A MEETING IN THE ROAD.
The unlooked-for eloquence which rang in the blacksmith's words, and
the assurance of his tone, no less than this startling disclosure of
thoughts with which I had never dreamed of crediting him, or any
peasant, took me so aback for a moment that I stood silent. Doury
seized the occasion, and struck in.
"You see now, M. le Vicomte," he said complacently, "the necessity for
such a Committee. The King's peace must be maintained."
"I see," I answered harshly, "that there are violent men abroad, who
were better in the stocks. Committee? Let the King's officers keep the
King's peace! The proper machinery----"
"It is shattered!"
The words were Doury's. The next moment he quailed at his presumption.
"Then let it be repaired!" I thundered. "_Mon Dieu!_ that a set of
tavern cooks and base-born rascals should go about the country prating
of it, and prating to me! Go, I will have nothing to do with you or
your Committee. Go, I say!"
"Nevertheless--a little patience, M. le Vicomte," he persisted,
chagrin on his pale face--"nevertheless, if any of the nobility would
give us countenance, you most of all----"
"There would then be some one to hang instead of Doury!" I answered
bluntly. "Some one behind whom he could shield himself, and lesser
villains hide. But I will not be the stalking-horse."
"And yet, in other provinces," he answered desperately, his
disappointment more and more pronounced, "M. de Liancourt and M. de
Rochefoucauld have not disdained to----"
"Nevertheless, I disdain!" I retorted. "And more, I tell you, and I
bid you remember it, you will have to answer for the work you are
doing. I have told you it is treason. It is treason; I will have
neither act nor part in it. Now go."
"There will be burning," the smith muttered.
"Begone!" I said sternly. "If you do not----"
"Before the morn is old the sky will be red," he answered. "On your
head, Seigneur, be it!"
I aimed a blow at him with my cane; but he avoided it with a kind of
dignity, and stalked away, Doury following him with a pale, hang-dog
face, and his finery sitting very ill upon him. I stood and watched
them go, and then I turned to the Cure to hear what he had to say.
But I found him gone also. He, too, had slipped away; through the
house, to intercept them at the gates, perhaps, and dissuade them. I
waited for him, querulously tapping the walk with my stick, and
watching the corner of the house. Presently he came round it, holding
his hat an inch or two above his head, his lean, tall figure almost
shadowless, for it was noon. I noticed that his lips moved as he came
towards me; but, when I spoke, he looked up cheerfully.
"Yes," he said in answer to my question, "I went through the house,
and stopped them."
"It would be useless," I said. "Men so mad as to think that they could
replace his Majesty's Government with a Committee of smiths and
pastrycooks----"
"I have joined it," he answered, smiling faintly.
"The Committee?" I ejaculated, breathless with surprise.
"Even so."
"Impossible!"
"Why?" he said quietly. "Have I not always predicted this day? Is not
this what Rousseau, with his _Social Contract_, and Beaumarchais, with
his 'Figaro,' and every philosopher who ever repeated the one, and
every fine lady who ever applauded the other, have been teaching?
Well, it has come, and I have advised you, M. le Vicomte, to stand by
your order. But I, a poor man, I stand by mine. And for the Committee
of what seems to you, my friend, impossible people, is not any kind
of government"--this more warmly, and as if he were arguing with
himself--"better than none? Understand, Monsieur, the old machinery
has broken down. The Intendant has fled. The people defy the
magistrates. The soldiers side with the people. The _huissiers_ and
tax collectors are--the Good God knows where!"
"Then," I said indignantly, "it is time for the gentry to----"
"Take the lead and govern?" he rejoined. "By whom? A handful of
servants and game-keepers? Against the people? against such a mob as
you saw in the Square at Cahors? Impossible, Monsieur."
"But the world seems to be turning upside down," I said helplessly.
"The greater need of a strong unchanging holdfast--not of the world,"
he answered reverently; and he lifted his hat a moment from his head
and stood in thought. Then he continued: "However, the matter is this.
I hear from Doury that the gentry are gathering at Cahors, with the
view of combining, as you suggest, and checking the people. Now, it
must be useless, and it may be worse. It may lead to the very excesses
they would prevent."
"In Cahors?"
"No, in the country. Buton, be sure, did not speak without warrant. He
is a good man, but he knows some who are not, and there are lonely
chateaux in Quercy, and dainty women who have never known the touch of
a rough hand, and--and children."
"But," I cried aghast, "do you fear a Jacquerie?"
