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

"It is my god-son," whispered the Jesuit; and in a louder tone, he added: "Come in!"

Little Rodin was togged out in a red jacket and bonnet the same as the prelate. He saluted the company.

"What news, my child? What have you to tell us?" inquired his preceptor.

"Gentle god-father, there is a man down below, with the porter, disguised as a woman. He gave the pass-word, but the porter, not recognizing him, replied that he knew not what he was after with his jargon. Scenting a possible spy, the porter sent his wife up to me on the second floor, to warn me of what had happened."

"Doubtless it is one of our men, obliged to take refuge in disguise," began the Count.

"It is more serious than that," the Bishop dissented. "How are you to make sure he is one of us?"

"A man tricked out as a woman!" exclaimed the Marquis. "Is this carnival time?"

"You know all our people by sight?" asked Morlet of his god-son.

"Yes, dear god-father. When I've seen a person once, I do not forget him. The Lord God," and he crossed himself, "has blessed His little servant with the gift of memory, which he has so much use for."

"Go down to the porter's lodge," returned his dear god-father. "Examine the personage in question. If you recognize him, tell the porter to let him come up. If not, come back and let me know."

"Yes, good god-father, your orders shall be followed to the dot!" responded little Rodin, sliding out of the door, while the Bishop asked, dubiously:

"But may not that child make a mistake? Meseems the errand is poorly entrusted."

"My god-son is a prodigy of cleverness and penetration," returned the Abbot.

The interrupted topic of discussion was immediately resumed by the Count.

"I refuse to sit under a chairman," said he, "a priest, a subject of the King, who has the sacrilegious audacity of bringing up for consideration the abominable question, Is it, yes or no, expedient to allow Louis XVI to be guillotined?"

"Such abomination would seem incredible," chimed in the Bishop, "did one not know that the Society of Jesus often preaches regicide."

"The Society of Jesus has preached, has counseled regicide whenever it became important to suppress Kings ad majorem Dei gloriam– to the greater glory of God! The church is above monarchs," retorted the representative of the Society.

"A capital pleasantry!" put in the Marquis. "Here we are met to advise on measures to save the King, and the priest proposes to us to let them clip his head! The idea is brilliant!"

At this moment little Rodin returned, and reported to the Jesuit:

"Good god-father, in the person rigged out as a woman I have recognized Monsieur Hubert."

"Let him come in," ordered the recipient of the information.

Still in Madam Desmarais's hat and fur cloak Hubert entered the room. At the sight, the Marquis greeted him with a roar of laughter. Pale with rage, Hubert threw at his feet his feminine head-gear, dashed off the cloak which hid his vest and grey trousers, rushed at the Marquis, and, shaking his fist under the latter's nose, cried:

"You shall give me a reason for your insolence, you pigeon-house tenant!"

But the Count of Plouernel and his brother the Bishop interposed between the two, and succeeded in calming the financier's irritation, explaining to him that the Marquis was a hare-brain, and should not be taken seriously. Apparently bent upon proving his reputation, the Marquis cried out:

"Pardon, dear sir, hi! hi! or, rather, dear madam! Ah, ah, ah! if you knew what a winsome face you had! Pardon me, I am all upset over it – it is too much for me. Ah, ah, ah! Oh, the idea! I shall die of bottled-up laughter if you don't let me give vent to it!"

Suiting action to word, the Marquis went off into another roar of hysterics. Hubert's violent nature was about once more to get the better of him, but once more was it appeased by the solicitations of the Count and his brother. At last he cooled down sufficiently to make known to the company the secret of his transfiguration, and how he owed his life to his sister's devotion. During these confidences, the laughter of the Marquis gradually died out.

"Then, that part of St. Honoré Street where you have just missed arrest, dear Monsieur Hubert," said the Count, "will to-night be watched by the police, and I may, on leaving here, fall into their hands. For the refuge where I have hidden myself since my return to Paris is situated close to the St. Honoré Gate. The wife of a former whipper-in in the King's Huntsmen is giving me asylum. From the window of my garret I can see the house of this Desmarais, your brother-in-law; whom I now regret not having allowed to die under the cudgels when I had him flogged by my lackeys."

