For fully an hour after their prisoners had been removed La Boulaye
paced the narrow limits of the kitchen with face inscrutable and busy
mind. He recalled what Suzanne had said touching her betrothal to
Ombreval, whom she looked to meet at Treves. This miserable individual,
then, was the man for whose sake she had duped him. But Ombreval at
least was in Caron's power, and it came to him now that by virtue of
that circumstance he might devise a way to bring her back without the
need to go after her. He would send her word--aye, and proof--that he
had taken him captive, and it should be hers to choose whether she would
come to his rescue and humble herself to save him or leave him to his
fate. In that hour it seemed all one to La Boulaye which course she
followed, since by either, he reasoned, she must be brought to
suffer. That he loved her was with him now a matter that had sunk into
comparative insignificance. The sentiment that ruled his mind was anger,
with its natural concomitant--the desire to punish.
And when morning came the Deputy's view of the situation was still
unchanged. He was astir at an early hour, and without so much as
waiting to break his fast, he bade Garin bring in the prisoners. Their
appearance was in each case typical. Ombreval was sullen and his dress
untidy, even when allowance had been made for the inherent untidiness of
the Republican disguise which he had adopted to so little purpose. Des
Cadoux looked well and fresh after his rest, and gave the Deputy an airy
“Good morning” as he entered. He had been at some pains, too, with his
toilet, and although his hair was slightly disarranged and most of the
powder was gone from the right side, suggesting that he had lain on it,
his appearance in the main was creditably elegant.
“Citizen Ombreval,” said La Boulaye, in that stern, emotionless voice
that was becoming characteristic of him, “since you have acquainted
yourself with the contents of the letter you stole from the man you
murdered, you cannot be in doubt as to my intentions concerning you.”
The Vicomte reddened with anger.
“For your intentions I care nothing,” he answered hotly--rendered very
brave by passion--“but I will have you consider your words. Do you say
that I stole and murdered? You forget, M. le Republican, that I am a
gentlemen.”
“Meaning, of course, that the class that so described itself could do
these things with impunity without having them called by their proper
names, is it not so? But you also forget that the Republic has abolished
gentlemen, and with them, their disgraceful privileges.”
“Canaille!” growled the Vicomte, his eyes ablaze with wrath.
“Citizen-aristocrat, consider your words!” La Boulaye had stepped close
up to him, and his voice throbbed with a sudden anger no whit less
compelling than Ombreval's. “Fool! let me hear that word again, applied
either to me or to any of my followers, and I'll have you beaten like a
dog.”
And as the lesser ever does give way before the greater, so now did
the anger that had sustained Ombreval go down and vanish before the
overwhelming passion of La Boulaye. He grew pale to the lips at the
Deputy's threat, and his eyes cravenly avoided the steady gaze of his
captor.
“You deserve little consideration at my hands, Citizen,” said La
Boulaye, more quietly, “and yet I have a mind to give you a lesson in
generosity. We start for Paris in half-an-hour. If anywhere you should
have friends expecting you, whom you might wish to apprise of your
position, you may spend the half-hour that is left in writing to them. I
will see that your letter reaches its destination.”
Ombreval's pallor seemed to intensify. His eyes looked troubled as
they were raised to La Boulaye's. Then they fell again, and there was a
pause. At last--.
“I shall be glad to avail myself of your offer,” he said, in a voice
that for meekness was ludicrously at variance with his late utterances.
“Then pray do so at once.” And La Boulaye took down an inkhorn a quill,
and a sheaf of paper from the mantel-shelf behind him. These he placed
on the table, and setting a chair, he signed to the aristocrat to be
seated.
“And now, Citizen Cadoux,” said La Boulaye, turning to the old nobleman,
“I shall be glad if you will honour me by sharing my breakfast while
Citizen Ombreval is at his writing.”
Des Cadoux looked up in some surprise.
“You are too good, Monsieur,” said he, inclining his head. “But
afterwards?”
“I have decided,” said La Boulaye, with the ghost of a smile, “to deal
with your case myself, Citizen.”
The old dandy took a deep breath, but the glance of his blue eyes was
steadfast, and his lips smiled as he made answer:
“Again you are too good. I feared that you would carry me to Paris,
and at my age the journey is a tiresome one. I am grateful, and
meanwhile,--why, since you are so good as to invite me, let us
breakfast, by all means.”
They sat down at a small table in the embrasure of the window, and their
hostess placed before them a boiled fowl, a dish of eggs, a stew of
herbs, and a flask of red wine, all of which La Boulaye had bidden her
prepare.
“Why, it is a feast,” declared Des Cadoux, in excellent humour, and for
all that he was under the impression that he was to die in half-an-hour
he ate with the heartiest good-will, chatting pleasantly the while with
the Republican--the first Republican with whom it had ever been his
aristocratic lot to sit at table. And what time the meal proceeded
Ombreval--with two soldiers standing behind his chair-penned his letter
to Mademoiselle de Bellecour.
Had La Boulaye--inspired by the desire to avenge himself for the
treachery of which he had been the victim--dictated that epistle, t
could not have been indicted in a manner better suited to his ends.
It was a maudlin, piteous letter, in which, rather than making his
farewells, the Vicomte besought the aid of Suzanne. He was, he wrote,
in the hands of men who might be bribed, and since she was rich--for he
knew of the treasure with which she had escaped--he based his hopes upon
her employing a portion of her riches to obtaining his enlargement. She,
he continued, was his only hope, and for the sake of their love, for
the sake of their common nobility, he besought her not to fail him now.
Carried away by the piteousness of his entreaties the tears welled up to
his eyes and trickled down his cheeks, one or two of them finding their
way to the paper thus smearing it with an appeal more piteous still if
possible than that of his maudlin words.
At last the letter was ended. He sealed it with a wafer and wrote the
superscription:
“To Mademoiselle de Bellecour. At the 'Hotel des Trois Rois,' Treves.”
He announced the completion of his task, and La Boulaye bade him go
join Des Cadoux at the next table and take some food before setting out,
whilst the Deputy himself now sat down to write.
“Citoyenne,” he wrote, “the man to whom you are betrothed, for whose
sake you stooped to treachery and attempted murder, is in my hands. Thus
has Heaven set it in my power to punish you, if the knowledge that he
travels to the guillotine is likely to prove a punishment. If you would
rescue him, come to me in Paris, and, conditionally, I may give you his
life.”
That, he thought should humble her. He folded his letter round
Ombreval's and having sealed the package, he addressed it as Ombreval
had addressed his own missive.
“Garin,” he commanded briefly, “remove the Citizen Ombreval.”
When he had been obeyed, and Garin had conducted the Vicomte from the
room, La Boulaye turned again to Des Cadoux. They were alone, saving the
two soldiers guarding the door.
The old man rose, and making the sign of the cross, he stepped forward,
calm and intrepid of bearing.
“Monsieur,” he announced to La Boulaye, who was eyeing him with the
faintest tinge of surprise, “I am quite ready.”
“Have you always been so devout, Citizen?” inquired the Deputy.
“Alas! no Monsieur. But there comes a time in the life of every man
when, for a few moments at least, he is prone to grow mindful of the
lessons learnt in childhood.”
The surprise increased in La Boulaye's countenance. At last he shrugged
his shoulders, after the manner of one who abandons a problem that has
grown too knotty.
