CHAPTER XI.
AT THE BELLE IMAGE.
But the scene below soon drew M. le Comte from his abstraction; for even in the few minutes we had spent in listening to Pasdeloup’s story, told with a rude and simple eloquence which I have tried in vain to reproduce, it had assumed a new and more threatening aspect. The flood which had swept into the château was pouring out of it again, bearing upon its crest furniture, draperies, railings, doors—everything, in a word, which could be wrenched from the building. All of this was thrown into a great pile in the middle of the lawn and a torch applied to it. Then as the flames leaped upward the marauders joined hands around it and started a wild dance.
They had appropriated all the clothing they had found in the château, and it was not without a certain pang that I recognized one of my own coats in which I had taken especial pride making the circuit of the fire upon the back of a sturdy rascal, utterly incapable of appreciating its beauties, and wholly careless of preserving them. The effect under other circumstances would have been ludicrous enough; and indeed I found myself smiling after a moment, so trivial did the loss of my wardrobe appear in comparison with the dangers which threatened us. A few hours before it had seemed a great disaster; now it scarcely merited a second thought. For it was no longer a question of whether I should enter Poitiers in becoming state, but whether I should live to enter it at all. Besides, for some hours I had ceased to care as to the effect my appearance would have on either M. de Benseval or his daughter.
“Those roisterers seem harmless enough,” said M. le Comte after a moment. “It was foolish to run away. If I had stayed to broach a cask of wine for them they would have drunk my health and marched away shouting ‘God and the King!’ with the best of us. They are Revolutionists merely for the excitement of it, not because they bear me ill-will.”
“Those around the fire perhaps,” assented Pasdeloup, “but not those others;” and he indicated with his finger a small group which stood motionless in the shadow of the tower almost directly beneath us. We leaned over the parapet and looked down at them. The rays of the fire glinted on knives, muskets, pistols. They were fully armed, though they wore no uniform.
“Who are they?” asked M. le Comte.
“Goujon brought them from Paris with him, monsieur. Look again and you will see their red caps. They are heroes of the September massacres.”
I shivered at the words.
“Goujon wished to have at hand some one upon whom he could rely,” Pasdeloup added quietly. “He promised them that he would have agreeable work for them, and that they should be well repaid, or they would never have consented to leave Paris.”
“What are they doing down yonder?”
“They are watching the door to the tower.”
“Well, let them watch it. We shall not open it, and they can never break it down.”
“I would not be too certain of that, monsieur,” said Pasdeloup, gloomily. “They have learned many things at Paris. Goujon boasted that even unarmed the people had taken a great prison called the Bastille—but most probably he was lying.”
“No,” said his master in a low tone, “in that particular, at least, he spoke the truth. But miracles do not repeat themselves.”
“They no doubt have other means at command,” responded Pasdeloup grimly, “without calling in the aid of the good God.”
“No doubt they have,” agreed his master; “but at least we can reduce the number of these assassins;” and he drew his pistols.
But Pasdeloup laid a warning hand upon his arm.
“Not yet, monsieur,” he said. “I may be mistaken. Perhaps there is yet a chance. Perhaps those others will refuse to join them. Perhaps they will grow weary after a time and depart for home, content with such plunder as they can carry away. But if we begin the attack they will be on fire in a moment.”
“You are right,” agreed M. le Comte, and slowly returned his pistols to his belt. “Let us wait, then. Meanwhile Pasdeloup, do you tell us how you came to know so well what Goujon was planning—and more especially why, since you did know it, you did not give me warning.”
Pasdeloup hesitated a moment.
“I will tell you, monsieur,” he said at last, “and you will see that I am not to blame—that I did what I could. You perhaps know the inn of the Belle Image at Dange?”
“I have heard of it.”
