The Devil’s Laughter

by Frank Yerby

  “Down with you!” they growled.

  There was nothing for the brilliantly clad gentlefolk to do but to obey.

  “Now shout ‘Vive Necker!’ ” the ruffians commanded. “Say: ‘Long Live the Third Estate!’ Louder, you aristocratic dogs! All right, you noble whores—make a noise! You shrilled better than that when your favourite was running behind this afternoon!”

  Jean felt a surge of pity for these delicate, perfumed, powdered creatures, forced to kneel in the dusty street. Then he touched his own scarred face and all his pity vanished.

  Give it to them, he thought. They’ve had it coming a long time. . . .

  He tired of watching it after a while and turned away. Then his whole face slackened with relief, for he saw Fleurette coming across the street, her cane tapping on the stones.

  Thank God she’s all right, he thought, and waited.

  That was his mistake. For one desperate madman of a nobleman, braver, or drunker, than his fellows, came hurtling through the throng, his coachman lashing the horses, the yellow coach careering between all the halted vehicles so fast that now this pair of wheels, now that, were lifted clear of the ground, the horses’ hoofs making sparks against the cobblestones, the sound of their coming like thunder; and he, standing there, having no time, no time at all, even to scream out, “Fleurette!” before the maddened, lathered animals were upon her.

  He dug in his heels and started running at a diagonal, seeing that some of her clothes, the good dress he had bought her, being of stout stuff that would not tear like the rags she formerly wore, had caught in a projection of the yellow coach, and she was being dragged like a doll beneath the coach, whose wheels miraculously had not passed over her.

  He ran faster than he had ever run before in his life. The last three yards he covered in a gigantic leap, his fingers closing around the reins of the lead horse, and he swinging there, dragging the beast’s head down with a strength that was beyond strength, that was pure fury, desperation, slowing them, catching with his other hand the reins of the next horse, turning the outside pair aside so that all four horses were forced to turn, and the coach, skidding, crashed into the walls of a house. He was under it before it had stopped shaking from the impact, dragging her out.

  She was unconscious, but alive. A thin trickle of blood came out of both corners of her mouth. He lifted her up and faced the coach door. Even before it opened, the coat of arms on it seized his attention almost like a physical blow, so that when Gervais la Moyte stepped down, he was almost prepared for him.

  “Behold your work!” he said, and, for all its quiet, his voice was like a suddenly unsheathed blade.

  “My God!” Gervais exclaimed; “I didn’t see, I didn’t know. . . .”

  Jean opened his mouth to answer him, but he stopped then, frozen, his blood congealed, his breath thickened into solidity, a ball at the base of his throat. For a woman had appeared in the door of the coach behind Gervais la Moyte. A tall woman, bejewelled, painted, her tawny hair unpowdered, her hazel eyes widening like those of a great cat come suddenly from a lighted place into darkness.

  “Lucienne!” Jean breathed.

  She had been lovely before. But then it had been a beauty without art. Paris had changed her. And, because she was one of those women so basically perfect that even artificiality heightened her, she had become something more than lovely. Now, Jean thought weakly, now she is glorious.

  He heard the thunder of running feet, hundreds of feet pounding towards them.

  “Ran over her!” they were roaring. “Fleurette—poor, blind Fleurette! Kill them! Kill the noble swine!”

  Jean freed one arm from beneath his pitiful, broken little burden. He caught Gervais la Moyte by the shoulder and spun him, hard, in the direction of a narrow street.

  “Run,” he spat, “both of you! Damn you, run!”

  They flew into the little street an instant before the first of the fishwives, stone-cutters, brigands, workers, thieves hurtled round the corner and saw the coach, and Jean standing there with Fleurette in his arms.

  “Where are they?” they screamed at him; “Where? Is she dead?”

  “Gone,” Jean said. “No, she isn’t dead—but she will be if you don’t let me get her a doctor. . . .”

