the man chosen by

princes. You have an important mission,--that of directing the Vendean

war. Your death might result in the failure of monarchy; therefore

you must live. While honor requires us to stand by the ship, it calls

on you to escape. You must leave us, General; I will provide you with

a boat and a man. You may succeed in reaching the shore, by making a

détour. It is not yet daylight; the waves are high and the sea dark.

You will probably escape. There are occasions when to flee means to

conquer."

The old man bent his stately head in token of acquiescence.

Count Boisberthelot raised his voice.

"Soldiers and sailors!" he called.

Every movement ceased, and from all sides faces were turned in the

direction of the captain.

He continued:--

"This man who is among us represents the king. He has been intrusted to

our care; we must save him. He is needed for the throne of France. As

we have no prince, he is to be,--at least we hope so,--the leader of

the Vendée. He is a great general. He was to land with us in France;

now he must land without us. If we save the head we save all."

"Yes, yes, yes!" cried the voices of all the crew.

The captain went on:--

"He too is about to face a serious danger. It is not easy to reach the

coast. The boat must be large enough to live in this sea, and small

enough to escape the cruisers. He must land at some safe point, and

it will be better to do so nearer Fougères than Coutances. We want a

hardy sailor, a good oars-man and a strong swimmer, a man from that

neighborhood, and one who knows the straits. It is still so dark that

a boat can put off from the corvette without attracting attention; and

later there will be smoke enough to hide it from view. Its size will be

an advantage in the shallows. Where the panther is caught, the weasel

escapes. Although there is no outlet for us, there may be for a small

rowboat; the enemy's ships will not see it, and, what is more, about

that time we shall be giving them plenty of diversion. Is it decided?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" cried the crew.

"Then there is not a moment to be lost," continued the captain. "Is

there a man among you willing to undertake the business?"

In the darkness, a sailor stepped out of the ranks and said,--

"I am the man."

[Illustration 017]

X.

DOES HE ESCAPE?

[Illustration 018]

A few minutes later, one of those small boats called a gig, which are

always devoted to the use of the captain, pushed off from the ship.

There were two men in this boat,--the passenger in the stern, and the

volunteer sailor in the bow. The night was still very dark. The sailor,

according to the captain's instructions, rowed energetically towards

the Minquiers. For that matter, it was the only direction in which

he could row. Some provisions had been placed in the bottom of the

boat,--a bag of biscuits, a smoked tongue, and a barrel of water.

Just as they were lowering the gig, La Vieuville, a very scoffer in the

presence of destruction, leaning over the stern-post of the corvette,

cried out in his cool sneering voice a parting word:--

"Very good for escaping, and still better for drowning."

"Sir, let us joke no more," said the pilot.

They pushed off rapidly, and soon left the corvette far behind. Both

wind and tide were in the oars-man's favor, and the small skiff flew

rapidly along, wavering to and fro in the twilight, and hidden by the

high crests of the waves.

A gloomy sense of expectation brooded over the sea.

Suddenly amid this illimitable, tumultuous silence a voice was heard;

exaggerated by the speaking-trumpet, as by the brazen mask of ancient

tragedy, it seemed almost superhuman.

It was Captain Boisberthelot speaking.

"Royal marines," he exclaimed, "nail the white flag to the mizzen-mast!

We are about to look upon our last sunrise!"

And the corvette fired a shot.

"Long live the King!" shouted the crew.

Then from the verge of the horizon was heard another shout, stupendous,

remote, confused, and yet distinct,--

"Long live the Republic!"

And a din like unto the roar of three hundred thunderbolts exploded in

the depths of the sea.

The conflict began. The sea was covered with fire and smoke.

Jets of spray thrown up by the balls as they struck the water rose from

the sea on all sides.

The "Claymore" was pouring forth flame on the eight vessels; the

squadron, ranged in a semicircle around her, opened fire from all

its batteries. The horizon was in a blaze. A volcano seemed to have

sprung from the sea. The wind swept to and fro this stupendous crimson

drapery of battle through which the vessels appeared and disappeared

like phantoms. Against the red sky in the foreground were sketched the

outlines of the corvette.

The fleur-de-lis flag could be seen floating from the main-mast.

The two men in the boat were silent. The triangular shoal of the

Minquiers, a kind of submarine Trinacrium, is larger than the isle of

Jersey. The sea covers it. Its culminating point is a plateau that is

never submerged, even at the highest tide, and from which rise, towards

the northeast, six mighty rocks standing in a line, producing the

effect of a massive wall which has crumbled here and there. The strait

between the plateau and the six reefs is accessible only to vessels

drawing very little water. Beyond this strait is the open sea.

[Illustration 019]

The sailor who had volunteered to manage the boat headed for the

strait. Thus he had put Minquiers between the boat and the battle.

He navigated skilfully in the narrow channel, avoiding rocks to

starboard and port. The cliff now hid the battle from their view. The

flaming horizon and the furious din of the cannonade were growing less

distinct, by reason of the increased distance; but judging from the

continued explosions one could guess that the corvette still held its

own, and that it meant to use its hundred and ninety-one rounds to

the very last. The boat soon found itself in smooth waters beyond the

cliffs and the battle, and out of the reach of missiles. Gradually the

surface of the sea lost something of its gloom; the rays of light that

had been swallowed up in the shadows began to widen; the curling foam

leaped forth in jets of light, and the broken waves sent back their

pale reflections. Daylight appeared.

The boat was beyond reach of the enemy, but the principal difficulty

still remained to be overcome. It was safe from grape-shot, but the

danger of shipwreck was not yet past. It was on the open sea, a mere

shell, with neither deck, sail, mast, nor compass, entirely dependent

on its oars, face to face with the ocean and the hurricane,--a pygmy at

the mercy of giants.

Then amid this infinite solitude, his face whitened by the morning

light, the man in the bow of the boat raised his head and gazed

steadily at the man in the stern as he said,--

"I am the brother of him whom you ordered to be shot."

[Illustration 020]

[Illustration: Halmalo 021]

BOOK III.

HALMALO.

I.

SPEECH IS WORD.

[Illustration 022]

The old man slowly lifted his head.

He who had addressed him was about thirty years of age. The tan of the

sea was upon his brow; there was something unusual about his eyes, as

if the simple pupils of the peasant had taken on the keen expression

of the sailor; he held his oars firmly in his hands. He looked gentle

enough. In his belt he wore a dirk, two pistols, and a rosary.

"Who are you?" said the old man.

"I have just told you."

"What do you wish?"

The man dropped the oars, folded his arms, and replied,--

"To kill you."

"As you please!" replied the old man.

The man raised his voice.

"Prepare yourself."

"For what?"

"To die."

"Why?" inquired the old man.

A silence followed. For a moment the question seemed to abash the man.

He continued,--

"I tell you that I mean to kill you."

"And I ask of you the reason."

The sailor's eyes flashed.

"Because you killed my brother."

The old man answered quietly,--

"I saved his life at first."

"True. You saved him first, but you killed him afterwards."

"It was not I who killed him."

"Who was it, then?"

"His own fault."

The sailor gazed on the old man open-mouthed; then once more his brows

contracted savagely.

"What is your name?" asked the old man.

"My name is Halmalo, but I can kill you all the same, whether you know

my name or not."

Just then the sun rose; a ray struck the sailor full in the face,

vividly illumining that wild countenance.

The old man studied it closely. The cannonading, though not yet ended,

was no longer continuous. A dense smoke had settled upon the horizon.

The boat, left to itself, was drifting to leeward.

With his right hand the sailor seized one of the pistols at his belt,

while in his left he held his rosary.

The old man rose to his feet.

"Do you believe in God?" he asked.

"'Our Father who art in heaven.'" replied the sailor.

Then he made the sign of the cross.

"Have you a mother?"

He crossed himself again, saying,--

"I have said all I have to say. I give you one minute longer, my lord."

And he cocked the pistol.

"Why do you call me 'My lord'?"

"Because you are one. That is evident enough."

"Have you a lord yourself?"

"Yes, and a grand one too. Is one likely to be without a lord?"

"Where is he?"

"I do not know. He has left the country. His name is Marquis de

Lantenac, Viscount de Fontenay, Prince in Brittany; he is lord of the

Sept-Forêts. I never saw him, but he is my master all the same."

"If you were to see him, would you obey him?"

"Of course I should be a heathen were I not to obey him! We owe

obedience to God, and after that to the king, who is like unto God, and

then to the lord, who is like the king. But that has nothing to do with

the question; you have killed my brother, and I must kill you."

The old man replied,--

"Let us say, then, that I did kill your brother; I did well."

The sailor had closed more firmly upon his pistol.

"Come!" he said.

"So be it," said the old man.

And he added composedly,--

"Where is the priest?"

The sailor looked at him.

"The priest?"

"Yes. I gave your brother a priest; therefore it is your duty to

provide one for me."

"But I have none," replied the sailor.

And he continued,--

"How do you expect to find a priest here on the open sea?"

The convulsive explosions of the battle sounded more and more distant.

"Those who are dying yonder have their priest," said the old man.

"I know it," muttered the sailor; "they have the chaplain."

The old man went on,--

"If you make me lose my soul, it will be a serious matter."

The sailor thoughtfully bent his head.

"And if my soul is lost," continued the old man, "yours will be lost

also. Listen to me; I feel pity for you. You shall do as you like. For

my part, I only fulfilled my duty when I first saved your brother's

life and afterwards took it from him; and at the present moment I am

doing my duty in trying to save your soul. Reflect; for it is a matter

that concerns you. Do you hear the cannon-shots? Men are dying over

yonder; desperate men, in their last agony, husbands who will never

see their wives, fathers who will never see their children, brothers

who, like yourself, will never see their brothers. And who is to blame

for it? Your own brother. You believe in God, do you not? If so, you

know that God is suffering now. He is suffering in the person of his

son, the most Christian king of France, who is a child like the child

Jesus, and who is now imprisoned in the Temple; God is suffering in

his Church of Brittany, in his desecrated cathedrals, in his Gospels

torn to fragments, in his violated houses of prayer, in his murdered

priests. What were we about to do with that ship which is perishing

at this moment? We were going to the relief of the Lord. If your

brother had been a trustworthy servant, if he had performed his duties

faithfully, like a good and useful man, no misfortune would have

happened to the carronade, the corvette would not have been disabled,

she would not have got out of her course and fallen into the hands of

that cursed fleet, and we should all now be landing in France, brave

sailors and soldiers as we were, sword in hand, with our white banner

unfurled, a multitude of contented, happy men, advancing to the rescue

of the brave Vendean peasants, on our way to save France, the king, and

Almighty God. That is what we were intending to do, what we should have

done, and what I, the only one remaining, still propose to do. But you

intend to prevent me. In this struggle of impious men against priests,

in this conflict of regicides against the king, of Satan against God,

you range yourself in the ranks of Satan. Your brother was the Devil's

first assistant, you are his second. What he began you mean to finish.

You are for the regicides against the throne; you take sides with the

impious against the Church. You take away the Lord's last resource.

For, as I shall not be there,--I, who represent the king,--villages

will continue to burn, families to mourn, priests to bleed, Brittany

to suffer, the king to remain imprisoned, and Jesus Christ to grieve

over his people. And who will have caused all this? You. Well, you are

carrying out your own plans. I expected far different things from you,

but I was mistaken. It is true that I killed your brother. He played

a brave part, for that I rewarded him; he was guilty, therefore I

punished him. He failed in his duty; I have not failed in mine. What I

did I would do again; and I swear by the great Saint Anne of Auray, who

looks down on us, that under like circumstances I would shoot my own

son just as I shot your brother. Now you are the master. Indeed, I pity

you. You have broken your word to the captain,--you, Christian without

faith; you, Breton without honor. I was intrusted to your loyalty, and

you accepted the trust meaning to betray it; you offer my death to

those to whom you have promised my life. Do you realize whom you are

destroying here? It is your own self. You rob the king of my life, and

you consign yourself forever to the Devil. Go on, commit your crime.

You set a low value on your share in Paradise. Thanks to you, the Devil

will conquer; thanks to you, the churches will fall; thanks to you, the

heathen will go on turning bells into cannon,--men will be shot with

the very instrument that once brought to mind the salvation of their

souls. Perhaps at this moment, while I still speak to you, the same

bell that pealed for your baptism is killing your mother. Go on with

the Devil's work. Do not pause. Yes, I have condemned your brother; but

learn this,--I am but a tool in the hands of God. Ah I you pretend to

judge God's ways? You will next sit in judgment on the thunderbolt in

the heavens. Wretched man, you will be judged by it. Beware what you

do. Do you even know whether I am in a state of grace? No. Never mind,

go on; do your will. You have the power to hurl me to perdition, and

yourself likewise. Your own damnation, as well as mine, rests in your

hands. You will be answerable before God. We are alone, face to face

with the abyss; complete your work, make an end of it. I am old, and

you are young; I have no weapons, you are armed: kill me."

While the old man, standing erect, was uttering these words in a voice

that rang above the tumult of the sea, the undulations of the waves

showed him now in shadow, now in light. The sailor had turned ghostly

pale; large drops of moisture fell from his brow; he trembled like a

leaf; now and then he kissed his rosary. When the old man finished, he

threw away his pistol and fell on his knees.

"Pardon, my lord! forgive me!" he cried. "You speak like our Lord

himself. I have been wrong. My brother was guilty. I will do all I can

to make amends for his crime. Dispose of me; command me: I will obey."

"I forgive you," said the old man.

II.

A PEASANT'S MEMORY IS WORTH AS MUCH AS THE CAPTAIN'S SCIENCE.

The provisions with which the boat had been stocked were far from

superfluous; for the two fugitives were forced to make long détours,

and were thirty-six hours in reaching the coast. They passed the night

at sea; but the night was fine, with more moonlight than is pleasing to

people who wish to escape observation.

At first they were obliged to keep away from the French coast, and gain

the open sea in the direction of Jersey. They heard the final volley

from the unfortunate corvette, and it sounded like the roar of a lion

whom the hunters are killing in the forest. Then a silence fell upon

the sea.

The corvette "Claymore" perished like the "Vengeur;" but glory has kept

no record of its deeds. One can win no laurels who fights against his

native land.

Halmalo was a remarkable sailor. He performed miracles of skill and

sagacity. The route that he improvised amid the reefs, the waves, and

the vigilance of the enemy was a masterpiece. The wind had abated, and

the struggle with the sea was over. Halmalo had avoided the Caux des

Minquiers, and having rounded the Chaussée aux Boeufs, took refuge

there, so as to get a few hours of rest in the little creek formed

by the sea at low tide; then rowing southward, he continued to pass

between Granville and the Chausey Islands without being noticed by

the lookout either of Chausey or Granville. He entered the Bay of

Saint-Michel,--a daring feat, considering that the cruising squadron

was anchored at Cancale.

On the evening of the second day, about an hour before sunset, he

passed the hill of Saint-Michel, and landed on a shore that is always

avoided on account of the danger from its shifting sand.

[Illustration 023]

Fortunately the tide was high.

Halmalo pushed the boat as far as he could, tried the sand, and,

finding it firm, grounded the boat and jumped ashore, the old man

following, with eyes turned anxiously towards the horizon.

"My lord," said Halmalo, "this is the mouth of the Couesnon. We have

Beauvoir to starboard, and Huisnes to port. The belfry before us is

Ardevon."

The old man bent over the boat, took from it a biscuit, which he put in

his pocket, and said to Halmalo,--

"You may take the rest."

Halmalo put what remained of meat and biscuit in the bag, and hoisted

it on his shoulder. Having done this, he said,--

"My lord, am I to lead the way, or to follow you?"

"You will do neither."

Halmalo looked at the old man in amazement.

The latter went on,--

"We are about to separate, Halmalo. Two men are of no use whatever.

Unless they are a thousand, it is better for one man to be alone."

He stopped and pulled out of his pocket a knot of green silk resembling

a cockade; with a fleur-de-lis embroidered in gold in the centre.

"Can you read?" he asked.

"No."

"That is fortunate. A man who knows how to read is embarrassing. Have

you a good memory?"

"Yes."

"Very well. Listen, Halmalo. You will follow the road on the right, and

I the one on the left. You are to turn in the direction of Bazouges,

and I shall go towards Fougères. Keep your bag, because it makes you

look like a peasant; hide your weapons; cut yourself a stick from the

hedge; creep through the tall rye; glide behind the hedges; climb over

fences and cross the fields: you will thus avoid the passers-by, as

well as roads and bridges. Do not enter Pontorson. Ah! you will have to

cross the Couesnon. How will you manage that?"

"I shall swim across."

"Excellent. Then you will come to a ford. Do you know where it is?"

"Between Nancy and Vieux-Viel."

"Correct. You are evidently familiar with the country."

"But night is coming on. Where will my lord sleep?"

"I can take care of myself. And where will you sleep?"

"There are plenty of _émousses._ I was a peasant before I was a sailor."

"Throw away your sailor hat; it would betray you. You can surely find

some worsted head-covering."

"Oh, a cap is easily found. The first fisherman I meet will sell me

his."

"Very well. Now listen. You are familiar with the woods?"

"All of them."

"Throughout this entire neighborhood?"

"From Noirmoutier to Laval."

"Do you know their names too?"

"I know the woods and their names; I know all about them."

"You will forget nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Good. Now mind. How many leagues can you walk in a day?"

"Ten, fifteen, eighteen, twenty, if need be."

"It will have to be done. Do not miss a word of what I am about to tell

you. You will go to the woods of Saint-Aubin."

"Near Lamballe?"

"Yes. On the edge of a ravine between Saint-Rieul and Plédéliac there

is a large chestnut-tree. You will stop there. No one will be in sight."

"But a man will be there nevertheless. On that I can depend."

"You will give the call. Do you know it?"

Halmalo puffed out his cheeks, turned towards the sea, and there rang

the "to-whit-to-hoo" of the owl.

One would have supposed it came from the depths of a forest, so

owl-like and sinister was the sound.

"Good!" said the old man. "You have it."

He extended to Halmalo the green silk knot.

"This is my commander's badge. Take it. No one must know my name at

present; but this knot is sufficient. The fleur-de-lis was embroidered

by Madame Royale in the Temple prison."

Halmalo knelt. Trembling with awe he received the knot embroidered with

the fleur-de-lis, and in the act of raising it to his lips, he paused

as if in fear.

"May I?" he asked.

"Yes, since you kiss the crucifix."

Halmalo kissed the fleur-de-lis.

"Rise," said the old man.

Halmalo obeyed him, placing the knot in his bosom.

"Listen carefully to what I am about to say. This is the order:

'Revolt! Give no quarter.' On the edge of the forest of Saint-Aubin you

will give the call, repeating it three times. After the third time you

will see a man rise from the ground."

"I know, from a hole under the trees."

"That man will be Planchenault, sometimes called Coeur-de-Roi. To him

you will show this knot. He will know what it means. Then you are

to go by ways that you must discover for yourself to the woods of

Astillé, where you will see a cripple surnamed Mousqueton, a man who

shows mercy to no human being. You are to tell him that I love him,

and that he must stir up the parishes in his neighborhood. Thence you

will go to the wood of Couesbon, which is one mile from Ploërmel.

When you give the owl-cry, a man will come out of a hole; that will

be M. Thuault, seneschal of Ploërmel, who formerly belonged to the

Constitutional Assembly, but on the royalist side. You will direct

him to fortify the castle of Couesbon, that belongs to the Marquis de

Guer, a refugee. Ravines, woods of moderate extent, uneven soil, a good

spot. M. Thuault is an able and upright man. From there you will go to

Saint-Guen-les-Toits, and speak to Jean Chouan, whom I look upon as the

actual leader, and then to the woods of Ville-Anglose, where you will

see Guitter, called Saint-Martin; you will tell him to keep his eye on

a certain Courmesnil, son-in-law of the old Goupil de Préfeln, and who

is the head of the Jacobins of Argentan. Remember all this. I write

nothing, because writing must be avoided. La Rouarie made out a list,

which ruined everything. Thence you will go to the wood of Rougefeu,

where Miélette lives, he who leaps across ravines by the help of a long

pole."

"They call it a leaping-pole."

"Do you know how to use it?"

"Am I not a Breton peasant? The leaping-pole is our friend. It makes

our arms bigger, our legs longer."

"That is to say, it reduces the enemy and shortens the way. An

excellent machine."

[Illustration 024]

"Once, with my leaping-pole, I stood my ground against three salt-tax

men armed with sabres."

"When was that?"

"Ten years ago."

"Under the king?"

"Certainly."

"Against whom?"

"I really do not know. I was a salt-smuggler."

"Very good."

"It was called fighting against the collectors of the salt-tax. Is the

tax on salt the same thing as the king?"

"Yes, and no. But it is not necessary for you to understand this."

"I ask monseigneur's pardon for having put a question to monseigneur."

"Let us go on. Do you know the Tourgue?"

"Do I know it! I came from there."

"How is that?"

"Why, because I come from Parigné."

"To be sure, the Tourgue borders on Parigné."

"Do I know the Tourgue! The great round castle belongs to the family

of my lords. A large iron door separates the old building from the new

part, which a cannon could not destroy. In the new building they keep

the famous book on Saint-Barthélémy, which people come to see as a

curiosity. The grass is full of frogs. When I was a boy I used to play

with those frogs. And the underground passage, too. Perhaps I am the

only one left who knows about that."

"What underground passage? I don't know what you are talking about."

"That was in old times, when the Tourgue was besieged. The people

inside could escape through an underground passage which opened into

the woods."

"I know there are subterranean passages of that kind in the châteaux of

Jupellière and Hunaudaye, and in the tower of Champéon; but there is

nothing like it in the Tourgue."

"But indeed there is, monseigneur. I do not know the passages of which

monseigneur speaks; I only know the one in the Tourgue because I belong

in the neighborhood; and besides, I am the only one who does know of

it. It was never spoken of. It was forbidden, because this passage had

been used in the wars of M. de Rohan. My father knew the secret and

showed it to me. I know both the secret entrance and the outlet. If I

am in the forest I can go into the tower; and if I am in the tower I

can go into the forest without being seen, so that when the enemies

enter there is no one to be found. That is the passage of the Tourgue.

Oh, I know it well."

The old man remained silent for a moment.

"You must be mistaken. If there had been any such secret I should have

known it."

"Monseigneur, I am sure of it. There is a stone that turns."

"Oh, yes! You peasants believe in turning-stones, in singing-stones,

and in stones that go by night down to a neighboring brook to drink. A

pack of idle tales!"

"But when I turned the stone myself--"

"Yes, just as others have heard it sing. My friend, the Tourgue is

a Bastille, safe and strong, and easily defended; but he would be a

simpleton indeed who depended for escape on a subterranean passage."

"But, monseigneur--"

The old man shrugged his shoulders,--

"Let us waste no more time, but speak of business."

This peremptory tone checked Halmalo's persistence.

The old man resumed:--

"Let us go on. Listen. From Rougefeu you are to go into the wood of

Montchevrier, where you will find Bénédicité, the leader of the Twelve.

He is another good man. He recites his _Bénédicite_ while he has people

shot. There is no room for sensibility in warfare. From Montchevrier

you will go--"

He broke off.

"I had forgotten about the money."

He took from his pocket a purse and a pocket-book, which he put into

Halmalo's hands.

"In this pocket-book you will find thirty thousand francs in paper

money, which is worth about three livres and ten sous. The assignats

are false, to be sure, but the real ones are no more valuable; and in

this purse, mind, you will find one hundred louis d'ors. I give you all

I have, because I have no need of anything here, and it is better that

no money should be found on me. Now I will go on. From Montchevrier you

are to go to Antrain, where you will meet M. de Frotté; from Antrain

to Jupellière, where you Will see M. de Rochecotte; from Jupellière to

Noirieux, where you will find the Abbé Baudoin. Will you remember all

this?"

"As I do my Pater Noster."

"You will see M. Dubois-Guy at Saint-Brice-en-Cogle, M. de Turpin

at Morannes, which is a fortified town, and the Prince de Talmont at

Château-Gonthier."

"Will a prince speak to me?"

"Am I not speaking to you?"

Halmalo took off his hat.

"You need but to show Madam's fleur-de-lis, and your welcome is

assured. Remember that you will have to go to places where there are

mountaineers and _patauds._[1] You will disguise yourself. That is

an easy matter, since the republicans are so stupid that with a blue

coat, a three-cornered hat, and a cockade, you may go anywhere. The

day of regiments and uniforms has gone by; the regiments are not even

numbered, and every man is at liberty to wear any rag he fancies. You

will go to Saint-Mhervé. You will see Gaulier, called Grand-Pierre.

You will go to the cantonment of Parné, where all the men have swarthy

faces. They put gravel in their muskets and use a double charge of

powder to make more noise. They do well; but be sure and tell them

to kill, kill, and kill. You will go to the camp of the Vache-Noire,

which is an elevation in the midst of the forest of La Charnie, from

Vache-Noire to the camp of l'Avoine, then to the camp Vert, and

afterwards to the camp of the Fourmis. You will go to Grand-Bordage,

also called Haut-du-Pré, where lives the widow whose daughter married

Treton the Englishman; that is in the parish of Quelaines. You will

visit Épineux-le-Chevreuil, Sillé-le-Guillaume, Guillaume, Parannes,

and all the men in hiding throughout the woods. You will make friends

and you will send them to the borders of upper and lower Maine; you

will see Jean Treton in the parish of Vaisges, Sans-Regret in Bignon,

Chambord in Bonchamps, the Corbin brothers at Maisoncelles, and

Petit-Sans-Peur at Saint-Jean-sur-Evre. He is the one who is called

Bourdoiseau. Having done this, and uttered the watchwords, 'Revolt!'

'No quarter!' in all these places, you will join the royal and catholic

grand army, wherever it may be. You will see d'Elbée, de Lescure, de

la Rochejaquelein, and such leaders as may still be living. You will

show them my commander's knot. They know what it means. You are only a

sailor, but Cathelineau is nothing but a teamster. You will give them

this message from me: It is time to join the two wars, the great and

the small. The great one makes more noise, but the small one does the

work. The Vendée does fairly well, but Chouannerie goes farther, and in

civil war cruelty is a powerful agent. The success of a war depends on

the amount of evil that it causes."

He broke off.

"Halmalo, I tell you all this, not that you can understand the words,

but because your perceptions are keen, and you will comprehend the

matters themselves. I have trusted you since I saw you managing that

boat. Without knowing anything of geometry you execute wonderful sea

manoeuvres. He who can pilot a boat can guide an insurrection. Judging

from the way in which you managed our affair at sea, I feel sure that

you will execute my instructions equally well. But to resume: So you

will repeat to the chiefs all that I have told you, or words to the

same effect, as near as you can remember; I am confident that you

will convey to them my meaning. I prefer the warfare of the forest to

that of the open field. I have no intention of exposing one hundred

thousand peasants to the grape-shot of the soldiers in blue and the

artillery of M. Carnot. In a month's time I expect to have five hundred

sharp-shooters hidden in the woods. The republican army is my game.

Poaching is one method of warfare. The strategy of the thickets for me!

Ah, that is probably another word which you will not understand; but

never mind,--you know what I mean when I say, No quarter! and ambushes

on every side! Give me more Chouannerie rather than the regular Vendean

warfare. You will add that the English are on our side. Let us catch

the republic between two fires. Europe helps us: let us put down

revolution. Kings are waging a war of kingdoms: we will wage a war of

parishes. You will say all this. Do you understand me?"

"Yes: put all to fire and sword."

"That is it,"

"No quarter."

"None whatever. You understand?"

"I will go everywhere."

"And be always on your guard; for in these parts it is an easy matter

to lose one's life."

"Death I have no fear of. He who takes his first step may be wearing

his last shoes."

"You are a brave fellow."

"And if I am asked monseigneur's name?"

"It is not to be made known yet. You are to say that you do not know

it, and you will say the truth."

"Where shall I see monseigneur again?"

"At the place where I am going."

"How shall I know where that is?"

"All the world will know it. Before eight days have gone by you

will hear of me. I shall make examples; I shall avenge the king and

religion; and you will know well enough that it is I of whom they are

speaking."

"I understand."

"Do not forget anything."

"You may rest assured of that."

"Now go, and may God guide you! Go!"

"I will do all you bid me. I will go; I will speak; I will obey; I will

command."

"Good."

"And if I succeed--"

"I will make you a knight of Saint-Louis."

"Like my brother. And if I fail, you will have me shot?"

"Like your brother."

"So be it, monseigneur."

The old man bent his head, and seemed to fall into a gloomy reverie.

When he raised his eyes he was alone. Halmalo was only a black speck

vanishing on the horizon.

