"Oh, my life, my whole life for one hour of such vengeance!" cried the young woman, palpitating in wild exaltation. "Aye, let my life be a hundred times more miserable, more abject, more horrible than that which a King put upon me—I shall live it twice over in order to assist in the hour of this vengeance. A day, an hour of reprisals, for my life of misery!"
"Come then, Victoria, you shall be ours as we shall be yours, in life, in death, in triumph, in vengeance!"
So speaking, the Prince of Gerolstein led Victoria Lebrenn out of Samuel's chamber, across the garden, and into a deserted and half-subterranean green-house.
CHAPTER III.
THE VOYANTS.
The half-underground hot-house into which Franz of Gerolstein conducted his new convert was dimly lighted by a lamp placed at the foot of a stairway leading still further beneath the earth. On the first step of this staircase Franz found a package from which he produced two loose robes and two masks. Addressing his companion, he said:
"Put this robe on over your garments, and hide your countenance behind this mask."
They descended the stairs, and arrived in a corridor, lighted by the hanging lamp whose rays had guided them from above. At the extremity of the passage stood a man cloaked in red and with a black mask over his visage. He held a naked sword in his hand, and advanced two steps to meet the newcomers.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"We are of the disinherited," replied Franz. "For father we had enslavement, for mother ignorance; our condition is misery. We are of the poor, the oppressed, the damned here below."
"What do you wish, my brother?"
"Liberty, knowledge, happiness."
"Knock at that door," commanded the masked figure in red, stepping aside to make way for Franz and his companion. "Knock and it shall be opened unto you; seek, and ye shall find."
The door opened, and as soon closed behind the two initiates. For a moment they were blinded by the brilliance which flooded the subterraneous chamber to which they had now penetrated. It was lighted by seventy candelabra, each bearing seven candles—again the mystic number. The walls were covered with red drapery; at the further end a raised platform formed a dais with closed curtains; on the front of the dais was the picture of a carpenter's level. Several steps from the platform, on a draped table, were thrown in confusion a royal crown, a scepter, a pontifical tiara, a bishop's crosier, several collars of chivalric orders, and a few ducal or princely coronets; besides these there lay in the heap some pouches, half open, and full of gold and silver pieces.
Directly behind the table on which thus lay cluttered the emblems of religion, royalty, aristocracy and wealth, stood seven masked men, garbed in long robes, silent and erect, their arms crossed on their chests, seven specters, seven fantastic apparitions. The one whose duty it was to officiate at the reception of initiates stood in the center. Three Voyants were ranged to his right, three to his left. He addressed Victoria, who keenly felt the impression produced on her by the strange spectacle:
"Woman, your age?"
"Fifteen centuries, and more. I was born the first day of the enslavement and misery of my brothers."
"What would you?"
"The end of oppression. I wish to beat down thrones and altars, privileges of birth and of fortune, all the hoary monuments of ignorance, of slavery, and of iniquity, all the monopolies, all the privileges which flourish upon the people."
"What will happen when the level shall have passed over the old world, and when the exploiters of the people shall have disappeared?"
"The darkness of ages shall be superseded by the revivifying warmth and the fruitful light of the sun; harvests of abundance will cover with their sheaves the soil tilled by a fecund revolution."
"Is your severance from the old world complete?"
"I have broken with the old world, and rallied to the new."
"Behold this pontifical tiara, this kingly crown; gaze on these symbols of nobility, these sacks of gold and silver. You may demand of kings, of priests, of nobles, of the rich, the enjoyments of life, all by devoting yourself body and soul to these idols and to tyranny."
"It is my wish to overthrow those idols. I vow an implacable hatred to the enemies of the people."
"From this hour," responded the cloaked president, apparently satisfied with the interrogatory, "you shall be ours as we will be yours. Our device so has it—All for each; each for all. By this device, co-operation will replace in the future the selfishness of the masters of the old world. Who caused all the evils of which selfishness has been the source? He who first dug a ditch about a piece of common land and said 'This is mine.' The usurpation was consecrated by men simple-minded enough to respect these arbitrary boundaries; the spoliation of several by one gradually became a right; the deed became the law, the exception the rule. The tyranny growing out of this principle, initiated by violence and perpetuated by custom, became rooted in the peoples' mind, till at length they came to own an infant mewling in the cradle for their King, and to kiss the boot of the Pope. What consequences have not come out of these aberrations! Peoples have throttled each other. The earth has its damned ones, more to be pitied than those with whom superstition peoples hell. The damned on earth call themselves vassals, serfs, proletarians, artisans, laborers! It is of these damned ones that we seek the redemption. Think you the overturning of thrones and altars will suffice for the deliverance of these victims? No, alas, no. To the tyranny of King and Church will succeed an exploitation still more tyrannical, that of the tribe of Business. Then the dispenser of work and of wages will exert an empire absolute over his wage-earning workingmen. On the ruins of the thrones and altars will soon grow up the oligarchy of merchants and bourgeois.
"That oligarchy must also in its end be overthrown," continued the initiator. "That is our final aim.[3] Our design is to unite by the bond of a common faith, thousands of initiates in every country of Europe—first in Germany, then in France, in England, and elsewhere; to bring them gradually, by initiation, into the knowledge of the object of our association; to have them swear obedience to its chiefs, visible and invisible, and chosen from all ranks of society, from the highest to the lowest; to recruit our partisans and co-workers in the very councils of the Kings themselves, in the heart of the palace of the Popes. Our enemies will find themselves, without their knowing it, perpetually under our eyes; their plots will be revealed to us; their own creatures, to all appearances the most devoted to them, will obey our orders, and undermine the foundations of their social edifice. Then in the hour of redemption the old world shall crumble and go down under its debris of priests, nobles, and Kings.
"Woman," continued the master of ceremonies, outstretching his hand toward Victoria, "you now know our purposes. Here are our sinews of action. An annual assessment levied on all our brothers, who number themselves by millions, makes us masters of a mighty treasure. That is the source of the wealth in which revel those of our number whose duty it is to mix with the mighty ones of the day, sharing in their dalliances and dissipations—foxes to deceive, wolves to devour our enemies. Victoria Lebrenn, it is for you, thanks to your remarkable gifts of nature, to become one of our most active auxiliaries. But to serve well our cause, it will be necessary that you abdicate your own will, and that you stand ready, at any hour of the day or night, to follow our orders."
"Command; I obey."
"I must first acquaint our brothers with the particulars of your life, as you have set them down in your own hand, and confided them to your converter."
Picking up a roll of manuscript, the presiding officer proceeded to read the story of Victoria Lebrenn, as follows:
"In the year 1772, being then eleven years and a half old, I was one day crossing the garden of the Tuileries, carrying dinner to my father, a workman in a printing shop in Bac Street. I paused a moment to watch some little children at play. A woman well dressed and with decent features drew close to me, examined me attentively, and made me some compliments on my good looks. Then noting the porringer with my father's dinner, and learning from me that I was on my way to him, she proposed that I go with her in her carriage. Delighted to have a carriage-ride for the first time in my life, I readily agreed. Near the Draw Bridge a coach was waiting, into which I got with my conductress. She offered me some lozenges from a box, which I accepted. The lozenges contained some species of narcotic, for in a few minutes I had fallen into a deep sleep.
