L'univers t'abandonne!"
In another group, guarding their enmity to the end, two brothers of the people retorted with the "Marseillaise."
Two women near Dossonville were chatting gaily:
"I am so pale those cursed revolutionists will think that I am afraid."
"You must not give them that satisfaction."
"I do seem pale, then?"
"Yes."
"Ah, then I must rouge!"
Dossonville examined the figure of the graceful woman, who was gaily daubing her cheeks, and recognized the famous Duchess of M——. At this moment, in the obscurity of the arches, he discovered at last the blue dress and golden hair of Nicole.
"Oh, it is you," she cried joyfully. "I had hoped you could see me."
"Nicole," he said bitterly, "this is your doing."
Her manner changed; she grew serious.
"My friend," she said, "I have but done what I wished. I am happy." She held up her finger with Barabant's ring on it. "You see, I am his wife, and I have saved him."
The outward movement toward the tumbrels had begun. From the doorway the guards repeated:
"Hurry up, there; hurry up, you cursed aristocrats!"
Dossonville kissed her with more feeling than he had believed possible, and said, through the tears that clouded his eyes, "I would have saved you."
"Do not grieve," she said, touched by his sorrow. She took her scarf and put it into his hand, saying: "Give it to him. Tell him that I am happy—that it is best so. Adieu!"
Then, as though fearing to lose her self-control, she pressed his hand and hurried away.
Dossonville, passing out by a side entrance, hastened to meet the slow procession across the river. The city was in uproar; over the roofs the bells were crying the civil strife, while every street seemed to give forth the thunder of drums. Masses of volunteers, without formation or leader, swept the boulevards, while the air was charged with the conflict of shouts:
"Vive la Commune!"
"À bas les Jacobins!"
"Vive Robespierre!"
"Robespierre à la Guillotine!"
The chariots crossed from the gates of the Conciergerie, acclaimed by the hoots and jeers of the daily hordes of mad women who gathered to shriek their foul abuse and frantic revilings. But as the tumbrels passed the river the insults ceased, replaced by murmurs of sympathy.
In the third chariot Dossonville found Nicole. The duchess, with her brilliant cheeks, was on the same bench, and between the two women the boy, his hand in Nicole's.
From the direction of the Convention came wild rumors of Robespierre's defeat. The crowd, increasing, began to cry:
"Enough blood!"
"No more blood!"
"Pity on the condemned!"
Dossonville, hardly daring to hope, noticed that Sanson examined the crowd anxiously—a not unfriendly glance. The demonstration continued, growing bolder, a hundred voices insisting:
"Enough blood!"
"No more victims!"
"Stop the massacre!"
Among the prisoners several, unable to resist the sudden leap of hope to their eyes, stretched out their hands, crying:
"We are innocent!"
In the first chariot Cramoisin, in a frenzy, was shouting:
"Citoyens, do not mistake me. I am a republican. Vive la République! Save me, at least!"
Nicole was speaking to the boy; for the new vision of life had made him tremble. Amid the leaping floods of humanity she remained calm, a certain maternal sweetness and repose enveloping her as she sought to fortify the resolution of her companion. To Dossonville, through the rising storm of sound and swaying of bodies, a lull of peace seemed to surround her and to remove her from the frenzy.
Again the revolt rose in him that she should die thus. Perceiving all at once that the crowd had pressed about the carts until their progress was impeded, he flung himself into the swirl, exhorting and encouraging. The cries redoubled, becoming more threatening:
"Save them!"
"Enough butchery!"
"On, comrades! Save them!"
"Aye, deliver them!"
"Stop the chariots!"
"Unhitch the horses! Unhitch the horses!"
At this last, the cry of Dossonville, the multitude, with a shriek of triumph, surged up against the tumbrels. A hundred hands checked the horses, reaching out for the buckles of the harness, while a dozen voices cried:
"Courage! We'll release you!"
Already the prisoners exclaimed joyfully, already Dossonville stretched out his arms to Nicole, when a cry of fear and despair burst from the rescuers, voiced in the dreaded name:
"Henriot! Henriot!"
Up the street, at the head of his dragoons, sabres flashing in the air, break-a-neck came the wild figure of the Jacobin.
The surge of the fleeing crowd held Dossonville a moment against the tumbrel, where he heard through the confusion a cry of despair from the boy, "I could have borne anything but hope!" Then, as Dossonville was swept away, he saw the child's head fall upon the shoulder of Nicole. The next moment he was buffeted and hurled aside; then a horse struck him and flung him to the ground, where a dozen feet trampled him. Stunned, covered with dirt, and bleeding, he stumbled to his feet. The tumbrels, surrounded by cavalry, were disappearing in the distance, moving swiftly. He ran after them, shaking his helpless fist, and as he turned the corner, a groan burst from him. Over the heads of the people the twin shafts of the guillotine sprang into view.
Numb and half unconscious, seeing only, in the third cart, the distant blot of blue, he limped on, following as best he could into the square. He fought his way to the front, beside the cordon of naked swords that girdled the scaffold, repeating to himself a hundred times:
"I must not stay! I will not stay!"
But still the pitiful hope of a deliverance held him there, to snatch at every message of the air that floated over the distracted city. One after another the condemned mounted the steps and passed across the stage like phantoms, hurried on by the remorseless Jacobin, while those about him cried:
"Oh, for two hours—for one!"
