BETRAYAL
In the early days of April the wind-swept, ice-tormented Pyrenees had
been exchanged for the Spanish lowlands, vexed by the drought and heat
of those spring days. If the army had suffered from frostbite and
pneumonia before, it groaned now under a plague of dysentery, but it was
still, and increasingly, victorious. An approving Convention sent
congratulatory messages to Dugommier, who enjoyed the
distinction--somewhat unusual for a general in those days--of having
been neither superseded nor recalled to suffer an insulting trial and an
ignoble death.
France had a short way with her public servants just then. Was an army
in retreat? To Paris with the traitor who commanded it. Was an
advantage insufficiently followed up? To the guillotine with the
officer responsible. Dumouriez saved his head by going to Austria with
young Egalite at his heels, but many and many a general who had led the
troops of France looked out of the little window, and was flung into the
common trench, to be dust in dust with nobles, great ladies, common
murderers, and the poor Queen herself. Closer and closer shaved the
national razor, heavier and heavier fell the pall upon blood-soaked
Paris. Marat, long since assassinated, and canonised as first Saint of
the New Calendar, with rites of an impiety quite indescribable, would,
had he lived, have seen his prophecy fulfilled. Paris had drunk and was
athirst again, and always with that drunkard's craving which cannot be
allayed--no, not by all the floods of the infernal lake. Men were no
longer men, but victims of a horrible dementia. Listen to Hebert
demanding the Queen's blood.
"Do you think that any of us will be able to save ourselves?" he cries.
"I tell you we are all damned already, but if my blood must flow, it
shall not flow alone. I tell you that if we pass, our passing shall
devastate France, and leave her ruined and bloody, a spectacle for the
nations!" And this at the beginning of the Terror!
A curious thought comes to one. Are these words, instinct with pure,
fate-driven tragedy, the fruit of Hebert's mind--Hebert gross with Paris
slime, sensual, self-seeking, flushed with evil living? or is he, too,
unwillingly amongst the prophets, mouthpiece only of an immutable law,
which, outraged by him and his like, pronounces thus an irrevocable
doom?
Well might Danton write--"This is chaos, and the worlds are a-shaping.
One cannot see one's way for the red vapour. I am sick of it--sick.
There is nothing but blood, blood, blood. Camille says that the
infernal gods are athirst. If they are not glutted soon there will be
no blood left to flow. They may have mine before long. Maximilian eyes
my head as if it irked him to see it higher than his own. If it were
off he would seem the taller. I am going home to Arles--with my wife.
The spring is beautiful there, and the Aube runs clean from blood. It
were better to fish its waters than to meddle with the governing of
men."
Dangeau sighed heavily as he destroyed the letter. Surely the strong
hand would be able to steer the ship to calmer waters, and yet there was
a deep sense of approaching fatality upon him.
His fellow-Commissioner was of Robespierre's party,--a tall man,
wonderfully thin, with grizzled hair, and a nose where the bony ridge
showed yellow under the tight skin. He had a cold, suspicious eye,
light grey, with a green under-tinge, and was, as Dangeau knew beyond a
doubt, a spy both on himself and on Dugommier. There came an April day
full of heat, and sullen with brooding thunder. Dangeau in his tent,
writing his report, found the pen heavy in his hand, and for once was
glad of the interruption, when Vibert's shadow fell across the entrance,
and his long form bent to enter at the low door.
"Ah, come in," he said, pushing his inkstand away; and Vibert, who had
not waited for the invitation, sat down and looked at him curiously for
a moment. Then he said:
"A courier from Paris came in an hour ago."
Dangeau stretched out his hand, but the other held his papers close.
"There is news,--weighty news," he continued; and Dangeau felt his
courage leap to meet an impending blow.
"What news?" he asked, quite quietly, hand still held out.
"You are Danton's friend?"
"As you very well know, Citizen."
Vibert flung all his papers on the table.
"You 'll be less ready to claim his friendship in the future, I take
it," he said, with a sudden twang of steel in his voice. Dangeau turned
frightfully pale, but the hand that reached for the letters was
controlled.
