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Scaramouche
A Romance of the French Revolution
by Rafael Sabatini
November, 1999 [Etext #1947]
*The Project Gutenberg Etext of Scaramouche, by Rafael Sabatini*
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This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
SCARAMOUCHE
A Romance of the French Revolution
by Rafael Sabatini
CONTENTS
BOOK I
THE ROBE
I. THE REPUBLICAN
II. THE ARISTOCRAT
III. THE ELOQUENCE OF M. DE VILMORIN
IV. THE HERITAGE
V. THE LORD OF GAVRILLAC
VI. THE WINDMILL
VII. THE WIND
VIII. OMNES OMNIBUS
IX. THE AFTERMATH
BOOK II
THE BUSKIN
I. THE TRESPASSERS
II. THE SERVICE OF THESPIS
III. THE COMIC MUSE
IV. EXIT MONSIEUR PARVISSIMUS
V. ENTER SCARAMOUCHE
VI. CLIMENE
VII. THE CONQUEST OF NANTES
VIII. THE DREAM
IX. THE AWAKENING
X. CONTRITION
XI. THE FRACAS AT THE THEATRE FEYDAU
BOOK III
THE SWORD
I. TRANSITION
II. QUOS DEUS VULT PERDERE
III. PRESIDENT LE CHAPELIER
IV. AT MEUDON
V. MADAME DE PLOUGASTEL
VI. POLITICIANS
VII. THE SPADASSINICIDES
VIII. THE PALADIN OF THE THIRD
IX. TORN PRIDE
X. THE RETURNING CARRIAGE
XI. INFERENCES
XII. THE OVERWHELMING REASON
XIII. SANCTUARY
XIV. THE BARRIER
XV. SAFE-CONDUCT
XVI. SUNRISE
SCARAMOUCHE
BOOK I: THE ROBE
CHAPTER I
THE REPUBLICAN
He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was
mad. And that was all his patrimony. His very paternity was
obscure, although the village of Gavrillac had long since dispelled
the cloud of mystery that hung about it. Those simple Brittany folk
were not so simple as to be deceived by a pretended relationship
which did not even possess the virtue of originality. When a
nobleman, for no apparent reason, announces himself the godfather of
an infant fetched no man knew whence, and thereafter cares for the
lad's rearing and education, the most unsophisticated of country
folk perfectly understand the situation. And so the good people of
Gavrillac permitted themselves no illusions on the score of the real
relationship between Andre-Louis Moreau - as the lad had been named
- and Quintin de Kercadiou, Lord of Gavrillac, who dwelt in the
big grey house that dominated from its eminence the village
clustering below.
Andre-Louis had learnt his letters at the village school, lodged
the while with old Rabouillet, the attorney, who in the capacity of
fiscal intendant, looked after the affairs of M. de Kercadiou.
Thereafter, at the age of fifteen, he had been packed off to Paris,
to the Lycee of Louis Le Grand, to study the law which he was now
returned to practise in conjunction with Rabouillet. All this at
the charges of his godfather, M. de Kercadiou, who by placing him
once more under the tutelage of Rabouillet would seem thereby quite
clearly to be making provision for his future.
Andre-Louis, on his side, had made the most of his opportunities.
You behold him at the age of four-and-twenty stuffed with learning
enough to produce an intellectual indigestion in an ordinary mind.
Out of his zestful study of Man, from Thucydides to the
Encyclopaedists, from Seneca to Rousseau, he had confirmed into an
unassailable conviction his earliest conscious impressions of the
general insanity of his own species. Nor can I discover that
anything in his eventful life ever afterwards caused him to waver
in that opinion.
In body he was a slight wisp of a fellow, scarcely above middle
height, with a lean, astute countenance, prominent of nose and
cheek-bones, and with lank, black hair that reached almost to his
shoulders. His mouth was long, thin-lipped, and humorous. He was
only just redeemed from ugliness by the splendour of a pair of
ever-questing, luminous eyes, so dark as to be almost black. Of
the whimsical quality of his mind and his rare gift of graceful
expression, his writings - unfortunately but too scanty - and
particularly his Confessions, afford us very ample evidence. Of
his gift of oratory he was hardly conscious yet, although he had
already achieved a certain fame for it in the Literary Chamber of
Rennes - one of those clubs by now ubiquitous in the land, in
which the intellectual youth of France foregathered to study and
discuss the new philosophies that were permeating social life.
But the fame he had acquired there was hardly enviable. He was
too impish, too caustic, too much disposed - so thought his
colleagues - to ridicule their sublime theories for the regeneration
of mankind. himself he protested that he merely held them up to the
mirror of truth, and that it was not his fault if when reflected
there they looked ridiculous.
All that he achieved by this was to exasperate; and his expulsion
from a society grown mistrustful of him must already have followed
but for his friend, Philippe de Vilmorin, a divinity student of
Rennes, who, himself, was one of the most popular members of the
Literary Chamber.
Coming to Gavrillac on a November morning, laden with news of the
political storms which were then gathering over France, Philippe
found in that sleepy Breton village matter to quicken his already
lively indignation. A peasant of Gavrillac, named Mabey, had been
shot dead that morning in the woods of Meupont, across the river,
by a gamekeeper of the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr. The unfortunate
fellow had been caught in the act of taking a pheasant from a snare,
and the gamekeeper had acted under explicit orders from his master.
Infuriated by an act of tyranny so absolute and merciless, M. de
Vilmorin proposed to lay the matter before M. de Kercadiou. Mabey
was a vassal of Gavrillac, and Vilmorin hoped to move the Lord of
Gavrillac to demand at least some measure of reparation for the
widow and the three orphans which that brutal deed had made.
But because Andre-Louis was Philippe's dearest friend - indeed, his
almost brother - the young seminarist sought him out in the first
instance. He found him at breakfast alone in the long, low-ceilinged,
white-panelled dining-room at Rabouillet's - the only home that
Andre-Louis had ever known - and after embracing him, deafened him
with his denunciation of M. de La Tour d'Azyr.
"I have heard of it already," said Andre-Louis.
"You speak as if the thing had not surprised you," his friend
reproached him.
"Nothing beastly can surprise me when done by a beast. And La Tour
d'Azyr is a beast, as all the world knows. The more fool Mabey for
stealing his pheasants. He should have stolen somebody else's."
"Is that all you have to say about it?"
"What more is there to say? I've a practical mind, I hope."
"What more there is to say I propose to say to your godfather, M.
de Kercadiou. I shall appeal to him for justice."
"Against M. de La Tour d'azyr?" Andre-Louis raised his eyebrows.
"Why not?"
"My dear ingenuous Philippe, dog doesn't eat dog."
"You are unjust to your godfather. He is a humane man."
"Oh, as humane as you please. But this isn't a question
of humanity. It's a question of game-laws."
M. de Vilmorin tossed his long arms to Heaven in disgust. He was
a tall, slender young gentleman, a year or two younger than
Andre-Louis. He was very soberly dressed in black, as became a
seminarist, with white bands at wrists and throat and silver
buckles to his shoes. His neatly clubbed brown hair was innocent
of powder.
"You talk like a lawyer," he exploded.
"Naturally. But don't waste anger on me on that account. Tell me
what you want me to do."
"I want you to come to M. de Kercadiou with me, and to use your
influence to obtain justice. I suppose I am asking too much."
"My dear Philippe, I exist to serve you. I warn you that it is a
futile quest; but give me leave to finish my breakfast, and I am
at your orders."
M. de Vilmorin dropped into a winged armchair by the well-swept
hearth, on which a piled-up fire of pine logs was burning cheerily.
And whilst he waited now he gave his friend the latest news of the
events in Rennes. Young, ardent, enthusiastic, and inspired by
Utopian ideals, he passionately denounced the rebellious attitude
of the privileged.
Andre-Louis, already fully aware of the trend of feeling in the
ranks of an order in whose deliberations he took part as the
representative of a nobleman, was not at all surprised by what he
heard. M. de Vilmorin found it exasperating that his friend should
apparently decline to share his own indignation.
"Don't you see what it means?" he cried. "The nobles, by disobeying
the King, are striking at the very foundations of the throne. Don't
they perceive that their very existence depends upon it; that if the
throne falls over, it is they who stand nearest to it who will be
crushed? Don't they see that?"
"Evidently not. They are just governing classes, and I never heard
of governing classes that had eyes for anything but their own profit."
"That is our grievance. That is what we are going to change."
"You are going to abolish governing classes? An interesting
experiment. I believe it was the original plan of creation, and it
might have succeeded but for Cain."
"What we are going to do," said M. de Vilmorin, curbing his
exasperation, "is to transfer the government to other hands."
"And you think that will make a difference?"
"I know it will."
"Ah! I take it that being now in minor orders, you already possess
the confidence of the Almighty. He will have confided to you His
intention of changing the pattern of mankind."
M. de Vilmorin's fine ascetic face grew overcast. "You are profane,
Andre," he reproved his friend.
"I assure you that I am quite serious. To do what you imply would
require nothing short of divine intervention. You must change man,
not systems. Can you and our vapouring friends of the Literary
Chamber of Rennes, or any other learned society of France, devise a
system of government that has never yet been tried? Surely not.
And can they say of any system tried that it proved other than a
failure in the end? My dear Philippe, the future is to be read
with certainty only in the past. Ab actu ad posse valet consecutio.
Man never changes. He is always greedy, always acquisitive, always
vile. I am speaking of Man in the bulk."
"Do you pretend that it is impossible to ameliorate the lot of the
people?" M. de Vilmorin challenged him.
"When you say the people you mean, of course, the populace. Will
you abolish it? That is the only way to ameliorate its lot, for as
long as it remains populace its lot will be damnation."
"You argue, of course, for the side that employs you. That is
natural, I suppose." M. de Vilmorin spoke between sorrow and
indignation.
"On the contrary, I seek to argue with absolute detachment. Let us
test these ideas of yours. To what form of government do you aspire?
A republic, it is to be inferred from what you have said. Well, you
have it already. France in reality is a republic to-day."
Philippe stared at him. "You are being paradoxical, I think. What
of the King?"
"The King? All the world knows there has been no king in France
since Louis XIV. There is an obese gentleman at Versailles who
wears the crown, but the very news you bring shows for how little
he really counts. It is the nobles and clergy who sit in the high
places, with the people of France harnessed under their feet, who
are the real rulers. That is why I say that France is a republic;
she is a republic built on the best pattern - the Roman pattern.
Then, as now, there were great patrician families in luxury,
preserving for themselves power and wealth, and what else is
accounted worth possessing; and there was the populace crushed and
groaning, sweating, bleeding, starving, and perishing in the Roman
kennels. That was a republic; the mightiest we have seen."
Philippe strove with his impatience. "At least you will admit - you
have, in fact, admitted it - that we could not be worse governed
than we are?"
"That is not the point. The point is should we be better governed
if we replaced the present ruling class by another? Without some
guarantee of that I should be the last to lift a finger to effect a
change. And what guarantees can you give? What is the class that
aims at government? I will tell you. The bourgeoisie."
"What?"
"That startles you, eh? Truth is so often disconcerting. You hadn't
thought of it? Well, think of it now. Look well into this Nantes
manifesto. Who are the authors of it?"
"I can tell you who it was constrained the municipality of Nantes
to send it to the King. Some ten thousand workmen - shipwrights,
weavers, labourers, and artisans of every kind."
"Stimulated to it, driven to it, by their employers, the wealthy
traders and shipowners of that city," Andre-Louis replied. "I have
a habit of observing things at close quarters, which is why our
colleagues of the Literary Chamber dislike me so cordially in debate.
Where I delve they but skim. Behind those labourers and artisans of
Nantes, counselling them, urging on these poor, stupid, ignorant
toilers to shed their blood in pursuit of the will o' the wisp of
freedom, are the sail-makers, the spinners, the ship-owners and the
slave-traders. The slave-traders! The men who live and grow rich
by a traffic in human flesh and blood in the colonies, are conducting
at home a campaign in the sacred name of liberty! Don't you see that
the whole movement is a movement of hucksters and traders and
peddling vassals swollen by wealth into envy of the power that lies
in birth alone? The money-changers in Paris who hold the bonds in
the national debt, seeing the parlous financial condition of the
State, tremble at the thought that it may lie in the power of a
single man to cancel the debt by bankruptcy. To secure themselves
they are burrowing underground to overthrow a state and build upon
its ruins a new one in which they shall be the masters. And to
accomplish this they inflame the people. Already in Dauphiny we
have seen blood run like water - the blood of the populace, always
the blood of the populace. Now in Brittany we may see the like.
And if in the end the new ideas prevail? if the seigneurial rule
is overthrown, what then? You will have exchanged an aristocracy
for a plutocracy. Is that worth while? Do you 'think that under
money-changers and slave-traders and men who have waxed rich in
other ways by the ignoble arts of buying and selling, the lot of
the people will be any better than under their priests and nobles?
Has it ever occurred to you, Philippe, what it is that makes the
rule of the nobles so intolerable? Acquisitiveness. Acquisitiveness
is the curse of mankind. And shall you expect less acquisitiveness
in men who have built themselves up by acquisitiveness? Oh, I am
ready to admit that the present government is execrable, unjust,
tyrannical - what you will; but I beg you to look ahead, and to see
that the government for which it is aimed at exchanging it may be
infinitely worse."
Philippe sat thoughtful a moment. Then he returned to the attack.
"You do not speak of the abuses, the horrible, intolerable abuses
of power under which we labour at present."
"Where there is power there will always be the abuse of it."
"Not if the tenure of power is dependent upon its equitable
administration."
"The tenure of power is power. We cannot dictate to those who hold
it."
"The people can - the people in its might."
"Again I ask you, when you say the people do you mean the populace?
You do. What power can the populace wield? It can run wild. It
can burn and slay for a time. But enduring power it cannot wield,
because power demands qualities which the populace does not possess,
or it would not be populace. The inevitable, tragic corollary of
civilization is populace. For the rest, abuses can be corrected by
equity; and equity, if it is not found in the enlightened, is not
to be found at all. M. Necker is to set about correcting abuses,
and limiting privileges. That is decided. To that end the States
General are to assemble."
"And a promising beginning we have made in Brittany, as Heaven hears
me!" cried Philippe.
"Pooh! That is nothing. Naturally the nobles will not yield without
a struggle. It is a futile and ridiculous struggle - but then... it
is human nature, I suppose, to be futile and ridiculous."
M. de Vilmorin became witheringly sarcastic. "Probably you will
also qualify the shooting of Mabey as futile and ridiculous. I
should even be prepared to hear you argue in defence of the Marquis
de La Tour d' Azyr that his gamekeeper was merciful in shooting
Mabey, since the alternative would have been a life-sentence to
the galleys."
Andre-Louis drank the remainder of his chocolate; set down his cup,
and pushed back his chair, his breakfast done.
"I confess that I have not your big charity, my dear Philippe. I
am touched by Mabey's fate. But, having conquered the shock of
this news to my emotions, I do not forget that, after all, Mabey
was thieving when he met his death."
M. de Vilmorin heaved himself up in his indignation.
"That is the point of view to be expected in one who is the assistant
fiscal intendant of a nobleman, and the delegate of a nobleman to
the States of Brittany."
"Philippe, is that just? You are angry with me!" he cried, in real
solicitude.
"I am hurt," Vilmorin admitted. "I am deeply hurt by your attitude.
And I am not alone in resenting your reactionary tendencies. Do
you know that the Literary Chamber is seriously considering your
expulsion?"
Andre-Louis shrugged. "That neither surprises nor troubles me."
M. de Vilmorin swept on, passionately: "Sometimes I think that you
have no heart. With you it is always the law, never equity. It
occurs to me, Andre, that I was mistaken in coming to you. You are
not likely to be of assistance to me in my interview with M. de
Kercadiou." He took up his hat, clearly with the intention of
departing.
Andre-Louis sprang up and caught him by the arm.
"I vow," said he, "that this is the last time ever I shall consent
to talk law or politics with you, Philippe. I love you too well
to quarrel with you over other men's affairs."
"But I make them my own," Philippe insisted vehemently.
"Of course you do, and I love you for it. It is right that you
should. You are to be a priest; and everybody's business is a
priest's business. Whereas I am a lawyer - the fiscal intendant
of a nobleman, as you say - and a lawyer's business is the business
of his client. That is the difference between us. Nevertheless,
you are not going to shake me off."
"But I tell you frankly, now that I come to think of it, that I
should prefer you did not see M. de Kercadiou with me. Your duty
to your client cannot be a help to me."
His wrath had passed; but his determination remained firm, based
upon the reason he gave.
"Very well," said Andre-Louis. "It shall be as you please. But
nothing shall prevent me at least from walking with you as far as
the chateau, and waiting for you while you make your appeal to M.
de Kercadiou."
And so they left the house good friends, for the sweetness of M.
de Vilmorin's nature did not admit of rancour, and together they
took their way up the steep main street of Gavrillac.
CHAPTER II
THE ARISTOCRAT
The sleepy village of Gavrillac, a half-league removed from the main
road to Rennes, and therefore undisturbed by the world's traffic,
lay in a curve of the River Meu, at the foot, and straggling halfway
up the slope, of the shallow hill that was crowned by the squat manor.
By the time Gavrillac had paid tribute to its seigneur - partly in
money and partly in service - tithes to the Church, and imposts to
the King, it was hard put to it to keep body and soul together with
what remained. Yet, hard as conditions were in Gavrillac, they were
not so hard as in many other parts of France, not half so hard, for
instance, as with the wretched feudatories of the great Lord of La
Tour d'Azyr, whose vast possessions were at one point separated from
this little village by the waters of the Meu.
The Chateau de Gavrillac owed such seigneurial airs as might be
claimed for it to its dominant position above the village rather
than to any feature of its own. Built of granite, like all the rest
of Gavrillac, though mellowed by some three centuries of existence,
it was a squat, flat-fronted edifice of two stories, each lighted by
four windows with external wooden shutters, and flanked at either end
by two square towers or pavilions under extinguisher roofs. Standing
well back in a garden, denuded now, but very pleasant in summer, and
immediately fronted by a fine sweep of balustraded terrace, it looked,
what indeed it was, and always had been, the residence of
unpretentious folk who found more interest in husbandry than in
adventure.
Quintin de Kercadiou, Lord of Gavrillac - Seigneur de Gavrillac was
all the vague title that he bore, as his forefathers had borne before
him, derived no man knew whence or how - confirmed the impression
that his house conveyed. Rude as the granite itself, he had never
sought the experience of courts, had not even taken service in the
armies of his King. He left it to his younger brother, Etienne, to
represent the family in those exalted spheres. His own interests
from earliest years had been centred in his woods and pastures. He
hunted, and he cultivated his acres, and superficially he appeared
to be little better than any of his rustic metayers. He kept no
state, or at least no state commensurate with his position or with
the tastes of his niece Aline de Kercadiou. Aline, having spent
some two years in the court atmosphere of Versailles under the aegis
of her uncle Etienne, had ideas very different from those of her
uncle Quintin of what was befitting seigneurial dignity. But though
this only child of a third Kercadiou had exercised, ever since she
was left an orphan at the early age of four, a tyrannical rule over
the Lord of Gavrillac, who had been father and mother to her, she
had never yet succeeded in beating down his stubbornness on that
score. She did not yet despair - persistence being a dominant note
in her character - although she had been assiduously and fruitlessly
at work since her return from the great world of Versailles some
three months ago.
She was walking on the terrace when Andre-Louis and M. de Vilmorin
arrived. Her slight body was wrapped against the chill air in a
white pelisse; her head was encased in a close-fitting bonnet, edged
with white fur. It was caught tight in a knot of pale-blue ribbon
on the right of her chin; on the left a long ringlet of corn-coloured
hair had been permitted to escape. The keen air had whipped so much
of her cheeks as was presented to it, and seemed to have added
sparkle to eyes that were of darkest blue.
Andre-Louis and M. de Vilmorin had been known to her from childhood.
The three had been playmates once, and Andre-Louis - in view of his
spiritual relationship with her uncle - she called her cousin. The
cousinly relations had persisted between these two long after
Philippe de Vilmorin had outgrown the earlier intimacy, and had
become to her Monsieur de Vilmorin.
She waved her hand to them in greeting as they advanced, and stood
- an entrancing picture, and fully conscious of it - to await them
at the end of the terrace nearest the short avenue by which they
approached.
"If you come to see monsieur my uncle, you come inopportunely,
messieurs," she told them, a certain feverishness in her air. "He
is closely - oh, so very closely - engaged."
"We will wait, mademoiselle," said M. de Vilmorin, bowing gallantly
over the hand she extended to him. "Indeed, who would haste to the
uncle that may tarry a moment with the niece?"
"M. l'abbe," she teased him, "when you are in orders I shall take
you for my confessor. You have so ready and sympathetic an
understanding."
"But no curiosity," said Andre-Louis. "You haven't thought of that."
"I wonder what you mean, Cousin Andre."
"Well you may," laughed Philippe. "For no one ever knows." And
then, his glance straying across the terrace settled upon a carriage
that was drawn up before the door of the chateau. It was a vehicle
such as was often to be seen in the streets of a great city, but
rarely in the country. It was a beautifully sprung two-horse
cabriolet of walnut, with a varnish upon it like a sheet of glass
and little pastoral scenes exquisitely painted on the panels of the
door. It was built to carry two persons, with a box in front for
the coachman, and a stand behind for the footman. This stand was
empty, but the footman paced before the door, and as he emerged now
from behind the vehicle into the range of M. de Vilmorin's vision,
he displayed the resplendent blue-and-gold livery of the Marquis de
La Tour d'Azyr.
"Why!" he exclaimed. "Is it M. de La Tour d'Azyr who is with your
uncle?"
"It is, monsieur," said she, a world of mystery in voice and eyes,
of which M. de Vilmorin observed nothing.
"Ah, pardon!" he bowed low, hat in hand. "Serviteur, mademoiselle,"
and he turned to depart towards the house.
"Shall I come with you, Philippe?" Andre-Louis called after him.
"It would be ungallant to assume that you would prefer it," said M.
de Vilmorin, with a glance at mademoiselle. "Nor do I think it
would serve. If you will wait... "
M. de Vilmorin strode off. Mademoiselle, after a moment's blank
pause, laughed ripplingly. "Now where is he going in such a hurry?"
"To see M. de La Tour d'Azyr as well as your uncle, I should say."
"But he cannot. They cannot see him. Did I not say that they are
very closely engaged? You don't ask me why, Andre" There was an
arch mysteriousness about her, a latent something that may have
been elation or amusement, or perhaps both. Andre-Louis could not
determine it.
"Since obviously you are all eagerness to tell, why should I ask?"
quoth he.
"If you are caustic I shall not tell you even if you ask. Oh, yes,
I will. It will teach you to treat me with the respect that is my
due."
"I hope I shall never fail in that."
"Less than ever when you learn that I am very closely concerned in
the visit of M. de La Tour d'Azyr. I am the object of this visit."
And she looked at him with sparkling eyes and lips parted in
laughter.
"The rest, you would seem to imply, is obvious. But I am a dolt,
if you please; for it is not obvious to me."
"Why, stupid, he comes to ask my hand in marriage."
"Good God!" said Andre-Louis, and stared at her, chapfallen.
She drew back from him a little with a frown and an upward tilt of
her chin. "It surprises you?"
"It disgusts me," said he, bluntly. "In fact, I don't believe it.
You are amusing yourself with me."
For a moment she put aside her visible annoyance to remove his
doubts. "I am quite serious, monsieur. There came a formal letter
to my uncle this morning from M. de La Tour d'Azyr, announcing the
visit and its object. I will not say that it did not surprise us
a little..
"Oh, I see," cried Andre-Louis, in relief. "I understand. For a
moment I had almost feared... " He broke off, looked at her, and
shrugged.
"Why do you stop? You had almost feared that Versailles had been
wasted upon me. That I should permit the court-ship of me to be
conducted like that of any village wench. It was stupid of you. I
am being sought in proper form, at my uncle's hands."
"Is his consent, then, all that matters, according to Versailles?"
"What else?"
"There is your own."
She laughed. "I am a dutiful niece... when it suits me."
"And will it suit you to be dutiful if your uncle accepts this
monstrous proposal?"
"Monstrous!" She bridled. "And why monstrous, if you please?"
"For a score of reasons," he answered irritably.
"Give me one," she challenged him.
"He is twice your age."
"Hardly so much," said she.
"He is forty-five, at least."
"But he looks no more than thirty. He is very handsome - so much
you will admit; nor will you deny that he is very wealthy and very
powerful; the greatest nobleman in Brittany. He will make me a
great lady."
"God made you that, Aline."
"Come, that's better. Sometimes you can almost be polite." And she
moved along the terrace, Andre-Louis pacing beside her.
"I can be more than that to show reason why you should not let this
beast befoul the beautiful thing that God has made."
She frowned, and her lips tightened. "You are speaking of my future
husband," she reproved him.
His lips tightened too; his pale face grew paler.
"And is it so? It is settled, then? Your uncle is to agree? You
are to be sold thus, lovelessly, into bondage to a man you do not
know. I had dreamed of better things for you, Aline."
"Better than to be Marquise de La Tour d'Azyr?"
He made a gesture of exasperation. "Are men and women nothing more
than names? Do the souls of them count for nothing? Is there no
joy in life, no happiness, that wealth and pleasure and empty,
high-sounding titles are to be its only aims? I had set you high
- so high, Aline - a thing scarce earthly. There is joy in your
heart, intelligence in your mind; and, as I thought, the vision that
pierces husks and shams to claim the core of reality for its own.
Yet you will surrender all for a parcel of make-believe. You will
sell your soul and your body to be Marquise de La Tour d'Azyr."
"You are indelicate," said she, and though she frowned her eyes
laughed. "And you go headlong to conclusions. My uncle will not
consent to more than to allow my consent to be sought. We understand
each other, my uncle and I. I am not to be bartered like a turnip."
He stood still to face her, his eyes glowing, a flush creeping into
his pale cheeks.
"You have been torturing me to amuse yourself!" he cried. "Ah,
well, I forgive you out of my relief."
"Again you go too fast, Cousin Andre I have permitted my uncle to
consent that M. le Marquis shall make his court to me. I like the
look of the gentleman. I am flattered by his preference when I
consider his eminence. It is an eminence that I may find it
desirable to share. M. le Marquis does not look as if he were a
dullard. It should be interesting to be wooed by him. It may be
more interesting still to marry him, and I think, when all is
considered, that I shall probably - very probably - decide to do so."
He looked at her, looked at the sweet, challenging loveliness of that
childlike face so tightly framed in the oval of white fur, and all
the life seemed to go out of his own countenance.
"God help you, Aline!" he groaned.
She stamped her foot. He was really very exasperating, and
something presumptuous too, she thought.
"You are insolent, monsieur."
"It is never insolent to pray, Aline. And I did no more than pray,
as I shall continue to do. You'll need my prayers, I think."
"You are insufferable!" She was growing angry, as he saw by the
deepening frown, the heightened colour.
"That is because I suffer. Oh, Aline, little cousin, think well of
what you do; think well of the realities you will be bartering for
these shams - the realities that you will never know, because these
cursed shams will block your way to them. When M. de La Tour d'Azyr
comes to make his court, study him well; consult your fine instincts;
leave your own noble nature free to judge this animal by its
intuitions. Consider that... "
"I consider, monsieur, that you presume upon the kindness I have
always shown you. You abuse the position of toleration in which
you stand. Who are you? What are you, that you should have the
insolence to take this tone with me?"
He bowed, instantly his cold, detached self again, and resumed the
mockery that was his natural habit.
"My congratulations, mademoiselle, upon the readiness with which you
begin to adapt yourself to the great role you are to play."
"Do you adapt yourself also, monsieur," she retorted angrily, and
turned her shoulder to him.
"To be as the dust beneath the haughty feet of Madame la Marquise.
I hope I shall know my place in future."
The phrase arrested her. She turned to him again, and he perceived
that her eyes were shining now suspiciously. In an instant the
mockery in him was quenched in contrition.
"Lord, what a beast I am, Aline!" he cried, as he advanced.
"Forgive me if you can."
Almost had she turned to sue forgiveness from him. But his contrition
removed the need.
"I'll try," said she, "provided that you undertake not to offend
again.
"But I shall," said he. "I am like that. I will fight to save you,
from yourself if need be, whether you forgive me or not."
They were standing so, confronting each other a little breathlessly,
a little defiantly, when the others issued from the porch.
First came the Marquis of La Tour d'Azyr, Count of Solz, Knight of
the Orders of the Holy Ghost and Saint Louis, and Brigadier in the
armies of the King. He was a tall, graceful man, upright and
soldierly of carriage, with his head disdainfully set upon his
shoulders. He was magnificently dressed in a full-skirted coat of
mulberry velvet that was laced with gold. His waistcoat, of velvet
too, was of a golden apricot colour; his breeches and stockings were
of black silk, and his lacquered, red-heeled shoes were buckled in
diamonds. His powdered hair was tied behind in a broad ribbon of
watered silk; he carried a little three-cornered hat under his arm,
and a gold-hilted slender dress-sword hung at his side.
Considering him now in complete detachment, observing the
magnificence of him, the elegance of his movements, the great air,
blending in so extraordinary a manner disdain and graciousness,
Andre-Louis trembled for Aline. Here was a practised, irresistible
wooer, whose bonnes fortunes were become a by-word, a man who had
hitherto been the despair of dowagers with marriageable daughters,
and the desolation of husbands with attractive wives.
He was immediately followed by M. de Kercadiou, in completest
contrast. On legs of the shortest, the Lord of Gavrillac carried
a body that at forty-five was beginning to incline to corpulence
and an enormous head containing an indifferent allotment of
intelligence. His countenance was pink and blotchy, liberally
branded by the smallpox which had almost extinguished him in youth.
In dress he was careless to the point of untidiness, and to this
and to the fact that he had never married - disregarding the first
duty of a gentleman to provide himself with an heir - he owed the
character of misogynist attributed to him by the countryside.
After M. de Kercadiou came M. de Vilmorin, very pale and
self-contained, with tight lips and an overcast brow.
To meet them, there stepped from the carriage a very elegant young
gentleman, the Chevalier de Chabrillane, M. de La Tour d'Azyr's
cousin, who whilst awaiting his return had watched with considerable
interest - his own presence unsuspected - the perambulations of
Andre-Louis and mademoiselle.
Perceiving Aline, M. de La Tour d'Azyr detached himself from the
others, and lengthening his stride came straight across the terrace
to her.
To Andre-Louis the Marquis inclined his head with that mixture of
courtliness and condescension which he used. Socially, the young
lawyer stood in a curious position. By virtue of the theory of his
birth, he ranked neither as noble nor as simple, but stood somewhere
between the two classes, and whilst claimed by neither he was used
familiarly by both. Coldly now he returned M. de La Tour d'Azyr's
greeting, and discreetly removed himself to go and join his friend.
The Marquis took the hand that mademoiselle extended to him, and
bowing over it, bore it to his lips.
"Mademoiselle," he said, looking into the blue depths of her eyes,
that met his gaze smiling and untroubled, "monsieur your uncle does
me the honour to permit that I pay my homage to you. Will you,
mademoiselle, do me the honour to receive me when I come to-morrow?
I shall have something of great importance for your ear."
"Of importance, M. le Marquis? You almost frighten me." But there
was no fear on the serene little face in its furred hood. It was
not for nothing that she had graduated in the Versailles school of
artificialities.
"That," said he, "is very far from my design."
"But of importance to yourself, monsieur, or to me?"
"To us both, I hope," he answered her, a world of meaning in his
fine, ardent eyes.
"You whet my curiosity, monsieur; and, of course, I am a dutiful
niece. It follows that I shall be honoured to receive you."
"Not honoured, mademoiselle; you will confer the honour. To-morrow
at this hour, then, I shall have the felicity to wait upon you."
He bowed again; and again he bore her fingers to his lips, what time
she curtsied. Thereupon, with no more than this formal breaking of
the ice, they parted.
She was a little breathless now, a little dazzled by the beauty of
the man, his princely air, and the confidence of power he seemed to
radiate. Involuntarily almost, she contrasted him with his critic
- the lean and impudent Andre-Louis in his plain brown coat and
steel-buckled shoes - and she felt guilty of an unpardonable offence
in having permitted even one word of that presumptuous criticism.
To-morrow M. le Marquis would come to offer her a great position, a
great rank. And already she had derogated from the increase of
dignity accruing to her from his very intention to translate her to
so great an eminence. Not again would she suffer it; not again
would she be so weak and childish as to permit Andre-Louis to utter
his ribald comments upon a man by comparison with whom he was no
better than a lackey.
Thus argued vanity and ambition with her better self and to her vast
annoyance her better self would not admit entire conviction.
Meanwhile, M. de La Tour d'Azyr was climbing into his carriage. He
had spoken a word of farewell to M. de Kercadiou, and he had also
had a word for M. de Vilmorin in reply to which M. de Vilmorin had
bowed in assenting silence. The carriage rolled away, the powdered
footman in blue-and-gold very stiff behind it, M. de La Tour d'Azyr
bowing to mademoiselle, who waved to him in answer.
Then M. de Vilmorin put his arm through that of Andre Louis, and said
to him, "Come, Andre."
"But you'll stay to dine, both of you!" cried the hospitable Lord
of Gavrillac. "We'll drink a certain toast," he added, winking an
eye that strayed towards mademoiselle, who was approaching. He had
no subtleties, good soul that he was.
M. de Vilmorin deplored an appointment that prevented him doing
himself the honour. He was very stiff and formal.
"And you, Andre?"
"I? Oh, I share the appointment, godfather," he lied, "and I have
a superstition against toasts." He had no wish to remain. He was
angry with Aline for her smiling reception of M. de La Tour d'Azyr
and the sordid bargain he saw her set on making. He was suffering
from the loss of an illusion.
CHAPTER III
THE ELOQUENCE OF M. DE VILMORIN
As they walked down the hill together, it was now M. de Vilmorin
who was silent and preoccupied, Andre-Louis who was talkative. He
had chosen Woman as a subject for his present discourse. He claimed
- quite unjustifiably - to have discovered Woman that morning; and
the things he had to say of the sex were unflattering, and
occasionally almost gross. M. de Vilmorin, having ascertained the
subject, did not listen. Singular though it may seem in a young
French abbe of his day, M. de Vilmorin was not interested in Woman.
Poor Philippe was in several ways exceptional. Opposite the Breton
arme - the inn and posting-house at the entrance of the village of
Gavrillac - M. de Vilmorin interrupted his companion just as he was
soaring to the dizziest heights of caustic invective, and
Andre-Louis, restored thereby to actualities, observed the carriage
of M. de La Tour d'Azyr standing before the door of the hostelry.
"I don't believe you've been listening to me," said he.
"Had you been less interested in what you were saying, you might
have observed it sooner and spared your breath. The fact is, you
disappoint me, Andre. You seem to have forgotten what we went for.
I have an appointment here with M. le Marquis. He desires to hear
me further in the matter. Up there at Gavrillac I could accomplish
nothing. The time was ill-chosen as it happened. But I have hopes
of M. le Marquis."
"Hopes of what?"
"That he will make what reparation lies in his power. Provide for
the widow and the orphans. Why else should he desire to hear me
further?"
"Unusual condescension," said Andre-Louis, and quoted "Timeo Danaos
et dona ferentes."
"Why?" asked Philippe.
"Let us go and discover - unless you consider that I shall be in
the way."
Into a room on the right, rendered private to M. le Marquis for so
long as he should elect to honour it, the young men were ushered by
the host. A fire of logs was burning brightly at the room's far
end, and by this sat now M. de La Tour d'Azyr and his cousin, the
Chevalier de Chabrillane. Both rose as M. de Vilmorin came in.
Andre-Louis following, paused to close the door.
"You oblige me by your prompt courtesy, M. de Vilmorin," said the
Marquis, but in a tone so cold as to belie the politeness of his
words. "A chair, I beg. Ah, Moreau?" The note was frigidly
interrogative. "He accompanies you, monsieur?" he asked.
"If you please, M. le Marquis."
"Why not? Find yourself a seat, Moreau." He spoke over his shoulder
as to a lackey.
"It is good of you, monsieur," said Philippe, "to have offered me
this opportunity of continuing the subject that took me so
fruitlessly, as it happens, to Gavrillac."
The Marquis crossed his legs, and held one of his fine hands to the
blaze. He replied, without troubling to turn to the young man, who
was slightly behind him.
"The goodness of my request we will leave out of question for the
moment," said he, darkly, and M. de Chabrillane laughed. Andre-Louis
thought him easily moved to mirth, and almost envied him the faculty.
"But I am grateful," Philippe insisted, "that you should condescend
to hear me plead their cause.
The Marquis stared at him over his shoulder. "Whose cause?" quoth he.
"Why, the cause of the widow and orphans of this unfortunate Mabey."
The Marquis looked from Vilmorin to the Chevalier, and again the
Chevalier laughed, slapping his leg this time.
"I think," said M. de La Tour d'Azyr, slowly, "that we are at
cross-purposes. I asked you to come here because the Chateau de
Gavrillac was hardly a suitable place in which to carry our
discussion further, and because I hesitated to incommode you by
suggesting that you should come all the way to Azyr. But my object
is connected with certain expressions that you let fall up there.
It is on the subject of those expressions, monsieur, that I would
hear you further - if you will honour me."
Andre-Louis began to apprehend that there was something sinister in
the air. He was a man of quick intuitions, quicker far than those
of M. de Vilmorin, who evinced no more than a mild surprise.
"I am at a loss, monsieur," said he. "To what expressions does
monsieur allude?"
"It seems, monsieur, that I must refresh your memory." The Marquis
crossed his legs, and swung sideways on his chair, so that at last
he directly faced M. de Vilmorin. "You spoke, monsieur - and however
mistaken you may have been, you spoke very eloquently, too eloquently
almost, it seemed to me - of the infamy of such a deed as the act of
summary justice upon this thieving fellow Mabey, or whatever his name
may be. Infamy was the precise word you used. You did not retract
that word when I had the honour to inform you that it was by my orders
that my gamekeeper Benet proceeded as he did."
"If," said M. de Vilmorin, "the deed was infamous, its infamy is not
modified by the rank, however exalted, of the person responsible.
Rather is it aggravated."
"Ah!" said M. le Marquis, and drew a gold snuffbox from his pocket.
"You say, 'if the deed was infamous,' monsieur. Am I to understand
that you are no longer as convinced as you appeared to be of its
infamy?"
M. de Vilmorin's fine face wore a look of perplexity. He did not
understand the drift of this.
"It occurs to me, M. le Marquis, in view of your readiness to assume
responsibility, that you must believe justification for the deed
which is not apparent to myself."
"That is better. That is distinctly better." The Marquis took
snuff delicately, dusting the fragments from the fine lace at his
throat. "You realize that with an imperfect understanding of these
matters, not being yourself a landowner, you may have rushed to
unjustifiable conclusions. That is indeed the case. May it be a
warning to you, monsieur. When I tell you that for months past I
have been annoyed by similar depredations, you will perhaps
understand that it had become necessary to employ a deterrent
sufficiently strong to put an end to them. Now that the risk is
known, I do not think there will be any more prowling in my coverts.
And there is more in it than that, M. de Vilmorin. It is not the
poaching that annoys me so much as the contempt for my absolute and
inviolable rights. There is, monsieur, as you cannot fail to have
observed, an evil spirit of insubordination in the air, and there
is one only way in which to meet it. To tolerate it, in however
slight a degree, to show leniency, however leniently disposed, would
entail having recourse to still harsher measures to-morrow. You
understand me, I am sure, and you will also, I am sure, appreciate
the condescension of what amounts to an explanation from me where I
cannot admit that any explanations were due. If anything in what I
have said is still obscure to you, I refer you to the game laws, which
your lawyer friend there will expound for you at need."
With that the gentleman swung round again to face the fire. It
appeared to convey the intimation that the interview was at an end.
And yet this was not by any means the intimation that it conveyed
to the watchful, puzzled, vaguely uneasy Andre-Louis. It was,
thought he, a very curious, a very suspicious oration. It affected
to explain, with a politeness of terms and a calculated insolence
of tone; whilst in fact it could only serve to stimulate and goad
a man of M. de Vilmorin's opinions. And that is precisely what it
did. He rose.
"Are there in the world no laws but game laws?" he demanded, angrily.
"Have you never by any chance heard of the laws of humanity?"
The Marquis sighed wearily. "What have I to do with the laws of
humanity?" he wondered.
M. de Vilmorin looked at him a moment in speechless amazement.
"Nothing, M. le Marquis. That is - alas! - too obvious. I hope
you will remember it in the hour when you may wish to appeal to
those laws which you now deride."
M. de La Tour d'Azyr threw back his head sharply, his high-bred face
imperious.
"Now what precisely shall that mean? It is not the first time
to-day that you have made use of dark sayings that I could almost
believe to veil the presumption of a threat."
"Not a threat, M. le Marquis - a warning. A warning that such deeds
as these against God's creatures... Oh, you may sneer, monsieur,
but they are God's creatures, even as you or I - neither more nor
less, deeply though the reflection may wound your pride, In His
eyes... "
"Of your charity, spare me a sermon, M. l'abbe!"
"You mock, monsieur. You laugh. Will you laugh, I wonder, when God
presents His reckoning to you for the blood and plunder with which
your hands are full?"
"Monsieur!" The word, sharp as the crack of a whip, was from M. de
Chabrillane, who bounded to his feet. But instantly the Marquis
repressed him.
"Sit down, Chevalier. You are interrupting M. l'abbe, and I should
like to hear him further. He interests me profoundly."
In the background Andre-Louis, too, had risen, brought to his feet by
alarm, by the evil that he saw written on the handsome face of M. de
La Tour d'Azyr. He approached, and touched his friend upon the arm.
"Better be going, Philippe," said he.
But M. de Vilmorin, caught in the relentless grip of passions long
repressed, was being hurried by them recklessly along.
"Oh, monsieur," said he, "consider what you are and what you will
be. Consider how you and your kind live by abuses, and consider the
harvest that abuses must ultimately bring."
"Revolutionist!" said M. le Marquis, contemptuously. "You have the
effrontery to stand before my face and offer me this stinking cant
of your modern so-called intellectuals!"
"Is it cant, monsieur? Do you think - do you believe in your soul
- that it is cant? Is it cant that the feudal grip is on all
things that live, crushing them like grapes in the press, to its
own profit? Does it not exercise its rights upon the waters of the
river, the fire that bakes the poor man's bread of grass and barley,
on the wind that turns the mill? The peasant cannot take a step
upon the road, cross a crazy bridge over a river, buy an ell of
cloth in the village market, without meeting feudal rapacity,
without being taxed in feudal dues. Is not that enough, M. le
Marquis? Must you also demand his wretched life in payment for the
least infringement of your sacred privileges, careless of what
widows or orphans you dedicate to woe? Will naught content you but
that your shadow must lie like a curse upon the land? And do you
think in your pride that France, this Job among the nations, will
suffer it forever?"
He paused as if for a reply. But none came. The Marquis considered
him, strangely silent, a half smile of disdain at the corners of his
lips, an ominous hardness in his eyes.
Again Andre-Louis tugged at his friend's sleeve.
"Philippe."
Philippe shook him off, and plunged on, fanatically.
"Do you see nothing of the gathering clouds that herald the coming
of the storm? You imagine, perhaps, that these States General
summoned by M. Necker, and promised for next year, are to do nothing
but devise fresh means of extortion to liquidate the bankruptcy of
the State? You delude yourselves, as you shall find. The Third
Estate, which you despise, will prove itself the preponderating
force, and it will find a way to make an end of this canker of
privilege that is devouring the vitals of this unfortunate country."
M. le Marquis shifted in his chair, and spoke at last.
"You have, monsieur," said he, "a very dangerous gift of eloquence.
And it is of yourself rather than of your subject. For after all,
what do you offer me? A rechauffe of the dishes served to
out-at-elbow enthusiasts in the provincial literary chambers,
compounded of the effusions of your Voltaires and Jean-Jacques and
such dirty-fingered scribblers. You have not among all your
philosophers one with the wit to understand that we are an order
consecrated by antiquity, that for our rights and privileges we have
behind us the authority of centuries."
"Humanity, monsieur," Philippe replied, "is more ancient than
nobility. Human rights are contemporary with man."
The Marquis laughed and shrugged.
"That is the answer I might have expected. It has the right note
of cant that distinguishes the philosophers." And then M. de
Chabrillane spoke.
"You go a long way round," he criticized his cousin, on a note of
impatience.
"But I am getting there," he was answered. "I desired to make quite
certain first."
"Faith, you should have no doubt by now."
"I have none." The Marquis rose, and turned again to M. de Vilmorin,
who had understood nothing of that brief exchange. "M. l'abbe,"
said he once more, "you have a very dangerous gift of eloquence. I
can conceive of men being swayed by it. Had you been born a
gentleman, you would not so easily have acquired these false views
that you express."
M. de Vilmorin stared blankly, uncomprehending.
"Had I been born a gentleman, do you say?" quoth he, in a slow,
bewildered voice. "But I was born a gentleman. My race is as old,
my blood as good as yours, monsieur."
>From M. le Marquis there was a slight play of eyebrows, a vague,
indulgent smile. His dark, liquid eyes looked squarely into the
face of M. de Vilmorin.
"You have been deceived in that, I fear."
"Deceived?"
"Your sentiments betray the indiscretion of which madame your mother
must have been guilty."
The brutally affronting words were sped beyond recall, and the lips
that had uttered them, coldly, as if they had been the merest
commonplace, remained calm and faintly sneering.
A dead silence followed. Andre-Louis' wits were numbed. He stood
aghast, all thought suspended in him, what time M. de Vilmorin's
eyes continued fixed upon M. de La Tour d'Azyr's, as if searching
there for a meaning that eluded him. Quite suddenly he understood
the vile affront. The blood leapt to his face, fire blazed in his
gentle eyes. A convulsive quiver shook him. Then, with an
inarticulate cry, he leaned forward, and with his open hand struck
M. le Marquis full and hard upon his sneering face.
In a flash M. de Chabrillane was on his feet, between the two men.
Too late Andre-Louis had seen the trap. La Tour d'Azyr's words
were but as a move in a game of chess, calculated to exasperate his
opponent into some such counter-move as this - a counter-move that
left him entirely at the other's mercy.
M. le Marquis looked on, very white save where M. de Vilmorin's
finger-prints began slowly to colour his face; but he said nothing
more. Instead, it was M. de Chabrillane who now did the talking,
taking up his preconcerted part in this vile game.
"You realize, monsieur, what you have done," said he, coldly, to
Philippe. "And you realize, of course, what must inevitably follow."
M. de Vilmorin had realized nothing. The poor young man had acted
upon impulse, upon the instinct of decency and honour, never
counting the consequences. But he realized them now at the sinister
invitation of M. de Chabrillane, and if he desired to avoid these
consequences, it was out of respect for his priestly vocation, which
strictly forbade such adjustments of disputes as M. de Chabrillane
was clearly thrusting upon him.
He drew back. "Let one affront wipe out the other," said he, in a
dull voice. "The balance is still in M. le Marquis's favour. Let
that content him."
"Impossible." The Chevalier's lips came together tightly.
Thereafter he was suavity itself, but very firm. "A blow has been
struck, monsieur. I think I am correct in saying that such a thing
has never happened before to M. le Marquis in all his life. If you
felt yourself affronted, you had but to ask the satisfaction due
from one gentleman to another. Your action would seem to confirm
the assumption that you found so offensive. But it does not on that
account render you immune from the consequences."
It was, you see, M. de Chabrillane's part to heap coals upon this
fire, to make quite sure that their victim should not escape them.
"I desire no immunity," flashed back the young seminarist, stung by
this fresh goad. After all, he was nobly born, and the traditions
of his class were strong upon him - stronger far than the seminarist
schooling in humility. He owed it to himself, to his honour, to be
killed rather than avoid the consequences of the thing he had done.
"But he does not wear a sword, messieurs!" cried Andre Louis, aghast.
"That is easily amended. He may have the loan of mine."
"I mean, messieurs," Andre-Louis insisted, between fear for his
friend and indignation, "that it is not his habit to wear a sword,
that he has never worn one, that he is untutored in its uses. He
is a seminarist - a postulant for holy orders, already half a priest,
and so forbidden from such an engagement as you propose."
