It was, after all, no miracle, unless the very timely arrival upon
the scene of a regiment of the line might be accepted in the light of
Heaven-directed. As a matter of fact, a rumour of the assault that was
to be made that night upon the Chateau de Bellecour had travelled as far
as Amiens, and there, that evening, it had reached the ears of a certain
Commissioner of the National Convention, who was accompanying this
regiment to the army of Dumouriez, then in Belgium.
Now it so happened that this Commissioner had meditated making a descent
upon the Chateau on his own account, and he was not minded that any
peasantry should forestall or baulk him in the business which he
proposed to carry out there. Accordingly, he issued certain orders
to the commandant, from which it resulted that a company, two hundred
strong, was immediately despatched to Bellecour, to either defend or
rescue it from the mob, and thereafter to await the arrival of the
Commissioner himself.
This was the company that had reached Bellecour in the eleventh hour,
to claim the attention of the assailants. But the peasants, as we have
seen, were by no means disposed to submit to interference, and this they
signified by the menacing front they showed the military, abandoning
their attack upon the Chateau until they should be clear concerning the
intentions of the newcomers. Of these intentions the Captain did not
leave them long in doubt. A brisk word of command brought his men into a
bristling line of attack, which in itself should have proved sufficient
to ensure the peasantry's respect.
“Citizens” cried the officer, stepping forward, “in the name of the
French Republic I charge you to withdraw and to leave us unhampered in
the business we are here to discharge.”
“Citizen-captain,” answered the giant Souvestre, constituting himself
the spokesman of his fellows, “we demand to know by what right you
interfere with honest patriots of France in the act of ridding it of
some of the aristocratic vermin that yet lingers on its soil?”
The officer stared at his interlocutor, amazed by the tone of the man as
much as by the sudden growls that chorused it, but nowise intimidated by
either the one or the other.
“I proclaimed my right when I issued my charge in the name of the
Republic,” he answered shortly.
“We are the Republic,” Souvestre retorted, with a wave of the hand
towards the ferocious crowd of men and women behind him. “We are the
Nation--the sacred people of France. In our own name, Citizen-soldier,
we charge you to withdraw and leave us undisturbed.”
Here lay the basis of an argument into which, however, the Captain,
being neither politician nor dialectician, was not minded to be drawn.
He shrugged his shoulders and turned to his men.
“Present arms!” was the answer he delivered, in a voice of supreme
unconcern.
“Citizen-captain, this is an outrage,” screamed a voice in the mob. “If
blood is shed, upon your own head be it.”
“Will you withdraw?” inquired the Captain coldly.
“To me, my children,” cried Souvestre, brandishing his sabre, and
seeking to encourage his followers. “Down with these traitors who
dishonour the uniform of France! Death to the blue-coats!”
He leapt forward towards the military, and with a sudden roar his
followers, a full hundred strong sprang after him to the charge.
“Fire!” commanded the Captain, and from the front line of his company
fifty sheets of flame flashed from fifty carbines.
The mob paused; for a second it wavered; then before the smoke had
lifted it broke, and shrieking in terror, it fled for cover, leaving the
valorous Souvestre alone, to revile them for a swarm of cowardly rats.
The Captain put his hands to his sides and laughed till the tears
coursed down his cheeks. Checking his mirth at last, he called to
Souvestre, who was retreating in disgust and anger.
“Hi! My friend the patriot! Are you still of the same mind or will you
withdraw your people?”
“We will not withdraw,” answered the giant sullenly. “You dare not fire
upon free citizens of the French Republic.”
“Dare I not? Do you delude yourself with that, nor think that because
this time I fired over your heads I dare not fire into your ranks. I
give you my word that if I have to command my men to fire a second time
it shall not be mere make-believe, and I also give you my word that if
at the end of a minute I have not your reply and you are not moving out
of this--every rogue of you shall have a very bitter knowledge of how
much I dare.”
