The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty

by Alexandre Dumas

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  HAPPY FAMILY.

  On the evening of this same day, about five, a scene passed in the thirdand top flat of a dirty old tumbledown house in Juiverie Street which wewould like our readers to behold.

  The interior of the sitting-room denoted poverty, and it was inhabitedby three persons, a man, a woman, and a boy.

  The man looked to be over fifty; he was wearing an old uniform of aFrench Guards sergeant, a habit venerated since these troops sided withthe people in the riots and exchanged shots with the German dragoons.

  He was dealing out playing cards and trying to find an infallible meansof winning; a card by his side, pricked full of pinholes, showed that hewas keeping tally of the runs.

  The woman was four-and-thirty and appeared forty; she wore an old silkdress; her poverty was the more dreadful as she exhibited tokens ofsplendor; her hair was built up in a knot over a brass comb once gilded:and her hands were scrupulously cared for with the nails properlytrimmed in an aristocratic style. The slippers on her feet, overopenwork stockings, had been worked with gold and silver.

  Her face might pass in candlelight for about thirty; but, without paintand powder it looked five years older than reality.

  Its resemblance to Queen Marie Antoinette's was still so marked that onetried to recall it in the dusty clouds thrown up by royal horses aroundthe window of a royal coach.

  The boy was five years of age; his hair curled like a cherub's; hischeeks were round as an apple; he had his mother's diabolical eyes, andthe sensual mouth of his father--in short, the idleness and whims of thepair.

  He wore a faded pearl velvet suit and while munching a hunk of cakesandwiched with preserves, he frayed out the ends of an old tricoloredscarf inside a pearl gray felt hat.

  The family was illuminated by a candle with a large "thief in thegutter," stuck in a bottle for holder, which light fell on the man andleft most of the room in darkness.

  "Mamma," the child broke the silence by saying, as he threw the end ofthe cake on the mattress which served as bed, "I am tired of that kindof cake--faugh! I want a stick of red barley sugar candy."

  "Dear little Toussaint," said the woman. "Do you hear that, Beausire?"

  As the gamester was absorbed in his calculations, she lifted her footwithin snatch of her hand and taking off the slipper, cast it to hisnose.

  "What is the matter?" he demanded, with plain ill-humor.

  "Toussaint wants some candy, being tired of cheap cake."

  "He shall have it to-morrow."

  "I want it to-day--this evening--right now!" yelled the innocent in atearful voice which threatened stormy weather.

  "Toussaint, my boy, I advise you to give us quiet or papa will take youin hand," said the parent.

  The boy yelled again but more from deviltry than from fear.

  "You drunken sot, you just touch my darling, and I will attend to you,"said the mother, stretching out the white hand towards the bully whichher care of the nails made to become a claw at need.

  "Who the deuse wants to touch the imp? you know it is only my style ofspeaking, my dear Oliva, and that though I may dust your skirt now andthen I have always respected the kid's jacket. Tut, tut, come andembrace your poor Beausire who will be rich as a King in a week; come,my little Nicole."

  "When you are rich as a king, it will be another matter: but up to thattime no fooling."

  "But I tell you that it is as safe as if I had a million. You might bekind for a little while. Go and get credit of the baker."

  "A man rolling in millions wants a baker to let him have a loaf ontrust, ha, ha!"

  "I want some red barely sugar," howled the child.

  "Come, you king with the millions, give some sugar sticks to yourprince."

  Beausire started to put his hand to his fob but stopped half way.

  "You know I gave you my last piece yesterday."

  "Then, if you have the money," said the child to the woman whom Beausirecalled indifferently Nicole or Oliva, "give me a penny to buy candy."

  "There are two cents, you naughty boy, and mind you do not fall insliding down the bannisters."

  "Thank you, dear mother," said the boy, capering for joy and holding outhis hand.

  "Come here till I set your hat on and adjust your sash: it must not besaid that Captain Beausire let his son race about the streets indisorder--though it is all the same to him, the heartless fellow! Ishould die of shame!"

