with a chair myself. Ask the wife whether I would! Not--" he added, as
though to explain this apparent idiosyncrasy of his--"not while the
good God has given me two hands for the purpose."
"Nonsense!"
There was a brief silence, during which Richard's glance fell upon the
few pathetic garments so carefully folded upon the narrow bed.
"So my poor little prisoner is to die to-day," he murmured sadly.
"Yes," answered the Deputy, "and I am glad of it. There is no room in
France for such vermin. They must be exterminated, and the sooner the
better. I know what I am saying, and I tell you that this woman Corday
is a dangerous character. She has others behind her. She is but an
accomplice. I am here this evening," he explained, "to try and find out
from her the names of her confederates. She would give no satisfactory
replies this afternoon, but perhaps, now that the fear of death is upon
her, we may be more successful."
[Illustration: "AT LAST, TOWARD EVENING, SHE FORCED HER WAY IN"]
"Well," affirmed the veteran, with the stubbornness of his class,
"whatever you may say, I cannot help pitying the girl. How I am to
break the news to little Jean, I don't know!" he added pathetically.
"Myself, I shall have no appetite for supper. Poor girl! My heart goes
out to her in her time of trouble."
"Yes," said Chabot, with a sardonic smile, "and yours is not the only
heart, my friend."
Richard looked puzzled.
"There is a young painter," continued the Deputy, "Hauer, by name. He
has been sketching her in the court-house; yes, and speaking to her as
well. He had better be careful," he added threateningly. "I have my eye
on him; and so has the Committee of Public Safety." Chabot was standing
by the window; he picked up one of the garments lying folded there on
the shelf, examined it for a moment, and threw it down again in disdain.
"Yes, this Citizen Hauer is a fool. Like you," he turned to Richard,
"and your little Jean, and the rest. His head has been turned by the
woman's looks. He will lose it altogether if he is not careful."
To so simple a mind as that of the old warder, the Deputy's fierce and
bitter hatred toward his prisoner seemed difficult to understand until
he remembered certain stories connected with her arrest, stories in
which his visitor had played an important, if not a very edifying part.
In early life Chabot had been a member of the priesthood, but renounced
his vows in order to enter the sphere of politics. After the murder of
Marat, when Charlotte Corday had been conveyed to the Abbaye prison,
Chabot was among those who had helped to search her, a task in which
his zeal had so far outrun his discretion as to induce him to retain
a watch which he found upon the prisoner's person, until she somewhat
sarcastically reminded him of his early and apparently forgotten vows
of priestly poverty.
It was Chabot, too, who, suspecting Charlotte of having important
papers concealed about her, had profited by the fact of her hands being
tied to search for them. The wretched girl, supposing him to be bent
upon some fresh outrage, sprang away with so violent a gesture, in her
efforts to elude his touch, that the front of her dress burst open.
With a natural and spontaneous movement of shame, she turned quickly
away and stood with her face to the wall, begging to be allowed to
rearrange her dress. So genuine was her emotion, and so strongly did
her innocent modesty appeal to her jailors, that the request was
immediately granted, and she was even permitted to draw down and
arrange her sleeves in such a manner as to interpose them between her
wrists and the cords that bound her none too tenderly.
Richard recalled those incidents, which had been related to him by
Lafondée, the dentist, who lived opposite Marat's house, and who had
been one of the first to rush to the scene of the murder; and he smiled
knowingly to himself as he looked across the narrow space at the
passionate, revengeful face of the ex-priest.
He was about to formulate some further arguments in defence of his
little protégée, when a movement at the threshold of the cell attracted
his attention, and in another moment the object of his thoughts stood
framed in the open doorway.
What a child she looked, standing there, with her hands behind her
back, wearing a simple country-made frock of some dark material,
a white fichu crossed over her breast and fastened behind at the
waist. Her auburn hair was tied back by a green ribbon, and a little
white cap, the "bonnet" of the period, similar to that worn by Marie
Antoinette in David's celebrated picture, rested lightly upon her
small, girlish head.
