The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty

In the royal coach were the Queen, her son, her daughter, called Madam Royale though a child, Count Provence, the King’s brother. Lady Elizabeth his sister, and the Queen’s favorite lady of the household, Andrea Taverney Countess of Charny.

In a hundred carriages came the National Assemblymen who had declared they would henceforth be inseparable from the monarch.

This mob was about a quarter of an hour ahead of the royal party, and rallied round the two royal guardsmen’s heads as their colors. All stopped at the Sevres wine saloon. The collection was of tattered and half-drunken wretches, the scum that comes to the surface whether the inundation is water or lava.

Suddenly, great stir in the concourse, for they had seen the National Guards’ bayonets and General Lafayette’s white horse, immediately preceding the royal coach.

Lafayette was fond of popular gatherings: he really reigned among the Paris people whose idol he was. But he did not like the lowest orders. Paris, like Rome, had a grade under the mere mob.

In particular, he did not approve of Lynch Law, and he had done his utmost to try to save those aristocrats whom the crowd had executed. It was to hide their trophies and preserve the bloody tokens of victory that the multitude kept on ahead. But on being encouraged by the trio of captains waiting at the Sevres saloon, they decided to keep the heads up and wait for the King, so that he should not be parted from his faithful guards.

The mob was increased by the country folks flocking to the road from all quarters to see the cortege go by. A few cheered, adding their uproar to the howls, hoots and groans of the marching column, but the majority, stood dull and quiet on both sides of the road.

Did this mean that they were for the Royal Family? No: or at least unless they belonged to the court party, everybody, even the upper middle class, suffered more or less from the dreadful famine spreading over the kingdom. If they did not insult the King and Queen, they remained hushed, and the silence of an assemblage is often worse than an insult.

On the other hand the myriads roared with all their lung power: “Hurrah for Lafayette!” who took off his hat now and then or waved the sword in his right hand: and “Long live Mirabeau!” who thrust his head out of the carriage window, where he was one of six, to get a whiff of the air necessary for his broad chest.

Hence, amid the silence for himself, the unfortunate Louis XVI. heard applauded that Popularity which he had lost and that Genius which he had never possessed.

By the King’s right side carriage-window walked a man in a black suit whose dress pointed him out as one of the Philosophers, as they were termed, or Revolutionists who worked intellectually for the amelioration of the monarchy. This was the royal honorary physician, Dr. Honore Gilbert. The crowd cheered him at times, for he was a hero of their own. Born a Frenchman, of humble degree, a boy on the estate of the ultra-royalist Baron Taverney, he had educated himself in democratic learning. Falling in love with his master’s lovely daughter, Andrea, since Countess of Charny, he had followed her to court. At Paris he became favorite pupil of Rousseau, the revolutionist, and this farther confirmed him in his subversive principles.

But having taken advantage of Andrea while she was powerless under the influence of a mesmeric sleep, he fled the country. He had deposited in sure hands the living evidence of his crime, a boy named Emile (In honor of Rousseau, who wrote a book so called) Sebastian Gilbert, and fled the country. But at the Azores Islands he came in contact with the young lady’s brother Philip, who shot him down and believed he left him dead.

But, restored to life by his friend, the Baron Balsamo, otherwise Cagliostro the Magician he accompanied him to America.

The two formed part of the legion of Frenchmen who helped the revolted Thirteen Colonies to throw off the British yoke.

Returning to his country he was arrested at Havre and thown into the Bastile. When that hated prison was stormed by the Parisians led by the Farmer Billet, he was rescued. He had gone to court to learn who had caused this arrest, and to his amazement discovered that its author was the woman whom he had unutterably wronged. Yes, the baron’s daughter had married the Queen’s favorite, thought by some to be her paramour, Count George Charny, very rich, very brave and altogether fit to create her a power in the realm.

Gilbert had a sincere pity for royalty under a cloud. He was known to the King as the author of certain articles on the way to steer the Ship of State, and his offer to serve him was gladly accepted.

