by Eugène Sue
The first lackey of the Count of Plouernel, named Lorrain, the same who some months previously had carried the missive to Samuel the Jew, was showing into the Hall of the Portraits Abbot Morlet, of the Society of Jesus, a holy man of God and god-father to little Rodin, who, in fact, resembled him so closely as to be taken with reason for his son rather than his god-son. The Abbot was about forty years of age, clad in black, of middle height, weazened and nervous, with a fleshless, almost bald forehead over which fell a few straggling hairs of tawny yellow. His physiognomy, evil, insidious or beaming in turn, was above all remarkable for its caustic smile and its half-veiled glance, resembling that of a serpent. The Abbot was agitated, uneasy; he said to the lackey who introduced him:
“Announce me to your master without delay.”
“Monsieur Abbot,” respectfully answered Lorrain, “my lord will not keep you waiting an instant. His valets are just completing his toilet.”
“His toilet!” exploded the Abbot. “To be thinking of such trifles — he must be out of his head!”
Then pausing a moment and recalling the air of preparation and the brilliant lighting of the parlors he had passed through on the ground floor, he added:
“The Count seems to be expecting a large company?”
“My lord is giving a grand supper.”
“How is it that the agitation prevailing in Paris since day before yesterday and up to this very night does not compel the Count to be at the head of his regiment of the Guards?”
“Monsieur the Abbot is unaware that my lord journeyed this morning to Versailles to hand in his resignation, and to surrender the command of his regiment.”
“To surrender the command of his regiment!” echoed the Jesuit, stupefied, and as if he could not believe what he heard. “What—”
At that moment Lorrain left the hall, walking backward as his master entered.
Count Gaston of Plouernel had reached at this time his thirtieth year. The facial traits of his Germanic ancestry were reproduced in him. The whole effect of his person was one of audacity, haughtiness and arrogance. He presented the accepted type of the great seigneur of his time, and wore with grace his costume of plain blue cloth of Tours, spangled with silver and embroidered in gold. His taffeta vest was half lost to view under the billows of Alençon point lace which formed his shirt frill and rivalled for costly workmanship the flowing ruffles of his cuffs. His red-heeled shoes were fastened with diamond buckles. Diamonds also glittered in the hilt of his small-sword, which he wore ostentatiously slung under one of the tails of his coat.
At the sight of Abbot Morlet the Count seemed greatly surprised. He cordially extended to him his hand, however, saying:
“Well! good day, holy Father. What good wind blows you to us? I thought you at this time still a hundred leagues from Paris!”
“I just got in, and after attending to some indispensable duties, hurried over to you, to communicate to you, my dear Count — to you, one of the leaders of the court party — important information I had picked up during my trip through several of our provinces. Judge of my surprise! When I arrived here, I learned from your first lackey — that you had this very day given up the command of your regiment. That’s the way of it. The monarchy, the nobility, the clergy, are attacked as they never have been through the worst days of our history. And it is at such an hour that you, one of the greatest lords of France, you, a man of spirit and of courage, sheath your sword — at this hour when the battle is engaged with the Third Estate! Ah, Count, if you did not belong to the house of Plouernel, I would say that you were a coward and a traitor. But, as you are neither coward nor traitor, I shall make bold to say that you are a madman.”
“On the contrary, my dear Abbot, never have I acted more wisely. Never have I more studiously served our cause, or proven better my signal devotion, not to the King — his weakness revolts me — but to the Queen, to royalty!”
“So, you have judged it wise and politic to abandon the command of your regiment in our present circumstances? Is it for me, only to-day arrived, to have to inform you that Paris is laboring under the greatest excitement, and perhaps on the verge of a formidable insurrection? Didn’t I see them, on the other side of the Seine, beginning to throw up their barricades? Didn’t I meet on every street corner groups of malcontents, harangued by caballers of the Third Estate?”
