by Eugène Sue
“Charlotte,” continued Desmarais in a tone of harsh resolve, “cut short this passion which is a disgrace to all of us! I swear you shall never see 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 heeding his daughter, “I shall delay for twenty-four hours my return to Versailles. Hasten all your preparations for the trip. We shall leave to-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 be this 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, protested your love for the people, your disdain for the privileges of birth and wealth. And now you declare before me that your protestations were false, that you despise the people, fear them, hate them. The imposture and the lie drive me to rebel.”
“Hold your tongue, unworthy minx! Do you not see the window is open, and that your imprudent words can be heard without? Have you resolved to get us 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 the instant that the lawyer took hold of the casement fastening to draw shut the window, over the rail of the balcony, at the height of his own countenance, there appeared the livid head of Flesselles, impaled on its pike. 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. The band halted before the attorney’s door. Anew the cries burst loose without:
“Long live the Nation!”
“Death to the enemies of the people!”
“To the lamp-post with the aristocrats! — to the lamp-post with Desmarais!”
The clamors seemed to come so pat upon the words of Charlotte, that Madam Desmarais, stricken with affright, threw herself on her knees in an attitude of prayer, clasped her hands, and stammered out an appeal to God.
“To the lamp-post with Desmarais! Death to the traitor!” shrieked Lehiron’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 of the conquerors of the Bastille. It was the pack of jackals following the lions.
Desmarais gradually recovered from the state of rigid fright in which he was plunged, and cried out to Charlotte in a voice trembling with repressed rage:
“Unnatural daughter! Parricide! Did you hear the cries of death hurled at your father by those cannibals of Paris, who carry in triumph the head of Flesselles? These men, who perhaps quite soon will have made your father undergo the same torture, are the friends, the brothers of John Lebrenn. Your lover is, like them, an assassin. Horror upon all this revolted plebs!”
CHAPTER XII.
REUNITED FROM THE BASTILLE.
WHILE ADVOCATE DESMARAIS was whelming his daughter with reproaches on the score of her love for John Lebrenn, the latter was at his mother’s knee in their modest lodgings on the fourth floor of the old house in St. Honoré Street. In the larger of the two rooms composing the family’s apartments, were to be seen two beds. One had never been occupied for years, since the day Ronan Lebrenn disappeared without a soul knowing what had become of him. The room also contained a sort of little bookshelf garnished with books printed with his own hand, a portable workbench at which John in the evenings finished up pieces belonging to his ironsmith’s trade, tools, some little furniture, and a buffet of walnut-wood in which reposed the relics and legends of the family.
Madam, or Mother, Lebrenn, as she was called in the neighborhood, was nearly sixty years of age. Domestic griefs, rather than years, had enfeebled and ruined her health. Her venerable countenance was of an extreme pallor, and sadly sunken. The poor woman held in her hands the head of her son, kneeling before her. The aged mother stroked it several times, saying in a voice thrilled with emotion:
“Dear boy, you have come back to me at last. I can now reassure myself on the state of your wound. Helas! how great was my anguish during all the time of that frightful combat. The little note you sent me after the taking of the Bastille indeed calmed a little my terrors for you, but without stilling them completely. I feared lest, out of tenderness, you sought to deceive me as to the gravity of your hurt. Now I am coming to myself from my fears, and yet I still must hold you in my arms. Dear and only child whom God has left to a poor widow — how sweet it is for a mother to embrace her son!”
“Come, good mother, I see your spirit is still troubled by the pangs of this morning. But are you quite sure you are a widow? Am I truly your only child?”
“Helas! have not your father and sister both disappeared? Are they not lost forever to your poor mother?”
“But why should they not return to us some day?”
“Dear boy, if they lived, your father and sister whom you love so much, would we not have heard some news of them, even if it were impossible for them to come to us?”
“You are right, good mother. But you presume that it would have been possible for them to have sent us some intelligence of their fate. May we not suppose, though, that father was thrown into some state prison, and that he was deprived of all communication with the outside? So sad a supposition has nothing strange in it.”
“In that case, my child, the prison would have proven your father’s tomb, so frail was his health. We could not dare to hope that he would be able to surmount the rigors of his captivity.”
“But it might also be, good mother, that the hope of seeing us some day may have helped him to endure his sufferings.”
“Do not essay, dear boy, to raise in my heart hopes, which, deceived too soon, will but plunge me back again into despair. My dear husband is indeed lost to me, helas! As to your sister, we may well believe we shall never see her more. She also is lost to us. Without doubt she has sought in death a refuge from her anguish, since the fatal revelation of her earlier life to her fiance, Sergeant Maurice.”
“Nothing has come to light so far to confirm your apprehensions on the subject of these afflictions — dear, good mother—”
“If my poor girl is not dead — what can have been her lot? I shudder even to think of it — misery, or dishonor!”