The mob cheered at the remarkable shaking up of the sands in Time’s box by which the revolutionary advocate, fresh from the Bastile dungeons, should walk at the side of the King’s coach to shield his life from the assassin. No mere touch of rhetoric, for on the royal visit to Paris lately a bullet had cut a button off the doctor’s coat and slain a woman in the throng: this graceful gentlemen in black was then a better safeguard than the soldiers whose heads were now garnishing the pikes there in advance.

Queen Marie Antoinette looked with wonder at this doctor, whose stoicism she could not understand, while to it the American manner of forced quiet added more sternness. Without love or devotion for his sovereigns, he carried out what he considered duty towards them, as ready to die for them as those who had the qualities of the loyalist he lacked.

On both sides of the royal coach tramped men and women, in mud six inches deep, while amid the ribbons and rags, the Fishmarket women and porters of the Paris Markets swarmed round waves more compact than the rest of the human sea. These clumps were cannon or ammunition wagons, on which sat women singing at the top of their voices. An old song which had been applied to King Louis XV.'s mistress Jeanne Dubarry, and was now altered to suit Marie Antoinette and the situation of affairs, was their choice. They roared:

“The Baker’s wife has got the cash, which costs her very little.”

They also kept reiterating: “We shall not want for bread any more, as we have got the Baker, the Baker’s Wife and the Baker’s Little Boy along.”

The Queen seemed to listen to it all without understanding. Between her knees she held her son, who looked at the multitude as frightened princes stare when appalled.

The King watched with a dull and heavy eye. He had little sleep in the night; he had not made a good breakfast though usually a hearty eater; he had no time to have his hair dressed and his beard had grown long. His linen was limp and roughened, too – all things to his disadvantage. Alas, Louis was not the man for emergencies, and this was a period of emergencies. He bent his head when they came: save once when he held his chin up – it was when he walked upon the scaffold.

Lady Elizabeth was the angel of sweetness and resignation placed by heaven beside those doomed creatures to console the King during the Queen’s absence; and the Queen after the King’s death.

Count Provence, here as everywhere, had the squinting glance of a false man; he knew that he ran no present danger; he was the popular member of the family – no one knew why – perhaps because he remained in France when his brother Artois fled.

Could the King have read his heart, he might not have felt any gratitude to him for what he pledged in the way of devotion.

Countess Andrea seemed of marble. She had recognized the man she most hated in the King’s new confidential adviser, and one whom the Queen seemed bound to win to her side. Like a statue, the stir round her seemed not to affect her, and she looked in attire as trim as if fresh from a band-box. One thought was alive within her, fierce and luminous – love for some unknown – perchance her husband, or hate for Gilbert – at whom she darted lightnings involuntarily whenever their glances crossed. But she felt that she might not defy his with impunity, for he was a pupil of Balsamo Cagliostro, the arch-mesmerist, and might sway her with the same art.

A hundred paces on the other side of the little drinking saloon, the royal train stopped. All along the line the clamor doubled.

The Queen bent out of the window and as the movement looked like a bow to the crowd, there was a long murmur. She called Dr. Gilbert.

He went up to the window: as he had kept his hat off all the way, he had no need to bare his head in respect. His attitude showed he was entirely under her orders.

“What are your people shouting and singing?” she requested to know.

The Queen’s form of putting the question showed that she had been ruminating it for some time. He sighed as much as to say, it is the same old story.

“Alas, my lady,” he proceeded with profound melancholy, “those you call my people, were yours in former times, and it is less than twenty years ago when Lord Brissac, a delightful courtier whom I look in vain for here, showed you the same people shouting for the Dauphin under the City Hall windows and said: ‘You behold twenty thousand admirers there.'”

The Queen bit her lips from the impossibility of catching this man in want of a repartee or of respect.

“That is true – it only proves that the many-headed change,” she said.

Gilbert bowed this time, without retort.

“I asked you a question, doctor,” persisted the lady, with the obstinacy she had for even disagreeable matters.

“Yes, and I answer since your Majesty insists. They are singing that the Baker’s Wife has plenty of money which it gave her no trouble to get. You are aware that they style your Majesty the Baker’s Wife?”

“Just as they called me Lady Deficit before. Is there any connection between the nicknames?”