Souvestre was headstrong and angry. But what can one man, however
headstrong and however angry, do against two hundred, when his own
followers refuse to support him. The valour of the peasants was
distinctly of that quality whose better part is discretion. The thunder
of that fusillade had been enough to shatter their nerve, and to
Souvestre's exhortations that they should become martyrs in the noble
cause, of the people against tyranny, in whatsoever guise it came, they
answered with the unanswerable logic of caution.
The end was that a very few moments later saw them in full retreat,
leaving the military in sole and undisputed possession of Bellecour.
The officer's first thought was for the blazing stables, and he at once
ordered a detachment of his company to set about quenching the fire, a
matter in which they succeeded after some two hours of arduous labour.
Meanwhile, leaving the main body bivouacked in the courtyard, he entered
the Chateau with a score of men, and came upon the ten gentlemen still
standing in the shambles that the grand staircase presented. With the
Marquis de Bellecour the Captain had a brief and not over courteous
interview. He informed the nobleman that he was acting under the orders
of a Commissioner, who had heard at Amiens, that evening, of the attack
that was to be made upon Bellecour. Not unnaturally the Marquis was
mistrustful of the ends which that Commissioner, whoever he might be,
looked to serve by so unusual an act. Far better did it sort with
the methods of the National Convention and its members to leave the
butchering of aristocrats to take its course. He sought information
at the Captain's hands, but the officer was reticent to the point of
curtness, and so, their anxiety but little relieved, since it might seem
that they had but escaped from Scylla to be engulfed in Charbydis, the
aristocrats at Bellecour spent the night in odious suspense. Those that
were tending the wounded had perhaps the best of it, since thus their
minds were occupied and saved the torture of speculation.
The proportion of slain was mercifully small: of twenty that had fallen
it was found that but six were dead, the others being more or less
severely hurt. Conspicuous among the men that remained, and perhaps the
bravest of them all was old Des Cadoux. He had recovered his snuff-box,
than which there seemed to be nothing of greater importance in the
world, and he moved from group to group with here a jest and there a
word of encouragement, as seemed best suited to those he addressed.
Of the women, Mademoiselle de Bellecour and her sharp tongued mother,
showed certainly the most undaunted fronts.
Suzanne had not seen her betrothed since the fight upon the stairs. But
she was told that he was unhurt, and that he was tending a cousin of his
who had been severely wounded in the head.
It was an hour or so after sunrise when he sought her out, and they
stood in conversation together--a very jaded pair--looking down from one
of the windows upon the stalwart blue-coats that were bivouacked in the
quadrangle.
Suddenly on the still morning air came the sound of hoof-beats, and as
they looked they espied a man in a cocked hat and an ample black cloak
riding briskly up the avenue.
“See?” exclaimed Ombreval; “yonder at last comes the great man we
are awaiting--the Commissioner of that rabble they call the National
Convention. Now we shall know what fate is reserved for us.”
“But what can they do?” she asked.
“It is the fashion to send people of our station to Paris,” he replied,
“to make a mock of us with an affair they call a trial before they
murder us.”
She sighed.
“Perhaps this gentleman is more merciful,” was the hope she expressed.
“Merciful?” he mocked. “Ma foi, a ravenous tiger may be merciful before
one of these. Had your father been wise he had ordered the few of us
that remained to charge those soldiers when they entered, and to have
met our end upon their bayonets. That would have been a merciful fate
compared with the mercy of this so-called Commissioner is likely to
extend us.”
It seemed to be his way to find fault, and that warp in his character
rendered him now as heroic--in words--as he had been erstwhile scornful.
Suzanne shuddered, brave girl though she was.
“Unless you can conceive thoughts of a pleasanter complexion,” she said,
“I should prefer your silence, M. d'Ombreval.”
He laughed in his disdainful way--for he disdained all things, excepting
his own person and safety--but before he could make any answer they were
joined by the Marquis and his son.
In the courtyard the horseman was now dismounting, and a moment or two
later they heard the fall of feet, upon the stairs. A soldier threw open
the door, and holding it, announced:
“The Citizen-deputy La Boulaye, Commissioner of the National Convention
to the army of General Dumouriez.”
