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

"What, is this you, Citizen Brutus Desmarais? And pray, what are you soliciting here? An order for the debut at the Opera of that dancing girl you are protecting?"

"That devil of a Fouché knows everything! You would think he was still Minister of Police," interjected Hubert.

"The cask will always smell of the herring, my dear. I saw this morning two of my old agents, who continue to make me their little confidences."

"Prefect of police, chief of spies! A pretty function, and highly honorable!" sneered Hubert.

"Take care, take care, Citizen Hubert," cautioned Fouché. "I have my eye on the Orleanist conspiracy, in which you have taken it upon yourself to play a role!"

"Your spies are robbing you. You are very ill informed," retorted the banker.

"Why try to trifle with me? Everybody conspires under the open heavens these days. These Bourbons are imbeciles, and their Prefect of Police, Monsieur André, is a ninny! We play all around their legs."

"How can you dare to hold such language in the very palace of our beloved sovereigns?" protested Count Desmarais.

"Come, now! You and your fellows in the Chamber of Peers are yourselves conspirators and enemies of the Bourbons."

"Your conspiracies are pure will-o'-the-wisps," again retorted Hubert.

"Well, I tell you that you, Hubert, are conspiring for the Duke of Orleans. Several officers and generals are conspiring in favor of Bonaparte. A number of colonels in command of regiments are connected with this second plot; while, finally, the old Jacobins, and notably your son-in-law John Lebrenn, Citizen Brutus, as well as the painter Martin and their friends, are conspiring for the Republic; that's a third conspiracy."

"All these plots and complots are of your own invention," grumbled Desmarais, feeling very uneasy.

"True!" acquiesced Fouché with a smile. "But if I never follow the conspiracies I invent, I at least always let myself into those which the imbeciles are nursing. I've a foot everywhere: with the republicans, as an ex-Terrorist; among the Bonapartists, as ex-minister of the Emperor; with the Orleanists as an old friend of Philip Equality's; in short, the best proof I can give you of the existence of these complots is, that I have just come to denounce them. Yes," he continued, his smile broadening, while Desmarais and Hubert stared at him in stupefaction, "I have come to denounce them to that blockhead of a Blacas."

"His Excellency will have the honor to receive Monsieur the Duke of Otranto," announced the usher, making a low bow to Fouché.

"Messieurs," beamed Fouché as he moved towards the open door, "a royalist like me comes before everybody."

As the door closed after Fouché, a new group of solicitors entered the waiting room. These newcomers were the Count of Plouernel, now in spite of his missing eye lieutenant-general and second in command of the company of Black Musketeers of the military household of Louis XVIII; the Count's son, Viscount Gonthram, a boy of thirteen, in the costume of King's page; and, lastly, Cardinal Plouernel, the Count's younger brother. The prelate was garbed in a red cloak and cap. For a moment these new personages stood apart, then the Count of Plouernel advanced towards Monsieur Hubert, whom he did not at first recognize, and engaged him in the following conversation:

"Will you have the goodness, sir, to inform me whether the audiences have commenced?"

"Yes, monsieur; just now the Duke of Otranto was called in by Monsieur the Duke of Blacas. But, pardon me," he added, as little by little he recalled the other's features, "is it not Monsieur the Count of Plouernel whom I have the honor to address?"

"Yes, monsieur," replied the latter.

"Monsieur, do you not recognize me?" continued Hubert. "I will assist you. We met in 1792, during the trial of our unhappy King. We were conspiring then against the Republic – "

"St. Roche Street, at the house of the former beadle of the parish? Now I recall it!"

"Who would have told us then, Monsieur Count, that more than twenty years after that meeting we would encounter each other again in the palace of the brother of that royal martyr?"

"I fear lest that terrible lesson be lost upon royalty."

"Between ourselves, and without reproach, you have been somewhat the cause of these unhappinesses, you gentlemen of the nobility."

"In conspiring against the republican Constitution we but defended our property and our honor. The Republic despoiled us of our seigniorial rights, sacred and consecrated rights which we held of God and of our sword."

"Ah, the eternal strife between the Franks and the Gauls! Why is not my nephew Lebrenn here to reply to you!"

"What say you, sir?" asked Plouernel, shuddering at the name. "That Lebrenn, that ironsmith, has he become your nephew? What strange news!"