  At the risk of whatever the neighbors might say against the heir to theBeausire name, the boy would have dispensed with the hat and band, ofwhich he recognized the use before the other urchins did the freshnessand beauty. But as the arrangement of his dress was a condition of thegift, the young Hector had to yield to it.

  He consoled himself by taunting his father with the coin by thrusting itup under his nose; absorbed in his figuring the parent merely smiled atthe pretty freak.

  Soon they heard his timid step, though quickened by gluttony, descendingthe stairs.

  "Now then, Captain Beausire," snapped the woman after a pause, "yourwits must lift us out of this miserable position, or else I must haverecourse to mine."

  She spoke with a toss of the head as much as to say: "A lady of mylovely face never dies of starvation, never fear!"

  "Just what I am busy about, my little Nicole," responded Beausire.

  "By shuffling the cards?"

  "Did I not tell you that I have found the infallible coup?"

  "At it again, eh? Captain Beausire, I warn you that I am going to huntup my old acquaintances and see if one of them cannot have you shut upin the madhouse. Dear, dear, if Lord Richelieu were not dead, ifCardinal Rohan were not ruined, if Lady Lamotte Valois were not inLondon dodging the sheriff's officers----"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I should find means and not be obliged to share the misery of an oldswashbuckler like this one."

  With a queenly flirt of the hand Oliva _alias_ Nicole Legay,disdainfully indicated the gambler.

  "But I keep telling you that I shall be rich to-morrow," he repeated,himself at any rate convinced.

  "Show me the first gold piece of your million and I shall believe therest."

  "You will see ten gold pieces this evening--the very sum promised me.You can have five to buy a silk dress and a velvet suit for theyoungster: with the balance I will bring you the million I promised."

  "You unhappy fellow, you mean to gamble again?"

  "But I tell you again that I have lit on an infallible sequence."

  "Own brother to the one with which you threw away the sixty thousandlivres from the amount you stole at the Portuguese Ambassador's?"

  "Money got over the devil's back goes under his belly," replied Beausiresententiously. "I always did think that the way I got that cash broughtbad luck."

  "Is this fresh lot coming from an inheritance? have you an uncle who hasdied in the Indies or America and left you the ten louis?"

  "Nicole Legay," rejoined Beausire with a lofty air, "these ten will beearned not only honestly but honorably, for a cause which interests meas well as the rest of the nobility of France."

  "So you are a nobleman, Friend Beausire?" jeered the lady.

  "You may say so: we have it stated so in the birth entry on the registerof St. Paul's, and signed by your servitor, Jean Baptiste Toussaint deBeausire, on the day when I gave my name to our boy----"

  "A handsome present that was," gibed Nicole.

  "And my estate," added the so-called captain emphatically.

  "If kind heaven does not send him something more solid," interposedNicole, shaking her head, "the poor little dear is sure to live on airand die in the poorhouse."

  "Really, Nicole, this is too much to endure--you are never contented."

  "Endure? good gracious, who wants you to endure?" exclaimed the reducedgentlewoman, breaking down the dam to her long-restrained ire: "ThankGod, I am not worried about myself or my little pet, and this very nightI shall go forth and seek my fo
rtune."

  She rose and took three steps towards the door, but he strode in betweenthem and opened his arms to bar the way.

  "You naughty creature, did I not tell you that my fortune----"

  "Go on," said Nicole.

  "Is coming home to-night: though the coup were a mistake--which isimpossible, it would only be five louis lost."

  "There are times when a few pieces of money are a fortune, sir. But youwould not know that, who have squandered a pile of gold as high as thishouse."

  "That proves my merit: I made it at the cards, and if I made some once Ishall make more another time: besides, there is a special providencefor--smart rogues."

  "That is a fine thing to rely on!"

  "Do you not believe in Providence? are you an atheist, Nicole? of theschool of Voltaire who denies all that sort of thing?"

  "Beausire, no matter what I am, you are a fool."