"You live near the St. Honoré Gate, you say, Count? What is the number of the house, if you please?" asked the Abbot with a start.

"Number 19; the entrance is distinguished by a small gate-way."

"You could not have chosen your refuge worse! I am glad to be able to warn you of your danger. At No. 17 of that same street live two members of the Lebrenn family, John the iron-worker, and that beautiful woman whom you knew under the name of Marchioness Aldini. Be on your guard, for if these people came to know where you were hidden, they would not let slip the opportunity to wreak on you the hate with which they have pursued your family for so many centuries."

"Now that that fool of a Marquis has become almost reasonable, let us resume the course of our deliberation," replied the Count, thanking Morlet for his information; and addressing Hubert: "When you came in, the priest was having the presumption to propose for our consideration the question whether it would not be wiser to postpone the projected stroke until after the King was sentenced, instead of to-morrow, as we purpose."

"Any such delay would be all the sadder seeing that this very evening a case of arms, containing also several copies of our proclamation, was seized in my brother-in-law's house. The Committee of General Safety thus has by this time the most flagrant proof of a conspiracy. So then, I say, we must make haste. Yesterday and day before I saw several officers and grenadiers of my old battalion, who are very influential in their quarter. They await but the signal to run to arms. The bourgeoisie has a horror of the Republic."

"Confess, Monsieur Hubert, that it would be better for the bourgeoisie to resign itself to what it calls 'the privileges of the throne, the immunities of the nobility and clergy,' than to submit to the tyranny of the populace," rejoined Plouernel.

"Monsieur Count, a few years ago you administered through the cudgels of your lackeys a good dressing down to a man whom I have the unhappiness to possess for brother-in-law. I, in his place, would have paid you back, not by proxy, through hirelings, but in person. Now, great seigneur that you are, what would you have done in that case?"

"Eh! My God, my poor Monsieur Hubert! If I did not, in the first moment of anger, run you through the body with my sword, I would have been under the obligation of asking for a lettre de cachet and sending you to the Bastille."

"Because a man of your birth could not consent to fight a bourgeois?"

"Certainly; for the tribunal composed of our seigneurs the Marshals of France, to which the nobility refers its affairs of honor, would have formally prohibited the duel; and we are bound by oath to respect the decisions of Messieurs the Marshals. For the common herd we have nothing but contempt."

"It seems to me we are wandering singularly astray from the question at stake," interposed the Bishop. "Let us come back to it."

"Not at all, Monsieur Bishop," retorted Hubert. "We must first of all know what we are conspiring for. If we are conspiring to overthrow the Republic, we must know by what regime we shall replace it. Shall it be by an absolute monarchy, as before, or by the constitutional monarchy of 1791? Well, gentlemen of the nobility, gentlemen of the clergy, what we want, we bourgeois, we of the common herd, whom you despise, is the constitutional monarchy. Take that for said."

"So that the bourgeoisie may reign in fact, under the semblance of a kingdom? We reject that sort of a government," sneered Plouernel.

"Naturally."

"Whence it follows that you wish to substitute the bourgeois oligarchy, the privilege of the franc, for our aristocracy?"

"Without a doubt. For we hold in equal aversion both the old regime, that is, the rule of unbridled privilege, and the Republic."

"Let us come back to the subject," snapped Jesuit Morlet. "The bourgeoisie, the nobility, the clergy – all abominate the Republic. So much is settled. Let us, then, first attend to the overthrow of the Republic; later we may decide on its successor. Let us decide immediately whether we shall or shall not delay the execution of our plot of to-morrow – the first question; and the second, which, to tell the truth, ought to take precedence over the other – whether it would not be better after all, in the combined interests of the Church, the monarchy, the nobility and the bourgeoisie, simply to let them, without any more ado, send Louis to the guillotine!"

