Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Who commands?” he asked, briefly.

  “I, Jean Verig, captain of the 180th!” roared a villainous-browed fellow.

  “No, you don’t, you fool!” said Fortin, “I do, and here is my order,” shoving it under the Governor’s nose.

  “I can’t see it, — read it,” said François, sulkily.

  Then Fortin read in a loud voice:

  “The Citizen Governor of the Prison of the Condemned is hereby ordered to execute six hostages — notably the Sieur Darboy, calling himself Archbishop of Paris.

  (Signed)— “FERRE, “RAOUL RIGAULT.”

  “That is all right,” said François, rubbing his hands. “We’ll take the first six on your list. Read the names!”

  “Silence!” commanded Fortin, and read the first six names in a heavy voice:— “Darboy.

  “Deguerry.

  “Bonjean.

  “Clerc.

  “Allard.

  “Ducoudray.”

  Brigadier Romain had opened a cell door and the Archbishop dragged his fever-racked frame across the threshold. —

  “Are you the Citizen Darboy?” demanded Verig.

  “Yes, my son.”

  “Stand there, then!”

  “Am I to die?”

  “Are you to die?” mimicked Sicard; “my faith! I think you are.”

  The five other victims were hastily led out of their cells and placed in single file. Romain, swinging a lantern, led the procession, followed by the motley throng of Federals, Genton, Fortin, and Sicard bringing up the rear with François.

  Slowly they descended the stone steps, twenty-five in number, entered a gallery which bordered the façade opposite the court-yard, passed the doorway, descended six more steps, and entered the path which encircles the prison walls, — the dreary “chemin de ronde.” Again they turned to the right, through the garden of the hospital, through the “Salle des Vieillards,” and entered the second “chemin de ronde.” Here the Archbishop was taken suddenly faint, for the road was long and he was very ill. The President Bonjean was sobbing, and Sicard laughed at him.

  “Coward,” he said.

  “It is not for myself, I have a family,” said Bonjean. —

  “You cannot intend to shoot us,” said the Archbishop, piteously; “it is impossible—”

  “Enough!” cried Fortin, and the procession moved on to the grille, passed it, and stood below the exterior wall of the prison.

  “Monseigneur!” cried Father Clerc, falling on his knees. All the priests knelt. The old man silently blessed them, then tottered to his place against the wall.

  “Hurry!” urged François, “or you can’t see to aim.”

  “Lend me your sabre,” said Sicard to Fortin: “I’ll order the firing.”

  Genton placed the armed mob in three ranks and stepped back beside François. Father Allard opened his soutane and bared his breast, and at the same instant Sicard raised his sabre. The rifles cracked sharply. “Fire!” shouted Sicard again, and again the rifles blazed. And, the Archbishop still showing signs of life, Sicard motioned a man to finish him with the bayonet and strolled over to Genton.

  “Well,” he said, “that settles the Archbishop!”

  “My compliments,” said Genton; “have you got a cigarette?”

  CHAPTER XXVIII. THE LAST BARRICADE.

  THE morning after the Archbishop’s murder, two new prisoners were brought into the “Prison of the Condemned.” François inspected them, while the Brigadier Romain read their orders of arrest in a voice which seemed to vibrate with pity:

  “Archibald Wilton, arrested by order of Raoul Rigault, charged with treason. To be executed without court-martial on receipt of signed order from the Préfet of Police.”

  “Saves me trouble,” continued François; “hey! are you wounded?”

  “Hands shot off,” said Wilton, drily.

  “Let’s see.”

  Wilton raised a mutilated arm.

  “You’ll die anyway,” observed François; “you might as well be shot.”

  “If you want to shoot me you’d better send me a surgeon first,” said Wilton, in a faint voice.

  “I believe I will,” mused the Governor, biting the end of his pencil; “if you die now I’ll have trouble with Rigault. What’s this woman here for?” Romain read from his order slip:

  “Ynès Falaise, accused of speaking ill of the Commune, convicted of aiding the Versailles wounded, notably the traitor Wilton. To be shot upon receipt of order signed by Raoul Rigault.”