"Your meaning, Citizen?"
Vibert's strident laugh rang out.
"Danton was--somebody, and your friend. Danton is--a name and nothing
more. Once the knife has fallen there is not a penny to choose between
him and any other carrion. A good riddance to France, and all good
patriots will say 'Amen' to that."
"Patriots!" muttered Dangeau, and then fell to reading the papers with
bent head and eyes resolutely calm. When he looked up no one would have
guessed that he was moved, and the sneering look which dwelt upon his
face glanced off again. He met Vibert's eyes full, his own steady with
a cold composure, and after a moment or two the thin man shuffled with
his feet, and spat noisily.
"Well," he said, "Robespierre for my money; but, of course, Danton was
backing you, and you stand to lose by his fall."
"Ah," said Dangeau softly, "you think so?"
He looked to the open door of the tent as he spoke. The flap was rolled
high to let in the air, and showed a slope, planted with vines in stiff
rows, and, above, a space of sky. This seemed to consist of one low,
bulging cloud, dark with suppressed thunder, and in the heavy bosom of
it a pulse of lightning throbbed continually. With each throb the play
of light grew more vivid, whilst out of the distance came a low,
answering boom, the far-off heart-beat of the storm. Dangeau's eyes
rested on the prospect with a strange, sardonic expression. Danton was
dead, and dead with him all hopes that he might lead a France, purged
terribly, and regenerate by fire and blood, to her place as the first,
because the freest, of nations. Danton was dead, and Paris adrift,
unrestrained, upon a sea of blood. Danton was dead, and the last,
lingering, constructive purpose had departed from a confederacy given
over to a mere drunken orgy of destruction--slaves to an ignoble passion
for self-preservation. To Dangeau's thought death became suddenly a
thing honourable and to be desired. From the public services of those
days it was the only resignation, and he saw it now before him,
inevitable, more dignified than life beneath a squalid yoke. All the
ideals withered, all the idols shattered, youth worn through, patriotism
chilled, disenchantment, disintegration, decay,--these he saw in sombre
retrospect, and nausea, long repressed, broke upon him like a flood.
A flash brighter than any before shot in a vicious fork across the
blackening sky, and the thunder followed it close, with a crash that
startled Vibert to his feet.
Dangeau sat motionless, but when the reverberations had died away, he
leaned across the table, still with that slight smile, and said:
"And what do you say of me in your report, Vibert?"
Still dazed with the noise, the man stared nervously.
"My report, Citizen?"
"Your report, Vibert."
"My report to the Convention?"
Dangeau laughed, with the air of a man who is enjoying himself. After
the dissimulation, the hateful necessity for repression and evasion,
frankness was a luxury.
"Oh, no, my good Vibert, not your report to the Convention. It is your
report to Robespierre that I mean. I have a curiosity to know how you
mean to put the thing. 'Emotion at hearing of Danton's death,' is that
your line, eh?"
"Citizen----"
"What, protestations? Really, Vibert, you underrate my intelligence.
Shall I tell you what you said about me last time?"
Vibert shifted his eyes to the door, and seemed to measure his distance
from it.
"What I said last time, Citizen?" he stammered. Once out of the tent he
knew he could break Dangeau easily enough, but at present, alone with a
man who he was aware must be desperate, he felt a creeping in his bones,
and a strong desire to be elsewhere.
Dangeau's lip lifted.
"Be reassured, my friend. I am not a spy, and I really have no idea
what it was that you said, though now that you have been so obligingly
transparent I think I might hazard a guess. It would be a pity if this
week's report were to contain nothing fresh. Robespierre might even be
bored--in the intervals of killing his betters."
Vibert's lips closed with a snap. Here was recklessness, here was
matter enough to condemn a man who stood firmer than Dangeau.
Dangeau leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs.
