Resisting all Marietta’s entreaties to stay and sup with her—resisting blandishments that might have subjugated sterner moralists—Gerald quitted her to seek out his humble lodging in the ‘Rue de Marais.’ Like all men who have gained a victory over themselves, he was proud of his triumph, and almost boastfully contrasted his tattered dress and lowly condition with the splendour he had just left behind him.
‘I suppose,’ muttered he, ‘I too might win success if I could stifle all sense of conscience within me, and be the slave of the vile thing they call the world. It is what men would call my own fault if I be poor and friendless—so, assuredly, Mirabeau would say.’
‘Mirabeau will not say so any more then,’ said a voice close beside him in the dark street.
‘Why so?’ asked Gerald fiercely.
‘Simply because that great moralist is dead.’
Not noticing the half sarcasm of the epithet, Gerald eagerly asked when the event occurred.
‘I can tell you almost to a minute,’ said the other. ‘We were just coming to the close of the third act of the piece “L’Amour le veut,” where I was playing Jostard, when the news came; and the public at once called out, “Drop the curtain.”’
As the speaker had just concluded these words, the light of a street lamp fell full upon his figure, and Gerald beheld a meanly clad but good-looking man of about eight-and-twenty, whose features were not unfamiliar to him.
‘We have met before, sir,’ said he.
‘It was because I recognised your voice I ventured to address you; you were a Garde du Corps once?’
‘And you?’
‘I was once upon a time the Viscount Alfred de Noe,’ said the other lightly. ‘It was a part my ancestors performed for some seven or eight centuries. Now I change my rôle every night.’
Through all the levity of this remark there was also what savoured of courage, that bold defiance of the turns of fortune which sounded haughtily.
‘I, too, have had my reverses; but not so great as yours,’ said Gerald modestly.
‘When a man is killed by a fall, what signifies it if the drop has been fifty feet or five hundred! Mon cher,’ said the other, ‘you and I were once gentlemen—we talked, ate, drank, and dressed as such; we have now the canaille life, and the past is scarcely even a dream.’
‘It is the present I would call a dream,’ said Gerald.
‘I ‘d do so too if its cursed reality would let me,’ said De Noe, laughing, ‘or if I could throw off the cast of shop for one brief hour, and feel myself the man I once was.’
‘What are you counting? Have you lost anything?’ asked Gerald, as the other turned over some pieces of money in his hand, and then hastily searched pocket after pocket.
‘No; I was just seeing if I had wherewithal to ask you to sup with me, and I find that I have.’
‘Rather, come and share mine—I live here,’ said Gerald, as he pushed a door which lay ajar. ‘It’s a very humble meal I invite you to partake of; but we ‘ll drink to the good time coming.’
‘I accept frankly,’ said the other, as he followed Gerald up the dark and narrow stairs.
‘A bed and a looking-glass, as I live!’ exclaimed De Noe, as he entered the room. ‘What a sybarite! Why, my friend, you outrage the noble precepts of our glorious Revolution by these luxurious pretensions—you insult equality and fraternity together.’
‘Let me at least conciliate liberty then,’ said Gerald gaily, ‘and ask you to feel yourself at home.’
‘How am I to call thee, mon cher?’ said De Noe, assuming the familiar second person, which I beg the reader to supply in the remainder of the interview.
‘Gerald Fitzgerald is my name.’
‘Le Chevalier Fitzgerald was just becoming a celebrity when they changed the spectacle. Ah, what a splendid engagement we all had, if we only knew how to keep it!’
‘The fault was not entirely ours,’ protested Gerald.
‘Perhaps not. The good public were growing tired of being always spectators; they wanted, besides, to see what was behind the scenes; and they found the whole machinery even more a sham than they expected, and so they smashed the stage and scattered the actors.’
Gerald had now covered the table with the materials of his frugal meal, and brought forth his last two bottles of Bordeaux, long reserved to celebrate the first piece of good fortune that might betide him.
‘It is easy to see,’ cried De Noe, ‘that you serve a Prince; your fare is worthy of Royalty, my dear Fitzgerald. If you had supped with me, your meal had been a mess of haricot, washed down with the light wines of the “Pays Latin.’”
‘And why, or how, do you suspect in whose service I am?’ asked Gerald eagerly.
‘My dear friend, every man of the emigration is known to the police, and I am one of its agents. I am frank with you, just to show you that you may be as candid with me. Like you, I came to Paris as a secret agent of “the family.” I plotted, and schemed, and intrigued to obtain access to information. All my reports, however, were discouraging. I had no tidings to tell but such as boded ill. I saw the game was up; and I was honest enough or foolish enough to say so. The orgies of the Revolution were only beginning, and no one wished to come back to the rigid decency and decorous propriety of the Monarchy. These were not pleasant things to write back; they were less pleasant, too, to read; besides that, a man who spent some three thousand francs a month ought, surely, to have had something more agreeable to report, and they intimated as much to me. Well, I endeavoured to obey. I frequented certain coteries at the Abbé Clery’s; I went of an evening to D’Allonville’s; and I even used to pass a Sunday at St. Germains with old Madame de St. Leon. I familiarised my mind with all the favourite expressions, and filled my letters with the same glowing fallacies that they ever repeated to each other. This finished me; they called me a knave, and dismissed me. I had then to choose between becoming a secret agent of the police, or throwing myself into the Seine. I took the humbler part, and became a spy. They assigned me the theatres, the small, low “spectacles” of the populace, and for this I had to become an actor. It was a vow of poverty I took, my dear Chevalier; but I always hoped I was to rise to a higher order, which did not enjoin fasts nor disclaim clean linen. Seventeen long months has this slavery now endured, and during this time have I had seventeen hundred temptations to pitch my career to the devil, who invented it, and take the consequences, whatever they were; but somehow—shall I own it?—the chances and changes of this strange time have grown to assume to my mind the vicissitudes of a game. Even from the humble place I occupied have I seen those that seemed fortune’s first favourites ruined, and many a one as poor and needy and friendless as—as you or myself—rise to eminence, wealth, and power. This thought has given such an interest to events that I am reluctant to quit the table. What depressed me was that I was alone. Our old friends looked coldly on me, for I was no longer “of them.” Among the others, I knew not whom to trust, for in my heart of hearts I have no faith in the Revolution. Now I have watched you for months back. I knew your purpose, the places you frequented, the themes that interested you; and I often said to myself, that man “Gerard”—for so we called you in the police roll—would suit me. He was a Royalist, like me; his sympathies are like my own, so are his present necessities. I could, besides, give him much information of value to his party. In a word, I wanted you, Fitzgerald, and I felt that if I could not make my own fortune, I could certainly aid yours.’
