Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  One man cried out one thing, and one another; that the streets should be cleared, the regiment sent for, or complaint made to the Intendant. They were still speaking when the door opened and a Member came in. It was Louis de St. Alais, and his face was aglow with excitement. Commonly the most modest and quiet of men, he stood forward now, and raised his hand imperatively for silence.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, in a loud, ringing voice, “there is strange news! A courier with letters for my brother, M. de St. Alais, has spoken in the street. He brings strange tidings.”

  “What?” two or three cried.

  “The Bastille has fallen!”

  No one understood — how should they? — but all were silent. Then, “What do you mean, M. St. Alais?” the President asked, in bewilderment; and he raised his hand that the silence might be preserved. “The Bastille has fallen? How? What is it?”

  “It was captured on Tuesday by the mob of Paris,” Louis answered distinctly, his eyes bright, “and M. de Launay, the Governor, murdered in cold blood.”

  “The Bastille captured? By the mob?” the President exclaimed incredulously. “It is impossible, Monsieur. You must have misunderstood.”

  Louis shook his head. “It is true, I fear,” he said.

  “And M. de Launay?”

  “That too, I fear, M. le President.”

  Then, indeed, men looked at one another; startled, pale-faced, asking each mute questions of his fellows; while in the street outside the hum of disorder and rejoicing grew moment by moment more steady and continuous. Men looked at each other alarmed, and could not believe. The Bastille which had stood so many centuries, captured? The Governor killed? Impossible, they muttered, impossible. For what, in that case, was the King doing? What the army? What the Governor of Paris?

  Old M. de Gontaut put the thought into words. “But the King?” he said, as soon as he could get a hearing. “Doubtless his Majesty has already punished the wretches?”

  The answer came from an unexpected quarter, in words as little expected. M. de St. Alais, to whom Louis had handed a letter, rose from his seat with an open paper in his hand. Doubtless, if he had taken time to consider, he would have seen the imprudence of making public all he knew; but the surprise and mortification of the news he had received — news that gave the lie to his confident assurances, news that made the most certain doubt the ground on which they stood, swept away his discretion. He spoke.

  “I do not know what the King was doing,” he said, in mocking accents, “at Versailles; but I can tell you how the army was employed in Paris. The Garde Française were foremost in the attack. Besenval, with such troops as have not deserted, has withdrawn. The city is in the hands of the mob. They have shot Flesselles, the Provost, and elected Bailly, Mayor. They have raised a Militia and armed it. They have appointed Lafayette, General. They have adopted a badge. They have — —”

  “But, mon Dieu!” the President cried aghast. “This is a revolt!”

  “Precisely, Monsieur,” St. Alais answered.

  “And what does the King?”

  “He is so good — that he has done nothing,” was the bitter answer.

  “And the States General? — the National Assembly at Versailles?”

  “Oh, they? They too have done nothing.”

  “It is Paris, then?” the President said.

  “Yes, Monsieur, it is Paris,” the Marquis answered. “But Paris?” the President exclaimed helplessly. “Paris has been quiet so many years.”

  To this, however, the thought in every one’s mind, there seemed to be no answer. St. Alais sat down again, and, for a moment, the Assembly remained stunned by astonishment, prostrate under these new, these marvellous facts. No better comment on the discussions in which it had been engaged a few minutes before could have been found. Its Members had been dreaming of their rights, their privileges, their exemptions; they awoke to find Paris in flames, the army in revolt, order and law in the utmost peril.

  But St. Alais was not the man to be long wanting to his part, nor one to abdicate of his free will a leadership which vigour and audacity had secured for him. He sprang to his feet again, and in an impassioned harangue called upon the Assembly to remember the Fronde.

