Produced by Walter Debeuf, Project Gutenberg volunteer.
I Will Repay.
By Baroness Orczy.
PROLOGUE.
I
Paris: 1783.
"Coward! Coward! Coward!"
The words rang out, clear, strident, passionate, in a crescendo of
agonised humiliation.
The boy, quivering with rage, had sprung to his feet, and, losing his
balance, he fell forward clutching at the table, whilst with a
convulsive movement of the lids, he tried in vain to suppress the tears
of shame which were blinding him.
"Coward!" He tried to shout the insult so that all might hear, but his
parched throat refused him service, his trembling hand sought the
scattered cards upon the table, he collected them together, quickly,
nervously, fingering them with feverish energy, then he hurled them at
the man opposite, whilst with a final effort he still contrived to
mutter: "Coward!"
The older men tried to interpose, but the young ones only laughed, quite
prepared for the adventure which must inevitably ensue, the only
possible ending to a quarrel such as this.
Conciliation or arbitration was out of the question. Déroulède should
have known better than to speak disrespectfully of Adèle de Montchéri,
when the little Vicomte de Marny's infatuation for the notorious beauty
had been the talk of Paris and Versailles these many months past.
Adèle was very lovely and a veritable tower of greed and egotism. The
Marnys were rich and the little Vicomte very young, and just now the
brightly-plumaged hawk was busy plucking the latest pigeon, newly
arrived from its ancestral cote.
The boy was still in the initial stage of his infatuation. To him Adèle
was a paragon of all the virtues, and he would have done battle on her
behalf against the entire aristocracy of France, in a vain endeavour to
justify his own exalted opinion of one of the most dissolute women of
the epoch. He was a first-rate swordsman too, and his friends had
already learned that it was best to avoid all allusions to Adèle's
beauty and weaknesses.
But Déroulède was a noted blunderer. He was little versed in the manners
and tones of that high society in which, somehow, he still seemed an
intruder. But for his great wealth, no doubt, he never would have been
admitted within the intimate circle of aristocratic France. His ancestry
was somewhat doubtful and his coat-of-arms unadorned with quarterings.
But little was known of his family or the origin of its wealth; it was
only known that his father had suddenly become the late King's dearest
friend, and commonly surmised that Déroulède gold had on more than one
occasion filled the emptied coffers of the First Gentleman of France.
Déroulède had not sought the present quarrel. He had merely blundered in
that clumsy way of his, which was no doubt a part of the inheritance
bequeathed to him by his bourgeois ancestry.
He knew nothing of the little Vicomte's private affairs, still less of
his relationship with Adèle, but he knew enough of the world and enough
of Paris to be acquainted with the lady's reputation. He hated at all
times to speak of women. He was not what in those days would be termed a
ladies' man, and was even somewhat unpopular with the sex. But in this
instance the conversation had drifted in that direction, and when
Adèle's name was mentioned, every one became silent, save the little
Vicomte, who waxed enthusiastic.
A shrug of the shoulders on Déroulède's part had aroused the boy's ire,
then a few casual words, and, without further warning, the insult had
been hurled and the cards thrown in the older man's face.
Déroulède did not move from his seat. He sat erect and placid, one knee
crossed over the other, his serious, rather swarthy face perhaps a shade
paler than usual: otherwise it seemed as if the insult had never reached
his ears, or the cards struck his cheek.
He had perceived his blunder, just twenty seconds too late. Now he was
sorry for the boy and angered with himself, but it was too late to draw
back. To avoid a conflict he would at this moment have sacrificed half
his fortune, but not one particle of his dignity.
He knew and respected the old Duc de Marny, a feeble old man now, almost
a dotard whose hitherto spotless _blason_, the young Vicomte, his son,
was doing his best to besmirch.
When the boy fell forward, blind and drunk with rage, Déroulède leant
towards him automatically, quite kindly, and helped him to his feet. He
would have asked the lad's pardon for his own thoughtlessness, had that
been possible: but the stilted code of so-called honour forbade so
logical a proceeding. It would have done no good, and could but imperil
his own reputation without averting the traditional sequel.
The panelled walls of the celebrated gaming saloon had often witnessed
scenes such as this. All those present acted by routine. The etiquette
of duelling prescribed certain formalities, and these were strictly but
rapidly adhered to.
The young Vicomte was quickly surrounded by a close circle of friends.
His great name, his wealth, his father's influence, had opened for him
every door in Versailles and Paris. At this moment he might have had an
army of seconds to support him in the coming conflict.
Déroulède for a while was left alone near the card table, where the
unsnuffed candles began smouldering in their sockets. He had risen to
his feet, somewhat bewildered at the rapid turn of events. His dark,
restless eyes wandered for a moment round the room, as if in quick
search for a friend.
But where the Vicomte was at home by right, Déroulède had only been
admitted by reason of his wealth. His acquaintances and sycophants were
many, but his friends very few.
For the first time this fact was brought home to him. Every one in the
room must have known and realised that he had not wilfully sought this
quarrel, that throughout he had borne himself as any gentleman would,
yet now, when the issue was so close at hand, no one came forward to
stand by him.
"For form's sake, monsieur, will you choose your seconds?"
It was the young Marquis de Villefranche who spoke, a little haughtily,
with a certain ironical condescension towards the rich parvenu, who was
about to have the honour of crossing swords with one of the noblest
gentlemen in France.
"I pray you, Monsieur le Marquis," rejoined Déroulède coldly, "to make
the choice for me. You see, I have few friends in Paris."
