The Sword of Honor Part 76

"The most of the burghers look with repugnance upon a new Restoration; but for the commercial bourgeoisie, the Restoration, if it will only a.s.sure peace, means a renewal of business," replied Lebrenn.

"Always the same, these bourgeois," muttered Napoleon; "peace, business.

Their mouths can shape no other words. Among them never the shadow of national sentiment! And what is the att.i.tude of the people, the workingmen of your quarter?"

"Some are astonished at your inaction, Sire; others are more severe; they arraign your general policies."

"Have I not always had my hands tied by the Chamber of Deputies, by babblers, lawyers, and rainbow-chasers! They think only of orating, of overwhelming me with their reproaches, instead of aiding me to save the country. They balanced opinions like the Greeks in the lower world, while here the barbarians were at the gates of Paris. They are the wretches!"

"I was at St. Cloud in the days of Brumaire, Sire, when with your grenadiers you drove the Representatives of the people from their seats.

Now, when the safety of the fatherland is at stake, why do you not employ the same measures against the deputies who prevent your saving France?"

"The Five Hundred were Terrorists, malcontents, seditionists, a.s.sa.s.sins," said Napoleon quickly; "they merited death."

"I arrived shortly after the session of the Five Hundred. You ran no danger. No poniard was raised against you. The Five Hundred were no malcontents; they defended the law and the Const.i.tution."

"You are a Jacobin."

"Yes, Sire; ever since '93; and I believe that to-day, as in '93, the Republic single-handed could cope with coalized Europe--especially had the Republic your sword!"

Napoleon's face changed, and he smiled with that inscrutability mingled with grace and good-fellowship which gave him, more than anything else, such influence over the simple-minded. "Ah, ah, Sir Jacobin," he said, "well for you it is that I find out so late what you are. You have no doubt some influence in your quarter; I would have sent you to rot in Vincennes, my new prison of state, at the bottom of a pit!"

Anew the cries from below broke out: "Down with the Bourbons!" "Arms!"

"To the frontiers!" "Long live the Emperor--War to the death against the foreigners!"

"Brave people!" said Napoleon. "They would let themselves still be hewed to pieces for me; and still they bear the weight of imposts, of munitions of war, while my Marshals and all the military chiefs whom I covered with riches betray me. My role is played out. I shall go to America and turn planter, and philosophize on the emptiness of human events! I shall write my campaigns, like Caesar."

"Sire, you forget France. Place your sword at her service; become again General Bonaparte, as you were in the glorious days of Arcola and Lodi--"

"Sir," broke in the Emperor impatiently and with emphasis, "when one has been Emperor of the French, he does not step down. To fall, smitten by the thunderbolt, is not debas.e.m.e.nt. Never shall I consent to become again a simple general."

An aide-de-camp came up and joined the General. "Sire," he said, "Colonel Gourgaud awaits your Majesty's commands."

"Let him harness the six-horse coach and make his way out through the large gate of the Elysian Garden, to draw the attention of the mob about the palace. I shall take the single-horse carriage and leave by the equerries' gate. Hold, I have another order for you."

Napoleon grasped the aide by the arm, addressed him in a low voice, and walked off with him. Soon they both disappeared around the corner of the alley. The night was now black as pitch. Below, the cries of the people ascended again:

"Arms! Arms!"

"To the frontiers!"

"The Emperor, the Emperor! War to the bitter end against the invaders!"

"Your Emperor, O people! is fleeing from you by night," soliloquized John Lebrenn as he paced his weary round on the terrace. "He flees the duties to which your voice would call him. He might have enshrined his name in a new glory, that would have been pure and bright forever. But fate drives him on to terrible retribution--captivity, perhaps death.

And thus will be avenged the coup d'etat of Brumaire, thus his attempts against the liberty of the people. May the same fate fall upon all the monarchs of the world!"

EPILOGUE.

CHAPTER I.

"TO THE BARRICADES!"--1830.

Fifteen years have rolled their course since the second Restoration, accomplished after the Hundred Days. The Bourbon government seems to have set itself the task of making the indignation of the people run over.