"All that he should have remembered before he struck a blow," said
M. de Chabrillane, politely.
"The blow was deliberately provoked," raged Andre-Louis. Then he
recovered himself, though the other's haughty stare had no part in
that recovery. "0 my God, I talk in vain! How is one to argue
against a purpose formed! Come away, Philippe. Don't you see the
trap... "
M. de Vilmorin cut him short, and flung him off. "Be quiet, Andre.
M. le Marquis is entirely in the right."
"M. le Marquis is in the right?" Andre-Louis let his arms fall
helplessly. This man he loved above all other living men was caught
in the snare of the world's insanity. He was baring his breast to
the knife for the sake of a vague, distorted sense of the honour due
to himself. It was not that he did not see the trap. It was that
his honour compelled him to disdain consideration of it. To
Andre-Louis in that moment he seemed a singularly tragic figure.
Noble, perhaps, but very pitiful.
CHAPTER IV
THE HERITAGE
It was M. de Vilmorin's desire that the matter should be settled
out of hand. In this he was at once objective and subjective. A
prey to emotions sadly at conflict with his priestly vocation, he
was above all in haste to have done, so that he might resume a frame
of mind more proper to it. Also he feared himself a little; by
which I mean that his honour feared his nature. The circumstances
of his education, and the goal that for some years now he had kept
in view, had robbed him of much of that spirited brutality that is
the birthright of the male. He had grown timid and gentle as a
woman. Aware of it, he feared that once the heat of his passion
was spent he might betray a dishonouring weakness, in the ordeal.
M. le Marquis, on his side, was no less eager for an immediate
settlement; and since they had M. de Chabrillane to act for his
cousin, and Andre-Louis to serve as witness for M. de Vilmorin,
there was nothing to delay them.
And so, within a few minutes, all arrangements were concluded, and
you behold that sinisterly intentioned little group of four
assembled in the afternoon sunshine on the bowling-green behind the
inn. They were entirely private, screened more or less from the
windows of the house by a ramage of trees, which, if leafless now,
was at least dense enough to provide an effective lattice.
There were no formalities over measurements of blades or selection
of ground. M. le Marquis removed his sword-belt and scabbard, but
declined not considering it worth while for the sake of so negligible
an opponent - to divest himself either of his shoes or his coat.
Tall, lithe, and athletic, he stood to face the no less tall, but
very delicate and frail, M. de Vilmorin. The latter also disdained
to make any of the usual preparations. Since he recognized that it
could avail him nothing to strip, he came on guard fully dressed,
two hectic spots above the cheek-bones burning on his otherwise grey
face.
M. de Chabrillane, leaning upon a cane - for he had relinquished
his sword to M. de Vilmorin - looked on with quiet interest. Facing
him on the other side of the combatants stood Andre-Louis, the palest
of the four, staring from fevered eyes, twisting and untwisting
clammy hands.
His every instinct was to fling himself between the antagonists, to
protest against and frustrate this meeting. That sane impulse was
curbed, however, by the consciousness of its futility. To calm him,
he clung to the conviction that the issue could not really be very
serious. If the obligations of Philippe's honour compelled him to
cross swords with the man he had struck, M. de La Tour d'Azyr's
birth compelled him no less to do no serious hurt to the unfledged
lad he had so grievously provoked. M. le Marquis, after all, was
a man of honour. He could intend no more than to administer a
lesson; sharp, perhaps, but one by which his opponent must live to
profit. Andre-Louis clung obstinately to that for comfort.
Steel beat on steel, and the men engaged. The Marquis presented to
his opponent the narrow edge of his upright body, his knees
slightly flexed and converted into living springs, whilst M. de
Vilmorin stood squarely, a full target, his knees wooden. Honour
and the spirit of fair play alike cried out against such a match.
The encounter was very short, of course. In youth, Philippe had
received the tutoring in sword-play that was given to every boy
born into his station of life. And so he knew at least the
rudiments of what was now expected of him. But what could rudiments
avail him here? Three disengages completed the exchanges, and then
without any haste the Marquis slid his right foot along the moist
turf, his long, graceful body extending itself in a lunge that went
under M. de Vilmorin's clumsy guard, and with the utmost deliberation
he drove his blade through the young man's vitals.
Andre-Louis sprang forward just in time to catch his friend's body
under the armpits as it sank. Then, his own legs bending beneath
the weight of it, he went down with his burden until he was kneeling
on the damp turf. Philippe's limp head lay against Andre-Louis'
left shoulder; Philippe's relaxed arms trailed at his sides; the
blood welled and bubbled from the ghastly wound to saturate the poor
lad's garments.
With white face and twitching lips, Andre-Louis looked up at M. de
La Tour d'Azyr, who stood surveying his work with a countenance of
grave but remorseless interest.
"You have killed him!" cried Andre-Louis.
"Of course."
The Marquis ran a lace handkerchief along his blade to wipe it. As
he let the dainty fabric fall, he explained himself. "He had, as
I told him, a too dangerous gift of eloquence."
And he turned away, leaving completest understanding with
Andre-Louis. Still supporting the limp, draining body, the young
man called to him.
"Come back, you cowardly murderer, and make yourself quite safe by
killing me too!"
The Marquis half turned, his face dark with anger. Then M. de
Chabrillane set a restraining hand upon his arm. Although a party
throughout to the deed, the Chevalier was a little appalled now
that it was done. He had not the high stomach of M. de La Tour
d'Azyr, and he was a good deal younger.
"Come away," he said. "The lad is raving. They were friends."
"You heard what he said?" quoth the Marquis.
"Nor can he, or you, or any man deny it," flung back Andre-Louis.
"Yourself, monsieur, you made confession when you gave me now the
reason why you killed him. You did it because you feared him."
"If that were true - what, then?" asked the great gentleman.
"Do you ask? Do you understand of life and humanity nothing but
how to wear a coat and dress your hair - oh, yes, and to handle
weapons against boys and priests? Have you no mind to think, no
soul into which you can turn its vision? Must you be told that it
is a coward's part to kill the thing he fears, and doubly a coward's
part to kill in this way? Had you stabbed him in the back with a
knife, you would have shown the courage of your vileness. It would
have been a vileness undisguised. But you feared the consequences
of that, powerful as you are; and so you shelter your cowardice
under the pretext of a duel."
The Marquis shook off his cousin's hand, and took a step forward,
holding now his sword like a whip. But again the Chevalier caught
and held him.
"No, no, Gervais! Let be, in God's name!"
"Let him come, monsieur," raved Andre-Louis, his voice thick and
concentrated. "Let him complete his coward's work on me, and thus
make himself safe from a coward's wages."
M. de Chabrillane let his cousin go. He came white to the lips,
his eyes glaring at the lad who so recklessly insulted him. And
then he checked. It may be that he remembered suddenly the
relationship in which this young man was popularly believed to
stand to the Seigneur de Gavrillac, and the well-known affection
in which the Seigneur held him. And so he may have realized that
if he pushed this matter further, he might find himself upon the
horns of a dilemma. He would be confronted with the alternatives
of shedding more blood, and so embroiling himself with the Lord of
Gavrillac at a time when that gentleman's friendship was of the
first importance to him, or else of withdrawing with such hurt to
his dignity as must impair his authority in the countryside
hereafter.
Be it so or otherwise, the fact remains that he stopped short;
then, with an incoherent ejaculation, between anger and contempt,
he tossed his arms, turned on his heel and strode off quickly with
his cousin.
When the landlord and his people came, they found Andre-Louis, his
arms about the body of his dead friend, murmuring passionately into
the deaf ear that rested almost against his lips:
"Philippe! Speak to me, Philippe! Philippe... Don't you hear me?
0 God of Heaven! Philippe!"
At a glance they saw that here neither priest nor doctor could avail.
The cheek that lay against Andre-Louis's was leaden-hued, the
half-open eyes were glazed, and there was a little froth of blood
upon the vacuously parted lips.
Half blinded by tears Andre-Louis stumbled after them when they bore
the body into the inn. Upstairs in the little room to which they
conveyed it, he knelt by the bed, and holding the dead man's hand
in both his own, he swore to him out of his impotent rage that M. de
La Tour d'Azyr should pay a bitter price for this.
"It was your eloquence he feared, Philippe," he said. Then if I can
get no justice for this deed, at least it shall be fruitless to him.
The thing he feared in you, he shall fear in me. He feared that men
might be swayed by your eloquence to the undoing of such things as
himself. Men shall be swayed by it still. For your eloquence and
your arguments shall be my heritage from you. I will make them my
own. It matters nothing that I do not believe in your gospel of
freedom. I know it - every word of it; that is all that matters to
our purpose, yours and mine. If all else fails, your thoughts shall
find expression in my living tongue. Thus at least we shall have
frustrated his vile aim to still the voice he feared. It shall
profit him nothing to have your blood upon his soul. That voice in
you would never half so relentlessly have hounded him and his as it
shall in me - if all else fails."
It was an exulting thought. It calmed him; it soothed his grief,
and he began very softly to pray. And then his heart trembled as
he considered that Philippe, a man of peace, almost a priest, an
apostle of Christianity, had gone to his Maker with the sin of anger
on his soul. It was horrible. Yet God would see the righteousness
of that anger. And in no case - be man's interpretation of Divinity
what it might - could that one sin outweigh the loving good that
Philippe had ever practised, the noble purity of his great heart.
God after all, reflected Andre-Louis, was not a grand-seigneur.
M. de Kercadiou stared at him blankly out of his pale
CHAPTER V
THE LORD OF GAVRILLAC
For the second time that day Andre-Louis set out for the chateau,
walking briskly, and heeding not at all the curious eyes that
followed him through the village, and the whisperings that marked
his passage through the people, all agog by now with that day's
event in which he had been an actor.
He was ushered by Benoit, the elderly body-servant, rather
grandiloquently called the seneschal, into the ground-floor room
known traditionally as the library. It still contained several
shelves of neglected volumes, from which it derived its title, but
implements of the chase - fowling-pieces, powder-horns, hunting-bags,
sheath-knives - obtruded far more prominently than those of study.
The furniture was massive, of oak richly carved, and belonging to
another age. Great massive oak beams crossed the rather lofty
whitewashed ceiling.
Here the squat Seigneur de Gavrillac was restlessly pacing when
Andre-Louis was introduced. He was already informed, as he
announced at once, of what had taken place at the Breton arme. M.
de Chabrillane had just left him, and he confessed himself deeply
grieved and deeply perplexed.
"The pity of it!" he said. "The pity of it!" He bowed his enormous
head. "So estimable a young man, and so full of promise. Ah, this
La Tour d'Azyr is a hard man, and he feels very strongly in these
matters. He may be right. I don't know. I have never killed a man
for holding different views from mine. In fact, I have never killed
a man at all. It isn't in my nature. I shouldn't sleep of nights if
I did. But men are differently made."
"The question, monsieur my godfather," said Andre-Louis, "is what is
to be done." He was quite calm and self-possessed, but very white.
M. de Kercadiou stared at him blankly out of his pale eyes.
"Why, what the devil is there to do? From what I am told, Vilmorin
went so far as to strike M. le Marquis."
"Under the very grossest provocation."
"Which he himself provoked by his revolutionary language. The poor
lad's head was full of this encyclopaedist trash. It comes of too
much reading. I have never set much store by books, Andre; and I
have never known anything but trouble to come out of learning. It
unsettles a man. It complicates his views of life, destroys the
simplicity which makes for peace of mind and happiness. Let this
miserable affair be a warning to you, Andre. You are, yourself,
too prone to these new-fashioned speculations upon a different
constitution of the social order. You see what comes of it. A
fine, estimable young man, the only prop of his widowed mother too,
forgets himself, his position, his duty to that mother - everything;
and goes and gets himself killed like this. It is infernally sad.
On my soul it is sad." He produced a handkerchief, and blew his
nose with vehemence.
Andre-Louis felt a tightening of his heart, a lessening of the
hopes, never too sanguine, which he had founded upon his godfather.
"Your criticisms," he said, "are all for the conduct of the dead,
and none for that of the murderer. It does not seem possible that
you should be in sympathy with such a crime.
"Crime?" shrilled M. de Kercadiou. "My God, boy, you are speaking
of M. de La Tour d'Azyr."
"I am, and of the abominable murder he has committed... "
"Stop!" M. de Kercadiou was very emphatic. "I cannot permit that
you apply such terms to him. I cannot permit it. M. le Marquis is
my friend, and is likely very soon to stand in a still closer
relationship."
"Notwithstanding this?" asked Andre-Louis.
M. de Kercadiou was frankly impatient.
"Why, what has this to do with it? I may deplore it. But I have
no right to condemn it. It is a common way of adjusting differences
between gentlemen."
"You really believe that?"
"What the devil do you imply, Andre? Should I say a thing that I
don't believe? You begin to make me angry."
"'Thou shalt not kill,' is the King's law as well as God's."
"You are determined to quarrel with me, I think. It was a duel... "
Andre-Louis interrupted him. "It is no more a duel than if it had
been fought with pistols of which only M. le Marquis 's was loaded.
He invited Philippe to discuss the matter further, with the
deliberate intent of forcing a quarrel upon him and killing him.
Be patient with me, monsieur my god-father. I am not telling you
of what I imagine but what M. le Marquis himself admitted to me."
Dominated a little by the young man's earnestness, M. de Kercadiou's
pale eyes fell away. He turned with a shrug, and sauntered over to
the window.
"It would need a court of honour to decide such an issue. And we
have no courts of honour," he said.
"But we have courts of justice."
With returning testiness the seigneur swung round to face him again.
"And what court of justice, do you think, would listen to such a
plea as you appear to have in mind?"
"There is the court of the King's Lieutenant at Rennes."
"And do you think the King's Lieutenant would listen to you?"
"Not to me, perhaps, Monsieur. But if you were to bring the
plaint... "
"I bring the plaint?" M. de Kercadiou's pale eyes were wide with
horror of the suggestion.
"The thing happened here on your domain."
"I bring a plaint against M. de La Tour d'Azyr! You are out of your
senses, I think. Oh, you are mad; as mad as that poor friend of
yours who has come to this end through meddling in what did not
concern him. The language he used here to M. le Marquis on the
score of Mabey was of the most offensive. Perhaps you didn't know
that. It does not at all surprise me that the Marquis should have
desired satisfaction."
"I see," said Andre-Louis, on a note of hopelessness.
"You see? What the devil do you see?"
"That I shall have to depend upon myself alone."
"And what the devil do you propose to do, if you please?"
"I shall go to Rennes, and lay the facts before the King's
Lieutenant."
"He'll be too busy to see you." And M. de Kercadiou's mind swung
a trifle inconsequently, as weak minds will. "There is trouble
enough in Rennes already on the score of these crazy States General,
with which the wonderful M. Necker is to repair the finances of the
kingdom. As if a peddling Swiss bank-clerk, who is also a damned
Protestant, could succeed where such men as Calonne and Brienne have
failed."
"Good-afternoon, monsieur my godfather," said Andre-Louis.
"Where are you going?" was the querulous demand.
"Home at present. To Rennes in the morning."
"Wait, boy, wait!" The squat little man rolled forward, affectionate
concern on his great ugly face, and he set one of his podgy hands on
his godson's shoulder. "Now listen to me, Andre," he reasoned. "This
is sheer knight-errantry - moonshine, lunacy. You'11 come to no good
by it if you persist. You've read 'Don Quixote,' and what happened
to him when he went tilting against windmills. It's what will happen
to you, neither more nor less. Leave things as they are, my boy. I
wouldn't have a mischief happen to you."
Andre-Louis looked at him, smiling wanly.
"I swore an oath to-day which it would damn my soul to break."
"You mean that you'll go in spite of anything that I may say?"
Impetuous as he was inconsequent, M. de Kercadiou was bristling
again. "Very well, then, go... Go to the devil!"
"I will begin with the King's Lieutenant."
"And if you get into the trouble you are seeking, don't come
whimpering to me for assistance," the seigneur stormed. He was very
angry now. "Since you choose to disobey me, you can break your
empty head against the windmill, and be damned to you."
Andre-Louis bowed with a touch of irony, and reached the door.
"If the windmill should prove too formidable," said he, from the
threshold, "I may see what can be done with the wind. Good-bye,
monsieur my godfather."
He was gone, and M. de Kercadiou was alone, purple in the face,
puzzling out that last cryptic utterance, and not at all happy in
his mind, either on the score of his godson or of M. de La Tour
d'Azyr. He was disposed to be angry with them both. He found
these headstrong, wilful men who relentlessly followed their own
impulses very disturbing and irritating. Himself he loved his ease,
and to be at peace with his neighbours; and that seemed to him so
obviously the supreme good of life that he was disposed to brand
them as fools who troubled to seek other things.
CHAPTER VI
THE WINDMILL
There was between Nantes and Rennes an established service of three
stage-coaches weekly in each direction, which for a sum of
twenty-four livres - roughly, the equivalent of an English guinea
- would carry you the seventy and odd miles of the journey in some
fourteen hours. Once a week one of the diligences going in each
direction would swerve aside from the highroad to call at Gavrillac,
to bring and take letters, newspapers, and sometimes passengers. It
was usually by this coach that Andre-Louis came and went when the
occasion offered. At present, however, he was too much in haste to
lose a day awaiting the passing of that diligence. So it was on a
horse hired from the Breton arme that he set out next morning; and
an hour's brisk ride under a grey wintry sky, by a half-ruined road
through ten miles of flat, uninteresting country, brought him to the
city of Rennes.
He rode across the main bridge over the Vilaine, and so into the
upper and principal part of that important city of some thirty
thousand souls, most of whom, he opined from the seething, clamant
crowds that everywhere blocked his way, must on this day have taken
to the streets. Clearly Philippe had not overstated the excitement
prevailing there.
He pushed on as best he could, and so came at last to the Place
Royale, where he found the crowd to be most dense. From the plinth
of the equestrian statue of Louis XV, a white-faced young man was
excitedly addressing the multitude. His youth and dress proclaimed
the student, and a group of his fellows, acting as a guard of honour
to him, kept the immediate precincts of the statue.
Over the heads of the crowd Andre-Louis caught a few of the phrases
flung forth by that eager voice.
"It was the promise of the King... It is the King's authority they
flout... They arrogate to themselves the whole sovereignty in
Brittany. The King has dissolved them... These insolent nobles
defying their sovereign and the people... "
Had he not known already, from what Philippe had told him, of the
events which had brought the Third Estate to the point of active
revolt, those few phrases would fully have informed him. This popular
display of temper was most opportune to his need, he thought. And in
the hope that it might serve his turn by disposing to reasonableness
the mind of the King's Lieutenant, he pushed on up the wide and
well-paved Rue Royale, where the concourse of people began to diminish.
He put up his hired horse at the Come de Cerf, and set out again, on
foot, to the Palais de Justice.
There was a brawling mob by the framework of poles and scaffoldings
about the building cathedral, upon which work had been commenced
a year ago. But he did not pause to ascertain the particular cause
of that gathering. He strode on, and thus came presently to the
handsome Italianate palace that was one of the few public edifices
hat had survived the devastating fire of sixty years ago.
He won through with difficulty to the great hall, known as the Salle
des Pas Perdus, where he was left to cool his heels for a full
half-hour after he had found an usher so condescending as to inform
the god who presided over that shrine of Justice that a lawyer from
Gavrillac humbly begged an audience on an affair of gravity.
That the god condescended to see him at all was probably due to the
grave complexion of the hour. At long length he was escorted up
the broad stone staircase, and ushered into a spacious, meagrely
furnished anteroom, to make one of a waiting crowd of clients,
mostly men.
There he spent another half-hour, and employed the time in
considering exactly what he should say. This consideration made
him realize the weakness of the case he proposed to set before a
man whose views of law and morality were coloured by his social
rank.
At last he was ushered through a narrow but very massive and richly
decorated door into a fine, well-lighted room furnished with enough
gilt and satin to have supplied the boudoir of a lady of fashion.
It was a trivial setting for a King's Lieutenant, but about the
King's Lieutenant there was - at least to ordinary eyes - nothing
trivial. At the far end of the chamber, to the right of one of the
tall windows that looked out over the inner court, before a
goat-legged writing-table with Watteau panels, heavily encrusted
with ormolu, sat that exalted being. Above a scarlet coat with an
order flaming on its breast, and a billow of lace in which diamonds
sparkled like drops of water, sprouted the massive powdered head
of M. de Lesdiguieres. It was thrown back to scowl upon this
visitor with an expectant arrogance that made Andre-Louis wonder
almost was a genuflexion awaited from him.
Perceiving a lean, lantern-jawed young man, with straight, lank
black hair, in a caped riding-coat of brown cloth, and yellow
buckskin breeches, his knee-boots splashed with mud, the scowl upon
that August visage deepened until it brought together the thick
black eyebrows above the great hooked nose.
"You announce yourself as a lawyer of Gavrillac with an important
communication," he growled. It was a peremptory command to make
this communication without wasting the valuable time of a King's
Lieutenant, of whose immense importance it conveyed something more
than a hint. M. de Lesdiguieres accounted himself an imposing
personality, and he had every reason to do so, for in his time he
had seen many a poor devil scared out of all his senses by the
thunder of his voice.
He waited now to see the same thing happen to this youthful lawyer
from Gavrillac. But he waited in vain.
Andre-Louis found him ridiculous. He knew pretentiousness for the
mask of worthlessness and weakness. And here he beheld
pretentiousness incarnate. It was to be read in that arrogant
poise of the head, that scowling brow, the inflexion of that
reverberating voice. Even more difficult than it is for a man to
be a hero to his valet - who has witnessed the dispersal of the
parts that make up the imposing whole - is it for a man to be a
hero to the student of Man who has witnessed the same in a different
sense.
Andre-Louis stood forward boldly - impudently, thought M. de
Lesdiguieres.
"You are His Majesty's Lieutenant here in Brittany," he said - and
it almost seemed to the August lord of life and death that this
fellow had the incredible effrontery to address him as one man
speaking to another. "You are the dispenser of the King's high
justice in this province."
Surprise spread on that handsome, sallow face under the heavily
powdered wig.
"Is your business concerned with this infernal insubordination of
the canaille?" he asked.
"It is not, monsieur."
The black eyebrows rose. "Then what the devil do you mean by
intruding upon me at a time when all my attention is being claimed
by the obvious urgency of this disgraceful affair?"
"The affair that brings me is no less disgraceful and no less urgent."
"It will have to wait!" thundered the great man in a passion, and
tossing back a cloud of lace from his hand, he reached for the
little silver bell upon his table.
"A moment, monsieur!" Andre-Louis' tone was peremptory. M. de
Lesdiguieres checked in sheer amazement at its impudence. "I can
state it very briefly... "
"Haven't I said already... "
"And when you have heard it," Andre-Louis went on, relentlessly,
interrupting the interruption, "you will agree with me as to its
character."
M. de Lesdiguieres considered him very sternly.
"What is your name?" he asked.
"Andre-Louis Moreau."
"Well, Andre-Louis Moreau, if you can state your plea briefly, I
will hear you. But I warn you that I shall be very angry if you
fail to justify the impertinence of this insistence at so
inopportune a moment."
"You shall be the judge of that, monsieur," said Andre-Louis, and
he proceeded at once to state his case, beginning with the shooting
of Mabey, and passing thence to the killing of M. de Vilmorin. But
he withheld until the end the name of the great gentleman against
whom he demanded justice, persuaded that did he introduce it earlier
he would not be allowed to proceed.
He had a gift of oratory of whose full powers he was himself hardly
conscious yet, though destined very soon to become so.. He told
his story well, without exaggeration, yet with a force of simple
appeal that was irresistible. Gradually the great man's face relaxed
from its forbidding severity. Interest, warming almost to sympathy,
came to be reflected on it.
"And who, sir, is the man you charge with this?"
"The Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr."
The effect of that formidable name was immediate. Dismayed anger,
and an arrogance more utter than before, took the place of the
sympathy he had been betrayed into displaying.
"Who?" he shouted, and without waiting for an answer, "Why, here's
impudence," he stormed on, "to come before me with such a charge
against a gentleman of M. de La Tour d'Azyr's eminence! How dare
you speak of him as a coward."
"I speak of him as a murderer," the young man corrected. "And I
demand justice against him."
"You demand it, do you? My God, what next?"
"That is for you to say, monsieur."
It surprised the great gentleman into a more or less successful
effort of self-control.
"Let me warn you," said he, acidly, "that it is not wise to make
wild accusations against a nobleman. That, in itself, is a
punishable offence, as you may learn. Now listen to me. In this
matter of Mabey - assuming your statement of it to be exact - the
gamekeeper may have exceeded his duty; but by so little that it is
hardly worth comment. Consider, however, that in any case it is
not a matter for the King's Lieutenant, or for any court but the
seigneurial court of M. de La Tour d'Azyr himself. It is before
the magistrates of his own appointing that such a matter must be
laid, since it is matter strictly concerning his own seigneurial
jurisdiction. As a lawyer you should not need to be told so much."
"As a lawyer, I am prepared to argue the point. But, as a lawyer
I also realize that if that case were prosecuted, it could only end
in the unjust punishment of a wretched gamekeeper, who did no more
than carry out his orders, but who none the less would now be made
a scapegoat, if scapegoat were necessary. I am not concerned to
hang Benet on the gallows earned by M. de La Tour d'Azyr."
M. de Lesdiguieres smote the table violently. "My God!" he cried
out, to add more quietly, on a note of menace, "You are singularly
insolent, my man."
"That is not my intention, sir, I assure you. I am a lawyer,
pleading a case - the case of M. de Vilmorin. It is for his
assassination that I have come to beg the King's justice."
"But you yourself have said that it was a duel!" cried the
Lieutenant, between anger and bewilderment.
"I have said that it was made to appear a duel. There is a
distinction, as I shall show, if you will condescend to hear me out."
"Take your own time, sir!" said the ironical M. de Lesdiguieres,
whose tenure of office had never yet held anything that remotely
resembled this experience.
Andre-Louis took him literally. "I thank you, sir," he answered,
solemnly, and submitted his argument. "It can be shown that M. de
Vilmorin never practised fencing in all his life, and it is notorious
that M. de La Tour d'Azyr is an exceptional swordsman. Is it a duel,
monsieur, where one of the combatants alone is armed? For it amounts
to that on a comparison of their measures of respective skill."
"There has scarcely been a duel fought on which the same trumpery
argument might not be advanced."
"But not always with equal justice. And in one case, at least, it
was advanced successfully."
"Successfully? When was that?"
"Ten years ago, in Dauphiny. I refer to the case of M. de Gesvres,
a gentleman of that province, who forced a duel upon M. de la Roche
Jeannine, and killed him. M. de Jeannine was a member of a powerful
family, which exerted itself to obtain justice. It put forward just
such arguments as now obtain against M. de La Tour d'Azyr. As you
will remember, the judges held that the provocation had proceeded
of intent from M. de Gesvres; they found him guilty of premeditated
murder, and he was hanged."
M. de Lesdiguieres exploded yet again. "Death of my life!" he cried.
"Have you the effrontery to suggest that M. de La Tour d'Azyr should
be hanged? Have you?"
"But why not, monsieur, if it is the law, and there is precedent
for it, as I have shown you, and if it can be established that what
I state is the truth - as established it can be without difficulty?"
"Do you ask me, why not? Have you temerity to ask me that?"
"I have, monsieur. Can you answer me? If you cannot, monsieur, I
shall understand that whilst it is possible for a powerful family
like that of La Roche Jeannine to set the law in motion, the law
must remain inert for the obscure and uninfluential, however
brutally wronged by a great nobleman."
M. de Lesdiguieres perceived that in argument he would accomplish
nothing against this impassive, resolute young man. The menace of
him grew more fierce.
"I should advise you to take yourself off at once, and to be
thankful for the opportunity to depart unscathed."
"I am, then, to understand, monsieur, that there will be no inquiry
into this case? That nothing that I can say will move you?"
"You are to understand that if you are still there in two minutes
it will be very much the worse for you." And M. de Lesdiguieres
tinkled the silver hand-bell upon his table.
"I have informed you, monsieur, that a duel - so-called - has been
fought, and a man killed. It seems that I must remind you, the
administrator of the King's justice, that duels are against the law,
and that it is your duty to hold an inquiry. I come as the legal
representative of the bereaved mother of M. de Vilmorin to demand
of you the inquiry that is due."
The door behind Andre-Louis opened softly. M. de Lesdiguieres,
pale with anger, contained himself with difficulty.
"You seek to compel us, do you, you impudent rascal?" he growled.
"You think the King's justice is to be driven headlong by the voice
of any impudent roturier? I marvel at my own patience with you.
But I give you a last warning, master lawyer; keep a closer guard
over that insolent tongue of yours, or you will have cause very
bitterly to regret its glibness." He waved a jewelled, contemptuous
hand, and spoke to the usher standing behind Andre. "To the door!"
he said, shortly.
Andre-Louis hesitated a second. Then with a shrug he turned. This
was the windmill, indeed, and he a poor knight of rueful countenance.
To attack it at closer quarters would mean being dashed to pieces.
Yet on the threshold he turned again.
"M. de Lesdiguieres," said he, "may I recite to you an interesting
fact in natural history? The tiger is a great lord in the jungle,
and was for centuries the terror of lesser beasts, including the
wolf. The wolf, himself a hunter, wearied of being hunted. He
took to associating with other wolves, and then the wolves, driven
to form packs for self-protection, discovered the power of the pack,
and took to hunting the tiger, with disastrous results to him. You
should study Buffon, M. de Lesdiguieres."
"I have studied a buffoon this morning, I think," was the punning
sneer with which M. de Lesdiguieres replied. But that he conceived
himself witty, it is probable he would not have condescended to
reply at all. "I don't understand you," he added.
"But you will, M. de Lesdiguieres. You will," said Andre-Louis,
and so departed.
CHAPTER VII
THE WIND
He had broken his futile lance with the windmill - the image
suggested by M. de Kercadiou persisted in his mind - and it was, he
perceived, by sheer good fortune that he had escaped without hurt.
There remained the wind itself - the whirlwind. And the events in
Rennes, reflex of the graver events in Nantes, had set that wind
blowing in his favour.
He set out briskly to retrace his steps towards the Place Royale,
where the gathering of the populace was greatest, where, as he
judged, lay the heart and brain of this commotion that was exciting
the city.
But the commotion that he had left there was as nothing to the
commotion which he found on his return. Then there had been a
comparative hush to listen to the voice of a speaker who denounced
the First and Second Estates from the pedestal of the statue of
Louis XV. Now the air was vibrant with the voice of the multitude
itself, raised in anger. Here and there men were fighting with
canes and fists; everywhere a fierce excitement raged, and the
gendarmes sent thither by the King's Lieutenant to restore and
maintain order were so much helpless flotsam in that tempestuous
human ocean.
There were cries of "To the Palais! To the Palais! Down with the
assassins! Down with the nobles! To the Palais!"
An artisan who stood shoulder to shoulder with him in the press
enlightened Andre-Louis on the score of the increased excitement.
"They've shot him dead. His body is lying there where it fell at
the foot of the statue. And there was another student killed not
an hour ago over there by the cathedral works. Pardi! If they
can't prevail in one way they'll prevail in another." The man was
fiercely emphatic. "They'll stop at nothing. If they can't overawe
us, by God, they'll assassinate us. They are determined to conduct
these States of Brittany in their own way. No interests but their
own shall be considered."
Andre-Louis left him still talking, and clove himself a way through
that human press.
At the statue's base he came upon a little cluster of students about
the body of the murdered lad, all stricken with fear and helplessness.
"You here, Moreau!" said a voice.
He looked round to find himself confronted by a slight, swarthy man
of little more than thirty, firm of mouth and impertinent of nose,
who considered him with disapproval. It was Le Chapelier, a lawyer
of Rennes, a prominent member of the Literary Chamber of that city,
a forceful man, fertile in revolutionary ideas and of an exceptional
gift of eloquence.
"Ah, it is you, Chapelier! Why don't you speak to them? Why don't
you tell them what to do? Up with you, man!" And he pointed to
the plinth.
Le Chapelier's dark, restless eyes searched the other's impassive
face for some trace of the irony he suspected. They were as wide
asunder as the poles, these two, in their political views; and
mistrusted as Andre-Louis was by all his colleagues of the Literary
Chamber of Rennes, he was by none mistrusted so thoroughly as by
this vigorous republican. Indeed, had Le Chapelier been able to
prevail against the influence of the seminarist Vilmorin,
Andre-Louis would long since have found himself excluded from that
assembly of the intellectual youth of Rennes, which he exasperated
by his eternal mockery of their ideals.
So now Le Chapelier suspected mockery in that invitation, suspected
it even when he failed to find traces of it on Andre-Louis' face,
for he had learnt by experience that it was a face not often to be
trusted for an indication of the real thoughts that moved behind it.
"Your notions and mine on that score can hardly coincide," said he.
"Can there be two opinions?" quoth Andre-Louis.
"There are usually two opinions whenever you and I are together,
Moreau - more than ever now that you are the appointed delegate of
a nobleman. You see what your friends have done. No doubt you
approve their methods." He was coldly hostile.
Andre-Louis looked at him without surprise. So invariably opposed
to each other in academic debates, how should Le Chapelier suspect
his present intentions?
"If you won't tell them what is to be done, I will," said he.
"Nom de Dieu! If you want to invite a bullet from the other side,
I shall not hinder you. It may help to square the account."
Scarcely were the words out than he repented them; for as if in
answer to that challenge Andre-Louis sprang up on to the plinth.
Alarmed now, for he could only suppose it to be Andre-Louis'
intention to speak on behalf of Privilege, of which he was a
publicly appointed representative, Le Chapelier clutched him by the
leg to pull him down again.
"Ah, that, no!" he was shouting. "Come down, you fool. Do you
think we will let you ruin everything by your clowning? Come down!"
Andre-Louis, maintaining his position by clutching one of the legs
of the bronze horse, flung his voice like a bugle-note over the
heads of that seething mob.
"Citizens of Rennes, the motherland is in danger!"
The effect was electric. A stir ran, like a ripple over water,
across that froth of upturned human faces, and completest silence
followed. In that great silence they looked at this slim young man,
hatless, long wisps of his black hair fluttering in the breeze, his
neckcloth in disorder, his face white, his eyes on fire.
Andre-Louis felt a sudden surge of exaltation as he realized by
instinct that at one grip he had seized that crowd, and that he held
it fast in the spell of his cry and his audacity.
Even Le Chapelier, though still clinging to his ankle, had ceased
to tug. The reformer, though unshaken in his assumption of
Andre-Louis' intentions, was for a moment bewildered by the first
note of his appeal.
And then, slowly, impressively, in a voice that travelled clear to
the ends of the square, the young lawyer of Gavrillac began to speak.
"Shuddering in horror of the vile deed here perpetrated, my voice
demands to be heard by you. You have seen murder done under your
eyes - the murder of one who nobly, without any thought of self,
gave voice to the wrongs by which we are all oppressed. Fearing
that voice, shunning the truth as foul things shun the light, our
oppressors sent their agents to silence him in death."
Le Chapelier released at last his hold of Andre-Louis' ankle,
staring up at him the while in sheer amazement. It seemed that the
fellow was in earnest; serious for once; and for once on the right
side. What had come to him?
"Of assassins what shall you look for but assassination? I have a
tale to tell which will show that this is no new thing that you
have witnessed here to-day; it will reveal to you the forces with
which you have to deal. Yesterday... "
There was an interruption. A voice in the crowd, some twenty paces,
perhaps, was raised to shout:
"Yet another of them!"
Immediately after the voice came a pistol-shot, and a bullet
flattened itself against the bronze figure just behind Andre-Louis.
Instantly there was turmoil in the crowd, most intense about the
spot whence the shot had been fired. The assailant was one of a
considerable group of the opposition, a group that found itself at
once beset on every side, and hard put to it to defend him.
>From the foot of the plinth rang the voice of the students making
chorus to Le Chapelier, who was bidding Andre-Louis to seek shelter.
"Come down! Come down at once! They'll murder you as they murdered
La Riviere."
"Let them!" He flung wide his arms in a gesture supremely theatrical,
and laughed. "I stand here at their mercy. Let them, if they will,
add mine to the blood that will presently rise up to choke them.
Let them assassinate me. It is a trade they understand. But until
they do so, they shall not prevent me from speaking to you, from
telling you what is to be looked for in them." And again he laughed,
not merely in exaltation as they supposed who watched him from below,
but also in amusement. And his amusement had two sources. One was
to discover how glibly he uttered the phrases proper to whip up
the emotions of a crowd: the other was in the remembrance of how
the crafty Cardinal de Retz, for the purpose of inflaming popular
sympathy on his behalf, had been in the habit of hiring fellows
to fire upon his carriage. He was in just such case as that
arch-politician. True, he had not hired the fellow to fire that
pistol-shot; but he was none the less obliged to him, and ready to
derive the fullest, advantage from the act.
The group that sought to protect that man was battling on, seeking
to hew a way out of that angry, heaving press.
"Let them go!" Andre-Louis called down... "What matters one assassin
more or less? Let them go, and listen to me, my countrymen!"
And presently, when some measure of order was restored, he began
his tale. In simple language now, yet with a vehemence and
directness that drove home every point, he tore their hearts with
the story of yesterday's happenings at Gavrillac. He drew tears
from them with the pathos of his picture of the bereaved widow
Mabey and her three starving, destitute children - "orphaned to
avenge the death of a pheasant" - and the bereaved mother of that
M. de Vilmorin, a student of Rennes, known here to many of them,
who had met his death in a noble endeavour to champion the cause of
an esurient member of their afflicted order.
"The Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr said of him that he had too dangerous
a gift of eloquence. It was to silence his brave voice that he
killed him. But he has failed of his object. For I, poor Philippe
de Vilmorin's friend, have assumed the mantle of his apostleship,
and I speak to you with his voice to-day."
It was a statement that helped Le Chapelier at last to understand,
at least in part, this bewildering change in Andre-Louis, which
rendered him faithless to the side that employed him.
"I am not here," continued Andre-Louis, "merely to demand at your
hands vengeance upon Philippe de Vilmorin's murderers. I am here
to tell you the things he would to-day have told you had he lived."
So far at least he was frank. But he did not add that they were
things he did not himself believe, things that he accounted the
cant by which an ambitious bourgeoisie - speaking through the mouths
of the lawyers, who were its articulate part - sought to overthrow
to its own advantage the present state of things. He left his
audience in the natural belief that the views he expressed were the
views he held.
And now in a terrible voice, with an eloquence that amazed himself,
he denounced the inertia of the royal justice where the great are
the offenders. It was with bitter sarcasm that he spoke of their
King's Lieutenant, M. de Lesdiguieres.
"Do you wonder," he asked them, "that M. de Lesdiguieres should
administer the law so that it shall ever be favourable to our great
nobles? Would it be just, would it be reasonable that he should
otherwise administer it?" He paused dramatically to let his sarcasm
sink in. It had the effect of reawakening Le Chapelier's doubts,
and checking his dawning conviction in Andre-Louis' sincerity.
Whither was he going now?
He was not left long in doubt. Proceeding, Andre-Louis spoke as he
conceived that Philippe de Vilmorin would have spoken. He had so
often argued with him, so often attended the discussions of the
Literary Chamber, that he had all the rant of the reformers - that
was yet true in substance - at his fingers' ends.
"Consider, after all, the composition of this France of ours. A
million of its inhabitants are members of the privileged classes.
They compose France. They are France. For surely you cannot
suppose the remainder to be anything that matters. It cannot be
pretended that twenty-four million souls are of any account, that
they can be representative of this great nation, or that they can
exist for any purpose but that of servitude to the million elect."
Bitter laughter shook them now, as he desired it should. "Seeing
their privileges in danger of invasion by these twenty-four
millions - mostly canailles; possibly created by God, it is true,
but clearly so created to be the slaves of Privilege - does it
surprise you that the dispensing of royal justice should be placed
in the stout hands of these Lesdiguieres, men without brains to
think or hearts to be touched? Consider what it is that must be
defended against the assault of us others - canaille. Consider a
few of these feudal rights that are in danger of being swept away
should the Privileged yield even to the commands of their sovereign;
and admit the Third Estate to an equal vote with themselves.
"What would become of the right of terrage on the land, of parciere
on the fruit-trees, of carpot on the vines? What of the corvees
by which they command forced labour, of the ban de vendage, which
gives them the first vintage, the banvin which enables them to
control to their own advantage the sale of wine? What of their
right of grinding the last liard of taxation out of the people to
maintain their own opulent estate; the cens, the lods-et-ventes,
which absorb a fifth of the value of the land, the blairee, which
must be paid before herds can feed on communal lands, the pulverage
to indemnify them for the dust raised on their roads by the herds
that go to market, the sextelage on everything offered for sale in
the public markets, the etalonnage, and all the rest? What of their
rights over men and animals for field labour, of ferries over rivers,
and of bridges over streams, of sinking wells, of warren, of dovecot,
and of fire, which last yields them a tax on every peasant hearth?
What of their exclusive rights of fishing and of hunting, the
violation of which is ranked as almost a capital offence?
"And what of other rights, unspeakable, abominable, over the lives
and bodies of their people, rights which, if rarely exercised, have
never been rescinded. To this day if a noble returning from the
hunt were to slay two of his serfs to bathe and refresh his feet in
their blood, he could still claim in his sufficient defence that it
was his absolute feudal right to do so.
"Rough-shod, these million Privileged ride over the souls and bodies
of twenty-four million contemptible canaille existing but for their
own pleasure. Woe betide him who so much as raises his voice in
protest in the name of humanity against an excess of these already
excessive abuses. I have told you of one remorselessly slain in
cold blood for doing no more than that. Your own eyes have witnessed
the assassination of another here upon this plinth, of yet another
over there by the cathedral works, and the attempt upon my own life.
"Between them and the justice due to them in such cases stand these
Lesdiguieres, these King's Lieutenants; not instruments of justice,
but walls erected for the shelter of Privilege and Abuse whenever it
exceeds its grotesquely excessive rights.
"Do you wonder that they will not yield an inch; that they will
resist the election of a Third Estate with the voting power to
sweep all these privileges away, to compel the Privileged to submit
themselves to a just equality in the eyes of the law with the
meanest of the canaille they trample underfoot, to provide that the
moneys necessary to save this state from the bankruptcy into which
they have all but plunged it shall be raised by taxation to be borne
by themselves in the same proportion as by others?
"Sooner than yield to so much they prefer to resist even the royal
command."
A phrase occurred to him used yesterday by Vilmorin, a phrase to
which he had refused to attach importance when uttered then. He
used it now. "In doing this they are striking at the very
foundations of the throne. These fools do not perceive that if
that throne falls over, it is they who stand nearest to it who will
be crushed."
A terrific roar acclaimed that statement. Tense and quivering with
the excitement that was flowing through him, and from him out into
that great audience, he stood a moment smiling ironically. Then he
waved them into silence,, and saw by their ready obedience how
completely he possessed them. For in the voice with which he spoke
each now recognized the voice of himself, giving at last expression
to the thoughts that for months and years had been inarticulately
stirring in each simple mind.
Presently he resumed, speaking more quietly, that ironic smile about
the corner of his mouth growing more marked:
"In taking my leave of M. de Lesdiguieres I gave him warning out of
a page of natural history. I told him that when the wolves, roaming
singly through the jungle, were weary of being hunted by the tiger,
they banded themselves into packs, and went a-hunting the tiger in
their turn. M. de Lesdiguieres contemptuously answered that he did
not understand me. But your wits are better than his. You
understand me, I think? Don't you?"
Again a great roar, mingled now with some approving laughter, was
his answer. He had wrought them up to a pitch of dangerous passion,
and they were ripe for any violence to which he urged them. If he
had failed with the windmill, at least he was now master of the wind.
"To the Palais!" they shouted, waving their hands, brandishing canes,
and - here and there - even a sword. "To the Palais! Down with M.
de Lesdiguieres! Death to the King's Lieutenant!"
He was master of the wind, indeed. His dangerous gift of oratory
- a gift nowhere more powerful than in France, since nowhere else
are men's emotions so quick to respond to the appeal of eloquence
- had given him this mastery. At his bidding now the gale would
sweep away the windmill against which he had flung himself in vain.
But that, as he straightforwardly revealed it, was no part of his
intent.
"Ah, wait!" he bade them. "Is this miserable instrument of a
corrupt system worth the attention of your noble indignation?"
He hoped his words would be reported to M. de Lesdiguieres. He
thought it would be good for the soul of M. de Lesdiguieres to hear
the undiluted truth about himself for once.
"It is the system itself you must attack and overthrow; not a mere
instrument - a miserable painted lath such as this. And precipitancy
will spoil everything. Above all, my children, no violence!"
My children! Could his godfather have heard him!
"You have seen often already the result of premature violence
elsewhere in Brittany, and you have heard of it elsewhere in France.
Violence on your part will call for violence on theirs. They will
welcome the chance to assert their mastery by a firmer grip than
heretofore. The military will be sent for. You will be faced by
the bayonets of mercenaries. Do not provoke that, I implore you.
Do not put it into their power, do not afford them the pretext they
would welcome to crush you down into the mud of your own blood."
Out of the silence into which they had fallen anew broke now the
cry of
"What else, then? What else?"
"I will tell you," he answered them. "The wealth and strength of
Brittany lies in Nantes - a bourgeois city, one of the most
prosperous in this realm, rendered so by the energy of the
bourgeoisie and the toil of the people. It was in Nantes that
this movement had its beginning, and as a result of it the King
issued his order dissolving the States as now constituted - an
order which those who base their power on Privilege and Abuse do
not hesitate to thwart. Let Nantes be informed of the precise
situation, and let nothing be done here until Nantes shall have
given us the lead. She has the power - which we in Rennes have
not - to make her will prevail, as we have seen already. Let her
exert that power once more, and until she does so do you keep the
peace in Rennes. Thus shall you triumph. Thus shall the outrages
that are being perpetrated under your eyes be fully and finally
avenged."
As abruptly as he had leapt upon the plinth did he now leap down
from it. He had finished. He had said all - perhaps more than
all - that could have been said by the dead friend with whose voice
he spoke. But it was not their will that he should thus extinguish
himself. The thunder of their acclamations rose deafeningly upon
the air. He had played upon their emotions - each in turn - as a
skilful harpist plays upon the strings of his instrument. And they
were vibrant with the passions he had aroused, and the high note of
hope on which he had brought his symphony to a close.
A dozen students caught him as he leapt down, and swung him to their
shoulders, where again he came within view of all the acclaiming
crowd.
The delicate Le Chapelier pressed alongside of him with flushed face
and shining eyes.
"My lad," he said to him, "you have kindled a fire to-day that will
sweep the face of France in a blaze of liberty." And then to the
students he issued a sharp command. "To the Literary Chamber -at
once. We must concert measures upon the instant, a delegate must
be dispatched to Nantes forthwith, to convey to our friends there
the message of the people of Rennes."
The crowd fell back, opening a lane through which the students bore
the hero of the hour. Waving his hands to them, he called upon
them to disperse to their homes, and await there in patience what
must follow very soon.
"You have endured for centuries with a fortitude that is a pattern
to the world," he flattered them. "Endure a little longer yet. The
end, my friends, is well in sight at last."
They carried him out of the square and up the Rue Royale to an old
house, one of the few old houses surviving in that city that had
risen from its ashes, where in an upper chamber lighted by
diamond-shaped panes of yellow glass the Literary Chamber usually
held its meetings. Thither in his wake the members of that chamber
came hurrying, summoned by the messages that Le Chapelier had issued
during their progress.
Behind closed doors a flushed and excited group of some fifty men,
the majority of whom were young, ardent, and afire with the illusion
of liberty, hailed Andre-Louis as the strayed sheep who had returned
to the fold, and smothered him in congratulations and thanks.
Then they settled down to deliberate upon immediate measures, whilst
the doors below were kept by a guard of honour that had improvised
itself from the masses. And very necessary was this. For no sooner
had the Chamber assembled than the house was assailed by the
gendarmerie of M. de Lesdiguieres, dispatched in haste to arrest the
firebrand who was inciting the people of Rennes to sedition. The
force consisted of fifty men. Five hundred would have been too few.
The mob broke their carbines, broke some of their heads, and would
indeed have torn them into pieces had they not beaten a timely and
well-advised retreat before a form of horseplay to which they were
not at all accustomed.
And whilst that was taking place in the street below, in the room
abovestairs the eloquent Le Chapelier was addressing his colleagues
of the Literary Chamber. Here, with no bullets to fear, and no
one to report his words to the authorities, Le Chapelier could
permit his oratory a full, unintimidated flow. And that considerable
oratory was as direct and brutal as the man himself was delicate and
elegant.
He praised the vigour and the greatness of the speech they had heard
from their colleague Moreau. Above all he praised its wisdom.
Moreau's words had come as a surprise to them. Hitherto they had
never known him as other than a bitter critic of their projects of
reform and regeneration; and quite lately they had heard, not without
misgivings, of his appointment as delegate for a nobleman in the
States of Brittany. But they held the explanation of his conversion.
The murder of their dear colleague Vilmorin had produced this change.