The Marquis bowed, and gracefully flourished his lace handkerchief. He
was accustomed to being appealed to in all matters pertaining to
etiquette, to the toilet, to the latest cut in coats, and the procedure
in duels. Good-natured, foppish, and idle, he felt quite happy and in
his element thus to be made chief organiser of the tragic farce, about
to be enacted on the parquet floor of the gaming saloon.
He looked about the room for a while, scrutinising the faces of those
around him. The gilded youth was crowding round De Marny; a few older
men stood in a group at the farther end of the room: to these the
Marquis turned, and addressing one of them, an elderly man with a
military bearing and a shabby brown coat:
"Mon Colonel," he said, with another flourishing bow; "I am deputed by
M. Déroulède to provide him with seconds for this affair of honour, may
I call upon you to ..."
"Certainly, certainly," replied the Colonel. "I am not intimately
acquainted with M. Déroulède, but since you stand sponsor, M. le Marquis
..."
"Oh!" rejoined the Marquis, lightly, "a mere matter of form, you know.
M. Déroulède belongs to the entourage of Her Majesty. He is a man of
honour. But I am not his sponsor. Marny is my friend, and if you prefer
not to ..."
"Indeed I am entirely at M. Déroulède's service," said the Colonel, who
had thrown a quick, scrutinising glance at the isolated figure near the
card table, "if he will accept my services ..."
"He will be very glad to accept, my dear Colonel," whispered the Marquis
with an ironical twist of his aristocratic lips. "He has no friends in
our set, and if you and De Quettare will honour him, I think he should
be grateful."
M. de Quettare, adjutant to M. le Colonel, was ready to follow in the
footsteps of his chief, and the two men, after the prescribed
salutations to M. le Marquis de Villefranche, went across to speak to
Déroulède.
"If you will accept our services, monsieur," began the Colonel abruptly,
"mine, and my adjutant's, M. de Quettare, we place ourselves entirely at
your disposal."
"I thank you, messieurs," rejoined Déroulède. "The whole thing is a
farce, and that young man is a fool; but I have been in the wrong and
..."
"You would wish to apologise?" queried the Colonel icily.
The worthy soldier had heard something of Déroulède's reputed bourgeois
ancestry. This suggestion of an apology was no doubt in accordance with
the customs of the middle-classes, but the Colonel literally gasped at
the unworthiness of the proceeding. An apology? Bah! Disgusting!
cowardly! beneath the dignity of any gentleman, however wrong he might
be. How could two soldiers of His Majesty's army identify themselves
with such doings?
But Déroulède seemed unconscious of the enormity of his suggestion.
"If I could avoid a conflict," he said, "I would tell the Vicomte that I
had no knowledge of his admiration for the lady we were discussing and
..."
"Are you so very much afraid of getting a sword scratch, monsieur?"
interrupted the Colonel impatiently, whilst M. de Quettare elevated a
pair of aristocratic eyebrows in bewilderment at such an extraordinary
display of bourgeois cowardice.
"You mean, Monsieur le Colonel?"--queried Déroulède.
"That you must either fight the Vicomte de Marny to-night, or clear out
of Paris to-morrow. Your position in our set would become untenable,"
retorted the Colonel, not unkindly, for in spite of Déroulède's
extraordinary attitude, there was nothing in his bearing or his
appearance that suggested cowardice or fear.
"I bow to your superior knowledge of your friends, M. le Colonel,"
responded Déroulède, as he silently drew his sword from its sheath.
The centre of the saloon was quickly cleared. The seconds measured the
length of the swords and then stood behind the antagonists, slightly in
advance of the groups of spectators, who stood massed all round the
room.
They represented the flower of what France had of the best and noblest
in name, in lineage, in chivalry, in that year of grace 1783. The
storm-cloud which a few years hence was destined to break over their
heads, sweeping them from their palaces to the prison and the
guillotine, was only gathering very slowly in the dim horizon of
squalid, starving Paris: for the next half-dozen years they would still
dance and gamble, fight and flirt, surround a tottering throne, and
hoodwink a weak monarch. The Fates' avenging sword still rested in its
sheath; the relentless, ceaseless wheel still bore them up in their
whirl of pleasure; the downward movement had only just begun: the cry of
the oppressed children of France had not yet been heard above the din of
dance music and lovers' serenades.
The young Duc de Châteaudun was there, he who, nine years later, went to
the guillotine on that cold September morning, his hair dressed in the
latest fashion, the finest Mechlin lace around his wrists, playing a
final game of piquet with his younger brother, as the tumbril bore them
along through the hooting, yelling crowd of the half-naked starvelings
of Paris.
There was the Vicomte de Mirepoix, who, a few years later, standing on
the platform of the guillotine, laid a bet with M. de Miranges that his
own blood would flow bluer than that of any other head cut off that day
in France. Citizen Samson heard the bet made, and when De Mirepoix's
head fell into the basket, the headsman lifted it up for M. de Miranges
to see. The latter laughed.
"Mirepoix was always a braggart," he said lightly, as he laid his head
upon the block.
"Who'll take my bet that my blood turns out to be bluer than his?"
But of all these comedies, these tragico-farces of later years, none who
were present on that night, when the Vicomte de Marny fought Paul
Déroulède, had as yet any presentiment.
They watched the two men fighting, with the same casual interest, at
first, which they would have bestowed on the dancing of a new movement
in the minuet.
De Marny came of a race that had wielded the sword of many centuries,
but he was hot, excited, not a little addled with wine and rage.
Déroulède was lucky; he would come out of the affair with a slight
scratch.
