In the Name of Liberty: A Story of the Terror

She pressed her hands to her eyes to steady herself.

"And how long will it last?" she said solemnly, her voice reverberating in the hollow of the silent hall. "Three months, Barabant? And then—"

"For life—forever!"

Nicole shook her head incredulously, but her breast rose in long, tumultuous breaths, trembling with the memory of the word.

He mounted the stairs, turned and held out his hand to her. She dared not look at him, for victory was in his eyes.

"Nicole, Nicole!"

Then she looked at him, her hands to her throat, fallen back against the wall. He smiled to her, waiting confidently. Up the dark ascent was love, mystery, anguish, jealousy, doubt,—but always love.

She moved a step toward him, fascinated and drawn on, until their fingers touched. Then suddenly she shrank away, and with a cry, spreading out her hands to screen him from her sight, she fled. Only the instinct had survived, but the instinct had conquered.

XI
THE MAN WITH THE LANTERN

Then between Nicole and Barabant began one of those subtle conflicts of the sexes in which the one who loves the more unselfishly is foredoomed to defeat. Until the night of the execution Nicole had combated the very thought of love. Her flight at the staircase was the last spark of resistance. She had drunk of the cup, the poison was in her veins. The next morning she resigned herself to the bitter, determined, cost what it might, to have her hour of happiness.

She gave up the struggle against herself, but began another to safeguard her happiness. Her intuitions told her to resist—that the longer he was compelled to woo, the more he would prize her. In her uneasy doubts she had recourse to coquetry, but that coquetry which is unselfish and pathetic, and is nothing but the instinct of self-preservation.

To Barabant, who neither knew the depth of her longings, nor could have understood them had he known, the hesitation and delays of Nicole were incomprehensible. Resolved to meet her with like tactics, he assumed toward her the attitude of a comrade, avoiding all expression of sentiment.

Nicole readily fathomed the artifice. She countered by an equal show of indifference, leaving him always after a moment's conversation. Barabant retaliated by devoting himself anew to Louison.

The manœuver brought Nicole back. It was the one move she had not foreseen. It threw her into a panic of jealousy. Not that she did not understand his motive, but she feared, from his being thrown with Louison, results of which he had no thought. She admitted her mistake and relinquished the struggle. She returned uneasily to him, showing him from time to time, by a word or gesture, that he had only to ask. Barabant, blind to the extent of the change, though instinctively perceiving its import, redoubled his attentions to Louison; treating Nicole always as a comrade, hailing her joyfully, gay and charming in her company, but saying never a word of what she now impatiently sought.

Meanwhile events had been hurrying on the inevitable conflict between the Commune and the Convention. On the 25th of August the news of the treacherous surrender of Longwy to the Prussian army ran through the arteries of Paris as an inflaming poison. The Nation rose from the fall in the fury of its anger and wounded pride. From the windows of the Hôtel de Ville an immense banner rolled its folds over the city, bearing the inspiring inscription:

"The Fatherland is in danger!"

From all sides recruits rushed in to swell the legions of defense. The city, as though the enemy were already at its gates, converted itself into a camp, established posts and sentries, while at all hours the streets shook under the footfall of passing patrols. Searching parties ran from house to house, filling the prisons with suspected aristocrats.

The Convention, urged to abolish the monarchy and establish the Republic, hesitated. Only the Commune was resolute, vociferous, and implacable, shouting for the massacre of the traitors at home before marching against those abroad.

Lafayette deserting, Verdun rumored betrayed, traitors everywhere,—in the army of Brunswick, in the Assembly, in Paris,—nothing but a great example could strike terror in the hearts of aristocrats at home and abroad. What that example was, so clamorously demanded, few doubted who beheld the frenzied crowds that infested the gates of the prisons, gloating over the list of prisoners there exposed.

In the midst of these alarms, to the dismay of Goursac, Javogues took up his residence in the landing below them. Shortly after, Nicole reported another disquieting fact: la Mère Corniche had closed her cellar, refusing admission to all. Occasionally Barabant saw Javogues running the streets at the head of searching parties, in a whirlwind of disheveled forms and rushing torches, while the room of the Marseillais was filled with uncouth figures in secret gathering, of whose character Barabant, knowing the temperament of Javogues, had no doubt.

On the night of the 1st of September Barabant, who had enrolled for the defense of the city, began his patrol at the junction of the Rue St. Antoine and the great, gloomy square where had stood the fortress of the Bastille. The mass of citizens, foreseeing the massacre on the morrow, had retired early, barring the doors, leaving the streets to be swept by restless bands of the lawless: vultures stirred up by the prospect of carrion.

The hours lagged, and the tramp of his step seemed endless to Barabant. His reflections were bitter; for him, the Girondin, it was not simply the massacre of aristocrats, but the fall of his party, that he apprehended.

At twelve Nicole was to join him for the remaining hour. There was still three quarters of an hour before she would come. The increasing sound of voices restored him to the consciousness of his trust.

Soon a party of five emerged, preceded by a small muffled figure gliding with feverish steps ahead, as a flame devours its path. Barabant, following them on his beat, strove to recall the familiar stride of the leader. The patrol approaching him from the opposite direction cried:

"Is it you, Citoyen Sentry?"

