Marguerite shrunk back from him, and held out both hands, with the palms
outward, as if to protect herself from severe questioning.
He seized her hands and held them firmly.
“One thing—one word. Has Count Mirabeau ever spoken of love to you?”
“To me. No! No, a thousand times no!”
“But you visit him?”
“Yes.”
“With the consent of dame Doudel? of your mother perhaps?”
“They know nothing of it.”
“And this is all you will tell me?”
“Yes, it is all. Monsieur, a moment ago you said, ‘Trust me.’ I now say,
trust _me_.”
“I will—I do!” exclaimed the young man, pressing her hands to his lips;
“only say to me one word that my heart is thirsting to hear again, that
one word, ‘I love you! I love you—and no one else!’”
“Marguerite laid her hands together, and holding them toward him, said,
with that seriousness which springs from exquisite truth,
“I love you, and no one else!”
This scene had been passing in that grand amphitheatre, amid the dying
music and the tread of departing feet. Still it was a solitude, for no
one, so far as they could see, was near the seats they occupied, and the
whole world was a blank to them.
CHAPTER CIII.
PERFECT RECONCILIATION.
St. Just and Marguerite were so completely absorbed in each other, that
they did not observe a group of gayly-dressed women, with bright ribbons
streaming from their garments, who came laughing and dancing into the
arena, chasing each other up the steps of the abandoned altar, and
whirling off into the open space, while snatches of patriotic songs
broke from their lips, now in chorus, and again full of riotous discord.
Scenes like this had been too frequent that day for any especial
interest to be granted them, and the lovers scarcely heeded this one in
the ecstasy of their renewed happiness. Marguerite, unmindful that she
was seen, held out her hands in childlike earnestness, the young man
seized them, and covered them with kisses.
One of the dancers separated from the rest, and leaping from one turf
seat to another, came softly down behind the lovers, laughing quietly,
and with a finger to her lips, as a sign that her companions should keep
up their revel, and leave her to the mischief in hand.
The young man, feeling her shadow upon him, looked up suddenly. A frown
crept over his face, and he motioned the woman away with his hand. But
Louison Brisot was not a person who could be intimidated by a look or an
imperious gesture. She gave a leap, and sat down at the feet of
Marguerite, laughing.
Marguerite recognized her face, and uttering a cry of dread, clung to
the young man, trembling violently.
There was a touch of malice in Louison’s laugh now, for she hated the
poor girl, whom her voice alone had the power to terrify.
“Ho! ho! citoyen St. Just. Are you here with this white-faced cheat?
What if I tell of this at the Jacobins to-night?”
“Tell it where and how you please,” answered the young man, starting up,
and half lifting the frightened girl from the turf. “I answer to no man
or woman for the way in which I spend my time.”
“Do you know how she spends her time, and where? Ask Count Mirabeau.
Watch his door in the Chausee d’Antin, and see who creeps in and out
like a cat.”
Marguerite cast a wild, piteous look at St. Just. She knew this woman,
and her terror was complete.
“Ask her if she, born of the people, is not an aristocrat at heart; a
traitoress, a——”
“Hush!” commanded St. Just; and his beautiful face became fierce and
stormy with indignation. “With those foul lips dare you revile the
angels? Come away, Marguerite, the atmosphere is poisoned around us.”
Louison Brisot started up pale and fierce with the sting of his words.
She cast a withering glance, first upon St. Just, then upon the
trembling young creature by his side. The laugh was gone from her face,
bitter envy made her look fierce and old. She turned from them in
silence, more threatening than her most boisterous words, and stepping
cautiously from seat to seat, left them.
St. Just turned to the young girl, who saw her enemy disappear with
strained eyes and aching heart.
“Marguerite! Marguerite!” he cried, gently disturbed, “how is this?
Surely, you are not afraid of that brazen amazon?”
“Afraid? No, no, it is not that,” faltered the girl. “It is her words
that still tremble in my heart.”
“Her words! What harm can they do you or me? They were only insolent
bravado.”
“She called you by a name. She seemed to threaten you with harm?”
“Yes. What then?”
“Ah, monsieur! you are a member of the Assembly, and she boasts of her
power there.”
“Yes, the youngest man in that august body, but not young enough to be
afraid of this woman.”
“She is the friend of Robespierre?”
“Robespierre is an honest man, frugal, moral, a true patriot.”
“And of Marat?”
“That brutal man is useful to France, and will not become my enemy.”
“Let me go home,” pleaded the girl; “my heart aches, I am faint.”
“Marguerite, my poor child, do not look so miserably pale. Has that
accursed woman driven the smile from your face forever?”
“Forever! Oh, my God! this is hard! You are the queen’s enemy if these
men are your friends!”
“Marguerite, you drive me wild. What does this mean? I have said with my
whole heart that I love you.”
“Notwithstanding the secret in my heart?”
“Foolish child, you have no secret. I guess it all now. You love the
queen?”
“With all my life—all my soul!”
“And the king?”
“The king also; but you, monsieur, are the enemy of both.”
“This is not all your secret. Count Mirabeau has sold himself to the
court.”
Marguerite was silent.
“He has held communication with the queen, and a little girl that I know
of was his messenger.”
“Who has dared to say this?”
“I will tell you. Dame Doudel is my friend.”
“Ah, yes!”
“Dame Tillery is her sister. Think you she could visit St. Cloud and not
tell all the particulars?”
Marguerite almost smiled.
“Besides, this woman Brisot was a spy upon you, and brought her news to
Robespierre, who told it to his friends. She denied it all afterward,
but that did not change our belief.”
Marguerite looked bewildered. St. Just smiled.
“Now where is the secret? Have I not known it and kept silence even when
I suspected more?”
“But you are still a Jacobin—still an enemy to the royal family.”
“What is the meaning of all you have seen here to-day? Have not the
people and their king taken an oath of amity before God and the nation?
Even now you can hear the thunder of the cannon scattering this good
news to the four winds of heaven.”
Marguerite’s face brightened.
“Ah! it is so; in my terror I forget that. The people and the king are
one. I have not committed the sin of loving her enemy.”
Her little hand crept into his, the soft lovelight came into her eyes
again.
CHAPTER CIV.
A THEFT AND AN INSULT.
That night there was a wild, riotous ball at the site of the Bastille.
The Cour de Government had been cleared and garnished by a thousand busy
hands. Temporary draw-bridges, arched with lighted garlands, were thrown
over the half-drained ditch, dimly reflected in its sluggish waters.
Around the court nine pyramids of light represented the nine awful
towers, which had frowned on Paris more than four hundred years. These
pyramids shed their radiance on a circle of tri-colored tents, each
surmounted by a streaming banner, all chained together by great garlands
of flowers, gorgeous flags, and lights that kindled them like stars. On
each side the draw-bridge two noble pyramids rose forty feet from the
ground, from which thousands of colored lamps ran downward in rivers of
light, quivering, glowing, flinging more than the radiance of noonday on
the gorgeous arena, and kindling up the broken ruins beyond, till their
shadows grew darker than midnight. Between these noble pillars rose an
arch, on which eighty-three flags of the departments of France fluttered
to the night wind, and from the centre fell a mat of flowers, on which
was written in characters of glowing fire, “Here we dance!”
The tents were full; groups stood on the draw-bridges, looking upon the
brilliant scene, with the ruins of the old prison lying blackly behind
them. The arena was thronged with merry dancers; men and women of all
grades and every possible costume mingled in that strange scene. From a
great central tent came bursts of music, wild, riotous, and
revolutionary as the people who danced to it. Rude, half-clothed men,
crowned with laurel and oak-leaves, reeled through the dancers; women,
whose very presence there was odious, crowned each other with laurel,
and wheeled in bacchanalian groups around the blazing pillars of fire.