"He married my niece, the daughter of advocate Desmarais, to-day Count and peer of France."

Under the weight of the memories evoked by the name of Lebrenn, the Count fell silent. The Cardinal drew close to the speakers, holding by the hand his nephew Gonthram. His Eminence, better served by his memory than his brother the Count, recognized Hubert at once, and addressed him in the most courteous tones:

"It has indeed been many years since we met, monsieur; for, if you recollect, I accompanied my brother to the cabal in St. Roche Street. What a time! What sad days!"

"Indeed; and your Eminence must recall how lacking in respect to you the reverend Father Morlet was, who arrogated to himself the chairmanship of our meeting. The reverend was accompanied by his god-son, who seemed to be about the age of this pretty page" (indicating Gonthram); "but he was far from resembling him, for I never saw a face more sly and hypocritical than that child of the Church wore."

"Father Morlet is dead, and his god-son, taking orders in Rome under the name of Abbot Rodin, is affiliated with the Society of Jesus," the Cardinal informed the group. "This Father Rodin, as private secretary of the present General of the Order, enjoys great influence. Ah! by my faith! I did not know that our master hypocrite was in Paris!"

While the Cardinal was uttering these last words, the door opened and in stepped himself, the reverend Father Rodin. He was accompanied by an usher, into whose ear he dropped a couple of words. Rodin was now past his thirtieth year. His meager face, smooth shaven and wan, his half-closed and restless reptile eyes, his slightly bowed back, his already bald forehead, his bent neck, his sidling gait, his attitude of mock-humility, through which shone his contempt for others – everything about the man stamped him as hypocrisy incarnate. His black gown was threadbare and whitened at the seams; the mud was caked on his clumsy shoes. In one hand he held a squalid-looking cap, in the other an old cotton umbrella with red-and-white checks.

The usher to whom he spoke stepped for a moment into the next room and returned almost immediately. He made a deep obeisance of respect to the Jesuit, and said to him in a voice marked with great deference, "Reverend Father, I have the honor to conduct you at once to the private cabinet of monseigneur, who is at present engaged with the Duke of Otranto."

Rodin made a sign of assent, and with eyes fixed on his shoes, so that he did not see the Cardinal, he was about to walk by the group in which the latter stood.

"Usher!" called the Cardinal, haughtily, "a word with you. We, Monsieur the Count of Plouernel and I, were here before this reverend, which he does not seem to know. The reverend gentleman should wait his time of audience, and not usurp ours," he added, while Rodin bowed himself almost to the ground before him.

"I have the honor to inform your Eminence that I have orders from Monseigneur the Duke of Blacas on the subject of this holy Father. He is to be introduced whenever he presents himself, and before all other persons. I obey the orders given me," returned the usher.

"I shall not allow a simple priest to precede by a single step a Prince of the Church!" stamped the Cardinal. Rodin only bowed before him several times, lower than before, without raising his eyes to his face.

"My orders are imperative," said the usher.

Indignant the Cardinal turned to his brother. "Well, brother," he said, "there we are! By the navel of the Pope, I'd like to knock the interloper down!"

For all answer Rodin again mutely and humbly inclined towards the Cardinal. Then he made a sign to the usher to precede him, and vanished through a door on the opposite side of the room from where he had entered.

The latter entrance again swung open, and admitted Lieutenant General Count Oliver, in the garish uniform of his rank and decorated with the Legion of Honor and several foreign orders. He wore the great red ribbon on his scarf, the order of the Iron Crown over his shoulder, and the Cross of St. Louis in one of the buttonholes of his coat, which glittered with braid. John Lebrenn's old apprentice was now thirty-eight; his moustache still held its blackness, but his hair was streaked with grey; his face still was handsome and martial. A total stranger to the other personages in the audience chamber, he seated himself a little distance off from the group formed by the Cardinal, the Count of Plouernel, and Monsieur Hubert. Count Desmarais had withdrawn into the alcove of a window.

"That Jesuit, that scamp, that priestlet, introduced to Monsieur Blacas before me!" stormed the Cardinal to the Count, his brother. "Me, a Prince of the Church! I declare, as things are going, helped along by that execrable charter of 1814, we are marching towards another '93! France is lost!"

"The Restoration has done a great deal for the clergy, Monsieur Cardinal," declared Hubert. "You are very wrong to cast reproaches at the King and the government."