In that brutal deed Moreau had beheld at last in true proportions
the workings of that evil spirit which they were vowed to exorcise
from France. And to-day he had proven himself the stoutest apostle
among them of the new faith. He had pointed out to them the only
sane and useful course. The illustration he had borrowed from
natural history was most apt. Above all, let them pack like the
wolves, and to ensure this uniformity of action in the people of
all Brittany, let a delegate at once be sent to Nantes, which had
already proved itself the real seat of Brittany's power. It but
remained to appoint that delegate, and Le Chapelier invited them
to elect him.
Andre-Louis, on a bench near the window, a prey now to some measure
of reaction, listened in bewilderment to that flood of eloquence.
As the applause died down, he heard a voice exclaiming:
"I propose to you that we appoint our leader here, Le Chapelier, to
be that delegate."
Le Chapelier reared his elegantly dressed head, which had been bowed
in thought, and it was seen that his countenance was pale. Nervously
he fingered a gold spy-glass.
"My friends," he said, slowly, "I am deeply sensible of the honour
that you do me. But in accepting it I should be usurping an honour
that rightly belongs elsewhere. Who could represent us better, who
more deserving to be our representative, to speak to our friends of
Nantes with the voice of Rennes, than the champion who once already
to-day has so incomparably given utterance to the voice of this
great city? Confer this honour of being your spokesman where it
belongs - upon Andre-Louis Moreau."
Rising in response to the storm of applause that greeted the
proposal, Andre-Louis bowed and forthwith yielded. "Be it so," he
said, simply. "It is perhaps fitting that I should carry out what
I have begun, though I too am of the opinion that Le Chapelier would
have been a worthier representative. I will set out to-night."
"You will set out at once, my lad," Le Chapelier informed him, and
now revealed what an uncharitable mind might account the true source
of his generosity. "It is not safe after what has happened for you
to linger an hour in Rennes. And you must go secretly. Let none
of you allow it to be known that he has gone. I would not have you
come to harm over this, Andre-Louis. But you must see the risks
you run, and if you are to be spared to help in this work of
salvation of our afflicted motherland, you must use caution, move
secretly, veil your identity even. Or else M. de Lesdiguieres will
have you laid by the heels, and it will be good-night for you."
CHAPTER VIII
OMNES OMNIBUS
Andre-Louis rode forth from Rennes committed to a deeper adventure
than he had dreamed of when he left the sleepy village of Gavrillac.
Lying the night at a roadside inn, and setting out again early in
the morning, he reached Nantes soon after noon of the following day.
Through that long and lonely ride through the dull plains of
Brittany, now at their dreariest in their winter garb, he had ample
leisure in which to review his actions and his position. From one
who had taken hitherto a purely academic and by no means friendly
interest in the new philosophies of social life, exercising his wits
upon these new ideas merely as a fencer exercises his eye and wrist
with the foils, without ever suffering himself to be deluded into
supposing the issue a real one, he found himself suddenly converted
into a revolutionary firebrand, committed to revolutionary action
of the most desperate kind. The representative and delegate of a
nobleman in the States of Brittany, he found himself simultaneously
and incongruously the representative and delegate of the whole Third
Estate of Rennes.
It is difficult to determine to what extent, in the heat of passion
and swept along by the torrent of his own oratory, he might
yesterday have succeeded in deceiving himself. But it is at least
certain that, looking back in cold blood now he had no single
delusion on the score of what he had done. Cynically he had
presented to his audience one side only of the great question that
he propounded.
But since the established order of things in France was such as to
make a rampart for M. de La Tour d'Azyr, affording him complete
immunity for this and any other crimes that it pleased him to commit,
why, then the established order must take the consequences of its
wrong-doing. Therein he perceived his clear justification.
And so it was without misgivings that he came on his errand of
sedition into that beautiful city of Nantes, rendered its spacious
streets and splendid port the rival in prosperity of Bordeaux and
Marseilles.
He found an inn on the Quai La Fosse, where he put up his horse,
and where he dined in the embrasure of a window that looked out
over the tree-bordered quay and the broad bosom of the Loire, on
which argosies of all nations rode at anchor. The sun had again
broken through the clouds, and shed its pale wintry light over the
yellow waters and the tall-masted shipping.
Along the quays there was a stir of life as great as that to be seen
on the quays of Paris. Foreign sailors in outlandish garments and
of harsh-sounding, outlandish speech, stalwart fishwives with baskets
of herrings on their heads, voluminous of petticoat above bare legs
and bare feet, calling their wares shrilly and almost inarticulately,
watermen in woollen caps and loose trousers rolled to the knees,
peasants in goatskin coats, their wooden shoes clattering on the
round kidney-stones, shipwrights and labourers from the dockyards,
bellows-menders, rat-catchers, water-carriers, ink-sellers, and other
itinerant pedlars. And, sprinkled through this proletariat mass that
came and went in constant movement, Andre-Louis beheld tradesmen in
sober garments, merchants in long, fur-lined coats; occasionally a
merchant-prince rolling along in his two-horse cabriolet to the
whip-crackings and shouts of "Gare!" from his coachman; occasionally
a dainty lady carried past in her sedan-chair, with perhaps a mincing
abbe from the episcopal court tripping along in attendance;
occasionally an officer in scarlet riding disdainfully; and once the
great carriage of a nobleman, with escutcheoned panels and a pair
of white-stockinged, powdered footmen in gorgeous liveries hanging
on behind. And there were Capuchins in brown and Benedictines in
black, and secular priests in plenty - for God was well served in
the sixteen parishes of Nantes - and by way of contrast there were
lean-jawed, out-at-elbow adventurers, and gendarmes in blue coats
and gaitered legs, sauntering guardians of the peace.
Representatives of every class that went to make up the seventy
thousand inhabitants of that wealthy, industrious city were to be
seen in the human stream that ebbed and flowed beneath the window
from which Andre-Louis observed it.
Of the waiter who ministered to his humble wants with soup and
bouilli, and a measure of vin gris, Andre-Louis enquired into the
state of public feeling in the city. The waiter, a staunch
supporter of the privileged orders, admitted regretfully that an
uneasiness prevailed. Much would depend upon what happened at
Rennes. If it was true that the King had dissolved the States of
Brittany, then all should be well, and the malcontents would have
no pretext for further disturbances. There had been trouble and
to spare in Nantes already. They wanted no repetition of it. All
manner of rumours were abroad, and since early morning there had
been crowds besieging the portals of the Chamber of Commerce for
definite news. But definite news was yet to come. It was not even
known for a fact that His Majesty actually had dissolved the States.
It was striking two, the busiest hour of the day upon the Bourse,
when Andre-Louis reached the Place du Commerce. The square,
dominated by the imposing classical building of the Exchange, was
so crowded that he was compelled almost to fight his way through to
the steps of the magnificent Ionic porch. A word would have
sufficed to have opened a way for him at once. But guile moved him
to keep silent. He would come upon that waiting multitude as a
thunderclap, precisely as yesterday he had come upon the mob at
Rennes. He would lose nothing of the surprise effect of his
entrance.
The precincts of that house of commerce were jealously kept by a
line of ushers armed with staves, a guard as hurriedly assembled by
the merchants as it was evidently necessary. One of these now
effectively barred the young lawyer's passage as he attempted to
mount the steps.
Andre-Louis announced himself in a whisper.
The stave was instantly raised from the horizontal, and he passed
and went up the steps in the wake of the usher. At the top, on the
threshold of the chamber, he paused, and stayed his guide.
"I will wait here," he announced. "Bring the president to me."
"Your name, monsieur?"
Almost had Andre-Louis answered him when he remembered Le Chapelier's
warning of the danger with which his mission was fraught, and Le
Chapelier's parting admonition to conceal his identity.
"My name is unknown to him; it matters nothing; I am the mouthpiece
of a people, no more. Go."
The usher went, and in the shadow of that lofty, pillared portico
Andre-Louis waited, his eyes straying out ever and anon to survey
that spread of upturned faces immediately below him.
Soon the president came, others following, crowding out into the
portico, jostling one another in their eagerness to hear the news.
"You are a messenger from Rennes?"
"I am the delegate sent by the Literary Chamber of that city to
inform you here in Nantes of what is taking place."
"Your name?"
Andre-Louis paused. "The less we mention names perhaps the better."
The president's eyes grew big with gravity. He was a corpulent,
florid man, purse-proud, and self-sufficient.
He hesitated a moment. Then - "Come into the Chamber," said he.
"By your leave, monsieur, I will deliver my message from here - from
these steps."
"From here?" The great merchant frowned.
"My message is for the people of Nantes, and from here I can speak
at once to the greatest number of Nantais of all ranks, and it is
my desire - and the desire of those whom I represent - that as great
a number as possible should hear my message at first hand."
"Tell me, sir, is it true that the King has dissolved the States?"
Andre-Louis looked at him. He smiled apologetically, and waved a
hand towards the crowd, which by now was straining for a glimpse of
this slim young man who had brought forth the president and more
than half the numbers of the Chamber, guessing already, with that
curious instinct of crowds, that he was the awaited bearer of
tidings.
"Summon the gentlemen of your Chamber, monsieur," said he, "and you
shall hear all."
"So be it."
A word, and forth they came to crowd upon the steps, but leaving
clear the topmost step and a half-moon space in the middle.
To the spot so indicated, Andre-Louis now advanced very deliberately.
He took his stand there, dominating the entire assembly. He removed
his hat, and launched the opening bombshell of that address which
is historic, marking as it does one of the great stages of France's
progress towards revolution.
"People of this great city of Nantes, I have come to summon you to
arms!"
In the amazed and rather scared silence that followed he surveyed
them for a moment before resuming.
"I am a delegate of the people of Rennes, charged to announce to
you what is taking place, and to invite you in this dreadful hour
of our country's peril to rise and march to her defence."
"Name! Your name!" a voice shouted, and instantly the cry was taken
up by others, until the multitude rang with the question.
He could not answer that excited mob as he had answered the
president. It was necessary to compromise, and he did so, happily.
"My name," said he, "is Omnes Omnibus - all for all. Let that
suffice you now. I am a herald, a mouthpiece, a voice; no more. I
come to announce to you that since the privileged orders, assembled
for the States of Brittany in Rennes, resisted your will - our will
- despite the King's plain hint to them, His Majesty has dissolved
the States."
There was a burst of delirious applause. Men laughed and shouted,
and cries of "Vive le Roi!" rolled forth like thunder. Andre-Louis
waited, and gradually the preternatural gravity of his countenance
came to be observed, and to beget the suspicion that there might be
more to follow. Gradually silence was restored, and at last Andre
Louis was able to proceed.
"You rejoice too soon. Unfortunately, the nobles, in their insolent
arrogance, have elected to ignore the royal dissolution, and in
despite of it persist in sitting and in conducting matters as seems
good to them."
A silence of utter dismay greeted that disconcerting epilogue to the
announcement that had been so rapturously received. Andre-Louis
continued after a moment's pause:
"So that these men who were already rebels against the people,
rebels, against justice and equity, rebels against humanity itself,
are now also rebels against their King. Sooner than yield an inch
of the unconscionable privileges by which too long already they have
flourished, to the misery of a whole nation, they will make a mock
of royal authority, hold up the King himself to contempt. They are
determined to prove that there is no real sovereignty in France but
the sovereignty of their own parasitic faineantise."
There was a faint splutter of applause, but the majority of the
audience remained silent, waiting.
"This is no new thing. Always has it been the same. No minister
in the last ten years, who, seeing the needs and perils of the State,
counselled the measures that we now demand as the only means of
arresting our motherland in its ever-quickening progress to the
abyss, but found himself as a consequence cast out of office by the
influence which Privilege brought to bear against him. Twice already
has M. Necker been called to the ministry, to be twice dismissed
when his insistent counsels of reform threatened the privileges of
clergy and nobility. For the third time now has he been called to
office, and at last it seems we are to have States General in spite
of Privilege. But what the privileged orders can no longer prevent,
they are determined to stultify. Since it is now a settled thing
that these States General are to meet, at least the nobles and the
clergy will see to it - unless we take measures to prevent them - by
packing the Third Estate with their own creatures, and denying it
all effective representation, that they convert. the States General
into an instrument of their own will for the perpetuation of the
abuses by which they live. To achieve this end they will stop at
nothing. They have flouted the authority of the King, and they are
silencing by assassination those who raise their voices to condemn
them. Yesterday in Rennes two young men who addressed the people as
I am addressing you were done to death in the streets by assassins
at the instigation of the nobility. Their blood cries out for
vengeance."
Beginning in a sullen mutter, the indignation that moved his hearers
swelled up to express itself in a roar of anger.
"Citizens of Nantes, the motherland is in peril. Let us march to
her defence. Let us proclaim it to the world that we recognize
that the measures to liberate the Third Estate from the slavery in
which for centuries it has groaned find only obstacles in those
orders whose phrenetic egotism sees in the tears and suffering of
the unfortunate an odious tribute which they would pass on to their
generations still unborn. Realizing from the barbarity of the means
employed by our enemies to perpetuate our oppression that we have
everything to fear from the aristocracy they would set up as a
constitutional principle for the governing of France, let us declare
ourselves at once enfranchised from it.
"The establishment of liberty and equality should be the aim of
every citizen member of the Third Estate; and to this end we should
stand indivisibly united, especially the young and vigorous,
especially those who have had the good fortune to be born late enough
to be able to gather for themselves the precious fruits of the
philosophy of this eighteenth century."
Acclamations broke out unstintedly now. He had caught them in the
snare of his oratory. And he pressed his advantage instantly.
"Let us all swear," he cried in a great voice, "to raise up in the
name of humanity and of liberty a rampart against our enemies, to
oppose to their bloodthirsty covetousness the calm perseverance of
men whose cause is just. And let us protest here and in advance
against any tyrannical decrees that should declare us seditious when
we have none but pure and just intentions. Let us make oath upon
the honour of our motherland that should any of us be seized by an
unjust tribunal, intending against us one of those acts termed of
political expediency - which are, in effect, but acts of despotism
- let us swear, I say, to give a full expression to the strength
that is in us and do that in self-defence which nature, courage,
and despair dictate to us."
Loud and long rolled the applause that greeted his conclusion, and
he observed with satisfaction and even some inward grim amusement
that the wealthy merchants who had been congregated upon the steps,
and who now came crowding about him to shake him by the hand and to
acclaim him, were not merely participants in, but the actual leaders
of, this delirium of enthusiasm.
It confirmed him, had he needed confirmation, in his conviction that
just as the philosophies upon which this new movement was based had
their source in thinkers extracted from the bourgeoisie, so the need
to adopt those philosophies to the practical purposes of life was
most acutely felt at present by those bourgeois who found themselves
debarred by Privilege from the expansion their wealth permitted them.
If it might be said of Andre-Louis that he had that day lighted the
torch of the Revolution in Nantes, it might with even greater truth
be said that the torch itself was supplied by the opulent bourgeoisie.
I need not dwell at any length upon the sequel. It is a matter of
history how that oath which Omnes Omnibus administered to the
citizens of Nantes formed the backbone of the formal protest which
they drew up and signed in their thousands. Nor were the results of
that powerful protest - which, after all, might already be said to
harmonize with the expressed will of the sovereign himself - long
delayed. Who shall say how far it may have strengthened the hand of
Necker, when on the 27th of that same month of November he compelled
the Council to adopt the most significant and comprehensive of all
those measures to which clergy and nobility had refused their consent?
On that date was published the royal decree ordaining that the
deputies to be elected to the States General should number at least
one thousand, and that the deputies of the Third Estate should be
fully representative by numbering as many as the deputies of clergy
and nobility together.
CHAPTER IX
THE AFTERMATH
Dusk of the following day was falling when the homing Andre-Louis
approached Gavrillac. Realizing fully what a hue and cry there
would presently be for the apostle of revolution who had summoned
the people of Nantes to arms, he desired as far as possible to
conceal the fact that he had been in that maritime city. Therefore
he made a wide detour, crossing the river at Bruz, and recrossing
it a little above Chavagne, so as to approach Gavrillac from the
north, and create the impression that he was returning from Rennes,
whither he was known to have gone two days ago.
Within a mile or so of the village he caught in the fading light
his first glimpse of a figure on horseback pacing slowly towards
him. But it was not until they had come within a few yards of each
other, and he observed that this cloaked figure was leaning forward
to peer at him, that he took much notice of it. And then he found
himself challenged almost at once by a woman's voice.
"It is you, Andre - at last!"
He drew rein, mildly surprised, to be assailed by another question,
impatiently, anxiously asked.
"Where have you been?"
"Where have I been, Cousin Aline? Oh... seeing the world."
"I have been patrolling this road since noon to-day waiting for you."
She spoke breathlessly, in haste to explain. "A troop of the
marechaussee from Rennes descended upon Gavrillac this morning in
quest of you. They turned the chateau and the village inside out,
and at last discovered that you were due to return with a horse
hired from the Breton arme. So they have taken up their quarters
at the inn to wait for you. I have been here all the afternoon on
the lookout to warn you against walking into that trap."
"My dear Aline! That I should have been the cause of so much
concern and trouble!"
"Never mind that. It is not important."
"On the contrary; it is the most important part of what you tell me.
It is the rest that is unimportant."
"Do you realize that they have come to arrest you?" she asked him,
with increasing impatience. "You are wanted for sedition, and upon
a warrant from M. de Lesdiguieres."
"Sedition?" quoth he, and his thoughts flew to that business at
Nantes. It was impossible they could have had news of it in Rennes
and acted upon it in so short a time.
"Yes, sedition. The sedition of that wicked speech of yours at
Rennes on Wednesday."
"Oh, that!" said he. "Pooh!" His note of relief might have told
her, had she been more attentive, that he had to fear the consequences
of a greater wickedness committed since. "Why, that was nothing."
"Nothing?"
"I almost suspect that the real intentions of these gentlemen of
the marechaussee have been misunderstood. Most probably they have
come to thank me on M. de Lesdiguieres' behalf. I restrained the
people when they would have burnt the Palais and himself inside it."
"After you had first incited them to do it. I suppose you were
afraid of your work. You drew back at the last moment. But you
said things of M. de Lesdiguieres, if you are correctly reported,
which he will never forgive."
"I see," said Andre-Louis, and he fell into thought.
But Mlle. de Kercadiou had already done what thinking was necessary,
and her alert young mind had settled all that was to be done.
"You must not go into Gavrillac," she told him, "and you must get
down from your horse, and let me take it. I will stable it at the
chateau to-night. And sometime to morrow afternoon, by when you
should be well away, I will return it to the Breton arme."
"Oh, but that is impossible."
"Impossible? Why?"
"For several reasons. One of them is that you haven't considered
what will happen to you if you do such a thing."
"To me? Do you suppose I am afraid of that pack of oafs sent by M.
Lesdiguieres? I have committed no sedition."
"But it is almost as bad to give aid to one who is wanted for the
crime. That is the law."
"What do I care for the law? Do you imagine that the law will
presume to touch me?"
"Of course there is that. You are sheltered by one of the abuses I
complained of at Rennes. I was forgetting."
"Complain of it as much as you please, but meanwhile profit by it.
Come, Andre, do as I tell you. Get down from your horse." And then,
as he still hesitated, she stretched out and caught him by the arm.
Her voice was vibrant with earnestness. "Andre, you don't realize
how serious is your position. If these people take you, it is almost
certain that you will be hanged. Don't you realize it? You must
not go to Gavrillac. You must go away at once, and lie completely
lost for a time until this blows over. Indeed, until my uncle can
bring influence to bear to obtain your pardon, you must keep in hiding."
"That will be a long time, then," said Andre-Louis. M. de Kercadiou
has never cultivated friends at court."
"There is M. de La Tour d'Azyr," she reminded him, to his
astonishment.
"That man!" he cried, and then he laughed. "But it was chiefly
against him that I aroused the resentment of the people of Rennes.
I should have known that all my speech was not reported to you.
"It was, and that part of it among the rest."
"Ah! And yet you are concerned to save me, the man who seeks the
life of your future husband at the hands either of the law or of the
people? Or is it, perhaps, that since you have seen his true nature
revealed in the murder of poor Philippe, you have changed your views
on the subject of becoming Marquise de La Tour d'Azyr?"
"You often show yourself without any faculty of deductive reasoning."
"Perhaps. But hardly to the extent of imagining that M. de La Tour
d'Azyr will ever lift a finger to do as you suggest."
"In which, as usual, you are wrong. He will certainly do so if I
ask him."
"If you ask him?" Sheer horror rang in his voice.
"Why, yes. You see, I have not yet said that I will be Marquise de
La Tour d'Azyr. I am still considering. It is a position that has
its advantages. One of them is that it ensures a suitor's complete
obedience."
"So, so. I see the crooked logic of your mind. You might go so far
as to say to him: 'Refuse me this, and I shall refuse to be your
marquise.' You would go so far as that?"
"At need, I might."
"And do you not see the converse implication? Do you not see that
your hands would then be tied, that you would be wanting in honour
if afterwards you refused him? And do you think that I would
consent to anything that could so tie your hands? Do you think I
want to see you damned, Aline?"
Her hand fell away from his arm.
"Oh, you are mad!" she exclaimed, quite out of patience.
"Possibly. But I like my madness. There is a thrill in it unknown
to such sanity as yours. By your leave, Aline, I think I will ride
on to Gavrillac."
"Andre, you must not! It is death to you!" In her alarm she backed
her horse, and pulled it across the road to bar his way.
It was almost completely night by now; but from behind the wrack of
clouds overhead a crescent moon sailed out to alleviate the darkness.
"Come, now," she enjoined him. "Be reasonable. Do as I bid you.
See, there is a carriage coming up behind you. Do not let us be
found here together thus."
He made up his mind quickly. He was not the man to be actuated by
false heroics about dying, and he had no fancy whatever for the
gallows of M. de Lesdiguieres' providing. The immediate task that
he had set himself might be accomplished. He had made heard - and
ringingly - the voice that M. de La Tour d'Azyr imagined he had
silenced. But he was very far from having done with life.
"Aline, on one condition only."
"And that?"
"That you swear to me you will never seek the aid of M. de La Tour
d'Azyr on my behalf."
"Since you insist, and as time presses, I consent. And now ride on
with me as far as the lane. There is that carriage coming up."
The lane to which she referred was one that branched off the road
some three hundred yards nearer the village and led straight up the
hill to the chateau itself. In silence they rode together towards
it, and together they turned into that thickly hedged and narrow
bypath. At a depth of fifty yards she halted him.
"Now!" she bade him.
Obediently he swung down from his horse, and surrendered the reins
to her.
"Aline," he said, "I haven't words in which to thank you."
"It isn't necessary," said she.
"But I shall hope to repay you some day."
"Nor is that necessary. Could I do less than I am doing? I do not
want to hear of you hanged, Andre; nor does my uncle, though he is
very angry with you.
"I suppose he is.
"And you can hardly be surprised. You were his delegate, his
representative. He depended upon you, and you have turned your coat.
He is rightly indignant, calls you a traitor, and swears that he
will never speak to you again. But he doesn't want you hanged,
Andre."
"Then we are agreed on that at least, for I don't want it myself."
"I'll make your peace with him. And now - good-bye, Andre. Send me
a word when you are safe."
She held out a hand that looked ghostly in the faint light. He took
it and bore it to his lips.
"God bless you, Aline."
She was gone, and he stood listening to the receding clopper-clop of
hooves until it grew faint in the distance. Then slowly, with
shoulders hunched and head sunk on his breast, he retraced his steps
to the main road, cogitating whither he should go. Quite suddenly
he checked, remembering with dismay that he was almost entirely
without money. In Brittany itself he knew of no dependable
hiding-place, and as long as he was in Brittany his peril must
remain imminent. Yet to leave the province, and to leave it as
quickly as prudence dictated, horses would be necessary. And how
was he to procure horses, having no money beyond a single louis
d'or and a few pieces of silver?
There was also the fact that he was very weary. He had had little
sleep since Tuesday night, and not very much then; and much of the
time had been spent in the saddle, a wearing thing to one so little
accustomed to long rides. Worn as he was, it was unthinkable that
he should go far to-night. He might get as far as Chavagne, perhaps.
But there he must sup and sleep; and what, then, of to-morrow?
Had he but thought of it before, perhaps Aline might have been able
to assist him with the loan of a few louis. His first impulse now
was to follow her to the chateau. But prudence dismissed the
notion. Before he could reach her, he must be seen by servants,
and word of his presence would go forth.
There was no choice for him; he must tramp as far as Chavagne, find
a bed there, and leave to-morrow until it dawned. On the resolve
he set his face in the direction whence he had come. But again he
paused. Chavagne lay on the road to Rennes. To go that way was to
plunge further into danger. He would strike south again. At the
foot of some meadows on this side of the village there was a ferry
that would put him across the river. Thus he would avoid the
village; and by placing the river between himself and the immediate
danger, he would obtain an added sense of security.
A lane, turning out of the highroad, a quarter of a mile this side
of Gavrillac, led down to that ferry. By this lane some twenty
minutes later came Andre-Louis with dragging feet. He avoided the
little cottage of the ferryman, whose window was alight, and in the
dark crept down to the boat, intending if possible to put himself
across. He felt for the chain by which the boat was moored, and
ran his fingers along this to the point where it was fastened.
Here to his dismay he found a padlock.
He stood up in the gloom and laughed silently. Of course he might
have known it. The ferry was the property of M. de La Tour d'Azyr,
and not likely to be left unfastened so that poor devils might cheat
him of seigneurial dues.
There being no possible alternative, he walked back to the cottage,
and rapped on the door. When it opened, he stood well back, and
aside, out of the shaft of light that issued thence.
"Ferry!" he rapped out, laconically.
The ferryman, a burly scoundrel well known to him, turned aside to
pick up a lantern, and came forth as he was bidden. As he stepped
from the little porch, he levelled the lantern so that its light
fell on the face of this traveller.
"My God!" he ejaculated.
"You realize, I see, that I am pressed," said Andre-Louis, his eyes
on the fellow's startled countenance.
"And well you may be with the gallows waiting for you at Rennes,"
growled the ferryman. "Since you've been so foolish as to come
back to Gavrillac, you had better go again as quickly as you can.
I will say nothing of having seen you."
"I thank you, Fresnel. Your advice accords with my intention. That
is why I need the boat."
"Ah, that, no," said Fresnel, with determination. "I'll hold my
peace, but it's as much as my skin is worth to help you.
"You need not have seen my face. Forget that you have seen it."
"I'll do that, monsieur. But that is all I will do. I cannot put
you across the river."
"Then give me the key of the boat, and I will put myself across."
"That is the same thing. I cannot. I'll hold my tongue, but I
will not - I dare not - help you."
Andre-Louis looked a moment into that sullen, resolute face, and
understood. This man, living under the shadow of La Tour d'Azyr,
dared exercise no will that might he in conflict with the will of
his dread lord.
"Fresnel," he said, quietly, "if, as you say, the gallows claim me,
the thing that has brought me to this extremity arises out of the
shooting of Mabey. Had not Mabey been murdered there would have
been no need for me to have raised my voice as I have done. Mabey
was your friend, I think. Will you for his sake lend me the little
help I need to save my neck?"
The man kept his glance averted, and the cloud of sullenness
deepened on his face.
"I would if I dared, but I dare not." Then, quite suddenly he became
angry. It was as if in anger he sought support. "Don't you
understand that I dare not? Would you have a poor man risk his life
for you? What have you or yours ever done for me that you should ask
that? You do not cross to-night in my ferry. Understand that,
monsieur, and go at once - go before I remember that it may be
dangerous even to have talked to you and not give information. Go!"
He turned on his heel to reenter his cottage, and a wave of
hopelessness swept over Andre-Louis.
But in a second it was gone. The man must be compelled, and he had
the means. He bethought him of a pistol pressed upon him by Le
Chapelier at the moment of his leaving Rennes, a gift which at the
time he had almost disdained. True, it was not loaded, and he had
no ammunition. But how was Fresnel to know that?
He acted quickly. As with his right hand he pulled it from his
pocket, with his left he caught the ferryman by the shoulder, and
swung him round.
"What do you want now?" Fresnel demanded angrily. "Haven't I told
you that I... "
He broke off short. The muzzle of the pistol was within a foot of
his eyes.
"I want the key of the boat. That is all, Fresnel. And you can
either give it me at once, or I'll take it after I have burnt your
brains. I should regret to kill you, but I shall not hesitate. It
is your life against mine, Fresnel; and you'll not find it strange
that if one of us must die I prefer that it shall be you."
Fresnel dipped a hand into his pocket, and fetched thence a key.
He held it out to Andre-Louis in fingers that shook - more in anger
than in fear.
"I yield to violence," he said, showing his teeth like a snarling
dog. "But don't imagine that it will greatly profit you."
Andre-Louis took the key. His pistol remained levelled.
"You threaten me, I think," he said. "It is not difficult to read
your threat. The moment I am gone, you will run to inform against
me. You will set the marechaussee on my heels to overtake me."
"No, no!" cried the other. He perceived his peril. He read his
doom in the cold, sinister note on which Andre-Louis addressed him,
and grew afraid. "I swear to you, monsieur, that I have no such
intention."
"I think I had better make quite sure of you."
"0 my God! Have mercy, monsieur!" The knave was in a palsy of
terror. "I mean you no harm - I swear to Heaven I mean you no harm.
I will not say a word. I will not... "
"I would rather depend upon your silence than your assurances.
Still, you shall have your chance. I am a fool, perhaps, but I have
a reluctance to shed blood. Go into the house, Fresnel. Go, man.
I follow you."
In the shabby main room of that dwelling, Andre-Louis halted him
again. "Get me a length of rope," he commanded, and was readily
obeyed.
Five minutes later Fresnel was securely bound to a chair, and
effectively silenced by a very uncomfortable gag improvised out of
a block of wood and a muffler.
On the threshold the departing Andre-Louis turned.
"Good-night, Fresnel," he said. Fierce eyes glared mute hatred at
him. "It is unlikely that your ferry will be required again to-night.
But some one is sure to come to your relief quite early in the
morning. Until then bear your discomfort with what fortitude you
can, remembering that you have brought it entirely upon yourself by
your uncharitableness. If you spend the night considering that, the
lesson should not be lost upon you. By morning you may even have
grown so charitable as not to know who it was that tied you up.
Good-night."
He stepped out and closed the door.
To unlock the ferry, and pull himself across the swift-running
waters, on which the faint moonlight was making a silver ripple,
were matters that engaged not more than six or seven minutes. He
drove the nose of the boat through the decaying sedges that fringed
the southern bank of the stream, sprang ashore, and made the little
craft secure. Then, missing the footpath in the dark, he struck
out across a sodden meadow in quest of the road.
BOOK II:
CHAPTER I
HE TRESPASSERS
Coming presently upon the Redon road, Andre-Louis, obeying instinct
rather than reason, turned his face to the south, and plodded
wearily and mechanically forward. He had no clear idea of whither
he was going, or of whither he should go. All that imported at the
moment was to put as great a distance as possible between Gavrillac
and himself.
He had a vague, half-formed notion of returning to Nantes; and
there, by employing the newly found weapon of his oratory, excite
the people into sheltering him as the first victim of the
persecution he had foreseen, and against which he had sworn them to
take up arms. But the idea was one which he entertained merely as
an indefinite possibility upon which he felt no real impulse to act.
Meanwhile he chuckled at the thought of Fresnel as he had last seen
him, with his muffled face and glaring eyeballs. "For one who was
anything but a man of action," he writes, "I felt that I had
acquitted myself none so badly." It is a phrase that recurs at
intervals in his sketchy "Confessions." Constantly is he reminding
you that he is a man of mental and not physical activities, and
apologizing when dire neccessity drives him into acts of violence.
I suspect this insistence upon his philosophic detachment - for
which I confess he had justification enough - to betray his
besetting vanity.
With increasing fatigue came depression and self-criticism. He
had stupidly overshot his mark in insultingly denouncing M. de
Lesdiguieres. "It is much better," he says somewhere, "to be
wicked than to be stupid. Most of this world's misery is the fruit
not as priests tell us of wickedness, but of stupidity." And we
know that of all stupidities he considered anger the most deplorable.
Yet he had permitted himself to be angry with a creature like M. de
Lesdiguieres - a lackey, a fribble, a nothing, despite his
potentialities for evil. He could perfectly have discharged his
self-imposed mission without arousing the vindictive resentment of
the King's Lieutenant.
He beheld himself vaguely launched upon life with the riding-suit
in which he stood, a single louis d'or and a few pieces of silver
for all capital, and a knowledge of law which had been inadequate
to preserve him from the consequences of infringing it.
He had, in addition - but these things that were to be the real
salvation of him he did not reckon - his gift of laughter, sadly
repressed of late, and the philosophic outlook and mercurial
temperament which are the stock-in-trade of your adventurer in
all ages.
Meanwhile he tramped mechanically on through the night, until he
felt that he could tramp no more. He had skirted the little
township of Guichen, and now within a half-mile of Guignen, and
with Gavrillac a good seven miles behind him, his legs refused to
carry him any farther.
He was midway across the vast common to the north of Guignen when
he came to a halt. He had left the road, and taken heedlessly to
the footpath that struck across the waste of indifferent pasture
interspersed with clumps of gorse. A stone's throw away on his
right the common was bordered by a thorn hedge. Beyond this loomed
a tall building which he knew to be an open barn, standing on the
edge of a long stretch of meadowland. That dark, silent shadow it
may have been that had brought him to a standstill, suggesting
shelter to his subconsciousness. A moment he hesitated; then he
struck across towards a spot where a gap in the hedge was closed
by a five-barred gate. He pushed the gate open, went through the
gap, and stood now before the barn. It was as big as a house, yet
consisted of no more than a roof carried upon half a dozen tall,
brick pillars. But densely packed under that roof was a great
stack of hay that promised a warm couch on so cold a night. Stout
timbers had been built into the brick pillars, with projecting ends
to serve as ladders by which the labourer might climb to pack or
withdraw hay. With what little strength remained him, Andre-Louis
climbed by one of these and landed safely at the top, where he was
forced to kneel, for lack of room to stand upright. Arrived there,
he removed his coat and neckcloth, his sodden boots and stockings.
Next he cleared a trough for his body, and lying down in it, covered
himself to the neck with the hay he had removed. Within five minutes
he was lost to all worldly cares and soundly asleep.
When next he awakened, the sun was already high in the heavens, from
which he concluded that the morning was well advanced; and this
before he realized quite where he was or how he came there. Then
to his awakening senses came a drone of voices close at hand, to
which at first he paid little heed. He was deliciously refreshed,
luxuriously drowsy and luxuriously warm.
But as consciousness and memory grew more full, he raised his head
clear of the hay that he might free both ears to listen, his pulses
faintly quickened by the nascent fear that those voices might bode
him no good. Then he caught the reassuring accents of a woman,
musical and silvery, though laden with alarm.
"Ah, mon Dieu, Leandre, let us separate at once. If it should be
my father... "
And upon this a man's voice broke in, calm and reassuring:
"No, no, Climene; you are mistaken. There is no one coming. We
are quite safe. Why do you start at shadows?"
"Ah, Leandre, if he should find us here together! I tremble at the
very thought."
More was not needed to reassure Andre-Louis. He had overheard
enough to know that this was but the case of a pair of lovers who,
with less to fear of life, were yet - after the manner of their
kind - more timid of heart than he. Curiosity drew him from his
warm trough to the edge of the hay. Lying prone, he advanced his
head and peered down.
In the space of cropped meadow between the barn and the hedge stood
a man and a woman, both young. The man was a well-set-up, comely
fellow, with a fine head of chestnut hair tied in a queue by a
broad bow of black satin. He was dressed with certain tawdry
attempts at ostentatious embellishments, which did not prepossess
one at first glance in his favour. His coat of a fashionable cut
was of faded plum-coloured velvet edged with silver lace, whose
glory had long since departed. He affected ruffles, but for want
of starch they hung like weeping willows over hands that were fine
and delicate. His breeches were of plain black cloth, and his black
stockings were of cotton - matters entirely out of harmony with his
magnificent coat. His shoes, stout and serviceable, were decked
with buckles of cheap, lack-lustre paste. But for his engaging and
ingenuous countenance, Andre-Louis must have set him down as a
knight of that order which lives dishonestly by its wits. As it
was, he suspended judgment whilst pushing investigation further by
a study of the girl. At the outset, be it confessed that it was a
study that attracted him prodigiously. And this notwithstanding
the fact that, bookish and studious as were his ways, and in
despite of his years, it was far from his habit to waste
consideration on femininity.
The child - she was no more than that, perhaps twenty at the most
- possessed, in addition to the allurements of face and shape that
went very near perfection, a sparkling vivacity and a grace of
movement the like of which Andre-Louis did not remember ever before
to have beheld assembled in one person. And her voice too - that
musical, silvery voice that had awakened him - possessed in its
exquisite modulations an allurement of its own that must have been
irresistible, he thought, in the ugliest of her sex. She wore a
hooded mantle of green cloth, and the hood being thrown back, her
dainty head was all revealed to him. There were glints of gold
struck by the morning sun from her light nut-brown hair that hung
in a cluster of curls about her oval face. Her complexion was of
a delicacy that he could compare only with a rose petal. He could
not at that distance discern the colour of her eyes, but he guessed
them blue, as he admired the sparkle of them under the fine, dark
line of eyebrows.
He could not have told you why, but he was conscious that it
aggrieved him to find her so intimate with this pretty young fellow,
who was partly clad, as it appeared, in the cast-offs of a nobleman.
He could not guess her station, but the speech that reached him was
cultured in tone and word. He strained to listen.
"I shall know no peace, Leandre, until we are safely wedded," she
was saying. "Not until then shall I count myself beyond his reach.
And yet if we marry without his consent, we but make trouble for
ourselves, and of gaining his consent I almost despair."
Evidently, thought Andre-Louis, her father was a man of sense, who
saw through the shabby finery of M. Leandre, and was not to be
dazzled by cheap paste buckles.
"My dear Climene," the young man was answering her, standing
squarely before her, and holding both her hands, "you are wrong to
despond. If I do not reveal to you all the stratagem that I have
prepared to win the consent of your unnatural parent, it is because
I am loath to rob you of the pleasure of the surprise that is in
store. But place your faith in me, and in that ingenious friend
of whom I have spoken, and who should be here at any moment."
The stilted ass! Had he learnt that speech by heart in advance, or
was he by nature a pedantic idiot who expressed himself in this set
and formal manner? How came so sweet a blossom to waste her
perfumes on such a prig? And what a ridiculous name the creature
owned!
Thus Andre-Louis to himself from his observatory. Meanwhile, she
was speaking.
"That is what my heart desires, Leandre, but I am beset by fears
lest your stratagem should be too late. I am to marry this horrible
Marquis of Sbrufadelli this very day. He arrives by noon. He comes
to sign the contract - to make me the Marchioness of Sbrufadelli.
Oh!" It was a cry of pain from that tender young heart. "The very
name burns my lips. If it were mine I could never utter it - never!
The man is so detestable. Save me, Leandre. Save me! You are my
only hope."
Andre-Louis was conscious of a pang of disappointment. She failed
to soar to the heights he had expected of her. She was evidently
infected by the stilted manner of her ridiculous lover. There was
an atrocious lack of sincerity about her words. They touched his
mind, but left his heart unmoved. Perhaps this was because of his
antipathy to M. Leandre and to the issue involved.
So her father was marrying her to a marquis! That implied birth on
her side. And yet she was content to pair off with this dull young
adventurer in the tarnished lace! It was, he supposed, the sort of
thing to be expected of a sex that all philosophy had taught him to
regard as the maddest part of a mad species.
"It shall never be!" M. Leandre was storming passionately. "Never!
I swear it!" And he shook his puny fist at the blue vault of heaven
- Ajax defying Jupiter. "Ah, but here comes our subtle friend... "
(Andre-Louis did not catch the name, M. Leandre having at that moment
turned to face the gap in the hedge.) "He will bring us news, I know."
Andre-Louis looked also in the direction of the gap. Through it
emerged a lean, slight man in a rusty cloak and a three-cornered hat
worn well down over his nose so as to shade his face. And when
presently he doffed this hat and made a sweeping bow to the young
lovers, Andre-Louis confessed to himself that had he been cursed
with such a hangdog countenance he would have worn his hat in
precisely such a manner, so as to conceal as much of it as possible.
If M. Leandre appeared to be wearing, in part at least, the cast-offs
of nobleman, the newcomer appeared to be wearing the cast-offs of M.
Leandre. Yet despite his vile clothes and viler face, with its three
days' growth of beard, the fellow carried himself with a certain air;
he positively strutted as he advanced, and he made a leg in a manner
that was courtly and practised.
"Monsieur," said he, with the air of a conspirator, "the time for
action has arrived, and so has the Marquis... That is why."
The young lovers sprang apart in consternation; Climene with clasped
hands, parted lips, and a bosom that raced distractingly under its
white fichu-menteur; M. Leandre agape, the very picture of foolishness
and dismay.
Meanwhile the newcomer rattled on. "I was at the inn an hour ago
when he descended there, and I studied him attentively whilst he was
at breakfast. Having done so, not a single doubt remains me of our
success. As for what he looks like, I could entertain you at length
upon the fashion in which nature has designed his gross fatuity.
But that is no matter. We are concerned with what he is, with the
wit of him. And I tell you confidently that I find him so dull and
stupid that you may be confident he will tumble headlong into each
and all of the traps I have so cunningly prepared for him."
"Tell me, tell me! Speak!" Climene implored him, holding out her
hands in a supplication no man of sensibility could have resisted.
And then on the instant she caught her breath on a faint scream.
"My father!" she exclaimed, turning distractedly from one to the
other of those two. "He is coming! We are lost!"
"You must fly, Climene!" said M. Leandre.
"Too late!" she sobbed. "Too late! He is here."
"Calm, mademoiselle, calm!" the subtle friend was urging her. "Keep
calm and trust to me. I promise you that all shall be well."
"Oh!" cried M. Leandre, limply. "Say what you will, my friend, this
is ruin - the end of all our hopes. Your wits will never extricate
us from this. Never!"
Through the gap strode now an enormous man with an inflamed moon
face and a great nose, decently dressed after the fashion of a solid
bourgeois. There was no mistaking his anger, but the expression
that it found was an amazement to Andre-Louis.
"Leandre, you're an imbecile! Too much phlegm, too much phlegm!
Your words wouldn't convince a ploughboy! Have you considered what
they mean at all? Thus," he cried, and casting his round hat from
him in a broad gesture, he took his stand at M. Leandre's side, and
repeated the very words that Leandre had lately uttered, what time
the three observed him coolly and attentively.
"Oh, say what you will, my friend, this is ruin - the end of all
our hopes. Your wits will never extricate us from this. Never!"
A frenzy of despair vibrated in his accents. He swung again to face
M. Leandre. "Thus," he bade him contemptuously. "Let the passion
of your hopelessness express itself in your voice. Consider that you
are not asking Scaramouche here whether he has put a patch in your
breeches. You are a despairing lover expressing... "
He checked abruptly, startled. Andre-Louis, suddenly realizing what
was afoot, and how duped he had been, had loosed his laughter. The
sound of it pealing and booming uncannily under the great roof that
so immediately confined him was startling to those below.
The fat man was the first to recover, and he announced it after his
own fashion in one of the ready sarcasms in which he habitually dealt.
"Hark!" he cried, "the very gods laugh at you, Leandre." Then he
addressed the roof of the barn and its invisible tenant. "Hi! You
there!"
Andre-Louis revealed himself by a further protrusion of his tousled
head.
"Good-morning," said he, pleasantly. Rising now on his knees, his
horizon was suddenly extended to include the broad common beyond
the hedge. He beheld there an enormous and very battered travelling
chaise, a cart piled up with timbers partly visible under the sheet
of oiled canvas that covered them, and a sort of house on wheels
equipped with a tin chimney, from which the smoke was slowly curling.
Three heavy Flemish horses and a couple of donkeys - all of them
hobbled - were contentedly cropping the grass in the neighbourhood
of these vehicles. These, had he perceived them sooner, must have
given him the clue to the queer scene that had been played under
his eyes. Beyond the hedge other figures were moving. Three at
that moment came crowding into the gap - a saucy-faced girl with a
tip-tilted nose, whom he supposed to be Columbine, the soubrette;
a lean, active youngster, who must be the lackey Harlequin;, and
another rather loutish youth who might be a zany or an apothecary.
All this he took in at a comprehensive glance that consumed no more
time than it had taken him to say good-morning. To that
good-morning Pantaloon replied in a bellow:
"What the devil are you doing up there?"
"Precisely the same thing that you are doing down there," was the
answer. "I am trespassing."
"Eh?" said Pantaloon, and looked at his companions, some of the
assurance beaten out of his big red face. Although the thing was
one that they did habitually, to hear it called by its proper name
was disconcerting.
"Whose land is this?" he asked, with diminishing assurance.
Andre-Louis answered, whilst drawing on his stockings. "I believe
it to be the property of the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr."
"That's a high-sounding name. Is the gentleman severe?"
"The gentleman," said Andre-Louis, "is the devil; or rather, I
should prefer to say upon reflection, that the devil is a gentleman
by comparison.
"And yet," interposed the villainous-looking fellow who played
Scaramouche, "by your own confessing you don't hesitate, yourself,
to trespass upon his property."
"Ah, but then, you see, I am a lawyer. And lawyers are notoriously
unable to observe the law, just as actors are notoriously unable to
act. Moreover, sir, Nature imposes her limits upon us, and Nature
conquers respect for law as she conquers all else. Nature conquered
me last night when I had got as far as this. And so I slept here
without regard for the very high and puissant Marquis de La Tour
d'Azyr. At the same time, M. Scaramouche, you'll observe that I
did not flaunt my trespass quite as openly as you and your companions.
Having donned his boots, Andre-Louis came nimbly to the ground in
his shirt-sleeves, his riding-coat over his arm. As he stood there
to don it, the little cunning eyes of the heavy father conned him in
detail. Observing that his clothes, if plain, were of a good fashion,
that his shirt was of fine cambric, and that he expressed himself
like a man of culture, such as he claimed to be, M. Pantaloon was
disposed to be civil.
"I am very grateful to you for the warning, sir... " he was beginning.
"Act upon it, my friend. The gardes-champetres of M. d'Azyr have
orders to fire on trespassers. Imitate me, and decamp."
They followed him upon the instant through that gap in the hedge to
the encampment on the common. There Andre-Louis took his leave of
them. But as he was turning away he perceived a young man of the
company performing his morning toilet at a bucket placed upon one
of the wooden steps at the tail of the house on wheels. A moment
he hesitated, then he turned frankly to M. Pantaloon, who was still
at his elbow.
"If it were not unconscionable to encroach so far upon your
hospitality, monsieur," said he, "I would beg leave to imitate that
very excellent young gentleman before I leave you."
"But, my dear sir!" Good-nature oozed out of every pore of the fat
body of the master player. "It is nothing at all. But, by all
means. Rhodomont will provide what you require. He is the dandy
of the company in real life, though a fire-eater on the stage. Hi,
Rhodomont!"
The young ablutionist straightened his long body from the right
angle in which it had been bent over the bucket, and looked out
through a foam of soapsuds. Pantaloon issued an order, and
Rhodomont, who was indeed as gentle and amiable off the stage as he
was formidable and terrible upon it, made the stranger free of the
bucket in the friendliest manner.
So Andre-Louis once more removed his neckcloth and his coat, and
rolled up the sleeves of his fine shirt, whilst Rhodomont procured
him soap, a towel, and presently a broken comb, and even a greasy
hair-ribbon, in case the gentleman should have lost his own. This
last Andre-Louis declined, but the comb he gratefully accepted, and
having presently washed himself clean, stood, with the towel flung
over his left shoulder, restoring order to his dishevelled locks
before a broken piece of mirror affixed to the door of the
travelling house.
He was standing thus, what time the gentle Rhodomont babbled
aimlessly at his side when his ears caught the sound of hooves.
He looked over his shoulder carelessly, and then stood frozen, with
uplifted comb and loosened mouth. Away across the common, on the
road that bordered it, he beheld a party of seven horsemen in the
blue coats with red facings of the marechaussee.
Not for a moment did he doubt what was the quarry of this prowling
gendarmerie. It was as if the chill shadow of the gallows had
fallen suddenly upon him.
And then the troop halted, abreast with them, and the sergeant
leading it sent his bawling voice across the common.
"Hi, there! Hi!" His tone rang with menace.
Every member of the company - and there were some twelve in all
- stood at gaze. Pantaloon advanced a step or two, stalking, his
head thrown back, his manner that of a King's Lieutenant.
"Now, what the devil's this?" quoth he, but whether of Fate or
Heaven or the sergeant, was not clear.