"God knows," he answered solemnly. "The fathers have eaten sour
grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge. How many years have
men spent at Versailles the peasant's blood, life, bone, flesh! To pay
back at last, it may be, of their own! But God forbid, Monsieur, God
forbid. Yet, if ever--it comes now."
* * * * *
When he was gone I could not rest. His words had raised a fever in me.
What might not be afoot, what might not be going on, while I lay idle?
And, presently, to quench my thirst for news, I mounted and rode out
on the way to Cahors. The day was hot, the time for riding ill-chosen;
but the exercise did me good. I began to recover from the giddiness of
thought into which the Cure's fears, coming on the top of Buton's
warning, had thrown me. For a while I had seen things with their eyes;
I had allowed myself to be carried away by their imaginations; and the
prospect of a France ruled by a set of farriers and postillions had
not seemed so bizarre as it began to look, now that I had time,
mounting the long hill, which lies one league from Saux and two from
Cahors, to consider it calmly. For a moment, the wild idea of a whole
gentry fleeing like hares before their peasantry, had not seemed so
very wild.
Now, on reflection, beginning to see things in their normal sizes, I
called myself a simpleton. A Jacquerie? Three centuries and more had
passed since France had known the thing in the dark ages. Could any,
save a child alone in the night, or a romantic maiden solitary in
her rock castle, dream of its recurrence? True, as I skirted St.
Alais, which lies a little aside from the road, at the foot of the
hill, I saw at the village-turning a sullen group of faces that
should have been bent over the hoe; a group, gloomy, discontented,
waiting--waiting, with shock heads and eyes glittering under low
brows, for God knows what. But I had seen such a gathering before; in
bad times, when seed was lacking, or when despair, or some excessive
outrage on the part of the _fermier_, had driven the peasants to fold
their hands and quit the fields. And always it had ended in nothing,
or a hanging at most. Why should I suppose that anything would come of
it now, or that a spark in Paris must kindle a fire here?
In fact, I as good as made up my mind; and laughed at my simplicity.
The Cure had let his predictions run away with him, and Buton's
ignorance and credulity had done the rest. What, I now saw, could be
more absurd than to suppose that France, the first, the most stable,
the most highly civilised of States, wherein for two centuries none
had resisted the royal power and stood, could become in a moment the
theatre of barbarous excesses? What more absurd than to conceive it
turned into the _Petit Trianon_ of a gang of _roturiers_ and
_canaille?_
At this point in my thoughts I broke off, for, as I reached it, a
coach came slowly over the ridge before me and began to descend the
road. For a space it hung clear-cut against the sky, the burly figure
of the coachman and the heads of the two lackeys who swung behind it
visible above the hood. Then it began to drop down cautiously towards
me. The men behind sprang down and locked the wheels, and the
lumbering vehicle slid and groaned downwards, the wheelers pressing
back, the leading horses tossing their heads impatiently. The road
there descends not in _lacets_, but straight, for nearly half a mile
between poplars; and on the summer air the screaming of the wheels and
the jingling of the harness came distinctly to the ear.
Presently I made out that the coach was Madame St. Alais'; and I felt
inclined to turn and avoid it. But the next moment pride came to my
aid, and I shook my reins and went on to meet it.
I had scarcely seen a person except Father Benoit since the affair at
Cahors, and my cheek flamed at the thought of the _rencontre_ before
me. For the same reason the coach seemed to come on very slowly; but
at last I came abreast of it, passed the straining horses, and looked
into the carriage with my hat in my hand, fearing that I might see
Madame, hoping I might see Louis, ready with a formal salute at least.
Politeness required no less.
But sitting in the place of honour, instead of M. le Marquis, or his
mother, or M. le Comte, was one little figure throned in the middle of
the seat; a little figure with a pale inquiring face that blushed
scarlet at sight of me, and eyes that opened wide with fright, and
lips that trembled piteously. It was Mademoiselle!
Had I known a moment earlier that she was in the carriage and alone, I
should have passed by in silence; as was doubtless my duty after what
had happened. I was the last person who should have intruded on her.
But the men, grinning, I dare say, at the encounter--for probably
Madame's treatment of me was the talk of the house--had drawn up, and
I had reined up instinctively; so that before I quite understood that
she was alone, save for two maids who sat with their backs to the
horses, we were gazing at one another--like two fools!
"Mademoiselle!" I said.
"Monsieur!" she answered mechanically.
Now, when I had said that, I had said all that I had a right to say. I
should have saluted, and gone on with that. But something impelled me
to add--"Mademoiselle is going--to St. Alais?"