"I am of my brother's opinion as to what concerns the nobility," said the Count of Plouernel. "I blame the King strongly for giving the command of two regiments of his guards to ex-Marshals of the Empire, clodhoppers, men of no account, like all these plebeians, hardly scraped clean by the nobility Napoleon covered them with." General Oliver, so far unnoticed by the Count of Plouernel, here moved indignantly, but the Count proceeded: "The King should never have entrusted commands to these barrack-heroes, smelling of the pipe and the bottle, bumpkins whom we must elbow out of our way at the Tuileries, we, old Emigrants, who fought them under the Republic. We sacrificed all for our masters, and they do us the outrage to treat these upstarts as our equals! These specimens, during their Emperor's time, expressed themselves most insultingly toward the house of Bourbon; and to-day they accept services, favors, and commands from the King. It is only to betray him some day; at least that would not be the last word in the renegades' baseness, and they would not even be conscious of their apostasy!"

At this General Oliver rose, pale with anger, and striding roughly up to Plouernel said in a voice of concentrated rage:

"Sir, you will regret, I am convinced, your last words, when you learn that I, Lieutenant General, Count Oliver, have served the Emperor, to whom I owe my rank and title. For I have the honor to be a soldier of fortune, sir. I shall know how to chastise any insolence that may be addressed to me!"

Disdainfully looking General Oliver over from head to foot, the Count of Plouernel made answer: "Well, sir! I, Gaston, Count of Plouernel, second in command in his Majesty's Black Musketeers, have the honor never to have served any but my masters. I followed them into exile, and I returned to France in 1814. You have my opinion of traitors and turn-coats."

"The King has conferred on me the command of a military division, and it pleased him to award me the Cross of St. Louis. Tell me, sir, am I in your eyes because of that command and that decoration a traitor or a renegade? Answer, sir," demanded Oliver.

"Since you ask me, sir, I shall reply in all sincerity – "

At the moment when Plouernel would have finished the sentence, he was interrupted by the hilarious roar of a new personage who had burst into the room laughing fit to split his sides. It was his old friend the Marquis of St. Esteve, that intolerable would-be conspirator, whom the most serious moment could not check in his buffoonery. Powdered white, the Marquis's hair was dressed in 'pigeon-wings'; his little queue bobbed up and down on the collar of his bourgeois' coat with gold epaulets. He wore a court sword, knee breeches, and top boots; he was the epitome of that type of Emigrant dubbed 'Louis XV's tumblers.' On seeing Plouernel he at once ran toward him, clasped him in his arms, and all the while laughing fit to kill, exclaimed:

"Ah, Count! Hold me! I die! Oh, the idea! Ha, ha, ha! This time I shall split of it, surely! Oh, oh, oh! If you knew the funny sto – ry! Ah, the idea! I shall surely choke – let me laugh!"

Plouernel pushed him off, muttering "Devil take the nuisance!"

"Hang the Emigrant!" growled Oliver, on his part. "Interrupting just as I was about to slap that insolent fellow's face!"

"You don't know of it!" ran on the Marquis, continuing to shriek with laughter. "Ha, ha, ha! Bonaparte – has – has – oh! the idea! – has returned – has landed at the gulf – oh! oh! – at the gulf of Juan, near the town of Antibes! If that wouldn't make one split his sides laughing! Hi, hi, hi!"

"Gentlemen," cried an usher rushing in in a fright, and beside himself, "his Excellency has just been summoned to the King in haste by an important unforeseen matter. There is no need waiting – the audiences are off for another day!"

Following him hurriedly out of Blacas's cabinet, came Fouché, rubbing his hands. Glimpsing Desmarais, pale and distracted at the news of Napoleon's landing, he called to him: "If the tyrant does not have you shot on his return, Citizen Count Brutus, my faith, you will have fortune with you this time. Make your will!"

"Such a catastrophe! The designs of God are indeed impenetrable!" exclaimed the Cardinal to Fouché.

"On the contrary, this is the happiest event that could happen under the canopy. You don't see that Bonaparte falls into the little trap I set for him. His return is folly. He will reach Paris without striking a blow, for the Bourbons are execrated. But before a month, all Europe will march against France."

Without waiting for Fouché to finish his speech, the various persons in the hall fled to the door, each a prey to a different fear.

