by Eugène Sue
“Monsieur Desmarais knows that immediately upon the publication of a hand-bill by father, he disappeared, and that we believed him dead or shut up in some state prison. He even knows the contents of the pamphlet which father wrote, and often has he shed tears in my presence when speaking of the disgrace of which you were a victim at the hands of Louis XV.”
A bitter smile contracted Victoria’s lips, and she replied, “My father hid the truth in what he wrote, in order to stigmatize the first crime, and he threw a veil over the consequences of my dishonor. Have you raised the veil which covered my life? Did you speak of the series of assaults of which I was the victim?”
“Sister,” answered John Lebrenn, “out of respect for our family, I did not inform Monsieur Desmarais of the consequences of that first royal dishonor. I merely told him that you had been snatched from us, the same as my father, and that we knew not what had become of you. My confidences did not extend beyond that.”
“Your reserve was wise and prudent, dear brother. Continue to guard my secret from Monsieur Desmarais and his daughter. For them, as for all who know you, I must remain as dead.”
“Let it be as you desire, sister. But the dissimulation weighs on my heart like an act of cowardice.”
“The dissimulation is necessary to-day, brother, but it will not last forever. When you shall have a deeper knowledge of the character of your wife; after some years of marriage and motherhood shall have ripened her judgment, then, and only then, you may make to her a complete confidence of my past. Until then, I must remain dead to her, as to all — except you three and one other of our relatives, the Prince of Gerolstein, my initiator into the Voyants. Dead I shall be to the world, but living to you and to Franz of Gerolstein.”
“This Franz of Gerolstein,” asked Victoria’s father, “is he not one of the princes of that sovereign house of Germany founded of old by the descendants of our ancestor Gaëlo the Pirate?”
“Yes, father; the heir to a reigning prince was to-day one of the most fearless attackers of the Bastille.”
At this moment a knock was heard at the door.
“Enter,” cried John, and to the astonished eyes of the Lebrenn family appeared Franz of Gerolstein. In the Prince, whom Victoria had just named, John recognized one of his fellow-combatants of the day.
“Franz, here is my brother, of whom I have often spoken to you,” said Victoria, taking John’s hand and pressing it into that of the Prince. “You are relatives — now be friends. You are both worthy, one of the other. Both march in the same path.”
“My dear John — for so it is that friends and relatives of the same age should greet,” answered Franz with cordial familiarity, affectionately closing in his own hand that of the young artisan, “I know through your sister all the good that can be thought of you. That will tell you how glad I am to meet you.”
“I also, my dear Franz, am happy to find in you a relative and a friend,” John made answer, no less affectionately than the Prince. “Chance has made you of the sovereign race, yet you fight for the freedom of the people.”
“My dear John, I am, like you, a son of Joel, the brenn of the tribe of Karnak. More than once, across the ages, the republican ardor of the old Gallic blood has roused itself in my plebeian race — although, by an uncouth stroke of destiny, it has been muffled under a sovereignship and a grand-ducal crown.”
“Aye, we are indeed of the same blood — your words, your acts prove it,” said the blind father. “Your hand — let me also press your hand, my brave young man.”
Franz stepped toward Monsieur Lebrenn. “I am deeply sensible of these marks of fatherly good-will,” he said. “They console me for the rigors of my own father, who has banished me from his presence and forbade me from his states.”
“What can have been the cause of such severity!” rejoined the old man in surprise. “What is your crime?”
“My crime?” replied Franz, with a slight smile. “My crime consists in attaching scant weight to our sovereignty. I tried more than once to bring my father to more just, more modest appreciation of our origin. ‘Did not our family,’ I said to him, ‘come into its power through the audacity of an adventurer? May the earth lie light on our ancestor Gaëlo! But he was the companion and pupil of old Rolf, a frightful bandit, who, each spring, came to ravage the banks of the Loire and the Seine.’ My father’s answer was that all the crowned heads of the world, big or little, were sprung from no less savage a beginning. To which I retorted that there would come the day when the people, enlightened as to the origin of their pretended masters, would tire of being the exploitable property, the forced laborers, the chattels of a few royal families whose founders were fit for the galleys or the gibbet; and that I feared for kings, princes, emperors and Popes lest, by some terrible reversal of things here below, the people, driven to the limit of endurance, should treat them as their august founders deserved, and the most of them to this very day deserve to be treated.”