"You agree with me that that would be a pity? Very well then, you may
get out your notebook and write the truth for once. Tell the
incorruptible Maximilian that he is making the world too unpleasant a
place for any self-respecting Frenchman to care about remaining in it,
and, if that is not enough, you can inform him that Danton's blood will
yet call loud enough to bid him down to hell."
There was no emotion at all in his voice. He spoke drily, as one
stating facts too obvious to require any stress of tone, or emphasis.
Vibert was puzzled, but his nerves were recovering, and he wrote
defiantly, looking up with a half-start at every other word as if he
expected to see Dangeau's arm above him, poised to strike.
Dangeau shrugged his shoulders.
"You needn't be afraid," he said, with hard contempt. "You are too
obviously suited to the present debacle for me to wish to remove you
from it. No doubt your time will come, but I have no desire to play
Sanson's part."
Vibert winced. Perhaps he saw the red-edged axe of the Revolution
poised above him. When, four months later, he was indeed waiting for it
to fall, they say he cursed Dangeau very heartily.
The lightning stabbed with a blinding flame, the thunder crashed scarce
a heart-beat behind, and with that the rain began. It fell in great
gouts and splashes, with here and there a big hailstone, and for a
minute or two the air seemed full of water, pierced now by a sudden
flare of blue, and shattered again by the roar that followed. Then, as
it had come, so it went, and in a moment the whirl of the wind swept the
sky clear again.
Vibert pulled himself together. His long limbs had stiffened into a
curious rigidity whilst the storm was at its height, but now they came
out of it with a jerk. He thrust his notebook into the pocket which
bulged against his thin form, and under his drooping lids he sent a
queer, inquisitive glance at his companion. Dangeau was leaning back in
his chair, one arm thrown carelessly over the back of it, his attitude
one of acquiescence, his expression that of a man released from some
distasteful task. Vibert had seen many a man under sentence of death,
but this phase piqued him, and he turned in the doorway.
"Come then, Dangeau," he said, with a would-be familiar air, "what made
you do it? Between colleagues now? I may tell you, you had fairly
puzzled me. When you read those papers, I could have sworn you did not
care a jot, that it was all one to you who was at the top of the tree so
you kept your own particular branch; and then, just as I was thinking
you had bested me, and betrayed nothing, out you come with your 'To hell
with Robespierre.' What the devil took you?"
Dangeau looked at him with a strange gleam in his eyes. The impulse to
speak, to confide, attacks us at curious moments; years may pass, a man
may be set in all circumstances that invite betrayal, he may be closeted
with some surgeon skilled in the soul's hurts, and the impulse may not
wake,--and then, quite suddenly, at an untoward time, and to a listener
the most unlikely, his soul breaks bounds and displays its secret
springs.
Such an hour was upon Dangeau now, and he experienced its intoxication
to the full.
"My reason?" he said slowly. "My good Vibert, is one a creature of
reason? For me, I doubt it--I doubt it. Look at our reasonable town of
Paris, our reasonable Maximilian, our reasonable guillotine. Heavens!
how the infernal powers must laugh at us and our reason."
Then of a sudden the sneer dropped out of his tone, and a ring almost
forgotten came to it, and brought each word distinctly to Vibert's ear,
though the voice itself fell lower and lower, as he spoke less and less
to the man in the tent-door and more and more to his own crystallising
thoughts.
"My reason? Impulse,--just the sheer animal desire to strike at what
hurts. What was reason not to do for us? and in the end we come back to
impulse again. A vicious circle everywhere. The wheel turns, and we
rise, fancying the stars are within our grasp. The wheel turns on, and
we fall,--lose the stars and have our wage--a handful of bloody dust.
Louis was a tyrant, and he fell. I had a hand in that, and said,
'Tyranny is dead.' Dead? Just Heaven! and in Paris to-day every man is
a tyrant who is not a victim. Tyranny has the Hydra's gift of
multiplying in death. Better one tyrant than a hundred. Perhaps
Robespierre thinks that, but God knows it is better a people should be
oppressed than that they should become oppressors." Here his head came
up with a jerk, and his manner changed abruptly. "And then," he
continued, with a little bow, "and then, you see, I am so intolerably
bored with your society, my good Vibert."