There was nothing of the convicted criminal about her appearance, save
the slight shade of pallor which these last few days of captivity had
left upon her cheek; there was nothing of the prisoner in her bearing,
save that her hands were bound behind her. Her wide gray eyes, fresh
from the dazzling sunshine of the street, seemed to open wider still
in an endeavor to pierce the prison gloom into which she
was returning. But, as she saw the old warder's homely figure, standing
there in a kindly attitude of welcome, an expression of relief, almost
of happiness, illumined her face.
Two soldiers, who had accompanied her as far as the entrance, withdrew
as soon as their prisoner had crossed the threshold, and the door
closed upon them.
The old warder advanced to meet his captive.
"So you are back again, citizeness?" he said, with an assumed
cheerfulness which he was far from feeling.
"Ah, my good friend," replied the girl, in a low voice, which bore
signs of the long and fatiguing cross-examination to which she had just
been subjected, "I shall not trouble you much longer."
Richard shrugged his shoulders, as though to deny that any trouble was
involved in the care of so well-behaved a prisoner.
[Illustration: "'I KISS THE TIPS OF YOUR WINGS,' HE SAID"]
"I will tell the wife of your return," he said. "You promised to take
your supper with us, you remember."
"I fear I must break my promise," said Charlotte, with a sad smile.
"There will be no time for supper to-night."
"But my little Jean is so looking forward----"
"Poor little Jean," she interrupted; "I am so sorry to disappoint him.
But he will forgive me, I know. And by the by," she continued, "I
am expecting a visitor this evening. Will you please see that he is
admitted the moment he arrives?"
Chabot, who up to this time had been sitting unperceived in the corner
of the cell, gave vent to a low chuckle.
Charlotte looked about at the sound, and as her eye fell upon the
sinister figure of the ex-priest, she could not repress a shudder.
"You!" she exclaimed, starting back suddenly.
Chabot advanced toward her, with mock politeness, which the expression
on his face belied. "At your service!" he said, with a low bow.
"But why are you here? What do you want with me?" asked the frightened
girl.
"I am here to see you, on a little matter of--er--business. I want a
few moments' conversation with you."
Charlotte turned an appealing glance upon the old warder. "Surely," she
exclaimed, with a tone of passionate entreaty in her voice, "surely
I have a right to ask that the short hour of life that is left to me
shall be undisturbed?"
Richard made a weak, deprecating movement with his hands. "I am not
to blame," he explained. "The Deputy has a pass, signed by the Police
Commissioner."
He crossed over behind the prisoner, and was about to untie her hands.
Chabot, noticing his intention, stopped him with a peremptory gesture.
"Leave that to me," he said. "I will see to it myself."
"But--citizen--" the old man began.
Chabot pointed sternly toward the door.
"Go!" he said. "Go! For time is short, and I have things to say to the
prisoner in private."
Richard hesitated, as though about to refuse, but his natural weakness
was no match for the firm attitude of the Deputy, and, after an uneasy
glance at Charlotte Corday, he shambled clumsily to the threshold and
went out.
Chabot crossed to the door and made sure that it was properly closed.
Then he turned quickly and advanced to where Charlotte was still
standing.
"And now," he said, "now that we are alone, quite alone together,
you and I, let us for the moment forget our mutual--shall I say
dislike?--our distrust of one another, eh?"
He approached and laid his hands upon her wrists, stooping to undo the
cords with which the prisoner was bound.
At his touch Charlotte, who had been watching his movements with a look
of terror on her face, sprang sharply back, as though she had been
stung by some poisonous reptile.
"Don't come near me!" she exclaimed passionately. "I could not bear you
to touch me!"
She retreated to the farthest end of the cell and stood at bay there
with her back to the wall.
"As you will! as you will!" replied the other. "I merely thought that
perhaps you would chat more freely if--but no matter."
"Will you not sit down?" he added, motioning her to a chair.
"I will stand!" she answered coldly.
"By all means," said Chabot, in an amused voice, "by all means. But I
suppose you have no objection to my sitting?"
The girl made no reply.
Chabot ensconced himself as comfortably as possible in the hard wooden
chair which the warder had vacated.
"Let us be sensible," he said, after a pause. "Your little game is
over, you know. You have lost."
"I have won!" exclaimed Charlotte, with a touch of triumph in her voice.