“So much also as the finances are concerned. They mean by your money being easily come by that you had complaisant treasurers such as Calonne in particular, who gave you whatever you asked; the people therefore assume that you got your money readily for the asking.”

The Queen’s hand was clenched on the red velvet carriage-window ledge.

“So much for what they are singing. Now, for what they bellow out?”

“They say that they shall no longer want for bread since they have the Baker, the Baker’s Wife and the Baker’s Son among them.”

“I expect you to make this second piece of insolence clear.”

“You would see that they are not so much to blame as you fancy if you were to look to the intention and not weigh the words of the people. Wrongly or rightfully, the masses believe that a great Grain Trust is carried on at Versailles. This prevents flour from coming freely into the capital. Who feeds the Paris poor? the Baker. Towards whom does the working man and his wife hold out their supplicating hands when their children cry for food? the baker and the baker’s wife. Who do they pray to after the Sender of the harvest? the lady of the estate – that is, the loaf-giver, as the name is derived. Are not you three the loaf-givers for the country, the King, yourself and this august child? Do not be astonished at the mighty, blessed name the people give you, but thank them for cherishing the hope that as soon as the King, the Queen and their son are in the midst of the famished thousands, they will no longer be in want.”

For an instant the royal lady closed her eyes, and she made the movement of swallowing as though to keep down her hatred as well as bitter saliva which scorched her throat.

“So we ought to thank these howlers for their songs and nick-names upon us?”

“Yes, and most sincerely: the song is but an expression of their good humor as the shouts are of their expectations. The whole explains their desire.”

“So they want Lafayette and Mirabeau to live long?”

“Yes,” returned Gilbert, seeing that the Queen had clearly heard the cries, “for those two leaders, separated by the gulf over which you hang, may, united, save the monarchy.”

“Do you mean that the monarchy has sunk so low that it can be picked up by those two?” queried the lady.

He was going to make some kind of reply when a burst of voices, in dread, with atrocious peals of laughter and a great swaying of the gathering, driving Gilbert closer to the vehicle, announced that he would be needed in defense of the Queen by speech or action. It was the two head-carriers, who, after having made Leonard barb and curl the hair, wanted to have the fun of presenting them to Marie Antoinette – as other roughs, or perhaps the same – had presented the dead heads of sons to their fathers.

The crowd yelled with horror and fell away as these ghastly things came up.

“In heaven’s name, do not look to the right,” cried Gilbert.

The Queen was no woman to obey such an injunction without a peep to see the reason. So her first movement was to turn her gaze in the forbidden direction and she uttered a scream of fright. But, all of a sudden, as she tore her sight from this horrible spectacle as if they were Gorgon heads, they became fixed as though they met another view even more awful, from which she could not detach it.

This Medusa’s head was the stranger’s who had been drinking and chatting with Locksmith Gamain in the wine-store: with folded arms, he was leaning against a tree.

The Queen’s hand left the window cushion, and resting on Gilbert’s shoulder, he felt her clench her nails into its flesh. He turned to see her pale, with fixed eyes and quivering, blanched lips.

He would have ascribed the emotion to the two death’s heads but for her not looking at either. The gaze was in another direction, traveling visually in which he descried the object and he emitted a cry of amaze.

“Cagliostro!” both uttered at the same time.

The man at the tree clearly saw the Queen, but all he did was beckon for Gilbert to come to him.

At this point of time the carriages started on once more. By a natural and mechanical impulse the Queen gave Gilbert an outward push to prevent his being run over by the wheel. It looked as though she urged him towards the summoner. Anyhow, he was not sufficiently master of himself not to obey the mandate. Motionless, he let the party proceed; then, following the mock gunsmith who merely looked back to be sure he was followed, he entered behind him a little lane going uphill to Bellevue, where they disappeared behind a wall at the same time as the procession went out of sight in a declivity of the hills, as though plunging into an abyss.

CHAPTER IV

FATALITY

GILBERT followed his guide half-way up the slope where stood a handsome house. The foregoer pulled out a key and opened a side door intended for the master to go in or come out without the servants knowing when he did so. He left the door ajar to signify that the companion of the journey was to use it. Gilbert entered and shut the door gently but it silently closed itself tightly with a pneumatic arrangement at the hinges which seemed the work of magic. Such an appliance would have been the delight of Master Gamain.