“I do not wish, good mother, to hold out to you hopes, which, when deceived, will revive your sorrow and seriously compromise your health, perhaps your life. But I believe I can without danger accustom you to the idea that my sister still lives, and has not ceased to be worthy of your affection; and also that father, after having languished long years in a prison pit, may still recover his liberty, and that we may see him. — That is a hope in my heart which I would cause you to share. Follow well my reasoning—”
“’Twould be too much happiness for me — I cannot believe it. And if I could believe it, I ask myself whether I have the strength to bear so much joy. Rapture can kill, as well as grief, my dear son.”
“And so, dear mother, if such events are to be told, I shall have recourse to roundabout methods to make you acquainted with such unhoped-for news. If it were about father — for example — I would say, that the victorious people penetrated into the Bastille to deliver the persons thrown into the dungeons, and that, among them, we found one who resembled father; that we seized the prison registrars and made them search in their registers for the records of a prisoner who was very dear to me, as it might have chanced that my father was among the number; that, in one of these registers, I read the date, ‘April 22, 1783,’ and right after it, ‘No. 1297 — incarcerated — upper tier — cell No. 18.’”
“April 22, 1783,” repeated Madam Lebrenn pensively. “That is the day after your father disappeared.”
“I would tell you that beside the date there was no name given for the prisoner, it being the
usage to replace the name with a number. I would add, that, struck by the singular coincidence between the date and the time of father’s disappearance, I went down to visit cell No. 18, as was indicated in the register—”
“And then?” exclaimed Madam Lebrenn feverishly, and with growing anxiety.
“The cell was empty. But they told me that the prisoner who occupied it was an old man grown blind, alas, during his confinement. I asked where they had taken the unfortunate man, and dashed off to seek him. Isn’t this all interesting, mother?”
“Why do you break off your story? For I feel that your supposings are but preparations for some revelation that you are about to make. You look away from me — John, my boy, my dear boy!” cried Madam Lebrenn, reaching towards her son and making him turn his face up to her— “You weep! No more doubt of it — Lord God! the old man — was — he was—”
She could not finish. The word died on her lips, and she nearly swooned away. John, still kneeling before her, sustained her in his arms, saying: “Courage, good mother. Hear the end of my tale.”
“Courage, say you? But you are deceiving me, then? It was not then — your father?”
“It was he! ’Twas indeed he whom I held in my arms. He lived — you shall see him soon. But, poor dear mother, have courage. We are not yet at the end of our trials.”
“Since your father lives, courage is easy to me! Let them bring him to us quick!”
“Alas, you forget that in his dungeon father lost his sight. Besides, the weight of his irons, the humidity of his cell, have palsied, have paralyzed his limbs. He can hardly drag himself along.”
“But he lives! Ah, well! His infirmities will render him more dear to us,” cried Madam Lebrenn in lofty exaltation, and suddenly rising. “Let us go to meet him.”
“One moment, good mother. They are bringing him to us. But I have still to prepare you for another piece of good fortune. You know the proverb, good mother, ‘Good fortune never comes singly.’ But, first, I want to acquaint you with the person who broke open father’s cell, who freed him from his irons, and who bestowed upon him the simple cares that he long needed.”
“Tell me, dear son, who was your father’s liberator?”
“His liberator was a woman — an intrepid, heroic woman, who during the assault of the Bastille braved the fire of musketry and cannon and led the attackers, red flag in hand. Under a perfect hail of bullets she let down the drawbridge across one of the moats of the fortress, and was the first to run to the dungeons to free the prisoners. It was she who rescued father from his living grave.”
“Blessed be that woman! I shall cherish her as a daughter!”
“That heroic woman, who is truly worthy of your love — is Victoria! Is that enough happiness for us? Father and sister, both have come home to your caresses. They are there, close to us, at our neighbor Jerome’s, and await but the pre-arranged signal to come in.”
And John Lebrenn, joining the action to the words, struck three blows on the wall.
The door flew open, and on the sill appeared father Lebrenn, leaning on one side on the arm of Victoria, on the other on that of neighbor Jerome. Madam Lebrenn, intoxicated with joy, flung herself into the arms of her husband and daughter.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LEBRENN FAMILY.
THUS REUNITED, THE Lebrenn family gave themselves up to those sweetest of reminiscences, the recollections of sorrows now no more. The father recounted to his wife and children the tortures of his long captivity. Victoria retold the events in which she had been an actor since she had left them, not neglecting her affiliation with the sect of the Voyants, or “Seeing Ones.” Due tribute having been paid by the family to the civil cares of the day, the conversation turned upon their private interests.
John informed his father of his love for Charlotte Desmarais, and of the hope he cherished of soon uniting his destiny with hers. After listening attentively to his son, the old man said, in a voice marked with sadness:
“Alas, my dear John, I augur no good of your love. Advocate Desmarais is rich; he belongs to the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie, like the nobility, has its arrogance, its haughtiness. I much doubt whether he will give his consent to the marriage.”