The figure advancing assumed human shape.

"Hé, you are alone to-night?"

"Until twelve."

"You are lucky." He shifted his musket and laughed. "Mine leaves me alone to-night. We had a bit of a quarrel. I had to break a bottle over her head. And now, the devil take it! I have to stand guard alone." He added angrily: "That's the way with women."

"One moment, citoyen. You saw the party pass just now?"

"Aye. Did you not recognize him?"

"Who?"

"Some one who'll be busy to-night,—the Citoyen Marat." He raised his voice cheerily and sang:

"By to-morrow night there'll be no need of sentries!" he broke off. "It's long, eh, when there's no one to keep you company? The devil take the woman!" He shouldered his musket. "Citoyen, Salut et Fraternité."

He turned on his heel and joined the darkness, while back came the unmusical voice:

The rest lost itself faintly among distant roofs.

Barabant, recommencing his tedious pacing, returned to the Rue St. Antoine, where the sound of light footsteps warned him of the approach of a woman or a child.

"Can it be Nicole?" he thought hopefully, but his spirits fell as the woman came on doubtfully in a wavering line.

"Good evening, citoyenne," he said gallantly. "There are not many of your sex abroad to-night, and alone."

The woman gave the countersign, "The 10th of August."

Barabant, seeing that she was not inclined to enter into a conversation, cried:

"Take pity on the patriot, citoyenne. The hours are dull."

But the woman, with only a slight shake of her head, passed quickly on. Barabant, thus repulsed, grumbled to himself:

"She is neither young nor pretty or she would have stopped." But remembering the sentry he had left, he continued: "Perhaps it is the fair one with the broken head. If it is, she doesn't seem any too eager. No, she's turned away."

Suddenly he drew himself up with an exclamation. He saw the woman halt as with the twinkle of a lantern the figure of a man joined her, while to his astonishment she drew back in evident shrinking from her new companion.

Barabant, who had followed this scene with such intentness as to have become unaware of his surroundings, suddenly bounded back at the touch of a hand on his shoulder.

"What vigilance, Citoyen Barabant! What a model sentry!"

It was Louison who had stolen on him silently, and now stood mocking him. To Barabant the apparition was so in keeping with the strange impression which the girl had made on him that he was too startled to answer immediately.

"Why are you always afraid of me?" Louison said impatiently. "It isn't pleasant to inspire terror."

Barabant excused himself, recounting the scene he had just witnessed; but Louison, not to be put off, returned to her question. "So I inspire you with fear?"

"The expression is exaggerated," Barabant returned evasively.

"Come, frankly, there is something about me that has repelled you?" She continued seeking the answer herself. "Was it the day we went to the flower-market and I pretended anger? That was but play." Her eyes sought his face, as though she could find its expression despite the darkness. All at once she said, "It was at the guillotine?"

"That's true."

"I knew it; but why? I don't understand," she said almost angrily. "What is there about me that gives such an impression? I am not conscious of it."

"First, answer me this," Barabant said, "and frankly. At an execution you have no feeling of pity or horror, have you?"

"No," she answered thoughtfully. "Why?"

"Because it is too evident."

"How do I seem?" she said quickly.

"You seem utterly indifferent to any human suffering."

"That is true," she said slowly.

"It is not only that," Barabant continued, "but—how shall I say it? There seemed to be almost a fascination to you in the spectacle that ordinarily sickens the human heart."

"What!" the girl exclaimed, astonished, "are you not curious to see how a man can die?"

"Curious, yes; but the spectacle is disagreeable to me."

"Why? What is more ordinary and commonplace than death?"

Barabant, in despair of making her understand, remained silent.

"How curious! And when I am at an execution I look different from this?"

"Yes."

"I seem—?"

"Unhuman."

She tossed her head in displeasure and said sharply:

"I do not like that."

"I am frank."

Louison remained thoughtfully silent, perturbed and frowning. Then lifting her head, she said gaily, in quite a different manner:

"Very well, then; I shall take care how you see me in future."

She turned in the direction of the Bastille, and fastening her glance upon the ring of light, said:

"It seems to be going away. Perhaps we shall see the woman now."

"She comes faster this time," Barabant said as the sound of footsteps warned them of her approach.

The next moment a bundle of draperies passed them as a ship scudding before a storm. Louison, watching the woman, closed her hand over Barabant's wrist, allowing an exclamation to escape her. Then, springing forward, she cried:

"Eh, mother! Wait a moment!"

The fleeting figure turned as though stung, then dashed wildly into the darkness. Louison, with a bound, sprang after her, but suddenly clapping her hand to her forehead, turned and broke past Barabant, who heard only, as she shot on toward the Bastille, the words:

"The man with the lantern!"

XII
THE MASSACRE OF THE PRISONS

The next morning Nicole and Geneviève, having breakfasted at noon near the Temple, where the throng collected daily to insult the ears of the royal family, returned slowly toward the Tuileries through the hushed and apprehensive city.

Toward three o'clock the long-awaited tocsin sounded from the other side of the river, then the chance burst of a musket and the assembling roll of drums. But this time, in contrast to the night of the 9th of August, there came no spontaneous outpouring into the streets. As the tocsin continued to disturb the air with its violent voice, timid faces appeared at the windows, searching with anxious glances the streets, the opposite walls, in doubt of their neighbors; even the air, as though to discover the reason of the uproar.

