The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic

"I should have been happy to have for son-in-law a man as eminent in talent as for patriotism. I have firmly made up my mind not to give my daughter to anyone but a republican of our stripe, dear colleague."

"But now I think of it," interjected Billaud-Varenne, stopping and coming back a few steps, "you desire for son-in-law a republican eminent alike for his love of country and his talent? Is that your desire?"

"It is my most ardent wish!"

"Well, then, my dear Desmarais, you have that son-in-law under your hand – your pupil, Citizen John Lebrenn! The young man has lived close beside you, you must be acquainted with his manners and his private character. Mademoiselle Desmarais, reared by you in austere principles, ought, allowing for her personal inclinations, which should always be respected, to welcome such an aspirant to her hand. John Lebrenn is young, and of attractive appearance. So that, if such a marriage were pleasing to your daughter, would it not be an act calculated to draw toward you everyone's affection, for having begun the merging of the classes? Everybody would applaud the marriage of the daughter of the rich bourgeois, of the advocate of renown, with the simple artisan. What think you of the idea, my dear colleague?"

"You shall soon know," replied advocate Desmarais after a moment's reflection, during which he vainly racked his brains for an avenue of escape from the meshes of his own duplicity, now closed in upon him. Then he ran to the table, seated himself, seized paper and pen, and dashed off a few lines, while he said silently to himself:

"The danger admits of no hesitation. The sacrifice is consummated. After Billaud-Varenne's utterances on the 'merging of the classes,' I can no longer hang back. He is interested in Lebrenn; he will inform the boy of the proposal he just made to me; he will learn that John and my daughter have loved each other for four years and more. It will then be clear to Billaud-Varenne that my only reason for opposition to the union is my repugnance to giving my daughter to a workingman. I shudder for the consequences! Such a revelation, coming on the heels of Hubert's escape and the discovery of the depot of royalist arms and proclamations in my house, is capable of leading me straight to the guillotine!"

While indulging in these reflections, Desmarais indicted the following letter to John Lebrenn:

My dear John:

I await you at once, at my home. My daughter is yours, on one only condition, which I expect from your loyalty in which I have absolute confidence.

That condition is:

Never to mention to anyone, and particularly not to Billaud-Varenne, that you loved my daughter four years ago.

I await you.

Fraternal greetings,DESMARAIS.

The letter written, Desmarais rang. Gertrude appeared and the lawyer said to her:

"Carry this letter immediately to Citizen John Lebrenn, and wait for an answer."

"Yes, monsieur," answered the maid, and went on her errand.

"My dear colleague, excuse me for an instant, and I shall see whether my wife and daughter can receive us."

Thus left alone, Billaud-Varenne gave himself up to reflection. "There is a rat here somewhere," he mused. "Why does Desmarais wish to present me to his wife and daughter? Truly there are strange shifts in this man's conduct. He continually forces upon me a vague mistrust, and yet his vote, his speech, and his deed have always been in accord with the most advanced revolutionary principles. Whence comes this constant fear, which everything awakens in him, of being taken for a traitor? Just now he seemed shocked and startled at the idea which came to me to propose Lebrenn as his son-in-law. Does the bourgeois sans-culotte want to be a bourgeois gentleman? Does the rich lawyer fear he will debase himself in giving his daughter to a workman? And finally, what an absurd affectation of stoicism for him to call for the arrest of his wife because she yielded to the respectable sentiment of sisterly tenderness! Has he not constituted himself her jailer? Do these exaggerations mask treason or only extreme cowardice? Is Desmarais a traitor or lily-livered? or traitor and coward combined? After all, what matters it? He is an instrument, he is popular, eloquent, subtle, well-listened to in the Assembly. But, in times of reaction, traitors and cowards who by their exaggerations on one side have attained a certain popularity, become no less exaggerated the other way, and, in the desire to save their heads or 'give pledges,' send in preference their old friends to the scaffold. Desmarais may someday, if my distrust be well grounded, blossom forth into one of these furious reactionists. Lest that be the case, the proof of treason once at hand the evil must be cut out at the root." Punctuating his last words with a gesture of terrible significance, Billaud-Varenne added: "At any rate, let us await facts before forming a final judgment. Marat's penetration never fails, and he has his eye on our dear colleague."

