Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution

by Rafael Sabatini

  CHAPTER VIII. OMNES OMNIBUS

  Andre-Louis rode forth from Rennes committed to a deeper adventure thanhe had dreamed of when he left the sleepy village of Gavrillac. Lyingthe night at a roadside inn, and setting out again early in the morning,he reached Nantes soon after noon of the following day.

  Through that long and lonely ride through the dull plains of Brittany,now at their dreariest in their winter garb, he had ample leisure inwhich to review his actions and his position. From one who had takenhitherto a purely academic and by no means friendly interest in the newphilosophies of social life, exercising his wits upon these new ideasmerely as a fencer exercises his eye and wrist with the foils, withoutever suffering himself to be deluded into supposing the issue a realone, he found himself suddenly converted into a revolutionary firebrand,committed to revolutionary action of the most desperate kind. Therepresentative and delegate of a nobleman in the States of Brittany, hefound himself simultaneously and incongruously the representative anddelegate of the whole Third Estate of Rennes.

  It is difficult to determine to what extent, in the heat of passion andswept along by the torrent of his own oratory, he might yesterday havesucceeded in deceiving himself. But it is at least certain that, lookingback in cold blood now, he had no single delusion on the score of whathe had done. Cynically he had presented to his audience one side only ofthe great question that he propounded.

  But since the established order of things in France was such as to makea rampart for M. de La Tour d'Azyr, affording him complete immunity forthis and any other crimes that it pleased him to commit, why, then theestablished order must take the consequences of its wrong-doing. Thereinhe perceived his clear justification.

  And so it was without misgivings that he came on his errand of seditioninto that beautiful city of Nantes, rendered by its spacious streets andsplendid port the rival in prosperity of Bordeaux and Marseilles.

  He found an inn on the Quai La Fosse, where he put up his horse, andwhere he dined in the embrasure of a window that looked out over thetree-bordered quay and the broad bosom of the Loire, on which argosiesof all nations rode at anchor. The sun had again broken through theclouds, and shed its pale wintry light over the yellow waters and thetall-masted shipping.

  Along the quays there was a stir of life as great as that to be seenon the quays of Paris. Foreign sailors in outlandish garments and ofharsh-sounding, outlandish speech, stalwart fishwives with baskets ofherrings on their heads, voluminous of petticoat above bare legs andbare feet, calling their wares shrilly and almost inarticulately,watermen in woollen caps and loose trousers rolled to the knees,peasants in goatskin coats, their wooden shoes clattering on theround kidney-stones, shipwrights and labourers from the dockyards,bellows-menders, rat-catchers, water-carriers, ink-sellers, and otheritinerant pedlars. And, sprinkled through this proletariat mass thatcame and went in constant movement, Andre-Louis beheld tradesmen insober garments, merchants in long, fur-lined coats; occasionallya merchant-prince rolling along in his two-horse cabriolet to thewhip-crackings and shouts of "Gare!" from his coachman; occasionally adainty lady carried past in her sedan-chair, with perhaps a mincing abbefrom the episcopal court tripping along in attendance; occasionally anofficer in scarlet riding disdainfully; and once the great carriage ofa nobleman, with escutcheoned panels and a pair of white-stockinged,powdered footmen in gorgeous liveries hanging on behind. And there wereCapuchins in brown and Benedictines in black, and secular priests inplenty--for God was well served in the sixteen parishes of Nantes--andby way of contrast there were lean-jawed, out-at-elbow adventurers, andgendarmes in blue coats and gaitered legs, sauntering guardians of thepeace.

  Representatives of every class that went to make up the seventy thousandinhabitants of that wealthy, industrious city were to be seen inthe human stream that ebbed and flowed beneath the window from whichAndre-Louis observed it.

  Of the waiter who ministered to his humble wants with soup and bouilli,and a measure of vin gris, Andre-Louis enquired into the state of publicfeeling in the city. The waiter, a staunch supporter of the privilegedorders, admitted regretfully that an uneasiness prevailed. Much woulddepend upon what happened at Rennes. If it was true that the King haddissolved the States of Brittany, then all should be well, and themalcontents would have no pretext for further disturbances. There hadbeen trouble and to spare in Nantes already. They wanted no repetitionof it. All manner of rumours were abroad, and since early morning therehad been crowds besieging the portals of the Chamber of Commerce fordefinite news. But definite news was yet to come. It was not even knownfor a fact that His Majesty actually had dissolved the States.