Her lips moved, but I heard no sound. She stared at me like one under
a spell. The elder of her women, however, answered for her, and said
briskly:----
"Ah, _oui_, Monsieur."
"And Madame de St. Alais?"
"Madame remains at Cahors," the woman answered in the same tone, "with
M. le Marquis, who has business."
Then, at any rate, I should have gone on; but the girl sat looking at
me, silent and blushing; and something in the picture, something in
the thought of her arriving alone and unprotected at St. Alais, taken
with a memory of the lowering faces I had seen in the village,
impelled me to stand and linger; and finally to blurt out what I had
in my mind.
"Mademoiselle," I said impulsively, ignoring her attendants, "if you
will take my advice--you will not go on."
One of the women muttered "_Ma foi!_" under her breath. The other said
"Indeed!" and tossed her head impertinently. But Mademoiselle found
her voice.
"Why, Monsieur?" she said clearly and sweetly, her eyes wide with a
surprise that for the moment overcame her shyness.
"Because," I answered diffidently--I repented already that I had
spoken--"the state of the country is such--I mean that Madame la
Marquise scarcely understands perhaps that--that----"
"What, Monsieur?" Mademoiselle asked primly.
"That at St. Alais," I stammered, "there is a good deal of discontent,
Mademoiselle, and----"
"At St. Alais?" she said.
"In the neighbourhood, I should have said," I answered awkwardly.
"And--and in fine," I continued very much embarrassed, "it would be
better, in my poor opinion, for Mademoiselle to turn and----"
"Accompany Monsieur, perhaps?" one of the women said; and she giggled
insolently.
Mademoiselle St. Alais flashed a look at the offender, that made me
wink. Then with her cheeks burning, she said:----
"Drive on!"
I was foolish and would not let ill alone. "But, Mademoiselle," I
said, "a thousand pardons, but----"
"Drive on!" she repeated; this time in a tone, which, though it was
still sweet and clear, was not to be gainsaid. The maid who had not
offended--the other looked no little scared--repeated the order, the
coach began to move, and in a moment I was left in the road, sitting
on my horse with my hat in my hand, and looking foolishly at nothing.
The straight road running down between lines of poplars, the
descending coach, lurching and jolting as it went, the faces of the
grinning lackeys as they looked back at me through the dust--I well
remember them all. They form a picture strangely vivid and distinct in
that gallery where so many more important have faded into nothingness.
I was hot, angry, vexed with myself; conscious that I had trespassed
beyond the becoming, and that I more than deserved the repulse I had
suffered. But through all ran a thread of a new feeling--a quite new
feeling. Mademoiselle's face moved before my eyes--showing through the
dust; her eyes full of dainty surprise, or disdain as delicate,
accompanied me as I rode. I thought of her, not of Buton or Doury, the
Committee or the Cure, the heat or the dull road. I ceased to
speculate except on the chances of a peasant rising. That, that alone
assumed a new and more formidable aspect; and became in a moment
imminent and probable. The sight of Mademoiselle's childish face had
given a reality to Buton's warnings, which all the Cure's hints had
failed to impart to them.
So much did the thought now harass me, that to escape it I shook up my
horse, and cantered on, Gil and Andre following, and wondering,
doubtless, why I did not turn. But, wholly taken up with the horrid
visions which the blacksmith's words had called up, I took no heed of
time until I awoke to find myself more than half-way on the road to
Cahors, which lies three leagues and a mile from Saux. Then I drew
rein and stood in the road, in a fit of excitement and indecision.
Within the half-hour I might be at Madame St. Alais' door in Cahors,
and, whatever happened then, I should have no need to reproach myself.
Or in a little more I might be at home, ingloriously safe.
Which was it to be? The moment, though I did not know it, was fateful.
On the one hand, Mademoiselle's face, her beauty, her innocence, her
helplessness, pleaded with me strangely, and dragged me on to give the
warning. On the other, my pride urged me to return, and avoid such a
reception as I had every reason to expect.
In the end I went on. In less than half an hour I had crossed the
Valaridre bridge.
Yet it must not be supposed that I decided without doubt, or went
forward without misgiving. The taunts and sneers to which Madame had
treated me were too recent for that; and a dozen times pride and
resentment almost checked my steps, and I turned and went home again.
On each occasion, however, the ugly faces and brutish eyes I had seen
in the village rose before me; I remembered the hatred in which
Gargouf, the St. Alais' steward, was held; I pictured the horrors that
might be enacted before help could come from Cahors; and I went on.