"When I awoke, it was night. I was lying in a great bed with damask curtains. The ceiling of my chamber was of gold, and the room itself was richly furnished. Beside my pillow was seated the woman by whose agency I had been taken to the place. I asked her where I was. I wept at the anxiety of my parents; she calmed me, promising that they should soon be with me. She added that I was in the house of a person of great quality, who was interested in my youth, wished me much good, and would enrich my family. I knew I was not dreaming, but thought myself the heroine of a fairy tale. Two women entered. They made me rise, and put me in a perfumed bath. Then they dressed my hair, one of them winding a string of pearls through it. They dressed me in silk and lace, and served me with supper on plates of vermilion and gold. I experienced a sort of vertigo; I obeyed mechanically. Still, I kept asking for my father and mother. The woman of the carriage assured me that they would soon arrive, and be overjoyed to see me so beautiful. A hard-visaged man entered the chamber. I heard the old woman call him Monsieur Lebel, and speak to him with great respect. The man scrutinized me carefully. 'Little one,' he said to me, 'you must go to bed now.' Then he went out.
"Doubtless, in the course of the repast, they had served me with several glasses of heady wine, for I felt my reason clouding. I allowed myself to be put to bed, though not without again inquiring for my parents. They promised to take me back to them the next day. The woman and her two companions bade me good night, snuffed the candles in the candelabrum, and left me for light a single alabaster lamp, which threw a pale illumination over the spacious room. I was about to succumb less to sleep than to the leaden lethargy into which I had been plunged, when a start of fright restored to me, for a few moments, all my senses. My bed was set in an alcove. Two of the gilded panels which formed the alcove slid back in their grooves, and I beheld an old man in a dressing gown. I uttered a cry of astonishment—it was the King, Louis XV. I had seen him but a short time before at a public ceremony in Paris. I was stupefied into immobility. Close behind the King, in the secret passageway leading into the alcove, stood a beautiful young woman half-clad in a night robe, and holding a candle-stick. She laughed aloud, and said to the King, pushing him by the shoulder—'Go on, France, it is the loving hour!'
"That woman, I afterwards learned, was Countess Du Barry. I fainted with fear. I was the victim of an odious assault. Five days afterward, another poor child, aged like me, hardly twelve, the daughter of a miller of Trianon, was delivered after the same manner to the lust of Louis XV, and gave him the small-pox of which he died. Two days before his death, the woman of whom I have spoken, one of the royal procuresses, made me leave by night the little apartment in the palace of Versailles, and get with her into a carriage, assuring me she was about to restore me to my father, whom I continually called for, in tears. I still was not fully aware of my dishonor. Instead of returning me to my home, the procuress left me in an isolated dwelling not far from Versailles. High walls surrounded the garden; the only entry was by a gate which was kept under careful guard. Flight was impossible.
"In that house I found several young girls, of whom the youngest was barely my age, and the oldest, twenty. The place was the habitual haunt of great lords, prelates, and financiers. They came to sup with us—suppers that ended in shameful orgies. My companions, the immature victims, like myself, of kingly debauchery, gradually made known to me the extent of my disgrace. At first I was overcome by shame; then familiarity with vice, the contagion of example, the influence of the corrupt atmosphere in which I dwelt, stifled my better sentiments and my early training. I would never have dared at this time to return to my family. I reached my sixteenth year without having left that house of ill fame. By that time reflection and chagrin had matured my reason; then there began to grow up beside the sense of my degradation, the implacable hatred of the King and of those who, after him, had plunged me still deeper into the mire of infamy. I assisted daily in the orgies of the seigneurs of the Court, of the Church and of the Bourse. They never supposed creatures of our sort capable of attaching any importance to what they said in our presence; they expressed without hesitation their disdain and aversion for the people. Just about that time, several disturbances brought on by the dearness of provisions had been quelled at the musket's mouth; our guests regretted that the acts of repression had not been still more pitiless, saying, 'These flames can never be quenched save by rivers of blood.'
"Thus there was created in me, a daughter of the people, a blind thirst for vengeance. Louis XV was dead, but I followed with my hatred both royalty and nobility, clergy and financiers. Our relations with the men of this class taught me to see in them our merciless enemies. Still my material comfort and my early degradation engendered in me a cowardly inertia. I felt neither the courage nor the desire to flee the domicile where I was held. I was seized with mortal terror at the bare thought of encountering my father, my mother, my young brother; of soiling our hearth with my presence. And, finally, knowing that their life was poor and laborious, it seemed impossible to me to summon the will to work and to share their privations. Ease and luxury were enervating, were depraving me. Thus passed several years. I reached the age of twenty. The woman who kept the place died, and my companions and I were turned adrift. I was without resources and unable to earn my daily bread, my apprenticeship as a sempstress having been cut short by my kidnapping. The fear of misery, my determination not to continue in that abject life, the uncertainty of the future, and lastly my attachment to my family, overcame my shame and gave me the courage to return home. My parents believed me dead; my appearance overwhelmed them with joy and rendered them merciful. I confessed to them my past. They both covered me with tears and caresses, and withheld every reproach. My father gave me to read the plebeian legends of our family. Then my poor father, exasperated by the deed that marred my childhood, printed and distributed to the public with his own hand an account which he wrote and entitled A Night of Louis XV. A few days after the publication of this article, my father failed to come home at night. Since then we have had no trace of him. Doubtless he now is dead, or languishes in the cell of some State prison.
"For a year I remained with my mother and brother. I forced myself to live down my past. I took up again my sempstress's apprenticeship, and soon ceased to be a care to my mother. While my body had been stained, my heart remained pure. I had never felt the pangs of love. I now conceived a violent affection for a young sergeant in the French Guards named Maurice, the son of one of our neighbors. The young fellow did not know through what a slough my youth had been dragged, and thought me entirely worthy of him; so much did I dread his scorn that I had not the heart to disabuse him. He asked my hand of my mother. I begged her to hide from him my past shame; moved by my tears she consented to silence. We were affianced, Maurice and I. I had attained the summit of my prayers. I felt a secret remorse in deceiving the man who loyally offered me his hand, but I consoled myself with the thought of fulfilling scrupulously my marriage vows and making my husband as happy as possible. Cruelly was my dissimulation punished. One day, while walking between my mother and my betrothed, we met one of my old companions in misery. She knew me and addressed me in terms of a terrible meaning. Terrified at the expression of Maurice's face at this revelation, my heart broke—I collapsed. When I came to myself my mother stood at my side in tears. Commanded by my beloved to tell him all, for he still could not believe in my past indignity, my mother dared no longer hide the truth. Maurice was stricken dumb with grief, for he loved me with all his heart. He returned to the barracks in bewilderment, and chancing to come into the presence of his colonel, the Count of Plouernel, did not think to salute him. The Count, angered at this want of respect, knocked off Maurice's hat with a blow of his cane. He, half crazed with despair, raised his hand against his colonel. The crime was punishable by death under the scourge. The next day the young sergeant expired under that inhuman torture. The death of the man I loved threw me into a sort of frenzy. Often before, as the record of our family tells, had our fathers, as serfs or vassals, found themselves in arms face to face with the race of Plouernel. This memory redoubled my hatred for the colonel. Disgusted with life by the death of my only love, I resolved to avenge on the Count of Plouernel the decease of Maurice. I repaired to the quarters of the Guards at the hour when I knew I could find the colonel in his rooms. My hope was dashed. My paleness and agitation aroused the suspicions of the two under-officers to whom I addressed myself. They demanded the reason of my desire to see their chief. The brusqueness of my replies, my sinister and wild appearance strengthened their mistrust. They fell upon me, searched me, and found in my pocket—a dagger. Then I told them why I came. They arrested me; they haled me to the Repentant Women. I was subjected in that prison to the most barbarous treatment. One day a stranger visited the place. He questioned me. My answers impressed him. A few days later I was set at liberty, thanks to the efforts of this stranger, Franz, who came in person to fetch me from the Repentant Women."
