Gerald Fitzgerald, the Chevalier: A Novel

‘A rebel against the majesty of the people and the fame of its greatest martyr,’ said a deep voice, as he announced the crime of Fitzgerald, and pushed him forward to the place reserved for the accused. ‘While a nation humbles itself in sorrow, this man chooses the hour for riotous dissipation and excess. We met him as he issued forth from the woman Roland’s house, so that he cannot deny the charge.’

‘Accused, stand forward,’ said a coarse-looking man, in a mechanic’s dress, but whose manner was not devoid of a certain dignity. ‘You are here before the French people, who will judge you fairly.’

‘Were I even conscious of a crime, I would deny your right to try me.’

‘Young man, you do but injury to yourself in insulting us, was the grave rebuke, delivered with a calm decorum which seemed to have its influence on Fitzgerald.

‘Who accuses him?’ asked the judge aloud.

‘I’ – ‘and I ‘ – ‘and I’ – ‘all of us,’ shouted a number together, followed by a burst of, ‘Let Lamarc do it; let Lamarc speak’; and a pale, very young man, of gentle look and slight figure, came forward at the call.

With the ease of one thoroughly accustomed to address public assemblies, and with an eloquence evidently cultivated in very different spheres, the young man pronounced a glowing panegyric on Mirabeau. It was really a fine and scarce exaggerated appreciation of that great man. Haughtily disclaiming the right of any less illustrious than Riquetti himself to sit in judgment upon the excesses of his turbulent youth, the orator even declared that it was in the passionate commotion of such temperaments that grand ideas were fostered, just as preternatural fertility is the gift of countries where earthquakes and volcanoes have convulsed them.

‘Deplore, if you will,’ cried he, ‘his faults, for his own sake; sorrow over the terrible necessities of a nature whose excitements must be sought for even in crime; mourn over one whose mysterious being demanded for mere sustenance the poisoned draughts of intemperance; but for yourselves and for your own sakes, rejoice that the age has given you Gabriel Riquetti de Mirabeau.’

‘Who is it dares to say such words as these, cried a hoarse, discordant voice, as forcing his way through the dense mass, a small, misshapen figure stood forward. Though bespeaking in his appearance a condition considerably above those around him, his dress was disordered, his cravat awry, and his features trembling with recent excitement. As the strong light fell upon him, Gerald could mark a countenance whose features once seen were never forgotten. The forehead was high, but retreating, and the eyes so sunk within their sockets that their colour could not be known, and their only expression a look of wolfish ferocity; to this, too, a haggard cheek and long, lean jaw contributed. All these signs of a harsh and cruel nature were greatly heightened by his mode of speaking, for his mouth opened wide, exposing two immense rows of teeth, a display which they who knew him well said he was inordinately vain of.

‘Is it to men and Frenchmen that any dares to speak thus?’ yelled he, in a voice that overtopped the others, and was heard far and wide through the crowd. ‘Listen to me, people,’ screamed he again, as, ascending the sort of bench on which the judge was seated, he waved his hand to enforce silence. ‘Kneel down and thank the gods that your direst enemy is dead!’

A low murmur – it was almost like the growl of a wild beast – ran through the assembly; but such was the courage of the speaker that he waited till it had subsided, and then in accents shriller than before repeated the same words. The hum of the multitude was now reduced to a mere murmuring sound, and he went on. It was soon evident how inferior the polished eloquence of the other must prove before such an audience to the stormy passion of this man’s speech. Like the voice of a destroying angel scattering ruin and destruction, he poured out over the memory of Mirabeau the flood of his invective. He reproduced the vices of his youth to account for the crimes of his age, and saw the treason to his party explained in his falsehood to his friends. There was in his words and in all he said the force of a mad mountain torrent, bounding wildly from crag to crag, sweeping all before it as it went, and yet ever pouring its flood deeper, fuller, and stronger. From a narrative of Riquetti’s early life, with every incident of which he was familiar, he turned suddenly to show how such a man must, in the very nature of his being, be an enemy to the people. A noble by birth, an aristocrat in all his instincts, he could never have frankly lent himself to the cause of liberty. It was only a traitor he was, then, within their camp; he was there to learn their strength and their weakness, to delude them by mock concessions. It was, as he expressed it, by the heat of their own passions that he welded the fetters for their own limbs.