Vibert scowled, cursed, and went out. Half an hour afterwards he
thought of several things he might have said, and felt an additional
rancour against Dangeau because they had not come to him at the time. A
mean creature, Vibert, and not quick, but very apt for dirty work, and
therefore worth his price to the Incorruptible Robespierre.
Dangeau, left alone, fell to thinking. His strange elation was still
upon him, and he felt an unwonted lightness of spirit. He began to
consider whether he should wait to be arrested, or end now in the Roman
way. Suicide was much in vogue at the time, and was gilded with a strong
halo of heroics. The doctrine of a purpose in the individual existence
being rejected, the Stoic argument that life was a thing to be laid down
at will seemed reasonable enough. It appealed to the dramatic sense, a
thing very inherent in man, and the records of the times set down almost
as many suicides as executions. Dangeau had often enough maintained
man's right to relinquish that which he had not asked to receive, but at
this crisis in his life there came up in him old teachings, those which
are imperishable, because they have their roots in an imperishable
affection. His mother, whom he adored, had lived and died a devout
Catholic, and there came back to him now a strange, faint sense of the
dignity and purpose of the soul, of life as a trial, life as a trust.
It seemed suddenly nobler to endure than to relinquish. An image of the
deserter flitted through his brain, to be followed by another of the
child that pettishly casts away a broken toy, and from that his mind
went back, back through the years. For a moment his mother's eyes
looked quite clearly into his, and he heard her voice say, "Jacques, you
do not listen."
Ah, those tricks of the brain! How at a touch, a turn of the head, a
breath, a scent, the past rises quick, and the brain, phonograph and
photograph in one, shows us our dead again, and brings their voices to
our ears. Dangeau saw the chimney corner, and a crooked log on the
fire. The resin in it boiled up, and ran down all ablaze. He watched
it with wondering, childish eyes, and heard the gentle voice at his ears
say, "Jacques, you do not listen."
It was there and gone between one breath and the next, but it took with
it the dust of years, and left the old love very fresh and tender.
Ah--the dear woman, the dear mother. "Que Dieu te benisse," he said
under his breath.
The current of thought veered to Aline, and at that life woke in him,
the desire to live, the desire of her, the desire to love. Then on a
tide of bitterness, "She will be free." Quickly came the answer, "Free
and defenceless."
He sank his head in his hands, and, for the first time for months,
deliberately evoked her image.
It seemed as if Fate were concerning herself with Dangeau's affairs, for
she sent a bullet Vibert's way next morning. It ripped his scalp, and
sent him bleeding and delirious to a sick-bed from which he did not rise
for several weeks. It was, therefore, not until late in June that
Robespierre stretched out his long arm, and haled Dangeau from his post
in Spain to Paris and the prison of La Force.
Meanwhile there was trouble at Rancy-les-Bois. Mr. and Mrs. Desmond,
after a series of most adventurous adventures, had arrived at Bale, and
there, with characteristic imprudence, proceeded to narrate to a much
interested circle of friends and relatives the full and particular
details of their escape. Rancy was mentioned, Mlle Ange described and
praised, Aline's story brought in, Madelon's part in the drama given its
full value. Such imprudence may seem inconceivable, but it had more
than one parallel.