CHAPTER IX

WATERLOO

The Hundred Days were over. They had passed like the lightning in a stormy night. Relying only on his genius and his army, Napoleon had staked upon the turn of a battle his Empire and the independence of the country. This battle, of Waterloo, he lost, in spite of the super-human heroism of his soldiers.

May the name of Napoleon be accursed!

Several days had passed since that great disaster. In the cloth shop of John Lebrenn, in St. Denis Street, under the sign of the 'Sword of Brennus,' the following scene was enacting.

General Oliver, back wounded from the battle of Waterloo, where he had bravely conducted himself, was engaged in conversation with his former master.

"Well, Oliver," Lebrenn was saying to the wounded warrior, "your Bonaparte has led France to her doom. We have lost the frontiers conquered by the Republic. A second time the stranger is in the heart of our country."

"Ah, would that I had remained at Waterloo, like so many others of my companions-in-arms. But death would not take me!"

"I reproach you not, Oliver. You are defeated and unhappy; you have returned to us. Let us draw the curtain over the past."

"How just were the forebodings of your valiant sister! I sought a title of nobility, chivalric orders, and an income. To sustain the Empire I would have shot my parents and friends. When the Restoration took place, I did like the most of the Marshals and generals. In order to preserve my rank, my title, my crosses and my pay, I turned traitor to my past, I served the Bourbons, whom I despised. I would still have retained a fair competency even if, which was almost impossible, I had been able to tear myself away from the attraction of the army. But no, I had become a servile courtier. I had breathed the air of the court, I could live nowhere else. I cried 'Long live the King!' I went to mass, I followed the processions, a wax taper in my hand, I swallowed the insults the Emigrants heaped upon us when they beheld us at court crooking the knee to their princes. Ah, Victoria! Victoria! Shame and anguish have fallen upon me. I betrayed the Republic in Brumaire, I sold myself to the Restoration in 1814, I deserted it during the Hundred Days, and here I am reduced to exile – a just punishment for my apostasies."

"You have at least, Oliver, the conscience to repent that sad past. But you will see how few among the generals and Marshals of the Empire will repent like you the acts whose memory now galls you. Yes, you will yet see the Princes, the Dukes, and the Counts of the Empire, little as the new Restoration will please them, take up again the white cockade as quickly as they threw it down three months ago for the tricolor. Most of the Marshals are gorged with wealth; dignity would be easy for them. But no, they must renounce it for vanities dearer to their pride. Just God! There you have the fruits of Napoleon's maxim 'It is by rattles that men are led.'"

"I see too late the abysses toward which Napoleon was driving France," groaned Oliver.

Martin the painter just then happened in. "Ah, my dear friend," he announced from the threshold, "all hope is lost. Carnot despairs of the situation."

"Nevertheless, the situation is still good," protested Oliver. "Paris, considered as an immense entrenched camp, gives us the disposition of the five bridges across the Seine. It would be possible, by a night march, to move our troops by either bank of the river and wipe out the Prussian army. But, to carry out that plan, the people would have to be armed, which Napoleon does not want. The people in arms would mean revolution and the Republic."

"What Oliver says bears the stamp of reason," remarked Lebrenn.

"Our friends said to Carnot," returned Martin, "'The Emperor will be forced to abdicate, his hopes of empire will be blasted. The allies will not content themselves with sending him back again to Elba; he has everything to fear at their hands. Well, despairing as our position seems, never, if he wished it, will it have been so excellent! He can yet become the savior of France and the admiration of posterity. Let him again transform himself into General Bonaparte, let him put himself at the head of the troops and the armed people, with the battle-cry "Long live the Republic! Long live the Nation!" Then liberty will triumph and France arise, as ever, victorious.'"

"My heart leaps with enthusiasm at hearing such noble language," cried Oliver. "Yes, yes, Long live the Republic! No more monarchs! Neither Kings nor masters!"

"'The Emperor is resolved to abdicate,' replied Carnot to us," Martin continued. "'He knows well enough that he has only to don the red bonnet and cry To arms! for the whole people to rise. But he does not desire a new revolution, he does not want to go outside the law. He has no longer any authority. The Chamber of Deputies has seized the executive power, and is treating with the allies. The Emperor's part is played, he can do nothing more for France. Without his concurrence, I consider it futile to engage upon a struggle.' Such was the response of Carnot."

