“The blackmailing blackguard!” muttered Roger. “Naturally you refused?”
“Certainly not!” snapped de Talleyrand, rapping the point of his sword-stick sharply on the cobbles. “Had you been in my shoes and done so you are more of a fool than I take you for. Of course, they will publish the damned thing under my name now, and I shall never live it down; but nobody will believe a word of it. How could they when thousands of people saw the corpses of those poor Swiss, and when the Royal Family continue to be kept under lock and key as though they were a gang of coiners? It will do the King no harm; for to my mind he has dug his own grave and is already as good as dead. I wanted my passport; and you must admit, mon ami, that a live Bishop is very much more a matter for consideration than is a dead King, particularly when one happens to be the Bishop. But would you believe it, when all was done that son of a harlot, begotten on a dung-heap, said that before giving such an important person as myself a passport he must consult his colleagues. That was three days ago; each time I have called at his office since he has put me off with some excuse, and to go there again now is to risk arrest.”
Had his friend’s situation not been so serious, Roger would have roared with laughter. The logical de Talleyrand had run true to form in his quick realisation that it was silly to have scruples about flogging a dead donkey; but Danton had also run true to form in first using him, then adopting an attitude which would secure his death. To Roger it was clear that now the enragés regarded the Bishop as a reactionary they had never had any intention of allowing him to leave France. Being so truly devoted to his country, he had taken it for granted that no one would ever suppose him capable of assisting its enemies; but, being venal and treacherous themselves, they had jumped to the conclusion that he would at once place his brilliant gifts at the disposal of the émigrés and the Austrians. So Danton had deliberately delayed his departure, knowing that he was certain to be arrested in the course of the next few days and that, once in prison, he could be liquidated among the victims of the proposed massacre. After a moment, Roger asked:
“Are you living out at Passy?”
“I was until this morning,” came the quick reply; “but I am wondering whether I dare return there, lest I find a reception committee of sans-culottes waiting for me.”
“It would be safer not to; doubtless old Antoine told you of my visit?”
“Yes, and of the family you intended to hide; but you never turned up with them after all.”
“Alas, things went wrong, and they are now in prison.”
“I am sorry; but do not hesitate to use the house for such a purpose in the future, if you consider it safe to do so.”
“Thank you; it might yet prove of great use to me. I fear, though, that if Lebrun has put your name on the list of émigrés it will sooner or later be taken over by the Government.”
Talleyrand chuckled. “No; at least I can get the better of them there. I propose to make it over, with all its contents, to Gouverneur Morris on a pre-dated bill of sale. These rogues no longer respect God or the King, but they still make a parade of treating Americans as though they had invented all the virtues. I will tell him you may wish to make use of the house. No one will interfere with you there while it is in his name, and if I am still alive when my poor country does come to its senses, I will at least get my property back intact.”
“That is an excellent thought,” Roger agreed; then, glancing towards the dark entrance-way, he added, “I take it you were on your way to Madame de Flahaut?”
“Yes. I have been hanging about for the past two hours, from fear that if I approached her apartment before darkness had fallen some enemy of mine might recognise me on my way up to it. But I am most anxious to persuade her to leave Paris. The way things are going it looks as if at any time now the Commune might make the bare fact of having been born an aristocrat sufficient excuse to put her, and every one like her, in prison. I hope, too, that she will find me an attic in which I shall be safe, for the night at least; for I have not the devil of an idea where else to go.”
Roger shook his head. “Should a committee of the Section pick on this block for a round of domiciliary visits tonight it is hardly likely they would overlook an attic. No; I have a better plan. Go to La Belle Étoile. The landlord, M. Blanchard, is an old friend of mine, and for the past ten weeks I have kept a room there. Tell him that I sent you and wish you to have the use of it; then ask for my servant, Dan Izzard, and tell him to be at the Cushion and Keys at midnight. What I can do to help you get away I don’t yet know, but at all events you will be safe enough for the time being if you lie low in my room.”
