The Devil’s Laughter

by Frank Yerby

  Thereafter it began again. Cholat, the wine dealer from whom Jean and Pierre had often bought their daily bottle, was busy at the side of Georget, of the Marine Service, the two of them serving the ancient bronze cannon brought a hundred years ago from Siam. The pitiful balls of the antique weapons bounced off the round towers making scarcely a dent, but at every shot the people cheered.

  All the outbuildings were afire now, filling the air with dense, Stifling smoke. The guard-rooms, the mess-rooms blazed fiercely, adding greatly to the excitement, but contributing nothing at a] to the taking of the Bastille. A woman came screaming from the doorway of the arsenal, her clothing smoking.

  “A madman!” she shrieked; “with torches, there amid the powder!”

  Jean was off at her words. He dived into the open door of the arsenal in time to see a small man bending over, gleefully igniting trains of saltpetre and powder. That the resulting explosion would have harmed the Bastille not at all, while killing hundreds of the attackers, seemed not to have occurred to this man.

  Jean gave him the butt of Pierre’s musket in the stomach and dragged him out. Once outside, he saw who the small man was: this finebrand, incendiary, suicidal maker of explosions was none other than the hairdresser and peruke-maker of the Saint-Antoine section—a small man noted for his mildness.

  But there was no time now for such reflections. Inside the powder was hissing across the floor, straight towards those barrels that would send hundreds to their deaths. Jean drew one deep breath and plunged in, amid the smoke, kicking the trains of powder apart so that the gaps were too wide for the flames to bridge, watching one splutter out as another blazed up, dashing towards that one now, kicking, stamping, seeing them all out at last, but one barrel of saltpetre smouldering. He turned this barrel over on its side and kicked it through the door. Outside, other members of the crowd, seeing it smoking, fled in terror. Jean caught up with it and kicked it apart, scattering the saltpetre and stamping out the small blaze.

  There were other fires now. The howling mob had caught a young woman coming out of the inner courts of the prison, over the fallen drawbridge. They had her bound to a paillasse, and were piling straw and broken wood about her.

  “Burn her!” they shrieked; “burn the witch! ‘Tis old de Launay’s daughter! When he sees the smoke rise about her feet he’ll surrender!”

  Jean Paul hurled himself forward at once, swinging the musket; the mob broke before him; but another man, clawing his way from the other side of the circle, reached her first. Jean was beside him an instant later, and the two of them tore at her bonds. Jean recognised the man; he was Aubin Bonnemère, one of the heroes of the drawbridge.

  “His daughter?” Jean panted when they had her free.

  “No,” Bonnemère growled; “this girl’s a milliner’s clerk; I know her well. Here, let me have her—I’ll get her to safety. . . .”

  So it was, Jean realised afterwards, throughout the day: the brave men, the fighters behaved with conspicuous gallantry and honour; the others, the skulkers, the cowards committed the acts of vileness and cruelty.

  But there was no time for sanity now. The wild mob was pushing carts of burning straw, wet enough to make smoke, through the drawbridge and up to other vantage points to stifle the defenders. The wind changed, and the attackers themselves were being suffocated. Jean Paul, Elie, big Réole, the haberdasher, dragged them back, getting scorched hands and clothing for their pains.

  It was all noise now, confusion, madness. The firemen of the quartier were busy at their pumps, trying to wet the torch-holes of the cannon atop the towers. That their streams, at best, could not reach half the height of the Bastille deterred them not a whit; they kept on pumping, wetting half the crowd with flying spray.

  Jean saw a young carpenter mounted on the shoulders of friends, crying out for aid in building a catapult. Santerre, the brewer, was for burning the cold stones to ashes with a mixture of spikenard, poppy-seed oil, and phosphorus. Everybody was shooting. A young woman near-by was being given instructions in musketry by her sweetheart; a Turk in turban and baggy trousers banged away gleefully.