Yet with a mind made up to ridicule; which even the crowded streets,
when I reached them, failed to relieve, though they wore an
unmistakable air of excitement. Groups of people, busily conversing,
were everywhere to be seen; and in two or three places men were
standing on stools--in a fashion then new to me--haranguing knots of
idlers. Some of the shops were shut, there were guards before others,
and before the bakehouses. I remarked a great number of journals and
pamphlets in men's hands, and that where these were, the talk rose
loudest. In some places, too, my appearance seemed to create
excitement, but this was of a doubtful character, a few greeting me
respectfully, while more stared at me in silence. Several asked me, as
I passed, if I brought news, and seemed disappointed when I said I did
not; and at two points a handful of people hooted me.
This angered me a little, but I forgot it in a thing still more
surprising. Presently, as I rode, I heard my name called; and turning,
found M. de Gontaut hurrying after me as fast as his dignity and
lameness would permit. He leaned, as usual, on the arm of a servant,
his other hand holding a cane and snuff-box; and two stout fellows
followed him. I had no reason to suppose that he would appreciate the
service I had done him more highly, or acknowledge it more gratefully,
than on the day of the riot; and my surprise was great when he came
up, his face all smiles.
"Nothing, for months, has given me so much pleasure as this," he said,
saluting me with overwhelming cordiality. "By my faith, M. le Vicomte,
you have outdone us all! You will have such a reception yonder! and
you have brought two good knaves, I see. It is not fair," he
continued, nodding his head with senile jocularity. "I declare it is
not fair. But you know the text? 'There is more joy in heaven over one
sinner that repenteth than----' Ha! ha! Well, we must not be jealous.
You have taught them a lesson; and now we are united."
"But, M. le Baron," I said in amazement, as, obeying his gesture, I
moved on, while he limped jauntily beside me, "I do not understand you
in the least!"
"You don't?"
"No!" I said.
"Ah! you did not think that we should hear it so soon," he replied,
shaking his head sagely. "Oh, I can tell you we are well provided. The
campaign has begun, and the information department has not been
neglected. Little escapes us, and we shall soon set these rogues
right. But, for the fact, that damned rascal Doury let it out. I hear
you told them some fine home-truths. A Committee, the insolents! And
in our teeth! But you gave them a sharp set-back, I hear, M. le
Vicomte. If you had joined it, now----"
He stopped abruptly. A man crossing the street had slightly jostled
him. The old noble lost his temper, and on the instant raised his
stick with a passionate oath, and the man cowered away begging his
pardon. But M. de Gontaut was not to be appeased.
"Vagabond!" he cried after him, in a voice trembling with rage, "you
would throw me down again, would you? We will put you in your place
by-and-by. We will; why, _Dieu!_ when I was young----"
"But, M. le Baron," I said to divert his attention, for two or three
bystanders were casting ugly looks at us, and I saw that it needed
little to bring about a fracas, "are you quite sure that we shall be
able to keep them in check?"
The old noble still trembled, but he drew himself up with a gesture of
pathetic gallantry.
"You shall see!" he cried. "When it comes to hard knocks, you shall
see, Monsieur. But here we are; and there is Madame St. Alais on the
balcony with some of her bodyguard." He paused to kiss his hand, with
the air of a Polignac. "Up there, M. le Vicomte, you will see what you
will see," he continued. "And I--I shall be in luck, too, for I have
brought you."
It seemed to me more like a dream than a reality. A fortnight before,
I had been spurned from this house with insults; I had been bidden
never to enter it again. Now, on the balconies, from which pretty
faces and powdered heads looked down, handkerchiefs fluttered to greet
me. On the stairs, which, crowded with servants and lackeys, shook
under the constant stream of comers and goers, I was received with a
hum of applause. In every corner snuff-boxes were being tapped and
canes handled; the flashing of roguish eyes behind fans vied with the
glitter of mirrors. And through all a lane was made for me. At the
door Louis met me. A little farther on, Madame came half-way across
the room to me. It was a triumph--a triumph which I found
inexplicable, unintelligible, until I learned that the rebuff which I
had administered to the deputation had been exaggerated a dozen times,
nay, a hundred times, until it met even the wishes of the most
violent; while the sober and thoughtful were too glad to hail in my
adhesion the proof of that reaction, which the Royalist party, from
the first day of the troubles, never ceased to expect.