“Citizen des Cadoux,” said he, “I have deliberated that since I have
received no orders from Paris concerning you, and also since I am not by
profession a catch-poll there is no reason whatever why I should
carry you to Paris. In fact, Citizen, I know of no reason why I should
interfere with your freedom at all. On the contrary when I recall the
kindness you sought to do me that day, years ago, at Bellecour, I find
every reason why I should further your escape from the Revolutionary
tribunal. A horse, Citizen, stands ready saddled for you, and you are
free to depart, with the one condition, however, that you will consent
to become my courier for once, and carry a letter for me--a matter which
should occasion you, I think, no deviation from your journey.”
The old dandy, in whose intrepid spirit the death which he had believed
imminent had occasioned no trembling, turned pale as La Boulaye ceased.
His blue eyes were lifted almost timidly to the Deputy's face, and his
lip quivered.
“You are not going to have me shot, then?” he faltered.
“Shot?” echoed La Boulaye, and then he remembered the precise words of
the request which Des Cadoux had preferred the night before, but which,
at the time, he had treated lightly. “Ma foi, you do not flatter me!” he
cried. “Am I a murderer, then? Come, come, Citizen, here is the letter
that you are to carry. It is addressed to Mademoiselle de Bellecour, at
Treves, and encloses Ombreval's farewell epistle to that lady.”
“But, gladly, Monsieur,” exclaimed Des Cadoux.
And then, as if to cover his sudden access of emotion, of which he was
most heartily ashamed, he fumbled for his snuff-box, and, having found
it, he took an enormous pinch.
They parted on the very best of terms did these two--the aristocrat and
the Revolutionary--actuated by a mutual esteem tempered in each case
with gratitude.
When at last Des Cadoux had taken a sympathetic leave of Ombreval and
departed, Caron ordered the Vicomte to be brought before him again, and
at the same time bade his men make ready for the road.
“Citizen,” said La Boulaye, “we start for Paris at once. If you will
pass me your word of honour to attempt no escape you shall travel with
us in complete freedom and with all dignity.”
Ombreval looked at him with insolent surprise, his weak supercilious
mouth growing more supercilious even than its wont. He had recovered a
good deal of his spirit by now.
“Pass you my word of honour?” he echoed. “Mon Dieu! my good fellow a
word of honour is a bond between gentlemen. I think too well of mine to
pass it to the first greasy rascal of the Republic that asks it of me.”
La Boulaye eyed him a second with a glance before which the aristocrat
grew pale, and already regretted him of his words. The veins in the
Deputy's temples were swollen.
“I warned you,” said he, in a dull voice. Then to the soldiers standing
on either side of Ombreval--“Take him out,” he said, “mount him on
horseback. Let him ride with his hands pinioned behind his back, and his
feet lashed together under the horse's belly. Attend to it!”
“Monsieur,” cried the young man, in an appealing voice, “I will give you
my word of honour not to escape. I will--”
“Take him out,” La Boulaye repeated, with a dull bark of contempt. “You
had your chance, Citizen-aristocrat.”
Ombreval set his teeth and clenched his hands.
“Canaille!” he snarled, in his fury.
“Hold!” Caron called after the departing men.
They obeyed, and now this wretched Vicomte, of such unstable spirit
dropped all his anger again, as suddenly as he had caught it up. Fear
paled his cheek and palsied his limbs once more, for La Boulaye's
expression was very terrible.
“You know what I said that I would have done to you if you used that
word again?” La Boulaye questioned him coldly.
“I--I was beside myself, Monsieur,” the other gasped, in the intensity
of his fear. And at the sight of his pitiable condition the anger fell
away from La Boulaye, and he smiled scornfully.
“My faith,” he sneered. “You are hot one moment and cold the next.
Citizen, I am afraid that you are no better than a vulgar coward. Take
him away,” he ended, waving his hand towards the door, and as he watched
them leading him out he reflected bitterly that this was the man to whom
Suzanne was betrothed--the man whom, not a doubt of it, she loved, since
for him she had stooped so low. This miserable craven she preferred to
him, because the man, so ignoble of nature, was noble by the accident of
birth.
PART III. THE EVERLASTING RULE
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below and saints above,
For love is Heaven and Heaven is love.
--The Lay of the Last Minstrel.
CHAPTER XVI. CECILE DESHAIX. In his lodgings at the corner of the
Rue-St. Honore and the Rue de la Republique--lately changed, in the
all-encompassing metamorphosis, from “Rue Royale” sat the Deputy Caron
La Boulaye at his writing-table.
There was a flush on his face and a sparkle in the eyes that looked
pensively before him what time he gnawed the feathered end of his quill.
In his ears still rang the acclamations that had greeted his brilliant
speech in the Assembly that day. He was of the party of the Mountain--as
was but natural in a protege of the Seagreen Robespierre--a party more
famed for its directness of purpose than elegance of expression, and in
its ranks there was room and to spare for such orators as he. The season
was March of '93--a season marked by the deadly feud raging 'twixt the
Girondins and the Mountain, and in that battle of tongues La Boulaye
was covering himself with glory and doing credit to his patron, the
Incorruptible. He was of a rhetoric not inferior to Vergniaud's--that
most eloquent Girondon--and of a quickness of wit and honesty of aim
unrivalled in the whole body of the Convention, and with these gifts he
harassed to no little purpose those smooth-tongued legislators of
the Gironde, whom Dumouriez called the Jesuits of the Revolution. His
popularity with the men of the Mountain and with the masses of Paris was
growing daily, and the crushing reply he had that day delivered to the
charges preferred by Vergniaud was likely to increase his fame.
Well, therefore, might he sit with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes
chewing the butt of his pen and smiling to himself at the memory of
the enthusiasm of which he had been the centre a half-hour ago. Here,
indeed, was something that a man might live for, something that a
man might take pride in, and something that might console a man for a
woman's treachery. What, indeed, could woman's love give him that might
compare with this? Was it not more glorious far to make himself the
admired, the revered, the very idol of those stern men, than the beloved
of a simpering girl? The latter any coxcomb with a well-cut coat might
encompass, but the former achievement was a man's work.
And yet, for all that he reasoned thus speciously and philosophically,
there was a moment when his brow grew clouded and his eyes lost their
sparkle. He was thinking of that night in the inn at Boisvert, when he
had knelt beside her and she had lied to him. He was thinking of the
happiness, that for a few brief hours had been his, until he discovered
how basely she had deceived him, and for all the full-flavour of his
present elation it seemed to him that in that other happiness which he
now affected to despise by contrast, there had dwelt a greater, a more
contenting sweetness.
Would she come to Paris? He had asked himself that question every day
of the twenty that were spent since his return. And in the meantime the
Vicomte d'Ombreval lay in the prison of the Luxembourg awaiting trial.
That he had not yet been arraigned he had to thank the efforts of La
Boulaye. The young Deputy had informed Robespierre that for reasons
of his own he wished the ci-devant Vicomte, to be kept in prison some
little time, and the Incorruptible, peering at him over his horn-rimmed
spectacles, had shrugged his shoulders and answered:
“But certainly, cher Caron, since it is your wish. He will be safe in
the Luxembourg.”
He had pressed his protege for a reason, but La Boulaye had evaded the
question, promising to enlighten him later.
Since then Caron had waited, and now it was more than time that
Mademoiselle made some sign. Or was it that neither Ombreval's craven
entreaties nor his own short message had affected her? Was she wholly
heartless and likely to prove as faithless to the Vicomte in his hour of
need as she had proved to him?
With a toss of the head he dismissed her from his thoughts, and dipping
his quill, he began to write.
