Produced by Robert J. Hall
THE COMPANIONS OF JEHU
By Alexandre Dumas, père
CONTENTS
An Introductory Word to the Reader.
Prologue--The City of Avignon.
I. A Table d’Hôte.
II. An Italian Proverb.
III. The Englishman.
IV. The Duel.
V. Roland.
VI. Morgan.
VII. The Chartreuse of Seillon.
VIII. How the Money of the Directory was Used.
IX. Romeo and Juliet
X. The Family of Roland.
XI. Château des Noires-Fontaines.
XII. Provincial Pleasures.
XIII. The Wild-Boar.
XIV. An Unpleasant Commission.
XV. The Strong-Minded Man.
XVI. The Ghost.
XVII. Investigations.
XVIII. The Trial.
XIX. The Little House in the Rue de la Victoire.
XX. The Guests of General Bonaparte.
XXI. The Schedule of the Directory.
XXII. The Outline of a Decree.
XXIII. Alea Jacta Est.
XXIV. The Eighteenth Brumaire.
XXV. An Important Communication.
XXVI. The Ball of the Victims.
XXVII. The Bear’s Skin.
XXVIII. Family Matters.
XXIX. The Geneva Diligence.
XXX. Citizen Fouché’s Report.
XXXI. The Son of the Miller of Guerno.
XXXII. White and Blue.
XXXIII. The Law of Retaliation.
XXXIV. The Diplomacy of Georges Cadoudal.
XXXV. A Proposal of Marriage.
XXXVI. Sculpture and Painting.
XXXVII. The Ambassador.
XXXVIII. The Two Signals.
XXXIX. The Grotto of Ceyzeriat.
XL. A False Scent.
XLI. The Hôtel de la Poste.
XLII. The Chambéry Mail-Coach.
XLIII. Lord Grenville’s Reply.
XLIV. Change of Residence.
XLV. The Follower of Trails.
XLVI. An Inspiration.
XLVII. A Reconnoissance.
XLVIII. In which Morgan’s Presentiments are Verified.
XLIX. Roland’s Revenge.
L. Cadoudal at the Tuileries.
LI. The Army of the Reserves.
LII. The Trial.
LIII. In which Amélie Keeps Her Word.
LIV. The Confession.
LV. Invulnerable.
LVI. Conclusion.
AN INTRODUCTORY WORD TO THE READER
Just about a year ago my old friend, Jules Simon, author of “Devoir,”
came to me with a request that I write a novel for the “Journal pour
Tous.” I gave him the outline of a novel which I had in mind. The
subject pleased him, and the contract was signed on the spot.
The action occurred between 1791 and 1793, and the first chapter opened
at Varennes the evening of the king’s arrest.
Only, impatient as was the “Journal pour Tous,” I demanded a fortnight
of Jules Simon before beginning my novel. I wished to go to Varennes; I
was not acquainted with the locality, and I confess there is one thing I
cannot do; I am unable to write a novel or a drama about localities with
which I am not familiar.
In order to write “Christine” I went to Fontainebleau; in writing “Henri
III.” I went to Blois; for “Les Trois Mousquetaires” I went to Boulogne
and Béthune; for “Monte-Cristo” I returned to the Catalans and the
Château d’If; for “Isaac Laquedem” I revisited Rome; and I certainly
spent more time studying Jerusalem and Corinth from a distance than if I
had gone there.
This gives such a character of veracity to all that I write, that the
personages whom I create become eventually such integral parts of the
places in which I planted them that, as a consequence, many end by
believing in their actual existence. There are even some people who
claim to have known them.
In this connection, dear readers, I am going to tell you something
in confidence--only do not repeat it. I do not wish to injure honest
fathers of families who live by this little industry, but if you go to
Marseilles you will be shown there the house of Morel on the Cours, the
house of Mercédès at the Catalans, and the dungeons of Dantès and Faria
at the Château d’If.
When I staged “Monte-Cristo” at the Theâtre-Historique, I wrote to
Marseilles for a plan of the Château d’If, which was sent to me. This
drawing was for the use of the scene painter. The artist to whom I had
recourse forwarded me the desired plan. He even did better than I would
have dared ask of him; he wrote beneath it: “View of the Château d’If,
from the side where Dantès was thrown into the sea.”
I have learned since that a worthy man, a guide attached to the Château
d’If, sells pens made of fish-bone by the Abbé Faria himself.
There is but one unfortunate circumstance concerning this; the fact is,
Dantès and the Abbé Faria have never existed save in my imagination;
consequently, Dantès could not have been precipitated from the top to
the bottom of the Château d’If, nor could the Abbé Faria have made pens.
But that is what comes from visiting these localities in person.
Therefore, I wished to visit Varennes before commencing my novel,
because the first chapter was to open in that city. Besides,
historically, Varennes worried me considerably; the more I perused the
historical accounts of Varennes, the less I was able to understand,
topographically, the king’s arrest.
I therefore proposed to my young friend, Paul Bocage, that he accompany
me to Varennes. I was sure in advance that he would accept. To merely
propose such a trip to his picturesque and charming mind was to make him
bound from his chair to the tram. We took the railroad to Châlons.
There we bargained with a livery-stable keeper, who agreed, for a
consideration of ten francs a day, to furnish us with a horse and
carriage. We were seven days on the trip, three days to go from Châlons
to Varennes, one day to make the requisite local researches in the city,
and three days to return from Varennes to Châlons.
I recognized with a degree of satisfaction which you will easily
comprehend, that not a single historian had been historical, and with
still greater satisfaction that M. Thiers had been the least accurate of
all these historians. I had already suspected this, but was not certain.
The only one who had been accurate, with absolute accuracy, was Victor
Hugo in his book called “The Rhine.” It is true that Victor Hugo is a
poet and not a historian. What historians these poets would make, if
they would but consent to become historians!
One day Lamartine asked me to what I attributed the immense success of
his “Histoire des Girondins.”
“To this, because in it you rose to the level of a novel,” I answered
him. He reflected for a while and ended, I believe, by agreeing with me.
I spent a day, therefore, at Varennes and visited all the localities
necessary for my novel, which was to be called “René d’Argonne.” Then
I returned. My son was staying in the country at Sainte-Assise, near
Melun; my room awaited me, and I resolved to go there to write my novel.
I am acquainted with no two characters more dissimilar than Alexandre’s
and mine, which nevertheless harmonize so well. It is true we pass many
enjoyable hours during our separations; but none I think pleasanter than
those we spend together.
I had been installed there for three or four days endeavoring to begin
my “René d’Argonne,” taking up my pen, then laying it aside almost
immediately. The thing would not go. I consoled myself by telling
stories. Chance willed that I should relate one which Nodier had told
me of four young men affiliated with the Company of Jehu, who had been
executed at Bourg in Bresse amid the most dramatic circumstances. One of
these four young men, he who had found the greatest difficulty in dying,
or rather he whom they had the greatest difficulty in killing, was but
nineteen and a half years old.
Alexandre listened to my story with much interest. When I had finished:
“Do you know,” said he, “what I should do in your place?”
“What?”
“I should lay aside ‘René d’Argonne,’ which refuses to materialize, and
in its stead I should write ‘The Companions of Jehu.’”
“But just think, I have had that other novel in mind for a year or two,
and it is almost finished.”
“It never will be since it is not finished now.”
“Perhaps you are right, but I shall lose six months regaining my present
vantage-ground.”
“Good! In three days you will have written half a volume.”
“Then you will help me.”
“Yes, for I shall give you two characters.”
“Is that all?”
“You are too exacting! The rest is your affair; I am busy with my
‘Question d’Argent.’”
“Well, who are your two characters, then?”
“An English gentleman and a French captain.”
“Introduce the Englishman first.”
“Very well.” And Alexandre drew Lord Tanlay’s portrait for me.
“Your English gentleman pleases me,” said I; “now let us see your French
captain.”
“My French captain is a mysterious character, who courts death with all
his might, without being able to accomplish his desire; so that each
time he rushes into mortal danger he performs some brilliant feat which
secures him promotion.”
“But why does he wish to get himself killed?”
“Because he is disgusted with life.”
“Why is he disgusted with life?”
“Ah! That will be the secret of the book.”
“It must be told in the end.”
“On the contrary, I, in your place, would not tell it.”
“The readers will demand it.”
“You will reply that they have only to search for it; you must leave
them something to do, these readers of yours.”
“Dear friend, I shall be overwhelmed with letters.”
“You need not answer them.”
“Yes, but for my personal gratification I, at least, must know why my
hero longs to die.”
“Oh, I do not refuse to tell you.”
“Let me hear, then.”
“Well, suppose, instead of being professor of dialectics, Abelard had
been a soldier.”
“Well?”
“Well, let us suppose that a bullet--”
“Excellent!”
“You understand? Instead of withdrawing to Paraclet, he would have
courted death at every possible opportunity.”
“Hum! That will be difficult.”
“Difficult! In what way?”
“To make the public swallow that.”
“But since you are not going to tell the public.”
“That is true. By my faith, I believe you are right. Wait.”
“I am waiting.”
“Have you Nodier’s ‘Souvenirs de la Révolution’? I believe he wrote one
or two pages about Guyon, Leprêtre, Amiet and Hyvert.”
“They will say, then, that you have plagiarized from Nodier.”
“Oh! He loved me well enough during his life not to refuse me whatever
I shall take from him after his death. Go fetch me the ‘Souvenirs de la
Révolution.’”
Alexandre brought me the book. I opened it, turned over two or three
pages, and at last discovered what I was looking for. A little of
Nodier, dear readers, you will lose nothing by it. It is he who is
speaking:
The highwaymen who attacked the diligences, as mentioned in the article
on Amiet, which I quoted just now, were called Leprêtre, Hyvert, Guyon
and Amiet.
Leprêtre was forty-eight years old. He was formerly a captain of
dragoons, a knight of St. Louis, of a noble countenance, prepossessing
carriage and much elegance of manner. Guyon and Amiet have never been
known by their real names. They owe that to the accommodating spirit
prevailing among the vendors of passports of those days. Let the reader
picture to himself two dare-devils between twenty and thirty years of
age, allied by some common responsibility, the sequence, perhaps of
some misdeed, or, by a more delicate and generous interest, the fear of
compromising their family name. Then you will know of Guyon and Amiet
all that I can recall. The latter had a sinister countenance, to which,
perhaps, he owes the bad reputation with which all his biographers have
credited him. Hyvert was the son of a rich merchant of Lyons, who had
offered the sub-officer charged with his deportation sixty thousand
francs to permit his escape. He was at once the Achilles and the Paris
of the band. He was of medium height but well formed, lithe, and of
graceful and pleasing address. His eyes were never without animation nor
his lips without a smile. His was one of those countenances which
are never forgotten, and which present an inexpressible blending of
sweetness and strength, tenderness and energy. When he yielded to the
eloquent petulance of his inspirations he soared to enthusiasm. His
conversation revealed the rudiments of an excellent early education and
much natural intelligence. That which was so terrifying in him was his
tone of heedless gayety, which contrasted so horribly with his position.