The sun had just set; the sea-mews and hooded gulls were flying

homeward from the ocean, and the atmosphere was charged with that

well-known restlessness that precedes the night; the tree-frogs

croaked, the kingfishers flew whistling from the pools, the gulls and

rooks kept up their usual evening clamor, and the shore-birds called

to each other, but not a human sound was to be heard. It was absolute

solitude,--not a sail on the bay, not a peasant in the fields; only a

bleak expanse as far as the eye could reach. The tall sand-thistles

quivered; the pale twilight sky shed a livid light over all the shore;

and the ponds far away on the dark plain looked like sheets of pewter

laid flat upon the ground. A sea-wind was blowing.

[Illustration 025]

[Footnote 1: A name given by the Chouans to the republicans, a

corruption of patriot.--TR.]

[Illustration: Tellmarch 026]

BOOK IV.

TELLMARCH.

I.

ON THE TOP OF THE DUNE.

[Illustration 027]

The old man waited until Halmalo was out of sight; then drawing his

sea-cloak more closely around him, he started walking slowly, wrapt in

thought. He took the direction of Huisnes; Halmalo had gone towards

Beauvoir.

Behind him rose the enormous triangle of Mont Saint-Michel, with its

cathedral tiara and its cuirass-like fortress, whose two great eastern

towers--the one round, the other square--help the mountain to bear

up under the burden of the church and the village. As the pyramid of

Cheops is a landmark in the desert, so is Mont-Saint Michel a beacon to

the sea.

The quicksands in the bay of Mont Saint-Michel act imperceptibly

upon the dunes. At that time between Huisnes and Ardevon there was a

very high one, which is no longer in existence. This dune, levelled

by an equinoctial gale, was unusually old, and on its summit stood a

milestone, erected in the twelfth century in memory of the council held

at Avranches against the assassins of Saint Thomas of Canterbury. From

its top one could see all the surrounding country, and ascertain the

points of the compass.

The old man directed his steps to this dune, and ascended it.

When he reached the summit, he seated himself on one of the four

projecting stones, and leaning back against the monument, began to

examine the land that lay spread out like a geographical map at his

feet. He seemed to be looking for a route in a country that had

once been familiar to him. In this broad landscape, obscured by the

twilight, nothing was distinctly visible but the dark line of the

horizon against the pale sky.

One could see the clustered roofs of eleven hamlets and villages; and

all the belfries of the coast were visible several miles away, standing

high that they might serve as beacons to the sailors in time of need.

Some minutes later the old man seemed to have found what he was looking

for in this dim light; his eye rested on an enclosure of trees, walls,

and roofs, partially visible between the valley and the wood: it was a

farm. He nodded his head with an expression of satisfaction, like one

who says to himself, "There it is!" and began to trace with his finger

the outlines of a route across the hedges and the fields. From time to

time he gazed intently at a shapeless and somewhat indistinct object

that was moving above the principal roof of the farm, and seemed to ask

himself what it could be. It was colorless and dim, in consequence of

the time of day. It was not a weather-vane, because it was floating;

and there seemed to be no reason why it should be a flag.

He felt weary; and grateful to rest on the stone where he was sitting,

he yielded to that vague sense of oblivion which the first moment of

repose brings to weary men. There is one hour of the day which may

be called noiseless,--the peaceful hour of early evening; that hour

had come, and he was enjoying it. He gazed, he listened. To what?

To perfect tranquillity. Even savage natures have their moments of

melancholy. Suddenly this tranquillity was--not exactly disturbed, but

sharply defined by the voices of those who were passing below. They

were the voices of women and children. It was like a joyous chime of

bells heard unexpectedly in the darkness. The group from which the

voices came could not be distinguished, on account of the underbrush;

but it was evident that the persons were walking along the foot of the

dune, in the direction of the plain and the forest. As those clear,

fresh voices reached the old man where he sat absorbed in thought, they

were so near that he lost not a word.

A woman's voice said,--

"Let us hurry, Flécharde. Is this the way?"

"No; it is over yonder."

And the dialogue went on between the two voices, the one high and

shrill, the other low and timid.

"What is the name of this farm where we are living now?"

"Herbe-en-Pail."

"Are we still far from it?"

"Fully a quarter of an hour."

"Let us make haste and get there in time for the soup."

"Yes, I know we are late."

"We ought to run; but your mites are tired. We are only two women, and

cannot carry three brats. And then, you, Flécharde, you are carrying

one as it is,--a perfect lump of lead. You have weaned that little

gormandizer, and you still carry it. That is a bad habit; you had

better make it walk. Well, the soup will be cold,--worse luck!"

"Ah, what good shoes you gave me! They fit as though they were made for

me."

"It's better than going barefooted."

"Do hurry, René-Jean."

"He is the one who makes us late; he has had to stop and speak to all

the little village girls that we meet He behaves like a man already."

"Of course he does; he is going on five years old."

"Tell us, René-Jean, why did you speak to that little girl in the

village?"

A child's voice, that of a boy, replied,--

"Because I know her."

"How is that? You know her?" said the woman.

"Yes," answered the boy; "because we played games this morning."

[Illustration 028]

"Well, I must say!" exclaimed the woman. "We have been here only three

days; a boy no bigger than your fist, and he has found a sweetheart

already!"

And the voices grew fainter in the distance, and every sound died away.

II.

AURES HABET, ET NON AUDIET.

The old man sat motionless. He was not consciously thinking, nor yet

was he dreaming. Around him was peace, repose, assurance of safety,

solitude. Although night had shut down upon the woods, and in the

valley below it was nearly dark, broad daylight still rested on the

dune. The moon was rising in the east, and several stars pricked the

pale blue of the zenith. This man, although intensely absorbed in his

own interests, surrendered himself to the unutterable peacefulness of

nature. He felt the vague dawn of hope rising in his breast,--if the

word "hope" may fitly be applied to projects of civil warfare. For the

moment it seemed to him that in escaping from the inexorable sea he had

left all danger behind him. No one knew his name; he was alone,--lost,

as far as concerned the enemy; he had left no traces behind him, for

the surface of the sea preserves no trace; all is hidden, ignored, and

never even suspected. He felt unspeakably calm. A little more, and he

would have fallen asleep.

It was the deep silence pervading both heaven and earth that lent to

the hour a subtle charm to soothe the imagination of this man, stirred

as he was by inward and outward agitations.

There was nothing to be heard but the wind blowing in from the sea, a

prolonged monotonous bass, to which the ear becomes so used that it

almost ceases to be noticed as a sound.

All at once he rose to his feet

His attention was suddenly awakened. An object on the horizon seemed to

arrest his glance.

He was gazing at the belfry of Cormeray, at the farther end of the

valley. Something unusual was going on in this belfry.

Its dark silhouette was clearly defined against the sky; the tower

surmounted by the spire could be seen distinctly, and between the tower

and the spire was the square cage for the bell, without a penthouse,

and open on the four sides, after the fashion of Breton belfries. Now

this cage seemed to open and shut by turns, and at regular intervals;

its lofty aperture looked now perfectly white, and the next moment

black, the sky constantly appearing and vanishing, eclipse following

the light, as the opening and shutting succeeded each other with the

regularity of a hammer striking an anvil.

This belfry of Cormeray lay before him at a distance of some two

leagues. He looked towards the right in the direction of the belfry

of Baguer-Pican, which also rose straight against the horizon, and

the cage of that belfry was opening and closing like the belfry of

Cormeray. He looked towards the left at the belfry of Tanis; the cage

of Tanis opened and closed like that of Baguer-Pican. He examined

all the belfries on the horizon, one after another,--the belfries of

Courtils, of Précey, of Crollon, and of Croix-Avranchin on his right

hand, those of Raz-sur-Couesnon, of Mordray, and of the Pas on his

left, and before him the belfry of Pontorson. Every belfry cage was

changing alternately from white to black.

What could it mean?

It meant that all the bells were ringing, and they must be ringing

violently to cause the light to change so rapidly.

What was it, then? The tocsin, beyond a doubt. They were ringing, and

frantically too, from all the belfries, in every parish, and in every

village, and yet not a sound could be heard.

This was owing to the distance, combined with the sea-wind, which,

blowing from the opposite direction, carried all sounds from the shore

away beyond the horizon.

All these frantic bells ringing on every side, and at the same time

this silence; what could be more appalling?

The old man looked and listened.

He could not hear the tocsin, but he could see it. Seeing the tocsin is

rather a strange sensation.

Against whom was this fury directed?

Against whom was the tocsin ringing?

III.

THE USEFULNESS OF BIG LETTERS.

Some one was surely caught in a trap.

Who could it be?

A shudder shook this man of steel.

It could not be he. His arrival could not have been discovered. It was

impossible for the representatives to have learned it already, for he

had but just stepped on shore. The corvette had surely foundered with

all on board; and even on the corvette Boisberthelot and La Vieuville

were the only men who knew his name.

The bells kept up their savage sport. He counted them mechanically,

and in the abrupt transition from the assurance of perfect safety to

a terrible sense of danger, his thoughts wandered restlessly from

one conjecture to another. However, after all, this ringing might be

accounted for in many different ways, and he finally reassured himself

by repeating, "In short, no one knows of my arrival here, or even my

name."

For several minutes there had been a slight noise overhead and behind

him,--a sound resembling the rustling of a leaf; at first he took no

notice of it, but as it continued, persisted, one might almost say, he

finally turned. It was really a leaf,--a leaf of paper. The wind was

struggling to tear off a large placard that was pasted on the milestone

above his head. The placard had but just been pasted; for it was still

moist, and had become a prey to the wind, which in its sport had partly

detached it.

The old man had not perceived it, because he had ascended the dune on

the opposite side.

He stepped up on the stone where he had been sitting, and placed his

hand on the corner of the placard that fluttered in the wind. The sky

was clear; in June the twilight lasts a long time, and although it was

dark at the foot of the dune, the summit was still light. A part of the

notice was printed in large letters; it was yet sufficiently light to

read it, and this was what he read:--

THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, ONE AND INDIVISIBLE.

We, Prieur of the Marne, representative of the people,

in command of the army on the coast of Cherbourg, give

notice, That the ci-devant Marquis of Lantenac, Viscount

of Fontenay, calling himself a Breton prince, and who has

secretly landed on the coast of Granville, is outlawed.

A price has been set upon his head. Whoever captures him

dead or alive will receive sixty thousand livres. This sum

will be paid in gold, and not in paper money. A battalion

of the army of the coast guards of Cherbourg will be at

once despatched for the apprehension of the former Marquis

of Lantenac. The inhabitants of the parishes are ordered

to lend their aid.

Given at the Town Hall of Granville the second of June,

1793.

Signed: PRIEUR, DE LA MARNE.

Below this name there was another signature written in smaller

characters, which the fading light prevented him from deciphering.

Pulling his hat down over his eyes, and muffling himself in his

sea-cape up to his chin, the old man hastily descended the dune.

Evidently it was not safe to tarry any longer on this lighted summit.

Perhaps he had stayed there too long already. The top of the dune was

the only point of the landscape that still remained visible.

When he had descended and found himself in the darkness he slackened

his pace.

He took the road leading to the farm which he had traced out, evidently

believing himself safe in that direction. It was absolute solitude.

There were no passers-by at this hour.

Stopping behind a clump of bushes, he unfastened his cloak, turned his

waistcoat with the hairy side out, refastened his cloak, that was but a

rag held by a string around his neck, and resumed his journey.

It was bright moonlight.

He came to a place where two roads forked, and on the pedestal

of the old stone cross which stood there a white square could be

distinguished,--undoubtedly another placard like the one he had lately

read. As he drew near to it he heard a voice.

[Illustration 029]

"Where are you going?" it said; and turning he beheld a man in the

hedge-row, tall like himself, and of about the same age, with hair as

white and garments even more ragged than his own,--almost his very

double.

The man stood leaning on a long staff.

"I asked you where you were going? he repeated.

"In the first place, tell me where I am," was the reply, uttered in

tones of almost haughty composure.

And the man answered,--

"You are in the seigneury of Tanis, of which I am the beggar and you

the lord."

"I?"

"Yes, you,--monsieur le marquis de Lantenac."

IV.

THE CAIMAND.

The Marquis de Lantenac (henceforth we shall call him by his name)

replied gravely,--

"Very well. Then deliver me up."

The man continued,--

"We are both at home here,--you in the castle, I in the bushes."

"Let us put an end to this. Do what you have to do. Deliver me to the

authorities," said the Marquis.

The man went on,--

"You were going to the farm Herbe-en-Pail, were you not?"

"Yes."

"Don't go there."

"Why not?"

"Because the Blues are there."

"How long have they been there?"

"These three days past."

"Did the inhabitants of the farm and village resist?"

"No; they opened all the doors."

"Ah!" said the Marquis.

The man indicated with his finger the roof of the farm, which was

visible in the distance above the trees.

"Do you see that roof, Marquis?"

"Yes."

"Do you see what there is above it?"

"Something waving?"

"Yes."

"It is a flag."

"The tricolor," said the man.

It was the object that had attracted the attention of the Marquis when

he stood on the top of the dune.

"Isn't the tocsin ringing?" inquired the Marquis.

"Yes."

"On what account?"

"Evidently on yours."

"But one cannot hear it?"

"The wind prevents it from being heard."

The man continued,--

"Did you see that notice about yourself?"

"Yes."

"They are searching for you."

Then glancing towards the farm, he added,--

"They have a demi-battalion over there."

"Of republicans?"

"Of Parisians."

"Well," said the Marquis, "let us go on."

And he made a step in the direction of the farm. The man seized him by

the arm.

"Don't go there!"

"Where would you have me go?"

"With me."

The Marquis looked at the beggar.

"Listen to me, Marquis: My home is not a fine one, but it is safe,--a

hut lower than a cellar, seaweed for a floor, and for a ceiling a roof

of branches and of grass. Come. They would shoot you at the farm,

and at my house you will have a chance to sleep; you must be weary.

To-morrow the Blues start out again, and you can go where you choose."

The Marquis studied the man.

"On which side are you, then?" asked the Marquis. "Are you a royalist,

or a republican?"

"I am a beggar."

"Neither royalist nor republican?"

"I believe not."

"Are you for or against the king?"

"I have no time for that sort of thing."

"What do you think of what is transpiring?"

"I think that I have not enough to live on."

"Yet you come to my aid."

"I knew that you were outlawed. What is this law, then, that one can be

outside of it? I do not understand. Am I inside the law, or outside of

it? I have no idea. Does dying of hunger mean being inside the law?"

"How long have you been dying of hunger?"

"All my life."

"And you propose to save me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I said to myself, 'There is a man who is poorer than I, for he

has not even the right to breathe.'"

"True. And so you mean to save me?"

"Certainly. Now we are brothers, my lord,--beggars both; I for bread,

and you for life."

"But do you know there is a price set on my head?"

"Yes."

"How did you know it?"

"I have read the notice."

"Then you can read?"

"Yes, and write also. Did you think I was like the beasts of the field?"

"But since you can read, and have seen the notice, you must know that

he who delivers me up will receive sixty thousand francs."

"I know it."

"Not in assignats."

"Yes, I know,--in gold."

"You realize that sixty thousand francs is a fortune?"

"Yes."

"And that the man who arrests me will make his fortune?"

"Yes; and what then?"

"His fortune!"

"That is exactly what I thought. When I saw you, I said to myself, 'To

think that whoever arrests this man will earn sixty thousand francs,

and make his fortune! Let us make haste to hide him.'"

The Marquis followed the beggar.

They entered a thicket. There was the beggar's den, a sort of chamber

in which a large and ancient oak had allowed the man to take up his

abode; it was hollowed out under its roots, and covered with its

branches,--dark, low, hidden, actually invisible,--and in it there was

room for two.

"I foresaw that I might have a guest," said the beggar.

This kind of subterranean lodging, less rare in Brittany than one

might imagine, is called a _carnichot._ The same name is also given to

hiding-places built in thick walls. The place was furnished with a few

jugs, a bed of straw or sea-weed, washed and dried, a coarse kersey

blanket, and a few tallow dips, together with a flint and steel, and

twigs of furze to be used as matches.

They stooped, crawling for a moment, and penetrated into a chamber

divided by the thick roots of the tree into fantastic compartments, and

seated themselves on the heap of dry sea-weed that served as a bed. The

space between the two roots through which they had entered, and which

served as a door, admitted a certain amount of light. Night had fallen;

but the human eye adapts itself to the change of light, and even in

the darkness it sometimes seems as if the daylight lingered still. The

reflection of a moonbeam illumined the entrance. In the corner was a

jug of water, a loaf of buckwheat bread, and some chestnuts.

"Let us sup," said the beggar.

They divided the chestnuts; the Marquis gave his bit of hard-tack; they

ate of the same black loaf, and drank in turn out of the same jug of

water, meanwhile conversing.

[Illustration 030]

The Marquis questioned the man.

"So it is all one to you, whatever happens?"

"Pretty much. It is for you who are lords to look out for that sort of

business."

"But then, what is going on now, for instance--"

"It is all going on over my head."

The beggar added,--

"Besides, there are things happening still higher; the sun rises, the

moon waxes and wanes. That is the kind of thing that interests me."

He took a swallow from the jug and said,--

"Good fresh water!"

Then he continued,--

"How do you like this water, my lord?"

"What is your name?" asked the Marquis.

"My name is Tellmarch, but they call me the Caimand."

"I understand. _Caimand_ is a local word."

"Which means beggar. I am also called Le Vieux."

He went on,--

"I have been called Le Vieux for forty years."

"Forty years! But you must have been young then!"

"I was never young. You are young still, Marquis. You have the legs

of a man of twenty; you can climb the great dune, while I can hardly

walk. A quarter of a mile tires me out. Yet we are of the same age;

but the rich have an advantage over us,--they eat every day. Eating

keeps up one's strength."

After a silence the beggar went on:--

"Wealth and poverty,--there's the mischief; it seems to me that that is

the cause of all these catastrophes. The poor want to be rich, and the

rich do not want to become poor. I think that is at the bottom of it

all, but I do not trouble myself about such matters; let come what may,

I am neither for the creditor nor for the debtor. I know that there is

a debt, and somebody is paying it; that is all. I would rather they had

not killed the king, and yet I hardly know why. And then one says to

me, 'Think how they used to hang people for nothing at all! Think of

it! For a miserable shot fired at one of the king's deer, I once saw a

man hung: he had a wife and seven children.' There is something to be

said on both sides."

He was silent again, then resumed:--

"Of course you understand. I do not pretend to know just how matters

stand; men go to and fro, changes take place, while I live beneath the

stars."

Again Tellmarch became thoughtful, then went on:--

"I know something of bone-setting and medicine. I am familiar with

herbs and the use of plants; the peasants see me preoccupied for no

apparent reason, and so I pass for a wizard. Because I dream, they

think that I am wise."

"Do you belong to the neighborhood?" asked the Marquis.

"I have never left it."

"Do you know me?"

"Certainly. The last time I saw you, you were passing through this part

of the country on your way to England; that was two years ago. Just

now I saw a man on the top of the dune,--a tall man. Tall men are not

common hereabouts; Brittany is a country of short men. I looked more

closely; I had read the notice, and I said to myself, 'See here!' And

when you came down, the moon was up and I recognized you."

"But I do not know you,"

"You have looked at me, but you never saw me." And Tellmarch the

Caimand added,--

"I saw you. The passer-by and the beggar look with different eyes."

"Have I ever met you before?"

"Often, for I am your beggar. I used to beg on the road, below your

castle. Sometimes you gave me alms; he who gives takes no notice, but

he who receives looks anxiously and observes well. A beggar is a born

spy. But though I am often sad, I try not to be a malicious spy. I used

to hold out my hand, and you saw nothing but that, into which you threw

the alms that I needed in the morning to keep me from dying of hunger

at night. Frequently I went twenty-four hours without food. Sometimes a

penny means life itself. I am paying you now for the life I owe you."

"True, you are saving my life."

"Yes, I am saving your life, monseigneur."

The voice of Tellmarch grew solemn:--

"On one condition."

"What is that?"

"That you have not come here to do harm."

"I have come here to do good."

"Let us sleep," said the beggar.

They lay down side by side on the bed of sea-weed. The beggar dropped

to sleep at once. The Marquis, although much fatigued, remained awake

for some time, thinking and watching his companion in the darkness;

finally he lay back. Lying upon the bed was equivalent to lying on the

earth, and he took advantage of this to put his ear to the ground and

listen. He could hear a hollow subterranean rumbling. It is a fact that

sound is transmitted into the bowels of the earth; he could hear the

ringing of the bells.

The tocsin continued.

The Marquis fell asleep.

V.

WHEN HE AWOKE IT WAS DAYLIGHT.

The beggar was standing up,--not in his den, for it was impossible to

stand erect there, but outside on the threshold. He was leaning on his

staff, and the sunshine fell upon his face.

"Monseigneur," said Tellmarch, "it has just struck four from the

belfry of Tanis. I heard it strike,--therefore the wind has changed; it

comes from the land, and as I heard no other sound the tocsin must have

ceased. All is quiet at the farm and in the village of Herbe-en-Pail.

The Blues are either sleeping or gone. The worst of the danger is over;

it will be prudent for us to separate. This is my time for going out."

He indicated a point in the horizon.

"I am going this way;" then pointing in the opposite direction, he

said,--

"You are to go that way."

The beggar gravely waved his hand to the Marquis.

"Take those chestnuts with you, if you are hungry," he added, pointing

to the remains of the supper.

A moment after he had disappeared among the trees.

The Marquis rose and went in the direction indicated by Tellmarch.

It was that charming hour called in the old Norman peasant dialect the

"peep of day." The chirping of the finches and of the hedge-sparrows

was heard. The Marquis followed the path that they had traversed

the day before, and as he emerged from the thicket he found himself

at the fork of the roads marked by the stone cross. The placard was

still there, looking white and almost festive in the rising sun. He

remembered that there was something at the foot of this notice that he

had not been able to read the evening before, on account of the small

characters and the fading light. He went up to the pedestal of the

cross. Below the signature "Prieur, de la Marne," the notice ended

with the following lines in small characters:--

The identity of the ci-devant Marquis of Lantenac having

been established, he will be executed without delay.

Signed: GAUVAIN,

_Chief of Battalion in Command of Exploring Column._

"Gauvain!" said the Marquis.

He paused, wrapt in deep thought, his eyes fixed on the placard.

"Gauvain!" he repeated.

He started once more, turned, looked at the cross, came back, and read

the placard over again.

Then he slowly walked away. Had any one been near, he might have heard

him mutter to himself in an undertone:--

"Gauvain!"

The roofs of the farm on his left were not visible from the sunken

paths through which he was stealing. He skirted a precipitous hill,

covered with blossoming furze, of the species known as the thorny

furze. This eminence was crowned by one of those points of land called

in this district a _hure_,[1] and at its base the trees cut off the

view at once. The foliage seemed bathed in light. All Nature felt the

deep joy of morning.

Suddenly this landscape became terrible. It was like the explosion of

an ambuscade. An indescribable tornado of wild cries and musket-shots

fell upon these fields and woods all radiant with the morning light,

and from the direction of the farm rose a dense smoke mingled with

bright flames, as though the village and the farm were but a truss

of burning straw. It was not only startling but awful,--this sudden

change from peace to wrath; like an explosion of hell in the very midst

of dawn, a horror without transition. A fight was going on in the

direction of Herbe-en-Pail. The Marquis paused.

No man in a case like this could have helped feeling as he did;

curiosity is more powerful than fear. One must find out what is

going on, even at the risk of life. He climbed the hill at the foot

of which lay the sunken path. From there, although the chances were

that he would be discovered, he could at least see what was taking

place. In a few moments he stood on the _hure_ and looked about him.

In fact, there was both a fusillade and a fire. One could hear the

cries and see the fire. The farm was evidently the centre of some

mysterious catastrophe. What could it be? Was it attacked? And if so,

by whom? Could it be a battle? Was it not more likely to be a military

execution? By the orders of a revolutionary decree the Blues frequently

punished refractory farms and villages by setting them on fire. For

instance, every farm and hamlet which had neglected to fell the trees

as prescribed by law, and had not opened roads in the thickets for the

passage of republican cavalry, was burned. It was not long since the

parish of Bourgon near Ernée had been thus punished. Was Herbe-en-Pail

a case in point? It was evident that none of those strategic openings

ordered by the decree had been cut, either in the thickets or in the

environs of Tanis and Herbe-en-Pail. Was this the punishment thereof?

Had an order been received by the advanced guard occupying the farm?

Did not this advanced guard form a part of one of those exploring

columns called _colonnes infernales_?

The eminence on which the Marquis had stationed himself was surrounded

on all sides by a wild and bristling thicket called the grove of

Herbe-en-Pail; it was about as large as a forest, however, and extended

to the farm, concealing, as all Breton thickets do, a network of

ravines, paths, and sunken roads,--labyrinths wherein the republican

armies frequently went astray.

This execution, if execution it were, must have been a fierce one,

for it had been rapid. Like all brutal deeds, it had been done like a

flash. The atrocity of civil war admits of these savage deeds. While

the Marquis, vainly conjecturing, and hesitating whether to descend or

to remain, listened and watched, this crash of extermination ceased,

or, to speak more accurately, vanished. The Marquis could see the

fierce and jubilant troop as it scattered through the grove. There was

a dreadful rushing to and fro beneath the trees. From the farm they

had entered the woods. Drums beat an attack, but there was no more

firing. It was like a _battue_; they seemed to be following a scent.

They were evidently looking for some one; the noise was wide-spread

and far-reaching. There were confused outcries of wrath and triumph, a

clamor of indistinct sounds. Suddenly, as an outline is revealed in a

cloud of smoke, one sound became clearly defined and audible in this

tumult. It was a name, repeated by thousands of voices, and the Marquis

distinctly heard the cry,--

"Lantenac, Lantenac! The Marquis of Lantenac!" They were looking for

him.

VI.

THE VICISSITUDES OF CIVIL WAR.

Around him suddenly, from all directions, the thicket was filled with

muskets, bayonets, and sabres, a tricolored banner was unfurled in the

dim light, and the cry, "Lantenac!" burst forth on his ears, while at

his feet through the brambles and branches savage faces appeared.

The Marquis was standing alone on the top of the height, visible from

every part of the wood. He could scarcely distinguish those who shouted

his name, but he could be seen by all. Had there been a thousand

muskets in the wood, he offered them a target. He could distinguish

nothing in the coppice, but the fiery eyes of all were directed upon

him.

He took off his hat, turned back the brim, and drawing from his pocket

a white cockade, he pulled out a long dry thorn from a furze-bush, with

which he fastened the cockade to the brim of his hat, then replaced it

on his head, the upturned brim revealing his forehead and the cockade,

and in a loud voice, as though addressing the wide forest, he said:--

"I am the man you seek. I am the Marquis de Lantenac, Viscount de

Fontenay, Breton Prince, Lieutenant-General of the armies of the king.

Make an end of it. Aim! Fire!"

And opening with both hands his goat-skin waistcoat, he bared his

breast.

Lowering his eyes to see the levelled guns, he beheld himself

surrounded by kneeling men.

A great shout went up,--"Long live Lantenac! Long live our lord! Long

live the General!"

At the same time hats were thrown up and sabres whirled joyously, while

from all sides brown woollen caps hoisted on long poles were waving in

the air.

A Vendean band surrounded him.

[Illustration 031]

At the sight of him they fell on their knees.

Legends tell us that the ancient Thuringian forests were inhabited by

strange beings,--a race of giants, at once superior and inferior to

men,--whom the Romans regarded as horrible beasts, and the Germans

as divine incarnations, and who might chance to be exterminated or

worshipped according to the race they encountered.

A sensation similar to that which may have been felt by one of those

beings was experienced by the Marquis when, expecting to be treated

like a monster, he was suddenly worshipped as a deity.

All those flashing eyes were fastened upon him with a kind of savage

love.

The crowd were armed with guns, sabres, scythes, poles, and sticks. All

wore large felt hats or brown caps, with white cockades, a profusion

of rosaries and charms, wide breeches left open at the knee, jackets of

skin, and leather gaiters; the calves of their legs were bare, and they

wore their hair long; some looked fierce, but all had frank and open

countenances.

A young man of noble bearing passed through the crowd of kneeling men

and hastily approached the Marquis. He wore a felt hat with an upturned

brim, a white cockade, and a skin jacket, like the peasants; but his

hands were delicate and his linen was fine, and over his waistcoat was

a white silk scarf, from which hung a sword with a golden hilt.

Having reached the _hure_, he threw aside his hat, unfastened his

scarf, and kneeling, presented to the Marquis both scarf and sword.

"Indeed we were seeking for you," he said, "and we have found you.

Receive the sword of command. These men are yours now. I was their

commander; now am I promoted, since I become your soldier. Accept our

devotion, my lord. General, give me your orders."

At a sign from him, men carrying the tricolored banner came forth from

the woods, and going up to the Marquis, placed it at his feet. It was

the one he had seen through the trees.

"General," said the young man who presented the sword and the scarf,

"this is the flag which we took from the Blues who held the farm

Herbe-en-Pail. My name is Gavard, my lord. I was with the Marquis de la

Rouarie."