Castillon and Duchemin were the next to come into the cloth shop. The first, in his working clothes, still had on his leather apron, blackened by smoke from the forge. Duchemin, whose moustache had grown quite grey in the interim, wore a veteran's uniform. He had been placed in that corps after the Russian campaign, in which he served as quartermaster in the artillery of the Imperial Guard.

"Well, my friends, what news from the suburbs?" asked Lebrenn.

"In St. Antoine they are demanding arms to run to the defense of the barrier of La Villette, which they say is already threatened by the Prussians. 'Guns! Your Emperor will never give them to you!' I told them," answered Castillon. And catching sight of General Oliver, he gazed at him a moment open-mouthed and concluded: "Well, I am not blind! There is Oliver! What a strange encounter!"

"It is indeed Oliver, our old apprentice," said Lebrenn, smiling.

"Ah, it is really you, my fine fellow!" returned Castillon. "Well, well! It seems you have become a general. Well, that is nothing wrong, for you are a brave one. But I also learned – and this, on my faith, would make a hen smile – I also read that you had become a Count! Is it possible! You, a Count! an ex-ragamuffin who used to ply the bellows for our forge, and to whom I taught the song of those fine days: 'Ah ça ira, ça ira, to the lamp-post with the aristocrats!'"

Instead this time of getting angry, Oliver smiled sadly and extended his hand to Castillon, saying, "Amuse yourself at my expense, my old Castillon; it is your right. Your quips are merited, I confess my wrongs. But be indulgent toward your old comrade. To-day, I wish to fight for the Republic."

"Heaven be thanked! You have sung me an air there that has brought the tears to my eyes," exclaimed Castillon with emotion as he eagerly pressed the general's hand.

Duchemin smiled genially and gave the military salute. "Present, general," he said. "Still another of the Army of the Rhine and Moselle. You do not recall me at the passage of the Beresina?"

"Well! Well!" replied Oliver warmly. "Well do I remember you, and Carmagnole, your sweetheart of a spit-fire."

"Here is an ex-member of the battalion of Paris Volunteers – a tried patriot, and a republican of the old school," raid Castillon, indicating to General Oliver Duresnel, who just then entered.

"Ah, my friend," said John Lebrenn to the new arrival, "if you do not bring me better news than Martin has just given us, our reunion to-day will lack its flavor. The masses lie indifferent."

"Consummatum est!" Duresnel sighed by way of answer. "It is finished. I have just left the Chamber of Deputies; the Emperor has issued his abdication, and is preparing, they say, to set out for his residence of Malmaison, where he will remain while the allies settle upon his fate."

"And what news of the army?"

"The Prince of Eckmuehl, who commands the troops united under the walls of Paris, assembled his generals this morning, and all or nearly all have gone over to the Bourbon government. No more hope for it; we must endure the ignominy of a second Restoration."

"In which case, friend John, what shall we do? Without arms, without headship, without leaders, the people can do nothing," sighed Castillon.

"The old sans-culottes of the St. Antoine suburb ask nothing better than to go to the front. In desperation for the cause, they were to march to-day in mass to the Elysian Fields, in the hope that Napoleon would yield to the acclamations of the populace," commented Duchemin.

"I am on guard at the Elysian Fields at six o'clock!" exclaimed John Lebrenn, looking at his watch. "Like an old National Guard, I must to my post. Adieu, friends!" And he continued to Oliver, "Come to supper this evening with us and with our old comrades here. We shall take our adieus of the banished soldier, and before we part, Oliver, we will drain a last bumper of wine to the re-birth of the Republic. Neither Kings nor masters! The Commune, the Federation, and the Red Flag!"

"Till this evening, then," replied Oliver. "Long live the Republic! War upon Kings! Down with the Bourbons!"

CHAPTER X

DEPOSITION

Although it was mid-June, the day touched its close towards eight o'clock in the evening. The shadows of night were already mingling with the thick shade of the Elysian Garden, where Napoleon dismounted on his return from Waterloo. A compact mass of people filled Marigny Alley, one of whose sides was formed by the terrace of the palace, on which trees and verdure grew in profusion.

The throng was composed almost to a man of artisans or federated troops of the suburbs. From time to time the buzzing of the vast multitude was dominated by the cry from thousands of throats – "Down with the Bourbons!" – "Down with the foreigners!" – "Down with the traitors!" – "Arms!" – "To the front!" – "Long live the Emperor!"