For the rest, he was unanimously conceded to be kind, generous, humane,
lenient toward the weak, while with the strong he loved to display a
vigor truly athletic which his somewhat effeminate features were far
from indicating. He boasted that he had never been without money, and
had no enemies. That was his sole reply to the charges of theft and
assassination. He was twenty-two years old.
To these four men was intrusted the attack upon a diligence conveying
forty thousand francs of government money. This deed was transacted
in broad daylight, with an exchange of mutual courtesy almost; and the
travellers, who were not disturbed by the attack, gave little heed to
it. But a child of only ten years of age, with reckless bravado,
seized the pistol of the conductor and fired it into the midst of the
assailants. As this peaceful weapon, according to the custom, was only
charged with powder, no one was injured; but the occupants of the coach
quite naturally experienced a lively fear of reprisals. The little
boy’s mother fell into violent hysterics. This new disturbance created
a general diversion which dominated all the preceding events and
particularly attracted the attention of the robbers. One of them flew to
the woman’s side, reassuring her in the most affectionate manner, while
complimenting her upon her son’s precocious courage, and courteously
pressed upon her the salts and perfumes with which these gentlemen were
ordinarily provided for their own use. She regained consciousness. In
the excitement of the moment her travelling companions noticed that the
highwayman’s mask had fallen off, but they did not see his face.
The police of those days, restricted to mere impotent supervision, were
unable to cope with the depredations of these banditti, although they
did not lack the means to follow them up. Appointments were made at the
cafés, and narratives relating to deeds carrying with them the penalty
of death circulated freely through all the billiard-halls in the land.
Such was the importance which the culprits and the public attached to
the police.
These men of blood and terror assembled in society in the evening,
and discussed their nocturnal expeditions as if they had been mere
pleasure-parties.
Leprêtre, Hyvert, Amiet and Guyon were arraigned before the tribunal
of a neighboring department. No one save the Treasury had suffered from
their attack, and there was no one to identify them save the lady
who took very good care not to do so. They were therefore acquitted
unanimously.
Nevertheless, the evidence against them so obviously called for
conviction, that the Ministry was forced to appeal from this decision.
The verdict was set aside; but such was the government’s vacillation,
that it hesitated to punish excesses that might on the morrow be
regarded as virtues. The accused were cited before the tribunal of
Ain, in the city of Bourg, where dwelt a majority of their friends,
relatives, abettors and accomplices. The Ministry sought to propitiate
the one party by the return of its victims, and the other by the almost
inviolate safeguards with which it surrounded the prisoners. The return
to prison indeed resembled nothing less than a triumph.
The trial recommenced. It was at first attended by the same results as
the preceding one. The four accused were protected by an alibi, patently
false, but attested by a hundred signatures, and for which they could
easily have obtained ten thousand. All moral convictions must fail
in the presence of such authoritative testimony. An acquittal seemed
certain, when a question, perhaps involuntarily insidious, from the
president, changed the aspect of the trial.
“Madam,” said he to the lady who had been so kindly assisted by one
of the highwaymen, “which of these men was it who tendered you such
thoughtful attention?”
This unexpected form of interrogation confused her ideas. It is probable
that she believed the facts to be known, and saw in this a means of
modifying the fate of the man who interested her.
“It was that gentleman,” said she, pointing to Leprêtre. The four
accused, who were included in a common alibi, fell by this one admission
under the executioner’s axe. They rose and bowed to her with a smile.
“Faith!” said Hyvert, falling back upon his bench with a burst of
laughter, “that, Captain, will teach you to play the gallant.”
I have heard it said that the unhappy lady died shortly after of
chagrin.
The customary appeal followed; but, this time, there was little hope.
The Republican party, which Napoleon annihilated a month later, was in
the ascendency. That of the Counter-Revolution was compromised by its
odious excesses. The people demanded examples, and matters were arranged
accordingly, as is ordinarily the custom in strenuous times; for it is
with governments as with men, the weakest are always the most cruel. Nor
had the Companies of Jehu longer an organized existence. The heroes of
these ferocious bands, Debeauce, Hastier, Bary, Le Coq, Dabri, Delbourbe
and Storkenfeld, had either fallen on the scaffold or elsewhere. The
condemned could look for no further assistance from the daring courage
of these exhausted devotees, who, no longer capable of protecting their
own lives, coolly sacrificed them, as did Piard, after a merry supper.
Our brigands were doomed to die.
Their appeal was rejected, but the municipal authorities were not the
first to learn of this. The condemned men were warned by three shots
fired beneath the walls of their dungeon. The Commissioner of the
Executive Directory, who had assumed the rôle of Public Prosecutor at
the trial, alarmed at this obvious sign of connivance, requisitioned a
squad of armed men of whom my uncle was then commander. At six o’clock
in the morning sixty horsemen were drawn up before the iron gratings of
the prison yard.
Although the jailers had observed all possible precautions in entering
the dungeon where these four unfortunate men were confined, and whom
they had left the preceding day tightly pinioned and heavily loaded
with chains, they were unable to offer them a prolonged resistance.
The prisoners were free and armed to the teeth. They came forth without
difficulty, leaving their guardians under bolts and bars, and, supplied
with the keys, they quickly traversed the space that separated them
from the prison yard. Their appearance must have been terrifying to the
populace awaiting them before the iron gates.
To assure perfect freedom of action, or perhaps to affect an appearance
of security more menacing even than the renown for strength and
intrepidity with which their names were associated, or possibly even to
conceal the flow of blood which reveals itself so readily beneath white
linen, and betrays the last agonies of a mortally wounded man, their
breasts were bared. Their braces crossed upon the chest--their wide red
belts bristling with arms--their cry of attack and rage, all that must
have given a decidedly fantastic touch to the scene. Arrived in the
square, they perceived the gendarmerie drawn up in motionless ranks,
through which it would have been impossible to force a passage. They
halted an instant and seemed to consult together. Leprêtre, who was, as
I have said, their senior and their chief, saluted the guard with his
hand, saying with that noble grace of manner peculiar to him:
“Very well, gentlemen of the gendarmerie!”
Then after a brief, energetic farewell to his comrades, he stepped in
front of them and blew out his brains. Guyon, Amiet and Hyvert assumed
a defensive position, their double-barrelled pistols levelled upon their
armed opponents. They did not fire; but the latter, considering this
demonstration as a sign of open hostility, fired upon them. Guyon fell
dead upon Leprêtre’s body, which had not moved. Amiet’s hip was broken
near the groin. The “Biographie des Contemporains” says that he was
executed. I have often heard it said that he died at the foot of the
scaffold. Hyvert was left alone, his determined brow, his terrible eye,
the pistol in each practiced and vigorous hand threatening death to
the spectators. Perhaps it was involuntary admiration, in his desperate
plight, for this handsome young man with his waving locks, who was
known never to have shed blood, and from whom the law now demanded the
expiation of blood; or perhaps it was the sight of those three corpses
over which he sprang like a wolf overtaken by his hunters, and the
frightful novelty of the spectacle, which for an instant restrained
the fury of the troop. He perceived this and temporized with them for a
compromise.
“Gentlemen,” said he, “I go to my death! I die with all my heart! But
let no one approach me or I shall shoot him--except this gentleman,” he
continued, pointing to the executioner. “This is an affair that concerns
us alone and merely needs a certain understanding between us.”
This concession was readily accorded, for there was no one present who
was not suffering from the prolongation of this horrible tragedy, and
anxious to see it finished. Perceiving their assent, he placed one
of his pistols between his teeth, and drawing a dagger from his belt,
plunged it in his breast up to the hilt. He still remained standing and
seemed greatly surprised. There was a movement toward him.
“Very well, gentlemen!” cried he, covering the men who sought to
surround him with his pistols, which he had seized again, while the
blood spurted freely from the wound in which he had left his poniard.
“You know our agreement; either I die alone or three of us will die
together. Forward, march!” He walked straight to the guillotine, turning
the knife in his breast as he did so.
“Faith,” said he, “my soul must be centred in my belly! I cannot die.
See if you can fetch it out.”
This last was addressed to his executioner. An instant later his head
fell. Be it accident or some peculiar phenomenon of the vitality, it
rebounded and rolled beyond the circle of the scaffolding, and they will
still tell you at Bourg, that Hyvert’s head spoke.
Before I had finished reading I had decided to abandon René d’Argonne
for the Companions of Jehu. On the morrow I came down with my travelling
bag under my arm.
“You are leaving?” said Alexandre to me.
“Yes.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Bourg, in Bresse.”
“What are you going to do there?”
“Study the neighborhood and consult with the inhabitants who saw
Leprêtre, Amiet, Guyon and Hyvert executed.”
* * * * *
There are two roads to Bourg--from Paris, of course; one may leave the
train at Mâcon, and take stage from Mâcon to Bourg, or, continuing as
far as Lyons, take train again from Lyons to Bourg.
I was hesitating between these two roads when one of the travellers who
was temporarily occupying my compartment decided me. He was going to
Bourg, where he frequently had business. He was going by way of Lyons;
therefore, Lyons was the better way.
I resolved to travel by the same route. I slept at Lyons, and on the
morrow by ten in the morning I was at Bourg.
A paper published in the second capital of the kingdom met my eye. It
contained a spiteful article about me. Lyons has never forgiven me since
1833, I believe, some twenty-four years ago, for asserting that it was
not a literary city. Alas! I have in 1857 the same opinion of Lyons as I
had in 1833. I do not easily change my opinion. There is another city
in France that is almost as bitter against me as Lyons, that is Rouen.
Rouen has hissed all my plays, including Count Hermann.
One day a Neapolitan boasted to me that he had hissed Rossini and
Malibran, “The Barbiere” and “Desdemona.”
“That must be true,” I answered him, “for Rossini and Malibran on their
side boast of having been hissed by Neapolitans.”
So I boast that the Rouenese have hissed me. Nevertheless, meeting a
full-blooded Rouenese one day I resolved to discover why I had been
hissed at Rouen. I like to understand these little things.
My Rouenese informed me: “We hiss you because we are down on you.”
Why not? Rouen was down on Joan of Arc. Nevertheless it could not be
for the same reason. I asked my Rouenese why he and his compatriots were
ill-disposed to me; I had never said anything evil of apple sugar, I
had treated M. Barbet with respect during his entire term as mayor,
and, when a delegate from the Society of Letters at the unveiling of the
statue of the great Corneille, I was the only one who thought to bow to
him before beginning my speech. There was nothing in that which could
have reasonably incurred the hatred of the Rouenese.
Therefore to this haughty reply, “We hiss you because we have a grudge
against you,” I asked humbly:
“But, great Heavens! why are you down on me?”
“Oh, you know very well,” replied my Rouenese.
“I?” I exclaimed.