The chief initiator concluded the reading of the melancholy recital, and replaced the pages of manuscript on the table before him. "The account of our sister is authenticated throughout," he said.
"To this story of my sad life," declared Victoria, "there is nothing to add. Only to-day did I learn the name of the generous stranger to whom I owe my release from prison; and again I declare myself ready to pledge my devotion and service to the cause of humanity. Let the war upon the oppressors be implacable!"
"From the most obscure to the most illustrious, all devotion is equal in the eyes of our great cause, and in the eyes of its most noble martyr, the immortal crucified master of Nazareth," added the initiator, drawing aside the curtains of the dais and disclosing a Christ on a crucifix, surmounted with the level of equality. Then he continued, speaking to Victoria, "Woman, in the name of the poor carpenter of Nazareth, the friend of the sorrowing and the disinherited, the enemy of the priests and the rulers of his day—woman, do you swear faith, love, and obedience to our cause?"
"I swear!" answered Victoria in a ringing voice, raising her hands toward the crucifix. "I swear faith and obedience to our cause!"
"You are now ours as we are yours," replied the officiant, dropping the curtains. "From to-morrow on you will receive our instructions from our brother Franz. To work! The opening of the States General shall be the signal for the enfranchisement of the people. The thrones shall disappear beneath the scourge of the revolution!"[4]
At that moment the watch posted in the corridor of the Voyant temple of liberty struck thrice precipitately on the door, giving the alarm. The lights which had cast their radiance over the meeting went out as if by magic, and a profound darkness took possession of the underground chamber.
From the obscurity was heard the voice of Anacharsis Clootz, the masked officiant, saying to the other Voyants who had been present at the initiation of Victoria Lebrenn:
"Baboeuf, go with Buonarotti, Danton and Condorcet by the right exit. I shall take the left, together with Franz, Loustalot, and our neophyte."
CHAPTER IV.
LITTLE RODIN.
While Anacharsis Clootz, the rich Dutch banker, later to be known as the "Orator of the Human Race," was thus presiding at the initiation of Victoria Lebrenn into the sect of the Voyants, Samuel, left alone with his wife by the departure of Franz of Gerolstein and his companion, had been just preparing to continue his dictation to Bathsheba, when he heard the street-outlook rapping discreetly at the gate. Samuel, hastening at the call, found the watcher holding by the hand a young boy who cried bitterly.
"The poor little fellow has lost his way," said the lookout, passing the boy in to Samuel. "I found him sitting down there by the buttress of the gate, sobbing. You would better keep him with you for the night, and to-morrow, in the daylight, he can be taken back to his folks—if you can find out from him where he lives."
Touched by the child's grief, Samuel took him into the lower room and both he and Bathsheba bent all their energies toward quieting him. The boy seemed to be about nine or ten years old. He was poorly clad, and of a wan and ailing appearance. His face presented none of the smiling prettiness usual with children of his age. His peaked features, his sickly and cadaverous pallor, his thin, pale lips, his sly and shifty, yet keen and observing glance—revealing a precocious cleverness—in fine, something low, mean and crafty in the look of the boy would, no doubt, have inspired aversion rather than sympathy in the breasts of the couple were it not for the cruel desertion of which he seemed the victim. Hardly had he entered the room when he dropped to his knees, crossed himself, and clasping his hands exclaimed through his tears:
"Blessed be You, Lord God, for having pitied Your little servant and led him to this good sir and this good lady. Save them a place in Your paradise!"
Dragging himself on his knees toward the Jew and his wife, the urchin kissed their hands effusively and with far too great a flood of gratitude for sincerity. Bathsheba took him on her knees, and said to him as she wiped his tear-stained face, "Don't cry, poor little one. We'll take care of you to-night, and to-morrow we'll take you home. But where do you live, and what is your name?"
"My name is Claude Rodin," answered the child; and he added, with a monstrous sigh, "The good God has been merciful to my parents, and took them to His holy paradise."
"Poor dear creature," answered Samuel, "you are, then, an orphan?"
"Alas, yes, good sir! My dear dead father used to be holy water dispenser at the Church of St. Medard. My dear dead mother used to rent out chairs in the same parish. They are now both with the angels; they are walking with the blessed saints."
"And where do you live, my poor child?"
"With Monsieur the Abbot Morlet, my good lady; a holy man of God, and my kind god-father."
"But how did it happen, my child, that you went astray at this late hour of the night?" asked Samuel. "You must have left home all alone?"
"Just after benediction," answered little Rodin, crossing himself devoutly, "Monsieur the Abbot, my good god-father, took me to walk with him in the Place Royale. There were a lot of people gathered around some mountebanks. I sinned!" cried the boy, beating his chest in contrition, "the Lord God punished me. It is my fault—my fault—my very great fault! Will God ever forgive me my sin?"
"But what great sin did you commit?" questioned Bathsheba.
"Mountebanks are heretics, fallen, and destined for hell," answered little Rodin, pressing his lips together with a wicked air, and striking his breast again. "I sinned, hideously sinned, in watching the games of those reprobates. The Lord God punished me by separating me from my good god-father. The swaying of the crowd carried him away from me. No use to look for him! No use to call him! It was impossible to find him. It was my very great fault!"
"And how did you get here from the Place Royale? The two points are far apart."
"Having said my prayers, both mental and oral, several times, in order to call to my aid the divine pity," replied Rodin emphatically and with an air of beatitude, "I started out to find my way home, away down at the end of the Roule suburb, near the Folie-Beaujon."
"Poor child," interrupted Bathsheba. "More than a league to travel! How I pity the dear child. Go on with your story," she said to him.
"It is a long way, true enough," added Samuel, "but all he had to do was to follow the boulevards. How did you come to lose the road?"
"A worthy gentleman, of whom I inquired the way, told me I would reach home quicker by taking another street. I walked all evening, but all I did was to get lost. The wrath of the Lord pursued me!" After sighing and beating his breast again, little Rodin continued: "Then, at last, passing your house, I felt so tired, so tired, that I fell on your door-step from weariness, and prayed the good God to come to my help. He deigned to hear the prayer of His little servant, and so you came to pity me, my good sir and lady. May God receive you in heaven!"
"You shall spend the night here, dear child, and to-morrow we will take you back to your god-father—so don't weep any more."
"Alas, good sir, the holy man will be so anxious! He will think me lost!"
"It is impossible now to calm his anxiety. But are you hungry or thirsty? Will you have something to eat or drink?"
"No, good mistress; only I'm terribly sleepy, and wish I could lie down."
"I can well believe it," said Bathsheba, addressing her spouse; "after such fatigue and worry, the little fellow must be worn out. It is only natural that he should be dying to go to sleep."
"But where shall we put him? We are in a tight fix. We have but one bed."