  They cleared a way for him. Some of the women and a man or two went with him. But before he was ten yards away he heard the sound of smashing wood, glass breaking; then hoarse-voiced, deep, terror-filled at first, then louder, shriller with the ragged note of pain getting into it, the first screams of the Comte de Gravereau’s lackeys.

  He didn’t look back. There was nothing he could do now. He heard a new sound, a scream, too; but not a scream, nothing that was human even, and it was this that forced him to look back. He saw what it was. They were even killing the horses.

  Marianne worked wonders. It was she, actually, who saved Fleurette’s life. She bathed the poor broken body, straightening the blind waif’s limbs into a comfortable position, got the brandy down her throat without strangling her, so that when Pierre came back with the Surgeon of the Guard, a military doctor quite accustomed to broken bones, all he had to do was to set her three fractured ribs and her broken left arm. He worked well, with rough skill. Towards nightfall she regained consciousness and was able to take a little hot soup. Then she sank into a deep sleep.

  Jean was glad of that, because not even the incessant gunfire in the Rue Saint-Antoine disturbed her. When, finally, the guards were forced to bring up cannon to disperse the mob, she jumped and whimpered a little in her sleep, but the belly-deep, bass rumble of the artillery-fire could not waken her.

  The mob, during those hours that Fleurette lay unconscious, sacked the Reveillon house from top to bottom. They burned everything that blameless man owned, even casting live chickens into the bonfire. They drank every drop of wine he had in his cellar, and when that was finished they drank the casks of varnish he also had there, being by this time too drunk to know the difference. Five of them died in convulsions from drinking the varnish.

  When the Watch, the Royal Croats Cavalry, the French Guards, and the Swiss Guards finally got there to rescue the thirty guards the mob had overwhelmed, they had the courage of M. Reveillon’s good brandy. They charged the soldiers again and again. Two hundred rioters were killed. Three hundred more were wounded. The only thing that stopped them finally was the cannon.

  The revolt had lasted four days. And everybody in Paris—except the higher noblesse, who had long since forgotten how to use either their brains or their eyes—knew that the world had ended.

  “To be born again,” Jean Paul Marin whispered as he sat beside his own bed looking at Fleurette’s sleeping form; “but not the same—not ever the same again. . . .”

  Then, moved by sudden impulse, he leaned over and touched her fevered brow lightly with his lips.

  7

  “IT is strange,” Jean Paul Marin wrote to his brother Bertrand, “how ill adapted the human animal is to any kind of change whatsoever. On Monday, the fourth of May, the States-General begin their sessions at Versailles. . . .”

  He paused, looking at his calendar.

  “That historic day being now but two days off, I find myself in the midst of preparations. They are simple, as I have decided against moving to Versailles. The weather now is mild, and the daily ride to that fair seat of Royalty cannot but be beneficial to my health. Besides, my business affairs in Paris require that I keep in constant touch. But to return to the matter of change:

  “You and I, dear brother, had had many bitter quarrels over my radicalism. Honesty, at the moment, leaves me no other course but to humbly beg your pardon and to admit that in many things you were right. This will astonish you. I know; but the things I have seen in and around Paris have brought me to the reluctant conclusion that the overflow of an established order of society is not a thing to be undertaken lightly.

  “Ills there are in our realm; grave ills, intolerable ills. But now I wonder if in our pell-m
ell rush towards reform we may be merely substituting for them others graver, even more insufferable. The arrogance and folly of the nobles was for men of our class a perpetual insult; but contrasting it now with the beastly stupidity and the murderous fury of the canaille, I remind myself that it at least had the saving grace of the forms of courtesy.

  “In short, your fire-eating brother finds himself in the curious position of being spoken of in all quarters as a known moderate, in some, indeed, he is damned as a conservative. I have changed, Bertie—so much that it sometimes startles me. . . .”

