by Eugène Sue
Morlet the Jesuit again brought the conversation back into its channel. “Monsieur Hubert,” he said to the banker, “at what number do you estimate the energetic bourgeois who will take part in the fight?”
“Five or six thousand, old members of the National Guard. I can answer for that number.”
“I am willing to concede you ten thousand. There are ten thousand men. And you, Count, how many do you think there are of the returned Emigrants, the old officers and soldiers of the constitutional guard of Louis XVI, and finally of the ex-servitors of the King and the Princes — coachmen, lackeys, whippers-in, stable-boys and other menials, who form your minute-militia?”
“I figure on four thousand — or less,” replied the Count.
“Let us say five thousand. Add them to Monsieur Hubert’s ten thousand National Guards, and we have a total of fifteen thousand men. Now, although Paris has vomited to the frontiers since September fifty thousand volunteers, how estimate you the number remaining of these sans-culottes and Jacobins of the suburbs, the Sections and the federations, and finally the regiments of infantry, cavalry and artillery which are republican?”
“There are fifteen thousand men, about, troops of all arms, not in Paris, but within the constitutional limits, that is, within twelve leagues of the capital,” Hubert answered.
“These troops could reach Paris in one day’s march. There you have fifteen thousand men in trained and equipped corps, cavalry, infantry, and artillery, devoted to the Republic and the Convention; troops equal in number to your fifteen thousand insurgents. We can number the Jacobin population of the suburbs and the Sections, and the hordes of the federations, at thirty thousand — scamps, armed with pikes or guns, and provided with cannon as well! Now, suppose the King liberated, and the members of the Convention exterminated. You then find yourselves face to face with a regular and irregular army of forty-five thousand determined villains, while you number only fifteen thousand men, without artillery, and extremely ill provided with supplies.”
“A brave man doesn’t count his enemies — he attacks them!” exclaimed Hubert.
“We shall have for auxiliaries the foreign armies,” interjected Plouernel, “and the civil war in the west and south.”
“Let us not be carried away by fancies. We are considering a levy of defenders which must be made to-morrow, in Paris; we are considering a fight which will be over in one day, in the capital,” returned Abbot Morlet, coldly.
“If we are beaten in Paris, we shall retreat to the revolted provinces! We shall be new food to the civil war!” cried the Bishop.
“The mitre weighs too much for your head, monseigneur,” retorted the Jesuit. “Retreat to the provinces, say you? But if the insurrection is defeated, how are you going to slip through the hands of the victors in the fray? All or nearly all of you will be massacred or guillotined.”
“Eh!” cried the Count, in a rage, “our friends the foreigners will avenge us! They will burn Paris to the ground!”
“And the King? He will have been, I suppose, delivered by a bold sortie. But the insurrection worsted, he will be retaken and will not escape death.”
“Well, we shall avenge him by a civil and a foreign war,” was the lame solution of the problem proposed by the Count.
“Let us proceed,” continued the Abbot. “Since, taking your own figures, it is a hundred to one that, even if you succeed in snatching Louis from his jailers for an instant, he will not fail to be retaken and have his head shorn off, what will your insurrection have availed you? Let the good populace, then, tranquilly trim the neck of this excellent prince. His death will be the signal for civil war, for the foreign invasion, and for the stamping out of the Republic. Do not uselessly endanger your lives and those of your friends; they can, like you, render great service at the proper moment. Accordingly, I sum up: the interests of all — bourgeoisie, nobles and clergy — will best be served by letting Louis XVI be guillotined with the briefest possible delay. I have spoken.”
The inflexible logic of the prelate made a keen impression on his auditors. He spoke sooth in regard to the certain defeat of the royalist insurrection, and in relation to the redoubled fury into which the death of Louis would throw the rulers of the surrounding monarchies. Nothing, indeed, could be more formidable than their concerted efforts and activity against the Republic — impoverished, torn by factions and almost without trained troops as the latter would be. But the Jesuit suspected not, was unable, despite his profound cunning, to conceive, what prodigies love of country and the republican faith were soon to give birth to.