"Oh, good sir," eagerly broke in little Rodin, "don't put yourself out for me. I shall sleep very well right there, if you will let me;" and the boy indicated a re-enforced and brass-bound chest which his keen eye had spied, and which formed a seat at the further end of the room. "That will do me, very well."
"I never thought of the chest," remarked Samuel. "The boy is right. At his age one sleeps anywhere. With plenty of warm covering he will pass the night there almost as comfortably as in his own bed. It all comes out for the best."
"I'll go fetch a cushion and a cloak, and fix him up as well as possible," added Bathsheba, leaving the room.
The boy sat down and huddled himself together as if unable to resist the lassitude and sleep which weighed upon him. His head sank upon his chest, and his eyes closed. But immediately peeping under his lids he saw on the table close beside him pens, ink, and several sheets of freshly written paper. It was Samuel's unfinished letter to Levi.
"I surely was inspired in asking to sleep here," murmured the boy, aside; "let me recall without forgetting anything the orders of my good god-father," he thought, as the Jew's wife returned with the makeshift bedding she had gone in search of.
"Here, dear boy," she said, "I'll put you to bed and tuck you in well from the cold."
Simulating a heavy sleep, the urchin did not stir.
"Poor creature—asleep already," said Bathsheba. "I'll have to carry him." Lifting little Rodin in her arms she placed him on the chest, while Samuel arranged the cushion under his head and covered him up with the cloak. These cares completed, Samuel and his wife turned again to the completion of the note to their cousin Levi; but his thoughts having been disarranged by the frequent interruptions, Samuel asked his wife to re-read the letter from the beginning, after which he finished it, while the young boy was seemingly sound asleep.
Bathsheba had just taken down the last of her husband's dictation when suddenly another rap resounded at the gate.
"Samuel," cried the Jewess, pale and trembling, "that time the watcher gave the alarm signal."
Samuel went to the gate, opened the wicket and asked the lookout:
"What is up?"
"For nearly quarter of an hour I have remarked two men, closely wrapped in their cloaks, who came in from St. Gervais Street, and halted at the corner of the garden wall. They examined the house minutely. Immediately I fell on one of the stone benches in the dark passageway and pretended to be asleep. Two or three times they passed by without noticing me; they kept walking up and down, now examining the exterior of the building, now conversing in low tones. Finally they saw me, and said aloud—'There is a wine-bibber sleeping himself sober.' They walked once more to some distance; then returning towards me, I heard them utter these words: 'And now, let us report to the sergeant.' They quickened their steps and vanished around the corner of St. Francois Street. Now you are warned, Master Samuel."
"When you first observed them, was anyone within?" asked Samuel. "Are you sure of that, lookout?"
"No one—except the child I brought to you, and whom you took in yourself."
"These two men must be attached to the police, since they intended to go straight to the sergeant; could their suspicions as to what went on here have been awakened by their observations to-night?"
"There was no one in the street while our brothers were arriving. I am sure of it; I kept good and sure guard."
"The suspicions of these fellows must, then, date from further back than this evening. But, in that case, at the first suspicion of one of his agents, the Lieutenant of Police would have had the house turned topsy-turvy by his searchers. There is something inexplicable in the conduct of these men. However, if they guessed that you were not really asleep, but could hear, I believe they would have enjoyed giving you a false scare. But then, to what purpose? No matter, forewarned is forearmed. Maintain your watch, and the instant you get sight or sound of the police sergeant, notify me with the usual signal."
Samuel thereupon ran to the green-house and gave the alarm, which, repeated by the Voyant on guard at the door of the temple, was the signal for the dispersal of the meeting. Then the Jew returned to the room where his wife awaited him.
"Well, my friend," asked Bathsheba hurriedly in an undertone, and unable to control her anxiety, "what is going on?"
"The danger is not imminent. Nevertheless, I have just warned our brothers to leave the temple by the two secret issues. The flag-stone which masks the descent under the hot-house will be replaced, for the police spies were watching the house. They will cause it to be searched, they must be able to discover nothing, and our friends must have time to escape. Reassure yourself, my dear wife; we run not the slightest danger."
"Lower, my friend, lower, lest you wake the child," cautioned Bathsheba, indicating little Rodin, who seemed to be still sound asleep, although his eyelids were imperceptibly winking. "Oh, may the alarms of this night be vain, and may all danger escape you!"
"Dear wife, let us trust to Providence. It inspired me to write that letter to our cousin Levi, and now, whatever may come, I am prepared. The sacred mission bequeathed to us by my grandfather will be fulfilled, and I shall have saved the heritage of Monsieur Marius Rennepont."
"First—a movable flag conceals the descent under the green-house. Second—this renegade of a Jew is going to safeguard the fortune of a certain Marius Rennepont," recited little Rodin to himself, not having lost a word of the conversation between Samuel and his wife. "Oh, now, I mustn't forget that name, nor the two secret exits of the temple, nor the movable flag-stone of the green-house—nor a lot of other things!"
The alarm given by the lookout proved premature, for neither the sergeant of police nor his men appeared on the scene that night to ransack the house in St. Francois Street.
CHAPTER V.
COUNT AND JESUIT.
More than four months had elapsed since the night on which Victoria Lebrenn was received into the society of the Illuminati, and on which little Rodin, with froward slyness, had penetrated the secrets of the Jew Samuel, the guardian of the Rennepont fortune. In short, it was the night of July 13, 1789.
The Plouernel mansion, in the suburb of St. Germain, had been built, in the beginning of the Seventeenth Century, by the order of Raoul of Plouernel, peer and Marshal of France, and ambassador to Spain. This seigneur, residing habitually at Versailles or at Paris, left to his stewards and bailiffs the administration of his domains in Auvergne, Beauvoisis, and Brittany. He never visited his country seat of Plouernel, devastated at the time of the Breton uprising.[5] Marshal Plouernel had had transported to his establishment in Paris all his family portraits, the oldest of which represented Neroweg, the leude of Clovis and count of the country of Auvergne. These portraits now adorned one of the halls of the Plouernel mansion; among them was one draped in black crepe, in token of mourning. The effigy hidden beneath the veil of black was that of Colonel Plouernel, traitor, according to the traditions of the monarchy, to his faith and to his King.
The first lackey of the Count of Plouernel, named Lorrain, the same who some months previously had carried the missive to Samuel the Jew, was showing into the Hall of the Portraits Abbot Morlet, of the Society of Jesus, a holy man of God and god-father to little Rodin, who, in fact, resembled him so closely as to be taken with reason for his son rather than his god-son. The Abbot was about forty years of age, clad in black, of middle height, weazened and nervous, with a fleshless, almost bald forehead over which fell a few straggling hairs of tawny yellow. His physiognomy, evil, insidious or beaming in turn, was above all remarkable for its caustic smile and its half-veiled glance, resembling that of a serpent. The Abbot was agitated, uneasy; he said to the lackey who introduced him:
"Announce me to your master without delay."
"Monsieur Abbot," respectfully answered Lorrain, "my lord will not keep you waiting an instant. His valets are just completing his toilet."
"His toilet!" exploded the Abbot. "To be thinking of such trifles—he must be out of his head!"
Then pausing a moment and recalling the air of preparation and the brilliant lighting of the parlors he had passed through on the ground floor, he added:
"The Count seems to be expecting a large company?"
