THE GUILLOTINE
I
My nephew, Leon, had sworn to seek out the beautiful young Frenchwoman,
Valerie, whom we had last seen in the gardens of the burning house; but
many days elapsed before that came to be, as you shall presently learn.
In the first place, there was far too much to do in Moscow for the army
to think about women at all.
We had arrived at the end of our journey, and the twelve hundred
leagues of marching had tired the strongest of us. Now we would rest
at the heart of Russia, while the Emperor dictated peace to the Tsar
and his army made good its losses. We never so much as dreamed that we
had pursued a phantom, and that it would lead the Grand Army to its
destruction.
So you must behold us for many days in Moscow enjoying the fruits of
our labours and yet finding plenty of work to do. I have told you
already that the Guards were quartered in the Palace of the Kremlin,
whither the Emperor had repaired; and there I took up my residence with
my nephew Leon, and was occupied for some days in attending to the sick
who had accompanied us on our long journey from Smolensk. Though many
rumours came to me of the strange things that were happening in the
city beyond the palace, I paid little heed to them. His Majesty the
Emperor had set out to conquer Russia, and here he was at the heart of
their empire. What remained, then, but to sign a splendid peace and to
return in triumph to Paris?
This is how things should have been, yet how different they were!
We had been prepared to find the Russian nobles fled from Moscow, but
the absolute desertion of the city by its people astonished us beyond
compare.
Often would I go forth into these magnificent streets, to find the
great houses all shut up, their gardens a solitude, the cafes closed,
and none but our own soldiers abroad.
Deserted houses everywhere! The hotels shut up and boarded against the
stranger. All the shops denuded of their goods and shuttered and
barred as though they were prisons.
Such Russians as we met had the most revolting aspect and were clad in
the coarsest sheepskins. We knew that the best of them were convicts
who had been released by the governor on our advent, and now they
skulked like wolves to do us a mischief in every alley or by-street
which sheltered them.
For the rest, Moscow might have been a mausoleum. We danced to the
music of our own voices; the cheers that were raised were the cheers
from French throats which heralded only a hollow victory.
The plunder that we seized came to our hands undisputed. No man
contended with us save the brigands, and they were like jackals, whose
howls were chiefly heard by night.
I have often wondered at the sang-froid with which all this was
received at head-quarters. None of the staff appeared aware of the
perils of our situation, nor did the fact that we were already running
short of provisions alarm our leaders. Many things we had in
abundance, and they should have provoked our irony. It was ridiculous
to see whole companies of the Guard making merry over casks of French
liqueur or wallowing like schoolgirls in boxes of sweetmeats. Yet such
was the case, and nothing but the actual riches of the city blinded the
rank and file to the truth.
Oh, what days of plunder they were, and how our good fellows revelled
in them!
A man had but to sally forth with an axe in his hand to reach the
riches of a Croesus. I have seen the veriest Gascons so laden with
furs and jewels and the wealth of nobles that they themselves, could
they have conveyed their burdens to Paris, might never have had an
anxiety about their bread to the end of their days. It was the
commonest thing to discover carts and wagons in Moscow piled high with
the treasures of centuries and led uncontested to the camps of an enemy
which had found the gates open and the ramparts undefended. Even the
Imperial edict against pillage and rapine was useless to prevent this
spoliation. The men had suffered much to reach the Holy City, and His
Majesty the Emperor was wise enough to reward them according to their
hopes.
Here I must tell you that the common troopers were by no means the only
offenders in this respect. There was not an officer in or out of the
Guards who did not claim his share of the plunder, while he shut his
eyes to the doings of those under him. If I myself forbore to take a
hand in this profitable amusement, it was because my burdens were heavy
and owed not a little to the state of Moscow even in the early days of
our occupation.
Then, as afterwards, fire was our almost daily enemy. One day it would
be in the bazaars; the next in the poorest quarters of the city; again
in the houses of the rich, which our troopers had pillaged. We were
told the convicts fired the buildings by the governor's orders. We
could not believe it, and yet we hunted the rascals down as though they
were vermin.
