The grandfathers of the present generation of Boulonnese remembered
the great day of the National Fete, when all Boulogne, for twenty-four
hours, went crazy with joy. So many families had fathers, brothers,
sons, languishing in prison under some charge of treason, real or
imaginary; so many had dear ones for whom already the guillotine loomed
ahead, that the feast on this memorable day of September, 1793, was one
of never-to-be-forgotten relief and thanksgiving.
The weather all day had been exceptionally fine. After that glorious
sunrise, the sky had remained all day clad in its gorgeous mantle of
blue and the sun had continued to smile benignly on the many varied
doings of this gay, little seaport town. When it began to sink slowly
towards the West a few little fluffy clouds appeared on the horizon,
and from a distance, although the sky remained clear and blue, the sea
looked quite dark and slaty against the brilliance of the firmament.
Gradually, as the splendour of the sunset gave place to the delicate
purple and grey tints of evening, the little fluffy clouds merged
themselves into denser masses, and these too soon became absorbed in the
great, billowy banks which the southwesterly wind was blowing seawards.
By the time that the last grey streak of dusk vanished in the West, the
whole sky looked heavy with clouds, and the evening set in, threatening
and dark.
But this by no means mitigated the anticipation of pleasure to come. On
the contrary, the fast-gathering gloom was hailed with delight, since it
would surely help to show off the coloured lights of the lanthorns, and
give additional value to the glow of the torches.
Of a truth 'twas a motley throng which began to assemble on the Place de
la Senechaussee, just as the old bell of the Beffroi tolled the hour of
six. Men, women and children in ragged finery, Pierrots with neck frills
and floured faces, hideous masks of impossible beasts roughly besmeared
in crude colours. There were gaily-coloured dominoes, blue, green, pink
and purple, harlequins combining all the colours of the rainbow in
one tight-fitting garment, and Columbines with short, tarlatan skirts,
beneath which peeped bare feet and ankles. There were judges' perruques,
and soldiers' helmets of past generations, tall Normandy caps adorned
with hundreds of streaming ribbons, and powdered headgear which recalled
the glories of Versailles.
Everything was torn and dirty, the dominoes were in rags, the Pierrot
frills, mostly made up of paper, already hung in strips over the
wearers' shoulders. But what mattered that?
The crowd pushed and jolted, shouted and laughed, the girls screamed as
the men snatched a kiss here and there from willing or unwilling lips,
or stole an arm round a gaily accoutred waist. The spirit of Old King
Carnival was in the evening air--a spirit just awakened from a long Rip
van Winkle-like sleep.
In the centre of the Place stood the guillotine, grim and gaunt with
long, thin arms stretched out towards the sky, the last glimmer of
waning light striking the triangular knife, there, where it was not
rusty with stains of blood.
For weeks now Madame Guillotine had been much occupied plying her
gruesome trade; she now stood there in the gloom, passive and immovable,
seeming to wait placidly for the end of this holiday, ready to begin her
work again on the morrow. She towered above these merrymakers, hoisted
up on the platform whereon many an innocent foot had trodden, the
tattered basket beside her, into which many an innocent head had rolled.
What cared they to-night for Madame Guillotine and the horrors of
which she told? A crowd of Pierrots with floured faces and tattered
neck-frills had just swarmed up the wooden steps, shouting and laughing,
chasing each other round and round on the platform, until one of them
lost his footing and fell into the basket, covering himself with bran
and staining his clothes with blood.
“Ah! vogue la galere! We must be merry to-night!”
And all these people who for weeks past had been staring death and the
guillotine in the face, had denounced each other with savage callousness
in order to save themselves, or hidden for days in dark cellars to
escape apprehension, now laughed, and danced and shrieked with gladness
in a sudden, hysterical outburst of joy.
Close beside the guillotine stood the triumphal car of the Goddess of
Reason, the special feature of this great national fete. It was only a
rough market cart, painted by an unpractised hand with bright, crimson
paint and adorned with huge clusters of autumn-tinted leaves, and the
scarlet berries of mountain ash and rowan, culled from the town gardens,
or the country side outside the city walls.
In the cart the goddess reclined on a crimson-draped seat, she, herself,
swathed in white, and wearing a gorgeous necklace around her neck.
Desiree Candeille, a little pale, a little apprehensive of all this
noise, had obeyed the final dictates of her taskmaster. She had been the
means of bringing the Scarlet Pimpernel to France and vengeance, she was
to be honoured therefore above every other woman in France.
She sat in the car, vaguely thinking over the events of the past few
days, whilst watching the throng of rowdy merrymakers seething around
her. She thought of the noble-hearted, proud woman whom she had helped
to bring from her beautiful English home to sorrow and humiliation in
a dank French prison, she thought of the gallant English gentleman with
his pleasant voice and courtly, debonnair manners.
Chauvelin had roughly told her, only this morning, that both were now
under arrest as English spies, and that their fate no longer concerned
her. Later on the governor of the city had come to tell her that Citizen
Chauvelin desired her to take part in the procession and the national
fete, as the Goddess of Reason, and that the people of Boulogne were
ready to welcome her as such. This had pleased Candeille's vanity, and
all day, whilst arranging the finery which she meant to wear for the
occasion, she had ceased to think of England and of Lady Blakeney.
But now, when she arrived on the Place de la Senechaussee, and mounting
her car, found herself on a level with the platform of the guillotine,
her memory flew back to England, to the lavish hospitality of Blakeney
Manor, Marguerite's gentle voice, the pleasing grace of Sir Percy's
manners, and she shuddered a little when that cruel glint of evening
light caused the knife of the guillotine to glisten from out the gloom.