From the street came the dull roll of beaten drums and the rhythmical
fall of marching feet. But the sound was too common in revolutionary
Paris to arrest attention, and he wrote on, heeding it as little as he
did the gruff voice of a pastry-cook crying his wares, the shriller call
of a milkman, or the occasional rumblings of passing vehicles. But of a
sudden one of those rumblings ceased abruptly at his door. He heard the
rattle of hoofs and the grind of the wheel against the pavement, and
looking up, he glanced across at the ormolu timepiece on his overmantel.
It was not yet four o'clock.
Wondering whether the visitor might be for him or for the tenant of
the floor above, he sat listening until his door opened and his
official--the euphemism of “servant” in the revolutionary lexicon--came
to announce that a woman was below, asking to see him.
Now for all that he believed himself to have become above emotions where
Mademoiselle de Bellecour was concerned, he felt his pulses quicken at
the very thought that this might be she at last.
“What manner of woman, Brutus?” he asked.
“A pretty woman, Citizen,” answered Brutus, with a grin. “It is the
Citoyenne Deshaix.”
La Boulaye made an impatient gesture.
“Fool, why did you not say so,” he cried sharply.
“Fool, you did not ask me,” answered the servant, with that touching,
fraternal frankness adopted by all true patriots. He was a thin,
under-sized man of perhaps thirty years of age, and dressed in black,
with a decency--under La Boulaye's suasion--that was rather at variance
with his extreme democracy. His real name was Ferdinand, but, following
a fashion prevailing among the ultra-republicans, he had renamed himself
after the famous Roman patriot.
La Boulaye toyed a moment with his pen, a frown darkening his brow.
Then:
“Admit her,” he sighed wearily.
And presently she came, a pretty woman, as Brutus had declared, very
fair, and with the innocent eyes of a baby. She was small of stature,
and by the egregious height of her plume-crowned head-dress it would
seem as if she sought by art to add to the inches she had received
from Nature. For the rest she wore a pink petticoat, very extravagantly
beflounced, and a pink corsage cut extravagantly low. In one hand she
carried a fan--hardly as a weapon against heat, seeing that the winter
was not yet out--in the other a huge bunch of early roses.
“Te voile!” was her greeting, merrily--roguishly--delivered, and if the
Revolution had done nothing else for her, it had, at least, enabled her
to address La Boulaye by the “Thou” of intimacy which the new vocabulary
prescribed.
La Boulaye rose, laid aside his pen, and politely, if coolly, returned
her greeting and set a chair for her.
“You are,” said he, “a very harbinger of Spring, Citoyenne, with your
flowers and your ravishing toilette.”
“Ah! I please you, then, for once,” said she without the least
embarrassment. “Tell me--how do you find me?” And, laughing, she turned
about that he might admire her from all points of view.
He looked at her gravely for a moment, so gravely that the laughter
began to fade from her eyes.
“I find you charming, Citoyenne,” he answered at last. “You remind me of
Diana.”
“Compliments?” quoth she, her eyebrows going up and her eyes beaming
with surprise and delight. “Compliments from La Boulaye! But surely it
is the end of the world. Tell me, mon ami,” she begged, greedily angling
for more, “in what do I remind you of the sylvan goddess?”
“In the scantiness of your raiment, Citoyenne,” he answered acidly. “It
sorts better with Arcadia than with Paris.”
Her eyebrows came down, her cheeks flushed with resentment and
discomfiture. To cover this she flung her roses among the papers of his
writing-table, and dropping into a chair she fanned herself vigorously.
“Citoyenne, you relieve my anxieties,” said he. “I feared that you stood
in danger of freezing.”
“To freeze is no more than one might expect in your company,” she
answered, stifling her anger.
He made no reply. He moved to the window, and stood drumming absently
on the panes. He was inured to these invasions on the part of Cecile
Deshaix and to the bold, unwomanly advances that repelled him. To-day
his patience with her was even shorter than its wont, haply because when
his official had announced a woman he had for a moment permitted himself
to think that it might be Suzanne. The silence grew awkward, and at last
he broke it.
“The Citizen Robespierre is well?” he asked, without turning.
“Yes,” said she, and for all that there was chagrin to spare in the
glance with which she admired the back of his straight and shapely
figure, she contrived to render her voice airily indifferent. “We were
at the play last night.”
“Ah!” he murmured politely. “And was Talma in veine?”
“More brilliant than ever,” answered she.
“He is a great actor, Citoyenne.”
A shade of annoyance crossed her face.
“Why do you always address me as Citoyenne?” she asked, with some
testiness.
He turned at last and looked at her a moment.
“We live in a censorious world, Citoyenne,” he answered gravely.
She tossed her head with an exclamation of impatience.
“We live in a free world, Citizen. Freedom is our motto. Is it for
nothing that we are Republicans?”
“Freedom of action begets freedom of words,” said he, “and freedom of
words leads to freedom of criticism--and that is a thing to which no
wise woman will expose herself, no matter under what regime we live.
You would be well-advised, Citoyenne, in thinking of that when you come
here.”
“But you never come to us, Caron,” she returned, in a voice of mild
complaint. “You have not been once to Duplay's since your return from
Belgium. And you seem different, too, since your journey to the army.”
She rose now and approached him. “What is it, cher Caron?” she asked,
her voice a very caress of seductiveness, her eyes looking up into his.
“Is something troubling you?”
“Troubling me?” he echoed, musingly. “No. But then I am a busy man,
Citoyenne.”
A wave of red seemed to sweep across her face, and her heel beat the
parquet floor.
“If you call me Citoyenne again I shall strike you,” she threatened him.
He looked down at her, and she had the feeling that behind the
inscrutable mask of his countenance he was laughing at her.
“It would sort well with your audacity,” he made answer coolly.
She felt in that moment that she hated him, and it was a miracle that
she did not do as she had threatened, for with all her meek looks she
owned a very fiercest of tempers. She drew back a pace or two, and her
glance fell.
“I shall not trouble you in future,” she vowed. “I shall not come here
again.”
He bowed slightly.
“I applaud the wisdom of your resolve--Cit--Cecile. The world, as I have
said, is censorious.”
She looked at him a second, then she laughed, but it was laughter of the
lips only; the eyes looked steely as daggers and as capable of mischief.
“Adieu, Citizen La Boulaye,” she murmured mockingly.
“Au revoir, Citoyenne Deshaix,” he replied urbanely.
“Ough!” she gasped, and with that sudden exclamation of pent-up wrath,
she whisked about and went rustling to the door.
“Citoyenne,” he called after her, “you are forgetting your flowers.”
She halted, and seemed for a second to hesitate, looking at him oddly.
Then she came back to the table and took up her roses. Again she looked
at him, and let the bouquet fall back among the papers.
“I brought them for you, Caron,” she said, “and I'll leave them with
you. We can at least be friends, can we not?”
“Friends? But were we ever aught else?” he asked.
“Alas! no,” she said to herself, whilst aloud she murmured: “I thought
that you would like them. Your room has such a gloomy, sombre air, and
a few roses seem to diffuse some of the sunshine on which they have been
nurtured.”
“You are too good, Cecile” he answered, and, for all his coldness, he
was touched a little by this thoughtfulness.
She looked up at the altered tone, and the expression of her face seemed
to soften. But before she could make answer there was a rap at the door.
It opened, and Brutus stood in the doorway.
“Citizen,” he announced, in his sour tones, “there is another woman
below asking to see you.”
La Boulaye started, as again his thoughts flew to Suzanne, and a dull
flush crept into his pale cheeks and mounted to his brow. Cecile's eyes
were upon him, her glance hardening as she observed these signs. Bitter
enough had it been to endure his coldness whilst she had imagined that
it sprang from the austerity of his nature and the absorption of his
soul in matters political. But now that it seemed she might have cause
to temper her bitterness with jealousy her soul was turned to gall.