"Cursed Henriot, we could have saved them!"
"Why does the Convention delay?"
"Ah, the monster! He is afraid to lose a single one!"
She came at last, a patch of blue, a white face against the stretch of heads. She saw him not at all, nor any one. The maternal instinct of the woman that had raised her above her companions on the journey was gone, and with it all consciousness of the world and the sorrows and the responsibilities which had so transformed her. Only once did she notice her surroundings, when the bourreau, with impatient hand, bared her throat. Then for a moment her hands went instinctively to cover herself from the multitude. Almost immediately her face became grave and reverent. The assistants advanced to take her to the guillotine. Then with a rapid motion she made the sign of the cross, raising her eyes to the deep sky, as though already she saw beyond the grave,—the timid question of a child who hesitates in wonder before the incomprehensible.
With a sob, Dossonville turned, shrinking from the sight of the mutilating knife, and waited with averted face.
There was a vast moment, then a shock of steel, and a woman who had seen his tears whispered:
"It is over!"
Then, fleeing from the inexorable machine, he plunged, weeping, through the crowd, stumbling aimlessly on into the frantic city, where, too late, every street was echoing to the fear-releasing shrieks of rejoicing:
"Robespierre is fallen!"
"The Terror is ended!"
EPILOGUE
An hour later Dossonville was arrested, thanks to his political somersault, which had brought him twenty denunciations before the Committee of Safety as having always spoken ill of the Jacobins and defamed the character of Robespierre. The accusation of a day served to cleanse the record of months.
Imprisoned for a few months at the Maison Talaru, he gained the frontier at a favorable moment and embarked for South America. Then for ten years, at sea or in the colonies, he was buffeted from continent to continent, always embroiled, always running on the lead of adventure, which he called his one bad habit.
When he again saw Paris, the Empire was at its crest. The city he had left a wilderness had flowered with the riotous luxuriance of the tropics. The Tuileries Gardens were again noisy with the laughter of promenaders, thronging to a review in the Place du Carrousel. Wherever he went his eye caught the flash of martial splendor and the sheen of sabers.
A little sadly he spent the days in the strange Babylon, seeking some trace of the great Revolution that once had rolled through the city, of the thundering mobs, the fervid cafés, the tricoteuses, and the creak of the roiling tumbrels.
The Cabaret of the Prêtre Pendu, its gibbet banished, had become the Cabaret of a Hundred and One Victories. The greeting of "citoyen" no longer resounded in the street. Of all the familiar faces in the Rue Maugout, not one confronted him. La Mère Corniche had been replaced by another concierge, bent and wrinkled after the manner of concierges, as though her life had been passed at her post.
Among the counts and barons, marshals and princes, of the Empire, galloping in glory, shouting frantically "Vive l'Empereur!" Dossonville recognized with bewilderment figures of Jacobins and Girondins, once worshipers of the sacred Republic. He sought out the Maison Talaru; lackeys were lounging before the door and a stream of carriages rolling through the restored porte-cochère. Once, hearing the rumor of a great execution for the afternoon, with a revival of interest he asked a passer-by:
"And the executioner, what do you call him?"
"Sanson."
"Charles Sanson?"
"His son."
Recalling the prophecy of the father, indifferent servitor to republic or kingdom, he returned pensively to the boulevards, where, to rid himself of black memories, he selected among the pomp and the glitter a fashionable café, and installed himself.
Presently, reviewing idly the gorgeous clientele, his eye rested on a knot of generals. The figure of the speaker caught his memory by a certain trick of exuberant gesture that recalled a comrade of other days. Calling a waiter, he demanded:
"That man over there, decorated with medals and laughing, in that cluster of fighters, do you see him?"
"The Baron de Ricordo—yes, sir."
"What's his name?"
"The Baron de Ricordo; a great man in the Senate, sir."
"Ah, I thought he resembled some one else. Thanks."
Almost immediately, dissatisfied, he recalled him.
"And his family name? Find that out."
"Monsieur, he is a Barabant, of the well-known Barabants of the Midi. The family is honorable and old. I—"
"Never mind. Ah, one thing more. Is he married? Tell me that."
"Monsieur, he marries this month,—a great marriage."
"Enough. That's sufficient."
At this moment the party pushed back their chairs and came straggling toward him.
"When you're young all folly's possible," said the voice of Barabant at his elbow.
"It's a wonder, I say, that we survive to middle age."
"Dame, yes!" replied the baron. "Will you believe it of me—at twenty-five I wept because I could not die for an idea!"
Dossonville, who was on the point of rising, fell back and lowered his head. The resplendent group swaggered down to the sidewalk, where presently a magnificent equipage rolled up, a lady extended her hand to the Baron de Ricordo, who, nodding to his comrades, sprang into the carriage and drove off.
Pushing back the untasted glass, Dossonville rang for his bill.
"Monsieur doesn't take his drink," the garçon objected.
Dossonville, looking down, saw that it was true.
"There is something the matter, monsieur?"
"Exactly."
"Monsieur complains—"
"Ah, I have looked at the bottom of the glass, my friend," he answered; but his glance was in the street. "When one drinks one should never do that."
Leaving the perplexed garçon to turn over his words, he sauntered among the thronged tables, and joining the slow procession of the promenaders, was swept gradually away.