The Jesuit's words were again received with imprecations by the Bishop and Monsieur Plouernel, while the Marquis, finding the idea funnier and funnier, burst into irrepressible laughter. Hubert, greatly surprised, but curious to fathom the Abbot's purposes, insisted on knowing the reasons on which he based his opinion. Accordingly, when silence was restored, the Jesuit commenced:

"I maintain, and I shall prove, that the sentencing and execution of Louis XVI offer to us precious advantages. This sovereign – I leave it to you, Count, and to you, Monsieur Hubert – is completely lost, both as an absolute King, because he lacks energy, and as a constitutional King, because he has twenty times striven to abolish the Constitution which he pledged himself to support. So much is self-evident and incontestible. Accordingly, the death of Louis XVI will deliver us from the unpleasant outcome of an absolute King without vigor, if absolute royalty is to prevail; and will spare us a constitutional King without fidelity to his oath, if constitutional royalty wins out. That settles the first and extremely interesting point. Second point, the execution of the King will deal a mortal blow to the Republic. Louis XVI will become a martyr, and the wrath of the foreign sovereigns will be aroused to the last notch against a rising Republic which for first gage of battle throws at their feet the head of a King, and summons their peoples to revolt. The extermination of the Republic will thus become a question of life and death for the monarchs of Europe; they will summon up a million soldiers, and invest vast treasuries, coupled with the credit of England. Can the outcome of such a struggle be doubted? France, without a disciplined army; France, ruined, reduced to a paper currency, torn by factions, by the civil war which we priests will let loose in the west and south – France will be unable to resist all Europe. But, in order to exasperate the foreign rulers, to excite their hatred, their fury, they must be made to behold the head of Louis XVI rolling at their feet!"

"Reverend sir, you frighten me with your doctrines!" was all the Count of Plouernel could say. With a paternal air the Jesuit continued:

"Big baby! I am through. One of two things: Either to-morrow's plot works well, or it works ill. In the first case, Louis XVI is delivered; the Convention is exterminated. A thousand resolute men can carry out the stroke. But afterwards? You will have to fight the suburbs, the Sections, the troops around Paris, which will run to the succor of the capital."

"We shall fight them!" was Hubert's exclamation.

"We shall cut them to pieces! Neither mercy nor pity for the rebels!" cried Plouernel.

"We shall have the bandits from the prisons set fire to the suburbs at all four corners! A general conflagration!" suggested the Bishop.

"And these worthy tenants of the suburbs," giggled the Marquis, "seeing their kennels ablaze, will think of nothing else but to fire in the air, to check the flames. Hi! hi! hi! The idea is a jolly one!"

Morlet the Jesuit again brought the conversation back into its channel. "Monsieur Hubert," he said to the banker, "at what number do you estimate the energetic bourgeois who will take part in the fight?"

"Five or six thousand, old members of the National Guard. I can answer for that number."

"I am willing to concede you ten thousand. There are ten thousand men. And you, Count, how many do you think there are of the returned Emigrants, the old officers and soldiers of the constitutional guard of Louis XVI, and finally of the ex-servitors of the King and the Princes – coachmen, lackeys, whippers-in, stable-boys and other menials, who form your minute-militia?"

"I figure on four thousand – or less," replied the Count.

"Let us say five thousand. Add them to Monsieur Hubert's ten thousand National Guards, and we have a total of fifteen thousand men. Now, although Paris has vomited to the frontiers since September fifty thousand volunteers, how estimate you the number remaining of these sans-culottes and Jacobins of the suburbs, the Sections and the federations, and finally the regiments of infantry, cavalry and artillery which are republican?"

"There are fifteen thousand men, about, troops of all arms, not in Paris, but within the constitutional limits, that is, within twelve leagues of the capital," Hubert answered.

"These troops could reach Paris in one day's march. There you have fifteen thousand men in trained and equipped corps, cavalry, infantry, and artillery, devoted to the Republic and the Convention; troops equal in number to your fifteen thousand insurgents. We can number the Jacobin population of the suburbs and the Sections, and the hordes of the federations, at thirty thousand – scamps, armed with pikes or guns, and provided with cannon as well! Now, suppose the King liberated, and the members of the Convention exterminated. You then find yourselves face to face with a regular and irregular army of forty-five thousand determined villains, while you number only fifteen thousand men, without artillery, and extremely ill provided with supplies."

"A brave man doesn't count his enemies – he attacks them!" exclaimed Hubert.

"We shall have for auxiliaries the foreign armies," interjected Plouernel, "and the civil war in the west and south."