“In good sooth,” said John Lebrenn, laughing, “that language was surely severe for a Prince to hold — and to monarchs!”
“So, my dear John, my father grew furious at my language. In fine, I concluded by urging him to set a great example to the other princes of the Germanic Confederation, by laying aside his grand-duchy. ‘Lay aside,’ I said to him, ‘a power stained with crime in its very origin, and lead the people of your states and the other German principalities to unite in a republic like the cantons of the Swiss, or the provinces of the Netherlands. The Poles, the Hungarians, the Moldavians, the Wallachians, enslaved by Prussia, by Russia and by Austria, but trained to republicanism by their old elective customs, will soon be attracted by the example and the cry of liberty! Then the three last powerful despotisms of Europe — Prussia, Austria, and Russia — will find themselves hemmed in, threatened by free peoples, and we shall soon have an end of these last lairs of royalty!’”
“That was preparing for the future!” the old man exclaimed. “The United States of Europe! The Universal Republic!”
“But my father preferred to hang to his throne,” continued Franz. “Then convinced of the futility of my appeals, and holding the duty of a citizen in precedence over that of a son, I passed from word to action. With all my power and by every means at my disposal I propagated in Germany, its cradle, the society of the Illuminati; my father banished me.”
“Your account of yourself, Monsieur Gerolstein, deepens still more the esteem in which I needs must hold you,” nodded the old man.
“These words of regard are doubly precious, Monsieur Lebrenn. They shall add their bonds to those of the relationship already existent between us. It is in the name of those very bonds that I am about to reveal to you one of the motives of my visit — a cordial offer of my services. It is a blood-relation, it is a friend who speaks, Monsieur Lebrenn; do not then, I beg of you, yield to a susceptibility in itself honorable, but perhaps exaggerated. You were a printer. For long your labor provided for the wants of your family. But now you have lost your sight in prison; you are feeble. Madam Lebrenn is old. What are to be your resources against the material needs of existence?”
“My health, thanks to God, is not so weakened that I can no longer work,” replied Madam Lebrenn brightly. “The presence of my husband will double my strength.”
“And I, mother,” added John, “am I not here by you? Reassure yourself, Franz, my father and mother shall want for nothing. We are, nevertheless, deeply sensible of your offer. We thank you, but we decline, firmly.”
“John, allow me to interrupt you,” began the Prince. “I know from your sister what an industrious and skilful workman you are. But, please you, let us look at the situation together. Have you been able to go to your shop for the last four days? Considering the great events close at hand, of which the taking of the Bastille is but the precursor and sign, can you count on the full disposition of your time? The struggle once engaged between the nation and the royal power, will it not continue impetuous, implacable?
Is it at a season when the liberty of the people trembles in the balance that you ought to abandon the field of battle? And still your family must live, and it can only live by your daily labor.”
“Often have I said,” exclaimed Victoria, “that the people has never had the time to complete the revolutions it began! or else, if they were accomplished promptly, decisively and overwhelmingly, the time has always been lacking to defend the conquest, to maintain it, consolidate it, and fructify it. The people’s enemies, on the other hand, gentlemen of leisure, free from care, kings, priests, nobles or tax-farmers, have awaited, under cover, the certain hour to ravish from the people the benefits of its short-lived conquest.”
“Alas, it is but too true,” assented her father. “The time has always been lacking — the time and the money.”
“Such is the fatal verity!” continued Gerolstein. “Would that verity could convince the people that if they can, which is rarely the case, make some little savings from their meager pay, it is not at the tavern they should spend them. For those savings of the worker should, when the day arrives, insure to him a portion of the necessary leisure to emancipate himself. And if he has been able to put aside nothing, he is in error to yield to an exaggerated scruple of delicacy and repulse the aid fraternally offered to him by his friends in order that he may be assured one of the means to clinch his victory.”