“What manner of woman, Brutus?” he asked after a second's pause.
“Tall, pale, straight, black hair, black eyes, silk gown--and savours
the aristocrat a league off,” answered Brutus.
“Your official seems gifted with a very comprehensive eye,” said Cecile
tartly.
But La Boulaye paid no heed to her. The flush deepened on his face, then
faded again, and he grew oddly pale. His official's inventory of her
characteristics fitted Mademoiselle de Bellecour in every detail.
“Admit her, Brutus,” he commanded, and his voice had a husky sound.
Then, turning to Cecile, “You will give me leave?” he said, cloaking
rude dismissal in its politest form.
“Assuredly,” she answered bitterly, making shift to go. “Your visitor is
no doubt political?” she half-asked half-asserted.
But he made no answer as he held the door for her, and bowed low as she
passed out. With a white face and lips tightly compressed she went, and
half-way on the stairs she met a handsome woman, tall and of queenly
bearing, who ascended. Her toilette lacked the elaborateness of
Cecile's, but she carried it with an air which not all the modistes of
France could have succeeded in imparting to the Citoyenne Deshaix.
So dead was Robespierre's niece to every sense of fitness that, having
drawn aside to let the woman pass, she stood gazing after her until she
disappeared round the angle of the landing. Then, in a fury, she swept
from the house and into her waiting coach, and as she drove back to
Duplay's in the Rue St. Honore she was weeping bitterly in her jealous
rage.
CHAPTER XVII. LA BOULAYE'S PROMISE
La Boulaye remained a moment by the door after Cecile's departure;
then he moved away towards his desk, striving to master the tumultuous
throbbing of his pulses. His eye alighted on Cecile's roses, and,
scarce knowing why he did it, he picked them up and flung them behind a
bookcase. It was but done when again the door opened, and his official
ushered in Mademoiselle de Bellecour.
Oddly enough, at sight of her, La Boulaye grew master of himself. He
received her with a polite and very formal bow--a trifle over-graceful
for a patriot.
“So, Citoyenne,” said he, and so cold was his voice that it seemed even
tinged with mockery, “you are come at last.”
“I could not come before, Monsieur,” she answered, trembling. “They
would not let me.” Then, after a second's pause: “Am I too late,
Monsieur?” she asked.
“No,” he answered her. “The ci-devant Vicomte d'Ombreval still lies
awaiting trial. Will you not be seated?”
“I do not look to remain long.”
“As you please, Citoyenne. I have delayed Ombreval's trial thinking that
if not my letter why then his might bring you, sooner or later, to his
rescue. It may interest you to hear,” he continued with an unmistakable
note of irony, “that that brave but hapless gentleman is much fretted at
his incarceration.”
A shadow crossed her face, which remained otherwise calm and composed
--the beautiful, intrepid face that had more than once been La Boulaye's
undoing.
“I am glad that you have waited, Monsieur. In so doing you need have
no doubts concerning me. M. d'Ombreval is my betrothed, and the troth I
plighted him binds me in honour to succour him now.”
La Boulaye looked steadily at her for a moment.
“Upon my soul,” he said at last, a note of ineffable sarcasm vibrating
in his voice, “I shall never cease to admire the effrontery of your
class, and the coolness with which, in despite of dishonourable action,
you make high-sounding talk of honour and the things to which it binds
you. I have a dim recollection, Citoyenne, of something uncommonly like
your troth which you plighted me one night at Boisvert. But so little
did that promise bind you that when I sought to enforce your fulfilment
of it you broke my head and left me to die in the road.”
His words shook her out of her calm. Her bosom rose and fell, her eyes
seemed to grow haggard and her hands were clasped convulsively.
“Monsieur,” she answered, “when I gave you my promise that night I had
every intention of keeping it. I swear it, as Heaven is my witness.”
“Your actions more than proved it,” he said dryly.
“Be generous, Monsieur,” she begged. “It was my mother prevailed upon me
to alter my determination. She urged that I should be dishonoured if I
did not.”
“That word again!” he cried. “What part it plays in the life of the
noblesse. All that it suits you to do, you do because honour bids you,
all to which you have bound yourselves, but which is distasteful, you
discover that honour forbids, and that you would be dishonoured did you
persist. But I am interrupting you, Citoyenne. Did your mother advance
any arguments?”
“The strongest argument of all lay here, in my heart, Monsieur,” she
answered him, roused and hardened by his scorn. “You must see that it
had become with me a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. Upon
reflection I discovered that I was bound to two men, and it behoved me
to keep the more binding of my pledges.”
“Which you discovered to be your word to Ombreval,” he said, and his
voice grew unconsciously softer, for he began to realise the quandary in
which she had found herself.
She inclined her head assentingly.
“To him I had given the earlier promise, and then, again, he was of my
own class whilst you--”
“Spare me, Citoyenne,” he cried. “I know what you would say. I am of the
rabble, and of little more account in a matter of honour than a beast of
the field. It is thus that you reason, and yet, mon Dieu! I had thought
that ere now such notions had died out with you, and that, stupid enough
though your class has proved itself, it would at least have displayed
the intelligence to perceive that its day is ended, its sun set.” He
turned and paced the apartment as he spoke. “The Lilies of France have
been shorn from their stems, they have withered by the roadside, and
they have been trampled into the dust by the men of the new regime,
and yet it seems that you others of the noblesse have not learnt your
lesson. You have not yet discovered that here in France the man who was
born a tiller of the soil is still a man, and, by his manhood, the equal
of a king, who, after all, can be no more than a man, and is sometimes
less. Enfin!” he ended brusquely. “This is not the National Assembly,
and I talk to ears untutored in such things. Let us deal rather with the
business upon which you are come.”
She eyed him out of a pale face, with eyes that seemed fascinated. That
short burst of the fiery eloquence that had made him famous revealed him
to her in a new light: the light of a strength and capacity above and
beyond that which, already, she had perceived was his.
“Will you believe, Monsieur, that it cost me many tears to use you as I
did? If you but knew--” And there she paused abruptly. She had all but
told him of the kiss that she had left upon his unconscious lips that
evening on the road to Liege. “Mon Dieu how I hated myself!” And she
shuddered as she spoke.
He observed all this, and with a brusqueness that was partly assumed he
hastened to her rescue.
“What is done is done, Citoyenne. Come, let us leave reminiscences. You
are here to atone, I take it.”
At that she started. His words reminded her of those of his letter.
“Monsieur La Boulaye--”
“If it is all one to you, Citoyenne, I should prefer that you call me
citizen.”
“Citizen, then,” she amended. “I have brought with me the gems which
I told you would constitute my dowry. In his letter to me the Vicomte
suggested that--” She paused.
“That some Republican blackguard might be bribed,” he concluded, very
gently.
His gentleness deceived her. She imagined that it meant that he might
not be unwilling to accept such a bribe, and thereupon she set herself
to plead with him. He listened dispassionately, his hands behind his
back, his eyes bent upon her, yet betraying nothing of his thoughts. At
last she brought her prayer for Ombreval's life to an end, and produced
a small leather bag which she set upon the table, beseeching him to
satisfy himself as to the value of the contents.
Now at last he stirred. His face grew crimson to the roots of his hair,
and his eyes seemed of a sudden to take fire. He seized that little bag
and held it in his hand.
