There was a flush on his face and a sparkle in the eyes that looked pensively before him what time he gnawed the feathered end of his quill. In his ears still rang the acclamations that had greeted his brilliant speech in the Assembly that day. He was of the party of the Mountain — as was but natural in a protege of the Seagreen Robespierre — a party more famed for its directness of purpose than elegance of expression, and in its ranks there was room and to spare for such orators as he. The season was March of ‘93 — a season marked by the deadly feud raging ‘twixt the Girondins and the Mountain, and in that battle of tongues La Boulaye was covering himself with glory and doing credit to his patron, the Incorruptible. He was of a rhetoric not inferior to Vergniaud’s — that most eloquent Girondon — and of a quickness of wit and honesty of aim unrivalled in the whole body of the Convention, and with these gifts he harassed to no little purpose those smooth-tongued legislators of the Gironde, whom Dumouriez called the Jesuits of the Revolution. His popularity with the men of the Mountain and with the masses of Paris was growing daily, and the crushing reply he had that day delivered to the charges preferred by Vergniaud was likely to increase his fame.
Well, therefore, might he sit with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes chewing the butt of his pen and smiling to himself at the memory of the enthusiasm of which he had been the centre a half-hour ago. Here, indeed, was something that a man might live for, something that a man might take pride in, and something that might console a man for a woman’s treachery. What, indeed, could woman’s love give him that might compare with this? Was it not more glorious far to make himself the admired, the revered, the very idol of those stern men, than the beloved of a simpering girl? The latter any coxcomb with a well-cut coat might encompass, but the former achievement was a man’s work.
And yet, for all that he reasoned thus speciously and philosophically, there was a moment when his brow grew clouded and his eyes lost their sparkle. He was thinking of that night in the inn at Boisvert, when he had knelt beside her and she had lied to him. He was thinking of the happiness, that for a few brief hours had been his, until he discovered how basely she had deceived him, and for all the full-flavour of his present elation it seemed to him that in that other happiness which he now affected to despise by contrast, there had dwelt a greater, a more contenting sweetness.
Would she come to Paris? He had asked himself that question every day of the twenty that were spent since his return. And in the meantime the Vicomte d’Ombreval lay in the prison of the Luxembourg awaiting trial. That he had not yet been arraigned he had to thank the efforts of La Boulaye. The young Deputy had informed Robespierre that for reasons of his own he wished the ci-devant Vicomte, to be kept in prison some little time, and the Incorruptible, peering at him over his horn-rimmed spectacles, had shrugged his shoulders and answered:
“But certainly, cher Caron, since it is your wish. He will be safe in the Luxembourg.”
He had pressed his protege for a reason, but La Boulaye had evaded the question, promising to enlighten him later.
Since then Caron had waited, and now it was more than time that Mademoiselle made some sign. Or was it that neither Ombreval’s craven entreaties nor his own short message had affected her? Was she wholly heartless and likely to prove as faithless to the Vicomte in his hour of need as she had proved to him?
With a toss of the head he dismissed her from his thoughts, and dipping his quill, he began to write.
From the street came the dull roll of beaten drums and the rhythmical fall of marching feet. But the sound was too common in revolutionary Paris to arrest attention, and he wrote on, heeding it as little as he did the gruff voice of a pastry-cook crying his wares, the shriller call of a milkman, or the occasional rumblings of passing vehicles. But of a sudden one of those rumblings ceased abruptly at his door. He heard the rattle of hoofs and the grind of the wheel against the pavement, and looking up, he glanced across at the ormolu timepiece on his overmantel. It was not yet four o’clock.
Wondering whether the visitor might be for him or for the tenant of the floor above, he sat listening until his door opened and his official — the euphemism of “servant” in the revolutionary lexicon — came to announce that a woman was below, asking to see him.
Now for all that he believed himself to have become above emotions where Mademoiselle de Bellecour was concerned, he felt his pulses quicken at the very thought that this might be she at last.
“What manner of woman, Brutus?” he asked.
“A pretty woman, Citizen,” answered Brutus, with a grin. “It is the Citoyenne Deshaix.”