“That is all true, Abbot. We are drawing near the moment of a decisive crisis. The fever of revolution has lasted since day before yesterday, since Saturday, the 11th of July. The first act took place in the Palais Royal, when the recall of Necker became known to the public. A young man named Camille Desmoulins stirred up the gullible clowns in the gardens by crying out that the King was centering his troops on Paris, with the purpose of dissolving the National Assembly, arresting the leaders, and massacring the people of Paris. The most resolute of his hearers cried To arms! To the barricades! and suited the action to the word. Bezenval, the military commander of Paris, informed of the tumult, ordered the dragoons of the Marquis of Crussol to horse. The dragoons sabered the rabble. But that only angered the populace, and the agitation spread to the suburbs. A soldier of my command told the people that several French Guards had been sent to the Abbey Prison; for you must know, good Father, that insubordination had crept into my regiment. I had sent the mutineers in irons to the Abbey to await the time to administer to them the scourging they deserved, when the populace hurled themselves against the prison, put to rout the sentries, and liberated the mutinous Guards. The latter received as great an ovation as if they had had the honor of being Monsieur Necker, or Monsieur Mirabeau!”
“This detestable spirit of rebellion is only too like that which infests many of our provinces. But these saturnalia were, I hope, put down with the greatest severity?”
“Not a whit, my dear Father. A King who pretends to the title of ‘Father of the people’ does not punish them — or very little. What was the result? The mildness of the reproof redoubled the rabble’s audacity. The success of the expedition against the Abbey whetted their appetite, and they turned their attention to the prison of La Force, where they delivered all the debtors. The insurrection growing more and more serious, the Prince of Lambesc at length received orders from Marshal Broglie, the new Minister of War, to mount his regiment, the Royal Germans, and charge upon this impious populace, then excitedly huddled in the garden of the Tuileries. At the same time I was ordered to bring up my regiment, to support, if necessary, the cavalry of Lambesc.”
“The French Guards commanded by a colonel like you, Count, should easily mow down these rebels. And yet you abandon your command. Your conduct is an enigma.”
“On the contrary, nothing is more clear. Do you know the difference between a German and a Frenchman?”
“What do you mean?”
“Picture to yourself a tribune of the cross-roads, an insolent droll named Gonchon, who never spoke of himself but in the third person, come to harangue the German soldiers in the name of the brotherhood of man. The German soldier, understanding nothing of that demagogic trash, draws at the command of his colonel, and sabers both Gonchon and the mob! That is what the dragoons of Lambesc did; that is what the cavalry of Berchiny would have done gladly, and the cavalry of Esterhazy and of Roëmer, or the regiments of Desbach, of Salis, or the Royal Swiss.”
“Good! That is the medicine for this canaille.”
“But hardly had Lambesc and his horse sabered the rabble in the garden of the Tuileries, when that very mob poured back into Louis XV Place, where I had stationed myself at the head of my regiment in battle array. I gave the order to fire on the ructious rabble. Murmurs broke out among the soldiers in the ranks; some made answer, We will not fire on the people! I ordered the mutinous men to be seized and shot on the spot. The murmurs grew louder. I repeated the order. Bang! Several soldiers struck me in the face! Whole companies broke ranks, waving the butts of their muskets in the air.”
“Everything is lost if we cannot count o
n the army!” cried the Abbot in dismay.
“You have said it, Abbot — unless the court party is resolved to serve royalty to the exclusion of the King. In the face of the stand taken by my men, there was nothing to do but march them back to their quarters. This morning I repaired to Versailles, and on gaining an audience with the King I pleaded with his Majesty to authorize me to call a court-martial to judge and condemn to death within the hour about a hundred soldiers and under-officers of my regiment, the ringleaders of the revolt. After long consideration, his Majesty answered with a sour air that ‘if it was a matter of shooting a half dozen or so insubordinates, he saw no great obstacle in the way, but that he would not listen at all to any mass slaughters.’ Thereupon the King crabbedly turned his back on me, shrugged his shoulders, and took himself off to his private apartments. That is why, my good Father, I have renounced my command in the French Guards. But reassure yourself,” he added, in response to the dumbfounded look the Abbot wore. “I shall remain neither passive nor idle. I hope to serve our cause more actively, and, without contradiction, more usefully, now, than if I still were at the head of my regiment.”
