The grandfathers of the present generation of Boulonnese rememberedthe great day of the National Fete, when all Boulogne, for twenty-fourhours, went crazy with joy. So many families had fathers, brothers,sons, languishing in prison under some charge of treason, real orimaginary; so many had dear ones for whom already the guillotine loomedahead, that the feast on this memorable day of September, 1793, was oneof never-to-be-forgotten relief and thanksgiving.
The weather all day had been exceptionally fine. After that glorioussunrise, the sky had remained all day clad in its gorgeous mantle ofblue and the sun had continued to smile benignly on the many varieddoings of this gay, little seaport town. When it began to sink slowlytowards the West a few little fluffy clouds appeared on the horizon,and from a distance, although the sky remained clear and blue, the sealooked quite dark and slaty against the brilliance of the firmament.
Gradually, as the splendour of the sunset gave place to the delicatepurple and grey tints of evening, the little fluffy clouds mergedthemselves into denser masses, and these too soon became absorbed in thegreat, billowy banks which the southwesterly wind was blowing seawards.
By the time that the last grey streak of dusk vanished in the West, thewhole sky looked heavy with clouds, and the evening set in, threateningand dark.
But this by no means mitigated the anticipation of pleasure to come. Onthe contrary, the fast-gathering gloom was hailed with delight, since itwould surely help to show off the coloured lights of the lanthorns, andgive additional value to the glow of the torches.
Of a truth 'twas a motley throng which began to assemble on the Place dela Senechaussee, just as the old bell of the Beffroi tolled the hour ofsix. Men, women and children in ragged finery, Pierrots with neck frillsand floured faces, hideous masks of impossible beasts roughly besmearedin crude colours. There were gaily-coloured dominoes, blue, green, pinkand purple, harlequins combining all the colours of the rainbow inone tight-fitting garment, and Columbines with short, tarlatan skirts,beneath which peeped bare feet and ankles. There were judges' perruqes,and soldiers' helmets of past generations, tall Normandy caps adornedwith hundreds of streaming ribbons, and powdered headgear which recalledthe glories of Versailles.
Everything was torn and dirty, the dominoes were in rags, the Pierrotfrills, mostly made up of paper, already hung in strips over thewearers' shoulders. But what mattered that?
The crowd pushed and jolted, shouted and laughed, the girls screamed asthe men snatched a kiss here and there from willing or unwilling lips,or stole an arm round a gaily accoutred waist. The spirit of Old KingCarnival was in the evening air--a spirit just awakened from a long Ripvan Winkle-like sleep.
In the centre of the Place stood the guillotine, grim and gaunt withlong, thin arms stretched out towards the sky, the last glimmer ofwaning light striking the triangular knife, there, where it was notrusty with stains of blood.
For weeks now Madame Guillotine had been much occupied plying hergruesome trade; she now stood there in the gloom, passive and immovable,seeming to wait placidly for the end of this holiday, ready to begin herwork again on the morrow. She towered above these merrymakers, hoistedup on the platform whereon many an innocent foot had trodden, thetattered basket beside her, into which many an innocent head had rolled.
What cared they to-night for Madame Guillotine and the horrors ofwhich she told? A crowd of Pierrots with floured faces and tatteredneck-frills had just swarmed up the wooden steps, shouting and laughing,chasing each other round and round on the platform, until one of themlost his footing and fell into the basket, covering himself with branand staining his clothes with blood.
"Ah! vogue la galere! We must be merry to-night!"
And all these people who for weeks past had been staring death and theguillotine in the face, had denounced each other with savage callousnessin order to save themselves, or hidden for days in dark cellars toescape apprehension, now laughed, and danced and shrieked with gladnessin a sudden, hysterical outburst of joy.
Close beside the guillotine stood the triumphal car of the Goddess ofReason, the special feature of this great national fete. It was only arough market cart, painted by an unpractised hand with bright, crimsonpaint and adorned with huge clusters of autumn-tinted leaves, and thescarlet berries of mountain ash and rowan, culled from the town gardens,or the country side outside the city walls.
In the cart the goddess reclined on a crimson-draped seat, she, herself,swathed in white, and wearing a gorgeous necklace around her neck.Desiree Candeille, a little pale, a little apprehensive of all thisnoise, had obeyed the final dictates of her taskmaster. She had been themeans of bringing the Scarlet Pimpernel to France and vengeance, she wasto be honoured therefore above every other woman in France.
She sat in the car, vaguely thinking over the events of the past fewdays, whilst watching the throng of rowdy merrymakers seething aroundher. She thought of the noble-hearted, proud woman whom she had helpedto bring from her beautiful English home to sorrow and humiliation ina dank French prison, she thought of the gallant English gentleman withhis pleasant voice and courtly, debonnair manners.
Chauvelin had roughly told her, only this morning, that both were nowunder arrest as English spies, and that their fate no longer concernedher. Later on the governor of the city had come to tell her that CitizenChauvelin desired her to take part in the procession and the nationalfete, as the Goddess of Reason, and that the people of Boulogne wereready to welcome her as such. This had pleased Candeille's vanity, andall day, whilst arranging the finery which she meant to wear for theoccasion, she had ceased to think of England and of Lady Blakeney.
But now, when she arrived on the Place de la Senechaussee, and mountingher car, found herself on a level with the platform of the guillotine,her memory flew back to England, to the lavish hospitality of BlakeneyManor, Marguerite's gentle voice, the pleasing grace of Sir Percy'smanners, and she shuddered a little when that cruel glint of eveninglight caused the knife of the guillotine to glisten from out the gloom.