I have often wondered what His Majesty the Emperor would have done had
he known the true state of affairs in Moscow. He did not know them,
however, and he was still anxious to propitiate those whom he believed
to be its people. Every day we heard the story of the peace which was
to be signed, and of the profit which was to come to our arms thereby;
and every day we who served were abroad in street or alley wrestling
with the flames and smoke of the burning houses, or hanging and
shooting the incendiaries who had become the enemy.
Little wonder that my nephew Leon had no time for love-making. Often
would I ask him if he had heard of or seen the beautiful Valerie again.
The rascal pretended that he had forgotten her very existence, and yet
I knew in my heart that he had remembered her. It was no surprise to
me when, at the end of the third week, I heard from his servant,
Gascogne, that he had received a letter from Valerie herself, and that
it had contained an invitation to dinner in a house beyond the suburbs
of the city. When I charged Leon with it he shook his head and smiled
in his boyish way.
"Oh, mon oncle," he protested, "what time have I for anything like
that?"
I rejoined that a man has always time for a pretty woman, and at that
he laughed loudly.
"She asked me to dinner," says he, "but, of course, I shall not go.
Why, my dear uncle, it would be very dangerous to do so. Do you not
know that her friend is Prince Nicholas, who has sworn a vendetta
against every Frenchman in Moscow? I should be a fool to do anything
of the kind."
I agreed that he would be, and really I was not a little astonished at
his common sense.
Captains of the Guard are rarely prudent where a pretty face is
concerned, and Valerie St. Antoine was one of the most beautiful women
I had ever seen in all my life. It was amazing to me that Leon should
have learned so much wisdom in so short a space of time, and I plumed
myself upon his sagacity. Oh, how easily do we old fogeys deceive
ourselves! Not three days had elapsed before I learned that he had
written to the lady, and on the fourth I heard with some regret that he
had gone to dine with her.
II
Now, I do not know why it was, but this affair had caused me much
uneasiness from the beginning, and when I heard, upon the evening of
September 28, that my nephew had left the palace and gone to dine with
Valerie, a disquietude quite beyond ordinary attended the discovery.
Possibly Leon's own words had something to do with it. He had said
that such an invitation might be a trap, and although the opinion was
expressed as a joke, there remained a doubt in my own mind which no
mere assurance could remove.
Remember the circumstances. We had discovered already that Valerie St.
Antoine was the friend, and more than the friend, of a man who had
sworn to exterminate the French in Moscow. The reality of the tie
which bound them had been made apparent to me when I was with her in
Prince Boris's house, and I could conceive no honest circumstance which
would justify the invitation to my nephew Leon. When I questioned his
servant, Gascogne, that good fellow seemed no less uneasy than I myself.
"There have been five officers from this regiment lost in Moscow this
very week," said he. "I warned Captain Leon, but he would not listen
to me. A woman. Faugh! It is the usual story, major. They all have
a rendezvous, and none of them returns. Why did not the captain
consult you? I told him that it was a trick, and he answered me by
putting on his best uniform and calling a droshky. Major, we shall be
lucky if we see him again."
I took no such view as this, and yet a certain foreboding of ill was
not lightly to be put aside.
Leon had done as so many others in his regiment, and some of those had
never returned to the palace. It might even be that the girl Valerie
had not written the letter at all; and this latter thought was so
disquieting that I sent Gascogne out to seek the driver of the droshky
and to bring the fellow to the palace. When he came, a few sharp words
soon had the truth from him.
"My good fellow," said I, "you will drive me immediately to the house
to which you have just taken my nephew, Captain de Courcelles. If you
play any trick upon me I will have you hanged at the gate of the
Kremlin. Now, choose for yourself."
This was no idle threat, nor was it without its effect. The man fell
into a frenzy of fear, while great drops of sweat stood upon his
forehead, and he protested his innocence before God and the saints.
"Then let him put it to the proof," said I to the interpreter, "and
bring his droshky here immediately."
Ten minutes later we were passing out of the western gate, and Sergeant
Bardot, of the Fusiliers, was at my side. They called him "the
antelope" in the regiment, and there was no nimbler fellow in all the
Guards.
"Captain Leon has gone to meet a woman," said I. "It may be a trap,
and, if so, we must get him out of it. I can count upon your
discretion, sergeant?"
He answered that he was altogether at my service, and I could see that
the prospect of an adventure pleased him greatly.