"Very well," said the Marquis.

[Illustration 032]

And calm and composed he girded on the scarf.

Then he pulled out his sword, and waving it above his head, he cried,--

"Rise! And long live the king!"

All started to their feet. Then from the depth of the woods arose a

tumultuous and triumphant cry,--

"Long live the king! Long live our Marquis! Long live Lantenac!"

The Marquis turned towards Gavard.

"How many are you?"

"Seven thousand."

While they were descending the hill, the peasants clearing away the

furze-bushes to make a path for the Marquis de Lantenac, Gavard

continued:--

"All this may be explained in a word, my lord: nothing could be more

simple. It needed but a spark. The republican placard in revealing your

presence has roused the country for the king. Besides, we have been

secretly notified by the mayor of Granville, who is one of us,--the

same who saved the Abbé Ollivier. They rang the tocsin last night."

"For whom?"

"For you."

"Ah!" said the Marquis.

"And here we are," continued Gavard.

"And you number seven thousand?"

"To-day. But we shall be fifteen thousand to-morrow. It is the Breton

contingent. When Monsieur Henri de la Rochejaquelein went to join

the catholic army they sounded the tocsin, and in one night six

parishes--Isernay, Corqueux, Échaubroignes, Aubiers, Sainte Aubin, and

Nueil--sent him ten thousand men. They had no munitions of war, but

having found at a quarryman's house sixty pounds of blasting-powder,

Monsieur de la Rochejaquelein took his departure with that. We felt

sure you must be somewhere in these woods, and we were looking for you."

"And you attacked the Blues at the farm Herbe-en-Pail?"

"The wind prevented them from hearing the tocsin, and they mistrusted

nothing; the population of the hamlet, a set of clowns, received them

well. This morning we invested the farm while the Blues were sleeping,

and the thing was over in a trice. I have a horse here; will you deign

to accept it, general?"

"Yes."

A peasant led up a white horse with military housings. The Marquis

mounted him without accepting Gavard's proffered assistance.

"Hurrah!" cried the peasants. The English fashion of cheering is much

in vogue on the Breton coast, for the people have continual dealings

with the Channel islands.

Gavard made the military salute, asking, as he did so, "Where will you

establish your headquarters, my lord?"

"At first, in the forest of Fougères."

"It is one of the seven forests belonging to you."

"We need a priest."

"We have one."

"Who is it?"

"The curate of the Chapelle-Erbrée."

"I know him. He has made the trip to Jersey." A priest stepped out from

the ranks and said,--

"Three times."

The Marquis turned his head.

"Good morning, Monsieur le Curé. There is work in store for you."

"So much the better, Monsieur le Marquis."

"You will have to hear the confessions of such as desire your services.

No one will be forced."

"Marquis," said the priest, "at Guéménée, Gaston compels the

republicans to confess."

"He is a hairdresser. The dying should be allowed free choice in such a

matter."

Gavard, who had gone away to give certain orders, now returned.

"I await your commands, general."

"In the first place, the rendez-vous is in the forest of Fougères.

Direct the men to separate and meet there."

"The order has been given."

"Did you not say that the people of Herbe-en-Pail were friendly to the

Blues?"

"Yes, general."

"Was the farm burned?"

"Yes."

"Did you burn the hamlet?"

"No."

"Burn it."

"The Blues tried to defend themselves. But they numbered one hundred

and fifty, while we were seven thousand."

"What Blues are they?"

"Those of Santerre."

"He who ordered the drums to beat while they were beheading the king?

Then it is a Parisian battalion?"

"A demi-battalion."

"What was it called?"

"Their banner has on it, 'Battalion of the Bonnet-Rouge.'"

"Wild beasts."

"What is to be done with the wounded?"

"Put an end to them."

"What are we to do with the prisoners?"

"Shoot them."

"There are about eighty of them."

"Shoot them all."

"There are two women."

"Treat them all alike."

"And three children."

"Bring them along. We will decide what Is to be done with them."

And the Marquis spurred his horse forward.

VII.

NO MERCY![2]NO QUARTER![3]

While these events were transpiring in the vicinity of Tanis, the

beggar had gone towards Crollon. He plunged into the ravines, under

wide leafy bowers, heedless of all things, noticing nothing; as he

himself had expressed it, dreaming rather than thinking,--for the

thinker has an object, but the dreamer has none; wandering, rambling,

pausing, munching here and there a sprig of wild sorrel, drinking at

the springs, raising his head from time to time as distant sounds

attracted his attention, then yielding again to the irresistible

fascination of nature; presenting his rags to the sunlight, hearing

human sounds, by chance, but listening to the singing of birds.

He was old and slow; as he told the Marquis of Lantenac, he could not

go far; a quarter of a mile fatigued him; he made a short circuit

towards Croix-Avranchin, and it was evening when he returned.

A little beyond Macey, the path he followed led him to a sort of

elevation, destitute of trees, which commanded a wide expanse of

country, including the entire horizon from the west as far as the sea.

A smoke attracted his attention.

There is nothing more delightful than a smoke, and nothing more

alarming. There are smokes signifying peace, and smokes that mean

mischief. In the density and color of a column of smoke lies all

the difference between war and peace, brotherly love and hatred,

hospitality and the grave, life and death. A smoke rising among the

trees may mean the sweetest thing in all the world,--the family hearth,

or the most dreadful of calamities,--a conflagration. And the entire

happiness or misery of a human being is sometimes centred in a vapor,

scattered by the wind. The smoke which Tellmarch saw was of a kind to

excite anxiety.

It was black with sudden flashes of red light, as though the furnace

from whence it sprung burned fitfully and was gradually dying out, and

it rose above Herbe-en-Pail. Tellmarch hurried along, walking towards

the smoke. He was tired, but he wanted to know what it meant.

He reached the top of a hillock, behind which nestled a hamlet and the

farm.

Neither farm nor hamlet was to be seen.

A heap of ruins was still burning, all that remained of Herbe-en-Pail.

It is much more heart-rending to see a cottage burn than a palace. A

cottage in flames is a pitiful sight. Devastation swooping down on

poverty, a vulture pouncing upon an earth-worm,--there is a sense of

repugnance about it that makes one shudder.

If we believe the Biblical legend, the sight of a conflagration once

turned a human being into a statue. For an instant a similar change

came over Tellmarch. The sight before his eyes transfixed him to the

spot. The work of destruction went on in silence. Not a cry was heard;

not a human sigh mingled with the smoke. That furnace pursued its task

of devouring the village with no other sound than the splitting of

timbers and the crackling of thatch. From time to time the clouds of

smoke were rent, the falling roofs revealed the gaping chambers, the

fiery furnace displayed all its rubies, the poor rags turned scarlet,

and the wretched old furniture, tinged with purple, stood out amid

these dull red interiors; Tellmarch was dazed by the terrible calamity.

Several trees of a neighboring chestnut-grove had caught fire and were

in a blaze.

He listened, trying to hear a voice, a call, or some kind of a noise.

Nothing stirred but the flames; all was still save the fire. Had all

the inhabitants fled?

Where was the community that lived and labored at Herbe-en-Pail? What

had become of this little family?

Tellmarch descended the hillock.

A gloomy enigma lay before him. He approached it slowly, gazing at

it steadily. He advanced towards the ruin with the deliberation of a

shadow, feeling like a ghost in this tomb.

Having reached what had formerly been the door of the farm, he looked

into the yard, whose ruined walls no longer separated it from the

surrounding hamlet.

What he had seen before was nothing as compared with what he now

beheld. From afar he had seen the terror of it; now all its horrors lay

before him.

In the middle of the yard was a dark mass, vaguely outlined on one side

by the flames, and on the other by the moonlight. It was a heap of

men; and these men were dead. Around this mound lay a wide pool, still

smoking, whose surface reflected the flames; but it needed not the fire

to redden it; it was of blood.

Tellmarch went up to it. He examined, one after another, these

prostrate bodies; all were corpses. Both the moon and the

conflagration lighted up the scene.

The dead bodies were those of soldiers. Every man had bare feet; both

their shoes and their weapons had been taken from them, but they

still wore their blue uniforms. Here and there one could distinguish,

amid the confusion of the limbs and heads, hats bearing the tricolor

cockades riddled with bullets. They were republicans,--the same

Parisians who the previous evening had been living, active men,

garrisoned at the farm Herbe-en-Pail. The symmetrical arrangement of

the fallen bodies proved the affair to have been an execution. They had

been shot on the spot, and with precision. They were all dead. Not a

sound came from the mass.

Tellmarch examined each individual corpse, and every man was riddled

with shot.

Their executioners, doubtless in haste to depart, had not taken time to

bury them.

Just as he was about to leave the place, his attention was attracted by

the sight of four feet protruding beyond the corner of a low wall in

the yard.

These feet were smaller than those which he had previously seen; there

were shoes upon them, and as he drew near he perceived that they were

the feet of women.

Two women were lying side by side behind the wall, also shot.

Tellmarch stooped over them. One of them wore a kind of uniform; beside

her was a jug, broken and empty. She was a vivandière. She had four

balls in her head. She was dead.

[Illustration 033]

Tellmarch examined the other, who was a peasant woman. Her eyes were

closed, her mouth open, her face discolored; but there were no wounds

in her head. Her dress, undoubtedly worn to shreds by long marches, was

rent by her fall, exposing her bosom. Tellmarch pushed it still further

aside, and discovered on her shoulder a round wound made by a ball; the

shoulder-blade was broken. He gazed upon her livid breast.

"A nursing mother," he murmured.

He touched her. She was not cold.

The broken bone and the wound in the shoulder were her only injuries.

He placed his hand on her breast, and felt a faint throb. She was not

dead.

Tellmarch raised himself, and cried out in a terrible voice,--

"Is there no one here?"

"Is that you, Caimand?" replied a voice, so low that it could scarcely

be heard.

At the same time a head emerged from a hole in the ruin, and the next

moment a second one peered forth from another aperture.

These were the sole survivors,--two peasants who had managed to hide

themselves, and who now, reassured by the familiar voice of the

Caimand, crept out of the hiding-places where they had been crouching.

They approached Tellmarch, still trembling violently.

The latter had found strength to utter his cry, but he could not speak;

deep emotions always produce this effect.

He pointed to the woman lying at his feet.

"Is she still alive?" asked one of the peasants.

Tellmarch nodded.

"And the other woman,--is she living too?" asked the second peasant.

Tellmarch shook his head.

The peasant who had been the first to show himself continued:--

"All the others are dead, are they not? I saw it all. I was in my

cellar. How grateful one is to God, in times like these, to have no

family! My house was burned. Lord Jesus! everybody was killed. This

woman had children,--three little ones! The children cried, 'Mother!'

The mother cried, 'Oh, my children!' They killed the mother and carried

away the children. I saw all,--oh, my God! my God! Those who murdered

them went off well pleased. They carried away the little ones, and

killed the mother. But she is not dead, is she? I say, Caimand, do you

think you could save her? Don't you want us to help you carry her to

your _carnichot?_"

[Illustration 034]

Tellmarch nodded.

The woods were near the farm. They quickly made a litter with branches

and ferns, and placing the woman, still motionless, upon it, they

started towards the grove, the two peasants bearing the litter, one at

the head, the other at the foot, while Tellmarch supported the woman's

arm and constantly felt her pulse.

On the way the two peasants talked; and over the body of the bleeding

woman, whose pale face was lighted by the moon, they exchanged their

frightened exclamations.

"To kill all!"

"To burn all!"

"Oh, my Lord! Is that the way they are going to do now?"

"It was that tall old man who ordered it."

"Yes; he was the commander."

"I did not see him while the shooting went on. Was he there?"

"No, he was gone. But it was done by his order, all the same."

"Then it was he who did this."

"He said, 'Kill, burn! No quarter!'"

"Is he a marquis?"

"Yes, of course; he is our marquis."

"What is his name?"

"It is Monsieur de Lantenac."

Tellmarch raised his eyes to heaven, murmuring between his teeth,--

"Had I but known!"

[Footnote 1: A head.--TR.]

[Footnote 2: Watchword of the Commune.]

[Footnote 3: Watchword of the Princes.]

[Illustration: At Paris. 035]

PART II.

AT PARIS.

BOOK I.

CIMOURDAIN.

[Illustration: Cimourdain. 036]

I.

THE STREETS OF PARIS AT THAT TIME.

People lived in public; they ate at tables spread outside the doors;

women sat on the church steps, making lint to the accompaniment of the

Marseillaise; the park of Monceaux and the Luxembourg were turned into

parade-grounds; at every street-corner there was a gun-maker's shop,

where muskets were manufactured before the eyes of the passers-by,

to their great admiration. "Patience: this is revolution" was on

every lip. People smiled heroically. They went to the theatre as in

Athens during the Peloponnesian war. At street-corners were seen such

playbills as these, advertising: "The Siege of Thionville;" "A Mother

saved from the Flames;" "The Club of Sans-Soucis;" "The oldest of the

Popes Joan;" "The Military Philosophers;" "The Art of Love-making in

the Village." The Germans were at the gates; it was rumored that

the King of Prussia had secured boxes for the opera. Everything was

terrible, yet no one was frightened. The grewsome law against the

suspected, which was the crime of Merlin de Douai, held a vision of

the guillotine suspended over every head. A lawyer, Séran by name,

learning that he had been denounced, calmly awaited his arrest, arrayed

in his dressing-gown and slippers, playing the flute at his window.

No one seemed to have any spare time, every one was in a hurry; all

the hats bore their cockades, and the women cried, "Are not red caps

becoming to us?" All Paris seemed in the act of changing its abode.

The curiosity shops were filled with crowns, mitres, gilded sceptres,

and fleur-de-lis, spoils from royal dwellings,--the signs of the

destruction of monarchy. Copes and surplices might be seen hanging on

hooks offered for sale at the old-clothes shops. At the Porcherons

and at Ramponneau's men decked out in surplices and stoles bestrode

donkeys caparisoned with chasubles, and drank wine from ecclesiastical

ciboria. In the Rue Saint-Jacques barefooted street-pavers once stopped

the wheelbarrow of a shoe-pedler and clubbing together bought fifteen

pairs of shoes to send to the Convention "for our soldiers." Busts of

Rousseau, Franklin, Brutus, and even, be it added, of Marat, abounded.

In the Rue Cloche-Perce, below one of Marat's busts, in a black wooden

frame under glass, hung a formula of prosecution against Malouet, with

facts in support of the charges and the following lines inscribed on

the margin:--

These details were given to me by the mistress of Sylvain

Bailly, a good patriot, and who had a liking for me.

Signed: MARAT.

The inscription on the Palais Royal fountain, "Quantos effundit in

usus!" was hidden under two large canvases painted in distemper, one

representing Cahier de Gerville denouncing to the National Assembly

the rallying-cry of the "Chiffonistes" of Arles; the other, Louis

XVI. brought back from Varennes in his royal carriage, and under the

carriage a plank fastened by cords bearing on each end a grenadier

with levelled bayonet. Very few large shops were open; perambulating

carts containing haberdashery and toys, lighted by tallow candles,

which, melting, dripped upon the merchandise, were dragged through the

streets by women. Ex-nuns adorned with blond wigs kept open shop; this

woman, darning stockings in a stall, was a countess; that dressmaker,

a marchioness; Madame de Boufflers lived in an attic from which she

had a view of her own hotel. Venders ran about offering the news

bulletins. People who muffled their chins in their neck-cloths were

called "écrouelleux." Street singers swarmed. The crowd hooted Pitou,

the royalist song-writer, a brave man, to boot, for he was imprisoned

twenty-two times and was brought before the revolutionary tribunal for

slapping himself behind when he uttered the word "civism;" seeing that

his head was in danger, he exclaimed, "But my head is not the offending

member!" which made the judges laugh, and saved his life. This Pitou

ridiculed the fashion of Greek and Latin names; his favorite song

was about a cobbler and his wife whom he called Cujus and Cujusdam.

The Carmagnole was danced in circles; they no longer said "lady"

and "gentleman," but "citizen" and "citizeness." They danced in the

ruined cloisters, beneath a chandelier made of two sticks fastened

crosswise to the vaulted roof, bearing four candles, while the church

lamps burned upon the altar, and tombs lay beneath the dancers' feet.

They wore "tyrant-blue" waistcoats, and shirt-pins called "liberty's

cap," composed of red, white, and blue stones. The Rue de Richelieu

was called Rue de la Loi; the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the Faubourg de

Gloire; a statue of Nature stood in the Place de la Bastille. People

pointed out to each other well-known personages,--Châtelet, Didier,

Nicolas, and Gamier-Delaunay, who mounted guard at the doors of the

joiner Duplay; Voullant, who never missed a day of guillotining, and

who followed the tumbrils of the condemned, calling it "going to the

red mass;" Montflabert, a revolutionary juryman and marquis whom they

called _Dix-Août._ They watched the pupils of the École Militaire file

past, called "aspirants to the school of Mars" by the decrees of the

Convention, and nicknamed by the people "Robespierre's pages." They

read the proclamations of Fréron, denouncing those suspected of the

crime of "négotiantisime." Young scapegraces gathered about the doors

of the mayoralties crowding the brides and grooms as they came in

sight, and shouting, "Municipal marriages," in derision of the civil

ceremony. The statues of the saints and kings at the Invalides were

crowned with Phrygian caps. They played cards on curbstones at the

crossings, and the very cards themselves were totally revolutionized;

kings were replaced by genii, queens by the Goddess of Liberty, knaves

by Equality, aces by emblems of Law. The public gardens were tilled;

they ploughed the Tuileries.

With all this was intermingled, especially among the conquered

party, an indescribably haughty weariness of living. A man wrote to

Fouquier-Tinville, "Be so kind as to lift from me the burden of life.

This is my address." Champcenetz was arrested for exclaiming at the

Palais Royal: "When are we to have a Turkish revolution? I should

like to see the republic _à la Porte."_[1] Newspapers abounded.

Hair-dressers' apprentices curled the women's wigs in public while the

master read the "Moniteur" aloud; others, surrounded by listeners,

commented with expressive gesticulations on the journal "Entendons

nous," of Dubois Crancé, or the "Trompette du père Bellerose."

Sometimes a man was both a barber and a pork-dealer; and hams and

chitterlings would hang side by side with a golden-haired doll. The

wines of the Émigrés were sold by dealers on the streets. One merchant

advertised wine of fifty-two different brands; others retailed

lyre-shaped clocks and sofas _à la duchesse._ A hairdresser had the

following notice printed on his sign: "I shave the clergy; I dress

the hair of the nobility; I wait upon the Tiers-État." People went to

Martin, at No. 173 in the Rue d'Anjou, formerly called Rue Dauphine,

to have their fortune told. Bread, coal, and soap were scarce. Herds

of milch-cows on their way from the provinces were constantly passing.

At La Vallée, lamb was sold at fifteen francs a pound. An order of the

Commune assigned to each person a pound of meat for every ten days.

People stood in files at the shop-doors; one file that reached from the

door of a grocer's shop in the Rue du Petit-Carreau to the middle of

the Rue Montorgueil has become a matter of tradition. Forming a queue

was called "holding the string," on account of the long cord held by

those who stood in line one behind the other.

In the midst of all this wretchedness women were brave and gentle. They

passed whole nights waiting their turn to be served at the baker's.

The revolution was successful in its expedients. It alleviated this

wide-spread misery by two dangerous measures,--the assignat and

the maximum; in other words, the lever and the fulcrum. France was

actually saved by empiricism. The enemy, both in Coblentz and in

London, speculated in assignats.

[Illustration 038]

Girls went hither and thither offering lavender-water, garters,

and false hair, and selling stocks at the same time; there were

stock-jobbers on the steps of the Rue Vivienne, with muddy shoes,

greasy hair, woollen caps with fox-tails, and the dandies of the Rue

de Valois, with their polished boots, a toothpick in their mouths, and

beaver hats on their heads, to whom the girls said "thee and thou." The

people hunted them down as they did thieves, whom the royalists called

"active citizens." Robbery, however, seldom occurred; the fearful

destitution was matched by a stoical honesty. With downcast eyes the

barefooted and the hungry went gravely past the shop-windows of the

jewellers of the Palais Égalité. During a domiciliary visit made by the

Section Antoine at Beaumarchais' house, a woman plucked a flower in

the garden: the crowd boxed her ears. A cord of wood cost four hundred

francs in coin. People were to be seen in the streets sawing up their

wooden beds. In the winter the fountains froze, and two pails of water

cost twenty sous; every man was his own water-carrier. A gold louis was

worth three thousand nine hundred and fifty francs. A ride in a fiacre

cost six hundred francs. After a day's ride the following dialogue

might be heard: "How much do I owe you, coachman?" "Six thousand

livres." The trade of a greengrocer woman amounted to twenty thousand

francs a day. A beggar was known to have said: "Help me, for charity's

sake! I want two hundred and thirty livres to pay for my shoes." At the

entrance of the bridges might be seen colossal figures, sculptured and

painted by David, which Mercier insultingly called "enormous wooden

Punchinellos." These figures represented Federalism and Coalition

overthrown. No infirmity of purpose among the people. There was a

gloomy sense of pleasure in having put an end to thrones. No lack of

volunteers ready to lay down their lives: every street furnished a

battalion. The flags of the district went hither and thither, each one

with its own device. On the banner of the Capuchin District might be

read, "No one will shave us;" on another, "No other nobility save that

of the heart." On the walls were placards, large and small, white,

yellow, green, and red, printed and written, on all which might be read

this war-cry: "Long live the Republic!" Little children lisped, "Ça

ira."

These little children were the nucleus of a great future.

Later on, a cynical city took the place of the tragical one;

the streets of Paris have displayed two distinct revolutionary

aspects,--the one preceding the 9th Thermidor, and that which followed

it. After the Paris of Saint-Just came the Paris of Tallien. Such are

the constant antitheses of Almighty God. Immediately after Sinai, the

Courtille appeared.

Paroxysms of popular folly may always be expected. The same thing had

taken place eighty years before. After Louis XIV., as well as after

Robespierre, the people needed breathing space; hence the Regency at

the opening of the century and the Directory at its close, each reign

of terror ending in a Saturnalia. France fled from the Puritan as well

as from the monarchical cloister with the joy of a nation escaping from

bondage.

After the 9th Thermidor, Paris was like one gone mad with gayety.

An unwholesome joy prevailed, exceeding all bounds. The frenzy of

life followed the frenzy of death, and grandeur eclipsed itself.

They had a Trimalcion whom they called Grimod de la Reynière; also

an "Almanach des Gourmands." People dined to the accompaniment

of trumpets in the entresols of the Palais Royal; the orchestras

were composed of women beating drums and blowing trumpets; the

"rigadooner," bow in hand, reigned over all; they supped after the

Oriental fashion at Méot's, surrounded by censers of perfume. The

artist Boze painted his daughters, innocent and charming heads of

sixteen, "en guillotinés,"--that is, bare-necked and in red chemises.

The wild dances in ruined churches were followed by the balls of

Ruggieri, Luquet Wenzel, Mauduit, and the Montansier; to the dignified

_citoyennes_ making lint, succeeded sultanas, savages, and nymphs; to

the bare feet of the soldiers, disfigured by blood, mud, and dust,

succeeded the bare feet of women adorned with diamonds; and together

with shamelessness came dishonesty,--which had its purveyors in high

places, and their imitators in the lower ranks. Paris was infested by

swarms of sharpers, and every man had to watch his "luc," or in other

words, his pocket-book. One of the amusements was to go to the Place

of the Palais de Justice to see the female acrobats on the tabouret;

they were forced to tie their skirts down. At the doors of the theatres

street-urchins offered cabs, crying, "Citizen and Citizeness, there is

room enough for two." They sold no more copies of "The Old Cordelier"

or of "L'Ami du peuple;" but in their stead they offered "Punch's

Letter" and "The Rogues' Petition." The Marquis de Sade presided at

the section of the Pikes, Place Vendôme. The reaction was both jovial

and ferocious. The Dragons of Liberty of '92 were revived under the

name of Knights of the Dagger. At the same time there appeared on the

stage the type Jocrisse. There were the "Merveilleuses," and after the

"Merveilleuses," the "Inconcevables." People swore fantastic oaths

by "sa paole victimée" and by "sa paole verte." This was the recoil

from Mirabeau to Bobèche. Paris vibrates like an enormous pendulum

of civilization; now it touches one pole, now the other,--Thermopylæ

and Gomorrah. After '93, Revolution suffered a singular eclipse: the

century apparently forgot to finish what it had begun; a strange orgie,

interposing, took possession of the foreground, and thrusting the

dread Apocalypse behind, it drew a veil over the monstrous vision, and

shouted with laughter after its fright; tragedy vanished in parody;

and rising from the horizon's edge the smoke of carnival obscured the

outlines of Medusa.

But in the year '93 the streets of Paris still retained the imposing

and fierce aspect of the beginning. They had their orators, like Varlot

for instance, who travelled about in a booth on wheels, from the top

of which he harangued the passers-by; their heroes, one of whom was

called "the Captain of iron-shod poles;" their favorites, like Guffroy,

the author of the pamphlet "Rougiff." Some of these celebrities were

mischievous, others exerted a wholesome influence. One among all the

rest was honest and filial,--it was Cimourdain.

II.

CIMOURDAIN.

[Illustration 039]

Cimourdain had a pure but gloomy soul. There was something of the

absolute within him. He had been a priest, which is a serious matter.

A man may, like the heavens, enjoy a gloomy serenity,--it needs only

an influence powerful enough to create night within his soul; and the

priesthood had done this thing for Cimourdain. To be once a priest is

to be a priest forever.

Though there be night within us, we may still possess the stars.

Cimourdain was a man of many virtues and truths, but they shone amid

the darkness.

His story may be told in a few words. He had been a village curate, and

tutor in an influential family; but falling heir to a small legacy, he

had thereby gained his freedom.

He was obstinate to the last degree. He employed meditation as the

artisan uses his pincers. He believed it wrong to abandon an idea until

he had fully developed it. His method of thought was intense. He was

familiar with all the European languages, and had some acquaintance

with other tongues. His devotion to study was a great help towards the

preservation of his chastity. But there is nothing more dangerous than

such a system of repression.

Either from pride, circumstances, or loftiness of soul, he had been

true to his priestly vows; but his faith he had not been able to keep.

Science had crushed it; all his dogmas had gone from him. Then, looking

into his own soul, he saw therein a mutilated being, and having no

power to rid himself of his priesthood, he tried, after an austere

fashion, to remould the man. For want of a family he adopted his

country; a wife had been refused him,--he had wedded humanity. There is

a certain sense of emptiness in this all-embracing zeal.

His parents, who were peasants, had thought to lift him above the

common people by consecrating him to the priesthood; he had returned

among them of his own accord, and with a feeling of passionate

devotion watched the suffering with intense sympathy. From a priest

he had become a philosopher, and from a philosopher an athlete. Even

during the life of Louis XV., Cimourdain had vaguely fancied himself

a republican. But of what republic? Perhaps of the Republic of Plato,

and it might be of Draco also. Forbidden to love, he devoted himself

to hating. He detested lies, monarchy, theocracy, and his priestly

garb; he hated the present, and eagerly invoked the future; he had a

presentiment of what it would be, he foresaw it, he pictured it, both

terrible and grand. In order to put an end to this deplorable human

misery, he felt the need of a leader who would appear not only as an

avenger but also as a liberator. He worshipped the catastrophe from

afar.

In 1789 this catastrophe came and found him ready. Cimourdain flung

himself into that gigantic scheme for human regeneration on logical

principles, which, for a mind constituted like his, is equivalent

to saying with inexorable determination. Logic is not a softening

influence. He had survived the great revolutionary years, and had been

shaken by the blasts thereof,--in '89, the fall of the Bastille, the

end of the martyrdom of people; in.'90, on the 19th of June, the end of

the feudal system; in '91, Varennes, and the end of royalty; in '92,

the birth of the Republic. He had seen the rise of Revolution. He was

not the man to fear that giant; on the contrary, the universal growth

had given him new life, and though already advanced in years,--for

he was fifty, and a priest ages faster than other men,--he too began

to develop. From year to year he had watched and kept pace with the

progress of events. At first he had feared lest Revolution might fail;

he watched it. Since it had both logic and justice on its side, he

expected its success, and his confidence increased in proportion to the

fear it inspired; he would have this Minerva crowned with the stars

of the future,--a Pallas likewise bearing the Gorgon's head for her

buckler. In case of need he would have wished an infernal glare to

flash from her divine eyes upon the demons, paying them back in their

own coin.

Thus he reached '93.

'93 is the war of Europe against France, and of France against Paris.

What then is Revolution? It is the victory of France over Europe, and

of Paris over France. Hence the immensity of that terrible moment '93,

grander than all the rest of the century.

Nothing could be more tragic. Europe attacking France, and France

attacking Paris,--a drama with the proportions of an epic.

