SANS SOUCI
In after days Aline de Rochambeau looked back upon her time in prison as
a not unpeaceful interlude between two periods of stress and terror.
After loneliness unspeakable, broken only by companionship with the
coarse, the dull, the cruel, she found herself in the politest society
of France, and in daily, hourly contact with all that was graceful,
exquisite, and refined in her own sex,--gallant, witty, and courteous in
the other.
When she joined the other prisoners on the morning after her arrest, the
scene surprised her by its resemblance to that ill-fated reception which
had witnessed at once her debut and her farewell to society. The
dresses were a good deal shabbier, the ladies' coiffures not quite so
well arranged, but there was the same gay, light talk, the same bowing
and curtsying, the same air of high-bred indifference to all that did
not concern the polite arts.
All at once she became very acutely conscious of her bourgeoise dress
and unpowdered hair. She felt the roughness of her pricked fingers, and
experienced that painful sense of inferiority which sometimes afflicts
young girls who are unaccustomed to the world. The sensation passed in
a flash, but the memory of it stung her not a little, and she crossed
the room with her head held high.
The old Comtesse de Matigny eyed her through a tortoise-shell lorgnette
which bore a Queen's cipher in brilliants, and had been a gift from
Marie Antoinette.
"Who is that?" she demanded, in her deep, imperious tones.
"Some little bourgeoise, accused of Heaven knows what," shrugged M. de
Lancy.
The old lady allowed hazel eyes which were still piercing to rest for a
moment longer on Aline. Then they flashed mockingly on M. le Marquis.
"My friend, you are not as intelligent as usual. Did you see the girl's
colour change when she came in? When a bourgeoise is embarrassed, she
hangs her head and walks awkwardly. If she had an apron on, she would
bite the corner. This girl looked round, and flushed,--it showed the
fine grain of her skin,--then up went her head, and she walked like a
princess. Besides, I know the face."
A slight, fair woman, with tired eyes which looked as if the colour had
been washed from them by much weeping, leaned forward. She was Mme de
Crespigny, and her husband had been guillotined a fortnight before.
"I have seen her too, Madame," she said in an uninterested sort of way,
"but I cannot recall where it was."
Mme la Comtesse rapped her knee impatiently with a much-beringed hand.
"It is some one she reminds me of," she said at last--"some one long
ago, when I was younger. I never forget a face, I always prided myself
on that. It was at Court--long ago--those were gay days, my friends.
Ah! I have it. La belle Irlandaise, Mlle Desmond, who married-- Now,
who did Mlle Desmond marry? It is I who am stupid to-day. It is the
cold, I think."
"Was it Henri de Rochambeau?" said De Lancy.
She nodded vivaciously.
"It was--yes, that was it, and I danced at their wedding, and dreamed on
a piece of the wedding-cake. I shall not say of whom I dreamed, but it
was not of feu M. le Comte, for I had never seen him then. Yes, yes,
Henri de Rochambeau, and la belle Irlandaise. They were a very
personable couple, and why they saw fit to go and exist in the country,
Heaven alone knows--and perhaps his late Majesty, who did Mme de
Rochambeau the honour of a very particular admiration."
"And she objected, chere Comtesse?" De Lancy's tone was one of pained
incredulity.
Chere Comtesse shrugged her shoulders delicately.
"What would you?" she observed. "She was as beautiful as a picture, and
as virtuous as if Our Lady had sat for it. It even fatigued one a
little, her virtue."
Her own had bored no one--she had not permitted it any such social
solecism.
"I remember," said De Lancy; "they went down to Rochambeau, and expired
there of dulness and each other's unrelieved society."
Mme de Crespigny had been looking attentively at Aline. "Now I know who
the girl is," she said. "It is the girl who disappeared, who was
supposed to have been massacred. I saw her at Laure de Montargis'
reception the day of the arrests, and I remember her now. Ah! that poor
Laure----"
She shuddered faintly. De Lancy became interested.
"But she accompanied her cousin to La Force and perished there."
"She must have escaped. I am sure it is she. She had that way of
holding her head--like a stag--proud and timid."
"It was one of her mother's attractions," said the Comtesse. "Mlle
Desmond was, however, a great deal more beautiful. Her daughter, if
this girl is her daughter, has only that trick, and the eyes--yes, she
has the lovely eyes," as Aline turned her head and looked in their
direction. "M. de Lancy, do me the favour of conducting her here, and
presenting her to me."