In this instance trouble was not long in breeding. Three years
previously Joseph Pichon of Bale had gone Paris-wards to seek his
fortune. Circumstances had sent him as apprentice to M. Bompard, the
watchmaker of Rancy's market-town. Here he stayed two years, years
which were enlivened by tender passages between him and Marie, old
Bompard's only child. At the end of two years M. Pichon senior died,
having lost his elder son about six months before. Joseph, therefore,
came in for his father's business, and immediately made proposals for
the hand of Mlle Marie. Bompard liked the young man, Marie declared she
loved him; but the times were ticklish. It was not the moment for
giving one's heiress to a foreigner. Such an action might be
unfavourably construed, deemed unpatriotic; so Joseph departed
unbetrothed, but with as much hope as it is good for a young man to
nourish. His views were Republican, his sentiments ardent. By the time
his own affairs were settled it was to be hoped that public matters
would also be quieter, and then--why, then Marie Bompard might become
Marie Pichon, no one forbidding. Imagine, then, the story of the
Desmonds' escape coming to the ears of Joseph the Republican. He burned
with interest, and, having more than a touch of the busybody, sat down
and wrote Bompard a full account of the whole affair. Bompard was
annoyed. He crackled the pages angrily, and stigmatised Joseph as a fool
and a meddler. Bompard was fat, and a good, kind, easy man; he desired
to live peaceably, and really the times made it very difficult. His
first impulse was to put the paper in the fire and hold his tongue.
Then he reflected that he was not Joseph's only acquaintance in the
place. If the young man were to write to Jean Dumont, the Mayor's son,
for instance, and then it was to come out that the facts had been known
to Bompard, and concealed by him. "Seigneur!" exclaimed Bompard,
mopping his brow, which had become suddenly moist. Men's heads had come
off for less than that. He read the letter again, drumming on his
counter the while, with a stubby, black-nailed hand; at any rate, risk
or no risk, Madelon must not be mentioned. He had known her from a
child; there was, in fact, some very distant connection between the
families, and she was a good, pretty girl. Bompard was a fatherly man.
He liked to chuck a pretty girl under the chin, and see her blush, and
Madelon had a pleasant trick of it; and then, just now, all the world
knew she was expecting the birth of her first child. No, certainly he
would hold his tongue about Madelon. He burnt the letter, feeling like
a conspirator, and it was just as he was blowing away the last
compromising bit of ash that Mathieu Leroux walked in upon him.
They talked of the weather first, and then of the prospects of a good
apple year. Then Mathieu harked back to the old story of the fire,
worked himself into a passion over it, noted Bompard's confusion, and in
ten minutes had the whole story out,--all, that is, except his own
daughter's share in it, and at that he guessed with an inward fury which
fairly frightened poor fat Bompard.
"Those Desaix!" he exclaimed with an oath. "If I 'd had your tale six
weeks ago! Now there 's only Ange and the niece. It's like Marthe to
cheat one in the end!"
Bompard looked curiously at him. He did not know the secret of
Mathieu's hostility to the Desaix family. Old Mere Anne could have told
him that when Marthe was a handsome, black-eyed girl, Mathieu Leroux had
lifted his eyes high, and conceived a sullen passion for one as much
above him as Rene de Montenay was above her sister Ange. The village
talked, Marthe noted the looks that followed her everywhere, and boiled
with pride and anger. Then one day Mme de Montenay, coldly ignoring all
differences in the ranks below her own, said:
"So, Marthe, you are to make a match of it with young Leroux"; and at
that the girl flamed up.
"If we 're not high enough for the Chateau, at least we 're too high for
the gutter," she said, with a furiously pointed glance at Rene de
Montenay, whose eyes were on her sister.
Ange turned deadly pale, Rene flushed to the roots of his hair, Madame
bit her lip, and Charles Leroux, who was listening at the door, took
note of the bitter words, and next time he was angry with his brother
flung them at him tauntingly. Mathieu neither forgot nor forgave them.
After forty years his resentment still festered, and was to break at
last into an open poison.
His trip to Paris had furnished him with the names and style of patriots
whose measures could be trusted not to err on the side of leniency, and
to one of these he wrote a hot denunciation of Ange Desaix and Aline
Dangeau, whom he accused of being enemies to the Republic, and traitors
to Liberty, inasmuch as they had assisted proscribed persons to
emigrate. No greater crime existed. The denunciation did its work, and
in a trice down came Commissioner Brutus Carre to set up his tribunal
amongst the frightened villagers, and institute a little terror within
the Terror at quiet Rancy-les-Bois.