“A singular occurrence which I witnessed this morning,” responded the young artisan, “strikingly reinforces your argument. One of my friends, a journeyman carpenter, and several others of our comrades, were gathered at break of day in the neighborhood of the Bastille, awaiting the signal for the attack. A man simply clad, and with an open countenance, accosted them: ‘Brothers,’ said he, ‘you go to-day to fight for your liberty. It is your duty. But to-day you will not go to your shops, and will earn nothing. If you have families, how will they live to-morrow? If you are bachelors, what will you live on yourselves? Allow then, one of your unknown friends to come to your aid as a brother. It is not an alms that I offer; I only assure you your leisure for this great day, by delivering you from your cares for the morrow.’”
“That ‘unknown friend’ was the banker Anacharsis Clootz, the treasurer of the Voyants, and rich enough in his own name to aid our brothers for a long time to come,” explained Franz in an undertone to Victoria, without interrupting John, who continued:
“My comrades accepted the offer so delicately made, without much hesitation.”
“Now, Monsieur Lebrenn, can you still shrink from accepting, as John does, my tenders of service?”
“No, Monsieur Gerolstein, neither I nor my son will hesitate any further in accepting your generous offer, should there arise any necessity of falling back upon it,” replied the father of the house.
“John,” said Victoria, suddenly, “it is growing late. Go at once to Monsieur Desmarais, who is liable at any moment to leave for Versailles. Your plan must not be altered.”
“True,” answered the young man with a shudder. “The project is now doubly important. I must to it without delay.”
“My friends, you know advocate Desmarais, deputy of the Third Estate in the States General?” asked Franz of Gerolstein. “He is reputed a good citizen and a friend of the revolution.”
“We all believe that Monsieur Desmarais is not one of those suspicious and craven bourgeois who tremble at the revolution,” John answered, as he made toward the door. Then he returned— “Till we meet again, Franz, I hope; meseems we are already old friends.”
“Franz will await here the result of your visit, brother,” said Victoria.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE BOURGEOIS UNMASKED.
MONSIEUR DESMARAIS, STILL affected by the cries uttered by Lehiron’s mob and unable to account for the apparently sudden revulsion of the sentiments entertained for him by the people, was earnestly conversing with his wife and her brother, Monsieur Hubert. The latter he had summoned to his side to consult on the weighty resolves he felt forced to take, both on the score of his daughter, and on the line of policy which he should adopt to ride the gathering political storm.
Monsieur Hubert, Desmarais’s brother-in-law and a rich banker of Paris, was a very honest man, in the accepted sense of honesty in the commercial jargon; that is to say, he scrupulously fulfilled his engagements, and never loaned his money at higher rates than the law allowed. At heart he was dry; his spirit was jealous and sinister. A man of inflexible opinions, he nursed an equal aversion for the clergy, the nobility, and the proletariat. He regarded the Third Estate as called to reign under the nominal authority of a constitutional head, an emperor or king, whom he called a “pig in clover,” in imitation of the English; the intervention of the people in public affairs he considered the height of absurdity. Monsieur Hubert lived in the St. Thomas of the Louvre quarter, a quarter hostile to the revolution, where he had recently been promoted to the grade of commander of the battalion. This battalion, called the “Daughters of St. Thomas of the Louvre,” was almost entirely composed of royalists. The banker was about fifty years of age; of slight build, one could see in his physiognomy, in his glance, that in him nervous force supplied the place of physical energy. At this moment he was plunged in a deep silence. His sister and Monsieur Desmarais seemed to hang with an uneasy curiosity on the result of the financier’s reflections. The latter at length seemed to have reached the end of his cogitation, for he raised his head and said sardonically:
“In the light of your confidences, dear brother-in-law, I can only remind you that four months ago I told you you were wrong to let yourself be dragged into what you called the ‘cause of the people.’ My sincerity caused a sort of break between us, but at your first call, you see me back again. My previsions have been fulfilled. To-day the populace has been unchained, and I see you all struck with fright at the cries of death that have rung in your ears.”