"My lord is giving a grand supper."
"How is it that the agitation prevailing in Paris since day before yesterday and up to this very night does not compel the Count to be at the head of his regiment of the Guards?"
"Monsieur the Abbot is unaware that my lord journeyed this morning to Versailles to hand in his resignation, and to surrender the command of his regiment."
"To surrender the command of his regiment!" echoed the Jesuit, stupefied, and as if he could not believe what he heard. "What—"
At that moment Lorrain left the hall, walking backward as his master entered.
Count Gaston of Plouernel had reached at this time his thirtieth year. The facial traits of his Germanic ancestry were reproduced in him. The whole effect of his person was one of audacity, haughtiness and arrogance. He presented the accepted type of the great seigneur of his time, and wore with grace his costume of plain blue cloth of Tours, spangled with silver and embroidered in gold. His taffeta vest was half lost to view under the billows of Alençon point lace which formed his shirt frill and rivalled for costly workmanship the flowing ruffles of his cuffs. His red-heeled shoes were fastened with diamond buckles. Diamonds also glittered in the hilt of his small-sword, which he wore ostentatiously slung under one of the tails of his coat.
At the sight of Abbot Morlet the Count seemed greatly surprised. He cordially extended to him his hand, however, saying:
"Well! good day, holy Father. What good wind blows you to us? I thought you at this time still a hundred leagues from Paris!"
"I just got in, and after attending to some indispensable duties, hurried over to you, to communicate to you, my dear Count—to you, one of the leaders of the court party—important information I had picked up during my trip through several of our provinces. Judge of my surprise! When I arrived here, I learned from your first lackey—that you had this very day given up the command of your regiment. That's the way of it. The monarchy, the nobility, the clergy, are attacked as they never have been through the worst days of our history. And it is at such an hour that you, one of the greatest lords of France, you, a man of spirit and of courage, sheath your sword—at this hour when the battle is engaged with the Third Estate! Ah, Count, if you did not belong to the house of Plouernel, I would say that you were a coward and a traitor. But, as you are neither coward nor traitor, I shall make bold to say that you are a madman."
"On the contrary, my dear Abbot, never have I acted more wisely. Never have I more studiously served our cause, or proven better my signal devotion, not to the King—his weakness revolts me—but to the Queen, to royalty!"
"So, you have judged it wise and politic to abandon the command of your regiment in our present circumstances? Is it for me, only to-day arrived, to have to inform you that Paris is laboring under the greatest excitement, and perhaps on the verge of a formidable insurrection? Didn't I see them, on the other side of the Seine, beginning to throw up their barricades? Didn't I meet on every street corner groups of malcontents, harangued by caballers of the Third Estate?"
"That is all true, Abbot. We are drawing near the moment of a decisive crisis. The fever of revolution has lasted since day before yesterday, since Saturday, the 11th of July. The first act took place in the Palais Royal,[6] when the recall of Necker became known to the public. A young man named Camille Desmoulins stirred up the gullible clowns in the gardens by crying out that the King was centering his troops on Paris, with the purpose of dissolving the National Assembly, arresting the leaders, and massacring the people of Paris. The most resolute of his hearers cried To arms! To the barricades! and suited the action to the word. Bezenval, the military commander of Paris, informed of the tumult, ordered the dragoons of the Marquis of Crussol to horse. The dragoons sabered the rabble. But that only angered the populace, and the agitation spread to the suburbs. A soldier of my command told the people that several French Guards had been sent to the Abbey Prison; for you must know, good Father, that insubordination had crept into my regiment. I had sent the mutineers in irons to the Abbey to await the time to administer to them the scourging they deserved, when the populace hurled themselves against the prison, put to rout the sentries, and liberated the mutinous Guards. The latter received as great an ovation as if they had had the honor of being Monsieur Necker, or Monsieur Mirabeau!"
"This detestable spirit of rebellion is only too like that which infests many of our provinces. But these saturnalia were, I hope, put down with the greatest severity?"
"Not a whit, my dear Father. A King who pretends to the title of 'Father of the people' does not punish them—or very little. What was the result? The mildness of the reproof redoubled the rabble's audacity. The success of the expedition against the Abbey whetted their appetite, and they turned their attention to the prison of La Force, where they delivered all the debtors. The insurrection growing more and more serious, the Prince of Lambesc at length received orders from Marshal Broglie, the new Minister of War, to mount his regiment, the Royal Germans, and charge upon this impious populace, then excitedly huddled in the garden of the Tuileries. At the same time I was ordered to bring up my regiment, to support, if necessary, the cavalry of Lambesc."
"The French Guards commanded by a colonel like you, Count, should easily mow down these rebels. And yet you abandon your command. Your conduct is an enigma."
"On the contrary, nothing is more clear. Do you know the difference between a German and a Frenchman?"
"What do you mean?"
"Picture to yourself a tribune of the cross-roads, an insolent droll named Gonchon,[7] who never spoke of himself but in the third person, come to harangue the German soldiers in the name of the brotherhood of man. The German soldier, understanding nothing of that demagogic trash, draws at the command of his colonel, and sabers both Gonchon and the mob! That is what the dragoons of Lambesc did; that is what the cavalry of Berchiny would have done gladly, and the cavalry of Esterhazy and of Roëmer, or the regiments of Desbach, of Salis, or the Royal Swiss."
"Good! That is the medicine for this canaille."
"But hardly had Lambesc and his horse sabered the rabble in the garden of the Tuileries, when that very mob poured back into Louis XV Place, where I had stationed myself at the head of my regiment in battle array. I gave the order to fire on the ructious rabble. Murmurs broke out among the soldiers in the ranks; some made answer, We will not fire on the people! I ordered the mutinous men to be seized and shot on the spot. The murmurs grew louder. I repeated the order. Bang! Several soldiers struck me in the face! Whole companies broke ranks, waving the butts of their muskets in the air."
"Everything is lost if we cannot count on the army!" cried the Abbot in dismay.
"You have said it, Abbot—unless the court party is resolved to serve royalty to the exclusion of the King. In the face of the stand taken by my men, there was nothing to do but march them back to their quarters. This morning I repaired to Versailles, and on gaining an audience with the King I pleaded with his Majesty to authorize me to call a court-martial to judge and condemn to death within the hour about a hundred soldiers and under-officers of my regiment, the ringleaders of the revolt. After long consideration, his Majesty answered with a sour air that 'if it was a matter of shooting a half dozen or so insubordinates, he saw no great obstacle in the way, but that he would not listen at all to any mass slaughters.' Thereupon the King crabbedly turned his back on me, shrugged his shoulders, and took himself off to his private apartments. That is why, my good Father, I have renounced my command in the French Guards. But reassure yourself," he added, in response to the dumbfounded look the Abbot wore. "I shall remain neither passive nor idle. I hope to serve our cause more actively, and, without contradiction, more usefully, now, than if I still were at the head of my regiment."
"That assurance overwhelms me with joy, dear Count," cried the Abbot "What are your plans?"
"First, I give to-night a supper, a convivial repast in which I bring together the influential heads of the court party, for the purpose of deciding on our final measures—presided over by the most remarkable and adorable woman I have ever met."
The Jesuit gazed at Monsieur Plouernel in amaze, and answered: "Are you speaking seriously? Are you really dreaming of having a political meeting of such importance presided over by—a woman?"