“That assurance overwhelms me with joy, dear Count,” cried the Abbot “What are your plans?”
“First, I give to-night a supper, a convivial repast in which I bring together the influential heads of the court party, for the purpose of deciding on our final measures — presided over by the most remarkable and adorable woman I have ever met.”
The Jesuit gazed at Monsieur Plouernel in amaze, and answered: “Are you speaking seriously? Are you really dreaming of having a political meeting of such importance presided over by — a woman?”
“Your astonishment will cease, my dear Abbot, when you make the acquaintance of Madam the Marchioness Aldini, a Venetian by birth, the widow of Marquis Aldini, a great Florentine lord who left his wife an immense fortune. The Marchioness has resided in Paris for now nearly a month.”
“You know the lady for only a month, and you dare initiate her into the secrets of our party!”
“Oh, Abbot, the Marchioness is more of our party than we ourselves! A patrician and a Catholic, she nurses an invincible horror for the populace and for revolutions. We shall never have a more ardent auxiliary than she. And then, she is beautiful — seductive — irresistible!”
“And where did you meet this beautiful personage?”
“One day last month I received a note stamped with outraged pride. The writer, Marchioness Aldini, addressed to me, as colonel of the Guards, a complaint against the insolence of several of my soldiers, who had beaten her lackeys. Struck with the lofty tone of the missive, I called on the Marchioness, who was occupying the establishment of the Countess of St. Megrin, now in England, and maintained there a house on the grandest scale. One of the Marchioness’s private valets introduced me to her in her parlor. Ah, Abbot! at the sight of her I stood spellbound, enchanted! The extreme beauty of the foreign dame, the fire of her glance, the expression of her face, the perfection of her stature, the complete admirableness of her person — all threw me into transports of admiration.” Abbot Morlet puckered his brow dubiously, and the colonel continued: “In short, the Marchioness realized, she surpassed, an ideal a hundred times dreamt of by me, wearied as I am of the flirtatious beauties of the city and the court. What a difference, or rather what a distance, separates them from the Marchioness! Pride of patrician blood, resoluteness of character, ardor, impetuosity of passion, all were legible in her countenance of a masculine paleness, in her look of flame. Something imperious in her posture, something virile in the accents of her tongue, gave to this extraordinary woman — none other like her! — an irresistible charm; — for, before she had spoken a word, I felt myself captured, enchained, bewitched.”
“And the fascination grew and grew, if that is possible,” put in the Jesuit sardonically, “when this beautiful lady opened her mouth? The siren took you by the eyes and by the ears. She greeted you, I presume, in the most charming and gallant manner?”
“Not a bit of it! On the contrary, she greeted me with an air of arrogance and irritation. She taxed me severely for the insolence of my soldiers.”
“But the tigress finished by turning sweet?”
“Yes, after the greatest protestations on my part, and my assurance that I would chastise the guilty soldiers.”
“The anger of the Marchioness being calmed, the interview, no doubt, took a most tender turn?”
“We spoke of the affairs of the day.”
“Strange, out of all whooping! A colonel of thirty, a man of the court, besides, to speak decorously of the events of the day — with a beautiful lady — and he so lusty elsewhere!”
“So it was, nevertheless, reverend Father. I never even thought, at that first interview, of venturing upon the slightest word of gallantry, so struck was I with the spirit of the Marchioness. Blue death! I was pale with rage at hearing the Marchioness’s bitter sarcasms. I should have been glad — may God blast me! — to put myself at the head of my regiment and shoot down all the bourgeois in the States General.”
“This retrospective zeal flows from an excellent sentiment; and I know not how sufficiently to applaud the beautiful Venetian for having aroused that sentiment in you. Strongly do I approve the belle’s sarcasms, her scorn for the ranters of the Third Estate, and the populace which supports them. Still, methinks it is very surprising that a stranger should interest herself so warmly in our affairs,” added the Jesuit thoughtfully.