A good swordsman too, that wealthy parvenu. It was interesting to watch
his sword-play: very quiet at first, no feint or parry, scarcely a
riposte, only _en garde,_ always _en garde_ very carefully, steadily,
ready for his antagonist at every turn and in every circumstance.
Gradually the circle round the combatants narrowed. A few discreet
exclamations of admiration greeted Déroulède's most successful parry. De
Marny was getting more and more excited, the older man more and more
sober and reserved.
A thoughtless lunge placed the little Vicomte at his opponent's mercy.
The next instant he was disarmed, and the seconds were pressing forward
to end the conflict.
Honour was satisfied: the parvenu and the scion of the ancient race had
crossed swords over the reputation of one of the most dissolute women in
France. Déroulède's moderation was a lesson to all the hot-headed young
bloods who toyed with their lives, their honour, their reputation as
lightly as they did with their lace-edged handkerchiefs and gold
snuff-boxes.
Already Déroulède had drawn back. With the gentle tact peculiar to
kindly people, he avoided looking at his disarmed antagonist. But
something in the older man's attitude seemed to further nettle the
over-stimulated sensibility of the young Vicomte.
"This is no child's play, monsieur," he said excitedly. "I demand full
satisfaction."
"And are you not satisfied?" queried Déroulède. "You have borne yourself
bravely, you have fought in honour of your liege lady. I, on the other
hand ..."
"You," shouted the boy hoarsely, "you shall publicly apologise to a
noble and virtuous woman whom you have outraged--now--at--once--on your
knees ..."
"You are mad, Vicomte," rejoined Déroulède coldly. "I am willing to ask
your forgiveness for my blunder ..."
"An apology--in public--on your knees ..."
The boy had become more and more excited. He had suffered humiliation
after humiliation. He was a mere lad, spoilt, adulated, pampered from
his boyhood: the wine had got into his head, the intoxication of rage
and hatred blinded his saner judgment.
"Coward!" he shouted again and again.
His seconds tried to interpose, but he waved them feverishly aside. He
would listen to no one. He saw no one save the man who had insulted
Adèle, and who was heaping further insults upon her, by refusing this
public acknowledgment of her virtues.
De Marny hated Déroulède at this moment with the most deadly hatred the
heart of man can conceive. The older man's calm, his chivalry, his
consideration only enhanced the boy's anger and shame.
The hubbub had become general. Everyone seemed carried away with this
strange fever of enmity, which was seething in the Vicomte's veins. Most
of the young men crowded round De Marny, doing their best to pacify him.
The Marquis de Villefranche declared that the matter was getting quite
outside the rules.
No one took much notice of Déroulède. In the remote corners of the
saloon a few elderly dandies were laying bets as to the ultimate issue
of the quarrel.
Déroulède, however, was beginning to lose his temper. He had no friends
in that room, and therefore there was no sympathetic observer there, to
note the gradual darkening of his eyes, like the gathering of a cloud
heavy with the coming storm.
"I pray you, messieurs, let us cease the argument," he said at last, in
a loud, impatient voice. "M. le Vicomte de Marny desires a further
lesson, and, by God! he shall have it. En garde, M. le Vicomte!"
The crowd quickly drew back. The seconds once more assumed the bearing
and imperturbable expression which their important function demanded.
The hubbub ceased as the swords began to clash.
Everyone felt that farce was turning to tragedy.
And yet it was obvious from the first that Déroulède merely meant once
more to disarm his antagonist, to give him one more lesson, a little
more severe perhaps than the last. He was such a brilliant swordsman, and
De Marny was so excited, that the advantage was with him from the very
first.
How it all happened, nobody afterwards could say. There is no doubt that
the little Vicomte's sword-play had become more and more wild: that he
uncovered himself in the most reckless way, whilst lunging wildly at his
opponent's breast, until at last, in one of these mad, unguarded
moments, he seemed literally to throw himself upon Déroulède's weapon.
The latter tried with lightning-swift motion of the wrist to avoid the
fatal issue, but it was too late, and without a sigh or groan, scarce a
tremor, the Vicomte de Marny fell.
The sword dropped out of his hand, and it was Déroulède himself who
caught the boy in his arms.
It had all occurred so quickly and suddenly that no one had realised it
all, until it was over, and the lad was lying prone on the ground, his
elegant blue satin coat stained with red, and his antagonist bending
over him.
There was nothing more to be done. Etiquette demanded that Déroulède
should withdraw. He was not allowed to do anything for the boy whom he
had so unwillingly sent to his death.
As before, no one took much notice of him. Silence, the awesome silence
caused by the presence of the great Master, fell upon all those around.
Only in the far corner a shrill voice was heard to say:
"I hold you at five hundred louis, Marquis. The parvenu is a good
swordsman."
The groups parted as Déroulède walked out of the room, followed by the
Colonel and M. de Quettare, who stood by him to the last. Both were old
and proved soldiers, both had chivalry and courage in them, with which
to do tribute to the brave man whom they had seconded.
At the door of the establishment, they met the leech who had been
summoned some little time ago to hold himself in readiness for any
eventuality.
The great eventuality had occurred: it was beyond the leech's learning.
In the brilliantly lighted saloon above, the only son of the Duc de
Marny was breathing his last, whilst Déroulède, wrapping his mantle
closely round him, strode out into the dark street, all alone.
II
The head of the house of Marny was at this time barely seventy years of
age. But he had lived every hour, every minute of his life, from the day
when the Grand Monarque gave him his first appointment as gentleman page
in waiting when he was a mere lad, barely twelve years of age, to the
moment--some ten years ago now--when Nature's relentless hand struck him
down in the midst of his pleasures, withered him in a flash as she does
a sturdy old oak, and nailed him--a cripple, almost a dotard--to the
invalid chair which he would only quit for his last resting place.