La Boulaye made an impatient gesture.
“Fool, why did you not say so,” he cried sharply.
“Fool, you did not ask me,” answered the servant, with that touching, fraternal frankness adopted by all true patriots. He was a thin, under-sized man of perhaps thirty years of age, and dressed in black, with a decency — under La Boulaye’s suasion — that was rather at variance with his extreme democracy. His real name was Ferdinand, but, following a fashion prevailing among the ultra-republicans, he had renamed himself after the famous Roman patriot.
La Boulaye toyed a moment with his pen, a frown darkening his brow. Then:
“Admit her,” he sighed wearily.
And presently she came, a pretty woman, as Brutus had declared, very fair, and with the innocent eyes of a baby. She was small of stature, and by the egregious height of her plume-crowned head-dress it would seem as if she sought by art to add to the inches she had received from Nature. For the rest she wore a pink petticoat, very extravagantly beflounced, and a pink corsage cut extravagantly low. In one hand she carried a fan — hardly as a weapon against heat, seeing that the winter was not yet out — in the other a huge bunch of early roses.
“Te voile!” was her greeting, merrily — roguishly — delivered, and if the Revolution had done nothing else for her, it had, at least, enabled her to address La Boulaye by the “Thou” of intimacy which the new vocabulary prescribed.
La Boulaye rose, laid aside his pen, and politely, if coolly, returned her greeting and set a chair for her.
“You are,” said he, “a very harbinger of Spring, Citoyenne, with your flowers and your ravishing toilette.”
“Ah! I please you, then, for once,” said she without the least embarrassment. “Tell me — how do you find me?” And, laughing, she turned about that he might admire her from all points of view.
He looked at her gravely for a moment, so gravely that the laughter began to fade from her eyes.
“I find you charming, Citoyenne,” he answered at last. “You remind me of Diana.”
“Compliments?” quoth she, her eyebrows going up and her eyes beaming with surprise and delight. “Compliments from La Boulaye! But surely it is the end of the world. Tell me, mon ami,” she begged, greedily angling for more, “in what do I remind you of the sylvan goddess?”
“In the scantiness of your raiment, Citoyenne,” he answered acidly. “It sorts better with Arcadia than with Paris.”
Her eyebrows came down, her cheeks flushed with resentment and discomfiture. To cover this she flung her roses among the papers of his writing-table, and dropping into a chair she fanned herself vigorously.
“Citoyenne, you relieve my anxieties,” said he. “I feared that you stood in danger of freezing.”
“To freeze is no more than one might expect in your company,” she answered, stifling her anger.
He made no reply. He moved to the window, and stood drumming absently on the panes. He was inured to these invasions on the part of Cecile Deshaix and to the bold, unwomanly advances that repelled him. To-day his patience with her was even shorter than its wont, haply because when his official had announced a woman he had for a moment permitted himself to think that it might be Suzanne. The silence grew awkward, and at last he broke it.
“The Citizen Robespierre is well?” he asked, without turning.
“Yes,” said she, and for all that t
here was chagrin to spare in the glance with which she admired the back of his straight and shapely figure, she contrived to render her voice airily indifferent. “We were at the play last night.”
“Ah!” he murmured politely. “And was Talma in veine?”
“More brilliant than ever,” answered she.
“He is a great actor, Citoyenne.”
A shade of annoyance crossed her face.
“Why do you always address me as Citoyenne?” she asked, with some testiness.
He turned at last and looked at her a moment.
“We live in a censorious world, Citoyenne,” he answered gravely.
She tossed her head with an exclamation of impatience.
“We live in a free world, Citizen. Freedom is our motto. Is it for nothing that we are Republicans?”
“Freedom of action begets freedom of words,” said he, “and freedom of words leads to freedom of criticism — and that is a thing to which no wise woman will expose herself, no matter under what regime we live. You would be well-advised, Citoyenne, in thinking of that when you come here.”
“But you never come to us, Caron,” she returned, in a voice of mild complaint. “You have not been once to Duplay’s since your return from Belgium. And you seem different, too, since your journey to the army.” She rose now and approached him. “What is it, cher Caron?” she asked, her voice a very caress of seductiveness, her eyes looking up into his. “Is something troubling you?”