"Your astonishment will cease, my dear Abbot, when you make the acquaintance of Madam the Marchioness Aldini, a Venetian by birth, the widow of Marquis Aldini, a great Florentine lord who left his wife an immense fortune. The Marchioness has resided in Paris for now nearly a month."
"You know the lady for only a month, and you dare initiate her into the secrets of our party!"
"Oh, Abbot, the Marchioness is more of our party than we ourselves! A patrician and a Catholic, she nurses an invincible horror for the populace and for revolutions. We shall never have a more ardent auxiliary than she. And then, she is beautiful—seductive—irresistible!"
"And where did you meet this beautiful personage?"
"One day last month I received a note stamped with outraged pride. The writer, Marchioness Aldini, addressed to me, as colonel of the Guards, a complaint against the insolence of several of my soldiers, who had beaten her lackeys. Struck with the lofty tone of the missive, I called on the Marchioness, who was occupying the establishment of the Countess of St. Megrin, now in England, and maintained there a house on the grandest scale. One of the Marchioness's private valets introduced me to her in her parlor. Ah, Abbot! at the sight of her I stood spellbound, enchanted! The extreme beauty of the foreign dame, the fire of her glance, the expression of her face, the perfection of her stature, the complete admirableness of her person—all threw me into transports of admiration." Abbot Morlet puckered his brow dubiously, and the colonel continued: "In short, the Marchioness realized, she surpassed, an ideal a hundred times dreamt of by me, wearied as I am of the flirtatious beauties of the city and the court. What a difference, or rather what a distance, separates them from the Marchioness! Pride of patrician blood, resoluteness of character, ardor, impetuosity of passion, all were legible in her countenance of a masculine paleness, in her look of flame. Something imperious in her posture, something virile in the accents of her tongue, gave to this extraordinary woman—none other like her!—an irresistible charm;—for, before she had spoken a word, I felt myself captured, enchained, bewitched."
"And the fascination grew and grew, if that is possible," put in the Jesuit sardonically, "when this beautiful lady opened her mouth? The siren took you by the eyes and by the ears. She greeted you, I presume, in the most charming and gallant manner?"
"Not a bit of it! On the contrary, she greeted me with an air of arrogance and irritation. She taxed me severely for the insolence of my soldiers."
"But the tigress finished by turning sweet?"
"Yes, after the greatest protestations on my part, and my assurance that I would chastise the guilty soldiers."
"The anger of the Marchioness being calmed, the interview, no doubt, took a most tender turn?"
"We spoke of the affairs of the day."
"Strange, out of all whooping! A colonel of thirty, a man of the court, besides, to speak decorously of the events of the day—with a beautiful lady—and he so lusty elsewhere!"
"So it was, nevertheless, reverend Father. I never even thought, at that first interview, of venturing upon the slightest word of gallantry, so struck was I with the spirit of the Marchioness. Blue death! I was pale with rage at hearing the Marchioness's bitter sarcasms. I should have been glad—may God blast me!—to put myself at the head of my regiment and shoot down all the bourgeois in the States General."
"This retrospective zeal flows from an excellent sentiment; and I know not how sufficiently to applaud the beautiful Venetian for having aroused that sentiment in you. Strongly do I approve the belle's sarcasms, her scorn for the ranters of the Third Estate, and the populace which supports them. Still, methinks it is very surprising that a stranger should interest herself so warmly in our affairs," added the Jesuit thoughtfully.
Without a pause, the priest continued: "Tell me, Count—Have you dealt out the punishment to the insolent soldiers who beat the lackeys of Madam the Marchioness?"
"It was impossible to discover them."
"And she hasn't asked you for an account of their punishment? Strange! Do you know what I think, Count? The outrage was an imaginary one. It was the Marchioness's pretext to secure a first interview with you."
"Come, Abbot, you are insane! For what reason should she have sought to inveigle me into an interview?"
"I'll tell you, Count, for I foresee the end of this adventure. You returned often to visit the Marchioness? You became enamored of her? And soon the beautiful Venetian, answering your passion, granted you the boon of love for thanks—after having wheedled out of you all our party's closest secrets."
"You are mistaken, holy Father. On the faith of a gentleman, the Marchioness loves me as passionately as I love her; but she has placed certain conditions on her favors."
"And what may the conditions be with which she has hedged about her bounty?"
"A struggle to the death against the revolution; the exaltation of royalty, of the privileges of the nobility and the Church; the extermination of our enemies. Only on these conditions, Abbot, shall my love receive its sweetest recompense."
"Count," cried the Jesuit after a moment's silence, "you are only twenty years old! What am I saying? You are barely sixteen—you are still at the age of innocence and childlike credulity. You have been blindfolded, duped, made game of, tossed in a blanket, like the most artless of young fellows! Oh, the women! And you think yourself a Lovelace, a lady-killer, my poor Count! And you presume to play a role in the politics of the court!"
"Monsieur Abbot Morlet, familiarity has its limits—do not oblige me to recall the fact to you any more forcibly!" exclaimed Monsieur Plouernel, flaring into a rage. Then, calming himself with an effort, he continued, sarcastically: "It suits you ill indeed, my reverend sir, to twit me on the empire exercised over me by women. Has no woman ever reigned over you? Could not the record of the vestry tell of a fertile gossip, the hirer-out of chairs at the Church of St. Medard, and widow of Goodman Rodin, the dispenser of holy water in the same parish? Your mistress is the mother of that little Rodin whom you brought here one day last year!"
Unmoved by the raillery of Monsieur Plouernel, the Jesuit replied:
"Your sarcasm is in the last degree pleasant, and moreover, well to the point, in that it furnishes me the occasion, Count, to give you an excellent lesson. You need the bit, the bridle, and also the whip, my fine gentleman."
"I am listening, reverend sir."
"Your love for fine ladies of irresistible beauty is capable of leading you into the most mournful follies; while I, by reason of my love for my gossip Rodin, shall be, I hope, able to prevent, and what is more, to repair your insanities."
"This is getting curious, Abbot. Continue."
"About four months ago, about the beginning of April, at a late hour of the night, a child, overcome with fatigue, fell on the doorstep of a house in St. Francois Street, in the Swamp."
"St. Francois Street, in the Swamp! A rascal of a Jew, a skin-flint of a usurer, lives there. You know him, Abbot? He does business with the clergy too?"
"It was at the door of that very house that the child sank down with weariness, crying and shivering. The Jew, out of the pity of his heart, took in the little fellow, who, he supposed, had lost his way. Then, succumbing to fatigue and drowsiness, the lad fell asleep on a bench in the room in which the Jew and his wife were conversing."
"Bless my heart, holy Father! Your voice is trembling, your nose is growing red, your look is softening, and your eye grows moist! That infant gifted with so precocious an intelligence, that prodigy, surely can be no other than little Rodin, your god-son! Honor to you, Abbot, and to your gossip! You have performed a prodigy, like the Virgin Mary with the Holy Ghost!"
"Throughout, the little fellow lost not a word of the conversation between the Jew and his wife; and thanks to a false alarm, adroitly given without by one of our brothers and myself, my god-son, in the course of his feigned sleep, surprised two secrets of inestimable import for the welfare of religion and the nobility. You shall judge—"
"You are deceiving yourself, Abbot, in trying to make me believe that from the chatter of a miserable Jew and his wife, a chatter surprised by an urchin, secrets of such importance can be won."