'93 is a year of intense action. The tempest is there in all its wrath

and grandeur. Cimourdain felt himself in his element. This scene of

distraction, wild and magnificent, suited the compass of his outspread

wings. Like a sea-eagle, he united a profound inward calm with a relish

for external danger. Certain winged natures, souls of the tempest,

ferocious yet tranquil, seem eminently fitted for combatting the storms

of life.

His sense of pity was never kindled, save in behalf of the wretched. He

devoted himself to those forms of suffering that are most repulsive.

For him nothing was abhorrent. That was his kind of goodness. He

was divine in his zeal to relieve the most loathsome sufferers. He

searched for ulcers that he might kiss them. Those noble actions

which are hideous to look upon are the most difficult to perform; for

such he had a preference. One day at the Hôtel-Dieu a man was at the

point of death, suffocating with a tumor in the throat,--a putrid,

malignant, and perhaps contagious abscess, which must be opened at

once. Cimourdain was there; he put his lips to the abscess, sucked

it, spitting it out as his mouth filled, emptied the tumor and saved

the man. As he still was wearing his priestly garb at the time, some

one said to him: "Had you done that for the king you would be made a

bishop." "I would not do it for the king," replied Cimourdain. The act

and the answer made him popular in the gloomy quarters of Paris to

a degree that won for him unbounded influence over the classes that

suffer, weep, and struggle for vengeance. When the public indignation,

that fruitful source of blunders, rose high against the monopolists, it

was Cimourdain who by a word prevented the sacking of a boat laden with

soap at the Saint-Nicolas quay, and who dispersed the furious crowds

that were stopping the carriages at the barrier Saint-Lazare.

[Illustration 040]

He it was who ten days after the 10th of August marshalled the people

who went forth to overthrow the statues of kings, which as they fell

cost some of them their lives. On the Place Vendôme, a woman, Reine

Violet, pulling at the rope she had fastened around the neck of Louis

XIV., was crushed to death beneath its weight. This statue had been

standing for a hundred years: it was erected on the 12th of August,

1692; it was overthrown on the 12th of August, 1793. On the Place de la

Concorde one Guinguerlot, having called the demolishers "canaille," was

butchered on the pedestal of the statue of Louis XV. The statue itself

was hacked to pieces; later, it was melted into sous. One arm alone

escaped,--the right arm, which Louis XV. held outstretched with the

gesture of a Roman emperor. By request of Cimourdain the people sent a

deputation to offer this arm to Latude, a man who had been buried alive

in the Bastille for forty years. When Latude with an iron collar round

his neck and a chain round his loins was rotting alive in that prison

at the bidding of the king whose statue overlooked Paris, who could

have prophesied to him that both prison and statue would fall, and that

he would come forth from his tomb,--he, the prisoner, would be the

master of that hand of bronze which had signed his warrant, and that

nothing would be left of this monarch of clay save his brazen arm?

Cimourdain was one of those men who possess an inward monitor, and who

when they appear absent-minded are simply listening to its voice.

Cimourdain was both learned and ignorant. He was versed in science,

and knew nothing whatever of life; hence his severity. His eyes were

bandaged like those of Homer's Themis: he possessed the blind certainty

of an arrow,--that, seeing naught besides, flies straight to the goal.

In revolution there is nothing so formidable as the straight line.

Cimourdain went straight ahead, with fatal results. He believed that

in these social geneses the farthest point is solid ground,--an error

common to minds in which logic occupies the place of reason. He went

beyond the Convention, beyond the Commune: he belonged to the Évêché.

The society called the Évêché because it held its meetings in a hall

of the old episcopal palace was rather a medley of men than a society.

There were present, as in the Commune, those silent but important

spectators who, as Garat expressed it, "had about them as many

pistols as they had pockets." The Évêché was a queer mixture, both

cosmopolitan and Parisian,--no contradiction in terms, since Paris is

the place where throbs the heart of all nations. There at the Évêché

was the great plebeian incandescence. As compared with the Évêché, the

Convention was cold and the Commune lukewarm. It was one of those

revolutionary formations which partake of the nature of a volcano. The

Évêché combined everything,--ignorance, stupidity, honesty, heroism,

wrath, and policy. Brunswick had agents therein. It held men worthy of

Sparta, and others fit only for the galleys. The greater number of them

were mad and honest. The Gironde, speaking in the person of Isnard,

temporary president of the Convention, had uttered this appalling

prophecy: "Parisians, beware! for in your city not one stone shall

be left resting upon another, and the day will come when men will

search for the place where Paris once stood." This speech had given

Birth to the Évêché. Certain men--and as we have just said, men of

all nations--had felt the need of drawing closer to Paris. Cimourdain

joined this group.

The party reacted against the reactionists. It sprang from that public

necessity for violence which constitutes the formidable and mysterious

side of revolutions. Strong in this strength, the Évêché at once

defined its position. In the disturbances of Paris it was the Commune

that fired the cannon, and the Évêché that sounded the alarm.

In his inexorable sincerity Cimourdain believed that all means are fair

when devoted to the service of truth,--a conviction which eminently

fitted him for the control of extremists of all parties. Scoundrels

perceived him to be honest, and were satisfied. Crime is flattered to

feel that virtue has taken it in charge. It is rather embarrassing, but

pleasing nevertheless. Palloy the architect, who had taken advantage

of the destruction of the Bastille to sell the stones for his own

benefit, and who, being appointed to paint the cell of Louis XVI.,

had in his zeal covered the wall with bars, chains, and iron collars;

Gonchon, the suspected orator of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, whose

receipts were found later; the American Fournier, who on the 17th of

July fired a pistol-shot at Lafayette,--an act for which, they said,

Lafayette himself had paid; Henriot, who had come from Bicêtre, and

who had been a lackey, a juggler, a thief, and a spy before he turned

general and levelled his guns on the Convention; La Reynie, formerly

grand-vicar of Chartres, who had substituted "Père Duchesne" for his

breviary,--all these men were respected by Cimourdain, and all that

was needed to keep the worst of them from stumbling occasionally was

to feel that really formidable and determined candor like a judgment

before them. It was thus that Saint-Just terrified Schneider. At the

same time the majority in the Évêché, consisting for the most part of

poor and violent men, sincere in their purposes, believed in Cimourdain

and followed him. His vicar or aide-de-camp, whichever you choose

to call him, was Danjou,--that other republican priest, whose lofty

stature endeared him to the people, who called him the Abbé Six-Pieds.

Cimourdain could have led whithersoever he chose that fearless chief

called Général la Pique and the bold Truchon (surnamed Grand-Nicolas),

who tried to save Madame de Lamballe, offering her his arm to assist

her in leaping over the corpses,--an attempt which would have proved

successful had it not been for the barbarous joke of Chariot the

barber.

The Commune kept watch over the Convention, and the Évêché over

the Commune. Cimourdain, an upright man, despising intrigues, had

broken more than one mysterious thread in the hands of Pache, whom

Beurnonville called "the black man." At the Évêché, Cimourdain was

on good terms with all. He was consulted by Dobsent and Momoro. He

spoke Spanish to Gusman, Italian to Pio, English to Arthur, Flemish

to Pereyra, German to the Austrian Proly, the bastard of a prince.

He reconciled all these discordant elements: hence his strong though

obscure position. Hébert feared him.

In those times and over those tragic assemblies Cimourdain possessed

the power of the inexorable. He was a faultless man, who believed

himself to be infallible. He had never been seen to weep. His was an

inaccessible and frigid virtue; a just, but awful, man.

There are no half measures possible for a revolutionary priest. A

priest who embarks in an adventure so portentous in its aims, is

influenced either by the highest or the lowest motives; he must be

either infamous or sublime. Cimourdain was sublime, but isolated

in rugged inaccessibility, inhospitably repellent,--sublime in his

surrounding of precipices. Lofty mountains possess this forbidding

purity.

Cimourdain looked like an ordinary man, clothed in whatever happened

to be convenient, rather poor in aspect. In his youth he had received

the tonsure, and later in life had become bald. His few remaining

locks were gray. Looking upon his forehead, expansive as it was, an

observing eye could read his character. Cimourdain had an abrupt way

of speaking, at once passionate and solemn; his utterance was rapid,

his tone peremptory, the expression of his mouth sad and bitter; his

eyes were clear and deep, and his whole face bore the impress of an

unspeakable indignation. Such was Cimourdain.

To-day his name is unknown.

History possesses these terrible incognitos.

III.

A CORNER NOT DIPPED INTO THE STYX.

Was such a man in very deed a man? Could the servant of all men feel a

personal affection? Was he not too much of a soul to possess a heart?

That vast embrace, enfolding everything and everybody, could it be

limited to one? Could Cimourdain love? We answer, yes.

In his youth, when he was a tutor in an almost princely family, he

had a pupil, the son and heir of the house, whom he loved. It is easy

to love a child. What is there that one cannot forgive a child? One

forgives him for being a lord, a prince, a king. His innocent age and

his weakness make one forget the crimes of his race and the arrogance

of his rank. He is so little that one pardons him for being great,

the slave forgives him for being the master. The old negro idolizes

the white nursling. Cimourdain had conceived a passionate love for

his pupil. Childhood is so ineffably charming, it absorbs all love.

All the power of loving in Cimourdain's nature had, so to speak,

concentrated itself upon that child; the heart, condemned to solitude,

fed upon this sweet and innocent creature, which it loved with the

combined tenderness of a father, a brother, a friend, and a creator. To

him he was indeed a son,--not of the flesh, but of the soul; he was not

his father, the author of his being, but he was his master, and this

was his masterpiece. He had made a man of this little lord,--possibly a

great man, who knows? Thus run our dreams. Without the knowledge of the

family,--for does one require permission to create an intelligence, a

well-directed will, and an upright character?--he had communicated to

the young viscount, his pupil, all the advanced ideas that he himself

held; he had inoculated him with the dread virus of his own virtue; he

had infused into his veins his belief, his conscience, his ideal; into

the brain of this aristocrat, as into a mould, he had poured the soul

of the people. Mind seeks nourishment; intelligence is a breast. There

is an analogy between the nurse who gives her milk and the tutor who

gives his thought. Sometimes the tutor is more of a father than the

actual father himself, just as the nurse is more like a mother than

the natural mother. Cimourdain was closely bound to his pupil by the

profound paternity of the soul. The very sight of the child touched him.

Let us add this: it was an easy matter to replace the father, since the

child had none, he was an orphan; his father and mother were both dead;

there was only a blind grandmother, and a great-uncle who did not live

at home to watch over him. The grandmother died; the great-uncle, who

was the head of the family, was a military man, a member of the high

nobility, who held various appointments at Court; he avoided the old

family dungeon, living at Versailles, changing his quarters with the

army, and leaving the orphan alone in the solitary castle. Thus the

preceptor was the master in every sense of the word. Furthermore, let

us add, Cimourdain had witnessed the birth of his pupil. When almost

a baby, the child had a serious illness; during the crisis Cimourdain

had watched over him night and day. The doctor prescribes, but it is

the nurse who saves, and Cimourdain had saved the child. Not only was

his pupil indebted to him for his instruction, his education, and his

knowledge, he also owed him his convalescence and his health; over

and above the development of his mind he owed him his very life. We

worship those who are indebted to us for everything; hence Cimourdain

worshipped the child.

In the course of time the natural separation between them took place.

Having finished his education, Cimourdain was obliged to leave the

child, who had now become a young man. With what cold and careless

cruelty such separations are planned! How calmly do families discharge

the tutor, who leaves his soul behind him with the child, and the

nurse who leaves her heart's blood! Cimourdain, having received his

salary and his dismissal, had left the higher for the lower sphere;

the partition that separates the great from the little had closed

once more. The young lord, an officer by birth, received a captain's

commission at the outset, and had departed to join some garrison. The

humble tutor, already a rebellious priest in his secret heart, had lost

no time in returning to the obscure ground-floor of the church, among

the inferior clergy, and thus lost sight of his pupil.

Revolution came. The recollection still brooding within him of that

creature whom he had transformed into a man was by no means lost,

although buried beneath the immense accumulation of public affairs.

It is a noble deed to model a statue and breathe into it the breath of

life; but to mould an intelligence and inspire it with the spirit of

truth is far nobler. Cimourdain was the Pygmalion of a soul.

The mind may possess its offspring.

The only being on earth whom he loved was this pupil,--child and orphan

as he was. Is such a man vulnerable to the influence of any affection

whatsoever? We shall see.

[Footnote 1: A pan meaning a Turkish republic, and the republic

expelled.--TR.]

[Illustration: Le cabaret de la Rue de Paon 041]

BOOK II.

THE POT-HOUSE OF THE RUE DU PAON

I.

MINOS, ÆACUS, AND RHADAMANTHUS.

[Illustration 042]

In the Rue du Paon there was an ale-house called by courtesy a café,

and in this café a back-room which has since become famous in history.

It was there that from time to time those men, so powerful and so

closely watched that they dared not venture to speak to one another in

public, held their secret meetings.

It was there, on the 23d day of October, 1792, that the Mountain and

the Gironde exchanged their famous kiss. There, too, Garat--although

he does not admit it in his memoirs--came for information during that

rueful night when, after having placed Clavière in safety in the Rue

de Beaune, he stopped his carriage on the Pont-Royal to listen to the

tocsin. On the 28th of June, 1793, in this back-room, three men were

gathered around a table. Their chairs did not touch. Each man occupied

one of the three sides of the table, leaving the fourth one vacant. It

was about eight o'clock in the evening. Although it was still light

in the street, the back-room was dark, and a lamp--a luxury in those

times--hanging from the ceiling threw its light upon the table. The

first of those men was pale, young, and grave, with thin lips and a

cold unsympathetic expression. There was a nervous twitching in his

cheek, which must have been a drawback to the act of smiling. He was

powdered and gloved, and his well-brushed and carefully-buttoned

light-blue coat fitted him without a wrinkle. He wore nankeen breeches,

white stockings, a high cravat, a plaited shirt-frill, and silver

buckles on his shoes. Of the two other men, one was, so to speak, a

giant, the other a dwarf. The tall man was negligently dressed in a

loose coat of scarlet, with his neck bare, and a half-untied cravat

hanging carelessly below his shirt-frill; his waistcoat was unfastened

for want of buttons; he wore top-boots; and his hair, although

dishevelled and bristling, still showed signs of former dressing;

his wig looked very much like a mane, and his face was marked by the

small-pox. Between his eyebrows was a line betokening a fierce temper,

and at the corner of his mouth another, rather suggestive of a kindly

nature. His lips were thick, his teeth large; he had the fist of a

porter, and flashing eyes. The short personage was a yellow-looking

man, who when seated had the effect of one deformed. His head was

thrown back, his eyes blood-shot; livid patches covered his face; a

handkerchief was tied over his straight, greasy hair; no forehead to

speak of, but a monstrous and terrible mouth. He wore long trousers,

slippers, a waistcoat that seemed originally to have been made of

white satin, and over it a loose jacket, in the folds of which a hard

straight line revealed the presence of a poniard. The first of these

men was Robespierre, the second Danton, the third Marat.

They were alone in this room. Before Danton stood a bottle of wine

covered with dust,--reminding one of Luther's half pint of beer,--a cup

of coffee before Marat, and papers were spread in front of Robespierre.

Near the papers stood one of those round, heavy, ridged, leaden

inkstands, which will be remembered by all who were schoolboys at the

beginning of this century, and a pen had been thrown down beside it.

A large brass seal bearing the words "Palloy fecit," and representing

an exact miniature model of the Bastille, rested upon these papers. A

map of France lay outspread in the middle of the table. Outside the

door stood Marat's watchdog, one Laurent Basse, the same who was an

agent at No. 18 Rue des Cordeliers, and who on the 13th of July, nearly

a fortnight after this 28th of June, was to deal a blow with a chair

upon the head of a woman named Charlotte Corday, who at this time was

vaguely dreaming at Caen. Laurent Basse was the proof-carrier of "L'Ami

du Peuple." On that evening, having been brought by his master to the

café of the Rue du Paon, he was ordered to keep the room closed where

Marat, Danton, and Robespierre were seated, and to admit no one, unless

it were some person from the Committee of Public Safety, the Commune,

or the Évêché.

Robespierre would not have it closed against Saint-Just, neither would

Danton refuse admittance to Pache, or Marat to Gusman.

The subject of the conference, which had already lasted a long time,

lay in the papers spread out on the table, which Robespierre had been

reading aloud. The voices were gradually rising higher and higher.

Something very like anger was developing between these three men.

From without one could catch, from time to time, fragments of excited

speech. In those days the custom of public tribunals seemed to have

created a certain right to listen. It was at the time when the copying

clerk, Fabricius Pâris, watched through the key-hole the proceedings

of the Committee of Public Safety; not an act of supererogation, be it

observed, for it was this very Pâris who notified Danton on the night

of the 31st of March, 1794. Laurent Basse had his ear at the door of

the back-room in which Danton, Marat, and Robespierre were seated; he

served Marat, but he belonged to the Évêché.

II.

MAGNA TESTANTUR VOCE PER UMBRAS.

Danton had just risen, pushing back his chair impetuously. "Listen!" he

cried. "There is but one urgent business,--the Republic is in danger. I

have but a single purpose, that is, to deliver France from the enemy.

And to accomplish this, all means are fair. All! All! All! I have to

deal with every form of danger. I employ every variety of expedient,

and when all is to be feared, then I venture all. My thought is a

lioness. No half measures, no squeamishness in revolution. Nemesis

is not a haughty prude. Let us make ourselves terrible and likewise

useful. Does the elephant stop to see where he puts his foot? Let us

crush the enemy."

Robespierre replied mildly,--

"I am willing."

Then he added,--

"The question is, to learn the whereabouts of the enemy."

"He is without, and it is I who have driven him there," said Danton.

"He is within, and I am watching him," said Robespierre.

"I will drive him out again," replied Danton.

"One cannot so easily expel an internal enemy."

"What, then, is to be done?"

"He must be exterminated."

"I agree to that," said Danton, in his turn.

And he continued,--

"But I tell you he is outside, Robespierre."

"And I tell you that he is within, Danton."

"Robespierre, he is on the frontier."

"He is in the Vendée, Danton."

"Calm yourselves," remarked a third voice; "he is everywhere, and you

are lost."

It was Marat who spoke.

Robespierre looked at Marat, and quietly retorted,--

"A truce to generalizations. Let us come to particulars. Here are the

facts."

"Pedant!" growled Marat.

Placing his hand on the paper spread out before him, Robespierre

continued:--

"I have just read you the despatches of Prieur de la Marne, and also

communicated the information given by Gélambre. Listen, Danton; foreign

war is as nothing compared with the dangers of civil war. A foreign war

is like a scratch on the elbow, but civil war is an ulcer which eats

away your liver. Here is the sum and substance of all that I have just

read to you: the Vendée, which has hitherto been divided among many

chiefs, is about to concentrate its forces. Henceforth it is to have

one leader--"

"A sort of central brigand," muttered Danton.

"It is the man who landed near Pontorson on the 2d of June. You have

seen what he is. Observe, that this landing was contemporary with the

arrest of the representatives, Prieur de la Côte d'Or and Romme, at

Bayeux, by that treacherous district of Calvados, which took place on

the very same day, the 2d of June."

"And their transfer to the castle of Caen," said Danton.

Robespierre replied:--

"I will proceed to sum up the despatches. They are organizing the

warfare of the forest on a vast scale. At the same time an English

invasion is in preparation,--Vendeans and Englishmen; Brittany joining

hands with Britain. The Hurons of Finistère speak the same language

as the Topinambes of Cornwall. I showed you an intercepted letter of

Puisaye, where he says that 'twenty thousand red coats distributed

among the insurgents will be the means of raising one hundred thousand

more.' When the peasant insurrection is fully organized, the English

descent will take place. Here is the plan; follow it on the map." And

putting his finger on the map, Robespierre continued:--

"The English have the choice of landing place, from Cancale to Paimpol.

Craig would prefer the Bay of Saint-Brieuc, Cornwallis the Bay of

Saint-Cast. But this is simply a matter of detail. The left shore

of the Loire is guarded by the rebel Vendean army, and as to the

twenty-eight miles of open country between Ancenis and Pontorson, forty

Norman parishes have promised their assistance. The descent will be

made at three points, Plérin, Iffiniac, and Pléneuf; from Plérin they

will go to Saint-Brieuc, and from Pléneuf to Lamballe; on the second

day they intend to reach Dinan, where there are nine hundred English

prisoners, thus simultaneously occupying Saint-Jouan and Saint-Méen,

where they, are to leave the cavalry; on the third day two columns

will march,--one to Jouan on Bédée, the other to Dinan on Becherel,

a natural fortress, and where they propose to set up two batteries;

on the fourth day they expect to be at Rennes, which is the key to

Brittany. Whoever has Rennes is master of the situation. Rennes once

taken, Châteauneuf and Saint-Malo are sure to fall. There are one

million cartridges and fifty field-pieces at Rennes."

"Which they will sweep away," muttered Danton.

Robespierre continued:--

"To conclude. From Rennes three columns will descend, one upon

Fougères, and the second and third upon Vitré and Redon. As the bridges

are destroyed, the enemy will be provided, as has already been stated,

with pontoons and planks, and they will also have guides for such

places as are fordable by cavalry. From Fougères they will diverge to

Avranches, from Redon to Ancenis, from Vitré to Laval. Nantes will

surrender, Brest likewise. Redon opens the way to Vilaine, as Fougères

to Normandy and Vitré to Paris. In fifteen days they will have a

brigand army of three hundred thousand men, and the whole of Brittany

will belong to the King of France."

"You mean to the King of England," said Danton. "No, to the King of

France," replied Robespierre, adding: "the King of France is worse; it

takes fifteen days to expel a foreign foe, and eighteen hundred years

to destroy a monarchy."

Danton, who had reseated himself with his elbows resting on the table,

supported hip head on his hands and remained buried in thought.

"You perceive the danger," said Robespierre. "Vitré opens for the

English the way to Paris."

Raising his head, Danton brought his two clenched fists down upon the

map as though it were an anvil.

"Robespierre, did not Verdun open the way to Paris for the Prussians?"

"What then?"

"Well, we will drive the English as we drove the Prussians."

And Danton rose again.

Robespierre placed his cold hand on Danton's burning wrist.

"Danton, Champagne did not take sides with the Prussians, as Brittany

does with the English. Retaking Verdun was foreign war; but to

recapture Vitré will be civil war."

And Robespierre murmured in a cold, sepulchral tone,--

"A serious difference."

Then he continued,--

"Sit down, Danton, and look at the map, instead of battering it with

your fists."

But Danton was wholly carried away with his own ideas.

"Well, this goes beyond everything!" he exclaimed; "to be on the alert

for a catastrophe in the west, when it is actually in the east! I

grant you, Robespierre, that England looms up on the ocean; but Spain

rises from behind the Pyrenees, Italy from the Alps, Germany from

the Rhine, and the big Russian bear is behind them all. Robespierre,

danger surrounds us like a circle, and we are in its centre. Coalition

abroad, treason at home. In the south, Servant holds the door of

France ajar for the King of Spain; in the north, Dumouriez goes over

to the enemy. However, he always threatened Holland less than Paris.

Nerwinde has wiped out Jemmapes and Valmy. The philosopher Rabaut

Saint-Étienne, a traitor, like the Protestant he is, corresponds with

the courtier Montesquiou. The army is decimated. No battalion has

now over four hundred men, and the brave regiment of Deux-Ponts is

reduced to one hundred and fifty; the camp of Pamars has surrendered;

Givet has but five hundred bags of flour left. We are falling back

on Landau; Wurmser presses Kléber; Mayence makes a valiant defence;

Condé yields ignobly, and Valenciennes likewise, but this in no way

alters the fact that their defenders Féraud and Chancel are two heroes,

not to mention Meunier, who defended Mayence; but all the others

are betraying us. Dharville plays the traitor at Aix-la-Chapelle,

Mouton at Brussels, Valence at Bréda, Neuilly at Limbourg, Miranda

at Maëstricht; Stengel, Lanoue, Ligonnier, Menou, Dillon, traitors

all,--hideous coin of Dumouriez. Examples are needed. I am suspicious

of Custine's countermarches. I am inclined to believe that he preferred

the lucrative capture of Frankfort to the more useful one of Coblentz.

Suppose that Frankfort is able to pay a war indemnity of four

millions,--what is that in comparison with crushing a nest of Émigrés?

I call it treason. Meunier died on the 13th of June, and Kléber is

now alone. Meanwhile Brunswick gains strength and marches onward.

He raises the German flag in every French place that he captures.

The Margrave of Brandenburg is to-day the arbiter of Europe; he is

pocketing our provinces; you will soon see him appropriating Belgium;

one might think that we were working for Berlin; and if this continues,

and we take no means to prevent it, the French Revolution will result

in the aggrandizement of Potsdam. Its chief consequence will be the

advancement of the little State of Frederick II., and we shall have

killed the King of France for the benefit of the King of Prussia."

[Illustration 043]

Here Danton, terrible in his wrath, burst into a fit of laughter, which

made Marat smile.

"You have each your hobby. Yours, Danton, is Prussia, and yours,

Robespierre, is the Vendée. I will also mention a few facts. You

do not see the real danger which is centred in the cafés and the

gaming-houses: the Café de Choiseul is Jacobin; the Café Patin,

royalist; the Café Rendez-Vous attacks the National Guard, and the Café

de la Porte Saint-Martin defends it; the Café de la Régence is opposed

to Brissot, the Café Corazza favors him; the Café Procope swears by

Diderot, and the Café du Théâtre Français by Voltaire; at the Rotonde

they tear up the assignats; the Cafés Saint-Marceau are in a state of

perfect fury; the Café Manouri is agitating the flour problem; at the

Café de Foy there is a perpetual racket and brawling, and at the Perron

the hornets of finance are buzzing. All this is a serious matter."

[Illustration 044]

Danton no longer laughed, but Marat still continued to smile. The smile

of a dwarf is worse than the laugh of a giant.

"Are you sneering, Marat?" growled Danton.

[Illustration 045]

Marat twitched his hip convulsively,--that motion peculiar to himself

which has been so often described,--and his smile died away.

"Ah, I recognize you, Citizen Danton. You are the man who in full

convention called me 'that individual Marat.' Listen: I forgive you.

We are in times when men play the fool. Sneering, did you say? What

kind of a man do you think I am? I have denounced Chazot, Pétion,

Kersaint, Mouton, Dufriche-Valazé, Ligonnier, Menou, Banneville,

Gensonné, Biron, Lidon, and Chambon. Was I wrong? I scent the treason

of the traitor before the deed is done, and I find it useful to

denounce the criminal in advance. It is my habit to say in the evening

what the rest of you say the next day. I am the man who proposed to

the Assembly a complete scheme for criminal legislation. What have I

done up to the present moment? I asked to have the sections instructed

that they might be disciplined for revolution; I had the seals of

thirty-two boxes broken; I reclaimed the diamonds placed in the hands

of Roland; I proved that the Brissotins had given to the Committee of

General Safety blank warrants; I noted certain omissions in Lindet's

report concerning the crimes of Capet; I voted for the execution

of the tyrant in the course of twenty-four hours; I defended the

battalions of Mauconseil and the Républicain; I prevented the reading

of Narbonne's and Malouet's letters; I motioned in favor of the wounded

soldiers; I caused the suppression of the Committee of Six; I foresaw

the treason of Dumouriez in the affair of Mons; I demanded to have one

hundred thousand relatives of the refugees taken as hostages for the

commissioners delivered to the enemy; I proposed to declare traitor

any representative who crossed the frontier; I unmasked the faction

of Roland in the disturbances at Marseilles; I insisted that a price

should be set on the head of Égalité's son; I defended Bouchotte; I

called for a nominal vote to expel Isnard from the chair.

[Illustration 046]

It was I who instigated the declaration that Parisians had deserved

well of their country; that is why Louvet calls me a dancing puppet,

and why Finistère demands my expulsion. For this the city of Loudun

wishes me to be exiled, and the city of Amiens proposes to muzzle

me, Coburg requires my arrest, and Lecointe-Puiraveau suggests to

the Convention that it would be well to pronounce me insane. Bah!

Citizen Danton, why did you ask me to come to your Conventicle if

you did not wish for my advice? Did I ask permission to belong to

it? Far from it. I have no inclination for a tête-à-tête with such

counter-revolutionists as Robespierre and yourself. However, I might

have expected this. You have not understood me,--neither you nor

Robespierre. Are there then no statesmen here? You need a spelling

lesson in politics, and some one to dot your _i_'s for you. This is

the meaning of what I told you,--you are both mistaken. The danger

comes neither from London nor from Berlin, as you two believe. It is

in Paris. It is in the absence of unity; in the right of every man to

pull his own way, beginning with you yourselves; in the levelling of

intellects; in the anarchy of will--"

[Illustration 047]

"Anarchy!" interrupted Danton. "Who is it that causes anarchy if not

yourself?"