Late at night, when the revel was at its highest, an old man came
through that radiant arch of flowers and flame, and stood for a moment
dazzled by the scene that eddied around him. The crowd outside had
seized him in its current, and breaking at the entrance, left him
stranded there, with the light pouring down upon his broad forehead and
silvery beard with the force of an August sun.
Some women, who were chanting the Marseillaise in the nearest tent,
flocked out at the sight of this august head, shouting, “The prisoner!
The prisoner of the Bastille!” surrounded him in triple rows, and hedged
him in with a chain of wreathing arms.
“Bring us flowers! Bring us wine, laurel, and oak-leaves! Let us crown
the martyr of the Bastille, and pour a libation to liberty. Liberty and
fraternity!”
They forced this old man into the center of the arena, arresting the
dancers with their shouts, and crowding them back with remorseless
enthusiasm. Some leaped up and tore flowers from the swinging festoons;
others snatched laurel from the bacchanalian crowns of their companions.
Almost instantaneously a garland was fastened on the old man’s head, and
a goblet of wine was held to his lips, while the crowd whirled, a human
maelstrom, around him, shouting, singing, and tossing their arms upward
in a tempest of insane delight.
The prisoner stood a moment bewildered. He put aside the wine-cup, which
one of the women held to his lips, but so unsteadily that it reddened
his beard, and taking the laurel wreath from his head, flung it from
him.
“Let me go,” he said, with gentle impatience; “I do not like this.”
They would have kept him by force, but some among the crowd saw that he
was feeble and grew deadly pale; so they forced a passage for him out of
that ring of unsexed women, and allowed the old man to make his own way
through the crowd, across one of the draw-bridges, and into the black
ruins beyond.
After the first impulse no one cared to follow the old man, and,
thinking himself quite unobserved, he crept down into the darkness of
his cell, and called in a soft, broken voice for his little companion,
to which he began whispering something in rapturous haste, as if he
really thought the tiny creature could understand him.
Notwithstanding the old man thought himself alone, there was something
hidden there among the shadows, far more crafty and keen of wit than the
poor little mouse, faithful as it had been.
Close down by the cell, hidden behind a fragment of rock, crouched
Zamara, the dwarf. Hour after hour he had followed the old man with the
vigilance of a hound and the cunning of a fox. At last he had tracked
him to his lair, and heard the low, pathetic words with which he told
his happiness to the little companion, whose sympathy always seemed
ready for him.
“Ah, my little friend! I have such news to tell you; that is right,
creep close into my bosom. It is a warm heart, you will sleep against
to-night. Did I tell you, little one, a great work has been done since
morning? Feel the ring on my finger; do not be afraid, it will not hurt
you. To you and me it is a blessing always. Years and years ago it was
taken from me and put on the hand of a beautiful, good woman, born to
great misfortunes without deserving them. But for this, they could not
have kept me here till the old towers were torn down over our heads; but
for this her bitter enemies would never have prevailed. But I have it
once more, and am strong again—young and strong. See, my hand trembles
no longer. You can sit firmly upon it and look into my face. Is it not
that of a powerful man? Tell me if the blood does not mount into my
cheek? I think so—I think so, for it feels like wine about my heart.
To-morrow, sweetheart, we will set about the great work. It is for us to
save the daughter of my dear old mistress, how I cannot yet see; but my
strength lies here: with this on my finger, I feel it in me to heave
mountains from their base. What, restless, sweetheart? Do you hear some
one? Be quiet, none of those rude people will come here—with all their
floods of light they cannot find us out. What, again? It may be that our
Marguerite is coming—but then how could she get through the revel out
yonder? Hush now: do not attempt to get away. Surely, you are not afraid
of _her_? We must find all this out to-morrow. Now that God has given us
back a great power, no one shall be unhappy. We will make sure of that!”
The old man paused here and seemed to listen; then he spoke again, but
with soft sleepiness, as if the great fatigue of the day were settling
gently down upon his faculties.
“It was nothing. She could not have come to-night, the crowd is so
great. That is well; creep into my bosom—happiness makes me sleepy.”
There was a faint, hushing whisper after this, followed by the regular
breathing of a man in his first sleep.
Full half an hour Zamara sat in the shadows, waiting for a certainty
that the slumber of that old man was profound. Then he arose to his
hands and knees, paused, listened, and crept forward stealthily, like a
fox upon its prey.
The old man was lying upon his back, with one hand folded over his
bosom, the other lay supinely upon the stone floor, just where a gleam
of moonlight cut across it, revealing the golden serpent coiled around
one finger. Zamara touched the ring. It circled the delicate finger
loosely—age and suffering had shrunken that hand almost to a shadow. The
fingers were bent downward: another touch and the ring slipped to the
floor, with a faint click that took away the dwarf’s breath; for an
instant, it disturbed the sleeper, who moved a little, leaving the ring
entirely exposed.
Softly as a cat stretches out its claw, Zamara’s fingers crept toward
his prize and fastened upon it. Then he groveled backward out of the
cell, drew a sharp breath, leaped to his feet, and fled across the
ruins.
A woman sat in one of the tents drinking wine from a horn cup, which one
of the _sans culottes_ had just filled for her from a cask which stood
on one end in front of the tent. A hole had been torn in the top,
through which he thrust the cup, and drew it forth dripping. Three times
he had filled the cup, yet the woman was thirsty, and held it out for
more, with a rollicking laugh, which the dwarf recognized and hated. But
the tent was near the entrance and he was obliged to pass her. In his
confusion he ran against Mirabeau, whose policy it was to show himself
at such popular gatherings, where he usually made great capital by his
familiarity with the lower classes. He was talking to a group of
workmen, who gathered around him, with some earnestness, though his face
bore an expression of intense fatigue, when Zamara was hustled violently
against him by the crowd.
Impatient and suffering from the absolute pain of a disease, which was
making rapid inroads on him, he seized the dwarf with one hand, lifted
him up, pitched him into the crowd, and, turning his back, went on with
what he had been saying.
It happened that the dwarf fell just within the tent where Louison
Brisot sat, and his sudden advent shook the cup in her hand, spilling
the wine upon her; the rest she dashed over him with a rude laugh. The
dwarf struggled to his feet, livid with rage. A word, bitter with coarse
insult, broke from him, and clenching his tiny fist, he shook it
viciously.
“He has not had enough,” cried Louison, addressing the _sans culottes_.
“Do you know who he is, citoyen? Well, you have heard of Madame Du Berry
and her _famillier_? This is her imp.”
The man thus appealed to seized Zamara, without a word dashed his foot
against the head of the wine-cask, and plunged the dwarf in, roaring
with laughter as the red liquid surged over the edges, and crimsoned his
own legs and feet.
A storm of coarse merriment followed this act. The cask was not large
enough to drown the poor wretch, but he was drawn out frenzied with
rage, and dripping from head to foot with the wine some in the crowd
coveted.
Louison went up to him, laughing till she could hardly speak.
“Go back to your mistress,” she said, “and tell her if she lets her imp
loose again among the patriots of France, he will be found the next
morning hung up at some lantern, like a spider caught in its own web.”
Zamara only answered by a look that checked her laughter on the instant.
“The venomous snake,” she muttered, “and I have trodden on him.”
Yes, she had trodden on him, and so had the proud man whose ambition it
was to rule France.
CHAPTER CV.
THE SECRET OF THE RING.
Zamara left the site of the Bastille, burning with rage. Every step he
took deepened his bitter humiliation. Keenly sensitive about his
diminutive form, he felt the cruel sarcasm this woman had put upon him
with double force. To half-drown him in a cask, scarcely large enough to
hold a child, was a stinging insult, for which he would, some day, have
vengeance—vengeance on her, and on the man who had found out his fraud,
and made it of no avail. But he still held the ring, and the thought of
the gold it would purchase was some consolation.