"Count—what do you think of a fortune of nearly 220 millions of francs? Isn't it a magnificent sum? If these 220 millions should pass into the possession of a party religious, able, tireless, blessed with cleverness and boldness, would they not become a lever of immense power? Again, suppose there were a mysterious sect, the object of which was the annihilation of the Catholic Church, the overthrow of thrones, the abolition of the privileges of birth and of fortune; suppose that sect extended its ramifications throughout all Europe, that it counted in its ranks classes the most diversified in society, from the lowest to the highest, and that some of them were even of kingly rank; suppose that association had at its disposal a considerable treasure; suppose its masters, men and women, to be capable of assuming, at need, any mask, any role; that, thanks to their specious masquerade, they introduced themselves among the royalists, and fathomed the secrets of our party;—then, Count, what would you think of the discovery of that sect? Would it not be of the primest importance? What say you?"
"Surely; but only if the pretended sect existed. Come, holy Father, it is with surprise and regret that I see a man of your good sense fall into the net of these absurd fables about the Voyants of France, the Illuminati of Germany, and other fish-yarns, veritable Mother Goose tales!"
"If I prove to you the existence of this society—if I show you the place where their leaders meet, will you admit that the revealer of the secret has rendered a signal service to the throne and the altar? Well, Count, compare now the results of your mad-cap passion for the beautiful foreign Marchioness, with the consequences of what you term my love for my gossip Rodin. According to you, my god-son is one of the visible and carnal outcomes of that love; if so I owe to the wily youngster first—the discovery of a treasure which should some day reach more than 200 millions, on the trail of which our Society of Jesus has been for over a century; and, second—the unearthing of a den of Voyants."
CHAPTER VI.
ROYALISTS AT BANQUET.
The answer which the Count of Plouernel was about to make to his friend the Jesuit was interrupted by the arrival of several of his convivial friends of the court party—dukes, marquises, canons, and archbishops. Among them was the Viscount of Mirabeau, nicknamed, by reason of his portly front and the quantity of liquor he could contain, "Barrel Mirabeau." He was an infantry colonel, and younger brother to the famous orator of the Third Estate. He seemed to be in great heat, and cried in a loud voice to Monsieur Plouernel:
"Good evening, my dear Count. Devil take this infamous town of Paris and its Parisians! Long live Versailles, the true capital of France."
"Whence all this anger, Viscount?"
"Anger! Allow me to inform you that just now this vile populace, which to-night overflows in all the streets, had the impudence to stop my carriage on the Louis XV Bridge. By God's death, I shall punish these people!"
"What did you say to the insolent creatures?"
"I was treating this fraction of the 'sovereign people' like the abject rabble that they are, when my lackey, trembling like a hare, and hoping to secure our release, conceived the infernal idea of calling out to the beggars 'Make way, there, if you please, for the carriage of Monsieur Mirabeau!' Immediately the tempest turned to a zephyr, and the stupid people made way for me, to cries of 'Long live Mirabeau!'"
"They must have taken you for your brother!"
"Death and fury! It is but too true! I shall never forgive my brother that insult!"
"Calm yourself, Viscount; but yet a few days and that filthy populace will be clouted back into the mire where it belongs."
"Her Excellency, Marchioness Aldini," loudly announced one of Plouernel's valets at that moment, swinging back both sides of the great door of the parlor, into which he introduced—Victoria Lebrenn under her borrowed name and title.
The friends of Monsieur Plouernel thus beheld Marchioness Aldini for the first time. All were struck with astonishment at her beauty, heightened as it was by the splendor of her toilet. For Victoria now wore a trailing robe of poppy-colored cloth of Tours, trimmed with black lace. The cut of her corsage left bare her arms, shoulders and the rise of her breast, which seemed sculptured in the purest marble. Her black hair was not buried, as was the custom of the time, under a layer of white powder, but, glowing with the luster of ebony, and rolled in thick and numerous ringlets around her head, majestically crowned her brow. A triple string of Venetian sequins served both as diadem and collar. Nothing can give an adequate idea of the effect of this original mode, at once elegant and severe, which was still more remarkable in that it differed completely from the pomponned attires of the period, and harmonized marvellously with Victoria's own cast of beauty.
Plouernel's friends, seized with admiration, were for a moment speechless. Every look was fastened on the foreign dame;—even Abbot Morlet experienced the fascination, and said to himself as he gazed at her:
"I can understand how the Count is mad over her. The danger is greater than I suspected. She is a very siren."
Of all Plouernel's assembled friends, the Abbot was the only one to penetrate the true nature of Victoria's beauty. Her pallor, her flashing black eyes, her bitter and sardonic smile, gave to her face an indefinable somberness, which was in accord with the severity of her costume of red, black and gold.
Soon the voice of Monsieur Plouernel's chief butler was heard, announcing that supper was served. The Count offered his arm to Victoria, to lead her into the capacious dining room. Walls of white plaster were relieved by gilded moldings which framed large panels frescoed with birds, fruits and flowers. A splendid silver service was laid out on the table, along with a brilliantly colored set of Sevres china. On the burnished surface of the silver glittered the glow of rose-colored candles, held in candelabra of vermilion. The banqueters took their seats about the table. The Count, who had escorted Victoria to a place beside himself, opened the feast.
"Permit me, my friends," he said, "to follow a custom recently introduced from England into France, and to propose a first toast to Madam the Marchioness Aldini, who has deigned to accept my invitation to supper." The Count rose, glass in hand—"To Madam the Marchioness Aldini!"
The whole company, following the Count's example, rose in their places; holding their glasses in their out-stretched hands, they repeated:
"To Madam the Marchioness Aldini!"
Draining their glasses, they resumed their seats.
Victoria in her turn rose. After a moment's pause she replied:
"In response to the courtesy of Monsieur the Count of Plouernel, and of yourselves, my lords prelates, and gentlemen, I propose with my heart and with my lips a toast to the Church, to the monarchy, and to the nobility,—and to the extermination of revolutionists, of whatever rank."
With these words Victoria moistened her lips in the wine which filled her glass, while Plouernel's friends, transported by the words of the young woman, repeated in ecstasy, to the music of their clinking glasses—
"To the Church! To the King! To the nobility! To the extermination of the revolutionists!"
The roisterers sat down; even Abbot Morlet muttered to himself, "Ah, if the Marchioness is sincere, what an ally we should have in her! What a magic effect the energy of her words produced on these foppish gentlemen, and on these brainless and imprudent prelates, imbeciles who don't even know how to cloak their vices under their sacred robes!"
Victoria, who had been cautiously watching the Jesuit, replied to his thought in her own mind: "That priest with the cadaverous mask keeps his snaky looks ever fastened on me. He alone, of all this company, seems to mistrust me. We must redouble our care and boldness—the game is on."
Meanwhile a Cardinal was puzzling over something, and thinking to himself: "Where did I meet that beautiful Marchioness, or at least a girl who much resembled her? Ah! I remember! It was in the little house where the Dubois woman kept her nymphs, in the King's 'Doe Park,' as he called it, near Versailles. Come, come, that must be an illusion—although, that Italian lord, Aldini, not knowing the antecedents of the old inmate of the Dubois house, might well have left her his name, his title, and all. But let us look into things a bit before we pass a rash judgment."
