by Frank Yerby
“Perhaps we should leave her locked up for a week—say,” Jean suggested in mock alarm. “She’s a dangerous woman when her temper’s aroused.”
The Prefect turned the key in the big lock.
“I think you have no cause for anxiety, Citizen Marin,” he said; “for Madame surely cannot believe the things she is saying. Any man so fortunate as to be married to anyone so beautiful as Madame would never in this life turn his head to look at another woman!”
“You are gallant, Citizen Prefect,” Lucienne said as he bowed her out of the cell. “Perhaps if this husband of mine continues to be so negligent you might be willing to show me the sights of Paris?”
The Prefect reddened to the roots of his hair.
“You honour me too much, Madame,” he said dryly, “but your husband does not appear to be the type of man I’d risk making an enemy of. Au ‘voir, Madame, M’sieur.”
“Au ‘voir,” Jean said.
Lucienne smiled at him.
“Precisely when did I marry you, Citizen Marin?” she said; “I don’t seem to be able to recall the circumstances.”
“You wouldn’t,” Jean laughed; “you were far gone with wine. But I’ll show you the certificate—in the morning.”
“Strange,” Lucienne mused; “we are really much alike—you and I. We carried that off well, didn’t we?”
“Rather,” Jean said.
“And you’re already becoming a power in the city. Keep it up, Jeannot. You may even interest me again—one of these years. . . .”
Jean looked at her. He stopped smiling. Of all the things he disliked about Lucienne, nothing annoyed him more than her superb vanity.
“I suppose we’ll have to walk,” she sighed. “Oh, well, it’s not too far. It seems that all I’ve done for the last few days is to walk endless leagues and never get anywhere.”
Jean didn’t answer her. His mind was off on another track. He was wondering how it was that the two women who were capable of stirring his deepest emotions could be so entirely different as were Nicole and Lucienne.
“Here we are,” she said mockingly; “I’d ask you to come up, but for the fact that I know you’d accept.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” Jean said.
“I am. And I’ve had enough labour for one day. I don’t mean to spend the next two hours warding off your attempts to exercise your husbandly prerogatives.”
“You’re sure of yourself, aren’t you?” Jean said.
“Quite. I’ve never met a man I couldn’t have—if I wanted him. But he has to make me want him. That, believe it or not, is a tall order. You’d better work at it, Jean.”
“What the devil makes you think I want to?” Jean growled.
“This,” Lucienne said; then going up on tiptoe, she kissed his mouth. Jean felt his toes curling inside his boots. In twenty seconds there were hammers at his temples; in thirty, his blood was one long drum-roll in his veins; but she didn’t let him go. She clung her mouth to his achingly, endlessly, the soft under-flesh of lip and tongue-tip keeping up their devilish play. Then, suddenly, startlingly, she stepped back from him, and her trained ballet-dancer’s arms thrust him away with a strength that was almost that of a man.
She swayed there before him, laughing.
“Bonne nuit, mon Jeannot!” she whispered; “I trust that you’ll sleep well!”
“Sacré bleu!” Jean roared.
She leaned back against the door, weak with laughter.
“I have no need of you this night, Jeannot,” she laughed; “nor any night, for that matter. When you saved me from those hags, I had just come from Gervais. I wouldn’t permit him to accompany me, at the risk of his life.”
Jean stood there, staring at her. There was black murder in his eyes.
“But you shouldn’t be too lonesome, mon pauvre,” she murmured; “after all, you can always send for that little wench with the gentle voice—the one I frightened away, remember?”
“Fleurette!” Jean breathed; “dear God, I had forgotten her!”
Then he whirled on his heel and ran off down the street. Lucienne looked after him, a little thoughtful frown puckering the flesh above her eyes.
Fleurette, she mused; I shall have to remember that name. . . .
“No,” the concierge said, “the poor child hasn’t been here, M’sieur . . . not since two nights ago. I’m sick with worry. With all the rioting in the streets, there’s no telling. . . .”
But Jean didn’t let her finish her words. He was off again, moving with astonishing speed for a man whose head had not touched a pillow for more than forty-eight hours.