  The Governor leered at Ynès, who stood beside Wilton. She was dressed in black, and wore a red cross on her arm. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “Ynès Falaise, formerly actress in the Folies St. Antoine.” Her voice was almost inaudible.

  “You are not a religieuse now, are you?” asked François.

  “No.”

  “Then why do you wear the Geneva Cross? Speak louder!”

  “I devote myself to the wounded!”

  “Really? Very commendable, indeed. Dressed in black too?” sneered the Governor; “oh, how pious! What are you in mourning for?”

  “For my country’s honor.”

  “Oh — I thought it might have been for your own. Is this traitor your lover?”

  “I love him,” she replied, and laid her hand lightly on Wilton’s shoulder.

  “Then you can take care of him,” roared the Governor, “I won’t work my surgeon to death on every foreigner who comes here! Take good care that he lives long enough to be shot, you hussy, or I’ll have you put out of the way with a clubbed rifle! Romain, throw that loving pair into the dead Jesuit’s cell, and ring the signal for recreation. The prisoners will have to take it in here, for it’s raining.”

  “Then these prisoners get no recreation to-day?”

  “No, you fool! Ring the signal!”

  The Brigadier Romain led Ynès and Wilton into the cell of the dead Archbishop, locked the door, and moved swiftly toward the end of the corridor where a rope dangled from the great gong over the doorway. Landes, lying on the board in his cell, heard the clang of the gong, and sprang to his feet eagerly, for that signal meant an hour’s liberty with Jeanne.

  “Jeanne!” he called through the grating, his eyes fixed on the bars across the intervening cell. She came to her grating, and at the same moment his eyes met the eyes of Wilton.

  “Hello!” said Wilton, weakly, “I heard that you were here.” Then Philip’s astonished gaze fell upon Ynès. She looked at him piteously.

  “Monsieur Wilton is badly hurt,” she said; “I am to nurse him—”

  “So we can both be shot,” gasped Wilton. “Are you ill, Philip?”

  Before Philip could reply, the door of his cell was flung open, and the Brigadier Romain, smiling amiably, invited him to come out and get a little air.

  In the long, dim corridor, hundreds of prisoners were gathered, for the hour of recreation was the same for all the tiers in La Grande Roquette, and now the prisoners from the upper floors were crowding down the small circular stairway into the immense corridor below. Everywhere groups were congregating, but Philip noticed that gestures and voices were more subdued than usual, especially among the priests.

  “They all know about the Archbishop,” he thought, and looked around for Jeanne. She was standing alone by one of the wash-basins, and he made his way toward her through the throng of priests, gendarmes, Versaillist soldiers, imprisoned policemen, and Gardes de Paris.

  “Who are the people in the cell between yours and mine?” she asked, laying both her hands in his. He began to tell her, but stopped as the Governor came up and eyed them insolently.

  “Pretty birds!” he said; “now I have two pair of turtle-doves caged here,” and he made an insulting gesture toward Jeanne. —

  “I have already told you what I should do if you lay your hand on that lady,” said Philip, between his teeth.

  The Governor looked at him for an instant. “That is the third time you have thre
atened me,” he said.

  “I hope it will be sufficient,” returned Philip, doggedly.

  The Brigadier Romain at that moment entered the corridor, stole up behind the Governor, and touched him on the shoulder.

  “What do you want?” said the Governor, his eyes still fixed on Philip. —

  “Rigault is going to shoot some more priests and gendarmes,” he whispered; “here is the list. Shall I notify the gentlemen?”

  The Governor nodded, never removing his eyes from Philip’s, and Romain glided away among the prisoners, tapping the condemned softly on the shoulder with a cheerful: “We need seventy-five this time; come, Monsieur! Pray do not look so frightened, gentlemen.”

  There was the silence of death among the prisoners, as a file of Federal soldiers entered the corridor and closed in around the condemned.

  “And you,” said the Governor, stretching his arm out toward Jeanne and Philip, “I will get permission to have you shot with the next batch!” Then he turned on his heel and followed the long line of the condemned moving in single file toward the prison court. —

  An hour later, Philip and Jeanne crept back to their cells, and the Brigadier Romain facetiously bade them good-night and good-bye, “for,” he said, “to-morrow the Governor will go to see Rigault about you.”