“Yes, you.”
“Well, never mind; pretend I do not know.”
“You remember the dinner the city gave you, in connection with that
statue of Corneille?”
“Perfectly. Were they annoyed because I did not return it?”
“No, it is not that.”
“What is it then?”
“Well, at that dinner they said to you: ‘M. Dumas, you ought to write a
play for Rouen based upon some subject taken from its own history.’”
“To which I replied: ‘Nothing easier; I will come at your first summons
and spend a fortnight in Rouen. You can suggest the subject, and during
that fortnight I will write the play, the royalties of which I shall
devote to the poor.’”
“That is true, you said that.”
“I see nothing sufficiently insulting in that to incur the hatred of the
Rouenese.”
“Yes, but they added: ‘Will you write it in prose?’ To which you
replied--Do you remember what you answered?”
“My faith! no.”
“You replied: ‘I will write it in verse; it is soonest done.’”
“That sounds like me. Well, what then?”
“Then! That was an insult to Corneille, M. Dumas; that is why the
Rouenese are down on you, and will be for a long time.”
Verbatim!
Oh, worthy Rouenese! I trust that you will never serve me so ill as to
forgive and applaud me.
The aforesaid paper observed that M. Dumas had doubtless spent but one
night in Lyons because a city of such slight literary standing was not
worthy of his longer sojourn. M. Dumas had not thought about this at
all. He had spent but one night at Lyons because he was in a hurry to
reach Bourg. And no sooner had M. Dumas arrived at Bourg than he asked
to be directed to the office of its leading newspaper.
I knew that it was under the management of a distinguished archeologist,
who was also the editor of my friend Baux’s work on the church of Brou.
I asked for M. Milliet. M. Milliet appeared. We shook hands and I
explained the object of my visit.
“I can fix you perfectly,” said he to me. “I will take you to one of
our magistrates, who is at present engaged upon a history of the
department.”
“How far has he got in this history?”
“1822.”
“Then that’s all right. As the events I want to relate occurred in 1799,
and my heroes were executed in 1800, he will have covered that epoch,
and can furnish me with the desired information. Let us go to your
magistrate.”
On the road, M. Milliet told me that this same magisterial historian was
also a noted gourmet. Since Brillat-Savarin it has been the fashion
for magistrates to be epicures. Unfortunately, many are content to be
gourmands, which is not at all the same thing.
We were ushered into the magistrate’s study. I found a man with a shiny
face and a sneering smile. He greeted me with that protecting air which
historians deign to assume toward poets.
“Well, sir,” he said to me, “so you have come to our poor country in
search of material for your novel?”
“No, sir; I have my material already. I have come simply to consult your
historical documents.”
“Good! I did not know that it was necessary to give one’s self so much
trouble in order to write novels.”
“There you are in error, sir; at least in my instance. I am in the habit
of making exhaustive researches upon all the historical events of which
I treat.”
“You might at least have sent some one else.”
“Any person whom I might send, sir, not being so completely absorbed
in my subject, might have overlooked many important facts. Then, too, I
make use of many localities which I cannot describe unless I see them.”
“Oh, then this is a novel which you intend writing yourself?”
“Yes, certainly, sir. I allowed my valet to write my last; but he had
such immense success that the rogue asked so exorbitant an increase of
wages that, to my great regret, I was unable to keep him.”
The magistrate bit his lips. Then, after a moment’s silence, he said:
“Will you kindly tell me, sir, how I can assist you in this important
work?”
“You can direct my researches, sir. As you have compiled the history of
the department, none of the important event which have occurred in its
capital can be unknown to you.”
“Truly, sir, I believe that in this respect I am tolerably well
informed.”
“Then, sir, in the first place, your department was the centre of the
operations of the Company of Jehu.”
“Sir, I have heard speak of the Companions of Jesus,” replied the
magistrate with his jeering smile.
“The Jesuits, you mean? That is not what I am seeking, sir.”
“Nor is it of them that I am speaking. I refer to the stage robbers who
infested the highroads from 1797 to 1800.”
“Then, sir, permit me to tell you they are precisely the ones I have
come to Bourg about, and that they were called the Companions of Jehu,
and not the Companions of Jesus.”
“What is the meaning of this title ‘Companions of Jehu’? I like to get
at the bottom of everything.”
“So do I, sir; that is why I did not wish to confound these highwaymen
with the Apostles.”
“Truly, that would not have been very orthodox.”
“But it is what you would have done, nevertheless, sir, if I, a poet,
had not come here expressly to correct the mistake you, as historian,
have made.”
“I await your explanation, sir,” resumed the magistrate, pursing his
lips.
“It is short and simple. Elisha consecrated Jehu, King of Israel,
on condition that he exterminate the house of Ahab; Elisha was Louis
XVIII.; Jehu was Cadoudal; the house of Ahab, the Revolution. That is
why these pillagers of diligences, who filched the government money to
support the war in the Vendée, were called the Companions of Jehu.”
“Sir, I am happy to learn something at my age.”
“Oh, sir! One can always learn, at all times and at all ages; during
life one learns man; in death one learns God.”
“But, after all,” my interlocutor said to me with a gesture of
impatience, “may I know in what I can assist you?”
“Thus, sir. Four of these young men, leaders of the Companions of Jehu,
were executed at Bourg, on the Place du Bastion.”
“In the first place, sir, in Bourg executions do not take place at the
Bastion; they execute on the Fair grounds.”
“Now, sir--these last fifteen or twenty years, it is true--since Peytel.
But before, especially during the Revolution, they executed on the Place
du Bastion.”
“That is possible.”
“It is so. These four young men were called Guyon, Leprêtre, Amiet, and
Hyvert.”
“This is the first time I have heard those names.”
“Yet their names made a certain noise at Bourg.”
“Are you sure, sir, that these men were executed here?”
“I am positive.”
“From whom have you derived your information?”
“From a man whose uncle, then in command of the gendarmerie, was present
at the execution.”
“Will you tell me this man’s name?”
“Charles Nodier.”
“Charles Nodier, the novelist, the poet?”
“If he were a historian I would not be so insistent, sir. Recently,
during a trip to Varennes, I learned what dependence to place upon
historians. But precisely because he is a poet, a novelist, I do
insist.”
“You are at liberty to do so; but I know nothing of what you desire to
learn, and I dare even assert that, if you have come to Bourg solely to
obtain information concerning the execution of--what did you call them?”
“Guyon, Leprêtre, Amiet, and Hyvert.”
“You have undertaken a futile voyage. For these last twenty years, sir,
I have been searching the town archives, and I have never seen anything
relating to what you have just told me.”
“The town archives are not those of the registrar, sir; perhaps at the
record office I may be able to find what I am seeking.”
“Ah! sir, if you can find anything among those archives you will be a
very clever man! The record office is a chaos, a veritable chaos. You
would have to spend a month here, and then--then--”
“I do not expect to stay here more than a day, sir; but if in that day I
should find what I am seeking will you permit me to impart it to you?”
“Yes, sir; yes, sir; and you will render me a great service by doing
so.”
“No greater than the one I asked of you. I shall merely give you some
information about a matter of which you were ignorant, that is all.”
You can well understand that on leaving my magistrate, my honor was
piqued. I determined, cost what it might, to procure this information
about the Companions of Jehu. I went back to Milliet, and cornered him.
“Listen,” he said. “My brother-in-law is a lawyer.”
“He’s my man! Let’s go find the brother-in-law.”
“He’s in court at this hour.”
“Then let us go to court.”
“Your appearance will create a sensation, I warn you.”
“Then go alone--tell him what we want, and let him make a search. I will
visit the environs of the town to base my work on the localities. We
will meet at four o’clock at the Place du Bastion, if you are agreed.”
“Perfectly.”
“It seems to me that I saw a forest, coming here.”
“The forest of Seillon.”
“Bravo!”
“Do you need a forest?”
“It is absolutely indispensable to me.”
“Then permit me--”
“What?”
“I am going to take you to a friend of mine, M. Leduc, a poet who in his
spare moments is an inspector.”
“Inspector of what?”
“Of the forest.”
“Are there any ruins in the forest?”
“The Chartreuse, which is not in the forest, but merely some hundred
feet from it.”
“And in the forest?”
“There is a sort of hermitage which is called La Correrie, belonging to
the Chartreuse, with which it communicates by a subterranean passage.”
“Good! Now, if you can provide me with a grotto you will overwhelm me.”
“We have the grotto of Ceyzeriat, but that is on the other side of the
Reissouse.”
“I don’t mind. If the grotto won’t come to me, I will do like Mahomet--I
will go to the grotto. In the meantime let us go to M. Leduc.”
Five minutes later we reached M. Leduc’s house. He, on learning what we
wanted, placed himself, his horse, and his carriage at my disposal. I
accepted all. There are some men who offer their services in such a way
that they place you at once at your ease.
We first visited the Chartreuse. Had I built it myself it could not have
suited me better. A deserted cloister, devastated garden, inhabitants
almost savages. Chance, I thank thee!
From there we went to the Correrie; it was the supplement of the
Chartreuse. I did not yet know what I could do with it; but evidently it
might be useful to me.
“Now, sir,” I said to my obliging guide, “I need a pretty site, rather
gloomy, surrounded by tall trees, beside a river. Have you anything like
that in the neighborhood?”
“What do you want to do with it?”
“To build a château there.”
“What kind of a château?”
“Zounds! of cards! I have a family to house, a model mother, a
melancholy young girl, a mischievous brother, and a poaching gardener.”
“There is a place called Noires-Fontaines.”
“In the first place the name is charming.”
“But there is no château there.”
“So much the better, for I should have been obliged to demolish it.”
“Let us go to Noires-Fontaines.”
We started; a quarter of an hour later we descended at the ranger’s
lodge.
“Shall we take this little path?” said M. Leduc; “it will take us where
you want to go.”
It led us, in fact, to a spot planted with tall trees which overshadowed
three or four rivulets.
“We call this place Noires-Fontaines,” M. Leduc explained.
“And here Madame de Montrevel, Amélie and little Edouard will dwell. Now
what are those villages which I see in front of me?”
“Here, close at hand, is Montagnac; yonder, on the mountain side,
Ceyzeriat.”
“Is that where the grotto is?”
“Yes. But how did you know there was a grotto at Ceyzeriat?”
“Never mind, go on. The name of those other villages, if you please.”
“Saint-Just, Tréconnas, Ramasse, Villereversure.”
“That will do.”
“Have you enough?”
“Yes.”
I drew out my note-book, sketched a plan of the locality and wrote about
in their relative positions the names of the villages which M. Leduc had
just pointed out to me.
“That’s done!” said I.
“Where shall we go now?”
“Isn’t the church of Brou near this road?”
“Yes.”
“Then let us go to the church of Brou.”
“Do you need that in your novel?”
“Yes, indeed; you don’t imagine I am going to lay my scene in a country
which contains the architectural masterpiece of the sixteenth century
without utilizing that masterpiece, do you?”