The streets were emptied; small groups wavered in the entrances, waiting for the first rumors to guide them. As the two girls hesitated, a woman appeared, running toward them, dragging a child at either side. From window and doorway a clamor of questions arose, while many, running into the street, surrounded her and sought to stop her progress. But the woman, resisting all entreaties, cleft the crowd and disappeared, repeating frantically:

"They are massacring the prisoners!"

The street grew noisy with exclamation and conjecture, while those above, in the windows, screamed down for the rumors that flew from lip to lip. A little later another messenger arrived,—a waif of the slums, to whom the marks of poverty and vice had given the semblance of an incongruous manhood. The boy came romping down the street, bare-legged, disheveled, brandishing a knife. At times he flung up his hands and screamed in childish treble:

"To the Abbaye, citoyens, to the Abbaye! The tyrants are being exterminated. The justice of the people is beginning! To the Abbaye! To the Abbaye!"

Behind the frenzied boy there fell a silence, and the crowd, in a sudden, senseless panic, retreated indoors.

"The Abbaye!" Nicole cried in consternation. "And Dossonville! We must hurry there."

A baker's wife, seeing them hastening on, cried:

"Are you going to the Abbaye, citoyennes? Is there any danger?"

"Not for us."

"Wait, I'll join you."

A cobbler made a fourth, then two apprentices from a cloth-merchant attached themselves, then a fishwife and a tow-headed newsboy. As they crossed the Seine the crowd increased, while horrid figures of depravity and suffering, vermin of Paris, broke past them. Cutlasses and pikes appeared, and from the panting throng shouts burst out:

"Death to the traitors!"

"Death to the betrayers of Longwy!"

"Death to all aristocrats!"

"Death to priests!"

At the Abbaye they found the sanguinary remnants of the prisoners who, transferred from the Conciergerie, had been swept from the carts into the maw of the mob at the very gates that opened to shelter them. On the prison itself there had been as yet no attack. The mob, seeking vengeance on the priests, had swept on to the convent of Les Carmes.

At the sight of the strewn corpses and the blood-bespattered pavements the baker's wife halted, crying:

"I've seen enough; I'm going back."

The cobbler hesitated, listening across the houses to the faint cries of the mob in the Rue Vaugirard. The apprentices sprang forward, while the newsboy exclaimed impudently:

"Come on, comrades, we must see what's doing!"

Nicole, who had come solely to assure herself of Dossonville's safety, likewise recoiling before the spectacle of butchery, was yet so impelled by the subtle, morbid fascination which such scenes exercise over the human mind, that without a thought she hastened on. The fishwife and the cobbler joined them; even the woman who had already started to retreat acceded to the common curiosity and returned, protesting:

"It's too horrible! Turn back."

"After all," the cobbler answered, "that's what the aristocrats would like to do to us!"

"Aye, citoyen, you've hit it right!"

"And the women?"

"They'll leave them alone."

"We'll see."

About the convent a loose throng was churning, bristling with pikes and crudely fashioned spears.

"Keep together," the cobbler cried, "and bear toward the wall!"

By this manœuver they penetrated to the front, where, their band disintegrating, Geneviève and Nicole succeeded in reaching a position at a grill in the wall.

In the garden, not thirty feet away, a black mass dotted with the white of human faces was huddled together, shrinking from the gates and apertures that swarmed with axes, scythes, swords, and barbarous faces more pitiless than the steel.

At Nicole's side a mason extended his cutlass toward the priests, bellowing:

"Eh, you fat fellow over there! Wait till they let us in! I'll carve you!"

Another shouted:

"I choose to shave the tall one; I'll make a true monk of him!"

The priests encouraged one another; some knelt, others lifted their arms, their voices, and their eyes serenely above. A few blanched before the approach of martyrdom, while others in whom youth's natural impulse to life was strong calculated the surroundings and weighed the desperate chances of escape.

All at once there was an upheaval in the herd of the besieged, a swaying toward the walls, and a sudden parting that opened a path to the chapel beyond, where a swarm of the populace, who had broken through, was spreading over the steps. From the crowd without a wild shout went up; those at the locked gates, stretching their arms through, strove to prod the victims with their pikes.

On the steps, face to face with their prey, the new assailants hesitated, seeking some pretext before striking. But one, more impatient than the rest, burst from the back and fired point-blank into the herd. The impulse once given, the assassins fell upon their victims, who on their knees welcomed the end.

Forty or fifty of the younger members, revolting at such surrender to death, bounded away to scale the farther walls. A very few passed over and escaped to outer courts before the bandits flung themselves on the fleeing. Then everywhere could be seen bodies clutching at the brim of the wall, tumbling and pitching backward in the horror of the overtaking fate. Arms that grasped liberty suddenly contracted in the convulsions of despair; faces that already looked on life appeared a moment above the wall and fell back with the sharp summons to death.

"Shall we go?" cried Nicole, suffocated.

"Yes."

But they could not move. The scene enchained them.

The hunt consummated, the hunters flung themselves on the unresisting, and as though to stifle the smallest spark of pity, redoubled their fury and their cries.

