There were roars of anger and screams of terror in the night, and above
the Chateau de Bellecour the inky blackness of the heavens was broken by
a dull red glow, which the distant wayfarer might have mistaken for the
roseate tint of dawn, were it possible for the dawn to restrict itself
to so narrow an area.
Ever and anon a tongue of flame would lick up into the night towards
that russet patch of sky, betraying the cause of it and proclaiming
that incendiaries were at work. Above the ominous din that told of
the business afoot there came now and again the crack of a musket,
and dominating all other sounds was the sullen roar of the revolted
peasants, the risen serfs, the rebellious vassals of the Siegneur de
Bellecour.
For time has sped and has much altered in the speeding. Four years have
gone by since the night on which the lacerated Caron la Boulaye was
smuggled out of Bellecour in Robespierre's berline and in that four
years much of the things that were prophesied have come to pass
--aye, and much more besides that was undreamt of at the outset by the
revolutionaries. A gruesome engine that they facetiously called
the National Razor--invented and designed some years ago by one Dr.
Guillotin--is but an item in the changes that have been, yet an item
that in its way has become a very factor. It stands not over-high, yet
the shadow of it has fallen athwart the whole length and breadth of
France, and in that shadow the tyrants have trembled, shaken to the very
souls of them by the rude hand of fear; in that shadow the spurned and
downtrodden children of the soil have taken heart of grace. The bonds
of servile cowardice that for centuries had trammelled them have been
shaken off like cobwebs, and they that were as sheep are now become the
wolves that prey on those that preyed on them for generations.
There is, in the whole of France, no corner so remote but that, sooner
or later, this great upheaval has penetrated to it. Louis XVI.--or
Louis Capet, as he is now more generally spoken of--has been arraigned,
condemned and executed. The aristocrats are in full emigratory flight
across the frontiers--those that have not been rent by the vassals they
had brought to bay, the people they had outraged. The Lilies of France
lie trampled under foot in the shambles they have made of that fair
land, whilst overhead the tricolour--that symbol of the new trinity,
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity--is flaunted in the breeze.
A few of the more proud and obstinate--so proud and obstinate as to find
it a thing incredible that the order should indeed change and the old
regime pass away--still remain, and by their vain endeavours to lord
it in their castles provoke such scenes as that enacted at Bellecour in
February of '93 (by the style of slaves) or Pluviose of the year One
of the French Republic, as it shall presently come to be known in the
annals of the Revolution.
Bellecour, the most arrogant of arrogants, had stood firm, and
desperately contrived through all these months of revolution to maintain
his dominion in his corner of Picardy. But even he was beginning to
realise that the end was at hand, and he made his preparations to
emigrate. Too proud, however, to permit his emigration to savour of a
flight, he carried the leisureliness of his going to dangerous extremes.
And now, on the eve of departure, he must needs pause to give a fete
at once of farewell and in honour of his daughter's betrothal to the
Vicomte Anatole d'Ombreval. This very betrothal at so unpropitious a
season was partly no more than contrived by the Marquis that he might
mark his ignoring and his serene contempt of the upheaval and the new
rule which it had brought.
All that was left of the noblesse in Picardy had flocked that day to the
Chateau de Bellecour, and the company there assembled numbered perhaps
some thirty gallants and some twenty ladies. A banquet there had been,
which in the main was a gloomy function, for the King's death was too
recent a matter to be utterly lost sight of. Later, however, as the
generous supply of wine did its work and so far thawed the ice of
apprehension that bound their souls as to dispose them to enjoy, at
least, the present hour in forgetfulness, there was a better humour in
the air. This developed, and so far indeed did it go that in the evening
a Pavane was suggested, and, the musicians being found, it was held in
the great salon of the Chateau.
It was then that the first alarm had penetrated to their midst. It had
found them a recklessly merry crew, good to behold in their silks and
satins, powder and patches, gold lace and red heels, moving with waving
fans, or hand on sword, and laced beaver under elbow, through the
stately figures of the gavotte.
Scared, white-faced lackeys had brought the news, dashing wildly in
upon that courtly assembly. The peasants had risen and were marching on
Bellecour.