Juliette was then a mere slip of a girl, an old man's child, the spoilt
darling of his last happy years. She had retained some of the melancholy
which had characterised her mother, the gentle lady who had endured so
much so patiently, and who had bequeathed this final tender burden--her
baby girl--to the brilliant, handsome husband whom she had so deeply
loved, and so often forgiven.
When the Duc de Marny entered the final awesome stage of his gilded
career, that deathlike life which he dragged on for ten years wearily to
the grave, Juliette became his only joy, his one gleam of happiness in
the midst of torturing memories.
In her deep, tender eyes he would see mirrored the present, the future
for her, and would forget his past, with all its gaieties, its mad,
merry years, that meant nothing now but bitter regrets, and endless
rosary of the might-have-beens.
And then there was the boy. The little Vicomte, the future Duc de Marny,
who would in _his_ life and with _his_ youth recreate the glory of the
family, and make France once more ring with the echo of brave deeds and
gallant adventures, which had made the name of Marny so glorious in camp
and court.
The Vicomte was not his father's love, but he was his father's pride,
and from the depths of his huge, cushioned arm-chair, the old man would
listen with delight to stories from Versailles and Paris, the young
Queen and the fascinating Lamballe, the latest play and the newest star
in the theatrical firmament. His feeble, tottering mind would then take
him back, along the paths of memory, to his own youth and his own
triumphs, and in the joy and pride in his son, he would forget himself
for the sake of the boy.
When they brought the Vicomte home that night, Juliette was the first to
wake. She heard the noise outside the great gates, the coach slowly
drawing up, the ring for the doorkeeper, and the sound of Matthieu's
mutterings, who never liked to be called up in the middle of the night
to let anyone through the gates.
Somehow a presentiment of evil at once struck the young girl: the
footsteps sounded so heavy and muffled along the flagged courtyard, and
up the great oak staircase. It seemed as if they were carrying something
heavy, something inert or dead.
She jumped out of bed and hastily wrapped a cloak round her thin girlish
shoulders, and slipped her feet into a pair of heelless shoes, then she
opened her bedroom door and looked out upon the landing.
Two men, whom she did not know, were walking upstairs abreast, two more
were carrying a heavy burden, and Matthieu was behind moaning and crying
bitterly.
Juliette did not move. She stood in the doorway rigid as a statue. The
little cortège went past her. No one saw her, for the landings in the
Hotel de Marny are very wide, and Matthieu's lantern only threw a dim,
flickering light upon the floor.
The men stopped outside the Vicomte's room. Matthieu opened it, and then
the five men disappeared within, with their heavy burden.
A moment later old Pétronelle, who had been Juliette's nurse, and was
now her devoted slave, came to her, all bathed in tears.
She had just heard the news, and she could scarcely speak, but she
folded the young girl, her dear pet lamb, in her arms, and rocking
herself to and fro she sobbed and eased her aching, motherly heart.
But Juliette did not cry. It was all so sudden, so awful. She, at
fourteen years of age, had never dreamed of death; and now there was her
brother, her Philippe, in whom she had so much joy, so much pride--he
was dead--and her father must be told ...
The awfulness of this task seemed to Juliette like unto the last
Judgment Day; a thing so terrible, so appalling, so impossible, that it
would take a host of angels to proclaim its inevitableness.
The old cripple, with one foot in the grave, whose whole feeble mind,
whose pride, whose final flicker of hope was concentrated in his boy,
must be told that the lad had been brought home dead.
"Will you tell him, Pétronelle?" she asked repeatedly, during the brief
intervals when the violence of the old nurse's grief subsided somewhat.
"No--no--darling, I cannot--I cannot--" moaned Pétronelle, amidst a
renewed shower of sobs.
Juliette's entire soul--a child's soul it was--rose in revolt at thought
of what was before her. She felt angered with God for having put such a
thing upon her. What right had He to demand a girl of her years to
endure so much mental agony?
To lose her brother, and to witness her father's grief! She couldn't!
she couldn't! she couldn't! God was evil and unjust!
A distant tinkle of a bell made all her nerves suddenly quiver. Her
father was awake then? He had heard the noise, and was ringing his bell
to ask for an explanation of the disturbance.
With one quick movement Juliette jerked herself free from the nurse's
arms, and before Pétronelle could prevent her, she had run out of the
room, straight across the dark landing to a large panelled door
opposite.
The old Duc de Marny was sitting on the edge of his bed, with his long,
thin legs dangling helplessly to the ground.
Crippled as he was, he had struggled to this upright position, he was
making frantic, miserable efforts to raise himself still further. He,
too, had heard the dull thud of feet, the shuffling gait of men when
carrying a heavy burden.
His mind flew back half-a-century, to the days when he had witnessed
scenes wherein he was then merely a half-interested spectator. He knew
the cortège composed of valets and friends, with the leech walking
beside that precious burden, which anon would be deposited on the bed
and left to the tender care of a mourning family.
Who knows what pictures were conjured up before that enfeebled vision?
But he guessed. And when Juliette dashed into his room and stood before
him, pale, trembling, a world of misery in her great eyes, she knew that
he guessed and that she need not tell him. God had already done that for
her.
Pierre, the old Duc's devoted valet, dressed him as quickly as he could.
M. le Duc insisted on having his _habit de cérémonie,_ the rich suit of
black velvet with the priceless lace and diamond buttons, which he had
worn when they laid le Roi Soleil to his eternal rest.