"They are devils, these Russians," said he, "and it is just as well
that we should go. I trust we shall be in good time, major. The
regiment could not afford to lose Captain Leon. There is no better
officer in the Guards."
I agreed with that. There was no better officer in the Guards. If he
were in any danger we must save him. So many had fallen in Moscow at a
woman's nod that I ceased to ask myself what part curiosity played in
this adventure.
Sufficient that Leon had gone to dine with Nicholas, the Russian, who
had sworn a vendetta against every French officer in the city.
III
It was nine o'clock when we left the barracks, and half an hour later
when the droshky rolled out upon the great north road to Petersburg.
So hot was it that hundreds of our fellows were sleeping in the open
parks which abound on the border of the city, and their bivouac fires
glowed beneath the pines and showed many a scene of tipsy revelry.
With them were some of those women who cling to the skirts of an army
as flies to a pasty, and these hussies capered about the fires in song
and dance, while the sorriest music set them whooping like wild men at
a fair. We paid little attention to them, but thought rather of the
wide road ahead of us and of our unknown destination.
Now, this was a hazardous journey, as any man who was with me in Moscow
will bear witness.
It is true that the city and surrounding country were wholly in our
power; but we knew very well that bands of wild Cossacks ravaged the
neighbourhood and were ready enough to butcher any Frenchman they could
find. The road itself lay chiefly through pine woods, which afforded
good harbourage to these brigands, and more than once I thought that I
saw a horseman watching us as we went. When I mentioned as much to the
sergeant he pooh-poohed it, as such a man would, declaring that our own
patrols were in the district and would deal with such scum.
"We are not worth powder and shot," he said with a laugh, "and, in any
case, we shall have the satisfaction of shooting the driver if anything
happens to us."
This seemed to afford him some consolation. I noticed that he took out
his pistol and primed it, as though very ready to begin if the
miserable coachman afforded him any pretext. We, however, drove on
without event, and when we had covered perhaps a couple of leagues the
driver turned suddenly down a grassy path through the wood and
presently declared that we had reached our destination.
It was not very dark here, and for the moment I thought that the fellow
had played a trick upon us.
We appeared to have reached a veritable forest, great chestnut trees
taking the place of the pines and a wide pool shining under the moon's
rays where the roadway ended. Presently, however, I discerned the
glimmer of a lamp amidst a copse upon the right-hand side, and the
droshky driver indicated with his whip that it was the house which
Captain Leon had visited.
An uglier place could not be imagined. The dark groves of stupendous
trees, the silent pool, the remote situation of the habitation,
affected me strangely. I was convinced by this time that my nephew had
fallen into a trap, and that we should be lucky men if we found him
alive. Even the imperturbable Bardot could not put a good face upon
it. He showed his pistol to the coachman and commanded him to stay
where he was. Then he followed me down the grove towards the house.
I have told you that it was hidden in the trees; but this will give you
but a poor idea of its situation. We saw upon nearer approach that the
pool or lake was fed by a winding river, upon an island of which the
house was built, so that it was entirely surrounded by water, which a
mediaeval drawbridge spanned.
The building itself had all the air of the keep of an ancient castle,
being no more than a great round tower built upon the island, with a
miserable outhouse at its foot and a barn-like structure to the south,
which served, I doubt not, for a stable. Save for a glimmer of light
which showed through a considerable loophole above the drawbridge,
there was no evidence of occupation either above or below. The place
seemed as silent as the grave; our own footsteps upon the sward were a
heavy sound upon the silence of that summer's night.
To be sure, we approached very cautiously. We must have been at least
fifty paces from the water's edge when Bardot went down flat upon his
stomach and began to crawl towards the river.
"If I whistle," he said, "come to me."
I answered that I would; and after an interminable interval of waiting
I heard his signal. When I came up to his side he pointed to the
figure of a man who stood sentry beyond the bridge.
"Look," he said. "The fellow is drunk. They are all drunk in this
cursed country. If we sounded the reveille he would not hear us. We
must go over and tell him so. You can swim, of course?"