  He stretched out his hand to dip his pen in the inkwell. He had said all he needed to, but he must make the courteous inquiries after the health of Simone, and ask of some word of Thérèse, and even of Nicole, neither of whom, strangely, had written him. At that moment he glanced towards Fleurette. She was lying very still on the bed with her eyes opened wide. From her very stillness he knew she was listening to something. He knew also that it would be several minutes before the same sound reached his ears.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “Someone is coming,” she told him. “The facteur, I think. Ah, yes, it is the facteur. The poor man, his feet must hurt him so. I can tell by the way he limps. . . .”

  Jean got up at once. He had never ceased to be amazed at this faculty of hers, but he knew better than to doubt her. Besides, it was actually his fault that she could hear the postman. In his great need to have some word from Nicole, Jean had begged the old man to bring all his mail directly up to his flat, instead of leaving it with the concierge below. Of course, he tipped the facteur liberally each time the old man had to climb the stairs; but he was conscious of the fact that it wasn’t really necessary. He went up and down the stairs several times a day, and any letter that came for him, even one from Nicole, could easily wait the short time that elapsed before he passed the office of the concierge.

  He went round the little cot he had bought for himself. Pierre and Marianne had offered to take Fleurette off his hands, but the doctor had stressed the inadvisability of moving her. So Jean had given up his good bed and bought the cot.

  He met the postman at the entresol, thus saving that tired old man a climb of three more flights of stairs. There was only one letter for him. To his disappointment, he recognised Bertrand’s bold hand. Still, Bertrand might conceivably mention Nicole, so he took the letter and went back upstairs to his flat. That he didn’t open it at once was not due to any restraint on his part, but to the fact that even in the day-time it was so dark in the hallways of the building that he couldn’t have read it, anyway.

  Fleurette lay on the bed listening to his breathing. She heard the first rasping note get into it. Then it stopped altogether.

  “What is it?” she cried out, forcing herself half up with her one good arm. “Tell me what it is, Jean!”

  She realised at once that she had called him by his name without any title. It was the first time she had ever done that. She opened her lips to apologise, to say—but Jean’s voice cut her off. She would not have recognised it if she hadn’t known it was he.

  “Oh, my God!” he got out. “Oh, dear God!”

  “Tell me what it is!” she screamed at him. “Please tell me!” But he was beyond speech. He was sitting on the little cot without knowing how he got there, staring at the words in Bertrand’s letter, his sight clear, unblurred, for this was a thing beyond tears, reading over and over again in pure naked anguish the words:

  “. . . a major Jacquerie. Every château in this part of the province was burned to the ground. Prepare yourself, mon Jean, for this will be hard. Thérèse—is dead. Gervais defended his château with some courage, but when he saw that there was no chance, he fled, leaving our poor sister to her fate. ‘Tis said that he is now in Paris. You may even see him soon, because he will sit for the nobles of the provinces in the States.

  “I have no suggestion of how you should deal with him in such eventuality. I cannot make suggestions. You, and you alone, of us all opposed this match. Were you here, I’d ask your forgiveness upon my knees. . . .”

  “Jean!” Fleurette wept. “You’re ill! Speak to me, tell me. . . .”

  “Lie down again, little one,” Jean said; and his voice was curiously gentle. “You’ll harm yourself.”

  He sat there, holding the letter. It had several pages, and he had read only part of the first. He must read it all, but he seemed unable to. His fingers wouldn’t work, somehow. He couldn’t separate the pages. He sat there holding it. Fleurette was crying very softly. He could hear her. The sound came from a million leagues away, somewhere on the other side of the moon.

  He had the second page now. The words leaped up at him, smashed into his consciousness like axe blows:

  “. . . complete carbonisation . . . recognised her only by her jewellery . . . burial at once . . . held mob at bay with pistols while the Abbé Grégoire said the last rites. They stoned him while he was praying . . . never got back to the Abbey—murdered on the road. . . .”