The village buzzed like a startled hive, women bent white faces over
their household tasks, men shuffled embarrassed feet at the inn,
glancing suspiciously at one another, and all avoiding Mathieu's hard
black eyes. At the white house Commissioner Brutus Carre occupied Mlle
Marthe's sunny room, whilst Ange and Aline sat under lock and key, and
heard wild oaths and viler songs defile the peaceful precincts.
Up at the mill, Madelon lay abed with her newborn son at her breast.
Strange how the softness and the warmth of him stirred her heart, braced
it, and gave her a courage which amazed Jean Jacques. She lay, a little
pale, but quite composed, and fixed her round brown eyes upon her
father's scowling face. In the background Jean Jacques stood stolidly.
He was quite ready to strangle Mathieu with those strong hands of his,
but had sufficient wit to realise that such a proceeding would probably
not help Madelon.
"They were here!" vociferated Mathieu loudly. "You took them in, you
concealed them, you helped them to get away. You thought you had
cheated me finely, you and that oaf who stands there; and you thought me
a good, easy man, one who would cover your fault because you were his
daughter. I tell you I am a patriot, I! If my daughter betrays the
Republic shall I shield her? I say no, a thousand times no!"
Madelon's clear gaze never wavered. Her arm held her baby tight, and if
her heart beat heavily no one heard it except the child, who whimpered a
little and put groping hands against her breast.
"Then you mean to denounce me?" she said quite low.
"Denounce you! Yes, you 're no daughter of mine! Every one shall know
that you are a traitress."
"And my baby?" asked Madelon.
Leroux cursed it aloud, and the child, frightened by the harsh voice,
burst into a lusty wailing that took all its mother's tender hushing to
still.
When she looked at her father again there was something very bright and
intent in her expression.
"Very well, my father," she said; "it is understood that you denounce
me. Do you perhaps suppose that I shall hold my tongue?"
"Say what you like, and be damned to you!" shouted Mathieu.
Jean Jacques clenched his hands and took a step forward, but his wife's
expression checked him.
"I may say what I like?" she observed.
"The more the better. Why, see here, Madelon, if you will give evidence
against Ange Desaix and her niece, I 'll do my best to get you off."
"Why, what has Mlle Ange to do with it?" said Madelon, open-eyed.
Leroux became speechless for a moment. Then he swore volubly, and
cursed Madelon for a liar.
"A liar, and a damned fool!" he spluttered. "For now I 'll not lift a
finger for you, my girl, and when you see the guillotine ready for you,
perhaps you 'll wish you 'd kept a civil tongue in your head."
"Enough!" said Madelon sharply. "Let us understand each other. If you
speak, I speak too. If you accuse me, I accuse you."
"Accuse me, accuse me,--and of what?"
Madelon's eyes flashed.
"You have a short memory," she said; "others will not believe it is so
short. When I say, as I shall say, that it was you that arranged Mlle
Marguerite's flight there will be plenty of people who will believe me."
She paused, panting a little, and Mathieu, white with passion, stared
helplessly at her.
Jean Jacques, in the background, looked from one to the other, amazed to
the point of wondering whether he were asleep or awake. Was this
Madelon, who had been afraid of raising her voice in her father's
presence? And what was all this about Leroux and the escape? It was
beyond him, but he opened ears and eyes to their widest.
"There is no proof!" shouted Mathieu.
"Ah, but yes," said Madelon at once; "you forget that Mlle Marguerite
gave you her diamond shoe-buckles as a reward for helping her and M. le
Chevalier to get away."
"Shoe-buckles!" exclaimed Mathieu Leroux, his eyes almost starting from
his head.
"Yes, indeed, shoe-buckles with diamonds in them, fit for a princess;
and they are hidden in your garden, my father, and when I tell the
Commissioner that, and show him where they are buried, do you think that
your patriotism will save you?"
"It is not true," gasped Mathieu, putting one hand to his head, where
the hair clung suddenly damp.
"Citizen Brutus Carre will believe it," returned Madelon steadily.