There are men whose influence upon certain others is like a charm; without any seeming effort—without apparently a care on the subject—the words sink deep into the heart and carry persuasion with them. Of these was De Noe. Poor and miserable as he was, the stamp of gentleman was indelibly on him; and as Gerald sat and listened, the other’s opinions and views stole gradually into his mind with a power scarcely conceivable.
The ranges of his knowledge, too, seemed marvellous. He knew not only the theory of each pretender to popular favour, but the names and plans of their opponents. His firm conviction was that Mirabeau not only could, but would have saved the monarchy.
‘And now?’ cried Gerald, eager to hear what he had to predict.
‘And now the cards are shuffling for a new deal, Gerald, but the game will be a stormy one. The men who have convulsed France have not received their wages; they are growing hourly more and more impatient, and the end will be they ‘ll murder the paymasters.’
By a long but not wearisome line of argument he went on to show that the Revolution would consume itself. Out of anarchy and blood men would seek the deliverance of a dictator, and the real hope of the monarchists was in making terms with him.
‘You will meet no acceptance for those opinions from your friends; they are too lukewarm for sanguine loyalty; they are, besides, to be the work of time. But think and ponder them, Fitzgerald. Go out to-morrow into the streets, and count how many heads must fall before men will condescend to reason; the gaunt and famished faces you will meet are scarcely the guarantees of a long tranquillity. If the Monarchy is ever to come back to France, it is the mob must restore it.’
‘These are Mirabeau’s words,’ said Gerald quickly.
‘It was a craftier than Mirabeau explained them, though,’ broke in De Noe, ‘the shrewd and subtle Maurice de Talleyrand! But let us turn to ourselves and our own fortunes. What are we to do that France may benefit by our valuable services? How are our grand intelligences to redound to the advantage of the nation?’
‘I confess I have no plans. I grow weary of this inglorious life I lead. If there was an army in whose ranks I could fight, I ‘d turn a soldier, and care little in what cause.’
‘I guess the secret of your recklessness, Gerald; I read it in every word you speak.’
‘How so? What do you mean?’
‘You are in love, mon cher. These are the promptings of a hopeless passion.’
‘You were never more wrong in your life,’ said Gerald, blushing till his face and forehead were crimson.
‘Would you try to deceive a man trained to the subtleties of such a life as mine? Do you fancy that a “mouchard” cannot read the thoughts that men have scarcely confessed to themselves? It is not their privilege to win confidences, but to extort them; and so, I tell you again, Gerald, you are in love.’
‘And again I say, you are mistaken; I have but to remind you of the life I lead—its cares and duties—to show you how unlikely, if not impossible, is such an event.’
‘Bah!’ said the other scoffingly. ‘You stand at the door of the opera. As the crowd pours out, a shawled and muffled figure hastily passes to her carriage; she speaks a word or two, and the tones are in your heart for years after. The diligence drives at daybreak through some country village; a curtain is hastily withdrawn, and a pair of eyes meet yours, in which there is no expression save a pleased surprise; and yet you think of them in far-away lands, and across seas, as dear remembrances. Something more than these, an impression a little stronger, will oftentimes give the motive to a whole life. You doubt it; well, listen to a confession of my own.
‘When I first took service under my present masters, they assigned to me, as the sphere of duty, a small and miserable theatre in the cité. When I tell you that the entrance was four sous, you have the measure of its pretensions. What singular destiny brought our strange corps together I cannot think; we were of every class and condition of life, and of every shade of temperament and character. There was a Catalonian condemned for life to the galleys in Spain; a Swiss, who had poisoned a whole family; a monk, whose convent had been burned, and he himself the only one escaped; a court lady, who had been betrothed to an ambassador; and a gipsy girl, who had exhibited her native dances through all the towns of Italy. These were but a few of our incongruous elements, and it is with the last of them only I have to deal—the gipsy. Whence she came, or with whom, I never could learn. I only know that one evening, from some illness of our first actress, we were driven upon our own resources to amuse the public. Each, after his fashion, delivered some specimen of his talents, by repeating some well-known part, some oft-recited speech or song. When it came to her turn to appear, she evinced no fear or trepidation; she did not even ask a question of advice or counsel, but walked boldly on, stood for a second or two contemplating the dense crowd before her, and then began a strange, wild rhapsody, illustrating the events of the time. She told of the nobles living in splendour, ignoring the sorrows of the poor, forgetting their very existence. She described their life of luxury and pleasure, how they beguiled their leisure hours with enjoyments. She counterfeited their polished intercourse. She was a duchess; her ragged, tattered shawl swept the ground as a train, and she curtsied with a grace and dignity the highest might have envied. She presented her daughter to some great noble: the young girl was asked to sing; and then, taking her guitar, she sang a troubadour melody, and with a touching tenderness that brought tears over cheeks seared and sorrow-worn. Her aim was evidently to throw over the haughty existence of a hated class the softened light of a home; to show that among that proud order the same sympathies lived and reigned, the same affections grew, the same joys and griefs prevailed. Therein lay the power of vengeance. “They despise and reject you!” cried she; “they hold themselves apart from you, as beings of another destiny; of all this fair world contains they will not share with you, save in the air and sunlight; and yet their passions are your passions—their hates, loves, and jealousies are all your own. All their wealth teaches no new affection, all their civilisation can stifle no old pang. If you be like them, then, in all these, why not resemble them in their cruelties? Down with them! down with them!” she cried, “for the brand to burn, and the axe to cleave.” She shrieked the wild scream of an incensed populace. The chateau was attacked on every side—but why do I continue? The terrible roar of the famished crowd before her is still in my ears, as she sank dying on the stage, the martyred girl of the people, pouring out her blood for her brethren.