Marat paid no attention.

"Robespierre, Danton, the danger is in this multitude of cafés, in

these countless gaming-houses, this crowd of clubs,--Club des Noirs,

Club des Fédérés, Club des Dames, Club des Impartiaux (which dates

from Clermont-Tonnerre, and which was the Monarchical Club of 1790,--a

social circle originated by the priest Claude Fauchet), the Club des

Bonnets de Laine, founded by the journalist Prudhomme, etc.; without

counting your Jacobin Club, Robespierre, and your Club of Cordeliers,

Danton. The danger is in the famine that made the porte-sacs Blin

hang François Denis, the baker of Palu market, to the lamp-post of

the Hôtel de Ville, and likewise in the justice that hung porte-sacs

Blin for hanging baker Denis. The danger lies in the depreciation of

the currency. One day on the Rue du Temple an assignat of a hundred

francs fell to the ground, and a passer-by, a man of the lower class,

remarked, 'It is not worth while to pick it up.' The danger comes from

the stock-brokers and the monopolists. Fine progress we have made when

we hoist the black flag over the Hôtel de Ville! You have arrested

Baron Trenck; but that is not sufficient. I want to see you wring the

neck of that old prison intriguer. Do you think that the business is

accomplished because the President of the Convention places a civic

crown on the head of Labertèche, who received forty-one sabre-thrusts

at Jemmapes, and of whom Chénier makes himself the showman? Comedies

and idle shows! Ah, you take no heed of Paris! You are looking for

danger at a distance, when it is close at hand. Of what use are your

police, Robespierre? You have your spies,--Payan in the Commune,

Coffinhal at the Revolutionary Tribunal, David in the Committee of

Public Safety, Couthon in the Committee of Public Well-being. You

perceive that I am well informed. Now, then, learn this: The danger

is hanging over your heads and rising beneath your feet. Conspiracies!

conspiracies! conspiracies! The people passing along the streets read

the papers to one another, and nod their heads significantly; six

thousand men having no civic papers--the returned Émigrés, Muscadins,

and Mathevons--are hidden in the cellars and garrets and in the wooden

galleries of the Palais Royal; they are ranged in files in front of the

bake-shops; women stand on the door-sills, and clasping their hands,

cry, 'When shall we have peace?' It is of no use to close the doors

of the Executive Committee against the public. Every word you utter

is known; and as a proof, Robespierre, I will repeat the words you

spoke last night to Saint-Just: 'Barbaroux's paunch grows apace; that

will inconvenience him in his flight.' Danger, I tell you, lurks on

every side, but chiefly in the centre. In Paris, while the ci-devants

are weaving their plots the patriots go barefoot; the aristocrats

arrested on the 9th of March are already released; the fine private

horses that bespatter us with mud in the streets ought to be harnessed

to the cannons on the frontier; a loaf of bread weighing four pounds

is sold for three francs and twelve sous; indecent plays are given on

the stage; and Robespierre will sooner or later send Danton to the

guillotine."

"Phew!" exclaimed Danton.

Robespierre was attentively studying the map.

"What we need is a dictator!" cried Marat, fiercely. "You know,

Robespierre, that I want a dictator."

Robespierre raised his head. "Yes, I know, Marat, it must be either you

or I."

"I or you, you mean," retorted Marat.

"The dictatorship,--I advise you to try it!" grumbled Danton between

his closed teeth.

Marat perceived Danton's frown.

"Stop," he said. "Let us make one last effort to come to an agreement.

The situation is well worth it. Was there not an understanding for the

31st of May? The question of mutual agreement is even more important

than Girondism, which is a matter of detail. There is a certain amount

of truth in your statements; but truth itself, the whole truth, the

real truth, lies in, I say, Federalism in the south, Royalism in the

West, a deadly struggle between the Convention and the Commune in

Paris, and on the frontier the backsliding of Custine and the treason

of Dumouriez. What will be the result? The end will be nothing less

than dismemberment. And what do we require? Unity. Therein lies our

salvation. But we have no time to lose. Paris must undertake the

control of the Revolution. If we waste one hour, the Vendeans may be

in Orleans to-morrow, and the Prussians in Paris. I grant one thing to

you, Danton, and another to Robespierre. So be it. And the conclusion

must be dictatorship. Let us, we three who represent the Revolution,

grasp the dictatorship. We are the three heads of Cerberus. One is a

talking head, and that is you, Robespierre; the second head does the

roaring, and that is you, Danton--"

"And the other bites, and that is you, Marat," said Danton.

"All three bite," said Robespierre.

For a time there was silence; then this dialogue full of gloomy and

violent utterances proceeded.

"Listen, Marat; people should know each other before they marry. How

did you find out what I said to Saint-Just yesterday?"

"That is my affair, Robespierre."

"Marat!"

"It is my duty to gain information."

"Marat!"

"I like to know what is going on."

"Marat!"

"Robespierre, I know what you say to Saint-Just, as I know what Danton

says to Lacroix; I know what happens on the quay of the Théatins, at

the Hôtel Labriffe, a den frequented by the nymphs of the Emigration,

as well as I know what is going on at the house of Thilles, near

Gonesse, which now belongs to Valmerange, the former administrator

of the postal service, where Maury and Cazalès were in the habit of

going,--a house which Sieyès and Vergniaud have since frequented, and

where at the present time a certain person goes once a week."

In saying a certain person, Marat looked significantly at Danton.

"If I had but two farthings' worth of power, this would be terrible,"

cried Danton.

[Illustration 048]

"I know what you say, Robespierre," continued Marat, "just as I knew

what was going on in the tower of the Temple when they were fattening

Louis XVI.; and the wolf, the she-wolf, and the cubs, during the month

of September alone, devoured eighty-six baskets of peaches. At that

time the nation was starving. I know it, as I know that Roland was

concealed in a lodging looking out on a back-yard, in the Rue de la

Harpe; as I know that six hundred pikes used on the 14th of July were

manufactured by Faure, the locksmith of the Duke of Orleans; as I know

what they do at the house of Saint-Hilaire, the mistress of Sillery.

On the days when there is to be a ball, old Sillery himself chalks the

parquet floors of the yellow salon in the Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins;

Buzot and Kersaint dined there; Saladin dined there on the 27th, and

with whom do you guess, Robespierre? With your friend Lasource."

"Idle talk," muttered Robespierre; "Lasource is not my friend."

He added thoughtfully,--

"In the mean time there are eighteen manufactories of false assignats

in London."

Marat went on in a voice calm but somewhat tremulous, an ominous sign

with him,--

"You are the faction of the All-Importants. Yes, I know everything, in

spite of what Saint-Just calls the silence of State--"

Marat emphasized this word, looked at Robespierre, and continued:--

"I know the conversation that takes place at your table on the days

when Lebas invites David to eat the food prepared by his betrothed,

Élisabeth Duplay, your future sister-in-law, Robespierre. I am the

all-seeing eye of the people, and from the depths of my cave I observe.

Yes, I hear, I see, and I know. You are contented with small things.

You admire yourself. Robespierre shows himself off before his Madame de

Chalabre, the daughter of the Marquis who played whist with Louis XV.

on the evening of Damiens' execution. Yes, heads are carried high in

these days. Saint-Just never unbends; Legendre is a scrupulous devotee

to fashion, with his new frock-coat and white waistcoat, and a frill,

that people may forget his apron. Robespierre imagines that history

will be interested to know that he wore an olive-colored coat _à la

Constitution_, and a sky-blue coat _à la Convention._ He hangs his

portrait on every wall around his room--"

Robespierre interrupted him in a voice even more quiet than that of

Marat himself:--

"And you drag yours through all the sewers, Marat."

They continued this conversation in tones whose very deliberation

emphasized the violence of the attacks and retorts, and added a certain

irony to the implied threats.

"Robespierre, you called those who are in favor of the abolition of

monarchy the Don Quixotes of mankind."

"And you, Marat, after the 4th of August, in No. 559 of your 'Ami du

Peuple,'--you see, I remember the number, a useful item,--you requested

to have the titles of the nobles restored to them. You said: 'Once a

Duke, always a Duke.'"

"Robespierre, in the session of the 7th of December you defended

Roland's wife against Viard."

"Just as my brother defended you, Marat, when you were attacked at the

Jacobins'. What does that prove? Nothing at all."

"Robespierre! we all know the cabinet at the Tuileries where you said

to Garas: 'I am tired of the Revolution.'"

"Marat, in this very ale-house, on the 20th of October, you embraced

Barbaroux."

"And you said to Buzot, Robespierre, 'What does the Republic signify?'"

"Marat, you invited three men from Marseilles to breakfast with you

here in this ale-house."

"Robespierre, you go about escorted by a strong fellow from the market

armed with a club."

"And you, Marat, on the eve of the 10th of August,--you asked Buzot to

assist you in escaping to Marseilles disguised as a jockey."

"During the prosecutions of September you took good care to hide

yourself, Robespierre."

"And you, Marat, were not backward in making a display of yourself."

"Robespierre, you flung the red cap on the ground."

"Yes, when a traitor hoisted it. Dumouriez defiles Robespierre."

"Robespierre, you refused to throw a veil over the head of Louis XVI.

when Chateauvieux' soldiers were passing."

"I did better than veil his head; I cut it off."

Danton interposed, but it was like pouring oil upon the flames.

"Robespierre, Marat, calm yourselves," he said. Marat did not like to

be mentioned in the second place. He turned round.

"What affair is this of Danton?"

"What affair of mine? I will tell you. There must be no fratricides;

we must have no strife between two men, both of whom serve the people.

It is enough to have to deal with foreign and civil wars, and it would

be too much if we were to have a family conflict. It is I who made the

Revolution, and I do not choose to have it destroyed. This is why I

feel called upon to interfere."

Marat replied, without raising his voice,--

"You had better be attending to the settlement of your own accounts."

"My accounts!" cried Danton. "Go ask for them in the passes of Argonne,

in Champagne delivered, in Belgium conquered, in the armies where I

have exposed my breast four times already to the grape-shot! Inquire in

the Place de la Révolution, on the scaffold of the 21st of January, of

the throne lying on the ground, of the guillotine, that widow--"

Here Marat broke forth, interrupting Danton,--

"The guillotine is a virgin who gives death unto men, but not life."

"What do you know about it? I will make her fruitful."

"We shall see."

And he smiled.

Danton saw the smile.

"Marat," he cried, "you are the man who prefers to hide; I am a man who

rejoices in broad daylight, in the open air. I despise the life of a

reptile. It would not suit me to be a woodlouse. You live in a cave; I

live in the street. You hold no communication with mankind; the chance

passer-by may see and speak with me."

"Handsome youth! Will you ascend to my abode?" growled Marat.

And no longer smiling, he continued in a peremptory tone:--

"Danton, give an account of the thirty-three thousand crowns cash, that

were paid you by that Montmorin in the name of the king, under the

pretext of indemnifying you for the post of solicitor of the Châtelet."

"I belonged to the 14th of July," said Danton, haughtily.

"And the Garde-meuble? And the crown diamonds?"

"I was also of the 6th of October."

"And the thefts of your _alter ego_, Lacroix, in Belgium?"

"I was of the 20th of June."

"And the loans to Montansier?"

"I influenced the people to bring about the return from Varennes."

"And the Opera House built with the money that you furnished?"

"I armed the sections of Paris."

"And the hundred thousand livres in secret funds of the Ministère de la

Justice?"

"The 10th of August was my work."

"And the two millions secret expenses of the Assembly, a quarter of

which fell to your share?"

"I arrested the progress of the enemy, and barred the road to the

allied kings."

"Prostitute!" cried Marat.

Danton was terrible in his wrath.

"Yes," he cried; "you have spoken the word! I have sold my virtue, but

I saved the world!"

Robespierre meanwhile continued to bite his nails. He could neither

laugh nor smile. He possessed not the lightning-like laughter of

Danton, nor the sting of Marat's smile.

Danton continued,--

"I am like the ocean: I have my flood and ebb. When the tide is low you

can see the shoals; but at high tide you see only the waves."

"What one might call your froth," said Marat.

"My tempest, rather," replied Danton.

They both sprang to their feet, and Marat burst forth; the adder

suddenly assumed the shape of a dragon.

"Ah, Robespierre! ah, Danton!" he exclaimed, "you will not listen to

me. I tell you, you are lost! Your policy brings you up against a wall!

Every issue is closed to you, and you go on committing deeds that will

finally leave you with no outlet save that of the grave."

"In that lies the very essence of our greatness," said Danton,

shrugging his shoulders.

Marat went on:--

"Danton, beware! Vergniaud has a wide mouth, thick lips, and frowning

brows, like yourself. He is also pitted, like you and Mirabeau. Yet

this did not prevent the 31st of May. Ah, you shrug your shoulders! A

shrug of the shoulders has been known to cost a man his head. I tell

you, Danton, your loud voice, your loose cravat, your top-boots, your

late suppers, your ample pockets,--Louisette will have something to say

about all that."

Louisette was Marat's pet name for the guillotine.

He continued:--

"And as for you, Robespierre, you are a Moderate; but that will avail

you nothing. Go on; powder and dress your hair, brush your clothes,

play the coxcomb, wear fine linen, be a model of propriety, frizzed

and bedizened; sooner or later you will go to the Place de Grève; read

Brunswick's proclamation, and make up your mind to be treated like the

regicide Damiens, and you are arrayed in fine style to be drawn and

quartered."

"Echo of Coblentz!" muttered Robespierre between his teeth.

"Robespierre, I echo no one. I am the cry of the whole world. Ah, you

are young, both of you! How old are you, Danton? Thirty-four. And you,

Robespierre? Thirty-three. Well, as for myself, I have lived from

the beginning of time. I am the embodiment of the ancient misery of

mankind. I am six thousand years old."

"That is true," replied Danton; "for six thousand years Cain has been

preserved in hatred, like a toad in a stone. The stone breaks, and Cain

leaps forth among men, to be known as Marat."

"Danton!" cried Marat; and a livid glare shone in his eyes.

"Well, what is it?" said Danton.

Thus conversed these three terrible men,--conflicting thunderbolts!

III.

A QUIVERING OF THE INMOST FIBRES.

[Illustration 050]

The conversation ceased for a time. Each Titan betook himself to his

own reflections.

Lions are disturbed by hydras. Robespierre had grown very pale, and

Danton very much flushed. Both shuddered. Marat's wild glare had died

out; calmness, imperious calmness, now rested on the face of that man,

feared by those who were themselves objects of awe.

Danton felt himself conquered, but was unwilling to yield.

He continued,--

"Marat talks loudly of dictatorship and unity, possessing all the while

a talent for destroying."

Robespierre opened his thin lips, and by way of supplementing Danton's

speech remarked,--

"I agree with Anacharsis Cloots. Give me neither Roland nor Marat."

"And I," said Marat,--"I say neither Danton nor Robespierre."

He gazed steadily at the two men, and then added:

"Let me advise you, Danton. You are in love, and think of marrying

again; let politics alone,--be wise."

And taking a step towards the door, he was about to take his departure,

with the ominous salutation,--

"Farewell, gentlemen."

Danton and Robespierre shuddered.

At that moment a voice was heard at the farther end of the room,

saying,--

"You are wrong, Marat."

All turned. During Marat's outbreak some one had entered, unperceived,

through the door at the back of the room.

"Is that you, citizen Cimourdain?" said Marat "Good-day."

It was Cimourdain.

"I tell you that you are wrong, Marat," he repeated.

Marat turned green, which was his way of growing pale, and Cimourdain

added:--

"You are useful, but Robespierre and Danton are indispensable. Why do

you threaten them? Let us have union, citizens. The people wish us to

be united."

This entrance was like a dash of cold water, or the arrival of a

stranger upon the scene of a family quarrel; it produced a calming

effect upon the surface, if it did not reach the depths.

Cimourdain advanced towards the table.

Both Danton and Robespierre knew him. They had often noticed, in the

public tribunals of the Convention, this obscure but influential man,

whom the people greeted with respect. Robespierre, however, always

ceremonious, inquired,--

"How did you get in, citizen?"

"He belongs to the Évêché," replied Marat, in an unusually meek tone of

voice.

Marat braved the Convention and led the Commune, but he feared the

Évêché.

This is a law.

Mirabeau, in some mysterious far-away depth, is conscious of the

existence of Robespierre. Marat, too, is aware of Hébert,--Hébert

of Babeuf. So long as the subterranean strata remain quiet, the

politician can move at his ease. But there is a sub-soil under the most

revolutionary, and the boldest men will quail when they feel beneath

their feet the movement which they themselves have started overhead.

[Illustration 051]

To be able to distinguish between the disturbance that springs from

covetousness and that which is founded on principle, to combat the

one and to aid the other, constitutes the genius and merit of great

revolutionists.

"Oh, citizen Cimourdain is not unwelcome," he said, as he extended his

hand to Cimourdain, adding:

"Parbleu! Let us explain the situation to citizen Cimourdain. He comes

in just in time. I represent the Mountain, Robespierre the Committee of

Public Safety, Marat the Commune; and Cimourdain represents the Évêché.

He will give us the casting vote."

"So be it," replied Cimourdain, in his serious and simple manner. "What

is the subject under consideration?"

"The Vendée," replied Robespierre.

"The Vendée," echoed Cimourdain, then went on:

"There lies the great danger. If Revolution expires, the Vendée will

have given it its death-blow. One Vendée is more to be feared than ten

Germanys. If France is to be saved, we must destroy the Vendée."

These words won Robespierre to his side; but still the latter put the

question,--

"Were you not formerly a priest?"

For the priestly aspect had not escaped his observation. He recognized

in another what he had within himself.

"Yes, citizen," replied Cimourdain.

"What does that matter?" cried Danton. "When priests are good they

are better than other men. In time of revolution priests are melted

into citizens, just as bells are melted into sous and cannon. Danjou

and Danon are both priests. Thomas Lindet is Bishop of Évreux. At the

Convention, Robespierre, you sit side by side with Massieu, Bishop

of Beauvais. The Vicar-General Vaugeois belonged to the Insurrection

Committee of the 10th of August. Chabot is a capuchin. Dom Gerle

devised the oath of the Tennis-Court. The Abbé Audran declared the

National Assembly superior to the king; the Abbé Goutte asked the

Legislature to remove the daïs from the chair of Louis XVI., and the

Abbé Grégoire instigated the abolition of royalty."

"A motion seconded by the comedian Collot d'Herbois. They two did the

business; the priest overturned the throne, the comedian deposed the

king!"

"Let us return to the Vendée," said Robespierre.

"Well, what is it?" asked Cimourdain; "what is the Vendée doing now?"

"This," replied Robespierre. "It has found a leader; it will become

terrible."

"Who is this leader, citizen Robespierre?"

"He is a ci-devant Marquis de Lantenac, who styles himself a Breton

prince."

Cimourdain made a movement.

"I know him," he said. "I was chaplain at his house."

He reflected for a moment, and then continued:

"He was fond of women before he became active in military affairs."

"Like Biron, who was a Lauzun," said Danton. Cimourdain added

thoughtfully,--

"Yes, formerly a man devoted to pleasure. He must be terrible."

"Frightful!" said Robespierre. "He burns villages, kills the wounded,

massacres prisoners, and shoots women."

"Women?"

"Yes. Among others he ordered a woman to be shot who was the mother of

three children. No one knows what became of the children. Moreover, he

is really a leader. He understands the art of warfare."

"True," replied Cimourdain. "When he was in the Hanoverian war the

soldiers used to say, 'Richelieu above, Lantenac below;' but the latter

was the actual general. Ask your colleague Dussaulx about it."

Robespierre remained for a moment absorbed in thought; then the

conversation between Cimourdain and himself was renewed.

"Well, citizen Cimourdain, this man is in the Vendée."

"How long since?"

"Three weeks ago."

"He must be outlawed."

"That has been done."

"A price must be set upon his head."

"That also has been done."

"A large sum of money must be offered for his capture."

"The offer has been made,"

"It must not be in assignats."

"Certainly not."

"But in gold."

"It has been so promised."

"And he must be guillotined."

"That shall be done."

"By whom?"

"By you!"

"By me?"

"Yes; you will be delegated by the Committee of Public Safety with

ample powers."

"I accept," said Cimourdain.

Robespierre was rapid in his decisions,--a states-manlike quality. He

took from the portfolio that lay before him a sheet of white paper, at

the head of which the following words were printed: "French Republic,

one and indivisible: Committee of Public Safety."

"I accept," continued Cimourdain. "Let the terrible encounter the

terrible. Lantenac is ferocious; I will be equally so. It shall be war

unto death with that man; I shall rid the Republic of him, if it be

God's will."

He stopped, then continued,--

"I am a priest; I believe in God."

"God has grown antiquated," said Danton.

"I believe in God," repeated Cimourdain, unmoved.

Robespierre gloomily nodded his approval, and Cimourdain continued,--

"To whom shall I be delegated?"

Robespierre replied,--

"To the commandant of the exploring division sent against Lantenac. But

I give you warning that he is a nobleman."

"That is another thing that excites my contempt," cried Danton. "A

nobleman? Well, what of that? It is all the same whether a man be a

priest or a nobleman; if he is a good man, he is excellent. Nobility

is a prejudice; but we ought to deal impartially with it, granting

both its merits and its demerits. Is not Saint-Just a nobleman,

Robespierre? Florelle de Saint-Just,--parbleu! Anacharsis Cloots is

a baron. Our friend Charles Hesse, who never misses a single session

of the Cordeliers, is a prince, brother to the reigning Landgrave of

Hesse-Rothenbourg. Montaut, Marat's intimate friend, is Marquis de

Montaut. In the revolutionary tribunal there is one juror Vilate,

who is a priest, and another Leroy, Marquis de Montflabert. Both are

trustworthy men."

"And you forget," added Robespierre, "the foreman of the revolutionary

jury--"

"Antonelle!"

"Marquis Antonelle," corrected Robespierre.

"And that Dampierre, who was lately killed before Condé by the

Republic," rejoined Danton, "was a nobleman; and Beaurepaire too,

who blew his brains out rather than open the gates of Verdun to the

Prussians."

"And in spite of all that," grumbled Marat, "on the day when Condorcet

exclaimed, 'The Gracchi were nobles!' Danton cried out, 'All nobles are

traitors,--beginning with Mirabeau, and ending with thee!'"

Here the serious voice of Cimourdain rose above the others:--

"Citizen Danton, citizen Robespierre, you may perhaps be justified in

your confidence; but the nation distrusts, and it has reason to do

so. When a priest is charged with the surveillance of a nobleman, the

responsibility is a double one, and it is the duty of the priest to be

inflexible."

"That is true," said Robespierre.

"And inexorable," added Cimourdain.

"Well said, citizen Cimourdain!" rejoined Robespierre. "It is a young

man with whom you will have to deal, and you will have the advantage

over him, from the fact that you are twice his age. He must be

guided, but with the utmost discretion, that he may not suspect it.

It seems that he has military ability; all reports are unanimous on

that point. He forms part of a corps which has been detached from the

army of the Rhine and sent into the Vendée. He has lately returned

from the frontier, where he distinguished himself by his bravery and

intelligence, and is now in command of the exploring division, which he

handles like an expert. For fifteen days he has held the old Marquis

de Lantenac in check. He restrains him, and at the same time compels

him to give way. He will end by forcing him to the sea and pitching

him into it. Lantenac has the cunning of an old general, while his

opponent possesses the boldness of a young captain. This young man has

already won for himself enemies and detractors, who are envious of him.

Adjutant-General Léchelle is jealous of him."

"This Léchelle wants to be commander-in-chief," interrupted Danton. "He

has only a pun in his favor,--it needs a ladder to mount into a cart.

Meanwhile, Charette defeats him."

"And he is not willing that any one else should defeat Lantenac," added

Robespierre. "The misfortune of the Vendean war is the existence of

these rivalries. Our soldiers are heroes led by inferior commanders.

Chérin, a mere captain of hussars, enters Saumur with trumpets,

playing _Ça ira_; he takes Saumur; he might go on and take Cholet,

but having received no orders, he pauses. Every position of command

in the Vendée ought to be reconstructed; the garrisons are scattered,

the forces dispersed; an army that is scattered is paralyzed; it is

like a rock crumbling into dust. Nothing but tents are left at Camp

de Paramé. Between Tréguier and Dinan there are a hundred useless

little encampments out of which a division could be formed to cover

the entire coast. Léchelle, supported by Parrein, robs the northern

coast under the pretext of protecting the southern, and thus exposes

France to the English. Half a million of peasants in revolt, and a

descent of England upon France,--such is Lantenac's plan. The young

commander of the exploring column presses his resistless sword against

Lantenac's loins, until he forces him to yield, and this without

asking leave of Léchelle. Now, Léchelle is his chief, therefore he

denounces him. Opinions are divided regarding this young man. Léchelle

would like to have him shot, and Prieur de la Marne wishes to make him

Adjutant-General."

"He seems to me to possess great qualities," observed Cimourdain.

"But he has one defect!"

This interruption came from Marat.

"And what is that?" asked Cimourdain.

"Clemency," replied Marat; and he went on: "He is firm in the assault,

but after the victory he shows his weakness. He grants indulgences,

he is too merciful and forgiving, he protects _religieuses_ and nuns,

he saves the wives and daughters of the aristocrats, he releases

prisoners, and lets the priests go free."

"A grave fault," murmured Cimourdain.

"A crime, you would do better to call it," said Marat.

"Sometimes," said Danton.

"Often," said Robespierre.

"Almost always," insisted. Marat.

"Yes, when one has to deal with the enemies of one's country it may

always be called a crime," said Cimourdain.

Marat turned towards the latter.

"And what then would you do with a Republican chief who would set a

Royalist leader at liberty?" he inquired.

"I should agree with Léchelle; I would have him shot."

"Or guillotined," said Marat.

"He might take his choice," said Cimourdain. Danton began to laugh.

"The one seems to me as good as the other."

"You are quite sure to have one or the other," muttered Marat; and

averting his eyes from Danton, he fixed them again on Cimourdain.

"So, citizen Cimourdain, if you caught a Republican chief stumbling,

you would have him beheaded?"

"Within twenty-four hours."

"Well," resumed Marat, "I agree with Robespierre; citizen Cimourdain

must be sent as a delegate from the Committee of Public Safety to the

commander of the exploring division of the coast army. What is this

commander's name, by the way?"

Robespierre, beginning to turn over his papers, replied,--

"He is a ci-devant nobleman."

"It is an excellent plan to set a priest to guard a nobleman," said

Danton. "Either one of them, singly and alone, I am inclined to

distrust; but when taken together, I have no fear of them: they keep a

mutual watch over each other, and go on very well."

The expression of indignation peculiar to Cimourdain's face grew more

pronounced; but doubtless aware that the observation was based upon

truth, he did not turn towards Danton as he lifted his severe voice.

"If the Republican commander intrusted to my care makes a false step,

he will suffer the penalty of death."

Robespierre, with his eyes still resting on his portfolio, said:--

"Here is the name; the commander in charge of whom you will be placed,

to conduct yourself in his regard at your own discretion, is a former

Viscount called Gauvain."

Cimourdain turned pale.

"Gauvain!" he exclaimed.

Marat observed Cimourdain's pallor.

"The Viscount Gauvain!" repeated Cimourdain.

"Yes," said Robespierre.

"Well?" exclaimed Marat, gazing steadfastly at Cimourdain.

There was a brief silence, broken by Marat.

"Citizen Cimourdain, do you accept the appointment of commissioner

delegate to the commander Gauvain, with the condition which you

yourself have laid down? Is it agreed?"

"It is," replied Cimourdain, with increasing pallor.

Robespierre took the pen that lay beside him, and in his slow and

regular handwriting traced four lines on the sheet of paper headed

"Committee of Public Safety." After signing it, he passed the pen and

paper to Danton, who signed; and the signature of Marat, who had not

once removed his eyes from the pale face of Cimourdain, was added to

the others.

Robespierre, taking back the sheet, dated it and gave it to Cimourdain,

who read on it the following:--

YEAR II. OF THE REPUBLIC.

Full powers are granted to citizen Cimourdain,

commissioner delegated from the Committee of Public Safety

to the citizen Gauvain, in command of the exploring

division of the army of the coast. ROBESPIERRE. DANTON.

MARAT.

And below the signatures: "June 29, 1793."

The revolutionary calendar, called the civil calendar, had no legal

existence at that time, and was only adopted by the Convention on the

5th of October, 1793, in response to the proposition of Romme.

While Cimourdain was reading, Marat continued to watch him. Then, in a

tone half-inaudible, as though speaking to himself, he said,--

"All this must be confirmed by a decree from the Convention, or by a

special resolution of the Committee of Public Safety. Something still

remains to be done."

"Citizen Cimourdain, where do you live?" asked Robespierre.

"Cour du Commerce."

"Indeed! Then you are a neighbor of mine. I live there also," said

Danton.

