Edmond Dantes Part 21

"Indeed!" was the bland rejoinder; "and has a manifesto of this decision been issued to the people?"

"It has; and it instantly called forth a counter manifesto from the electoral committee of the Twelfth Arrondiss.e.m.e.nt, expressing very natural astonishment that, at the same time the opposition abandoned the banquet, they had not abandoned their seats in the Chamber, and inviting them so to do at once."

"And the Ministry?" anxiously asked M. Thiers.

"Will to-morrow be impeached, Monsieur!"

"Ah! indeed! indeed!" cried the smart little aspirant, gleefully rubbing his hands.

At that moment General Lamoriciere, the brother-in-law of Thiers, who owed so much to the house of Orleans, hastily approached.

"I come straight from the Tuileries," he said, with considerable excitement. "General Jacqueminot has just issued an order of the day, as commander-in-chief of the National Guard, appealing to them as the const.i.tutional protectors of the Throne to take no part in the banquet.

Orders have, also, been issued for the rappel to be beaten at dawn, in the Quartier St. Honore, the scene of the contemplated procession. But it's all folly to rely on the National Guard. They are of the people.

Only the Munic.i.p.al Guard and the troops of the Line can be relied on in the civil conflict, which is sure to come to-morrow."

"And the Ministers, what do they?" asked Thiers.

"Oh! they are not idle," replied the soldier. "The bastilles are armed, and those of Montrouge and Aubervilliers are provisioned. The horse-artillery at Vincennes are ready, on the instant, to gallop into the capital. Seventy additional pieces of ordnance are now entering the barrieres. The Munic.i.p.al Guard are supplied with ball-cartridges. The troops concentrated at sunrise to-morrow will not be less than one hundred thousand strong. With these men in the forts and faithful, the city can be starved in three days, National Guard and all, if rebellious. Now is the crisis in which to test the remarkable admission of M. Duchatel, in May, '45, that the bastilles of Paris were designed to 'fortify order.' We shall see, we shall see!"

"And the Marshal Duke of Islay--where is he?" quietly asked Marrast, with a significant shrug and smile.

At this mention of his bitter foe, a frown lowered on the fine face of Lamoriciere, as he briefly and sternly replied:

"With the King, Monsieur--General Bugeaud is with the King. But they mistake, Monsieur. Eugene Cavaignac is the man for this emergency.

Bugeaud is a soldier--a mere soldier--Cavaignac is a statesman--a Napoleon! Paris will discriminate between the two one day, and that shortly."

And with an abrupt military salute the conqueror of Algeria walked away, followed by his little brother-in-law, who seemed yet shorter and more insignificant at the side of his towering and graceful form. At the same moment, Ledru Rollin entered in great agitation, and, having glanced hastily around, as if in search of some one in the a.s.semblage, advanced straight to the journalist and grasped his hand.

"By heavens, Armand, I think the hour has arrived!"

"Whence do you come?" was the quick question.

"From the Boulevards, where I left Flocon, Louis Blanc and M. Dantes, with the people. I tell you, Armand, the people are ripe--ripe! The Ministerial ordinances prohibiting the banquet have kindled a flame wherever they have gone. The pitiful manifesto of the opposition and the counter manifesto of the Twelfth Arrondiss.e.m.e.nt have only served to fan this flame into fury. It has been our care to restrain and direct, not to excite. It is dark and cold without, Armand; the winter wind howls dismally along the streets, the sleet freezes as it falls and the furious blast almost extinguishes the torches by which, at the corners and at the cafes, the different manifestoes of the day are being read to the eager throngs, on whose faces, in the flare of the blood-red light, can be perceived the fury of their hearts. The people, at length, are ripe! To-morrow all Paris will be in arms!"

While Ledru Rollin was thus speaking, Louis Blanc entered and quietly approached, courteously saluting his acquaintances on his way, and stopping to exchange a few words with Madame Dantes, who inquired with considerable anxiety for her husband.

"I have this moment left him, Madame," said Louis Blanc. "Be a.s.sured, he is safe and well. Ah! how glorious to be an object of solicitude to one like you!" he added, with a smile.

The lady smiled also, and offered an appropriate jest in reply to the gallantry of the distinguished author, as he moved on to join his friends.