Some of his sudden rage the Marquis vented by striking the servants'
spokesman in the face.
“Dare you bring me such a message?” he cried furiously.
“But, my lord, what are we to do?” gasped the frightened lackey.
“Do, fool?” returned Bellecour. “Why, close the gates and bid them
return home as they value their lives. For if they give me trouble I'll
hang a round dozen of them.”
Still was there that same big talk of hanging men. Still did it seem
that the Marquis of Bellecour accounted himself the same lord of life
and death that he and his forbears had been for generations. But there
were others who thought differently. The music had ceased abruptly, and
a little knot of gentlemen now gathered about the host, and urged him to
take some measures of precaution. In particular they desired to ensure
the safety of the ladies who were being thrown into a great state of
alarm, so that of some of these were the screams that were heard in that
night of terror. Bellecour's temper was fast gaining, and as he
lost control of himself the inherent brutality of his character came
uppermost.
“Mesdames,” he cried rudely, “this screeching will profit us nothing.
Even if we must die, let us die becomingly, not shrieking like butchered
geese.”
A dozen men raised their voices angrily against him in defence of the
women he had slighted. But he waved them impatiently away.
“Is this an hour in which to fall a-quarrelling among ourselves?” he
exclaimed. “Or do you think it one in which a man can stop to choose his
words? Sang-dieu! That screaming is a more serious matter than at first
may seem. If these rebellious dogs should chance to hear it, it will be
but so much encouragement to them. A fearless front, a cold contempt,
are weapons unrivalled if you would prevail against these mutinous
cravens.”
But his guests were insistent that something more than fearless fronts
and cold contempts should be set up as barriers between themselves and
the advancing peasantry. And in the end Bellecour impatiently quitted
the room to give orders for the barricading of the gates and the
defending of the Chateau, leaving behind him in the salon the very
wildest of confusions.
From the windows the peasantry could now be seen, by the light of their
torches, marching up the long avenue that fronted the Chateau, and
headed by a single drum on which the bearer did no more than beat the
step. They were a fierce, unkempt band, rudely armed--some with scythes,
some with sickles, some with hedge-knives, and some with hangers; whilst
here and there was one who carried a gun, and perhaps a bayonet as well.
Nor were there men only in the rebellious ranks. There were an almost
equal number of women in crimson caps, their bosoms bare, their heads
dishevelled, their garments filthy and in rags--for the tooth of poverty
had bitten deeply into them during the past months.
As they swung along to the rhythmical thud of the drum, their voices
were raised in a fearful chorus that must have made one think of the
choirs of hell, and the song they sang was the song of Rouget de l'Isle,
which all France had been singing these twelve months past:
“Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons.
Allons, marchons!
Qu'un sang inpur
Abreuve nos sillons!”
Ever swelling as they drew nearer came the sound of that terrible
hymn to the ears of the elegant, bejewelled, bepowdered company in the
Chateau. The gates were reached and found barred. An angry roar went up
to Heaven, followed by a hail of blows upon the stout, ironbound oak,
and an imperious call to open.
In the courtyard below the Marquis had posted the handful of servants
that remained faithful--for reasons that Heaven alone may discern--to
the fortunes of the house. He had armed them with carbines and supplied
them with ammunition. He had left them orders to hold off the mob from
the outer gates as long as possible; but should these be carried, they
were to fall back into the Chateau itself, and make fast the doors.
Meanwhile, he was haranguing the gentlemen--some thirty of them, as we
have seen--in the salon and urging them to arm themselves so that they
might render assistance.
His instances were met with a certain coldness, which at last was given
expression by the most elegant Vicomte d'Ombreval--the man who was about
to become his son-in-law.
“My dear Marquis,” protested the young man, his habitually supercilious
mouth looking even more supercilious than usual as he now spoke, “I beg
that you will consider what you are proposing. We are your guests, we
others, and you ask us to defend your gates against your own people
for you! Surely, surely, sir, your first duty should have been to have
ensured our safety against such mutinies on the part of the rabble of
Bellecour.”