There was a brief colloquy among the horsemen, then they came
trotting across the common straight towards the players' encampment.
Andre-Louis had remained standing at the tail of the travelling
house. He was still passing the comb through his straggling hair,
but mechanically and unconsciously. His mind was all intent upon
the advancing troop, his wits alert and gathered together for a leap
in whatever direction should be indicated.
Still in the distance, but evidently impatient, the sergeant bawled
a question.
"Who gave you leave to encamp here?"
It was a question that reassured Andre-Louis not at all. He was
not deceived by it into supposing or even hoping that the business
of these men was merely to round up vagrants and trespassers. That
was no part of their real duty; it was something done in passing
- done, perhaps, in the hope of levying a tax of their own. It
was very long odds that they were from Rennes, and that their real
business was the hunting down of a young lawyer charged with
sedition. Meanwhile Pantaloon was shouting back.
"Who gave us leave, do you say? What leave? This is communal land,
free to all."
The sergeant laughed unpleasantly, and came on, his troop following.
"There is," said a voice at Pantaloon's elbow, "no such thing as
communal land in the proper sense in all M. de La Tour d'Azyr's vast
domain. This is a terre censive, and his bailiffs collect his dues
from all who send their beasts to graze here."
Pantaloon turned to behold at his side Andre-Louis in his
shirt-sleeves, and without a neckcloth, the towel still trailing
over his left shoulder, a comb in his hand, his hair half dressed.
"God of God!" swore Pantaloon. "But it is an ogre, this Marquis
de La Tour d'Azyr!"
"I have told you already what I think of him," said Andre-Louis.
"As for these fellows you had better let me deal with them. I have
experience of their kind." And without waiting for Pantaloon's
consent, Andre-Louis stepped forward to meet the advancing men of
the marechaussee. He had realized that here boldness alone could
save him.
When a moment later the sergeant pulled up his horse alongside of
this half-dressed young man, Andre-Louis combed his hair what time
he looked up with a half smile, intended to be friendly, ingenuous,
and disarming.
In spite of it the sergeant hailed him gruffly: "Are you the leader
of this troop of vagabonds?"
"Yes... that is to say, my father, there, is really the leader."
And he jerked a thumb in the direction of M. Pantaloon, who stood
at gaze out of earshot in the background. "What is your pleasure,
captain?"
"My pleasure is to tell you that you are very likely to be gaoled
for this, all the pack of you." His voice was loud and bullying.
It carried across the common to the ears of every member of the
company, and brought them all to stricken attention where they stood.
The lot of strolling players was hard enough without the addition
of gaolings.
"But how so, my captain? This is communal land free to all."
"It is nothing of the kind."
"Where are the fences?" quoth Andre-Louis, waving the hand that
held the comb, as if to indicate the openness of the place.
"Fences!" snorted the sergeant. "What have fences to do with the
matter? This is terre censive. There is no grazing here save by
payment of dues to the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr."
"But we are not grazing," quoth the innocent Andre-Louis.
"To the devil with you, zany! You are not grazing! But your beasts
are grazing!"
"They eat so little," Andre-Louis apologized, and again essayed his
ingratiating smile.
The sergeant grew more terrible than ever. "That is not the point.
The point is that you are committing what amounts to a theft, and
there's the gaol for thieves."
"Technically, I suppose you are right," sighed Andre-Louis, and
fell to combing his hair again, still looking up into the sergeant's
face. "But we have sinned in ignorance. We are grateful to you for
the warning." He passed the comb into his left hand, and with his
right fumbled in his breeches' pocket, whence there came a faint
jingle of coins. "We are desolated to have brought you out of your
way. Perhaps for their trouble your men would honour us by stopping
at the next inn to drink the health of... of this M. de La Tour d'
Azyr, or any other health that they think proper.
Some of the clouds lifted from the sergeant's brow. But not yet all.
"Well, well," said he, gruffly. "But you must decamp, you
understand." He leaned from the saddle to bring his recipient hand
to a convenient distance. Andre-Louis placed in it a three-livre
piece.
"In half an hour," said Andre-Louis.
"Why in half an hour? Why not at once?"
"Oh, but time to break our fast."
They looked at each other. The sergeant next considered the broad
piece of silver in his palm. Then at last his features relaxed from
their sternness.
"After all," said he, "it is none of our business to play the
tipstaves for M. de La Tour d'Azyr. We are of the marechaussee
from Rennes." Andre-Louis' eyelids played him false by flickering.
"But if you linger, look out for the gardes-champetres of the
Marquis. You'll find them not at all accommodating. Well, well
- a good appetite to you, monsieur," said he, in valediction.
"A pleasant ride, my captain," answered Andre-Louis.
The sergeant wheeled his horse about, his troop wheeled with him.
They were starting off, when he reined up again.
"You, monsieur!" he called over his shoulder. In a bound
Andre-Louis was beside his stirrup. "We are in quest of a scoundrel
named Andre-Louis Moreau, from Gavrillac, a fugitive from justice
wanted for the gallows on a matter of sedition. You've seen nothing,
I suppose, of a man whose movements seemed to you suspicious?"
"Indeed, we have," said Andre-Louis, very boldly, his face eager
with consciousness of the ability to oblige.
"You have?" cried the sergeant, in a ringing voice. "Where? When?"
"Yesterday evening in the neighbourhood of Guignen... "
"Yes, yes," the sergeant felt himself hot upon the trail.
"There was a fellow who seemed very fearful of being recognized
... a man of fifty or thereabouts... "
"Fifty!" cried the sergeant, and his face fell. "Bah! This man of
ours is no older than yourself, a thin wisp of a fellow of about
your own height and of black hair, just like your own, by the
description. Keep a lookout on your travels, master player. The
King's Lieutenant in Rennes has sent us word this morning that he
will pay ten louis to any one giving information that will lead to
this scoundrel's arrest. So there 's ten louis to be earned by
keeping your eyes open, and sending word to the nearest justices.
It would be a fine windfall for you, that."
"A fine windfall, indeed, captain," answered Andre-Louis, laughing.
But the sergeant had touched his horse with the spur, and was
already trotting off in the wake of his men. Andre-Louis continued
to laugh, quite silently, as he sometimes did when the humour of a
jest was peculiarly keen.
Then he turned slowly about, and came back towards Pantaloon and
the rest of the company, who were now all grouped together, at gaze.
Pantaloon advanced to meet him with both hands out-held. For a
moment Andre-Louis thought he was about to be embraced.
"We hail you our saviour!" the big man declaimed. "Already the
shadow of the gaol was creeping over us, chilling us to the very
marrow. For though we be poor, yet are we all honest folk and not
one of us has ever suffered the indignity of prison. Nor is there
one of us would survive it. But for you, my friend, it might have
happened. What magic did you work?"
"The magic that is to be worked in France with a King's portrait.
The French are a very loyal nation, as you will have observed. They
love their King - and his portrait even better than himself,
especially when it is wrought in gold. But even in silver it is
respected. The sergeant was so overcome by the sight of that noble
visage - on a three-livre piece - that his anger vanished, and he
has gone his ways leaving us to depart in peace."
"Ah, true! He said we must decamp. About it, my lads! Come,
come... "
"But not until after breakfast," said Andre-Louis. "A half-hour
for breakfast was conceded us by that loyal fellow, so deeply was
he touched. True, he spoke of possible gardes-champetres. But he
knows as well as I do that they are not seriously to be feared, and
that if they came, again the King's portrait - wrought in copper
this time - would produce the same melting effect upon them. So, my
dear M. Pantaloon, break your fast at your ease. I can smell your
cooking from here, and from the smell I argue that there is no need
to wish you a good appetite."
"My friend, my saviour!" Pantaloon flung a great arm about the young
man's shoulders. "You shall stay to breakfast with us."
"I confess to a hope that you would ask me," said Andre-Louis.
CHAPTER II
THE SERVICE OF THESPIS
They were, thought Andre-Louis, as he sat down to breakfast with
them behind the itinerant house, in the bright sunshine that
tempered the cold breath of that November morning, an odd and yet
an attractive crew. An air of gaiety pervaded them. They affected
to have no cares, and made merry over the trials and tribulations
of their nomadic life. They were curiously, yet amiably, artificial;
histrionic in their manner of discharging the most commonplace of
functions; exaggerated in their gestures; stilted and affected in
their speech. They seemed, indeed, to belong to a world apart, a
world of unreality which became real only on the planks of their
stage, in the glare of their footlights. Good-fellowship bound them
one to another; and Andre-Louis reflected cynically that this
harmony amongst them might be the cause of their apparent unreality.
In the real world, greedy striving and the emulation of
acquisitiveness preclude such amity as was present here.
They numbered exactly eleven, three women and eight men; and they
addressed each other by their stage names: names which denoted their
several types, and never - or only very slightly - varied, no matter
what might be the play that they performed.
"We are," Pantaloon informed him, "one of those few remaining
staunch bands of real players, who uphold the traditions of the old
Italian Commedia dell' Arte. Not for us to vex our memories and
stultify our wit with the stilted phrases that are the fruit of a
wretched author's lucubrations. Each of us is in detail his own
author in a measure as he develops the part assigned to him. We are
improvisers - improvisers of the old and noble Italian school."
"I had guessed as much," said Andre-Louis, "when I discovered you
rehearsing your improvisations."
Pantaloon frowned.
"I have observed, young sir, that your humour inclines to the
pungent, not to say the acrid. It is very well. It is I suppose,
the humour that should go with such a countenance. But it may lead
you astray, as in this instance. That rehearsal - a most unusual
thing with us - was necessitated by the histrionic rawness of our
Leandre. We are seeking to inculcate into him by training an art
with which Nature neglected to endow him against his present needs.
Should he continue to fail in doing justice to our schooling... But
we will not disturb our present harmony with the unpleasant
anticipation of misfortunes which we still hope to avert. We love
our Leandre, for all his faults. Let me make you acquainted with our
company.
And he proceeded to introduction in detail. He pointed out the
long and amiable Rhodomont, whom Andre-Louis already knew.
"His length of limb and hooked nose were his superficial
qualifications to play roaring captains," Pantaloon explained.
"His lungs have justified our choice. You should hear him roar.
At first we called him Spavento or Epouvapte. But that was unworthy
of so great an artist. Not since the superb Mondor amazed the world
has so thrasonical a bully been seen upon the stage. So we
conferred upon him the name of Rhodomont that Mondor made famous;
and I give you my word, as an actor and a gentleman - for I am a
gentleman, monsieur, or was - that he has justified us."
His little eyes beamed in his great swollen face as he turned their
gaze upon the object of his encomium. The terrible Rhodomont,
confused by so much praise, blushed like a schoolgirl as he met the
solemn scrutiny of Andre-Louis.
"Then here we have Scaramouche, whom also you already know.
Sometimes he is Scapin and sometimes Coviello, but in the main
Scaramouche, to which let me tell you he is best suited - sometimes
too well suited, I think. For he is Scaramouche not only on the
stage, but also in the world. He has a gift of sly intrigue, an
art of setting folk by the ears, combined with an impudent
aggressiveness upon occasion when he considers himself safe from
reprisals. He is Scaramouche, the little skirmisher, to the very
life. I could say more. But I am by disposition charitable and
loving to all mankind."
"As the priest said when he kissed the serving-wench," snarled
Scaramouche, and went on eating.
"His humour, like your own, you will observe, is acrid," said
Pantaloon. He passed on. "Then that rascal with the lumpy nose
and the grinning bucolic countenance is, of course, Pierrot. Could
he be aught else?"
"I could play lovers a deal better," said the rustic cherub.
"That is the delusion proper to Pierrot," said Pantaloon,
contemptuously. "This heavy, beetle-browed ruffian, who has grown
old in sin, and whose appetite increases with his years, is
Polichinelle. Each one, as you perceive, is designed by Nature
for the part he plays. This nimble, freckled jackanapes is
Harlequin; not your spangled Harlequin into which modern degeneracy
has debased that first-born of Momus, but the genuine original zany
of the Commedia, ragged and patched, an impudent, cowardly,
blackguardly clown."
"Each one of us, as you perceive," said Harlequin, mimicking the
leader of the troupe, "is designed by Nature for the part he plays."
"Physically, my friend, physically only, else we should not have so
much trouble in teaching this beautiful Leandre to become a lover.
Then we have Pasquariel here, who is sometimes an apothecary,
sometimes a notary, sometimes a lackey - an amiable, accommodating
fellow. He is also an excellent cook, being a child of Italy, that
land of gluttons. And finally, you have myself, who as the father
of the company very properly play as Pantaloon the roles of father.
Sometimes, it is true, I am a deluded husband, and sometimes an
ignorant, self-sufficient doctor. But it is rarely that I find it
necessary to call myself other than Pantaloon. For the rest, I am
the only one who has a name - a real name. It is Binet, monsieur.
"And now for the ladies... First in order of seniority we have
Madame there." He waved one of his great hands towards a buxom,
smiling blonde of five-and-forty, who was seated on the lowest of
the steps of the travelling house. "She is our Duegne, or Mother,
or Nurse, as the case requires. She is known quite simply and
royally as Madame. If she ever had a name in the world, she has
long since forgotten it, which is perhaps as well. Then we have
this pert jade with the tip-tilted nose and the wide mouth, who
is of course our soubrette Columbine, and lastly, my daughter
Climene, an amoureuse of talents not to be matched outside the
Comedie Francaise, of which she has the bad taste to aspire to
become a member."
The lovely Climene - and lovely indeed she was - tossed her
nut-brown curls and laughed as she looked across at Andre-Louis.
Her eyes, he had perceived by now, were not blue, but hazel.
"Do not believe him, monsieur. Here I am queen, and I prefer to
be queen here rather than a slave in Paris."
"Mademoiselle," said Andre-Louis, quite solemnly, "will be queen
wherever she condescends to reign."
Her only answer was a timid - timid and yet alluring - glance from
under fluttering lids. Meanwhile her father was bawling at the
comely young man who played lovers - "You hear, Leandre! That is
the sort of speech you should practise."
Leandre raised languid eyebrows. "That?" quoth he, and shrugged.
"The merest commonplace."
Andre-Louis laughed approval. "M. Leandre is of a readier wit than
you concede. There is subtlety in pronouncing it a commonplace to
call Mlle. Climene a queen.
Some laughed, M. Binet amongst them, with good-humoured mockery.
"You think he has the wit to mean it thus? Bah! His subtleties are
all unconscious."
The conversation becoming general, Andre-Louis soon learnt what yet
there was to learn of this strolling band. They were on their way
to Guichen, where they hoped to prosper at the fair that was to open
on Monday next. They would make their triumphal entry into the town
at noon, and setting up their stage in the old market, they would
give their first performance that same Saturday night, in a new
canevas - or scenario - of M. Binet's own, which should set the
rustics gaping. And then M. Binet fetched a sigh, and addressed
himself to the elderly, swarthy, beetle-browed Polichinelle, who sat
on his left.
"But we shall miss Felicien," said he. "Indeed, I do not know what
we shall do without him."
"Oh, we shall contrive," said Polichinelle, with his mouth full.
"So you always say, whatever happens, knowing that in any case the
contriving will not fall upon yourself."
"He should not be difficult to replace," said Harlequin.
"True, if we were in a civilized land. But where among the rustics
of Brittany are we to find a fellow of even his poor parts?" M.
Binet turned to Andre-Louis. "He was our property-man, our machinist,
our stage-carpenter, our man of affairs, and occasionally he acted."
"The part of Figaro, I presume," said Andre-Louis, which elicited a
laugh.
"So you are acquainted with Beaumarchais!" Binet eyed the young
man with fresh interest.
"He is tolerably well known, I think."
"In Paris, to be sure. But I had not dreamt his fame had reached
the wilds of Brittany."
"But then I was some years in Paris - at the Lycee of Louis le
Grand. It was there I made acquaintance with his work."
"A dangerous man," said Polichinelle, sententiously.
"Indeed, and you are right," Pantaloon agreed. "Clever - I do not
deny him that, although myself I find little use for authors. But
of a sinister cleverness responsible for the dissemination of many
of these subversive new ideas. I think such writers should be
suppressed."
"M. de La Tour d'Azyr would probably agree with you - the gentleman
who by the simple exertion of his will turns this communal land into
his own property." And Andre-Louis drained his cup, which had been
filled with the poor vin gris that was the players' drink.
It was a remark that might have precipitated an argument had it not
also reminded M. Binet of the terms on which they were encamped
there, and of the fact that the half-hour was more than past. In a
moment he was on his feet, leaping up with an agility surprising in
so corpulent a man, issuing his commands like a marshal on a field
of battle.
"Come, come, my lads! Are we to sit guzzling here all day? Time
flees, and there's a deal to be done if we are to make our entry
into Guichen at noon. Go, get you dressed. We strike camp in twenty
minutes. Bestir, ladies! To your chaise, and see that you contrive
to look your best. Soon the eyes of Guichen will be upon you, and
the condition of your interior to-morrow will depend upon the
impression made by your exterior to-day. Away! Away!"
The implicit obedience this autocrat commanded set them in a whirl.
Baskets and boxes were dragged forth to receive the platters and
remains of their meagre feast. In an instant the ground was
cleared, and the three ladies had taken their departure to the
chaise, which was set apart for their use. The men were already
climbing into the house on wheels, when Binet turned to Andre-Louis.
"We part here, sir," said he, dramatically, "the richer by your
acquaintance; your debtors and your friends." He put forth his
podgy hand.
Slowly Andre-Louis took it in his own. He had been thinking swiftly
in the last few moments. And remembering the safety he had found
from his pursuers in the bosom of this company, it occurred to him
hat nowhere could he be better hidden for the present, until the
quest for him should have died down.
"Sir," he said, "the indebtedness is on my side. It is not every
day one has the felicity to sit down with so illustrious and
engaging a company."
Binet's little eyes peered suspiciously at the young man, in quest
of irony. He found nothing but candour and simple good faith.
"I part from you reluctantly," Andre-Louis continued. "The more
reluctantly since I do not perceive the absolute necessity for
parting."
"How?" quoth Binet, frowning, and slowly withdrawing the hand which
the other had already retained rather longer than was necessary.
"Thus," Andre-Louis explained himself. "You may set me down as a
sort of knight of rueful countenance in quest of adventure, with no
fixed purpose in life at present. You will not marvel that what I
have seen of yourself and your distinguished troupe should inspire
me to desire your better acquaintance. On your side you tell me
that you are in need of some one to replace your Figaro - your
Felicien, I think you called him. Whilst it may be presumptuous of
me to hope that I could discharge an office so varied and so
onerous... "
"You are indulging that acrid humour of yours again, my friend,"
Binet interrupted him. "Excepting for that," he added, slowly,
meditatively, his little eyes screwed up, "we might discuss this
proposal that you seem to be making."
"Alas! we can except nothing. If you take me, you take me as I am.
What else is possible? As for this humour - such as it is - which
you decry, you might turn it to profitable account."
"How so?"
"In several ways. I might, for instance, teach Leandre to make
love."
Pantaloon burst into laughter. "You do not lack confidence in your
powers. Modesty does not afflict you."
"Therefore I evince the first quality necessary in an actor."
"Can you act?"
"Upon occasion, I think," said Andre-Louis, his thoughts upon his
performance at Rennes and Nantes, and wondering when in all his
histrionic career Pantaloon's improvisations had so rent the heart
of mobs.
M. Binet was musing. "Do you know much of the theatre?" quoth he.
"Everything," said Andre-Louis.
"I said that modesty will prove no obstacle in your career."
"But consider. I know the work of Beaumarchais, Eglantine, Mercier,
Chenier, and many others of our contemporaries. Then I have read, of
course, Moliere, Racine, Corneille, besides many other lesser French
writers. Of foreign authors, I am intimate with the works of Gozzi,
Goldoni, Guarini, Bibbiena, Machiavelli, Secchi, Tasso, Ariosto, and
Fedini. Whilst of those of antiquity I know most of the work of
Euripides, Aristophanes, Terence, Plautus... "
"Enough!" roared Pantaloon.
"I am not nearly through with my list," said Andre-Louis.
"You may keep the rest for another day. In Heaven's name, what can
have induced you to read so many dramatic authors?"
"In my humble way I am a student of man, and some years ago I made
the discovery that he is most intimately to be studied in the
reflections of him provided for the theatre."
"That is a very original and profound discovery," said Pantaloon,
quite seriously. "It had never occurred to me. Yet is it true.
Sir, it is a truth that dignifies our art. You are a man of parts,
that is clear to me. It has been clear since first I met you. I
can read a man. I knew you from the moment that you said
'good-morning.' Tell me, now: Do you think you could assist me
upon occasion in the preparation of a scenario? My mind, fully
engaged as it is with a thousand details of organization, is not
always as clear as I would have it for such work. Could you assist
me there, do you think?"
"I am quite sure I could."
"Hum, yes. I was sure you would be. The other duties that were
Felicien's you would soon learn. Well, well, if you are willing,
you may come along with us. You'd want some salary, I suppose?"
"If it is usual," said Andre-Louis.
"What should you say to ten livres a month?"
"I should say that it isn't exactly the riches of Peru."
"I might go as far as fifteen," said Binet, reluctantly. "But times
are bad."
"I'll make them better for you."
"I've no doubt you believe it. Then we understand each other?"
"Perfectly," said Andre-Louis, dryly, and was thus committed to the
service of Thespis.
CHAPTER II
THE COMIC MUSE
The company's entrance into the township of Guichen, if not exactly
triumphal, as Binet had expressed the desire that it should be, was
at least sufficiently startling and cacophonous to set the rustics
gaping. To them these fantastic creatures appeared - as indeed they
were - beings from another world.
First went the great travelling chaise, creaking and groaning on its
way, drawn by two of the Flemish horses. It was Pantaloon who drove
it, an obese and massive Pantaloon in a tight-fitting suit of scarlet
under a long brown bed-gown, his countenance adorned by a colossal
cardboard nose. Beside him on the box sat Pierrot in a white smock,
with sleeves that completely covered his hands, loose white trousers,
and a black skull-cap. He had whitened his face with flour, and he
made hideous noises with a trumpet.
On the roof of the coach were assembled Polichinelle, Scaramouche,
Harlequin, and Pasquariel. Polichinelle in black and white, his
doublet cut in the fashion of a century ago, with humps before and
behind, a white frill round his neck and a black mask upon the upper
half of his face, stood in the middle, his feet planted wide to
steady him, solemnly and viciously banging a big drum. The other
three were seated each at one of the corners of the roof, their legs
dangling over. Scaramouche, all in black in the Spanish fashion of
the seventeenth century, his face adorned with a pair of mostachios,
jangled a guitar discordantly. Harlequin, ragged and patched in
every colour of the rainbow, with his leather girdle and sword of
lath, the upper half of his face smeared in soot, clashed a pair of
cymbals intermittently. Pasquariel, as an apothecary in skull-cap
and white apron, excited the hilarity of the onlookers by his
enormous tin clyster, which emitted when pumped a dolorous squeak.
Within the chaise itself, but showing themselves freely at the
windows, and exchanging quips with the townsfolk, sat the three
ladies of the company. Climene, the amoureuse, beautifully gowned
in flowered satin, her own clustering ringlets concealed under a
pumpkin-shaped wig, looked so much the lady of fashion that you
might have wondered what she was dong in that fantastic rabble.
Madame, as the mother, was also dressed with splendour, but
exaggerated to achieve the ridiculous. Her headdress was a
monstrous structure adorned with flowers, and superimposed by little
ostrich plumes. Columbine sat facing them, her back to the horses,
falsely demure, in milkmaid bonnet of white muslin, and a striped
gown of green and blue.
The marvel was that the old chaise, which in its halcyon days may
have served to carry some dignitary of the Church, did not founder
instead of merely groaning under that excessive and ribald load.
Next came the house on wheels, led by the long, lean Rhodomont, who
had daubed his face red, and increased the terror of it by a pair
of formidable mostachios. He was in long thigh-boots and leather
jerkin, trailing an enormous sword from a crimson baldrick. He wore
a broad felt hat with a draggled feather, and as he advanced he
raised his great voice and roared out defiance, and threats of
blood-curdling butchery to be performed upon all and sundry. On
the roof of this vehicle sat Leandre alone. He was in blue satin,
with ruffles, small sword, powdered hair, patches and spy-glass, and
red-heeled shoes: the complete courtier, looking very handsome. The
women of Guichen ogled him coquettishly. He took the ogling as a
proper tribute to his personal endowments, and returned it with
interest. Like Climene, he looked out of place amid the bandits who
composed the remainder of the company.
Bringing up the rear came Andre-Louis leading the two donkeys that
dragged the property-cart. He had insisted upon assuming a false
nose, representing as for embellishment that which he intended for
disguise. For the rest, he had retained his own garments. No one
paid any attention to him as he trudged along beside his donkeys,
an insignificant rear guard, which he was well content to be.
They made the tour of the town, in which the activity was already
above the normal in preparation for next week's fair. At intervals
they halted, the cacophony would cease abruptly, and Polichinelle
would announce in a stentorian voice that at five o'clock that
evening in the old market, M. Binet's famous company of improvisers
would perform a new comedy in four acts entitled, "The Heartless
Father."
Thus at last they came to the old market, which was the groundfloor
of the town hall, and open to the four winds by two archways on each
side of its length, and one archway on each side of its breadth.
These archways, with two exceptions, had been boarded up. Through
those two, which gave admission to what presently would be the
theatre, the ragamuffins of the town, and the niggards who were
reluctant to spend the necessary sous to obtain proper admission,
might catch furtive glimpses of the performance.
That afternoon was the most strenuous of Andre-Louis' life,
unaccustomed as he was to any sort of manual labour. It was spent
in erecting and preparing the stage at one end of the market-hall;
and he began to realize how hard-earned were to be his monthly
fifteen livres. At first there were four of them to the task - or
really three, for Pantaloon did no more than bawl directions.
Stripped of their finery, Rhodomont and Leandre assisted Andre-Louis
in that carpentering. Meanwhile the other four were at dinner with
the ladies. When a half-hour or so later they came to carry on the
work, Andre-Louis and his companions went to dine in their turn,
leaving Polichinelle to direct the operations as well as assist in
them.
They crossed the square to the cheap little inn where they had
taken up their quarters. In the narrow passage Andre-Louis came
face to face with Climene, her fine feathers cast, and restored by
now to her normal appearance
"And how do you like it?" she asked him, pertly.
He looked her in the eyes. "It has its compensations," quoth he,
in that curious cold tone of his that left one wondering whether he
meant or not what he seemed to mean.
She knit her brows. "You... you feel the need of compensations
already?"
"Faith, I felt it from the beginning," said he. "It was the
perception of them allured me."
They were quite alone, the others having gone on into the room set
apart for them, where food was spread. Andre-Louis, who was as
unlearned in Woman as he was learned in Man, was not to know, upon
feeling himself suddenly extraordinarily aware of her femininity,
that it was she who in some subtle, imperceptible manner so rendered
him.
"What," she asked him, with demurest innocence, "are these
compensations?"
He caught himself upon the brink of the abyss.
"Fifteen livres a month," said he, abruptly.
A moment she stared at him bewildered. He was very disconcerting.
Then she recovered.
"Oh, and bed and board," said she. "Don't be leaving that from
the reckoning, as you seem to be doing; for your dinner will be
going cold. Aren't you coming?"
"Haven't you dined?" he cried, and she wondered had she caught a
note of eagerness.
"No," she answered, over her shoulder. "I waited."
"What for?" quoth his innocence, hopefully.
"I had to change, of course, zany," she answered, rudely. Having
dragged him, as she imagined, to the chopping-block, she could not
refrain from chopping. But then he was of those who must be
chopping back.
"And you left your manners upstairs with your grand-lady clothes,
mademoiselle. I understand."
A scarlet flame suffused her face. "You are very insolent," she
said, lamely.
"I've often been told so. But I don't believe it." He thrust open
the door for her, and bowing with an air which imposed upon her,
although it was merely copied from Fleury of the Comedie Francaise,
so often visited in the Louis le Grand days, he waved her in.
"After you, ma demoiselle." For greater emphasis he deliberately
broke the word into its two component parts.
"I thank you, monsieur," she answered, frostily, as near sneering
as was possible to so charming a person, and went in, nor addressed
him again throughout the meal. Instead, she devoted herself with
an unusual and devastating assiduity to the suspiring Leandre, that
poor devil who could not successfully play the lover with her on
the stage because of his longing to play it in reality.
Andre-Louis ate his herrings and black bread with a good appetite
nevertheless. It was poor fare, but then poor fare was the common
lot of poor people in that winter of starvation, and since he had
cast in his fortunes with a company whose affairs were not
flourishing, he must accept the evils of the situation
philosophically.
"Have you a name?" Binet asked him once in the course of that repast
and during a pause in the conversation.
"It happens that I have," said he. "I think it is Parvissimus.
"Parvissimus?" quoth Binet. "Is that a family name?"
"In such a company, where only the leader enjoys the privilege of a
family name, the like would be unbecoming its least member. So I
take the name that best becomes in me. And I think it is Parvissimus
- the very least."
Binet was amused. It was droll; it showed a ready fancy. Oh, to be
sure, they must get to work together on those scenarios.
"I shall prefer it to carpentering," said Andre-Louis. Nevertheless
he had to go back to it that afternoon, and to labour strenuously
until four o'clock, when at last the autocratic Binet announced
himself satisfied with the preparations, and proceeded, again with
the help of Andre-Louis, to prepare the lights, which were supplied
partly by tallow candles and partly by lamps burning fish-oil.
At five o'clock that evening the three knocks were sounded, and the
curtain rose on "The Heartless Father."
Among the duties inherited by Andre-Louis from the departed Felicien
whom he replaced, was that of doorkeeper. This duty he discharged
dressed in a Polichinelle costume, and wearing a pasteboard nose.
It was an arrangement mutually agreeable to M. Binet and himself. M.
Binet - who had taken the further precaution of retaining Andre-Louis'
own garments - was thereby protected against the risk of his latest
recruit absconding with the takings. Andre-Louis, without illusions
on the score of Pantaloon's real object, agreed to it willingly
enough, since it protected him from the chance of recognition by any
acquaintance who might possibly be in Guichen.
The performance was in every sense unexciting; the audience meagre
and unenthusiastic. The benches provided in the front half of the
market contained some twenty-seven persons: eleven at twenty sous
a head and sixteen at twelve. Behind these stood a rabble of some
thirty others at six sous apiece. Thus the gross takings were two
louis, ten livres, and two sous. By the time M. Binet had paid for
the use of the market, his lights, and the expenses of his company
at the inn over Sunday, there was not likely to be very much left
towards the wages of his players. It is not surprising, therefore,
that M. Binet's bonhomie should have been a trifle overcast that
evening.
"And what do you think of it?" he asked Andre-Louis, as they were
walking back to the inn after the performance.
"Possibly it could have been worse; probably it could not," said he.
In sheer amazement M. Binet checked in his stride, and turned to
look at his companion.
"Huh!" said he. "Dieu de Dien! But you are frank."
"An unpopular form of service among fools, I know."
"Well, I am not a fool," said Binet.
"That is why I am frank. I pay you the compliment of assuming
intelligence in you, M. Binet."
"Oh, you do?" quoth M. Binet. "And who the devil are you to assume
anything? Your assumptions are presumptuous, sir." And with that
he lapsed into silence and the gloomy business of mentally casting
up his accounts.
But at table over supper a half-hour later he revived the topic.
"Our latest recruit, this excellent M. Parvissimus," he announced,
"has the impudence to tell me that possibly our comedy could have
been worse, but that probably it could not." And he blew out his
great round cheeks to invite a laugh at the expense of that foolish
critic.
"That's bad," said the swarthy and sardonic Polichinelle. He was
grave as Rhadamanthus pronouncing judgment. "That's bad. But what
is infinitely worse is that the audience had the impudence to be of
the same mind."
"An ignorant pack of clods," sneered Leandre, with a toss of his
handsome head.
"You are wrong," quoth Harlequin. "You were born for love, my dear,
not criticism."
Leandre - a dull dog, as you will have conceived - looked
contemptuously down upon the little man. "And you, what were you
born for?" he wondered.
"Nobody knows," was the candid admission. "Nor yet why. It is the
case of many of us, my dear, believe me."
"But why" - M. Binet took him up, and thus spoilt the beginnings of
a very pretty quarrel - "why do you say that Leandre is wrong?"
"To be general, because he is always wrong. To be particular,
because I judge the audience of Guichen to be too sophisticated
for 'The Heartless Father.'"
"You would put it more happily," interposed Andre-Louis - who was
the cause of this discussion - "if you said that 'The Heartless
Father' is too unsophisticated for the audience of Guichen."
"Why, what's the difference?" asked Leandre.
"I didn't imply a difference. I merely suggested that it is a
happier way to express the fact."
"The gentleman is being subtle," sneered Binet.
"Why happier?" Harlequin demanded.
"Because it is easier to bring 'The Heartless Father' to the
sophistication of the Guichen audience, than the Guichen audience
to the unsophistication of 'The Heartless Father.'"
"Let me think it out," groaned Polichinelle, and he took his head
in his hands.
But from the tail of the table Andre-Louis was challenged by Climene
who sat there between Columbine and Madame.
"You would alter the comedy, would you, M. Parvissimus?" she cried.
He turned to parry her malice.
"I would suggest that it be altered," he corrected, inclining his
head.
"And how would you alter it, monsieur?"
"I? Oh, for the better."
"But of course!" She was sleekest sarcasm. "And how would you do it?"
"Aye, tell us that," roared M. Binet, and added: "Silence, I pray
you, gentlemen and ladies. Silence for M. Parvissimus."
Andre-Louis looked from father to daughter, and smiled. "Pardi!"
said he. "I am between bludgeon and dagger. If I escape with my
life, I shall be fortunate. Why, then, since you pin me to the very
wall, I'll tell you what I should do. I should go back to the
original and help myself more freely from it."
"The original?" questioned M. Binet - the author.
"It is called, I believe, 'Monsieur de Pourceaugnac,' and was written
by Moliere."
Somebody tittered, but that somebody was not M. Binet. He had been
touched on the raw, and the look in his little eyes betrayed the
fact that his bonhomme exterior covered anything but a bonhomme.
"You charge me with plagiarism," he said at last; "with filching the
ideas of Moliere."
"There is always, of course," said Andre-Louis, unruffled, "the
alternative possibility of two great minds working upon parallel
lines."
M. Binet studied the young man attentively a moment. He found him
bland and inscrutable, and decided to pin him down.
"Then you do not imply that I have been stealing from Moliere?"
"I advise you to do so, monsieur," was the disconcerting reply.
M. Binet was shocked.
"You advise me to do so! You advise me, me, Antoine Binet, to turn
thief at my age!"
"He is outrageous," said mademoiselle, indignantly.
"Outrageous is the word. I thank you for it, my dear. I take you
on trust, sir. You sit at my table, you have the honour to be
included in my company, and to my face you have the audacity to
advise me to become a thief - the worst kind of thief that is
conceivable, a thief of spiritual things, a thief of ideas! It is
insufferable, intolerable! I have been, I fear, deeply mistaken
in you, monsieur; just as you appear to have been mistaken in me.
I am not the scoundrel you suppose me, sir, and I will not number
in my company a man who dares to suggest that I should become one.
Outrageous!"
He was very angry. His voice boomed through the little room, and
the company sat hushed and something scared, their eyes upon
Andre-Louis, who was the only one entirely unmoved by this outburst
of virtuous indignation.
"You realize, monsieur," he said, very quietly, "that you are
insulting the memory of the illustrious dead?"
"Eh?" said Binet.
Andre-Louis developed his sophistries.
"You insult the memory of Moliere, the greatest ornament of our
stage, one of the greatest ornaments of our nation, when you suggest
that there is vileness in doing that which he never hesitated to do,
which no great author yet has hesitated to do. You cannot suppose
that Moliere ever troubled himself to be original in the matter of
ideas. You cannot suppose that the stories he tells in his plays
have never been told before. They were culled, as you very well
know - though you seem momentarily to have forgotten it, and it is
therefore necessary that I should remind you - they were culled,
many of them, from the Italian authors, who themselves had culled
them Heaven alone knows where. Moliere took those old stories and
retold them in his own language. That is precisely what I am
suggesting that you should do. Your company is a company of
improvisers. You supply the dialogue as you proceed, which is
rather more than Moliere ever attempted. You may, if you prefer it
- though it would seem to me to be yielding to an excess of scruple
- go straight to Boccaccio or Sacchetti. But even then you cannot
be sure that you have reached the sources."
Andre-Louis came off with flying colours after that. You see what
a debater was lost in him; how nimble he was in the art of making
white look black. The company was impressed, and no one more that
M. Binet, who found himself supplied with a crushing argument
against those who in future might tax him with the impudent
plagiarisms which he undoubtedly perpetrated. He retired in the
best order he could from the position he had taken up at the outset.
"So that you think," he said, at the end of a long outburst of
agreement, "you think that our story of 'The Heartless Father'
could be enriched by dipping into 'Monsieur de Pourceaugnac,' to
which I confess upon reflection that it may present certain
superficial resemblances?"
"I do; most certainly I do - always provided that you do so
judiciously. Times have changed since Moliere." It was as a
consequence of this that Binet retired soon after, taking
Andre-Louis with him. The pair sat together late that night, and
were again in close communion throughout the whole of Sunday morning.
After dinner M. Binet read to the assembled company the amended and
amplified canevas of "The Heartless Father," which, acting upon the
advice of M. Parvissimus, he had been at great pains to prepare.
The company had few doubts as to the real authorship before he began
to read; none at all when he had read. There was a verve, a grip
about this story; and, what was more, those of them who knew their
Moliere realized that far from approaching the original more closely,
this canevas had drawn farther away from it. Moliere's original
part - the title role - had dwindled into insignificance, to the
great disgust of Polichinelle, to whom it fell. But the other parts
had all been built up into importance, with the exception of Leandre,
who remained as before. The two great roles were now Scaramouche,
in the character of the intriguing Sbrigandini, and Pantaloon the
father. There was, too, a comical part for Rhodomont, as the
roaring bully hired by Polichinelle to cut Leandre into ribbons.
And in view of the importance now of Scaramouche, the play had been
rechristened "Figaro-Scaramouche."
This last had not been without a deal of opposition from M. Binet.
But his relentless collaborator, who was in reality the real author
- drawing shamelessly, but practically at last upon his great store
of reading - had overborne him.
"You must move with the times, monsieur. In Paris Beaumarchais is
the rage. 'Figaro' is known to-day throughout the world. Let us
borrow a little of his glory. It will draw the people in. They
will come to see half a 'Figaro' when they will not come to see a
dozen 'Heartless Fathers.' Therefore let us cast the mantle of
Figaro upon some one, and proclaim it in our title."
"But as I am the head of the company... " began M. Binet, weakly.
"If you will be blind to your interests, you will presently be a
head without a body. And what use is that? Can the shoulders of
Pantaloon carry the mantle of Figaro? You laugh. Of course you
laugh. The notion is absurd. The proper person for the mantle of
Figaro is Scaramouche, who is naturally Figaro's twin-brother."
Thus tyrannized, the tyrant Binet gave way, comforted by the
reflection that if he understood anything at all about the theatre,
he had for fifteen livres a month acquired something that would
presently be earning him as many louis.
The company's reception of the canevas now confirmed him, if we
except Polichinelle, who, annoyed at having lost half his part in
the alterations, declared the new scenario fatuous.
"Ah! You call my work fatuous, do you?" M. Binet hectored him.
"Your work?" said Polichinelle, to add with his tongue in his cheek:
"Ah, pardon. I had not realized that you were the author."
"Then realize it now."
"You were very close with M. Parvissimus over this authorship," said
Polichinelle, with impudent suggestiveness.
"And what if I was? What do you imply?"
"That you took him to cut quills for you, of course."
"I'll cut your ears for you if you're not civil," stormed the
infuriated Binet.
Polichinelle got up slowly, and stretched himself.
"Dieu de Dieu!" said he. "If Pantaloon is to play Rhodomont, I
think I'll leave you. He is not amusing in the part." And he
swaggered out before M. Binet had recovered from his speechlessness.
CHAPTER IV
EXIT MONSIEUR PARVISSIMUS
Ar four o'clock on Monday afternoon the curtain rose on
"Figaro-Scaramouche" to an audience that filled three quarters of
the market-hall. M. Binet attributed this good attendance to the
influx of people to Guichen for the fair, and to the magnificent
parade of his company through the streets of the township at the
busiest time of the day. Andre-Louis attributed it entirely to
the title. It was the "Figaro" touch that had fetched in the
better-class bourgeoisie, which filled more than half of the
twenty-sous places and three quarters of the twelve-sous seats.
The lure had drawn them. Whether it was to continue to do so would
depend upon the manner in which the canevas over which he had
laboured to the glory of Binet was interpreted by the company. Of
the merits of the canevas itself he had no doubt. The authors upon
whom he had drawn for the elements of it were sound, and he had
taken of their best, which he claimed to be no more than the
justice due to them.
The company excelled itself. The audience followed with relish the
sly intriguings of Scaramouche, delighted in the beauty and
freshness of Climene, was moved almost to tears by the hard fate
which through four long acts kept her from the hungering arms of
the so beautiful Leandre, howled its delight over the ignominy of
Pantaloon, the buffooneries of his sprightly lackey Harlequin, and
the thrasonical strut and bellowing fierceness of the cowardly
Rhodomont.
The success of the Binet troupe in Guichen was assured. That night
the company drank Burgundy at M. Binet's expense. The takings
reached the sum of eight louis, which was as good business as M.
Binet had ever done in all his career. He was very pleased.
Gratification rose like steam from his fat body. He even
condescended so far as to attribute a share of the credit for the
success to M. Parvissimus.
"His suggestion," he was careful to say, by way of properly
delimiting that share, "was most valuable, as I perceived at the
time."
"And his cutting of quills," growled Polichinelle. "Don't forget
that. It is most important to have by you a man who understands how
to cut a quill, as I shall remember when I turn author."
But not even that gibe could stir M. Binet out of his lethargy of
content.
On Tuesday the success was repeated artistically and augmented
financially. Ten louis and seven livres was the enormous sum that
Andre-Louis, the doorkeeper, counted over to M. Binet after the
performance. Never yet had M. Binet made so much money in one
evening - and a miserable little village like Guichen was certainly
the last place in which he would have expected this windfall.
"Ah, but Guichen in time of fair," Andre-Louis reminded him. "There
are people here from as far as Nantes and Rennes to buy and sell.
To-morrow, being the last day of the fair, the crowds will be greater
than ever. We should better this evening's receipts."
"Better them? I shall be quite satisfied if we do as well, my
friend."
"You can depend upon that," Andre-Louis assured him. "Are we to
have Burgundy?"
And then the tragedy occurred. It announced itself in a succession
of bumps and thuds, culminating in a crash outside the door that
brought them all to their feet in alarm.
Pierrot sprang to open, and beheld the tumbled body of a man lying
at the foot of the stairs. It emitted groans, therefore it was
alive. Pierrot went forward to turn it over, and disclosed the fact
that the body wore the wizened face of Scaramouche, a grimacing,
groaning, twitching Scaramouche.
The whole company, pressing after Pierrot, abandoned itself to
laughter.
"I always said you should change parts with me," cried Harlequin.
"You're such an excellent tumbler. Have you been practising?"
"Fool!" Scaramouche snapped. "Must you be laughing when I've all
but broken my neck?"
"You are right. We ought to be weeping because you didn't break
it. Come, man, get up," and he held out a hand to the prostrate
rogue.
Scaramouche took the hand, clutched it, heaved himself from the
ground, then with a scream dropped back again.
"My foot!" he complained.
Binet rolled through the group of players, scattering them to right
and left. Apprehension had been quick to seize him. Fate had
played him such tricks before.
"What ails your foot?" quoth he, sourly.
"It's broken, I think," Scaramouche complained.
"Broken? Bah! Get up, man." He caught him under the armpits and
hauled him up.
Scaramouche came howling to one foot; the other doubled under him
when he attempted to set it down, and he must have collapsed again
but that Binet supported him. He filled the place with his plaint,
whilst Binet swore amazingly and variedly.
"Must you bellow like a calf, you fool? Be quiet. A chair here,
some one."
A chair was thrust forward. He crushed Scaramouche down into it.
"Let us look at this foot of yours."
Heedless of Scaramouche's howls of pain, he swept away shoe and
stocking.
"What ails it?" he asked, staring. "Nothing that I can see." He
seized it, heel in one hand, instep in the other, and gyrated it.
Scaramouche screamed in agony, until Climene caught Binet's arm and
made him stop.
"My God, have you no feelings?" she reproved her father. "The lad
has hurt his foot. Must you torture him? Will that cure it?"
"Hurt his foot!" said Binet. "I can see nothing the matter with his
foot - nothing to justify all this uproar. He has bruised it,
maybe... "
"A man with a bruised foot doesn't scream like that," said Madame
over Climene's shoulder. "Perhaps he has dislocated it."
"That is what I fear," whimpered Scaramouche.
Binet heaved himself up in disgust.
"Take him to bed," he bade them, "and fetch a doctor to see him."
It was done, and the doctor came. Having seen the patient, he
reported that nothing very serious had happened, but that in falling
he had evidently sprained his foot a little. A few days' rest and
all would be well.
"A few days!" cried Binet. "God of God! Do you mean that he can't
walk?"
"It would be unwise, indeed impossible for more than a few steps."
M. Binet paid the doctor's fee, and sat down to think. He filled
himself a glass of Burgundy, tossed it off without a word, and sat
thereafter staring into the empty glass.
"It is of course the sort of thing that must always be happening to
me," he grumbled to no one in particular. The members of the company
were all standing in silence before him, sharing his dismay. "I
might have known that this - or something like it - would occur to
spoil the first vein of luck that I have found in years. Ah, well,
it is finished. To-morrow we pack and depart. The best day of the
fair, on the crest of the wave of our success - a good fifteen louis
to be taken, and this happens! God of God!"
"Do you mean to abandon to-morrow's performance?"
All turned to stare with Binet at Andre-Louis.
"Are we to play 'Figaro-Scaramouche' without Scaramouche?" asked
Binet, sneering.
"Of course not." Andre-Louis came forward. "But surely some
rearrangement of the parts is possible. For instance, there is a
fine actor in Polichinelle."
Polichinelle swept him a bow. "Overwhelmed," said he, ever sardonic.
"But he has a part of his own," objected Binet.
"A small part, which Pasquariel could play."
"And who will play Pasquariel?"
"Nobody. We delete it. The play need not suffer."
"He thinks of everything," sneered Polichinelle. "What a man!"
But Binet was far from agreement. "Are you suggesting that
Polichinelle should play Scaramouche?" he asked, incredulously.
"Why not? He is able enough!"
"Overwhelmed again," interjected Polichinelle.
"Play Scaramouche with that figure?" Binet heaved himself up to
point a denunciatory finger at Polichinelle's sturdy, thick-set
shortness.
"For lack of a better," said Andre-Louis.
"Overwhelmed more than ever." Polichinelle's bow was superb this
time. "Faith, I think I'll take the air to cool me after so much
blushing."
"Go to the devil," Binet flung at him.
"Better and better." Polichinelle made for the door. On the
threshold he halted and struck an attitude. "Understand me, Binet.
I do not now play Scaramouche in any circumstances whatever." And
he went out. On the whole, it was a very dignified exit.
Andre-Louis shrugged, threw out his arms, and let them fall to his
sides again. "You have ruined everything," he told M. Binet. "The
matter could easily have been arranged. Well, well, it is you are
master here; and since you want us to pack and be off, that is what
we will do, I suppose."
He went out, too. M. Binet stood in thought a moment, then followed
him, his little eyes very cunning. He caught him up in the doorway.
"Let us take a walk together, M. Parvissimus," said he, very affably.
He thrust his arm through Andre-Louis', and led him out into the
street, where there was still considerable movement. Past the booths
that ranged about the market they went, and down the hill towards the
bridge. "I don't think we shall pack to-morrow," said M. Binet,
presently. "In fact, we shall play to-morrow night."
"Not if I know Polichinelle. You have... "
"I am not thinking of Polichinelle."
"Of whom, then?"
"Of yourself."
"I am flattered, sir. And in what capacity are you thinking of me?"
There was something too sleek and oily in Binet's voice for
Andre-Louis' taste.
"I am thinking of you in the part of Scaramouche."
"Day-dreams," said Andre-Louis. "You are amusing yourself, of
course."
"Not in the least. I am quite serious."
"But I am not an actor."
"You told me that you could be."
"Oh, upon occasion... a small part, perhaps... "
"Well, here is a big part - the chance to arrive at a single stride.
How many men have had such a chance?"