“Troubling me?” he echoed, musingly. “No. But then I am a busy man, Citoyenne.”
A wave of red seemed to sweep across her face, and her heel beat the parquet floor.
“If you call me Citoyenne again I shall strike you,” she threatened him.
He looked down at her, and she had the feeling that behind the inscrutable mask of his countenance he was laughing at her.
“It would sort well with your audacity,” he made answer coolly.
She felt in that moment that she hated him, and it was a miracle that she did not do as she had threatened, for with all her meek looks she owned a very fiercest of tempers. She drew back a pace or two, and her glance fell.
“I shall not trouble you in future,” she vowed. “I shall not come here again.”
He bowed slightly.
“I applaud the wisdom of your resolve — Cit — Cecile. The world, as I have said, is censorious.”
She looked at him a second, then she laughed, but it was laughter of the lips only; the eyes looked steely as daggers and as capable of mischief.
“Adieu, Citizen La Boulaye,” she murmured mockingly.
“Au revoir, Citoyenne Deshaix,” he replied urbanely.
“Ough!” she gasped, and with that sudden exclamation of pent-up wrath, she whisked about and went rustling to the door.
“Citoyenne,” he called after her, “you are forgetting your flowers.”
She halted, and seemed for a second to hesitate, looking at him oddly. Then she came back to the table and took up her roses. Again she looked at him, and let the bouquet fall back among the papers.
“I brought them for you, Caron,” she said, “and I’ll leave them with you. We can at least be friends, can we not?”
“Friends? But were we ever aught else?” he asked.
“Alas! no,” she said to herself, whilst aloud she murmured: “I thought that you would like them. Your room has such a gloomy, sombre air, and a few roses seem to diffuse some of the sunshine on which they have been nurtured.”
“You are too good, Cecile” he answered, and, for all his coldness, he was touched a little by this thoughtfulness.
She looked up at the altered tone, and the expression of her face seemed to soften. But before she could make answer there was a rap at the door. It opened, and Brutus stood in the doorway.
“Citizen,” he announced, in his sour tones, “there is another woman below asking to see you.”
La Boulaye started, as again his thoughts flew to Suzanne, and a dull flush crept into his pale cheeks and mounted to his brow. Cecile’s eyes were upon him, her glance hardening as she observed these signs. Bitter enough had it been to endure his coldness whilst she had imagined that it sprang from the austerity of his nature and the absorption of his soul in matters political. But now that it seemed she might have cause to temper her bitterness with jealousy her soul was turned to gall.
“What manner of woman, Brutus?” he asked after a second’s pause.
“Tall, pale, straight, black hair, black eyes, silk gown — and savours the aristocrat a league off,” answered Brutus.
“Your official seems gifted with a very comprehensive eye,” said Cecile tartly.
But La Boulaye paid no heed to her. The flush deepened on his face, then faded again, and he grew oddly pale. His official’s inventory of her characteristics fitted Mademoiselle de Bellecour in every detail.
“Admit her, Brutus,” he commanded, and his voice had a husky sound. Then, turning to Cecile, “You will give me leave?” he said, cloaking rude dismissal in its politest form.
“Assuredly,” she answered bitterly, making shift to go. “Your visitor is no doubt political?” she half-asked half-asserted.
But he made no answer as he held the door for her, and bowed low as she passed out. With a white face and lips tightly compressed she went, and half-way on the stairs she met a handsome woman, tall and of queenly bearing, who ascended. Her toilette lacked the elaborateness of Cecile’s, but she carried it with an air which not all the modistes of France could have succeeded in imparting to the Citoyenne Deshaix.
So dead was Robespierre’s niece to every sense of fitness that, having drawn aside to let the woman pass, she stood gazing after her until she disappeared round the angle of the landing. Then, in a fury, she swept from the house and into her waiting coach, and as she drove back to Duplay’s in the Rue St. Honore she was weeping bitterly in her jealous rage.
