Ange Pitou (Volume 1)

by Alexandre Dumas

  The mere spectators of this scene jumped upon posts, on window-sills, on every jutting part of a building, in order to gain a better view; and they encouraged by their savage shouts the frightful effervescence of the actors.

  The latter were playing with their victim, as would a troop of tigers with an inoffensive prey.

  They were disputing who should hang Foulon; at last they understood that if they wished to enjoy his agony, it was necessary that their several functions should be agreed upon.

  But for that he would have been torn to pieces.

  Some of them raised up Foulon, who had no longer strength enough to cry out.

  Others, who had taken off his cravat and torn off his coat, placed a rope round his neck.

  And others, who had climbed up the lamp-post, had handed to their companions below the rope which they put round the neck of the ex-minister.

  For a moment they raised Foulon above their heads and showed him thus to the crowd,—a rope twined round his neck, and his hands tied behind him.

  Then, when the crowd had had due time to contemplate the sufferer; when they had clapped their hands sufficiently,—the signal was given, and Foulon, pale and bleeding, was hoisted up to a level with the lantern, amid a hooting which was more terrible even than death.

  All those who, up to that time, had not been able to see anything, then perceived the public enemy raised above the heads of the crowd.

  New shouts were then heard; but these were against the executioners. Were they about to kill Foulon so expeditiously?

  The executioners merely shrugged their shoulders, and pointed to the rope.

  The rope was old; it could be seen to give way, strand by strand. The movements which Foulon made in his desperate agony at length broke the last strand; and Foulon, only half strangled, fell heavily upon the pavement.

  He was only at the preface of his torments; he had only penetrated into the vestibule of death.

  They all rushed towards the sufferer; they were perfectly secure with regard to him. There was no chance of his escaping them; in falling he had broken his leg a little below the knee.

  And yet some imprecations arose, imprecations which were unintelligible and calumniatory. The executioners were accused; they were considered as clumsy and unskilful,—they who, on the contrary, had been so ingenious that they had expressly chosen an old worn-out rope, in the hope that it would break.

  A hope which the event, as has been related, had fully realized.

  They made a knot in the rope, and again fixed it round the neck of the unhappy man, who, half dead, with haggard eyes looked around, endeavoring to discover whether in that city which is called the centre of the civilized universe,—whether one of the bayonets of that king whose minister he had been, and who had a hundred thousand, would not be raised in his defence amid that horde of cannibals.

  But there was nothing there to meet his eyes but hatred, but insult, but death.

  "At least, kill me at once, without making me endure these atrocious torments!" cried the despairing Foulon.

  "Well, now," replied a jeering voice, "why should we abridge your torments? you have made ours last long enough."

  "And besides," said another, "you have not yet had time enough to digest your nettles."

  "Wait, wait a little!" cried a third; "his son-in-law, Berthier, will be brought to him; there is room enough for him on the opposite lamp-post."

  "We shall see what wry faces the father-in-law and son-in-law will make at each other," added another.

  "Finish me; finish me at once!" cried the wretched man.

  During this time, Bailly and Lafayette were begging, supplicating, exclaiming, and endeavoring to get through the crowd; suddenly, Foulon was again hoisted by the rope, which again broke, and their prayers, their supplications, their agony, no less painful than that of the sufferer himself, were lost, confounded, and extinguished amid the universal laugh which accompanied this second fall.

  Bailly and Lafayette, who three days before had been the sovereign arbiters of the will of six hundred thousand Parisians,—a child now would not listen to them; the people even murmured at them; they were in their way; they were interrupting this great spectacle.

  Billot had vainly given them all the aid of his uncommon strength; the powerful athlete had knocked down twenty men, but in order to reach Foulon it would be necessary to knock down fifty, a hundred, two hundred; and his strength is exhausted, and when he pauses to wipe from his brow the perspiration and the blood which is streaming from it, Foulon is raised a third time to the pulley of the lamp-post.