  “As Paris was then, Paris is now!” he cried. “Fickle and seditious, to be won by no gifts, but always to be overcome by famine. Best assured that the fat bourgeois will not long do without the white bread of Gonesse, nor the tippler without the white wine of Arbois! Cut these off, the mad will grow sane, and the traitor loyal. Their National Guards, and their Badges, and their Mayors, and their General? Do you think that these will long avail against the forces of order, of loyalty, against the King, the nobility, the clergy, against France? No, gentlemen, it is impossible,” he continued, looking round him with warmth. “Paris would have deposed the great Henry and exiled Mazarin; but in the result it licked their shoes. It will be so again, only we must stand together, we must be firm. We must see that these disorders spread no farther. It is the King’s to govern, and the people’s to obey. It has been so, and it will be so to the end!”

  His words were not many, but they were timely and vigorous; and they served to reassure the Assembly. All that large majority, which in every gathering of men has no more imagination than serves to paint the future in the colours of the past, found his arguments perfectly convincing; while the few who saw more clearly, and by the light of instinct, or cold reason, discerned that the state of France had no precedent in its history, felt, nevertheless, the infection of his confidence. A universal shout of applause greeted his last sentence, and, amid tumultuous cries, the concourse, which had remained on its feet, poured into the gangways, and made for the door; a desire to see and hear what was going forward moving all to get out as quickly as possible, though it was not likely that more could be learned than was already known.

  I shared this feeling myself, and, forgetting in the excitement of the moment my part in the day’s debate, I pressed to the door. The Bastille fallen? The Governor killed? Paris in the hands of the mob? Such tidings were enough to set the brain in a whirl, and breed forgetfulness of nearer matters. Others, in the preoccupation of the moment, seemed to be equally oblivious, and I forced my way out with the rest.

  But in the doorway I happened, by a little clumsiness, to touch one of the Harincourts. He turned his head, saw who it was had touched him, and tried to stop. The pressure was too great, however, and he was borne on in front of me, struggling and muttering something I could not hear. I guessed what it was, however, by the manner in which others, abreast of him, and as helpless, turned their heads and sneered at me; and I was considering how I could best encounter what was to come, when the sight which met our gaze, as we at last issued from the narrow passage and faced the market-place — two steps below us — drove their existence for a moment from my mind.

  CHAPTER IV.

  L’AMI DU PEUPLE.

  There were others who stood also; impressed by a sight which, in the light of the news we had just heard, that astonishing, that amazing news, seemed to have especial significance. We had not yet grown accustomed in France to crowds. For centuries the one man, the individual, King, Cardinal, Noble, or Bishop, had stood forward, and the many, the multitude, had melted away under his eye; had bowed and passed.

  But here, within our view, rose the cold lowering dawn of a new day. Perhaps, if we had not heard what we had heard — that news, I mean — or if the people had not heard it, the effect on us, the action on their part, might have been different. As it was, the crowd that faced us in the Square as we came out, the great crowd that faced us and stretched from wall to wall, silent, vigilant, menacing, showed not a sign of flinching; and we did. We stood astonished, each halting as he came out, and looking, and then consulting his neighbour’s eyes to learn what he thought.

  We had over our heads the great Cathedral, from the shadow of which we issued. We had among us many who had been wont to see a hundred peasants tremble at their frown. B
ut in a moment, in a twinkling, as if that news from Paris had shaken the foundations of Society, we found these things in question. The crowd in the Square did not tremble. In a silence that was grimmer than howling it gave back look for look. Nor only that; but as we issued, they made no way for us, and those of the Assembly who had already gone down, had to walk along the skirts of the press to get to the inn. We who came later saw this, and it had its weight with us. We were Nobles of the province; but we were only two hundred, and between us and the Trois Rois, between us and our horses and servants, stretched this line of gloomy faces, these thousands of silent men.

  No wonder that the sight, and something that underlay the sight, diverted my mind for a moment from M. Harincourt and his purpose, and that I looked abroad; while he, too, stood gaping and frowning, and forgot me. Perforce we had to go down; one by one reluctantly, a meagre string winding across the face of the crowd; sullen defiance on one side, scorn on the other. In Cahors it came to be remembered as the first triumph of the people, the first step in the degradation of the privileged. A word had brought it about. A word, the Bastille fallen, had combined the floating groups, and formed of them this which we saw — the people.