But it was no good. Fleurette was not in any of the places she usually went to to sell her flowers-though she could hardly have been expected to be in the small hours of the morning. Nor was she at the du Pains’, where she often came to visit Marianne. Jean even returned to his own flat, hoping to find her there. It was empty, the fire cold, the bed still unmade, just as Lucienne had left it.
He dashed cold water into his face and wiped the dust away with a towel. Then he picked up his sabre and the two pistols again and went down into the street.
By ten o’clock of that morning, July 14, 1789, he had to give it up. He was too tired even to move. He walked back towards his flat, dragging his feet like a man of seventy years, until he turned into the Rue Saint-Antoine once more.
It was choked with people from wall to wall. There were fine ladies among them, and well-dressed gentlemen. Everybody was staring towards the grim, grey towers of the Bastille.
He couldn’t see the top of the prison. It was wreathed in smoke. Jean heard the rattle of musketry, saw the puffs of gun smoke rising from the roof-tops, the windows of houses, from the esplanade itself.
Jean worked his way forward through the crowd, his fatigue forgotten. Before it had been rioting, street tumults; but to attack the Bastille was more: this was revolution itself.
What we wanted to do, Jean thought, would have been done slowly; but we would have won in the end. But now they’re going to do it all quickly, and what man can foresee whether the results will be good or ill?
The crowd was so thick that he had to use his shoulders, his elbows, to force a passage. But when they saw the naked sabre in his hand, they opened a way for him.
The first thing he saw when he gained the esplanade before the outworks of the four-hundred-year old fortress turned prison was Pierre du Pain kneeling beside an overturned cart, firing with the rest. Jean started to bend over to work his way towards his friend, but he realised suddenly that the gesture was utterly ridiculous. The eighty ancient Invalides atop the towers, and the thirty-two Swiss with them, were not firing a shot. So he straightened up and sauntered over to his embattled comrade.
He stood beside Pierre for several minutes while the red-haired one was busily engaged in reloading his musket. Before Pierre could fine again, Jean laid a hand on his shoulders.
“Just what the devil do you think you’re doing?” he asked mockingly.
Pierre grinned at him.
“Shooting,” he said gleefully; “here, have a shot on me!”
Jean took the musket from Pierre’s hands.
“Would you mind informing me,” he said, holding the gun as though he had never before seen one in his life, “what one is supposed to do with this?”
“Why, fire it, of course!”
“At what?” Jean demanded with mock gravity.
“Espêce d’un idiot!” Pierre roared; “at the Bastille, thou creature of the elongated ears! Or do you mean to tell me you cannot see it?”
“Oh, I see it right enough,” Jean laughed; “what I don’t see is the advantage of firing a musket at walls eight feet thick, behind which are hidden men I cannot even see, and who, additionally, are not shooting back.”
Pierre shook his head mournfully.
“Jean, Jean,” he groaned; “I wonder sometimes if there really is aught between your ears. Of course we can’t take the Bastille with
musket-fine. But it’s going to fall all the same, from noise, from fear, like the walls of Jericho. . . . So I’m going to go on shooting. It pleases me that I shan’t be able to kill anybody. I don’t want to. All I want, pauvre bête, is that enough people see me in the act of being lion-hearted, courageous, etc., in the forefront of the heroes who pulled down the age-old symbol of tyranny. . . . Afterwards, it will mean something in France to be one of the heroes of the Fall—you understand?”
There was, Jean saw at once, much method in this madness. The Bastille, he knew, was all but empty of prisoners—and had been for some years. Its defenders were Invalides, old soldiers home from half-forgotten wars, but recently reinforced by a sparse garrison of young Swiss. But in the minds of the people the Bastille remained the chief symbol of age-old tyranny. To storm it, to take it, even, was to accomplish little against the régime. The government did not need it; its maintenance was actually burdensome.
But when in history, he thought wryly, have facts prevailed over ideas? As a thing, as a prison, it’s nothing; but as an idea. . . . Win or lose, today we’ll set all France aflame. . . .
So thinking, he lifted the musket and fired it, taking care to hit nothing at all.
