The Elusive Pimpernel

by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

  Boulogne had gone through many phases, in its own languid and sleepyway, whilst the great upheaval of a gigantic revolution shook othercities of France to their very foundations.

  At first the little town had held somnolently aloof, and whilst Lyonsand Tours conspired and rebelled, whilst Marseilles and Toulon openedtheir ports to the English and Dunkirk was ready to surrender tothe allied forces, she had gazed through half-closed eyes at all theturmoil, and then quietly turned over and gone to sleep again.

  Boulogne fished and mended nets, built boats and manufactured bootswith placid content, whilst France murdered her king and butchered hercitizens.

  The initial noise of the great revolution was only wafted on thesoutherly breezes from Paris to the little seaport towns of NorthernFrance, and lost much of its volume and power in this aerial transit:the fisher folk were too poor to worry about the dethronement of kings:the struggle for daily existence, the perils and hardships of deep-seafishing engrossed all the faculties they possessed.

  As for the burghers and merchants of the town, they were at firstcontent with reading an occasional article in the "Gazette de Paris" orthe "Gazette des Tribunaux," brought hither by one or other of the manytravellers who crossed the city on their way to the harbour. They wereinterested in these articles, at times even comfortably horrified at thedoings in Paris, the executions and the tumbrils, but on the whole theyliked the idea that the country was in future to be governed by dulychosen representatives of the people, rather than be a prey to thedespotism of kings, and they were really quite pleased to see thetricolour flag hoisted on the old Beffroi, there where the snow-whitestandard of the Bourbons had erstwhile flaunted its golden fleur-de-lisin the glare of the midday sun.

  The worthy burgesses of Boulogne were ready to shout: "Vive laRepublique!" with the same cheerful and raucous Normandy accent as theyhad lately shouted "Dieu protege le Roi!"

  The first awakening from this happy torpor came when that tent was putup on the landing stage in the harbour. Officials, dressed in shabbyuniforms and wearing tricolour cockades and scarves, were now quarteredin Town Hall, and repaired daily to that roughly erected tent,accompanied by so many soldiers from the garrison.

  There installed, they busied themselves with examining carefullythe passports of all those who desired to leave or enter Boulogne.Fisher-folk who had dwelt in the city--father and son and grandfatherand many generations before that--and had come and gone in and out oftheir own boats as they pleased, were now stopped as they beached theircraft and made to give an account of themselves to these officials fromParis.

  It was, of a truth, more than ridiculous, that these strangers shouldask of Jean-Marie who he was, or of Pierre what was his business, orof Desire Francois whither he was going, when Jean-Marie and Pierreand Desire Francois had plied their nets in the roads outside Boulogneharbour for more years than they would care to count.

  It also caused no small measure of annoyance that fishermen wereordered to wear tricolour cockades on their caps. They had no specialill-feeling against tricolour cockades, but they did not care aboutthem. Jean-Marie flatly refused to have one pinned on, and beingadmonished somewhat severely by one of the Paris officials, he becameobstinate about the whole thing and threw the cockade violently on theground and spat upon it, not from any sentiment of anti-republicanism,but just from a feeling of Norman doggedness.

  He was arrested, shut up in Fort Gayole, tried as a traitor and publiclyguillotined.

  The consternation in Boulogne was appalling.

  The one little spark had found its way to a barrel of blastingpowder and caused a terrible explosion. Within twenty-four hoursof Jean-Marie's execution the whole town was in the throes ofthe Revolution. What the death of King Louis, the arrest of MarieAntoinette, the massacres of September had failed to do, that the arrestand execution of an elderly fisherman accomplished in a trice.

  People began to take sides in politics. Some families realized that theycame from ancient lineage, and that their ancestors had helped to buildup the throne of the Bourbons. Others looked up ancient archives andremembered past oppressions at the hands of the aristocrats.

  Thus some burghers of Boulogne became ardent reactionaries, whilstothers secretly nursed enthusiastic royalist convictions: some wereready to throw in their lot with the anarchists, to deny the religionof their fathers, to scorn the priests and close the places of worship;others adhered strictly still to the usages and practices of the Church.

  Arrest became frequent: the guillotine, erected in the Place de laSenechaussee, had plenty of work to do. Soon the cathedral was closed,the priests thrown into prison, whilst scores of families hoped toescape a similar fate by summary flight.