I shook my head, for the truth was I could not swim a stroke. When I
discovered that he was in a like predicament, the tragic irony of our
position began to be realised for the first time. There we were, fifty
paces from the door, behind which poor Leon might already be in
jeopardy. I knew now that the girl Valerie had not written the letter,
and this was just the trap I had supposed it to be. Yet there we
stood, as helpless as any child from a woodlander's hut. Even Bardot
could make nothing of it.
"If I had known!" he would say, just as though it had been in my power
to tell him. Such folly angered me. I got up regardless of the risk
of discovery, and began to make my way back to the carriage. The man
should gallop back to Moscow, said I, and we would return within the
hour with a troop of cavalry, and this time we would bring our own
bridge.
This was in my mind, though the despair of it needs no apology.
"A thousand to one," I argued, "that Leon will not be alive when we
return; and yet we might avenge him!"
A fierce desire to beat down the walls of the accursed house, to break
in upon the assassins and to butcher them where they stood, possessed
me as a fever. There was not a man in the regiment who, would not have
galloped through the night at Leon's call. Pity then if we might not
avenge him.
This I had said, when another whistle from the river bank arrested my
attention and sent me back to Bardot.
He still lay behind the bush which concealed us, and his hand was
raised in warning. When I rejoined him he pulled me down, and speaking
in a deep whisper, he bade me listen. A boat was being rowed across
the river. We saw it plainly in the moonlight--a great, crazy tub with
a frail girl for its pilot. It touched the bank some fifty yards from
the place where we lay hidden, and instantly the girl leapt from it and
disappeared in the brushwood.
"Valerie St. Antoine, by all that is holy!" said I.
The mystery was deepening truly, but we were nearer to it now, and
without a word spoken we strode toward the deserted boat and
immediately began to pull across the river.
IV
Meanwhile what of Leon, and what had happened to him since he left
Moscow? I shall try to tell you in a few words, that you may
understand both his situation and ours, and the meaning of what was to
come after.
The letter he had received was such as a soldier of the Guard is well
acquainted with, and he discovered in it nothing out of the ordinary.
A pretty woman had fallen in love with him and desired to see him
again. There must have been two hundred who had done that since he
quitted Paris, yet few who drew from him so swift a response.
Was not Mademoiselle Valerie a fellow-countrywoman, and had not these
two looked into each other's eyes as lovers are wont to do?
I remembered the impression she had made upon him in the prince's
palace, and how he had sworn to hunt her out at Moscow; and I for one
could not wonder that his heart leapt when she wrote to him and named a
rendezvous to his liking.
He was to dine with her, the letter said, and her carriage would carry
him to the barracks afterwards. He little knew the kind of journey
that it was meant to be, nor what would lie under the tarpaulin which
the assassins had made ready for him.
So off goes our gay cavalier, dressed in his best and as cock-a-hoop as
a page-boy who has been kissed by a duchess.
The warnings he received fell on deaf ears. He knew that the regiment
had lost good officers who went out upon just such a foolish errand as
this; but they had gone to Russian houses, while Valerie was a
Frenchwoman who bore an honoured name. There could be nothing to fear
in such society. He would dine with her and tell her what she most
desired to hear. This was a Guardsman's proper employment, and he
would not be doing his duty if he shirked it. To give him his due,
Leon was rarely remiss in these matters.
So you will understand why he did not suspect anything--even when they
drove through the wood and came to the drawbridge. She would desire
secrecy, of course, and this place appeared to be a very citadel of
love. Leon merely remarked that aspect of it when he crossed the
bridge and the great gate which Ivan the Terrible had built was shut
upon him.
She would be alone, and he would find her complacent. The words were
hardly said when he found himself face to face with Nicholas, the
princely assassin, whose name had struck terror to the heart of many a
French prisoner. Now a man trained to the surprises of war has some
command of himself whatever the circumstances.
Leon was such a man, and you may be sure he did not betray himself.
Though the peril of the situation was now fully revealed, and he
understood the trap into which he had fallen, what should he do but bow
in a grand manner to his Highness, and declare his pleasure at that
_rencontre_? The prince in his turn affected to be as agreeably
surprised. He apologised for the absence of Mademoiselle Valerie, whom
he declared to be confined to her room with an indisposition; and upon
that he led the way immediately to the great apartment in which the
supper was to be served.
This was nothing else than the round tower which Ivan had built, and a
strange place it was, surely, for the entertainment of a man's friends.