  A new note in the crowd’s roan caught Jean’s attention. Hulin was back with the Garde Française. The mob had cannon now, real cannon. The reserves among the crowd, Mailland, Elie, Hulin, took command at once, and the big guns began to jump and bellow, showering down splinters of rock from the towers.

  It was over very soon after that. From the towers the white of napkins fluttered from raised musket-butts. Jean joined a crowd of men, led by Maillard, carrying a long plank. They stretched it out over the moat, and Jean and the others balanced it there, using the weight of their bodies to hold it in place. Then Maillard walked out on the springy, limber plank and received the terms of surrender:

  Pardons for all, immunity for all those surrendering.

  “Granted!” Maillard roared, “upon my faith as an officer!”

  Huhn and Elie seconded him, and the second bridge was let down.

  Instantly the horde of screaming, cursing women surged into the prison, shooting, stabbing everything in sight, the ones who came after fining into their comrades who had gone before.

  Jean Paul fell in with Hulin, Elie and Maillard, showing his weapons to protect the prisoners.

  It was useless. The mob cheered the Swiss, who had fired upon them, believing them to be prisoners because of their blue smocks. But they fell upon the Invalides, who had refused to a man to shoot into the mob, like savage beasts. The poor old one who at the last had knocked the torch from M. de Launay’s hand and prevented his blowing up the prison was pierced three times through the body with a sword, and had his right hand, the same hand that had saved the lives of his tormentors, severed from his arm and placed on the end of a pike, to be paraded through the streets.

  Despite the efforts of Jean and the others, five officers and three old soldiers were butchered on the spot. Jean and Hulin, drunk with fatigue, covered M. de Launay with their own bodies. But in the gateway a tall villain reached past them and slashed open the Governor’s shoulder. In the Rue Saint-Antoine the mob swarmed over them, tearing out his hair, spitting into his face, kicking him.

  Jean Paul laid about him wrathfully with the flat of his sword, Maillard and Hulin used their musket butts, and thus got the bleeding, tormented old man as far as the arcade of Saint-Jean.

  But it was no good. The screaming, shrieking madmen and women knocked even big Hulin to the earth. Jean fought on alone, separated from Maillard. In his fury, he even widened the space about the Governor, when he saw the slender, well-known form standing in the crowd, turning her sightless gaze this way and that, her lovely face mirroring complete bewilderment.

  “Fleurette!” he called out.

  She started towards the sound of his voice; and he paused a moment waiting, which was a mistake, for it diverted his attention just long enough for a bearded blackguard to lift his musket butt and bring it whistling down. Jean heard it and jumped aside a fraction of a second too late, so that it caught him a glancing blow. He went down, all the darkness in the world crashing about his head. He heard the roar of the mob growing dimmer until it died away altogether. He was conscious that a great weight had been lifted from him, and willingly he drifted away on a soft tide of blackness.

  Later, not long after, a few minutes only, so far as he was able to judge, he was conscious of a soft, sweet voice calling his name. Great droplets splashed into his face. He heard her crying:

  “Jean! Oh, they’ve killed him! Jean, Jean—now I cannot live! Jean, by God’s love, do not leave me. . . .”

  With great effort, Jean opened his eyes.

  “Nor shall I, little Fleurette,” he whispered; “not ever. . . .”

  She bent down and covered his face with kisses, babbling meaningless words from pure joy. Jean put down one hand and forced himself upright. Then he saw it:

  In an agony of despair, M. de Launay had kicked out at his torturers, screaming: “Kill me! By God’
s mercy, kill me!” A dozen bayonets pierced him the same instant; the mob dragged his body into the gutter and handed the sabre to the man he had kicked, roaring:

  “Cut off his head! The honour is yours, since ‘twas you he kicked!”

  Only a few days before Jean had given a handful of sous to the fat simpleton who held the sabre. This man had been a cook, thrown out of work because the nobles he had worked for had fled. Now the idiot stood there, grinning, slashing at the poor, dead throat of a man who had been an officer and a gentleman in the best sense of both those words. The sabre was too dull; it would not even break the skin. The idiot threw it down and took a small, black-handled knife from his pocket.