  Vague rumours of a band of English adventurers soon reached the littlesea-port town. The Scarlet Pimpernel--English spy or hero, as he wasalternately called--had helped many a family with pronounced royalisttendencies to escape the fury of the blood-thirsty Terrorists.

  Thus gradually the anti-revolutionaries had been weeded out of the city:some by death and imprisonment, others by flight. Boulogne became thehotbed of anarchism: the idlers and loafers, inseparable from any townwhere there is a garrison and a harbour, practically ruled the city now.Denunciations were the order of the day. Everyone who owned any money,or lived with any comfort was accused of being a traitor and suspectedof conspiracy. The fisher folk wandered about the city, surly anddiscontented: their trade was at a standstill, but there was a trifleto be earned by giving information: information which meant the arrest,ofttimes the death of men, women and even children who had tried to seeksafety in flight, and to denounce whom--as they were trying to hire aboat anywhere along the coast--meant a good square meal for a starvingfamily.

  Then came the awful cataclysm.

  A woman--a stranger--had been arrested and imprisoned in the Fort Gayoleand the town-crier publicly proclaimed that if she escaped from jail,one member of every family in the town--rich or poor, republican orroyalist, Catholic or free-thinker--would be summarily guillotined.

  That member, the bread-winner!

  "Why, then, with the Duvals it would be young Francois-Auguste. He keepshis old mother with his boot-making..."

  "And it would be Marie Lebon, she has her blind father dependent on hernet-mending."

  "And old Mother Laferriere, whose grandchildren were left penniless...she keeps them from starvation by her wash-tub."

  "But Francois-Auguste is a real Republican; he belongs to the JacobinClub."

  "And look at Pierre, who never meets a calotin but he must needs spit onhim."

  "Is there no safety anywhere?... are we to be butchered like so manycattle?..."

  Somebody makes the suggestion:

  "It is a threat... they would not dare!..."

  "Would not dare?..."

  'Tis old Andre Lemoine who has spoken, and he spits vigorously on theground. Andre Lemoine has been a soldier; he was in La Vendee. He waswounded at Tours... and he knows!

  "Would not dare?..." he says in a whisper. "I tell you, friends, thatthere's nothing the present government would not dare. There was thePlaine Saint Mauve... Did you ever hear about that?... little childrenfusilladed by the score... little ones, I say, and women with babies attheir breasts ... weren't they innocent?... Five hundred innocent peoplebutchered in La Vendee... until the Headsman sank--worn not... I couldtell worse than that... for I know.... There's nothing they would notdare!..."

  Consternation was so great that the matter could not even be discussed.

  "We'll go to Gayole and see this woman at any rate."

  Angry, sullen crowds assembled in the streets. The proclamation had beenread just as the men were leaving the public houses, preparing to gohome for the night.

  They brought the news to the women, who, at home, were setting the soupand bread on the table for their husbands' supper. There was no thoughtof going to bed or of sleeping that night. The bread-winner in everyfamily and all those dependent on him for daily sustenance weretr
embling for their lives.

  Resistance to the barbarous order would have been worse than useless,nor did the thought of it enter the heads of these humble and ignorantfisher folk, wearied out with the miserable struggle for existence.There was not sufficient spirit left in this half-starved populationof a small provincial city to suggest open rebellion. A regiment ofsoldiers come up from the South were quartered in the Chateau, and thenatives of Boulogne could not have mustered more than a score of disusedblunderbusses between them.

  Then they remembered tales which Andre Lemoine had told, the fate ofLyons, razed to the ground, of Toulon burnt to ashes, and they did notdare rebel.

  But brothers, fathers, sons trooped out towards Gayole, in order tohave a good look at the frowning pile, which held the hostage for theirsafety. It looked dark and gloomy enough, save for one window which gaveon the southern ramparts. This window was wide open and a feeble lightflickered from the room beyond, and as the men stood about, gazing atthe walls in sulky silence, they suddenly caught the sound of a loudlaugh proceeding from within, and of a pleasant voice speaking quitegaily in a language which they did not understand, but which soundedlike English.

  Against the heavy oaken gateway, leading to the courtyard of the prison,the proclamation written on stout parchment had been pinned up. Besideit hung a tiny lantern, the dim light of which flickered in the eveningbreeze, and brought at times into sudden relief the bold writing andheavy signature, which stood out, stern and grim, against the yellowishbackground of the paper, like black signs of approaching death.