  This time they had taken compassion upon him; the rope was a new one.

  At last the condemned is dead; the victim no longer suffers.

  Half a minute had sufficed to the crowd to assure itself that the vital spark was extinguished. And now that the tiger has killed, he may devour his prey.

  The body, thrown from the top of the lamp-post, did not even fall to the ground. It was torn to pieces before it reached it.

  The head was separated from the trunk in a second, and in another second raised on the end of a pike. It was very much in fashion in those days to carry the heads of one's enemies in that way.

  At this sanguinary spectacle Bailly was horrified. That head appeared to him to be the head of the Medusa of ancient days.

  Lafayette, pale, his drawn sword in his hand, with disgust repulsed the guards who had surrounded him, to excuse themselves for not having been the strongest.

  Billot, stamping his feet with rage, and kicking right and left, like one of own fiery Perche horses, returned into the Hôtel de Ville, that he might see no more of what was passing on that ensanguined square.

  As to Pitou, his fieriness of popular vengeance was changed into a convulsive movement; and he had fled to the river's bank, where he closed his eyes and stopped his ears, that he might neither see nor hear.

  Consternation reigned in the Hôtel de Ville; the electors began to comprehend that they would never be able to direct the movements of the people, save in the manner which should suit the people.

  All at once, while the furious mob were amusing themselves with dragging the mutilated remains of Foulon through the gutters, a new cry, a new shout, rolling like distant thunder, was heard, proceeding from the opposite side of the river.

  A courier was seen galloping over the bridge. The news he was bringing was already known to the crowd. They had guessed it from the signs of their most skilful leaders, as a pack of hounds take up the scent from the inspiration of their finest-nosed and best-practised bloodhounds.

  The crowd rush to meet this courier, whom they surround; they scent that he has touched their new prey; they feel that he is going to speak of Monsieur Berthier.

  And it was true.

  Interrogated by ten thousand voices, all howling at once, the courier is compelled to reply to them.

  "Monsieur Berthier de Savigny has been arrested at Compiègne."

  Then he proceeds into the Hôtel de Ville, where he announces the same tidings to Lafayette and to Bailly.

  "Good; good! I knew it," said Lafayette.

  "We knew it," said Bailly, "and orders have been given that he should be kept there."

  "Kept there?" repeated the courier.

  "Undoubtedly; I have sent two commissaries with an escort."

  "An escort of two hundred and fifty men, was it not?" said an elector; "it is more than sufficient."

  "Gentlemen," replied the courier, "this is precisely what I was sent to tell you. The escort has been dispersed and the prisoner carried off by the multitude."

  "Carried off!" exclaimed Lafayette. "Has the escort allowed the prisoner to be carried off?"

  "Do not blame them, General; all that it was possible to do, they did."

  "But Monsieur Berthier?" anxiously inquired Bailly.

  "They are bringing him to Paris; and he is at Bourget by this time."

  "But should they bring him here," cried Billot, "he is lost.
"

  "Quick! quick!" cried Lafayette, "five hundred men to Bourget. Let the commissioners and Monsieur Berthier stop there; let them sleep there! During the night we will consider what is to be done."

  "But who would venture to undertake such a commission?" said the courier, who was looking with terror at that waving sea of heads, every wave of which sent forth its threatening roar.

  "I will!" cried Billot; "at least, I will save him."

  "But you would perish in the attempt," cried the courier; "the road is black with people."

  "I will go, nevertheless," said the farmer.

  "It is useless now," murmured Bailly, who had been listening to the noises from without. "Hush! Do you not hear that?"

  They then heard, from the direction of the Porte St. Martin, a rushing noise like that of the sea when beating over the shingles on a beach.

  This frenzied howl came to them over the roofs like steam over the sides of a boiling caldron.

  "It is too late," said Lafayette.

  "They are coming! they are coming!" murmured the courier. "Do you not hear them?"

  "A regiment! a regiment!" cried Lafayette, with that generous ebullition of humanity which was the most brilliant feature of his character.