The Seigneur angrily stamped his foot. In his choler he was within
an ace of striking Ombreval, and might have done so had not the
broad-minded and ever-reasonable old Des Cadoux interposed at that
moment to make clear to the Marquis's guests a situation than which
nothing could have been clearer. He put it to them that the times
were changed, and that France was no longer what France had been; that
allowances must be made for M. de Bellecour, who was in no better case
than any other gentleman in that unhappy country! and finally, that
either they must look to arming and defending themselves or they must
say their prayers and submit to being butchered with the ladies.
“For ourselves,” he concluded calmly, tapping his gold snuffbox and
holding it out to Bellecour, for all the world with the air of one
who was discussing the latest fashion in wigs, “I can understand your
repugnance at coming to blows with this obscene canaille. It is doing
them an honour of which they are not worthy. But we have these ladies
to think of, Messieurs, and--” he paused to apply the rappee to
his nostrils--“and we must exert ourselves to save them, however
disagreeable the course we may be compelled to pursue. Messieurs, I am
the oldest here; permit that I show you the way.”
His words were not without effect; they kindled chivalry in hearts that,
after all, were nothing if not prone to chivalry--according to their own
lights--and presently something very near enthusiasm prevailed. But the
supercilious and very noble Ombreval still grumbled.
“To ask me to fight this scum!” he ejaculated in horror “Pardi! It is
too much. Ask me to beat them off with a whip like a pack of curs, and
I'll do it readily. But fight them--!”
“Nothing could delight us more, Vicomte, than to see you beat them off
with a whip,” Des Cadoux assured him. “Arm yourself with a whip, by all
means, my friend, and let us witness the prodigies you can perform with
it.”
“See what valour inflames the Vicomte, Suzanne,” sneered a handsome
woman into Mademoiselle's ear. “With what alacrity he flies to arms that
he may defend you, even with his life.”
“M. d'Ombreval is behaving according to his lights,” answered Suzanne
coldly.
“Ma foi, then his lights are unspeakably dim,” was the contemptuous
answer.
Mademoiselle gave no outward sign of the deep wound her pride
was receiving. The girl of nineteen, who had scorned the young
secretary-lover in the park of Bellecour that morning four years ago,
was developed into a handsome lady of three-and-twenty.
“It would be beneath the dignity of his station to soil his hands in
such a conflict as my father has suggested,” she said at last.
“I wonder would it be beneath the dignity of his courage,” mused the
same caustic friend. “But surely not, for nothing could be beneath
that.”
“Madame!” exclaimed Suzanne, her cheeks reddening; for as of old, and
like her father, she was quickly moved to anger. “Will it please you to
remember that M. d'Ombreval is my affianced husband?”
“True,” confessed the lady, no whit abashed. “But had I not been told so
I had accounted him your rejected suitor, who, broken-hearted, gives no
thought either to his own life or to yours.”
In a pet, Mademoiselle gave her shoulder to the speaker and turned
away. In spite of the words with which she had defended him, Suzanne
was disappointed in her betrothed, and yet, in a way, she understood his
bearing to be the natural fruit of that indomitable pride of which she
had observed the outward signs, and for which, indeed as much as for the
beauty of his person, she had consented to become his wife. After all,
it was the outward man she knew. The marriage had been arranged, and
this was but their third meeting, whilst never for an instant had they
been alone together. By her mother she had been educated up to the
idea that it was eminently desirable she should become the Vicomtesse
d'Ombreval. At first she had endured dismay at the fact that she had
never beheld the Vicomte, and because she imagined that he would be,
most probably, some elderly roue, as did so often fall to the lot of
maidens in her station. But upon finding him so very handsome to behold,
so very noble of bearing, so lofty and disdainful that as he walked he
seemed to spurn the very earth, she fell enamoured of him out of very
relief, as well as because he was the most superb specimen of the other
sex that it had ever been hers to observe.
And now that she had caught a glimpse of the soul that dwelt
beneath that mass of outward perfections it had cost her a pang of
disappointment, and the poisonous reflection cast upon his courage by
that sardonic lady with whom she had talked was having its effect.
