VÆ VICTIS!
(1)
All that night Fortuné de la Vireville sat in the desecrated church
of St. Gildas at Auray, his back against a pillar. Hundreds of his
comrades were there with him, so crowded together that it was
difficult to find room to lie at length. He was fasting, as they
all were, since the evening before, his wounded arm was inflamed
and aching, but his thoughts were with René, stiff and stark by
now, most probably, on the sandhills or the shore; with Le Goffic,
helpless at St. Pierre; with his scattered and leaderless Bretons.
Before his eyes, in that encumbered church, lit only by a single
lamp, rushed in a stupefying panorama all the events of that long
day of disaster, from his ominous waking in the early morning to
the last scene in the little fort--and its aftermath. He remembered
how, as the grenadiers drew up their long column of prisoners on
the shore, the rain had ceased, and the sun had come out; even the
wind, which had wrought them so much calamity, seemed, too late,
to be abating. But by three o'clock in the afternoon, when, faint
with hunger and fatigue, they arrived at Fort Penthièvre, the
downpour had begun again, and it rained in torrents as they marched,
for eight hours or more, towards Auray. At the head of the column
walked Sombreuil, supporting the old Bishop of Dol, who, on account
of his age and infirmities, had not been able to embark for the
English fleet, and who, in any case, as he said, had made the
sacrifice of his life. And because, before they started, every man
had given his parole not to attempt escape, they marched for all
those weary hours through a strongly Royalist countryside, half
of the time in the friendly darkness, with an insufficient and
fatigued escort, and not one broke his word. Thus, in the dead
of night, they had reached Auray, and had been huddled into its
various churches.
Here in St. Gildas were massed all ages and ranks, veterans and
boys, officers and private soldiers alike, and the wounded, of
whom there were not a few, lay in their rain-soaked clothes on
the stone floor with no care but what their empty-handed companions
could give them. Here was Gesril du Papeu, the brine scarcely
dry in his hair, who had swum back again from safety to share
the fate of his comrades; and Charles de Lamoignon, who had carried
his wounded younger brother to a boat, himself forbearing to embark;
and men with names like Salignac-Fénelon and Broglie, and the
seventeen-year-old Louis de Talhouët, who had passed, a prisoner,
through the estates of his own family on the way to Auray; and
many another. . . .
* * * * *
Somewhere between three and four in the morning an émigré named
de Manny, whom La Vireville had known some years previously, came
past, and, finding a little vacant space by the Chouan leader, sat
down, and recalled himself to his memory.
"You have been in Holland since then?" inquired Fortuné, looking
at the faded sky-blue uniform with its orange cuffs. The fact was
equally proclaimed by the black cockade which marked him as one of
the second--Sombreuil's--contingent.
"Yes; I was--and am--in the Légion de Béon, and had the luck to
escape when the Republicans massacred eighty of us as we marched
out at the surrender of Bois-le-Duc. This time----" he shrugged
his shoulders.
"We surrendered on terms, even if the capitulation was only verbal,"
said La Vireville, without much conviction. "There are plenty of
witnesses to that."
"Yes," retorted de Manny; "and what are the chances of the capitulation
being observed?"
La Vireville said nothing.
"There is one man who will not escape in any case," went on the
lieutenant of Béon, looking towards the tombstone a little way
off where Sombreuil sat talking to some of his officers. "He is
exempt from the capitulation--he exempted himself. And do you know,
La Vireville, that he was summoned by the English Admiralty to
Portsmouth, to take command of us of the black cockade, on the very
eve of his wedding day? The summons came at midnight, and he obeyed
it instantly; but he was to have been married on the morrow to a
lady whom he adored."
La Vireville made a sudden movement, as if his posture irked him.
"How very dramatic!" he observed drily. "Was the lady sorry or
relieved, I wonder?"
De Manny looked at him, astonished at the tone, but the speaker's
face was now in shadow from a neighbouring pillar.
"I understand that she was heart-broken--that they both were. But
what makes you ask such a question? Have you anything against M.
de Sombreuil?"
"Nothing whatever," replied the Chouan, shifting his wounded arm
to a more comfortable position. "I pity him from the bottom of my
heart. But the lady will marry someone else, you may be sure."
"Sombreuil will be difficult to replace, however," said de Manny
meditatively, looking again at the young colonel of hussars, who
had indeed every gift of mind and body to commend him both to man
and woman.
La Vireville gave a smothered laugh. "Good heavens, man, have you
not yet learnt that to a woman's heart no one is irreplaceable? She
can always find somebody else . . . if she have not already found
him," he added, almost inaudibly. "But it is half-past three; if
you will excuse me I shall try to sleep a little." And, putting
his head back against the stone, he closed his eyes.
The officer of Béon studied him for a moment, in the dim light,
with a curiosity which even the desperate nature of their common
situation could not blunt, before he, too, settled himself to
snatch a little repose.
(2)
Next morning some charitable hand threw in a little bread through
the ruined windows of St. Gildas. Later, the muster-roll was called,
and the officers, separated from the men, were marched to the town
prison, though some eighteen hundred émigrés were drafted off to
Vannes and other places.
La Vireville was among those who remained at Auray, to witness the
indefatigable devotion of the women of that town to the prisoners.
These cooked for them, brought them food, running the gauntlet of
the pleasantries of their guards, took messages for their families,
and tried--in a few cases successfully--to smuggle them out of
prison. The days passed. Time was punctuated by the summons to
go before the military commission, by batches of twenty, every
morning and evening. Few came back. Sombreuil, the old Bishop of
Dol, and twenty priests were shot at Vannes on the twenty-eighth
of July, just a week after the surrender, and it was abundantly
clear that the capitulation, if it had ever existed save as a
tragic misunderstanding, would not be observed. It was for this
that they had given their paroles, that those who from fatigue had
fallen out during the march from Quiberon had voluntarily come into
Auray next morning and surrendered themselves. . . . Even before
trial, therefore, they all prepared for death, and since, against
all expectation, a priest was allowed them, they went to their last
confessions in a little bare room at the top of the prison--the
only room that could boast a chair.