  "Springing from the lower class, as you do, it is not surprising thatyou nourish such notions. I warn you that they do not appertain to mycaste and political opinions."

  "You are a saucebox," returned the beauty of the past.

  "But I have faith. If anyone were to say, 'Beausire, your son who hasgone out to buy a sugar stick, will return with a lump of gold,' Ishould answer: 'Very likely, if it be the will of Allah!' as a Turkishgentleman of my acquaintance says."

  "Beausire, you are an idiot," said Nicole, but she had hardly spoken thewords before young Toussaint's voice was heard on the stairs calling:

  "Oh, papa--mamma!"

  "What is the matter?" cried Nicole, opening the door with true maternalsolicitude. "Come, my darling, come."

  The voice drew near like the ventriloquist doing the trick of the man inthe cellar.

  "I should not be astonished if he had lit on the streak of good luck Ifeel promised," said the gambler.

  The boy rushed into the room, holding a sugarstick in his mouth, huggingunder his left arm a bag of sugarplums, and showing in his right hand agold coin which shone in the candle glimmer like the North Star.

  "Goodness of heaven, what has occurred?" cried Nicole, slamming the doorto.

  She covered his gluey face with kisses--mothers never being disgusted,from their caresses seeming to purify everything.

  "The matter is a genuine louis of gold, worth full value of twenty-fourlivres," said Beausire, skillfully obtaining the piece.

  "Where did you pick that up that I may go for the others, my duck?" heinquired.

  "I never found it, papa: it was give to me," replied the boy. "A kindgentleman give it me."

  Ready as Beausire to ask who this donor was, Nicole was prudent fromexperience on account of Captain Beausire's jealousy. She confinedherself to repeating:

  "A gentleman?"

  "Yes, mamma dear," rejoined the child, crunching the barley-sugarbetween his teeth: "a gentleman who came into the grocer's store where Iwas, and he says: 'God bless me, but, master, do I not behold a younggentleman whose name is De Beausire, whom you have the honor ofattending to at the present time?'"

  Beausire perked up and Nicole shrugged her shoulders.

  "What did the grocer say to that, eh?" demanded the card-sharper.

  "Master Grocer says: 'I don't know whether he is a gentleman or not, buthis name is Beausire,' 'Does he live by here?' went on the gentleman.'Top-floor, next house on the left.' 'Give anything the young masterwants to him--I will foot the bill,' said the gentleman. Then he gave methe money saying: 'There a louis for you, young sir: when you have eatenyour candy, that will buy you more. He put the money in my hand; thegrocer stuck this bag under my arm and I came away awfully glad. Oh,where is my money-piece?"

  Not having seen Beausire's disappearing trick, he began to look allround for the louis.

  "You clumsy little blockhead, you have lost it," said the captain.

  "No, I never!" yelled the child.

  The dispute would have become warm but for the interruption which cameto put an end to it.

  The door opened slowly and a bland voice made these words audible:

  "How do you do, Mistress Nicole? good evening, Captain Beausire! How areyou, little Toussaint?"

  All turned: on the threshold was an elegantly attired man, smiling onthe family group.

  "Oh, here's the gentleman who gave me the candy," cried young Toussaint.

  "Count Cagliostro," exclaimed Beausire and the lady at the same time.

  "That is a winning little boy, and I think you ought to be happy atbeing a parent, Captain Beausire," said the intruder.

  He advanced and with one scrutinizing glance saw that the couple werereduced to the last penny.

  The child was the first to break the silence because he had nothing onhis conscience.

  "Oh, kind sir, I have lost the shining piece," said he.

  Nicole opened her mouth to state the case but she reflected that silencemight lead to a repetition of the godsend and she would inherit it; herexpectation was not erroneous.

  "Lost your louis, have you, my poor boy?" said Cagliostro, "well, hereare two; try not to lose them."

  Pulling out a purse of which the plumpness kindled Beausire's greedyglances, he dropped two coins into Toussaint's little sticky paw.