But the time was too full of other trouble to permit her to indulge her
thoughts overlong upon such a matter. A volley of musketry from below
came to warn them of the happenings there. The air was charged with the
hideous howls of the besieging mob, and presently there was a cry
from one of the ladies, as a sudden glare of light crimsoned the
window-panes.
“What is that?” asked Madame de Bellecour of her husband.
“They have fired the stables,” he answered, through set teeth. “I
suppose they need light to guide them in their hell's work.”
He strode to the glass doors opening to the balcony the same balcony
from which four years ago his guests had watched the flogging of La
Boulaye--and, opening them, he passed out. His appearance was greeted by
a storm of execration. A sudden shot rang out, and the bullet, striking
the wall immediately above him, brought down a shower of plaster on his
head. It had been fired by a demoniac who sat astride the great gates
waving his discharged carbine and yelling such ordures of speech as it
had never been the most noble Marquis's lot to have stood listening to.
Bellecour never flinched. As calmly as if nothing had happened, he leant
over the parapet and called to his men below.
“Hold, there! Of what are you dreaming slumberers. Shoot me that fellow
down.”
Their guns had been discharged, but one of them, who had now completed
his reloading, levelled the carbine and fired. The figure on the gates
seemed to leap up from his sitting posture, and then with a scream he
went over, back to his friends without.
The fired stables were burning gaily by now, and the cheeriest bonfire
man could have desired on a dark night, and in the courtyard it was
become as light as day.
The Marquis on the balcony was taking stock of his defences and making
rapid calculations in his mind. He saw no reason why, so well
protected by those stout oaken gates they should not--if they were but
resolute--eventually beat back the mob. And then, even as his courage
was rising at the thought, a deafening explosion seemed to shake the
entire Chateau, and the gates--their sole buckler, upon whose shelter he
had been so confidently building--crashed open, half blown away by the
gunpowder keg that had been fired against it.
He had a fleeting glimpse of a stream of black fiends pouring through
the dark gap and dashing with deafening yells into the crimson light
of the courtyard. He saw his little handful of servants retreat
precipitately within the Chateau. He heard the clang of the doors
that were swung to just as the foremost of the rabble reached the
threshold--With all this clearly stamped upon his mind, he turned, and
springing into the salon he drew his sword.
“To the stairs, Messieurs!” he cried “To the stairs!”
And to the stairs they went. The extremity was now too great for
argument. They dared not so much as look at their women-folk, lest they
should be unmanned by the sight of those huddled creatures--their finery
but serving to render them the more pitiable in their sickly affright.
In a body the whole thirty of them swept from the room, and with
Bellecour at their head and Ombreval somewhere in the rearmost rank,
they made their way to the great staircase.
Here, armed with their swords and a brace of pistols to each man, whilst
for a few the Marquis had even found carbines, they waited, with faces
set and lips tight pressed for the end that they knew approached.
Nor was their waiting long. As the peasants had blown down the gates so
now did they blow down the doors of the Chateau, and in the explosion
three of Bellecour's servants--who had stood too near--were killed. Over
the threshold they swarmed into the dark gulf of the great hall to the
foot of the staircase. But here they were at a disadvantage. The light
of the burning stables, shining through the open doorway, revealed them
to the defenders, whilst they themselves looked up into the dark. There
was a sudden cracking of pistols and a few louder reports from the guns,
and the mob fled, screaming, back into the yard, leaving a score of dead
and wounded on the polished floor of the hall.
Old M. des Cadoux laughed in the dark, as with his sword hanging from
his wrist he tapped his snuff-box.
“Ma foi,” said he to his neighbour, “they are discovering that it is
not to be the triumphal march they had expected. A pinch of rappee,
Stanislas?”