‘If you ask who should mourn this man, the answer is, His own order; and it is they, and they alone, who sorrow over the lost leader. Not you, nor I, nor that youth yonder, whom you pretend to arraign; but whom you should honour with words of praise and encouragement. Is it not brave of him, in this hour of bastard grief, that he should stand forth to tell you how mean and dastardly ye are! I tell you, once more, that he who dares to stem the false sentiments of misguided enthusiasm has a courage grander than his who storms a breach. My friendship is his own from this hour,’ and as he said, he descended from the bench, and flung his arms around Fitzgerald.

Shouts of ‘Well done, Marat, bravely spoken!’ rent the air, and a hundred voices told how the current of public favour had changed its course.

‘Let us not tarry here, young man,’ said Marat. ‘Come along with me; there is much to be done yet.’

While Gerald was not sorry to be relieved from a position of difficulty and danger, he was also eager to undeceive his new ally, and avow that he had no sympathy with the opinions attributed to him. It was no time, however, for explanations, nor was the temper of the mob to be long trusted. He therefore suffered himself to be led along by the friends of Marat, who, speedily making way for their chief, issued into the open street.

‘Whither now!’ cried one aloud.

‘To the Bureau – to the Bureau!’ said another.

‘Be it so,’ said Marat. ‘The Ami du Peuple– so was his journal called – ’ must render an account of this night to its readers. I have addressed seven assemblies since eleven o’clock, and save that one in the Rue de Grenelle, all successfully. By the way, who is our friend? What is he called? Fitzgerald – a foreign name – all the better; we can turn this incident to good account. Are Frenchmen to be taught the path to liberty by a stranger, eh, Favart? That’s the keynote for your overture!’

‘The article is written – it is half-printed already,’ said Favart. ‘It begins better – “The impostor is dead: the juggler who gathered your liberties into a bundle and gave them back to you as fetters, is no more! “’

‘Ah, que c’est beau, that phrase!’ cried two or three together.

‘I will not have it,’ said Marat impetuously; ‘these are not moments for grotesque imagery. Open thus: “Who are the men that have constituted themselves the judges of immortality? Who are these, clad in shame and cloaked in ignominy, who assume to dispense the glory of a nation? Are these mean tricksters – these fawners on a corrupted court – these slaves of the basest tyranny that ever defaced a nation’s image, to be guardians at the gate of civic honours?”

‘Ah! there it is. It was Marat himself spoke there,’ said one.

‘That was the clink of the true metal,’ said Chaptal.

And now, in the wildest vein of rhapsody, Marat continued to pour forth a strange confused flood of savage invective. For the most part the language was coarse and ill-chosen and the reasoning faulty in the expression, but here and there would pierce through a phrase or an image so graphic or so true as actually to startle and amaze. It was these improvisations, caught up and reproduced by his followers, which constituted the leading articles of his journal. Too much immersed in the active career of his demagogue life to spare time for writing, he gave himself the habit of this high-flown and exaggerated style, which wore, so to say, a mock air of composition.

Pointing to the immense quantity of this sort of matter which his journal contained, Marat would boast to the people of his unceasing labours in their cause, his days of hard toil, his nights of unbroken exertion. He artfully contrasted a life thus spent with the luxurious existence of the pampered ‘rich.’ Such were the first steps of one who journeyed afterward far in crime – such the initial teachings of one who subsequently helped mainly to corrupt a whole people.

A strange impulse of curiosity to see something of these men of whom he had heard so much, influenced Gerald, while he was also in part swayed by the marvellous force of that torrent which never ceased to flow from Marat’s lips. It was a sort of fascination, not the less strong that it imparted a sense of pain.

‘I will see this night’s adventure to the end,’ said he to himself, and he went along with them.

CHAPTER VII. A SUPPER WITH THE ‘FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE’

There is a strange similarity between the moral and the physical evils of life, which extends even to the modes by which they are propagated. We talk of the infection of a fever, but we often forget that prejudices are infinitely more infectious. The poor man, ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-clad, destitute, heart-sick, and weary, falls victim to the first epidemic that crosses his path. So with the youth of unfixed faith and unsettled pursuits: he adopts any creed of thought or opinion warm enough to stimulate his imagination and fix his ambition. How few are they in life who have chosen for themselves their political convictions; what a vast majority is it that has adopted the impressions that float around them!