“And so, Mademoiselle de Bellecour,” said he, in a concentrated voice,
“you have learnt so little of me that you bring me a bribe of gems. Am
I a helot, that you should offer to buy my very soul? Do you think my
honour is so cheap a thing that you can have it for the matter of some
bits of glass? Or do you imagine that we of the new regime, because we
do not mouth the word at every turn, have no such thing as honour? For
shame!” He paused, his wrath boiling over as he sought words in which
to give it utterance. And then, words failing him to express the half of
what was in him, he lifted the bag high above his head, and hurled it
at her feet with a force that sent half the glittering contents rolling
about the parquet floor. “Citoyenne, your journey has been in vain. I
will not treat with you another instant.”
She recoiled before his wrath, a white and frightened thing that but an
instant back had been so calm and self-possessed. She gave no thought to
the flashing jewels scattered about the floor. Through all the fear that
now possessed her rose the consideration of this man--this man whom she
had almost confessed half-shamedly to herself that she loved, that night
on the Liege road; this man who at every turn amazed her and filled her
with a new sense of his strength and dignity.
Then, bethinking her of Ombreval and of her mission, she took her
courage in both hands, and, advancing a step, she cast herself upon her
knees before Caron.
“Monsieur, forgive me,” she besought him. “I meant you no insult. How
could I, when my every wish is to propitiate you? Bethink you, Monsieur,
I have journeyed all the way from Prussia to save that man, because my
hon--because he is my betrothed. Remember, Monsieur, you held out to me
the promise in your letter that if I came you would treat with me, and
that I might buy his life from you.”
“Why, so I did,” he answered, touched by her humiliation and her tears.
“But you went too fast in your conclusions.”
“Forgive me that. See! I am on my knees to you. Am I not humbled enough?
Have I not suffered enough for the wrong I may have done you?”
“It would take the sufferings of a generation to atone for the wrongs I
have endured at the hands of your family, Citoyenne.”
“I will do what you will, Monsieur. Bethink you that I am pleading for
the life of the man I am to marry.”
He looked down upon her now in an emotion that in its way was as
powerful as her own. Yet his voice was hard and sternly governed as he
now asked her,
“Is that an argument, Mademoiselle? Is it an argument likely to prevail
with the man who, for his twice-confessed love of you, has suffered sore
trials?”
He felt that in a way she had conquered him; his career, which but that
day had seemed all-sufficing to him, was now fallen into the limbo of
disregard. The one thing whose possession would render his life a happy
one, whose absence would leave him now a lasting unhappiness, knelt here
at his feet. Forgotten were the wrongs he had suffered, forgotten the
purpose to humble and to punish. Everything was forgotten and silenced
by the compelling voice of his blood, which cried out that he loved her.
He stooped to her and caught her wrists in a grip that made her wince.
His voice grew tense.
“If you would bribe me to save his life, Suzanne, there is but one price
that you can pay.”
“And that?” she gasped her eyes looking up with a scared expression into
his masterful face.
“Yourself,” he whispered, with an ardour that almost amounted to
fierceness.
She gazed a second at him in growing alarm, then she dragged her hands
from his grasp, and covering her face she fell a-sobbing.
“Do not misunderstand me,” he cried, as he stood erect over her. “If
you would have Ombreval saved and sent out of France you must become my
wife.”
“Your wife?” she echoed, pausing in her weeping, and for a moment an odd
happiness seemed to fill her. But as suddenly as it had arisen did
she stifle it. Was she not the noble daughter of the noble Marquis de
Bellecour and was not this a lowly born member of a rabble government?
There could be no such mating. A shudder ran through her. “I cannot,
Monsieur, I cannot!” she sobbed.
He looked at her a moment with a glance that was almost of surprise,
then, with a slight compression of the lips and the faintest raising of
the shoulders, he turned from her and strode over to the window. There
was a considerable concourse of people on their way to the Place de la
Republique, for the hour of the tumbrils was at hand.
A half-dozen of those unsexed viragos produced by the Revolution, in
filthy garments, red bonnets and streaming hair, were marching by to the
raucous chorus of the “Ca ira!”
He turned from the sight in disgust, and again faced his visitor.
“Citoyenne,” he said, in a composed voice, “I am afraid that your
journey has been in vain.”
She rose now from her knees, and advanced towards him.
“Monsieur, you will not be so cruel as to send me away empty-handed?”
she cried, scarce knowing what she was saying.
But he looked at her gravely, and without any sign of melting.
“On what,” he asked, “do you base any claim upon me?”
“On what?” she echoed, and her glance was troubled with perplexity. Then
of a sudden it cleared. “On the love that you have confessed for me,”
she cried.
He laughed a short laugh-half amazement, half scorn.
“Mon Dieu!” he exclaimed, tossing his arms to Heaven, “a fine claim
that, as I live; a fine argument by which to induce me to place another
man in your arms. I am to do it because I love you!”
They gazed at each other now, she with a glance of strained anxiety,
he with the same look of half-contemptuous wonder. And then a creaking
rumble from below attracted his attention, and he looked round. He moved
forward and threw the window wide, letting in with the March air an odd
medley of sounds to which the rolling of drums afforded a most congruous
accompaniment.
“Look, Citoyenne,” he said, and he pointed out the first tumbril, which
was coming round the corner of the Rue St. Honore.
She approached with some shrinking begotten by a suspicion of what she
was desired to see.
In the street below, among a vociferating crowd of all sorts and
conditions, the black death-cart moved on its way to the guillotine.
It was preceded by a company of National Guards, and followed by the
drummers and another company on foot. Within the fatal vehicle travelled
three men and two women, accompanied by a constitutional priest--one of
those renegades who had taken the oath imposed by the Convention. The
two women sat motionless, more like statues than living beings,
their faces livid and horribly expressionless, so numbed were their
intelligences by fear. Of the men, one stood calm and dignified, another
knelt at his prayers, and was subject, therefore, to the greater portion
of the gibes the mob was offering these poor victims; the third, a
very elegant gentleman in a green coat and buckskin breeches, leant
nonchalantly upon the rail of the tumbril and exchanged gibes with
the people. All five of them were in the prime of life, and, by their
toilettes and the air that clung to them, belonged unmistakably to the
noblesse.
One glance did Mademoiselle bestow upon that tragic spectacle, then with
a shudder she drew back, her face going deathly white.
“Why did you bid me look?” she moaned.
“That for yourself you might see,” he answered pitilessly, “the road by
which your lover is to journey.”
“Mon Dieu!” she cried, wringing her hands, “it is horrible. Oh! You are
not men, you Revolutionists. You are beasts of prey, tigers in human
semblance.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Great injustices beget great reactions. Great wrongs can only be
balanced by great wrongs. For centuries the power has lain with the
aristocrats, and they have most foully abused it. For centuries the
people of France have writhed beneath the armed heel of the nobility,
and their blood, unjustly and wantonly shed, has saturated the soil
until from that seed has sprung this overwhelming retribution.
Now--now, when it is too late--you are repenting; now, when at last some
twenty-five million Frenchmen have risen with weapons in their hands to
purge the nation of you. We are no worse than were you; indeed, not so
bad. It is only that we do in a little while--and, therefore, while it
lasts in greater quantity--what you have been doing through countless
generations.”
“Spare me these arguments, Monsieur,” she cried, recovering her spirit.
“The 'whys' and 'wherefores' of it are nothing to me. I see what you are
doing, and that is enough. But,” and her voice grew gentle and pleading,
her hands were held out to him, “you are good at heart, Monsieur; you
are generous and you can be noble. You will give me the life that I have
come to beg of you; the life you promised me.”
“Yes, but upon terms, Mademoiselle, and those terms you have heard.”
She looked a moment into that calm, set face, into the dark grey eyes
that looked so solemn and betrayed so little of what was passing within.