"We will not discuss the point," said Chabot. "I do not argue with
women. I wish you to tell me what you were unwilling, and very
naturally unwilling, to admit at your trial--the true motive of your
crime. I want to know the source from which came the inspiration. You
have executed the deed alone, but you cannot have planned it alone.
Others have helped you. You are to die, remember, alone; to suffer
alone; and yet it is not you alone who are guilty. There are, there
must be, others who have urged you to commit this crime. The Girondist
Barbaroux, for instance," he suggested, "a friend of yours, who has
just been arrested----"
"Had nothing whatever to do with it," exclaimed the girl, breaking in
upon his unfinished sentence. "What I have done, I have done alone, and
I am proud of it! I confided in none; I asked advice of none. The idea
was my own; the conception was my own; and I carried it out by myself!"
There was in her voice a note of exultation, of glory, of triumph in
the success of her crime; she seemed almost to boast of the solitude of
her guilt, as though conscious of the fact that one executes but ill
that which another's brain has conceived.
"Oh, it is very loyal of you to try and conceal the identity of your
accomplices," said Chabot, with a sneer.
"My loyalty is for my country alone. It was my love of her that
inspired me to plan my project; my love of her that helped me to
undertake it; my desire for her welfare that gave me strength to carry
it out!"
"Indeed," said the Deputy sardonically. "And doubtless it required
unusual strength to deal so fatal a blow, straight to the heart!"
The girl looked at him in surprise.
"The indignation in my own heart showed me the way," she said quietly.
"One would think," continued Chabot, "that you had practised with the
knife before on some other----" He left the sentence unfinished.
The blood rushed to Charlotte's cheek. A fire of indignation and
resentment burned in her usually tender eyes, making them blaze and
flame until even the cold-blooded Deputy was moved to admire the beauty
of this emotional woman, so fierce in the defence of her honor.
"You know well that I am no ordinary assassin," she exclaimed. "My
hands are clean in the eyes of Heaven. My soul is guiltless before God."
The ex-priest took a step forward. "How dare you speak of God? You?"
"I dare speak of Him," replied the girl, in an impassioned voice,
"because I believe that it was He who inspired me, as He inspired
Judith of old, to make this sacrifice in the cause of liberty. I
believe that He chose me to bear this message of His righteous
vengeance to a people who have forgotten His name; that He nerved my
arm to strike the blow at which you wonder. I have completed my task,"
she went on, in a quieter tone, "I leave the rest to others. I have
avenged much innocent blood. I have prevented the shedding of much
more." She turned proudly round and faced the Deputy with flashing eyes.
"I have killed one man," she said, "to save a hundred thousand!"
Chabot smiled grimly.
"Do you then imagine," he asked, "that you have murdered all the
Marats?"
"I have destroyed one," she retorted. Her fearless gaze met the crafty
eyes of her examiner, and they quailed before it.
"Perhaps the others will be afraid," she added meaningly.
"I must admit," replied the Deputy with a nervous assumption of
jocularity, "I am relieved to think that for the moment I am beyond
the reach of those pretty hands of yours. For I have no desire, believe
me, to be added to the list of your victims!"
Charlotte smiled scornfully. "You need have no fears," she said. "Were
my hands as free as yours, or my heart as black, you would still be
safe. You surely cannot flatter yourself that the question of the life
or death of such as you could be of any importance to the State."
The natural egotism of the man was wounded; his vanity was touched.
Confident of Charlotte's helplessness, he approached to within a few
feet of her.
"Are you not afraid to speak in such a tone to me?" he asked. "We are
alone here--" he looked meaningly round at the empty cell. "The walls
are thick. No one can hear us."
Charlotte looked him up and down with a slow, scornful gaze. "Afraid?"
she asked. "Of you?" She smiled. "Do you think that one can look at
you; at your shifty eyes--at your restless mouth--" involuntarily the
Deputy's hand rose to his lips--"without discovering the secret which
you conceal so badly behind a mask of insult and of bluster? Do you
think I cannot see what a coward you are at heart?"
"Truly polite!" exclaimed the other nervously. "At any rate, I am no
murderer!"
"Because you have not the courage!" replied the girl. "But be sure that
however great the guilt of those who have shed all this innocent blood,
you who have allowed it to be spilt will also have to answer for it."