  "Look, mamma," said he, running to Nicole; "here's one for you and onefor me."

  While the child shared his windfall with his mother, the new-comerremarked the tenacity with which the former-soldier watched his purseand tried to estimate the contents before it was pocketted again. Onseeing it disappear, he sighed.

  "Still glum, captain?" said the visitor.

  "And you, count, always rich?"

  "Pooh! you are one of the finest philosophers I have ever known, as wellat the present as in antiquity, and you are bound to know the axiom towhich man does honor in all ages. 'Riches are not contentment.' I haveknown you to be rich, relatively."

  "That's so: I have owned as much as a hundred thousand francs."

  "It is possible; only when I met you again, you had spent nearly fortythousand of it so as to have but sixty, but that is a round sum for acorporal in the army."

  "What is that to the sums you dispose of?" he sighed.

  "I am only the banker, the trustee, Captain Beausire, and if I wereobliged to settle up I daresay you could play St. Martin and I thebeggar who would be glad to have half your cloak. But, my dear Beausire,do you not remember the circumstances of our last meeting? As I said,just now, you had sixty thousand left of the hundred thousand: were youhappier than now?"

  The ex-corporal heaved a retrospective sigh which might pass for a moan.

  "Would you exchange your present position though you possessed nothingbut one poor louis you 'nicked' from young Toussaint?"

  "My lord!"

  "Do not let us get warm, sir: we quarrelled once and you were obliged togo out and pick up your sword which I threw out of the window. You willremember?" went on the count, seeing that the man made no reply: "it isa good thing to have a memory. I ask you again would you change youractual position, though down to the solitary louis you 'extracted' fromyoung Toussaint"--this time the allegation passed without protest--"forthe precarious scrape from which I relieved you?"

  "No, my lord, you are right--I should not change. At that epoch, alas! Iwas parted from my darling Nicole."

  "To say nothing of being hunted by the police, on account of yourrobbing the Portuguese Embassy. What the mischief has become of thatcase, a villainous one, as I remember it, Captain B.?"

  "It has been dropped, my lord," was the reply.

  "So much the better: though I would not reckon on its not being pickedup again. The police are awful for raking up past grievances, and theruling powers might want to be on good terms with Portugal. However,that apart, in spite of the hard lines to which you are reduced, you arehappy. If you had a thousand louis, your felicity would be complete,eh?"

  Nicole's eyes glittered and her partner's flashed flames.

  "Lord be good to us," cried the latter: "with half I wou
ld buy a lot inthe country and live a rural life on the rest like a country squire!"

  "Like Cincinnatus!"

  "While Nicole would educate the boy."

  "Like Cornelia! Death of my life, Captain Beausire! not only would thisbe exemplary but touching: do you hope to earn as much as that in thepiece of business you have in hand?"

  "What business?" queried the other, starting.

  "That you are carrying on as sergeant of the Guards; for which you areto meet a man, this evening, under the Palais Royal arcades."

  "Oh, my lord," moaned Beausire, turning pale as a corpse and wringinghis hands. "Do not destroy me!"

  "Why, you are going distracted now? Am I the Chief of Police to ruinyou?"

  "There, I told you, you are getting into a pretty pickle," exclaimedNicole. "I know nothing about it, my lord, but whenever he hides anygame from me, I know it is a bad one."

  "But you are wrong, my dear lady, for this is an excellent speculation."

  "Is it not?" cried the gambler. "The count, as a nobleman, understandsthat all the nobility are in this scheme----"

  "For it to succeed. It must be allowed though, that the people areinterested in its failure. If you will believe me, captain--youunderstand that a friend is giving advice--you will take no part in itfor the peers or the people. Better act for yourself."

  "Certainly, for yourself," said Nicole. "Blest if you have not toiledlong enough for others: so that it is high time you looked after NumberOne."

  "You hear the lady, who speaks like a born orator. Bear this in mind,Friend Beausire, all spec's have a good and a bad side, one for thewinners, one for the losers: no affair however good, can benefiteverybody; the whole trouble is to hit on the right side."