Robespierre continued:--

"There is not a moment to lose. To-morrow you will receive your formal

commission, signed by all the members of the Committee of Public

Safety. This is a confirmation of the commission accrediting you

specially to the acting representatives Philippeaux, Prieur de la

Marne, Lecointre, Alquier, and others. We know you; your powers are

unlimited. It rests with you to make Gauvain a general or send him

to the scaffold. You will receive your commission to-morrow at three

o'clock. When will you start?"

"At four o'clock," said Cimourdain; and they separated.

On returning home, Marat informed Simonne Évrard that he should go to

the Convention to-morrow.

[Illustration: The Convention. 052]

BOOK III.

THE CONVENTION.

[Illustration 053]

I.

THE CONVENTION.

I.

We are approaching the summit.

The Convention is before our eyes, and in the presence of this lofty

eminence the gaze grows steady.

Nothing more towering ever rose above the human horizon. There is but

one Himalaya, but one Convention.

The Convention may perhaps be called the culminating point in history.

During its lifetime--an assembly actually lives--one did not realize

what it was. Its supreme grandeur was not appreciated by its

contemporaries, who were too much terrified to be dazzled. Mediocrities

and moderate hills levy no severe tax on one's admiration; but the

majestic inspires a holy horror, whether it be the majesty of genius

or of a mountain, an assembly or a masterpiece. Too close proximity

excites alarm; every peak seems exaggerated, the ascent is fatiguing,

and one loses breath in climbing its sharp acclivities, misses his

footing on the slopes, and is wounded by the cragged surfaces, which

in themselves are beauties; the foaming torrent indicates the presence

of the chasm, the summit is veiled in clouds; whether ascending or

descending, it is equally frightful, hence one feels the influence of

terror rather than of admiration,--a kind of aversion to grandeur,

which is a strange enough sensation. While gazing on the abyss, one

cannot always appreciate its sublimity; the monster is more evident

than the miracle. It was thus that men first judged the Convention.

The purblind undertook to fathom an abyss whose depths could only be

sounded by the eagle.

To-day we behold it in the perspective outlining the granite profile

of the French Revolution against the calm and tragic background of the

far-away heavens.

II.

The 14th of July set the nation free.

The 10th of August hurled its thunderbolts.

The 21st of September founded a new era; for the 21st of September

was the equinox, the equilibrium, _Libra_,--the balance-scales of

Justice. According to the remark of Romme, the Republic was proclaimed

beneath this sign of Equality and Justice,--heralded, so to speak, by a

constellation.

The Convention is the first avatar of the people. It was the

Convention that turned the new and glorious page, introducing the

future of to-day.

Every idea requires a visible embodiment; every principle needs a

habitation; a church means the four walls within which the Almighty

has his dwelling-place; every dogma must have its temple. When the

Convention became a fact, the first problem was to locate it.

At first it was established in the Manège, but afterwards at the

Tuileries. Here they raised a platform and arranged scenery, painted

in gray, by David; also, rows of benches and a square tribune; there

were parallel pilasters, with massive plinths, and long rectangular

stems, and square enclosures, into which the multitude crowded, and

which were called public tribunes; a Roman velarium, and Grecian

draperies; and amid these right angles and straight lines the

Convention was installed,--a tempest confined within geometrical

limits. On the tribune the red cap was painted in gray. At first the

Royalists ridiculed this gray _bonnet-rouge_, this artificial hall,

this pasteboard monument, this sanctuary of papier-mâché, this pantheon

of mud and spittle. How quickly it was destined to vanish! The pillars

were made of barrel-staves, the arches of thin deal boards, the

bas-reliefs were mastic, the entablature was of pine, the statues were

of plaster, the marble was painted, the walls were of canvas; and in

this provisional shelter France has recorded deeds that can never be

forgotten.

During the early sessions of the Convention the walls of the Hall

of the Manège were covered with the advertisements with which Paris

swarmed at the time of the return from Varennes. On one might be read:

"The King returns. Whoever applauds him will be chastised; whoever

insults him will be hung." On another: "Peace. Keep your hats on your

heads. He is about to pass before his judges." On another: "The King

took aim at the nation, but his weapon hung fire. Now the nation has

its turn." On another: "The law! the law!" It was within these walls

that the Convention sat in judgment on Louis XVI.

At the Tuileries, now called the Palais National, where the Convention

had held its sessions from the 10th of May, 1793, the Assembly

Hall occupied the space between the Pavillon de l'Horloge, called

Pavillon Unité, and the Pavillon Marsan, called Pavillon Liberté. The

Pavillon de Flore was now called Pavillon-Égalité. The Assembly Hall

was accessible by the grand staircase of Jean Bullant. The entire

ground-floor of the palace below the first story, occupied by the

Assembly, was a kind of long guardroom, littered with the luggage and

camp-beds of the various troops mounting guard over the Convention. The

Assembly had a special guard of honor, called "the Grenadiers of the

Convention."

A tricolored ribbon divided the palace occupied by the Assembly from

the garden where the people passed in and out.

III.

Let us finish our description of the Assembly Hall. Everything

concerning this terrible place is of interest. The first object to

attract one's attention on entering was a tall statue of Liberty,

placed between two large windows. This hall, which was formerly

the king's theatre, had now become the stage of Revolution. It was

forty-two metres long, ten metres in width, and eleven in height. This

elegant and superb hall built by Vigarani for the use of the courtiers

was hidden beneath the rude timber-work which served to support the

weight of the people in '93. The only point of support upon which

this timber-work of the public tribunes rested, was a single post,

which well deserves honorable mention. This post consisted of one

solid piece, ten metres in circumference, and few caryatides have done

an equal amount of work; for years it bore the severe pressure of

revolution. It has supported applause, enthusiasm, insult, clamors and

tumults, the tremendous chaos of wrath, the fury of insurrection, and

never given way beneath its burden. After the Convention it witnessed

the council of the Ancients. On the 18th Brumaire it was relieved. At

that time Percier replaced this wooden pillar by columns of marble that

did not last so long.

An architect's ideal is sometimes peculiar; that of the architect

of the Rue de Rivoli was the curved path of a cannon-ball in its

flight; the architect of Carlsruhe conceived the ideal of a fan;

and the conception of the architect who built the hall where

the Convention established itself on the 10th of May, 1793, was

apparently a huge bureau drawer, for it was long as well as high and

flat. A great semicircle had been added to one of the long sides

of the parallelogram; this was the amphitheatre with seats for

the representatives, but neither tables nor desks; Garan-Coulon,

who wrote a great deal, used to write, resting his paper on his

knee; facing the benches was the tribune,--before it the bust of

Lepelletier-Saint-Fargeau, and behind it the president's arm-chair.

The head of the bust projected slightly above the edge of the tribune,

which afterwards was the cause of its removal.

The amphitheatre consisted of nineteen semicircular benches, rising one

above the other, some of which had been lengthened in order to fit into

the corners, by means of other benches cut off for the purpose.

In the semicircle beneath, at the foot of the tribunal, were the places

of the ushers, and on the other side of the tribune hung a placard

nine feet high, set in a black wooden frame, and bearing on its two

pages, separated by a kind of sceptre, the Declaration of the rights

of man. On the other side was an empty space which was afterwards

occupied by a similar frame, containing the Constitution of the year

II., with the two pages separated by a sword. Above the tribune, over

the head of the orator, from a deep loge divided into two compartments

and filled with People, floated three immense tricolored banners,

arranged in a horizontal position, resting on an altar upon which

could be read the following words: "The Law." Behind this altar rose,

like the sentinel of freedom of speech, an enormous Roman fasces as

tall as a column. Two colossal statues, placed erect against the wall,

faced the representatives,--Lycurgus on the president's right hand,

Solon on his left, with Plato towering above the Mountain. The statues

stood on simple wooden blocks, resting on a long projecting cornice

that encircled the hall, separating the people from the Assembly. The

spectators leaned their elbows on this cornice.

The black wooden frame enclosing the proclamation of the Rights of

Man reached to the cornice, interfering with the symmetry of the

entablature,--an infraction of the straight line that made Chabot

growl. "It is ugly," he said to Vadier.

The heads of the statues were decorated with wreaths of oak and laurel.

Green curtains, on which similar wreaths were painted in a deeper shade

of the same color, fell in heavy folds from the surrounding cornice,

draping the entire lower floor of the hall occupied by the Assembly.

Above this drapery the wall was white and bare. In this wall, as if

carved by a chisel, without moulding or ornament, were two stories of

public tribunes, the square ones below, the round ones above; according

to the rule-for the influence of Vitruvius was still acknowledge--the

archivolts were superimposed upon the architraves. There were ten

tribunes on each of the long sides of the hall, and two huge boxes at

both ends; twenty-four in all. There sat the assembled crowd.

The spectators in the lower tribunes overflowed their bounds, grouping

themselves on every projection along the cornice. A long iron bar,

firmly fastened at the point of support, served as a rail to the upper

tribunes, and protected the spectators from the pressure of the crowds

that ascended the stairs. Once, however, a man who was pitched suddenly

into the Assembly below escaped death by falling partly upon Massieu,

Bishop of Beauvais; whereupon he exclaimed, "Really, a bishop has his

use, then, after all!"

The hall of the Convention was large enough to contain two thousand

persons, and on the days of insurrections even three thousand.

The Convention held two sessions,--one during the day and one in the

evening.

The back of the president's chair was round, studded with gilt nails.

His table was supported by four winged monsters with a single foot,

who might have been supposed to have come forth from the Apocalypse

to witness the Revolution. They seemed to have been unharnessed from

Ezekiel's chariot to drag the tumbril of Samson.

On the president's table stood a huge bell, almost as large as a

church-bell, a big copper inkstand, and a parchment portfolio, which

contained the record of proceedings. The blood from many a severed

head, borne aloft on the end of a pike, has dripped upon this table.

Nine steps led to the tribune. These steps were high, steep, and

difficult of ascent; Gensonné once tripped in the act of mounting them.

"It is like the staircase of a scaffold!" he said. "It is well to serve

your apprenticeship!" cried Carrier.

In the corners of the hall, where the walls seemed rather bare, the

architect had placed Roman fasces as ornaments, with the axe bound on

the outside.

On the right and left of the tribune pedestals supported two candelabra

twelve feet high, each bearing four pairs of Argand lamps. For each

public box there was a similar candelabra; and on the pedestals

of these candelabra circles were carved, which the people called

"guillotine collars."

The seats of the Assembly, rising almost to the cornice of the

tribunes, gave the representatives and the people an opportunity to

chat with one another.

The exits of the tribunes opened into a labyrinth of corridors, often

echoing with wild and tumultuous sounds.

The Convention, outgrowing the limits of the palace, ace, overflowed

into the neighboring hotels of Longueville and Coigny. If we may credit

Lord Bradford's letter, it was to the Hôtel Coigny that the royal

furniture was removed after the 10th of August. It took two entire

months to empty the Tuileries.

The committees were lodged in the vicinity of the hall: those of

legislation, agriculture, and commerce at the Pavillon-Égalité; those

of the navy, the colonies, finance, assignats, and public safety, at

the Pavillon Liberté; the Committee of War was at the Pavillon-Unité.

The lodgings of the Committee of General Safety were accessible to

those of the Public Safety through a dark corridor, lighted night and

day by a lantern,--a passage-way for the spies of all parties, who came

and went, talking in whispers.

The bar of the Convention had been changed several times. Usually it

was at the right hand of the president.

At both ends of the hall the two vertical partitions that shut off the

concentric semicircles of the amphitheatre on the right hand and on the

left, allowed space enough between partition and wall for two long and

narrow passages closed at either end by square doors, which afforded

entrance and exit.

A door opening upon the Terrasse des Feuillants, and leading directly

into the hall, served for the admittance of the representatives.

This hall, ineffectually lighted during the day by windows, whose

insufficient glimmer was replaced by livid torches when twilight fell,

seemed ever shrouded in night. The lamplight sessions were lugubrious,

the artificial light seeming really to increase rather than diminish

the darkness. No man could see his neighbor; from all parts of the hall

indistinct groups of faces seemed to be mocking each other. People

passed one another without recognition. One day Laignelot, hastening to

the tribune, jostled some one in the descending passage. "I beg pardon,

Robespierre," he said. "For whom do you take me?" replied a hoarse

voice. "Excuse me, Marat," said Laignelot.

Below, one tribune on either Bide of the president was reserved; for,

strange to say, privileged spectators were admitted to the Convention.

The draperies of these tribunes--the only ones thus adorned--were

caught back to the middle of the architrave by golden cords and

tassels. The tribunes of the people were bare. The general effect

was stern, unconventional, and yet correct. The union of propriety

and fierceness is the essence of a revolutionary life. The Hall of

the Convention presented a perfect example of what artists have

since called the "messidor architecture." It was at once massive and

frail. The builders of that period mistook symmetry for beauty. The

Renaissance had said its last word under Louis XV., and a reaction had

set in. The standards of nobility and purity had been so exaggerated

that that which was really noble had degenerated into insipidity, and

purity itself had become inexpressibly wearisome. Prudery may exist

in architecture. After the dazzling orgies of form and color of the

eighteenth century, art had begun a system of diet, and allowed itself

only a straight line. This style of improvement resulted in ugliness,

and art was thereby reduced to a skeleton,--a phenomenal condition

which is the drawback to this kind of wisdom and abstinence; the style

is so strict that it becomes meagre. Apart from all political emotion,

the mere sight of this architecture made one shiver. Dimly recalling

the old theatre, with its garlanded boxes, its ceiling of azure and

crimson, its chandelier and girandoles with their prismatic reflections

glittering like diamonds, its dove-colored upholstery, the profusion

of cupids and nymphs on its curtain and draperies,--all that royal and

amorous idyl, painted, sculptured, and gilded, which once irradiated

this gloomy place with its smile,--and then casting one's eyes upon

these severe rectangular lines, cold and sharp as steel, made one think

of Boucher guillotined by David.

IV.

He who looked upon the Assembly utterly forgot the hall. He who

witnessed the drama was oblivious to the theatre. Nothing more

misshapen and at the same time sublime. A crowd of heroes, a herd of

cowards; wild beasts on the mountain, reptiles in the swamp. There all

those combatants, the ghosts of to-day, swarmed, elbowed each other,

quarrelling, threatening, fighting, and living out their lives.

A convocation of Titans!

[Illustration 054]

On the right the Gironde,--a legion of thinkers; on the left the

Mountain,--a group of athletes. Here might be seen Brissot, to whom

the keys of the Bastille had been delivered; Barbaroux, who ruled

the Marseillais; Kervélégan, who had entire control of the battalion

of Brest, quartered in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau; Gensonné, who had

established the supremacy of representatives over generals; Gaudet,

that man of ill-omen, to whom the Queen one evening at the Tuileries

had shown the sleeping Dauphin: Gaudet kissed the child on the

forehead, and beheaded the father; the chimerical Salles, who denounced

the intrigues of the Mountain with Austria; Sillery, the cripple of the

Right, and Couthon, the paralytic of the Left; Lause-Duperret, who,

upon being called a "villain" by a certain journalist, invited him to

dinner, saying, "Oh, 'villain' simply means a man whose opinions differ

from our own;" Rabaut-Saint-Étienne, who began his almanac in 1790

with these words: "The Revolution is over;" Quinette, one of those who

hastened the downfall of Louis XVI.; the Jansenist Camus, who compiled

the civil constitution of the clergy, believed in the miracles of the

deacon of Pâris, and prostrated himself every night before an image of

Christ seven feet high, nailed to his chamber wall; the priest Fauchet,

who, together with Camille Desmoulins, was instrumental in bringing

about the 14th of July; Isnard, guilty of saying, "Paris will be

destroyed," at the very moment when Brunswick was saying, "Paris will

be burned;" Jacob Dupont, who was the first man to proclaim himself "an

atheist," and to whom Robespierre replied, "Atheism is aristocratic;"

Lanjuinais, a stern, sagacious, and valiant Breton; Ducos, the Euryalus

of Boyet-Fonfrède; Rebecqui, the Pylades of Barbaroux, who tendered

his resignation because Robespierre had not as yet been guillotined;

Richaud, who was opposed to the permanency of Sections; Lasource, who

uttered the murderous apothegm, "Woe be unto grateful nations," and who

at the foot of the scaffold was to contradict himself by those haughty

words, flung to the members of the Mountain,--"We are dying because the

nation slumbers; when it awakes your turn will come;" Biroteau, who in

abolishing the inviolability of the crown unconsciously forged his own

axe and reared his own scaffold; Charles Villatte, who shielded his

conscience behind this protest: "I will not vote beneath the axe;"

Louvet, the author of "Faublas," who was to end as a librarian at the

Palais Royal, with Lodoïska at the desk; Mercier, the author of the

"Tableau de Paris," who exclaimed, "Every king felt of his neck on the

21st of January;" Marec, who had the care of the "faction of ancient

limits;" the journalist Carra, who at the foot of the scaffold said

to the executioner: "It is provoking to die; I should like to have

seen the result;" Vigée, who called himself a grenadier of the second

battalion of Mayenne-et-Loire, and who when threatened by the public

tribunes, cried, "I move that at the first murmur of the tribunes we

all withdraw, and, sabre in hand, march upon Versailles;" Buzot, who

was doomed to die of hunger, and Valazé, to fall by his own dagger;

Condorcet, who was to die at Bourg-la-Reine, or Bourg-Égalité, as

it was called at that time, betrayed by a volume of Horace that he

carried in his pocket; Pétion, whose fate it was to be adored by the

populace in 1792 and devoured by the wolves in 1794; and twenty more

besides,--Pontécoulant, Marboz, Lidon, Saint-Martin, Dussaulx, the

translator of Juvenal, who had made the Hanover campaign; Boileau,

Bertrand, Lesterp-Beauvais, Lesage, Gomaire, Gardien, Mainvielle,

Duplantier, Lacaze, Antiboul, and, foremost among them all, Barnave,

whom men called Vergniaud.

[Illustration 055]

On the other side, Antoine-Louis-Léon Florelle de Saint-Just, a youth

of twenty-three, whose pallid face, low forehead, regular profile, and

deep, mysterious eyes conveyed an impression of profound melancholy;

Merlin de Thionville, whom the Germans called "Feuer-Teufel"--the

fire-devil; Merlin de Douai, the guilty author of the Law of the

Suspects; Soubrany, whom the Parisians, in the riot of the first

Prairial, demanded for their general; the former curé, Lebon, who

now held a sabre in the hand that had once sprinkled holy water;

Billaud-Varennes, who foresaw the magistracy of the future, when

arbitrators would take the place of judges; Fabre d'Églantine, who

chanced upon the happy invention of the republican calendar, and Rouget

de Lisle, the composer of the Marseillaise,--no second inspiration ever

visited either of these two men; Manuel, the attorney of the Commune,

who had said, "A dead king is no less a man;" Goujon, who marched into

Tripstadt, Newstadt, and Spire, and who witnessed the flight of the

Prussian army; Lacroix, a lawyer transformed into a general and made

knight of Saint-Louis six days before August 10; Fréron-Thersite, son

of Fréron Zoïle; Ruth, the inexorable searcher of the iron cupboard,

predestined to a great republican suicide, who was to kill himself on

the day of the death of the Republic; Fouché, with the soul of a demon

and the face of a corpse; Camboulas, the friend of Père Duchesne, who

used to say to Guillotin, "You belong to the Club of the Feuillants,

but your daughter belongs to the Club of the Jacobins;" Jagot, who

replied to those who pitied the nakedness of the prisoners in those

savage words: "A prison is a dress of stone;" Javogues, the frightful

desecrator of the tombs of Saint-Denis; Osselin, himself a proscriber,

who sheltered one of the proscribed, Madame Charry, in his own house;

Bentabolle, who while presiding over the Assembly gave the tribunes

the signal for applause or disapproval; the journalist Robert,

Mademoiselle Kéralio's husband, who wrote: "Neither Robespierre nor

Marat comes to my house; Robespierre is welcome to come whenever he

chooses, Marat never;" Garan-Coulon, who, when Spain interceded on

the occasion of the trial of Louis XVI., had haughtily requested that

the Assembly should not condescend to read the letter of one king

pleading for another; the bishop Grégoire, who in the earlier part of

his career was worthy to have belonged to the primitive church, but who

afterwards, during the period of the Empire, renounced his Republican

principles; Amar, who said, "The whole earth condemns Louis XVI.; to

whom then shall we appeal for judgment? To the planets;" Rouyer, who on

the 21st of January opposed the firing of the cannon of the Pont-Neuf,

saying, "A king's head ought to make no more noise in falling than the

head of any other man;" Chénier, brother of the poet André; Vadier,

one of those who placed a pistol on the tribune; Tanis, who used to

say to Momoro, "I want Marat and Robespierre to embrace at my table."

[Illustration 056]

"Where do you live?" "At Charenton." "It would have surprised me had

you said elsewhere," was Momoro's reply; Legendre, who was the butcher

of the French Revolution, as Pride had been of the English Revolution.

"Come and be slaughtered!" he cried to Lanjuinais. To which the latter

replied: "First pass a decree that I am an ox, if you please;" Collot

d'Herbois, that gloomy comedian, wearing, as it were, the antique

mask with the double mouth, one of which said "Yes," while the

other said "No," approving on the one hand and blaming on the other,

defaming Carrier in Nantes and deifying Châlier in Lyons, sending

Robespierre to the scaffold and Marat to the Pantheon; Génissieux,

who asked that the penalty of death should be imposed on whosoever

should be found wearing a medal that bore the inscription, "Louis XVI.

martyred;" Léonard Bourdon, the schoolmaster, who had offered his

house to the old man of Mount Jura; Topsent, the sailor; Goupilleau,

the lawyer; Laurient Lecointre, merchant; Duhem, the doctor; Sergent,

the sculptor; David, the artist; and Joseph Égalité, the prince; and

others besides,--Lecointe Puiraveau, who called for a formal decree

pronouncing Marat "insane;" Robert Lindet, the troublesome author

of that devilfish whose head was the Committee of Public Safety,

and whose twenty-one thousand arms embraced France in the shape of

revolutionary committees; Leboeuf, on whom Girey-Dupré, in his "Noël

des faux-Patriotes," wrote this line:--

"Leboeuf vit Legendre et beugla."

Thomas Paine, the benevolent American; Anacharsis Cloots, the

millionnaire, a German baron, who although an atheist was still a man

of sincere purpose, and a follower of Hébert; the upright Lebas, a

friend of the Duplays; Rovère, one of those men whom one occasionally

meets, who indulge in wickedness for its own sake, a variety of amateur

more common than we might imagine; Charlier, who wished to address

aristocrats with the familiar "vous;" the elegiac and cruel Tallien,

who was to bring about the 9th Thermidor out of pure love of it:

Cambacérès, a lawyer, who finally became a prince; Carrier, another

lawyer, who turned into a tiger; Laplanche, who once exclaimed, "I

demand priority for the alarm-gun;" Thuriot, who wished the jurors

of the Revolutionary Tribunal to vote aloud; Bourdon de l'Oise, who

provoked Chambon to challenge him, denounced Paine, and in his turn was

denounced by Hébert; Fayau, who proposed to despatch an incendiary army

into the Vendée; Tavaux, who on the 13th of April acted as a sort of

mediator between the Gironde and the Mountain; Vernier, who suggested

that the leaders of the Gironde and the Mountain should be sent to

serve as common soldiers; Rewbell, who shut himself up in Mayence;

Bourbotte, whose horse was killed under him at Saumur; Guimberteau and

Jard-Panvilliers, the commanders of the army of the Cherbourg coast and

that of La Rochelle; Lecarpentier, who was in charge of the squadron of

Cancale; Roberjot, for whom the ambush of Rastadt was lying in wait;

Prieur de la Marne, who wore in camp his former major's epaulettes;

Levasseur de la Sarthe, who by a single word induced Serrent, commander

of the Battalion of Saint-Armand, to kill himself; Reverchon, Maure,

Bernard de Saintes, Charles Richard, Lequinio, and towering above them

all a Mirabeau whom men called Danton.

Belonging to neither of these parties, and yet holding both in awe,

rose the man Robespierre.

[Illustration: 057]

V.

Below crouched dismay, which may be noble, and fear, which cannot

fail to be contemptible. Beneath all these passions, this heroism

and devotion, this rage, might be seen the gloomy multitude of the

anonymous. The shoals of the Assembly were called the Plain, comprising

the entire floating element,--men who are in doubt, who hesitate,

retreat, temporize, mistrustfully watching one another. The Mountain

and the Gironde were the chosen few, the Plain was the crowd. The Plain

was summed up and expressed in Sieyès.

Sieyès was a man of a naturally profound mind, full of chimerical

projects. He had paused at the Third Estate, and had never been able

to rise as high as the people. Certain minds are constituted to rest

midway. Sieyès called Robespierre a tiger, who returned the compliment

by calling him a mole. He was a philosopher who had attained prudence

if not wisdom. He was a courtier, rather than the servant of the

Revolution. He took a spade and went to work with the people in the

Champs de Mars, hauling the same cart with Alexander de Beauharnais. He

urged others to energetic labors which he never performed himself. He

said to the Girondists: "Put the cannon on your own side." There are

philosophers who are natural wrestlers, and they like Condorcet joined

the party of Vergniaud, or like Camille Desmoulins that of Danton.

There are philosophers who value their lives, and those who belonged to

this class followed Sieyès.

The best vats have their dregs. Still lower even than the Plain was

the Marsh, whose stagnation was hideous to look upon, revealing

as it did transparent egotism. There shivered the timid in silent

expectation. Nothing could be more wretched. Ignominious to the last

degree, and yet feeling no shame, hiding their indignation, living in

servitude, cherishing covert rebellion, possessed by a certain cynical

terror, they had all the desperation peculiar to cowardice; they

really preferred the Gironde, and yet they chose the Mountain; when

the final result depended on them, they went over to the successful

side; they surrendered Louis XVI. to Vergniaud, Danton to Robespierre,

and Robespierre to Tallien. They put Marat in the pillory during his

lifetime, and deified him after his death. They showed themselves the

partisans of the very cause which they suddenly turned against. They

seemed to possess an instinct for jostling the infirm. Since they had

joined the cause with the understanding that it was a strong one, any

sign of wavering seemed to them equivalent to treason. They were the

majority, the power, and the fear. Hence springs the audacity of the

base.

Hence the 31st of May, the 11th Germinal, the 9th Thermidor,--tragedies

where dwarfs untied the knots of giants.

VI.

And among these passionate men were to be found others, fanciful

dreamers. Utopia was there in all its varied forms,--from the warlike,

which admitted the scaffold, to the mild, which would fain abolish

the penalty of death; a spectre or an angel, according as one viewed

it from the throne or from the side of the common people. Men eager

for the fray stood face to face with others who were contented

to brood over their dreams of peace. The brain of Carnot created

fourteen armies while Jean Debry was revolving in his head a scheme

of universal democratic federation. Amid this furious eloquence, amid

these howling and thundering voices, some men there were who preserved

a fruitful silence. Lakanal was silent, preoccupied with his system

for national public education; Lanthenas held his peace, absorbed in

his plans for primary schools; Revellière-Lepaux was silent, dreaming

of philosophy when it should attain the dignity of religion. Others

busied themselves with matters of minor importance and the details

of every-day life. Guyton-Morveaux was interested in the improvement

of the sanitary condition of hospitals; Maire in the abolishment of

existing servitudes; Jean-Bon-Saint-André in the suppression of arrest

and imprisonment for debt; Romme in Chappe's proposition; Duböe in

the filing of the archives; Coren-Fustier in the foundation of the

Cabinet of Anatomy and the Museum of Natural History; Guyomard in

the navigation of rivers and the damming of the Scheldt. Men were

fanatical about art, even monomaniacs on the subject; on the 21st of

January, at the very time when the head of monarchy was falling on the

Place de la Révolution, Bézard, the representative of the Oise, went

to see a picture of Rubens which had been found in a garret in the

Rue Saint-Lazare. Artists, orators, and prophets, giants like Danton,

and men as childlike as Cloots, gladiators and philosophers, were all

straining for the same goal,--progress. Nothing disconcerted them. The

greatness of the Convention consisted in its efforts to discover what

degree of reality there might be in that which men call the impossible.

At one end stood Robespierre with his eyes fixed upon the Law, and at

the other Condorcet gazing with equal steadiness on Duty.

[Illustration 058]

Condorcet was a man enlightened, but given to dreaming. Robespierre

possessed executive ability; and sometimes, in the final crises of

worn-out conditions, execution signifies extermination. Revolutions

have two slopes,--the one ascending, the other descending,--whereon we

meet at different stages each season in its turn, from the freezing to

the flowery; and each zone produces men suited to the climate, from

those who live under the hot rays of the sun, to those who dwell with

the thunderbolt.

[Illustration 059]

VII.