Her face was transfigured by emotion as she spoke. She seemed to be
gazing into the caverns of eternity with the eyes of some inspired
prophetess. "I look forward into the future," she continued, "and I
see you, and the other brigands who surrounded Marat, whom God only
allows to live so as to make their fall the more terrible,--so as to
frighten all who would attempt to establish their fortunes on the ruins
of a misguided people,--I see you dragged by force up the scaffold
steps--the ladder to Eternity which I scale so willingly--till your
coward's eyes gaze forth flinching from that blood-stained casement,
that is for me the window looking out on immortality!"
Chabot stared in amazement at this young girl, who seemed to speak with
the assurance of a seer. He could not subdue his admiration of a woman
who was so obviously fearless of death. "Come," he said, "I like your
pluck." He inspected her with a critical eye. "You're not a bad-looking
girl, either, for an aristocrat." He came very close to her, apparently
unconscious of the loathing with which she regarded his approach. "Turn
round and let me have a look at you," he ordered. Charlotte did not
seem to have heard him, but kept her head high in the air, and the same
lofty look of disdain in her eye.
"Proud, are you?" said the deputy, with a snarl. "I suppose I'm not
good enough to speak to you, eh?"
Charlotte still remained silent.
"Hoity toity!" continued Chabot, "with your fine airs and graces! You
won't be so damned haughty in an hour's time, _I_ know! You won't hold
your head so high then, I'll be bound!" He came quite close and leered
into her face. "Why do you treat me like this?" he asked. "Aren't
I good enough for you?" There was no tremor of fear in the girl's
attitude, but almost unconsciously she turned her head away. "Come
here!" he said sharply. "Come closer!" Charlotte Corday did not move.
Chabot stooped until his face was only a few inches from hers. "I've
a good mind to take a kiss from you," he said, with an ugly smile.
"What do you say to that, eh?" he asked. The girl moved her head still
further away so as to avoid looking upon the hideous features which
were now so close to her own pure lips.
"What's the use of making all this fuss?" said Chabot impatiently.
Still no reply from the woman, who, beneath her appearance of calm
and courage, could feel her heart beating wildly with terror and
apprehension. "What?" continued the Deputy, "Look at me!" he commanded.
Then, as Charlotte seemed to pay no attention to his orders, "Damn
you!" he said, "you _shall_ look at me!" And he placed his hands upon
her shoulders and turned her quickly round so as to face him.
Then, and not till then, did her self-reliance give way. With the
amorous touch of his hateful fingers upon her neck, she realized the
helplessness and horror of her position. With a convulsive movement
she tried to free her hands. The face of her enemy came closer and
closer to hers, and she read the coarse desires of his vicious soul in
the lustful brightness of his eyes. In a perfect agony of disgust and
terror she fought desperately to fling herself out of his reach.
"Let me go!" she appealed, "let me go! Ah, God!" she cried, in a
strangled voice, "Let me go!"
Her cry must have been loud enough to penetrate the thick prison door,
for in a moment it was flung open, and two men, Richard and another,
rushed into the room, and Charlotte was aware that the old warder had
interposed his burly person between her and the man she loathed.
"I should have known better than to leave you alone with a man of his
character," exclaimed the veteran, glowering at the ex-priest. "The
wife will never forgive me."
Chabot had recovered his self-possession, and was regarding the old
man's perturbation with evident amusement.
The stranger who had entered the cell with Richard was a young man
of about thirty, clean-shaven, with dark, almost black hair shading
a high, intellectual brow and eyes of unusual brilliance. He was
dressed in the uniform, such as it was, of the National Guard, but
his appearance was not that of a soldier, and the artist's block and
sketching materials which he carried in his hand proclaimed him to be,
what indeed he was, a portrait painter.
He had heard the woman's agonized cry. The scene that he had witnessed
on entering the room had shown him the cause of her distress, and, with
the blind, impetuous rage which the sight of any act of violence or
injustice towards the weak or helpless rouses in a young and chivalrous
soul, he rushed to where Chabot was standing and seized that worthy
violently by the shoulder.
"What the devil are you doing?" he demanded furiously.
"That is no business of yours," retorted Chabot, coolly disengaging
himself from the other's grasp. "You evidently do not know who I am,
young man."