Gerald Fitzgerald supped with Marat at the Rue de Moulins: he sat down with Fauchet, Etienne, Chaptal, Favart and the rest – all writers for the Ami du Peuple– all henchmen of the one great and terrible leader.

Gerald had often taken his part in the wild excesses of a youthful origin; he had borne a share in those scenes where passion stimulated by debauch becomes madness, and where a frantic impetuosity usurps the place of all reason and judgment; but it was new to him to witness a scene where the excesses were those of minds worked up by the wildest nights of political ambition, the frantic denunciations of political adversaries, and the maddest anticipations of a dreadful vengeance. They talked before him with a freedom which, in that time, was rarely heard. They never scrupled to discuss all the chances of their party, and the casualties of that eventful future that lay before them.

How the monarchy must fall – how the whole social edifice of France must be overthrown – how nobility was to be annihilated, and a new code of distinction created, were discussed with a seriousness, mingled with the wildest levity. That the road to these changes lay through blood, never for a moment seemed to check the torrent of their speculations. Some amused themselves by imaginary lists of proscriptions, giving the names and titles of those they would recommend for the honours of the guillotine.

‘Every thing,’ cried Guadet, ‘everything that calls itself Duke, Marquis, or Count.’

‘Do not include the Barons, Henri, for my cook is of that degree, and I could not spare him,’ cried Viennet.

‘Down with the aristocrat,’ said several; ‘he stands by his order, even in his kitchen.’

‘Nay,’ broke in Viennet, ‘I am the first of you all to reduce these people to their becoming station.’

‘Do not say so,’ said Gensonné: ‘the Marquis de Trillac has been a gamekeeper on my property this year back.’

‘Your property!’ said Marat contemptuously. ‘Your paternal estate was a vegetable stall in the Marché aux Bois; and your ancestral chateau, a room in the Pays Latin, five stories high.’

‘You lived at the same house, in the cellar, Marat; and, by your own account, it was I that descended to know you!’

‘If he talks of property, I’ll put him in my list,’ said Laroche. ‘He whose existence is secure is unworthy to live.’

‘A grand sentiment that,’ said another; ‘let us drink it!’ and they arose and drained their glasses to the toast.

‘The Duc de Dampierre, has any one got him down?’ asked Guadet.

‘I have ‘ – ’ and I ‘ – ’ and I,’ said several together.

‘I demand a reprieve for the Duke,’ said another. ‘I was at college with him at Nantes, and he is a good fellow, and kind-hearted.’

‘Miserable patriot,’ said Guadet, laughing, ‘that can place his personal sympathies against the interests of the State.’

‘Parbleu!’ cried Laroche, looking over his neighbour’s arm. ‘Gensonné has got Robespierre’s name down!’

‘And why not? I detest him. Menard was right when he called him a “Loup en toilette de bal!”’

‘What a list Menard has here!’ said Guadet, holding it up, as he read aloud. ‘All who have served the court, or whose families have, for the last three generations – all who employ court tailors, barbers, shoemakers, or armourers – ’

‘Pray add, all whose names can be traced to baptismal registries, or who are alleged to have been born in wedlock,’ said Lescour. ‘Let us efface the vile aristocracy effectually!’

‘Your sneer is a weak sarcasm,’ said Marat savagely. ‘Menard is right: it is not man by man, but in platoons, that our vengeance must be executed.’

‘I have an uncle and five cousins, whom, from motives of delicacy, I have not denounced. Will any one do me the favour to write the Count de Rochegarde and his sons?’

‘I adopt them with pleasure. I wanted a count or two among my barons.’

‘I drink to all patriots,’ said Marat, draining his glass, and turning a full look on Fitzgerald.

‘I accept the toast,’ said Gerald, drinking.

‘And I too,’ cried Louvet, ‘though I do not understand it.’

‘By patriot, I mean one who adores liberty,’ said Marat

‘And hates the tyrant,’ cried another.

‘For the liberty to send my enemy to the guillotine, I am ready to fight to-morrow,’ said Guadet.

‘For whom, let me ask, are we to make ourselves hangmen and headsmen?’ cried a pale, sickly youth, whose voice trembled as he spoke. ‘The furious populace will not thank you that you have usurped their hunting-grounds. If you run down their game, they will one day turn and rend you!’