"It is a chance I do not covet, M. Binet. Shall we change the
subject?" He was very frosty, as much perhaps because he scented
in M. Binet's manner something that was vaguely menacing as for any
other reason.
"We'll change the subject when I please," said M. Binet, allowing a
glimpse of steel to glimmer through the silk of him. "To-morrow
night you play Scaramouche. You are ready enough in your wits, your
figure is ideal, and you have just the kind of mordant humour for
the part. You should be a great success."
"It is much more likely that I should be an egregious failure."
"That won't matter," said Binet, cynically, and explained himself.
"The failure will be personal to yourself. The receipts will be
safe by then."
"Much obliged," said Andre-Louis.
"We should take fifteen louis to-morrow night."
"It is unfortunate that you are without a Scaramouche," said
Andre-Louis.
"It is fortunate that I have one, M. Parvissimus." Andre-Louis
disengaged his arm. "I begin to find you tiresome," said he. "I
think I will return."
"A moment, M. Parvissimus. If I am to lose that fifteen louis...
you'll not take it amiss that I compensate myself in other ways?"
"That is your own concern, M. Binet."
"Pardon, M. Parvissimus. It may possibly be also yours." Binet
took his arm again. "Do me the kindness to step across the street
with me. Just as far as the post-office there. I have something
to show you."
Andre-Louis went. Before they reached that sheet of paper nailed
upon the door, he knew exactly what it would say. And in effect it
was, as he had supposed, that twenty louis would be paid for
information leading to the apprehension of one Andre-Louis Moreau,
lawyer of Gavrillac, who was wanted by the King's Lieutenant in
Rennes upon a charge of sedition.
M. Binet watched him whilst he read. Their arms were linked, and
Binet's grip was firm and powerful.
"Now, my friend," said he, "will you be M. Parvissimus and play
Scaramouche to-morrow, or will you be Andre-Louis Moreau of Gavrillac
and go to Rennes to satisfy the King's Lieutenant?"
"And if it should happen that you are mistaken?" quoth Andre-Louis,
his face a mask.
"I'll take the risk of that," leered M. Binet. "You mentioned, I
think, that you were a lawyer. An indiscretion, my dear. It is
unlikely that two lawyers will be in hiding at the same time in the
same district. You see it is not really clever of me. Well, M.
Andre-Louis Moreau, lawyer of Gavrillac, what is it to be?"
"We will talk it over as we walk back," said Andre-Louis.
"What is there to talk over?"
"One or two things, I think. I must know where I stand. Come, sir,
if you please."
"Very well," said M. Binet, and they turned up the street again, but
M. Binet maintained a firm hold of his young friend's arm, and kept
himself on the alert for any tricks that the young gentleman might
be disposed to play. It was an unnecessary precaution. Andre-Louis
was not the man to waste his energy futilely. He knew that in bodily
strength he was no match at all for the heavy and powerful Pantaloon.
"If I yield to your most eloquent and seductive persuasions, M.
Binet," said he, sweetly, "what guarantee do you give me that you
will not sell me for twenty louis after I shall have served your
turn?"
"You have my word of honour for that." M. Binet was emphatic.
Andre-Louis laughed. "Oh, we are to talk of honour, are we? Really,
M. Binet? It is clear you think me a fool."
In the dark he did not see the flush that leapt to M. Binet's round
face. It was some moments before he replied.
"Perhaps you are right," he growled. "What guarantee do you want?"
"I do not know what guarantee you can possibly give."
"I have said that I will keep faith with you."
"Until you find it more profitable to sell me."
"You have it in your power to make it more profitable always for me
to keep faith with you. It is due to you that we have done so well
in Guichen. Oh, I admit it frankly."
"In private," said Andre-Louis.
M. Binet left the sarcasm unheeded.
"What you have done for us here with 'Figaro-Scaramouche,' you can
do elsewhere with other things. Naturally, I shall not want to lose
you. That is your guarantee."
"Yet to-night you would sell me for twenty louis."
"Because - name of God! - you enrage me by refusing me a service well
within your powers. Don't you think, had I been entirely the rogue
you think me, I could have sold you on Saturday last? I want you to
understand me, my dear Parvissimus."
"I beg that you'll not apologize. You would be more tiresome than
ever."
"Of course you will be gibing. You never miss a chance to gibe.
It'll bring you trouble before you're done with life. Come; here
we are back at the inn, and you have not yet given me your decision."
Andre-Louis looked at him. "I must yield, of course. I can't help
myself."
M. Binet released his arm at last, and slapped him heartily upon the
back. "Well declared, my lad. You'll never regret it. If I know
anything of the theatre, I know that you have made the great decision
of your life. To-morrow night you'll thank me."
Andre-Louis shrugged, and stepped out ahead towards the inn. But M.
Binet called him back.
"M. Parvissimus!"
He turned. There stood the man's great bulk, the moonlight beating
down upon that round fat face of his, and he was holding out his hand.
"M. Parvissimus, no rancour. It is a thing I do not admit into my
life. You will shake hands with me, and we will forget all this."
Andre-Louis considered him a moment with disgust. He was growing
angry. Then, realizing this, he conceived himself ridiculous, almost
as ridiculous as that sly, scoundrelly Pantaloon. He laughed and
took the outstretched hand. "No rancour?" M. Binet insisted.
"Oh, no rancour," said Andre-Louis.
CHAPTER V
ENTER SCARAMOUCHE
Dressed in the close-fitting suit of a bygone age, all black, from
flat velvet cap to rosetted shoes, his face whitened and a slight
up-curled moustache glued to his upper lip, a small-sword at his
side and a guitar slung behind him, Scaramouche surveyed himself
in a mirror, and was disposed to be sardonic - which was the proper
mood for the part.
He reflected that his life, which until lately had been of a
stagnant, contemplative quality, had suddenly become excessively
active. In the course of one week he had been lawyer, mob-orator,
outlaw, property-man, and finally buffoon. Last Wednesday he had
been engaged in moving an audience of Rennes to anger; on this
Wednesday he was to move an audience of Guichen to mirth. Then he
had been concerned to draw tears; to-day it was his business to
provoke laughter. There was a difference, and yet there was a
parallel. Then as now he had been a comedian; and the part that he
had played then was, when you came to think of it, akin to the part
he was to play this evening. For what had he been at Rennes but a
sort of Scaramouche - the little skirmisher, the astute intriguer,
spattering the seed of trouble with a sly hand? The only difference
lay in the fact that to-day he went forth under the name that
properly described his type, whereas last week he had been disguised
as a respectable young provincial attorney.
He bowed to his reflection in the mirror.
"Buffoon!" he apostrophized it. "At last you have found yourself.
At last you have come into your heritage. You should be a great
success.
Hearing his new name called out by M. Binet, he went below to find
the company assembled, and waiting in the entrance corridor of the
inn.
He was, of course, an object of great interest to all the company.
Most critically was he conned by M. Binet and mademoiselle; by the
former with gravely searching eyes, by the latter with a curl of
scornful lip.
"You'll do," M. Binet commended his make-up. "At least you look
the part."
"Unfortunately men are not always what they look," said Climene,
acidly.
"That is a truth that does not at present apply to me," said
Andre-Louis. "For it is the first time in my life that I look what
I am."
Mademoiselle curled her lip a little further, and turned her shoulder
to him. But the others thought him very witty - probably because he
was obscure. Columbine encouraged him with a friendly smile that
displayed her large white teeth, and M. Binet swore yet once again
that he would be a great success, since he threw himself with such
spirit into the undertaking. Then in a voice that for the moment
he appeared to have borrowed from the roaring captain, M. Binet
marshalled them for the short parade across to the market-hall.
The new Scaramouche fell into place beside Rhodomont. The old one,
hobbling on a crutch, had departed an hour ago to take the place of
doorkeeper, vacated of necessity by Andre-Louis. So that the
exchange between those two was a complete one.
Headed by Polichinelle banging his great drum and Pierrot blowing
his trumpet, they set out, and were duly passed in review by the
ragamuffins drawn up in files to enjoy so much of the spectacle as
was to be obtained for nothing.
Ten minutes later the three knocks sounded, and the curtains were
drawn aside to reveal a battered set that was partly garden, partly
forest, in which Climene feverishly looked for the coming of Leandre.
In the wings stood the beautiful, melancholy lover, awaiting his cue,
and immediately behind him the unfledged Scaramouche, who was anon
to follow him.
Andre-Louis was assailed with nausea in that dread moment. He
attempted to take a lightning mental review of the first act of this
scenario of which he was himself the author-in-chief; but found his
mind a complete blank. With the perspiration starting from his skin,
he stepped back to the wall, where above a dim lantern was pasted a
sheet bearing the brief outline of the piece. He was still studying
it, when his arm was clutched, and he was pulled violently towards
the wings. He had a glimpse of Pantaloon's grotesque face, its eyes
blazing, and he caught a raucous growl:
"Climene has spoken your cue three times already."
Before he realized it, he had been bundled on to the stage, and
stood there foolishly, blinking in the glare of the footlights, with
their tin reflectors. So utterly foolish and bewildered did he look
that volley upon volley of laughter welcomed him from the audience,
which this evening packed the hall from end to end. Trembling a
little, his bewilderment at first increasing, he stood there to
receive that rolling tribute to his absurdity. Climene was eyeing
him with expectant mockery, savouring in advance his humiliation;
Leandre regarded him in consternation, whilst behind the scenes, M.
Binet was dancing in fury.
"Name of a name," he- groaned to the rather scared members of the
company assembled there, "what will happen when they discover that
he isn't acting?"
But they never did discover it. Scaramouche's bewildered paralysis
lasted but a few seconds. He realized that he was being laughed at,
and remembered that his Scaramouche was a creature to be laughed
with, and not at. He must save the situation; twist it to his own
advantage as best he could. And now his real bewilderment and terror
was succeeded by acted bewilderment and terror far more marked, but
not quite so funny. He contrived to make it clearly appear that his
terror was of some one off the stage. He took cover behind a painted
shrub, and thence, the laughter at last beginning to subside, he
addressed himself to Climene and Leandre.
"Forgive me, beautiful lady, if the abrupt manner of my entrance
startled you. The truth is that I have never been the same since
that last affair of mine with Almaviva. My heart is not what it
used to be. Down there at the end of the lane I came face to face
with an elderly gentleman carrying a heavy cudgel, and the horrible
thought entered my mind that it might be your father, and that our
little stratagem to get you safely married might already have been
betrayed to him. I think it was the cudgel put such notion in my
head. Not that I am afraid. I am not really afraid of anything.
But I could not help reflecting that, if it should really have been
your father, and he had broken my head with his cudgel, your hopes
would have perished with me. For without me, what should you have
done, my poor children?"
A ripple of laughter from the audience had been steadily enheartening
him, and helping him to recover his natural impudence. It was clear
they found him comical. They were to find him far more comical than
ever he had intended, and this was largely due to a fortuitous
circumstance upon which he had insufficiently reckoned. The fear of
recognition by some one from Gavrillac or Rennes had been strong
upon him. His face was sufficiently made up to baffle recognition;
but there remained his voice. To dissemble this he had availed
himself of the fact that Figaro was a Spaniard. He had known a
Spaniard at Louis le Grand who spoke a fluent but most extraordinary
French, with a grotesque excess of sibilant sounds. It was an accent
that he had often imitated, as youths will imitate characteristics
that excite their mirth. Opportunely he had bethought him of that
Spanish student, and it was upon his speech that to-night he modelled
his own. The audience of Guichen found it as laughable on his lips
as he and his fellows had found it formerly on the lips of that
derided Spaniard.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Binet - listening to that glib
impromptu of which the scenario gave no indication - had recovered
from his fears.
"Dieu de Dieu!" he whispered, grinning. "Did he do it, then, on
purpose?"
It seemed to him impossible that a man who had been so
terror-stricken as he had fancied Andre-Louis, could have recovered
his wits so quickly and completely. Yet the doubt remained.
To resolve it after the curtain had fallen upon a first act that
had gone with a verve unrivalled until this hour in the annals of
the company, borne almost entirely upon the slim shoulders of the
new Scaramouche, M. Binet bluntly questioned him.
They were standing in the space that did duty as green-room, the
company all assembled there, showering congratulations upon their
new recruit. Scaramouche, a little exalted at the moment by his
success, however trivial he might consider it to-morrow, took then
a full revenge upon Climene for the malicious satisfaction with
which she had regarded his momentary blank terror.
"I do not wonder that you ask," said he. "Faith, I should have
warned you that I intended to do my best from the start to put the
audience in a good humour with me. Mademoiselle very nearly ruined
everything by refusing to reflect any of my terror. She was not
even startled. Another time, mademoiselle, I shall give you full
warning of my every intention."
She crimsoned under her grease-paint. But before she could find an
answer of sufficient venom, her father was rating her soundly for
her stupidity - the more soundly because himself he had been deceived
by Scaramouche's supreme acting.
Scaramouche's success in the first act was more than confirmed as
the performance proceeded. Completely master of himself by now,
and stimulated as only success can stimulate, he warmed to his work.
Impudent, alert, sly, graceful, he incarnated the very ideal of
Scaramouche, and he helped out his own native wit by many a
remembered line from Beaumarchais, thereby persuading the better
informed among the audience that here indeed was something of the
real Figaro, and bringing them, as it were, into touch with the
great world of the capital.
When at last the curtain fell for the last time, it was Scaramouche
who shared with Climene the honours of the evening, his name that
was coupled with hers in the calls that summoned them before the
curtains.
As they stepped back, and the curtains screened them again from the
departing audience, M. Binet approached them, rubbing his fat hands
softly together. This runagate young lawyer, whom chance had blown
into his company, had evidently been sent by Fate to make his fortune
for him. The sudden success at Guichen, hitherto unrivalled, should
be repeated and augmented elsewhere. There would be no more sleeping
under hedges and tightening of belts. Adversity was behind him. He
placed a hand upon Scaramouche's shoulder, and surveyed him with a
smile whose oiliness not even his red paint and colossal false nose
could dissemble.
"And what have you to say to me now?" he asked him. "Was I wrong
when I assured you that you would succeed? Do you think I have
followed my fortunes in the theatre for a lifetime without knowing
a born actor when I see one? You are my discovery, Scaramouche. I
have discovered you to yourself. I have set your feet upon the road
to fame and fortune. I await your thanks."
Scaramouche laughed at him, and his laugh was not altogether pleasant.
"Always Pantaloon!" said he.
The great countenance became overcast. "I see that you do not yet
forgive me the little stratagem by which I forced you to do justice
to yourself. Ungrateful dog! As if I could have had any purpose
but to make you; and I have done so. Continue as you have begun,
and you will end in Paris. You may yet tread the stage of the
Comedie Francaise, the rival of Talma, Fleury, and Dugazon. When
that happens to you perhaps you will feel the gratitude that is due
to old Binet, for you will owe it all to this soft-hearted old fool."
"If you were as good an actor on the stage as you are in private,"
said Scaramouche, "you would yourself have won to the Comedie
Francaise long since. But I bear no rancour, M. Binet." He laughed,
and put out his hand.
Binet fell upon it and wrung it heartily.
"That, at least, is something," he declared. "My boy, I have great
plans for you - for us. To-morrow we go to Maure; there is a fair
there to the end of this week. Then on Monday we take our chances
at Pipriac, and after that we must consider. It may be that I am
about to realize the dream of my life. There must have been upwards
of fifteen louis taken to-night. Where the devil is that rascal
Cordemais?"
Cordemais was the name of the original Scaramouche, who had so
unfortunately twisted his ankle. That Binet should refer to him by
his secular designation was a sign that in the Binet company at
least he had fallen for ever from the lofty eminence of Scaramouche.
"Let us go and find him, and then we'll away to the inn and crack a
bottle of the best Burgundy, perhaps two bottles."
But Cordemais was not readily to be found. None of the company had
seen him since the close of the performance. M. Binet went round
to the entrance. Cordemais was not there. At first he was annoyed;
then as he continued in vain to bawl the fellow's name, he began to
grow uneasy; lastly, when Polichinelle, who was with them,
discovered Cordemais' crutch standing discarded behind the door, M.
Binet became alarmed. A dreadful suspicion entered his mind. He
grew visibly pale under his paint.
"But this evening he couldn't walk without the crutch!" he exclaimed.
"How then does he come to leave it there and take himself off?"
"Perhaps he has gone on to the inn," suggested some one.
"But he could n't walk without his crutch," M. Binet insisted.
Nevertheless, since clearly he was not anywhere about the market-hall,
to the inn they all trooped, and deafened the landlady with their
inquiries.
"Oh, yes, M. Cordemais came in some time ago."
"Where is he now?"
"He went away again at once. He just came for his bag."
"For his bag!" Binet was on the point of an apoplexy. "How long
ago was that?"
She glanced at the timepiece on the overmantel. "It would be about
half an hour ago. It was a few minutes before the Rennes diligence
passed through."
"The Rennes diligence!" M. Binet was almost inarticulate. "Could
he... could he walk?" he asked, on a note of terrible anxiety.
"Walk? He ran like a hare when he left the inn. I thought, myself,
that his agility was suspicious, seeing how lame he had been since
he fell downstairs yesterday. Is anything wrong?"
M. Binet had collapsed into a chair. He took his head in his hands,
and groaned.
"The scoundrel was shamming all the time!" exclaimed Climene. "His
fall downstairs was a trick. He was playing for this. He has
swindled us."
"Fifteen louis at least - perhaps sixteen!" said M. Binet. "Oh, the
heartless blackguard! To swindle me who have been as a father to
him - and to swindle me in such a moment."
>From the ranks of the silent, awe-stricken company, each member of
which was wondering by how much of the loss his own meagre pay would
be mulcted, there came a splutter of laughter.
M. Binet glared with blood-injected eyes.
"Who laughs?" he roared. "What heartless wretch has the audacity
to laugh at my misfortune?"
Andre-Louis, still in the sable glories of Scaramouche, stood
forward. He was laughing still.
"It is you, is it? You may laugh on another note, my friend, if I
choose a way to recoup myself that I know of."
"Dullard!" Scaramouche scorned him. "Rabbit-brained elephant! What
if Cordemais has gone with fifteen louis? Hasn't he left you
something worth twenty times as much?"
M. Binet gaped uncomprehending.
"You are between two wines, I think. You've been drinking," he
concluded.
"So I have - at the fountain of Thalia. Oh, don't you see? Don't
you see the treasure that Cordemais has left behind him?"
"What has he left?"
"A unique idea for the groundwork of a scenario. It unfolds itself
all before me. I'll borrow part of the title from Moliere. We'll
call it 'Les Fourberies de Scaramouche,' and if we don't leave the
audiences of Maure and Pipriac with sides aching from laughter I'll
play the dullard Pantaloon in future."
Polichinelle smacked fist into palm. "Superb!" he said, fiercely.
"To cull fortune from misfortune, to turn loss into profit, that
is to have genius.
Scaramouche made a leg. "Polichinelle, you are a fellow after my
own heart. I love a man who can discern my merit. If Pantaloon had
half your wit, we should have Burgundy to-night in spite of the
flight of Cordemais."
"Burgundy?" roared M. Binet, and before he could get farther
Harlequin had clapped his hands together.
"That is the spirit, M. Binet. You heard him, landlady. He called
for Burgundy."
"I called for nothing of the kind."
"But you heard him, dear madame. We all heard him."
The others made chorus, whilst Scaramouche smiled at him, and patted
his shoulder.
"Up, man, a little courage. Did you not say that fortune awaits us?
And have we not now the wherewithal to constrain fortune? Burgundy,
then, to... to toast 'Les Fourberies de Scaramouche.'"
And M. Binet, who was not blind to the force of the idea, yielded,
took courage, and got drunk with the rest.
CHAPTER VI
CLIMENE
Diligent search among the many scenarios of the improvisers which
have survived their day, has failed to bring to light the scenario
of "Les Fourberies de Scaramouche," upon which we are told the
fortunes of the Binet troupe came to be soundly established. They
played it for the first time at Maure in the following week, with
Andre-Louis - who was known by now as Scaramouche to all the
company, and to the public alike - in the title-role. If he had
acquitted himself well as Figaro-Scaramouche, he excelled himself
in the new piece, the scenario of which would appear to be very
much the better of the two.
After Maure came Pipriac, where four performances were given, two
of each of the scenarios that now formed the backbone of the Binet
repertoire. In both Scaramouche, who was beginning to find himself,
materially improved his performances. So smoothly now did the two
pieces run that Scaramouche actually suggested to Binet that after
Fougeray, which they were to visit in the following week, they
should tempt fortune in a real theatre in the important town of
Redon. The notion terrified Binet at first, but coming to think
of it, and his ambition being fanned by Andre-Louis, he ended by
allowing himself to succumb to the temptation.
It seemed to Andre-Louis in those days that he had found his real
metier, and not only was he beginning to like it, but actually to
look forward to a career as actor-author that might indeed lead
him in the end to that Mecca of all comedians, the Comedie
Francaise. And there were other possibilities. From the writing
of skeleton scenarios for improvisers, he might presently pass to
writing plays of dialogue, plays in the proper sense of the word,
after the manner of Chenier, Eglantine, and Beaumarchais.
The fact that he dreamed such dreams shows us how very kindly he
had taken to the profession into which Chance and M. Binet between
them had conspired to thrust him. That he had real talent both
as author and as actor I do not doubt, and I am persuaded that had
things fallen out differently he would have won for himself a
lasting place among French dramatists, and thus fully have realized
that dream of his.
Now, dream though it was, he did not neglect the practical side
of it.
"You realize," he told M. Binet, "that I have it in my power to
make your fortune for you.
He and Binet were sitting alone together in the parlour of the inn
at Pipriac, drinking a very excellent bottle of Volnay. It was on
the night after the fourth and last performance there of "Les
Feurberies." The business in Pipriac had been as excellent as in
Maure and Guichen. You will have gathered this from the fact that
they drank Volnay.
"I will concede it, my dear Scaramouche, so that I may hear the
sequel."
"I am disposed to exercise this power if the inducement is
sufficient. You will realize that for fifteen livres a month a
man does not sell such exceptional gifts as mine.
"There is an alternative," said M. Binet, darkly.
"There is no alternative. Don't be a fool, Binet."
Binet sat up as if he had been prodded. Members of his company
did not take this tone of direct rebuke with him.
"Anyway, I make you a present of it," Scaramouche pursued, airily.
"Exercise it if you please. Step outside and inform the police that
they can lay hands upon one Andre-Louis Moreau. But that will be
the end of your fine dreams of going to Redon, and for the first
time in your life playing in a real theatre. Without me, you can't
do it, and you know it; and I am not going to Redon or anywhere
else, in fact I am not even going to Fougeray, until we have an
equitable arrangement."
"But what heat!" complained Binet, "and all for what? Why must you
assume that I have the soul of a usurer? When our little arrangement
was made, I had no idea how could I? - that you would prove as
valuable to me as you are? You had but to remind me, my dear
Scaramouche. I am a just man. As from to-day you shall have thirty
livres a month. See, I double it at once. I am a generous man."
"But you are not ambitious. Now listen to me, a moment."
And he proceeded to unfold a scheme that filled Binet with a
paralyzing terror.
"After Redon, Nantes," he said. "Nantes and the Theatre Feydau."
M. Binet choked in the act of drinking. The Theatre Feydau was a
sort of provincial Comedie Francaise. The great Fleury had played
there to an audience as critical as any in France. The very thought
of Redon, cherished as it had come to be by M. Binet, gave him at
moments a cramp in the stomach, so dangerously ambitious did it
seem to him. And Redon was a puppet-show by comparison with Nantes.
Yet this raw lad whom he had picked up by chance three weeks ago,
and who in that time had blossomed from a country attorney into
author and actor, could talk of Nantes and the Theatre Feydau
without changing colour.
"But why not Paris and the Comedie Francaise?" wondered M. Binet,
with sarcasm, when at last he had got his breath.
"That may come later," says impudence.
"Eh? You've been drinking, my friend."
But Andre-Louis detailed the plan that had been forming in his mind.
Fougeray should be a training-ground for Redon, and Redon should be
a training-ground for Nantes. They would stay in Redon as long as
Redon would pay adequately to come and see them, working hard to
perfect themselves the while. They would add three or four new
players of talent to the company; he would write three or four fresh
scenarios, and these should be tested and perfected until the troupe
was in possession of at least half a dozen plays upon which they
could depend; they would lay out a portion of their profits on
better dresses and better scenery, and finally in a couple of months'
time, if all went well, they should be ready to make their real bid
for fortune at Nantes. It was quite true that distinction was
usually demanded of the companies appearing at the Feydau, but on
the other hand Nantes had not seen a troupe of improvisers for a
generation and longer. They would be supplying a novelty to which
all Nantes should flock provided that the work were really well done,
and Scaramouche undertook - pledged himself - that if matters were
left in his own hands, his projected revival of the Commedia dell'
Arte in all its glories would exceed whatever expectations the
public of Nantes might bring to the theatre.
"We'll talk of Paris after Nantes," he finished, supremely
matter-of-fact, "just as we will definitely decide on Nantes
after Redon."
The persuasiveness that could sway a mob ended by sweeping M. Binet
off his feet. The prospect which Scaramouche unfolded, if
terrifying, was also intoxicating, and as Scaramouche delivered a
crushing answer to each weakening objection in a measure as it was
advanced, Binet ended by promising to think the matter over.
"Redon will point the way," said Andre-Louis, "and I don't doubt
which way Redon will point."
Thus the great adventure of Redon dwindled to insignificance.
Instead of a terrifying undertaking in itself, it became merely a
rehearsal for something greater. In his momentary exaltation Binet
proposed another bottle of Volnay. Scaramouche waited until the
cork was drawn before he continued.
"The thing remains possible," said he then, holding his glass to
the light, and speaking casually, "as long as I am with you."
"Agreed, my dear Scaramouche, agreed. Our chance meeting was a
fortunate thing for both of us."
"For both of us," said Scaramouche, with stress. "That is as I
would have it. So that I do not think you will surrender me just
yet to the police."
"As if I could think of such a thing! My dear Scaramouche, you
amuse yourself. I beg that you will never, never allude to that
little joke of mine again."
"It is forgotten," said Andre-Louis. "And now for the remainder of
my proposal. If I am to become the architect of your fortunes, if
I am to build them as I have planned them, I must also and in the
same degree become the architect of my own."
"In the same degree?" M. Binet frowned.
"In the same degree. From to-day, if you please, we will conduct
the affairs of this company in a proper manner, and we will keep
account-books."
"I am an artist," said M. Binet, with pride. "I am not a merchant."
"There is a business side to your art, and that shall be conducted
in the business manner. I have thought it all out for you. You
shall not be troubled with details that might hinder the due
exercise of your art. All that you have to do is to say yes or no
to my proposal."
"Ah? And the proposal?"
"Is that you constitute me your partner, with an equal share in the
profits of your company."
Pantaloon's great countenance grew pale, his little eyes widened to
their fullest extent as he conned the face of his companion. Then
he exploded.
"You are mad, of course, to make me a proposal so monstrous."
"It has its injustices, I admit. But I have provided for them. It
would not, for instance, be fair that in addition to all that I am
proposing to do for you, I should also play Scaramouche and write
your scenarios without any reward outside of the half-profit which
would come to me as a partner. Thus before the profits come to be
divided, there is a salary to be paid me as actor, and a small sum
for each scenario with which I provide the company; that is a matter
for mutual agreement. Similarly, you shall be paid a salary as
Pantaloon. After those expenses are cleared up, as well as all the
other salaries and disbursements, the residue is the profit to be
divided equally between us."
It was not, as you can imagine, a proposal that M. Binet would
swallow at a draught. He began with a point-blank refusal to
consider it.
"In that case, my friend," said Scaramouche, "we part company at
once. To-morrow I shall bid you a reluctant farewell."
Binet fell to raging. He spoke of ingratitude in feeling terms; he
even permitted himself another sly allusion to that little jest of
his concerning the police, which he had promised never again to
mention.
"As to that, you may do as you please. Play the informer, by all
means. But consider that you will just as definitely be deprived
of my services, and that without me you are nothing - as you were
before I joined your company."
M. Binet did not care what the consequences might be. A fig for
the consequences! He would teach this impudent young country
attorney that M. Binet was not the man to be imposed upon.
Scaramouche rose. "Very well," said he, between indifference and
resignation. "As you wish. But before you act, sleep on the matter.
In the cold light of morning you may see our two proposals in their
proper proportions. Mine spells fortune for both of us. Yours
spells ruin for both of us. Good-night, M. Binet. Heaven help you
to a wise decision.
The decision to which M. Binet finally came was, naturally, the only
one possible in the face of so firm a resolve as that of Andre-Louis,
who held the trumps. Of course there were further discussions,
before all was settled, and M. Binet was brought to an agreement
only after an infinity of haggling surprising in one who was an
artist and not a man of business. One or two concessions were made
by Andre-Louis; he consented, for instance, to waive his claim to
be paid for scenarios, and he also consented that M. Binet should
appoint himself a salary that was out of all proportion to his
deserts.
Thus in the end the matter was settled, and the announcement duly
made to the assembled company. There were, of course, jealousies
and resentments. But these were not deep-seated, and they were
readily swallowed when it was discovered that under the new
arrangement the lot of the entire company was to be materially
improved from the point of view of salaries. This was a matter
that had met with considerable opposition from M. Binet. But the
irresistible Scaramouche swept away all objections.
"If we are to play at the Feydau, you want a company of
self-respecting comedians, and not a pack of cringing starvelings.
The better we pay them in reason, the more they will earn for us."
Thus was conquered the company's resentment of this too swift
promotion of its latest recruit. Cheerfully now - with one
exception - they accepted the dominance of Scaramouche, a dominance
soon to be so firmly established that M. Binet himself came under it.
The one exception was Climene. Her failure to bring to heel this
interesting young stranger, who had almost literally dropped into
their midst that morning outside Guichen, had begotten in her a
malice which his persistent ignoring of her had been steadily
inflaming. She had remonstrated with her father when the new
partnership was first formed. She had lost her temper with him,
and called him a fool, whereupon M. Binet - in Pantaloon's best
manner - had lost his temper in his turn and boxed her ears. She
piled it up to the account of Scaramouche, and spied her opportunity
to pay off some of that ever-increasing score. But opportunities
were few. Scaramouche was too occupied just then. During the week
of preparation at Fougeray, he was hardly seen save at the
performances, whilst when once they were at Redon, he came and went
like the wind between the theatre and the inn.
The Redon experiment had justified itself from the first. Stimulated
and encouraged by this, Andre-Louis worked day and night during the
month that they spent in that busy little town. The moment had been
well chosen, for the trade in chestnuts of which Redon is the centre
was just then at its height. And every afternoon the little theatre
was packed with spectators. The fame of the troupe had gone forth,
borne by the chestnut-growers of the district, who were bringing
their wares to Redon market, and the audiences were made up of people
from the surrounding country, and from neighbouring villages as far
out as Allaire, Saint-Perrieux and Saint-Nicholas. To keep the
business from slackening, Andre-Louis prepared a new scenario every
week. He wrote three in addition to those two with which he had
already supplied the company; these were "The Marriage of Pantaloon,"
"The Shy Lover," and "The Terrible Captain." Of these the last was
the greatest success. It was based upon the "Miles Gloriosus" of
Plautus, with great opportunities for Rhodomont, and a good part
for Scaramouche as the roaring captain's sly lieutenant. Its
success was largely due to the fact that Andre-Louis amplified the
scenario to the extent of indicating very fully in places the
lines which the dialogue should follow, whilst here and there he
had gone so far as to supply some of the actual dialogue to be
spoken, without, however, making it obligatory upon the actors
to keep to the letter of it.
And meanwhile as the business prospered, he became busy with
tailors, improving the wardrobe of the company, which was sorely
in need of improvement. He ran to earth a couple of needy artists,
lured them into the company to play small parts - apothecaries and
notaries - and set them to beguile their leisure in painting new
scenery, so as to be ready for what he called the conquest of Nantes,
which was to come in the new year. Never in his life had he worked
so hard; never in his life had he worked at all by comparison with
his activities now. His fund of energy and enthusiasm was
inexhaustible, like that of his good humour. He came and went,
acted, wrote, conceived, directed, planned, and executed, what time
M. Binet took his ease at last in comparative affluence, drank
Burgundy every night, ate white bread and other delicacies, and
began to congratulate himself upon his astuteness in having made
this industrious, tireless fellow his partner. Having discovered
how idle had been his fears of performing at Redon, he now began to
dismiss the terrors with which the notion of Nantes had haunted him.
And his happiness was reflected throughout the ranks of his company,
with the single exception always of Climene. She had ceased to
sneer at Scaramouche, haying realized at last that her sneers left
him untouched and recoiled upon herself. Thus her almost indefinable
resentment of him was increased by being stifled, until, at all costs,
an outlet for it must be found.
One day she threw herself in his way as he was leaving the theatre
after the performance. The others had already gone, and she had
returned upon pretence of having forgotten something.
"Will you tell me what I have done to you?" she asked him,
point-blank.
"Done to me, mademoiselle?" He did not understand. She made a
gesture of impatience. "Why do you hate me?"
"Hate you, mademoiselle? I do not hate anybody. It is the most
stupid of all the emotions. I have never hated - not even my
enemies."
"What Christian resignation!"
"As for hating you, of all people! Why... I consider you adorable.
I envy Leandre every day of my life. I have seriously thought of
setting him to play Scaramouche, and playing lovers myself."
"I don't think you would be a success," said she.
"That is the only consideration that restrains me. And yet, given
the inspiration that is given Leandre, it is possible that I might
be convincing."
"Why, what inspiration do you mean?"
"The inspiration of playing to so adorable a Climene."
Her lazy eyes were now alert to search that lean face of his.
"You are laughing at me," said she, and swept past him into the
theatre on her pretended quest. There was nothing to be done with
such a fellow. He was utterly without feeling. He was not a man
at all.
Yet when she came forth again at the end of some five minutes, she
found him still lingering at the door.
"Not gone yet?" she asked him, superciliously.
"I was waiting for you, mademoiselle. You will be walking to the
inn. If I might escort you... "
"But what gallantry! What condescension!"
"Perhaps you would prefer that I did not?"
"How could I prefer that, M. Scaramouche? Besides, we are both
going the same way, and the streets are common to all. It is that
I am overwhelmed by the unusual honour."
He looked into her piquant little face, and noted how obscured it
was by its cloud of dignity. He laughed.
"Perhaps I feared that the honour was not sought."
"Ah, now I understand," she cried. "It is for me to seek these
honours. I am to woo a man before he will pay me the homage of
civility. It must be so, since you, who clearly know everything,
have said so. It remains for me to beg your pardon for my ignorance."
"It amuses you to be cruel," said Scaramouche. "No matter. Shall
we walk?"
They set out together, stepping briskly to warm their blood against
the wintry evening air. Awhile they went in silence, yet each
furtively observing the other.
"And so, you find me cruel?" she challenged him at length, thereby
betraying the fact that the accusation had struck home.
He looked at her with a half smile. "Will you deny it?"
"You are the first man that ever accused me of that."
"I dare not suppose myself the first man to whom you have been cruel.
That were an assumption too flattering to myself. I must prefer to
think that the others suffered in silence."
"Mon Dieu! Have you suffered?" She was between seriousness and
raillery.
"I place the confession as an offering on the altar of your vanity."
"I should never have suspected it."
"How could you? Am I not what your father calls a natural actor?
I was an actor long before I became Scaramouche. Therefore I have
laughed. I often do when I am hurt. When you were pleased to be
disdainful, I acted disdain in my turn."
"You acted very well," said she, without reflecting.
"Of course. I am an excellent actor."
"And why this sudden change?"
"In response to the change in you. You have grown weary of your
part of cruel madam - a dull part, believe me, and unworthy of your
talents., Were I a woman and had I your loveliness and your grace,
Climene, I should disdain to use them as weapons of offence."
"Loveliness and grace!" she echoed, feigning amused surprise. But
the vain baggage was mollified. "When was it that you discovered
this beauty and this grace, M. Scaramouche?"
He looked at her a moment, considering the sprightly beauty of her,
the adorable femininity that from the first had so irresistibly
attracted him.
"One morning when I beheld you rehearsing a love-scene with Leandre."
He caught the surprise that leapt to her eyes, before she veiled
them under drooping lids from his too questing gaze.
"Why, that was the first time you saw me."
"I had no earlier occasion to remark your charms."
"You ask me to believe too much," said she, but her tone was softer
than he had ever known it yet.
"Then you'll refuse to believe me if I confess that it was this
grace and beauty that determined my destiny that day by urging me
to join your father's troupe."
At that she became a little out of breath. There was no longer any
question of finding an outlet for resentment. Resentment was all
forgotten.
"But why? With what object?"
"With the object of asking you one day to be my wife."
She halted under the shock of that, and swung round to face him.
Her glance met his own without, shyness now; there was a hardening
glitter in her eyes, a faint stir of colour in her cheeks. She
suspected him of an unpardonable mockery.
"You go very fast, don't you?" she asked him, with heat.
"I do. haven't you observed it? I am a man of sudden impulses.
See what I have made of the Binet troupe in less than a couple of
months. Another might have laboured for a year and not achieved
the half of it. Shall I be slower in love than in work? Would it
be reasonable to expect it? I have curbed and repressed myself not
to scare you by precipitancy. In that I have done violence to my
feelings, and more than all in using the same cold aloofness with
which you chose to treat me. I have waited - oh! so patiently -
until you should tire of that mood of cruelty."
"You are an amazing man," said she, quite colourlessly.
"I am," he agreed with her. "It is only the conviction that I am
not commonplace that has permitted me to hope as I have hoped."
Mechanically, and as if by tacit consent, they resumed their walk.
"And I ask you to observe," he said, "when you complain that I go
very fast, that, after all, I have so far asked you for nothing."
"How?" quoth she, frowning.
"I have merely told you of my hopes. I am not so rash as to ask at
once whether I may realize them."
"My faith, but that is prudent," said she, tartly.
"Of course."
It was his self-possession that exasperated her; for after that she
walked the short remainder of the way in silence, and so, for the
moment, the matter was left just there.
But that night, after they had supped, it chanced that when Climene
was about to retire, he and she were alone together in the room
abovestairs that her father kept exclusively for his company. The
Binet Troupe, you see, was rising in the world.
As Climene now rose to withdraw for the night, Scaramouche rose
with her to light her candle. Holding it in her left hand, she
offered him her right, a long, tapering, white hand at the end of
a softly rounded arm that was bare to the elbow.
"Good-night, Scaramouche," she said, but so softly, so tenderly,
that he caught his breath, and stood conning her, his dark eyes
aglow.
Thus a moment, then he took the tips of her fingers in his grasp,
and bowing over the hand, pressed his lips upon it. Then he looked
at her again. The intense femininity of her lured him on, invited
him, surrendered to him. Her face was pale, there was a glitter in
her eyes, a curious smile upon her parted lips, and under its
fichu-menteur her bosom rose and fell to complete the betrayal of her.
By the hand he continued to hold, he drew her towards him. She came
unresisting. He took the candle from her, and set it down on the
sideboard by which she stood. The next moment her slight, lithe
body was in his arms, and he was kissing her, murmuring her name as
if it were a prayer.
"Am I cruel now?" she asked him, panting. He kissed her again for
only answer. "You made me cruel because you would not see," she
told him next in a whisper.
And then the door opened, and M. Binet came in to have his paternal
eyes regaled by this highly indecorous behaviour of his daughter.
He stood at gaze, whilst they quite leisurely, and in a
self-possession too complete to be natural, detached each from
the other.
"And what may be the meaning of this?" demanded M. Binet, bewildered
and profoundly shocked.
"Does it require explaining?" asked Scaramouche. "Doesn't it speak
for itself - eloquently? It means that Climene and I have taken it
into our heads to be married."
"And doesn't it matter what I may take into my head?"
"Of course. But you could have neither the bad taste nor the bad
heart to offer any obstacle."
"You take that for granted? Aye, that is your way, to be sure - to
take things for granted. But my daughter is not to be taken for
granted. I have very definite views for my daughter. You have done
an unworthy thing, Scaramouche. You have betrayed my trust in you.
I am very angry with you."
He rolled forward with his ponderous yet curiously noiseless gait.
Scaramouche turned to her, smiling, and handed her the candle.
"If you will leave us, Climene, I will ask your hand of your father
in proper form."
She vanished, a little fluttered, lovelier than ever in her mixture
of confusion and timidity. Scaramouche closed the door and faced the
enraged M. Binet, who had flung himself into an armchair at the head
of the short table, faced him with the avowed purpose of asking for
Climene's hand in proper form. And this was how he did it:
"Father-in-law," said he, "I congratulate you. This will certainly
mean the Comedie Francaise for Climene, and that before long, and
you shall shine in the glory she will reflect. As the father of
Madame Scaramouche you may yet be famous."
Binet, his face slowly empurpling, glared at him in speechless
stupefaction. His rage was the more utter from his humiliating
conviction that whatever he might say or do, this irresistible
fellow would bend him to his will. At last speech came to him.
"You're a damned corsair," he cried, thickly, banging his ham-like
fist upon the table. "A corsair! First you sail in and plunder me
of half my legitimate gains; and now you want to carry off my
daughter. But I'll be damned if I'll give her to a graceless,
nameless scoundrel like you, for whom the gallows are waiting
already."
Scaramouche pulled the bell-rope, not at all discomposed. He smiled.
There was a flush on his cheeks and a gleam in his eyes. He was
very pleased with the world that night. He really owed a great debt
to M. de Lesdiguieres.
"Binet," said he, "forget for once that you are Pantaloon, and behave
as a nice, amiable father-in-law should behave when he has secured a
son-in-law of exceptionable merits. We are going to have a bottle of
Burgundy at my expense, and it shall be the best bottle of Burgundy
to be found in Redon. Compose yourself to do fitting honour to it.
Excitations of the bile invariably impair the fine sensitiveness of
the palate."
CHAPTER VII
THE CONQUEST OF NANTES
The Binet Troupe opened in Nantes - as you may discover in surviving
copies of the "Courrier Nantais" - on the Feast of the Purification
with "Les Fourberies de Scaramouche." But they did not come to
Nantes as hitherto they had gone to little country villages and
townships, unheralded and depending entirely upon the parade of
their entrance to attract attention to themselves. Andre-Louis
had borrowed from the business methods of the Comedie Francaise.
Carrying matters with a high hand entirely in his own fashion, he
had ordered at Redon the printing of playbills, and four days before
the company's descent upon Nantes, these bills were pasted outside
the Theatre Feydau and elsewhere about the town, and had attracted
- being still sufficiently unusual announcements at the time -
considerable attention. He had entrusted the matter to one of the
company's latest recruits, an intelligent young man named Basque,
sending him on ahead of the company for the purpose.
You may see for yourself one of these playbills in the Carnavalet
Museum. It details the players by their stage names only, with the
exception of M. Binet and his daughter, and leaving out of account
that he who plays Trivelin in one piece appears as Tabarin in
another, it makes the company appear to be at least half as numerous
again as it really was. It announces that they will open with "Les
Fourberies de Scaramouche," to be followed by five other plays of
which it gives the titles, and by others not named, which shall also
be added should the patronage to be received in the distinguished
and enlightened city of Nantes encourage the Binet Troupe to prolong
its sojourn at the Theatre Feydau. It lays great stress upon the
fact that this is a company of improvisers in the old Italian manner,
the like of which has not been seen in France for half a century,
and it exhorts the public of Nantes not to miss this opportunity of
witnessing these distinguished mimes who are reviving for them the
glories of the Comedie de l'Art. Their visit to Nantes - the
announcement proceeds - is preliminary to their visit to Paris,
where they intend to throw down the glove to the actors of the
Comedie Francaise, and to show the world how superior is the art of
the improviser to that of the actor who depends upon an author for
what he shall say, and who consequently says always the same thing
every time that he plays in the same piece.
It is an audacious bill, and its audacity had scared M. Binet out
of the little sense left him by the Burgundy which in these days he
could afford to abuse. He had offered the most vehement opposition.
Part of this Andre-Louis had swept aside; part he had disregarded.
"I admit that it is audacious," said Scaramouche. "But at your time
of life you should have learnt that in this world nothing succeeds
like audacity."
"I forbid it; I absolutely forbid it," M. Binet insisted.
"I knew you would. Just as I know that you'll be very grateful to
me presently for not obeying you.
"You are inviting a catastrophe."
"I am inviting fortune. The worst catastrophe that can overtake
you is to be back in the market-halls of the country villages from
which I rescued you. I'll have you in Paris yet in spite of
yourself. Leave this to me."
And he went out to attend to the printing. Nor did his preparations
end there. He wrote a piquant article on the glories of the Comedie
de l'Art, and its resurrection by the improvising troupe of the
great mime Florimond Binet. Binet's name was not Florimond; it was
just Pierre. But Andre-Louis had a great sense of the theatre. That
article was an amplification of the stimulating matter contained in
the playbills; and he persuaded Basque, who had relations in Nantes,
to use all the influence he could command, and all the bribery they
could afford, to get that article printed in the "Courrier Nantais"
a couple of days before the arrival of the Binet Troupe.
Basque had succeeded, and, considering the undoubted literary merits
and intrinsic interest of the article, this is not at all surprising.
And so it was upon an already expectant city that Binet and his
company descended in that first week of February. M. Binet would
have made his entrance in the usual manner - a full-dress parade with
banging drums and crashing cymbals. But to this Andre-Louis offered
the most relentless opposition.
"We should but discover our poverty," said he. "Instead, we will
creep into the city unobserved, and leave ourselves to the imagination
of the public."
He had his way, of course. M. Binet, worn already with battling
against the strong waters of this young man's will, was altogether
unequal to the contest now that he found CLIMENE in alliance with
Scaramouche, adding her insistence to his, and joining with him
in reprobation of her father's sluggish and reactionary wits.
Metaphorically, M. Binet threw up his arms, and cursing the day on
which he had taken this young man into his troupe, he allowed the
current to carry him whither it would. He was persuaded that he
would be drowned in the end. Meanwhile he would drown his vexation
in Burgundy. At least there was abundance of Burgundy. Never in
his life had he found Burgundy so plentiful. Perhaps things were
not as bad as he imagined, after all. He reflected that, when all
was said, he had to thank Scaramouche for the Burgundy. Whilst
fearing the worst, he would hope for the best.
And it was very much the worst that he feared as he waited in the
wings when the curtain rose on that first performance of theirs at
the Theatre Feydau to a house that was tolerably filled by a public
whose curiosity the preliminary announcements had thoroughly
stimulated.
Although the scenario of "Lee Fourberies de Scaramouche" has not
apparently survived, yet we know from Andre-Louis' "Confessions"
that it is opened by Polichinelle in the character of an arrogant
and fiercely jealous lover shown in the act of beguiling the
waiting-maid, Columbine, to play the spy upon her mistress, Climene.
Beginning with cajolery, but failing in this with the saucy
Columbine, who likes cajolers to be at least attractive and to pay
a due deference to her own very piquant charms, the fierce humpbacked
scoundrel passes on to threats of the terrible vengeance he will
wreak upon her if she betrays him or neglects to obey him implicitly;
failing here, likewise, he finally has recourse to bribery, and
after he has bled himself freely to the very expectant Columbine, he
succeeds by these means in obtaining her consent to spy upon Climene,
and to report to him upon her lady's conduct.
The pair played the scene well together, stimulated, perhaps, by
their very nervousness at finding themselves before so imposing an
audience. Polichinelle was everything that is fierce, contemptuous,
and insistent. Columbine was the essence of pert indifference
under his cajolery, saucily mocking under his threats, and finely
sly in extorting the very maximum when it came to accepting a bribe.
Laughter rippled through the audience and promised well. But M.
Binet, standing trembling in the wings, missed the great guffaws of
the rustic spectators to whom they had played hitherto, and his
fears steadily mounted.
Then, scarcely has Polichinelle departed by the door than Scaramouche
bounds in through the window. It was an effective entrance, usually
performed with a broad comic effect that set the people in a roar.
Not so on this occasion. Meditating in bed that morning, Scaramouche
had decided to present himself in a totally different aspect. He
would cut out all the broad play, all the usual clowning which had
delighted their past rude audiences, and he would obtain his effects
by subtlety instead. He would present a slyly humorous rogue,
restrained, and of a certain dignity, wearing a countenance of
complete solemnity, speaking his lines drily, as if unconscious of
the humour with which he intended to invest them. Thus, though it
might take the audience longer to understand and discover him, they
would like him all the better in the end.