"I have no wish to. It does not interest me. But I do know that you are
not wanted here!"
"I am the Deputy Chabot, of the Department of Loir-et-Cher!"
"Indeed," replied the young man, apparently unabashed by so much
distinction. "Well, I am Jean Jacques Hauer! And to the devil with your
'deputy'!"
"So you are the fortunate Citizen Hauer," said Chabot, with a dark
smile of comprehension. "I see, I see!"
"What do you mean?" asked the artist threateningly.
Chabot turned to Charlotte Corday with a bow.
"I congratulate you, mademoiselle," he said, with meaning in his voice,
"I congratulate you on the possession of so well-bred, so well-mannered
a lover!"
Hauer sprang forward with a cry of rage, and would have hurled himself
upon the Deputy, had not Charlotte's quiet voice stopped him.
"Leave him alone," she begged. "Let him be, I pray you. He is not
worthy of your anger."
Chabot moved toward the entrance slowly.
"Good-by, mademoiselle," he said, "and thank you"--ironically--"thank
you for a very pleasant chat, which I shall always remember, when you
are--what shall we say?--forgotten!"
Charlotte faced him with quiet dignity.
"I may be forgotten," she replied, "and that soon. But what I have done
shall not readily be forgotten."
With a sarcastic laugh the Deputy crossed the threshold and was gone.
Richard watched his departure with evident relief, and then turned to
address his prisoner.
"There is a priest without," he said, "who asks whether you desire his
services."
Charlotte shook her head. "Will you thank him on my behalf for his
kindness. But I do not need the offices of the Church."
She crossed to the table and leaned one hand upon it.
"The blood that I have spilt, and my blood that I am about to shed, are
the only sacrifices that I can offer to God," she said. "I have no
fears. He knows all, and will forgive."
The warder bowed his head, took a last look round the cell to see that
all was well, and left the room.
II
As the door closed Charlotte sank into a chair and buried her face in
her hands. The long trial and the incidents that had followed it had
been very tiring. She was young and lonely, and her last hour had come.
Small wonder then that for a moment she should give way to emotion
or that her eyes should brim with the bitter tears of fatigue and
disappointment.
Hauer watched her in silence for a little while, and then crossed the
narrow room and stood beside her chair.
"Perhaps you would rather be alone?" he said, in a tender voice of pity.
Charlotte raised her shining eyes to his, and a grave smile stole like
a shadow to her lips.
"No, no," she exclaimed, holding out a detaining hand, "I have but few
moments left to me, and still fewer friends. Stay with me, Monsieur
Hauer, if you will, and," she added in a lighter tone, "you may finish
the portrait."
He took his painting materials from the table, set up the small
portable easel, arranged the palette and brushes in his hand, and
commenced his work upon the portrait of the prisoner, which he had
begun in the court-house, and which, at her request and by permission
of her judges, he was now to be allowed to complete.
And as he painted, they talked together, quietly, sympathetically, with
the understanding and the occasional silence of old friends, these two
who had but learned to know each other during the last few days, but
from whose short acquaintance were destined to spring, for the one, a
friendship which did much to lighten the burden of these last hours,
for the other, a love which he was to bear in his heart to the end of
an adventurous career.
This girl, who had lost her mother at an early age; who had ever since
lived a simple, secluded, somewhat lonely existence, first in the
convent of L'Abbaye-aux-Dames, and subsequently under the care of an
old aunt at Caen; who had never found a friend in whom to confide her
troubles; now for the first time discovered a sympathetic listener, who
gradually drew from her the sad story of her life and of the sinister
events that led up to the tragedy with which it was to close.
As a girl she had been much alone; had played alone, thought alone,
lived alone. And in her case, as in that of many others, solitude had
been the mother of great thoughts. Hers was not an unhappy childhood,
but her happiness had sprung from sources other than those usually open
to children. She drew most of her pleasure from books, from Plutarch,
from Corneille, the poet, her ancestor, of whom she was justly proud,
and who had declared that poetry and heroism were of the same race, the
one carrying out what the other conceived.
So had she grown up at Caen, dreaming much of her country's welfare,
filled with a romantic ambition to do something for France, something
grand, something noble.