“And you say that you love me?” she cried.
“Helas!” he sighed. “It is a weakness I cannot conquer.
“Look well down into your heart, M. La Boulaye,” she answered him, “and
you will find how egregious is your error. You do not love me; you love
yourself, and only yourself. If you loved me you would not seek to
have me when I am unwilling. Above all things, you would desire my
happiness--it is ever so when we truly love--and you would seek to
promote it. If, indeed, you loved me you would grant my prayer, and
not torture me as you are doing. But since you only love yourself, you
minister only to yourself, and seek to win me by force since you desire
me.”
She ceased, and her eyes fell before his glance, which remained riveted
upon her face. Immovable he stood a moment or two, then he turned from
her with a little sigh, and leaning his elbow upon the window-sill,
he gazed down into the crowds surging about the second tumbril. But
although he saw much there that was calculated to compel attention,
he heeded nothing. His thoughts were very busy, and he was doing what
Mademoiselle had bidden him. He was looking into himself. And from that
questioning he gathered not only that he loved her, but that he loved
her so well and so truly that--in spite even of all that was passed--he
must do her will, and deliver up to her the man she loved.
His resolve was but half taken when he heard her stirring in the room
behind him. He turned sharply to find that she had gained the door.
“Mademoiselle!” he called after her. She stopped, and as she turned, he
observed that her lashes were wet. But in her heart there arose now a
fresh hope, awakened by the name by which he had recalled her. “Whither
are you going?” he asked.
“Away, Monsieur,” she answered. “I was realising that my journey had
indeed been in vain.”
He looked at her a second in silence. Then stepping forward:
“Mademoiselle,” he said, very quietly, “your arguments have prevailed,
and it shall be as you desire. The ci-devant Vicomte d'Ombreval shall go
free.”
Her face seemed to grow of a sudden paler, and for an instant she stood
still as if robbed of understanding. Then she came forward with hands
outheld.
“Said I not that you were good and generous? Said I not that you could
be noble, Monsieur?” she cried, as she caught his resisting hand and
sought to carry it to her lips. “God will bless you, Monsieur--”
He drew his hand away, but without roughness. “Let us say no more,
Mademoiselle,” he begged.
“But I will,” she answered him. “I am not without heart, Monsieur, and
now that you have given me this proof of the deep quality of your love,
I--” She paused, as if at a loss for words.
“Well, Mademoiselle?” he urged her.
“I have it in my heart to wish that--that it were otherwise,” she said,
her cheeks reddening under his gaze. “If it were not that I account
myself in honour bound to wed M. le Vicomte--”
“Stop!” he interrupted her. He had caught at last the drift of what she
was saying. “There is no need for any comedy, Suzanne. Enough of that
had we at Boisvert.”
“It is not comedy,” she cried with heat. “It was not altogether comedy
at Boisvert.”
“True,” he said, wilfully misunderstanding her that he might the more
easily dismiss the subject, “it went nearer to being tragedy.” Then
abruptly he asked her:
“Where are you residing?”
She paused before replying. She still wanted to protest that some
affection for him dwelt in her heart, although curbed (to a greater
extent even than she was aware) by the difference in their stations, and
checked by her plighted word to Ombreval. At last, abandoning a purpose
which his countenance told her would be futile:
“I am staying with my old nurse at Choisy,” she answered him. “Henriette
Godelliere is her name. She is well known in the village, and seems
in good favour with the patriots, so that I account myself safe. I am
believed to be her niece from the country.”
“Hum!” he snorted. “The Citoyenne Godelliere's niece from the country in
silks?”
“That is what someone questioned, and she answered that it was a gown
plundered from the wardrobe of some emigrated aristocrats.”
“Have a care, Suzanne,” said he. “The times are dangerous, and it is a
matter of a week ago since a man was lanterne for no other reason than
because he was wearing gloves, which was deemed an aristocratic habit.
Come, Mademoiselle, let us gather up your gems. You were going without
them some moments ago.”
And down upon his knees he went, and, taking up the little bag which had
been left where he had flung it, he set himself to restore the jewels to
it. She came to his assistance, in spite of his protestations, and so,
within a moment or two, the task was completed, and the little treasure
was packed away in the bosom of her gown.
“To-morrow,” he said, as he took his leave of her at the door, “I shall
hope to bring the ci-devant Vicomte to Choisy, and I will see that he is
equipped with a laissez-passer that will carry both of you safely out of
France.”
She was beginning to thank him all over again, but he cut her short, and
so they parted.
Long after she was gone did he sit at his writing-table, his head in his
hands and his eyes staring straight before him. His face looked grey and
haggard; the lines that seared it were lines of pain.
“They say,” he murmured once, thinking aloud, as men sometimes will
in moments of great stress, “that a good action brings its own reward.
Perhaps my action is not a good one, after all, and that is why I
suffer.”
And, burying his head in his arms, he remained thus with his sorrow
until his official entered to inquire if he desired lights.
CHAPTER XVIII. THE INCORRUPTIBLE
It was towards noon of the following day when Caron La Boulaye presented
himself at the house of Duplay, the cabinet-maker in the Rue St. Honore,
and asked of the elderly female who admitted him if he might see the
Citizen-deputy Robespierre.
A berline stood at the door, the postillion at the horses' heads, and
about it there was some bustle, as if in preparation of a departure. But
La Boulaye paid no heed to it as he entered the house.
He was immediately conducted upstairs to the Incorruptible's
apartment--for he was too well known to so much as need announcing. In
answer to the woman's knock a gentle, almost plaintive voice from within
bade them enter, and thus was Caron ushered into the humble dwelling
of the humble and ineffective-looking individual whose power already
transcended that of any other man in France, and who was destined to
become still more before his ephemeral star went out.
Into that unpretentious and rather close-smelling room--for it was
bed-chamber as well as dining-room and study--stepped La Boulaye
unhesitatingly, with the air of a man who is intimate with his
surroundings and assured of his welcome in them. In the right-hand
corner stood the bed on which the clothes were still tumbled; in the
centre of the chamber was a table all littered with the disorder of
a meal partaken; on the left, by the window, sat Robespierre at his
writing-table, and from the overmantel at the back of the room a marble
counterpart of Robespierre's own head and shoulders looked down upon the
newcomer. There were a few pictures on the whitewashed walls, and a few
objects of art about the chamber, but in the main it had a comfortless
air, which may in part have resulted from the fact that no fire had been
lighted.
The great man tossed aside his pen, and rose as the door closed after
the entering visitor. Pushing his horn-rimmed spectacles up on to his
forehead he stretched out his hand to La Boulaye.
“It is you, Caron,” he murmured in that plaintive voice of his. It was a
voice that sorted well with the humane man who had resigned a judgeship
at Arras sooner than pass a death-sentence, but hardly so well with him
who, as Public Prosecutor in Paris, had brought some hundreds of heads
to the sawdust. “I have been desiring to congratulate you upon your
victory of yesterday,” he continued, “even as I have been congratulating
myself upon the fact that it was I who found you and gave you to the
Nation. I feared that I might not see you ere I left.”
“You are leaving Paris?” asked La Boulaye, without heeding the
compliments in the earlier part of the other's speech.
“For a few days. Business of the Nation, my friend. But you--let us talk
of you. Do you know that I am proud of you, cher Caron? Your eloquence
turned Danton green with jealousy, and as for poor Vergniaud, it
extinguished him utterly. Ma foi! If you continue as you have begun,
the day may not be far distant when you will become the patron and I the
Protege.” And his weak eyes beamed pleasantly from out of that unhealthy
pale face.