  It was striking two, the busiest hour of the day upon the Bourse, whenAndre-Louis reached the Place du Commerce. The square, dominated by theimposing classical building of the Exchange, was so crowded that hewas compelled almost to fight his way through to the steps of themagnificent Ionic porch. A word would have sufficed to have opened a wayfor him at once. But guile moved him to keep silent. He would come uponthat waiting multitude as a thunderclap, precisely as yesterday hehad come upon the mob at Rennes. He would lose nothing of the surpriseeffect of his entrance.

  The precincts of that house of commerce were jealously kept by a lineof ushers armed with staves, a guard as hurriedly assembled by themerchants as it was evidently necessary. One of these now effectivelybarred the young lawyer's passage as he attempted to mount the steps.

  Andre-Louis announced himself in a whisper.

  The stave was instantly raised from the horizontal, and he passed andwent up the steps in the wake of the usher. At the top, on the thresholdof the chamber, he paused, and stayed his guide.

  "I will wait here," he announced. "Bring the president to me."

  "Your name, monsieur?"

  Almost had Andre-Louis answered him when he remembered Le Chapelier'swarning of the danger with which his mission was fraught, and LeChapelier's parting admonition to conceal his identity.

  "My name is unknown to him; it matters nothing; I am the mouthpiece of apeople, no more. Go."

  The usher went, and in the shadow of that lofty, pillared porticoAndre-Louis waited, his eyes straying out ever and anon to survey thatspread of upturned faces immediately below him.

  Soon the president came, others following, crowding out into theportico, jostling one another in their eagerness to hear the news.

  "You are a messenger from Rennes?"

  "I am the delegate sent by the Literary Chamber of that city to informyou here in Nantes of what is taking place."

  "Your name?"

  Andre-Louis paused. "The less we mention names perhaps the better."

  The president's eyes grew big with gravity. He was a corpulent, floridman, purse-proud, and self-sufficient.

  He hesitated a moment. Then--"Come into the Chamber," said he.

  "By your leave, monsieur, I will deliver my message from here--from thesesteps."

  "From here?" The great merchant frowned.

  "My message is for the people of Nantes, and from here I can speakat once to the greatest number of Nantais of all ranks, and it is mydesire--and the desire of those whom I represent--that as great a numberas possible should hear my message at first hand."

  "Tell me, sir, is it true that the King has dissolved the States?"

  Andre-Louis looked at him. He smiled apologetically, and waved a handtowards the crowd, which by now was straining for a glimpse of this slimyoung man who had brought forth the president and more than half thenumbers of the Chamber, guessing already, with that curious instinct ofcrowds, that he was the awaited bearer of tidings.

  "Summon the gentlemen of your Chamber, monsieur," said he, "and youshall hear all."

  "So be it."

  A word, and forth they came to crowd upon the steps, but leaving clearthe topmost step and a half-moon space in the middle.

  To the spot so indicated, Andre-Louis now advanced very deliberately.He took his stand there, dominating the entire assembly. He removedhis hat,
and launched the opening bombshell of that address whichis historic, marking as it does one of the great stages of France'sprogress towards revolution.

  "People of this great city of Nantes, I have come to summon you toarms!"

  In the amazed and rather scared silence that followed he surveyed themfor a moment before resuming.

  "I am a delegate of the people of Rennes, charged to announce to youwhat is taking place, and to invite you in this dreadful hour of ourcountry's peril to rise and march to her defence."

  "Name! Your name!" a voice shouted, and instantly the cry was taken upby others, until the multitude rang with the question.

  He could not answer that excited mob as he had answered the president.It was necessary to compromise, and he did so, happily. "My name," saidhe, "is Omnes Omnibus--all for all. Let that suffice you now. I am aherald, a mouthpiece, a voice; no more. I come to announce to you thatsince the privileged orders, assembled for the States of Brittany inRennes, resisted your will--our will--despite the King's plain hint tothem, His Majesty has dissolved the States."

  There was a burst of delirious applause. Men laughed and shouted, andcries of "Vive le Roi!" rolled forth like thunder. Andre-Louis waited,and gradually the preternatural gravity of his countenance came to beobserved, and to beget the suspicion that there might be more to follow.Gradually silence was restored, and at last Andre Louis was able toproceed.

  "You rejoice too soon. Unfortunately, the nobles, in their insolentarrogance, have elected to ignore the royal dissolution, and in despiteof it persist in sitting and in conducting matters as seems good tothem."

  A silence of utter dismay greeted that disconcerting epilogue tothe announcement that had been so rapturously received. Andre-Louiscontinued after a moment's pause:

  "So that these men who were already rebels against the people, rebels,against justice and equity, rebels against humanity itself, are nowalso rebels against their King. Sooner than yield an inch of theunconscionable privileges by which too long already they haveflourished, to the misery of a whole nation, they will make a mockof royal authority, hold up the King himself to contempt. They aredetermined to prove that there is no real sovereignty in France but thesovereignty of their own parasitic faineantise."