Zamara went to his own room when he reached the residence of his
mistress. His wine-stained garments were soon changed, and he sat down
to examine the mysterious prize that had wrought such fatal
consequences, at least to one life. It was an Egyptian scarabee,
curiously carved, and of a dull green, around which a tiny serpent
coiled itself, fold upon fold, shooting its head clear through the
beetle, where it had been perforated for the string, upon which these
antique gems were often gathered in a necklace for the monarch whose
tomb they enriched. This serpent, Zamara truly guessed, had been
attached to the scarabee after it was drawn from the tomb, after a sleep
of some thousands of years. The head of the serpent was large in
proportion to the body, and flattened, like that of an adder before it
springs.
The dwarf examined the mechanism of this ring. He began to comprehend
that it might be made terrible without magic. He searched the scarabee
cautiously with his finger, and at the extremity found a tiny spring,
scarcely larger than a grain of mustard-seed. In breathless trepidation
he touched this spring, when the head of the serpent curved downward,
the jaws opened, and through them shot a ruby tongue, slender and sharp
as the finest needles. One dart of this subtile tongue, and the head
writhed itself back into place.
The fire that shot over the dusky face of the dwarf was lurid. He
understood the meaning of this delicate mechanism, and the sweetness of
certain revenge was already in his bad heart. He went to a little
cabinet, and took from a secret compartment a tiny earthenware jar,
which contained a morsel of some apparently resinous substance. This he
examined carefully, gloating over it with eager satisfaction. Opening a
small knife, he was about to take some on its point, but a selfish
after-thought seized upon him.
“Not yet,” he said; “there must be no danger to _her_, for she alone
stands between me and such brutes as nearly murdered me to-night. Ho,
the ring shall first win me gold, and then, oh! such sweet revenge. That
fierce count has twice laid his great, strong hands upon Zamara—thrice
heaped insult on him. Bulk makes him brave; but wit is stronger than
weight, and revenge sharper than either.”
With these words, Zamara locked up the scarabee with the little jar, and
crept into bed, muttering to himself, and lay in thoughtful wakefulness
until the day dawned. Then he arose, and once more examined the beetle,
to make sure that no secret of its mechanism had escaped him.
As early as it was possible to see his mistress, the dwarf went to her
room, a richly frescoed boudoir, crowded with the gorgeous, but
tarnished furniture that had been saved out of her royal degradation.
She lay upon a stiff backed, gilded couch, in a loose, morning robe of
soiled brocade, and turned her head indolently as the dwarf came in.
“Mistress, I have brought you the ring. You will believe now that Zamara
speaks the truth.”
Du Berry started up, fully aroused.
“Let me look at it. No, no, no! I will not touch it. That strange man
said it was fatal to every one but himself. The poor queen has found it
so. Give it back to the old man. He shall not be despoiled a second
time.”
The Countess Du Berry spoke hastily, and with shuddering emphasis. She
had a nervous terror of the ring, which was, indeed, a proof of her own
great crime.
“Take it back! Take it back! I have no wish for it!”
“But, madame would not believe me when I said the queen had given it up.
She promised gold if I would let her have a sight of it. Has madame
forgotten?”
“No, no! I never forget! But take the thing away! There is the
money—count it for yourself. My heart is lighter, now that I am sure
that thing can no longer harm the queen. Take your money there.”
Madame flung her purse, heavy with clinking gold, at the dwarf’s feet,
and turning upon her couch, hid her face among its silken cushions,
almost as much afraid as if a real serpent had been threatening her;
for, with all her reckless audacity, the woman was a miserable coward at
heart; and in this case superstition made her abject.
Zamara went out from her presence, weighing the purse of gold in his
palm, and gloating over it.
“Ah, ha!” he muttered. “The ring frightens her. It is enough that this
poor, harmless beetle has slept so long in a tomb; to her it is
saturated with death, but I know how to make it harmless as a dove, or
venomous as an asp. It shall be one to my friends, the other to my foes.
After that the old prisoner may get it if he can.”
Again the dwarf opened his cabinet and took the earthen jar from its
hiding-place. This time he opened the jaws of that serpent ring, and
filled them with the soft, resinous paste, which he took from the jar
with the sharp point of a penknife. Having thus charged the serpent with
venom, he laid it carefully away in one of the most secret drawers of
his cabinet.
“We must wait,” he said, muttering to himself, as was his habit. “They
will not let me approach near enough until last night is forgotten. My
looks frightened her, I could see that. It needs time and infinite
craft—but that is nothing. ‘Revenge is a dish that can be eaten cold.’
It is locked up there, and I can wait.”
CHAPTER CVI.
THE OLD MAN FALLS ASLEEP.
That morning the prisoner of the Bastille awoke and felt for the ring,
which was like a promise of immortality to him. It was gone. He started
up in wild amaze, refusing to believe the evidence of his own senses. He
shook his garments, removed them one by one, examining every fold. He
threaded the thick silver of his beard with both trembling hands, and
interrogated the keen-eyed mouse, which stood looking at him with almost
human intelligence from a corner of the cell, where it had fled on being
ejected from the bosom of its old friend.
It was gone. When the old man was sure of this he went wild in his
passionate despair, and rushed out among the bleak ruins, calling on God
to take vengeance on the wretch who had despoiled him.
His cries brought no echo of sympathy from any human voice: for even
then the ruins of the Bastille were like the heaped up lava of a burnt
district. Across the moat a few workmen were busy striking the tents,
and taking down the blackened lamps which had been stars of flame the
night before; but they only paused long enough to laugh at the old man’s
wild gestures, and went off to another part of the grounds.
Then the poor prisoner, half demented by his loss, began the most
patient search that ever absorbed a human life. Day after day, hour
after hour, he wandered over those ruins, peering behind the stones,
fathoming crevices, searching the clefts of each broken wall, and
questioning every person he met, if anything strange had been seen, but
in all cases, refusing with meek cunning, to disclose the thing he
searched for.
Thus for weeks and months the old man spent half his time in the ruins
searching, searching, searching for the ring, which never came back to
him. And so he grew weaker and weaker as hope died out in him; sometimes
sitting whole days in the solitude of his cell, but always with his eyes
roving over the floor and walls, as if he still expected them to give up
his treasure.
When her father did not come as usual to the house, which seldom
happened now, Marguerite always sought him in his cell, with a basket on
her arm, and fed him with bread soaked in wine, or gave him delicate
meats cooked by her own hand; for she saw that the old prisoner did not
care for anything, and shrunk more and more into his hiding-place, as if
he longed to evade everything but herself and his little dungeon
companion.
One day, when she came upon her gentle mission, the old man looked
earnestly in her face a long time, then he shook his head with a sad,
wavering movement, and dropped his eyes.
“Change, change—everywhere change,” he murmured. “The same face, yet not
the same. What is it that fills her with such holy light. Tell me little
one, what it means?”
“It means,” answered Marguerite, with the rich quietness of supreme
content, “that I am beloved—that I love.”
“Beloved? Love? Ah! I heard of such things once. Then, I think, some one
loved me; but that was a long, long time ago.”
“But you are still loved,” said Marguerite, laying her hand on his.
“I should be, if I could find _that_!” answered the old man; “but it is
too late, I am feeble, and cannot search further—very, very feeble!”
“Take more of the wine,” pleaded Marguerite. “If you would only go home
with me.”
“No, no; this is my home. I need no other.”
Marguerite pressed the shadowy hand clasped in hers.
“But some day, when I have a home of my own, you will bring little
marmousette and live with me.”
“A home of your own?” questioned the old man. “When will you have that?”
“When France is quiet again. It is a sweet, sweet secret, which you
shall know when you care to listen, father.”
“Ah, if I could find _that_, you should be very happy, Therese.”
“But I am happy, wonderfully happy, father. You understand when a girl
is loved, the wealth of the whole world is hers.”
The old man shook his head; he was very weak and even this sweet talk
wearied him. Marguerite saw it and her heart thrilled with apprehension.
