The Sword of Honor Part 15

"Citizens! my friends, my brothers! I can not find words in which to express the admiration your victory inspires me with. Thanks to your generous efforts, the most formidable rampart of despotism is overthrown! Be a.s.sured, citizens, that your representatives know the significance of the taking of the Bastille. The a.s.sembly has declared that the ministers and the councillors of his Majesty, whatever their rank in the state, are responsible for the present evils and those which may follow. Responsibility shall be demanded of the ministers and all functionaries!"

"Bravo! Long live Desmarais! Long live the a.s.sembly! Long live the Nation! Death to the King! Death to the Queen! Down with the aristocrats!"

"Nothing could be more pleasing to me, citizens," continued Desmarais, "than the choice you have made of Citizen Lebrenn as the spokesman of the sentiments that animate you. Honor to this young and valiant artisan, the son of one of the victims rescued from the Bastille!"

This allocution, p.r.o.nounced by advocate Desmarais with every appearance of great tenderness, moved the people. Tears dimmed the eyes of all. The father of John Lebrenn seized his son in his arms, and Charlotte, unable to restrain her tears, murmured as she cast a look of grat.i.tude toward heaven, "Thanks to you, my G.o.d! My father is his true old n.o.ble self again. He sees the injustice of his opposition to John!"

When the emotion produced by his last words had somewhat subsided, advocate Desmarais resumed: "Adieu till we meet again, citizens, my friends--my brothers! I return to Versailles. The a.s.sembly has despatched three of my colleagues and myself to learn at first hand how it fares with the good people of Paris. When our report is called for, we shall be ready. Long live the Nation!"

With a final farewell gesture to the throng, Desmarais quitted the balcony and re-entered his apartment. In a few moments the column took up its interrupted march, and disappeared. Almost immediately there disgorged itself tumultuously into St. Honore Street a band of men of an aspect strangely contrasting with that of the populace just addressed by Monsieur Desmarais. Some were dressed in rags, others wore a garb less sordid, but nearly all bore on their faces the stamp of vice and crime.

The band was composed of men without occupation; do-nothing workmen; debauched laborers; petty business men ruined by misconduct, become pickpockets, sharpers, infesters of houses of ill fame and other evil resorts; robbers and convicts, a.s.sa.s.sins--a hideous crowd, capable of every crime; an execrable crowd, whom our eternal enemies keep in fee and easily egg on to these saturnalia, for which the people is but too often held culpable; wretches in the hire of the priests, the n.o.bles and the police.

At the head of these bandits marched a man with the face of a brigand, of gigantic stature and herculean frame, and conspicuously well clad.

Once a "cadet," then a gaming-house proprietor, then usher of the Church of St. Medard, Lehiron, for such was the name of the leader of the band, had been expelled from his last employment for the theft of the poor-box. Around his waist a sash of red wool held two horse-pistols and a cutla.s.s that had parted company with its sheath. His coat and the cuffs of his shirt rolled back to the elbow, he gesticulated wildly with his bare hands, which were clotted with blood. At the end of a pike he still bore the head of Monsieur Flesselles, and from time to time, while brandishing the hideous trophy, he would cry out in a stentorian voice:

"Long live the Nation! To the lamp-post with the aristocrats! Death to all the n.o.bles!"

"Death to the enemies of the people! The aristocrats to the lamp-post!"

repeated all the bandits, brandishing their pikes, their sabers, or their guns blackened with powder.

"To the lamp-post with the aristocrats!" also cried the shrill and piercing voice of an urchin who gave his hand to a miserably clad character, the man of the false beard of whom Desmarais had spoken. It was the Jesuit Morlet, and the boy his G.o.d-son, little Rodin. At the moment that the band hove in sight of the lawyer's dwelling, the Jesuit drew close to Lehiron, and spoke a few words to him in a low voice. The latter stopped, signed to his followers for silence and cried at the top of his leathern lungs:

"Death to the bourgeois! Death to the traitors! To the lamp-post with Desmarais!"

Then the band resumed its way; and Abbot Morlet, posted at the head of the troop, made haste to bring it up to the last straggling files of the vanquishers of the Bastille. Then, upon the carriage of the cannon whence she dominated the throng, he beheld the woman with the red handkerchief and the dark robe. In spite of the change which her costume imparted to her features, the Jesuit was stupefied to recognize--Marchioness Aldini!

Barely had he recovered from his surprise when the Marchioness descended from the piece of artillery. As hastily, the Jesuit quitted his companions in order to trace her, and, if possible, clear up the suspicions which in his mind surrounded this one-time Marchioness, now heroine of the people. Little Rodin followed his dear G.o.d-father, and the two, elbowing their way through the people of the quarter, who were seized with surprise and affright at the murderous cries uttered by the sinister band which approached, inquired, as they went, for the beautiful dark woman coiffed in a red handkerchief who had just leaped down from the cannon--having, so the Abbot pretended, a message for her.