  "And you do not think I am there, eh?"

  "Not at all; I would even add, if you are willful--for you know I dabblein telling fortunes--that you will not only risk your honor, and thefortune you seek--but your life. You will most likely be hanged!"

  "They do not hang noblemen," objected Beausire, wiping the perspirationstreaming from his brow.

  "That is so: but to avoid the gallows-tree and have your head cut off,you would have to prove your family-tree; it would take so long that thecourt would lose patience, and string you up for the time being--leavingyour widow to demand compensation if you turned out to have deserveddecapitation. Still you may say that it does not matter, as it is thecrime that casts shame and not the scaffold, to quote a poet. Stillagain, I dare say you are not so attached to your opinions that youwould lay down your life for them; I understand this. Deuse take us, butwe have only one life, as another poet says, not so great as the other,but as truthful."

  "My lord," faltered the ex-guardsman, "I have remarked in my too briefacquaintance with your lordship, that you have a way of speaking ofsome things which would make the hair of a more timid man than mebristle on his head."

  "Hang me if that is my intention," responded Cagliostro; "Besides youare not a timid man."

  "No: yet there are circumstances," began Beausire.

  "I understand; such as when one has the jail for theft behind one andthe gallows for high treason before one--for I suppose they give thatname to the crime of kidnapping the King."

  "My lord," cried Beausire, terrified.

  "Wretch, is it on kidnapping that you build your fortune?" demandedOliva.

  "Oh, he was not wrong to dwell in golden dreams, my dear lady; only, asI have already said, each affair has a dark side and a bright one andBeausire has the misfortune to take the dark one; all he has to do is toshift."

  "If there is time, what must I do?" asked the bully.

  "Suppose one thing," said the gentleman; "that your conspiracy fails.Suppose that the accomplices of the masked man and the one in the browncloak are arrested; we may suppose anything in these times--suppose theyare doomed to death! Suppose--for Augeard and Bezenval have beenacquitted, so that anything unlikely may come round nowadays--supposethat you are one of these accomplices; you have the halter round yourneck, when--say what they like--a man always shows a little of the whitefeather about then----"

  "Do have done, my lord! I entreat you, for I seem to feel the ropethrottling me!"

  "That is not astonishing as I am supposing it is round your neck!Suppose, then, that they say to you: 'Poor old Beausire, this is yourown fault. Not only might you have dodged this Old Bony who clutches youin his claws, but gain a thousand louis to buy the pretty cottage underthe green trees where you long to live with ever-lovely Oliva and merrylittle Toussaint, with the balance of what was partly spent for thepurchase of your homestead. You might live, as you said, like a squire,in high boots in the winter and easy shoes the rest of the year; while,instead of this delicious lookout, you have the Execution-place,planted with two or three one or two-armed trees, of which the highestholds out its ugly branch unto you. Faugh! my poor Captain Beausire,what a hideous prospect!'"

  "But how am I to elude it--how make the thousand to ensure my peace andthat of dear Nicole and little Toussaint?"

  "Your good angel would say: 'Why not apply to the Count of Cagliostro, arich nobleman who is in town for his pleasure and who is weary ofnothing to do. Go to him and tell him----"

  "But I do not know where he lives! I did not even know he is in town; Idid not know he was still alive!" protested Beausire.

  "He lives ever. It is because you would not know these facts that hecomes to you, my dear Beausire, so that you will have no excuse. Youhave merely to say to him: 'Count, I know how fond you are of hearingthe news. I have some fresh for you. The King's brother is conspiringwith Marquis Favras. I speak from full knowledge as I am the right-handman of the marquis. The aim of the plot is to take the King away toPeronne. If your lordship likes to be amused, I will tell him step bystep how the moves are played.' Thereupon the count, who is a generouslord, would reply: 'If you will really do this, Captain Beausire, as alllaborers are worthy of their hire, I put aside twenty-four thousandlivres for a charitable act; but I will balk myself in this whim, andyou shall have them on the day when you come and tell me either that theKing shall be taken off or Marquis Favras captured--in the same way asyou are given these ten louis--not as hand-money or as an advance, or aloan, but as a pure gift."