“By the Eternal! my reverend sir,” at last cried the Count, “why, then, have you approved of our projects, why have you put at our service Lehiron and his band of frightful villains after his own pattern, to help undertake the affair?”
“Firstly, because I might have been mistaken in my conjectures — Errare humanum est — to err is human. A man of sense is not obstinate in his error. Secondly, and this is supreme to me, I have received from the General of my Order, at Rome, these instructions: ‘It is important to our holy mother the Church that Louis XVI be crowned with the palm of martyrdom.’ So that, having tested the danger and uselessness of an uprising, I declare point-blank my determination not to take the least part in it; I declare that I shall withhold from it whatever means of action I can in any way control; in short, I shall oppose it in all possible manner, licit and illicit. On the which account,” concluded the Jesuit, rising and bowing, “I shall now withdraw, so please you, my humble reverence from your honorable company. I have nothing more to do here.”
The Abbot moved impassively toward the door, only replying to the looks of wonder on every face with the words, “I have said.”
But Hubert blocked his passage, and cried: “Miserable cassock, hypocrite, cock-roach! Would you be also capable of denouncing us?”
“I am capable of everything to the end of preventing an act reprobated by the General of my Order. The General of the Jesuits has spoken; all must obey him — even Kings, even the Pope. Silence and obedience are the words!”
So saying, and profiting by the stupor into which his audacity and self-possession threw the other conspirators, the Jesuit left the room.
“We are off, god-son,” he said to little Rodin when he had descended to the second floor. “Come, my child; other cares call me elsewhere.”
“Me also,” responded the boy, blessing himself and rising. “I am ready to follow you, good god-father. Command. To hear you is to obey.”
CHAPTER XV.
THE KING ON TRIAL.
AS ALREADY RECOUNTED, John Lebrenn, in his capacity as municipal officer, was charged on the night of December 10, 1793, with the task of watching over Louis XVI, detained, with his family, at the Temple. Occupying a room before the chamber of the ex-King, Lebrenn felt for the prisoner a sort of compassion, as he reflected that this man, not without his good inclinations, and endowed with certain undeniable domestic virtues, had been pushed by his position as King to wrongful acts which were about to bring down a terrible punishment upon his head.
Louis submitted to his confinement with mingled carelessness and resignation, rarely displaying either annoyance or anger at the rigorous surveillance of which he was the object; he hoped that the penalty pronounced against him by the Convention would not exceed imprisonment until after the peace, and then banishment. For his wife, his sister, and his son and daughter, he showed great solicitude; one proof of the inherent sin of royalty, which could transform a good husband, a good brother, and a good father — a man without malice in his private life — into an execrable tyrant, capable of every transgression.
The curtains which screened the glass door separating the ante-chamber from that occupied by the fallen King accidentally falling apart in the middle, they revealed to John Lebrenn Louis XVI pacing up and down the room, although his usual bed-time had long sounded. The King seemed to be in a state of agitation which accorded ill with his apathetic nature. O
n the morrow he was to appear at the bar of the Convention; and during the day he had learned from Clery, his man-in-waiting, who, due to his secret connection with the royalists, was informed of their moves, that a plan was afoot to snatch him from his escort on the way from the Temple to the Convention. Quite likely to turn his mind from these thoughts, he opened the door leading into the room guarded by John Lebrenn, in order to speak with him. The countenance of his watchman seemed to inspire some confidence in the prisoner; perhaps he remarked on the young man’s features an expression of compassion, easy to confound with the respectful interest of a subject for a prisoner King. He stepped into the room of his guard. Not out of respect for the King, but out of commiseration for the captive man, the soldier rose from the camp cot on which he had been sitting. Louis addressed him affably, as follows:
“My friend, I am not disposed to sleep, to-night. If you will, let us talk together, that my sleeplessness may be rendered less irksome.”
“Willingly, Sire,” replied Lebrenn.
This was the first time since his captivity that Louis XVI heard one of his captors address him by that title ‘Sire.’ They called him habitually ‘citizen,’ or ‘monsieur,’ or ‘Louis Capet.’ Seeking to read the inner thoughts of the man before him, Louis resumed, after a moment’s silence:
“My friend, I do not think I am mistaken in believing that you pity my lot? I have been calumniated, but the light will break some day, perhaps soon: thank God, I still have friends. I know not what it is that tells me you are one of those faithful and devoted subjects of whom I speak.”