“Oh come with me, father,” she pleaded. “I cannot bear to see you
sleeping on these damp stones while I have a bed. Come, and you shall
know once more what love is.”
“Not now. I like the stones; a bed makes me ache in all my limbs.
Besides, my little friend likes no place as well as this.”
“Poor little marmousette, it must be a small place which cannot make
room for him,” said Marguerite. “I will make him a nest among my
flowers. And you, my father, oh what can I do that will make you happy?”
“_That_ would make me happy, if you could only find it.”
“Alas, I cannot. Where could I search?”
“It is here. It will be found by some poor stranger, and work more
mischief; but I cannot help it; day and night I have searched among
these stones.”
“You have worn yourself out, my father.”
“Yes, I think so,” answered the old man, faintly.
“I cannot leave you here alone.”
“Alone! He is here; he never leaves me.”
“But you will come with me?”
“Oh, yes! when I am stronger.”
The old man’s face drooped on his breast after this, and he seemed to
sleep.
Marguerite arose to go.
“Adieu,” she said. “You are weary, and I keep you from rest.”
“From rest? No one can do that,” said the old man, gently. “Adieu!”
Marguerite bowed her head; her father lifted his hands and blessed her
as she bent before him.
There was something mournful and pathetic in his gestures, which filled
her heart with sad forebodings.
The night was dark and cloudy. It was dangerous to be out so late; yet
Marguerite lingered near the cell reluctant to leave the old man alone.
Twice she went back and listened. All was silent, and, at last she moved
homeward through the ruins.
As Marguerite reached the draw-bridge, the shadow of a man fell across
it. Her heart leaped.
“Is it you St. Just? Is it you? Ah, I never needed you so much.”
“No Marguerite, it is only Jacques. Do not be hurt because it is not
that other. He is not always near to watch you as I am.”
Jacques spoke with humility. In all his bitter trouble he had never once
swerved from the most perfect kindness to the girl who scarcely thought
that he suffered.
“I thought that you did not care to watch me now, monsieur Jacques,” she
said. “You never come to see us.”
There was pain, subdued with infinite patience, in Jacques’ eyes as he
answered this light reproach. Did the girl know how much it had cost him
to keep away from her? Had she absolutely forgotten her
promise—forgotten that he loved her?
“Marguerite,” he said, with mournful firmness, “you remember a promise
made that day before the Bastille was taken?”
Marguerite uttered a faint cry and recoiled backwards as if the man had
aimed a blow at her.
“No, no! I have not forgotten; but I thought—oh, Monsieur Jacques,
forgive me!”
The girl held out her hands to him now, and the anguish of a new
enlightenment thrilled her voice.
Jacques took her hands in his and clasped them firmly. With the struggle
of a giant he held down the bitter agony in his heart.
“Such words are not for you, Marguerite. Instead of forgiveness, I give
you blessings. I am ready to serve you—die for you. But forgiveness we
must not talk of that. There is nothing to forgive between you and me.”
“Is a broken promise nothing—for mine is broken. I hardly made a
struggle to keep it; yet you gave liberty to my poor father. Is selfish
forgetfulness nothing? Am I worthy that you forgive me without asking?”
cried Marguerite, stung with keen self-reproach.
“Hush, Marguerite, hush! I cannot listen when you revile yourself. It
was not for this I spoke; but I feared you might remember that promise
and be troubled by it. Now you will understand that it is forgotten,
utterly forgotten.”
A heavy sigh broke from the strong man as these words left his lips, and
his limbs shook as if the soul had been wrenched from his body.
“Ah, Monsieur Jacques, can such things be forgotten?”
Jacques knew that she was thinking of St. Just, and wondering in her
heart if _he_ ever could forget. The idea was but one pang more, still
it wounded him to the soul.
Marguerite took consolation from her own absorbing love. “If he cared
for me in that way,” she thought, “to forget would be impossible. It is
because I was so helpless and so miserable. One gets over pity, but
love, oh, never—never. That would be death with no Heaven afterward.”
With that man standing before her, so brave, so noble in his
self-abnegation, the girl could reason thus, and turn her thoughts on
the being of her own worship.
Perhaps Jacques felt something of this, for his voice shook when he
addressed her again.
“I would still have cared for your safety, and followed you in silence,
Marguerite. But the streets are full of dangerous people to-night, and
you staid so late I feared that you might need help.”
These words turned Marguerite’s thoughts back to her father.
“Monsieur Jacques, oh! my friend, I do, I do. My poor father is ill. I
can keep his secret no longer. Come with me—together we may persuade him
to leave this place.”
Marguerite turned to lead the way back to her father’s cell. Jacques
followed her in silence. The clouds broke and poured watery gleams of
moonlight into that prison cell, as these two persons approached it. By
this fitful radiance they saw the old man sleeping tranquilly on the
stone floor—so tranquilly that their own hearts stopped beating.
Monsieur Jacques bent over him.
“Does he sleep,” said Marguerite, in a low voice, for her heart was
chilled within her. “Does he sleep?”
“So sweetly that the angels of Heaven alone can wake him,” was the
solemn reply.
CHAPTER CVII.
THE SCARABEE DOES ITS DEADLY WORK.
Months went by, for a little time the wheels of the Revolution revolved
with a slow but steady force. The influence of Mirabeau had made itself
felt; his powerful genius held the populace in check. Chosen president
of the Assembly, he had inspired that body with some of his own
conservative ideas. The queen began to trust him fully. The king saw in
him a safe counsellor. For a time the fearful storm that afterward swept
France like a simoon, seemed to have passed away. The nation took time
to breathe. Mirabeau had triumphed over all his enemies but one, that
one found him at the zenith of his power.
On the twenty-seventh of March, 1791, Mirabeau spoke three times in the
Assembly. Never had he been more impressive, never had his genius
exhibited itself with greater effect. With words of living eloquence on
his lips he stepped down from the tribune, passed between double ranks
of admiring friends and defeated enemies, and was seen by the people of
France no more.
The next day it was known at the clubs, and heralded in the streets,
that the great statesman of France was ill.
All Paris sympathized with the sufferings of this strong and most gifted
man. His house in the Chaussée d’Antin was besieged by people, who
blocked up the street that no carriage might disturb the rest of their
idol. The Jacobin club sent its President at the head of a deputation,
to express the profound sympathy of that body. Robespierre, who allowed
himself to drift with the current, was found in the sick-room. The king
sent every day to inquire after Mirabeau’s health.
The great man was ill, but fully conscious of all the homage that
surrounded him. He yet believed himself invincible, and gloried in all
these evidences of popularity. He was accused of giving stage effect to
his sick bed. It may be that he did, for no man knew better how to
appeal to the senses of an audience—and he did not believe himself to be
dying.
One day, when the street was choked up with anxious inquirers, a swarthy
dwarf was seen among the crowd, striving to escape observation, but
making constant progress toward the door of Mirabeau’s dwelling. He
reached it at last, and finding a servant on the threshold patiently
answering the anxious questions put to him regarding the state of his
master, waited quietly till the man should recognize him.
“Is it possible to see Mirabeau?”
“What, you?”
“Is he ill—very ill? I come from one who wishes to know the truth.”
“I know; your mistress is his friend. There can be no harm in saying to
her that he is ill, but not so hopeless as his worshippers think. Their
terrors but increase his popularity. She will understand.”
The dwarf did understand that his enemy was in no immediate danger, and
probably would recover. This only made him the more resolute to gain
access to the great man.
“I have a message,” he said; “not from the lady you think of; but from
one so high that I dare not speak her name.”
“A message? But so many messages come, that I cannot even listen to
them. Such adulation would drive a man mad, though he were in sound
health. I can take no message.”
Zamara motioned to the man to stoop, and whispered,
“Not if it were from her majesty, the queen?”
The man looked cautiously around. There was danger in the queen’s name,
which he could appreciate.
