IN EXITU ISRAEL.
[Illustration]
IN EXITU ISRAEL
_AN HISTORICAL NOVEL_
BY
S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.
Author of '_Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_,'
'_Origin and Development of Religious Belief_,' '_The Silver Store_,' &c., &c.
VOL. II
LONDON
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1870
OXFORD:
BY T. COMBE, M.A., E.B. GARDNER, E.P. HALL, AND H. LATHAM, M.A.,
PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.
IN EXITU ISRAEL.
CHAPTER XXI.
When Gabrielle and Madeleine had retired for the night to the little
bedroom of the latter, Madeleine seated herself on the bed, set her
candle on the table, and holding Gabrielle by the wrists looked full in
her face, and said abruptly: 'What brings you to Paris?'
The little peasantess was startled, and hesitated. Madeleine asked
after a moment's delay,--'You have come to trade on your youth and
beauty?'
Gabrielle's eyes opened wide. She did not understand.
'Yes,' said the Parisian flower-girl; 'God gives us comely
countenances, graceful limbs, and ready wit. These are our wares,
set up at auction to the highest bidder. So runs the world. God
did not make it so; it is the creation of privilege. I have tried
millinery-work--that did not suit me. I have tried wood-carving for
churches--that did not pay. I have sought admission to many another
trade--it was not open to women. So now my mother has sent me to
Versailles to sell flowers to the nobles and gentry of the court, to
be coaxed and petted and flirted with, to try to bewitch, ensnare,
shackle one of them. By all means, if possible, to entangle some rich
aristocrat. A glorious aim for woman! Hah! to estimate beauty at so
much; a straight nose at so much, ruddy lips at so much, dimples at so
much, laughing black eyes at so much, wit at so much, and virtue at
nothing!'
She paused and shook Gabrielle's arms passionately. Then she went on:
'Bread is scarce, all provisions are dear. Why? because speculators buy
up the corn,--keep it back to create a famine, and enrich themselves
on the sufferings of the poor. Can poor folk afford to keep daughters
at home to eat, eat, eat, and bring in nothing? First the interested
create destitution, and then they take advantage of it to buy of the
destitute what we would not sell except to save life. We are not poor
here,--we in this house, because we live on the scraps flung us by the
privileged classes. The corporal is salaried by the king to defend his
majesty and his majesty's prisons against the French people, whose
father he pretends to be; my mother makes caps and head-dresses for the
grand ladies, the wives and mistresses of the officers; Klaus gets his
living from the ecclesiastics, who buy his statues; and I sell flowers
to the queen and the court, and keep my eyes open, looking out for a
chance. Tell me now--why are you come here? On speculation?'
'I have come to Paris, because a lady whom I love is in the Bastille.'
'In the Bastille!' exclaimed Madeleine, dropping her hands.
'And I must do my best to obtain her release.'
The Parisian girl laughed.
'You are a foolish little peasantess,' she said; 'what can you do?'
'Did not Madame Legros obtain the release of Latude? Why, then, should
I despair?'
'Madame Legros had a hard time of it. She worked for three years, she
left no stone unturned, she was a woman of indomitable will.'
'And why should not I--with my faith?'
'Faith in what? in the righteousness of your cause? More the reason
that it should fail. Violence and injustice alone gain the day now.'
'Madeleine, I will see the king.'
'The king is nothing, he is in the hands of the queen.'
'Then I will see the queen.'
'The queen!' echoed Madeleine, with a shrug. 'If you are to prevail
with her, you must interest her vanity, her ambition, her love of
display, her passion for pleasure,--those are the only springs that
will move her.'
'Madeleine, I am sure I could persuade her to obtain the release of
Madame Berthier.'
'What Madame Berthier do you speak of?'
'The wife of the Intendant, Berthier de Sauvigny.'
'Take my advice and do not meddle. You will burn your fingers.'
'Madeleine!' exclaimed Gabrielle, 'I must, I must indeed do what I
can. The poor lady's last cry was to me to save her. I know that I am
nothing but a little peasant-girl, that I am ignorant of the ways of
grand people at court, but I feel in my heart that I have been called
to do something for her. Even if I cannot deliver her, I can, perhaps,
obtain permission to see her and attend on her in her prison.'
'Why is she deprived of her liberty?'
'Because she is a little deranged. Understand me, she is not mad, but
has been driven by ill usage into eccentricities. She is harmless, and
oh! so good.'
'Sit down on the bed, and listen to me,' said Madeleine, 'and you shall
hear exactly what your prospects are.' Gabrielle took her place beside
the Parisian flower-girl, and took her hand between her palms.
'Are you listening?' asked Madeleine; 'well, be prepared for the
worst. I am going to throw a bucket of cold and dirty water over your
enthusiasm.'
'I am prepared,' answered Gabrielle, feebly.
'In the first place,' began Madeleine, 'know that the great people do
nothing without requiring a return. What have you to give the queen? I
say the queen; for if anything is to be done, it must be done through
her.'
'Nothing to give her, but I may interest her.'
'You can only interest her through _herself_. Can you do that; can you
gratify her pride and love of display?'
'No.'
'Then put aside the hope of doing anything in that quarter. Now, who
influences the queen? The court; in particular the Count d'Artois. If
you gain him, you gain the queen, you gain the king, and you have what
you want.'