  Light faded in the long corridor, the guards began their monotonous tramp, tramp, tramp. Philip pushed his miserable supper aside, and flung himself face downwards on the stones.

  Wilton’s voice aroused him, and he stumbled to his feet and went to the iron grating. “Philip,” he gasped, “send a guard for a priest. Tell him I am dying.”

  Landes obeyed, and, pressing his face to the “judas,” called out.

  “What do you want?” replied the Brigadier Romain, who was passing with a lantern and a bunch of keys.

  “The man in the next cell is dying, and asks for a priest,” said Philip; “hurry!”

  “Fichtre!” murmured Romain; “the Governor will catch it from Rigault.”

  “Hurry! You cannot deny him a priest!” repeated Philip.

  “No — it is permitted,” answered Romain; “a man has the right to go to hell in his own way,” and he unlocked a cell door a little way down the corridor, and hustled the priest who occupied it into the cell where Wilton lay, his head on Ynès’ knees. “Give him a good send-off,” said Romain, laughing loudly. “A priest’s recommendation goes a long way with the devil.” Philip beckoned Ynès, and she came and leaned sobbing on the grating, while the murmur of confession rose from the end of the cell:

  “Mon père, je m’accuse—”

  “Oh, Philip, — it is hard,” whispered Ynès; “I love him so truly, — I would be a good woman if he could live. I have been different ever since I loved him.”

  “You have been working in the hospital?”

  “Yes, and the field.”

  The murmur of confession went on.

  “Are you married?” asked Philip.

  “No. Archie wishes we were — now.”

  “Yes — it is better,” said Philip.

  “I — I never thought it mattered when one loved,” sobbed Ynès.

  “It does matter, Ynès,” said Philip; “don’t cry so, — there is another life after this. Don’t you believe it?”

  “Yes, I do now. I understand that there must be another life.”

  With Philip and Jeanne behind their bars as witnesses Ynès Falaise and Archie Wilton were joined in wedlock. Then the priest knelt beside Ynès on the stone floor, reciting the prayers for the dying, and Ynès, holding the wounded man’s head against her breast, gave way to bitter weeping.

  “Less noise there!” shouted the guard, hammering on the door with the butt of his rifle. At the sound, Wilton sat up.

  “What was that?” he said.

  “Nothing, Archie,” sobbed Ynès.

  For a moment there was silence, broken only by the low murmur of the priest. Then Wilton lay back, calling feebly on Landes. “Good-bye, Philip.”

  “Good-bye, Archie, dear fellow,” answered Philip. Wilton sighed, turned his face to Ynès, and died quietly in her arms. Romain came to the door, opened it, and turned away, leaving Ynès crouched beside her dead husband.

  It was four o’clock in the morning. Philip was stretched on his board, staring at the ceiling, when something came crashing into the street outside, and burst with a loud explosion under his window. At once the prison was in an uproar, but Romain hurried from cell to cell, cursing savagely, and threatening to shoot any prisoner who did not keep silence.

  “Que Dieu me damne!” he cried, dropping his mask of good nature, “if I hear another word I’ll let the mob in on you! Keep quiet you cursed priests, — and you too, you cowardly Yankee!”

  An inspiration flashed upon Landes; he hammered on his door and shouted: “the Versaillists are in Paris! Death to the Commune!” A tremendous shout answered him.

  “You lie!” screamed Romain; “if you open your mouth again I’ll shut it forever!”

  “Try it!” cried Philip.

  “Will you be silent!” howled Romain, drawing his revolver.

  “No! Down with the Commune!”

  Romain flew to the cell door, shoved his revolver through the “judas,” and fired. Landes dropped.

  “Good!” yelled Romain, unlocking the door; “I’ll make sure of you now!”

  As he flung the door open, Philip leaped at his throat, twisted his wrist until it cracked, and dragging the revolver from his limp fist, fired it in his face. Romain plunged face downward on the stones, his keys ringing, the lantern rolling into the cell. It was not extinguished, however, and Philip picked it up, seized the keys from the dead man’s belt, and hurried into the corridor.