  Like an actor rehearsing with the "properties," Cagliostro pulled outthe weighty purse, stuck in finger and thumb and with a dexteritybearing witness to his experience in such actions, whipped out just tenpieces, neither more nor less, which Beausire--we must do himjustice--thrust out his hand with alacrity to receive.

  "Excuse me, captain," said the other, gently fencing off the hand, "weare only playing at Supposes."

  "Yes, but through suppositions one arrives at the fact," responded thecardplayer, whose eyes glowed like burning coals.

  "Have we reached this point?"

  Beausire hesitated; let us hasten to say that it was not honor, fidelityto plighted word, or a pricked conscience which caused the wavering. Didour readers know Beausire, they would not want this denial. It was thesimple fear that the count would not keep his word.

  "I see what you are passing through," said the tempter.

  "Ay, my lord, I shrink from betraying the trust a gentleman puts in me,"replied the adventurer. "It is very hard," he seemed to say as he raisedhis eyes heavenward.

  "Nay, it is not that, and this is another proof of the old saw that 'Noman knows himself'," said the count. "You are afraid that I will not payyou the sum stated. The objection is quite natural; but I shall givesecurity."

  "My lord certainly need not."

  "Personal security, Madam Legay."

  "Oh, if the count promises, it is as good as done," said the lady.

  "You see, sir, what one gains by scrupulously keeping one's promises.One day when the lady was in the same quandary as yourself, I mean thepolice were hunting after her, I offered her an asylum in my residence.The lady hesitated, fearing that I was no Joseph--unless so christened.I gave her my word to respect her, and this is true, eh?" />
  "I swear it, on my little Toussaint," said Oliva-Nicole.

  "So you believe that I will pay the sum mentioned on the day when theKing shall have been abducted or Marquis Favras arrested, to say nothingof my serving the running knot strangling him a while ago. For thisaffair, at all events, there shall be no halter or gibbet, for I cannotbind myself any farther. You understand: The man who is born tobe--ahem!"

  "My lord, it is as if the courts had awarded us the money," said thewoman.

  "Well, my beauty," said Cagliostro, putting the ten gold pieces on thetable in a row, "just imbue the captain with this belief of yours."

  He waved his hand for the gambler to confer with his partner. Theirparley lasted only five minutes, but it was most lively. MeanwhileCagliostro looked at the cards and the one by which tally was kept.

  "I know the run," he observed, "it is that invented by John Law whofloated the Mississippi Bubble. I lost a million on it."

  This remark seemed to give fresh activity to the dialogue of Beausireand his light-o-love. At last Beausire was decided; he came forward tooffer his hand to Cagliostro like a horse-dealer about to strike abargain. But the other frowned.

  "Captain, between gentlemen the parole suffices. Give me yours."

  "On the faith of Beausire, it shall be done."

  "That is enough for me," said the other, drawing out a diamond-studdedwatch on which was a portrait of Frederick the Great. "It is now aquarter to nine. At nine precisely you are expected under the RoyalePlace arcades, near Sully House. Take these ten pieces, pocket them, puton your coat and buckle on your sword--and do not keep them waiting."

  "Where am I to see your lordship next?" inquired Beausire, obeying theinstructions, without asking reiteration.

  "In St. Jean's Cemetery, if you please. When we have such deadly mattersto discuss the company of the dead is better than the living. Come whenyou are free; the first to arrive waits for the other. I have now tochat with the lady."

  The captain stood on one foot.

  "Be easy; I did not make bold when she was a single woman; I have themore reason to respect her since she is a mother of a family. Be off,captain."

  Beausire threw a glance at his wife, by courtesy, at all events,tenderly hugged little Toussaint, saluted the patron with respect mixedwith disquiet, and left the house just as Notre Dame clock bell wasstriking the three-quarters after eight.