People pointed out to each other the bend in the left-hand passage,

where Robespierre whispered to Clavière's friend Garat that terrible

epigram, "Clavière a conspiré partout où il a respiré." In this

same bend, well adapted for privacy and suppressed indignation,

Fabre d'Églantine quarrelled with Romme, reproaching him for having

disfigured his calendar by changing Fervidor into Thermidor.

People pointed out the corner where, elbow to elbow, sat the seven

representatives of Haute-Garonne, who, being the first called upon to

pronounce their verdict upon Louis XVI., had thus answered, one after

the other: Mailhe, "death;" Delmas, "death;" Projean, "death;" Calès,

"death;" Ayral, "death;" Julien, "death;" Desaby, "death,"--eternal

reverberation that fills all history, and since the birth of human

justice has continued to send forth a funereal echo from the walls of

the tribunal. Amid this stormy sea of faces one man would point out

to another the individuals whose tragic votes had caused that fearful

din: Paganel, who cried, "Death. A king serves no purpose save by his

death." Millaud, who said, "If death had never been known, we must

to-day have invented it." Old Raffron du Trouillet, who exclaimed,

"A speedy death!" Goupilleau, who cried, "The scaffold, at once.

Delay but aggravates the pain of death." Sieyès, who with solemn

brevity uttered the single word, "Death." Thuriot, who, rejecting

the appeal to the people proposed by Buzot, said, "What! The primary

assemblies! forty-four thousand tribunals! an endless trial! The

head of Louis XVI. would have time to grow gray before it fell."

Augustin-Bon-Robespierre, who exclaimed, after his brother, "I ignore

that humanity which massacres the people and pardons despots! Death!

The demand for a reprieval means a substitution of the appeal to

tyrants for the appeal to the people." Foussedoire, who took the place

of Bernardin-de-Saint-Pierre, saying, "The shedding of human blood is

abhorrent to me; but the blood of a king is not human blood. Death!"

Jean-Bon-Saint-André, who said, "No nation can be free until the tyrant

dies." Lavicomterie, who expressed himself in this formula: "So long as

the tyrant breathes, liberty is strangled. Death!" Châteauneuf-Randon,

who cried, "The death of Louis the Last!" Guyardin, who suggested, "Let

him be executed at the Barrière-Renversée." The Barrière-Renversée was

the Barrière du Trône. Tellier, who said, "Let us forge a cannon of the

calibre of Louis XVI.'s head, to fire upon the enemy." And among those

inclined to mercy, Gentil was one, who said, "I vote for imprisonment.

He who makes a Charles I. makes a Cromwell likewise." Bancal, who said,

"Exile. I should like to see the first king of the earth sentenced to

earn his living at a trade." Albouys, who said, "Exile. Let this living

spectre wander round among the thrones." Zangiacomi, who said, "I vote

for imprisonment; let us keep Capet alive for a scarecrow." Chaillon,

who said, "Let him live! I do not approve of killing a man for Rome to

canonize." While sentences like these fell one after the other from

these severe lips, making their way into history, bedizened women in

low-necked dresses sat in the boxes, and with list in hand counted the

votes as they were given, pricking each name with a pin.

[Illustration 060]

Where tragedy has entered in, horror and pity remain. To see the

Convention, at whatsoever epoch of its reign, was to witness anew the

judgment of the last of the Capets; the legend of the 21st of January

seemed to be interwoven with all its acts; the formidable Assembly was

composed of those men whose fatal breath put out the ancient torch of

monarchy, which had burned for eighteen centuries; the decisive trial

of all kings in the person of one seemed to be the starting-point of

the great war which it waged against the past. At whatsoever session of

the Convention one might be present, the shadow cast by the scaffold

of Louis XVI. never failed to make itself evident. The spectators

told each other about the resignations of Kersaint and Roland, and

also about Duchâtel the deputy of the Deux-Sèvres, who, being ill,

caused himself to be carried to the Assembly, and on his death-bed

voted against the execution of the king,--an act which excited Marat

to laughter. People looked for the representative forgotten to-day,

who, after a session that had lasted thirty-seven hours, overcome by

fatigue, fell asleep on his bench, and being roused by the usher when

his turn came to vote, half-opened his eyes, murmured, "Death," and

fell asleep again.

At the time when the death-sentence of Louis XVI. was passed,

Robespierre had eighteen months to live, Danton fifteen, Vergniaud

nine, Marat five months and three weeks, and Lepelletier-Saint-Fargeau

one day! Brief and terrible was the breath of life in those days.

VIII.

The people had a window, opening on the Convention in the shape of the

public tribunes, and when this window proved inadequate, they opened

the door, and the street-population poured in upon the Assembly. The

invasions of the crowd into this senate presented one of the most

striking spectacles known to history. Generally these irruptions

were amicable. The street fraternized with the curule chair. But

friendship with a people who had once, in the course of three hours,

taken the cannon of the Invalides and forty thousand muskets besides,

was a somewhat formidable relationship. At every moment a procession

interrupted the session. There were deputations admitted to the bar,

petitions, expressions of respect, offerings. The pike of honor of the

Faubourg Saint-Antoine was brought in, borne by women. The English

offered twenty thousand pairs of shoes for our barefooted soldiers.

"Citizen Arnoux," said the "Moniteur," "the curé of Aubignan, in

command of the battalion of the Drôme, requests permission to march

to the frontier, and begs that his parish may be kept for him." The

delegates from the Sections came, bringing in wheelbarrows, dishes,

patens, chalices, monstrances, heaps of gold, silver, and gilt,

offerings to the country from this ragged crowd, who asked, as a

reward, permission to dance the Carmagnole before the Convention.

[Illustration 061]

Chenard, Narbonne, and Vallière came to sing stanzas in honor of the

Mountain. The section of Mont-Blanc brought the bust of Lepelletier,

and a woman placed a red cap on the head of the president, who embraced

her; "the citoyennes of the section du Mail" strewed flowers "before

the legislators;" the "pupils of the country," escorted by music, came

to thank the Convention for having "paved the way for the prosperity

of the century;" the women of the section of the Gardes-Françaises

brought roses; the women of the section of the Champs-Élysées presented

a crown of oak-leaves; the women of the section of the Temple came to

the bar and took an oath "to wed only true Republicans;" the section of

Molière presented a medal of Franklin which, by a formal decree, was

suspended from the wreath of the statue of Liberty; the Foundlings,

who had been declared the Children of the Republic, filed by, dressed

in the national uniform; young girls of the ninety-third section came

arrayed in long white gowns, and the next day the "Moniteur" contained

this line: "The president receives a bouquet from the innocent hands

of a fair young girl." The orators saluted the crowds and sometimes

flattered them, saying to the multitude; "Thou art infallible; thou

art irreproachable; thou art sublime." The lower classes are childlike;

they are fond of sugar-plums. Sometimes a riot would invade the

Assembly, entering in a fury and departing pacified, like the Rhone

flowing through Lake Leman, which is muddy enough on its entrance, but

flows out as blue as the sky.

[Illustration 062]

If it continued turbulent, Henriot would now and then order his

furnaces for heating the bullets to be brought up to the entrance of

the Tuileries.

IX.

While this assembly was throwing off the shackles of revolution, it was

also promoting civilization. It was a furnace, to be sure, but it was

likewise a forge. In this caldron where terror was bubbling, progress

also fermented. From that chaos of shadows and tempestuous whirlwind

of clouds spread immense rays of light parallel with the eternal

laws,--rays that have since rested on the horizon, forever visible

in the sky of the nations, and which are called justice, tolerance,

goodness, reason, truth, and love. The Convention proclaimed this

grand axiom: "The liberty of one citizen ends where that of another

begins;" thus summing up in two lines the essence of social science.

It proclaimed the sanctity of the poor, as well as of the infirm in

the persons of the blind, and of the mutes, whose guardianship had

been assumed by the State; it honored maternity in the person of the

girl-mother, whom it comforted and lifted up, childhood in the orphans

adopted by the State, and innocence in the accused, who was indemnified

by the government after his acquittal. It branded the traffic in

blacks and abolished slavery. It proclaimed civil consolidation. It

decreed gratuitous instruction. It organized national education by

the establishment of the normal school in Paris, the central school

in the cities, and the primary school in the communes. It founded

conservatories and museums. It systematized the Code as well as the

weights and measures, and the method of calculation by decimals. It

established the finances of France upon a firm basis, and brought about

an era of public credit after the long monarchical bankruptcy. It

established communication by telegraph, it provided almshouses for old

age and the improved hospitals for sickness; it gave the Polytechnic

School to the cause of education, the Bureau of Longitude to science,

and the Institute to the domain of human intellect. It was at once

cosmopolitan and national. Of the eleven thousand two hundred and ten

decrees issued by the Convention, the proportion of philanthropic as

compared with the political was as two to one. It proclaimed universal

morality to be the basis of society, and universal conscience the basis

of the law. And it must be remembered that all these reforms--the

abolition of slavery, the proclamation of universal brotherhood, the

protection of humanity, the elevation of the human conscience, the law

of labor changed into a privilege, thus transforming the burden into a

comfort, the consolidation of the national wealth, the enlightenment

and protection of children, the dissemination of knowledge and

science, a light set upon all the mountain-tops, help proffered to the

suffering, and the promulgation of all principle--were accomplished by

the Convention, with the Vendée gnawing like hydra at its entrails, and

the kings of the world leaping like tigers upon its shoulders.

[Illustration 063]

X.

Astonishing assembly! The human, the inhuman, and the

superhuman,--every type in short might be found there. An epic

accumulation of antagonisms,--Guillotin avoiding David, Bazire

insulting Chabot, Gaudet mocking Saint-Just, Vergniaud despising

Danton, Louvet attacking Robespierre, Buzot denouncing Égalité, Chambon

branding Pache: all hating Marat. And how many more names might yet be

registered! Armonville,--called Bonnet-Rouge, because at the sessions

he invariably wore a Phrygian cap,--a friend of Robespierre, who

demanded that the latter should be "guillotined after Louis XVI." to

restore the equilibrium; Massieu, a colleague and counterpart of the

kindly Lamourette, the bishop, destined to leave his name to a kiss;

Lehardy du Morbihan, stigmatizing the priests of Brittany; Barère,

the man of majorities, who presided when Louis XVI. appeared at the

bar, and who bore the same relation to Paméla as Louvet to Lodoïska;

the orator Daunou, who said, "Let us gain time;" Dubois-Crancé, who

listened to Marat's whispered confidences; the Marquis de Châteauneuf;

Laclos; Herault de Séchelle, who fell back before Henriot, crying,

"Gunners, to your pieces!" Julien, who compared the Mountain to

Thermopylæ; Gamon, who demanded that a public tribune should be

reserved exclusively for women; Laloy, who awarded the honors of

the session to Bishop Gobel, who came to the Convention to exchange

his mitre for the red cap; Lecomte, who cried, "So we pay homage to

the priest who unfrocks himself;" Féraud, whose head was saluted by

Boissy-d'Anglas, leaving to history the solution of the query, "Did

Boissy-d'Anglas salute the victim in the person of the head, or the

assassins in the form of the pike?" the two brothers Duprat, one a

member of the Mountain, the other a Girondist, who hated each other, as

did the two brothers Chénier.

[Illustration 064]

Many a word has been uttered in this tribune in moments of excitement

which has sometimes unconsciously to the speaker aroused the fatal

spirit of revolution, and so influenced the existing circumstances

that a sense of discontent and passion suddenly sprang to life. As if

displeased with what they heard, events seemed to take offence at the

words of men, and catastrophes were precipitated by human speech. The

reverberation of a voice in the mountain is sufficient to start an

avalanche. The utterance of one superfluous word may be followed by a

landslide, which might not have happened had no word been spoken. One

might almost fancy that events develop a certain irascibility.

Thus a mistaken word falling by chance from the lips of an orator cost

Mme. Élisabeth her head.

Intemperance of language was the rule at the Convention. In the

discussions threats flew back and forth, crossing one another, like

sparks from a conflagration.

_Pétion._ "Come to the point, Robespierre."

_Robespierre._ "You are the point, Pétion. I shall come; you need have

no fear."

_A Voice._ "Death to Marat!"

_Marat._ "When Marat dies, the city of Paris will be no more; and when

Paris is gone, there is an end to the Republic."

Billaud-Varennes rose to say, "We wish to--"

Barère interrupted him: "You speak in the plural, like a king."

And another day:--

_Philippeaux._ "One of the members drew his sword upon me."

_Audouin._ "President, call the assassin to order."

_The President._ "Wait."

_Panis._ "President, I call you to order,"--a sally followed by an

outburst of rude laughter.

_Lecointre._ "The Curé of Chant-de-Bout complains that his Bishop

Fauchet forbids him to marry."

_A Voice._ "I see no reason why Fauchet, who has mistresses, should try

to prevent other men from having wives."

_Another Voice._ "Priest, take to thyself a wife."

The tribunes mingled in the conversation, and said "Thou" to the

members.

One day the representative Ruamps mounted to the tribune, and, one

of his hips being much larger than the other, a spectator called out

to him: "Turn that one towards the Right, since you have a cheek _à

la David!_" Such were the liberties that the people took with the

Convention. Once, however, during the uproar of the 11th of April,

1793, the president caused a disorderly person in the tribunes to be

arrested.

One day, during a session at which the venerable Buonarotti was

present, Robespierre had the floor, and spoke for two hours, never

removing his eyes from Danton,--sometimes looking straight at him,

which was unpleasant enough, but when he looked at him sideways, it

was even more disagreeable. His thunders of eloquence were not without

effect, ending by an indignant outburst full of ominous words: "We

know the intriguers, and those who strive to corrupt, as well as

those who are corrupted; we know the traitors also. They are present

in this Assembly. They hear our voice, our eyes are upon them, and

our gaze pursues them. Let them look above their heads, and they will

discover the sword of the law; let them look into their conscience, and

there behold their own infamy. Let them beware!" When Robespierre had

finished, Danton, with his half-closed eyes turned upwards and one arm

hanging over the back of his chair, threw himself back and began to

hum,--

"Cadet Roussel fait des discours

Qui ne sont pas longs quand ils sont courts."

Imprecations fell thick on every side,--"Conspirator!" "Assassin!"

"Scoundrel!" "Seditious!"

"Moderate!" They denounced one another in the presence of the bust of

Brutus standing there. Exclamations, insults, challenges! Angry glances

interchanged, much shaking of fists, flashing of pistols and half-drawn

daggers. An awful outblazing from the tribune. Some talked as if

they were pushed up against the guillotine. Heads waved to and fro,

frightened yet terrible. The multitude was like a volume of smoke blown

all ways at once,--men of the Mountain, Girondists, Feuillantists,

Moderates, Terrorists, Jacobins, Cordeliers, and the eighteen regicide

priests.

All these men!--a mass of smoke driven about in every direction.

XI.

Spirits at the mercy of the wind,--but a wind of preternatural power!

It might be truthfully said, even of the chief among them, that to be

a member of the Convention was like being a wave of the ocean. The

impetus came from above. There was an inherent force in the Convention,

which might be called a will,--not in the sense of an individual

quality, but belonging to the Assembly as a body; and this will was an

idea, indomitable and boundless, which from the heavens above descended

into the darkness below. Men called it Revolution, and wherever it

passed, some men were overthrown and others exalted; one would be

scattered like foam, while another was dashed to pieces against the

rocks. It kept its goal well in mind as it drove the maelstrom before

it. To impute revolution to men is like attributing the tides to the

waves.

Revolution is a manifestation of the unknown. You may call it good

or evil, according as you aspire to the future or cling to the past;

but leave it to its authors. It would seem to be the joint product

of great events and great individualities, but is in reality the

result of events alone. Events plan the expenditures for which men pay

the bills. Events dictate, men sign. The 14th of July was signed by

Camille Desmoulins, the 10th of August by Danton, the 2d September by

Marat, the 21st of September by Grégoire, and the 21st of January by

Robespierre; but Desmoulins, Danton, Marat, Grégoire, and Robespierre

are merely clerks. The majestic and mysterious compiler of those grand

pages was Almighty God, wearing the mask of destiny. Robespierre

believed in God,--he did indeed.

Revolution is one form of the eternal phenomenon that circumscribes us

on all sides, and which we call Necessity.

In the presence of this mysterious complication of benefits and

wretchedness rises the wherefore of history.

_Because._ This answer may be the reply of one who knows nothing, as

well as that of one who knows all.

In the presence of these monstrous catastrophes which both devastate

and revivify civilization, one hesitates to sit in judgment on the

details. To blame or to praise men on account of the result is very

much like praising or criticising the ciphers on account of the sum

total. The inevitable is sure to happen; if the wind is to blow, it

will blow, but the eternal serenity remains untouched by these blasts.

Like the starlit sky above the tempest, truth and justice sit enthroned

above all revolutions.

XII.

Such was this immeasurable Convention, like an intrenched encampment of

the human race attacked simultaneously by all the powers of darkness;

the camp-fires of an army of ideas besieged by its foes, an immense

bivouac of human intellect on the slope of a precipice. Nothing in

history can be compared to this Assembly, which contained within itself

senate and people, conclave and street-crossing, Areopagus and public

square, tribunal and accused.

The Convention always yielded to the wind; but this wind came from the

mouth of the people, and it was the breath of God.

And to-day, after the lapse of eighty years, every time the Convention

presents itself to the mind of any man whomsoever, whether philosopher

or historian, he cannot but pause and meditate; since no man can be

indifferent to that grand procession of shadows.

[Illustration 069]

II.

MARAT IN THE GREEN-ROOM.

On the day following the interview in the Rue du Paon, Marat, according

to the intention which he had announced to Simonne Évrard, went to the

Convention.

There chanced to be present a certain marquis, Louis de Montaut, an

admirer of Marat,--the same who afterwards presented to the Convention

a decimal clock surmounted by a bust of Marat.

Just as Marat entered, Chabot approached Montant. "Ci-devant--" he said.

Montaut looked up.

"Why do you call me ci-devant?"

"Because that's what you are."

"I?"

"Of course, since you were once a marquis."

"Never!"

"Nonsense!"

"My father was a soldier; my grandfather was a weaver."

"What folly is this, Montaut?"

"My name is not Montaut."

"What is it, then?"

"My name is Maribon."

"Very well," declared Chabot; "it is all one to me."

And he added, between his teeth,--

"Every man, nowadays, pretends that he is no marquis."

Marat stopped in the left-hand corridor and looked at Montaut and

Chabot.

Whenever he came in, a murmur would pass through the crowd, but always

at a respectful distance; it was quiet in his immediate vicinity. Marat

paid no attention whatever. He scorned the croaking of the frogs.

In this dim shadow obscuring the lower benches, Conpé de l'Oise,

Prunelle, Villars,--a bishop who afterwards became a member of the

French Academy,--Boutroue, Petit, Plaichard, Bonet, Thibaudeau,

Valdruche, pointed him out to one another.

"Look! There is Marat!"

"He is not ill, then?"

"Probably he is, since he is here in a dressing-gown."

"In a dressing-gown?"

"Certainly."

"What liberties he allows himself!"

"That he should dare to come to the Convention in such a garb!"

"Since he came one day crowned with laurels, he might be expected to

appear in a dressing-gown."

"With his face of copper, and teeth of verdigris."

"His dressing-gown seems new."

"What is it made of?"

"A kind of rep."

"Striped?"

"Just see the lapels!"

"They are made of fur."

"Tiger-skin?"

"No, ermine."

"Imitation."

"He has stockings on."

"Remarkable!"

"And shoes with buckles."

"Silver buckles!"

"Camboulas' sabots will not soon forgive him that."

On the opposite benches they pretended not to see Marat, but continued

to talk of other matters. Santhonax accosted Dussaulx.

"Have you heard, Dussaulx?"

"What?"

"The ci-devant Count de Brienne."

"The one who was at La Force with the ci-devant Duke de Villeroy?"

"Yes."

"I knew them both. What about them?"

"You know they were so frightened that they saluted all the red caps of

the turnkeys, and one day refused to take a hand at _piquet_ because a

pack of cards with kings and queens was offered them."

"Well?"

"They were guillotined yesterday."

"Both of them?"

"Yes."

"Well, how did they behave in prison?"

"Like cowards!"

"And what sort of a figure did they cut on the scaffold?"

"Intrepid."

Whereupon Dussaulx exclaimed,--

"It's easier to die than to live."

Barère had begun to read a report on the subject of the Vendée. Nine

hundred men from Morbihan had started with cannon to relieve Nantes.

Redon was threatened by the peasants, and Paimboeuf had been attacked.

A fleet was cruising in the vicinity of Maindrin to prevent invasions.

From Ingrande to Maure the entire left bank of the Loire bristled

with Royalist batteries. Three thousand peasants had taken possession

of Pornic. They cried: "Vive les Anglais!" Barère read a letter from

Santerre to the Convention ending with the following words:

"Seven thousand peasants attacked Vannes. We repulsed

them, and they retreated, leaving four cannon in our

hands."

"And how many prisoners?" interrupted a voice. Barère went on,--

"Postscript. We have no prisoners, because we have ceased

to take them."[1]

Marat, as usual, stood motionless, paying no attention to what was

going on, apparently absorbed in deep preoccupation.

He held a paper in his hand, crumpling it between his fingers. Had it

been unfolded, certain words in the handwriting of Momoro, in answer,

no doubt, to some question of Marat, might have been read:--

"Nothing can be done in opposition to the supreme

authority of the delegated commissioners, especially

those of the Committee of Public Safety. Although

Génissieux said in the session of May 6th, 'Each

commissioner is more than a king,' it had no effect. Life

and death are in their hands. Massade at Angers, Trullard

at Saint-Amand, Nyon with General Marcé, Parrein in the

army of the 'Sables,' Millier in the army of Niort, are

all-powerful. The Jacobin Club has gone so far as to

appoint Parrein brigadier-general. Circumstances excuse

everything. A delegate of the Committee of Public Safety

may hold in check a commander-in-chief."

Marat ceased crumpling the paper, put it in his pocket, and walked

slowly towards Montaut and Chabot, who had continued their conversation

and had not seen him enter.

Chabot was just saying,--

"Maribon, or Montaut, listen to this: I have just left the Committee of

Public Safety."

"And what are they doing there?"

"They are setting a priest to watch a noble."

"Ah!"

"A noble like yourself--"

"I am not a noble," said Montaut.

"To be watched by a priest--"

"Like you."

"I am not a priest," said Chabot.

And both men began to laugh.

"Please give us a more definite account."

"Well, here is the tale: a priest, Cimourdain by name, has been

delegated with full powers to a Viscount Gauvain, who is in command of

the exploring division of the army of the coast. Now, the difficulty

is, to prevent the nobleman from cheating and the priest from

betraying."

"There will be no trouble about that. You have only to make death the

third party."

"That is what I came for," said Marat They looked up.

"Good-day, Marat," said Chabot; "we seldom see you at our sessions."

"My doctor has ordered baths," replied Marat.

"Ah, you had better beware of baths," continued Chabot. "Seneca died in

a bath."

Marat smiled.

"There is no Nero here, Chabot."

"I should say there was, since you are here," said a gruff voice.

It was Danton, who was passing on his way towards his seat.

Marat did not turn round.

He thrust his head in between the faces of Montaut and Chabot.

"Listen, I have come on serious business; one of us three must propose

the draft of a decree to the Convention to-day."

"I am not the man," said Montaut. "They pay no attention to me; I am a

marquis."

"Neither will they listen to me; I am a Capuchin," said Chabot.

"Nor to me, for I am Marat"

A silence ensued.

Marat, absorbed in his own thoughts, was not accessible to questions;

still, Montaut ventured upon one.

"What decree would you like the Assembly to pass, Marat?"

"A decree inflicting the penalty of death on any military chief who

allows a rebel prisoner to escape."

Chabot interposed.

"There is such a decree already; it was made a law at the end of April."

"That amounts to nothing whatever," said Marat. "Everywhere throughout

the Vendée prisoners are helped to escape, and any man may shelter them

with impunity."

"That is because the decree is no longer in force, Marat."

"It must be revived, Chabot."

"No doubt it needs to be revived."

"And to accomplish this we must address the Convention."

"There will be no need to do that, Marat; the Committee of Public

Safety will suffice."

"The object will be attained," added Montaut, "if the Committee of

Public Safety order the decree to be placarded in every Commune of the

Vendée, and make two or three suitable examples."

"Of men in authority," rejoined Chabot. "Of the generals."

Marat mumbled between his teeth, "Yes, I suppose that will answer."

"Marat," continued Chabot, "go and say that to the Committee of Public

Safety yourself."

Marat gazed steadily at him, which was not pleasant, even for a Chabot.

"Chabot," he said, "the Committee of Public Safety meets at

Robespierre's house; I do not visit Robespierre."

"Then I will go myself," said Montaut.

"Very well," replied Marat.

The next day a mandate from the Committee of Public Safety was sent in

all directions, ordering the authorities of the cities and villages of

the Vendée not only to publish, but also strictly to execute, a decree

awarding the penalty of death to all who were known to aid and abet the

escape of brigands and rebel prisoners.

This decree was but the first step. The Convention was to go still

farther than that. Several months later, on the 11th Brumaire, in the

year II. (November, 1793), when Laval opened its gates to the Vendean

fugitives, it decreed that every city that sheltered rebels should be

demolished and destroyed.

The princes of Europe, on their side, in the manifesto of the Duke of

Brunswick, suggested by the Émigrés and drawn up by the Marquis of

Linnon, steward to the Duke of Orleans, declared that every Frenchman

taken with arms in his hand should be shot, and if but a hair fell from

the head of the king, Paris should be razed to the ground.

Cruelty against barbarity.

[Footnote 1: Moniteur, vol. xix. p. 81.]

[Illustration: In the Vendée 066]

PART III.

IN THE VENDÉE.

BOOK I.

THE VENDÉE.

[Illustration 067]

I.

THE FORESTS.

[Illustration 068]

There were in Brittany at that time seven much-dreaded forests. The

Vendean war was a rebellion among priests, and the forest was their

auxiliary. The spirits of darkness help one another.

The seven Black Forests of Brittany were the forest of Fougères, which

bars the passage between Dol and Avranches; the forest of Princé, eight

miles in circumference; the forest of Paimpont, abounding in ravines

and brooks, and almost inaccessible in the direction of Baignon, with

an easy retreat towards Concornet, which was a Royalist town; the

forest of Rennes, whence could be heard the tocsin of the Republican

parishes, always numerous in the neighborhood of cities,--there it

was that Puysaye lost Focard; the forest of Machecoul, where Charette

dwelt like a wild beast; the forest of La Garnache, belonging to

the Trémoilles, the Gauvains, and the Rohans; and the forest of

Brocéliande, that had been appropriated by the fairies.

One nobleman in Brittany was called the _Seigneur des Sept-Forêts_, and

he was the Viscount de Fontenay, a Breton prince.

For the Breton prince was a creation quite distinct from the French

prince. The Rohans were Breton princes. Gamier de Saintes, in his

report to the Convention of the 15th Nivôse, year II., thus describes

the Prince de Talmont,--"That Capet of brigands, the sovereign of Maine

and Normandy."

The events that transpired in Breton forests from 1792 to 1800

would form a history in themselves, blending like a legend with the

stupendous affair of the Vendée.

There is truth in legend as well as in history, but the nature of

legendary truth differs from that of historic truth. The former may be

invention; but its result is reality. Both, however, have the same aim,

inasmuch as each strives to depict the eternal type of mankind under

the transitory specimen.

The Vendée cannot be fully understood unless legend is allowed to

supplement history; history must present the total effect, legend

describe the details.

We cannot refuse to acknowledge that the Vendée is well worth the

trouble, for it is a prodigy.

That War of the Ignorant, so dull and yet so splendid, so detestable

and at the same time so magnificent, was at once the despair and the

pride of the nation. In the act of wounding France, the Vendée covered

her with glory. There are times when human society presents enigmas

whose meaning becomes evident to the wise, while for the ignorant it

remains obscure, signifying nothing more than violence and barbarism.

A philosopher is slow to accuse. He takes into consideration the

disturbances caused by these problems, which never pass without casting

a shadow like a cloud.

He who would understand the Vendée must picture the antagonism of the

French Revolution on the one hand, and the Breton peasant on the other.

Face to face with these unparalleled events,--this tremendous

promise of every advantage at once, this fit of rage on the part of

civilization, this excess of infuriated progress, to be accompanied by

an improvement that could neither be measured nor understood,--stands

this serious and peculiar savage, this man with the keen eyes and long

hair, who lives on milk and chestnuts; whose ideas are bounded by his

roof, by his hedge, and by his ditch; who can distinguish each village

by the sound of its bells; who drinks nothing but water, yet wears a

leather waistcoat worked with silken arabesques,--a man uncultivated,

dressed in embroidered garments, who tattoes his clothes as his

ancestors the Celts used to tattoo their faces; who respects his master

in the person of his executioner; who speaks a dead language, which is

equivalent to keeping his mind in a tomb, goading his oxen, sharpening

his scythe, hoeing his black grain, kneading his buckwheat cake;

reverencing, first his plough, and secondly his grandmother; believing

in the Blessed Virgin, and in the White Lady no less; worshipping

before the altar, and also before the tall mysterious stone set up in

the midst of the moor,--a laborer in the plain, a fisherman on the

coast, a poacher in the thicket, devoted to his kings, his priests,

his lords, and to his very lice; a man of pensive mood, often standing

motionless for hours on the wide deserted shore, listening gloomily to

the sounding sea.