In front of the two girls a Marseillais felled a priest with two strokes across the scalp, and drove his pike into the stomach with such ferocity that the point refused to move. The assassin, in rage jumping on the lifeless body, stamped and tugged, cursing the resistance of the corpse which sought to retain the weapon that had struck it down. Everywhere the butchers, not content with the death-dealing blow, flung themselves on the lifeless bodies, piercing them with infuriated stabs, as though the last insult was this mutilation of the dead.

Finally, despairing of satisfying their vengeance on this inert mass, the leaders forced those who remained into the church, some who still breathed being borne on the arms of those who but deferred their murder. Two by two they were led out and butchered.

From this moment the massacre, in its clock-like procession, abated its fury. The executioners themselves, exhausted and listless, struck mechanically.

The crowd, grumbling at the monotony, moved away. Nicole and Geneviève found themselves in the street, packed in the press, beside their late companions. The crowd, animated by the lust of curiosity, became that most fearful of the manifestations of humanity—a mob.

Geneviève and Nicole, no longer individuals, but atoms, became cold, pitiless, maddened with sensations, hungry for new; invaded by a fury which they did not understand, an anger and a hatred of which they knew not the cause.

Some one cried:

"On to St. Firmin. There are eighty priests there!" A hundred voices took up the cry, and the mass, set in motion, rolled toward the prison.

The fishwife, with streaming hair, bellowed:

"Cut the throats of every one. No priest must escape!"

Farther on in the press of bodies, Nicole saw the two apprentices, transformed with the frenzy.

The cobbler had armed himself with some weapon; even the tow-headed newsboy near them screamed hysterically:

"À la mort! À la mort!"

"I can go no farther!" Nicole protested.

"Yes, yes," Geneviève cried, seizing her arms and impelling her, but half resisting, into the rush of the multitude. "We must see it! We must see everything!"

She was a child no longer, but a savage akin in fury to the beast enraged by the red flash of blood.

At St. Firmin's the vanguard broke into the prison. The night was filled with shrieks of terror and of furious exultation. Body after body, dead or dying, was hurled from the window, to be pounced upon below and torn to pieces. More than eighty lay quivering in mounds.

Then at last the mob, by that strange organization by which it moves without commands, turned face and, sparkling with torches, inundated the narrow street that led down to the Boulevard St. Germain, and returned to the prison of the Abbaye. It was now deep into the night, and for hours a semblance of a trial had been going on within the court. The mob, thus balked by the routine of justice, softened and dissipated into a throng of spectators, bewildered and recovering slowly from their delirium.

Nicole, fearing for Dossonville, pressed forward for a nearer view. About the gates were a score of executioners, so saturated with blood that at first glance the butchers seemed more like the butchered. Eight or ten waited in two rows the arrival of the new victim. As many more leaned wearily against the wall with nodding heads. One stooped to light fresh torches.

Suddenly the gates disclosed to Nicole the flaring courtyard and the wild figure of a prisoner propelled to destruction by two guards. At first he marched to his death with firm tread; but all at once, with a horrid heave of his breast, he stretched out his hands before his face to hide the hideous doom. Shoved forward, his arms raised in the instinct of self-preservation, he suffered untold tortures: his arms, hacked to spouting stumps, received a dozen gashes, while the revolting body sought to strike back against the sting, until the last blow silenced the shriek on shriek that called on merciful death.

Two men dragged aside the half-naked corpse and flung it on the mound of bodies. At the shock of the new arrival there was a sudden settling and shifting in this inert mass, a quivering adjustment that gave the ghastly semblance of life, as though a hideous welcome of the dead to the dead. Geneviève, with throbbing pulses and dilated nostrils, shuddered and turned to Nicole. She was so rigid, so ghastly with the horror, that Geneviève seized her arm.

"Ah! ah! ah!"

At her clutch Nicole screamed in mortal dread, then burst into hysterical weeping. Geneviève put her arm around her and drew her away, through the morbid crowd, seeing dimly the baker's wife pressing feverishly forward to seize their place. Then Nicole, covering her eyes, began to scream:

"Take me away, away, away!"

But at every tenth step she stopped and struggled to go back, her glance seeking the caldron. The third time, to her horror, the gates opened once more, and, heavily borne between two guards, she saw the figure of Dossonville.

XIII
DOSSONVILLE IN PERIL

"The Citoyen Dossonville to the bar! The Citoyen Dos-son-ville!"

The call, resounding along the stone corridors, reached the prisoners huddled in the main hall of the Abbaye.

"The Citoyen Dos-son-ville!"

A turnkey under a snarling torch penetrated the group, drawing one after another to him with rough hand.

"The Citoyen Dossonville! I summon all on peril of their lives to discover to me the Citoyen Dossonville!"

Out of the mass extended a hand with long, accusing forefinger, and a voice exclaimed:

"Over there."

The hand was snatched back, while a fomenting in the crowd showed where the informer was burying himself from recognition.

The turnkey stopped before a figure stretched in sleep, and incredulously thrust his torch into the face. But the sleeper continued to inhale long breaths methodically, until, convinced of the genuineness of the sleep, the turnkey proceeded to wake him with a vigorous thrust of his foot.