“Let us go to the church of Brou.”
A quarter of an hour later the sacristan showed us into this granite
jewel-case which contains the three marble gems called the tombs of
Marguerite of Austria, Marguerite or Bourbon, and of Philibert le Beau.
“How is it,” I asked the sacristan, “that all these masterpieces were
not reduced to powder during the Revolution?”
“Ah! sir, the municipality had an idea.”
“What was it?”
“That of turning the church into a storage house for fodder.”
“Yes, and the hay saved the marble; you are right, my friend, that _was_
an idea.”
“Does this idea of the municipality afford you another?” asked M. Leduc.
“Faith, yes, and I shall have poor luck if I don’t make something out of
it.”
I looked at my watch. “Three o’clock! Now for the prison. I have an
appointment with M. Milliet at four on the Place du Bastion.”
“Wait; there is one thing more.”
“What is that?”
“Have you noticed Marguerite of Austria’s motto?”
“No; where is it?”
“Oh, all over. In the first place, look above her tomb.”
“‘Fortune, infortune, fort’une.’”
“Exactly.”
“Well, what does this play of words mean?”
“Learned men translate it thus: ‘Fate persecutes a woman much.’”
“Explain that a little.”
“You must, in the first place, assume that it is derived from the
Latin.”
“True, that is probable.”
“Well, then: ‘Fortuna infortunat--’”
“Oh! Oh! ‘Infortunat.’”
“Bless me!”
“That strongly resembles a solecism!”
“What do you want?”
“An explanation.”
“Explain it yourself.”
“Well; ‘Fortuna, infortuna, forti una.’ ‘Fortune and misfortune are
alike to the strong.’”
“Do you know, that may possibly be the correct translation?”
“Zounds! See what it is not to be learned, my dear sir; we are endowed
with common-sense, and that sees clearer than science. Have you anything
else to tell me?”
“No.”
“Then let us go to the prison.”
We got into the carriage and returned to the city, stopping only at the
gate of the prison. I glanced out of the window.
“Oh!” I exclaimed, “they have spoiled it for me.”
“What! They’ve spoiled it for you?”
“Certainly, it was not like this in my prisoners’ time. Can I speak to
the jailer?”
“Certainly.”
“Then let us consult him.”
We knocked at the door. A man about forty opened it. He recognized M.
Leduc.
“My dear fellow,” M. Leduc said to him, “this is one of my learned
friends--”
“Come, come,” I exclaimed, interrupting him, “no nonsense.”
“Who contends,” continued M. Leduc, “that the prison is no longer the
same as it was in the last century?”
“That is true, M. Leduc, it was torn down and rebuilt in 1816.”
“Then the interior arrangements are no longer the same?”
“Oh! no, sir, everything was changed.”
“Could I see the old plan?”
“M. Martin, the architect, might perhaps be able to find one for you.”
“Is he any relation to M. Martin, the lawyer?”
“His brother.”
“Very well, my friend, then I can get my plan.”
“Then we have nothing more to do here?” inquired M. Leduc.
“Nothing.”
“Then I am free to go home?”
“I shall be sorry to leave you, that is all.”
“Can you find your way to the Bastion without me?”
“It is close by.”
“What are you going to do this evening?”
“I will spend it with you, if you wish.”
“Very good! You will find a cup of tea waiting for you at nine.”
“I shall be on hand for it.”
I thanked M. Leduc. We shook hands and parted.
I went down the Rue des Lisses (meaning Lists, from a combat which
took place in the square to which it leads), and skirting the Montburon
Garden, I reached the Place du Bastion. This is a semicircle now used as
the town marketplace. In the midst stands the statue of Bichat by
David d’Angers. Bichat, in a frockcoat--why that exaggeration of
realism?--stands with his hand upon the heart of a child about nine or
ten years old, perfectly nude--why that excess of ideality? Extended
at Bichat’s feet lies a dead body. It is Bichat’s book “Of Life and
of Death” translated into bronze. I was studying this statue, which
epitomizes the defects and merits of David d’Angers, when I felt some
one touch my shoulder. I turned around; it was M. Milliet. He held a
paper in his hand.
“Well?” I asked.
“Well, victory!”
“What is that you have there?”
“The minutes of the trial and execution.”
“Of whom?”
“Of your men.”
“Of Guyon, Leprêtre, Amiet--!”
“And Hyvert.”
“Give it to me.”
“Here it is.”
I took it and read:
REPORT OF THE DEATH AND EXECUTION OF LAURENT GUYON, ETIENNE
HYVERT, FRANÇOIS AMIET, ANTOINE LEPRÊTRE. Condemned the twentieth
Thermidor of the year VIII., and executed the twenty-third
Vendemiaire of the year IX.
To-day, the twenty-third Vendemiaire of the year IX., the
government commissioner of the tribunal, who received at eleven
of the evening the budget of the Minister of Justice, containing
the minutes of the trial and the judgment which condemns to
death Laurent Guyon, Etienne Hyvert, François Amiet and Antoine
Leprêtre;--the decision of the Court of Appeals of the sixth
inst., rejecting the appeal against the sentence of the
twenty-first Thermidor of the year VIII., I did notify by letter,
between seven and eight of the morning, the four accused that
their sentence of death would take effect to-day at eleven o’clock.
In the interval which elapsed before eleven o’clock, the four
accused shot themselves with pistols and stabbed themselves with
blows from a poinard in prison. Leprêtre and Guyon, according
to public rumor, were dead; Hyvert fatally wounded and dying;
Amiet fatally wounded, but still conscious. All four, in this
state, were conveyed to the scaffold, and, living or dead, were
guillotined. At half after eleven, the sheriff, Colin, handed in
the report of their execution to the Municipality for registration
upon the death roll:
The captain of gendarmerie remitted to the Justice of the Peace
a report of what had occurred in the prison, of which he was a
witness. I, who was not present, do certify to what I have learned
by hearsay only.
(Signed) DUBOST, _Clerk_.
Bourg, 23d Vendemiaire of the year IX.
Ah! so it was the poet who was right and not the historian! The captain
of gendarmerie, who remitted the report of the proceedings in the prison
to the Justice of the Peace, at which he was present, was Nodier’s
uncle. This report handed to the Justice of the Peace was the story
which, graven upon the young man’s mind, saw the light some forty
years later unaltered, in that masterpiece entitled “Souvenirs de la
Révolution.” The entire series of papers was in the record office. M.
Martin offered to have them copied for me; inquiry, trial and judgment.
I had a copy of Nodier’s “Souvenirs of the Revolution” in my pocket.
In my hand I held the report of the execution which confirmed the facts
therein stated.
“Now let us go to our magistrate,” I said to M. Milliet.
“Let us go to our magistrate,” he repeated.
The magistrate was confounded, and I left him convinced that poets know
history as well as historians--if not better.
ALEX. DUMAS.
PROLOGUE. THE CITY OF AVIGNON
We do not know if the prologue we are going to present to our readers’
eyes be very useful, nevertheless we cannot resist the desire to make of
it, not the first chapter, but the preface of this book.
The more we advance in life, the more we advance in art, the more
convinced we become that nothing is abrupt and isolated; that nature
and society progress by evolution and not by chance, and that the event,
flower joyous or sad, perfumed or fetid, beneficent or fatal, which
unfolds itself to-day before our eyes, was sown in the past, and had
its roots sometimes in days anterior to ours, even as it will bear its
fruits in the future.
Young, man accepts life as it comes, enamored of yestereen, careless
of the day, heeding little the morrow. Youth is the springtide with its
dewy dawns and its beautiful nights; if sometimes a storm clouds the
sky, it gathers, mutters and disperses, leaving the sky bluer, the
atmosphere purer, and Nature more smiling than before. What use is there
in reflecting on this storm that passes swift as a caprice, ephemeral
as a fancy? Before we have discovered the secret of the meteorological
enigma, the storm will have disappeared.
But it is not thus with the terrible phenomena, which at the close of
summer, threaten our harvests; or in the midst of autumn, assail our
vintages; we ask whither they go, we query whence they come, we seek a
means to prevent them.
To the thinker, the historian, the poet, there is a far deeper subject
for reflection in revolutions, these tempests of the social atmosphere
which drench the earth with blood, and crush an entire generation of
men, than in those upheavals of nature which deluge a harvest, or flay
the vineyards with hail--that is to say, the fruits of a single harvest,
wreaking an injury, which can at the worst be repaired the ensuing year;
unless the Lord be in His days of wrath.
Thus, in other days, be it forgetfulness, heedlessness or ignorance
perhaps--(blessed he who is ignorant! a fool he who is wise!)--in other
days in relating the story which I am going to tell you to-day I would,
without pausing at the place where the first scene of this book occurs,
have accorded it but a superficial mention, and traversing the Midi like
any other province, have named Avignon like any other city.
But to-day it is no longer the same; I am no longer tossed by the
flurries of spring, but by the storms of summer, the tempests of
autumn. To-day when I name Avignon, I evoke a spectre; and, like Antony
displaying Cæsar’s toga, say:
“Look! in this place ran Cassius’ dagger through;
See what a rent the envious Casca made;
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed--”
So, seeing the bloody shroud of the papal city, I say: “Behold the blood
of the Albigenses, and here the blood of the Cevennais; behold the blood
of the Republicans, and here the blood of the Royalists; behold the
blood of Lescuyer; behold the blood of Maréchal Brune.”
And I feel myself seized with a profound sadness, and I begin to write,
but at the first lines I perceive that, without suspecting it, the
historian’s chisel has superseded the novelist’s pen in my hand.
Well, let us be both. Reader, grant me these ten, fifteen, twenty pages
to the historian; the novelist shall have the rest.
Let us say, therefore, a few words about Avignon, the place where the
first scene of the new book which we are offering to the public, opens.
Perhaps, before reading what we have to say, it would be well to cast a
glance at what its native historian, François Nouguier, says of it.
“Avignon,” he writes, “a town noble for its antiquity, pleasing in
its site, superb for its walls, smiling for the fertility of its soil,
charming for the gentleness of its inhabitants, magnificent for its
palace, beautiful in its broad streets, marvellous in the construction
of its bridge, rich because of its commerce, and known to all the
world.”
May the shade of François Nouguier pardon us if we do not at first see
his city with the same eyes as he does. To those who know Avignon be it
to say who has best described it, the historian or the novelist.
It is but just to assert in the first place that Avignon is a town
by itself, that is to say, a town of extreme passions. The period of
religious dissensions, which culminated for her in political hatreds,
dates from the twelfth century. After his flight from Lyons, the valleys
of Mont Ventoux sheltered Pierre de Valdo and his Vaudois, the ancestors
of those Protestants who, under the name of the Albigenses, cost the
Counts of Toulouse, and transferred to the papacy, the seven châteaux
which Raymond VI. possessed in Languedoc.