True to that resolve, he now played his part as the friend and hired
ally of the lovesick Leandre, on whose behalf he came for news of
Climene, seizing the opportunity to further his own amour with
Columbine and his designs upon the money-bags of Pantaloon. Also he
had taken certain liberties with the traditional costume of
Scaramouche; he had caused the black doublet and breeches to be
slashed with red, and the doublet to be cut more to a peak, a la
Henri III. The conventional black velvet cap he had replaced by a
conical hat with a turned-up brim, and a tuft of feathers on the
left, and he had discarded the guitar.
M. Binet listened desperately for the roar of laughter that usually
greeted the entrance of Scaramouche, and his dismay increased when
it did not come. And then he became conscious of something
alarmingly unusual in Scaramouche's manner. The sibilant foreign
accent was there, but none of the broad boisterousness their
audiences had loved.
He wrung his hands in despair. "It is all over!" he said. "The
fellow has ruined us! It serves me right for being a fool, and
allowing him to take control of everything!"
But he was profoundly mistaken. He began to have an inkling of this
when presently himself he took the stage, and found the public
attentive, remarked a grin of quiet appreciation on every upturned
face. It was not, however, until the thunders of applause greeted
the fall of the curtain on the first act that he felt quite sure
they would be allowed to escape with their lives.
Had the part of Pantaloon in "Les Fourberies" been other than that
of a blundering, timid old idiot, Binet would have ruined it by his
apprehensions. As it was, those very apprehensions, magnifying as
they did the hesitancy and bewilderment that were the essence of
his part, contributed to the success. And a success it proved that
more than justified all the heralding of which Scaramouche had been
guilty.
For Scaramouche himself this success was not confined to the public.
At the end of the play a great reception awaited him from his
companions assembled in the green-room of the theatre. His talent,
resource, and energy had raised them in a few weeks from a pack of
vagrant mountebanks to a self-respecting company of first-rate
players. They acknowledged it generously in a speech entrusted to
Polichinelle, adding the tribute to his genius that, as they had
conquered Nantes, so would they conquer the world under his guidance.
In their enthusiasm they were a little neglectful of the feelings
of M. Binet. Irritated enough had he been already by the overriding
of his every wish, by the consciousness of his weakness when opposed
to Scaramouche. And, although he had suffered the gradual process
of usurpation of authority because its every step had been attended
by his own greater profit, deep down in him the resentment abode to
stifle every spark of that gratitude due from him to his partner.
To-night his nerves had been on the rack, and he had suffered agonies
of apprehension, for all of which he blamed Scaramouche so bitterly
that not even the ultimate success - almost miraculous when all the
elements are considered - could justify his partner in his eyes.
And now, to find himself, in addition, ignored by this company - his
own company, which he had so laboriously and slowly assembled and
selected among the men of ability whom he had found here and there
in the dregs of cities was something that stirred his bile, and
aroused the malevolence that never did more than slumber in him. But
deeply though his rage was moved, it did not blind him to the folly
of betraying it. Yet that he should assert himself in this hour was
imperative unless he were for ever to become a thing of no account
in this troupe over which he had lorded it for long months before
this interloper came amongst them to fill his purse and destroy his
authority.
So he stepped forward now when Polichinelle had done. His make-up
assisting him to mask his bitter feelings, he professed to add his
own to Polichinelle's acclamations of his dear partner. But he did
it in such a manner as to make it clear that what Scaramouche had
done, he had done by M. Binet's favour, and that in all M. Binet's
had been the guiding hand. In associating himself with Polichinelle,
he desired to thank Scaramouche, much in the manner of a lord
rendering thanks to his steward for services diligently rendered and
orders scrupulously carried out.
It neither deceived the troupe nor mollified himself. Indeed, his
consciousness of the mockery of it but increased his bitterness.
But at least it saved his face and rescued him from nullity - he who
was their chief.
To say, as I have said, that it did not deceive them, is perhaps to
say too much, for it deceived them at least on the score of his
feelings. They believed, after discounting the insinuations in
which he took all credit to himself, that at heart he was filled
with gratitude, as they were. That belief was shared by Andre-Louis
himself, who in his brief, grateful answer was very generous to M.
Binet, more than endorsing the claims that M. Binet had made.
And then followed from him the announcement that their success in
Nantes was the sweeter to him because it rendered almost immediately
attainable the dearest wish of his heart, which was to make Climene
his wife. It was a felicity of which he was the first to acknowledge
his utter unworthiness. It was to bring him into still closer
relations with his good friend M. Binet, to whom he owed all that he
had achieved for himself and for them. The announcement was joyously
received, for the world of the theatre loves a lover as dearly as
does the greater world. So they acclaimed the happy pair, with the
exception of poor Leandre, whose eyes were more melancholy than ever.
They were a happy family that night in the upstairs room of their
inn on the Quai La Fosse - the same inn from which Andre-Louis had
set out some weeks ago to play a vastly different role before an
audience of Nantes. Yet was it so different, he wondered? Had he
not then been a sort of Scaramouche - an intriguer, glib and
specious, deceiving folk, cynically misleading them with opinions
that were not really his own? Was it at all surprising that he
should have made so rapid and signal a success as a mime? Was not
this really all that he had ever been, the thing for which Nature
had designed him?
On the following night they played "The Shy Lover" to a full house,
the fame of their debut having gone abroad, and the success of
Monday was confirmed. On Wednesday they gave "Figaro-Scaramouche,"
and on Thursday morning the "Courrier Nantais" came out with an
article of more than a column of praise of these brilliant
improvisers, for whom it claimed that they utterly put to shame the
mere reciters of memorized parts.
Andre-Louis, reading the sheet at breakfast, and having no delusions
on the score of the falseness of that statement, laughed inwardly.
The novelty of the thing, and the pretentiousness in which he had
swaddled it, had deceived them finely. He turned to greet Binet and
Climene, who entered at that moment. He waved the sheet above his
head.
"It is settled," he announced, "we stay in Nantes until Easter."
"Do we?" said Binet, sourly. "You settle everything, my friend."
"Read for yourself." And he handed him the paper.
Moodily M. Binet read. He set the sheet down in silence, and turned
his attention to his breakfast.
"Was I justified or not?" quoth Andre-Louis, who found M. Binet's
behaviour a thought intriguing.
"In what?"
"In coming to Nantes?"
"If I had not thought so, we should not have come," said Binet, and
he began to eat.
Andre-Louis dropped the subject, wondering.
After breakfast he and Climene sallied forth to take the air upon
the quays. It was a day of brilliant sunshine and less cold than
it had lately been. Columbine tactlessly joined them as they were
setting out, though in this respect matters were improved a little
when Harlequin came running after them, and attached himself to
Columbine.
Andre-Louis, stepping out ahead with Climene, spoke of the thing
that was uppermost in his mind at the moment.
"Your father is behaving very oddly towards me," said he. "It is
almost as if he had suddenly become hostile."
"You imagine it," said she. "My father is very grateful to you,
as we all are."
"He is anything but grateful. He is infuriated against me; and I
think I know the reason. Don't you? Can't you guess?"
"I can't, indeed."
"If you were my daughter, Climene, which God be thanked you are
not, I should feel aggrieved against the man who carried you away
from me. Poor old Pantaloon! He called me a corsair when I told
him that I intend to marry you."
"He was right. You are a bold robber, Scaramouche."
"It is in the character," said he. "Your father believes in having
his mimes play upon the stage the parts that suit their natural
temperaments."
"Yes, you take everything you want, don't you?" She looked up at
him, half adoringly, half shyly.
"If it is possible," said he. "I took his consent to our marriage
by main force from him. I never waited for him to give it. When, in
fact, he refused it, I just snatched it from him, and I'll defy him
now to win it back from me. I think that is what he most resents."
She laughed, and launched upon an animated answer. But he did not
hear a word of it. Through the bustle of traffic on the quay a
cabriolet, the upper half of which was almost entirely made of glass,
had approached them. It was drawn by two magnificent bay horses and
driven by a superbly livened coachman.
In the cabriolet alone sat a slight young girl wrapped in a lynx-fur
pelisse, her face of a delicate loveliness. She was leaning forward,
her lips parted, her eyes devouring Scaramouche until they drew his
gaze. When that happened, the shock of it brought him abruptly to a
dumfounded halt.
Climene, checking in the middle of a sentence, arrested by his own
sudden stopping, plucked at his sleeve.
"What is it, Scaramouche?"
But he made no attempt to answer her, and at that moment the
coachman, to whom the little lady had already signalled, brought
the carriage to a standstill beside them. Seen in the gorgeous
setting of that coach with its escutcheoned panels, its portly
coachman and its white-stockinged footman - who swung instantly
to earth as the vehicle stopped - its dainty occupant seemed to
Climene a princess out of a fairy-tale. And this princess leaned
forward, with eyes aglow and cheeks aflush, stretching out a
choicely gloved hand to Scaramouche.
"Andre-Louis!" she called him.
And Scaramouche took the hand of that exalted being, just as he
might have taken the hand of Climene herself, and with eyes that
reflected the gladness of her own, in a voice that echoed the joyous
surprise of hers, he addressed her familiarly by name, just as she
had addressed him.
"Aline!"
CHAPTER VIII
THE DREAM
"The door," Aline commanded her footman, and "Mount here beside me,"
she commanded Andre-Louis, in the same breath.
"A moment, Aline."
He turned to his companion, who was all amazement, and to Harlequin
and Columbine, who had that moment come up to share it. "You permit
me, Climene?" said he, breathlessly. But it was more a statement
than a question. "Fortunately you are not alone. Harlequin will
take care of you. Au revoir, at dinner."
With that he sprang into the cabriolet without waiting for a reply.
The footman dosed the door, the coachman cracked his whip, and the
regal equipage rolled away along the quay, leaving the three
comedians staring after it, open-mouthed... Then Harlequin laughed.
"A prince in disguise, our Scaramouche!" said he.
Columbine clapped her hands and flashed her strong teeth. "But what
a romance for you, Climene! How wonderful!"
The frown melted from Climene's brow. Resentment changed to
bewilderment.
"But who is she?"
"His sister, of course," said Harlequin, quite definitely.
"His sister? How do you know?"
"I know what he will tell you on his return."
"But why?"
"Because you wouldn't believe him if he said she was his mother."
Following the carriage with their glance, they wandered on in the
direction it had taken. And in the carriage Aline was considering
Andre-Louis with grave eyes, lips slightly compressed, and a tiny
frown between her finely drawn eyebrows.
"You have taken to queer company, Andre," was the first thing she
said to him. "Or else I am mistaken in thinking that your companion
was Mlle. Binet of the Theatre Feydau."
"You are not mistaken. But I had not imagined Mlle. Binet so famous
already."
"Oh, as to that... " mademoiselle shrugged, her tone quietly
scornful. And she explained. "It is simply that I was at the play
last night. I thought I recognized her."
"You were at the Feydau last night? And I never saw you!"
"Were you there, too?"
"Was I there!" he cried. Then he checked, and abruptly changed his
tone. "Oh, yes, I was there," he said, as commonplace as he could,
beset by a sudden reluctance to avow that he had so willingly
descended to depths that she must account unworthy, and grateful
that his disguise of face and voice should have proved impenetrable
even to one who knew him so very well.
"I understand," said she, and compressed her lips a little more
tightly.
"But what do you understand?"
"The rare attractions of Mlle. Binet. Naturally you would be at
the theatre. Your tone conveyed it very clearly. Do you know that
you disappoint me, Andre? It is stupid of me, perhaps; it betrays,
I suppose, my imperfect knowledge of your sex. I am aware that
most young men of fashion find an irresistible attraction for
creatures who parade themselves upon the stage. But I did not
expect you to ape the ways of a man of fashion. I was foolish
enough to imagine you to be different; rather above such trivial
pursuits. I conceived you something of an idealist."
"Sheer flattery."
"So I perceive. But you misled me. You talked so much morality of
a kind, you made philosophy so readily, that I came to be deceived.
In fact, your hypocrisy was so consummate that I never suspected it.
With your gift of acting I wonder that you haven't joined Mlle.
Binet's troupe."
"I have," said he.
It had really become necessary to tell her, making choice of the
lesser of the two evils with which she confronted him.
He saw first incredulity, then consternation, and lastly disgust
overspread her face.
"Of course," said she, after a long pause, "that would have the
advantage of bringing you closer to your charmer."
"That was only one of the inducements. There was another. Finding
myself forced to choose between the stage and the gallows, I had the
incredible weakness to prefer the former. It was utterly unworthy
of a man of my lofty ideals, but - what would you? Like other
ideologists, I find it easier to preach than to practise. Shall I
stop the carriage and remove the contamination of my disgusting
person? Or shall I tell you how it happened?"
"Tell me how it happened first. Then we will decide."
He told her how he met the Binet Troupe, and how the men of the
marechaussee forced upon him the discovery that in its bosom he could
lie safely lost until the hue and cry had died down. The explanation
dissolved her iciness.
"My poor Andre, why didn't you tell me this at first?"
"For one thing, you didn't give me time; for another, I feared to
shock you with the spectacle of my degradation."
She took him seriously. "But where was the need of it? And why did
you not send us word as I required you of your whereabouts?"
"I was thinking of it only yesterday. I have hesitated for several
reasons."
"You thought it would offend us to know what you were doing?"
"I think that I preferred to surprise you by the magnitude of my
ultimate achievements."
"Oh, you are to become a great actor?" She was frankly scornful.
"That is not impossible. But I am more concerned to become a great
author. There is no reason why you should sniff. The calling is an
honourable one. All the world is proud to know such men as
Beaumarchais and Chenier."
"And you hope to equal them?"
"I hope to surpass them, whilst acknowledging that it was they who
taught me how to walk. What did you think of the play last night?"
"It was amusing and well conceived."
"Let me present you to the author."
"You? But the company is one of the improvisers."
"Even improvisers require an author to write their scenarios. That
is all I write at present. Soon I shall be writing plays in the
modern manner."
"You deceive yourself, my poor Andre. The piece last night would
have been nothing without the players. You are fortunate in your
Scaramouche."
"In confidence - I present you to him."
"You - Scaramouche? You?" She turned to regard him fully. He
smiled his close-lipped smile that made wrinkles like gashes in
his cheeks. He nodded. "And I didn't recognize you!"
"I thank you for the tribute. You imagined, of course, that I was
a scene-shifter. And now that you know all about me, what of
Gavrillac? What of my godfather?"
He was well, she told him, and still profoundly indignant with
Andre-Louis for his defection, whilst secretly concerned on his
behalf.
"I shall write to him to-day that I have seen you."
"Do so. Tell him that I am well and prospering. But say no more.
Do not tell him what I am doing. He has his prejudices too.
Besides, it might not be prudent. And now the question I have been
burning to ask ever since I entered your carriage. Why are you in
Nantes, Aline?"
"I am on a visit to my aunt, Mme. de Sautron. It was with her that
I came to the play yesterday. We have been dull at the chateau; but
it will be different now. Madame my aunt is receiving several guests
to-day. M. de La Tour d'Azyr is to be one of them."
Andre-Louis frowned and sighed. "Did you ever hear, Aline, how poor
Philippe de Vilmorin came by his end?"
"Yes; I was told, first by my uncle; then by M. de La Tour d'Azyr,
himself."
"Did not that help you to decide this marriage question?"
"How could it? You forget that I am but a woman. You don't expect
me to judge between men in matters such as these?"
"Why not? You are well able to do so. The more since you have
heard two sides. For my godfather would tell you the truth. If
you cannot judge, it is that you do not wish to judge." His tone
became harsh. "Wilfully you close your eyes to justice that might
check the course of your unhealthy, unnatural ambition."
"Excellent!" she exclaimed, and considered him with amusement and
something else. "Do you know that you are almost droll? You rise
unblushing from the dregs of life in which I find you, and shake
off the arm of that theatre girl, to come and preach to me."
"If these were the dregs of life I might still speak from them to
counsel you out of my respect and devotion ,Aline." He was very
stiff and stern. "But they are not the dregs of life. Honour and
virtue are possible to a theatre girl; they are impossible to a
lady who sells herself to gratify ambition; who for position, riches,
and a great title barters herself in marriage."
She looked at him breathlessly. Anger turned her pale. She reached
for the cord.
"I think I had better let you alight so that you may go back to
practise virtue and honour with your theatre wench."
"You shall not speak so of her, Aline."
"Faith, now we are to have heat on her behalf. You think I am too
delicate? You think I should speak of her as a... "
"If you must speak of her at all," he interrupted, hotly, "you'll
speak of her as my wife."
Amazement smothered her anger. Her pallor deepened. "My God!" she
said, and looked at him in horror. And in horror she asked him
presently: "You are married - married to that -?"
"Not yet. But I shall be, soon. And let me tell you that this
girl whom you visit with your ignorant contempt is as good and pure
as you are, Aline. She has wit and talent which have placed her
where she is and shall carry her a deal farther. And she has the
womanliness to be guided by natural instincts in the selection of
her mate."
She was trembling with passion. She tugged the cord.
"You will descend this instant!" she told him fiercely. "That you
should dare to make a comparison between me and that... "
"And my wife-to-be," he interrupted, before she could speak the
infamous word. He opened the door for himself without waiting for
the footman, and leapt down. "My compliments," said he, furiously,
"to the assassin you are to marry." He slammed the door. "Drive
on," he bade the coachman.
The carriage rolled away up the Faubourg Gigan, leaving him standing
where he had alighted, quivering with rage. Gradually, as he walked
back to the inn, his anger cooled. Gradually, as he cooled, he
perceived her point of view, and in the end forgave her. It was not
her fault that she thought as she thought. Her rearing had been such
as to make her look upon every actress as a trull, just as it had
qualified her calmly to consider the monstrous marriage of convenience
into which she was invited.
He got back to the inn to find the company at table. Silence fell
when he entered, so suddenly that of necessity it must be supposed he
was himself the subject of the conversation. Harlequin and Columbine
had spread the tale of this prince in disguise caught up into the
chariot of a princess and carried off by her; and it was a tale that
had lost nothing in the telling.
Climene had been silent and thoughtful, pondering what Columbine had
called this romance of hers. Clearly her Scaramouche must be vastly
other than he had hitherto appeared, or else that great lady and he
would never have used such familiarity with each other. Imagining him
no better than he was, Climene had made him her own. And now she was
to receive the reward of disinterested affection.
Even old Binet's secret hostility towards Andre-Louis melted before
this astounding revelation. He had pinched his daughter's ear quite
playfully. "Ah, ah, trust you to have penetrated his disguise, my
child!"
She shrank resentfully from that implication.
"But I did not. I took him for what he seemed."
Her father winked at her very solemnly and laughed. "To be sure,
you did. But like your father, who was once a gentleman, and knows
the ways of gentlemen, you detected in him a subtle something
different from those with whom misfortune has compelled you hitherto
to herd. You knew as well as I did that he never caught that trick
of haughtiness, that grand air of command, in a lawyer's musty
office, and that his speech had hardly the ring or his thoughts the
complexion of the bourgeois that he pretended to be. And it was
shrewd of you to have made him yours. Do you know that I shall be
very proud of you yet, Climene?"
She moved away without answering. Her father's oiliness offended
her. Scaramouche was clearly a great gentleman, an eccentric if you
please, but a man born. And she was to be his lady. Her father
must learn to treat her differently.
She looked shyly - with a new shyness - at her lover when he came
into the room where they were dining. She observed for the first
time that proud carriage of the head, with the chin thrust forward,
that was a trick of his, and she noticed with what a grace he moved
- the grace of one who in youth has had his dancing-masters and
fencing-masters.
It almost hurt her when he flung himself into a chair and exchanged
a quip with Harlequin in the usual manner as with an equal, and it
offended her still more that Harlequin, knowing what he now knew,
should use him with the same unbecoming familiarity.
CHAPTER IX
THE AWAKENING
"Do you know," said Climene, "that I am waiting for the explanation
which I think you owe me?"
They were alone together, lingering still at the table to which
Andre-Louis had come belatedly, and Andre-Louis was loading himself
a pipe. Of late - since joining the Binet Troupe - he had acquired
the habit of smoking. The others had gone, some to take the air
and others, like Binet and Madame, because they felt that it were
discreet to leave those two to the explanations that must pass. It
was a feeling that Andre-Louis did not share. He kindled a light
and leisurely applied it to his pipe. A frown came to settle on
his brow.
"Explanation?" he questioned presently, and looked at her. "But on
what score?"
"On the score of the deception you have practised on us - on me."
"I have practised none," he assured her.
"You mean that you have simply kept your own counsel, and that in
silence there is no deception. But it is deceitful to withhold
facts concerning yourself and your true station from your future
wife. You should not have pretended to be a simple country lawyer,
which, of course, any one could see that you are not. It may have
been very romantic, but... Enfin, will you explain?"
"I see," he said, and pulled at his pipe. "But you are wrong,
Climene. I have practised no deception. If there are things about
me that I have not told you, it is that I did not account them of
much importance. But I have never deceived you by pretending to be
other than I am. I am neither more nor less than I have
represented myself."
This persistence began to annoy her, and the annoyance showed on her
winsome face, coloured her voice.
"Ha! And that fine lady of the nobility with whom you are so
intimate, who carried you off in her cabriolet with so little
ceremony towards myself? What is she to you?"
"A sort of sister," said he.
"A sort of sister!" She was indignant. "Harlequin foretold that
you would say so; but he was amusing himself. It was not very
funny. It is less funny still from you. She has a name, I suppose,
this sort of sister?"
"Certainly she has a name. She is Mlle. Aline de Kercadiou, the
niece of Quintin de Kercadiou, Lord of Gavrillac."
"Oho! That's a sufficiently fine name for your sort of sister.
What sort of sister, my friend?"
For the first time in their relationship he observed and deplored
the taint of vulgarity, of shrewishness, in her manner.
"It would have been more accurate in me to have said a sort of
reputed left-handed cousin."
"A reputed left-handed cousin! And what sort of relationship may
that be? Faith, you dazzle me with your lucidity."
"It requires to be explained."
"That is what I have been telling you. But you seem very reluctant
with your explanations."
"Oh, no. It is only that they are so unimportant. But be you the
judge. Her uncle, M. de Kercadiou, is my godfather, and she and I
have been playmates from infancy as a consequence. It is popularly
believed in Gavrillac that M. de Kercadiou is my father. He has
certainly cared for my rearing from my tenderest years, and it is
entirely owing to him that I was educated at Louis le Grand. I owe
to him everything that I have - or, rather, everything that I had;
for of my own free will I have cut myself adrift, and to-day I
possess nothing save what I can earn for myself in the theatre or
elsewhere."
She sat stunned and pale under that cruel blow to her swelling pride.
Had he told her this but yesterday, it would have made no impression
upon her, it would have mattered not at all; the event of to-day
coming as a sequel would but have enhanced him in her eyes. But
coming now, after her imagination had woven for him so magnificent a
background, after the rashly assumed discovery of his splendid
identity had made her the envied of all the company, after having
been in her own eyes and theirs enshrined by marriage with him as a
great lady, this disclosure crushed and humiliated her. Her prince
in disguise was merely the outcast bastard of a country gentleman!
She would be the laughing-stock of every member of her father's
troupe, of all those who had so lately envied her this romantic good
fortune.
"You should have told me this before," she said, in a dull voice
that she strove to render steady.
"Perhaps I should. But does it really matter?"
"Matter?" She suppressed her fury to ask another question. "You
say that this M. de Kercadiou is popularly believed to be your
father. What precisely do you mean?"
"Just that. It is a belief that I do not share. It is a matter of
instinct, perhaps, with me. Moreover, once I asked M. de Kercadiou
point-blank, and I received from him a denial. It is not, perhaps,
a denial to which one would attach too much importance in all the
circumstances. Yet I have never known M de Kercadiou for other than
a man of strictest honour, and I should hesitate to disbelieve him
- particularly when his statement leaps with my own instincts. He
assured me that he did not know who my father was."
"And your mother, was he equally ignorant?" She was sneering, but
he did not remark it. Her back was to the light.
"He would not disclose her name to me. He confessed her to be a
dear friend of his."
She startled him by laughing, and her laugh was not pleasant.
"A very dear friend, you may be sure, you simpleton. What name do
you bear?"
He restrained his own rising indignation to answer her question
calmly: "Moreau. It was given me, so I am told, from the Brittany
village in which I was born. But I have no claim to it. In fact
I have no name, unless it be Scaramouche, to which I have earned a
title. So that you see, my dear," he ended with a smile, "I have
practised no deception whatever."
"No, no. I see that now." She laughed without mirth, then drew a
deep breath and rose. "I am very tired," she said.
He was on his feet in an instant, all solicitude. But she waved
him wearily back.
"I think I will rest until it is time to go to the theatre." She
moved towards the door, dragging her feet a little. He sprang to
open it, and she passed out without looking at him.
Her so brief romantic dream was ended. The glorious world of fancy
which in the last hour she had built with such elaborate detail,
over which it should be her exalted destiny to rule, lay shattered
about her feet, its debris so many stumbling-blocks that prevented
her from winning back to her erstwhile content in Scaramouche as he
really was.
Andre-Louis sat in the window embrasure, smoking and looking idly
out across the river. He was intrigued and meditative. He had
shocked her. The fact was clear; not so the reason. That he should
confess himself nameless should not particularly injure him in the
eyes of a girl reared amid the surroundings that had been Climene's.
And yet that his confession had so injured him was fully apparent.
There, still at his brooding, the returning Columbine discovered
him a half-hour later.
"All alone, my prince!" was her laughing greeting, which suddenly
threw light upon his mental darkness. Climene had been disappointed
of hopes that the wild imagination of these players had suddenly
erected upon the incident of his meeting with Aline. Poor child!
He smiled whimsically at Columbine.
"I am likely to be so for some little time," said he, "until it
becomes a commonplace that I am not, after all, a prince.
"Not a prince? Oh, but a duke, then - at least a marquis."
"Not even a chevalier, unless it be of the order of fortune. I
am just Scaramouche. My castles are all in Spain."
Disappointment clouded the lively, good-natured face.
"And I had imagined you... "
"I know," he interrupted. "That is the mischief." He might have
gauged the extent of that mischief by Climene's conduct that evening
towards the gentlemen of fashion who clustered now in the green-room
between the acts to pay their homage to the incomparable amoureuse.
Hitherto she had received them with a circumspection compelling
respect. To-night she was recklessly gay, impudent, almost wanton.
He spoke of it gently to her as they walked home together,
counselling more prudence in the future.
"We are not married yet," she told him, tartly. "Wait until then
before you criticize my conduct."
"I trust that there will be no occasion then," said he.
"You trust? Ah, yes. You are very trusting."
"Climene, I have offended you. I am sorry."
"It is nothing," said she. "You are what you are. Still was he not
concerned. He perceived the source of her ill-humour; understood,
whilst deploring it; and, because he understood, forgave. He
perceived also that her ill-humour was shared by her father, and by
this he was frankly amused. Towards M. Binet a tolerant contempt
was the only feeling that complete acquaintance could beget. As for
the rest of the company, they were disposed to be very kindly towards
Scaramouche. It was almost as if in reality he had fallen from the
high estate to which their own imaginations had raised him; or
possibly it was because they saw the effect which that fall from his
temporary and fictitious elevation had produced upon Climene.
Leandre alone made himself an exception. His habitual melancholy
seemed to be dispelled at last, and his eyes gleamed now with
malicious satisfaction when they rested upon Scaramouche, whom
occasionally he continued to address with sly mockery as "mon
prince."
On the morrow Andre-Louis saw but little of Climene. This was not
in itself extraordinary, for he was very hard at work again, with
preparations now for "Figaro-Scaramouche" which was to be played
on Saturday. Also, in addition to his manifold theatrical
occupations, he now devoted an hour every morning to the study of
fencing in an academy of arms. This was done not only to repair
an omission in his education, but also, and chiefly, to give him
added grace and poise upon the stage. He found his mind that
morning distracted by thoughts of both Climene and Aline. And
oddly enough it was Aline who provided the deeper perturbation.
Climene's attitude he regarded as a passing phase which need not
seriously engage him. But the thought of Aline's conduct towards
him kept rankling, and still more deeply rankled the thought of
her possible betrothal to M. de La Tour d'Azyr.
This it was that brought forcibly to his mind the self-imposed but
by now half-forgotten mission that he had made his own. He had
boasted that he would make the voice which M. de La Tour d'Azyr had
sought to silence ring through the length and breadth of the land.
And what had he done of all this that he had boasted? He had
incited the mob of Rennes and the mob of Nantes in such terms as
poor Philippe might have employed, and then because of a hue and
cry he had fled like a cur and taken shelter in the first kennel
that offered, there to lie quiet and devote himself to other
things - self-seeking things. What a fine contrast between the
promise and the fulfilment!
Thus Andre-Louis to himself in his self-contempt. And whilst he
trifled away his time and played Scaramouche, and centred all his
hopes in presently becoming the rival of such men as Chenier and
Mercier, M. de La Tour d'Azyr went his proud ways unchallenged
and wrought his will. It was idle to tell himself that the seed
he had sown was bearing fruit. That the demands he had voiced in
Nantes for the Third Estate had been granted by M. Necker, thanks
largely to the commotion which his anonymous speech had made. That
was not his concern or his mission. It was no part of his concern
to set about the regeneration of mankind, or even the regeneration
of the social structure of France. His concern was to see that M.
de La Tour d'Azyr paid to the uttermost liard for the brutal wrong
he had done Philippe de Vilmorin. And it did not increase his
self-respect to find that the danger in which Aline stood of being
married to the Marquis was the real spur to his rancour and to
remembrance of his vow. He was - too unjustly, perhaps - disposed
to dismiss as mere sophistries his own arguments that there was
nothing he could do; that, in fact, he had but to show his head to
find himself going to Rennes under arrest and making his final exit
from the world's stage by way of the gallows.
It is impossible to read that part of his "Confessions" without
feeling a certain pity for him. You realize what must have been
his state of mind. You realize what a prey he was to emotions so
conflicting, and if you have the imagination that will enable you
to put yourself in his place, you will also realize how impossible
was any decision save the one to which he says he came, that he
would move, at the first moment that he perceived in what direction
it would serve his real aims to move.
It happened that the first person he saw when he took the stage on
that Thursday evening was Aline; the second was the Marquis de La
Tour d'Azyr. They occupied a box on the right of, and immediately
above, the stage. There were others with them - notably a thin,
elderly, resplendent lady whom Andre-Louis supposed to be Madame
la Comtesse de Sautron. But at the time he had no eyes for any but
those two, who of late had so haunted his thoughts. The sight of
either of them would have been sufficiently disconcerting. The
sight of both together very nearly made him forget the purpose for
which he had come upon the stage. Then he pulled himself together,
and played. He played, he says, with an unusual nerve, and never
in all that brief but eventful career of his was he more applauded.
That was the evening's first shock. The next came after the second
act. Entering the green-room he found it more thronged than usual,
and at the far end with Climene, over whom he was bending from his
fine height, his eyes intent upon her face, what time his smiling
lips moved in talk, M. de La Tour d'Azyr. He had her entirely to
himself, a privilege none of the men of fashion who were in the
habit of visiting the coulisse had yet enjoyed. Those lesser
gentlemen had all withdrawn before the Marquis, as jackals withdraw
before the lion.
Andre-Louis stared a moment, stricken. Then recovering from his
surprise he became critical in his study of the Marquis. He
considered the beauty and grace and splendour of him, his courtly
air, his complete and unshakable self-possession. But more than
all he considered the expression of the dark eyes that were devouring
Climene's lovely face, and his own lips tightened.
M. de La Tour d'Azyr never heeded him or his stare; nor, had he done
so, would he have known who it was that looked at him from behind
the make-up of Scaramouche; nor, again, had he known, would he have
been in the least troubled or concerned.
Andre-Louis sat down apart, his mind in turmoil. Presently he found
a mincing young gentleman addressing him, and made shift to answer
as was expected. Climene having been thus sequestered, and Columbine
being already thickly besieged by gallants, the lesser visitors had
to content themselves with Madame and the male members of the troupe.
M. Binet, indeed, was the centre of a gay cluster that shook with
laughter at his sallies. He seemed of a sudden to have emerged from
the gloom of the last two days into high good-humour, and Scaramouche
observed how persistently his eyes kept flickering upon his daughter
and her splendid courtier.
That night there, were high words between Andre-Louis and Climene,
the high words proceeding from Climene. When Andre-Louis again,
and more insistently, enjoined prudence upon his betrothed, and
begged her to beware how far she encouraged the advances of such
a man as M. de La Tour d'Azyr, she became roundly abusive. She
shocked and stunned him by her virulently shrewish tone, and her
still more unexpected force of invective.
He sought to reason with her, and finally she came to certain
terms with him.
"If you have become betrothed to me simply to stand as an obstacle
in my path, the sooner we make an end the better."
"You do not love me then, Climene?"
"Love has nothing to do with it. I'll not tolerate your insensate
jealousy. A girl in the theatre must make it her business to accept
homage from all."
"Agreed; and there is no harm, provided she gives nothing in
exchange."
White-faced, with flaming eyes she turned on him at that.
"Now, what exactly do you mean?"
"My meaning is clear. A girl in your position may receive all the
homage that is offered, provided she receives it with a dignified
aloofness implying clearly that she has no favours to bestow in
return beyond the favour of her smile. If she is wise she will
see to it that the homage is always offered collectively by her
admirers, and that no single one amongst them shall ever have the
privilege of approaching her alone. If she is wise she will give
no encouragement, nourish no hopes that it may afterwards be beyond
her power to deny realization."
"How? You dare?"
"I know my world. And I know M. de La Tour d'Azyr," he answered her.
"He is a man without charity, without humanity almost; a man who
takes what he wants wherever he finds it and whether it is given
willingly or not; a man who reckons nothing of the misery he
scatters on his self-indulgent way; a man whose only law is force.
Ponder it, Climene, and ask yourself if I do you less than honour in
warning you."
He went out on that, feeling a degradation in continuing the subject.
The days that followed were unhappy days for him, and for at least
one other. That other was Leandre, who was cast into the profoundest
dejection by M. de La Tour d'Azyr's assiduous attendance upon Climene.
The Marquis was to be seen at every performance; a box was perpetually
reserved for him, and invariably he came either alone or else with his
cousin M. de Chabrillane.
On Tuesday of the following week, Andre-Louis went out alone early
in the morning. He was out of temper, fretted by an overwhelming
sense of humiliation, and he hoped to clear his mind by walking.
In turning the corner of the Place du Bouffay he ran into a slightly
built, sallow-complexioned gentleman very neatly dressed in black,
wearing a tie-wig under a round hat. The man fell back at sight of
him, levelling a spy-glass, then hailed him in a voice that rang
with amazement.
"Moreau! Where the devil have you been hiding your-self these months?"
It was Le Chapelier, the lawyer, the leader of the Literary Chamber
of Rennes.
"Behind the skirts of Thespis," said Scaramouche.
"I don't understand."
"I didn't intend that you should. What of yourself, Isaac? And
what of the world which seems to have been standing still of late?"
"Standing still!" Le Chapelier laughed. "But where have you been,
then? Standing still!" He pointed across the square to a caf‚
under the shadow of the gloomy prison. "Let us go and drink a
bavaroise. You are of all men the man we want, the man we have
been seeking everywhere, and - behold! - you drop from the skies
into my path."
They crossed the square and entered the caf‚.
"So you think the world has been standing still! Dieu de Dieu! I
suppose you haven't heard of the royal order for the convocation of
the States General, or the terms of them - that we are to have what
we demanded, what you demanded for us here in Nantes! You haven't
heard that the order has gone forth for the primary elections - the
elections of the electors. You haven't heard of the fresh uproar
in Rennes, last month. The order was that the three estates should
sit together at the States General of the bailliages, but in the
bailliage of Rennes the nobles must ever be recalcitrant. They took
up arms actually - six hundred of them with their valetaille, headed
by your old friend M. de La Tour d'Azyr, and they were for slashing
us - the members of the Third Estate - into ribbons so as to put an
end to our insolence." He laughed delicately. "But, by God, we
showed them that we, too, could take up arms. It was what you
yourself advocated here in Nantes, last November. We fought them
a pitched battle in the streets, under the leadership of your
namesake Moreau, the provost, and we so peppered them that they were
glad to take shelter in the Cordelier Convent. That is the end of
their resistance to the royal authority and the people's will."
He ran on at great speed detailing the events that had taken place,
and finally came to the matter which had, he announced, been causing
him to hunt for Andre-Louis until he had all but despaired of
finding him.
Nantes was sending fifty delegates to the assembly of Rennes which
was to select the deputies to the Third Estate and edit their cahier
of grievances. Rennes itself was being as fully represented, whilst
such villages as Gavrillac were sending two delegates for every two
hundred hearths or less. Each of these three had clamoured that
Andre-Louis Moreau should be one of its delegates. Gavrillac wanted
him because he belonged to the village, and it was known there what
sacrifices he had made in the popular cause; Rennes wanted him
because it had heard his spirited address on the day of the shooting
of the students; and Nantes - to whom his identity was unknown -
asked for him as the speaker who had addressed them under the name
of Omnes Omnibus and who had framed for them the memorial that was
believed so largely to have influenced M. Necker in formulating the
terms of the convocation.
Since he could not be found, the delegations had been made up
without him. But now it happened that one or two vacancies had
occurred in the Nantes representation; and it was the business of
filling these vacancies that had brought Le Chapelier to Nantes.
Andre-Louis firmly shook his head in answer to Le Chapelier's
proposal.
"You refuse?" the other cried. "Are you mad? Refuse, when you are
demanded from so many sides? Do you realize that it is more than
probable you will be elected one of the deputies, that you will be
sent to the States General at Versailles to represent us in this
work of saving France?"
But Andre-Louis, we know, was not concerned to save France. At the
moment he was concerned to save two women, both of whom he loved,
though in vastly different ways, from a man he had vowed to ruin.
He stood firm in his refusal until Le Chapelier dejectedly abandoned
the attempt to persuade him.
"It is odd," said Andre-Louis, "that I should have been so deeply
immersed in trifles as never to have perceived that Nantes is being
politically active."
"Active! My friend, it is a seething cauldron of political emotions.
It is kept quiet on the surface only by the persuasion that all goes
well. At a hint to the contrary it would boil over."
"Would it so?" said Scaramouche, thoughtfully. "The knowledge may
be useful." And then he changed the subject. "You know that La
Tour d'Azyr is here?"
"In Nantes? He has courage if he shows himself. They are not a
docile people, these Nantais, and they know his record and the part
he played in the rising at Rennes. I marvel they haven't stoned
him. But they will, sooner or later. It only needs that some one
should suggest it."
"That is very likely," said Andre-Louis, and smiled. "He doesn't
show himself much; not in the streets, at least. So that he has
not the courage you suppose; nor any kind of courage, as I told
him once. He has only insolence."
At parting Le Chapelier again exhorted him to give thought to what
he proposed. "Send me word if you change your mind. I am lodged
at the Cerf, and I shall be here until the day after to-morrow. If
you have ambition, this is your moment."
"I have no ambition, I suppose," said Andre-Louis, and went his way.
That night at the theatre he had a mischievous impulse to test what
Le Chapelier had told him of the state of public feeling in the
city. They were playing "The Terrible Captain," in the last act of
which the empty cowardice of the bullying braggart Rhodomont is
revealed by Scaramouche.
After the laughter which the exposure of the roaring captain
invariably produced, it remained for Scaramouche contemptuously to
dismiss him in a phrase that varied nightly, according to the
inspiration of the moment. This time he chose to give his phrase
a political complexion:
"Thus, 0 thrasonical coward, is your emptiness exposed. Because
of your long length and the great sword you carry and the angle at
which you cock your hat, people have gone in fear of you,, have
believed in you, have imagined you to be as terrible and as formidable
as you insolently make yourself appear. But at the first touch of
true spirit you crumple up, you tremble, you whine pitifully, and
the great sword remains in your scabbard. You remind me of the
Privileged Orders when confronted by the Third Estate."
It was audacious of him, and he was prepared for anything - a laugh,
applause, indignation, or all together. But he was not prepared for
what came. And it came so suddenly and spontaneously from the
groundlings and the body of those in the amphitheatre that he was
almost scared by it - as a boy may be scared who has held a match
to a sun-scorched hayrick. It was a hurricane of furious applause.
Men leapt to their feet, sprang up on to the benches, waving their
hats in the air, deafening him with the terrific uproar of their
acclamations. And it rolled on and on, nor ceased until the curtain
fell.
Scaramouche stood meditatively smiling with tight lips. At the
last moment he had caught a glimpse of M. de La Tour d'Azyr's face
thrust farther forward than usual from the shadows of his box, and
it was a face set in anger, with eyes on fire.
"Mon Dieu!" laughed Rhodomont, recovering from the real scare that
had succeeded his histrionic terror, "but you have a great trick
of tickling them in the right place, Scaramouche."
Scaramouche looked up at him and smiled. "It can be useful upon
occasion," said he, and went off to his dressing-room to change.
But a reprimand awaited him. He was delayed at the theatre by
matters concerned with the scenery of the new piece they were to
mount upon the morrow. By the time he was rid of the business the
rest of the company had long since left. He called a chair and
had himself carried back to the inn in solitary state. It was one
of many minor luxuries his comparatively affluent present
circumstances permitted.
Coming into that upstairs room that was common to all the troupe,
he found M. Binet talking loudly and vehemently. He had caught
sounds of his voice whilst yet upon the stairs. As he entered Binet
broke off short, and wheeled to face him.
"You are here at last!" It was so odd a greeting that Andre-Louis
did no more than look his mild surprise. "I await your explanations
of the disgraceful scene you provoked to-night."
"Disgraceful? Is it disgraceful that the public should applaud me?"
"The public? The rabble, you mean. Do you want to deprive us of
the patronage of all gentlefolk by vulgar appeals to the low passions
of the mob.?"
Andre-Louis stepped past M. Binet and forward to the table. He
shrugged contemptuously. The man offended him, after all.
"You exaggerate grossly - as usual."
"I do not exaggerate. And I am the master in my own theatre. This
is the Binet Troupe, and it shall be conducted in the Binet way."
"Who are the gentlefolk the loss of whose patronage to the Feydau
will be so poignantly felt?" asked Andre-Louis.
"You imply that there are none? See how wrong you are. After the
play to-night M. le Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr came to me, and spoke
to me in the severest terms about your scandalous outburst. I was
forced to apologize, and... "
"The more fool you," said Andre-Louis. "A man who respected himself
would have shown that gentleman the door." M. Binet's face began
to empurple. "You call yourself the head of the Binet Troupe, you
boast that you will be master in your own theatre, and you stand
like a lackey to take the orders of the first insolent fellow who
comes to your green-room to tell you that he does not like a line
spoken by one of your company! I say again that had you really
respected yourself you would have turned him out."
There was a murmur of approval from several members of the company,
who, having heard the arrogant tone assumed by the Marquis, were
filled with resentment against the slur cast upon them all.
"And I say further," Andre-Louis went on, "that a man who respects
himself, on quite other grounds, would have been only too glad to
have seized this pretext to show M. de La Tour d'Azyr the door."
"What do you mean by that?" There was a rumble of thunder in the
question.
Andre-Louis' eyes swept round the company assembled at the
supper-table. "Where is Climene?" he asked, sharply.
Leandre leapt up to answer him, white in the face, tense and
quivering with excitement.
"She left the theatre in the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr's carriage
immediately after the performance. We heard him offer to drive
her to this inn."
Andre-Louis glanced at the timepiece on the overmantel. He seemed
unnaturally calm.
"That would be an hour ago - rather more. And she has not yet
arrived?"
His eyes sought M. Binet's. M. Binet's eyes eluded his glance.
Again it was Leandre who answered him.
"Not yet."
"Ah!" Andre-Louis sat down, and poured himself wine. There was
an oppressive silence in the room. Leandre watched him expectantly,
Columbine commiseratingly. Even M. Binet appeared to be waiting
for a cue from Scaramouche. But Scaramouche disappointed him.
"Have you left me anything to eat?" he asked.
Platters were pushed towards him. He helped himself calmly to food,
and ate in silence, apparently with a good appetite. M. Binet sat
down, poured himself wine, and drank. Presently he attempted to
make conversation with one and another. He was answered curtly, in
monosyllables. M. Binet did not appear to be in favour with his
troupe that night.
At long length came a rumble of wheels below and a rattle of halting
hooves. Then voices, the high, trilling laugh of Climene floating
upwards. Andre-Louis went on eating unconcernedly.
"What an actor!" said Harlequin under his breath to Polichinelle,
and Polichinelle nodded gloomily.
She came in, a leading lady taking the stage, head high, chin thrust
forward, eyes dancing with laughter; she expressed triumph and
arrogance. Her cheeks were flushed, and there was some disorder in
the mass of nut-brown hair that crowned her head. In her left hand
she carried an enormous bouquet of white camellias. On its middle
finger a diamond of great price drew almost at once by its effulgence
the eyes of all.
Her father sprang to meet her with an unusual display of paternal
tenderness. "At last, my child!"
He conducted her to the table. She sank into a chair, a little
wearily, a little nervelessly, but the smile did not leave her face,
not even when she glanced across at Scaramouche. It was only
Leandre, observing her closely, with hungry, scowling stare, who
detected something as of fear in the hazel eyes momentarily seen
between the fluttering of her lids.
Andre-Louis, however, still went on eating stolidly, without so
much as a look in her direction. Gradually the company came to
realize that just as surely as a scene was brooding, just so
surely would there be no scene as long as they remained. It was
Polichinelle, at last, who gave the signal by rising and withdrawing,
and within two minutes none remained in the room but M. Binet, his
daughter, and Andre-Louis. And then, at last, Andre-Louis set down
knife and fork, washed his throat with a draught of Burgundy, and
sat back in his chair to consider Climene.
"I trust," said he, "that you had a pleasant ride, mademoiselle."
"Most pleasant, monsieur. Impudently she strove to emulate his
coolness, but did not completely succeed.
"And not unprofitable, if I may judge that jewel at this distance.
It should be worth at least a couple of hundred louis, and that
is a formidable sum even to so wealthy a nobleman as M. de La Tour
d'Azyr. Would it be impertinent in one who has had some notion
of becoming your husband, to ask you, mademoiselle, what you have
given him in return?"
M. Binet uttered a gross laugh, a queer mixture of cynicism and
contempt.
"I have given nothing," said Climene, indignantly.
"Ah! Then the jewel is in the nature of a payment in advance."
"My God, man, you're not decent!" M. Binet protested.
"Decent?" Andre-Louis' smouldering eyes turned to discharge upon
M. Binet such a fulmination of contempt that the old scoundrel
shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Did you mention decency,
Binet? Almost you make me lose my temper, which is a thing that
I detest above all others!" Slowly his glance returned to Climene,
who sat with elbows on the table, her chin cupped in her palms,
regarding him with something between scorn and defiance.
"Mademoiselle," he said, slowly, "I desire you purely in your own
interests to consider whither you are going."
"I am well able to consider it for myself, and to decide without
advice from you, monsieur."
"And now you've got your answer," chuckled Binet. "I hope you
like it."
Andre-Louis had paled a little; there was incredulity in his great
sombre eyes as they continued steadily to regard her. Of M. Binet
he took no notice.
"Surely, mademoiselle, you cannot mean that willingly, with open
eyes and a full understanding of what you do, you would exchange
an honourable wifehood for... for the thing that such men as M. de
La Tour d'Azyr may have in store for you?"
M. Binet made a wide gesture, and swung to his daughter. "You hear
him, the mealy-mouthed prude! Perhaps you'll believe at last that
marriage with him would be the ruin of you. He would always be
there the inconvenient husband - to mar your every chance, my girl."
She tossed her lovely head in agreement with her father "I begin to
find him tiresome with his silly jealousies," she confessed. "As a
husband I am afraid he would be impossible."
Andre-Louis felt a constriction of the heart. But - always the
actor - he showed nothing of it. He laughed a little, not very
pleasantly, and rose.
"I bow to your choice, mademoiselle. I pray that you may not
regret it"
"Regret it?" cried M. Binet. He was laughing, relieved to see his
daughter at last rid of this suitor of whom he had never approved,
if we except those few hours when he really believed him to be an
eccentric of distinction. "And what shall she regret? That she
accepted the protection of a nobleman so powerful and wealthy that
as a mere trinket he gives her a jewel worth as much as an actress
earns in a year at the Comedie Francaise?" He got up, and advanced
towards Andre-Louis. His mood became conciliatory. "Come, come,
my friend, no rancour now. What the devil! You wouldn't stand in
the girl's way? You can't really blame her for making this choice?
Have you thought what it means to her? Have you thought that under
the protection of such a gentleman there are no heights which she
may not reach? Don't you see the wonderful luck of it? Surely, if
you're fond of her, particularly being of a jealous temperament,
you wouldn't wish it otherwise?"