“Step in, step in! I will speak to you when the crowd grows less. Sit
down and wait. From the Tuileries—did you say that? Speak low, there is
danger in it.”
The dwarf nodded his head, put a finger to his lip, and sat down in the
entrance-hall, close by the bronze statue, which he remembered so well.
The man had seen Zamara frequently at the house before, and had no
hesitation in speaking freely to him.
“The truth is,” he said, confidentially, “our count has overworked
himself. Spoke five times in one day. Think of it! And this is a good
time to learn how warmly the people regard him. Do not expect him to get
well all at once—he is not fool enough for that; but, after a little,
his enemies will find him thundering at them from his place again. We do
not intend to die just yet; his friends comprehend it all. As for the
rest, why, of course, for them he _is_ dying.”
“Then he is well enough to be told that I have a message for him
directly from the queen—I have brought such things before.”
“I will take the message.”
“No, I must give it into his own hands. Such were my orders. Ask if he
will admit a messenger from her majesty—that is all I desire.”
“I will go; but listen how they are swarming against the door again. Was
ever a man so beloved?”
Zamara saw the servant depart with a quiet countenance; but the moment
he was gone, an evil expression broke into his eyes, and a smile crept
across his lips.
“So he would make fresh popularity for himself out of this. Well, he
shall. This illness, which is half feigned, shall make him immortal.”
The servant came back, and motioned Zamara to follow him. They mounted a
broad stair-case, up which heavy balustrades of carved oak wound to the
roof, and, opening a door at the first landing, led the way through an
ante-room, in which several persons were waiting, into a state-chamber,
hung with crimson silk, with a thick Persian carpet on the center of a
polished oak floor. On this carpet a great, high-posted bedstead stood,
curtained with red, like the windows, on which Mirabeau lay, as it were,
bathed in the twilight of a warm sunset.
A pile of snow-white pillows was under the sick man’s head, lifting him
to a half-sitting posture. The linen that covered his bosom fell apart
at the neck, leaving his throat free, and lending a picturesque effect
to his chest and shoulders.
Some loose papers lay upon the counterpane near his hand, as if he had
been reading, and just laid them down.
“What, is it manikin?” said the sick man, with a good-natured smile. “I
thought wise people had done trusting you long ago. What is it—about the
person who sent you? There must be some mistake, I think. Come close to
the bed, and speak low.”
The dwarf came up smiling, and with a strange glimmer in his eyes.
“The queen, through the young person you know of, sent for me this
morning, gave me this ring from her own finger, bade me bring it to you,
and say that, for her sake, she insisted that you would wear it, and for
the sake of France you must hasten to be well.”
“Are these her very words?” demanded Mirabeau.
“Her very words,” answered the dwarf, enjoying malicious pleasure in the
sick man’s excitement.
“And nothing more?”
“She said you would recognize the ring!”
“Give it me! Give it me!”
That dusky hand trembled a little as it reached forth the ring. Mirabeau
took it eagerly and examined the design.
“Yes; my lips touched it once. I recognize it,” he said, with the
exaltation of a man whose brain is already surcharged.
“The design was emblematical, she said,” answered Zamara. “A serpent,
strong and wise, enfolding this emblem of royalty, the green beetle, was
buried with some monarch thousands of years ago.”
Mirabeau laid the ring on the bed and closed his eyes. The excitement
had been too much for him.
Zamara drew back and waited. Until that ring was upon Mirabeau’s hand
his errand was but half done.
After an interval of some minutes, Mirabeau turned a little on his
pillows and opened his eyes.
“Ah, I remember!” he said. “You brought me a ring, and were telling me
something about it. I am a little weary now, but in time her words will
all come back, like old wine, and give me strength. Tell her this, and
say that I only crave life that it may be devoted to her and hers. Ha! I
have been wandering—this is no message to send. You have but to give her
highness my thanks—understand that, Mirabeau’s thanks, and nothing
more.”
“Her majesty bade me bring her word that I had seen the ring on your
finger, Count Mirabeau. Shall I say that you were too weak and had no
strength to put it on?”
“What, I so far gone that I cannot thrust a ring on my finger. Where is
the serpent? Oh, here!”
Even the little finger of that large, white hand, was too large for the
ring, and it was forced over the joint with violence. The keen eyes of
the dwarf were upon it. He saw the head crest itself, a single flash of
the ruby tongue, and then the ring was twisted to its place: but just
above the joint was a scarcely perceptible speck of blue.
“It is small and pains me a little,” said Mirabeau; “take it off!
To-morrow, I will try it on the other hand. Take it off, I say!”
The dwarf took the hand in his, grasped the beetle by its sides, and
drew away the ring with a slow, cautious movement. His hand did not
tremble, but the locked firmness of his features betrayed the force he
put upon his nerves.
“Lay it in that casket on the console,” said Mirabeau faintly, “and call
my doctor from the next room.”
As he spoke, the sick man’s head fell back upon the pillow, his arms
settled down, all feeling fled from his limbs, and his breathing became
heavy and quick, as if the heart were struggling in mortal agony.
A cry of real terror broke from the dwarf. Half a dozen persons, who
waited in the ante-room, rushed into the chamber, but it was only to see
a dead man lying under those crimson shadows.
The woorara leaves no signs, Zamara knew that, and remained quiet, while
the physician stood horror-stricken over all that remained of his
patient. When the tumult subsided a little, he stole out with the ring
grasped cautiously in his hand.
“How did you find Mirabeau?” questioned a woman standing by the door, in
a low voice, as Zamara went out. “The man told me you had been admitted.
Is he better? Will he live?”
The woman’s face was pale and locked; her voice shook with fear as she
asked these questions. A flash of dusky red shot athwart the Indian’s
face, her anguish was sweet to his ear. He opened his hand and displayed
the ring.
“He sent you this, and bade you wear it for his sake. Mirabeau is dead!”
That wretched woman snatched at the ring, thrust it on her finger, and
covered it with passionate kisses.
“Woe to France! Woe to France!” she cried out in wild anguish, “Mirabeau
is dead! Mirabeau is dead!”
He waited to see her fall; but the poison had exhausted itself on one
life, or she had failed to touch the spring.
“Fool that I was,” he muttered, gliding out of the crowd, while the sad
cry rose from lip to lip,
“Mirabeau is dead!”
CHAPTER CVIII.
THE STORMING OF THE TUILERIES.
When Mirabeau died, constitutional monarchy in France lost its strongest
support. Slowly, but with steady persistence, Robespierre assumed the
place which he could only fill with the iron pertinacity of a fixed
purpose. From the hour that his voice became potent in the National
Assembly, commenced the fearful rush with which the nation hurled itself
into anarchy, assassination, atheism, and such other fearful crimes as
history shrinks from recording. Then legislation itself became anarchy,
constitutions were made, rent to atoms, and made over again in solemn
mockery. Everything grand, beautiful or good, was trampled under the
feet of the multitude. Men who had ever worshipped God blasphemed him
now. Women who had been devout, forgot even to respect themselves. As
anarchy prevailed, morality, justice and religion disappeared. France
was reeling like a drunken creature toward an abyss of blood from which
an eternity of goodness can never lift her, unstained.
Struggle as she will, explain and apologise as she has, the power of an
awful truth is upon her. Time itself will only deepen the ensanguined
pages she has given to universal history. Terrified by the danger that
surrounded him, the king and his family attempted to flee from the
country he had ruled. But the red hand of the people was laid upon him,
and he was dragged back to Paris worse than a prisoner. For a time he
was insulted, watched and forced to become the very tool of his own
enemies. After a martyrdom of humiliation, he was besieged in his palace
by a band of marauders still more ferocious than the _Sans Culottes_
with whom they fraternized in hideous brotherhood. Privately sanctioned
and organized by men who called themselves the government, this fearful
riot, intended to drive the king into the arms of his worst foes, was
commenced and carried out by a combination of the brigands of Paris with
the Marsellaise, a herd of ferocious butchers, which had swarmed up from
the lowest dregs of the country wherever a moral monster could be found.