Through luxuriously fitted passages Gilbert finally came into a drawing room, hung with Indian satin tapestry; a fantastic Oriental bird held the lustre in its beak and it emitted a light which Gilbert knew was electricity, though its application thus would have been a puzzle to others than this specialist in advanced science. The lights represented lily-blooms, which again was an anticipation of modern illuminators.

One picture alone adorned this room but it was Raphael’s Madonna.

Gilbert was admiring this masterpiece when the host entered by a secret door behind him from a dressing room.

An instant had sufficed for him to wash off the stain and the pencillings and to give his black hair, without any grey, a stylish turn. He had also changed his clothes. Instead of the workman was an elegant nobleman. His embroidered coat and his hands glittering with rings in the Italian style, strongly contrasted with Gilbert’s American black coat and his plain gold ring, a keepsake from General Washington.

Count Cagliostro advanced with a smiling open face and held out his hand to Gilbert.

“Dear Master,” cried the latter rushing to him.

“Stop a bit,” interrupted the other, laughing: “since we have parted, my dear Gilbert, you have made such progress in revolutionary methods at all events, that you are the master at present and I not fit to undo your shoestrings.”

“I thank you for the compliment,” responded the doctor, “but how do you know I have made such progress, granting I have progressed?”

“Do you believe you are one of those men whose movement is not marked although not seen? Since eight years I have not set eyes on you but I have had a daily report of what you did. Do you doubt I have double-sight?”

“You know I am a mathematician.”

“You mean, incredulous? Let me show you, then. In the first place you returned to France on family matters; they do not concern me, and consequently – “

“Nay, dear master, go on,” interposed the other.

“Well, you came to have your son Sebastian educated in a boarding school not far from Paris in quiet, and to settle business affairs with your farmer, an honest fellow whom you are now retaining in town against his wishes. For a thousand reasons he wants to be home beside his wife.”

“Really, master, you are prodigious!”

“Wait for something stronger. The second time you returned to France because political questions drew you, like many others; besides you had published several political treatises which you sent to King Louis XVI., and as there is much of the Old Man in you – you are prouder for the approval of the King than perhaps you would be of that of my predecessor in your training, Rousseau – who would be higher than a king this day, had he lived – you yearn to learn what is thought of Dr. Gilbert by the descendant of St. Louis, Henry Fourth and Louis XIV. Unfortunately a little matter has kept alive which you did not bear in mind, as a sequel to which I picked you up in a cave in the Azores, where my yacht put in. I restored you from the effects of a bullet in your breast. This little affair concerned Mdlle. Andrea Taverney, become Countess Charny, which she deserves, to save the Queen’s reputation, compromised by the King coming upon her and Count Charny by surprise.

“As the Queen could refuse nothing to this saver, she got a blank warrant and committal to prison for you, so that you were arrested on the road out of Havre and taken to the Bastile. There you would be to this day, dear doctor, if the people, prepared for a rising by a person whom you may divine, had not in a day knocked the old building lower than the gutter. I was not sorry, for I had a taste of the fare myself before I was banished the Kingdom. This morning early, you contributed to the rescue of the Royal Family, by running to arouse Lafayette, who was sleeping the sleep of the virtuous; and just now, when you saw me, you were about to make a breastwork of your body for the Queen who seemed threatened – though, between ourselves, she detests you. Is this right? Have I forgotten anything of note, such as a hypnotic seance before the King when Countess Charny was made to disclose how she had led to your imprisonment and how she obtained a certain casket of your papers by one Wolfstep, a police agent? Tell me and if I have omitted any point, I am ready to do penance for it.”

Gilbert stood stupefied before this extraordinary man, who knew so well to prepare his march that his hearer was inclined to attribute to him the faculty of comprising heavenly as well as mundane things, and to read in the heart of man.

“Yes, it is thus and you are still the magician, the fortune-teller, the thaumaturgist, Cagliostro!”