He put on his orders and buckled on his sword. The gorgeous clothes,
which had suited him so well in the prime of his manhood, hung somewhat
loosely on his attenuated frame, but he looked a grand and imposing
figure, with his white hair tied behind with a great black bow, and the
fine jabot of beautiful point d'Angleterre falling in a soft cascade
below his chin.
Then holding himself as upright as he could, he sat in his invalid
chair, and four flunkeys in full livery carried him to the deathbed of
his son.
All the house was astir by now. Torches burned in great sockets in the
vast hall and along the massive oak stairway, and hundreds of candles
flickered ghostlike in the vast apartments of the princely mansion.
The numerous servants were arrayed on the landing, all dressed in the
rich livery of the ducal house.
The death of an heir of the Marnys is an event that history makes a note
of.
The old Duc's chair was placed close to the bed, where lay the dead body
of the young Vicomte. He made no movement, nor did he utter a word or
sigh. Some of those who were present at the time declared that his mind
had completely given way, and that he neither felt nor understood the
death of his son.
The Marquis de Villefranche, who had followed his friend to the last,
took a final leave of the sorrowing house.
Juliette scarcely noticed him. Her eyes were fixed on her father. She
would not look at her brother. A childlike fear had seized her, there,
suddenly, between these two silent figures: the living and the dead.
But just as the Marquis was leaving the room, the old man spoke for the
first time.
"Marquis," he said very quietly, "you forget--you have not yet told me
who killed my son."
"It was in a fair fight, M. de Duc," replied the young Marquis, awed in
spite of all his frivolity, his light-heartedness, by this strange,
almost mysterious tragedy.
"Who killed my son, M. le Marquis?" repeated the old man mechanically.
"I have the right to know," he added with sudden, weird energy.
"It was M. Paul Déroulède, M. le Duc," replied the Marquis. "I repeat,
it was in fair fight."
The old Duc sighed as if in satisfaction. Then with a courteous gesture
of farewell reminiscent of the _grand siècle_ he added:
"All thanks from me and mine to you, Marquis, would seem but a mockery.
Your devotion to my son is beyond human thanks. I'll not detain you now.
Farewell."
Escorted by two lacqueys, the Marquis passed out of the room.
"Dismiss all the servants, Juliette; I have something to say," said the
old Duc, and the young girl, silent, obedient, did as her father bade
her.
Father and sister were alone with their dead. As soon as the last hushed
footsteps of the retreating servants died away in the distance, the Duc
de Marny seemed to throw away the lethargy which had enveloped him until
now. With a quick, feverish gesture he seized his daughter's wrist, and
murmured excitedly:
"His name. You heard his name, Juliette?"
"Yes, father," replied the child.
"Paul Déroulède! Paul Déroulède! You'll not forget it?"
"Never, father!"
"He killed your brother! You understand that? Killed my only son, the
hope of my house, the last descendant of the most glorious race that has
ever added lustre to the history of France."
"In fair fight, father!" protested the child.
"'Tis not fair for a man to kill a boy," retorted the old man, with
furious energy.
"Déroulède is thirty: my boy was scarce out of his teens: may the
vengeance of God fall upon the murderer!"
Juliette, awed, terrified, was gazing at her father with great,
wondering eyes. He seemed unlike himself. His face wore a curious
expression of ecstasy and of hatred, also of hope and exultation,
whenever he looked steadily at her.
That the final glimmer of a tottering reason was fast leaving the poor,
aching head she was too young to realise. Madness was a word that had
only a vague meaning for her. Though she did not understand her father
at the present moment, though she was half afraid of him, she would have
rejected with scorn and horror any suggestion that he was mad.
Therefore when he took her hand and, drawing her nearer to the bed and
to himself, placed it upon her dead brother's breast, she recoiled at
the touch of the inanimate body, so unlike anything she had ever touched
before, but she obeyed her father without any question, and listened to
his words as to those of a sage.
"Juliette, you are now fourteen, and able to understand what I am going
to ask of you. If I were not chained to this miserable chair, if I were
not a hopeless, abject cripple, I would not depute anyone, not even you,
my only child, to do that, which God demands that one of us should do."
He paused a moment, then continued earnestly:
"Remember, Juliette, that you are of the house of Marny, that you are a
Catholic, and that God hears you now. For you shall swear an oath before
Him and me, an oath from which only death can relieve you. Will you
swear, my child?"
"If you wish it, father."
"You have been to confession lately, Juliette?"
"Yes, father; also to holy communion, yesterday," replied the child. "It
was the Fête-Dieu, you know."
"Then you are in a state of grace, my child?"
"I was yesterday morning, father," replied the young girl naïvely, "but
I have committed some little sins since then."
"Then make your confession to God in your heart now. You must be in a
state of grace when you speak the oath."
The child closed her eyes, and as the old man watched her, he could see
the lips framing the words of her spiritual confession.
Juliette made the sign of the cross, then opened her eyes and looked at
her father.
"I am ready, father," she said; "I hope God has forgiven me the little
sins of yesterday."
"Will you swear, my child?"
"What, father?"
"That you will avenge your brother's death on his murderer?"
"But, father ..."
"Swear it, my child!"
"How can I fulfil that oath, father?--I don't understand ..."
"God will guide you, my child. When you are older you will understand."
For a moment Juliette still hesitated. She was just on that borderland
between childhood and womanhood when all the sensibilities, the nervous
system, the emotions, are strung to their highest pitch.