‘As the curtain fell I rushed forward to raise her; she was fainting. The emotion was not all unreal. I had seen her a hundred times before; we used to salute each other as we met, and perhaps exchange a word or two; and though struck by her uncommon beauty, I only deemed her one of those unhappy shreds that hang on the draggled robe of humanity, without intellect or mind—of those who are unfortunate without pity; but now as I lifted her up, and carried her to a seat, I saw before me the marvellous artist—one whose genius could conceive the highest flights of passion, and who had powers also to portray it. It was some time before she came to herself; her faculties seemed to wander in a sort of dreamy vagueness. She dropped words of Italian too, and muttered strange rhymes to herself. I tried to soothe her and calm her. I told her of the immense success she had achieved, and that even in that rude audience there reigned a fervour of enthusiasm that would have carried them to any excesses. “Poor wretches,” muttered she, “who are insensible to real wrongs, and can yet be moved by a mockery of woe.”
This was all she said, and turned from me with a gesture of aversion. Half stung by the insult of her manner, half wounded in the instincts of my class—for it is hard to forget that one was born noble—I stooped down and whispered in her ear some bitter words of reproach. She started like one bitten by a serpent, and stared at me with wide eyeballs and half-opened mouth. I saw my advantage, and used it. I told her that those she insulted were incomparably above the base herd she dared to place above them; that in self-devotion, courage, and single-heartedness the world had never yet displayed their equals. The perils that others encountered in pursuit of vengeance or plunder were dared by them in the assertion of a noble cause and to avenge a glorious martyrdom. With a fierce look she scanned my features for above a minute, and then said, “I know it, and hate them for it.” You might imagine that such a speech so uttered had made her odious to my eyes for ever; and yet, Gerald, from that very moment my heart was all her own. Some would explain this by saying we live in times when every human sentiment is inverted; when, having confounded right and wrong, made peace seem death, and anarchy a blessing, that men are fascinated by what should repel, and deterred by what should attract them. There may be truth in this manner of reconciling the strange caprices which seem to urge us even to what we have hitherto shown repugnance. I have neither taste nor patience for the inquiry; enough for me the fact that I loved her, with an ardour intense as it was sudden.
‘I will not weary you with any story of my passion. It was the old narrative of a hopeless love, affection unreturned, a whole heart’s devotion given without the shadow of requital. There was not an artifice I did not practise to cure myself of this baleful infatuation. I reasoned, I pondered, I even prayed against it. I tried to invest her with all the “traits” of that “canaille” multitude I hated. I endeavoured to believe her the very type of that base herd who exulted over our ruin and downfall; but no sooner did I see her, and hear her voice, than I forgot all my self-deceptions, and loved her more ardently, ay, more abjectly than ever. We live in strange times, Gerald,’ said he, with a deep sigh, ‘and we learn hard lessons. That this poor and friendless girl of the people should despise a Count de Noe tells to what depths we have fallen.’
Gerald listened with deep interest to this story. He never doubted in his own mind that this girl was Marietta, nor did he wonder at the fascination she exercised; still was he careful to conceal this knowledge from De Noe, and affecting a mere curiosity in the adventure, asked him to continue.
‘I have little more to tell you,’ said the other. ‘I know not if my attentions persecuted her, or that the promptings of a higher ambition moved her, but she left us, some said, to become the mistress of Mirabeau; others declared that Collot d’Herbois was her lover. The truth was soon apparent when she appeared at the Français under the name of Gabrielle. Ay, Gerald, the great genius of the French stage, the gifted pupil of Talma, the marvellous artiste whose triumphs are trumpeted through Europe, was the other day but the gipsy actress of the Trou de Taupe, as our little stage was politely named.’
De Noe described with enthusiasm the fervour of admiration La Gabrielle had excited; how the foremost men of the time had offered to share fortune with her; that she had but to choose throughout France the man who would be her protector—from Dumourier to Tinaille, there is not one would not make her his wife to-morrow.
‘I see,’ added he, ‘that you account all this exaggeration on my part. Well, there is happily a way to test the faithfulness of my report.’
‘How so?’