Up till noon it was all comic opera, typically French. The people had the delirious experience of standing in the open street firing volley after volley at a fortress that did not shoot back at all. It was only after the elector Thuniot de la Rosière and his deputation had been admitted to the prison to parley with Governor de Launay that Jean began to realise that the situation was beginning to deteriorate, to sink into tragedy.
“If it becomes a battle,” he said to Pierre, “if they shoot back, even few as they are, do you realise what carnage there’ll be among this mob? They have cannon up there, remember—even if de Launay has drawn them back a little. . . .”
“You have right, Citizen,” a young giant of a man who was near-by said; “but I’m going to do something about that.”
“And what do you propose to do, Citizen?” Pierre asked. “I’m off to the Place de Grève,” the big one said, “to have a word with the Garde there. I’m a half-pay, remember, a reserve. They’ll listen to me. Then we’ll have cannon, Citizens! And that monstrosity will come tumbling about their ears!”
“Your name, Citizen?” Jean said quietly. It might be good later to know such things.
“Hulin, Citizen,” the young giant rumbled in his thick Swiss accent; “I think that after today the world will have cause to remember that name!”
Then he was off, striding like Hercules towards the Hôtel de Ville.
Jean looked around him. In the crowd were several men he knew, Paris electors who had remained banded together after having chosen the deputies to the National Assembly, and who furnished now the only shadow of a government that the city had. Jean had hoped to see some of the deputies who had come down from Versailles with him; they, above all, might be able to accomplish something by negotiation. But he saw none. The others, he guessed, had all gone back to their seats in the Hall de Menus Plaisirs.
The electors would have to do. He moved among them, saying a few words to each. They nodded grimly and fell in behind him. Jean marched up to the drawbridge, waving his white cravat upward at the towers.
The firing spluttened, died. After a time that stretched out to the crack of doom, they heard the first creak of the winches lowering the bridge.
A soldier conducted them to de Launay. The old man was ashen; but with despair, not terror.
“I can never surrender my post,” he said, “except on orders from my King.”
“Consider well, M’sieur le Gouverneur,” Jean Paul said; “if this thing comes to bloodshed, it will mean death to many. As a soldier, I know you don’t hold your own life too dear, but consider your men—consider the innocents down below. . . .”
“Innocents!” de Launay roared. “Madmen! I’ll give you my answer, M. Marin! Come with me.”
Jean and his delegation followed the Governor. That gallant soldier led them far below into the cellar of the prison. An ancient soldier opened the door.
One glance and Jean Paul knew where he was. This was the powder magazine. There was a rude chair beside a table. On the table was a candlestick with a tall candle in it, already lighted.
“Look!” M. de Launay said, and pointed.
Jean followed the gesture. On the floor thick trains of black powder led directly to several barrels.
“I need only to lower that candle,” M. de Launay said grimly. “Tell them that, M. Marin! Tell them that if they persist in this folly, I’ll sacrifice myself, my garrison, and the prisoners they’ve come to save. But, by God, I’ll take an escort of thousands with me on that march to hell!”
Jean stared at the old Governor. There was no doubt that M. de Launay meant it.
“You, M. de Launay,” he said slowly, “are a soldier—and a man of honour. I have never been a soldier, but my word means as much to me as yours does to you. I give it now, that if you desist for a reasonable length of time, I will personally dispatch a messenger to M. de Lafayette asking him to request such orders of the King.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind!” de Launay growled. “You may, if you will, send a message to His Majesty informing him of my plight; but nothing more, M. Marin. ‘Tis neither your place nor mine to tell Louis of France what he should do!”
Half the troubles of today, Jean thought hotly, stem from the fact that no one has ever been able to tell the fat one anything at all. Oh, he’ll ask advice, all right; even keep to it—for five minutes—no not even five. Even those who know him best swear it is easier to keep together oiled ivory balls in one’s hand than it is to force any decisiveness from the King.
“As you will, M. de Launay,” he said, and went back up the stairs.