The little old dandy clicked away on his high heels, and in a moment
Mademoiselle was aware of a truly courtly bow, whilst a thin, shaky
voice said gallantly:
"We rejoice to welcome Mademoiselle to our society."
She curtsied--a graceful action--and Madame de Matigny watching, nodded
twice complacently. "Bourgeoise indeed!" she murmured, and pressed her
lips together.
"You are too good, Monsieur," said Mademoiselle.
Only four words, but the voice--the composure.
"Madame la Comtesse is right, as always; she is certainly one of us,"
thought De Lancy.
"Madame la Comtesse de Matigny begs the honour of your acquaintance," he
pursued; "she had the pleasure of knowing your parents."
"Monsieur?"
"Do I not address Mlle de Rochambeau?"
Surprise, and a sense of terror at hearing her name, so long concealed,
brought the colour to her face.
"That is my name," she murmured.
"She is always right--she is wonderful," repeated the Marquis to
himself, as he piloted his charge across the room.
He made the presentation in form.
"Madame la Comtesse, permit that I present to you Mademoiselle de
Rochambeau."
Aline bent to the white, wrinkled hand, but was raised and embraced.
"You resemble your mother too closely to be mistaken by any one who had
the happiness of her acquaintance," said a gracious voice, and thereon
ensued a whole series of introductions. "M. le Marquis de Lancy, who
also knew your parents."
"Mme de Crespigny, my granddaughter Mlle Marguerite de Matigny."
A delightful sensation of having come home to a place of safety and
shelter came over Aline as she smiled and curtsied, forgetting her poor
dress and hard-worked fingers in the pleasure of being restored to the
society of her equals.
"Sit down here, beside me," commanded Mme de Matigny. She had been a
great beauty as well as a great lady in her day, and she spoke with an
imperious air that fitted either part. "Marguerite, give Mademoiselle
your stool."
Aline protested civilly, but Mlle Marguerite, a little dark-eyed
creature, with a baby mouth, dropped a soft whisper in her ear as she
rose:
"Grandmamma is always obeyed--but on the instant," and Aline sat down
submissively.
"And now, racontez donc, mon enfant, racontez," said the old lady,
"where have you been all these months, and how did you escape?"
Embarrassing questions these, but to hesitate was out of the question.
That would at once point to necessity for concealment. She began,
therefore, and told her story quite simply, and truly, only omitting
mention of her work with Dangeau.
Mme de Matigny tapped her knee.
"But, enfin, I do not understand. What is all this? Why did you not
appeal to your cousin's friends, to Mme de St. Aignan, or Mme de
Rabutin, for example?"
"I knew only the names, Madame," said Aline, lifting her truthful eyes.
"And at first I thought all had perished. I dared not ask, and there
was no one to tell me."
"Poor child," the hand stopped tapping, and patted her shoulder kindly.
"And this Rosalie you speak of, what was she?"
"Sometimes she was kind. I do not think she meant me any harm, and at
least she saved my life once."
When she came to the story of her arrest, she faltered a little. The
old eyes were so keen.
"What do they accuse you of? You have done nothing?"
"Oh, chere Comtesse, is it then necessary that one should have done
anything?" broke in Adele de Crespigny, a little bitter colour in that
faded voice of hers. "Have you done anything, or I, or little Marguerite
here?"
Madame fanned herself, her manner slightly distant. She was not
accustomed to be interrupted.
"They say I wrote letters to emigres, to my son Charles, in fact.
Marguerite also. It is a crime, it appears, to indulge in family
feeling. But, you, you, Mademoiselle, did not even do that."
"No," said Aline, blushing. "It was ... it was that the Citizen Hebert
found out my real name--I do not know how--and denounced me."
Her downcast looks filled in enough of the story for those penetrating
eyes.
"Canaille!" said the old lady under her breath, and then aloud:
"You are better here, with us. It is more convenable," and once more
she patted the shoulder, and that odd sense of being at home brought
sudden tears to Aline's eyes.
A few days later a piece of news reached her. She and Marguerite de
Matigny sat embroidering the same long strip of silk. They had become
close friends in the enforced daily intimacy of prison life, and the
luxury of possessing a friend with whom she could revive the old,
innocent, free talk of convent times was delightful in the extreme to
the lonely girl, forced too soon into a self-reliance beyond her years.
Mlle Marguerite looked up from the brilliant half-set stitch, and
glanced warily round.
"Tiens, Aline," she said, putting her small head on one side, "I heard
something this morning, something that concerns you."
Aline grew paler. That all news was bad news was one axiom which the
events of the last few months had graved deeply on her heart.