Dossonville started to a sitting position, opening his eyes on the suspicious visage above him and the background of fellow-prisoners who, afraid to show too much interest, held themselves at a distance and followed from the corners of their eyes.

"What do you want with me?"

"Are you the Citoyen Dossonville?"

"I am."

"The Nation summons you to appear before the bar of the popular justice!"

"At eleven o'clock at night? The justice of the people never sleeps, then?"

"Be quick!"

Dossonville lifted himself to an upright position, restoring his pillow to its rightful function of cloak.

"I will not bother about my other possessions now," he cried sarcastically. "Citoyennes and citoyens, to the pleasure of seeing you again, or not, as you prefer. Now for the justice of the people!"

Under the lightness of his manner, his mind worked with the desperation of an animal at bay. Of what he was approaching he knew nothing. Yet as he advanced along the reverberant corridors, his mind assembled a dozen stratagems to meet either a whirlwind of assassins or the travesty of a trial. His eye, meanwhile alert for every detail, enveloped each portion of the journey at a glance, running the walls as a wild animal tracks his cage.

Gradually his waiting ear distinguished a muffled hum, a buzz of voices, increasing in volume until out of it escaped the piercing shriek of a woman.

The next moment there burst upon his hearing a hundred cries,—shrieks of terror, shouts of vengeance, cries of pity, commands and groans, drunken and maddened notes,—sharp to the ear, rushing over his mind in a storm of confusion. The gate opened and the volume smote him with the fury of a blast.

He stood in the courtyard, blinking at strange forms and the crossing and recrossing of torches, striving to collect his wits. Two guards had seized him, presenting the points of their reddened swords to his breast.

His eye went to the center of the courtyard, to a table flanked by torches, littered with papers, bottles, and the glint of steel; behind which, installed as judge, Dossonville recognized the huissier Maillard. A score of Marseillais, stained with blood, reeling from sleep or drunkenness, churned about this improvised tribunal, interrupting with their revilings the testimony of the accused, or swaggered back and forth through the gate that led to the mob. Some clustered in corners to drink from the bottles that a wine-merchant constantly renewed; others nonchalantly lighted pipes, stretched their arms and yawned. In the lull between executions Dossonville heard a snore. Amid this carnage one man, stretched on a bench, was unconcernedly asleep.

"There's a man who's not disturbed by trifles," he muttered.

At the slight shift he made, one of his guards pricked him with his sword, crying angrily:

"Move again, and I'll cut you to ribbons!"

"I am become a statue," Dossonville answered coolly. "Only, do not bear too hard. I am ticklish."

Ahead of him, a priest without hope told his beads; while before the tribunal was a man so bowed with years that he had to be supported on either side.

All at once, seeking in the crowd, Dossonville perceived Javogues.

"Aïe! aïe!" he mumbled uneasily at the sight of that gloating face. "What ferocity! He is bound to make sure of me. The animal!"

He turned stoically from the Marseillais to the judges, where, to his amazement, he perceived a movement of clemency toward the accused. Suddenly the voice of Maillard appealed to the crowd:

"Citoyens, whatever the condition or the crimes of this feeble plaything of time, I declare to you that it is unworthy of the Republic to pursue here its vengeance! When nature, for eighty years, has spared one from peril of sickness, shock of accident, and the din of battles, man cannot show himself more pitiless than nature. Citoyens, I demand the handful of years for this venerable man."

An approving murmur saluted this oratorical appeal, broken by the strident voice of Javogues:

"Traitors have no age. If he is an aristocrat, let him die!"

Maillard, encouraged by the cries of dissent, extended his arm over the broken figure and said impressively:

"Whatever this man has been, exists no more. The Republic can take no vengeance here, for it can deprive this man of nothing. Citoyens, let him be acquitted."

"Well said."

"He speaks well."

"Free him!"

"Bravo. Free him!"

The acquitted man, aware of what had happened, was led away by the guards. The priest was put in his place, Dossonville moving nearer.

But now the executioners without the gates, growing impatient, smote the air with their cries:

"More victims!"

"Hurry up!"

"No ceremony with the aristocrat!"

"Hurry up! More! More!"

"Give us more! We want more!"

"Maillard, we are thirsty!"

The judge, addressing the quiet victim, proceeded methodically:

"Jean Marie Latour?"

"I am he."

"Called Brother Francis?"

"Yes."

"Priest?"

"Yes."

"You refused the oath of allegiance to the Nation?"

"I did."

At this a howl more of triumph than of anger burst from the listeners, and the judge, recognizing the hopelessness of the case, said shortly:

"To La Force."

Three men seized him and bore him, unresisting, to the shambles, while two more propelled Dossonville roughly forward.

Hardly was he in position when three piercing shrieks announced the death of the priest. Dossonville, shuddering despite his will, heard a voice cry boisterously:

"Eh, what a squeal the animal gave!"

The guards fell back, guarding his retreat, while Dossonville, disdaining to notice, felt rather than saw the Marseillais take his position at his side.

"Armand Roger Dossonville?"

"The same."

"Lieutenant in the National Guard?"

"Yes."

"You are accused of being in the Tuileries on the tenth day of August and of firing upon the Nation."

