The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic

by Eugène Sue

  CHAPTER XI.

  LIONS AND JACKALS.

  Gertrude hastened to execute her mistress's order, and revealed to thedeputy's family St. Honore Street, packed, as far as the eye couldreach, with a dense crowd. The windows of the houses bordering on itwere filled by their inhabitants, drawn thither by the commotion. Thecolumn of the vanquishers of the Bastille was stationed in front and toboth sides of the Desmarais domicile; it was composed for the most partof men of the people, clad in their working clothes. Some carried guns,pikes, or swords; several among them were armed with the implements oftheir trade. All, bourgeois, mechanics, soldiers, acclaimed the victoryof the people with the cry, a thousand times repeated:

  "Long live the Nation!"

  In the center of the column glowered two pieces of light artillerycaptured in the courtyard of the redoubtable prison. On the caisson ofone of these cannon, erect, majestically leaning on a pike-staff fromwhich floated the tricolor, stood a woman of massive stature, a redkerchief half concealing the heavy tresses which fell down upon hershoulders. Her dark robe disclosed her robust arms. She held her pike inone hand--in the other a shattered chain. Woman of the people as shewas, she seemed the genius of Liberty incarnate.

  To the rear of the cannon rested a cart trimmed with green branches andsurrounded by men who bore at the end of long poles or of pikes chains,garrottes, gags, iron boots, iron corsets, pincers, and other strangeand horrible instruments of torture gathered up in the subterraneanchambers of the Bastille. In the car were three of the prisonersdelivered by the people. One of these was the Provost of Beaumont,imprisoned fifteen years before for having denounced the famineagreement. Another, who seemed to have lost his reason in the sufferingsof a long and drear captivity, was the Count of Solange, imprisoned by_lettre de cachet_ during the reign of Louis XV. The last of the threeprisoners was broken, bent to the ground, tottering. He lifted to heavenhis colorless eyes--alas, the unfortunate man had become blind in hisdungeon. It was the father of John Lebrenn. Poor victim of tyranny! Hefeebly supported himself by the arm of his son, wounded though thelatter was.

  Such was the picture that met the gaze of advocate Desmarais as hestepped out upon the balcony of his dwelling, his wife and daughter oneither side of him. Charlotte's first glances went in search of, and assoon found, John Lebrenn. With a woman's intuition she divined that theaged figure beside him, snatched from the cells of the Bastille wasindeed his father.

  The appearance of advocate Desmarais and his family was greeted with anew outburst of acclaim:

  "Long live the friend of the people!"

  In stepping forth upon the balcony, Desmarais had yielded merely topolicy. He made a virtue of necessity. Condescending, gracious,complaisant, he began by greeting with smile, look, and gesture thepopulace assembled beneath his windows. Then he bowed, and placed hishand on his heart as if to express by that pantomime the emotion, thegratitude, which he experienced at the demonstration of which he was theobject.

  Silence was re-established among the crowd. John Lebrenn, still standingin the cart beside his father, addressed the attorney in a voice clearand sonorous:

  "Citizen Desmarais, defender of the rights of the people, thanks to you,our representative in the National Assembly! Your acts, your speeches,have responded to all that we expected of you. Honor to the friend ofthe people!"

  The advocate signified that he wished to reply. The tumult was hushed,and the deputy of the Third Estate delivered himself as follows:

  "Citizens! my friends, my brothers! I can not find words in which toexpress the admiration your victory inspires me with. Thanks to yourgenerous efforts, the most formidable rampart of despotism isoverthrown! Be assured, citizens, that your representatives know thesignificance of the taking of the Bastille. The Assembly has declaredthat the ministers and the councillors of his Majesty, whatever theirrank in the state, are responsible for the present evils and those whichmay follow. Responsibility shall be demanded of the ministers and allfunctionaries!"

  "Bravo! Long live Desmarais! Long live the Assembly! Long live theNation! Death to the King! Death to the Queen! Down with thearistocrats!"

  "Nothing could be more pleasing to me, citizens," continued Desmarais,"than the choice you have made of Citizen Lebrenn as the spokesman ofthe sentiments that animate you. Honor to this young and valiantartisan, the son of one of the victims rescued from the Bastille!"

  This allocution, pronounced by advocate Desmarais with every appearanceof great tenderness, moved the people. Tears dimmed the eyes of all. Thefather of John Lebrenn seized his son in his arms, and Charlotte, unableto restrain her tears, murmured as she cast a look of gratitude towardheaven, "Thanks to you, my God! My father is his true old noble selfagain. He sees the injustice of his opposition to John!"