"Hell-cat! She-devil! You would not dare----"
"Yes, I would dare. I will dare anything if you push me too far, but if
you hold your tongue I will hold mine," said Madelon, looking at him
over her baby's head. She laid her free arm across the child as she
spoke, and Leroux saw truth and determination in her eyes.
Jean Jacques began to understand. Eh, but Madelon was clever. A smile
came slowly into his broad face, and his hands unclenched. After all,
there would be no strangling. It was much better so. Quarrels in
families were a mistake. He conceived that the moment had arrived when
he might usefully intervene.
"It is a mistake to quarrel," he observed in his deep, slow voice.
Mathieu swung round, glaring, and Madelon closed her eyes for a moment.
There was a slight pause, during which Jean Jacques met his
father-in-law's furious gaze with placidity.
Then he said again:
"Quarrels in families are a mistake. It is better to live peaceably.
Madelon and I are quiet people."
Leroux gave a short, enraged grunt, and looked again at his daughter.
As he moved she opened her eyes, and he read in them an unchanged
resolve.
"I don't want to quarrel, I 'm sure," he said sulkily.
"We don't," observed Jean Jacques with simplicity.
"Then it is understood. Madelon will tell no lies about me?"
"I say nothing unless I am arrested. If that happens, I tell what I
know."
"But you know nothing," exploded Leroux.
"The shoe-buckles," said Madelon.
Leroux stared at her silently for a full minute. Then, with an
angrily-muttered oath, he flung out of the room, shutting the door
behind him with violence.
Jean Jacques stood scratching his head.
"Eh, Madelon," he said, "you faced him grandly. But when did he get
those shoe-buckles, and how did you know about them?"
Madelon began to laugh faintly, with catching breath.
"Oh, thou great stupid," she panted; "did'st thou not understand? There
never, never, never were any buckles at all, but he thought they were
there in his garden, and it did just as well," and with that she buried
her face in the pillow and broke into passionate weeping.
Mathieu Leroux held his tongue about his daughter and walked softly for
a day or two. Also he took much exercise in his garden, where he dug to
the depth of three feet, but without finding anything.
Meanwhile Brutus Carre was occupied with the forms of republican
justice. His prisoners were to be taken to Paris, since Justice lacked
implements here, and Rancy owned no convenient stream where one might
drown the accused in pairs, or sink them by the boat-load.
Ange Desaix faced him with a high look. If her ideals were tottering,
their nobility still clung about her, wrapping her from this man's rude
gaze.
"I was a Republican before the Revolution," she said, and her look drew
from Citizen Carre an outburst of venom.
"You are suspect, gravely suspect," he bellowed.
"But, Citizen--" and the frank gaze grew a little bewildered.
"But, Citoyenne!--but, Aristocrat! What! you answer me, you bandy
words? Is treason so bold in Rancy-les-Bois? Truly it's time the
wasp's nest was smoked out. Take her away!" and Mlle Ange went out,
still with that bewildered look.
M. le Cure came next. There was a high flush on his thin cheeks, and
his fingers laced and interlaced continually.
When Carre blustered at him he started, leaned forward, and tapped the
table sharply.
"I wish to speak, to make a statement," he said in a high, trembling
voice.
There was a surprised silence, whilst the priest stretched out his hand
and spoke as from the pulpit.
"My children, I have been as Judas amongst you, as Judas who betrayed
his Lord. I desire to ask pardon of the souls I have offended, before I
go to answer for my sin."
Carre stared at him.
"Is he mad?" he asked, with a brutal laugh.
"No, not mad," said M. le Cure quietly.
"Not that it matters having a crack in a head that's so soon to come
off," continued the Commissioner. "Take him away. When I want to hear a
sermon I 'll send for him"; and out went the cure.
On the road to Paris he was very quiet, sitting for the most part with
his head in his hands. After they reached Paris, Mlle Ange and Aline
saw him no more. No doubt he perished amongst the hundreds who died and
left no sign. As for the women, they were sent to the Abbaye, and there
waited for the end.