  Under such circumstances it needed only the slightest spark to bring about an explosion; and that was presently supplied. M. de Gontaut, a tall, thin, old man, who could remember the early days of the late King, walked a little way in front of me. He was lame, and used a cane, and as a rule a servant’s arm. This morning, the lackey was not forthcoming, and he felt the inconvenience of skirting instead of crossing the square. Nevertheless he was not foolish enough to thrust himself into the crowd; and all might have gone well, if a rogue in the front rank of the throng had not, perhaps by accident, tripped up the cane with his foot. M. le Baron turned in a flash, every hair of his eyebrows on end, and struck the fellow with his stick.

  “Stand back, rascal!” he cried, trembling, and threatening to repeat the blow. “If I had you, I would soon — —”

  The man spat at him.

  M. de Gontaut uttered an oath, and in ungovernable rage struck the wretch two or three blows — how many I could not see, though I was only a few paces behind. Apparently the man did not strike back, but shrank, cowed by the old noble’s fury. But those behind flung him forward, with cries of “Shame! A bas la Noblesse!” and he fell against M. de Gontaut. In a moment the Baron was on the ground.

  It was so quickly done that only those in the immediate neighbourhood, St. Alais, the Harincourts, and myself, saw the fall. Probably the mob meant no great harm; they had not yet lost all reverence. But at the time, with the tale of De Launay in my ears, and my imagination inflamed, I thought that they intended M. de Gontaut’s death, and as I saw his old head fall, I sprang forward to protect him.

  St. Alais was before me, however. Bounding forward, with rage not less than Gontaut’s, he hurled the aggressor back with a blow which sent him into the arms of his supporters. Then dragging M. de Gontaut to his feet, the Marquis whipped out his sword, and darting the bright point hither and thither with the skill of a practised fencer, in a twinkling he cleared a space round him, and made the nearest give back with shrieks and curses.

  Unfortunately he touched one man; the fellow was not hurt, but at the prick he sank down screaming, and in a second the mood of the crowd changed. Shrieks, half-playful, gave way to a howl of rage. Some one flung a stick, which struck the Marquis on the chest, and for a moment stopped him. The next instant he sprang at the man who had thrown it, and would have run him through, but the fellow fled, and the crowd, with a yell of triumph, closed over his path. This stopped St. Alais in mid course, and left him only the choice between retreating, or wounding people who were innocent.

  He fell back with a sneering word, and sheathed his sword. But the moment his back was turned a stone struck him on the head, and he staggered forward. As he fell the crowd uttered a yell, and half a dozen men dashed at him to trample on him.

  Their blood was up; this time I made no mistake, I read mischief in their eyes. The scream of the man whom he had wounded, though the fellow was more frightened than hurt, was in their ears. One of the Harincourts struck down the foremost, but this only enraged without checking them. In a moment he was swept aside and flung back, stunned and reeling; and the crowd rushed upon their victim.

  I threw myself before him. I had just time to do that, and cry “Shame! shame!” and force back one or two; and then my intervention must have come to nothing, it must have fared as ill with me as with him, if in the nick of time, with a ring of grimy faces threatening us, and a dozen hands upraised, I had not been recognised. Buton, the blacksmith of Saux — one of the foremost — screamed out my name, and turning with outstretched arms, forced back his neighbours. A man of huge strength, it was as much as he could do to stem the torrent; but in a moment his frenzied cries became heard and understood. Others recognised me, the crowd fell back. Some one raised a cry of “Vive Saux! Long live the friend of the people!” and the shout being taken up first in one place and then in another, in a trice the Square rang with the words.

  I had not then learned the fickleness of the multitude, or that from A bas to vive is the step of an instant; and despite myself, and though I despised myself for the feeling, I felt my heart swell on the wave of sound. “Vive Saux! Vive l’ami du peuple!” My equals had scorned me, but the people — the people whose faces wore a new look to-day, the people to whom this one word, the Bastille fallen, had given new life — acclaimed me. For a moment, even while I cried to them, and shook my hands to them to be silent, there flashed on me the things it meant; the things they had to give, power and tribuneship! “Vive Saux! long live the friend of the people!” The air shook with the sound; the domes above me gave it back. I felt myself lifted up on it; I felt myself for the minute another and a greater man!