  When the emotion produced by his last words had somewhat subsided,advocate Desmarais resumed: "Adieu till we meet again, citizens, myfriends--my brothers! I return to Versailles. The Assembly hasdespatched three of my colleagues and myself to learn at first hand howit fares with the good people of Paris. When our report is called for,we shall be ready. Long live the Nation!"

  With a final farewell gesture to the throng, Desmarais quitted thebalcony and re-entered his apartment. In a few moments the column tookup its interrupted march, and disappeared. Almost immediately theredisgorged itself tumultuously into St. Honore Street a band of men of anaspect strangely contrasting with that of the populace just addressed byMonsieur Desmarais. Some were dressed in rags, others wore a garb lesssordid, but nearly all bore on their faces the stamp of vice and crime.The band was composed of men without occupation; do-nothing workmen;debauched laborers; petty business men ruined by misconduct, becomepickpockets, sharpers, infesters of houses of ill fame and other evilresorts; robbers and convicts, assassins--a hideous crowd, capable ofevery crime; an execrable crowd, whom our eternal enemies keep in feeand easily egg on to these saturnalia, for which the people is but toooften held culpable; wretches in the hire of the priests, the nobles andthe police.

  At the head of these bandits marched a man with the face of a brigand,of gigantic stature and herculean frame, and conspicuously well clad.Once a "cadet," then a gaming-house proprietor, then usher of the Churchof St. Medard, Lehiron, for such was the name of the leader of the band,had been expelled from his last employment for the theft of thepoor-box. Around his waist a sash of red wool held two horse-pistols anda cutlass that had parted company with its sheath. His coat and thecuffs of his shirt rolled back to the elbow, he gesticulated wildly withhis bare hands, which were clotted with blood. At the end of a pike hestill bore the head of Monsieur Flesselles, and from time to time, whilebrandishing the hideous trophy, he would cry out in a stentorian voice:

  "Long live the Nation! To the lamp-post with the aristocrats! Death toall the nobles!"

  "Death to the enemies of the people! The aristocrats to the lamp-post!"repeated all the bandits, brandishing their pikes, their sabers, ortheir guns blackened with powder.

  "To the lamp-post with the aristocrats!" also cried the shrill andpiercing voice of an urchin who gave his hand to a miserably cladcharacter, the man of the false beard of whom Desmarais had spoken. Itwas the Jesuit Morlet, and the boy his god-son, little Rodin. At themoment that the band hove in sight of the lawyer's dwelling, the Jesuitdrew close to Lehiron, and spoke a few words to him in a low voice. Thelatter stopped, signed to his followers for silence and cried at the topof his leathern lungs:

  "Death to the bourgeois! Death to the traitors! To the lamp-post withDesmarais!"

  Then the band resumed its way; and Abbot Morlet, posted at the head ofthe troop, made haste to bring it up to the last straggling files of thevanquishers of the Bastille. Then, upon the carriage of the cannonwhence she dominated the throng, he beheld the woman with the redhandkerchief and the dark robe. In spite of the change which her costumeimparted to her features, the Jesuit was stupefied torecognize--Marchioness Aldini!

  Barely had he recovered from his surprise when the Ma
rchioness descendedfrom the piece of artillery. As hastily, the Jesuit quitted hiscompanions in order to trace her, and, if possible, clear up thesuspicions which in his mind surrounded this one-time Marchioness, nowheroine of the people. Little Rodin followed his dear god-father, andthe two, elbowing their way through the people of the quarter, who wereseized with surprise and affright at the murderous cries uttered by thesinister band which approached, inquired, as they went, for thebeautiful dark woman coiffed in a red handkerchief who had just leapeddown from the cannon--having, so the Abbot pretended, a message for her.Finally a woman haberdasher, drawn to the threshold of her booth,replied to Abbot Morlet's interrogations:

  "Yes, the beautiful young woman you seek has entered house No. 17, alongwith our neighbor John Lebrenn. That is all I can tell you."

  "Then the Lebrenn family lives in this street, my dear woman?"

  "Certainly. Mother Lebrenn and her family occupy two rooms on the fourthfloor of No. 17."

  "Thank you for your information, my dear woman," replied the Jesuit,with difficulty concealing the joy that the unexpected discovery causedhim. "Many thanks!"