‘To-morrow evening is Madame Roland’s night of reception. You have heard of her as the great leader of the advanced reformers—they who would strip the nation of everything to clothe it in rags of their own pattern. Come with me there; I will present you as a young friend from the provinces, or better still, an exile fled from Italian tyranny. You will meet the most distinguished men of that extreme party; you will hear their sentiments and their hopes. A stray phrase about despotism, a passing word of execration on kingly rule, will be enough to make you free of the guild, and you will not fail to glean information from them. At all events, there is a great chance that you may see “Gabrielle;” she rarely misses one of these evenings, and you will see her in the sphere she loves best to move in, and where her influence is unbounded. It may be she will give me leave to present you.’
‘I will not ask so much,’ said Gerald, with an affected humility.
‘You cannot say so till you have seen her,’ cried the other. ‘I tell you, Gerald, that the men whose pride would scorn the notice of royalty would kneel with devotion to do her homage. She is not one of those whose eminence is a recognised conventionality, but one whose sway is an indisputable influence, greater as she is in real life than when depicting imaginary sorrows; and then that wondrous gift, the heritage of her gipsy blood, perhaps heightens the power she possesses to something almost terrible.’
‘Of what do you speak?’ asked Gerald eagerly.
‘I scarcely know how or what to call it. It savours of the old Egyptian art called “fate-reading.” I am sceptical enough on most things; and had I not seen with my eyes, and heard with my ears, I had scouted the very thought of such revelations.’
‘And what have you seen?’
De Noe paused for a few seconds, and in a voice slightly tremulous for agitation, said: ‘I will tell you what I myself witnessed. It was one night late at Madame Roland’s: the company had all gone, save the Gabrielle, Brissot, Guidet, and myself, and we only waited for carriages to fetch us away, as the rain was falling in torrents. The Gabrielle, shawled and muffled, ready to depart, seated herself in the antechamber; and refusing all entreaties to return to the salon, remained in a sort of reverie, with closed eyes and clasped hands—the attitude bespeaking one who would not be disturbed. Madame Roland said it was an “extase,” and would not suffer any one to speak. After a long pause, during which her countenance was perfectly motionless, she slowly raised her arm and pointed with her finger toward one corner of the room. ‘There, there,’ whispered she, in a low voice, ‘what a number of them! There are more than fifty; and see, they are saddling more! The black one will not let himself be bridled. Ah! he has kicked the groom; poor fellow! they are carrying him away. Hush! take care, take care, or the secret will be out. Silly man,’ said she, with a mocking smile, ‘he would paint out the arms, as if any one could be deceived by such a cavalcade.’ At this, Brissot whispered in my ear: ‘It is the royal stable that she sees. I will soon test the truth of this vision’; and he stepped unnoticed from the room. He had not gone many minutes, when with a long-drawn sigh she opened her eyes and looked about her. “How late my carriage is to-night,” said she to Madame Roland, “and how ashamed am I to keep you up to such an hour!” While Madame Roland answered her in tones of kindness and affection, I watched the Gabrielle closely. There was not a line in that pale face that indicated the slightest emotion; perhaps the most marked expression was a look of weariness and exhaustion. At length the carriage arrived, and she drove away. We, however, all remained, for Brissot had promised me to return, and I told them whither he had gone. It was past two when he came back, pale as death, and covered with a cold perspiration. “It is as she said,” cried he, in terror: “two commissaries have brought the news to Bailly that the king was about to fly to De Bouilly’s camp; and all the horses at Versailles were ready for the start. Two hundred mounted royalists were in the Cour when the commissaries arrived.” I could tell you of other and more striking scenes than this,’ said De Noe; ‘some are yet unaccomplished; but I believe in them as I believe in my own existence.’
Gerald sat without uttering a word for some time. At last he said, ‘You have given me a great curiosity to see your priestess, if I could but do so unobserved.’
‘Nothing is easier. Come early to-morrow evening; and I will take care, after your presentation to the hostess, to secrete you where none will remark you.’
‘I agree, then, and will ask you to come and fetch me at the proper hour.’
‘Remember, Gerald, that in your dress you must adopt the mode of the Jacobins.’
‘Marat himself could not be more accurate in costume than you will find me,’ said Gerald, as he squeezed his friend’s hand to say adieu.
If it be matter of wonderment that at such a time as we now speak of De Noe should have opened his heart thus freely to one he had never met before, the simple explanation lies in the fact that periods of “espionage” are precisely those when men make the rashest confederacies. Wearied and worn out, as it were, by everlasting chicanery and trick, they seize with avidity on the first occasion that presents itself to relieve the weight of an overburdened heart. To feel a sense of trust is sufficient to make them reveal their most secret feelings; and it was thus that De Noe no sooner found himself alone with Gerald than he told him the whole story of his love.
Gerald not only read his motives aright, but saw also something of the man himself. He perceived in him a type of a class by no means unfrequent at the time—royalists by birth and instinct, and yet so stripped of all the prestige of their once condition, and so destitute of hope, that they really lived on the contingency of each day, not knowing by what stratagem the morrow was to be met, nor to what straits future fate might subject them. Besides this, he saw how the supporters of the ‘cause’ had gradually degenerated from the great names and nobles of France to men of ruined hopes and blasted fortunes, whose intrigues were conceived in the lowest places, and carried on by the meanest associates. The more he reflected on these things, the more was he convinced that Mirabeau was right when he said the ‘Revolution was a fire that must burn out.’
‘And how long will the flames last,’ cried he to himself; ‘they will not assuredly be extinguished in my time. The great convulsions of nations will bear proportion to the vast materials they deal with. France will not rally from this shock for half a century to come; and ere that I shall have passed away.’