Billaud-Varenne's soliloquy was cut short by the return of Desmarais, flanked by his wife and daughter. The latter seemed sweetly moved by the confidence her father had just made her, touching his determination in the matter of her marriage with John Lebrenn. Madam Desmarais, on the contrary, was under the influence of mournful thoughts, by reason of the events in which she found her brother involved, the fate of whom caused her no slight anxiety; she was at much pains to restrain her tears.

The member of the Assembly, bowing with kind and respectful courtesy to the wife of his colleague, spoke first:

"I regret, madam, that it is at a moment so sad to you that I have the honor of being presented; but I hope, indeed I am certain, that my dear colleague will not prolong much more your captivity, but will deliver you from your guardians."

"Citizen Billaud-Varenne, it shall be as you desire. I shall send away the agents charged with keeping guard over Citizeness Desmarais. Jailers in our hall go ill with a day of betrothal."

"What say you, citizen," ejaculated Billaud-Varenne. "A day of betrothal?"

"The letter I wrote just this instant, was destined to my pupil Lebrenn. I announced to him, very simply, that I offered him the hand of my daughter."

"Your procedure is indeed worthy of praise."

"And now, my daughter," continued Desmarais solemnly, "answer me truthfully. Before your departure from Paris for Lyons, you often saw here our young neighbor Lebrenn. What is your opinion of the young citizen?"

"I think that there is no soul more lofty, no character more generous, no heart better than his. He is a young man of worth."

"You consent to wed him?"

"I consent with all the greater willingness, father, because, unknown to you and mother, I have for a long time loved Monsieur John Lebrenn, the valiant iron-worker. I even believe that my affection is returned."

"The young girl is charming in her grace and candor," thought Billaud-Varenne. "What a strange falling out! These two young people love each other in secret! In very truth, it is a romance, an idyll!"

"What, my daughter, you love our young friend, and he loves you!" cried the lawyer, putting on an air of great surprise. "And you hid your love from me? How comes it that you and our friend John made a mystery of the love you felt for each other?"

The return of Gertrude interrupted the colloquy.

"Well! What answer did our young neighbor make to my letter?"

"Citizen John Lebrenn is absent. The porter told me that on leaving the club of the Jacobins, he came to change his clothes, putting on his uniform of municipal officer, in order to go to the Temple Prison, where he is to mount guard to-night over Louis Capet. I brought the letter back. Here it is."

"Ah, I regret this mischance, dear colleague," said the lawyer; "especially now that I am aware of the love of these two children for each other. I would have been overjoyed to have you witness the happiness for which you are in part responsible."

"I share your regrets, dear colleague," replied Billaud-Varenne; then, smiling, after a moment's thought: "It remains with you to grant me a compensation for which I shall be very grateful. Entrust to me this letter, which I will have delivered, this very evening at the Temple, to our young friend."

"Ah, sir, how good you are," said Charlotte quickly, blushing with emotion. "Thank you for your gracious offer."

"Here is the letter, dear colleague. As much as my daughter, I thank you for your cordial interest," added the lawyer, handing over the missive; while he said to himself: "Billaud-Varenne is incapable of opening a letter confided to him and addressed to John Lebrenn. He will not see him to-night; I need, then, fear no indiscretion on the boy's part, and it is for me now to inform John, as soon as possible, of my projects and the conditions I impose upon him for his marriage."

"Adieu, madam, adieu, mademoiselle," Billaud-Varenne was saying to the two women, as he bowed to each; "I shall carry with me at least the certainty that this evening, begun under such sad auspices, will end in domestic joy."

Madam Desmarais, overwhelmed with apprehensions of her brother's fate, could only reply sadly as she returned the bow, "I thank you, monsieur, for your good wishes."

"Till to-morrow, dear colleague," said the lawyer, going with Billaud-Varenne as far as the door of the parlor; and then he added in an undertone, "If, as I have no doubt, John Lebrenn marries my daughter, would it not be timely to mention the marriage in the journal of our friend Marat?"

"I promise you, colleague, to speak of it to Marat; he will consider the matter," responded Billaud-Varenne with a touch of irony; and he muttered to himself: "Affectation again. This bidding for popularity once more arouses my suspicions."