  "What! By God's death!" exclaimed Bailly, who swore perhaps for the first time in his life, "you seem to forget that our army—ours!—is precisely that crowd whom you wish to fight."

  And he hid his face in his hands.

  The shouts which had been heard in the distance were re-echoed by the people in the streets, and thus communicated to the crowd upon the square with the rapidity of a train of gunpowder.

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  Chapter XII

  The Son-in-Law

  THEN those who were insulting the remains of Foulon left their sanguinary game, to rush forward in pursuit of a new vengeance.

  The adjacent streets immediately disgorged a large proportion of that howling mob, who hurried from the square with upraised knives and menacing gestures, towards the Rue St. Martin, to meet the new funeral procession.

  The junction having been accomplished, both parties were equally eager to return to the square.

  A strange scene then ensued.

  Some of those ingenious persons whom we have seen upon the Place de Grève presented to the son-in-law the head of Foulon on the end of a pike.

  Monsieur Berthier was coming along the Rue St. Martin with the commissary. They were then just crossing the Rue St. Merry.

  He was in his own cabriolet,—a vehicle which at that period was considered as eminently aristocratic; a vehicle which more than any other excited popular animadversion; for the people had so often complained of the reckless rapidity with which they were driven, either by young fops or dancing-girls who drove themselves, and which, drawn by a fiery horse, sometimes ran over, but always splashed, the unfortunate pedestrian.

  Berthier, in the midst of all the shouts, the hootings, and the threats of the infuriate mob, was talking tranquilly with the elector Rivière,—the commissary sent to Compiègne to save him, but who, being abandoned by his colleague, had with much difficulty saved himself.

  The people had begun with the cabriolet; they had turned off the head of it, so that Berthier and his companion were completely exposed, not only to the view, but to the blows of the populace.

  As they moved onwards, his misdeeds were related to him, commented upon, and exaggerated by the popular fury.

  "He wished to starve Paris," cried one.

  "He had the rye and wheat cut when it was green; and then, a rise in the price of corn having taken place, he realized enormous sums."

  "Not only did he do that," said they, "which was enough in itself, but he was conspiring."

  In searching him, they had found a pocket-book. In this pocket-book were incendiary letters, orders for massacre, proof that ten thousand cartridges had been distributed to his agents; so said the crowd.

  These were all monstrous absurdities; but as is well known, the mob, when in a paroxysm of rage, gives out as positive facts the most absurd improbabilities.

  The person whom they accused of all this was a man who was still young, not being more than from thirty to thirty-two years of age, elegantly dressed, almost smiling, though greeted every moment by injurious epithets and even blows. He looked with perfect indifference at the infamous placards which were held up to him, and without affectation continued his conversation with Rivière.

  Two men, irritated at his assurance, had wished to terrify him, and to diminish this self-confidence. They had mounted on the steps, on each side of the cabriolet, and each of them placed the point of his bayonet on Berthier's breast.

  But Berthier, brave even to temerity, was not to be moved by such a trifle. He had continued to converse with the elector as if those two muskets were but inoffensive accessories to the cabriolet.

  The mob, profoundly exasperated by this disdain, which formed so complete a contrast to the terror of Foulon,—the mob roared around the vehicle, and waited with impatience for the moment when instead of a threat they might inflict a wound.

  It was then that Berthier had fixed his eyes on a misshapen and bloody object, which was held up and danced before him, and which he suddenly recognized as the head of his father-in-law, and which the ruffians who bore it held down close to his lips.

  They wished to make him kiss it.

  Monsieur Rivière, indignant at this brutality, pushed the pike away with his hand.

  Berthier thanked him by a gesture, and did not even deign to turn round to follow this hideous trophy with his eyes. The executioners carried it behind the cabriolet, holding it over Berthier's head.

  They thus arrived on the Place de Grève; and the prisoner, after unheard-of efforts by the civic guards, who had been re-assembled in some order, was delivered into the hands of the electors of the Hôtel de Ville.