When doubt or despondency weighed upon his mind, all the crafty reasoning of Mirabeau and all the sensual teachings of Rousseau came freshly to his memory. They told him of a world of conflict and struggle, but also a world of voluptuous pleasure and abandonment. They sneered at the ideal pretexts men called loyalty and fidelity, and they counselled the enjoyment of the present as the only true philosophy. ‘Tell me you are sure of being alone to-morrow,’ said Diderot, ‘and I will listen to how you mean to spend it.’ like evil spirits that love the night, these dark thoughts were sure to seek him in his hours of gloomy depression.
There was, with all this, a sense of pique as he compared his own position with that which Marietta had already won for herself. ‘We started together in the race, thought he, ‘and see where she has distanced me! That poor friendless girl is already a social influence and a power, while I am a mere hanger-on of men, who use me in dangers that show how little they regard me. What rare abilities must she possess! What a marvellous insight into the human heart and all its varied workings! How ingeniously, too, has she contrived to interweave with her dramatic power the stranger and more mysterious workings of a supernatural influence! How far is she the dupe of her own deceptions?’ This was a thought not easily solved, knowing her well as he did, and knowing how often she was the slave of her own passionate impulses. ‘I will see her to-night with my own eyes, and mayhap be able to read her aright.’
The receptions of Madame Roland were among the ‘events’ of the day. They were the rendezvous of all that was most advanced and extravagant in republicanism. Thoroughly true-hearted and single-minded herself, she was rapidly attracted to those men who declaimed against courts and courtly vices, and sincerely believed that virtue only resided beneath lowly roofs and among narrow fortunes. Her sincere enthusiasm—the genuine ardour of a character that had no duplicity in it—added to considerable personal charms, gave her a vast influence in the society wherein she moved. She was not strictly handsome, but her features were of extreme delicacy, and capable of expression the most refined and captivating; but her voice was the spell which, it is said, never failed to fascinate those who heard it.
In the management of this marvellous instrument of captivation was, perhaps, the solitary evidence of anything like study or artifice about her. She knew how to attune and modulate it to perfection; and even they who pronounced her conversational powers as inferior to Madame de Stael’s, were ready to confess that the melody and softness of her utterance gave her an unquestionable advantage. Married to a man more than double her age, she exercised a complete independence in all the arrangements of her household, inviting whom she pleased, bringing together in her salons ingredients the most dissimilar, and representatives of classes the widest apart.
Gerald had more than once heard of these receptions, and was curious to witness them; he wished, besides, to see some of the men whom the popular will declared to be the great leaders of party, and whose legislative ability was regarded as the hope of France.
‘Do not flatter yourself that you are about to be struck by any intellectual display,’ whispered De Noe, as he led him up the stairs. ‘For the most part, you will hear nothing but violent tirades against royalty, and coarse abuse of a society of which the speaker knows nothing.’
The salons, which were small, were crammed with company, so that for some time Gerald had little other occupation than to scrutinise the appearance of the guests, and the strange extravagances of that costume which they had come to assume distinctively.
‘Look yonder,’ whispered De Noe, ‘at the tall, dark man, like a Spaniard, with his long hair combed back and falling on his neck. That is Lanthenas, l’ami de la maison; he lives here. Were she any one else, people would call him her lover; but “La Manon,” as they style her, has no heart to bestow on such emotion; she is with her whole soul in politics, and only cares for humanity when counted by millions.’
‘Who is the pert-looking, conceited fellow he is talking to?’ asked Gerald.
‘That is Louvet, the great literary hero of the day. Seven editions of an indecent novel, sold in as many weeks, have made him rich as well as famous; and the author of Faublas is now courted and sought after on all sides.’
As the crowd thickened, De Noe could but just tell the names of the more remarkable characters without time for more. There was Pelleport, a marquis by birth, but now a spy, and libelist of the lowest class, side by side with Condorcet, the optimist philosopher, and Brissot, the wildest enunciator of republicanism. Carsu, with a dozen penal sentences over his head, was talking familiarly with old Monsieur Roland himself, a simple-hearted old egotist, vain, harmless, and conceited. Yonder, entertaining a group of ladies by the last scandals of the day, told as none but himself could tell them, was Gaudet, a young lawyer from Lyons, his dress the exaggeration of all that constituted the republican mode; while looking on, and with air at once rebuking and amused, stood Dumont, his staid features and simple attire the modest contrast to the other’s finery.
‘A young friend of mine, just come from Italy, Madame, said De Noe, suddenly perceiving Madame Roland’s eyes fixed on Fitzgerald.
‘And “of us”?’ said she significantly.
‘Assuredly, Madame, or I had not dared to present him,’ said De Noe, bowing.
‘You must not say so, sir. Do you know,’ said she, addressing Gerald, ‘that it was only last week he brought a bishop here, Monseigneur de Blois.’
‘Ah! but be just, Madame; he had been degraded for immorality,’ broke in De Noe, laughing.
‘You should have shared his penalty, Monsieur De Noe,’ said she, half coldly, and moved on.
‘Come, Gerald, let me present you to some of my illustrious friends. Whom will you know? That choleric old lady there, a dismissed court lady, and the sworn enemy of the queen; or her daughter, the pretty widow, playing trictrac with Fabre d’Êglantine? Or shall I introduce you to that dark-eyed beauty, whose foot you are not the first man that ever admired? She is, or was, La Comtesse de Ratignolles, but calls herself Julie Servan on her books.
‘Why don’t you answer me? What are you thinking of? Ah, parbleu! I see well enough. It is the Gabrielle; and the tall, pale man she leans upon is Talma. Is not that enough of homage, mon cher? See how they rise to let her pass. We have been courtiers in our day, Gerald, but did you ever see a more queenly presence than that?’