"Who accuses me?"

"I accuse you."

"And I."

Dossonville turned, met the angry eyes of Javogues, and seeking the second speaker, recognized one of those who had arrested him. He turned to the tribunal.

"The witnesses are mistaken. I was not at the Tuileries."

His accusers burst into a roar of denunciation, but Maillard, quelling them, said quietly:

"That should not be difficult to prove. With whom were you on the tenth day of August?"

Dossonville nodded his head in assent. Then, seeing the trap into which he was being led, he asked:

"First, does not that register relate that on my arrest I claimed an alibi with the Citoyen Marat and later renounced it at this prison, giving as a reason that I used it as a protection to insure my reaching prison and a trial?"

Javogues broke in furiously:

"Do not listen to him! He prepares some new lie!" Then grasping Dossonville by the collar, he shook his fist in his face. "I swear that if he is acquitted, I myself will cut his throat."

"The Citoyen Javogues," Dossonville continued, without changing the level of his voice, "unfortunately for me, from the day we met has hated me with an obstinate hatred. I adopted the subterfuge only because I believed that otherwise I never could have reached the prison alive. The proof is, I denounced it immediately and explained my reasons. You will find it there. I will now tell you with whom I passed the day."

He waited a moment for quiet, Javogues thundering:

"He lies! He lies! He lies!"

"The man whose testimony I invoke is known to you, Citoyen Maillard. Of his patriotism there can be no question. Unfortunately, he left immediately after for the Army of the Rhone. From ten o'clock of the night of August 9th until ten o'clock of the morning of August 10th I was in the house of the Citoyen Héron."

There was a movement of stupefaction in the assemblage, even Javogues recoiling. But the first words of Maillard fell upon the ears of Dossonville as the sudden fall of a sword.

"The Citoyen Héron did not leave for the frontier. Let the Citoyen Héron be roused and corroborate the accused!"

Two or three threw themselves upon the sleeper to bring him forward. The mind of Dossonville, thus faced with certain defeat, did not give a second to despair, but, with the last instinctive grasping for life, gathered for a supreme effort.

"It is unnecessary," he cried hurriedly. "That night I performed secret services to the Nation that cannot be made public. But my life is at stake; I demand Santerre. Santerre will vouch for me."

But what he said was lost in the chorus:

"Spy!"

"Liar!"

"Traitor!"

"Liar! Liar!"

"Santerre now!"

"Robespierre next!"

"He was nursing Danton, perhaps!"

Dossonville stretched out his hand appealingly, but recognizing, himself, the impossibility of his position, he changed the gesture into one of command, and looking Maillard calmly in the face, said:

"Well, hurry it up then!"

"To La Force!"

Dossonville, wheeling to meet his escorts, found himself face to face with Javogues.

"Ah, traitor," the Marseillais cried, planting himself in his path with folded arms, "have I caught you at last?"

With a sneer, he turned contemptuously on his heel, while Dossonville, seized by his two guards, began the fatal journey. Already from the gates savage faces peered in expectation, while from the courtyard cries of warning arose:

"Another! Another!"

"Make ready, comrades!"

"A tall one this time!"

"Make ready!"

Half-way to the gate, Dossonville stumbled and went down, sprawling. Instantly he was up, but catching at the arms of his guards, who, trying to shake him off, cried:

"Let go, there, or I'll stab you."

"Citoyen," answered Dossonville with an exclamation of pain—"Citoyen, I have turned my ankle. Support me!"

"Come, come, no nonsense!"

"Citoyen, it is because I do not wish to appear to shrink. Remember that I am a Frenchman; I desire only to die bravely. Give me your support."

"Give it to him!" growled the other.

"Citoyen, I thank you; unfortunately, we shall not meet again."

The one who had spoken continued gruffly:

"When you pass through the gate keep your hands behind your back; you'll suffer less."

"Thanks again."

The next moment the door of the human furnace flung open upon his eyes the horrid spectacle of dead and living: of the living more horrible than the dead.

"One step more!"

The butchers, but five deep, seeing a man borne to them by their comrades, relaxed their tension; those farthest away even lowering their dripping blades.

"There, citoyens, steady me one moment."

With a sudden powerful lunge Dossonville threw the two guards back and leaped headlong into the gauntlet, pierced it, bounded across the open, and dove headlong into the friendly crowd, disappearing like an enormous fish, with only an eddy in the crowd to show his passage.

XIV
GOURSAC AS ACCUSER

For two days, while the massacre ran its course, Paris, in terror of a few hundred assassins, was silent and empty. Bands of marauders scoured the streets, robbing and pillaging under pretext of the right of search. No shops were opened, all industry was suspended, while the law-abiding occupied themselves with fortifying their doors against immediate assault.

Nicole, broken with the horror of her experience, remained in her room, in utter collapse. Barabant, who likewise was ignorant of the escape of Dossonville, sick at heart, passed the day in the room of Goursac, mourning the fall of the Revolution of Ideas. Louison, alone of all the court, ventured out, bringing back such tales of the ferocity of Javogues that Goursac in his anger vowed that he would strike him down. The day was pervaded with the stillness of night. Across the roof arrived the faint traveling cries of victims; beyond that, the air was empty.