But the respite was brief. In a moment they saw the glare increase at
the door, and presently a half-dozen of the rabble entered with torches,
followed by some scores of their comrades. They paused at sight of
that company ranged upon the stairs, as well they might, for a more
incongruous sight could scarcely be imagined. Across the bodies of the
slain, and revealed by the lifting powder smoke, stood that little band
of thirty men, a blaze of gay colours, a sheen of silken hose, their
wigs curled and powdered, their costly ruffles scintillant with jewels;
calm, and supercilious, mocking to a man. There was a momentary gasp
of awe, and then the spell was broken by the aristocrats themselves. A
pistol spoke, and a volley followed. In the hall some stumbled forward,
some hurtled backward, and some sank down in nerveless heaps. But those
that remained did not again retreat. Reinforced by others, that crowded
in behind, they charged boldly up the stairs, headed by a ragged,
red capped giant named Souvestre--a man whom the Marquis had once
irreparably wronged.
The sight of him was a revelation to Bellecour. This assault was
Souvestre's work; the fellow had been inciting the people of Bellecour
for the past twelve months, long indeed before the outbreak of the
revolution proper, and at last he had roused them to the pitch of
accompanying him upon his errand of tardy but relentless vengeance.
With a growl the Marquis raised his pistol. But Souvestre saw the
movement, and with a laugh he did the like. Simultaneously there were
two reports, and Bellecour's arm fell shattered to his side. Souvestre
continued to advance, his smoking pistol in one hand and brandishing
a huge sabre with the other. Behind him, howling and roaring like the
beasts of prey they were become, surged the tenantry of Bellecour to pay
the long-standing debt of hate to their seigneur.
“Here,” said Des Cadoux, with a grimace, “endeth the chapter of our
lives. I wonder, do they keep rappee in heaven?” He snapped down the lid
of his gold snuffbox--that faithful companion and consoler of so
many years--and cast it viciously at the head of one of the oncoming
peasants. Then tossing back the lace from his wrist he brought his sword
into guard and turned aside a murderous stroke which an assailant aimed
at him.
“Animal,” he snapped viciously, as he set to work, “it is the first time
that my chaste blade has been crossed with such dirty steel as yours. I
hope, for the honour of Cadoux, that it may not be quite the last.”
Up, and ever up, swept that murderous tide. The half of those that
had held the stairs lay weltering upon them as if in a last attempt to
barricade with their bodies what they could no longer defend with their
hands. A bare half-score remained standing, and amongst these
that gallant old Cadoux, who had by now accounted for a half-dozen
sans-culottes, and was hence in high glee, a man rejuvenesced. His
sallies grew livelier and more barbed as the death-tide rose higher
about him. His one regret was that he had been so hasty in casting his
snuff box from him, for he was missing its familiar stimulus. At his
side the Marquis was fighting desperately, fencing with his left arm,
and in the hot excitement seeming oblivious of the pain his broken right
must be occasioning.
“It is ended, old friend,” he groaned at last, to Des Cadoux. “I am
losing strength, and I shall be done for in a moment. The women,” he
almost sobbed, “mon Dieu, the women!”
Des Cadoux felt his old eyes grow moist, and the odd, fierce mirth that
seemed to have hitherto infected him went out like a candle that
is snuffed. But suddenly before he could make any answer, a new and
unexpected sound, which dominated the din of combat, and seemed to cause
all--assailants and defenders alike--to pause that they might listen,
was wafted to their ears.
It was the roll of the drum. Not the mere thudding that had beaten the
step for the mob, but the steady and vigorous tattoo of many sticks upon
many skins.
“What is it? Who comes?” were the questions that men asked one another,
as both aristocrats and sansculottes paused in their bloody labours. It
was close at hand. So close at hand that they could discern the tramp
of marching feet. In the infernal din of that fight upon the stairs
they had not caught the sound of this approach until now that the
new-comers--whoever they might be--were at the very gates of Bellecour.
From the mob in the yard there came a sudden outcry. Men sprang to the
door of the Chateau and shouted to those within.
“Aux Armes,” was the cry. “A nous, d nous!”
And in response to it the assailants turned tail, and dashed down the
stairs, overleaping the dead bodies that were piled upon them, and many
a man slipping in that shambles and ending the descent on his back. Out
into the courtyard they swept: leaving that handful of gentlemen, their
fine clothes disordered, splashed with blood and grimed with powder,
to question one another touching this portent, this miracle that seemed
wrought by Heaven for their salvation.