Tom Burke Of "Ours" Volume I Part 50

While thus I felt a growing interest for these bold but simple children of the forest, my anxiety for my own fate grew hourly greater. No answer was ever returned to my letter to the minister, nor any notice taken of it whatever; and though each day I heard of some one or other being examined before the "Tribunal Special" or the Prfet de Police, I seemed as much forgotten as though the grave enclosed me. My dread of anything like acquaintance or intimacy with the other prisoners prevented my learning much of what went forward each day, and from which, from some source or other, they seemed well informed. A chance phrase, an odd word now and then dropped, would tell me of some new discovery by the police or some recent confession by a captured conspirator; but of what the crime consisted, and who were they princ.i.p.ally implicated, I remained totally ignorant.

It was well known that both Moreau and Pichegru were confined in a part of the tower that opened upon the terrace, but neither suffered to communicate with each other, nor even to appear at large like the other prisoners. It was rumored, too, that each day one or both were submitted to long and searching examinations, which, it was said, had hitherto elicited nothing from either save total denial of any complicity whatever, and complete ignorance of the plots and machinations of others.

So much we could learn from the "Moniteur," which reached us each day; and while a.s.suming a tone of open reprobation regarding the _Chouans_, spoke in terms the most cautious and reserved respecting the two generals, as if probing the public mind how far their implication in treason might be credited, and with what faith the proofs of their partic.i.p.ation might be received.

At last the train seemed laid; the explosion was all prepared, and nothing wanting but the spark to ignite it. A letter from Moreau to the Consul appeared in the columns of the Government paper; in which, after recapitulating in terms most suitable the services he had rendered the Republic while in command of the army of the Rhine,--the confidence the Convention had always placed in him, the frequent occasions which had presented themselves to him of gratifying ambitious views (had he conceived such he adverted, in brief but touching terms, to his conduct on the 18th Brumaire in seconding the adventurous step taken by Bonaparte himself, and attributed the neglect his devotion had met with, rather to the interference and plotting of his enemies than to any estrangement on the part of the Consul.) Throughout the whole of the epistle there reigned a tone of reverence for the authority of Bonaparte most striking and remarkable; there was nothing like an approach to the equality which might well be supposed to subsist between two great generals,--albeit the one was at the height of power, and the other sunk in the very depth of misfortune. On the contrary, the letter was nothing more than an appeal to old souvenirs and former services to one who possessed the power, if he had the will, to save him; it breathed throughout the sentiments of one who demands a favor, and that favor his life and honor, at the hands of him who had already const.i.tuted himself the fountain of both.

While such was the position of Moreau,--a position which resulted in his downfall,--chance informed as of the different ground occupied by his companion in misfortune, the Greneral Pichegru.

About three days after the publication of Moreau's letter, we were walking as usual in the garden of the Temple, when a huissier came up, and beckoning to two of the prisoners, desired them to follow him. Such was the ordinary course by which one or more were daily summoned before the tribunal for examination, and we took no notice of what had become a matter of every-day occurrence, and went on conversing as before about the news of the morning. Several hours elapsed without the others having returned; and at last we began to feel anxious about their fate, when one of them made his appearance, his heightened color and agitated expression betokening that something more than common had occurred.

"We were examined with Pichegru," said the prisoner,--who was an old quartermaster in the army of the Upper Rhine,--as he sat down upon a bench and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.

"Indeed!" said the tall colonel with the bald head; "before Monsieur Ral, I suppose?"

"Yes, before Ral. My poor old general: there he was, as I used to see him formerly, with his hand on the breast of his uniform, his pale, thin features as calm as ever, until at last when roused his eyes flashed fire and his lip trembled before he broke out into such a torrent of attack--"

"Attack, say you?" interrupted the Abb,; "a bold course, my faith! in one who has need of all his powers for defence."

"It was ever his tactique to be the a.s.sailant," said a bronzed, soldierlike fellow, in a patched uniform; "he did so in Holland."

"He chose a better enemy to practise it with then, than he has done now," resumed the quartermaster, sadly.

"Whom do you mean?" cried half a dozen voices together.

..."The Consul."