Leon observed that the walls of the apartment were hung entirely in
black velvet, while at the northern arch there was a platform similarly
draped in black, but with its plain boards strewn with rushes, as they
strew a scaffold in my own country. So ominous was this that even my
nephew's sang-froid was hard put to it to forbear a remark; but the
prince smiled affably all the time, and appeared to be quite unaware
that there was anything extraordinary about this habitation. Leon
admitted that he spoke French like a fellow-countryman, and his first
act was to introduce my nephew to some dozen officers of the Russian
Guard who had come to the house to make merry with him.
These were fine fellows, clad, as he, in the splendid white and gold
uniform of the Tsar's cuirassiers. They welcomed a brother officer
with professed cordiality, and the prince commanding that supper should
be served, they turned with one accord to the table and began to fall
upon the viands as though ravenous with hunger. Will you be surprised
to hear that Leon did not imitate them in this? I shall tell you why
in a word: he had seen a dead body in the straw upon the platform, and,
looking at it a second time, he perceived that it was a trunk without a
head.
You may imagine what this discovery meant--even to a man of Leon's
disposition. At first he would have it that the whole thing was one of
Nicholas's jokes--the draping of the room, the straw upon the mock
scaffold, and the ghastly figure which the rushes tried to hide. Then
he remembered the prince's evil reputation and the stories of his
savagery, which had been told at many a bivouac. Here was one of those
fanatics who believed that Moscow was the holy city, and that we, the
French, were so many barbarians who had profaned the sacred shrine of
Russia. No trick was too treacherous to be employed against us, no
trap was not justified which had Frenchmen for its object. Again and
again, as we had marched across Russia, the throats of our fellows had
been cut in many a lonely farmhouse, and many a courtesan had lured
honest men to their destruction.
So Leon sat there with his eyes fixed upon the body and the secret
words of warning drumming in his ears. What hope had he of escape from
such a place? He remembered the moat and the drawbridge, the lonely
wood and the dark groves about it, and despair fell upon him. It
remained but to die as the Guards know how; and, believing that his
death was imminent, he refused no longer the goblets of wine which were
offered to him, and affected a merriment as loud as that of the noble
assassins who had entrapped him.
A remarkable feast, truly, as you shall: judge by his own account of
it. The meats! were served on dishes of solid gold; the goblets were
of the same precious metal. They drank champagne from our own kingdom
of France; the rich red wines of Italy, while the joyous fruits of the
Rhineland vineyards were not lacking. The food itself had an Eastern
flavour, and many of the dishes were highly spiced and Eastern. For
music there were fiddles in a gallery above, and even the distant
voices of women singing a light chanson at the back of the stage.
Leon raised his eyes to the musicians' gallery from time to time, and
fell to wondering if Valerie were among the singers. Surely she had
never written the letter which brought him to this house--she, a
Frenchwoman! He could not believe it; and yet the note had been in a
woman's handwriting. Possibly the writer was one of those who now sang
disreputable songs behind the curtains of the gallery. Leon pitied
rather than condemned the poor wretch who had been the prince's
instrument. When he remembered that Valerie loved this man he could
have taken a knife from the table and killed him where he sat.
His Highness may have guessed what was in the young man's mind, but if
he did so, a courtly art concealed it. Never was there a gayer
companion. He told stories of all the cities to which peace or war had
carried him--of our own Paris and gloomy Petersburg, of gay Vienna and
that monstrously dull town of London, of which the English boast.
Nearly all concerned the women of these places and the successes he had
had among them.
His companions meanwhile listened with a deference which so high a
personage commanded. Their jokes were often _sotto voce_, and when the
prince laughed they laughed in sycophantine imitation. With all this
Leon plainly perceived that the feast was but a preparation for some
greater scene to come. His eyes went often now to the curtain above
the gallery, as though he would read a secret there. I do not think he
was astonished when for one brief instant the same curtain trembled and
was drawn a little way back, to disclose the face of Valerie. She was
in the house, then, after all! He began to believe that she had
written the letter, and for that he would have strangled her willingly.
Then he heard the prince speaking to him, and, the curtain being
dropped back, he turned to listen to a disquisition upon French
politics.