“My dear Hubert,” replied Desmarais, restraining his impatience, but interrupting the financier, “please, do not let us concern ourselves with politics now. We begged you to come to our aid with your advice; you put to one side our disagreement; we thank you. So please you then, help us to recall to her senses our unworthy daughter, who is madly smitten with an ironsmith’s apprentice, our neighbor, whom you have several times met in our house.”
“Very well then, my dear Desmarais; let us put aside politics for the moment. Nevertheless, since we are concerned with the unworthy love of my niece for that artisan, I must, indeed, recall to your mind that I have often reproached you for your intimacy with the young fellow. To-day, a grave peril menaces you. Your regrets are tardy.”
“My dear Hubert, we waste precious time in vain recriminations of the past. Unfortunately, what is done, is done. Let us speak, I pray you, of the present. My wife and I, in order to cut short this attachment of Charlotte for John Lebrenn, have decided to take our daughter with us to Versailles. What do you think of that resolution?”
“That it will not accomplish the object you seek. Versailles is too near to Paris. If your man is as persevering as enamored — not of Charlotte, but of her fortune, for, do not mistake, the fellow is after nothing but her dower — he will find a way to meet her. My advice would be to send Mademoiselle Charlotte, instantly, a hundred leagues from Paris, to throw this lover off the track. Send her, say, to Lyons, to our cousin Dusommier; my sister will accompany her and remain beside her until this puppy-love is forgotten. A month or two will do for that.”
“Your advice, brother, seems wise. But I fear that Charlotte will not consent to the trip.”
“Heavens, sister! Is paternal authority an empty word! A flightabout of seventeen years to dare disobey the orders of her parents? That is not probable, surely. Have some strength.”
“But it is well to be prepared for everything. Let us suppose this case — she refuses to obey—”
“In that case, brother-in-law, willy-nilly, bundle Mademoiselle Charlotte into the stage for Lyons — then, whip up, coachman!”
Just then Gertrude the servant entered and said: “Monsieur John Lebrenn desires to speak with monsieur on a very pressing matter. He is in the vestibule.”
“What! The wretch still has the audacity to present himself here!” cried Hubert, purple with rage.
“He does not know that my daughter has revealed their engagement; and besides — a while ago—” stammered Desmarais, turning red with confusion, “I had to give him a cordial greeting.”
“Yes, brother,” said Madam Desmarais, coming to the aid of her husband, “a while ago, a column returning from the Bastille, commanded by John Lebrenn, halted before our house, shouting ‘Long live Citizen Desmarais! Long live the friend of the people!’”
“And so, I had to bow to necessity,” acknowledged the lawyer. “I was forced to harangue the insurgents.”
“Wonderful, brother-in-law, wonderful!” retorted Hubert, with a burst of cutting laughter. “The lesson and the punishment are complete!”
“My friend — if you receive this young man, be calm, I conjure you,” said Madam Desmarais uneasily to the lawyer. “Refuse him politely.”
“Death of my life! my poor sister, have you not a drop of blood in your veins?”
“Brother, I beg of you, do not speak so loud. John Lebrenn is even now, perhaps, in the dining room.”
“Ah, heaven, if he is there — so much the better! And since no one here dares speak outright to one of the famous conquerors of the Bastille, I take it upon myself,” cried Hubert still louder, his eyes glaring with anger, and starting for the door of the room.
But Madam Desmarais, alarmed and suppliant, seized the financier by the arm, exclaiming in a trembling voice, “Brother, I beg you! Oh, God, have pity on us!”
Hubert yielded to the prayers of his sister and stopped just as Desmarais, emerging from his revery, said to his wife with a sigh of relief, “Dear friend, I have hit upon quite a plausible way, in case Monsieur Lebrenn has the impudence to ask for our daughter’s hand, to reject his demand without giving him anything to be offended at. I shall refuse him without irritating him.”