  There was a faint splutter of applause, but the majority of the audienceremained silent, waiting.

  "This is no new thing. Always has it been the same. No minister inthe last ten years, who, seeing the needs and perils of the State,counselled the measures that we now demand as the only means ofarresting our motherland in its ever-quickening progress to the abyss,but found himself as a consequence cast out of office by the influencewhich Privilege brought to bear against him. Twice already has M. Neckerbeen called to the ministry, to be twice dismissed when his insistentcounsels of reform threatened the privileges of clergy and nobility. Forthe third time now has he been called to office, and at last it seemswe are to have States General in spite of Privilege. But what theprivileged orders can no longer prevent, they are determined tostultify. Since it is now a settled thing that these States General areto meet, at least the nobles and the clergy will see to it--unless wetake measures to prevent them--by packing the Third Estate with theirown creatures, and denying it all effective representation, that theyconvert the States General into an instrument of their own will for theperpetuation of the abuses by which they live. To achieve this end theywill stop at nothing. They have flouted the authority of the King, andthey are silencing by assassination those who raise their voices tocondemn them. Yesterday in Rennes two young men who addressed the peopleas I am addressing you were done to death in the streets by assassins atthe instigation of the nobility. Their blood cries out for vengeance."

  Beginning in a sullen mutter, the indignation that moved his hearersswelled up to express itself in a roar of anger.

  "Citizens of Nantes, the motherland is in peril. Let us march to herdefence. Let us proclaim it to the world that we recognize that themeasures to liberate the Third Estate from the slavery in which forcenturies it has groaned find only obstacles in those orders whosephrenetic egotism sees in the tears and suffering of the unfortunatean odious tribute which they would pass on to their generations stillunborn. Realizing from the barbarity of the means employed by ourenemies to perpetuate our oppression that we have everything to fearfrom the aristocracy they would set up as a constitutional principle forthe governing of France, let us declare ourselves at once enfranchisedfrom it.

  "The establishment of liberty and equality should be the aim of everycitizen member of the Third Estate; and to this end we should standindivisibly united, especially the young and vigorous, especially thosewho have had the good fortune to be born late enough to be able togather for themselves the precious fruits of the philosophy of thiseighteenth century."

  Acclamations broke out unstintedly now. He had caught them in the snareof his oratory. And he pressed his advantage instantly.

  "Let us all swear," he cried in a great voice, "to raise up in the nameof humanity and of liberty a rampart against our enemies, to oppose totheir bloodthirsty covetousness the calm perseverance of men whose causeis just. And let us protest here and in advance against any tyrannicaldecrees that should declare us seditious when we have none but pure andjust intentions. Let us make oath upon the honour of our motherland thatshould any of us be seized by an unjust tribunal, intending against usone of those acts termed of political expediency--which are, in effect,but acts of despotism--let us swear, I say, to give a full expressionto the strength that is in us and do that in self-defence which nature,courage, and despair dictate to us."

  Loud and long rolled the applause that greeted his conclusion, and heobserved with satisfaction and even some inward grim amusement that thewealthy merchants who had been congregated upon the steps, and who nowcame crowding about him to shake him by the hand and to acclaim him,were not merely participants in, but the actual leaders of, thisdelirium of enthusiasm.

  It confirmed him, had he needed confirmation, in his conviction thatjust as the philosophies upon which this new movement was based hadtheir source in thinkers extracted from the bourgeoisie, so the needto adopt those philosophies to the practical purposes of life was mostacutely felt at present by those bourgeois who found themselves debarredby Privilege from the expansion their wealth permitted them. If it mightbe said of Andre-Louis that he had that day lighted the torch of theRevolution in Nantes, it might with even greater truth be said that thetorch itself was supplied by the opulent bourgeoisie.

  I need not dwell at any length upon the sequel. It is a matter ofhistory how that oath which Omnes Omnibus administered to the citizensof Nantes formed the backbone of the formal protest which they drew upand signed in their thousands. Nor were the results of that powerfulprotest--which, after all, might already be said to harmonize with theexpressed will of the sovereign himself--long delayed. Who shall say howfar it may have strengthened the hand of Necker, when on the 27th ofthat same month of November he compelled the Council to adopt the mostsignificant and comprehensive of all those measures to which clergy andnobility had refused their consent? On that date was published the royaldecree ordaining that the deputies to be elected to the States Generalshould number at least one thousand, and that the deputies of theThird Estate should be fully representative by numbering as many as thedeputies of clergy and nobility together.