"Citizens," said the lawyer to the two agents of the Section commissioner posted outside the door, "you may withdraw. Fraternal greetings." And addressing Billaud-Varenne, he repeated: "Till to-morrow, dear colleague."

"Till to-morrow!" returned the latter. "I shall go at once to the Temple, and within the hour, John Lebrenn shall have your letter." After which the member of the National Convention once more added, to himself:

"Positively, I think Marat must keep his eye on Desmarais; he seems to me a hypocrite who will well bear watching."

END OF VOLUME I

PART II

THE BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION

(Continued.)

CHAPTER XIV

JESUIT CAMPAIGNING

While these events were taking place at the abode of advocate Desmarais, a royalist cabal was in full swing in St. Roche Street, on the fourth floor of an old house built at the rear of a courtyard. An ex-beadle of the parish, devoted to Abbot Morlet, and generously feed from the strong-box of the clerical and aristocratic party, received the conspirators in his lodge, consisting of two mansard buildings huddled together. A secret issue, contrived in the bottom of a pantry, communicated from the rear-most of these two buildings with the garret of the neighboring house, which was also kept by royalists. In a corner of the garret opened a trap which gave access to a cachette, as they were called in those times, a hiding-place large enough to hold four beds, and sufficiently supplied with air and light through a section of drain-pipe running up along the chimney which formed one of the sides of the perfectly contrived refuge. In case of a sudden descent upon the home of the ex-beadle, the latter, warned by the porter, who was in his confidence, would give the alarm to the refugees sheltered with him; these then decamped by the secret issue and gained the cachette, where they were doubly secure; for even if the trap in the pantry were discovered, one would suppose the fugitives to have escaped by the staircase of the neighboring house. There were in Paris a number of these places, designed for refractory priests, ex-nobles, and suspects, who conspired against the Republic.

So on this night in question, the royalist cabal was met at the home of the ex-beadle. The Count of Plouernel was there, and his younger brother, the Bishop in partibus of Gallipoli; also the Marquis of St. Esteve, that insufferable laugher, who four years before had attended the supper given by the Count to Marchioness Aldini; and Abbot Morlet. The members of the cabal were seated in camp chairs about a clay stove; all were dressed like bourgeois, and wore their hair without powder. The Marquis alone was frizzled like hoar-frost; he had on an elegant coat of purple cloth with gold buttons, and purple trousers to match; his stockings of white silk were half hidden by the legs of his jockey-boots. Good humor and joviality were written all over his countenance, as expansive as if that very moment he were not staking his head. The Bishop of Gallipoli, the junior of the Count of Plouernel by several years, was dressed as a layman; both he and the Marquis, for a long time emigrated, had recently succeeded in crossing the frontier and regaining Paris, where they lay in concealment, like a great many other aristocrats returned from abroad. The face of Jesuit Morlet was still, as always, calm and sardonic; he wore a carmagnole jacket and red bonnet.

Eleven o'clock sounded from the Church of St. Roche.

"Eleven o'clock," quoth the Count of Plouernel. "We were to have been all met at ten; and here we are only four at the rendezvous. There are twenty members on the committee. Such negligence is unpardonable! The absentees are incurring grave responsibility."

"Their negligence is all the more reprehensible seeing that we must act to-morrow; it is to-morrow that the King is to be taken to that den of knaves, known as the Convention," added his brother the Bishop.

"Our friends must be kept away by some serious obstacle," continued Plouernel. "Gentlemen can not be suspected of cowardice."

The Marquis let loose a peal of laughter. "Gentlemen! And that money-changer, that Monsieur Hubert! That blue head! At first I would not be one of the party, when I learned I had to sit with that bourgeois. But after all, he bears the name of the great St. Hubert, patron of hunters! Hi! hi! And so, out of regard for his patron, I admitted the clown!"

"For God's sake, Marquis," broke in Plouernel, "put a bridle on your hilarity. Let us talk sense. This Monsieur Hubert is a determined clown, and very influential among the old grenadiers of the battalion of the Daughters of St. Thomas."