  “In my job as a cook,” he announced proudly, “I learned how to cut meat!” Then he bent and sawed away until de Launay’s head fell free.

  They lifted it, stuck it upon the tines of a pitchfork, and started to march away.

  “What is it, Jean?” Fleurette whispered. “What are they doing?”

  “Nothing,” Jean said; “just making a noise.”

  He got to his feet and took her arm, thinking: In this new world we’ve made ‘tis a blessing to be blind.

  Then he led her away, through the scattering crowd.

  9

  “I’VE had enough!” Jean Paul said angrily; “I’m going to hand in my resignation tomorrow!”

  Pierre grinned at him. It was a very wry grin.

  “At the risk of being a bore,” he drawled, “I can only say——”

  “That you told me so. All right, so you did. But not even you predicted what murderous beasts the people were going to become.”

  “Still,” Fleurette put in, “they were cruelly oppressed, Jean.”

  “I know. But they fought to end that oppression—not, I fondly believed, to become oppressors in their turn. I don’t think that either Pierre or I, or anyone I know, risked our a thousand times to turn France over to the street rabble of Paris.”

  He got up and walked over to where Fleurette sat. In her she held an object that looked like a picture frame. It was backed with a thin sheet of wood, through which Jean had cut the letters of the alphabet with the point of a sharp knife. Now, by using this stencil, she could trace her letters, and thus learn to write. With her natural dexterity, her progress had been nothing short of marvellous.

  “Put it down,” he said. “Write without it.”

  Fleurette did so. She slowly wrote his name, then her own, and held them up for him to see. The letters were shaky and ran down-hill, but were entirely legible.

  Pierre gazed over Jean’s shoulder.

  “Why,” he suggested, “don’t you make her another frame with flat cross-bars? She could write in the spaces between the bars, and the bars themselves would prevent her writing from slanting like that.”

  “Good idea,” Jean said; “I’ll do it.”

  “I think,” Pierre said, gazing at his friend, “that you’re in on this conspiracy.”

  “What conspiracy?” Jean mocked.

  “Between Marianne and Fleurette. For the last month they’ve been plotting something. . . .”

  “Oh, Jean!” Fleurette scolded, “you must have told him! I knew you couldn’t keep a secret. Now isn’t that just like a man!”

  Pierre smiled at the possessive note that appeared so frequently in her voice nowadays. If it were me, he mused, pretty and gentle as she is, I wouldn’t care that she’s blind.

  “I didn’t tell him,” Jean laughed, “but I will now, with your permission. Shall I?”

  “Of course, Jean. After all he’s going to be a partner.”

  “I’m going to be a partner in what?” Pierre demanded.

  “Our new business,” Jean said. “I’m selling the press, Pierre.”

  “Enfer!” Pierre swore. “Why, Jean? We’ve done well so far, and . . .”

  “I’ll tell you why. But you mustn’t interrupt. If, after I’ve finished, you don’t agree, I’ll listen to your arguments and try to answer them. But first hear me out.”

  “All right,” Pierre said.

  “I find,” Jean said ruefully, “that I am, after all, my father’s son. I seem to have a nose for business. Strange—I spent most of my youth quarrelling bitterly with the old man over the inequity of making profits, the vileness of trade, etcetera; but the Paris canaille have convinced me that any society not founded upon solid industry and sober trade is lost. . . .”

  “Hear! Hear!” Pierre mocked.

  “You promised not to interrupt!” Fleurette said severely.

  “You are becoming quite a typical petite bourgeoise!” Jean laughed. “A real domestic tyrant, isn’t she, Pierre?”

  “Of course,” Fleurette said firmly; “that’s precisely what you men need. Where do you think Pierre would be now without Marianne?”

  “Somewhere in a gutter, drunk and happy,” Pierre grinned.

  “This is getting us nowhere,” Jean said. “Look, Pierre, have you examined our balance sheets for the past several months?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what do they show?”