Throughout her short life she had worshipped her father with a
whole-hearted, passionate devotion, which had completely blinded her to
his weakening faculties and the feebleness of his mind.
She was also in that initial stage of enthusiastic piety which
overwhelms every girl of temperament, if she be brought up in the Roman
Catholic religion, when she is first initiated into the mysteries of the
Sacraments.
Juliette had been to confession and communion. She had been confirmed by
Monseigneur, the Archbishop. Her ardent nature had responded to the full
to the sensuous and ecstatic expressions of the ancient faith.
And somehow her father's wish, her brother's death, all seemed mingled
in her brain with that religion, for which in her juvenile enthusiasm
she would willingly have laid down her life.
She thought of all the saints, whose lives she had been reading. Her
young heart quivered at the thought of _their_ sacrifices, their
martyrdoms, their sense of duty.
An exaltation, morbid perhaps, superstitious and overwhelming, took
possession of her mind; also, perhaps, far back in the innermost
recesses of her heart, a pride in her own importance, her mission in
life, her individuality: for she was a girl after all, a mere child,
about to become a woman.
But the old Duc was waxing impatient.
"Surely you do not hesitate, Juliette, with your dead brother's body
clamouring mutely for revenge? You, the only Marny left now!--for from
this day I too shall be as dead."
"No, father," said the young girl in an awed whisper, "I do not
hesitate. I will swear, just as you bid me."
"Repeat the words after me, my child."
"Yes, father."
"Before the face of Almighty God, who sees and hears me ..."
"Before the face of Almighty God, who sees and hears me," repeated
Juliette firmly.
"I swear that I will seek out Paul Déroulède."
"I swear that I will seek out Paul Déroulède."
"And in any manner which God may dictate to me encompass his death, his
ruin or dishonour, in revenge for my brother's death."
"And in any manner which God may dictate to me encompass his death, his
ruin or dishonour, in revenge for my brother's death," said Juliette
solemnly.
"May my brother's soul remain in torment until the final Judgment Day if
I should break my oath, but may it rest in eternal peace the day on
which his death is fitly avenged."
"May my brother's soul remain in torment until the final Judgment Day if
I should break my oath, but may it rest in eternal peace the day on
which his death is fitly avenged."
The child fell upon her knees. The oath was spoken, the old man was
satisfied.
He called for his valet, and allowed himself quietly to be put to bed.
One brief hour had transformed a child into a woman. A dangerous
transformation when the brain is overburdened with emotions, when the
nerves are overstrung and the heart full to breaking.
For the moment, however, the childlike nature reasserted itself for the
last time, for Juliette, sobbing, had fled out of the room, to the
privacy of her own apartment, and thrown herself passionately into the
arms of kind old Pétronelle.
CHAPTER I
Paris: 1793
The outrage.
It would have been very difficult to say why Citizen Déroulède was quite
so popular as he was. Still more difficult would it have been to state
the reason why he remained immune from the prosecutions, which were
being conducted at the rate of several scores a day, now against the
moderate Gironde, anon against the fanatic Mountain, until the whole of
France was transformed into one gigantic prison, that daily fed the
guillotine.
But Déroulède remained unscathed. Even Merlin's law of the suspect had
so far failed to touch him. And when, last July, the murder of Marat
brought an entire holocaust of victims to the guillotine--from Adam Lux,
who would have put up a statue in honour of Charlotte Corday, with the
inscription: "Greater than Brutus", to Charlier, who would have had her
publicly tortured and burned at the stake for her crime--Déroulède alone
said nothing, and was allowed to remain silent.
The most seething time of that seething revolution. No one knew in the
morning if his head would still be on his own shoulders in the evening,
or if it would be held up by Citizen Samson the headsman, for the
sansculottes of Paris to see.
Yet Déroulède was allowed to go his own way. Marat once said of him: "Il
n'est pas dangereux." The phrase had been taken up. Within the precincts
of the National Convention, Marat was still looked upon as the great
protagonist of Liberty, a martyr to his own convictions carried to the
extreme, to squalor and dirt, to the downward levelling of man to what
is the lowest type in humanity. And his sayings were still treasured up:
even the Girondins did not dare to attack his memory. Dead Marat was
more powerful than his living presentment had been.
And he had said that Déroulède was not dangerous. Not dangerous to
Republicanism, to liberty, to that downward, levelling process, the
tearing down of old traditions, and the annihilation of past
pretensions.
Déroulède had once been very rich. He had had sufficient prudence to
give away in good time that which, undoubtedly, would have been taken
away from him later on.
But when he gave willingly, at a time when France needed it most, and
before she had learned how to help herself to what she wanted.
And somehow, in this instance, France had not forgotten: an invisible
fortress seemed to surround Citizen Déroulède and keep his enemies at
bay. They were few, but they existed. The National Convention trusted
him. "He was not dangerous" to them. The people looked upon him as one
of themselves, who gave whilst he had something to give. Who can gauge
that most elusive of all things: _Popularity?_
He lived a quiet life, and had never yielded to the omni-prevalent
temptation of writing pamphlets, but lived alone with his mother and
Anne Mie, the little orphaned cousin whom old Madame Déroulède had taken
care of, ever since the child could toddle.
Everyone knew his house in the Rue Ecole de Médecine, not far from the
one wherein Marat lived and died, the only solid, stone house in the
midst of a row of hovels, evil-smelling and squalid.
The street was narrow then, as it is now, and whilst Paris was cutting
off the heads of her children for the sake of Liberty and Fraternity,
she had no time to bother about cleanliness and sanitation.