  A dozen guards, rifle in hand, stood motionless by the staircase, but Philip cried out to them to aid him, for the Versailles troops were in Paris, and they stood no chance unless they surrendered. —

  It may have been the overpowering impudence of the request that held them back, but it was also true that most of the armed guards had been recruited among the former police and gendarmes of the Empire, and they had no stomach for their work or for the Commune. Through terror of François and of Romain, and also to save their skins from Raoul Rigault, these former gendarmes had consented to enter the prison service of the Commune. Now that Romain was dead, and the Versailists were in Paris, and especially now that somebody had taken the initiative, they did not hesitate very long.

  “Will you speak a good word for us, Citizen?” asked one.

  “Yes, indeed! Here, take these keys and let out the prisoners on the other floors!” cried Landes. “The Commune will come for us and we’ve got to intrench ourselves!”

  “Then give me the keys,” said the man, “I’ll do it if I am shot for it!” and he hastened away toward the upper corridors.

  Somehow or other the news of the fate of the seventy-five victims taken that morning had reached the prison. The inconceivable horrors of the massacre in the rue Haxo, where the mob had flung itself on the helpless prisoners and had literally hacked them to death with knives, were recounted to the smallest details by the friendly guards, and in a moment the long corridor resounded with the excited cries of the prisoners.

  “Shall we go tamely to be butchered?” shouted a Turco of the Line; “shall we go to the rue Haxo?”

  “Let us defend ourselves!” cried the gendarmes, lugging bedding, boards, and planks stripped from the ceilings to make a barricade. They had no weapons except the dozen or so rifles of the guards, but a priest tore the iron bars and stanchions from the benches, and his example was followed by the rest. A Line soldier named Ziem took command of the barricade, posting a dozen gendarmes, who carried rifles, in the centre, and asking those armed with iron bars to lie close behind.

  Philip, his arm clasping Jeanne’s, stood guard at the long stairway which rose from the prison court. François, the Governor, had escaped in the confusion, and the prisoners knew it would not
be very long before the battalions of the Commune swarmed into the prison.

  François, in his night-shirt, had fled at the first sound of the insurrection, and half an hour later he stood shivering before Raoul Rigault in the Luxembourg Palace.

  “You ‘re a traitor!” yelled Rigault, beside himself with fury.

  “No, I’m not,” chattered François, “and if you’ll give me some clothes I’ll head a battalion to quell the riot. It’s only that they’ve heard of the affair in the rue Haxo and have become desperate.”

  “Then you can get on your clothes and go back and finish the lot of them,” said Rigault; “how many are there? Fifteen hundred? Good! Here is an order to execute every one of them!” And he seized a stamped paper and wrote the order. “And if they refuse—”

  “What’s that? Don’t I give you a battalion?”

  “Yes, but suppose they resist.”

  “Then collect every criminal in the city prisons — scour Belleville and the Faubourg St. Antoine until you get a mob that can smell blood through the walls of La Grande Roquette. I tell you to tear the walls down, blow the prison up, anything, to get at the prisoners. Do you think I’ve finished my list yet? What a fool I’d look letting those priests and gendarmes slip through my fingers. There’s an American there, too, whom I intended to strangle. But there will be no time — make sure of him first of all. You’d better do this job up quickly or you’ll have a bayonet in your back before you know it!”

  François took the order and followed an officer into a room where he quickly clothed himself in the uniform of a colonel. Rigault watched him sarcastically.

  “What battalion am I to take?” asked François.

  “Any you can find,” replied Rigault, “get out, you fool!” and he turned on his heel and walked away toward the river.

  It took François all day to collect his rabble, but when they were assembled he could justly boast that he commanded the vilest mob that ever howled for blood.

  They entered the court-yard of the Prison of the Condemned and attempted to rush the stairway, but the twelve rifles and Philip’s revolver choked the stairs with dead and dying and the mob fell back disconcerted. Then they tried diplomacy and sent a white flag up the stairway with solemn promises of safe conduct. The prisoners consulted. A dozen priests and citizens who believed that the barricade could not hold out, and if it did, starvation would drive the defenders to make terms, left the barricade bearing a white flag, and entered the court-yard of the prison.