It was truly, as De Noe described, like the passage of royalty. Marietta swept by, bowing slightly to either side, and by an easy gesture of her hand seeming half to decline, half accept, the honours that were paid her. Refusing with a sort of haughty indifference the seat prepared for her at the end of the room, she moved on toward a small boudoir, and was lost to Gerald’s view. Indeed, his attention was rapidly directed elsewhere, as a small, dark-eyed man in the centre of the room proceeded to entertain the company with an account of Mirabeau’s last moments. It was the Doctor Cabanis, who had tended his sickbed with such devotional affection, and whose real attachment had soothed the last sufferings of his patient. If there was something in Gerald’s estimation more than questionable in this exposure of all that might be deemed most sacred and private, the narrative was full of little details that interested him.
The dreadful mockery by which Mirabeau endeavoured to cheat death of his terrors, as, dressed, perfumed, and essenced, he lay upon his last bed, all surrounded with flowers, was told with a thrilling minuteness. Through all the assumed calm, through all the acted philosophy, there crept out the agonising eagerness for life, that even his dissimulation could not smother. His incessant questioning as to this symptom or that, whether it indicated good or evil; the intense anxiety with which he scrutinised the faces around his bed, to read the thoughts their words belied, were all related; and, strangely enough, assumed to imply that they were the last desires of a patriot who only longed for life to serve his country. Of those who listened, many doubted the honesty and good faith of his character; some thought him a royalist in disguise; some deemed him a lukewarm patriot; some even regarded him as so destitute of principle, that his professions were good for nothing; and yet amid all these disparaging estimates, they regarded this deathbed, where no consolations of religion were breathed, where no murmur of prayer was heard, nor one supplication for mercy raised, as a glorious triumph! It was to their eyes the dawning of that transcendent brightness which was to succeed the long night of priestcraft and superstition; and however ready to cavil at his doctrines or dispute his theories, there was but one voice—to honour him who with his last breath had defied the Church.
‘Ah, que c’est beau!’ ‘Ah que c’est magnifique!’ were the mutterings on every side. One only circumstance detracted in any way from the effect of these revelations; it was, that he who made them momentarily gave vent to his feelings and shed tears. This homage to human frailty jarred upon the classic instincts of the assembly. It was an ignoble weakness, unworthy of such a theme; and in a tone of stern rebuke, Fabre d’Églantine interrupted the speaker, and said—
‘Your grief is unbecoming, sir; such sorrow insults the memory you mean to hallow! If you would learn how the death of Mirabeau should be accepted, go yonder, and you will see.’ He pointed as he spoke toward the boudoir, and thither with a common impulse the crowd now moved.
A warning gesture from Talma, as he stood in the doorway, and with uplifted hand motioned silence, arrested their steps, and, awestruck by the imposing attitude of one whose slightest gesture was eloquent, they halted. Mixed in the throng, Gerald could barely catch a glimpse of the scene beyond. He could, however, perceive that Marietta was lying in a sort of trance; a crown of ‘immortelles’ that she had been weaving had fallen from her hand, and lay at her feet; her hair, too, had burst its bands, and fell in large waving masses over her neck and arms; the faintest trace of colour marked her cheeks, and sufficed to show that she had not fainted.
Lanthenas laid his finger softly on her wrist, and in a cautious whisper said, ‘The pulse is intermittent, the “accès” will be brief.’
‘We were talking of the death of Cæsar,’ said Talma, ‘when the attack came on. She would not have it that Brutus was a patriot. She tried to show that in such natures—stern, cold, and self-denying—patriotism can no more take root than love. I asked her then if Gabriel Riquetti were such a man——’
‘Hush! she is about to speak,’ broke in Madame Roland.
A few soft murmuring sounds escaped Marietta’s lips, and her fingers moved convulsively.
‘What is it she says,’ cried Louvet, ‘of crime and poison?’
‘Hush! listen.’
‘Examine Comps,’ muttered she; ‘he knows all.’
‘It is Mirabeau’s secretary she speaks of,’ said Louvet, ‘he committed suicide last night.’
‘No; he is not dead, though his wound may prove fatal,’ said Cabanis.
‘He will live,’ said Marietta solemnly, and then seemed to sink into a deep stupor.
‘Yes, trust me, I will tell him,’ cried she suddenly, with a voice as assured and an accent as firm as though awake. ‘Come here and let me whisper it.’
One after another bent down beside the couch, but she repulsed them sharply, and with a half-angry gesture motioned them away.
Madame Roland knelt down and took her hand, but with the same abrupt movement the other pushed her away, muttering, ‘No, not you—not you.’
Again and again did they who knew her best present themselves, but with the same ill success. Some she drove rudely back, to others she made a sign to retire.
‘Mayhap the person is not present that you wish for,’ said Madame Roland softly.
‘He is here,’ said she gently.
Name after name of those around did Madame Roland whisper, but all without avail. At last, as Langrés presented himself, Marietta turned with a sort of aversion from him and said—
‘I am in search of a prince, and you bring me a butcher.’
This insulting speech was not heard without a smile by some who knew this man’s origin, and detested the coarse ruffianism of his address.
‘Parbleau, Madame! if you want princes you must go and seek them at the Français,’ said Langrés angrily, as he dropped back into the crowd.
Meanwhile, impelled by a strong desire to test the reality of her vision, Gerald made his way through the throng, and dropping on one knee, took her hand in his own.
A start and a faint exclamation—half surprise, half joy—broke from her as she felt his touch. She passed her hand over his face, and through his long hair, and then bending down kissed him on the forehead. She whispered a few words rapidly in his ear, and sank back exhausted.
