BEAUSIRE'S BRAVADO.
Imprisoned in the Chatelet, Beausire was brought before the jury
specially charged to deal with thefts committed in the taking of the
Tuileries. He could not deny what was only too clearly brought forth,
so he most humbly confessed his deed and sued for clemency.
His antecedents being looked up, they so little edified the court on
his moral character, that he was condemned to five years in the hulks
and transportation to the plantations.
In vain did he allege that he had been led into crime by the most
commendable feelings, namely, to provide a peaceful future for his
wife and child; nothing could alter the doom, and as the court was one
without appeal, and the sentences active, it was likely to be executed
immediately.
Better for him had it not been deferred for a day. Fate would have it
that one of his old associates was put in prison with him on the eve of
his sentence being carried out. They renewed acquaintance and exchanged
confidences.
The new-comer was, he said, concerned in a well-matured plot which was
to burst on Strand Place or before the Justice Hall. The conspirators
were to gather in a considerable number, as if to see the executions
taking place at either spot, and, raising shouts of "Long live the
king!" "The Prussians are coming, hurrah!" "Death to the nation!" they
were to storm the City Hall, call to their help the National Guards,
two thirds Royalist, or at least Constitutional, maintain the abolition
of the Commune, and, in short, accomplish the loyal counter-revolution.
The mischief was that Beausire's old partner was the very man who was
to give the signal. The others in the plot, ignorant of his arrest,
would hie to the place of execution, and the rising would fall to the
ground from nobody being there to start the cries.
This was the more lamentable, added the friend, from there never being
a better arranged plot, and one that promised a more certain result.
His arrest was the more regrettable still as, in the turmoil, the
prisoner would most certainly be rescued and get away, so that he would
elude the branding-iron and the galleys.
Though Captain Beausire had no settled opinions, he leaned toward
royalty, so he began to deplore the check to the scheme, in the first
place for the king's sake, and then for his own.
All at once he struck his brow, for he was illumined with a bright idea.
"Why, this first execution is to be mine!" he said.
"Of course, and it would have been a rich streak of luck for you."
"But you say that it will not matter who gives the cue, for the plot
will burst out?"
"Yes. But who will do this, when I am caged, and can not communicate
with the lads outside?"
"I," replied Beausire in lofty, tragic tones. "Will I not be on the
spot, since it is I whom they are to put in the pillory? So I am the
man who will cry out the arranged shouts; it is not so very hard a
task, methinks."
"I always said you were a genius," remarked the captain's friend, after
being wonder-struck.
Beausire bowed.
"If you do this," continued the Royalist plotter, "you will not only
be delivered and pardoned, but still further, when I proclaim that
the success of the outbreak is due to you, you can shake hands with
yourself beforehand on the great reward you will earn."
"I am not going to do the deed for anything like lucre," said the
adventurer, with the most disinterested of manners.
"We all know that," rejoined the friend; "but when the reward comes
along, I advise you not to refuse it."
"Oh, if you think I ought to take it--" faltered the gambler.
"I press you to, and if I had any power over you, I should order you,"
resumed the companion, majestically.
"I give in," said Beausire.
"Well, to-morrow we will breakfast together, for the governor of the
jail will not refuse this favor to two old 'pals,' and we will crack a
jolly good bottle of the rosy to the success of this plot."
Though Beausire may have had his doubts on the kindness of prison
governors, the request was granted, to his great satisfaction. It was
not one bottle they drained, but several. At the fourth, Beausire
was a red-hot Royalist. Luckily, the warders came to take him to the
Strand before he emptied the fifth. He stepped into the cart as into a
triumphal chariot, disdainfully surveying the throng for whom he was
storing up such a startling surprise.
On Notre Dame Bridge, a woman and a little boy were waiting for him to
come along. He recognized poor Oliva, in tears, and young Toussaint,
who, on beholding his father among the soldiers, said:
"Serves him right; what did he beat me for?"
The proud father smiled protectingly, and would have waved a blessing
but his hands were tied behind his back.
The City Hall Square was crammed with people. They knew that this felon
had robbed in the palace, and they had no pity for him. Hence, the
Guards had their work cut out to keep them back when the cart stopped
at the pillory foot.
Beausire looked on at the uproar and scuffling, as much as to say: "You
shall see some fun in awhile; this is nothing to the joker I have up my
sleeve!"
When he appeared on the pillory platform, there was general hooting;
but at the supreme moment, when the executioner opened the culprit's
shirt and pulled down the sleeve to bare the shoulder, and then stooped
down to take the red-hot brand, that happened which always does--all
was silent before the majesty of the law.
Beausire snatched at this lull, and gathering all his powers, he
shouted in a full, ringing and sonorous voice:
"Long live the king! Hurrah for the Prussians! Down with the nation!"
However great a tumult the prisoner may have expected, the one this
raised much exceeded it; the protest was not in shouts, but howls. The
whole gathering uttered an immense roar and rushed on the pillory.
This time the guards were insufficient to protect their man. Their
ranks were broken, the scaffold swarmed upon, the executioner thrown
over, and the condemned one torn from the stand and flung into the
surging mob.
He would have been flayed, dismembered, and torn to pieces but for one
man, arrayed in his scarf as a town officer, who luckily saw it all
from the City Hall steps.
It was the Commune attorney, Manuel. He had strongly humane feelings,
which he often had to keep hidden, but they moved him at such times.
With great difficulty he fought his way to Beausire, and laying hold of
him, said in a loud voice:
"In the name of the law, I claim this man!"
There was hesitation; he unloosed his scarf, floating it like a flag,
and called for all good citizens to assist him.
A score clustered round him and drew Beausire, half dead, from the
crowd. Manuel had him carried into the Hall, which was seriously
threatened, so deep was the exasperation. Manuel came out on the
balcony.
"This man is guilty," he said, "but of a crime for which he has not
been tried. Let us select a jury from among us to assemble in a room of
the City Hall. Whatever the sentence, it shall be executed; but let us
have a legal sentence."
Is it not curious that such language should be used on the eve of
the massacre of the prisoners, by one of the men accused of having
organized it, at the peril of his life?
This pledge appeased the mob. Beausire was dragged before the
improvised jury. He tried to defend himself, but his second crime was
as patent as the first; only in the popular eye it was much graver.
Was it not a dreadful crime and deserving of condign punishment to
cheer the king who was put in prison as a traitor, to hurrah for the
Prussians who had captured a French town, and to wish death to the
nation, in agony on a bed of pain?
So the jury decided not only that the culprit deserved the capital
penalty, but that to mark the shame which the law had sought to define
by substituting the guillotine for the gallows, that he should be
hanged, and on the spot where he committed the offense.
Consequently the headsman of Paris had his orders to erect a gibbet on
the pillory stand.
The view of this work and the certainty that the prisoner could not
escape them, pacified the multitude.
This was the matter which the Assembly was busied with. It saw that
everything tended to a massacre--a means of spreading terror and
perpetuating the Commune. The end was that they voted that the Commune
had acted to merit the gratitude of the country, and Robespierre, after
praising it, asserted that the House had lost the public confidence,
and that the only way for the people to save themselves was to retake
their powers.
So the masses were to be without check, but with a heart full of
vengeance, and charged to continue the August massacre of those who had
fought for the palace on the tenth, by following them into the prisons.
It was the first of September, and a storm seemed to oppress everybody
with its suspended lightning.