Without a pause, the priest continued: “Tell me, Count — Have you dealt out the punishment to the insolent soldiers who beat the lackeys of Madam the Marchioness?”
“It was impossible to discover them.”
“And she hasn’t asked you for an account of their punishment? Strange! Do you know what I think, Count? The outrage was an imaginary one. It was the Marchioness’s pretext to secure a first interview with you.”
“Come, Abbot, you are insane! For what reason should she have sought to inveigle me into an interview?”
“I’ll tell you, Count, for I foresee the end of this adventure. You returned often to visit the Marchioness? You became enamored of her? And soon the beautiful Venetian, answering your passion, granted you the boon of love for thanks — after having wheedled out of you all our party’s closest secrets.”
“You are mistaken, holy Father. On the faith of a gentleman, the Marchioness loves me as passionately as I love her; but she has placed certain conditions on her favors.”
“And what may the conditions be with which she has hedged about her bounty?”
“A struggle to the death against the revolution; the exaltation of royalty, of the privileges of the nobility and the Church; the extermination of our enemies. Only on these conditions, Abbot, shall my love receive its sweetest recompense.”
“Count,” cried the Jesuit after a moment’s silence, “you are only twenty years old! What am I saying? You are barely sixteen — you are still at the age of innocence and childlike credulity. You have been blindfolded, duped, made game of, tossed in a blanket, like the most artless of young fellows! Oh, the women! And you think yourself a Lovelace, a lady-killer, my poor Count! And you presume to play a role in the politics of the court!”
“Monsieur Abbot Morlet, familiarity has its limits — do not oblige me to recall the fact to you any more forcibly!” exclaimed Monsieur Plouernel, flaring into a rage. Then, calming himself with an effort, he continued, sarcastically: “It suits you ill indeed, my reverend sir, to twit me on the empire exercised over me by women. Has no woman ever reigned over you? Could not the record of the vestry tell of a fertile gossip, the hirer-out of chairs at the Church of St. Medard, and widow of Goodman Rodin, the dispenser of holy water in the same parish? Your mistress is the mother of that little Rodin whom you brought here one day last year!”
Unmoved by the raillery of Monsieur Plouernel, the Jesuit replied:
“Your sarcasm is in the last degree pleasant, and moreo
ver, well to the point, in that it furnishes me the occasion, Count, to give you an excellent lesson. You need the bit, the bridle, and also the whip, my fine gentleman.”
“I am listening, reverend sir.”
“Your love for fine ladies of irresistible beauty is capable of leading you into the most mournful follies; while I, by reason of my love for my gossip Rodin, shall be, I hope, able to prevent, and what is more, to repair your insanities.”
“This is getting curious, Abbot. Continue.”
“About four months ago, about the beginning of April, at a late hour of the night, a child, overcome with fatigue, fell on the doorstep of a house in St. Francois Street, in the Swamp.”
“St. Francois Street, in the Swamp! A rascal of a Jew, a skin-flint of a usurer, lives there. You know him, Abbot? He does business with the clergy too?”
“It was at the door of that very house that the child sank down with weariness, crying and shivering. The Jew, out of the pity of his heart, took in the little fellow, who, he supposed, had lost his way. Then, succumbing to fatigue and drowsiness, the lad fell asleep on a bench in the room in which the Jew and his wife were conversing.”
“Bless my heart, holy Father! Your voice is trembling, your nose is growing red, your look is softening, and your eye grows moist! That infant gifted with so precocious an intelligence, that prodigy, surely can be no other than little Rodin, your god-son! Honor to you, Abbot, and to your gossip! You have performed a prodigy, like the Virgin Mary with the Holy Ghost!”
“Throughout, the little fellow lost not a word of the conversation between the Jew and his wife; and thanks to a false alarm, adroitly given without by one of our brothers and myself, my god-son, in the course of his feigned sleep, surprised two secrets of inestimable import for the welfare of religion and the nobility. You shall judge—”