“This,” mocked Ombreval, to whom the name meant nothing, “is the
representative of a Government of strict equality, and he is announced
with as much pomp as was ever an ambassador of his murdered Majesty's.”
Then a something out of the common in the attitude of his companions
arrested his attention. Mademoiselle was staring with eyes full of the
most ineffable amazement, her lips parted, and her cheeks whiter than
the sleepless night had painted them. The Marquis was scowling in a
surprise that seemed no whit less than his daughter's, his head thrust
forward, and his jaw fallen. The Vicomte, too, though in a milder
degree, offered a countenance that was eloquent with bewilderment. From
this silent group Ombreval turned his tired eyes to the door and took
stock of the two men that had entered. One of these was Captain Juste,
the officer in command of the military; the other was a tall man, with
a pale face, an aquiline nose, a firm jaw, and eyes that were very
stern--either of habit or because they now rested upon the man who four
years ago had used him so cruelly.
He stood a moment in the doorway as if enjoying the amazement which had
been sown by his coming. There was no mistaking him. It was the same La
Boulaye of four years ago, and yet it was not quite the same. The face
had lost its boyishness, and the strenuous life he had lived had scored
it with lines that gave him the semblance of a greater age than was his.
The old, poetic melancholy that had dwelt in the secretary's countenance
was now changed to strength and firmness. Although little known as yet
to the world at large, the great ones of the Revolution held him in high
esteem, and looked upon him as a power to be reckoned with in the near
future. Of Robespierre--who, it was said, had discovered him and brought
him to Paris--he was the protege and more than friend, a protection and
friendship this which in '93 made any man almost omnipotent in France.
He was dressed in a black riding-suit, relieved only by the white
neck-cloth and the tricolour sash of office about his waist. He removed
his cocked hat, beneath which the hair was tied in a club with the same
scrupulous care as of old.
Slowly he advanced into the salon, and his sombre eyes passed from the
Marquis to Mademoiselle. As they rested upon her some of the sternness
seemed to fade from their glance. He found in her a change almost as
great as that which she had found in him. The lighthearted, laughing
girl of nineteen, who had scorned his proffered love when he had wooed
her that April morning to such disastrous purpose, was now ripened into
a stately woman of three-and-twenty. He had thought his boyish passion
dead and buried, and often in the years that were gone had he smiled
softly to himself at the memory of his ardour, as we smile at the
memory of our youthful follies. Yet now, upon beholding her again, so
wondrously transformed, so tall and straight, and so superbly beautiful,
he experienced an odd thrill and a weakening of the stern purpose that
had brought him to Bellecour.
Then his glance moved on. A moment it rested on the supercilious,
high-bred countenance of the Vicomte d'Ombreval, standing with so
proprietary an air beside her, then it passed to the kindly old face of
Des Cadoux, and he recalled how this gentleman had sought to stay the
flogging of him. An instant it hovered on the Marquis, who--haggard of
face and with his arm in a sling--was observing him with an expression
in which scorn and wonder were striving for the mastery; it seemed to
shun the gaze of the pale-faced Vicomte, whose tutor he had been in the
old days of his secretaryship, and full and stern it returned at last to
settle upon the Marquis.
“Citizen Bellecour,” he said, and his voice, like his face, seemed to
have changed since last the Marquis had heard it, and to have grown more
deep and metallic, “you may marvel, now that you behold the Commissioner
who sent a company of soldiers to rescue you and your Chateau from the
hands of the mob last night, what purpose I sought to serve by extending
to you a protection which none of your order merits, and you least of
any, in my eyes.”
“The times may have wrought sad and overwhelming changes,” answered the
Marquis, with cold contempt, “but it has not yet so utterly abased us
that we bring ourselves to speculate upon the purposes of the rabble.”
A faint crimson flush crept into Caron's sallow cheeks.
“Indeed, I see how little you have changed!” he answered bitterly. “You
are of those that will not learn, Citizen. The fault lies here,” he
added, tapping his head, “and it will remain until we remove the ones
with the other. But now for the business that brings me,” he proceeded,
more briskly. “Four years ago, Citizen Bellecour, you laid your whip
across my face in the woods out yonder, and when I spoke of seeking
satisfaction action you threatened me with your grooms. I will not speak
of your other brutalities on that same day. I will confine myself to
that first affront.”