“Sire, I am too loyal to leave you a single instant in error. I do not accept the designation of ‘subject,’ Sire! I am a citizen of the French Republic.”
“Enough, monsieur; I was mistaken,” bitterly replied Louis. “Nevertheless, I thank you for your frankness.”
“My words were dictated by my dignity, first of all; next, by my pity for the misfortunes, not of the King, but of the man.”
“Sir,” cried Louis XVI haughtily, “I require no one’s pity; the commiseration of heaven and my conscience are enough. Let us stop there.”
“Sire, I did not seek the honor of this conversation; and, should it continue, it is well that you be under no illusion as to my sentiments towards royalty. The Revolution and the Republic have no more devoted soldier than myself. Now, Sire, I am at your service.”
Louis XVI was not utterly lacking in sense; his first resentment past, he admitted to himself that the conduct of this municipal officer was all the more praiseworthy, inasmuch as while declaring himself a revolutionist and a republican, he nevertheless treated a captive King with respect.
“I was rude just now, I am sorry for it,” he said at length. “Hoping for a moment to discover in you a faithful subject, I found myself face to face with an enemy. The disappointment was great. Still, let us talk a little on this subject of your hatred for royalty. What harm have this royalty, this nobility, this clergy, against which you rail, done to you and your like?”
“I could, Sire, reply to you in a few words, by facts and not by railings. But I wish not to wound your preconceived ideas, and above all to avoid giving you cause to make a sad comparison. This, Sire, is the third time, in the course of fourteen centuries, that a descendant of my family encounters one of the heirs of the monarchy of Clovis; and that under circumstances—”
“Doubtless the circumstances were intensely interesting. What were they? You pique my curiosity.”
“Sire, the circumstances are sinister. It would be painful to me to give you cause to draw the sad comparison between your present position and that of the princes, your predecessors.”
“Tell me that part of your legends, Monsieur Lebrenn. My curiosity is highly excited, and my confidence in a brighter future will not be dimmed by your recital.”
“To obey you, Sire, I shall. It was in the year 738 that one of my ancestors, named Amael, a soldier of fortune and companion to Charles Martel, found himself in Anjou, at the Convent of St. Saturnine. My ancestor was commissioned by Charles Martel to keep prisoner in the convent a poor boy of nine, the only son of Thierry IV, the do-nothing King, named Childeric. The child soon died, thus extinguishing, in the last scion of the Merovingians, the stock of Clovis who had covered Gaul with ruins. Two centuries and a half later, in 987, at the palace of Compiegne, another of my ancestors, the son of a forester of the royal domain, found himself alone in the chamber of Louis the Do-nothing with that prince; he saw him of a sudden faint, become deadly pale, and writhe in agony. He apostrophized the dying King thus: ‘Louis, last year Hugh the Capet, Count of Paris, had your father Lothaire poisoned by the Queen his wife, a concubine of the Bishop of Laon. Louis, you are about to die of poison which your wife, Queen Blanche, has just given you. She has promised Hugh the Capet, her accomplice, to wed him during the coming year.’ And so it was; the last of the Carlovingians dead, Hugh the Capet espoused his widow and had himself enthroned King of France. There, Sire, that is how royal dynasties are founded and ended.”
“These are strange chances, Monsieur Lebrenn,” replied Louis XVI. “One of your ancestors charged to watch the last prince of the dynasty of Clovis; another ancestor sees perish the last scion of the monarchy of Charlemagne; and this night you are to watch over me, whom you probably consider as the last King of the dynasty of Hugh Capet. You will soon perceive your error.”
“Sire,” returned John Lebrenn, “you insisted on knowing the occurrences of which I just spoke, in connection with a question you put to me—”
“Aye, Monsieur Lebrenn; and in spite of the strangeness of the circumstances with which you have just made me acquainted, I repeat my question. What harm have royalty, nobility and clergy ever done to you and yours, that you should hate them so?”