Andre-Louis looked at him in silence for a long moment. Then he
laughed again. "Oh, you are fantastic," he said. "You are not real."
He turned on his heel and strode to the door.
The action, and more the contempt of his look, laugh, and words stung
M. Binet to passion, drove out the conciliatoriness of his mood.
"Fantastic, are we?" he cried, turning to follow the departing
Scaramouche with his little eyes that now were inexpressibly evil.
"Fantastic that we should prefer the powerful protection of this
great nobleman to marriage with beggarly, nameless bastard. Oh, we
are fantastic!"
Andre-Louis turned, his hand upon the door-handle. No," he said,
"I was mistaken. You are not fantastic. You are just vile - both
of you." And he went out.
CHAPTER X
CONTRITION
Mlle. de Kercadiou walked with her aunt in the bright morning
sunshine of a Sunday in March on the broad terrace of the Chateau
de Sautron.
For one of her natural sweetness of disposition she had been oddly
irritable of late, manifesting signs of a cynical worldliness, which
convinced Mme. de Sautron more than ever that her brother Quintin
had scandalously conducted the child's education. She appeared to
be instructed in all the things of which a girl is better ignorant,
and ignorant of all the things that a girl should know. That at
least was the point of view of Mme. de Sautron.
"Tell me, madame," quoth Aline, "are all men beasts?" Unlike her
brother, Madame la Comtesse was tall and majestically built. In
the days before her marriage with M. de Sautron, ill-natured folk
described her as the only man in the family. She looked down now
from her noble height upon her little niece with startled eyes.
"Really, Aline, you have a trick of asking the most disconcerting
and improper questions."
"Perhaps it is because I find life disconcerting and improper.
"Life? A young girl should not discuss life."
"Why not, since I am alive? You do not suggest that it is an
impropriety to be alive?"
"It is an impropriety for a young unmarried girl to seek to know
too much about life. As for your absurd question about men, when
I remind you that man is the noblest work of God, perhaps you will
consider yourself answered."
Mme. de Sautron did not invite a pursuance of the subject. But Mlle.
de Kercadiou's outrageous rearing had made her headstrong.
"That being so," said she, will you tell me why they find such an
overwhelming attraction in the immodest of our sex?"
Madame stood still and raised shocked hands. Then she looked down
her handsome, high-bridged nose.
"Sometimes - often, in fact, my dear Aline - you pass all
understanding. I shall write to Quintin that the sooner you are
married the better it will be for all."
"Uncle Quintin has left that matter to my own deciding," Aline
reminded her.
"That," said madame with complete conviction, "is the last and most
outrageous of his errors. Who ever heard of a girl being left to
decide the matter of her own marriage? It is... indelicate almost
to expose her to thoughts of such things." Mme. de Sautron
shuddered. "Quintin is a boor. His conduct is unheard of. That
M. de La Tour d'Azyr should parade himself before you so that you
may make up your mind whether he is the proper man for you!" Again
she shuddered. "It is of a grossness, of... of a prurience almost...
Mon Dieu! When I married your uncle, all this was arranged between
our parents. I first saw him when he came to sign the contract.
I should have died of shame had it been otherwise. And that is how
these affairs should be conducted."
"You are no doubt right, madame. But since that is not how my own
case is being conducted, you will forgive me if I deal with it apart
from others. M. de La Tour d'Azyr desires to marry me. He has been
permitted to pay his court. I should be glad to have him informed
that he may cease to do so."
Mme. de Sautron stood still, petrified by amazement. Her long face
turned white; she seemed to breathe with difficulty.
"But.., but.. what are you saying?" she gasped.
Quietly Aline repeated her statement.
"But this is outrageous! You cannot be permitted to play
fast-and-loose with a gentleman of M. le Marquis' quality! Why, it
is little more than a week since you permitted him to be informed
that you would become his wife!"
"I did so in a moment of... rashness. Since then M. le Marquis'
own conduct has convinced me of my error."
"But - mon Dieu!" cried the Countess. "Are you blind to the great
honour that is being paid you? M. le Marquis will make you the
first lady in Brittany. Yet, little fool that you are, and greater
fool that Quintin is, you trifle with this extraordinary good
fortune! Let me warn you." She raised an admonitory forefinger.
"If you continue in this stupid humour M. de La Tour d'Azyr may
definitely withdraw his offer and depart in justified mortification."
"That, madame, as I am endeavouring to convey to you, is what I
most desire."
"Oh, you are mad."
"It may be, madame, that I am sane in preferring to be guided by my
instincts. It may be even that I am justified in resenting that
the man who aspires to become my husband should at the same time
be paying such assiduous homage to a wretched theatre girl at the
Feydau."
"Aline!"
"Is it not true? Or perhaps you do not find it strange that M. de
La Tour d'Azyr should so conduct himself at such a time?"
"Aline, you are so extraordinary a mixture. At moments you shock
me by the indecency of your expressions; at others you amaze me by
the excess of your prudery. You have been brought up like a little
bourgeoise, I think. Yes, that is it - a little bourgeoise.
Quintin was always something of a shopkeeper at heart."
"I was asking your opinion on the conduct of M. de La Tour d'Azyr,
madame. Not on my own."
"But it is an indelicacy in you to observe such things. You should
be ignorant of them, and I can't think who is so... so unfeeling as
to inform you. But since you are informed, at least you should be
modestly blind to things that take place outside the... orbit of a
properly conducted demoiselle."
"Will they still be outside my orbit when I am married?"
"If you are wise. You should remain without knowledge of them.
It... it deflowers your innocence. I would not for the world that
M. de La Tour d'Azyr should know you so extraordinarily instructed.
Had you been properly reared in a convent this would never have
happened to you."
"But you do not answer me, madame!" cried Aline in despair. "It is
not my chastity that is in question; but that of M. de La Tour d'Azyr."
"Chastity!" Madame's lips trembled with horror. Horror overspread
her face. "Wherever did you learn that dreadful, that so improper
word?"
And then Mme. de Sautron did violence to her feelings. She realized
that here great calm and prudence were required. "My child, since
you know so much that you ought not to know, there can be no harm in
my adding that a gentleman must have these little distractions."
"But why, madame? Why is it so?"
"Ah, mon Dieu, you are asking me riddles of nature. It is so
because it is so. Because men are like that."
"Because men are beasts, you mean - which is what I began by asking
you."
"You are incorrigibly stupid, Aline."
"You mean that I do not see things as you do, madame. I am not
over-expectant as you appear to think; yet surely I have the right
to expect that whilst M. de La Tour d'Azyr is wooing me, he shall
not be wooing at the same time a drab of the theatre. I feel that
in this there is a subtle association of myself with that
unspeakable creature which soils and insults me. The Marquis is a
dullard whose wooing takes the form at best of stilted compliments,
stupid and unoriginal. They gain nothing when they fall from lips
still warm from the contamination of that woman's kisses."
So utterly scandalized was madame that for a moment she remained
speechless. Then -
"Mon Dieu!" she exclaimed. "I should never have suspected you of
so indelicate an imagination."
"I cannot help it, madame. Each time his lips touch my fingers I
find myself thinking of the last object that they touched. I at
once retire to wash my hands. Next time, madame, unless you are
good enough to convey my message to him, I shall call for water and
wash them in his presence."
"But what am I to tell him? How... in what words can I convey such
a message?" Madame was aghast.
"Be frank with him, madame. It is easiest in the end. Tell him
that however impure may have been his life in the past, however
impure he intend that it shall be in the future, he must at least
study purity whilst approaching with a view to marriage a virgin
who is herself pure and without stain."
Madame recoiled, and put her hands to her ears, horror stamped on
her handsome face. Her massive bosom heaved.
"Oh, how can you?" she panted. "How can you make use of such
terrible expressions? Wherever have you learnt them?"
"In church," said Aline.
"Ah, but in church many things are said that... that one would not
dream of saying in the world. My dear child, how could I possibly
say such a thing to M. le Marquis? How could I possibly?"
"Shall I say it?"
"Aline!"
"Well, there it is," said Aline. "Something must be done to
shelter me from insult. I am utterly disgusted with M. le Marquis
- a disgusting man. And however fine a thing it may be to become
Marquise de La Tour d'Azyr, why, frankly, I'd sooner marry a
cobbler who practised decency."
Such was her vehemence and obvious determination that Mme. de Sautron
fetched herself out of her despair to attempt persuasion. Aline was
her niece, and such a marriage in the family would be to the credit
of the whole of it. At all costs nothing must frustrate it.
"Listen, my dear," she said. "Let us reason. M. le Marquis is away
and will not be back until to-morrow."
"True. And I know where he has gone - or at least whom he has gone
with. Mon Dieu, and the drab has a father and a lout of a fellow
who intends to make her his wife, and neither of them chooses to do
anything. I suppose they agree with you, madame, that a great
gentleman must have his little distractions." Her contempt was as
scorching as a thing of fire. "However, madame, you were about to
say?"
"That on the day after to-morrow you are returning to Gavrillac.
M. de La Tour d'Azyr will most likely follow at his leisure."
"You mean when this dirty candle is burnt out?"
"Call it what you will." Madame, you see, despaired by now of
controlling the impropriety of her niece's expressions. "At
Gavrillac there will be no Mlle. Binet. This thing will be in the
past. It is unfortunate that he should have met her at such a
moment. The chit is very attractive, after all. You cannot deny
that. And you must make allowances."
"M. le Marquis formally proposed to me a week ago. Partly to
satisfy the wishes of the family, and partly... " She broke off,
hesitating a moment, to resume on a note of dull pain, "Partly
because it does not seem greatly to matter whom I marry, I gave
him my consent. That consent, for the reasons I have given you,
madame, I desire now definitely to withdraw."
Madame fell into agitation of the wildest. "Aline, I should never
forgive you! Your uncle Quintin would be in despair. You do not
know what you are saying, what a wonderful thing you are refusing.
Have you no sense of your position, of the station into which you
were born?"
"If I had not, madame, I should have made an end long since. If I
have tolerated this suit for a single moment, it is because I
realize the importance of a suitable marriage in the worldly sense.
But I ask of marriage something more; and Uncle Quintin has placed
the decision in my hands."
"God forgive him!" said madame. And then she hurried on: "Leave
this to me now, Aline. Be guided by me - oh, be guided by me!"
Her tone was beseeching. "I will take counsel with your uncle
Charles. But do not definitely decide until this unfortunate affair
has blown over. Charles will know how to arrange it. M. le Marquis
shall do penance, child, since your tyranny demands it; but not in
sackcloth and ashes. you'll not ask so much?"
Aline shrugged. "I ask nothing at all," she said, which was neither
assent nor dissent.
So Mme. de Sautron interviewed her husband, a slight, middle-aged
man, very aristocratic in appearance and gifted with a certain
shrewd sense. She took with him precisely the tone that Aline
had taken with herself and which in Aline she had found so
disconcertingly indelicate. She even borrowed several of Aline's
phrases.
The result was that on the Monday afternoon when at last M. de La
Tour d'Azyr's returning berline drove up to the chateau, he was met
by M. le Comte de Sautron who desired a word with him even before
he changed.
"Gervais, you're a fool," was the excellent opening made by M. le
Comte.
"Charles, you give me no news," answered M. le Marquis. "Of what
particular folly do you take the trouble to complain?"
He flung himself wearily upon a sofa, and his long graceful body
sprawling there he looked up at his friend with a tired smile on
that nobly handsome pale face that seemed to defy the onslaught of
age.
"Of your last. This Binet girl."
"That! Pooh! An incident; hardly a folly."
"A folly - at such a time," Sautron insisted. The Marquis looked
a question. The Count answered it. "Aline," said he, pregnantly.
"She knows. How she knows I can't tell you, but she knows, and she
is deeply offended."
The smile perished on the Marquis' face. He gathered himself up.
"Offended?" said he, and his voice was anxious.
"But yes. You know what she is. You know the ideals she has
formed. It wounds her that at such a time - whilst you are here
for the purpose of wooing her - you should at the same time be
pursuing this affair with that chit of a Binet girl."
"How do you know?" asked La Tour d'Azyr.
"She has confided in her aunt. And the poor child seems to have
some reason. She says she will not tolerate that you should come
to kiss her hand with lips that are still contaminated from... Oh,
you understand. You appreciate the impression of such a thing
upon a pure, sensitive girl such as Aline. She said - I had better
tell you - that the next time you kiss her hand, she will call for
water and wash it in your presence."
The Marquis' face flamed scarlet. He rose. Knowing his violent,
intolerant spirit, M. de Sautron was prepared for an outburst. But
no outburst came. The Marquis turned away from him, and paced
slowly to the window, his head bowed, his hands behind his back.
Halted there he spoke, without turning, his voice was at once
scornful and wistful.
"You are right, Charles, I am a fool - a wicked fool! I have just
enough sense left to perceive it. It is the way I have lived, I
suppose. I have never known the need to deny myself anything I
wanted." Then suddenly he swung round, and the outburst came.
"But, my God, I want Aline as I have never wanted anything yet! I
think I should kill myself in rage if through my folly I should
have lost her." He struck his brow with his hand. "I am a beast!"
he said. "I should have known that if that sweet saint got word of
these petty devilries of mine she would despise me; and I tell you,
Charles, I'd go through fire to regain her respect."
"I hope it is to be regained on easier terms," said Charles; and
then to ease the situation which began to irk him by its solemnity,
he made a feeble joke. "It is merely asked of you that you refrain
from going through certain fires that are not accounted by
mademoiselle of too purifying a nature."
"As to that Binet girl, it is finished - finished," said the Marquis.
"I congratulate you. When did you make that decision?"
"This moment. I would to God I had made it twenty-four hours ago.
As it is-" he shrugged - "why, twenty-four hours of her have been
enough for me as they would have been for any man - a mercenary,
self-seeking little baggage with the soul of a trull. Bah!" He
shuddered in disgust of himself and her.
"Ah! That makes it easier for you," said M. de Sautron, cynically.
Don't say it, Charles. It is not so. Had you been less of a fool,
you would have warned me sooner."
"I may prove to have warned you soon enough if you'll profit by
the warning."
"There is no penance I will not do. I will prostrate myself at her
feet. I will abase myself before her. I will make confession in
the proper spirit of contrition, and Heaven helping me, I'll keep
to my purpose of amendment for her sweet sake." He was tragically
in earnest.
To M. de Sautron, who had never seen him other than self-contained,
supercilious, and mocking, this was an amazing revelation. He
shrank from it almost; it gave him the feeling of prying, of peeping
through a keyhole. He slapped his friend's shoulder.
"My dear Gervais, here is a magnificently romantic mood. Enough
said. Keep to it, and I promise you that all will presently be well.
I will be your ambassador, and you shall have no cause to complain."
"But may I not go to her myself?"
"If you are wise you will at once efface yourself. Write to her if
you will - make your act of contrition by letter. I will explain
why you have gone without seeing her. I will tell her that you did
so upon my advice, and I will do it tactfully. I am a good diplomat,
Gervais. Trust me."
M. le Marquis raised his head, and showed a face that pain was
searing. He held out his hand. "Very well, Charles. Serve me in
this, and count me your friend in all things."
CHAPTER XI
THE FRACAS AT THE THEATRE FEYDAU
Leaving his host to act as his plenipotentiary with Mademoiselle de
Kercadiou, and to explain to her that it was his profound contrition
that compelled him to depart without taking formal leave of her, the
Marquis rolled away from Sautron in a cloud of gloom. Twenty-four
hours with La Binet had been more than enough for a man of his
fastidious and discerning taste. He looked back upon the episode
with nausea - the inevitable psychological reaction - marvelling
at himself that until yesterday he should have found her so
desirable, and cursing himself that for the sake of that ephemeral
and worthless gratification he should seriously have imperilled his
chances of winning Mademoiselle de Kercadiou to wife. There is,
after all, nothing very extraordinary in his frame of mind, so that
I need not elaborate it further. It resulted from the conflict
between the beast and the angel that go to make up the composition
of every man.
The Chevalier de Chabrillane - who in reality occupied towards the
Marquis a position akin to that of gentleman-in-waiting - sat
opposite to him in the enormous travelling berline. A small folding
table had been erected between them, and the Chevalier suggested
piquet. But M. le Marquis was in no humour for cards. His thoughts
absorbed him. As they were rattling over the cobbles of Nantes'
streets, he remembered a promise to La Binet to witness her
performance that night in "The Faithless Lover." And now he was
running away from her. The thought was repugnant to him on two
scores. He was breaking his pledged word, and he was acting like a
coward. And there was more than that. He had led the mercenary
little strumpet - it was thus he thought of her at present, and
with some justice - to expect favours from him in addition to the
lavish awards which already he had made her. The baggage had almost
sought to drive a bargain with him as to her future. He was to take
her to Paris, put her into her own furniture - as the expression
ran, and still runs - and under the shadow of his powerful
protection see that the doors of the great theatres of the capital
should be opened to her talents. He had not - he was thankful to
reflect - exactly committed himself. But neither had he definitely
refused her. It became necessary now to come to an understanding,
since he was compelled to choose between his trivial passion for
her - a passion quenched already - and his deep, almost spiritual
devotion to Mademoiselle de Kercadiou.
His honour, he considered, demanded of him that he should at once
deliver himself from a false position. La Binet would make a scene,
of course; but he knew the proper specific to apply to hysteria of
that nature. Money, after all, has its uses.
He pulled the cord. The carriage rolled to a standstill; a footman
appeared at the door.
"To the Theatre Feydau," said he.
The footman vanished and the berline rolled on. M. de Chabrillane
laughed cynically.
"I'll trouble you not to be amused," snapped the Marquis. "You
don't understand." Thereafter he explained himself. It was a rare
condescension in him. But, then, he could not bear to be
misunderstood in such a matter. Chabrillane grew serious in
reflection of the Marquis' extreme seriousness.
"Why not write?" he suggested. "Myself, I confess that I should
find it easier.
Nothing could better have revealed M. le Marquis' state of mind
than his answer.
"Letters are liable both to miscarriage and to misconstruction.
Two risks I will not run. If she did not answer, I should never
know which had been incurred. And I shall have no peace of mind
until I know that I have set a term to this affair. The berline
can wait while we are at the theatre. We will go on afterwards.
We will travel all night if necessary."
"Peste!" said M. de Chabrillane with a grimace. But that was all.
The great travelling carriage drew up at the lighted portals of the
Feydau, and M. le Marquis stepped out. He entered the theatre with
Chabrillane, all unconsciously to deliver himself into the hands of
Andre-Louis.
Andre-Louis was in a state of exasperation produced by Climene's
long absence from Nantes in the company of M. le Marquis, and fed
by the unspeakable complacency with which M. Binet regarded that
event of quite unmistakable import.
However much he might affect the frame of mind of the stoics, and
seek to judge with a complete detachment, in the heart and soul of
him Andre-Louis was tormented and revolted. It was not Climene he
blamed. He had been mistaken in her. She was just a poor weak
vessel driven helplessly by the first breath, however foul, that
promised her advancement. She suffered from the plague of greed;
and he congratulated himself upon having discovered it before
making her his wife. He felt for her now nothing but a deal of
pity and some contempt. The pity was begotten of the love she had
lately inspired in him. It might be likened to the dregs of love,
all that remained after the potent wine of it had been drained off.
His anger he reserved for her father and her seducer.
The thoughts that were stirring in him on that Monday morning, when
it was discovered that Climene had not yet returned from her
excursion of the previous day in the coach of M. le Marquis, were
already wicked enough without the spurring they received from the
distraught Leandre.
Hitherto the attitude of each of these men towards the other had
been one of mutual contempt. The phenomenon has frequently been
observed in like cases. Now, what appeared to be a common
misfortune brought them into a sort of alliance. So, at least, it
seemed to Leandre when he went in quest of Andre-Louis, who with
apparent unconcern was smoking a pipe upon the quay immediately
facing the inn.
"Name of a pig!" said Leandre. "How can you take your ease and
smoke at such a time?"
Scaramouche surveyed the sky. "I do not find it too cold," said
he. "The sun is shining. I am very well here."
"Do I talk of the weather?" Leandre was very excited.
"Of what, then?"
"Of Climene, of course."
"Oh! The lady has ceased to interest me," he lied.
Leandre stood squarely in front of him, a handsome figure handsomely
dressed in these days, his hair well powdered, his stockings of silk.
His face was pale, his large eyes looked larger than usual.
"Ceased to interest you? Are you not to marry her?" Andre-Louis
expelled a cloud of smoke. "You cannot wish to be offensive. Yet
you almost suggest that I live on other men's leavings."
"My God!" said Leandre, overcome, and he stared awhile. Then he
burst out afresh. "Are you quite heartless? Are you always
Scaramouche?"
"What do you expect me to do?" asked Andre-Louis, evincing surprise
in his own turn, but faintly.
"I do not expect you to let her go without a struggle."
"But she has gone already." Andre-Louis pulled at his pipe a
moment, what time Leandre clenched and unclenched his hands in
impotent rage. "And to what purpose struggle against the
inevitable? Did you struggle when I took her from you?"
"She was not mine to be taken from me. I but aspired, and you won
the race. But even had it been otherwise where is the comparison?
That was a thing in honour; this - this is hell."
His emotion moved Andre-Louis. He took Leandre's arm. "You're a
good fellow, Leandre. I am glad I intervened to save you from
your fate."
"Oh, you don't love her!" cried the other, passionately. "You never
did. You don't know what it means to love, or you'd not talk like
this. My God! if she had been my affianced wife and this had
happened, I should have killed the man - killed him! Do you hear
me? But you... Oh, you, you come out here and smoke, and take the
air, and talk of her as another man's leavings. I wonder I didn't
strike you for the word."
He tore his arm from the other's grip, and looked almost as if he
would strike him now.
"You should have done it," said Andre-Louis. "It's in your part."
With an imprecation Leandre turned on his heel to go. Andre-Louis
arrested his departure.
"A moment, my friend. Test me by yourself. Would you marry her
now?"
"Would I?" The young man's eyes blazed with passion. "Would I?
Let her say that she will marry me, and I am her slave."
"Slave is the right word - a slave in hell."
"It would never be hell to me where she was, whatever she had done.
I love her, man, I am not like you. I love her, do you hear me?"
"I have known, it for some time," said Andre-Louis. "Though I
didn't suspect your attack of the disease to be quite so violent.
Well, God knows I loved her, too, quite enough to share your thirst
for killing. For myself, the blue blood of La Tour d'Azyr would
hardly quench this thirst. I should like to add to it the dirty
fluid that flows in the veins of the unspeakable Binet."
For a second his emotion had been out of hand, and he revealed to
Leandre in the mordant tone of those last words something of the
fires that burned under his icy exterior. The young man caught
him by the hand.
"I knew you were acting," said he. "You feel - you feel as I do."
"Behold us, fellows in viciousness. I have betrayed myself, it
seems. Well, and what now? Do you want to see this pretty Marquis
torn limb from limb? I might afford you the spectacle."
"What?" Leandre stared, wondering was this another of Scaramouche's
cynicisms.
"It isn't really difficult provided I have aid. I require only a
little. Will you lend it me?"
"Anything you ask," Leandre exploded. "My life if you require it."
Andre-Louis took his arm again. "Let us walk," he said. "I will
instruct you."
When they came back the company was already at dinner. Mademoiselle
had not yet returned. Sullenness presided at the table. Columbine
and Madame wore anxious expressions. The fact was that relations
between Binet and his troupe were daily growing more strained.
Andre-Louis and Leandre went each to his accustomed place. Binet's
little eyes followed them with a malicious gleam, his thick lips
pouted into a crooked smile.
"You two are grown very friendly of a sudden," he mocked.
"You are a man of discernment, Binet," said Scaramouche, the cold
loathing of his voice itself an insult. "Perhaps you discern the
reason?"
"It is readily discerned."
"Regale the company with it!" he begged; and waited. "What? You
hesitate? Is it possible that there are limits to your
shamelessness?"
Binet reared his great head. "Do you want to quarrel with me,
Scaramouche?" Thunder was rumbling in his deep, voice.
"Quarrel? You want to laugh. A man doesn't quarrel with creatures
like you. We all know the place held in the public esteem by
complacent husbands. But, in God's name, what place is there at
all for complacent fathers?"
Binet heaved himself up, a great towering mass of manhood. Violently
he shook off the restraining hand of Pierrot who sat on his left.
"A thousand devils!" he roared; "if you take that tone with me, I'll
break every bone in your filthy body."
"If you were to lay a finger on me, Binet, you would give me the
only provocation I still need to kill you." Andre-Louis was as
calm as ever, and therefore the more menacing. Alarm stirred the
company. He protruded from his pocket the butt of a pistol - newly
purchased. "I go armed, Binet. It is only fair to give you warning.
Provoke me as you have suggested, and I'll kill you with no more
compunction than I should kill a slug, which after all is the thing
you most resemble - a slug, Binet; a fat, slimy body; foulness
without soul and without intelligence. When I come to think of it
I can't suffer to sit at table with you. It turns my stomach."
He pushed away his platter and got up. "I'll go and eat at the
ordinary below stairs."
Thereupon up jumped Columbine.
"And I'll come with you, Scaramouche!" cried she.
It acted like a signal. Had the thing been concerted it couldn't
have fallen out more uniformly. Binet, in fact, was persuaded of
a conspiracy. For in the wake of Columbine went Leandre, in the
wake of Leandre, Polichinelle and then all the rest together, until
Binet found himself sitting alone at the head of an empty table in
an empty room - a badly shaken man whose rage could afford him no
support against the dread by which he was suddenly invaded.
He sat down to think things out, and he was still at that melancholy
occupation when perhaps a half-hour later his daughter entered the
room, returned at last from her excursion.
She looked pale, even a little scared - in reality excessively
self-conscious now that the ordeal of facing all the company awaited
her.
Seeing no one but her father in the room, she checked on the
threshold.
"Where is everybody?" she asked, in a voice rendered natural by
effort.
M. Binet reared his great head and turned upon her eyes that were
blood-injected. He scowled, blew out his thick lips and made harsh
noises in his throat. Yet he took stock of her, so graceful and
comely and looking so completely the lady of fashion in her long
fur-trimmed travelling coat of bottle green, her muff and her broad
hat adorned by a sparkling Rhinestone buckle above her adorably
coiffed brown hair. No need to fear the future whilst he owned
such a daughter, let Scaramouche play what tricks he would.
He expressed, however, none of these comforting reflections.
"So you're back at last, little fool," he growled in greeting. "I
was beginning to ask myself if we should perform this evening. It
wouldn't greatly have surprised me if you had not returned in time.
Indeed, since you have chosen to play the fine hand you held in
your own way and scorning my advice, nothing can surprise me."
She crossed the room to the table, and leaning against it, looked
down upon him almost disdainfully.
"I have nothing to regret," she said.
"So every fool says at first. Nor would you admit it if you had.
You are like that. You go your own way in spite of advice from
older heads. Death of my life, girl, what do you know of men?"
"I am not complaining," she reminded him.
"No, but you may be presently, when you discover that you would have
done better to have been guided by your old father. So long as your
Marquis languished for you, there was nothing you could not have
done with the fool. So long as you let him have no more than your
fingertips to kiss... ah, name of a name! that was the time to
build your future. If you live to be a thousand you'll never have
such a chance again, and you've squandered it, for what?"
Mademoiselle sat down.- "You're sordid," she said, with disgust.
"Sordid, am I?" His thick lips curled again. "I have had enough of
the dregs of life, and so I should have thought have you. You held
a hand on which to have won a fortune if you had played it as I
bade you. Well, you've played it, and where's the fortune? We can
whistle for that as a sailor whistles for wind. And, by Heaven,
we'll need to whistle presently if the weather in the troupe
continues as it's set in. That scoundrel Scaramouche has been at
his ape's tricks with them. They've suddenly turned moral. They
won't sit at table with me any more." He was spluttering between
anger and sardonic mirth. "It was your friend Scaramouche set them
the example of that. He threatened my life actually. Threatened my
life! Called me... Oh, but what does that matter? What matters is
that the next thing to happen to us will be that the Binet Troupe
will discover it can manage without M. Binet and his daughter.
This scoundrelly bastard I've befriended has little by little
robbed me of everything. It's in his power to-day to rob me of my
troupe, and the knave's ungrateful enough and vile enough to make
use of his power.
"Let him," said mademoiselle contemptuously.
"Let him?" He was aghast. "And what's to become of us?"
"In no case will the Binet Troupe interest me much longer," said
she. "I shall be going to Paris soon. There are better theatres
there than the Feydau. There's Mlle. Montansier's theatre in the
Palais Royal; there's the Ambigu Comique; there's the Comedie
Francaise; there's even a possibility I may have a theatre of my
own."
His eyes grew big for once. He stretched out a fat hand, and
placed it on one of hers. She noticed that it trembled.
"Has he promised that? Has he promised?"
She looked at him with her head on one side, eyes sly and a queer
little smile on her perfect lips.
"He did not refuse me when I asked it," she answered, with
conviction that all was as she desired it.
"Bah!" He withdrew his hand, and heaved himself up. There was
disgust on his face. "He did not refuse!" he mocked her; and then
with passion: "Had you acted as I advised you, he would have
consented to anything that you asked, and what is more he would
have provided anything that you asked - anything that lay within
his means, and they are inexhaustible. You have changed a
certainty into a possibility, and I hate possibilities - God of
God! I have lived on possibilities, and infernally near starved
on them."
Had she known of the interview taking place at that moment at the
Chateau de Sautron she would have laughed less confidently at her
father's gloomy forebodings. But she was destined never to know,
which indeed was the cruellest punishment of all. She was to
attribute all the evil that of a sudden overwhelmed her, the
shattering of all the future hopes she had founded upon the Marquis
and the sudden disintegration of the Binet Troupe, to the wicked
interference of that villain Scaramouche.
She had this much justification that possibly, without the warning
from M. de Sautron, the Marquis would have found in the events of
that evening at the Theatre Feydau a sufficient reason for ending
an entanglement that was fraught with too much unpleasant excitement,
whilst the breaking-up of the Binet Troupe was most certainly the
result of Andre-Louis' work. But it was not a result that he
intended or even foresaw.
So much was this the case that in the interval after the second act,
he sought the dressing-room shared by Polichinelle and Rhodomont.
Polichinelle was in the act of changing.
"I shouldn't trouble to change," he said. "The piece isn't likely
to go beyond my opening scene of the next act with Leandre."
"What do you mean?"
"You'll see." He put a paper on Polichinelle's table amid the
grease-paints. "Cast your eye over that. It's a sort of last will
and testament in favour of the troupe. I was a lawyer once; the
document is in order. I relinquish to all of you the share produced
by my partnership in the company."
"But you don't mean that you are leaving us?" cried Polichinelle in
alarm, whilst Rhodomont's sudden stare asked the same question.
Scaramouche's shrug was eloquent. Polichinelle ran on gloomily:
"Of course it was to have been foreseen. But why should you be the
one to go? It is you who have made us; and it is you who are the
real head and brains of the troupe; it is you who have raised it
into a real theatrical company. If any one must go, let it be
Binet - Binet and his infernal daughter. Or if you go, name of a
name! we all go with you!"
"Aye," added Rhodomont, "we've had enough of that fat scoundrel."
"I had thought of it, of course," said Andre-Louis. "It was not
vanity, for once; it was trust in your friendship. After to-night
we may consider it again, if I survive."
"If you survive?" both cried.
Polichinelle got up. "Now, what madness have you in mind?" he
asked.
"For one thing I think I am indulging Leandre; for another I am
pursuing an old quarrel."
The three knocks sounded as he spoke.
"There, I must go. Keep that paper, Polichinelle. After all, it
may not be necessary.
He was gone. Rhodomont stared at Polichinelle. Polichinelle
stared at Rhodomont.
"What the devil is he thinking of?" quoth the latter.
"That is most readily ascertained by going to see," replied
Polichinelle. He completed changing in haste, and despite what
Scaramouche had said; and then followed with Rhodomont.
As they approached the wings a roar of applause met them coming from
the audience. It was applause and something else; applause on an
unusual note. As it faded away they heard the voice of Scaramouche
ringing clear as a bell:
"And so you see, my dear M. Leandre, that when you speak of the
Third Estate, it is necessary to be more explicit. What precisely
is the Third Estate?"
"Nothing," said Leandre.
There was a gasp from the audience, audible in the wings, and then
swiftly followed Scaramouche's next question:
"True. Alas! But what should it be?"
"Everything," said Leandre.
The audience roared its acclamations, the more violent because of
the unexpectedness of that reply.
"True again," said Scaramouche. "And what is more, that is what it
will be; that is what it already is. Do you doubt it?"
"I hope it," said the schooled Leandre.
"You may believe it," said Scaramouche, and again the acclamations
rolled into thunder.
Polichinelle and Rhodomont exchanged glances: indeed, the former
winked, not without mirth.
"Sacred name!" growled a voice behind them. "Is the scoundrel at
his political tricks again?"
They turned to confront M. Binet. Moving with that noiseless tread
of his, he had come up unheard behind them, and there he stood now
in his scarlet suit of Pantaloon under a trailing bedgown, his little
eyes glaring from either side of his false nose. But their attention
was held by the voice of Scaramouche. He had stepped to the front
of the stage.
"He doubts it," he was felling the audience. "But then this M.
Leandre is himself akin to those who worship the worm-eaten idol of
Privilege, and so he is a little afraid to believe a truth that is
becoming apparent to all the world. Shall I convince him? Shall I
tell him how a company of noblemen backed by their servants under
arms - six hundred men in all - sought to dictate to the Third
Estate of Rennes a few short weeks ago? Must I remind him of the
martial front shown on that occasion by the Third Estate, and how
they swept the streets clean of that rabble of nobles - cette
canaille noble... "
Applause interrupted him. The phrase had struck home and caught.
Those who had writhed under that infamous designation from their
betters leapt at this turning of it against the nobles themselves.
"But let me tell you of their leader - le pins noble de cette
canaille, on bien le plus canaille de ces nobles! You know him
- that one. He fears many things, but the voice of truth he fears
most. With such as him the eloquent truth eloquently spoken is a
thing instantly to be silenced. So he marshalled his peers and
their valetailles, and led them out to slaughter these miserable
bourgeois who dared to raise a voice. But these same miserable
bourgeois did not choose to be slaughtered in the streets of Rennes.
It occurred to them that since the nobles decreed that blood should
flow, it might as well be the blood of the nobles. They marshalled
themselves too - this noble rabble against the rabble of nobles -
and they marshalled themselves so well that they drove M. de La
Tour d'Azyr and his warlike following from the field with broken
heads and shattered delusions. They sought shelter at the hands
of the Cordeliers; and the shavelings gave them sanctuary in their
convent - those who survived, among whom was their proud leader,
M. de La Tour d'Azyr. You have heard of this valiant Marquis, this
great lord of life and death?"
The pit was in an uproar a moment. It quieted again as Scaramouche
continued:
"Oh, it was a fine spectacle to see this mighty hunter scuttling to
cover like a hare, going to earth in the Cordelier Convent. Rennes
has not seen him since. Rennes would like to see him again. But
if he is valorous, he is also discreet. And where do you think he
has taken refuge, this great nobleman who wanted to see the streets
of Rennes washed in the blood of its citizens, this man who would
have butchered old and young of the contemptible canaille to silence
the voice of reason and of liberty that presumes to ring through
France to-day? Where do you think he hides himself? Why, here in
Nantes."
Again there was uproar.
"What do you say? Impossible? Why, my friends, at this moment he
is here in this theatre - skulking up there in that box. He is too
shy to show himself - oh, a very modest gentleman. But there he is
behind the curtains. Will you not show yourself to your friends,
M. de La Tour d'Azyr, Monsieur le Marquis who considers eloquence
so very dangerous a gift? See, they would like a word with you;
they do not believe me when I tell them that you are here."
Now, whatever he may have been, and whatever the views held on the
subject by Andre-Louis, M. de La Tour d'Azyr was certainly not a
coward. To say that he was hiding in Nantes was not true. He came
and went there openly and unabashed. It happened, however, that the
Nantais were ignorant until this moment of his presence among them.
But then he would have disdained to have informed them of it just as
he would have disdained to have concealed it from them.
Challenged thus, however, and despite the ominous manner in which
the bourgeois element in the audience had responded to Scaramouche's
appeal to its passions, despite the attempts made by Chabrillane to
restrain him, the Marquis swept aside the curtain at the side of the
box, and suddenly showed himself, pale but self-contained and
scornful as he surveyed first the daring Scaramouche and then those
others who at sight of him had given tongue to their hostility.
Hoots and yells assailed him, fists were shaken at him, canes were
brandished menacingly.
"Assassin! Scoundrel! Coward! Traitor!"
But he braved the storm, smiling upon them his ineffable contempt.
He was waiting for the noise to cease; waiting to address them in
his turn. But he waited in vain, as he very soon perceived.
The contempt he did not trouble to dissemble served but to goad
them on.
In the pit pandemonium was already raging. Blows were being freely
exchanged; there were scuffling groups, and here and there swords
were being drawn, but fortunately the press was too dense to permit
of their being used effectively. Those who had women with them and
the timid by nature were making haste to leave a house that looked
like becoming a cockpit, where chairs were being smashed to provide
weapons, and parts of chandeliers were already being used as missiles.
One of these hurled by the hand of a gentleman in one of the boxes
narrowly missed Scaramouche where he stood, looking down in a sort
of grim triumph upon the havoc which his words had wrought. Knowing
of what inflammable material the audience was composed, he had
deliberately flung down amongst them the lighted torch of discord,
to produce this conflagration.
He saw men falling quickly into groups representative of one side
or the other of this great quarrel that already was beginning to
agitate the whole of France. Their rallying cries were ringing
through the theatre.
"Down with the canaille!" from some.
"Down with the privileged!" from others.
And then above the general din one cry rang out sharply and
insistently:
"To the box! Death to the butcher of Rennes! Death to La Tour
d'Azyr who makes war upon the people!"
There was a rush for one of the doors of the pit that opened upon
the staircase leading to the boxes.
And now, whilst battle and confusion spread with the speed of fire,
overflowing from the theatre into the street itself, La Tour
d'Azyr's box, which had become the main object of the attack of the
bourgeoisie, had also become the rallying ground for such gentlemen
as were present in the theatre and for those who, without being men
of birth themselves, were nevertheless attached to the party of the
nobles.
La Tour d'Azyr had quitted the front of the box to meet those who
came to join him. And now in the pit one group of infuriated
gentlemen, in attempting to reach the stage across the empty
orchestra, so that they might deal with the audacious comedian who
was responsible for this explosion, found themselves opposed and
held back by another group composed of men to whose feelings
Andre-Louis had given expression.
Perceiving this, and remembering the chandelier, he turned to
Leandre, who had remained beside him.
"I think it is time to be going," said he.
Leandre, looking ghastly under his paint, appalled by the storm
which exceeded by far anything that his unimaginative brain could
have conjectured, gurgled an inarticulate agreement. But it looked
as if already they were too late, for in that moment they were
assailed from behind.
M. Binet had succeeded at last in breaking past Polichinelle and
Rhodomont, who in view of his murderous rage had been endeavouring
to restrain him. Half a dozen gentlemen, habitues of the green-room,
had come round to the stage to disembowel the knave who had created
this riot, and it was they who had flung aside those two comedians
who hung upon Binet. After him they came now, their swords out; but
after them again came Polichinelle, Rhodomont, Harlequin, Pierrot,
Pasquariel, and Basque the artist, armed with such implements as
they could hastily snatch up, and intent upon saving the man with
whom they sympathized in spite of all, and in whom now all their
hopes were centred.
Well ahead rolled Binet, moving faster than any had ever seen him
move, and swinging the long cane from which Pantaloon is inseparable.
"Infamous scoundrel!" he roared. "You have ruined me! But, name
of a name, you shall pay!"
Andre-Louis turned to face him. "You confuse cause with effect,"
said he. But he got no farther... Binet's cane, viciously driven,
descended and broke upon his shoulder. Had he not moved swiftly
aside as the blow fell it must have taken him across the head, and
possibly stunned him. As he moved, he dropped his hand to his
pocket, and swift upon the cracking of Binet's breaking cane came
the crack of the pistol with which Andre-Louis replied.
"You had your warning, you filthy pander!" he cried. And on the
word he shot him through the body.
Binet went down screaming, whilst the fierce Polichinelle, fiercer
than ever in that moment of fierce reality, spoke quickly into
Andre-Louis' ear:
"Fool! So much was not necessary! Away with you now, or you'll
leave your skin here! Away with you!"
Andre-Louis thought it good advice, and took it. The gentlemen who
had followed Binet in that punitive rush upon the stage, partly
held in check by the improvised weapons of the players, partly
intimidated by the second pistol that Scaramouche presented, let
him go. He gained the wings, and here found himself faced by a
couple of sergeants of the watch, part of the police that was
already invading the theatre with a view to restoring order. The
sight of them reminded him unpleasantly of how he must stand
towards the law for this night's work, and more particularly for
that bullet lodged somewhere in Binet's obese body. He flourished
his pistol.
"Make way, or I'll burn your brains!" he threatened them, and
intimidated, themselves without firearms, they fell back and let
him pass. He slipped by the door of the green-room, where the
ladies of the company had shut themselves in until the storm should
be over, and so gained the street behind the theatre. It was
deserted. Down this he went at a run, intent on reaching the inn
for clothes and money, since it was impossible that he should take
the road in the garb of Scaramouche.
BOOK III: THE SWORD
CHAPTER I
TRANSITION
"You may agree," wrote Andre-Louis from Paris to Le Chapelier, in
a letter which survives, "that it is to be regretted I should
definitely have discarded the livery of Scaramouche, since clearly
there could be no livery fitter for my wear. It seems to be my
part always to stir up strife and then to slip away before I am
caught in the crash of the warring elements I have aroused. It is
a humiliating reflection. I seek consolation in the reminder of
Epictetus (do you ever read Epictetus?) that we are but actors in
a play of such a part as it may please the Director to assign us.
It does not, however, console me to have been cast for a part so
contemptible, to find myself excelling ever in the art of running
away. But if I am not brave, at least I am prudent; so that where
I lack one virtue I may lay claim to possessing another almost to
excess. On a previous occasion they wanted to hang me for sedition.
Should I have stayed to be hanged? This time they may want to
hang me for several things, including murder; for I do not know
whether that scoundrel Binet be alive or dead from the dose of
lead I pumped into his fat paunch. Nor can I say that I very
greatly care. If I have a hope at all in the matter it is that he
is dead - and damned. But I am really indifferent. My own concerns
are troubling me enough. I have all but spent the little money that
I contrived to conceal about me before I fled from Nantes on that
dreadful night; and both of the only two professions of which I can
claim to know anything - the law and the stage - are closed to me,
since I cannot find employment in either without revealing myself
as a fellow who is urgently wanted by the hangman. As things are
it is very possible that I may die of hunger, especially considering
the present price of victuals in this ravenous city. Again I have
recourse to Epictetus for comfort. 'It is better,' he says, 'to die
of hunger having lived without grief and fear, than to live with a
troubled spirit amid abundance.' I seem likely to perish in the
estate that he accounts so enviable. That it does not seem exactly
enviable to me merely proves that as a Stoic I am not a success.
There is also another letter of his written at about the same time
to the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr - a letter since published by M.
Emile Quersac in his "Undercurrents of the Revolution in Brittany,"
unearthed by him from the archives of Rennes, to which it had been
consigned by M. de Lesdiguieres, who had received it for justiciary
purposes from the Marquis.
"The Paris newspapers," he writes in this, "which have reported in
considerable detail the fracas at the Theatre Feydau and disclosed
the true identity of the Scaramouche who provoked it, inform me also
that you have escaped the fate I had intended for you when I raised
that storm of public opinion and public indignation. I would not
have you take satisfaction in the thought that I regret your escape.
I do not. I rejoice in it. To deal justice by death has this
disadvantage that the victim has no knowledge that justice has
overtaken him. Had you died, had you been torn limb from limb that
night, I should now repine in the thought of your eternal and
untroubled slumber. Not in euthanasia, but in torment of mind
should the guilty atone. You see, I am not sure that hell hereafter
is a certainty, whilst I am quite sure that it can be a certainty in
this life; and I desire you to continue to live yet awhile that you
may taste something of its bitterness.
"You murdered Philippe de Vilmorin because you feared what you
described as his very dangerous gift of eloquence, I took an oath
that day that your evil deed should be fruitless; that I would
render it so; that the voice you had done murder to stifle should
in spite of that ring like a trumpet through the land. That was
my conception of revenge. Do you realize how I have been fulfilling
it, how I shall continue to fulfil it as occasion offers? In the
speech with which I fired the people of Rennes on the very morrow
of that deed, did you not hear the voice of Philippe de Vilmorin
uttering the ideas that were his with a fire and a passion greater
than he could have commanded because Nemesis lent me her inflaming
aid? In the voice of Omnes Omnibus at Nantes my voice again -
demanding the petition that sounded the knell of your hopes of
coercing the Third Estate, did you not hear again the voice of
Philippe de Vilmorin? Did you not reflect that it was the mind of
the man you had murdered, resurrected in me his surviving friend,
which made necessary your futile attempt under arms last January,
wherein your order, finally beaten, was driven to seek sanctuary
in the Cordelier Convent? And that night when from the stage of
the Feydau you were denounced to the people, did you not hear yet
again, in the voice of Scaramouche, the voice of Philippe de
Vilmorin, using that dangerous gift of eloquence which you so
foolishly imagined you could silence with a sword-thrust? It is
becoming a persecution - is it not? - this voice from the grave
that insists upon making itself heard, that will not rest until
you have been cast into the pit. You will be regretting by now
that you did not kill me too, as I invited you on that occasion.
I can picture to myself the bitterness of this regret, and I
contemplate it with satisfaction. Regret of neglected opportunity
is the worst hell that a living soul can inhabit, particularly
such a soul as yours. It is because of this that I am glad to
know that you survived the riot at the Feydau, although at the time
it was no part of my intention that you should. Because of this I
am content that you should live to enrage and suffer in the shadow
of your evil deed, knowing at last - since you had not hitherto the
wit to discern it for yourself - that the voice of Philippe de
Vilmorin will follow you to denounce you ever more loudly, ever more
insistently, until having lived in dread you shall go down in blood
under the just rage which your victim's dangerous gift of eloquence
is kindling against you."
I find it odd that he should have omitted from this letter all
mention of Mlle. Binet, and I am disposed to account it at least a
partial insincerity that he should have assigned entirely to his
self-imposed mission, and not at all to his lacerated feelings in
the matter of Climene, the action which he had taken at the Feydau.
Those two letters, both written in April of that year 1789, had for
only immediate effect to increase the activity with which Andre-Louis
Moreau was being sought.
Le Chapelier would have found him so as to lend him assistance, to
urge upon him once again that he should take up a political career.
The electors of Nantes would have found him - at least, they would
have found Omnes Omnibus, of whose identity with himself they were
still in ignorance - on each of the several occasions when a vacancy
occurred in their body. And the Marquis de La Tour d'Azyr and M.
de Lesdiguieres would have found him that they might send him to
the gallows.
With a purpose no less vindictive was he being sought by M. Binet,
now unhappily recovered from his wound to face completest ruin. His
troupe had deserted him during his illness, and reconstituted under
the direction of Polichinelle it was now striving with tolerable
success to continue upon the lines which Andre-Louis had laid down.
M. le Marquis, prevented by the riot from expressing in person to
Mlle. Binet his purpose of making an end of their relations, had
been constrained to write to her to that effect from Azyr a few days
later. He tempered the blow by enclosing in discharge of all
liabilities a bill on the Caisse d'Escompte for a hundred louis.
Nevertheless it almost crushed the unfortunate and it enabled her
father when he recovered to enrage her by pointing out that she owed
this turn of events to the premature surrender she had made in
defiance of his sound worldly advice. Father and daughter alike
were left to assign the Marquis' desertion, naturally enough, to
the riot at the Feydau. They laid that with the rest to the account
of Scaramouche, and were forced in bitterness to admit that the
scoundrel had taken a superlative revenge. C1imene may even have
come to consider that it would have paid her better to have run a
straight course with Scaramouche and by marrying him to have trusted
to his undoubted talents to place her on the summit to which her
ambition urged her, and to which it was now futile for her to aspire.
If so, that reflection must have been her sufficient punishment.
For, as Andre-Louis so truly says, there is no worse hell than that
provided by the regrets for wasted opportunities.
Meanwhile the fiercely sought Andre-Louis Moreau had gone to earth
completely for the present. And the brisk police of Paris, urged
on by the King's Lieutenant from Rennes, hunted for him in vain.
Yet he might have been found in a house in the Rue du Hasard within
a stone's throw of the Palais Royal, whither purest chance had
conducted him.