"Let us not be carried away by fancies. We are considering a levy of defenders which must be made to-morrow, in Paris; we are considering a fight which will be over in one day, in the capital," returned Abbot Morlet, coldly.

"If we are beaten in Paris, we shall retreat to the revolted provinces! We shall be new food to the civil war!" cried the Bishop.

"The mitre weighs too much for your head, monseigneur," retorted the Jesuit. "Retreat to the provinces, say you? But if the insurrection is defeated, how are you going to slip through the hands of the victors in the fray? All or nearly all of you will be massacred or guillotined."

"Eh!" cried the Count, in a rage, "our friends the foreigners will avenge us! They will burn Paris to the ground!"

"And the King? He will have been, I suppose, delivered by a bold sortie. But the insurrection worsted, he will be retaken and will not escape death."

"Well, we shall avenge him by a civil and a foreign war," was the lame solution of the problem proposed by the Count.

"Let us proceed," continued the Abbot. "Since, taking your own figures, it is a hundred to one that, even if you succeed in snatching Louis from his jailers for an instant, he will not fail to be retaken and have his head shorn off, what will your insurrection have availed you? Let the good populace, then, tranquilly trim the neck of this excellent prince. His death will be the signal for civil war, for the foreign invasion, and for the stamping out of the Republic. Do not uselessly endanger your lives and those of your friends; they can, like you, render great service at the proper moment. Accordingly, I sum up: the interests of all – bourgeoisie, nobles and clergy – will best be served by letting Louis XVI be guillotined with the briefest possible delay. I have spoken."

The inflexible logic of the prelate made a keen impression on his auditors. He spoke sooth in regard to the certain defeat of the royalist insurrection, and in relation to the redoubled fury into which the death of Louis would throw the rulers of the surrounding monarchies. Nothing, indeed, could be more formidable than their concerted efforts and activity against the Republic – impoverished, torn by factions and almost without trained troops as the latter would be. But the Jesuit suspected not, was unable, despite his profound cunning, to conceive, what prodigies love of country and the republican faith were soon to give birth to.

"By the Eternal! my reverend sir," at last cried the Count, "why, then, have you approved of our projects, why have you put at our service Lehiron and his band of frightful villains after his own pattern, to help undertake the affair?"

"Firstly, because I might have been mistaken in my conjectures —Errare humanum est– to err is human. A man of sense is not obstinate in his error. Secondly, and this is supreme to me, I have received from the General of my Order, at Rome, these instructions: 'It is important to our holy mother the Church that Louis XVI be crowned with the palm of martyrdom.' So that, having tested the danger and uselessness of an uprising, I declare point-blank my determination not to take the least part in it; I declare that I shall withhold from it whatever means of action I can in any way control; in short, I shall oppose it in all possible manner, licit and illicit. On the which account," concluded the Jesuit, rising and bowing, "I shall now withdraw, so please you, my humble reverence from your honorable company. I have nothing more to do here."

The Abbot moved impassively toward the door, only replying to the looks of wonder on every face with the words, "I have said."

But Hubert blocked his passage, and cried: "Miserable cassock, hypocrite, cock-roach! Would you be also capable of denouncing us?"

"I am capable of everything to the end of preventing an act reprobated by the General of my Order. The General of the Jesuits has spoken; all must obey him – even Kings, even the Pope. Silence and obedience are the words!"

So saying, and profiting by the stupor into which his audacity and self-possession threw the other conspirators, the Jesuit left the room.

"We are off, god-son," he said to little Rodin when he had descended to the second floor. "Come, my child; other cares call me elsewhere."

"Me also," responded the boy, blessing himself and rising. "I am ready to follow you, good god-father. Command. To hear you is to obey."

CHAPTER XV

THE KING ON TRIAL

As already recounted, John Lebrenn, in his capacity as municipal officer, was charged on the night of December 10, 1793, with the task of watching over Louis XVI, detained, with his family, at the Temple. Occupying a room before the chamber of the ex-King, Lebrenn felt for the prisoner a sort of compassion, as he reflected that this man, not without his good inclinations, and endowed with certain undeniable domestic virtues, had been pushed by his position as King to wrongful acts which were about to bring down a terrible punishment upon his head.