One of the military commissions to try the prisoners sat over the
market of Auray, that remarkable building with the great roof which
La Vireville remembered well enough, having seen it when, at the
head of his gars, he had helped to take the town a few short weeks
before. But the other was in the little chapel of the Congrégation
des Femmes, and it was here that he was tried, and condemned, as
an émigré taken with arms in his hand. No reference was made by the
tribunal to his exploits in the Chouannerie of Northern Brittany;
it was not necessary.
There was still a picture over the altar in the other little chapel
to which he was taken, with the rest of that day's condemned,
for his last night. A few mattresses, even, had been put in the
sacristy, but most of the prisoners were of the mind of the old
Breton gentleman, M. de Kergariou, and needed nothing save a light
to pray by. Scattered about the chapel was a pathetic flotsam,
the possessions of former occupants who also had spent here their
last night on earth; and La Vireville, picking up a little book
of prayers marked with the name of a boy of fourteen, Paul Le
Vaillant de la Ferrière, a volunteer in du Dresnay, who had been
wounded, like him, at Ste. Barbe, knew by it that, despite his
extreme youth, he too had been sent to the slaughter.
In this little place Fortuné lay down for his last living sleep.
He had no desire to meet death with bravado; it was, he felt,
more seemly to meet it with devotion, as so many had done, and
were doing now. If he could not compass that he had been too
long accustomed to the daily thought of it to fear it. Everything
had ended for him on the morning when he broke his sword. He
wished, it was true, that he could have left his mother in better
circumstances, but before he quitted Jersey he had had the Prince
de Bouillon's promise of a pension for her if he did not return.
She would grieve for him, yes; but she would not have had him
outlive his comrades. And she, too, would sleep soundly soon.
Poor little Anne-Hilarion! For him he was really sorry. The child
loved his father so much; he would find it hard to believe that
he would never see him again. (For he was certain now that René de
Flavigny, even if he had survived, had never reached safety.) And
there had been no chance of fulfilling his own promise; escape
had never even looked his way. . . . After all, Providence had
been merciful to him, just where it had seemed most merciless. . . .
He had no son, and therefore no anguish of farewell.
And so, disturbed neither by thoughts of the morrow, by the low-voiced
conversation of two friends near him, nor by the prayers of others,
Fortuné de la Vireville slept soundly, as has happened to not a
few in like circumstances.
(3)
He woke a little before four o'clock, and heard an old émigré, M.
de Villavicencio, standing under one of the windows, read the
prayers for the dying to two others, much younger. The old man
was beginning the _Profisceretur_ when the tramp of feet was heard
outside. The chapel door was opened, letting in the air of the
early morning; soldiers stood there with packets of cords. Just
for one moment there was silence, and, in it, the rapturous song
of a thrush; then M. de Villavicencio finished the prayer.
Fortuné got to his feet and tried to put some order into his attire.
As he did this he cast a sudden keen glance at the captive who
happened to be nearest to him, a man a good ten years younger than
himself, fair-haired and slim, and pitiably nervous.
"I believe they have recently adopted the happy plan of tying us
together two and two," he said to him quietly. "Might I have the
honour of being your companion?"
The young émigré was obliged to put his hand over his mouth to
steady its traitorous twitching before he could reply. Then he
said, out of a dry throat:
"You are very good, Monsieur, but surely there is someone else
you would rather . . . die with? . . ."
The Chouan shook his head with a little smile, and as they stood
side by side waiting for the soldiers to tie them together, the
younger man pulled out from his breast the miniature of a girl,
and showed it to him without a word.
"Believe me, it will not hurt," said La Vireville in a low voice
as their turn came. "I have seen men shot by a firing-party before
now. It is over so quickly that they know nothing about it." (Perhaps
the youth would have the luck never to find out that this statement
was not always true.) "It is nothing near so painful as being tied
up like this when one is winged.--De grâce, corporal, put that
cord round my right arm instead, if my friend has no objection!"
The two changed places, and La Vireville restored his wounded arm
to the sling. Before the cord was knotted the officer in charge of
the party began to read out the names. Every man answered to his own.
"La Vireville, Fortuné."
"Present."
The officer looked up from the list. "You are not to go with this
batch. Why the devil have you tied him up, corporal?"
"_Not to . . . not to go . . ._" stammered La Vireville, thinking
he must be already dead--and dreaming. "It must be a mistake--you
are confusing me with someone else!"
"Untie him!" said the officer briefly, offering no explanation;
and the corporal, grumbling a little, obeyed.
"This is horrible!" said La Vireville to his comrade, a comrade
no longer. "Dieu, why did I answer to my name! If I had had the
least idea, you should have answered instead."
"You are wanted to give somebody else the courage you have given
me," answered the young man with an attempt at a smile. "You permit,
Monsieur?" And he kissed him.
* * * * *
A little later--it was still not much after sunrise--they were
marched off, two and two, through the quiet streets of the little
town towards the red meadow, the 'martyrs' field,' without him,
and he sat alone in the deserted chapel, stunned, emptied of any
conscious feeling, even of relief. And later still he heard, over
the mile or so of distance, the volley which told him that they had
reached their journey's end. Fortuné de la Vireville bowed his head
and prayed for their souls as he had never prayed for his own--as
he would not have prayed, perhaps, had he shared that volley.