Rue Ecole de Médecine did little credit to the school after which it was
named, and it was a most unattractive crowd that usually thronged its
uneven, muddy pavements.
A neat gown, a clean kerchief, were quite an unusual sight down this
way, for Anne Mie seldom went out, and old Madame Déroulède hardly ever
left her room. A good deal of brandy was being drunk at the two drinking
bars, one at each end of the long, narrow street, and by five o'clock in
the afternoon it was undoubtedly best for women to remain indoors.
The crowd of dishevelled elderly Amazons who stood gossiping at the
street corner could hardly be called women now. A ragged petticoat, a
greasy red kerchief round the head, a tattered, stained shift--to this
pass of squalor and shame had Liberty brought the daughters of France.
And they jeered at any passer-by less filthy, less degraded than
themselves.
"Ah! voyons l'aristo!" they shouted every time a man in decent clothes,
a woman with tidy cap and apron, passed swiftly down the street.
And the afternoons were very lively. There was always plenty to see:
first and foremost, the long procession of tumbrils, winding its way
from the prisons to the Place de la Révolution. The forty-four thousand
sections of the Committee of Public Safety sent their quota, each in
their turn, to the guillotine.
At one time these tumbrils contained royal ladies and gentlemen,
_ci-devant_ dukes and princesses, aristocrats from every county in
France, but now this stock was becoming exhausted. The wretched Queen
Marie Antoinette still lingered in the Temple with her son and daughter.
Madame Elisabeth was still allowed to say her prayers in peace, but
_ci-devant_ dukes and counts were getting scarce: those who had not
perished at the hand of Citizen Samson were plying some trade in Germany
or England.
There were aristocratic joiners, innkeepers, and hairdressers. The
proudest names in France were hidden beneath trade signs in London and
Hamburg. A good number owed their lives to that mysterious Scarlet
Pimpernel, that unknown Englishman who had snatched scores of victims
from the clutches of Tinville the Prosecutor, and sent M. Chauvelin,
baffled, back to France.
Aristocrats were getting scarce, so it was now the turn of deputies of
the National Convention, of men of letters, men of science or of art,
men who had sent others to the guillotine a twelvemonth ago, and men who
had been loudest in defence of anarchy and its Reign of Terror.
They had revolutionised the Calendar: the Citizen-Deputies, and every
good citizen of France, called this 19th day of August 1793 the 2nd
Fructidor of the year I. of the New Era.
At six o'clock on that afternoon a young girl suddenly turned the angle
of the Rue Ecole de Médecine, and after looking quickly to the right and
left she began deliberately walking along the narrow street.
It was crowded just then. Groups of excited women stood jabbering before
every doorway. It was the home-coming hour after the usual spectacle on
the Place de la Révolution. The men had paused at the various drinking
booths, crowding the women out. It would be the turn of these Amazons
next, at the brandy bars; for the moment they were left to gossip, and
to jeer at the passer-by.
At first the young girl did not seem to heed them. She walked quickly
along, looking defiantly before her, carrying her head erect, and
stepping carefully from cobblestone to cobblestone, avoiding the mud,
which could have dirtied her dainty shoes.
The harridans passed the time of day to her, and the time of day meant
some obscene remark unfit for women's ears. The young girl wore a simple
grey dress, with fine lawn kerchief neatly folded across her bosom, a
large hat with flowing ribbons sat above the fairest face that ever
gladdened men's eyes to see.
Fairer still it would have been, but for the look of determination which
made it seem hard and old for the girl's years.
She wore the tricolour scarf round her waist, else she had been more
seriously molested ere now. But the Republican colours were her
safeguard: whilst she walked quietly along, no one could harm her.
Then suddenly a curious impulse seemed to seize her. It was just outside
the large stone house belonging to Citizen-Deputy Déroulède. She had so
far taken no notice of the groups of women which she had come across.
When they obstructed the footway, she had calmly stepped out into the
middle of the road.
It was wise and prudent, for she could close her ears to obscene
language and need pay no heed to insult.
Suddenly she threw up her head defiantly.
"Will you please let me pass?" she said loudly, as a dishevelled Amazon
stood before her with arms akimbo, glancing sarcastically at the lace
petticoat, which just peeped beneath the young girl's simple grey frock.
"Let her pass? Let her pass? Ho! ho! ho!" laughed the old woman, turning
to the nearest group of idlers, and apostrophising them with a loud
oath. "Did _you_ know, citizeness, that this street had been specially
made for aristos to pass along?"
"I am in a hurry, will you let me pass at once?" commanded the young
girl, tapping her foot impatiently on the ground.
There was the whole width of the street on her right, plenty of room for
her to walk along. It seemed positive madness to provoke a quarrel
singlehanded against this noisy group of excited females, just home from
the ghastly spectacle around the guillotine.
And yet she seemed to do it wilfully, as if coming to the end of her
patience, all her proud, aristocratic blood in revolt against this
evil-smelling crowd which surrounded her.
Half-tipsy men and noisome, naked urchins seemed to have sprung from
everywhere.
"Oho, quelle aristo!" they shouted with ironical astonishment, gazing at
the young girl's face, fingering her gown, thrusting begrimed,
hate-distorted faces close to her own.
Instinctively she recoiled and backed towards the house immediately on
her left. It was adorned with a porch made of stout oak beams, with a
tiled roof; an iron lantern descended from this, and there was a stone
parapet below, and a few steps, at right angles from the pavement, led
up to the massive door.
On these steps the young girl had taken refuge. Proud, defiant, she
confronted the howling mob, which she had so wilfully provoked.