Outwardly he had changed little since his first coming to Paris, to
represent the Third Estate of Artoise, saving, his cheeks were grown
more hollow. Upon his dress he still bestowed the same unpretentious
care that had always characterised it, which, in one of the most
prominent patriots of the Mountain, amounted almost to foppishness. Blue
coat, white waistcoat, silk hose and shoes buckled with silver, gave him
an elegant exterior that must have earned him many a covert sneer
from his colleagues. His sloping forehead was crowned by a periwig,
sedulously curled and powdered--for all that with the noblesse this was
already a discarded fashion.
La Boulaye replied to his patron's compliments with the best grace he
could command considering how full of another matter was his mind.
“I may congratulate myself, Maximilien,” he added, “upon my good fortune
in coming before you took your departure. I have a request to prefer, a
favour to ask.”
“Tut! Who talks of favours? Not you, Caron, I hope. You have but to name
what you desire, and so that it lies within my power to accord it, the
thing is yours.”
“There is a prisoner in the Luxembourg in whom I am interested. I seek
his enlargement.”
“But is that all?” cried the little man, and, without more ado, he
turned to his writing-table and drew a printed form from among the chaos
of documents. “His name?” he asked indifferently, as he dipped his quill
in the ink-horn and scratched his signature at the foot of it.
“An aristocrat,” said Caron, with some slight hesitancy.
“Eh?” And the arched brows drew together for an instant. “But no matter.
There are enough and to spare even for Fouquier-Tinvillle's voracious
appetite. His name?”
“The ci-devant Vicomte Antole d'Ombreval.”
“Qui-ca?” The question rang sharp as a pistol-shot, sounding the
more fearful by virtue of the contrast with the gentle tones in which
Robespierre had spoken hitherto. The little man's face grew evil.
“d'Ombreval?” he cried. “But what is this man to you? It is by your
favour alone that I have let him live so long, but now--” He stopped
short. “What is your interest in this man?” he demanded, and the
question was so fiercely put as to suggest that it would be well for La
Boulaye that he should prove that interest slight indeed.
But whatever feelings may have been swaying Caron at the moment, fear
was not one of them.
“My interest in him is sufficiently great to cause me to seek his
freedom at your hands,” he answered, with composure.
Robespierre eyed him narrowly for a moment, peering at him over his
spectacles which he had drawn down on to his tip-tilted nose. Then the
fierceness died out of his mien and manner as suddenly as it had sprung
up. He became once more the weak-looking, ineffectual man that had first
greeted La Boulaye: urbane and quiet, but cold-cold as ice.
“I am desolated, my dear Caron, but you have asked me for the one man in
the prisons of France whose life I cannot yield you. He is from Artois,
and there is an old score 'twixt him and me, 'twixt his family and mine.
They were the grands seigneurs of the land on which we were born, these
Ombrevals, and I could tell you of wrongs committed by them which would
make you shudder in horror. This one shall atone in the small measure
we can enforce from him. It was to this end that I ordered you to effect
his capture. Have patience, dear Caron, and forgive me that I cannot
grant your request. As I have said, I am desolated that it should be
so. Ask me, if you will, the life of any other--or any dozen others--and
they are yours. But Ombreval must die.”
Caron stood a moment in silent dismay. Here was an obstacle upon which
he had not counted when he had passed his word to Suzanne to effect the
release of her betrothed. At all costs he must gain it, he told himself,
and to that end he now set himself to plead, advancing, as his only
argument--but advancing it with a fervour that added to its weight--that
he stood pledged to save the ci-devant Vicomte. Robespierre looked up
at him with a shade of polite regret upon his cadaverous face, and with
polite regret he deplored that Caron should have so bound himself.
So absorbed were they, the one in pleading, the other in resisting,
that neither noticed the opening of the door, nor yet the girl who stood
observing them from the threshold.
“If this man dies,” cried La Boulaye at last, “I am dishonoured.
“It is regrettable,” returned Robespierre, “that you should have pledged
your word in the matter. You will confess, Caron, that it was a little
precipitate. Enfin,” he ended, crumpling the document he had signed and
tossing it under the table, “you must extricate yourself as best you
can. I am sorry, but I cannot give him to you.”
Caron's face was very white and his hands were clenched convulsively. It
is questionable whether in that moment he had not flung himself upon the
Incorruptible, and enforced that which hitherto he had only besought,
but that in that instant the girl stepped into the room.
“And is it really you, Caron?” came the melodious voice of Cecile.
La Boulaye started round to confront her, and stifled a curse at the
untimely interruption which Robespierre was blessing as most timely.
“It is--it is, Citoyenne,” he answered shortly, to add more shortly
still: “I am here on business with the Citizen, your uncle.”
But before the girl could so much as appreciate the rebuke he levelled
at her intrusion, her uncle had come to the rescue.
“The business, however, is at an end. Take charge of this good Caron,
Cecile, whilst I make ready for my journey.”
Thus, sore at heart, and chagrined beyond words, La Boulaye was forced
to realise his defeat, and to leave the presence of the Incorruptible.
But with Cecile he went no farther than the landing.
“If you will excuse me, Citoyenne,” he said abstractedly, “I will take
my leave of you.”
“But I shall not excuse you, Caron,” she said, refusing to see his
abstraction. “You will stay to dinner--”
“I am sorry beyond measure, but--”
“You shall stay,” she interrupted. “Come, Caron. It is months since you
were with us. We will make a little fete in honour of your yesterday's
triumph,” she promised him, sidling up to him with a bewitching glance
of blue eyes, and the most distracting toss of golden curls upon an
ivory neck.
But to such seductions Caron proved as impervious as might a man of
stone. He excused himself with cold politeness. The Nation's business
was awaiting him; he might not stay.
“The Nation's business may await you a little longer,” she declared,
taking hold of his arm with both hands, and had she left it at that it
is possible that she had won her way with him. But most indiscreetly she
added:
“Come, Caron, you shall tell me who was your yesterday's visitor. Do you
know that the sight of her made me jealous? Was it not foolish in me?”
And now, from cold politeness, La Boulaye passed to hot impoliteness.
Roughly he shook her detaining hands from him, and with hardly so much
as a word of farewell, he passed down the stairs, leaving her white with
passion at the slight he had thereby put upon her.
The beauty seemed to pass out of her face much as the meekness was wont
to pass out of her uncle's when he was roused. Her blue eyes grew steely
and cruel as she looked after him.
“Wait, Caron,” she muttered to herself, “I will cry quits with you.”
And then, with a sob of anger, she turned and mounted the stairs to her
apartments.
CHAPTER XIX. THE THEFT
La Boulaye sat once more in the Rue Nationale and with his head in his
hands, his elbows supported by the writing-table, he stared before him,
his face drawn with the pain and anger of the defeat he had sustained
where no defeat had been expected.
He had been so assured that he had but to ask for Ombreval's life,
and it would be accorded him; he had promised Suzanne with such
confidence--boasting almost--that he could do this, and to do it he had
pledged his word. And now? For very shame he could not go to her and
tell her that despite his fine promises despite his bold bargaining, he
was as powerless to liberate Ombreval as was she herself.
And with reflection he came to see that even did he bear her such a tale
she would not believe it. The infinite assurance of his power, implicit
in everything that he had said to her, must now arise in her memory, and
give the lie to his present confession of powerlessness. She would not
believe him, and disbelieving him, she would seek a motive for the words
that she would deem untrue. And that motive she would not find far
to seek. She would account his present attitude the consummation of
a miserable subterfuge by which he sought to win her confidence and
esteem. She would--she must--believe that he had but made a semblance
of befriending her so disinterestedly only that he might enlist her
kindness and regard, and turn them presently to his own purposes.