Avignon, a powerful republic governed by podestats, refused to submit
to the King of France. One morning Louis VIII., who thought it easier
to make a crusade against Avignon like Simon de Montfort, than against
Jerusalem like Philippe Auguste; one morning, we say, Louis VIII.
appeared before the gates of Avignon, demanding admission with lances at
rest, visor down, banners unfurled and trumpets of war sounding.
The bourgeois refused. They offered the King of France, as a last
concession, a peaceful entrance, lances erect, and the royal banner
alone unfurled. The King laid siege to the town, a siege which lasted
three months, during which, says the chronicler, the bourgeois of
Avignon returned the French soldiers arrow for arrow, wound for wound,
death for death.
The city capitulated at length. Louis VIII. brought the Roman
Cardinal-Legate, Saint-Angelo, in his train. It was he who dictated the
terms, veritable priestly terms, hard and unconditional. The Avignonese
were commanded to demolish their ramparts, to fill their moats, to raze
three hundred towers, to sell their vessels, and to burn their engines
and machines of war. They had moreover to pay an enormous impost, to
abjure the Vaudois heresy, and maintain thirty men fully armed and
equipped, in Palestine, to aid in delivering the tomb of Christ. And
finally, to watch over the fulfillment of these terms, of which the bull
is still extant in the city archives, a brotherhood of penitents was
founded which, reaching down through six centuries, still exists in our
days.
In opposition to these penitents, known as the “White Penitents,” the
order of the “Black Penitents” was founded, imbued with the spirit of
opposition of Raymond of Toulouse.
From that day forth the religious hatreds developed into political
hatreds. It was not sufficient that Avignon should be the land of
heresy. She was destined to become the theatre of schisms.
Permit us, in connection with this French Rome, a short historical
digression. Strictly speaking, it is not essential to the subject
of which we treat, and we were perhaps wiser to launch ourselves
immediately into the heart of the drama; but we trust that we will be
forgiven. We write more particularly for those who, in a novel, like
occasionally to meet with something more than fiction.
In 1285 Philippe le Bel ascended the throne.
It is a great historical date, this date of 1285. The papacy which, in
the person of Gregory VII., successfully opposed the Emperor of Germany;
the papacy which, vanquished in matters temporal by Henry IV., yet
vanquished him morally. This papacy was slapped by a simple Sabine
gentleman, and the steel gauntlet of Colonna reddened the cheek of
Boniface VIII. But the King of France, whose hand had really dealt this
blow, what happened to him under the successor of Boniface VIII.?
This successor was Benedict XI., a man of low origin, but who might
perhaps have developed into a man of genius, had they allowed him the
time. Too weak for an open struggle with Philippe le Bel, he found a
means which would have been the envy of the founder of a celebrated
order two hundred years later. He pardoned Colonna openly.
To pardon Colonna was to declare Colonna culpable, since culprits alone
have need of pardon. If Colonna were guilty, the King of France was at
least his accomplice.
There was some danger in supporting such an argument; also Benedict
XI. was pope but eight months. One day a veiled woman, a pretended
lay-sister of Sainte-Petronille at Perugia, came to him while he was
at table, offering him a basket of figs. Did it conceal an asp like
Cleopatra’s? The fact is that on the morrow the Holy See was vacant.
Then Philippe le Bel had a strange idea; so strange that it must, at
first, have seemed an hallucination.
It was to withdraw the papacy from Rome, to install it in France, to put
it in jail, and force it to coin money for his profit.
The reign of Philippe le Bel was the advent of gold. Gold! that was the
sole and unique god of this king who had slapped a pope. Saint Louis had
a priest, the worthy Abbé Suger, for minister; Philippe le Bel had two
bankers, two Florentines, Biscio and Musiato.
Do you expect, dear reader, that we are about to fall into the
philosophical commonplace of anathematizing gold? You are mistaken.
In the thirteenth century gold meant progress. Until then nothing was
known but the soil. Gold was the soil converted into money, the
soil mobilized, exchangeable, transportable, divisible, subtilized,
spiritualized, as it were.
So long as the soil was not represented by gold, man, like the god
Thermes, that landmark of the fields, had his feet imprisoned by the
earth. Formerly the earth bore man, to-day man bears the earth.
But this gold had to be abstracted from its hiding-place, and it was
hidden far otherwise than in the mines of Chile or Mexico. All the gold
was in the possession of the churches and the Jews. To extract it from
this double mine it needed more than a king; it required a pope.
And that is why Philippe le Bel, that great exploiter of gold, resolved
to have a pope of his own. Benedict XI. dead, a conclave was held at
Perugia; at this conclave the French cardinals were in the majority.
Philippe le Bel cast his eyes upon the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Bertrand
de Got, and to him he gave rendezvous in a forest near Saint-Jean
d’Angely.
Bertrand de Got took heed not to miss that appointment.
The King and the Archbishop heard mass there, and at the moment when the
Host was elevated, they bound themselves by this God they glorified to
absolute secrecy. Bertrand de Got was still ignorant of the matter in
question. Mass over, Philippe le Bel said:
“Archbishop, I have it in my power to make thee pope.”
Bertrand de Got listened no longer, but cast himself at the King’s feet,
saying:
“What must I do to obtain this?”
“Accord me the six favors which I shall ask of thee,” replied Philippe
le Bel.
“It’s for thee to command and for me to obey,” said the future Pope.
The vow of servitude was taken.
The King raised Bertrand de Got, and, kissing him on the mouth, said:
“The six favors which I demand of thee are these: First, thou shalt
reconcile me completely with the Church, and grant me pardon for the
misdeed that I committed toward Boniface VIII. Second, thou shalt
restore to me and mine the right of communion of which the Court of Rome
deprived me. Third, thou shalt grant me the clergy’s tithe in my kingdom
for the next five years, to help defray the expenses of the war in
Flanders. Fourth, thou shalt destroy and annul the memory of Pope
Boniface VIII. Fifth, thou shalt bestow the dignity of cardinal upon
Messires Jacopo and Pietro de Colonna. As to the sixth favor and
promise, that I shall reserve to speak to thee thereof in its time and
place.”
Bertrand de Got swore to the promises and favors known, and to the
promise and favor unknown. This last, which the King had not dared to
mention in connection with the others, was the abolition of the Knights
Templar. Besides the promises made on the Corpus Domini, Bertrand de Got
gave as hostages his brother and two of his nephews. The King swore on
his side that he should be elected pope.
This scene, set in the deep shadows of a crossroad in the forest,
resembled rather an evocation between magician and demon than an
agreement entered upon between king and pope.
Also the coronation of the King, which took place shortly afterward
at Lyons, and which began the Church’s captivity, seemed but little
agreeable to God. Just as the royal procession was passing, a wall
crowded with spectators fell, wounding the King and killing the Duc de
Bretagne. The Pope was thrown to the ground, and his tiara rolled in the
mud.
Bertrand de Got was elected pope under the name of Clement V.
Clement V. paid all that Bertrand de Got had promised. Philippe was
absolved, Holy Communion restored to him and his, the purple again
descended upon the shoulders of the Colonna, the Church was obliged
to defray the expenses of the war in Flanders and Philippe de Valois’s
crusade against the Greek Empire. The memory of Pope Boniface VIII. was,
if not destroyed and annulled, at least besmirched; the walls of the
Temple were razed, and the Templars burned on the open space of the Pont
Neuf.
All these edicts--they were no longer called bulls from the moment the
temporal power dictated them--all these edicts were dated at Avignon.
Philippe le Bel was the richest of all the kings of the French monarchy;
he possessed an inexhaustible treasury, that is to say, his pope. He had
purchased him, he used him, he put him to the press, and as cider flows
from apples, so did this crushed pope bleed gold. The pontificate,
struck by the Colonna in the person of Boniface VIII., abdicated the
empire of the world in the person of Clement V.
We have related the advent of the king of blood and the pope of gold.
We know how they ended. Jacques de Molay, from his funeral pyre, adjured
them both to appear before God within the year. _Ae to geron sithullia_,
says Aristophanes. “Dying hoary heads possess the souls of sibyls.”
Clement V. departed first. In a vision he saw his palace in flames.
“From that moment,” says Baluze, “he became sad and lasted but a short
time.”
Seven months later it was Philippe’s turn. Some say that he was killed
while hunting, overthrown by a wild boar. Dante is among their number.
“He,” said he, “who was seen near the Seine falsifying the coin of the
realm shall die by the tusk of a boar.” But Guillaume de Nangis makes
the royal counterfeiter die of a death quite otherwise providential.
“Undermined by a malady unknown to the physicians, Philippe expired,”
said he, “to the great astonishment of everybody, without either his
pulse or his urine revealing the cause of his malady or the imminence of
the danger.”
The King of Debauchery, the King of Uproar, Louis X., called the Hutin,
succeeded his father, Philippe le Bel; John XXII. to Clement V.
Avignon then became in truth a second Rome. John XXII. and Clement VI.
anointed her queen of luxury. The manners and customs of the times made
her queen of debauchery and indulgence. In place of her towers, razed by
Romain de Saint-Angelo, Hernandez de Héredi, grand master of Saint-Jean
of Jerusalem, girdled her with a belt of walls. She possessed dissolute
monks, who transformed the blessed precincts of her convents into places
of debauchery and licentiousness; her beautiful courtesans tore the
diamonds from the tiara to make of them bracelets and necklaces; and
finally she possessed the echoes of Vaucluse, which wafted the melodious
strains of Petrarch’s songs to her.
This lasted until King Charles V., who was a virtuous and pious prince,
having resolved to put an end to the scandal, sent the Maréchal de
Boucicaut to drive out the anti-pope, Benedict XIII., from Avignon. But
at sight of the soldiers of the King of France the latter remembered
that before being pope under the name of Benedict XIII. he had been
captain under the name of Pierre de Luna. For five months he defended
himself, pointing his engines of war with his own hands from the heights
of the château walls, engines otherwise far more murderous than his
pontifical bolts. At last forced to flee, he left the city by a
postern, after having ruined a hundred houses and killed four thousand
Avignonese, and fled to Spain, where the King of Aragon offered him
sanctuary.
There each morning, from the summit of a tower, assisted by the two
priests who constituted his sacred college, he blessed the whole world,
which was none the better for it, and excommunicated his enemies, who
were none the worse for it. At last, feeling himself nigh to death,
and fearing lest the schism die with him, he elected his two vicars
cardinals on the condition that after his death one of the two would
elect the other pope. The election was made. The new pope, supported by
the cardinal who made him, continued the schism for awhile. Finally both
entered into negotiations with Rome, made honorable amends, and returned
to the fold of Holy Church, one with the title of Arch bishop of
Seville, the other as Archbishop of Toledo.
From this time until 1790 Avignon, widowed of her popes, was governed
by legates and vice-legates. Seven sovereign pontiffs had resided
within her walls some seven decades; she had seven hospitals, seven
fraternities of penitents, seven monasteries, seven convents, seven
parishes, and seven cemeteries.