“I was there one evening a week ago drinking a glass of wine during an hour Laroche had taken my place at the gate. It was the first time he had ever proposed such a thing, but that night he came to me and told me of the wonderful new wine at the Belle Image, so good and so cheap, since it no longer had to pay tithes, to the church and to the aristocrats. He ended by saying that as he was idle for an hour he would take my place at the gate while I went to the Belle Image and tasted the wine. I confess I was surprised; he saw it and explained that he wanted me to test for myself one of the benefits the Republic had conferred upon the people. So I went. I saw afterward that that was not his purpose at all.”
“I can guess what his purpose was,” said M. le Comte; “but continue your story.”
“I was, as I have said, drinking my wine,” continued Pasdeloup, “which was truly of a surprising excellence, when a man came and sat down beside me. For a moment I did not know him; then I saw it was Goujon. He greeted me with a kindness which surprised me when I remembered that it was I who had helped to capture him; but he seemed to have forgotten that. I saw that he was well dressed and that his hands were white. He ordered a bottle of wine even superior to that which I was drinking, invited me to join him, and began to tell me of the wonderful events which were happening in Paris—events which would end by making us all free, and rich, and happy. He said that the aristocrats and the priests had been starving and robbing and killing us for five hundred years, and that now it was our turn.
“‘You remember that your own mother was starved to death, Pasdeloup,’ he said.
“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I remember that.’
“‘Although enough to feed a hundred people was wasted every day at the château.’
“‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘perhaps that is true.’
“‘You know how she would have been beaten had it been known that she stole even a morsel of food from the pigs.’
“‘Yes,’ I said again; ‘I know that.’
“‘You may perhaps remember,’ he went on, with a frightful contortion of the countenance, ‘the punishment I suffered for trapping a hare.’
“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I remember.’
“‘And do you think it just, good God!’ he cried, ‘that a man should suffer like that for a fault so trivial? Yet that is what was happening day by day all over this broad land of France! What could we do? They took our grain for their bread, our flocks for their meat, our daughters for their pleasure. Did we so much as protest we were hanged on the nearest gallows as a warning to others not to lift their heads. We might live or die, starve or rot—what did it matter! We were less to them, as you have seen, than the swine in their pens!’ I do not know,” added Pasdeloup, in another tone, “whether all of this was true, but it had a certain air of truth about it.”
“Most of it was true, I fear,” said M. le Comte in a low voice, “though I had never looked at it in quite that way.”
“There is a great difference, is there not, monsieur,” asked Pasdeloup, “in whether one looks at a thing from above or from below?”
“Yes,” agreed his master still more quietly, “there is.”
“At any rate,” continued Pasdeloup, “Goujon grew more and more excited with each word he uttered. ‘Why is it,’ he demanded, ‘that some people wear lace and jewels and others only rags? Why should a noble’s pigs be treated better than his peasants? Why should the peasants toil from year to year in order that the priests and the aristocrats may live in idleness with their women, and have fine wines to drink, and fine clothes to wear, and great houses to shelter them, while we who make the wine, and spin the cloth, and build the houses, have only swill and rags and hovels? Why should they be warm in winter and we cold? Why should we permit their game to destroy our crops without being permitted to raise a hand to prevent it?’
“‘I do not know,’ I answered, ‘except that it was always so.’
“‘Well, it will be so no longer!’ he cried. ‘We are going to change all that. We are going to reverse things. Monsieur Veto has already sneezed in the sack; the Austrian woman and her whelp will follow him.’
“‘And what then?’ I asked.
“‘Then we shall be free. Then we shall set about the work of establishing liberty, equality, fraternity. But first we will stuff the nobles’ mouths with dust, just as those good fellows at Paris stuffed old Foulon’s with hay. Come, you must join us, Pasdeloup. You also have wrongs to avenge.’
“‘I will think of it,’ I said, and returned to my post at the gate.