No wonder that, taken by surprise and intoxicated with incense, I let
myself go. To have declared in that company and with Madame's gracious
words in my ears, that I had not come to join them, that I had come on
a different errand altogether, that though I had repelled the
deputation I had no intention of acting against it, would have
required a courage and a hardness I could not boast; while the
circumstances of the deputation, Doury's presumption and Buton's
hints, to say nothing of the violence of the Parisian mob, had not
failed to impress me unfavourably. With a thousand others who had
prepared themselves to welcome reform, I recoiled when I saw the
lengths to which it was tending; and, though nothing had been farther
from my mind when I entered Cahors than to join myself to the St.
Alais faction, I found it impossible to reject their apologies on the
spot, or explain on the instant the real purpose with which I had come
to them.
I was, in fact, the sport of circumstances; weak, it will be said, in
the wrong place and stubborn in the wrong; betraying a boy's petulance
at one time, and a boy's fickleness at another; and now a tool and now
a churl. Perhaps truly. But it was a time of trial; nor was I the only
man or the oldest man who, in those days, changed his opinions, and
again within the week went back; or who found it hard to find a
cockade, white, black, red or tricolour, to his taste.
Besides, flattery is sweet, and I was young; moreover, I had
Mademoiselle in my head and nothing could exceed Madame's
graciousness. I think she valued me the more for my late revolt, and
prided herself on my reduction in proportion as I had shown myself
able to resist.
"Few words are better, M. le Vicomte," she said, with a dignity which
honoured me equally with herself. "Many things have happened since I
saw you. We are neither of us quite of the same opinion. Forgive me. A
woman's word and a man's sword do no dishonour."
I bowed, blushing with pleasure. After a fortnight spent in solitude
these moving groups, bowing, smiling, talking in low, earnest tones of
the one purpose, the one aim, had immense influence with me. I felt
the contagion. I let Madame take me into her confidence.
"The King"--it was always the King with her--"in a week or two the
King will assert himself. As yet his ear has been abused. It will
pass; in the meantime we must take our proper places. We must arm our
servants and keepers, repress disorder and resist encroachment."
"And the Committee, Madame?"
She tapped me, smiling, with the ends of her dainty fingers.
"We will treat it as you treated it," she said.
"You think that you will be strong enough?"
"We," she answered.
"We?" I said, correcting myself with a blush.
"Why not? How can it be otherwise?" she replied, looking proudly round
her. "Can you look round and doubt it, M. le Vicomte?"
"But France?" I said.
"We are France," she retorted with a superb gesture.
And certainly the splendid crowd that filled her rooms was almost
warrant for the words; a crowd of stately men and fair women such as I
have only seen once or twice since those days. Under the surface there
may have been pettiness and senility; the exhaustion of vice; jealousy
and lukewarmness and dissension; but the powder and patches, the silks
and velvets of the old _regime_, gave to all a semblance of strength,
and at least the appearance of dignity. If few were soldiers, all wore
swords and could use them. The fact that the small sword, so powerful
a weapon in the duel, is useless against a crowd armed with stones and
clubs had not yet been made clear. Nothing seemed more easy than for
two or three hundred swordsmen to rule a province.
At any rate I found nothing but what was feasible in the notion; and
with little real reluctance, if no great enthusiasm, I pinned on the
white cockade. Putting all thoughts of present reform from my mind, I
agreed that order--order was the one pressing need of the country.
On that all were agreed, and all were hopeful. I heard no misgivings,
but a good deal of vapouring, in which poor M. de Gontaut, with the
palsy almost upon him, had his part. No one dropped a hint of danger
in the country, or of a revolt of the peasants. Even to me, as I stood
in the brilliant crowd, the danger grew to seem so remote and unreal,
that, delicacy as well as the fear of ridicule, kept me silent. I
could not speak of Mademoiselle without awkwardness, and so the
warning which I had come to give died on my lips. I saw that I should
be laughed at, I fancied myself deceived, and I was silent.
It was only when, after promising to return next day, I stood at the
door prepared to leave, and found myself alone with Louis, that I let
a word fall. Then I asked him with a little hesitation if he thought
that his sister was quite safe at St. Alais.
"Why not?" he said easily, with his hand on my shoulder.
"The 'trouble is not in the town only," I hinted. "Nor perhaps the
worst of the trouble."
He shrugged his shoulders. "You think too much of it, _mon cher_," he
answered. "Believe me, now that we are at one the trouble is over."
And that was the evening of the 4th of August, the day on which the
Assembly in Paris renounced at a single sitting all immunities,
exemptions, and privileges, all feudal dues, and fines, and rights,
all tolls, all tithes, the salt tax, the game laws, _capitaineries!_
At one sitting, on that evening; and Louis thought that the trouble
was over!