Surrounded by this army of fiends who broke into his presence,
threatening death wherever they went, the king, to save his helpless
family and faithful household from massacre, resolved to seek protection
from the Assembly which was in session.
Surrounded by a few friends, girded in by hosts of foes, this
unfortunate monarch took his first deliberate step to the scaffold.
Followed by his wife, his sister, and his children, he passed from the
palace into the grounds that partly surrounded it, hoping to make his
way unmolested through the crowd. But the gates had been broken, and
even here the mob swarmed around him with cruel taunts and brutal
threats.
The fallen monarch walked through the withered leaves that rustled
mournfully in his path, submitting to these scoffs and insults of the
furious crowd with a look of infinite sorrow.
Marie Antoinette followed him in dread silence, leading the unconscious
Dauphin by the hand, her face pale as death, her eyes burning with the
hot tears she would not permit to fall. Now and then, her figure shrank
from its queenly bearing as the crowd rained curses and hurled brutal
insults on her in the presence of her child. But she uttered neither
protest or appeal, when those ruthless hands snatched the watch from her
bosom and tore her garments to get at the purse she was supposed to
carry.
The innocent child, comprehending little of the horrors that surrounded
him, amused himself by kicking the dead leaves about, laughing archly if
they fluttered over the band of brigands, and looking up at his mother
as if he had done something in her defence.
Among the crowd were many women, keener in their spite and far more
ferocious than their fellow butchers, as unsexed women are sure to be,
in a scene like that. Among them were several on horseback, recognized
Amazons of the crowd, Theroigne de Mericourt, Louison Brisot, and,
deeper in the throng, Madame Gosner. These women wore red caps on their
heads, tri-colored scarfs across their bosoms, while the gleam of
unsheathed swords pointed the commands they gave to the crowd. One
forced the horse she rode through the mob, pointing her sword at the
queen.
“Take the child from her, he belongs to the nation! Hurl him this way,
my horse’s hoofs are impatient.”
The queen had not complained, but a shriek of agony broke from the
mother, and snatching the boy to her bosom, she made a wild appeal for
help.
“No, no, take me! trample _me_ down, but do not touch her or the child.”
It was the voice of a young girl, who sprang out of the crowd and threw
herself before the queen, where she stood like a virgin priestess
defending the altar at which she prayed.
“Ha, ha!” shouted the woman on horseback, “it is her protegée. I have
seen her at St. Cloud, at the little Trianon. It is she who carries
letters back and forth, between Dame Capet and the traitors. She dares
to stand between the people of France and their vengeance. Fling the boy
to me, and toss her to the Marsellaise.”
Marguerite Gosner stretched out her arms in wild appeal; her face was
inspired, her blue eyes turned black and bright as stars.
“Will no one help me? Is all manhood left among the people of France!”
A man pressed his way through the crowd; a strong man, full of
indomitable courage.
Marguerite flung up her clasped hands in an ecstasy of thanksgiving. It
was monsieur Jacques.
This brave man snatched the Dauphin from his mother and held him up
before the crowd, crying out in a voice that rang out trumpet-toned,
“Frenchmen do not war with children!”
A shout followed this brave act, and the cry ran from lip to lip.
“It is the foster-brother of Mirabeau. Let him have his way.”
Monsieur Jacques did have his way. Firm as a rock he walked before the
queen, protecting her with his person and bearing the child in his arms.
Marie Antoinette recognised in this man the person who had once saved
her life, and would have imprudently thanked him. He saw the expression
in her face, and with rude kindness bade her be silent. So the mournful
procession passed on, and the king disappeared into the blackness of an
awful future. While Monsieur Jacques was thus bravely occupied, Louison
Brisot stooped down from her horse and pointing her sword at Marguerite,
gave this order to a group of her followers.
“Seize her! Take her before the committee—you understand—I will be
there; cautiously, cautiously! Neither this man, nor St. Just must know
of it.”
She was obeyed. A few minutes after, two stout men had seized upon
Marguerite, and were dragging her through the tumult, the smoke, and the
horrible massacre which followed the king’s transit from his palace into
the very citadel of his enemies.
CHAPTER CIX.
THE PRISONS.
Subjects exist from which the pen shrinks away shuddering. Of such is
the Reign of Terror, now fully inaugurated. The royal family were close
prisoners in the Temple. The few friends that remained faithful to the
last, had been massacred or were fugitives.
On the second of September, 1792, the Ablaye and Des Carmes were forced
open by a mob, secretly instigated by the government, and the crowning
massacre of those horrible times was perpetrated without check or
hindrance. One of these prisons had been a cloistered convent, with a
church on one side, surrounded with grassy courts and blooming gardens.
At open noonday, when an unclouded sun looked down upon the horrors of
the deed, this beautiful spot was turned into a slaughter-house, where
priests were slain at their own altars, in the courts, in the gardens,
and kneeling in their cells. All day long the carnage went on, all day
long the shrieks and prayers of those struggling victim rent the air and
set the howling mob gathered outside the convent mad with desire to join
in the fearful work.
From time to time the gates were thrown open, and carts drawn by noble
horses, taken from the royal stables, carried out load after load of
dead bodies, leaving a track of blood as they slowly moved along.
Hideous men and women, with children in rags, crowded around the gates
and followed the death carts howling the Marsellaise.
Night came and this fearful work of death was but half accomplished. The
prisoners who had concealed themselves in the thickets of the court or
gardens, were driven into the chapel and murdered on the very altars.
This was the prison of the priests.
In the Ablaye, to the horrors of a general massacre was added the
hideous farce of a court of justice. Here twelve assassins constituted
themselves judges. Before these men, the wretched prisoners were
brought, questioned, insulted and cast forth to the howling cruelty of
the mob.
Among these was a young girl, a stranger to every one utterly alone. The
president of these mock judges asked her name.
She answered in a low voice:
“Marguerite Gosner.”
“Ha, that is the name of our old prisoner of the Bastille!” cried one of
the judges.
“He was my father,” said the girl.
The judges answered her with a laugh of derision.
“It is the name of citoyenne Gosner, the bravest patriot among our
women.”
Marguerite cast down her eyes and clasped her trembling hands; her voice
was scarcely audible as she said,
“She is my mother!”
“Her mother!” quoth an assassin, who stood near leaning on his dripping
sword. “It is a trick to save her worthless life. I saw her fling
herself at the feet of Capet’s wife; Louison Brisot was her accuser.”
“To the prison of La Force!”
This was a mocking sentence of death. The door opened. The poor girl was
led through, and stood white and dumb with horror among a gang of
executioners.
For one moment the fiends were held in check by her youth, her beauty,
and the utter stillness of her despair. Then they rushed upon her; but a
man, pale, firm and bloodless as yet, pushed through their ranks and
seized her by the arm.
“She is mine!” he said. “You have had all the rest; am I to be deprived
of everything?”
The assassins gave way, crying out,
“Yes, yes! he has waited till now. Let him have this pet lamb. Our
sabres are too heavy for such dainty work. Here comes another. Fall in!
fall in!”
“What is this?” cried a woman’s voice in fierce wrath. “Who is it that
dares to let my enemies free?”
“Nay, nay, citoyenne Brisot, we have but given her up to death; nothing
can save her.”
“I tell you,” answered the demon, “that man is her lover; he but came
here to save her.”
Two or three ruffians broke from the rest and pursued Monsieur Jacques,
who was moving swiftly through the crowd, carrying Marguerite in his
arms. They followed him close; they came up with him. The crowd was
densely packed; spears were thrust out at random; the assassins were in
haste to get back to their awful work, and made awkward thrusts; a spear
struck Jacques in the side. It was aimed at the girl, who uttered a
piercing shriek. A young man broke his passage through the crowd and
dashed the leveled weapons back.