“All that night I lay and thought of what Goujon had said, and I confess, M. le Comte, that it appeared to me reasonable. So long as I had imagined that things were as they were because the good God so willed it, I had not questioned them. But now I began to suspect that perhaps the good God had no hand in them at all, and that the only thing left for us was to do what we could to help ourselves. The next night I inquired for Laroche, but no one had seen him; so leaving the gate open—the first time that I had ever done so—I hastened to the Belle Image. Goujon was awaiting me; again he bought wine, and again he laid before me the wrongs of the peasantry. At last I told him that I would join the society which he was organizing at Dange. It was not until I had taken the oath that I discovered what it was he intended to do. He thought me wholly his, and indeed, from night to night, he convinced me more and more that justice was on our side.
“Two nights ago he was for some reason very jubilant and drank more than usual. It was at that time that he confided to me his passion for madame; that he told me what it was he had been doing in that attic at the moment you discovered him. Then he passed on to the plan he had in mind.
“‘We have all the servants now, Pasdeloup,’ he said; ‘even the women. Those we could not persuade we bribed; those we could not bribe we frightened into joining us. The plans are made, everything is ready. Your part will be to open the gates for us.’
“‘Which gates?’ I asked.
“‘The gates of the château, of course.’
“‘Of the château?’
“‘Certainly, it is of the château I am speaking. We are going to attack it.’
“‘But M. le Comte is not there,’ I protested.
“‘No,’ said Goujon with a triumphant smile, ‘nor will he ever again be there. I have attended to that. Laroche has lured him into our hands. First I will bring him here in order that he may witness my revenge—my triumph; then I will send him on to Paris to celebrate his nuptials with Madame Guillotine.’
“Then I saw the trap into which I had thrust my foot. As he sat there leering at me I was tempted to bury my knife in his belly; but I managed to control myself. It might be that there were other things which I should know.
“‘Well, then,’ I said, ‘since you already have him why attack the château?’
“The leer on his face grew broader.
“‘You forget, Pasdeloup,’ he said, ‘that the women are there.’
“‘What then?’
“‘What then? head of a pig! You are stupid to-night! Do you suppose I have forgotten? You do not know the sleepless nights I have spent tossing on my bed, biting my pillow at thought of what should one day be mine! Well, my day has come—that woman is going to be mine now—that is the triumph which Favras is to witness. Will it not be a pretty revenge? Could you think of anything prettier?’ and he leered at me again and licked his lips with a tongue which seemed strangely red and swollen. ‘You shall have the other; she shall be your reward—and pardieu! it is not to be laughed at. You do not know, Pasdeloup, what soft, white skins these ci-devant women have!’”
I felt my blood grow suddenly hot with rage and a glance at M. le Comte’s white face told me the agony he was suffering at the thought that his wife had been profaned by even the glances of this scoundrel.
“Go on,” he said hoarsely. “And then?”
“Perhaps something in my face betrayed me,” Pasdeloup continued. “At any rate, Goujon suddenly looked at me, then straightened back in his chair.
“‘I have been talking nonsense, Pasdeloup,’ he said. ‘I have taken too much wine. I am always saying absurd things when I am drunk. You must forget that foolishness.’
“He said it so naturally that I believed him, more especially since at the moment his head was wobbling so that he could scarcely keep it off the table. But when I reached the château again I found that my zeal for the Revolution had vanished, since, even drunk, one of its leaders could propose such horrible things. Last night I remained at my post at the gate; but to-night an uneasiness seized me. I fancied that I detected some sort of understanding among the other servants. At the first moment I slipped away to Dange to learn the truth. There I found that a detachment of the Blues had just come in by post and had been ordered forward at once to surround the château. All of that rabble yonder had gathered in the square and Goujon was addressing them. The terrible things he was saying made me tremble. But I listened only for a moment. Then I hastened back to give you warning and found that I was already too late. That is all, M. le Comte.”
His master laid a friendly hand upon his shoulder.
“I thank thee, Pasdeloup,” he said. “Whatever the event, thou hast done thy best. Thou hast paid thy debt a hundred fold.”
A sudden frenzied outburst of yells interrupted him. We looked down again and saw a procession emerging from the house upon the terrace. Before them they were rolling five or six casks of wine and spirits.
“We shall see now,” said Pasdeloup grimly, “how many of them will shout, ‘God and the King!’”