He sent Pierre du Pain with a written message to the Marquis de Lafayette. He might have spared himself the trouble. De Lafayette had been receiving such messages all morning long and sending them on to the King. But from Versailles—nothing. No one knew if Louis got the frantic notes that kept pouring in. Men said that he was out hunting, or making locks—the two chief diversions into which he always escaped when the pressure of events became too much for him.
The pressure of events, Jean Paul saw, was now too much for any man. Burly Louis Tournay, a cartwnight of Marais, was busily engaged in hammering bayonets into the joints of the masonry. Others swarmed to his aid, and a few minutes later he was as high as the top of the drawbridge, mounted upon his stairway of flashing blades.
“Now, the axe!” he roared, and other agile fellows swarmed upward, passing the great axe up to him. He balanced himself there, his feet widespread—one upon one bayonet, and the other upon another blade. Jean saw his muscles bunch, the axe lift, come whistling down, to clang in a shower of sparks against one of the chains holding the bridge.
Now, on the other side, Aubin Bonnemère had climbed to the roof of the guard-house and was attacking the other chain from his much firmer position. They were madmen, demons, striking with a strength beyond strength. A link gave first on Bonnemère’s side, the weight of the great bridge pulling it slowly apart. Then Tournay’s axe bit through the links on his side, and the drawbridge shivered, creaked, hung in mid-air for long seconds, then started downward, slowly at first, but falling ever faster until it crashed against the bank with a noise louder than all the thunder in the world.
The mob, roaring, swarmed over it. But half-way across some of them reeled, fell, lay there clawing the splintered planking with bloody fingers.
Jean looked up towards the tops of the towers. The smoke was thicker now. But at last it had flashes in it, fire-tongues, stabbing through the smoke. De Launay was firing back. Jean counted the flashes. As nearly as he could judge, there were thirty of them. That meant that only the Swiss were firing. The Invalides were sticking to their pledge not to fine upon the people of Paris.
But the thirty Swiss were shooting with terrible e
ffectiveness. Lines of men moved away now, bearing the wounded into the Rue Cerisaie. There were men lying on the esplanade who were beyond all need of surgery. This mad, useless siege of the Bastille had claimed the first of its martyrs—and the blood of martyrs is like oil upon the fire of any great cause.
You’re dead now, Jean thought bitterly, looking at them; you who wanted only freedom and bread. I, who would gladly change places with any of you, am alive, and must remain so until—
Must remain so? By what token, and for what reason? Nicole is dead, slain by cowards. Lucienne has become a thing it sickens me to contemplate. And everything I dreamed of, a new world, liberty, order, peace is being perverted by fools and scoundrels. . . .
He looked up at the eight great towers and smiled. Pierre said you were a symbol—that men would remember you, O pile of stone and keep of broken hearts! I have in me yet the pride that be for ever remembered—’tis this that you grant me, that, in surrendering, I will seem victorious in the eyes of men. . . .
So thinking, he lifted his sabre and ran straight for the drawbridge. Behind him a mob formed itself, and came after him howling:
“That’s it, Citizen Deputy! Lead on, we’ll follow you!”
But the Swiss on the ramparts had the cannon going now. Half-way to the bridge Jean’s cohorts had melted into the earth, shot-torn, a few of them, fear-crazed, the rest. But Jean Paul ran on through the hail of musket-fire, and not a ball came near him.
He paused at the bridge and looked back. Behind him were only the wounded and the dead. He stood there, resting on his sabre, staring out at the sea of humanity snarling at the edges of the esplanade, and himself alone, standing so close to the walls that only by leaning far out and thus exposing themselves could the Swiss shoot at him.
Fool, fool! he mocked himself, not even death wants you! Then he threw back his head and sent the eerie boom of his laughter soaring out over the crowd. It held them for a long moment, during which not a shot was fined. Then with magnificent foolhardiness Jean Paul strolled back in the direction whence he had come, not even looking up at the towers, walking easily, casually through the musket-fire and crash of cannon. His very sangfroid disconcerted the Swiss, so that they too stopped shooting and gazed down at this madman; and when he gained the edge of the crowd again, even the men on the ramparts sent up a cheer.