Finally a woman haberdasher, drawn to the threshold of her booth, replied to Abbot Morlet's interrogations:

"Yes, the beautiful young woman you seek has entered house No. 17, along with our neighbor John Lebrenn. That is all I can tell you."

"Then the Lebrenn family lives in this street, my dear woman?"

"Certainly. Mother Lebrenn and her family occupy two rooms on the fourth floor of No. 17."

"Thank you for your information, my dear woman," replied the Jesuit, with difficulty concealing the joy that the unexpected discovery caused him. "Many thanks!"

"And so," continued the Abbot, "I recover the traces of that family whom we have lost from sight for over a century. What a lucky chance! Two woodc.o.c.ks in one springe--Marchioness Aldini and the family of Lebrenn.

An enemy spotted, is one-half throttled. Let us train our batteries to suit."

"Dear G.o.d-father," put in little Rodin at that moment, with a determined air, "I am not afraid to look at heads mowed off."

"My child," replied the Jesuit with fatherly pride and happiness, "it is not enough to have no fear; one must actually feel his heart grow lightened when he sees the enemies of our holy mother, the Church of Rome, put to death."

"Dear G.o.d-father, was Monsieur Flesselles, then, an enemy of our holy mother, the Church?"

"My child, the death of Monsieur Flesselles, innocent or guilty, was useful to the good cause."

Meanwhile, Lehiron's band, just then pa.s.sing under the windows of Desmarais's home, continued to shriek, "Death to the enemies of the people! Death to the bourgeois! To the lamp-post with Desmarais!"

The cries had not yet reached the ears of the attorney, who had no sooner withdrawn from the balcony than his daughter, throwing herself into his arms, said to him in a voice broken with sobs of joy:

"Thanks, Oh, thanks, father, for what you have just said!"

"What are you thanking me for now?"

"For the n.o.ble utterances you have just addressed to Monsieur John Lebrenn," replied Charlotte delighted, not noticing the brusque transformation which came over the face of the advocate at her words.

"How! You have the presumption to abuse the necessity I found myself reduced to, in speaking a few words of good will to that laborer in order to save my house from pillage, and perhaps to protect my own life and that of my wife and daughter--you presume to abuse that necessity to oblige me to give my consent to your union with an ironsmith's apprentice? You are an unworthy daughter!"

"Then--your cordial words, your touching protestations, were but lies!"

murmured the young girl, crushed by her father's rough speech. "It was all comedy and imposture!"

"Charlotte," continued Desmarais in a tone of harsh resolve, "cut short this pa.s.sion which is a disgrace to all of us! I swear you shall never see that man again. To-morrow you leave Paris. It is my will."

"Father, my father--I implore you--revoke that sentence--"

"My dear friend," pursued Desmarais, addressing his wife and not heeding his daughter, "I shall delay for twenty-four hours my return to Versailles. Hasten all your preparations for the trip. We shall leave to-morrow morning. I shall take you along, as well as our daughter."

"Pity, father! Do not drive me to despair--"

"You know my will. Nothing can bend it."

"Cursed be this day," cried the young girl with indignation; "cursed be this day when you force me to forget the respect I owe a father. Helas!

it is you, you yourself, father, who just now, this very hour, protested your love for the people, your disdain for the privileges of birth and wealth. And now you declare before me that your protestations were false, that you despise the people, fear them, hate them. The imposture and the lie drive me to rebel."

"Hold your tongue, unworthy minx! Do you not see the window is open, and that your imprudent words can be heard without? Have you resolved to get us all killed?" cried Desmarais, running to the window to close it.

It was just the minute that Lehiron's band was pa.s.sing the house. At the instant that the lawyer took hold of the cas.e.m.e.nt fastening to draw shut the window, over the rail of the balcony, at the height of his own countenance, there appeared the livid head of Flesselles, impaled on its pike. A cry of fear broke from Desmarais, and he recoiled from the sill, clapping his hands before his eyes to shut out the grisly spectacle. The band halted before the attorney's door. Anew the cries burst loose without:

"Long live the Nation!"

"Death to the enemies of the people!"

"To the lamp-post with the aristocrats!--to the lamp-post with Desmarais!"

The clamors seemed to come so pat upon the words of Charlotte, that Madam Desmarais, stricken with affright, threw herself on her knees in an att.i.tude of prayer, clasped her hands, and stammered out an appeal to G.o.d.

"To the lamp-post with Desmarais! Death to the traitor!" shrieked Lehiron's band once more, and pa.s.sed on its way. The cries of "Death!"

faded away in the distance as Lehiron's troop followed in the wake of the conquerors of the Bastille. It was the pack of jackals following the lions.

Desmarais gradually recovered from the state of rigid fright in which he was plunged, and cried out to Charlotte in a voice trembling with repressed rage:

"Unnatural daughter! Parricide! Did you hear the cries of death hurled at your father by those cannibals of Paris, who carry in triumph the head of Flesselles? These men, who perhaps quite soon will have made your father undergo the same torture, are the friends, the brothers of John Lebrenn. Your lover is, like them, an a.s.sa.s.sin. Horror upon all this revolted plebs!"