After three days of butchery, came the reaction. The assassins, after slaughtering indiscriminately women, children, old men, priests, forgers, and other criminals, blinded with lust of blood, hurled themselves on La Correction, where the children of the people were confined, maltreated and covered with vermin. Thirty-three were led out and put to death.

Then at last Paris revolted. The Commune, itself horrified, rose up and ended the slaughter. On all sides the nursed wrath of the people exploded in cries of vengeance, as they thronged to the section-halls with angry denunciations and demands for prosecution.

After two days of fever and stupor, haunted by visions of the mocking face of Louison and of Barabant, Nicole made an effort, and rising from her bed, set out for the section-hall in the company of Geneviève. When they had entered the hot, choked hall and had taken seats, they found Goursac at the tribune stirring the assembly with pictures of the massacre of women and children. The audience, relieved of its personal fear, vented its anger in wild cries for vengeance. Goursac, having demanded the arrest and condemnation of the Terrorists, descended.

Across the boisterous hall Nicole beheld, with a sudden thrill, Barabant springing impetuously to take his place. But as he reached the tribune and turned to address the crowd, her eyes, which had followed his every movement, were distracted by a violent interruption at the entrance. A cry of indignant anger exploded from the crowd, a cry of despair from Geneviève, whose fingers buried themselves in Nicole's arm; and Nicole, seeking through the overheated, clamorous atmosphere, beheld, flanked by two companions, the wild figure of Javogues.

The crowd, taken unawares, remained vacillating; while the Marseillais, confident of his reception, advanced, and lifting his hideous arms, shouted:

"Citoyens, behold the blood of traitors and rejoice!"

No answering shout was returned.

"Citoyens, France has been purged of its tyrants!"

Nicole, shrinking from the horror of the Marseillais, was yet fascinated by his scornful courage.

For a moment the individual dominated the mass, as yet divided, awaiting the moment that should produce its leader. From somewhere in the back came the answer:

"And La Correction? Is the blood of children also on your arms?"

At this solemn denunciation, Javogues, for the first time realizing his danger, drew back a step, seeking the speaker in the craning of the crowd.

"Butcher! look this way! It is I—the Citoyen Goursac—who challenge you."

With a sweep of his arms, Goursac freed himself and began a zigzag descent down the benches toward his enemy, pausing at every step to cry:

"Butcher! Assassin! Cutthroat!"

Javogues, watching his approach, was at first too astounded to gather his senses; but when Goursac, piercing the last rows, emerged with accusing finger, Javogues advanced a step and closed a hand over his knife.

The mass, watching every motion of these two men, with one movement of its hundred arms loosened its weapons. The action unified it. It became an organism, hostile, menacing, and alert for the first outburst.

Goursac, gathering anger as he advanced, cried:

"Assassin of children! butcher of women! murderer! cutthroat! do you dare to show yourself in this assembly?"

Javogues's answer was lost in the clamor. From all quarters arrived the accusing question:

"La Correction? La Correction?"

"I was not at La Correction!" Javogues thundered above the tumult. "There is no blood of children on these arms."

"And of women?" Goursac caught up. "If you say those arms have not been stained with the blood of women, I tell you, you lie!"

Javogues snatched up his cutlass, but, changing his tactics, appealed to the assembly:

"Hear me!"

From all sides they cried angrily:

"No! no!"

"I demand the right of speech."

"No! no!"

"Hear him!" Barabant cried from the tribune. "Condemn no man without hearing him."

Nicole, with a swift premonition of an overhanging vengeance, started to cry:

"No, Barabant, no!"

But Geneviève, entwining her arms about her, besought her, crying:

"Mercy, Nicole, mercy! I love him!"

At points in the crowd others caught up Barabant's cry, until, after five minutes of fury and storm, the noise dwindled and went out.

Javogues, facing his accusers, returned his weapon to his belt, spread his legs as though to withstand the impending shock, folded his arms, and ran his eye over the banks of his enemies.

"Citoyens, I have answered that I was not at La Correction. You ask me if on these arms there is the blood of women. This is my answer: I do not know!"

"He mocks us!"

"Insolent!"

"Liar!"

"Impostor!"

"This is the blood of traitors," Javogues cried when the outburst had subsided, "and that is all I know. Traitors have no sex. When I see a traitor, I do not stop to ask if it be man, woman, or child, old or young! A traitor is a traitor! Were the mother who brought me forth or the child of my flesh to conspire against the Nation, I would strangle them with these my own hands!"

Again the clamor rose to drown his words, but this time Goursac, rushing from side to side, shouted:

"Let him continue! Let him continue!"

"Of what I have done I am ready to give an accounting," Javogues continued disdainfully. "At the prison of Les Carmes, my hatchet sent down to Hell the soul of that arch-conspirator Dulan." He lifted his arms. "That is the blood these arms bear, and I glory in it. At the Abbaye, I myself purified the Nation of five traitors. At La Force—"

But from the angry crowd rose the cry:

"Enough! Enough!"

One voice, deep and rumbling with an accent of doom, made itself heard:

"We give the right of speech to a citoyen to defend himself, not to a criminal to recite his crimes!"

Goursac, mounting to the tribune, secured a lull.