Louis submitted to his confinement with mingled carelessness and resignation, rarely displaying either annoyance or anger at the rigorous surveillance of which he was the object; he hoped that the penalty pronounced against him by the Convention would not exceed imprisonment until after the peace, and then banishment. For his wife, his sister, and his son and daughter, he showed great solicitude; one proof of the inherent sin of royalty, which could transform a good husband, a good brother, and a good father – a man without malice in his private life – into an execrable tyrant, capable of every transgression.

The curtains which screened the glass door separating the ante-chamber from that occupied by the fallen King accidentally falling apart in the middle, they revealed to John Lebrenn Louis XVI pacing up and down the room, although his usual bed-time had long sounded. The King seemed to be in a state of agitation which accorded ill with his apathetic nature. On the morrow he was to appear at the bar of the Convention; and during the day he had learned from Clery, his man-in-waiting, who, due to his secret connection with the royalists, was informed of their moves, that a plan was afoot to snatch him from his escort on the way from the Temple to the Convention. Quite likely to turn his mind from these thoughts, he opened the door leading into the room guarded by John Lebrenn, in order to speak with him. The countenance of his watchman seemed to inspire some confidence in the prisoner; perhaps he remarked on the young man's features an expression of compassion, easy to confound with the respectful interest of a subject for a prisoner King. He stepped into the room of his guard. Not out of respect for the King, but out of commiseration for the captive man, the soldier rose from the camp cot on which he had been sitting. Louis addressed him affably, as follows:

"My friend, I am not disposed to sleep, to-night. If you will, let us talk together, that my sleeplessness may be rendered less irksome."

"Willingly, Sire," replied Lebrenn.

This was the first time since his captivity that Louis XVI heard one of his captors address him by that title 'Sire.' They called him habitually 'citizen,' or 'monsieur,' or 'Louis Capet.' Seeking to read the inner thoughts of the man before him, Louis resumed, after a moment's silence:

"My friend, I do not think I am mistaken in believing that you pity my lot? I have been calumniated, but the light will break some day, perhaps soon: thank God, I still have friends. I know not what it is that tells me you are one of those faithful and devoted subjects of whom I speak."

"Sire, I am too loyal to leave you a single instant in error. I do not accept the designation of 'subject,' Sire! I am a citizen of the French Republic."

"Enough, monsieur; I was mistaken," bitterly replied Louis. "Nevertheless, I thank you for your frankness."

"My words were dictated by my dignity, first of all; next, by my pity for the misfortunes, not of the King, but of the man."

"Sir," cried Louis XVI haughtily, "I require no one's pity; the commiseration of heaven and my conscience are enough. Let us stop there."

"Sire, I did not seek the honor of this conversation; and, should it continue, it is well that you be under no illusion as to my sentiments towards royalty. The Revolution and the Republic have no more devoted soldier than myself. Now, Sire, I am at your service."

Louis XVI was not utterly lacking in sense; his first resentment past, he admitted to himself that the conduct of this municipal officer was all the more praiseworthy, inasmuch as while declaring himself a revolutionist and a republican, he nevertheless treated a captive King with respect.

"I was rude just now, I am sorry for it," he said at length. "Hoping for a moment to discover in you a faithful subject, I found myself face to face with an enemy. The disappointment was great. Still, let us talk a little on this subject of your hatred for royalty. What harm have this royalty, this nobility, this clergy, against which you rail, done to you and your like?"

"I could, Sire, reply to you in a few words, by facts and not by railings. But I wish not to wound your preconceived ideas, and above all to avoid giving you cause to make a sad comparison. This, Sire, is the third time, in the course of fourteen centuries, that a descendant of my family encounters one of the heirs of the monarchy of Clovis; and that under circumstances – "

"Doubtless the circumstances were intensely interesting. What were they? You pique my curiosity."

"Sire, the circumstances are sinister. It would be painful to me to give you cause to draw the sad comparison between your present position and that of the princes, your predecessors."

"Tell me that part of your legends, Monsieur Lebrenn. My curiosity is highly excited, and my confidence in a brighter future will not be dimmed by your recital."