“Bloodhounds, have you no better work than this?”
The ruffians looked at each other amazed.
“It is St. Just! It is St. Just! What has he to do with our vengeance?”
they muttered.
“But St. Just is the friend of the people; we must not anger him;
besides, there is plenty of work for us yonder.”
The men turned their spears and went away.
St. Just scarcely heeded them; he was bending over Monsieur Jacques, who
had fallen upon the pavement. Marguerite knelt by him, pale with the
horror she had passed through, trembling with sympathy for the wounded
man.
Wounded! He was dying. He made a faint motion with his hand that the
girl should bend down to him. She read the yearning wish in his eyes and
pressed her lips to his.
That mournful kiss took the last breath from the great heart which had
ceased to beat, loving her to the last.
St. Just lifted Marguerite from the pavement and gave orders that the
body of that brave man should be carried to his home.
The crowd had recognised his face, and were ready to obey him.
Through all the horrors of that night, St. Just bore the girl in safety.
She was sensible, though silent from exhaustion that seemed like death
itself; but with that came a sweet sense of rest and protection. In her
prison she had been utterly alone—utterly helpless. A mission of
importance had taken St. Just into the interior. Her arrest had been
secret; her incarceration was only known to those who had planned it.
Even her mother had searched for her in vain. St. Just had reached Paris
scarcely an hour before, and rushed to the prison, hoping to check the
carnage there.
The cry that broke from Marguerite when that spear struck Jacques,
brought him to her rescue. She was in his arms; he could feel the
quivering beat of her heart against his own; her arms clung to him with
faint spasms of strength, whenever a death cart rumbled by or a fiercer
shout than usual rent the air. Still she was alive, and he had saved
her.
CHAPTER CX.
BOUGHT BY BLOOD.
Like a wild beast, France had tasted blood and clamored loudly for more.
Her keepers, Robespierre, Danton, Marat and the rest, black-hearted and
red-handed as they were, found even their brutal ingenuity taxed by the
monsters whose growing appetite for murder they were compelled to feed.
A new excitement was prepared for them. The mockery of a trial, at which
the galleries presided; a tumultuous mob, hounding on its friends and
intimidating those who wished to be just—the trial of a good king by the
most depraved of his subjects.
This infamous parody of justice—twenty-four hours for a last farewell of
his family, for prayer, and a sacrament—grudgingly permitted, and the
whole world was horrified by an execution at which humanity recoils with
shudders of condemnation.
But even this terrible crime failed to appease the thirst for murder
which raged among the masses. Their leaders, urged on by the ignorance
of fanaticism, began to wage war on themselves. Every member of the
Assembly suspected of moderation or mercy was swept into prison, and the
people applauded. They were ready for anything but a return to honest
labor and thrifty habits. They revelled in the farce of being every man
his own monarch.
France had become ready for perfect anarchy; and plunged like a wild
beast, maddened with the blood of its own kind, into the Reign of
Terror, of which Robespierre, Danton, and Marat, were the high priests.
But the hand of a young girl sent Marat to his black account, and the
supremacy of chaos was left with Robespierre and Danton. At the summit
of his awful power, Robespierre was seized with a coward’s fear. By what
ultra crime could he appease the besotted cravings of his followers, and
keep them from turning on himself. Danton had lost all his cruel
invention. Denunciations and commonplace massacres had ceased to excite
enthusiasm; the horrors of the guillotine, which thrilled the community
at first, had degenerated into a popular amusement, at which the women
held high carnival, and gossiped, joked, brought their knitting and
worked, that no time might be lost while the axe was sharpening.
If there was a moment’s silence, when some ghastly head fell into the
basket, it was instantly atoned for by imprecations, or coarse laughter.
The executioner had no longer power to keep their attention. He did not
give keen variety enough; to them murder had lost its awful fascination.
The nobility had perished, or fled, and plebeian executions had become
grossly common. Robespierre, whose genius was sombre and cruel, sought
to appease them with another royal head; this might sharpen the palled
appetite of the crowd. The sight of a beautiful woman on the scaffold—a
queen, and the daughter of an empress, awoke something of the old
blood-thirsty enthusiasm. Robespierre saw the effect, and offered
another noble princess to the populace, the angelic Elizabeth. These two
martyred women went to the scaffold in a cart, with cords girding their
white wrists, each with her beautiful hair shorn close by the hangman’s
scissors.
In this awful spectacle Robespierre had exhausted all inventions of
cruelty, but the people demanded something more atrocious still; nothing
could satisfy their insatiable thirst. Their clamor found Robespierre
helpless. He had talked wildly of liberty till there was nothing more to
be said. His ingenuity had exhausted itself in giving new horrors to
death: and all he could offer was a repetition of the old crimes, which
had ceased even to interest the crowd. Always frugal and austere in his
habits, this man was the slave of no small vices, and looked with scorn
upon those who yielded to them. In his weird patriotism he was sincere,
but the people began to look upon his austerity as a rebuke. Weary of
murder they turned to blasphemy, and there the genius of Robespierre and
Danton gave way.
Now sweeping across the lurid path of Robespierre comes the Herbertists,
so fearfully depraved, that the Jacobins shrunk away from them, appalled
by the mingled blasphemy and jest with which they excited the people to
sacrilegious excesses.
These men laid their ensanguined hands upon the very altar of God,
upheaving it from their midst, and gave a zest to crime by adding
sacrilege to murder. Under their sway the cross fell from the summits of
the churches, crucifixes and chalices were melted into coin. Relics,
hitherto held sacred, were trampled under foot in contempt, burnt,
destroyed, and despised. Church bells no longer called the people to
worship, but fed the musketry of the soldiers, and the cannon turned
against the enemies of France. Holy crosses were taken down from the
cemeteries, and statues of sleep, in the form of voluptuous women,
rested in their place. Elegance, and even decency, were banished.
Guillotines became an object of fashion and of jest; children played
with them as toys, women wore them in their ears and on their bosoms.
Atheism, coarseness, and immorality, were liberty and equality.
This reign of reason was even more revolting than the reign of terror.
It turned religion and death itself into a burlesque.
At this time Louison Brisot, who had fled from Paris while her arch
enemy Robespierre remained supreme, came back with renewed audacity and
joined the Herbertists. She was young, fiercely beautiful, and in her
soul embodied all the enormities of the Revolution. Now the great
ambition of her life was accomplished, Theroigne de Mericourt was put
aside, and she was chosen as the goddess of Liberty.
The church of Notre Dame had been diverted of its sacred character, and
was now known as the Temple of Reason, in which the people held a grand
carnival, presided over by Louison Brisot, the most wicked of all the
shameless women of Paris.
On its high altar she was enthroned, clad in the scant robes of ancient
Greece, with a red cap on her head and a tri-colored bright scarf around
her waist, she sat on the holy altar of Christ and received the
blasphemous homage of thrice ten thousand idolators.
After this, the chair on which she sat was lifted by four men and
carried to the Assembly, surrounded by a band of white-robed dancing
girls, crowned with flowers. Here, seated by the president, this evil
woman received the homage of a goddess. Bishops, vicars, and cures, laid
crosses and rings at her feet, and, with the red cap on their heads,
joined in a hymn chanted to the honor of the new divinity.
During this ceremony a few stood aloof, filled with abhorrence and
contempt. Among these were Robespierre, and the youthful St. Just, men
whose very faults lifted them infinitely above any participation in a
scene so degrading. They could be cruel; but with one, at least, it was
under the honest conviction, that by cruelty alone the country could be
saved. To these men, relentless in their patriotism, but pure in their
lives, sacrilege and blasphemy had no charm.
CHAPTER CXI.
THE GODDESS OF REASON.