“Be brief, sir,” cried the Marquis offensively. “Since you have the
force to compel us to listen to you, let me beg that you will at least
display the generosity of detaining us no longer than you need.”
“I will be as brief as it lies within the possibility of words,”
answered Caron coldly. “I am come, Citizen Bellecour, to demand of you
to-day the satisfaction which four years ago you refused me.”
“Of me?” cried the Marquis.
“Through the person of your son, the Vicomte, as I asked for it four
years ago,” said Caron. “You are am old man, Citizen, and I do not fight
old men.”
“I am yet young enough to cut you into ribbons, you dog, if I were
minded to dishonour myself by meeting you.” And turning to Ombreval for
sympathy, he vented a low laugh of contemptuous wonder.
“Insolence!” sneered Ombreval sympathetically, whilst Mademoiselle stood
looking on with cheeks that were growing paler, for that this event
would end badly for either her father or her brother she never doubted.
“Citizen Bellecour,” said Caron, still very coldly, “you have heard what
I propose, as have you also, Citizen-vicomte.”
“For myself,” began the youth “I am--”
“Silence, Armand!” his father commanded, laying a hand upon his
sleeve. “Understand me, citizen-deputy, or citizen-commissioner, or
citizen-blackguard or whatever you call your vile self, you are come on
a fruitless journey to Bellecour. Neither I nor my son is so lost to the
duty which we owe our rank as to so much as dream of acceding to your
preposterous request. I think, sir, that you had been better advised to
have left the mob to its work last night, if you but restrained it for
this purpose.”
“Is that your last word?” asked La Boulaye, still calmly weathering that
storm of insults.
“My very last, sir.”
“There are more ways than one of taking satisfaction for that affront,
Citizen Bellecour,” rejoined La Boulaye, “and if the course which I
now pursue should prove more distasteful to you than that which I
last suggested, the blame of it must rest with you.” He turned to the
bluecoat at the door. “Citizen-soldier, my whip.”
There was a sudden movement among the aristocrats--a horrified
recoiling--and even Bellecour was shaken out of his splendid arrogance.
“Insolent cur!” exclaimed Ombreval with withering scorn; “to what
lengths is presumption driving you?”
“To the length of a horsewhip,” answered La Boulaye pleasantly.
He received the whip from the hands of the soldier and he now advanced
towards Bellecour, unwinding the lash as he came. Ombreval barred his
way with an oath.
“By Heaven: you shall not!” he cried.
“Shall not?” echoed La Boulaye, his lips curling. “You had best stand
aside--you that are steeped in musk and fierceness.” And before the
stern and threatening contempt of La Boulaye's glance the young nobleman
fell back. But his place was taken by the Vicomte de Bellecour, who
advanced to confront Caron.
“Monsieur la Boulaye,” he announced, “I am ready and willing to meet
you.” And considering the grim alternative with which the Republicans
had threatened him, the old Marquis had not the courage to interfere
again.
“Ah!” It was an exclamation of satisfaction from the Commissioner. “I
imagined that you would change your minds. I shall await you, Citizen,
in the garden in five minutes' time.”
“I shall not keep you waiting, Monsieur,” was the Vicomte's answer.
Very formally La Boulaye bowed and left the room accompanied by the
officer and followed by the soldier.
“Mon Dieu!” gasped the Marquise, fanning herself as the door closed
after the Republicans. “Open me a window or I shall stifle! How the
place reeks with them. I am a calm woman, Messieurs, but, on my honour,
had he addressed any of you by his odious title of 'citizen' again, I
swear that I had struck him with my own hands.”
There were some that laughed. But Mademoiselle was not of those.
Her eyes travelled to her brother's pale face and weakly frame, and her
glance was such a glance as we bend upon the beloved dead, for in him
she saw one who was going inevitably to his death.