"You have recited these executions," he cried, addressing Javogues. "By what authority did you constitute yourself a judge?"

Javogues, opening his arms, said:

"By the authority of popular justice."

"Where is your warrant?"

The Marseillais did not answer. The section, seeing where he was being led, kept an intense silence as Goursac's voice, rising in denunciation, continued:

"You admit these deaths. You claim popular authority. Show us your warrant from any popular body, from any section, and you march from here unmolested."

Javogues, turning to his companions, said in a low tone: "Save yourselves. I remain." The two moved—but forward to his side.

The eyes of the assembly were on Goursac, who, white with the intensity of his passion, slowly stretched forth his finger:

"Well?" He waited a moment, his figure rigid in denunciation. "No answer? Then I pronounce, before this assembly, that you have lied! I here declare that what you have done is not the work of a judge, but of a murderer! That when you declared you acted by popular authority, you slandered the Nation, and tried to fasten on it the stain of your guilt and the odium of massacre!" Then assembling all his powers, he shouted at the top of his lungs, "Slanderer of the Nation!"

He turned to the section.

"Citoyens, these are the vipers that assail every life. No one of us is safe. They threaten the Assembly. They do not conceal their desire for its massacre. But to-night we hold one, this monster, this scum of the earth. We hold him, self-confessed and convicted. Citoyens, I declare to you we shall be guilty of cowardice if we now allow this monster to live another day!"

"Aye, to prison with them!"

"À la mort! À la mort!"

"À la guillotine!"

Above the confusion one shrill voice rose victorious, bearing the final decree of the mass.

"No, citoyens! À la lanterne! À la lanterne!"

The next moment all other cries were swallowed up in the wild outburst:

"À la lanterne!"

A hundred hands were stretched out to grasp the Marseillais, when Barabant, to the despair of Nicole, flung himself in front of Javogues, and with appealing arm sought to be heard. But the torrent he faced was relentless. He saw nothing but open mouths, clenched fists, black brows; pistol, knife, and hatchet tossing above the surge of arms. His friends thundered in his ear:

"À la lanterne!"

Those in the back, climbing on the benches, bellowed down:

"À la lanterne!"

From the tribune, frenzied and terrible in his anger, Goursac whipped on the tempest:

"À la lanterne!"

Barabant, with all effort of his lungs, could not utter a sound against the storm. Those that were near shouted to him:

"Barabant, do not balk us!"

"Barabant, look out for your own neck!"

All at once, through the crowd, the terrified figure of Nicole struggled toward him. She flung herself to his side, catching him violently by the shoulders, panting and hysterical.

"Barabant—for my sake—Barabant—for your own safety—Barabant—if you believe in a woman's premonitions, do not save that viper!"

He shook his head and firmly but gently put her from him. The girl, covering her face with her hands, yielded to her despair and fell back into the crowd; while Barabant, never flinching, fought the uproar until he forced the frantic audience to listen.

"This man," he cried at last, above the persisting clamor—"this man is guilty; he should die!" The uproar broke out afresh. "He has put human beings to death without authority from the people. He must die!"

"À la lanterne!"

"Listen!"

"Shut the doors! Lock the doors!"

"But, citoyens," Barabant burst out, "neither have we the right of death. Denounce him, arrest him, but obey the law. Respect the law; respect justice. Citoyens, I demand the arrestation."

The shouts rose in conflict.

"No! no!"

"Yes! yes! yes!"

"Death to him!"

"Arrest him!"

"Hang him!"

"The law! The law!"

The mob was divided, threatening to clash and annihilate itself. The result was a dozen times in doubt, but after half an hour of lull and tumult the verdict was for the course of the law. Barabant again mounted the tribune and put the resolution of arrest.

Javogues and the two Marseillais were led away; the storm rolled out; the hall emptied; a few loiterers straggled down the benches, staring at Nicole, who, exhausted, sobbed on the shoulder of Goursac:

"What a mistake! What a mistake!"

Barabant, leaving the tribune, approached his friends. Now that the passions of the moment were cold, he began to doubt the wisdom of his act.

"I could not help it, Nicole," he said, moved by her utter grief. "It was right, Goursac, was it not?"

Twice he repeated the question without success; nor did the other answer until they reached the Rue Maugout. Then, at length, his bitterness broke through.

"Barabant," he cried, "I will say but one thing: my life is on your head."

"That is absurd," protested Barabant. "Javogues is in prison. He will be condemned."

"He will not remain there one hour!" Goursac replied curtly; but conquering his dejection, he extended his hand. "Barabant, I know you meant well—but you made a mistake. Remember what I say!"

"Meaning I have betrayed you?"

Goursac made no answer.

Barabant, turning brusquely, repeated the question:

"Citoyen, did I do wrong?"

"Barabant, my young friend," Goursac answered, avoiding the question, "when I meet a snake, I do not stop to ask if it is another's property!"

"Then I was wrong?"

"If Javogues loses his neck and we keep ours, no. If Javogues keeps his—"

He rubbed his own solicitously, it being unnecessary to complete the sentence.

By six o'clock the prophecy of Goursac was confirmed, and the inhabitants of the Rue Maugout learned, without astonishment, that Javogues had been liberated and was in hiding.