‘Ah, Brissot, are you there, with your bland notions stolen from Plato!’ cried Guadet. ‘It is pleasant even to hear your flute-stop in the wild concert of our hoarse voices!’

‘As to liberty, who can define it!’ exclaimed Brissot.

‘I can,’ cried Lescour. ‘The right to guillotine one’s neighbour!’

‘Who ever understood the meaning of equality?’ continued Brissot, unheeding him. ‘Procrustes was the inventor of it!’

‘And for fraternity: what is it – who has ever practised it?’

‘Cain is the only instance that occurs to me,’ said Guadet gravely.

‘I drink to America,’ said Marat. ‘May the infant republic live by the death of the mother that bore her!’

A wild hurrah followed the toast, which was welcomed with mad enthusiasm.

‘The beacon of liberty we are lighting here,’ continued he, ‘will be soon answered from every hill-top and mountain throughout Europe – from the snow-peaks of Norway to the olive-crowned heights of the Apennines – from the bleak cliffs of Scotland to the rocky summits of the Carpathians.’

In a strain bombastic and turgid, but marked at times by flashes of real eloquence, he launched out into one of those rhapsodies which formed the staple of his popular addresses. The glorious picture of a people free, happy, and prosperous was so mingled with a scene of vengeance and retribution, that the work of the guillotine was made to seem the chief agent of civilisation. The social condition of the nation was described, in the state of a man whose life could only be preserved at the cost of a terrible amputation. The operation once over, the body would recover its functions of health and stability. This was the image daily reproduced, till the public mind grew to regard it as a truism. The noblesse represented the diseased and rotten limb, whose removal was so imperative, and there were but too many circumstances which served to favour the comparison.

Gerald was of an age when fervour and daring exercised a deeper influence than calm conviction. The men of warm and glowing impulses, of passionate words and desperate achievements, are sure to exercise a powerful sway over the young, especially when they themselves are from the accident of fortune in the position of adventurers. The language he now heard was bold and definite: there was nothing of subterfuge or concealment about it. The men who spoke were ready to pledge their lives to their words; they were even more willing to fight than preach. There was, besides, a splendid assertion of self-devotion in their plans; personal advancement had no place in their speculations. All was for France and Frenchmen: nothing for a party; nothing for a class. Their aspirations were the highest too; the liberty they contended for was to be the birthright of every man. Brissot, beside whom Gerald sat, was one well adapted to captivate his youthful admiration. His long fair hair, his soft blue eyes, an almost girlish gentleness of look, contrasting with the intense fervour with which he uttered his convictions, imparted an amount of interest to him that Gerald was not slow to appreciate. He spoke, besides, with – what never fails in its effect – the force of an intense conviction. That they were to regenerate France; that the nation long enslaved, corrupted and degraded was to be emancipated, enlightened, and elevated by them, was his heartfelt belief. The material advantages of a great revolution to those who should effect it, he would not stop to consider. In his own phrase: ‘It was not to a mere land flowing with milk and honey Moses led the Israelites, but to a land promised to their forefathers, to be a heritage to their children!’

It is true his companions regarded him as a wild and dreamy enthusiast, impracticable in his notions, and too hopeful of humanity; but they wisely saw how useful such an element of ‘optimism’ was in flavouring the mass of their dangerous doctrines, and how the sentiments of such a man served to exalt the tone of their opinions. While the conversation went on around the table, the speakers, warming with the themes, growing each moment more bold and more animated, Brissot turned his attentions entirely to Fitzgerald. He not only sketched off to him the men around the board, but, in a few light touches, characterised their opinions and views.

At the conclusion of a description in which he had spoken with the most unguarded frankness, Gerald could not help asking him how it was that he could venture to declare so openly his opinions to a perfect stranger like himself.

Brissot only smiled, but did not answer.

‘For, after all,’ continued Gerald, ‘I am here in the camp of the enemy! I was a Royalist; I am so still.’

‘But there are none left, mon cher; the King himself is not one.’

‘Ready to die for the throne – ’

‘There is no throne; there is an old arm-chair, with the gilding rubbed away!’