  A dangerous charge, a fearful responsibility, which made Lafayette once more turn pale, and poor Bailly's heart swell almost to breaking.

  The mob, after having hacked away for a while at the cabriolet, which had been left at the foot of the front steps, again placed itself in the most advantageous positions, kept guard on all the issues from the building, made all its preparations, and placed new ropes in the pulleys of the lamp-posts.

  Billot, at the sight of Berthier, who was tranquilly ascending the great staircase of the Hôtel de Ville, tore his hair, and could not restrain himself from weeping bitterly.

  Pitou, who had left the river's bank, and had come on the quay again when he thought that Foulon's execution had been accomplished; Pitou, terrified, notwithstanding his hatred for Monsieur Berthier, guilty in his eyes not only of all the mob reproached him with, but also of having given gold buckles to Mademoiselle Catherine,—Pitou crouched down sobbing behind a bench.

  During this time Berthier had entered the grand Hall of Council as coolly as if all the tumult had reference to some other person, and quietly conversed with the electors.

  He knew the greater portion of them, and was even intimate with some of them.

  The latter avoided him with the instinctive terror with which timid minds are inspired by the contact of an unpopular man.

  Therefore Berthier soon found himself almost alone with Bailly and Lafayette.

  He made them relate to him all the particulars of Foulon's death. Then, shrugging his shoulders:—

  "Yes," said he, "I can understand it. They hate us, because we are the instruments with which royalty has tortured the people."

  "Great crimes are laid at your door, sir," said Bailly, austerely.

  "Sir," replied Berthier, "if I had committed all the crimes with which I am reproached, I should be less or more than man,—a wild beast or a demon. But I shall be tried, I presume, and then the truth will be ascertained."

  "Undoubtedly," said Bailly.

  "Well, then," rejoined Berthier, "that is all I desire. They have my correspondence, and it will be seen whose orde
rs I have obeyed; and the responsibility will fall on those to whom it rightly appertains."

  The electors cast their eyes upon the square, from which arose the most frightful clamor.

  Berthier understood this mute reply.

  Then Billot, pushing through the throng which surrounded Bailly, went up to the intendant, and offering him his huge honest hand:—

  "Good-day, Monsieur de Sauvigny," said he to him.

  "How! is that you, Billot?" cried Berthier, laughing, and grasping firmly the hand which was held out to him. "What! you have come to Paris to join in these disturbances,—you, my worthy farmer, who used to sell your wheat so well in the market at Villers-Cotterets, Crépy, and Soissons?"

  Billot, notwithstanding his democratic tendencies, could not but admire the tranquillity of this man, who could thus smile at a moment when his life was hanging by a thread.

  "Install yourselves, gentlemen," said Bailly to the electors; "we must now proceed to the examination of the charges against the accused."

  "Be it so," said Berthier; "but I must warn you of one thing, gentlemen, and that is, that I am perfectly exhausted. For the last two days I have not slept. Today, from Compiègne to Paris, I have been pushed about, beaten, dragged along. When I asked for something to eat, they offered me hay, which is not excessively refreshing. Therefore, give me some place where I can sleep, if it. be only for an hour."

  At that moment Lafayette left the room for a short time, to ascertain the state of matters outside. He returned more dispirited than ever.

  "My dear Bailly," said he to the mayor, "exasperation is at its height; to keep Monsieur Berthier here would be exposing ourselves to a siege. To defend the Hôtel de Ville would be giving these furious madmen the pretext which they wish. Not to defend the Hôtel de Ville would be acquiring the habit of yielding every time we are attacked."

  During this time, Berthier had sat down, and then stretched himself at full length upon a bench.

  He was preparing himself to sleep.

  The desperate howls from below were audible to him, for he was near an open window; but they did not disturb him. His countenance retained the serenity of a man who forgets all, to allow sleep to weigh down his eyelids.