But anon her reflections were suddenly interrupted by loud and prolongedshouts of joy. A whole throng of Pierrots had swarmed into the Placefrom every side, carrying lighted torches and tall staves, on which werehung lanthorns with many-coloured lights.
The procession was ready to start. A stentorian voice shouted out inresonant accents:
"En avant, la grosse caisse!"
A man now, portly and gorgeous in scarlet and blue, detached himselffrom out the crowd. His head was hidden beneath the monstrous mask ofa cardboard lion, roughly painted in brown and yellow, with crimsonfor the widely open jaws and the corners of the eyes, to make them seemferocious and bloodshot. His coat was of bright crimson cloth, with cutsand slashings in it, through which bunches of bright blue paper weremade to protrude, in imitation of the costume of mediaeval times.
He had blue stockings on and bright scarlet slippers, and behind himfloated a large strip of scarlet flannel, on which moons and suns andstars of gold had been showered in plenty.
Upon his portly figure in front he was supporting the big drum, whichwas securely strapped round his shoulders with tarred cordages, thespoil of some fishing vessel.
There was a merciful slit in the jaw of the cardboard lion, throughwhich the portly drummer puffed and spluttered as he shouted lustily:
"En avant!"
And wielding the heavy drumstick with a powerful arm, he brought itcrashing down against the side of the mighty instrument.
"Hurrah! Hurrah! en avant les trompettes!"
A fanfare of brass instruments followed, lustily blown by twelveyoung men in motley coats of green, and tall, peaked hats adorned withfeathers.
The drummer had begun to march, closely followed by the trumpeters.Behind them a bevy of Columbines in many-coloured tarlatan skirts andhair flying wildly in the breeze, giggling, pushing, exchanging ribaldjokes with the men behind, and getting kissed or slapped for theirpains.
Then the triumphal car of the goddess, with Demoiselle Candei
llestanding straight up in it, a tall gold wand in one hand, the otherresting in a mass of scarlet berries. All round the car, helter-skelter,tumbling, pushing, came Pierrots and Pierrettes, carrying lanthorns, andHarlequins bearing the torches.
And after the car the long line of more sober folk, the older fisherman,the women in caps and many-hued skirts, the serious townfolk who hadscorned the travesty, yet would not be left out of the procession. Theyall began to march, to the tune of those noisy brass trumpets which werethundering forth snatches from the newly composed "Marseillaise."
Above the sky became more heavy with clouds. Anon a few drops of rainbegan to fall, making the torches sizzle and splutter, and scattergrease and tar around and wetting the lightly-covered shouldersof tarlatan-clad Columbines. But no one cared! The glow of so muchmerrymaking kept the blood warm and the skin dry.
The flour all came off the Pierrots' faces, the blue paper slashings ofthe drummer-in-chief hung in pulpy lumps against his gorgeous scarletcloak. The trumpeters' feathers became streaky and bedraggled.
But in the name of that good God who had ceased to exist, who in theworld or out of it cared if it rained, or thundered and stormed! Thiswas a national holiday, for an English spy was captured, and all nativesof Boulogne were free of the guillotine to-night.
The revellers were making the circuit of the town, with lanthornsfluttering in the wind, and flickering torches held up aloft illumininglaughing faces, red with the glow of a drunken joy, young faces thatonly enjoyed the moment's pleasure, serious ones that withheld a frownat thought of the morrow. The fitful light played on the grotesquemasques of beasts and reptiles, on the diamond necklace of a veryearthly goddess, on God's glorious spoils from gardens and country-side,on smothered anxiety and repressed cruelty.
The crowd had turned its back on the guillotine, and the trumpetsnow changed the inspiriting tune of the "Marseillaise" to the ribaldvulgarity of the "Ca ira!"
Everyone yelled and shouted. Girls with flowing hair producedbroomsticks, and astride on these, broke from the ranks and danced a madand obscene saraband, a dance of witches in the weird glow of sizzlingtorches, to the accompaniment of raucous laughter and of coarse jokes.
Thus the procession passed on, a sight to gladden the eyes of those whohad desired to smother all thought of the Infinite, of Eternity and ofGod in the minds of those to whom they had nothing to offer in return.A threat of death yesterday, misery, starvation and squalor! all thehideousness of a destroying anarchy, that had nothing to give save anational fete, a tinsel goddess, some shallow laughter and momentaryintoxication, a travesty of clothes and of religion and a dance on theashes of the past.
And there along the ramparts where the massive walls of the cityencircled the frowning prisons of Gayole and the old Chateau, darkgroups were crouching, huddled together in compact masses, which inthe gloom seemed to vibrate with fear. Like hunted quarry seeking forshelter, sombre figures flattened themselves in the angles of thedank walls, as the noisy carousers drew nigh. Then as the torches andlanthorns detached themselves from out the evening shadows, hand wouldclutch hand and hearts would beat with agonized suspense, whilst thedark and shapeless forms would try to appear smaller, flatter, lessnoticeable than before.
And when the crowd had passed noisily along, leaving behind it a trailof torn finery, of glittering tinsel and of scarlet berries, when theboom of the big drum and the grating noise of the brass trumpets hadsomewhat died away, wan faces, pale with anxiety, would peer from outthe darkness, and nervous hands would grasp with trembling fingers thesmall bundles of poor belongings tied up hastily in view of flight.
At seven o'clock, so 'twas said, the cannon would boom from the oldBeffroi. The guard would throw open the prison gates, and those who hadsomething or somebody to hide, and those who had a great deal to fear,would be free to go whithersoever they chose.
And mothers, sisters, sweethearts stood watching by the gates, forloved ones to-night would be set free, all along of the capture of thatEnglish spy, the Scarlet Pimpernel.
Chapter XXXI: Final Dispositions
The Elusive Pimpernel Page 30