  Facing the gateway and the proclamation, the crowd of men took itsstand. The moon, from behind them, cast fitful, silvery glances at theweary heads bent in anxiety and watchful expectancy: on old heads andyoung heads, dark, curly heads and heads grizzled with age, on backsbent with toil, and hands rough and gnarled like seasoned timber.

  All night the men stood and watched.

  Sentinels from the town guard were stationed at the gates, but thesemight prove inattentive or insufficient, they had not the same priceat stake, so the entire able-bodied population of Boulogne watched thegloomy prison that night, lest anyone escaped by wall or window.

  They were guarding the precious hostage whose safety was the stipulationfor their own.

  There was dead silence among them, and dead silence all around, save forthat monotonous tok-tok-tok of the parchment flapping in the breeze. Themoon, who all along had been capricious and chary of her light, madea final retreat behind a gathering bank of clouds, and the crowd, thesoldiers and the great grim walls were all equally wrapped in gloom.

  Only the little lantern on the gateway now made a ruddy patch of light,and tinged that fluttering parchment with the colour of blood. Every nowand then an isolated figure would detach itself from out the watchingthrong, and go up to the heavy, oaken door, in order to gaze at theproclamation. Then the light of the lantern illumined a dark head or agrey one, for a moment or two: black or white locks were stirred gentlyin the wind, and a sigh of puzzlement and disappointment would bedistinctly heard.

  At times a group of three or four would stand there for awhile, notspeaking, only sighing and casting eager questioning glances at oneanother, whilst trying vainly to find some hopeful word, some turn ofphrase of meaning that would be less direful, in that grim and ferociousproclamation. Then a rough word from the sentinel, a push from thebutt-end of a bayonet would disperse the little group and send the men,sullen and silent, back into the crowd.

  Thus they watched for hours whilst the bell of the Beffroi tolled allthe hours of that tedious night. A thin rain began to fall in the smallhours of the morning, a wetting, soaking drizzle which chilled the wearywatchers to the bone.

  But they did not care.

  "We must not sleep, for the woman might escape."

  Some of them squatted down in the muddy road, the luckier ones managedto lean their backs against the slimy walls.

  Twice before the hour of midnight they heard that same quaint and merrylaugh proceeding from the lighted room, through the open window. Once itsounded very low and very prolonged, as if in response to a delightfuljoke.

  Anon the heavy gateway of Gayole was opened from within, and half adozen soldiers came walking out of the courtyard. They were dressed inthe uniform of the town-guard, but had evidently been picked out of therank and file, for all six were exceptionally tall and stalwart, andtowered above the sentinel, who saluted and presented arms as theymarched out of the gate.

  In the midst of them walked a slight, dark figure, clad entirely inblack, save for the tricolour scarf round his waist.

  The crowd of watchers gazed on the little party with suddenly awakenedinterest.

  "Who is it?" whispered some of the men.

  "The citizen-governor," suggested one.

  "The new public executioner," ventured another.

  "No! no!" quoth Pierre Maxime, the doyen of Boulogne fishermen, and agreat authority on every matter public or private with the town; "no, nohe is the man who has come down from Paris, the friend of Robespierre.He makes the laws now, the citizen-governor even must obey him. 'Tis hewho made the law that if the woman up yonder should escape..."

  "Hush!... sh!... sh!..." came in frightened accents from the crowd.

  "Hush, Pierre Maxine!... the Citizen might hear thee," whispered the manwho stood closest to the old fisherman; "the Citizen might hear thee,and think that we rebelled...."

  "What are these people doing here?' queried Chauvelin as he passed outinto the street.

  "They are watching the prison, Citizen," replied the sentinel, whom hehad thus addressed, "lest the female prisoner should attempt to escape."

  With a satisfied smile, Chauvelin turned toward the Town Hall, closelysurrounded by his escort. The crowd watched him and the soldiers asthey quickly disappeared in the gloom, then they resumed the stolid,wearisome vigil of the night.

  The old Beffroi now tolled the midnight hour, the one solitary light inthe old Fort was extinguished, and after that the frowning pile remaineddark and still.

  Chapter XXIX: The National Fete