"The Ministry provokes its fate!" he said, in a low tone, as he approached. "'Whom the G.o.ds would destroy, they first make mad.' These men suffered seventy reform banquets all over France. The seventy-first one they prohibit, and that, too, by the exhumation of an old despotic edict of 1790. This is exactly what we would have. It was the first, not the last banquet they should have suppressed. Barrot was right to-day, in the Chamber, when he said that had this manifestation been suffered the people would have become tranquil."

"Tranquil, indeed!" cried Ledru Rollin. "That's exactly what we have apprehended! No--no--it is too late! This Reform Banquet was, at first, but an insignificant thing. In it we now recognize the commencement of a revolution. The various announcements and postponements of this banquet have caused an agitation among the ma.s.ses favorable to our wishes, and the threats and obstinacy of the Ministry have completed the work. The hopes, fears, doubts and disappointments attending this affair have put the mind of all Paris in a ferment, and excited pa.s.sions of which we may take immediate advantage."

"Aye!" cried Louis Blanc, "we may now do what I have always wished and counseled--we, the Communists, may now take advantage of a movement, in the origin or inception of which we had no hand."

"True, most true!" observed Marrast; "this is the work of the Dynastics--Thiers, Barrot and the rest--the commencement of a reform under the law which we design to make a revolution paramount to all law."

"They begin to fear already that they have gone too far, those discreet men!" said Louis Blanc, smiling bitterly. "Did you observe how they shuffled to-night at M. Barrot's, and finally resolved to abandon the banquet, but, as a sop to the people, pledged themselves to impeach the Ministry?"

"Ah! ha! ha!" laughed Ledru Rollin; "just as if their abandonment of the banquet is to keep the people away from it to-morrow, any more than the Ministerial ordinances! Why, not one man in ten thousand knows of the existence of these manifestoes! But the faubourgs have been promised a holiday for a fortnight past, and they don't intend to be put off again."

"Whether the Dynastics designed or wished to be compromised in this affair," remarked Marrast, "they certainly are committed now, and it is too late for them to get out of the movement. Indeed, I view it as nothing less than a union of all the oppositions against the Crown--aye, against the Crown, and for a republic! We comprehend this--they don't.

They have not, like us, waited seventeen years for a signal for revolution;--and now, before G.o.d, I believe the hour is at hand! This is no accidental insurrection of the 5th and 6th of June, '32--no outbreak at a funeral--no riot of operatives--no unmeaning revolt, as in '39. It is a reform, with the first names in France as its advocates and supporters, which we will make a revolution if we can secure the National Guard."

"The National Guard is secured already," said Louis Blanc. "Are they not of the people? At least twenty thousand of the National Guard are Republicans. Of the remaining forty thousand, nearly all are well disposed or neutral in feeling. Have I studied the National Guard for twenty years in vain, and have all the measures of the Communists to secure them, when the crisis came on, proved utterly ineffectual? On the National Guard we may rely. The Munic.i.p.al Guard are picked men, and well paid to support the Throne--they will fight even better than the Line.

With the Line and the National Guard the people must seek to fraternize from the beginning--with the other troops they have solely to fight--but, after all, general facts and principles only can be laid down. Circ.u.mstances utterly beyond human control must direct and govern, and vary and determine results when the period of action arrives; and arrive it may at any hour of the day or night. At this moment Paris sleeps on a volcano, the fires of which have long been gathering through many a fair and sunny day! G.o.d only knows when the volcano will burst; but, when the hour comes, let the people be prepared!"

As these enthusiastic words were uttered, the dark eye of the speaker flashed and his lip quivered. The silver clock on the mantel, beside which the conspirators stood, struck the first quarter after two. The night was waning, but the festivity seemed rather to increase than diminish within the salons of the magnificent mansion, while the storm howled even more drearily without, and the rain, at intervals, in heavy blasts, beat even more fiercely against the northern cas.e.m.e.nts.

As Louis Blanc ceased speaking, M. Flocon entered the salon, and, as if by some preconcerted arrangement, at once sought his political friends.