Talleyrand took his hand and pressed it. “Chevalier, I see from the broad ribbon you wear how skilfully you have managed your own affairs, and it is most generous of you to risk your position on my behalf. La Belle Étoile—Dan Izzard—the Cushion and Keys—I will follow your instructions to the letter; but first I must see Madame la Comtesse and urge her to leave Paris before it is too late.”
“By all means,” Roger smiled. “Present my compliments to her, please; and if it would not be asking too much of a Bishop to carry a parcel for a Commissar, I should be grateful if you would collect the clothes I left with her, and take them to La Belle Étoile.”
“Mon ami, I would carry a jerry-pot for you, if by so doing I could render you a service,” laughed the Bishop; and with a wave of his hand he limped into the side-entrance to the Palace.
Roger walked slowly off in the direction of the Tuileries gardens. In the desperate game he was playing situations occurred every day, and often several times a day, in which he was tempted to take risks in order to save some unfortunate person from arrest, but he knew that if he did so with any frequency he would soon be deprived of the authority he had worked so hard to win—then it would be good-bye to any prospect of being able to make some really telling use of it on behalf of Mr. Pitt. Now, however, he was beset by no uncomfortable hesitation. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand was his personal friend, and, come what may, he must be saved from his enemies. The only question was how best to set about it.
It was not yet ten o’clock and the night was a warm one; so on reaching the gardens he sat down to think things out on the same bench he had shared on the evening of the 20th of June with the man from whom he had bought a cloak and hat. Twenty minutes later he rose, crossed the gardens, went through the Passage des Feuillants and so to the Place Vendôme, in which the Ministry of Justice was situated.
There, he asked for Citizen Danton and learned to his satisfaction that the Minister was at work in his room upstairs. After a short wait Roger was shown up. Since the 10th of August his work had brought him into contact with Danton on several occasions; so he gave him a hearty, fraternal greeting, and said without hesitation:
“Citizen Minister, I’ve come to ask you a favour.”
Danton had just returned from supping with some of his cronies. He belched loudly, then replied with a grin, “Well, what is it? They tell me you’re a great fire-eater; but if you’ve come to demand Antoinette-Medici’s head on a charger I’m afraid I can’t oblige you just yet.”
Roger grinned back. “No; I want the body of a live girl on a well-sprung bed; and only you, Citizen Minister, can give it me.”
With a roar of laughter, Danton sat back. “Go on, Citizen Commissioner; tell me about her.”
“I found her during a domiciliary visit. Her family are cidevants, of course. She looks like a piece of Dresden china; I’d probably be bored with her in a week, but I’ve got to have her. I’ve got to have her once, just to find out what these aristo girls are like when they are stripped of the dignity that their clothes gives them.”
Danton shrugged. “You’ll probably find her poor fare. But you don’t look to be lacking in muscle. If you want her, why the hell don’t you get some of your fellows to keep her family quiet while you pull her clothes off and give her a tumble?”
“No.” Roger shook his head. “I could easily r
ape her, but that would not be the same thing at all; I want her to undress in front of me and go through the whole business as if she were not compelled to it. I have had several talks with her and the first time she fainted, or pretended to; but like everyone else she has her price. This evening I got it out of her. She wants to get her brother and her uncle, who is an abbé, to England. If I can produce three passports, she is ready to pay me in her own coin for them.”
“Why bother about the passports? If she is willing to give herself at all, you have only to threaten to have her brother and the abbé arrested to induce her to do so.”
“Citizen Minister!” Roger said with sudden firmness. “Such a meanness would not be compatible with the high principles of our glorious Revolution.”
Danton did not laugh; he did not even allow a cynical smile to twist his thick lips, for such absurd illogicalities were uttered quite frequently, even, at times, by his most unscrupulous colleagues, either with deliberate hypocrisy or through plain muddled thinking. Pulling open a drawer of his desk he took out a file of blank passports, counted off six, handed them to Roger, and said:
“I am selling these at one hundred louis a time. I make you a gift of three, but you can dispose of the other three for me, and let me have three hundred louis by the end of the week.”
