Juliette had not gone to bed, this snowy night of the Noël. She had
said her Rosary and waited until the Christmas carillon. Then she
knelt and prayed for her own pardon, for light and guidance, for a
blessing upon those living friends she held most dear, for the souls
of the beloved departed. And then she had waited, pacing solitary in
her bedroom or sitting by her fire, for the sound of Breagh's return.
Madame Potier had gone to the Midnight Mass at the Cathedral. There
would be crowds of communicants--she might not reach home before
three. And in her absence had Juliette wished to sleep, sleep would
have been banished by the sounds of revelry going on in the regions
belowstairs.
Those first shouts for the Kaiser had been followed by others for the
Chancellor. Even in her remote eyrie she could hear the clinking of
glasses and the popping of corks. Then after a wild outburst of
cheering she had seen, peeping between the frost flowers on her
window into the snowy, moonlit garden, the great figure in the white
Cuirassier cloak move down the path between the snow-laden trees.
She was possessed by a great sense of loneliness, and a vague unreal
sensation of living somebody else's life, and not the life proper of
Juliette Bayard. She locked her door and built up the fire to a
cheerful hearth blaze, and sat upon the rug in her white dressing
gown, combing and brushing her glorious hair.
Never again need those superb waves of jet-black spun silk be
confined in the chenille net of Madame Charles Tessier. One could be
charming if one chose--there was no grim reason for being ugly,
thought Mademoiselle, as she brushed and brushed....
What was that?
So strange a sound from below that she dropped comb and hairbrush and
sprang to her feet quivering.... She had heard such a groan uttered
when the lance of the Uhlan had plunged through the body of my Cousin
Boisset....
Again! ... the sound of a door thrust violently open. Heavy
footsteps thudded on the gaslit landing of the next floor, and a
muffled voice cried out as though for help.
A man's voice.... Again it cried. No voice sounded in answer. She
unlocked her door, and set her foot upon the stairs.
A few steps down.... Then she saw him, the tottering giant with the
distorted, blue face, and the open mouth that trickled with saliva
and blood. What had befallen Juliette's enemy and France's pitiless
oppressor? His huge staring eyes were fixed on her. Tears rolled
from them as the deep groans issued from his gaping mouth and his
broad chest heaved and labored vainly for air.
"_Choking! Help!_" his gesture seemed to say to her, and a terrible
shudder convulsed her as the huge body crashed down prone at her feet.
With a strange mingling of pity and aversion she knelt down beside
him and looked at him closely by the light of the flaring gas jet
that illuminated the landing and stairs.
He had turned a little in falling. His blackening face and staring,
agonized eyes spoke to his desperate condition.... What was to be
done?... The obstruction in the throat must be removed somehow....
She rose up and went into the empty room upon her left hand, and felt
in the darkness for the bell. There was none. The bell rope had
been pulled down by the hand of the Minister, for this was the
torture chamber, where M. Thiers underwent his periodical ordeal of
thumbscrew and rack.
Air.... He must have fresh air. She desperately flung both the
windows open, admitting a gush of piercing cold. He still groaned,
but more faintly. The man was dying. Was not this the Judgment of
Heaven?
In the hour of his triumph the sword had fallen. France would be
saved--there would be no bombardment of Paris if the enemy were to
die to-night. This she told herself, standing in the sharp draught
from the open windows, and knew a thrill of intolerable triumph,
thinking:
"Our Lord has delivered him into hands as weak as mine!"
_Ting!..._
Her heart leaped and stood still. She looked breathlessly from the
window. Along the middle of the snowy Rue de Provence, where
pedestrians must walk to avoid the dangers of the frozen sideways, a
lantern moved, carried by a squat, muffled shape. A taller figure
followed, moving steadily.
_Ting-ting-ting!..._
A shock and thrill of mingled awe and terror passed through her. To
some dying Catholic, saint or sinner, in the dawn of this day of the
Christ-birth, the Body of the Virgin-born was being conveyed.... Was
it not to aid a soul in dire temptation--two souls, it might be--that
He had bidden His minister pass this way?
She bent the knee and made the Sign of the Cross, trembling, then
rose and sped back to the suffocating man. With a strength that she
could not have believed herself possessed of, she raised his
discolored head upon her lap.... His great jaws were wide open. She
thrust the tiny hand within them. Shuddering, sickening, she probed
with her slender fingers, thrusting them down into the contracting,
gulping throat.
Something bright projected beneath the swollen uvula, wedged firmly
into the membrane, blocking the orifice of the trachea. She nipped
the projecting end in the little fingers and pulled. It yielded. He
gave a gulp of relief. As the big teeth snapped together, she
plucked the little hand from peril, bringing with it the broken
silver pin.