The Viscount of Mirabeau was the first to speak aloud. "Madam the Marchioness," he said, "has pledged us a toast to the death of the revolutionists of all ranks and conditions. I understand how a bourgeois, or a peasant, can be a revolutionary; but I can not admit that princes, nobles, or clericals would train with that breed."
"All revolutionists are fit for the noose," retorted a Duke. "But the opinions of the groundlings may be explained by their desire to shake off the yoke. The people is at the end of its patience; it is kicking the traces; it rebels."
"You speak words of gold, my dear Duke," answered young Mirabeau. "We shall hang them all, and we shall show ourselves without pity for those pretended revolutionists, Orleans, Talleyrand, Lafayette, and my unworthy brother Mirabeau, who has brought dishonor upon our house."
"No, no pity for traitors, to whatever class they belong—nobles, clergy, or bourgeoisie," cried the Count of Plouernel.
"On the day of reckoning," echoed the Cardinal, "these felons shall all be hanged, high and low alike."
"They shall all be hanged at the same height—on their own principle of equality!" added a young Marquis, laughing.
Victoria cut short his laugh. "By the blood of Christ," she cried, "is there not in France a revolutionist a hundred times more damnable than the gentlemen, the bishops, and even than the princes of the blood who league themselves with the revolution—I would say, the most guilty?"
Surprise fell upon the company. Finally the Count of Plouernel stammered out: "What! Who is that revolutionist—more highly situated, according to you, than gentlemen or bishops—or even princes of the blood?"
"The King, Louis XVI!"
Again silence and stupefaction fell upon the thunder-struck banqueters. Some exchanged frightened glances. Others, deep in thought, sought for the key to the enigma. The rest stared at Victoria with anxious curiosity. Abbot Morlet alone said to himself: "Aha! I catch the woman's trend."
"How, Marchioness," fumbled Plouernel, "according to you—the King—would be—a revolutionist—and so cut out for the gibbet?"
"What was your motive, Count, for giving up your commission as colonel in the French Guards?" returned Victoria, unmoved.
"As I wrote you, Marchioness, I surrendered the command of my regiment because the King refused to authorize the severity which alone, to me, seems capable of re-establishing discipline among my soldiers and preventing them from becoming the allies of the revolution."
"And yet you are astonished when I pronounce the name of the accomplice of the revolutionists! I denounce the King, Louis XVI."
"You are a woman of genius, madam," acclaimed the Viscount of Mirabeau warmly. "You justly signalize one of the causes of the revolution. Honor to you, madam."
"I have no right to these praises, Viscount. I am a woman whom God has dowered with some little good sense, that is all. I am a patrician and a Catholic."
"Nevertheless, Madam Marchioness," interposed the Duke who had spoken before, "it seems to me hazardous to pretend that the King, our Sire, is a revolutionist. In truth, it is pursuing the metaphor to its extreme limits. I should hesitate to follow you upon that ground."
Here the Marquis broke in again with his irrepressible laugh, saying: "On one side the revolutionary King—on the other the 'sovereign people.' What a comicality! What a mess!"
Victoria continued: "King Louis XVI is the first, the most damnable of revolutionists. Neither grace nor pity for the guilty! What I say, I maintain; I shall prove it. I shall essay to rouse in you all remorse—for you represent here the nobility, the clergy, and the world of money, and you are nearly as responsible as the King. I shall soon make it clear to you."
"By the life of God, Marchioness, I am of your opinion," echoed the Viscount of Mirabeau. "Six months ago the nobility should have saddled its horses, and, whether the King consented or no, ridden against the revolution and put every peasant to the saber."
"Six months ago the curates should have stirred themselves, roused their parishes to the sound of the tocsin, and put arms into their hands. They also will have to enter the fight," quoth Abbot Morlet, speaking aloud for the first time since the beginning of the banquet.
"We understand each other, Monsieur Abbot," answered Victoria; and then to Mirabeau: "We judge the situation alike, Monsieur Viscount—the moment calls for a general and armed uprising."
"But we who are less keen-sighted," objected the Duke, "we confess the weakness of our prevision; we reject your conclusions."
"We are the three ninnies—the Duke, the Cardinal and I," put in the Marquis, cracking another joke.
"Decidedly," observed the Cardinal aside to himself. "I was the dupe of an accidental resemblance. This patrician Marchioness has nothing in common with the lovely nymph of the Dubois woman's lupanar."
Victoria began her proof: "Is not Louis XVI the worst of the revolutionists? Judge! On May 5th of this year, 1789, did he not convene the States General, instead of summoning to Versailles 25,000 men whom he had under his hand, led by resolute heads? At that time the revolution, hardly hatched, could have been stamped into oblivion. I am willing to excuse him for that mistake, but here is one more serious: The States General convened the 5th of May. The majority of the nobility and the clergy attempted to hold their deliberations by Order, and refused to mingle with the bourgeois for the examination of credentials. The Third Estate insisted, and upon a new refusal of the nobles and clergy, left the hall. At length the deputies of the communes had the insolence to declare themselves, on the 17th of June, the National Assembly, in the name of the pretended sovereignty of the people. They arrogated to themselves the right to vote the taxes, and declared that if the royal authority should order them to dissolve, they would not be responsible for the outcome. Did not the King tolerate all these audacities?"
"'Tis true," acquiesced the Viscount of Mirabeau. "It all passed before our eyes, at Versailles."
"That is the second crime I impute to the King," Victoria continued. "Louis XVI could still have crushed out in its cradle this rising rebellion, scattered by force this handful of malcontents—"
"That has been tried, madam, by us of the court party," interposed the Duke. "We induced his Majesty to allow the seats of the Assembly to be occupied by troops. On the morning of the 19th of June these so-called Representatives of the people found the corridors of their chamber occupied by two companies of grenadiers, with loaded muskets."
"Yes," put in the Marquis bitterly, "the King had the cleverness on that occasion to commit what was, from the point of view of the revolutionists, an assault upon the National Assembly, by allowing their meeting place to be invaded by the troops; and at the same time to perpetrate a new assault against royalty by not preventing the rebels from reuniting in the Tennis Court at Versailles; mistakes, mistakes, ever more mistakes."
"All this is conclusive evidence," chimed in Barrel Mirabeau. "This unfortunate King seems to be infatuated with folly."
"Either brace up foolish Kings or suppress them—else look out for the safety of the monarchy, Monsieur Viscount," replied Victoria.
"Thanks to God," went on a cavalry officer at the other end of the table, "thanks to God the King's brother, Monseigneur the Count of Provence, rose to the emergency. At this vexatious juncture the prince took an energetic step. Without even asking the King, he hired the Tennis Court for a whole month!"
Victoria broke out into a peal of grim and mocking laughter. "There is a party leader," she said, "of great bravery and great wisdom! One need go into no ecstasies over his courage!"
"Madam the Marchioness is right," chimed in the Viscount of Mirabeau again. "This measure had no other effect upon the rebels than to cause them, the next day, to instal themselves in the Church of St. Louis."
"And then the clergy, or at least a part of the clergy, committed another imbecility—they rallied to the Third Estate. The shaven-heads have their share of responsibility in all this," said the Count of Plouernel.
"The high clergy protested, against this treason, the blame of which should be thrown on the curates of the country districts," declared the Cardinal in self-defense.