But anon her reflections were suddenly interrupted by loud and prolonged
shouts of joy. A whole throng of Pierrots had swarmed into the Place
from every side, carrying lighted torches and tall staves, on which were
hung lanthorns with many-coloured lights.
The procession was ready to start. A stentorian voice shouted out in
resonant accents:
“En avant, la grosse caisse!”
A man now, portly and gorgeous in scarlet and blue, detached himself
from out the crowd. His head was hidden beneath the monstrous mask of
a cardboard lion, roughly painted in brown and yellow, with crimson
for the widely open jaws and the corners of the eyes, to make them seem
ferocious and bloodshot. His coat was of bright crimson cloth, with cuts
and slashings in it, through which bunches of bright blue paper were
made to protrude, in imitation of the costume of mediaeval times.
He had blue stockings on and bright scarlet slippers, and behind him
floated a large strip of scarlet flannel, on which moons and suns and
stars of gold had been showered in plenty.
Upon his portly figure in front he was supporting the big drum, which
was securely strapped round his shoulders with tarred cordages, the
spoil of some fishing vessel.
There was a merciful slit in the jaw of the cardboard lion, through
which the portly drummer puffed and spluttered as he shouted lustily:
“En avant!”
And wielding the heavy drumstick with a powerful arm, he brought it
crashing down against the side of the mighty instrument.
“Hurrah! Hurrah! en avant les trompettes!”
A fanfare of brass instruments followed, lustily blown by twelve
young men in motley coats of green, and tall, peaked hats adorned with
feathers.
The drummer had begun to march, closely followed by the trumpeters.
Behind them a bevy of Columbines in many-coloured tarlatan skirts and
hair flying wildly in the breeze, giggling, pushing, exchanging ribald
jokes with the men behind, and getting kissed or slapped for their
pains.
Then the triumphal car of the goddess, with Demoiselle Candeille
standing straight up in it, a tall gold wand in one hand, the other
resting in a mass of scarlet berries. All round the car, helter-skelter,
tumbling, pushing, came Pierrots and Pierrettes, carrying lanthorns, and
Harlequins bearing the torches.
And after the car the long line of more sober folk, the older fishermen,
the women in caps and many-hued skirts, the serious townfolk who had
scorned the travesty, yet would not be left out of the procession. They
all began to march, to the tune of those noisy brass trumpets which were
thundering forth snatches from the newly composed “Marseillaise.”
Above the sky became more heavy with clouds. Anon a few drops of rain
began to fall, making the torches sizzle and splutter, and scatter
grease and tar around and wetting the lightly-covered shoulders
of tarlatan-clad Columbines. But no one cared! The glow of so much
merrymaking kept the blood warm and the skin dry.
The flour all came off the Pierrots' faces, the blue paper slashings of
the drummer-in-chief hung in pulpy lumps against his gorgeous scarlet
cloak. The trumpeters' feathers became streaky and bedraggled.
But in the name of that good God who had ceased to exist, who in the
world or out of it cared if it rained, or thundered and stormed! This
was a national holiday, for an English spy was captured, and all natives
of Boulogne were free of the guillotine to-night.
The revellers were making the circuit of the town, with lanthorns
fluttering in the wind, and flickering torches held up aloft illumining
laughing faces, red with the glow of a drunken joy, young faces that
only enjoyed the moment's pleasure, serious ones that withheld a frown
at thought of the morrow. The fitful light played on the grotesque
masques of beasts and reptiles, on the diamond necklace of a very
earthly goddess, on God's glorious spoils from gardens and country-side,
on smothered anxiety and repressed cruelty.
The crowd had turned its back on the guillotine, and the trumpets
now changed the inspiriting tune of the “Marseillaise” to the ribald
vulgarity of the “Ca ira!”
Everyone yelled and shouted. Girls with flowing hair produced
broomsticks, and astride on these, broke from the ranks and danced a mad
and obscene saraband, a dance of witches in the weird glow of sizzling
torches, to the accompaniment of raucous laughter and of coarse jokes.
Thus the procession passed on, a sight to gladden the eyes of those who
had desired to smother all thought of the Infinite, of Eternity and of
God in the minds of those to whom they had nothing to offer in return.
A threat of death yesterday, misery, starvation and squalor! all the
hideousness of a destroying anarchy, that had nothing to give save a
national fete, a tinsel goddess, some shallow laughter and momentary
intoxication, a travesty of clothes and of religion and a dance on the
ashes of the past.
And there along the ramparts where the massive walls of the city
encircled the frowning prisons of Gayole and the old Chateau, dark
groups were crouching, huddled together in compact masses, which in
the gloom seemed to vibrate with fear. Like hunted quarry seeking for
shelter, sombre figures flattened themselves in the angles of the
dank walls, as the noisy carousers drew nigh. Then as the torches and
lanthorns detached themselves from out the evening shadows, hand would
clutch hand and hearts would beat with agonized suspense, whilst the
dark and shapeless forms would try to appear smaller, flatter, less
noticeable than before.
And when the crowd had passed noisily along, leaving behind it a trail
of torn finery, of glittering tinsel and of scarlet berries, when the
boom of the big drum and the grating noise of the brass trumpets had
somewhat died away, wan faces, pale with anxiety, would peer from out
the darkness, and nervous hands would grasp with trembling fingers the
small bundles of poor belongings tied up hastily in view of flight.
At seven o'clock, so 'twas said, the cannon would boom from the old
Beffroi. The guard would throw open the prison gates, and those who had
something or somebody to hide, and those who had a great deal to fear,
would be free to go whithersoever they chose.
And mothers, sisters, sweethearts stood watching by the gates, for
loved ones to-night would be set free, all along of the capture of that
English spy, the Scarlet Pimpernel.