“That is easily done,” Roger smiled as he took the precious pasteboards, “and I am greatly indebted to you, Citizen Minister.”
He turned away and had just reached the door when Danton’s voice boomed after him, “Did you know, Citizen Commissioner, that you are liable to be deprived of your rank and sash tomorrow?”
Those words jerked Roger to a halt as promptly as if he had been shot in the back. He was momentarily stunned by the awful thought that Danton had only been playing with him—that he had counted too far on his lecherous inventions to gain the goodwill of a man noted for his own immoralities—and that the wily demagogue meant to denounce him as a helper of aristocrats to escape from Paris.
He caught his breath. For a moment the blood seemed to have ceased from coursing through his veins. Suddenly his heart began to hammer violently and he could feel his face go scarlet. Desperately he strove for control of his alarm. The room was lit only from a three-branched candlestick on Danton’s desk; so, as he turned, the shadows by the door hid the signs of his agitation, but there were beads of perspiration on his forehead as he stared at the heavy figure with the brutal, pockmarked face.
“Yes,” went on the Jacobin, “you may even find yourself in jail by this time tomorrow. The Assembly has got wind of the use we mean to make of our brave Marseillais, and they don’t like the idea of their paying a social visit to the prisons. Quite a number of the leading deputies are holding a secret meeting tonight. They are trying to work their courage up to put a decree through the Assembly dissolving the Commune.”
Roger suppressed an audible sigh of relief only with the greatest difficulty. Slowly he bared his teeth in a sort of snarling grin, which he had found very effective on occasions when it had been necessary for him to play the terrorist, then he said:
“They had best beware how they trifle with the People’s representatives or it is they who will find themselves in prison. Good night to you, Citizen Minister.”
He had expected to have to give detailed particulars of the people for whom he had begged the passports, and had meant to give descriptions near enough to cover Adèle de Flahaut, de Talleyrand as her uncle the abbé, and himself as her brother. His idea had been that as the Bishop had for many years past never worn clerical clothes, except on the very rare occasions when he had to perform a religious ceremony, an abbé’s gown would be the best possible disguise for him; and the thought that three passports should prove no more difficult to secure than two had prompted him to ask for a third to put by for himself in case it later became necessary for him to leave Paris in a hurry. But his luck had been in, as he had not even had to run the risk of giving false names; and he now had six, all blank except for the all important signature.
When Dan arrived at the Cushion and Keys, Roger gave him four—two for de Talleyrand to fill in as he wished and two to hide at La Belle Étoile in case of an emergency—and kept the remaining two himself. He then told Dan to obtain from the Bishop the names under which the fugitives decided to travel, and to book two seats for them in the diligence leaving for Calais the following afternoon and, if the Bishop approved the idea of travelling as an abbé, to buy him a second-hand cassock in the morning. Then, very pleased at having been able to do so well for his friends, and praying that no hitch would occur to prevent their departure, he went to bed.
No hitch did occur. For four years Talleyrand was to pass into impecunious and unhappy exile, and it was to be still longer before Roger learned how he had filled in the blank passport, With great courage and extraordinary far-sightedness, he had used his own name and written under it “En mission diplomatique en Angleterre”. Thus, after Danton’s head had fallen beneath the knife of the guillotine, Talleyrand was able to produce his pass and assert that he had never fled from France as an émigré but had left it on government business, which enabled his friends to arrange for his return to the country that he loved so dearly very much sooner than could otherwise have taken place.
Years later, in a lofty, luxurious room, curtained with royal blue satin bearing the golden bees and eagles of the Emperor Napoleon, Roger was to see again that flimsy piece of pasteboard. It was to prove his own passport to liberty at the order of his friend, Monseigneur le Prince de Talleyrand, Prince de Bénévent, Arch-Chancellor of Europe.