To those who know Avignon there was at that epoch--there is yet--two
cities within a city: the city of the priests, that is to say, the Roman
city, and the city of the merchants, that is to say, the French city.
The city of the priests, with its papal palace, its hundred churches,
its innumerable bell-towers, ever ready to sound the tocsin of
conflagration, the knell of slaughter. The town of the merchants, with
its Rhone, its silk-workers, its crossroads, extending north, east,
south and west, from Lyons to Marseilles, from Nimes to Turin. The
French city, the accursed city, longing for a king, jealous of its
liberties, shuddering beneath its yoke of vassalage, a vassalage of the
priests with the clergy for its lord.
The clergy--not the pious clergy, tolerantly austere in the practice
of its duty and charity, living in the world to console and edify
it, without mingling in its joys and passions--but a clergy such as
intrigue, cupidity, and ambition had made it; that is to say, the
court abbés, rivalling the Roman priests, indolent, libertine, elegant,
impudent, kings of fashion, autocrats of the salon, kissing the hands of
those ladies of whom they boasted themselves the paramours, giving their
hands to kiss to the women of the people whom they honored by making
their mistresses.
Do you want a type of those abbés? Take the Abbé Maury. Proud as a duke,
insolent as a lackey, the son of a shoemaker, more aristocratic than the
son of a great lord.
One understands that these two categories of inhabitants, representing
the one heresy, the other orthodoxy; the one the French party, the other
the Roman party; the one the party of absolute monarchy, the other that
of progressive constitutionalism, were not elements conducive to the
peace and security of this ancient pontifical city. One understands,
we say, that at the moment when the revolution broke out in Paris, and
manifested itself by the taking of the Bastille, that the two parties,
hot from the religious wars of Louis XIV., could not remain inert in the
presence of each other.
We have said, Avignon, city of priests; let us add, city of hatreds.
Nowhere better than in convent towns does one learn to hate. The heart
of the child, everywhere else free from wicked passions, was born there
full of paternal hatreds, inherited from father to son for the last
eight hundred years, and after a life of hate, bequeathed in its turn, a
diabolical heritage, to his children.
Therefore, at the first cry of liberty which rang through France the
French town rose full of joy and hope. The moment had come at last for
her to contest aloud that concession made by a young queen, a minor,
in expiation of her sins, of a city and a province, and with it half a
million souls. By what right had she sold these souls in æternum to the
hardest and most exacting of all masters, the Roman Pontiff?
All France was hastening to assemble in the fraternal embrace of the
Federation at the Champ de Mars. Was she not France? Her sons ejected
delegates to wait upon the legate and request him respectfully to leave
the city, giving him twenty-four hours in which to do so.
During the night the papists amused themselves by hanging from a gibbet
an effigy of straw wearing the tri-color cockade.
The course of the Rhone has been controlled, the Durance canalled, dikes
have been built to restrain the fierce torrents, which, at the melting
of the snows, pour in liquid avalanches from the summits of Mt. Ventoux.
But this terrible flood, this living flood, this human torrent that
rushed leaping through the rapid inclines of the streets of Avignon,
once released, once flooding, not even God Himself has yet sought to
stay it.
At sight of this manikin with the national colors, dancing at the end
of a cord, the French city rose upon its very foundations with terrible
cries of rage. Four papist, suspected of this sacrilege, two marquises,
one burgher, and a workman, were torn from their homes and hung in the
manikin’s stead. This occurred the eleventh of June, 1790.
The whole French town wrote to the National Assembly that she gave
herself to France, and with her the Rhone, her commerce, the Midi, and
the half of Provence.
The National Assembly was in one of its reactionary moods. It did not
wish to quarrel with the Pope; it dallied with the King, and the matter
was adjourned. From that moment the rising became a revolt, and the Pope
was free to do with Avignon what the court might have done with Paris,
if the Assembly had delayed its proclamation of the Rights of Man.
The Pope ordered the annulment of all that had occurred at the Comtat
Venaissin, the re-establishment of the privileges of the nobles and
clergy, and the reinstallation of the Inquisition in all its rigor. The
pontifical decrees were affixed to the walls.
One man, one only, in broad daylight dared to go straight to the walls,
in face of all, and tear down the decree. His name was Lescuyer. He
was not a young man; and therefore it was not the fire of youth that
impelled him. No, he was almost an old man who did not even belong to
the province. He was a Frenchman from Picardy, ardent yet reflective, a
former notary long since established at Avignon.
It was a crime that Roman Avignon remembered; a crime so great that the
Virgin wept!
You see Avignon is another Italy. She must have her miracles, and if
God will not perform them, so surely will some one be at hand to invent
them. Still further, the miracle must be a miracle pertaining to the
Virgin. La Madonna! the mind, the heart, the tongue of the Italians are
full of these two words.
It was in the Church of the Cordeliers that this miracle occurred. The
crowd rushed there. It was much that the Virgin should weep; but a rumor
spread at the same time that brought the excitement to a climax. A large
coffer, tightly sealed, had been carried through the city; this chest
had excited the curiosity of all Avignon. What did it contain? Two hours
later it was no longer a coffer; but eighteen trunks had been seen going
toward the Rhone. As for their contents, a porter had revealed that;
they contained articles from the Mont-de-Piété that the French party
were taking with them into exile. Articles from the Mont-de-Piété, that
is to say, the spoils of the poor! The poorer the city the richer its
pawn-shops. Few could boast such wealth as those of Avignon. It was no
longer a factional affair, it was a theft, an infamous theft. Whites
and Reds rushed to the Church of the Cordeliers, shouting that the
municipality must render them an accounting.
Lescuyer was the secretary of the municipality. His name was thrown to
the crowd, not for having torn down the pontifical decrees--from that
moment he would have had defenders--but for having signed the order to
the keeper of the Mont-de-Piété permitting the removal of the articles
in pawn.
Four men were sent to seize Lescuyer and bring him to the church. They
found him in the street on his way to the municipality. The four men
fell upon him and dragged him to the church with the most ferocious
cries. Once there, Lescuyer understood from the flaming eyes that met
his, from the clinched fists threatening him, the shrieks demanding his
death; Lescuyer understood that instead of being in the house of the
Lord he was in one of those circles of hell forgotten by Dante.
The only idea that occurred to him as to this hatred against him was
that he had caused it by tearing down the pontifical decrees. He climbed
into the pulpit, expecting to convert it into a seat of justice, and in
the voice of a man who not only does not blame himself, but who is even
ready to repeat his action, he said:
“Brothers, I consider the revolution necessary; consequently I have done
all in my power--”
The fanatics understood that if Lescuyer explained, Lescuyer was saved.
That was not what they wanted. They flung themselves upon him, tore him
from the pulpit, and thrust him into the midst of this howling mob, who
dragged him to the altar with that sort of terrible cry which combines
the hiss of the serpent and the roar of the tiger, the murderous zou!
zou! peculiar to the people of Avignon.
Lescuyer recognized that fatal cry; he endeavored to gain refuge at the
foot of the altar. He found none; he fell there.
A laborer, armed with a stick, dealt him such a blow on the head that
the stick broke in two pieces. Then the people hurled themselves upon
the poor body, and, with that mixture of gayety and ferocity peculiar to
Southern people, the men began to dance on his stomach, singing, while
the women, that he might better expiate his blasphemies against the
Pope, cut or rather scalloped his lips with their scissors.
And out of the midst of this frightful group came a cry, or rather a
groan; this death groan said: “In the name of Heaven! in the name of the
Virgin! in the name of humanity! kill me at once.”
This cry was heard, and by common consent the assassins stood aside.
They left the unfortunate man bleeding, disfigured, mangled, to taste of
his death agony.
This lasted five hours, during which, amid shouts of laughter, insults,
and jeers from the crowd, this poor body lay palpitating upon the steps
of the altar. That is how they kill at Avignon.
Stay! there is yet another way. A man of the French party conceived the
idea of going to the Mont-de-Piété for information. Everything was in
order there, not a fork or a spoon had been removed. It was therefore
not as an accomplice of theft that Lescuyer had just been so cruelly
murdered, it was for being a patriot.
There was at that time in Avignon a man who controlled the populace. All
these terrible leaders of the Midi have acquired such fatal celebrity
that it suffices to name them for every one, even the least educated,
to know them. This man was Jourdan. Braggart and liar, he had made the
common people believe that it was he who had cut off the head of the
governor of the Bastille. So they called him Jourdan, Coupe-tête.
That was not his real name, which was Mathieu Jouve. Neither was he a
Provencal; he came from Puy-en-Velay. He had formerly been a muleteer
on those rugged heights which surround his native town; then a soldier
without going to war--war had perhaps made him more human; after that
he had kept a drink-shop in Paris. In Avignon he had been a vendor of
madder.
He collected three hundred men, carried the gates of the town, left
half of his troop to guard them, and with the remainder marched upon
the Church of the Cordeliers, preceded by two pieces of cannon. These he
stationed in front of the church and fired them into it at random. The
assassins fled like a flock of frightened birds, leaving some few dead
upon the church steps. Jourdan and his men trampled over the bodies and
entered the holy precincts. No one was there but the Virgin, and the
wretched Lescuyer, still breathing. Jourdan and his comrades took good
care not to despatch Lescuyer; his death agony was a supreme means
of exciting the mob. They picked up this remnant of a sentient being,
three-quarters dead, and carried it along, bleeding, quivering, gasping,
with them.
Every one fled from the sight, closing doors and windows. At the end of
an hour, Jourdan and his three hundred men were masters of the town.
Lescuyer was dead, but what of that; they no longer needed his agony.
Jourdan profited by the terror he had inspired to arrest or have
arrested eighty people, murderers, or so-called murderers of Lescuyer.
Thirty, perhaps, had never even set foot within the church. But when one
has such a good opportunity to be rid of one’s enemies, one must profit
by it; good opportunities are rare.
These eighty people were huddled into the Trouillas Tower. Historically
it is known as the Tower de la Glacière; but why change this name of
the Trouillas Tower? The name is unclean and harmonizes well with the
unclean deed which was now to be perpetrated there.
It had been the scene of the inquisitorial tortures. One can still see
on the walls the greasy soot which rose from the smoke of the funeral
pyre where human bodies were consumed. They still show you to-day the
instruments of torture which they have carefully preserved--the caldron,
the oven, the wooden horse, the chains, the dungeons, and even the
rotten bones. Nothing is wanting.
It was in this tower, built by Clement V., that they now confined the
eighty prisoners. These eighty men, once arrested and locked up in the
Trouillas Tower, became most embarrassing. Who was to judge them? There
were no legally constituted courts except those of the Pope. Could they
kill these unfortunates as they had killed Lescuyer?
We have said that a third, perhaps half of them, had not only taken no
part in the murder, but had not even set foot in the church. How should
they kill them? The killing must be placed upon the basis of reprisals.