'Can I see and speak to him?'
'Certainly, nothing easier. Announce yourself as a pretty girl, and he
will be with you at once.'
'And has he a tender heart?'
'Most tender,' answered Madeleine, with irony.
'He will listen to the grievance?'
'Most certainly.'
'And you think he really will be moved?'
'No doubt about it.'
There was something in Madeleine's manner which grated on the young
Norman girl's feelings; she withdrew her hands from clasping that of
the Parisian, and said reproachfully: 'You are mocking me.'
'No, I am not,' answered Madeleine, vehemently. 'Poor simple child!
Do you not see what I mean? You are pretty, more than pretty, you are
beautiful, and with all the freshness of the country about you. The
amorous prince will be bewitched at once. He will grant you all you
want, take your request to the queen, insist on her obtaining from the
king a release for your imprisoned lady,--but, remember what I told
you. No one at court does anything without expecting a return.'
She looked at Gabrielle, who shrank from her.
'Mind,' said the city flower-girl; 'I counsel nothing of the sort.
I show you the only possible means of success which is open to you
in that quarter. I know the court. The court has made us French
poor. It eats the fruit of our labour, and it says, when asked any
little favour, Give! but what shall we give? you have taken our
means of subsistence and our liberties. And the court answers, you
have sacrificed to us your lives and liberties, surrender also your
honour.' The girl sprang from the bed, and whirling round the room,
cried in a tone of mingled bitterness and banter: 'Did they in olden
times pass their sons and their daughters through the fire to Moloch?
Hah! Versailles, temple of Moloch, I salute you! Hah! royalty, Moloch
of modern days, I prostrate myself before you. Sometimes I think I
shall live to see that charnel-house swept out, and the great idol
overthrown. The hope is too great, the prospect overwhelms me.
Gabrielle! have you ever heard of a vampire? The vampire is a dead man,
who leaves his grave to suck the blood of the living. Where there is a
vampire, a blight falls on the neighbourhood; old and young waste away,
their blood is drained off to nourish a corpse which it cannot vivify.
If the coffin be examined, it is found to brim over with blood; the
corpse floats in blood, and is itself bloated with blood--blood that
it has drained from young veins and hopeful hearts, withering hopes
and destroying youth. Gabrielle! monarchy is the vampire. It is a dead
system of the past, to which nothing can restore life. In olden times
it was a living, thinking, acting power; now it is a carcase, but not
a harmless one. It drinks blood to this day--the blood of the poor. It
feeds worms, too, the court sycophants.'
The girl paced up and down the room as she spoke; then stopped,
burst into a laugh, and said: 'And what am I but a courtier of those
bloodsuckers? What is my highest ambition but to draw off a little of
the blood they drink, that I may riot in it myself? God have mercy on
poor France! men cannot afford to be honest or women to be modest, when
their honest means of subsistence is snatched from them by harpies to
be flung broadcast among the profligate.'
Then, reseating herself, and drawing her hand across her brow, she
said, sadly: 'Why cannot I live on the work of my hands? Because
prejudice and law combine to shut me out from trades in which I could
honestly earn my bread. And yet I have wished to live quietly and
toil for my living; but the times are against me, because society is
against me. Alas, Gabrielle! what do you think is the proudest hope
of a Parisian girl? Why, to become a Du Barry or a Pompadour. A man
strives and denies himself to become a great judge, or a great artist,
or a great philosopher, but a girl's ambition is to be mistress to a
prince, a duke, or a count. It is not our fault, it is the fault of a
rotten society which overwhelms some men with wealth and reduces others
to beggary, and says to those who are down, your only hope of rising is
by vice, all honourable avenues are shut.'
Madeleine put her arm round the little peasant-girl, and added in a
soft tone, 'Do not misunderstand me, my little simpleton. I am not so
low as you seem to think--I have not fallen over the precipice, but my
mother and the necessities of the time are forcing me nearer and nearer
to it every day, and my heart recoils with fear and loathing.' She
began to cry. 'Dear Gabrielle,' she continued; 'I think that perhaps
with a new order of things we might look up to Heaven for help, instead
of groping for crusts of bread among the ashes of hell. I do not know,
but I think it might be so. Oh that a Revolution might come before the
edge of the precipice is reached, and I am lost!'
The poor Normande did not know how to comfort her. She thought of her
father, and how ready he had been to expose her to danger, forced
to it by his great need, by the slave-driver, Famine, and she asked
herself what had created that famine, and the answer came, the _Ancien
Régime_. She remained silent, and Madeleine, after a paroxysm of tears,
recovered herself, and then returned to the subject on which she had
questioned Gabrielle.
'I only showed you how hopeless it was for you to attempt anything like
intercession on behalf of Madame Berthier at court. I do not advise
you to take the only course open to you that promises success. Indeed,
I warn you from it. But I will help you, if you like, to speak to the
queen. It can be easily effected, as I am her flower-girl; only be not
sanguine, I am convinced of the fruitlessness of the attempt.'
'I must make the attempt. I must, indeed.'
'Very well, then you shall.'
'Thank you, Madeleine, thank you very much.'
'Poor little friend, I will do for you what I can, but that is not
much. Now let us to bed.'