Many are the grievances of France against the Bourbons: Provocations, iniquities, barbarisms, the White Terror of 1815;--the provost courts, where the hatred and rancor of the Emigrants sated itself with vengeance;--a.s.sa.s.sination, organized, blessed, and glorified, in the south;--Trestaillon and other defenders of altar and throne slaying their fellow citizens with impunity;--the Chamber of Deputies unattainable, all its members royalists save one;--the billion francs'

indemnity granted to the Emigrants;--the establishment by the Ultramountainists and the Ultraroyalists of the law of sacrilege and the law of primogeniture;--the impieties of the clergy;--the orgies of the mission fathers.

Military and civil conspiracies sprang up, to protest against the Bourbons with the blood of martyrs. The _Carbonarii_, a vast secret society, extended its ramifications throughout all France and preserved the traditions of republicanism. The Chamber of Deputies was dissolved, having been guilty of declaring to Charles X through the organ of its majority, in its address to the crown, that harmony no longer existed between the legislative body and the government. The Chamber having been dissolved, the country in the new elections responded by returning 221 deputies of the opposition which composed the majority of the a.s.sembly.

King Charles X, in place of deferring to this manifestation by the country, imagined that, thanks to the successes of the French arms in Algeria, he could successfully put through a coup d'etat; which he attempted, using Minister Polignac as his instrument, and rendering the ordinances of the 26th of July, 1830, which suppressed the liberties of the nation.

During the fifteen years of the Restoration, John Lebrenn had continued his Breton cloth trade in Paris. Monsieur Desmarais, having gone mad upon the second return of the Bourbons, died in isolation. Marik, Lebrenn's son, had espoused Henory Kerdren, the daughter of a merchant of Vannes, a correspondent of his father's. One son had been born of the marriage. He was now two years old, and had been given the name of one of the heroes of ancient Gaul, Sacrovir.

The 27th of July, the day after the promulgation of the Polignac decrees, at about eleven in the evening, Madam Lebrenn and her daughter-in-law Henory had closed the shop, and had gone up to their mezzanine floor; there, together in their room, they busied themselves with the preparation of lint, in antic.i.p.ation of the insurrection which seemed due on the morrow. Marik Lebrenn and Castillon were loading cartridges. Castillon, now at the ripe old age of sixty-three, was white of hair, but still supple and robust, and still plied his ironsmith's trade. A cradle, in which slept little Sacrovir, the grandson of John Lebrenn, was placed beside Henory. It was a picture of the sweet joys of the family.

"In the presence of the pa.s.sing events, and especially of those that seem to be preparing," observed Madam Lebrenn, the same brave, steadfast Charlotte as of yore, "I feel again that grave and almost solemn emotion which I felt in my girlhood, in the grand days of the Revolution. Those were glorious spectacles!"

"A terrible and glorious time, mother," answered Henory. "Imperishable memories!"

"In the name of a name! We shall fight, Madam Henory!" quoth old Castillon. "These cartridges will not be wasted. Down with Charles X, Polignac, and the whole clique of them! Down with the skull-caps!"

Just then John Lebrenn came up. All rose and ran to meet him. He held out his hand to his wife, and kissed his daughter-in-law Henory on the forehead.

"The delegates of the patriot workingmen of the quarter have not yet come?" he asked.

"No, father," replied Marik.

"What news have you picked up on your travels, my friend?" asked his wife.

"Good, and bad."

"Commence with the bad, father," said Marik.

"The 221 deputies of the opposition lack energy," began his father; "there is indeed a minority of resolute citizens, Mauguin, Labbey of Pompieres, Dupont from the Eure, Audrey of Puyraveau, Daunou, and some others. But the majority seems paralyzed with fear. Thiers is a coward, Casimir Perier a poltroon. These two wretches pretend that royalty must be given time to repent and to return to the paths of legality. They propose opening negotiations with the monarchy."

"Death to Thiers, the petty bourgeois! Death to his accomplices. To the lamp-post with the traitors!" cried Castillon, as he filled a sh.e.l.l.

"The same fear, the same lack of confidence on the part of the bourgeoisie as in 1789," remarked Madam Lebrenn. "To-day, as then, the bourgeoisie is ready to fall at the feet of the King and implore his aid against the revolution."

"What is James Lafitte's att.i.tude?" queried Marik. "Does he show himself a man of resolution in the struggle?"

"His civic courage does not fail him. He remains calm and smiling. His establishment is the rendezvous of the Orleanist party, which is making a lot of stir, but takes no determined stand."

"And Lafayette--is he on the side of the people?" asked Madam Lebrenn in turn.