But the killing of these eighty people required a certain number of
executioners.
A species of tribunal was improvised by Jourdan and held session in
one of the law-courts. It had a clerk named Raphel; a president, half
Italian, half French; an orator in the popular dialect named Barbe
Savournin de la Roua, and three or four other poor devils, a baker, a
pork butcher--their names are lost in the multitude of events.
These were the men who cried: “We must kill all! If one only escapes he
will be a witness against us.”
But, as we have said, executioners were wanting. There were barely
twenty men at hand in the courtyard, all belonging to the petty
tradesfolk of Avignon--a barber, a shoemaker, a cobbler, a mason, and an
upholsterer--all insufficiently armed at random, the one with a sabre,
the other with a bayonet, a third with an iron bar, and a fourth with a
bit of wood hardened by fire. All of these people were chilled by a fine
October rain. It would be difficult to turn them into assassins.
Pooh! Is anything too difficult for the devil?
There comes an hour in such crises when God seems to abandon the earth.
Then the devil’s chance comes.
The devil in person entered this cold, muddy courtyard. Assuming the
features, form and face of an apothecary of the neighborhood named
Mendes, he prepared a table lighted by two lanterns, on which he placed
glasses, jugs, pitchers and bottles.
What infernal beverage did these mysterious and curiously formed
receptacles contain? No one ever knew, but the result is well known.
All those who drank that diabolical liquor were suddenly seized with a
feverish rage, a lust of blood and murder. From that moment it was only
necessary to show them the door; they hurtled madly into the dungeon.
The massacre lasted all night; all night the cries, the sobs, the
groans of the dying sounded through the darkness. All were killed, all
slaughtered, men and women. It was long in doing; the killers, we have
said, were drunk and poorly armed. But they succeeded.
Among these butchers was a child remarked for his bestial cruelty, his
immoderate thirst for blood. It was Lescuyer’s son. He killed and then
killed again; he boasted of having with his childish hand alone killed
ten men and four women.
“It’s all right! I can kill as I like,” said he. “I am not yet fifteen,
so they can do nothing to me for it.”
As the killing progressed, they threw their victims, the living, dead
and wounded, into the Trouillas Tower, some sixty feet, down into the
pit. The men were thrown in first, and the women later. The assassins
wanted time to violate the bodies of those who were young and pretty. At
nine in the morning, after twelve hours of massacre, a voice was still
heard crying from the depths of the sepulchre:
“For pity’s sake, come kill me! I cannot die.”
A man, the armorer Bouffier, bent over the pit and looked down. The
others did not dare.
“Who was that crying?” they asked.
“That was Lami,” replied Bouffier. Then, when he had returned, they
asked him:
“Well, what did you see at the bottom?”
“A queer marmalade,” said he. “Men and women, priests and pretty girls,
all helter-skelter. It’s enough to make one die of laughter.”
“Decidedly man is a vile creature,” said the Count of Monte-Cristo to M.
de Villefort.
Well, it is in this town, still reeking with blood, still warm, still
stirred by these last massacres, that we now introduce two of the
principal personages of our story.
CHAPTER I. A TABLE D’HÔTE
The 9th of October, 1799, on a beautiful day of that meridional autumn
which ripens the oranges of Hyères and the grapes of Saint-Peray, at the
two extremities of Provence, a travelling chaise, drawn by three post
horses, galloped at full speed over the bridge that crosses the Durance,
between Cavailhon and Château-Renard, on its way to Avignon, the ancient
papal city which a decree, issued the 25th of May, 1791, eight years
earlier, had reunited to France--a reunion confirmed by the treaty
signed in 1797, at Tolentino, between General Bonaparte and Pope Pius
VI.
The carriage entered by the gate of Aix and, without slackening speed,
traversed the entire length of the town, with its narrow, winding
streets, built to ward off both wind and sun, and halted at fifty paces
from the Porte d’Oulle, at the Hotel du Palais-Egalité, which they were
again beginning to quietly rename the Hotel du Palais-Royal, a name
which it bore formerly and still bears to-day.
These few insignificant words about the name of the inn, before which
halted the post-chaise which we had in view, indicate sufficiently well
the state of France under the government of the Thermidorian reaction,
called the Directory.
After the revolutionary struggle which had occurred between the 14th of
July, 1789, and the 9th Thermidor, 1794; after the days of the 5th and
6th of October, of the 21st of June, of the 10th of August, of the 2d
and 3d of September, of the 21st of May, of the 29th Thermidor and the
1st Prairial; after seeing fall the heads of the King and his judges,
and the Queen and her accusers, of the Girondins and the Cordeliers, the
Moderates and the Jacobins, France experienced that most frightful and
most nauseous of all lassitudes, the lassitude of blood!
She had therefore returned, if not to a need of monarchy, at least to a
desire for a stable government, in which she might place her confidence,
upon which she might lean, which would act for her, and which would
permit her some repose while it acted.
In the stead of this vaguely desired government, the country obtained
the feeble and irresolute Directory, composed for the moment of the
voluptuous Barrès, the intriguing Sièyes, the brave Moulins, the
insignificant Roger Ducos, and the honest but somewhat too ingenuous
Gohier. The result was a mediocre dignity before the world at large and
a very questionable tranquillity at home.
It is true that at the moment of which we write our armies, so glorious
during those epic campaigns of 1796 and 1797, thrown back for a time
upon France by the incapacity of Scherer at Verona and Cassano, and by
the defeat and death of Joubert at Novi, were beginning to resume
the offensive. Moreau had defeated Souvarow at Bassignano; Brune had
defeated the Duke of York and General Hermann at Bergen; Masséna had
annihilated the Austro-Russians at Zurich; Korsakof had escaped only
with the greatest difficulty; the Austrian, Hotz, with three other
generals, were killed, and five made prisoners. Masséna saved France at
Zurich, as Villars, ninety years earlier, had saved it at Denain.
But in the interior, matters were not in so promising a state, and the
government of the Directory was, it must be confessed, much embarrassed
between the war in the Vendée and the brigandages of the Midi, to which,
according to custom, the population of Avignon were far from remaining
strangers.
Beyond doubt the two travellers who descended from the carriage at the
door of the Hotel du Palais-Royal had reason to fear the state of mind
in which the always excitable papal town might be at that time; for just
before reaching Orgon, at a spot where three crossroads stretched out
before the traveller--one leading to Nimes, the second to Carpentras,
the third to Avignon--the postilion had stopped his horses, and, turning
round, asked:
“Will the citizens go by way of Avignon or Carpentras?”
“Which of the two roads is the shorter?” asked the elder of the two
travellers in a harsh, strident voice. Though visibly the elder, he was
scarcely thirty years of age.
“Oh, the road to Avignon, citizen, by a good four miles at least.”
“Then,” he had replied, “go by way of Avignon.”
And the carriage had started again at a gallop, which proclaimed that
the citizen travellers, as the postilion called them, although the title
of Monsieur was beginning to reappear in conversation, paid a fee of at
least thirty sous.
The same desire to lose no time manifested itself at the hotel entrance.
There, as on the road, it was the elder of the two travellers who spoke.
He asked if they could dine at once, and the way this demand was made
indicated that he was ready to overlook many gastronomical exigencies
provided that the repast in question be promptly served.
“Citizens,” replied the landlord, who, at the sound of carriage wheels
hastened, napkin in hand, to greet the travellers, “you will be promptly
and comfortably served in your room; but if you will permit me to
advise--” He hesitated.
“Oh, go on! go on!” said the younger of the travellers, speaking for the
first time.
“Well, it would be that you dine at the table d’hôte, like the traveller
for whom this coach, already harnessed, is waiting. The dinner is
excellent and all served.”
The host at the same time indicated a comfortably appointed carriage,
to which were harnessed two horses who were pawing the ground, while the
postilion sought patience in the bottle of Cahors wine he was emptying
near the window-ledge. The first movement of him to whom this proposal
was made was negative; nevertheless, after a second’s reflection,
the elder of the two travellers, as if he had reconsidered his first
decision, made an interrogative sign to his companion, who replied with
a look which signified, “You know that I am at your orders.”
“Very well, so be it,” said the other, “we will dine at the table
d’hôte.” Then, turning to the postilion, who, hat in hand, awaited
his order, he added, “Let the horses be ready in a half hour, at the
latest.”
And the landlord pointing out the way, they both entered the
dining-room, the elder of the two walking first, the other following
him.
Everyone knows the impression generally produced at a table d’hôte by
new-comers. All eyes were bent upon them and the conversation, which
seemed to be quite animated, stopped.
The guests consisted of the frequenters of the hotel, the traveller
whose carriage was waiting harnessed at the door, a wine merchant from
Bordeaux, sojourning temporarily at Avignon for reasons we shall shortly
relate, and a certain number of travellers going from Marseilles to
Lyons by diligence.
The new arrivals greeted the company with a slight inclination of the
head, and sat down at the extreme end of the table, thereby isolating
themselves from the other guests by three or four empty places. This
seemingly aristocratic reserve redoubled the curiosity of which they
were the object; moreover, they were obviously people of unquestionable
distinction, although their garments were simple in the extreme. Both
wore hightop boots and breeches, long-tailed coats, travelling overcoats
and broad-brimmed hats, the usual costume of the young men of that day.
But that which distinguished them from the fashionables of Paris, and
even of the provinces, was their long straight hair, and their black
stocks buckled round the neck, military fashion. The Muscadins--that
was the name then given to young dandies--the Muscadins wore dogs’ ears
puffing at the temples, the rest of the hair combed up tightly in a bag
at the back, and an immense cravat with long floating ends, in which
the chin was completely buried. Some had even extended this reaction to
powder.
As to the personality of the two young men, they presented two
diametrically opposite types.
The elder of the two, he who, as we have already remarked, had taken
the initiative several times, and whose voice, even in its most familiar
intonations, denoted the habit of command, was about thirty years of
age. His black hair was parted in the middle, falling straight from
his temples to his shoulders. He had the swarthy skin of a man who has
travelled long in southern climes, thin lips, a straight nose, white
teeth, and those hawk-like eyes which Dante gives to Cæsar. He was short
rather than tall, his hand was delicate, his foot slender and elegant.
His manner betrayed a certain awkwardness, suggesting that he was at
the moment wearing a costume to which he was not accustomed, and when he
spoke, his hearers, had they been beside the Loire instead of the Rhone,
would have detected a certain Italian accent in his pronunciation.
His companion seemed to be some three or four years younger than he. He
was a handsome young man with a rosy complexion, blond hair and light
blue eyes, a straight, firm nose and prominent but almost beardless
chin. He was perhaps a couple of inches taller than his companion,
and though his figure was somewhat above medium height, he was so well
proportioned, so admirably free in his movements, that he was evidently
if not extraordinarily strong, at least uncommonly agile and dexterous.