"Your Revolution," said his Highness, "was the greatest event in
history. I have just been telling my friend, Count Rafalovitch here,
that my father was in Paris in the year 1794, and that his dearest
friend, the Chevalier Constantini, was executed by the miscreants on
the Place de la Greve. He brought with him to Russia a model of the
guillotine, by which so many of your great men perished. I have it
here in this house, if you are curious to see it. It was made by the
great Dr. Guillotin himself, one of the first to fall by his own
invention, as you know. Shall we have it built up on yonder platform,
M. le Capitaine? It will help us to pass the time until the musicians
have refreshed themselves."
Now, all this was said pleasantly enough, as though it were the
merriest of jests, and yet to Leon it was not without significance.
The cat-like manner of the speaker; the sudden lust of blood which came
into his eyes as he leaned over the table and addressed my nephew; the
restless movements of the others round about; all betrayed a design so
dastardly that no pretence could conceal it. Instantly it dawned upon
Leon that the man whose body lay in the rushes had been murdered by
that very instrument. Death no Guardsman fears, but the humiliation of
such a death as this might have appalled the stoutest heart; and Leon
believed now that they meant to kill him. He drained the heavy goblet
of its wine to hide his face from those who watched him so curiously,
and when he had set the goblet down there was a smile upon his lips.
"I should like to see it, by all means," he said to the prince. "It is
odd that I, a Frenchman, am so ignorant, but, upon my word of honour, I
have never met 'Dr. Guillotine' in all my life."
"Then you shall meet him now," said his Highness, and touching a bell
upon the table, he summoned his servants to the room.
V
Sergeant Bardot and myself, meanwhile, had crossed the river, as you
may well have guessed. We found the tub old and crazy, and were but
poor watermen. Yet we reached the parapet upon the farther side, and
clambering up, we stood and listened if any had discovered us. The
sentry, however, made no motion, and perceiving that he was drunk, as
we had imagined, we crept towards him and were upon him before he could
utter a sound. A moment later he went, a cloth about his mouth,
headlong into the moat below us, and we stood there watching his
struggles, his musket in Bardot's hands.
It had been a swift coup, and some have complained of what we did. But
remember that this was a Russian stronghold, and that it imprisoned a
good comrade, and few will condemn us. It was our life or his, and we
did not hesitate for Leon's sake. I would do the same to-morrow for
the meanest trooper in the Emperor's army.
I say that we killed the man, and yet for the moment the deed did not
help us. There was the great gate, shut and barred against the
stranger, and twenty men might not have opened it. If we beat upon it
and they answered us, what then? The house would be full of Russians,
and we were but two against them. By a stratagem alone could we save
Leon's life, and calling upon our wits, we began to make a tour of the
house to spy out its weaknesses if we could.
These were not readily apparent. Even to an old soldier like Bardot
the place seemed impregnable. Everywhere the rugged stone walls
confronted us. There was no door other than that which the sentry had
guarded. The windows were so many slits in those ramparts of stone.
There was not even a water-pipe upon which a man could have got a
foothold. We could but stand there and gaze impotently upon that
prison which had defied the centuries. It was a torture to me to
remember that these impregnable walls answered for the liberty of one
so dear to me as my nephew.
VI
I have told you that there had been a glimmer of light shining from a
loop-hole in the tower when first we drove up to the place. It was
beneath this we came to a halt and stood to reckon with the situation.
Bardot's eyes were quick as an animal's, and it was he who perceived a
second opening in the wall, but not so high as the other, and without a
light beyond to disclose it. When he suggested that he should climb up
on my shoulders and get a footing at this spot, I could but ask him
what he hoped to effect thereby.
"Had you a rope," said I, "perchance we could look through the window,
but since you have not a rope----"
He interrupted me with a little cry. "Major," says he, "there was a
rope in the boat."
I retorted that we had used it to make the ship fast, but he laughed at
that.
"We shall return by the drawbridge," says he. "Do you stand sentinel
here, and I will get what we want." And with that he was off like a
shot, and for some minutes I saw him no more.