"Hi! hi! hi!" shrieked the Marquis, "a battalion of girls given the title of St. Thomas, who had to touch in order to believe! Hi! hi! hi! Bless me, Count, I could teach that battalion an evolution which would amuse us. Load and empty! Hi! hi!"

"No one else is coming; we are wasting precious time. Let us take counsel," put in Jesuit Morlet, sourly. "The porter is to whistle in case of alarm. At that signal, my god-son, on the watch on the second floor, will come up to warn the beadle, and we shall have time to flee, or to gain the cachette through the pantry. Let us take account of the state of affairs – "

"This double-bottomed pantry reminds me," struck in the uproarious Marquis, "of a certain gallant adventure of which I was once the hero. I'll tell it to you – "

"Devil take the bore! Give us a rest with your stories," quoth the Count.

"Marquis, why did you return to France? Answer categorically," said the Bishop to him.

"Idiot! To save my King! To snatch him out of the hands of the Philistines!"

"And is it thus that you pretend to save him, by interrupting our deliberations with your buffoonery? With jests out of season?"

"But you are not deliberating on a thing! You're sitting there like three sea-storks! Hi! hi! hi! You're not going ahead with the business any more than I am."

"The giddy fellow is correct," said Morlet, for once taking the Marquis's side. "We shall never finish if we do not introduce some order into this. I shall take the chair, and open the meeting."

"You – take the chair – my reverend sir? And by what right?" was the reply of the Bishop of Gallipoli.

"By the right which a man of sense has over fools like the Marquis; by the right which my age gives me. For I am here much older than any of you."

"So be it; preside," said Plouernel.

"If it is only a question of the precedence of age, I yield," said his brother.

"Oh, and I also! Hi! hi!" cried the Marquis, holding his sides.

"By heaven, Marquis, we shall have to toss you out of the window!" impatiently shouted the Count.

"Shut your heads, one and all of you," commanded Abbot Morlet. "I shall put the case to you in two words. To-morrow Louis XVI will be conducted from the prison of the Temple to the bar of the Convention. The occasion seems favorable for rescuing the King during the passage. Here is the means proposed. Five or six hundred resolute men, armed under their cloaks with pistols and poniards, will meet at different places previously agreed on, and locate themselves in isolated groups along the route to be taken by the King; they will mingle with the crowd, affect the language of the sans-culottes, and propagate the rumor, designedly launched several days ago, that the majority of the Convention is resolved to spare the life of Capet, and that the people must take justice into its own hands. Our agents will strive thus to inflame the people; during the passage of the King they will cry, 'Death to the tyrant!' At those words, the signal agreed upon, they shall resolutely attack the escort with pistols and daggers. It is our hope that, favored by the tumult, we may be able boldly to seize Louis XVI, and carry him off to some safe retreat prepared in advance. Our men will then march to the Convention and exterminate its members; this being successfully accomplished, proclamations already in print will be placarded over Paris calling all honest men to arms against the Republic. A part of the old elite companies of the National Guard, all the royalists and constitutionalists of Paris, the Emigrants who have been arriving for a fortnight – all will respond to the call to arms, and conduct the King to the Tuileries. Numerous emissaries will be sent at once into the west and south, and to Lyons, all of which places are ready to rise at the voice of the nobles and priests in hiding there. Civil war will flare up at once in several parts of the kingdom. The foreign armies, demoralized by their defeat at Valmy, are now beating an offensive retreat to the frontier; it is hoped that, through the civil war and the consequent chaos, the allies will regain the advantage they had at the opening of the campaign, advance on Paris by forced marches, and inflict terrible chastisement upon it. This culmination, prepared with a long hand – the only way to save the King – was about to occur just before the September massacres. The massacres had their good and their bad side."

"You dare to say there was a good side to that carnage? Your language is odious!" interrupted the Bishop.

"The massacres of September had a good side and a bad side," calmly reiterated the Abbot. "Here is the bad: The most active chiefs in the conspiracy, detained as suspects in the prisons, whence they were carrying on their plots, were killed; the royalists of Paris and the provinces, struck with terror, lay low and ceased their activity. It took three months to knit together all the threads of the conspiracy which had been snapped by the death of its leaders. The September massacres had also the bad aspect for us that they were combined with an outburst of patriotism. The volunteers, flocking in mass to the front, changed entirely by their bedevilled fury the previous tactics of the war. The Prussian infantry, the best in Europe, was overcome by the mad-caps – there is danger lest it may long remain in the panic into which it was thrown by the bayonet charge of the volunteers at the battle of Valmy."