Although attired in the same manner and apparently on a footing of
equality, he evinced remarkable deference to the dark young man,
which, as it could not result from age, was doubtless caused by some
inferiority of position. Moreover, he called his companion citizen,
while the other addressed him as Roland.
These remarks which we make to initiate the reader more profoundly into
our story, were probably not made as extensively by the guests at the
table d’hôte; for after bestowing a few seconds of attention upon
the new-comers, they turned their eyes away, and the conversation,
interrupted for an instant, was resumed. It must be confessed that
it concerned a matter most interesting to the travellers--that of the
stoppage of a diligence bearing a sum of sixty thousand francs belonging
to the government. The affair had occurred the day before on the road
from Marseilles to Avignon between Lambesc and Pont-Royal.
At the first words referring to this event, the two young men listened
with unmistakable interest. It had taken place on the same road which
they had just followed, and the narrator, the wine merchant of Bordeaux,
had been one of the principal actors in the scene on the highroad. Those
who seemed the most curious to hear the details were the travellers in
the diligence which had just arrived and was soon to depart. The other
guests, who belonged to the locality, seemed sufficiently conversant
with such catastrophes to furnish the details themselves instead of
listening to them.
“So, citizen,” said a stout gentleman against whom a tall woman, very
thin and haggard, was crowding in her terror. “You say that the robbery
took place on the very road by which we have just come?”
“Yes, citizen, between Lambesc and Pont-Royal. Did you notice the spot
where the road ascends between two high banks? There are a great many
rocks there.”
“Yes, yes, my friend,” said the wife, pressing her husband’s arm, “I
noticed it; I even said, as you must remember, ‘Here is a bad place; I
would rather pass here by day than at night.’”
“Oh! madame,” said a young man whose voice affected to slur his r’s
after the fashion of the day, and who probably assumed to lead the
conversation at the table d’hôte, on ordinary occasions, “you know the
Companions of Jehu know no day or night.”
“What! citizen,” asked the lady still more alarmed, “were you attacked
in broad daylight?”
“In broad daylight, citizeness, at ten o’clock in the morning.”
“And how many were there?” asked the stout gentleman.
“Four, citizen.”
“Ambushed beside the road?”
“No; they were on horseback, armed to the teeth and masked.”
“That’s their custom,” said the young frequenter of the table d’hôte,
“and they said, did they not: ‘Do not defend yourself, we will not harm
you. We only want the government money.’”
“Word for word, citizen.”
“Then,” continued this well-informed young man, “two dismounted from
their horses, flinging their bridles to their comrades, and commanded
the conductor to deliver up the money.”
“Citizen,” said the stout man astonished, “you describe the thing as if
you had seen it.”
“Monsieur was there, perhaps,” said one of the travellers, half in jest,
half in earnest.
“I do not know, citizen, whether in saying that you intend a rudeness,”
carelessly observed the young man who had so pertinently and obligingly
come to the narrator’s assistance, “but my political opinions are
such that I do not consider your suspicion an insult. Had I had the
misfortune to be among those attacked, or the honor to be one of those
who made the attack, I should admit it as frankly in the one case as in
the other. But yesterday at ten o’clock, at precisely the moment when
the diligence was stopped, twelve miles from here, I was breakfasting
quietly in this very seat. And, by-the-bye, with the two citizens who
now do me the honor to sit beside me.”
“And,” asked the younger of the two travellers who had lately joined the
table, whom his companion called Roland, “how many men were you in the
diligence?”
“Let me think; we were--yes, that’s it--we were seven men and three
women.”
“Seven men, not including the conductor?” repeated Roland.
“Yes.”
“And you seven men allowed yourselves to be plundered by four brigands?
I congratulate you, gentlemen.”
“We knew with whom we had to deal,” replied the wine merchant, “and we
took good care not to defend ourselves.”
“What! with whom you had to deal?” retorted the young man. “Why, it
seems to me, with thieves and bandits.”
“Not at all. They gave their names.”
“They gave their names?”
“They said, ‘Gentlemen, it is useless to defend yourselves; ladies, do
not be alarmed, we are not bandits, we are Companions of Jehu.’”
“Yes,” said the young man of the table d’hôte, “they warned you that
there might be no misunderstanding. That’s their way.”
“Ah, indeed!” exclaimed Roland; “and who is this Jehu who has such
polite companions? Is he their captain?”
“Sir,” said a man whose dress betrayed somewhat the secularized priest,
and who seemed also to be, not only an habitual guest at the table
d’hôte, but also an initiate into the mysteries of the honorable company
whose merits were then under discussion, “if you were better versed than
you seem to be in the Holy Scriptures, you would know that this Jehu
died something like two thousand six hundred years ago, and that
consequently he cannot at the present time stop coaches on the
highways.”
“Monsieur l’Abbé,” replied Roland, who had recognized an ecclesiastic,
“as, in spite of the sharp tone in which you speak, you seem a man of
learning, permit a poor ignoramus to ask you a few details about this
Jehu, dead these two thousand six hundred years, who, nevertheless, is
honored by followers bearing his name.”
“Jehu!” replied the churchman, in the same sour tone, “was a King of
Israel anointed by Elisha, on condition that he punish the crimes of the
house of Ahab and Jezbel, and put to death the priests of Baal.”
“Monsieur l’Abbé,” replied the young man laughing, “I thank you for the
explanation. I don’t doubt it is correct, and, above all, very learned.
But I must admit it doesn’t tell me much.”
“What, citizen!” exclaimed the abbé, “don’t you understand that Jehu
is his Majesty Louis XVIII., anointed on condition that he punish the
crimes of the Revolution and put to death all the priests of Baal; that
is to say, all those who had taken any part whatsoever in the abominable
state of things which, for these last seven years, has been called the
republic?”
“Yes, indeed!” exclaimed the young man; “of course I understand. But
among those whom the Companions of Jehu are appointed to fight, do
you reckon the brave soldiers who have repulsed the enemy along the
frontiers of France, and the illustrious generals who have commanded the
armies of the Tyrol, the Sambre-and-Meuse, and of Italy?”
“Why, beyond doubt, those foremost and before all.”
The young man’s eyes flashed lightning; his nostrils quivered and his
lips tightened. He rose from his chair, but his comrade touched his coat
and forced him to sit down again, while with a single glance he silenced
him. Then he who had thus given proof of his power, speaking for the
first time, addressed the young man of the table d’hôte.
“Citizen, excuse two travellers who are just arrived from the end of the
earth, from America, or India as it were. Absent from France these last
two years; we are completely ignorant of all that has occurred here, and
most desirous to obtain information.”
“Why, as to that,” replied the young man, to whom these words were
addressed, “that is but fair, citizen. Question us and we will answer
you.”
“Well,” continued the dark young man with the eagle eye, the straight
black hair, and the granite complexion, “now that I know who Jehu is,
and to what end his company was instituted, I should like to know what
his companions do with the money they take.”
“Oh! that is very simple, citizen. You know there is much talk of the
restoration of the Bourbon monarchy?”
“No, I did not know it,” replied the dark young man, in a tone which he
vainly strove to render artless; “I am but just arrived, as I told you,
from the end of the earth.”
“What! you did not know that? Well, six months hence it will be an
accomplished fact.”
“Really!”
“I have the honor to tell you so, citizen.”
The two soldier-like young men exchanged a glance and a smile, though
the young blond one was apparently chafing under the weight of his
extreme impatience.
Their informant continued: “Lyons is the headquarters of the conspiracy,
if one can call conspiracy a plot which was organized openly. ‘The
provisional government’ would be a more suitable word.”
“Well, then, citizen,” said the dark young man with a politeness not
wholly exempt from satire, “let us call it ‘provisional government.’”
“This provisional government has its staff and its armies.”
“Bah! its staff perhaps--but its armies--”
“Its armies, I repeat.”
“Where are they?”
“One is being organized in the mountains of Auvergne, under the orders
of M. de Chardon; another in the Jura Mountains, under M. Teyssonnet;
and, finally, a third is operating most successfully at this time,
in the Vendée, under the orders of Escarboville, Achille Leblond and
Cadoudal.”
“Truly, citizen, you render me a real service in telling me this. I
thought the Bourbons completely resigned to their exile. I supposed the
police so organized as to suppress both provisional royalist committees
in the large towns and bandits on the highways. In fact, I believed the
Vendée had been completely pacificated by Hoche.”
The young man to whom this reply was addressed burst out laughing.
“Why, where do you come from?” he exclaimed.
“I told you, citizen, from the end of the earth.”
“So it seems.” Then he continued: “You understand, the Bourbons are
not rich, the émigrés whose property was confiscated are ruined. It is
impossible to organize two armies and maintain a third without money.
The royalists faced an embarrassing problem; the republic alone could
pay for its enemies’ troops and, it being improbable that she would do
so of her own volition, the shady negotiation was abandoned, and it was
adjudged quicker to take the money without permission than to ask her
for it.”
“Ah! I understand at last.”
“That’s very fortunate.”
“Companions of Jehu then are the intermediaries between the Republic and
the Counter-Revolution, the tax-collectors of the royalist generals?”
“Yes. It is not robbery, but a military operation, rather a feat of
arms like any other. So there you are, citizen, and now you are as well
informed on this point as ourselves.”
“But,” timidly hazarded the wine merchant of Bordeaux, “if the
Companions of Jehu--observe that I say nothing against them--want the
government money--”
“The government money, no other. Individual plunder on their part is
unheard of.”
“How does it happen, then, that yesterday, in addition to the government
money, they carried off two hundred louis of mine?”
“My dear sir,” replied the young man of the table d’hôte, “I have
already told you that there is some mistake. As surely as my name is
Alfred de Barjols, this money will be returned to you some day.”
The wine merchant heaved a sigh and shook his head, as if, in spite of
that assurance, he still retained some doubts. But at this moment, as if
the promise given by the young noble, who had just revealed his social
position by telling his name, had stirred the delicacy of those whom he
thus guaranteed, a horse stopped at the entrance, steps were heard in
the corridor, the dining-room door opened, and a masked man, armed to
the teeth, appeared on the threshold.
“Gentlemen,” said he, in the profound silence occasioned by his
apparition, “is there a traveller here named Jean Picot, who was in the
diligence that was held up yesterday between Lambesc and Pont-Royal?”
“Yes,” said the wine merchant, amazed.
“Are you he?” asked the masked man.
“I am.”
“Was anything taken from you?”
“Oh, yes, two hundred louis, which I had intrusted to the conductor.”
“And I may add,” said the young noble, “that the gentleman was speaking
of it at this very moment. He looked upon it as lost.”
“The gentleman was wrong,” said the masked unknown, “we war upon
the government and not against individuals. We are partisans and not
robbers. Here are your two hundred Louis, sir, and if a similar mistake
should occur in the future, claim your loss, mentioning the name of
Morgan.”
So saying, the masked individual deposited a bag of gold beside the wine
merchant, bowed courteously to the other guests, and went out, leaving
some terrified and others bewildered by such daring.