The interval was spent in listening to a sound of distant music, which
I could not hear very plainly. There were women's voices and the music
of fiddles, and it seemed to me that I had heard some of their songs in
the casinos of my own Paris. Such a surprise was very welcome and put
heart into me. Leon could hardly be in peril while women were singing
to him. I told Bardot as much when he returned, and his curiosity
concerning the voices was not less than my own.
"Let us have a look at them," says he. And with that he climbed upon
my shoulders, and throwing the rope he had brought from the boat deftly
about the iron bar of the window he pulled himself up like a monkey,
and so gained a foothold on the ledge.
For a long time now he did not utter a word. I thought that I heard
him laughing softly, and then, of a sudden, he appeared to grow deeply
interested in what was happening in the room.
"What do you see, Bardot?" I asked him, anxiety getting the better of
me.
He did not reply, but peered the closer betwixt the bars.
"Oh!" cried I impatiently, "there will be some woman for a certainty."
His answer was to take a pistol from his belt and to look to the
priming. I could see him quite clearly, one arm being about the iron
bar and the other upon the trigger, which he had cocked.
"Good God!" I cried. "You will bring them out on us."
He did not heed me, but throwing his head back, he said in a loud
whisper: "They are going to butcher your nephew." At the same moment I
heard a dreadful scream from the tower itself.
"Help me up!" cried I, gone mad at my own impotence. "Why do you not
fire at them?"
He nodded his head, and thrusting his pistol through the bars, he
snapped at an unseen enemy. The weapon did not fire, and he threw it
down to me angrily. "Your own," he cried, and came a little way down
the rope to reach it.
The next minute there was a loud report, and upon that a hollow sound,
as though a great bell had been struck a heavy blow by a hammer.
"Now," cried Bardot quickly, "to the bridge!"
I did not question him, and we ran round together to fling down the
bridge, the windlass running out with the sound of a great ship's
cable. It seemed inconceivable that the Russians in the place did not
attack us. This, however, did not happen.
We ran across the bridge and there crouched as two hunters who
themselves were hunted.
"Listen!" says Bardot, bending his ear to the earth.
I imitated him, and heard a strange sound. It was the thunder of
cavalry through the wood.
"The Cossacks!" cried I. It seemed to me then that I should never see
poor Leon again.
VII
Within the tower the prince was now introducing my nephew to "Dr.
Guillotine."
All the resources of a barbarous masquerade were employed in this sorry
entertainment.
The stage itself would have served for a miniature Theatre Francais.
Brawny Cossacks, clad like the _sansculottes_ of the Revolution,
swarmed up on the mock scaffold and cried curses upon their prisoner.
The executioner was a huge Tartar with a monstrous black beard and a
knife at his girdle. The knitting women of the Place de la Greve were
not forgotten. A bevy of hags squatted about the platform and pointed
their lean fingers at the miserable prisoner.
Had Leon a doubt hitherto as to the meaning of this foul business, it
must have surrendered at the moment when he recognised one of his old
troopers among the mock condemned, and perceived that the Russians
meant to kill him.
Leaping to his feet, he cried an oath upon the outrage and commanded
them to stop.
It was a vain outburst. Two of the prince's men had him by the arms at
the first movement and pinned him to his chair, while his Highness
derided his courage.
"Here is a French Guardsman who has a woman's heart," said he, his
fellows shouting with ironic laughter at the sally. "We give him a
little play, such as we have seen in Paris, and behold! he is ready to
faint. A glass of wine, Michael, for the poor gentleman! Do you not
see how ill he is?"
A goblet of wine was offered to and spurned by my nephew. He perceived
that he was helpless and that the reputation of the Guards lay in his
keeping. It remained to bear himself with what dignity he could, and
turning to the prince, he exclaimed very coolly: "I apologise to your
Highness, for it is not possible that you can be in earnest." And so
he watched the drama to the end.
They had now dragged the struggling hussar to the plank of the
guillotine and thrown and bound him there. Very deliberately they
pushed him beneath the great knife, and then, all crying "Death to the
French!" the blade fell and silenced for ever the shrieks of the
unhappy wretch they had butchered.
Leon declares that from this moment Prince Nicholas was little better
than a madman. His cries of "Bravo!" were such as the insane might
have uttered. Clutching my nephew by the arm, he dragged him to the
scaffold, saying:
"You do not know 'Dr. Guillotine'? Come and be introduced, then. Come
and hear his music. You are a Frenchman and ignorant? Impossible, my
friend, impossible."