"Of a truth, Citizeness Margot, that grey dress would become you well!"
suggested a young man, whose red cap hung in tatters over an evil and
dissolute-looking face.
"And all that fine lace would make a splendid jabot round the aristo's
neck when Citizen Samson holds up her head for us to see," added
another, as with mock elegance he stooped and with two very grimy
fingers slightly raised the young girl's grey frock, displaying the
lace-edged petticoat beneath.
A volley of oaths and loud, ironical laughter greeted this sally.
"'Tis mighty fine lace to be thus hidden away," commented an elderly
harridan. "Now, would you believe it, my fine madam, but my legs are
bare underneath my kirtle?"
"And dirty, too, I'll lay a wager," laughed another. "Soap is dear in
Paris just now."
"The lace on the aristo's kerchief would pay the baker's bill of a whole
family for a month!" shouted an excited voice.
Heat and brandy further addled the brains of this group of French
citizens; hatred gleamed out of every eye. Outrage was imminent. The
young girl seemed to know it, but she remained defiant and
self-possessed, gradually stepping back and back up the steps, closely
followed by her assailants.
"To the Jew with the gewgaw, then!" shouted a thin, haggard female
viciously, as she suddenly clutched at the young girl's kerchief, and
with a mocking, triumphant laugh tore it from her bosom.
This outrage seemed to be the signal for the breaking down of the final
barriers which ordinary decency should have raised. The language and
vituperation became such as no chronicler could record.
The girl's dainty white neck, her clear skin, the refined contour of
shoulders and bust, seemed to have aroused the deadliest lust of hate in
these wretched creatures, rendered bestial by famine and squalor.
It seemed almost as if one would vie with the other in seeking for words
which would most offend these small aristocratic ears.
The young girl was now crouching against the doorway, her hands held up
to her ears to shut out the awful sounds. She did not seem frightened,
only appalled at the terrible volcano which she had provoked.
Suddenly a miserable harridan struck her straight in the face, with
hard, grimy fist, and a long shout of exultation greeted this monstrous
deed.
Then only did the girl seem to lose her self-control.
"A moi," she shouted loudly, whilst hammering with both hands against
the massive doorway. "A moi! Murder! Murder! Citoyen Déroulède, à moi!"
But her terror was greeted with renewed glee by her assailants. They
were now roused to the highest point of frenzy: the crowd of brutes
would in the next moment have torn the helpless girl from her place of
refuge and dragged her into the mire, an outraged prey, for the
satisfaction of an ungovernable hate.
But just as half-a-dozen pairs of talon-like hands clutched frantically
at her skirts, the door behind her was quickly opened. She felt her arm
seized firmly, and herself dragged swiftly within the shelter of the
threshold.
Her senses, overwrought by the terrible adventure which she had just
gone through, were threatening to reel; she heard the massive door
close, shutting out the yells of baffled rage, the ironical laughter,
the obscene words, which sounded in her ears like the shrieks of Dante's
damned.
She could not see her rescuer, for the hall into which he had hastily
dragged her was only dimly lighted. But a peremptory voice said quickly:
"Up the stairs, the room straight in front of you, my mother is there.
Go quickly."
She had fallen on her knees, cowering against the heavy oak beam which
supported the ceiling, and was straining her eyes to catch sight of the
man, to whom at this moment she perhaps owed more than her life: but he
was standing against the doorway, with his hand on the latch.
"What are you going to do?" she murmured.
"Prevent their breaking into my house in order to drag you out of it,"
he replied quietly; "so, I pray you, do as I bid you."
Mechanically she obeyed him, drew herself to her feet, and, turning
towards the stairs, began slowly to mount the shallow steps. Her knees
were shaking under her, her whole body was trembling with horror at the
awesome crisis she had just traversed.
She dared not look back at her rescuer. Her head was bent, and her lips
were murmuring half-audible words as she went.
Outside the hooting and yelling was becoming louder and louder. Enraged
fists were hammering violently against the stout oak door.
At the top of the stairs, moved by an irresistible impulse, she turned
and looked into the hall.
She saw his figure dimly outlined in the gloom, one hand on the latch,
his head thrown back to watch her movements.
A door stood ajar immediately in front of her. She pushed it open and
went within.
At that moment he too opened the door below. The shrieks of the howling
mob once more resounded close to her ears. It seemed as if they had
surrounded him. She wondered what was happening, and marvelled how he
dared to face that awful crowd alone.
The room into which she had entered was gay and cheerful-looking with
its dainty chintz hangings and graceful, elegant pieces of furniture.
The young girl looked up, as a kindly voice said to her, from out the
depths of a capacious armchair:
"Come in, come in, my dear, and close the door behind you! Did those
wretches attack you? Never mind. Paul will speak to them. Come here, my
dear, and sit down; there's no cause now for fear."
Without a word the young girl came forward. She seemed now to be walking
in a dream, the chintz hangings to be swaying ghostlike around her, the
yells and shrieks below to come from the very bowels of the earth.
The old lady continued to prattle on. She had taken the girl's hand in
hers, and was gently forcing her down on to a low stool beside her
armchair. She was talking about Paul, and said something about Anne Mie,
and then about the National Convention, and those beasts and savages,
but mostly about Paul.
The noise outside had subsided. The girl felt strangely sick and tired.
Her head seemed to be whirling round, the furniture to be dancing round
her; the old lady's face looked at her through a swaying veil, and
then--and then ...
Tired Nature was having her way at last; she folded the quivering young
body in her motherly arms, and wrapped the aching senses beneath her
merciful mantle of unconsciousness.