  "And so," continued the Abbot, "I recover the traces of that family whomwe have lost from sight for over a century. What a lucky chance! Twowoodcocks in one springe--Marchioness Aldini and the family of Lebrenn.An enemy spotted, is one-half throttled. Let us train our batteries tosuit."

  "Dear god-father," put in little Rodin at that moment, with a determinedair, "I am not afraid to look at heads mowed off."

  "My child," replied the Jesuit with fatherly pride and happiness, "it isnot enough to have no fear; one must actually feel his heart growlightened when he sees the enemies of our holy mother, the Church ofRome, put to death."

  "Dear god-father, was Monsieur Flesselles, then, an enemy of our holymother, the Church?"

  "My child, the death of Monsieur Flesselles, innocent or guilty, wasuseful to the good cause."

  Meanwhile, Lehiron's band, just then passing under the windows ofDesmarais's home, continued to shriek, "Death to the enemies of thepeople! Death to the bourgeois! To the lamp-post with Desmarais!"

  The cries had not yet reached the ears of the attorney, who had nosooner withdrawn from the balcony than his daughter, throwing herselfinto his arms, said to him in a voice broken with sobs of joy:

  "Thanks, Oh, thanks, father, for what you have just said!"

  "What are you thanking me for now?"

  "For the noble utterances you have just addressed to Monsieur JohnLebrenn," replied Charlotte delighted, not noticing the brusquetransformation which came over the face of the advocate at her words.

  "How! You have the presumption to abuse the necessity I found myselfreduced to, in speaking a few words of good will to that laborer inorder to save my house from pillage, and perhaps to protect my own lifeand that of my wife and daughter--you presume to abuse that necessity tooblige me to give my consent to your union with an ironsmith'sapprentice? You are an unworthy daughter!"

  "Then--your cordial words, your touching protestations, were but lies!"murmured the young girl, crushed by her father's rough speech. "It wasall comedy and imposture!"

  "Charlotte," continued Desmarais in a tone of harsh resolve, "cut shortthis passion which is a disgrace to all of us! I swear you shall neversee that man again. To-morrow you leave Paris. It is my will."

  "Father, my father--I implore you--revoke that sentence--"

  "My dear friend," pursued Desmarais, addressing his wife and not heedinghis daughter, "I shall delay for twenty-four hours my return toVersailles. Hasten all your preparations for the trip. We shall leaveto-morrow morning. I shall take you along, as well as our daughter."

  "Pity, father! Do not drive me to despair--"

  "You know my will. Nothing can bend it."

  "Cursed be this day," cried the young girl with indignation; "cursed bethis day when you force me to forget the respect I owe a father. Helas!it is you, you yourself, father, who just now, this very hour, protestedyour love for the people, your disdain for the privileges of birth andwealth. And now you declare before me that your protestations werefalse, that you despise the people, fear them, hate them. The impostureand the lie drive me to rebel."

  "Hold your tongue, unworthy minx! Do you not see the window is open, andthat your imprudent words can be heard without? Have you resolved to getus all killed?" cried Desmarais, running to the window to close it.

  It was just the minute that Lehiron's band was passing the house. At theinstant that the lawyer took hold of the casement fastening to draw shutthe window, over the rail of the balcony, at the height of his owncountenance, there appeared the livid head of Flesselles, impaled on itspike. A cry of fear broke from Desmarais, and he recoiled from the sill,clapping his hands before his eyes to shut out the grisly spectacle. Theband halted before the attorney's door. Anew the cries burst loosewithout:

  "Long live the Nation!"

  "Death to the enemies of the people!"

  "To the lamp-post with the aristocrats!--to the lamp-post withDesmarais!"

  The clamors seemed to come so pat upon the words of Charlotte, thatMadam Desmarais, stricken with affright, threw herself on her knees inan attitude of prayer, clasped her hands, and stammered out an appeal toGod.

  "To the lamp-post with Desmarais! Death to the traitor!" shriekedLehiron's band once more, and passed on its way. The cries of "Death!"faded away in the distance as Lehiron's troop followed in the wake ofthe conquerors of the Bastille. It was the pack of jackals following thelions.

  Desmarais gradually recovered from the state of rigid fright in which hewas plunged, and cried out to Charlotte in a voice trembling withrepressed rage:

  "Unnatural daughter! Parricide! Did you hear the cries of death hurledat your father by those cannibals of Paris, who carry in triumph thehead of Flesselles? These men, who perhaps quite soon will have madeyour father undergo the same torture, are the friends, the brothers ofJohn Lebrenn. Your lover is, like them, an assassin. Horror upon allthis revolted plebs!"