‘At all events there was a right to defend – ’

‘The right to live has an earlier date than the right to rule,’ said Brissot gravely; and seeing that he had caught the other’s attention, he launched forth into the favourite theme of his party, the wrongs of the people. Unlike the generality of his friends, Brissot did not dwell on the vices and corruptions of the nobles. It was the evils of poverty he pictured; the hopeless condition of those whose misery made them friendless.

‘If you but knew the suffering patience of the poor,’ said he, ‘the stubbornness of their devotion to those above them in station; the tacit submission with which they accept hardship as their birthright, you would despair of humanity – infinitely more from men’s humility than from their cruelty! We cannot stir them; we cannot move them,’ cried he. ‘“They are no worse off than their fathers were,” that is their reply. If the hour come, however, that they rise up of themselves – ’

Once more did Gerald revert to the hardihood of such confessions to a stranger, when the other broke in —

‘Does the shipwrecked sailor on the raft hesitate to stretch out his hand to the sinking swimmer beside him. Come home with me from this, and let me speak to you. You will learn nothing from these men. There is Marat again! he has but one note in his voice, and it is to utter the cry of Blood!’

While the stormy speaker revelled wildly in the chaos of his incoherent thoughts, conjuring up scenes of massacre and destruction, the others madly applauding him, Brissot stole away, and beckoned Gerald to follow him.

It was daybreak ere they separated, and as Gerald gained his chambers he tore the white cockade he had long treasured as a souvenir of his days of Garde du Corps in pieces, and scattered the fragments from his window to the winds.

CHAPTER VIII. THE DÉPÔT DE LA PRÉFECTURE

Gerald had scarcely fallen asleep when he was aroused by a rude crash at his door, and looking up, saw the room filled with gendarmerie in full uniform. A man in plain black meanwhile approached the bed where he lay, and asked if he were called Gerald Fitzgerald.

‘A ci-devant Garde du Corps and a refugee too?’ said the questioner, who was the substitute of the Procureur du Roi. ‘This is the order to arrest you, Monsieur,’ said he.

‘On what charge, may I ask?’ said Gerald indolently.

‘It is a grave one,’ said the other in a solemn voice, while he pointed to certain words in the warrant.

Gerald started as he read them, and, with a smile of scornful meaning, said —

‘Is it alleged that I poisoned the Count de Mirabeau?’

‘You are included among those suspected of that crime.’

‘And was he poisoned, then?’

‘The report of the surgeons who have examined the body is not conclusive. There are, however, sufficient grounds for investigation and inquiry. You will see, sir, that I have told you as much as I may – perhaps more than I ought.’

Left alone in his chamber that he might dress, Gerald proceeded to make his preparations with becoming speed. The order committed him to St. Pélagie, a prison then reserved for those accused of great crimes against the state. Weighty as such a charge was, he felt in the fact of an unjust accusation a degree of courageous energy that he had not known for many a previous day. In the midst of one’s self-accusings and misgivings, an ill-founded allegation brings a certain sense of relief: if this be the extent of my culpability, I may be proud of my conduct, is such satisfactory judgment to address to one’s own heart. He would have felt more comfort, it is true, in the reflection, if he did not remember that it was a frequent artifice of the day to accuse men of crimes of which they were innocent, to afford time and opportunity to involve them in some more grounded charge. Many were sent to Vincennes who were never afterwards heard of; and what easier, if needed, than to dispose of one like himself, without family or friends?

Though nominally committed to St. Pélagie, such was the crowded condition of that prison that Gerald was conducted to the ‘Dépôt de la Préfecture,’ a horrible den, into which murderers, malefactors, political offenders, and thieves were indiscriminately huddled, until time offered the opportunity to sift and divide them. It was a long hall, supported on two ranges of stone pillars, with wooden guard-beds on each side, and between them a space technically called ‘the street.’ Four narrow windows, close to the roof, admitted a scanty light into this dreary abyss, where upward of eighty prisoners were already confined. By a sort of understanding among themselves, for no other direction existed, the prisoners had divided themselves into three distinct classes, each of which maintained itself apart from the others. Such as had committed capital offences or were accused of them, held the first rank, and exercised a species of general sway over all. The place occupied by them was called ‘Le Nid’; they themselves were styled the ‘Birds of Passage.’ The political criminals gathered in a corner named ‘L’Opinion ‘; the rest, a large majority, were known as ‘Les Âmes de boue.’