The wonder-worker smiled with satisfaction, for it was evident that he was proud of having worked on Gilbert such an impression as the latter’s visage revealed.

“And now,” continued Gilbert, “as I love you as much as you do me, dear master, and my desire to learn what you have been doing is equal to yours and how I have fared, will you kindly tell me, if I am not intruding too far, in what part of the globe you have exhibited your genius and practiced your power?”

“Oh, I?” said Cagliostro, smiling, “like yourself I have been rubbing shoulders with kings, but with another aim. You go up to them to uphold them; I to knock them over. You try to manufacture a constitutional monarch and will not succeed; I, to make emperors, kings and princes democratic, and I am coming on.”

“Are you really?” queried Gilbert with an air of doubt.

“Decidedly. It must be allowed that they were prepared for me by Voltaire, Alembert and Diderot, admirable Mecaenases, sublime contemners of the gods, and also by the example of Frederick the Great, whom we have the misfortune to lose. But you know we are all mortal, except the Count of St. Germain and myself.

“So long as the Queen is fair, my dear Gilbert, and she can recruit soldiers to fight among themselves, kings who fret to push over thrones have never thought of hurling over the altar. But we have her brother, Kaiser Joseph II. who suppresses three-fourths of the monasteries, seizes ecclesiastical property, drives even the Camelite nuns out of their cells, and sends his sister prince of nuns trying on the latest fashions in hats and monks having their hair curled. We have the King of Denmark, who began by killing his doctor Struensee, and who, at seventeen, the precocious philosopher, said: ‘Voltaire made a man of me for he taught me to think.’ We have the Empress Catherine, who made such giant strides in philosophy that – while she dismembered Poland, Voltaire wrote to her: ‘Diderot, Alembert and myself are raising altars to you. We have the Queen of Sweden and many princes in the Empire and throughout Germany.'”

“You have nothing left you but to convert the Pope, my dear master, and I hope you will, as nothing is beyond you.”

“That will be a hard task. I have just slipped out of his claws. I was locked up in Castle Sanangelo as you were in the Bastile.”

“You don’t say so? did the Romans upset the castle as the people of St. Antoine Ward overthrew the Bastile?”

“No, my dear doctor, the Romans are a century behind that point. But, be easy: it will come in its day: the Papacy will have its revolutionary days, and Versailles and the Vatican can shake hands in equality at that era.”

“I thought that nobody came alive out of Castle Sanangelo?”

“Pooh! what about Benvenuto Cellini, the sculptor?”

“You had not wings such as he made, had you, and did you flit over the Tiber like a new Icarus?”

“It would be the more difficult as I was lodged for the farther security in the blackest dungeon of the keep. But I did get out, as you see.”

“Bribed the jailor with gold?”

“I was out of luck, for my turnkey was incorruptible. But, fortunately, he was not immortal. Chance – the believers say, Providence – well, the Architect of the Universe granted that he should die on the morrow of his refusing to open the prison doors. He died very suddenly! and he had to be replaced.”

“The new hand was not unbribable?”

“The day of his taking up his office, as he brought me the soup, he said: ‘Eat heartily and get your strength, for we have to do some stiff traveling this night.’ By George, the good fellow told no lie. That same night we rode three horses out dead, and covered a hundred miles.”

“What did the government say when your disappearance was known?”

“Nothing. The dead and still-warm other jailer was clad in the clothes I left behind; and a pistol was fired in his face; it was laid by his side and the statement was given out that in despair at having no escape and with the useless weapon which I had procured none could tell how, I had blown out my brains. It follows that I am officially pronounced dead and buried; the jailer being interred in my name. It will be useless, my dear Gilbert, my saying that I am alive, for the certificate of my death and burial will be produced to prove that I am no more. But they will not have to do anything of the sort as it suits me to be thought passed away at this date. I have made a dive into the sombre river, as the poets say, but I have come up under another name. I am now Baron Zanone, a Genoese banker. I discount the paper of princes – good paper in the sort of Cardinal Prince Rohan’s, you know. But I am not lending money merely for the interest. By the way, if you need cash, my dear Gilbert, say so? You know that my purse, like my heart, is always at your call.”