"Blue death! my reverend sir, you would best hold your tongue in matters of war, of which you know nothing!" the Count of Plouernel impatiently declared. "I served in the Emigrant corps which stormed the position of Croix-aux-Bois at the battle of Argonne; I was at the side of the Duke of Brunswick in the affray at Valmy; and I say that if the Prussian infantry was beaten down by these bare-feet, who precipitated themselves upon us like savages, it is now recovered from the panic, and asks nothing better than to avenge its disgrace. Yes, and let a war come, a real war, a great war, and the allies will make a butchery of these undisciplined hordes. The Prussians will feed fat their vengeance!"

"And I in turn tell you, that in this matter you are completely off your base," was the Abbot's unmoved rejoinder.

"By heaven, my reverend sir!" flared back the Count, "measure your terms!"

And the giggling Marquis cried, "Plague on it, Abbot, all you need is a switch to give us a flogging! Hi! hi! hi!"

"And in your case in particular, Marquis, it would fall where it was deserved. But to continue, I come now to the good, the excellent side of the September massacres."

Again the mere mention of such a possibility was more than the Bishop could contain himself under. "It is impossible," he broke in, "to sit still and hear it said in cold blood that that abominable carnage produced any good results."

"Monseigneur," was Morlet's reply, "it does not at all become you to discredit events in which you did not participate. Disguised as a charcoal burner, and with my god-son as a chimney-sweep, I saw these massacres at close range. Do you remember, Count, what I told you over the supper-table, four years ago, the evening the Bastille was taken: The ferocious beast must get the taste of blood to put it in the humor of slaying? Well, so it was. And, to make the blood flow, I rolled back my sleeves to the elbow, and set to work! So I say again, the massacres of September held this much good for us, that they aroused general horror throughout Europe and exasperated the foreign powers, even including England, which was until then almost neutral, but is now become the soul of the coalition. Even in Paris, this execrable hot-bed of revolution, where, it must be admitted, the massacres were, in a moment of vertigo, accepted by all classes of the people as a measure of public safety, they now inspire unspeakable horror! The revolutionists themselves are divided into two camps – the patriots of the 10th of August, and the Septembrists – a precious germ of internal discord among the wretches. All in all, there is good, much good for us, in the days of September. The terror evoked by them will come to the assistance of the present plot. Everything is prepared; the posts are assigned, the depots of arms established, the proclamations printed. Lehiron, a knave for any trick, if you grease his palm well, is in charge of the band of make-believe sans-culottes which is to assail the King's escort. I can answer for his intelligence and courage; he awaits his final orders next door. Finally, this very evening, and in spite of the careful guard kept about him, Louis XVI is to receive from his waiting-man Clery word of the project, merely that the prince may not be frightened at the tumult, and that he may follow with confidence those who give him the pass-word, 'God and the King! Pilnitz and Brunswick.' That, then, is how matters stand. A plot has been framed, it is on the eve of being carried out. Now, I put this question: Is the time ripe for action?"

Mute with astonishment, the Count, the Marquis and the Bishop stared blankly at one another. The Count was the first to break the silence:

"How is that! You give out the details, the agencies, the object of the plot, the execution of which is fixed for to-morrow, and still you seem to be in doubt as to whether action should be taken?"

"I ask deliberation on these two plain propositions: First, would it not be more opportune to await the day set for the execution of Louis XVI – his condemnation is not a matter of doubt – and only then attempt our stroke, in the hope that the horror of regicide will add to the number of our partisans? And secondly, – it is I, on my own initiative, on my own responsibility, who propose this grave question – would it not be more expedient, in the manifest interest of the Church and the monarchy – simply to allow Louis to be guillotined?"

The Jesuit's proposal, as strange as it was unexpected, threw his hearers into such amazement that they were struck dumb anew, and sat with their mouths hanging open. Three taps at the door, given like a preconcerted signal, were heard in the stillness.