That which in his letter to Le Chapelier he represents as a
contingency of the near future was, in fact, the case in which
already he found himself. He was destitute. His money was
exhausted, including that procured by the sale of such articles of
adornment as were not of absolute necessity.
So desperate was his case that strolling one gusty April morning
down the Rue du Hasard with his nose in the wind looking for what
might be picked up, he stopped to read a notice outside the door
of a house on the left side of the street as you approach the Rue
de Richelieu. There was no reason why he should have gone down
the Rue du Hasard. Perhaps its name attracted him, as appropriate
to his case.
The notice written in a big round hand announced that a young man
of good address with some knowledge of swordsmanship was required
by M. Bertrand des Amis on the second floor. Above this notice
was a black oblong board, and on this a shield, which in vulgar
terms may be described as red charged with two swords crossed and
four fleurs de lys, one in each angle of the saltire. Under the
shield, in letters of gold, ran the legend:
BERTRAND DES AMIS
Maitre en fait d'Armes des Academies du Roi
Andre-Louis stood considering. He could claim, he thought, to
possess the qualifications demanded. He was certainly young and
he believed of tolerable address, whilst the fencing-lessons he had
received in Nantes had given him at least an elementary knowledge
of swordsmanship. The notice looked as if it had been pinned there
some days ago, suggesting that applicants for the post were not very
numerous. In that case perhaps M. Bertrand des Amis would not be too
exigent. And anyway, Andre-Louis had not eaten for four-and-twenty
hours, and whilst the employment here offered - the precise nature
of which he was yet to ascertain - did not appear to be such as
Andre-Louis would deliberately have chosen, he was in no case now to
be fastidious.
Then, too, he liked the name of Bertrand des Amis. It felicitously
combined suggestions of chivalry and friendliness. Also the man's
profession being of a kind that is flavoured with romance it was
possible that M. Bertrand des Amis would not ask too many questions.
In the end he climbed to the second floor. On the landing he paused
outside a door, on which was written "Academy of M. Bertrand des
Amis." He pushed this open, and found himself in a sparsely
furnished, untenanted antechamber. From a room beyond, the door of
which was closed, came the stamping of feet, the click and slither
of steel upon steel, and dominating these sounds a vibrant sonorous
voice speaking a language that was certainly French; but such
French as is never heard outside a fencing-school.
"Coulez! Mais, coulez donc!....So! Now the flanconnade - en
carte....And here is the riposte....Let us begin again. Come! The
ward of fierce....Make the coupe, and then the quinte par dessus
les armes....0, mais allongez! Allongez! Allez au fond!" the voice
cried in expostulation. "Come, that was better." The blades ceased.
"Remember: the hand in pronation, the elbow not too far out. That
will do for to-day. On Wednesday we shall see you tirer au mur.
It is more deliberate. Speed will follow when the mechanism of the
movements is more assured."
Another voice murmured in answer. The steps moved aside. The
lesson was at an end. Andre-Louis tapped on the door.
It was opened by a tall, slender, gracefully proportioned man of
perhaps forty. Black silk breeches and stockings ending in light
shoes clothed him from the waist down. Above he was encased to the
chin in a closely fitting plastron of leather, His face was aquiline
and swarthy, his eyes full and dark, his mouth firm and his clubbed
hair was of a lustrous black with here and there a thread of silver
showing.
in the crook of his left arm he carried a fencing-mask, a thing of
leather with a wire grating to protect the eyes. His keen glance
played over Andre-Louis from head to foot.
"Monsieur?" he inquired, politely.
It was clear that he mistook Andre-Louis' quality, which is not
surprising, for despite his sadly reduced fortunes, his exterior was
irreproachable, and M. des Amis was not to guess that he carried
upon his back the whole of his possessions.
"You have a notice below, monsieur," he said, and from the swift
lighting of the fencing-master's eyes he saw that he had been
correct in his assumption that applicants for the position had not
been jostling one another on his threshold. And then that flash of
satisfaction was followed by a look of surprise.
"You are come in regard to that?"
Andre-Louis shrugged and half smiled. "One must live," said he.
"But come in. Sit down there. I shall be at your....I shall be
free to attend to you in a moment."
Andre-Louis took a seat on the bench ranged against one of the
whitewashed walls. The room was long and low, its floor entirely
bare. Plain wooden forms such as that which he occupied were placed
here and there against the wall. These last were plastered with
fencing trophies, masks, crossed foils, stuffed plastrons, and a
variety of swords, daggers, and targets, belonging to a variety of
ages and countries. There was also a portrait of an obese, big-nosed
gentleman in an elaborately curled wig, wearing the blue ribbon of
the Saint Esprit, in whom Andre-Louis recognized the King. And there
was a framed parchment - M. des Amis' certificate from the King's
Academy. A bookcase occupied one corner, and near this, facing the
last of the four windows that abundantly lighted the long room, there
was a small writing-table and an armchair. A plump and beautifully
dressed young gentleman stood by this table in the act of resuming
coat and wig. M. des Amis sauntered over to him - moving, thought
Andre-Louis, with extraordinary grace and elasticity - and stood in
talk with him whilst also assisting him to complete his toilet.
At last the young gentleman took his departure, mopping himself with
a fine kerchief that left a trail of perfume on the air. M. des
Amis closed the door, and turned to the applicant, who rose at once.
"Where have you studied?" quoth the fencing-master abruptly.
"Studied?" Andre-Louis was taken aback by the question. "Oh, at
Louis Le Grand."
M. des Amis frowned, looking up sharply as if to see whether his
applicant was taking the liberty of amusing himself.
"In Heaven's name! I am not asking you where you did your
humanities, but in what academy you studied fencing."
"Oh - fencing!" It had hardly ever occurred to Andre-Louis that
the sword ranked seriously as a study. "I never studied it very
much. I had some lessons in... in the country once.
The master's eyebrows went up. "But then?" he cried. "Why trouble
to come up two flights of stairs?" He was impatient.
"The notice does not demand a high degree of proficiency. If I am
not proficient enough, yet knowing the rudiments I can easily
improve. I learn most things readily," Andre-Louis commended himself.
"For the rest: I possess the other qualifications. I am young, as
you observe: and I leave you to judge whether I am wrong in assuming
that my address is good. I am by profession a man of the robe,
though I realize that the motto here is cedat toga armis."
M. des Amis smiled approvingly. Undoubtedly the young man had a
good address, and a certain readiness of wit, it would appear. He
ran a critical eye over his physical points. "What is your name?"
he asked.
Andre-Louis hesitated a moment. "Andre-Louis," he said.
The dark, keen eyes conned him more searchingly.
"Well? Andre-Louis what?"
"Just Andre-Louis. Louis is my surname."
"Oh! An odd surname. You come from Brittany by your accent. Why
did you leave it?"
"To save my skin," he answered, without reflecting. And then made
haste to cover the blunder. "I have an enemy," he explained.
M. des Amis frowned, stroking his square chin. "You ran away?"
"You may say so.
"A coward, eh?"
"I don't think so." And then he lied romantically. Surely a man
who lived by the sword should have a weakness for the romantic.
"You see, my enemy is a swordsman of great strength - the best blade
in the province, if not the best blade in France. That is his
repute. I thought I would come to Paris to learn something of the
art, and then go back and kill him. That, to be frank, is why your
notice attracted me. You see, I have not the means to take lessons
otherwise. I thought to find work here in the law. But I have
failed. There are too many lawyers in Paris as it is, and whilst
waiting I have consumed the little money that I had, so that... so
that, enfin, your notice seemed to me something to which a special
providence had directed me."
M. des Amis gripped him by the shoulders, and looked into his face.
"Is this true, my friend?" he asked.
"Not a word of it," said Andre-Louis, wrecking his chances on an
irresistible impulse to say the unexpected. But he didn't wreck
them. M. des Amis burst into laughter; and having laughed his fill,
confessed himself charmed by his applicant's fundamental honesty.
"Take off your coat," he said, "and let us see what you can do.
Nature, at least, designed you for a swordsman. You are light,
active, and supple, with a good length of arm, and you seem
intelligent. I may make something of you, teach you enough for my
purpose, which is that you should give the elements of the art to
new pupils before I take them in hand to finish them. Let us try.
Take that mask and foil, and come over here.
He led him to the end of the room, where the bare floor was scored
with lines of chalk to guide the beginner in the management of his
feet.
At the end of a ten minutes' bout, M. des Amis offered him the
situation, and explained it. In addition to imparting the rudiments
of the art to beginners, he was to brush out the fencing-room every
morning, keep the foils furbished, assist the gentlemen who came for
lessons to dress and undress, and make himself generally useful.
His wages for the present were to be forty livres a month, and he
might sleep in an alcove behind the fencing-room if he had no other
lodging.
The position, you see, had its humiliations. But, if Andre-Louis
would hope to dine, he must begin by eating his pride as an hors
d'oeuvre.
"And so," he said, controlling a grimace, "the robe yields not only
to the sword, but to the broom as well. Be it so. I stay."
lt is characteristic of him that, having made that choice, he should
have thrown himself into the work with enthusiasm. It was ever his
way to do whatever he did with all the resources of his mind and
energies of his body. When he was not instructing very young
gentlemen in the elements of the art, showing them the elaborate and
intricate salute - which with a few days' hard practice he had
mastered to perfection - and the eight guards, he was himself hard
at work on those same guards, exercising eye, wrist, and knees.
Perceiving his enthusiasm, and seeing the obvious possibilities it
opened out of turning him into a really effective assistant, M.
des Amis presently took him more seriously in hand.
"Your application and zeal, my friend, are deserving of more than
forty livres a month," the master informed him at the end of a week.
"For the present, however, I will make up what else I consider due
to you by imparting to you secrets of this noble art. Your future
depends upon how you profit by your exceptional good fortune in
receiving instruction from me."
Thereafter every morning before the opening of the academy, the
master would fence for half an hour with his new assistant. Under
this really excellent tuition Andre-Louis improved at a rate that
both astounded and flattered M. des Amis. He would have been less
flattered and more astounded had he known that at least half the
secret of Andre-Louis' amazing progress lay in the fact that he was
devouring the contents of the master's library, which was made up
of a dozen or so treatises on fencing by such great masters as La
Bessiere, Danet, and the syndic of the King's Academy, Augustin
Rousseau. To M. des Amis, whose swordsmanship was all based on
practice and not at all on theory, who was indeed no theorist or
student in any sense, that little library was merely a suitable
adjunct to a fencing-academy, a proper piece of decorative furniture.
The books themselves meant nothing to him in any other sense. He
had not the type of mind that could have read them with profit nor
could be understand that another should do so. Andre-Louis, on the
contrary, a man with the habit of study, with the acquired faculty
of learning from books, read those works with enormous profit, kept
their precepts in mind, critically set off those of one master
against those of another, and made for himself a choice which he
proceeded to put into practice.
At the end of a month it suddenly dawned upon M. des Amis that his
assistant had developed into a fencer of very considerable force,
a man in a bout with whom it became necessary to exert himself if
he were to escape defeat.
"I said from the first," he told him one day, "that Nature designed
you for a swordsman. See how justified I was, and see also how well
I have known how to mould the material with which Nature has
equipped you."
"To the master be the glory," said Andre-Louis.
His relations with M. des Amis had meanwhile become of the
friendliest, and he was now beginning to receive from him other
pupils than mere beginners. In fact Andre-Louis was becoming an
assistant in a much fuller sense of the word. M. des Amis, a
chivalrous, open-handed fellow, far from taking advantage of what
he had guessed to be the young man's difficulties, rewarded his
zeal by increasing his wages to four louis a month.
>From the' earnest and thoughtful study of the theories of others,
it followed now - as not uncommonly happens - that Andre-Louis came
to develop theories of his own. He lay one June morning on his
little truckle bed in the alcove behind the academy, considering a
passage that he had read last night in Danet on double and triple
feints. It had seemed to him when reading it that Danet had stopped
short on the threshold of a great discovery in the art of fencing.
Essentially a theorist, Andre-Louis perceived the theory suggested,
which Danet himself in suggesting it had not perceived. He lay now
on his back, surveying the cracks in the ceiling and considering
this matter further with the lucidity that early morning often
brings to an acute intelligence. You are to remember that for close
upon two months now the sword had been Andre-Louis' daily exercise
and almost hourly thought. Protracted concentration upon the subject
was giving him an extraordinary penetration of vision. Swordsmanship
as he learnt and taught and saw it daily practised consisted of a
series of attacks and parries, a series of disengages from one line
into another. But always a limited series. A half-dozen disengages
on either side was, strictly speaking, usually as far as any
engagement went. Then one recommenced. But even so, these
disengages were fortuitous. What if from first to last they should
be calculated?
That was part of the thought - one of the two legs on which his
theory was to stand; the other was: what would happen if one so
elaborated Danet's ideas on the triple feint as to merge them into
a series of actual calculated disengages to culminate at the fourth
or fifth or even sixth disengage? That is to say, if one were to
make a series of attacks inviting ripostes again to be countered,
each of which was not intended to go home, but simply to play the
opponent's blade into a line that must open him ultimately, and as
predetermined, for an irresistible lunge. Each counter of the
opponent's would have to be preconsidered in this widening of his
guard, a widening so gradual that he should himself be unconscious
of it, and throughout intent upon getting home his own point on
one of those counters.
Andre-Louis had been in his time a chess-player of some force, and
at chess he had excelled by virtue of his capacity for thinking
ahead. That virtue applied to fencing should all but revolutionize
the art. It was so applied already, of course, but only in an
elementary and very limited fashion, in mere feints, single, double,
or triple. But even the triple feint should be a clumsy device
compared with this method upon which he theorized.
He considered further, and the conviction grew that he held the key
of a discovery. He was impatient to put his theory to the test.
That morning he was given a pupil of some force, against whom
usually he was hard put to it to defend himself. Coming on guard,
he made up his mind to hit him on the fourth disengage,
predetermining the four passes that should lead up to it. They
engaged in tierce, and Andre-Louis led the attack by a beat and a
straightening of the arm. Came the demi-contre he expected, which
he promptly countered by a thrust in quinte; this being countered
again, he reentered still lower, and being again correctly parried,
as he had calculated, he lunged swirling his point into carte, and
got home full upon his opponent's breast. The ease of it surprised
him.
They began again. This time he resolved to go in on the fifth
disengage, and in on that he went with the same ease. Then,
complicating the matter further, he decided to try the sixth, and
worked out in his mind the combination of the five preliminary
engages. Yet again he succeeded as easily as before.
The young gentleman opposed to him laughed with just a tinge of
mortification in his voice.
"I am all to pieces this morning," he said.
"You are not of your usual force," Andre-Louis politely agreed.
And then greatly daring, always to test that theory of his to the
uttermost: "So much so," he added, "that I could almost be sure
of hitting you as and when I declare."
The capable pupil looked at him with a half-sneer. "Ah, that, no,"
said he.
"Let us try. On the fourth disengage I shall touch you. Allons!
En garde!"
And as he promised, so it happened.
The young gentleman who, hitherto, had held no great opinion of
Andre-Louis' swordsmanship, accounting him well enough for purposes
of practice when the master was otherwise engaged, opened wide his
eyes. In a burst of mingled generosity and intoxication, Andre-Louis
was almost for disclosing his method - a method which a little later
was to become a commonplace of the fencing-rooms. Betimes he checked
himself. To reveal his secret would be to destroy the prestige that
must accrue to him from exercising it.
At noon, the academy being empty, M. des Amis called Andre-Louis to
one of the occasional lessons which he still received. And for the
first time in all his experience with Andre-Louis, M. des Amis
received from him a full hit in the course of the first bout. He
laughed, well pleased, like the generous fellow he was.
"Aha! You are improving very fast, my friend." He still laughed,
though not so well pleased, when he was hit in the second bout.
After that he settled down to fight in earnest with the result that
Andre-Louis was hit three times in succession. The speed and
accuracy of the fencing-master when fully exerting himself
disconcerted Andre-Louis' theory, which for want of being exercised
in practice still demanded too much consideration.
But that his theory was sound he accounted fully established, and
with that, for the moment, he was content. It remained only to
perfect by practice the application of it. To this he now devoted
himself with the passionate enthusiasm of the discoverer. He
confined himself to a half-dozen combinations, which he practised
assiduously until each had become almost automatic. And he proved
their infallibility upon the best among M. des Amis' pupils.
Finally, a week or so after that last bout of his with des Amis,
the master called him once more to practice.
Hit again in the first bout, the master set himself to exert all
his skill against his assistant. But to-day it availed him nothing
before Andre-Louis' impetuous attacks.
After the third hit, M. des Amis stepped back and pulled off his
mask.
"What's this?" he asked. He was pale, and his dark brows were
contracted in a frown. Not in years had he been so wounded in his
self-love. "Have you been taught a secret botte?"
He had always boasted that he knew too much about the sword to
believe any nonsense about secret bottes; but this performance of
Andre-Louis' had shaken his convictions on that score.
"No," said Andre-Louis. "I have been working hard; and it happens
that I fence with my brains."
"So I perceive. Well, well, I think I have taught you enough, my
friend. I have no intention of having an assistant who is superior
to myself."
"Little danger of that," said Andre-Louis, smiling pleasantly.
"You have been fencing hard all morning, and you are tired, whilst
I, having done little, am entirely fresh. That is the only secret
of my momentary success.
His tact and the fundamental good-nature of M. des Amis prevented
the matter from going farther along the road it was almost
threatening to take. And thereafter, when they fenced together,
Andre-Louis, who continued daily to perfect his theory into an
almost infallible system, saw to it that M. des Amis always scored
against him at least two hits for every one of his own. So much
he would grant to discretion, but no more. He desired that M. des
Amis should be conscious of his strength, without, however,
discovering so much of its real extent as would have excited in
him an unnecessary degree of jealousy.
And so well did he contrive that whilst he became ever of greater
assistance to the master - for his style and general fencing, too,
had materially improved - he was also a source of pride to him as
the most brilliant of all the pupils that had ever passed through
his academy. Never did Andre-Louis disillusion him by revealing
the fact that his skill was due far more to M. des Amis' library
and his own mother wit than to any lessons received.
CHAPTER II
QUOS DEUS VULT PERDERE
Once again, precisely as he had done when he joined the Binet troupe,
did Andre-Louis now settle down whole-heartedly to the new profession
into which necessity had driven him, and in which he found effective
concealment from those who might seek him to his hurt. This
profession might - although in fact it did not - have brought him
to consider himself at last as a man of action. He had not, however,
on that account ceased to be a man of thought, and the events of the
spring and summer months of that year 1789 in Paris provided him
with abundant matter for reflection. He read there in the raw what
is perhaps the most amazing page in the history of human development,
and in the end he was forced to the conclusion that all his early
preconceptions had been at fault, and that it was such exalted,
passionate enthusiasts as Vilmorin who had been right.
I suspect him of actually taking pride in the fact that he had been
mistaken, complacently attributing his error to the circumstance
that he had been, himself, of too sane and logical a mind to gauge
the depths of human insanity now revealed.
He watched the growth of hunger, the increasing poverty and distress
of Paris during that spring, and assigned it to its proper cause,
together with the patience with which the people bore it. The world
of France was in a state of hushed, of paralyzed expectancy, waiting
for the States General to assemble and for centuries of tyranny to
end. And because of this expectancy, industry had come to a
standstill, the stream of trade had dwindled to a trickle. Men would
not buy or sell until they clearly saw the means by which the genius
of the Swiss banker, M. Necker, was to deliver them from this morass.
And because of this paralysis of affairs the men of the people were
thrown out of work and left to starve with their wives and children.
Looking on, Andre-Louis smiled grimly. So far he was right. The
sufferers were ever the proletariat. The men who sought to make
this revolution, the electors - here in Paris as elsewhere - were
men of substance, notable bourgeois, wealthy traders. And whilst
these, despising the canaille, and envying the privileged, talked
largely of equality - by which they meant an ascending equality
that should confuse themselves with the gentry - the proletariat
perished of want in its kennels.
At last with the month of May the deputies arrived, Andre-Louis'
friend Le Chapelier prominent amongst them, and the States General
were inaugurated at Versailles. It was then that affairs began to
become interesting, then that Andre-Louis began seriously to doubt
the soundness of the views he had held hitherto.
When the royal proclamation had gone forth decreeing that the
deputies of the Third Estate should number twice as many as those
of the other two orders together, Andre-Louis had believed that
the preponderance of votes thus assured to the Third Estate rendered
inevitable the reforms to which they had pledged themselves.
But he had reckoned without the power of the privileged orders over
the proud Austrian queen, and her power over the obese, phlegmatic,
irresolute monarch. That the privileged orders should deliver battle
in defence of their privileges, Andre-Louis could understand. Man
being what he is, and labouring under his curse of acquisitiveness,
will never willingly surrender possessions, whether they be justly
or unjustly held. But what surprised Andre-Louis was the unutterable
crassness of the methods by which the Privileged ranged themselves
for battle. They opposed brute force to reason and philosophy, and
battalions of foreign mercenaries to ideas. As if ideas were to be
impaled on bayonets!
The war between the Privileged and the Court on one side, and the
Assembly and the People on the other had begun.
The Third Estate contained itself, and waited; waited with the
patience of nature; waited a month whilst, with the paralysis of
business now complete, the skeleton hand of famine took a firmer
grip of Paris; waited a month whilst Privilege gradually assembled
an army in Versailles to intimidate it - an army of fifteen
regiments, nine of which were Swiss and German - and mounted a park
of artillery before the building in which the deputies sat. But
the deputies refused to be intimidated; they refused to see the guns
and foreign uniforms; they refused to see anything but the purpose
for which they had been brought together by royal proclamation.
Thus until the 10th of June, when that great thinker and
metaphysician, the Abbe Sieyes, gave the signal: "It is time," said
he, "to cut the cable."
And the opportunity came soon, at the very beginning of July. M. du
Chatelet, a harsh, haughty disciplinarian, proposed to transfer the
eleven French Guards placed under arrest from the military gaol of
the Abbaye to the filthy prison of Bicetre reserved for thieves and
felons of the lowest order. Word of that intention going forth, the
people at last met violence with violence. A mob four thousand
strong broke into the Abbaye, and delivered thence not only the
eleven guardsmen, but all the other prisoners, with the exception of
one whom they discovered to be a thief, and whom they put back again;
That was open revolt at last, and with revolt Privilege knew how to
deal. It would strangle this mutinous Paris in the iron grip of the
foreign regiments. Measures were quickly concerted. Old Marechal
de Broglie, a veteran of the Seven Years' War, imbued with a
soldier's contempt for civilians, conceiving that the sight of a
uniform would be enough to restore peace and order, took control
with Besenval as his second-in-command. The foreign regiments were
stationed in the environs of Paris, regiments whose very names were
an irritation to the Parisians, regiments of Reisbach, of Diesbach,
of Nassau, Esterhazy, and Roehmer. Reenforcements of Swiss were
sent to the Bastille between whose crenels already since the 30th
of June were to be seen the menacing mouths of loaded cannon.
On the 10th of July the electors once more addressed the King to
request the withdrawal of the troops. They were answered next day
that the troops served the purpose of defending the liberties of
the Assembly! And on the next day to that, which was a Sunday, the
philanthropist Dr. Guillotin - whose philanthropic engine of painless
death was before very long to find a deal of work, came from the
Assembly, of which he was a member, to assure the electors of Paris
that all was well, appearances notwithstanding, since Necker was
more firmly in the saddle than ever. He did not know that at the
very moment in which he was speaking so confidently, the
oft-dismissed and oft-recalled M. Necker had just been dismissed
yet again by the hostile cabal about the Queen. Privilege wanted
conclusive measures, and conclusive measures it would have -
conclusive to itself.
And at the same time yet another philanthropist, also a doctor, one
Jean-Paul Mara, of Italian extraction - better known as Marat, the
gallicized form of name he adopted - a man of letters, too, who had
spent some years in England, and there published several works on
sociology, was writing:
"Have a care! Consider what would be the fatal effect of a seditious
movement. If you should have the misfortune to give way to that, you
will be treated as people in revolt, and blood will flow."
Andre-Louis was in the gardens of the Palais Royal, that place of
shops and puppet-shows, of circus and cafes, of gaming houses and
brothels, that universal rendezvous, on that Sunday morning when
the news of Necker's dismissal spread, carrying with it dismay and
fury. Into Necker's dismissal the people read the triumph of the
party hostile to themselves. It sounded the knell of all hope of
redress of their wrongs.
He beheld a slight young man with a pock-marked face, redeemed
from utter ugliness by a pair of magnificent eyes, leap to a table
outside the Caf‚ de Foy, a drawn sword in his hand, crying, "To
arms!" And then upon the silence of astonishment that cry imposed,
this young man poured a flood of inflammatory eloquence, delivered
in a voice marred at moments by a stutter. He told the people that
the Germans on the Champ de Mars would enter Paris that night to
butcher the inhabitants. "Let us mount a cockade!" he cried, and
tore a leaf from a tree to serve his purpose - the green cockade of
hope.
Enthusiasm swept the crowd, a motley crowd made up of men and women
of every class, from vagabond to nobleman, from harlot to lady of
fashion. Trees were despoiled of their leaves, and the green
cockade was flaunted from almost every head.
"You are caught between two fires," the incendiary's stuttering
voice raved on. "Between the Germans on the Champ de Mars and the
Swiss in the Bastille. To arms, then! To arms!"
Excitement boiled up and over. From a neighbouring waxworks show
came the bust of Necker, and presently a bust of that comedian the
Duke of Orleans, who had a party and who was as ready as any other
of the budding opportunists of those days to take advantage of the
moment for his own aggrandizement. The bust of Necker was draped
with crepe.
Andre-Louis looked on, and grew afraid. Marat's pamphlet had
impressed him. It had expressed what himself he had expressed more
than half a year ago to the mob at Rennes. This crowd, he felt
must be restrained. That hot-headed, irresponsible stutterer would
have the town in a blaze by night unless something were done. The
young man, a causeless advocate of the Palais named Camille
Desmoulins, later to become famous, leapt down from his table still
waving his sword, still shouting, "To arms! Follow me!"
Andre-Louis advanced to occupy the improvised rostrum, which the
stutterer had just vacated, to make an effort at counteracting that
inflammatory performance. He thrust through the crowd, and came
suddenly face to face with a tall man beautifully dressed, whose
handsome countenance was sternly set, whose great sombre eyes
mouldered as if with suppressed anger.
Thus face to face, each looking into the eyes of the other, they
stood for a long moment, the jostling crowd streaming past them,
unheeded. Then Andre-Louis laughed.
"That fellow, too, has a very dangerous gift of eloquence, M. le
Marquis," he said. "In fact there are a number of such in France
to-day. They grow from the soil, which you and yours have irrigated
with the blood of the martyrs of liberty. Soon it may be your blood
instead. The soil is parched, and thirsty for it."
"Gallows-bird!" he was answered. "The police will do your affair
for you. I shall tell the, Lieutenant-General that you are to be
found in Paris."
"My God, man!" cried Andre-Louis, "will you never get sense? Will
you talk like that of Lieutenant-Generals when Paris itself is
likely to tumble about your ears or take fire under your feet?
Raise your voice, M. le Marquis. Denounce me here, to these. You
will make a hero of me in such an hour as this. Or shall I denounce
you? I think I will. I think it is high time you received your
wages. Hi! You others, listen to me! Let me present you to... "
A rush of men hurtled against him, swept him along with them, do
what he would, separating him from M. de La Tour d'Azyr, so oddly
met. He sought to breast that human torrent; the Marquis, caught
in an eddy of it, remained where he had been, and Andre-Louis' last
glimpse of him was of a man smiling with tight lips, an ugly smile.
Meanwhile the gardens were emptying in the wake of that stuttering
firebrand who had mounted the green cockade. The human torrent
poured out into the Rue de Richelieu, and Andre-Louis perforce must
suffer himself to be borne along by it, at least as far as the Rue
du Hasard. There he sidled out of it, and having no wish to be
crushed to death or to take further part in the madness that was
afoot, he slipped down the street, and so got home to the deserted
academy. For there were no pupils to-day, and even M. des Amis,
like Andre-Louis, had gone out to seek for news of what was
happening at Versailles.
This was no normal state of things at the Academy of Bertrand des
Amis. Whatever else in Paris might have been at a standstill lately,
the fencing academy had flourished as never hitherto. Usually both
the master and his assistant were busy from morning until dusk, and
already Andre-Louis was being paid now by the lessons that he gave,
the master allowing him one half of the fee in each case for himself,
an arrangement which the assistant found profitable. On Sundays the
academy made half-holiday; but on this Sunday such had been the
state of suspense and ferment in the city that no one having
appeared by eleven o'clock both des Amis and Andre-Louis had gone
out. Little they thought as they lightly took leave of each other
- they were very good friends by now - that they were never to
meet again in this world.
Bloodshed there was that day in Paris. On the Place Vendome a
detachment of dragoons awaited the crowd out of which Andre-Louis
had slipped. The horsemen swept down upon the mob, dispersed it,
smashed the waxen effigy of M. Necker, and killed one man on the
spot - an unfortunate French Guard who stood his ground. That was
a beginning. As a consequence Besenval brought up his Swiss from
the Champ de Mars and marshalled them in battle order on the Champs
Elysees with four pieces of artillery. His dragoons he stationed
in the Place Louis XV. That evening an enormous crowd, streaming
along the Champs Elysees and the Tuileries Gardens, considered with
eyes of alarm that warlike preparation. Some insults were cast
upon those foreign mercenaries and some stones were flung. Besenval,
losing his head, or acting under orders, sent for his dragoons and
ordered them to disperse the crowd, But that crowd was too dense to
be dispersed in this fashion; so dense that it was impossible for
the horsemen to move without crushing some one. There were several
crushed, and as a consequence when the dragoons, led by the Prince
de Lambesc, advanced into the Tuileries Gardens, the outraged crowd
met them with a fusillade of stones and bottles. Lambesc gave the
order to fire. There was a stampede. Pouring forth from the
Tuileries through the city went those indignant people with their
story of German cavalry trampling upon women and children, and
uttering now in grimmest earnest the call to arms, raised at noon
by Desmoulins in the Palais Royal.
The victims were taken up and borne thence, and amongst them was
Bertrand des Amis, himself - like all who lived by the sword - an
ardent upholder of the noblesse, trampled to death under hooves of
foreign horsemen launched by the noblesse and led by a nobleman.
To Andre-Louis, waiting that evening on the second floor of No. 13
Rue du Hasard for the return of his friend and master, four men of
the people brought that broken body of one of the earliest victims
of the Revolution that was now launched in earnest.
CHAPTER III
PRESIDENT LE CHAPELIER
The ferment of Paris which, during the two following days, resembled
an armed camp rather than a city, delayed the burial of Bertrand
des Amis until the Wednesday of that eventful week. Amid events
that were shaking a nation to its foundations the death of a
fencing-master passed almost unnoticed even among his pupils, most
of whom did not come to the academy during the two days that his
body lay there. Some few, however, did come, and these conveyed the
news to others, with the result that the master was followed to Pere
Lachaise by a score of young men at the head of whom as chief mourner
walked Andre-Louis.
There were no relatives to be advised so far as Andre-Louis was
aware, although within a week of M. des Amis' death a sister turned
up from Passy to claim his heritage. This was considerable, for the
master had prospered and saved money, most of which was invested in
the Compagnie des Eaux and the National Debt. Andre-Louis consigned
her to the lawyers, and saw her no more.
The death of des Amis left him with so profound a sense of loneliness
and desolation that he had no thought or care for the sudden access
of fortune which it automatically procured him. To the master's
sister might fall such wealth as he had amassed, but Andre-Louis
succeeded to the mine itself from which that wealth had been
extracted, the fencing-school in which by now he was himself so well
established as an instructor that its numerous pupils looked to him
to carry it forward successfully as its chief. And never was there
a season in which fencing-academies knew such prosperity as in these
troubled days, when every man was sharpening his sword and schooling
himself in the uses of it.
It was not until a couple of weeks later that Andre-Louis realized
what had really happened to him, and he found himself at the same
time an exhausted man, for during that fortnight he had been doing
the work of two. If he had not hit upon the happy expedient of
pairing-off his more advanced pupils to fence with each other,
himself standing by to criticize, correct and otherwise instruct,
he must have found the task utterly beyond his strength. Even so,
it was necessary for him to fence some six hours daily, and every
day he brought arrears of lassitude from yesterday until he was in
danger of succumbing under the increasing burden of fatigue. In
the end he took an assistant to deal with beginners, who gave the
hardest work. He found him readily enough by good fortune in one
of his own pupils named Le Duc. As the summer advanced, and the
concourse of pupils steadily increased, it became necessary for him
to take yet another assistant - an able young instructor named
Galoche - and another room on the floor above.
They were strenuous days for Andre-Louis, more strenuous than he
had ever known, even when he had been at work to build up the Binet
Company; but it follows that they were days of extraordinary
prosperity. He comments regretfully upon the fact that Bertrand des
Amis should have died by ill-chance on the very eve of so profitable
a vogue of sword-play.
The arms of the Academie du Roi, to which Andre-Louis had no title,
still continued to be displayed outside his door. He had overcome
the difficulty in a manner worthy of Scaramouche. He left the
escutcheon and the legend "Academie de Bertrand des Amis, Maitre en
fait d'Armes des Academies du Roi," appending to it the further
legend: "Conducted by Andre-Louis."
With little time now in which to go abroad it was from his pupils
and the newspapers - of which a flood had risen in Paris with the
establishment of the freedom of the Press - that he learnt of the
revolutionary processes around him, following upon, as a measure
of anticlimax, the fall of the Bastille. That had happened whilst
M. des Amis lay dead, on the day before they buried him, and was
indeed the chief reason of the delay in his burial. It was an
event that had its inspiration in that ill-considered charge of
Prince Lambesc in which the fencing-master had been killed.
The outraged people had besieged the electors in the Hotel de Ville,
demanding arms with which to defend their lives from these foreign
murderers hired by despotism. And in the end the electors had
consented to give them arms, or, rather - for arms it had none to
give - to permit them to arm themselves. Also it had given them a
cockade, of red and blue, the colours of Paris. Because these
colours were also those of the liveries of the Duke of Orleans,
white was added to them - the white of the ancient standard of
France - and thus was the tricolour born. Further, a permanent
committee of electors was appointed to watch over public order.
Thus empowered the people went to work with such good effect that
within thirty-six hours sixty thousand pikes had been forged. At
nine o'clock on Tuesday morning thirty thousand men were before the
Invalides. By eleven o'clock they had ravished it of its store of
arms amounting to some thirty thousand muskets, whilst others had
seized the Arsenal and possessed themse1ves of powder.
Thus they prepared to resist the attack that from seven points was
to be launched that evening upon the city. But Paris did not wait
for the attack. It took the initiative. Mad with enthusiasm it
conceived the insane project of taking that terrible menacing
fortress, the Bastille, and, what is more, it succeeded, as you
know, before five o'clock that night, aided in the enterprise by
the French Guards with cannon.
The news of it, borne to Versailles by Lambesc in flight with his
dragoons before the vast armed force that had sprouted from the
paving-stones of Paris, gave the Court pause. The people were in
possession of the guns captured from the Bastille. They were
erecting barricades in the streets, and mounting these guns upon
them. The attack had been too long delayed. It must be abandoned
since now it could lead only to fruitless slaughter that must
further shake the already sorely shaken prestige of Royalty.
And so the Court, growing momentarily wise again under the spur of
fear, preferred to temporize. Necker should be brought back yet
once again, the three orders should sit united as the National
Assembly demanded. It was the completest surrender of force to
force, the only argument. The King went alone to inform the
National Assembly of that eleventh-hour resolve, to the great
comfort of its members, who viewed with pain and alarm the dreadful
state of things in Paris. "No force but the force of reason and
argument" was their watchword, and it was so to continue for two
years yet, with a patience and fortitude in the face of ceaseless
provocation to which insufficient justice has been done.
As the King was leaving the Assembly, a woman, embracing his knees,
gave tongue to what might well be the question of all France:
"Ah, sire, are you really sincere? Are you sure they will not
make you change your mind?"
Yet no such question was asked when a couple of days later the King,
alone and unguarded save by the representatives of the Nation, came
to Paris to complete the peacemaking, the surrender of Privilege.
The Court was filled with terror by the adventure. Were they not
the "enemy," these mutinous Parisians? And should a King go thus
among his enemies? If he shared some of that fear, as the gloom of
him might lead us to suppose, he must have found it idle. What if
two hundred thousand men under arms - men without uniforms and with
the most extraordinary motley of weapons ever seen - awaited him?
They awaited him as a guard of honour.
Mayor Bailly at the barrier presented him with the keys of the city.
"These are the same keys that were presented to Henri IV. He had
reconquered his people. Now the people have reconquered their King."
At the Hotel de Ville Mayor Bailly offered him the new cockade, the
tricoloured symbol of constitutional France, and when he had given
his royal confirmation to the formation of the Garde Bourgeoise and
to the appointments of Bailly and Lafayette, he departed again for
Versailles amid the shouts of "Vive le Roi!" from his loyal people.
And now you see Privilege - before the cannon's mouth, as it were
- submitting at last, where had they submitted sooner they might
have saved oceans of blood - chiefly their own. They come, nobles
and clergy, to join the National Assembly, to labour with it upon
this constitution that is to regenerate France. But the reunion
is a mockery - as much a mockery as that of the Archbishop of Paris
singing the Te Deum for the fall of the Bastille - most grotesque
and incredible of all these grotesque and incredible events. All
that has happened to the National Assembly is that it has introduced
five or six hundred enemies to hamper and hinder its deliberations.
But all this is an oft-told tale, to be read in detail elsewhere.
I give you here just so much of it as I have found in Andre-Louis'
own writings, almost in his own words, reflecting the changes that
were operated in his mind. Silent now, he came fully to believe
in those things in which he had not believed when earlier he had
preached them.
Meanwhile together with the change in his fortune had come a change
in his position towards the law, a change brought about by the
other changes wrought around him. No longer need he hide himself.
Who in these days would prefer against him the grotesque charge of
sedition for what he had done in Brittany? What court would dare
to send him to the gallows for having said in advance what all
France was saying now? As for that other possible charge of murder,
who should concern himself with the death of the miserable Binet
killed by him - if, indeed, he had killed him, as he hoped - in
self-defence.
And so one fine day in early August, Andre-Louis gave himself a
holiday from the academy, which was now working smoothly under his
assistants, hired a chaise and drove out to Versailles to the Caf‚
d'Amaury, which he knew for the meeting-place of the Club Breton,
the seed from which was to spring that Society of the Friends of
the Constitution better known as the Jacobins. He went to seek
Le Chapelier, who had been one of the founders of the club, a man
of great prominence now, president of the Assembly in this important
season when it was deliberating upon the Declaration of the Rights
of Man.
Le Chapelier's importance was reflected in the sudden servility of
the shirt-sleeved, white-aproned waiter of whom Andre-Louis inquired
for the representative.
M. Le Chapelier was above-stairs with friends. The waiter desired
to serve the gentleman, but hesitated to break in upon the assembly
in which M. le Depute found himself.
Andre-Louis gave him a piece of silver to encourage him to make the
attempt. Then he sat down at a marble-topped table by the window
looking out over the wide tree-encircled square. There, in that
common-room of the caf‚, deserted at this hour of mid-afternoon, the
great man came to him. Less than a year ago he had yielded precedence
to Andre-Louis in a matter of delicate leadership; to-day he stood
on the heights, one of the great leaders of the Nation in travail,
and Andre-Louis was deep down in the shadows of the general mass.
The thought was in the minds of both as they scanned each other,
each noting in the other the marked change that a few months had
wrought. In Le Chapelier, Andre-Louis observed certain heightened
refinements of dress that went with certain subtler refinements of
countenance. He was thinner than of old, his face was pale and
there was a weariness in the eyes that considered his visitor
through a gold-rimmed spy-glass. In Andre-Louis those jaded but
quick-moving eyes of the Breton deputy noted changes even more
marked. The almost constant swordmanship of these last months had
given Andre-Louis a grace of movement, a poise, and a curious,
indefinable air of dignity, of command. He seemed taller by virtue
of this, and he was dressed with an elegance which if quiet was
none the less rich. He wore a small silver-hilted sword, and wore
it as if used to it, and his black hair that Le Chapelier had never
seen other than fluttering lank about his bony cheeks was glossy
now and gathered into a club. Almost he had the air of a
petit-maitre.
In both, however, the changes were purely superficial, as each was
soon to reveal to the other. Le Chapelier was ever the same direct
and downright Breton, abrupt of manner and of speech. He stood
smiling a moment in mingled surprise and pleasure; then opened wide
his arms. They embraced under the awe-stricken gaze of the waiter,
who at once effaced himself.
"Andre-Louis, my friend! Whence do you drop?"
"We drop from above. I come from below to survey at close quarters
one who is on the heights."
"On the heights! But that you willed it so, it is yourself might
now be standing in my place."
"I have a poor head for heights, and I find the atmosphere too
rarefied. Indeed, you look none too well on it yourself, Isaac.
You are pale."
"The Assembly was in session all last night. That is all. These
damned Privileged multiply our difficulties. They will do so until
we decree their abolition."
They sat down. "Abolition! You contemplate so much? Not that you
surprise me. You have always been an extremist."
"I contemplate it that I may save them. I seek to abolish them
officially, so as to save them from abolition of another kind at
the hands of a people they exasperate."
"I see. And the King?"
"The King is the incarnation of the Nation. We shall deliver him
together with the Nation from the bondage of Privilege. Our
constitution will accomplish it. You agree?"
Andre-Louis shrugged. "Does it matter? I am a dreamer in politics,
not a man of action. Until lately I have been very moderate; more
moderate than you think. But now almost I am a republican. I have
been watching, and I have perceived that this King is - just nothing,
a puppet who dances according to the hand that pulls the string."
"This King, you say? What other king is possible? You are surely
not of those who weave dreams about Orleans? He has a sort of
party, a following largely recruited by the popular hatred of the
Queen and the known fact that she hates him. There are some who
have thought of making him regent, some even more; Robespierre is
of the number."
"Who?" asked Andre-Louis, to whom the name was unknown.
"Robespierre - a preposterous little lawyer who represents Arras,
a shabby, clumsy, timid dullard, who will make speeches through
his nose to which nobody listens - an ultra-royalist whom the
royalists and the Orleanists are using for their own ends. He
has pertinacity, and he insists upon being heard. He may be
listened to some day. But that he, or the others, will ever make
anything of Orleans... pish! Orleans himself may desire it, but.
the man is a eunuch in crime; he would, but he can't. The phrase
is Mirabeau's."
He broke off to demand Andre-Louis' news of himself.
"You did not treat me as a friend when you wrote to me," he
complained. "You gave me no clue to your whereabouts; you
represented yourself as on the verge of destitution and withheld
from me the means to come to your assistance. I have been troubled
in mind about you, Andre. Yet to judge by your appearance I might
have spared myself that. You seem prosperous, assured. Tell me
of it."
Andre-Louis told him frankly all that there was to tell. "Do you
know that you are an amazement to me?" said the deputy. "From the
robe to the buskin, and now from the buskin to the sword! What
will be the end of you, I wonder?"
"The gallows, probably."
"Fish! Be serious. Why not the toga of the senator in senatorial
France? It might be yours now if you had willed it so."
"The surest way to the gallows of all," laughed Andre-Louis.
At the moment Le Chapelier manifested impatience. I wonder did the
phrase cross his mind that day four years later when himself he rode
in the death-cart to the Greve.
"We are sixty-six Breton deputies in the Assembly. Should a vacancy
occur, will you act as suppleant? A word from me together with the
influence of your name in Rennes and Nantes, and the thing is done."
Andre-Louis laughed outright. "Do you know, Isaac, that I never
meet you but you seek to thrust me into politics?"
"Because you have a gift for politics. You were born for politics."
"Ah, yes - Scaramouche in real life. I've played it on the stage.
Let that suffice. Tell me, Isaac, what news of my old friend, La
Tour d'Azyr?"
"He is here in Versailles, damn him - a thorn in the flesh of
the Assembly. They've burnt his chateau at La Tour d'Azyr.
Unfortunately he wasn't in it at the time. The flames haven't even
singed his insolence. He dreams that when this philosophic
aberration is at an end, there will be serfs to rebuild it for him."
"So there has been trouble in Brittany?" Andre-Louis had become
suddenly grave, his thoughts swinging to Gavrillac.
"An abundance of it, and elsewhere too. Can you wonder? These
delays at such a time, with famine in the land? Chateaux have been
going up in smoke during the last fortnight. The peasants took
their cue from the Parisians, and treated every castle as a Bastille.
Order is being restored, there as here, and they are quieter now."
"What of Gavrillac? Do you know?"
"I believe all to be well. M. de Kercadiou was not a Marquis de La
Tour d'Azyr. He was in sympathy with his people. It is not likely
that they would injure Gavrillac. But don't you correspond with
your godfather?"
"In the circumstances - no. What you tell me would make it now more
difficult than ever, for he must account me one of those who helped
to light the torch that has set fire to so much belonging to his
class. Ascertain for me that all is well, and let me know."
"I will, at once."
At parting, when Andre-Louis was on the point of stepping into his
cabriolet to return to Paris, he sought information on another
matter.
"Do you happen to know if M. de La Tour d'Azyr has married?" he
asked.
"I don't; which really means that he hasn't. One would have heard
of it in the case of that exalted Privileged."
"To be sure." Andre-Louis spoke indifferently. "Au revoir, Isaac!
You'll come and see me - 13 Rue du Hasard. Come soon."
"As soon and as often as my duties will allow. They keep me chained
here at present."
"Poor slave of duty with your gospel of liberty!"
"True! And because of that I will come. I have a duty to Brittany:
to make Omnes Omnibus one of her representatives in the National
Assembly."
"That is a duty you will oblige me by neglecting," laughed
Andre-Louis, and drove away.
CHAPTER IV
AT MEUDON
Later in the week he received a visit from Le Chapelier just before
noon.
"I have news for you, Andre. Your godfather is at Meudon. He
arrived there two days ago. Had you heard?"
"But no. How should I hear? Why is he at Meudon?" He was conscious
of a faint excitement, which he could hardly have explained.
"I don't know. There have been fresh disturbances in Brittany. It
may be due to that."
"And so he has come for shelter to his brother?" asked Andre-Louis.
"To his brother's house, yes; but not to his brother. Where do you
live at all, Andre? Do you never hear any of the news? Etienne de
Gavrillac emigrated years ago. He was of the household of M.
d'Artois, and he crossed the frontier with him. By now, no doubt,
he is in Germany with him, conspiring against France. For that is
what the emigres are doing. That Austrian woman at the Tuileries
will end by destroying the monarchy."
"Yes, yes," said Andre-Louis impatiently. Politics interested him
not at all this morning. "But about Gavrillac?"
"Why, haven't I told you that Gavrillac is at Meudon, installed in
the house his brother has left? Dieu de Dieu! Don't I speak French
or don't you understand the language? I believe that Rabouillet,
his intendant, is in charge of Gavrillac. I have brought you the
news the moment I received it. I thought you would probably wish to
go out to Meudon."
"Of course. I will go at once - that is, as soon as I can. I can't
to-day, nor yet to-morrow. I am too busy here." He waved a hand
towards the inner room, whence proceeded the click-click of blades,
the quick moving of feet, and the voice of the instructor, Le Duc.
"Well, well, that is your own affair. You are busy. I leave you now.
Let us dine this evening at the Caf‚ de Foy. Kersain will be of the
party."
"A moment!" Andre-Louis' voice arrested him on the threshold. "Is
Mlle. de Kercadiou with her uncle?"
"How the devil should I know? Go and find out."
He was gone, and Andre-Louis stood there a moment deep in thought.
Then he turned and went back to resume with his pupil, the Vicomte
de Villeniort, the interrupted exposition of the demi-contre of
Danet, illustrating with a small-sword the advantages to be derived
from its adoption.
Thereafter he fenced with the Vicomte, who was perhaps the ablest
of his pupils at the time, and all the while his thoughts were on
the heights of Meudon, his mind casting up the lessons he had to
give that afternoon and on the morrow, and wondering which of these
he might postpone without deranging the academy. When having touched
the Vicomte three times in succession, he paused and wrenched himself
back to the present, it was to marvel at the precision to be gained
by purely mechanical action. Without bestowing a thought upon what
he was doing, his wrist and arm and knees had automatically performed
their work, like the accurate fighting engine into which constant
practice for a year and more had combined them.
Not until Sunday was Andre-Louis able to satisfy a wish which the
impatience of the intervening days had converted into a yearning.
Dressed with more than ordinary care, his head elegantly coiffed
- by one of those hairdressers to the nobility of whom so