Marguerite saw the tremor that passed over her, and made haste to be
reassuring.
"No, no, ma belle, it is nothing bad. Stupid that I am! It is that
these wretches outside have been fighting amongst themselves, and your
M. Hebert has been sent to prison. I hope he likes it," and she took a
little vicious stitch which knotted her yellow thread, and confused the
symmetrical centre of a most gorgeous flower. "There, I have tangled my
thread again, and grandmamma will scold me. I shall say it was the
fault of your M. Hebert."
"Please don't call him _my_ M. Hebert," said Aline proudly. Marguerite
laid down her needle.
"Aline, why did he denounce you?"
"Ah, Marguerite, don't talk of him. You don't know what a wretch--" and
she broke off shuddering.
"No, but I should like to know. I can see you could tell tales--oh, but
most exciting ones! Why did he do it? He must have had some reason; or
did he just see you, and hate you, like love at first sight, only the
other way round?"
Mlle de Rochambeau assumed an air of prudence and reproof.
"Fi donc, Mlle de Matigny, what would your grandmother say to such
talk?"
Marguerite made a little, wicked _moue_.
"She would say--it was not convenable," she mimicked, and laid a coaxing
hand on her friend's knee. "But tell me then, Aline, tell me what I want
to know--tell me all about it, all there is to tell. I shall tease and
tease until you do," she declared.
"Oh, Marguerite, it is too dreadful to laugh about."
"If one never laughed, because of dreadful things, why, then, we should
all forget how to do it nowadays," pouted Marguerite. "But, see then,
already I cry--" and she lifted an infinitesimal scrap of cambric to her
dancing eyes.
Mlle de Rochambeau laughed, but she shook her head, and Marguerite gave
her a little pinch.
"Wicked one," she said; "but I shall find out all the same. All my life
I have found out what I wanted to, yes, even secrets of grandmamma's,"
and she nodded mischievously; but Aline turned back to the original
subject of the conversation.
"Are you sure he is in prison?" she asked anxiously.
"Yes, yes, quite sure. The Abbe Loisel said so when he came this
morning. I heard him say to grand-mamma, 'The wolves begin to tear each
other. It is a just retribution.' And then he said, 'Hebert, who edits
that disgrace to the civilised world, the _Pere Duchesne_, is in
prison.' Oh, Aline, would n't it have been fun if he had been sent
here?"
Aline's hand went to her heart.
"Oh, mon Dieu!" she said quickly.
Marguerite made round baby eyes of wonder.
"You _are_ frightened of him," she cried. "He must have done, or said,
something very bad to make you look like that. If you would tell me
what it was, I should not have to go on worrying you about him, but as
it is, I shall have to make you simply hate me. I know I shall," she
concluded mournfully.
"Oh, child, child, you don't understand," cried Mlle de Rochambeau,
feeling suddenly that her two years of greater age were twenty of bitter
experience. Her eyes filled as she bent her burning face over the
embroidery, whilst two large tears fell from them and lay on the petals
of her golden flower like points of glittering dew.
Marguerite coloured, and looked first down at the floor and then up at
her friend's flushed face.
"Oh, Aline!" she breathed, "was it really that? Oh, the wretch! And
when you wouldn't look at him he revenged himself? Ouf, it makes me
creep. No wonder you feel badly about it. The villain!" she stamped a
childish foot, and knotted her thread again.
"Oh dear, it will have to be cut," she declared, "and what grandmamma
will say, the saints alone know."
Aline took the work out of the too vehement hands, and spent five
minutes in bringing order out of a sad confusion. "Now it is better,"
she said, handing it back again; "you are too impatient, little one."
"Ah, 'twas not my fault, but that villain's. How could I be calm when I
thought of him? But you are an angel of patience, ma mie. How can you
be so quiet and still when things go wrong?"
"Ah," said Mademoiselle with half a sigh, "for eight months I earned my
living by my work, you know, and if I had lost patience when my thread
knotted I should have had nothing to eat next day, so you see I was
obliged to learn."
Mme de Matigny came by as she ended, and both girls rose and curtsied.
She glanced at the work, nodded her head, and passed on, on M. de
Lancy's arm. For the moment chattering Marguerite became decorous Mlle
de Matigny--a _jeune fille, bien elevee_. In her grandmother's presence
only the demurest of glances shot from the soft brown eyes, only the
most dutiful and conventional remarks dropped from the pretty, prudish
lips--but with Aline, what a difference! Now, the stately passage over,
she leaned close again above the neglected needle.