Robespierre and his friends had looked on the worship of reason with
unflinching contempt, but in these blasphemies lay a power that crushed
out the influence they had wielded. True, it had driven such women as
Madame Gosner, whose ideas of liberty were unselfish and austere, back
into privacy, but only concentrated greater influence on the few.
When the hour of conflict came, and it was not of slow progress, the
worshippers of reason triumphed.
Louison Brisot, the embodiment of a sacrilegious idea, found herself
more powerful than Robespierre. Herbert was her slave. She had but to
lift her hand to set the guillotine at work—a glance of her eye was
enough to select the victim. Among the first was Madame Du Berry, whose
cries of distress reached the exultant goddess as the tumbrel bore that
wretched woman to the place of execution. The poor creature had
concealed herself; but one day Zamara was seen whispering to the Goddess
of Reason in the gallery of the Assembly. The next day came those cries
of distress from the street, where a woman was going to execution, among
the laughter and jeers of the people.
In vain Robespierre and his party stemmed the tide of atheism, which the
nation received with avidity. In vain he had brought the queen to the
scaffold; the gloom of his destiny was complete—not even a royal
execution could interest the people now. In vain he got up a
counter-festival, dedicated to the Supreme Being. The grounds of the
Tuileries were crowded to hear his oration, the symphony and the ode;
but none of these things were new to the people of France, and they
turned with greater zest to the orgies, the songs, and dancing
bacchantes, which gave eclat and novelty to the Festival of Reason.
At last came a fearful struggle where the two parties fought like
gladiators, hand to hand, each for its life. Robespierre fell. That
night he was put under arrest, the next day the man so feared, so hated,
lay wounded and helpless in the power of his enemies, almost dead, and
yet condemned to die.
With him were twenty-two others identified with his cruel policy, and
who had partaken of his power, all arraigned before the tribunal, and
certain of their doom.
Among these was a man scarcely yet beyond his first youth whom even his
enemies looked upon almost with compassion; for the strange, sad beauty
of his face, the calm dignity of his manner, impressed even those
murderous men with a wish to save him. They knew that intense love of
country, a sublime thirst for liberty as it can never exist on earth,
had possessed this man, till he deemed no act too cruel, or sacrifice
too great for the freedom of his fellow men. But they knew also that the
death St. Just had been so ready to indict he was prepared to endure.
Those features, perfect as the inspirations of Grecian sculpture,
scarcely changed from their grave, almost feminine expression, when
sentence of death was passed upon him. His large, gray eyes gazed calmly
out from the shadow of their long lashes, and around the perfect mouth
came an expression of firm endurance; but with all this, it seemed
impossible to believe that a man of such gentle presence would die with
more courage than Danton or Robespierre.
When asked if he had anything to say, a faint smile quivered around the
young man’s mouth, and he answered,
“Nothing! Why should I protest against an inevitable fate, or check the
swift vengeance of my enemies. You are about to give me that for which I
have striven so long in vain—Liberty!”
With these words St. Just retired among those already condemned, and
waited for his doom. But all at once his firmness was sorely shaken; for
a fair, young maiden entered the tribunal, pale as death, and searching
the faces around her with looks of wild, pathetic entreaty. The
condemned prisoners stood in a group in one corner of the room. She saw
St. Just among them, and made her way toward him; but the young man put
out both hands to warn her away, and turned his face aside, that no one
might see the anguish that convulsed it.
Marguerite was struck dumb by this mute denial.
“What is this? Who is the woman who dares to intrude on our
deliberations,” cried the president, rising fiercely from his seat.
Marguerite opened her white lips to speak. But a voice she had never
disobeyed reached her in a firm, low undertone,
“Keep silence! I am condemned!”
She was silent, and stood there in the midst of the tribunal, white and
cold as a statue.
All at once there was a commotion in the gallery, where a female, in a
light, Grecian dress, with the blood-red cap of liberty on her head,
started up, and leaning over, that all the tribunal might see her,
called out,
“Behold the friend of St. Just, the servant of Widow Capet. I charge her
with it. She is a Royalist, an enemy to the nation!”
The speaker was Louison Brisot, the Goddess of Reason, who now exhibited
herself every day at the tribunal.
“If you ask proof, it is here. Patriot Zamara has already given one base
aristocrat to this tribunal. It was he who pointed out the hiding-place
of Du Berry. Now, his evidence will confound another. Let her go among
the condemned. You have no woman in the batch to-day, which is an insult
to the sex. Let her die with the rest.”
Marguerite’s wild, white face was uplifted to the woman, while she
hurled these cruel words at the tribunal. All at once she comprehended
that St. Just was condemned to die, that her terrible enemy was
demanding that she should go with him to the scaffold. A bright
illumination swept over her face, the power of speech came back to her
lips. She took a step or two forward, drawing nearer the tribunal.
“It is true,” she said. “I did serve the Queen. I loved her. She trusted
me, and I was faithful. It needs no witnesses—I confess it.”
“She confesses! She confesses! Put her with the condemned!”
Marguerite walked firmly across the room, and placed herself by the side
of St. Just, who turned his eyes upon her in mournful reproach, but did
not speak. Perhaps there was some gleam of comfort in the idea that she
would go with him into eternity.
Condemnation and death followed each other closely in those days. Less
than twenty-four hours after the Jacobins were sent from the
revolutionary tribunal, they were crowded into carts, surrounded by a
triple guard, and dragged through multitudes that lined the streets from
the Conciergerie to the Place de la Revolution. In this crowded tumbrel
Robespierre was the most conspicuous and the most hated. Shouts and
curses were hurled upon him by men, women, and even little children.
Under this storm of detestation for one man the others passed on almost
unnoticed.
In that crowded cart was a gentle girl, seated next to St. Just. She
leaned upon him for the support which his shackled hands had no power to
give, and, with her soft eyes lifted to his, encouraged him with faint,
wan smiles, inexpressibly pathetic.
“We shall be together, my beloved. It is only a minute, and you will
claim me,” she whispered, as the roar of the multitude passed over them
unheeded.
He strained at the cords that bound him with a wild desire to clasp her
to his heart, and fight for her young life.
“Be patient,” she said, grieved by the smothered fire in his eyes. “Is
it for me you rebel? Ah! if you only knew how much worse life would be
without you, this little minute of pain would be nothing.”
“Oh, my God! I was prepared for everything but this, my poor lamb! That
I should, myself, bring you to the slaughter!”
“But for that I should have been a coward. Ah! the cart stops! Let me go
first. I can bear anything but the—the widowhood of a moment.”
“Yes, my beloved, you shall go first. I will follow you, and find an
angel waiting.”
“Hark! What is that?” she whispered, shuddering.
“Do not look up; lean closer to me.”
His words were drowned by a fierce howl of mingled delight and
execration, that went thundering from the Place de la Revolution down
the streets of Paris. The head of Robespierre had fallen.
A fair young creature, robed in white, came next upon the scaffold, and
disappeared amid the dead silence of the multitude. Those who looked
upon St. Just, after she was lifted from the cart, saw that his head
drooped low upon his breast, and that a shiver of terrible anguish shook
his frame: then a sublime courage took possession of him, he mounted the
scaffold with a firm step, bent his head unresistingly, that the
executioner might cut away the dark waves of hair that fell down his
neck, and laid himself under that awful machine of death calmly, as if a
bed of roses awaited him, rather than the hideous saw-dust still wet
with Marguerite’s blood.
When the head of St. Just was exhibited, in all the marble beauty of its
perfect features, no shout of triumph arose from the mob, for he was
among the rare number of men, who, calling themselves patriots, still
retained the respect of his countrymen.
THE END.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Page Changed from Changed to
28 You this Austrian, how You saw this Austrian, how
haughtily she turned away haughtily she turned away
unchanged protegée protegée
570 the populace in cheek. Chosen the populace in check. Chosen
president of the Assembly president of the Assembly
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.