"What of the night, watchman?" cried Ledru Rollin, as the editor of "La Reforme" approached. "The latest news! for 'That of an hour's age doth hiss the speaker,' as the English Shakespeare says. The news! good or bad!"

"As I entered," said Flocon, "the house trembled with the jar of a train of heavy ordnance, attended by tumbrels and artillery caissons, and escorted by a regiment of horse, which rolled along the pavement of the Champs Elysees."

"Good!" answered Marrast, with enthusiasm.

"All night," continued Flocon, eagerly, "through darkness and storm, whole regiments of infantry have thronged the line of boulevards which stretch from the Tuileries to Vincennes, and each soldier bears upon his knapsack, in addition to all his arms, an axe to demolish barricades.

The garrisons of the arrondiss.e.m.e.nts of Paris are already seventy thousand strong; and the troops of the Line are concentrating around the Palais Bourbon and the Chamber of Deputies."

"Excellent--most excellent!" joyfully exclaimed Louis Blanc. "The affront will not be wanting! But where is M. Dantes?"

"He is still with the chiefs of the faubourgs and the committees of the Free-masons and workmen, in the Rue Lepelletier, issuing his last instructions for the morrow. Messieurs, that man is a magician! His zeal in the good cause puts the boldest of us all to the blush. By most indefatigable energy and indomitable perseverance, he has brought about a systematic, almost scientific organization and fraternity, through various modes of rapid intercommunication between the innumerable cla.s.ses of operatives of every description throughout the whole capital and its faubourgs, so that, within six hours, he can have in military array an armed ma.s.s of one hundred thousand blouses upon the boulevards.

The workshops alone, he tells me, can furnish fifty thousand. The rapidity with which he conveys intelligence through this immense army and their utter subservience to his will and subordination to his orders are all so wonderful that it is impossible to determine which is most so. To control a Parisian populace has. .h.i.therto been deemed a chimera.

With M. Dantes it is an existing reality. Not an army in Europe is so obedient or so prompt as his army of workmen. The secret is this--they know him to be their friend. All over Paris are to be seen his workshops, savings banks, hospitals and houses of industry and reform, and, in the suburbs, his phalansteries and his model farms. That he has the command of boundless wealth is certain; but whose it is, or whence it comes, no one can divine; and never did man make use of boundless wealth to attain his ends more wisely than he does! Why, I am told that the pens of half the litterateurs and feuilletonists of Paris have for years past been guided by his will and compensated from his purse to accomplish his purposes. 'The Mysteries of Paris' and 'The Wandering Jew' are but two of the triumphs of his policy. And his system of philanthropy seems not bounded by France, but to embrace all Europe. The Swiss Protestant and the Italian patriot have each felt his effective sympathy as well as the French workman; and in the same manner as with the operatives so has he obtained influence and weight with the National Guard, and to such an extent that of the sixty thousand one-half would obey his orders with greater alacrity than those of Jacqueminot himself.

I tell you, Messieurs, he is a magician!"

"Hush! hush!" cried Marrast; "he is entering now!"

"He pauses and looks around him!" said Louis Blanc.

"He looks for us; I will go to him!" remarked Flocon.

"He looks for his wife," replied Louis Blanc. "There, he catches her eye. See how eagerly she flies to him!"

"That is the finest pair in Paris," remarked the journalist.

"And the most devoted," added Ledru Rollin. "They have been man and wife for some time, it is said, and any one would take them for lovers at this moment."

"Have they children?" asked Flocon.

"No; but M. Dantes has by a former wife a son and daughter, who rival in good looks the celebrated children of our friend Victor Hugo,"

returned Louis Blanc.

"I met Arago, Lamartine, Sue, Chateaubriand and some other celebrities at his mansion in the Rue du Helder one night, recently," continued Marrast, "and I thought I never saw a house arranged with such perfect taste. The salons, library, picture-gallery, cabinet of natural history, conservatory, and laboratory were superb--everything, in short, was exquisite."

"And then one is always sure to meet at Madame Dantes' soirees," added Louis Blanc, "exactly the persons who, of all others, he wishes to see, and whom he would meet nowhere else, poets, painters, authors, orators, statesmen and artists of every description--in fine, every man or woman, whether native or foreigner, distinguished for anything, is certain to be met with at M. Dantes' house."