‘She has fainted! Bring water quickly,’ cried Lanthenas.
For a few minutes every attention was directed toward her; and it was only as she showed signs of recovery, some one asked—
‘What has become of De Noe and his friend?’
They were gone.
When Gerald gained the street, it was to find it crammed with a dense mob, whose wild cries and screams filled the air. No sooner was he perceived by some of the multitude than a hundred yells saluted him, with shouts of ‘Down with the aristocrat; down with the tyrant, who insults the friend of the people.’ It was a mob who, in fervour of enthusiasm for Mirabeau’s memory, had closed each of the theatres in succession, dispersed all meetings of public festivity, and even invaded the precincts of private houses, to dictate a more becoming observance toward the illustrious dead. Few men could bear such prescription less patiently than Fitzgerald. The very thought of being ruled and directed by the ‘canaille’ was insupportably offensive, and he drove back those who rudely pressed upon him, and answered with contempt their words of insult and outrage.
‘Who is it that insults the majesty of the people?’ cried one; ‘let us hear his name.’
‘It is Louvet’—‘It is Plessard’—‘It is Lestocq’—‘It is that miserable Custine ‘—shouted several together.
‘You are all wrong. I am a stranger, whose name not one of you has ever heard——’
‘A spy! an emissary of Pitt and Cobourg!’
‘I am a foreigner, with whose sentiments you have no concern. I do not obtrude my opinions upon you.’
‘What do we care for that?’ shouted a deep voice. ‘You have dared to offend the most sacred sentiments of a nation, and to riot in a festive orgie while we weep over the deathbed of a patriot.’
‘A la Grue! à la Grue!’ screamed the wild mass in a yell of passion.
Now the Grue was an immense crane—used in some repairs of the Pont Neuf—which still held its place at the approach to the bridge. It was here that a sort of public tribunal held its nightly sittings by the light of a gigantic lantern, suspended from the crane; and which, report alleged, had more than once given way to a very different pendant. It is certain that two men, taken in the act of robbery, had been hanged by the sentence of this self-constituted tribunal, which, in open defiance of the authorities, continued to assemble there. The cry, ‘A la Grue! à la Grue!’ had, therefore, a dreadful significance; and there was a terrible import in the savage roar of the mob as they ratified the proposal.
‘We will try him fairly. He shall be judged deliberately, and be allowed to speak in his own defence,’ said several, who believed that their words were those of moderation and equity:
Powerless against the overwhelming mass, and too indignant to proffer one single word of palliation, Gerald was hurried along towards the quay.
There was something singularly solemn in the measured tread of that vast multitude, as, in a mockery of justice, they marched along. At first not a word was spoken; but suddenly a deep voice in the front rank began one of the popular chants of the day, the whole dense mass joining in the refrain. Nothing could be ruder than the verses, save the accents that intoned them; but there was in the very roar and resonance a depth that imparted a sense of force and power.
We offer a rough version of the unpolished chant—
As they sang a number of voices in front of them took up the strain, till the crowd seemed to make the very air ring with their hoarse chant. In this way they reached the Seine, over whose dark and rapid flood the fatal crane seemed to droop sadly. Several hundred people were assembled here, a confused murmur showing that they were engaged in conversing rather than in that judicial function it was their pride to discharge.
‘A rebel against the majesty of the people and the fame of its greatest martyr,’ said a deep voice, as he announced the crime of Fitzgerald, and pushed him forward to the place reserved for the accused. ‘While a nation humbles itself in sorrow, this man chooses the hour for riotous dissipation and excess. We met him as he issued forth from the woman Roland’s house, so that he cannot deny the charge.’
‘Accused, stand forward,’ said a coarse-looking man, in a mechanic’s dress, but whose manner was not devoid of a certain dignity. ‘You are here before the French people, who will judge you fairly.’
‘Were I even conscious of a crime, I would deny your right to try me.’
‘Young man, you do but injury to yourself in insulting us, was the grave rebuke, delivered with a calm decorum which seemed to have its influence on Fitzgerald.
‘Who accuses him?’ asked the judge aloud.
‘I’—‘and I ‘—‘and I’—‘all of us,’ shouted a number together, followed by a burst of, ‘Let Lamarc do it; let Lamarc speak’; and a pale, very young man, of gentle look and slight figure, came forward at the call.
With the ease of one thoroughly accustomed to address public assemblies, and with an eloquence evidently cultivated in very different spheres, the young man pronounced a glowing panegyric on Mirabeau. It was really a fine and scarce exaggerated appreciation of that great man. Haughtily disclaiming the right of any less illustrious than Riquetti himself to sit in judgment upon the excesses of his turbulent youth, the orator even declared that it was in the passionate commotion of such temperaments that grand ideas were fostered, just as preternatural fertility is the gift of countries where earthquakes and volcanoes have convulsed them.
‘Deplore, if you will,’ cried he, ‘his faults, for his own sake; sorrow over the terrible necessities of a nature whose excitements must be sought for even in crime; mourn over one whose mysterious being demanded for mere sustenance the poisoned draughts of intemperance; but for yourselves and for your own sakes, rejoice that the age has given you Gabriel Riquetti de Mirabeau.’
‘Who is it dares to say such words as these, cried a hoarse, discordant voice, as forcing his way through the dense mass, a small, misshapen figure stood forward. Though bespeaking in his appearance a condition considerably above those around him, his dress was disordered, his cravat awry, and his features trembling with recent excitement. As the strong light fell upon him, Gerald could mark a countenance whose features once seen were never forgotten. The forehead was high, but retreating, and the eyes so sunk within their sockets that their colour could not be known, and their only expression a look of wolfish ferocity; to this, too, a haggard cheek and long, lean jaw contributed. All these signs of a harsh and cruel nature were greatly heightened by his mode of speaking, for his mouth opened wide, exposing two immense rows of teeth, a display which they who knew him well said he was inordinately vain of.