She would infer that he had posed as unselfish--as self-sacrificing,
almost--only that he might win her esteem, and that by telling her now
that Robespierre was inflexible in his resolve to send Ombreval to the
guillotine, he sought to retain that esteem whilst doing nothing for
it. That he had ever intended to save Ombreval she would not credit.
She would think it all a cunning scheme to win his own ends. And now he
bethought him of the grief that would beset her upon learning that her
journey had indeed been fruitless. He smote the table a blow with his
clenched hand, and cursed the whole Republic, from Robespierre down to
the meanest sans-culotte that brayed the Ca ira in the streets of Paris.
He had pledged his word, and for all that he belonged to the class whose
right to honour was denied by the aristocrats, his word he had never
yet broken. That circumstance--as personified by Maximilien
Robespierre--should break it for him now was matter enough to enrage
him, for than this never had there been an occasion on which such a
breach could have been less endurable.
He rose to his feet, and set himself to pace the chamber, driven to
action of body by the agonised activity of his mind. From the street
rose the cry of the pastry-cook going his daily rounds, as it had risen
yesterday, he remembered, when Suzanne had been with him. And now of
a sudden he stood still. His lips were compressed, his brows drawn
together in a forbidding scowl, and his eyes narrowed until they seemed
almost closed. Then with his clenched right hand he smote the open
palm of the other. His resolve was taken. By fair means or foul, with
Robespierre's sanction or without it, he would keep his word. After not
only the hope but the assurance he had given Suzanne that her betrothed
should go free, he could do no less than accomplish the Vicomte's
enlargement by whatever means should present themselves.
And now to seek a way. He recalled the free pardon to which Robespierre
had gone the length of appending his signature. He remembered that it
had not been destroyed; Robespierre had crumpled it in his hand and
tossed it aside. And by now Robespierre would have departed, and
it should not be difficult for him--the protege and intimate of
Robespierre--to gain access to the Incorruptible's room.
If only he could find that document and fill in the name of Ombreval the
thing would be as good as done. True, he would require the signatures
of three other Deputies; but one of these he could supply himself, and
another two were easily to be requisitioned, seeing that already it bore
Robespierre's.
And then as suddenly as the idea of the means had come to him, came now
the spectre of the consequences to affright him. How would it fare with
him on Robespierre's return? How angered would not Robespierre be upon
discovering that his wishes had been set at naught, his very measures
contravened--and this by fraud? And than Robespierre's anger there were
few things more terrible in '93. It was an anger that shore away heads
as recklessly as wayside flowers are flicked from their stems by the
idler's cane.
For a second it daunted him. If he did this thing he must seek refuge
in flight; he must leave France, abandon the career which was so full
of promise for him, and wander abroad, a penniless fortune-hunter. Well
might the prospect give him pause. Well might it cause him to survey
that pale, sardonic countenance that eyed him gloomily from the mirror
above his mantel shelf, and ask it mockingly if it thought that Suzanne
de Bellecour--or indeed, any woman living--were worthy of so great a
sacrifice.
What had she done for him that he should cast away everything for her
sake? Once she had told him that she loved him, only to betray him.
Was that a woman for whom a man should wanton his fortunes? And then
he smiled derisively, mocking his reflections in the mirror even as he
mocked himself.
“Poor fool,” he muttered, “it is not for the sake of what you are to
her. Were it for that alone, you would not stir a finger to gratify her
wishes. It is for the sake of what she is to you, Caron.”
He turned from the mirror, his resolve now firm, and going to the
door he called his official. Briefly he instructed Brutus touching the
packing of a valise, which he would probably need that night.
“You are going a journey, Citizen?” inquired Brutus, to which La Boulaye
returned a short answer in the affirmative. “Do I accompany you?”
inquired the official, to which La Boulaye shook his head.
At that Brutus, who, for all his insolence of manner, was very devotedly
attached to his employer, broke into remonstrances, impertinent of
diction but affectionate of tenor. He protested that La Boulaye had left
him behind, and lonely, during his mission to the army in Belgium, and
he vowed that he would not be left behind again.
“Well, well; we shall see, Brutus,” answered the Deputy, laying his hand
upon the fellow's shoulder. “But I am afraid that this time I am going
farther than you would care to come.”
The man's ferrety eyes were raised of a sudden to La Boulaye's face in a
very searching glance. Caron's tone had been laden with insinuation.
“You are running way,” cried the official.
“Sh! My good Brutus, what folly! Why should I run away--and from whom,
pray?”
“I know not that. But you are. I heard it in your voice. And you do not
trust me, Citizen La Boulaye,” the fellow added, in a stricken voice. “I
have served you faithfully these two years, and yet you have not learnt
to trust me.”
“I do, I do, my friend. You go too fast with your conclusions. Now see
to my valise, and on my return perhaps I'll tell you where I am going,
and put your fidelity to the test.”
“And you will take me with you?”
“Why, yes,” La Boulaye promised him, “unless you should prefer to remain
in Paris.”
With that he got away and leaving the house, he walked briskly up
the street, round the corner, and on until he stood once more before
Duplay's.
“Has the Citizen Robespierre departed yet?” he inquired of the woman who
answered his peremptory knock.
“He has been gone this hour, Citizen La Boulaye,” she answered. “He
started almost immediately after you left him.”
“Diable!” grumbled Caron, with well-feigned annoyance. “Quel
contretemps! I have left a most important document in his room, and, of
course, it will be locked.”
“But the Citoyenne Cecile has the key,” answered the woman, eager to
oblige him.
“Why, yes--naturally! Now that is fortunate. Will you do me the favour
to procure the key from he Citoyenne for a few moments, telling her, of
course, that it is I who need it?”
“But certainly, Montez, Citoyen.” And with a wave of the hand towards
the stairs she went before him.
He followed leisurely, and by the time he had reached Robespierre's door
her voice floated down to him from above, calling the Incorruptible's
niece. Next he heard Cecile's voice replying, and then a whispered
conference on the landing overhead, to the accompaniment of the
occasional tinkle of a bunch of keys.
Presently the domestic returned, and unlocking the door, she held it
open for La Boulaye to pass. From her attitude it seemed to Caron as if
she were intentioned--probably she had been instructed--to remain there
while he obtained what he sought. Now he had no mind that she should see
him making his quest among the wasted papers on the floor, and so:
“I shall not be more than a few minutes,” he announced quietly. “I will
call you when I am ready to depart.”
Thus uncompromisingly dismissed, she did not venture to remain, and,
passing in, La Boulaye closed the door. As great as had been his
deliberation hitherto was now the feverish haste with which he crossed
to the spot where he had seen the document flung. He caught up a
crumpled sheet and opened it out It was not the thing he sought. He cast
it aside and took up another with no better luck. To crumple discarded
papers seemed the habit of the Incorruptible, for there was a very
litter of them on the ground. One after another did Caron investigate
without success. He was on his knees now, and his exploration had
carried him as far as the table; another moment and he was grovelling
under it, still at his search, which with each fresh disappointment grow
more feverish.
Yonder--by the leg of the Incorruptible's chair--he espied the ball
of paper, and to reach it he stretched to his full length, lying prone
beneath a table in an attitude scarce becoming a Deputy of the French
Republic. But it was worth the effort and the disregard of dignity, for
when presently on his knees he smoothed out that document, he discovered
it to be the one he sought the order upon the gaolers of the Luxembourg
to set at liberty a person or persons whose names were to be filled in,
signed by Maximilien Robespierre.