  Then I turned and met St. Alais’ eye, and I fell to earth. He had risen, and, pale with rage, was wiping the dust from his coat with a handkerchief. A little blood was flowing from the wound in his head, but he paid no heed to it, in the intentness with which he was staring at me, as if he read my thoughts. As soon as something like silence was obtained, he spoke.

  “Perhaps if your friends have quite done with us, M. de Saux — we may go home?” he said, his voice trembling a little.

  I stammered something in answer to the sneer, and turned to accompany him; though my way to the inn lay in the opposite direction. Only the two Harincourts and M. de Gontaut were with us. The rest of the Assembly had either got clear, or were viewing the fracas from the door of the Chapter House, where they stood, cut off from us by a wall of people. I offered my arm to M. de Gontaut, but he declined it with a frigid bow, and took Harincourt’s; and M. le Marquis, when I turned to him, said, with a cold smile, that they need not trouble me.

  “Doubtless we shall be safe,” he sneered, “if you will give orders to that effect.”

  I bowed, without retorting on him; he bowed; and he turned away. But the crowd had either read his attitude aright, or gathered that there was an altercation between us, for the moment he moved they set up a howl. Two or three stones were thrown, notwithstanding Buton’s efforts to prevent it; and before the party had retired ten yards the rabble began to press on them savagely. Embarrassed by M. de Gontaut’s presence and helplessness, the other three could do nothing. For an instant I had a view of St. Alais standing gallantly at bay with the old noble behind him, and the blood trickling down his cheek. Then I followed them, the crowd made instant way for me, again the air rang with cheers, and the Square in the hot July sunshine seemed a sea of waving hands.

  M. de St. Alais turned to me. He could still smile, and with marvellous self-command, in one and the same instant he recovered from his discomfiture and changed his tactics.

  “I am afraid that after all we must trouble you,” he said politely. “M. le Baron is not a young man, and your people, M. de Saux, are somewhat obstreperous.”

  “What can I do?�
� I said sullenly. I had not the heart to leave them to their fortunes; at the same time I was as little disposed to accept the onus he would lay on me.

  “Accompany us home,” he said pleasantly, drawing out his snuff-box and taking a pinch.

  The people had fallen silent again, but watched us heedfully. “If you think it will serve?” I answered.

  “It will,” he said briskly. “You know, M. le Vicomte, that a man is born and a man dies every minute? Believe me no King dies — but another King is born.”

  I winced under the sarcasm, under the laughing contempt of his eye. Yet I saw nothing for it but to comply, and I bowed and turned to go with them. The crowd opened before us; amid mingled cheers and yells we moved away. I intended only to accompany them to the outskirts of the throng, and then to gain the inn by a by-path, get my horses and be gone. But a party of the crowd continued to follow us through the streets, and I found no opportunity. Almost before I knew it, we were at the St. Alais’ door, still with this rough attendance at our heels.

  Madame and Mademoiselle, with two or three women, were on the balcony, looking and listening; at the door below stood a group of scared servants. While I looked, however, Madame left her place above and in a moment appeared at the door, the servants making way for her. She stared in wonder at us, and from us to the rabble that followed; then her eye caught the bloodstains on M. de St. Alais’ cravat, and she cried out to know if he was hurt.

  “No, Madame,” he said lightly. “But M. de Gontaut has had a fall.”

  “What has happened?” she asked quickly. “The town seems to have gone mad! I heard a great noise a while ago, and the servants brought in a wild tale about the Bastille.”

  “It is true.”

  “What? That the Bastille — —”

  “Has been taken by the mob, Madame; and M. de Launay murdered.”

  “Impossible!” Madame cried with flashing eyes. “That old man?”