“To begin with, Sire, we know upon what crimes hang the rise and fall of dynasties; consequently we are unable to love and respect a royalty imposed upon us by conquest. All monarchies have had a similar origin. The Count of Boulainvilliers, in this very century, established and demonstrated that the land of the Gauls belonged of fact and of right to the King and the nobility, by the grace of God and the right of their good swords: the Gauls were a vanquished race.”
For several seconds Louis did not speak. Then he began brusquely, “Triumph in your hate, monsieur; you are here as the jailer of the descendant of those Kings whom you and your fellows have abhorred for ages.”
“The circumstance which has placed me near you, Sire, is of too high an order of morality to evoke in me a sentiment so miserable as that of sated hatred.”
“What, then, is the feeling which you do entertain, monsieur?”
“A religious emotion, Sire; such as is bred in every honest heart by one of these mysterious decrees of eternal justice which, sooner or later, manifests itself in its divine grandeur and seizes the guilty ones, in whatever rank they may be stationed.”
“So, monsieur, you make me a party to the evil my forefathers may have perpetrated upon their subjects?”
“Monarchs are rightfully regarded as parties to the crimes of their ancestors, the same as they pretend to be masters of the people by virtue of divine right and the conquests of those ancestors. All inheritance carries with it its responsibilities as well as its benefits. You surely would not dispute that, Sire?”
“To-morrow rebellious subjects will arrogate to themselves the right to summon their King before them to trial,” murmured Louis, without noticing Lebrenn’s question. “The will of heaven be done in all things; it will punish the wicked, and protect the just.”
As Louis pronounced these words, the porter of the Temple entered the room, saying, as he handed John the letter from advocate Desmarais, “Citizen officer, here is a letter just brought for you by Citizen Billaud-Varenne, who enjoined me to take it to you at once.”
“Good night, Monsieur Lebrenn,” said the King; and turning to the porter: “Send me my waiting-man Clery, to help me make my toilet. I wish to re
tire.”
Louis XVI returned to his room, while John Lebrenn, greatly surprised to recognize Desmarais’s hand-writing on the envelope which Billaud-Varenne had sent him, quickly tore it open, his heart, in spite of himself, beating loud against his ribs.
The missive read, Lebrenn for a moment thought he was dreaming. He hesitated to pin any faith to such unlooked-for good fortune, the realization of his dearest hopes. In vain did he seek to penetrate the motive for the singular condition placed by the lawyer upon his marriage. Examined in turn from the viewpoint of duty, of honor and of delicacy, the condition seemed to him on the whole acceptable; he simply bound himself for the future to a discretion from which he had not, in the past, varied a hair’s breadth.
Why attempt to paint the ineffable felicity of John Lebrenn? The night passed for him in a flood of joy.
In the morning he was one of the municipal officers charged to conduct Louis XVI to the bar of the Convention. Towards nine o’clock Chambon, Mayor of Paris, accompanied by a court clerk came to deliver to the King the order to appear before the Convention.
A two-horse coach awaited Louis at the door of the great tower, within the precincts of the Temple. Generals Santerre and Witenkoff were stationed on horseback beside the windows. Louis climbed into the vehicle, and seated himself on the rear seat, beside the Mayor of Paris; John Lebrenn and one of his colleagues in the Municipal Council occupied the front. As soon as the carriage issued from the courtyard of the Temple, the King realized, by the mass of military force with which his route to the National Convention was hemmed in, that the Committee of General Safety had been informed of the royalist intrigue, and had taken steps to make impossible any sudden assault calculated to carry off the prisoner.
While Louis was on his way to the Convention, that sovereign assembly, already two hours in session, was calmly and with dignity transacting public affairs. The trial of the ex-Executive was, no doubt, of prime importance, but to have changed its order of business, or to interrupt it without cause before the appearance of the accused, would have given the Convention almost the appearance of intimidation before the act which it was about to consummate in the teeth of the allied Kings of Europe. The countenances of the various factions presented singular contrasts. The galleries were filled with patriots, who, in common with the Mountain and the Jacobins, saw no safety for the Republic and the Revolution save in the condemnation of Louis XVI to the penalty of death.