  Jean’s lips moved, forming words, but not even Fleurette’s keen ears could catch them.

  “I am myself in hiding; I must flee the country. Because of Simone and our connection with the nobility, Villa Marin also is no more. . . . Every noble family and many of the richer bourgeois suffered the same fate. . . .”

  “Of Gervais’ sister,” he read, and stopped; for those were the last words on the page. He sat there, staring at them. He had faced the guns of his enemies. He had walked into the clubs and knives of the most dangerous criminals of Paris. He had risked torture not once but a dozen times in his attempts to escape the bagne at Toulon. But he could not turn that page.

  “Turn it, Jean,” Fleurette whispered; “read what it says. It’s better that you should know. . . .”

  He stared at her. But her face was not even turned in his direction. Then he too heard how loudly the stiff paper rattled in his shaking hands. He moved convulsively. The letter fell from his stiffened fingers and the pages scattered over the floor. He bent over and began to pick them up. The forever precise Bertrand had numbered them. Jean held page three in his hand.

  “. . . I can tell you but little. The petit chdteau of the Marquis de Saint Gravert was burned with the rest. This I know beyond all doubt. From there on, the rumours contradict one another. Many hold that the entire family perished in the flames. I doubt this, because Julien Lamont has not been at home for some months. Then, at least one of their servants escaped. This one I have seen, and he believes that it is possible for Madame la Marquise and the children to have escaped, for he himself helped them into a fast Jiacre, and though they were pursued, none of their pursuers were mounted. Here my knowledge of Nicole la Moyte and her children ends.

  “You will wonder why I single her out. The reason, mon pauvre, is simple: the last time I visited our poor, sainted sister she was there. She inquired after you with such extravagant interest that Thérèse gave her a warning look. She said quite calmly: ‘I don’t care if he knows.’ Then, turning to me, she looked me full in the face and told me: ‘I love your brother. I have since the first night I saw him. I intend to go on loving him till the day I die.’ Which astonished me, though it shouldn’t have; you, mon frêre, have always had a way with women. What troubles me more is the fact that Thérèse told me that you return this mad love of hers. I pray God that some day you may find her again, for—who knows?—after the world has been completely turned upside down, there may no longer be any barriers between you.

  “One word more, and I am done. It is my plan, as soon as it is feasible, to flee to Austria, where so many of those fortunate enough to escape have already gone. It may be that I shall learn something of your lost Nicole there; because, if she made good her escape, it will be there that she will have gone. . . .”

  There was more, but Jean didn’t read it. He had to get out of the flat, walk in the open, think. But then he saw Fleurette lying on the bed, her left arm in a sling, her body under her nightgo
wn bulky with bandages. He couldn’t leave her alone. Of course, it was almost time for Marianne to come and see after her, but the short space of time he would have to wait was intolerable to him.

  “I’m going out,” he told her, and his voice was strange, even to his own ears; “I’ll send Marianne to you.”

  “As you will, M’sieur Jean,” she said. And somehow without moving from the bed she had withdrawn a distance of a thousand leagues.

  “Fleurette—” he said; “what’s the matter?”

  “I—I am nothing to you!” she sobbed. “You push me away. You always keep me outside your life. . . .”

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked wonderingly.

  “Share things with me. Your joys—your sorrows, as I have shared with you. For instance, something in that letter you got has troubled you terribly. But you won’t tell me what it is. I asked you, but you wouldn’t tell me.”

  Jean studied her face a long time.

  “All right,” he whispered, “I’ll tell you. My little sister is dead. She was murdered by the peasants in an uprising near Marseilles. They burned the house of her husband, who is a noble. She was in the house, and they burned her with it. Enough?”

  “Too much!” she whispered. Then: “Come here, my Jean. . . .”

  He came over to where she lay.

  “Sit down,” she murmured.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed, and she put up her good hand and stroked his hair. She was crying. She didn’t say anything. She just lay there and stroked his hair and cried.