‘Is it to men and Frenchmen that any dares to speak thus?’ yelled he, in a voice that overtopped the others, and was heard far and wide through the crowd. ‘Listen to me, people,’ screamed he again, as, ascending the sort of bench on which the judge was seated, he waved his hand to enforce silence. ‘Kneel down and thank the gods that your direst enemy is dead!’
A low murmur—it was almost like the growl of a wild beast—ran through the assembly; but such was the courage of the speaker that he waited till it had subsided, and then in accents shriller than before repeated the same words. The hum of the multitude was now reduced to a mere murmuring sound, and he went on. It was soon evident how inferior the polished eloquence of the other must prove before such an audience to the stormy passion of this man’s speech. Like the voice of a destroying angel scattering ruin and destruction, he poured out over the memory of Mirabeau the flood of his invective. He reproduced the vices of his youth to account for the crimes of his age, and saw the treason to his party explained in his falsehood to his friends. There was in his words and in all he said the force of a mad mountain torrent, bounding wildly from crag to crag, sweeping all before it as it went, and yet ever pouring its flood deeper, fuller, and stronger. From a narrative of Riquetti’s early life, with every incident of which he was familiar, he turned suddenly to show how such a man must, in the very nature of his being, be an enemy to the people. A noble by birth, an aristocrat in all his instincts, he could never have frankly lent himself to the cause of liberty. It was only a traitor he was, then, within their camp; he was there to learn their strength and their weakness, to delude them by mock concessions. It was, as he expressed it, by the heat of their own passions that he welded the fetters for their own limbs.
‘If you ask who should mourn this man, the answer is, His own order; and it is they, and they alone, who sorrow over the lost leader. Not you, nor I, nor that youth yonder, whom you pretend to arraign; but whom you should honour with words of praise and encouragement. Is it not brave of him, in this hour of bastard grief, that he should stand forth to tell you how mean and dastardly ye are! I tell you, once more, that he who dares to stem the false sentiments of misguided enthusiasm has a courage grander than his who storms a breach. My friendship is his own from this hour,’ and as he said, he descended from the bench, and flung his arms around Fitzgerald.
Shouts of ‘Well done, Marat, bravely spoken!’ rent the air, and a hundred voices told how the current of public favour had changed its course.
‘Let us not tarry here, young man,’ said Marat. ‘Come along with me; there is much to be done yet.’
While Gerald was not sorry to be relieved from a position of difficulty and danger, he was also eager to undeceive his new ally, and avow that he had no sympathy with the opinions attributed to him. It was no time, however, for explanations, nor was the temper of the mob to be long trusted. He therefore suffered himself to be led along by the friends of Marat, who, speedily making way for their chief, issued into the open street.
‘Whither now!’ cried one aloud.
‘To the Bureau—to the Bureau!’ said another.
‘Be it so,’ said Marat. ‘The Ami du Peuple—so was his journal called—’ must render an account of this night to its readers. I have addressed seven assemblies since eleven o’clock, and save that one in the Rue de Grenelle, all successfully. By the way, who is our friend? What is he called? Fitzgerald—a foreign name—all the better; we can turn this incident to good account. Are Frenchmen to be taught the path to liberty by a stranger, eh, Favart? That’s the keynote for your overture!’
‘The article is written—it is half-printed already,’ said Favart. ‘It begins better—“The impostor is dead: the juggler who gathered your liberties into a bundle and gave them back to you as fetters, is no more! “’
‘Ah, que c’est beau, that phrase!’ cried two or three together.
‘I will not have it,’ said Marat impetuously; ‘these are not moments for grotesque imagery. Open thus: “Who are the men that have constituted themselves the judges of immortality? Who are these, clad in shame and cloaked in ignominy, who assume to dispense the glory of a nation? Are these mean tricksters—these fawners on a corrupted court—these slaves of the basest tyranny that ever defaced a nation’s image, to be guardians at the gate of civic honours?”
‘Ah! there it is. It was Marat himself spoke there,’ said one.
‘That was the clink of the true metal,’ said Chaptal.
And now, in the wildest vein of rhapsody, Marat continued to pour forth a strange confused flood of savage invective. For the most part the language was coarse and ill-chosen and the reasoning faulty in the expression, but here and there would pierce through a phrase or an image so graphic or so true as actually to startle and amaze. It was these improvisations, caught up and reproduced by his followers, which constituted the leading articles of his journal. Too much immersed in the active career of his demagogue life to spare time for writing, he gave himself the habit of this high-flown and exaggerated style, which wore, so to say, a mock air of composition.
Pointing to the immense quantity of this sort of matter which his journal contained, Marat would boast to the people of his unceasing labours in their cause, his days of hard toil, his nights of unbroken exertion. He artfully contrasted a life thus spent with the luxurious existence of the pampered ‘rich.’ Such were the first steps of one who journeyed afterward far in crime—such the initial teachings of one who subsequently helped mainly to corrupt a whole people.
A strange impulse of curiosity to see something of these men of whom he had heard so much, influenced Gerald, while he was also in part swayed by the marvellous force of that torrent which never ceased to flow from Marat’s lips. It was a sort of fascination, not the less strong that it imparted a sense of pain.
‘I will see this night’s adventure to the end,’ said he to himself, and he went along with them.