  “A slow, but steady decline. But not enough to warrant our giving up the paper.”

  “Not by itself. But there are other factors. For instance, the reason for the decline. The Mercury is the only remaining journal for moderates—for those who want to keep France a constitutional monarchy somewhat after the English fashion. We are losing ground steadily for two reasons: our clients are steadily fleeing France because their lives are in constant danger; and because many of those who remain are afraid to be seen reading our sheet even in the privacy of their homes.”

  “I don’t understand that,” Pierre said. “A café filled with idlers is one thing; but it seems to me that at home a man ought to be able to read what he damned well pleases.”

  “Remember who our clients are. They are men like poor Reveillon—men of substance. They nearly all have servants. In fact they’re the only class left in Paris who can afford to hire domestics. And who are the chief spies for the Palais Royal, the Jacobin Club, and the Cordeliers?”

  “You have right,” Pierre groaned.

  “I’m coming now to the most important point of all,” Jean said gravely. “You’re a married man, Pierre. So far you and Marianne have not been blessed with children. But you’re both young, so who can tell? I—I find myself growing weary of the loneliness of my own life. . . .”

  Pierre looked instantly at Fleurette, and saw the sudden flare of joy in her sightless eyes. Do not grow too happy, little waif, he thought; he is a strange beast, our Jean. . . .

  “I expect little of the future; but it is foolish to think we can fight the whole world, Pierre. How long has it been since we went to work without our pistols? How many times now has that infamous horse-doctor, Marat, singled out our paper for attack in his own slimy rag? Even Desmoulins has granted us a passing mention from time to time. We are listed among the proscribed of the Jacobin Club; more than one orator at Palais Royal has damned us.

  “It is well to be brave and defy them. But you and I, neither of us can afford such bravery any longer. You have Marianne; I have pledged myself to Fleurette’s protection. Besides—but I’ll not speak of that now. Our lives, then, are not entirely our own to give up heroically. And fruitless heroism is the worst of folly. We must wait, I think, until the people are sated with blood and folly; until there is a resurgence of sanity, of moderation. Then there must be men like us on hand to save France. If they drive us all out, kill us all—what then? These monsters will destroy themselves; but shall we leave the nation to the idiots and simpletons who follow them?”

  “M. l’Orateur!” Pierre laughed, “I salute you. A great preamble. Now, if you please, the point of all this?”

  “The point, mon vieux, is very simple. We must get out politics, abstain even from any activity that has a political tinge. Newspapers are nothing but politics. Hence—no paper. But we must gain our livelihood.”

  “We can last qui
te a time,” Pierre pointed out. “I convert all the money we made into gold, remember. And you haven’t even had to touch your inheritance.”

  “True. But they’ve paper money now, Pierre, the assignats. Our gold becomes daily a danger to us. Use it too freely and are called hoarders—and to the lamp-post with us! My father always told me not to put too much trust in currency, Pierre; in threatening times, convert it into real property. That’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve bought five hótels parliculiers. They’re being converted into flats. I can live, and well, from the rents. They’re fine houses, homes of former nobles and rich bourgeoise who have fled. I got them for a song; I could buy many more but there’s also a danger in too much expansion. The street orators have taught the people the word ‘profiteer’, too.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell him about us?” Fleurette put in.

  “Yes. It was Marianne’s idea, really, Pierre. She saw those three thousand or so journeymen-tailors who meet daily near the Colonnade to discuss their wrongs. You realise, of course that all the luxury trades have been paralysed by the emigration. And your very intelligent wife, Pierre, got the idea of giving some of those people work by opening a shop, or even a series of shops, to make clothes for the people—to make them in great numbers, in average sizes, so that a man or a woman could buy them finished except for small alterations from the shelves. Have you ever noticed that most Parisians don’t vary more than an inch in height—the members of all the mobs are small men? The Swiss and Germans are much bigger, ever noticed that? So you make all your clothes to fit people of the average size—with a few larger and smaller sizes to take care of people whose build differs. . . .”