"Dis donc, Aline! You were betrothed, were you not, to that poor M. de
Selincourt? Were you inconsolable when he was killed? Did you like
him?"
The ambiguous "aimer" fell from her lips with a teasing inflection.
"He is dead," reproved Mlle de Rochambeau.
"Tiens, I did not say he was alive! But did you; tell me? What did it
feel like to be betrothed?"
"Ask Mme de Matigny what is the correct feeling for a young girl to have
for her betrothed," said Aline, a hint of bitterness behind her smile.
"De grece!" and Marguerite's plump hands went up in horror. "See then,
Aline, I think it would be nice to love--really to love--do you not
think so?"
Mlle de Rochambeau shook her head with decision. Something in the light
words had stabbed her, and she felt an inward pain.
"I do not see why one should not love one's husband," pursued Marguerite
reflectively. "If one has to live with some one always, it would be far
more agreeable to love him. But it appears that that is a very
bourgeoise idea, and that it is more convenable to love some one else."
"Oh, Marguerite!"
"Yes, yes, I tell you it is so! Here one hears everything. They cannot
send one out of the room when the conversation begins to grow
interesting. There is Mme de Crespigny--she is in our room--she weeps
much in the night, but it is not because of her husband, oh no; it is
for M. le Chevalier de St. Armand, who was guillotined on the same day."
"Hush, Marguerite, you should not say such things."
"But if they are true, and this is really true, for when they brought
her the news she cried out 'Etienne' very loud, and fainted. M. de
Crespigny was our cousin, so I know all his names. There is no Etienne
amongst them," and she nodded wisely.
"Oh, Marguerite!"
"So you see it is true. I find that odious, for my part, though, to be
sure, what could she do if she loved him? One cannot make oneself love
or not love. It comes or it goes, and you can only weep like Mme de
Crespigny, unless, to be sure, one could make shift to laugh, as I think
I shall try to do when my time comes."
Mlle de Rochambeau looked up with a sudden flame in her eyes.
"It is not true that one cannot help loving," she said quickly. "One
can--one can. If it is a wrong love it can be crushed, and one forgets.
Oh, you do not know what you are talking about, Marguerite."
Marguerite embraced her.
"And do you?" she whispered slyly.
Girls' talk--strange talk for a prison, and one where Death stood by the
entrance, beckoning one and another.
One day it was M. de Lancy who was called away in the midst of a
compliment to his "Chere Comtesse," called to appear at Fouquier
Tinville's bar, and later, at that of another and more merciful Judge.
The next, Mme de Crespigny's tired eyes rested for the last time upon
prison walls, and she went out smiling wistful good-byes, to follow
husband and lover to a world where there is neither marrying nor giving
in marriage.
As each departed, the groups would close their ranks, and after a
moment's pause would talk the faster and more lightly, until once more
the summons came, and again one would be taken and one left.
This was one side of prison society. On the other a group of devout
persons kept up the forms of convent life, just as the coterie of Mme de
Matigny did those of the salon. The Abbe de Nerac, the Abbe Constantin,
and half a dozen nuns were the nucleus of this second group, but not all
were ecclesiastics or religious. M. de Maurepas, the young soldier,
with the ugly rugged face and good brown eyes, was of their number, and
devout ladies not a few, who spent their time between encouraging one
another in the holy life, and hours of silent prayer for those in the
peril of trial and the agony of death.
Their conversations may still be read, and breathe a piety as exquisite
as it is natural and touching. To both these groups came daily the Abbe
Loisel, bringing to the one news of the outside world, and to the other
the consolations of religion. Mass was said furtively, the Host
elevated, the faithful communicated, and Loisel would pass out again to
his life of hourly peril, moving from hiding-place to hiding-place, and
from plot to plot, risking his safety by day to comfort the prisoners,
or to bless the condemned on their way to the scaffold, and by night to
give encouragement to some little band of aristocrats who thought they
could fight the Revolution.
Singular mixture of conspirator and saint, his courage was undoubted.
The recorded heroisms of the times are many, those unrecorded more, and
his strange adventures have never found an historian.
Outside the Gironde rocked, tottered, and fell. Imprisoned Hebert was
loose again. Danton struck for the Mountain, and struck right home.
First arrest, then prison, and lastly death came upon the men who had
dreamed of ruling France. The strong man armed had kept the house,
until there came one stronger than he.
So passed the Girondins, first of the Revolution's children to fall
beneath the Juggernaut car they had reared and set in motion.