So he raved, while all in the room took up the cry of "Impossible!" and
began to shout and dance in their drunken frenzy like madmen.
Leon fought for his life then as he had never fought before in all wars
our Emperor has waged. A strong man, he threw even the Cossacks from
him, struck them senseless with any weapon that came to his hands, and
was up and down like a cork upon a billow; but all useless, as you may
well imagine.
When they got him to the scaffold he knew that his hour had come, and a
great calm possessed him.
"I congratulate the Prince of the Assassins," said he to his Highness.
"It is only in such a country as this that the butchers are ennobled."
And with that he walked straight towards the executioner and held out
his hands.
The man seized him as though he were a sheep. The prince himself began
to raise the knife by the rope and to caress its gleaming edge. Surely
Leon had but a moment to live. He thought as much, and a passionate
desire for life set him trembling. That he, so young, he whom so many
loved, he to whom day was so fair a thing and the night but a witchery
of woman's eyes--that he should perish here, butchered by the insane in
an hour of their frenzy! God surely would not permit such a crime as
that! Alas! he had forgotten how to pray these many years, and he but
stood there, defying them as any one of his Majesty's Guards would have
done.
"Assassins!" he cried; and then, as a challenge: "There is not one of
you that would dare to cross swords with me!"
They but laughed at him the more, and the prince now pulled the knife
so high that all in the room could see it. He was still laughing; but
some glimmer of reason had come to him, and that spirit of vengeance
which animated him could no longer be denied.
"You murdered twenty thousand honest people with your guillotine in
Paris," says he to Leon, as though a hussar of the year 1812 could be
responsible for what was done in Paris twenty years before. "Now you
must come here to burn the Holy City. Very well; we are going to teach
you a lesson."
He turned to the executioner, and giving him the sign, the wretch threw
Leon upon the plank.
It was then that Bardot, at the window, fired his pistol and struck the
great bell high in the tower above. How much would I have given could
I have been at his side at that moment. All that I heard were the loud
shouts of surprise, the cries of one man to the other that this was an
ambush, and, above all, the prince's screams when the great knife fell
and severed his arm at the elbow as neatly as any surgeon could have
done.
Such was the truth. At the moment of the alarm Prince Nicholas had
loosed the rope, and, trying to catch it again, he stumbled forward and
the great blade caught him by the elbow, and his hand and arm went
rolling to the floor.
With a loud cry Leon now wrenched himself from his executioners. All
were making for the gate of the tower, for they believed that the
French were upon them, and no man thought of anything but his own
safety.
VIII
Bardot and myself believed that the Cossacks were galloping to the
place, and we lay in the shadow of the bridge, hardly daring to breathe
lest the Russians in the house should discover us. When the latter
came headlong out of the tower this alarm seemed unnecessary, for it
was plain they were making for the forest.
"In five minutes," I said, "they will meet their fellows and all return
again to the butchery."
I little knew that Valerie St. Antoine had found the droshky in the
wood, and commanding the driver in the name of Prince Nicholas, had
driven at full gallop to the barracks to bring help to her countrymen.
Such was the case, however, and the men who now rode to Ivan's Tower
were of Leon's own troop; honest fellows who swore a bitter vengeance
while they rode. They fell upon the Russians at the heart of the wood,
and what they did there is best told at a bivouac. I went immediately
to the tower and looked there for my nephew.
When I found him he lay senseless upon the scaffold, and at first I
thought he was dead. The Guard, however, is obstinate in refusing to
die, and when we had forced brandy between his lips and had bathed his
forehead, he opened his eyes and asked where he was.
This I feared to tell him, but presently he sat up and looked about him.
"Ah!" he said, "I remember." And then he asked: "Where is Valerie St.
Antoine?"
"She should be in Moscow by this time," said I. "Why do you ask?"
"Because," said he, "I am still looking for her, mon oncle."
I shook my head. It seemed to me that the young woman in question had
proved herself to be but the harbinger of ill. And yet I could see
that my nephew's mind was made up, and that what he had done to-night
he would do again if Valerie St. Antoine did but lift her pretty hand
to beckon him.