Is it then strange that this blind man failed to appreciate the light?

II.

MEN.

The peasant has confidence in the field that nourishes him, no less

than in the wood that serves to hide him. It is no easy matter to

conceive an idea of the forests of Brittany. They were cities in

themselves. Nothing could be more secret, more silent, or more

impenetrable than those tangled thickets of briers and branches

offering shelter, repose, and silence. No solitude could seem more

death-like and sepulchral; if one could, like a flash of lightning,

have felled the entire forest at a single stroke, a swarm of human

beings would have stood forth revealed within those shades.

Concealed on the outside by coverings of stones and branches were

wells, round and narrow, sinking at first vertically and then

horizontally, widening under the ground like funnels, and ending in

dark chambers. Wells like these discovered by Westermann in Brittany

were also found in Egypt by Cambyses,--with this difference, that

while the Egyptian caves in the desert held dead men only, those in the

forests of Brittany contained living human beings. One of the wildest

glades in the woods of Misdon, intersected by subterranean passages and

cells, wherein a mysterious population moved to and fro, was called "la

Grande Ville." Another glade, just as deserted above ground, and no

less populous below, was called "la Place Royale."

This subterranean life in Brittany had existed from time immemorial.

Man had there sought refuge from his brother man. Hence these

hiding-places, like the dens of reptiles, hollowed out under the trees.

They dated from the times of the Druids, and some of the crypts were as

old as the dolmens. All the evil spirits of legend and the monsters of

history passed over this gloomy land,--Teutates, Cæsar, Hoël, Néomène,

Geoffrey of England, Alain of the iron glove, Pierre Mauclerc, the

French house of Blois and the English house of Montfort, kings and

dukes, the nine barons of Brittany, the judges of the Great Days, the

counts of Nantes who wrangled with the counts of Rennes, highwaymen,

banditti, Free Lances, René II., the Viscount de Rohan, the king's

governors, the "good Duke de Chaulnes" who hung the peasants under

the windows of Madame de Sévigné, the seignorial butcheries in the

fifteenth century, religious wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth,

and the thirty thousand dogs trained to hunt men in the eighteenth.

During this wild trampling, the people made up their minds that it

would be better for them to disappear. One after the other, the

troglodytes seeking to escape from the Celts, the Celts from the

Romans, the Bretons from the Normans, the Huguenots from the Catholics,

and the smugglers from the excise officers, had sought refuge first

in the forests, then underground. It is thus that tyranny forces the

nations to the last resource of the hunted beast. For two thousand

years had despotism, in all its varied forms,--of conquest, vassalage,

fanaticism, and taxation,--hunted down this unfortunate and distracted

Brittany; it was like an inexorable _battue_ constantly changing its

method of attack. Men disappeared underground. While that terror which

is a sort of rage was brooding in human souls, and the dens in the

forests were in waiting for them, the French Republic sprang into

existence. Brittany, thinking this compulsory deliverance but a new

form of oppression, broke into open rebellion,--a mistake usually made

by enslaved peoples.

III.

CONNIVANCE OF MEN AND FORESTS.

Thus the tragic forests of Brittany once more resumed their ancient

rôle of servant and accomplice to revolution.

The subsoil of such a forest was like a madrepore pierced and

intersected in all directions by a secret labyrinth of mines, cells,

and galleries. Each of these hidden cells was large enough to shelter

five or six men; the only difficulty was in breathing. Certain

mysterious ciphers have been preserved that give us a clew to this

powerful organization of the peasant rebellion. In Ille-et-Vilaine, in

the forest of Pertre, where the Prince de Talmont had taken refuge,

not a breath could be heard, not a trace of human life was visible;

and yet Focard had there mustered six thousand men. In Morbihan,

in the forest of Meulac, not a man of all the eight thousand there

was to be seen. These two forests, le Pertre and Meulac, are not,

however, to be reckoned among the great Breton forests. It would have

been dangerous walking over their explosive soil. These treacherous

copses, with their multitudes of combatants lurking in a sort of

subterranean labyrinth, were like great black sponges, from which,

beneath the pressure of Revolution's giant foot, civil war gushed

forth. Invisible battalions were lying in wait. This army, unknown to

the world, wound its way along under the feet of the Republican armies,

leaping out of the ground at times in vast numbers, and disappearing

as suddenly,--possessing the power of vanishing at will no less than

the gift of ubiquity. It was like the descending avalanche that leaves

but a cloud of dust behind, colossi with a marvellous genius for

contraction, giants in warfare, dwarfs in flight, jaguars with the

habits of moles. Moreover, there were woods as well as forests. As the

village ranks below the city, so the woods, bear a similar relation

to the forests, which they serve to connect after the fashion of a

labyrinth. Old castles, fortresses once upon a time, hamlets that had

been camps, farms covered with ambushes and snares, divided by ditches

and fenced in by trees, formed the meshes of the net in which the

Republican armies were caught.

All this was called the Bocage.

There was the wood of Misdon, with a pond in its midst, held by

Jean Chouan; the wood of Gennes, held by Taillefer; the wood of La

Huisserie, held by Gouge-le-Bruant; the wood of La Charnie, held by

Courtillé-le-Bâtard, called the apostle Saint Paul, chief of the

camp of the Vache-Noire; the wood of Burgault, in possession of that

enigmatical Monsieur Jacques, who was to meet with a mysterious death

in the vault of Juvardeil; the wood of Charreau, where Pimousse and

Petit-Prince, when attacked by the garrison of Châteauneuf, captured

the grenadiers from the ranks of the Republicans in a hand-to-hand

encounter; the wood of La Heureuserie, which witnessed the defeat of

the military post of Longue-Faye; the wood of L'Aulne, whence the road

between Rennes and Laval could be watched; the wood of La Gravelle,

won by a Prince of La Tremoille in a bowling-match; the wood of Lorges

in the Côtes-du-Nord, where Charles de Boishardy succeeded Bernard de

Villeneuve; the wood of Bagnard, near Fontenay, where Lescure offered

battle to Chalbos,--a challenge accepted by the latter although they

were five to one against him; the wood of La Durondais, over which

Alain le Redru and Hérispoux, sons of Charles the Bald, quarrelled in

former times; the wood of Croque-loup, on the edge of that moor where

Coupereau used to shear the prisoners; the wood of La Croix-Bataille,

witness to the Homeric insults hurled against each other by Jambe

d'Argent and Morière; the wood of La Saudraie, which the reader will

remember was reconnoitred by the Paris battalion; and many others

besides.

In several of these forests and woods there were not only subterranean

villages grouped around the burrow-like headquarters of the chief,

but actual hamlets composed of low cabins hidden under the trees in

such numbers that the forest was often filled with them. Sometimes the

smoke betrayed their presence. Two among these hamlets in the forest

of Misdon have become famous,--Lorrière, near Létang, and the group of

huts called La Rue-de-Bau, in the direction of Saint-Ouen-les-Toits.

[Illustration 069]

The women lived in the huts, and the men in the caves. The galleries

of the fairies and the old Celtic mines were utilized for purposes

of warfare. Food was conveyed to the dwellers underground, and some

there were who, forgotten, died of hunger. They, however, were awkward

fellows, who had not sense enough to uncover their wells. This cover,

usually made of moss and branches, and arranged so skilfully that it

was impossible to distinguish it on the outside from the surrounding

grass, was yet easily opened and closed from the inside. A den like

this, known under the name of "la loge," was hollowed out with great

care, and the earth taken therefrom thrown into some neighboring pond.

The inside walls and the floor were afterwards lined with ferns and

moss. It was fairly comfortable, save for the lack of light, fire,

bread, and air.

To rise from underground and appear among the living without due

precaution, possibly to disinter themselves at an inappropriate

moment, would be a serious business. They might chance to encounter an

army on the march. Those were dangerous woods, snares with a double

trap. The Blues dared not enter, and the Whites dared not come out.

IV.

THEIR LIFE UNDER GROUND.

The men, wearied of living in these beasts' lairs, would sometimes

venture to come out by night and dance on the neighboring moor; or else

they said prayers, by way of killing time. "Jean Chouan made us say our

beads from morning till night," says Bourdoiseau.

It was almost impossible, when the season arrived, to prevent the men

of Bas-Maine from going to the Fête de la Gerbe. They clung to their

own ideas. Tranche-Montagne says that Denys disguised himself as a

woman, to go to the play at Laval; after which he returned to his den.

All at once they would rush out in search of death, changing one tomb

for another.

Sometimes they would lift the cover of their grave and listen for any

chance sounds of battle in the distance, following it with their ears,

guided by the steady fire of the Republicans and the intermittent

shots of the Royalists. When the platoon-firing suddenly ceased, they

knew that the Royalists had lost the day; but if the scattering shots

continued, receding into the distance, it was a sign that the victory

was theirs. The Whites always pursued; the Blues never did so, because

the country was against them.

These underground belligerents were wonderfully well-informed.

Nothing could be more rapid or more mysterious than their means of

communication. The bridges and wagons had all been destroyed, yet they

found means to keep one another informed of all that went on, and to

send timely warning. Messenger-stations of danger were established from

forest to forest, from village to village, from hut to hut, from bush

to bush.

A stupid-looking peasant might be seen passing along; he carried

despatches in his hollow staff.

Furnished by Boétidoux, a former constituent, with the modern

Republican passport, in which a blank space is left for the name,

bundles of which were in the possession of that traitor, they were

enabled to travel from one end of Brittany to the other.

It was impossible to take them by surprise. Puysaye[1] states that

"secrets confided to upwards of four thousand individuals have been

religiously kept."

It seemed as though this quadrilateral, closed on the south by the line

from Sables to Thouars, on the east by that from Thouars to Saumur as

well as by the river of Thoué, on the north by the Loire, and on the

west by the ocean, possessed a system of nerves in common, and that no

single part of the ground could stir without shaking the whole. In

the twinkling of an eye, they learned in Luçon what was going on in

Noirmoutier, and the camp of La Loué knew what was passing in the camp

La Croix-Morineau. It was as if the birds had carried the news. On the

7th Messidor, in the year III., Hoche wrote: "One might have supposed

they had telegraphs."

They formed clans, as in Scotland, and each parish had its own captain.

My father fought in this war, and I know whereof I am speaking.

V.

THEIR LIFE IN WARFARE.

[Illustration 070]

Many of them had nothing but pikes; but good hunting-rifles were

plentiful, and no marksmen were more expert than the poachers of the

Bocage and the smugglers of Loroux. They were eccentric, terrible, and

intrepid fighters. The proclamation of a decree to levy three hundred

thousand men was the signal for ringing the tocsin in six hundred

villages. The flames burst forth in all directions at once. Poitou

and the Anjou revolted on the same day. Let us remark that the first

rumbling was heard on the 8th of July, 1792, a month previous to the

10th of August, on the moor of Kerbader. Alain Redeler, whose name is

now forgotten, was the forerunner of La Rochejaquelein and Jean Chouan.

The Royalists forced all able-bodied men to march, under penalty of

death. They confiscated harnesses, wagons, and provisions. Sapinaud

at once assembled three thousand soldiers, Cathelineau ten thousand,

Stofflet twenty thousand, and Charette took possession of Noirmoutier.

The Viscount de Scépeaux roused the Haut-Anjou, the Chevalier de

Dieuzie the Entre-Vilaine-et-Loire, Tristan l'Hermite the Bas-Maine,

the barber Gaston the city of Guéménée, and the Abbé Bernier all the

others.

It required but little to excite the masses. A great black cat was

placed in the tabernacle of a priest who had taken the civil oath,--a

"priest-juror," as he was called,--whence it suddenly leaped forth in

the middle of the Mass. "It's the Devil!" cried the peasants, and a

whole district rose in revolt. Sometimes flames would be seen issuing

from the confessionals. For assailing the Blues and crossing the

ravines, they had sticks fifteen feet long, called the "ferte,"--a

weapon of defence, which was likewise available for flight. In the very

heat of the conflict, when the peasants were attacking the Republican

squares, if they chanced to see on the battlefield a cross or a chapel,

all fell on their knees and said their prayers under the fire of the

enemy; and after finishing the rosary, those who had not been killed

rushed upon the enemy. Alas! what giants were these! They loaded their

muskets on the run; that was their special talent. They could be made

to believe anything. Their priests showed them other priests whose

necks had been reddened by a tightly drawn cord, saying to them:

"These are the guillotined come to life again." They had their fits of

chivalrous emotion; they paid military honors to Fesque, a Republican

standard-bearer, who had allowed himself to be sabred without once

losing hold of his banner. These peasants were at times derisive;

they called the married Republican priests "sans-calottes devenus

sans-culottes."[2] At first they stood in awe of the cannon; but after

a while they dashed upon them with no other weapons than their sticks,

and captured several. The first one they took was a fine bronze cannon,

which they baptized "le Missionnaire;" another gun, dating from the

times of the Catholic wars, and which had Richelieu's arms and an

image of the Virgin engraved upon it, they named Marie-Jeanne. When

they lost Fontenay, they lost Marie-Jeanne, around which six hundred

peasants fell fighting with unflinching courage.

[Illustration 071]

Later, they recaptured Fontenay in order to recover Marie-Jeanne,

which they brought back under the fleur-de-lis flag, covering it with

flowers, and making the women who passed by kiss it. But two cannon

were insufficient. It was Stofflet who had captured Marie-Jeanne;

Cathelineau, envying him, left Pin-en-Mange, attacked Jallais, and took

possession of a third one. Forest fell on Saint-Florent and captured

a fourth. Two other commanders, Chouppes and Saint-Paul, were still

more successful. They manufactured imitation-cannon from the trunks

of trees, using manikins for gunners; and with this artillery, over

which they made merry, they forced the Blues to retreat to Mareuil.

At that time they were in the height of their glory. Later, when

Chalbos defeated La Marsonnière, the peasants left behind them on the

dishonored battlefield two cannon, bearing the arms of England. At

that time the French princes were paid by England, who, as Nantiat

writes on the 10th of May, 1794, "remitted funds to Monseigneur because

Mr. Pitt was told that it was the proper thing to do." Mellinet, in

a report of the 31st of March, says: "The cry of the rebels is,'Long

live the English!'" The peasants tarried for purposes of pillage, for

these devotees were thieves. Savages have their vices, and it is to

these that civilization appeals. Puysaye says: "Several times I have

saved the town of Plélan from pillage." And again he says that he

refrained from entering Montfort: "I made a circuit in order to avoid

the sacking of the houses of the Jacobins."[3] They pillaged Cholet;

they sacked Chalans; passing by Granville, they robbed Ville-Dieu. They

called the country-people who joined the Blues the "Jacobin herd," and

exterminated them more fiercely than they did their other foes. They

enjoyed carnage like soldiers, and revelled in massacre like brigands.

To shoot the _patauds_ was their delight. They called it breaking their

fast.

At Fontenay one of their priests, named Barbotin, killed an old man

with a blow from his sabre. At Saint-Germain-sur-Ille [4] one of their

captains, a nobleman, shot the solicitor of the Commune, and took his

watch. At Machecoul for the space of five weeks they made a practice of

slaughtering the Republicans at the rate of thirty a day. Each string

of thirty they called a rosary. Behind this row of men there was a

trench prepared, into which the men fell back as they were shot; and

when, as sometimes happened, a man was still alive, he was buried as if

he were dead. Such acts have been witnessed in our own times. Joubert,

president of the district, had his wrists sawed off. They had handcuffs

for the Blues made expressly to cut the flesh. They slaughtered them

in the public squares, sounding the halloo. Charette, who signed

himself, "Fraternity, Chevalier Charette," and who, like Marat, wore a

handkerchief knotted around his brows, burned the city of Pornic, with

the inhabitants in their dwellings.

Meanwhile Carrier was frightful. Terror answered unto terror. The

Breton rebel looked very much like the Greek insurgent, clad as he was

in a short jacket, with a gun slung across his shoulders, leggings,

wide trousers of a material not unlike fustian. The lads resembled a

Greek klepht. Henri de la Rochejaquelein went into this war at the age

of twenty-one, armed with a pair of pistols and a stick. There were one

hundred and fifty-four divisions in the Vendean army. They laid regular

sieges. The city of Bressuire was invested by them for three days. On

a Good Friday ten thousand peasants bombarded the city of des Sables

with red-hot cannon-balls. They succeeded in destroying in one day the

fourteen Republican cantonments from Montigné to Courbeveilles. On

the high wall at Thouars the following astonishing dialogue was heard

between La Rochejaquelein and a lad: "Fellow!" "Here I am."--"Lend me

your shoulders to climb up on." "Take them."--"Give me your gun." "Here

it is." And La Rochejaquelein leaped into the city, and thus without

the aid of scaling-ladders they captured the very towers once besieged

by Duguesclin. They valued a cartridge far beyond a gold louis. They

burst into tears whenever they lost sight of their village belfry.

To run away seemed to them the simplest affair in the world. At such

times their leaders would exclaim, "Throw away your sabots, but keep

your guns!" When munitions failed, they said their beads, and proceeded

to take the powder from the caissons of the Republican artillery; and

afterwards d'Elbée demanded powder from the English. On the approach

of the enemy they concealed their wounded in the tall grain, or among

the brakes, and came back for them after the engagement was over. They

wore no uniform, and their clothing was falling to pieces. Noblemen as

well as peasants wore any rags that came to hand. Roger Mouliniers was

arrayed in a turban and dolman taken from the ward-robe of the Théâtre

de La Flèche; the Chevalier de Beauvilliers had a barrister's gown,

and a lady's bonnet over a woollen cap. All wore the white belt and

scarf. The different grades were indicated by a knot. Stofflet wore a

red knot, La Rochejaquelein a black one. Wimpfen, a semi-Girondist, and

who moreover had never been out of Normandy, wore the armlets of the

Carabots of Caen.

They had women in their ranks,--Madame de Lescure, who afterwards

became Madame de la Rochejaquelein; Thérèse de Mollien, mistress

of La Rouarie, she who burned the list of parishes; Madame de la

Rochefoucauld, young and beautiful, who sabre in hand rallied the

peasants at the foot of the Tower of the Château Puy-Rousseau; and

Antoinette Adams, styled the Chevalier Adams, so brave that when

captured she was shot standing, out of respect for her courage. This

epic period was a cruel one. Men behaved like maniacs. Madame de

Lescure deliberately walked her horse over the Republicans who lay

disabled on the battle-ground. She said they were dead, but very

possibly they may have been only wounded. There was occasionally

a traitor among the men, but never among the women. It is true,

Mademoiselle Fleury of the French Theatre forsook La Rouarie for Marat;

but that was for love's sake. The commanders were often as ignorant as

the soldiers. M. de Sapinaud could not spell correctly; he wrote, "Nous

_orions_ de notre _cauté._"

[Illustration 072]

The leaders hated one another. The captains of the Marais cried, "Down

with the Mountaineers!" Their cavalry was few in numbers, and difficult

to form. Puysaye writes: "A man who would cheerfully give me his two

sons grows cool when I ask for one of his horses." Poles, pitchforks,

scythes, muskets, old and new, poacher's knives, spits, iron-pointed

cud-gels studded with nails,--such were their weapons. Some carried

a cross made of two human bones. They rushed to the attack with

shouts, springing up at once from all quarters,--from woods, hills,

underbrush, and hollow roads,--ranging themselves in a circle, killing,

exterminating, striking terror, and then disappearing. Whenever they

passed a Republican town they cut down the liberty-pole, set it on

fire, and forming in a circle, danced around it. All their activity

was displayed by night. The rule of the Vendean is to be always

unexpected. They would march fifteen leagues in utter silence, without

so much as stirring a blade of grass. At night, their chiefs having

determined in a council of war at what point the Republican posts were

to be surprised the next day, they loaded their muskets, mumbled their

prayers, and taking off their sabots, filed through the woods in long

columns, barefoot across the heather and moss, noiseless, without

uttering a sound or drawing a breath, like a procession of cats in the

darkness.

VI.

THE SOUL OF THE EARTH PASSES INTO MAN.

The number of the rebels in the Vendée, including men, women, and

children, cannot be estimated at less than five hundred thousand.

Tuffin de la Rouarie states the sum total of the combatants to have

been half a million.

The federalists helped them, and the Vendée had the Gironde on its

side also. Lozère sent thirty thousand men into the Bocage. Eight

departments formed a coalition: five in Brittany, three in Normandy.

Évreux, who fraternized with Caen, was represented in the rebellion

by Chaumont, its mayor, and Gardembas, a man of note. Buzot, Gorsas,

and Barbaroux at Caen, Brissot at Moulins, Chassan at Lyons,

Rabaut-Saint-Étienne at Nismes, Meillan and Duchâtel in Brittany, all

fanned the flames of the furnace. There were two Vendées,--the great

army fighting in the forests, and the smaller one carrying on the war

in the bushes. And this marks the difference between Charette and Jean

Chouan. The little Vendée was simple-minded and true; the great Vendée

was corrupt. The little Vendée was the better of the two. The rank of

Marquis, lieutenant-general of the king's armies, was bestowed upon

Charette, and he received the grand cross of Saint-Louis. Jean Chouan

remained Jean Chouan. Charette resembles a bandit, Jean Chouan is more

like a paladin of old.

As to those magnanimous chiefs, Bonchamps, Lescure, La Rochejaquelein,

they were mistaken; the great Catholic army was an insane attempt,

upon whose heels disaster was sure to follow; imagine a crowd of

peasants storming Paris, a coalition of villages besieging the

Pantheon, a chorus of Christmas hymns and prayers striving to drown the

Marseillaise, a cohort of rustics rushing upon a legion of enlightened

minds. Mans and Savenay chastised this folly. The Vendée could not

cross the Loire; that was a stride beyond its power. Civil war can

make no conquests. Crossing the Rhine confirms the power of Cæsar and

adds to that of Napoleon; crossing the Loire kills La Rochejaquelein.

The genuine Vendée is the Vendée at home: there it is more than

invulnerable; it is unconquerable. At home the Vendée is smuggler,

laborer, soldier, shepherd, poacher, sharpshooter, goat-herd,

bell-ringer, peasant, spy, assassin, sacristan, and wild beast.

La Rochejaquelein is only an Achilles, while Jean Chouan is a Proteus.

The Vendée failed. Other revolts have been successful, that in

Switzerland for instance. The difference between mountain insurgents

like the Swiss and forest insurgents like the Vendean, exists in the

fact that almost invariably, owing to some fatal influence of his

surroundings, the former fights for an ideal, while the latter fights

for a prejudice. The one soars, the other crawls. The one fights for

humanity, the other for solitude; the one demands liberty, the other

isolation; the one defends the commune, the other the parish. "The

Commons! The Commons!" cried the heroes of Morat. The one has to do

with precipices, the other with quagmires; the one is the man of

torrents and foaming streams, the other of stagnant pools whence fever

rises; one has the blue sky above his head, the other a thicket; one is

on the mountain-top, the other among the shadows.

An education that is gained upon the heights is quite a different

affair from that of the shallows.

A mountain is a fortress; a forest is an ambush; the former inspires

courage, the latter teaches trickery. The ancients placed their gods

upon a pinnacle, and their satyrs within copses. The satyr is a savage,

half man, half beast. Free countries have their Apennines, Alps,

Pyrenees, an Olympus. Parnassus is a mountain. Mont Blanc was the

gigantic auxiliary of William Tell. Looking beyond and above those

titanic contests between human intellect and the darkness of night,

which form the subjects of the poems of India, one sees Himalaya

towering overhead. Greece, Spain, Italy, Helvetia have the mountains

for their inspiration. Cimmeria, whether it be Germany or Brittany, has

but the woods. The forest tends to barbarism.

The formation of the soil influences man in many of his actions. It

is more of an accomplice than one might imagine. When we consider

certain wild scenery, we feel tempted to exonerate man and accuse

Nature; we are conscious of an occult provocation on the part of

Nature; the desert has sometimes an unwholesome influence upon the

conscience, especially on one that is not enlightened. A conscience

may be gigantic,--take for example Socrates or the Christ; it may be

dwarf-like, in which case we find Atreus and Judas. A narrow conscience

soon displays the attributes of the reptile; it delights to haunt the

dim forests, it is attracted by the brambles, the thorns, the marshes

underneath the branches, and absorbs the evil influences of the place.

Optical illusions, mysterious mirages, the terrors of the hour and the

place, inspire a man with that sort of half-religious, half-animal

fear which in every-day life begets superstition, and in times of wild

excitements degenerates into brutality. Hallucination holds the torch

that lights the path to murder. A vertigo seizes the brigand. Nature,

marvellous as she is, holds a double meaning that dazzles great minds

and blinds the savage soul. When man is ignorant, and the desert is

alive with visions, the gloom of solitude is added to the blindness

of the intelligence; hence the abyss that sometimes yawns in the human

soul. There are certain rocks, ravines, copses, weird spaces between

the trees, revealing the blackness of the night, that incite man to

mad and cruel deeds. One might say that the evil fiend possesses such

spots. What tragic scenes has not the gloomy hill between Baignon and

Plélan beheld!

Wide horizons tend to enlarge the mind; limited horizons, on the

contrary, circumscribe it; hence men naturally kind-hearted, such, for

instance, as Jean Chouan, grow narrow-minded.

It is the hatred of narrow minds for liberal ideas that fetters the

march of progress. The Vendean war, a quarrel between the local and the

universal idea, the contest of peasant and patriot, may be summed up in

two words,--the village community and the fatherland.

VII.

THE VENDÉE HAS RUINED BRITTANY.

[Illustration 073]

Brittany is an old rebel. In all her revolts in the past two

thousand years she has had the right on her side until now; in

her last rebellion she was wrong. And yet, after all, whether she

was fighting against revolution or against monarchy, against the

acting representative or against the ruling dukes and peers, against

the financial resource of the assignats or the oppression of the

salt-tax,--whoever might be fighting, whether it were Nicolas Rapin,

François de La Noue, Captain Pluviaut, and The Lady of La Garnache, or

Stofflet, Coquereau, and Lechandelier de Pierreville, and whether they

were fighting under M. de Rohan against the king, or under M. de La

Rochejaquelein for the king, it was practically the same war, that of

local government against centralization.

These ancient provinces might be compared with a pond; stagnant water

is not inclined to flow; the wind, instead of rousing it to life,

simply irritates it. France ended at Finistère; that was the limit of

the space granted to man, and there the forward march of generations

ceased. "Pause!" cries the ocean to the land, and barbarism to

civilization. Whenever it feels the influence of any excitement in

Paris, whatever may be the occasion thereof, monarchy or republic,

despotism or liberty, it is an innovation, and Brittany bristles

with alarm, and says, "Let us alone! What do you want of us?" The

Marais seizes its pitchfork, and the Bocage grasps its musket. All

our attempts at reform in matters of education and legislation, our

philosophical systems, our men of genius, our triumphs, fail before the

Houroux; the tocsin of Bazouges holds the French Revolution in awe;

the moor of Faou defies the stormy assemblies on our public squares;

and the belfry of Haut-des-Près declares war against the Tower of the

Louvre. Terrible blindness!

The Vendean insurrection was a melancholy misunderstanding.

An affray on a gigantic scale, wrangling among Titans, a colossal

rebellion, fated to bequeath but one word to history, _The Vendée_,--a

glorious though melancholy word, devoting itself to death for the

absent, sacrificing itself to egotism, squandering its dauntless

courage, offering itself in the cause of cowards, with neither

foresight nor strategy, without tactics, plan, or aim, following no

leader, accepting no responsibility, showing how powerless the human

will may become, uniting the spirit of chivalry with the deeds of the

savage, absurdity at its height, darkness screening itself from the

light, ignorance offering a determined resistance to truth, justice,

right, reason, and deliverance, the terror of eight years, the

devastation of fourteen departments, the ravages in the fields, the

destruction of crops, the burning of villages, the ruin of cities, the

massacre of women and children, the torch applied to the thatch, the

sword plunged into the heart, the terror of civilization, the hope of

Mr. Pitt,--such was this war, an unreasoning attempt at parricide.

On the whole, the Vendée has served the cause of progress by

showing the necessity of scattering the ancient shadows of Brittany

by discharging into its thickets all the arrows of enlightenment

Catastrophes have a gloomy way of settling affairs.

[Footnote 1: Vol. ii. p. 35.]

[Footnote 2: The uncapped become unbreeched.--TR.]

[Footnote 3: Puysaye, vol. ii. pp. 187, 434.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid., p. 35.]

[Illustration: The Three Children 074]