"The Consul! Bonaparte! Attack him!" repeated one after the other, in accents of surprise and horror. "Poor fellow, he is deranged."

"So I almost thought myself, as I heard him," replied the quartermaster; "for, after submitting with patience to a long and tiresome examination, he suddenly, as if endurance could go no farther, cried out,--'a.s.sez!'

The prfet started, and Thuriot, who sat beside him, looked up terrified, while Pichegru went on: 'So the whole of this negotiation about Cayenne is then a falsehood? Your promise to make me governor there, if I consented to quit France forever, was a trick to extort confession or a bribe to silence? Be it so. Now, come what will, I 'll not leave France; and, more still, I 'll declare everything before the judges openly at the tribunal. The people shall know, all Europe shall know, who is my accuser, and what he is. Yes! your Consul himself treated with the Bourbons in Italy; the negotiations were begun, continued, carried on, and only broken off by his own excessive demands.

Ay, I can prove it: his very return from Egypt through the whole English fleet,--that happy chance, as you were wont to term it,--was a secret treaty with Pitt for the restoration of the exiled family on his reaching Paris. These facts--and facts you shall confess them--are in my power to prove; and prove them I will in the face of all France.'"

"Poor Pichegru!" said the abbe, contemptuously. "What an ill-tempered child a great general may be, after all! Did he think the hour would ever come for him to realize such a dream?"

"What do you mean?" cried two or three together.

"The Corsican never forgets a vendetta," was the cool reply, as he walked away.

"True," said the colonel, thoughtfully; "quite true."

To me these words were riddles. My only feeling towards Pichegru was one of contempt and pity, that in any depth of misfortune he could resort to such an unworthy attack upon him who still was the idol of all my thoughts; and for this, the conqueror of Holland stood now as low in my esteem as the most vulgar of the rabble gang that each day saw sentenced to the galleys.

CHAPTER x.x.xV. THE REIGN OF TERROR UNDER THE CONSULATE.

On the morning that followed the scene I have spoken of came the news of the arrest, the trial, and the death of the Duc d'Enghien. That terrible tragedy--which yet weighs, and will weigh forever, on the memory of the period--reached us in our prison with all the terrible force of circ.u.mstances to make it a day of sorrow and mourning. Such details as the journals afforded but little satisfied our curiosity. The youth, the virtues, the bravery of the prince had made him the idol of his party; and while his death was lamented for his own sake, his followers read in it the determination of the Government to stop at nothing in their resolve to exterminate that party. A gloomy silence sat upon the Chouans, who no longer moved about as before, regardless of their confinement to a prison. Their chief remained apart: he neither spoke to any one nor seemed to notice those who pa.s.sed; he looked stunned and stupefied, rather than deeply affected, and when he lifted his eyes, their expression was cold and wandering. Even the other prisoners, who rarely gave way to feeling of any kind, seemed at first overwhelmed by these sad tidings; and doubtless many who before had trusted to rank and influence for their safety, saw how little dependence could be placed on such aid when the blow had fallen upon a "Cond" himself.

I, who neither knew the political movements of the time nor the sources of the danger the Consul's party antic.i.p.ated, could only mourn over the unhappy fate of a gallant prince whose daring had cost him his life, and never dreamed for a moment of calling in question the honor or good faith of Bonaparte in an affair of which I could have easily believed him totally ignorant. Such, indeed, was the representation of the "Moniteur;" and whatever doubts the hints about me might have excited, were speedily allayed by the accounts I read of the Consul's indignation at the haste and informality of the trial, and his deep anger at the catastrophe that followed it.

"Savary will be disgraced for this," said I to the Abb, who leaned over my shoulder while I read the paper; "Bonaparte can never forgive him."

"You mistake, my dear sir," replied he, with a strange expression I could not fathom. "The Consul is the most forgiving of men; he never bears malice."

"But here was a dreadful event,--a crime, perhaps."

"Only a fault," resumed he. "By the bye, Colonel, this order about closing the barriers will be excessively inconvenient to the good people of Paris."

"I have been thinking over that, too," said an overdressed, affected-looking youth, whose perfumed curls and studied costume formed a strange contrast with the habits of his fellow-prisoners. "If they shut up the Barrire de de l'toile, what are they to do for Longchamps?"