CHAPTER XVII. LA BOULAYE’S PROMISE
La Boulaye remained a moment by the door after Cecile’s departure; then he moved away towards his desk, striving to master the tumultuous throbbing of his pulses. His eye alighted on Cecile’s roses, and, scarce knowing why he did it, he picked them up and flung them behind a bookcase. It was but done when again the door opened, and his official ushered in Mademoiselle de Bellecour.
Oddly enough, at sight of her, La Boulaye grew master of himself. He received her with a polite and very formal bow — a trifle over-graceful for a patriot.
“So, Citoyenne,” said he, and so cold was his voice that it seemed even tinged with mockery, “you are come at last.”
“I could not come before, Monsieur,” she answered, trembling. “They would not let me.” Then, after a second’s pause: “Am I too late, Monsieur?” she asked.
“No,” he answered her. “The ci-devant Vicomte d’Ombreval still lies awaiting trial. Will you not be seated?”
“I do not look to remain long.”
“As you please, Citoyenne. I have delayed Ombreval’s trial thinking that if not my letter why then his might bring you, sooner or later, to his rescue. It may interest you to hear,” he continued with an unmistakable note of irony, “that that brave but hapless gentleman is much fretted at his incarceration.”
A shadow crossed her face, which remained otherwise calm and composed — the beautiful, intrepid face that had more than once been La Boulaye’s undoing.
“I am glad that you have waited, Monsieur. In so doing you need have no doubts concerning me. M. d’Ombreval is my betrothed, and the troth I plighted him binds me in honour to succour him now.”
La Boulaye looked steadily at her for a moment.
“Upon my soul,” he said at last, a note of ineffable sarcasm vibrating in his voice, “I shall never cease to admire the effrontery of your class, and the coolness with which, in despite of dishonourable action, you make high-sounding talk of honour and the things to which it binds you. I have a dim recollection, Citoyenne, of something uncommonly like yo
ur troth which you plighted me one night at Boisvert. But so little did that promise bind you that when I sought to enforce your fulfilment of it you broke my head and left me to die in the road.”
His words shook her out of her calm. Her bosom rose and fell, her eyes seemed to grow haggard and her hands were clasped convulsively.
“Monsieur,” she answered, “when I gave you my promise that night I had every intention of keeping it. I swear it, as Heaven is my witness.”
“Your actions more than proved it,” he said dryly.
“Be generous, Monsieur,” she begged. “It was my mother prevailed upon me to alter my determination. She urged that I should be dishonoured if I did not.”
“That word again!” he cried. “What part it plays in the life of the noblesse. All that it suits you to do, you do because honour bids you, all to which you have bound yourselves, but which is distasteful, you discover that honour forbids, and that you would be dishonoured did you persist. But I am interrupting you, Citoyenne. Did your mother advance any arguments?”
“The strongest argument of all lay here, in my heart, Monsieur,” she answered him, roused and hardened by his scorn. “You must see that it had become with me a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. Upon reflection I discovered that I was bound to two men, and it behoved me to keep the more binding of my pledges.”
“Which you discovered to be your word to Ombreval,” he said, and his voice grew unconsciously softer, for he began to realise the quandary in which she had found herself.
She inclined her head assentingly.
“To him I had given the earlier promise, and then, again, he was of my own class whilst you—”
“Spare me, Citoyenne,” he cried. “I know what you would say. I am of the rabble, and of little more account in a matter of honour than a beast of the field. It is thus that you reason, and yet, mon Dieu! I had thought that ere now such notions had died out with you, and that, stupid enough though your class has proved itself, it would at least have displayed the intelligence to perceive that its day is ended, its sun set.” He turned and paced the apartment as he spoke. “The Lilies of France have been shorn from their stems, they have withered by the roadside, and they have been trampled into the dust by the men of the new regime, and yet it seems that you others of the noblesse have not learnt your lesson. You have not yet discovered that here in France the man who was born a tiller of the soil is still a man, and, by his manhood, the equal of a king, who, after all, can be no more than a man, and is sometimes less. Enfin!” he ended brusquely. “This is not the National Assembly, and I talk to ears untutored in such things. Let us deal rather with the business upon which you are come.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 78