But on the 30th of August Roger was given other things to think of besides the nocturnal flight of the man whose liberal mind and true patriotism had brought upon him the hatred of his fellow nobles, his fellow priests and now even of his fellow revolutionaries. Danton’s forecast proved correct; in a sudden spate of bravery induced by terror of their own future, the moderates in the Assembly put through a decree dissolving the Commune.
The excitement at the Hôtel de Ville was intense. Robespierre drafted a long memorandum on the services to “liberty” that the Commune had rendered and forced Pétion to read it at the bar of the Assembly. All through that day and the next the deputies stood firm; but on the 1st of September Danton came to the rescue and briefed Thuriot in a cunning speech. The Assembly gave way and the Commune was reinstated. Its Comité de Surveillance, now the legal masters of Paris again, issued their secret instructions that night. It had been planned to use the fall of Verdun as an excuse to launch the massacre. The city had hot yet fallen, but it was given out that it had, that the Prussians were marching on Paris, and that the prisons were full of conspirators who were about to break out and murder the People’s representatives. On Sunday the 2nd the massacres began.
In the last days of August the domiciliary visits had resulted in the arrest of over 3,000 suspects, and a number of these had been temporarily confined in the Hôtel de Ville until they could be allocated to various prisons. Among those removed at midday, twenty-four priests were ordered to be transferred to the prison of the Abbaye. The brigands from Marseilles were waiting for them: surrounding the coaches into which the prisoners were crammed they accompanied them, yelling threats and imprecations. When the cortège arrived outside the prison a cut-throat leader named Maillard gave the signal; the priests were hauled out of the coaches and butchered.
Billaud-Varennes, wearing his Municipal scarf, then arrived on the scene as the representative of the Commune. Standing among the dead bodies, he cried, “Patriots! You have executed justice on scoundrels! For having done this duty you shall each receive twenty-four livres”
With this official encouragement, the roaring mob streamed off to the Convent des Carmes, in the church of which it was known that some 180 other priests were incarcerated. Behind the convent lay a big, high-walled garden with extensive shrubberies and an oratory at its far end. Breaking into the church the assassins ordered the prisoners out i
nto the garden. A number of these saintly men, under the leadership of the venerable Archbishop of Aries, went straight to the oratory and, kneeling before the altar, offered themselves up to martyrdom. They were slaughtered as they knelt, until the flagstones were awash with blood. Others, less saintly, made a bid for life, and a terrible manhunt ensued as they were pursued through the bushes, the quiet of the September evening being shattered for a mile around by their hideous screams as they were caught and murdered.
With the blood-lust of the killers now at fever heat, Maillard led them back to the Abbaye, and at seven o’clock they broke in there. The building contained several hundred prisoners, including sixty-nine Swiss who had managed to escape on the 10th of August. They were the first to be killed, but now the massacre was to be made a travesty of justice. In one of the corridors a tribunal was set up, the prison register was produced, and each prisoner was given a brief mockery of an examination. A few, by their own wit or through the freakish humour of the mob, escaped the fate that awaited the great majority. The rest were told in turn, “You are to be transferred to La Force,” and hustled down a passage. It led to the courtyard where the sansculottes were waiting, their pikes, sabres and bayonets dripping blood.
The coming of night did not stop the dreadful carnage. It was continued by the ruddy glow of torches, which turned the shambles into a scene from Dante’s Inferno, and later by the even more sinister silver light of a beautiful September moon.
Meanwhile, the tocsin had been rung and the Faubourgs roused. Those fiends who had perpetrated such horrors at the sack of the Tuileries, three weeks before, again issued from their dens. The scum of Paris joined the fédérés and directed by Marat—the chief organiser of the massacre—attacked other prisons, the Châtelet, the Conciergerie, St. Fermin and La Force.
The Man who Killed the King Page 24