"_Parbleu!_ that did not strike me," interposed the colonel, tapping his forehead with his finger. "I 'll wager a crown that they haven't thought of that themselves."

"The Champs llyss are surely long enough for such tomfoolery," said the quartermaster, in a gruff, savage tone.

"Not one half," was the imperturbable reply of the youth; "and Longchamps promised admirably this year. I had ordered a _calche_,--light blue, with gilt circles on the wheels, and a bronze carving to the pole,--like an antique chariot."

"_Parbleu!_ you are more likely to take your next airing in a simpler conveyance," said the quartermaster with a grin.

"I was to have driven la Comtesse de Beauflers to the Bois de Boulogne."

"You must content yourself with the Comte de la Marque" (the prison name of the executioner) "instead," growled out the other.

I turned away, no less disgusted at the frivolity that could only see in the dreadful event that took place the temporary interruption to a vain and silly promenade, than at the savage coa.r.s.eness that could revel in the pain common misfortune gave him the privilege of inflicting.

Such, however, was the prevalent tone of thinking and speaking there.

The death of friends,--the ruin of those best loved and cared for; the danger that each day came nearer to themselves,--were all casualties to which habit, recklessness of life, and libertinism had accustomed them; while about former modes of life,--the pleasures of the capital, its delights and dissipation,--they conversed with the most eager interest.

It is thus, while in some natures misfortunes will call forth into exercise the best and n.o.blest traits that in happier circ.u.mstances had never found the necessity that gave them birth; so, in others, adversity depresses and demoralizes those weaker temperaments that seemed formed to sail safely in the calm waters, but never destined to brave the stormy seas of life.

With such a.s.sociates I could have neither sympathy nor friendship; and my life pa.s.sed on in one unbroken and dreary monotony, day succeeding day and night following night, till my thoughts, turned ever inward, had worn as it were a track for themselves in which the world without and its people had no share whatever. Not only was my application to the minister unanswered, but I was never examined before any of the tribunals; and sometimes the dreadful fate of those prisoners who in the Reign of Terror pa.s.sed their whole life in prison, their crimes, their very existence forgotten, would cross my mind, and strike me with terror unspeakable.

If in the sombre atmosphere of the Temple a sad and cheerless monotony prevailed, events followed fast on each other in that world from which its gloomy walls excluded us. Every hour was some new feature of the dark conspiracy brought to light; the vigilance of Monsieur Ral slept not night or day; and all that bribery, terror, or torture could effect, was put into requisition to obtain full and precise information as to every one concerned in the plot.

It was a bright, fresh morning in April, the sixth of the month,--the day is graven on my memory,--when, on walking forth into the garden, I was surprised to see the prisoners standing in a circle round a tree on which a placard was fastened, with glances eagerly turned towards the paper or bent sadly to the ground. They stood around, sad and silent. To my question of what had occurred, a significant look at the tree was the only reply I received, while in the faces of all I perceived that some dreadful news had reached them. Forcing my way with difficulty through the crowd, I at length approached near enough to read the placard, on which in large letters was written,--

"6 Avril. Le Temple.

"Charles Pichegru, ez-Gnral Rpublicain, s'est trangl dans sa prison."

"And did Pichegru, the great conqueror of Holland, die by his own hand?"

said I, as my eye rested on the fatal bulletin.

"Don't you read it, young man?" replied a deep, solemn voice beside me, which I at once knew was that of General George himself, "Can you doubt the accuracy of information supplied by the police?"

The bystanders looked up with a terrified and frightened expression, as if dreading lest the very listening to his words might be construed into an acquiescence in them.

"Trust me, he is dead," continued he. "They who have announced his fate here have a right to be relied on. It now only remains to be seen how he died. These prison maladies have a strange interest for us who live in the infected climate; and, if I mistake not, I see the 'Moniteur', yonder, a full hour before its usual time. See what a blessing, gentlemen, you enjoy in a paternal Government, which in moments of public anxiety can feel for your distress and hasten to alleviate it!"

The tone of sarcasm he spoke in, the measured fall of every word, sank into the hearers' minds, and though they stood mute, they did not even move from the spot.