“That would have been true before, good father,” replied John. “But ideas have changed of late years; great progress has been made during your sad imprisonment. People and bourgeoisie are now but one party, united by the same interests, by the same hopes, and both resolved on ending the privileges of our enemies, royalty, the Church, and the nobility. The bourgeoisie has learned that in the struggle it has joined with the monarchy, it has but one support, the people. If it is the head, we are the arms. The Third Estate possesses the shining lights, the wealth; but we, of the seed of the people, we have the numbers, the force, the courage. And then, to accomplish the revolution, our co-operation is absolutely necessary to the bourgeoisie. They must count on the workingmen, the proletariat. We have the power and the right.”
“Perhaps, my son. Yet, social prejudices are not effaced in a day. And for a long time to come, I fear, the bourgeois will see between himself and the artisan the same distance which separates him, the bourgeois, from the nobility.”
“Nevertheless, my friend,” interposed Madam Lebrenn, “Monsieur Desmarais has always received our son on a footing of equality, calling him friend, and inviting him to pass his evenings with him. He has heaped upon our son many marks of his gratitude.”
“Marks of gratitude, Marianne? For what?” asked the blind man. “What service has our son done Monsieur Desmarais? Or is his friendship disinterested?”
“I did my best to insure his election to the States General,” replied the young artisan.
“So,” said the old man, thoughtfully, “advocate Desmarais owes his election to your efforts, to your exertions?”
“He owes it to his merit, to his value. I only suggested Monsieur Desmarais to those of our fellow citizens who had confidence in me, and all acclaimed him.”
“In short, you powerfully aided in his election. I am no longer astonished that he treats you as a friend, an equal. But it is a far cry, my son, from words to acts. I doubt the sincerity of this lawyer’s affection.”
“That doubt would never enter your thoughts, good father, if you knew the excellent man. If you had heard him inveigh, as I have, against the distinctions of birth and fortune—”
“Perhaps he had in mind only the privileges of the nobility,” observed Victoria, who until then had remained grave and silent. “The prejudices of the Third Estate are tenacious.”
“I should add, dearest sister, that he idolizes his daughter so, that to see her happy, he would sacrifice all the prejudices of his class — even if he were still under their influence, which I can not believe. I am well assured of that.”
“And his daughter is an angel,” added Madam Lebrenn. “I have seen and can appreciate her.”
“The excellence of our son’s choice is not doubted,” replied the old man, half convinced. “And, after all, it may be that Monsieur Desmarais does belong to that portion of the bourgeoisie which sees in the proletariat, disinherited for so many centuries, a brother to be guided and helped along the path of emancipation. If such is the case, my son, your marriage with Mademoiselle Desmarais may be consummated, and become the joy of my old age.”
“Brother,” asked Victoria, “has Mademoiselle Desmarais informed her family of this projected union?”
“At our last meeting, she assured me that she would soon broach the subject to her mother, and inform her that she had pledged me her faith, as I have mine to her. But I can not yet tell you whether the confidence has been made.”
“Does Mademoiselle Desmarais seem to have any doubts as to the consent of her relatives?”
“Among those relatives there is an uncle, Hubert, a rich banker, who without doubt will oppose the project. This moneyed bourgeois entertains for the working class the most supreme contempt. But the violence of his opi
nions has brought about a rupture between him and Monsieur Desmarais. As to the latter and his wife, Mademoiselle Charlotte has no doubt of their consent, by reason of the affection and esteem they have always evinced for me.”
“Brother,” continued Victoria after a moment’s reflection, “I counsel you, make your demand for the hand of Mademoiselle Charlotte this very day. I base my advice on urgent grounds. If Monsieur Desmarais really sees in you a friend, an equal, if his devotion to the people and the revolution is sincere, the glory you have won at the taking of the Bastille can not but plead in your favor; his consent will be given immediately. On the contrary, if his protestations of love for the people have been but a mask of hypocrisy, it is better to know at once how to regard him; in that case, he will repulse you, or will evade giving you a direct answer. It is not merely a question of your love, brother, but of our cause — of a grave responsibility that weighs upon you. Your friends placed their faith in you when you asked their votes for Monsieur Desmarais; you owe it to them, now that the occasion presents itself, to make a decisive test, and assure yourself whether the convictions expressed by Monsieur Desmarais are sincere. If he refuses you the hand of his daughter, it shows that he is with us from the lips only, not from the heart. In that case, it will be proven that advocate Desmarais is a hypocrite and a traitor! Would not then your duty, your honor, brother, demand that you unmask the double-dealer?”
“Nothing more just than what Victoria has said,” declared the old man. “You should, my son, go this very day and lay your suit before Monsieur Desmarais.”
John thought for an instant, and answered: “You are right, father. My line of conduct is mapped out for me. I go at once to Monsieur Desmarais’s, and formally present my request for the hand of Charlotte.”
“Brother,” interposed Victoria, suppressing a sigh, “have you informed Monsieur Desmarais fully on our father’s disappearance? He should know all that relates to that mournful event.”