"Robespierre the elder was carried to the City Hall, to the Committee of Public Safety, on the 10th Thermidor, between the hours of one and two in the morning. He was carried in on a board, by several artillerymen and armed citizens. He was placed on a table in the audience hall which lay in front of the executive room of the committee. A pine box, which held some samples of bread sent from the Army of the North, was placed under his head and served in some sort as a pillow. He lay for the space of nearly an hour so immobile that one might think he had ceased to live. Then he began to open his eyes. Blood flowed freely from the wound in his lower left jaw. The jawbone was shattered by a pistol shot. His shirt was bloody; he was hatless and cravatless. He wore a sky-blue coat, and trousers of nankeen; his white stockings were rolled down to his shoes. Between three and four in the morning they noticed that he held in his hand a little bag of white skin, inscribed 'At the Grand Monarch; Lecourt, outfitter to the King and his troops, St. Honoré Street, near Poulies Street, Paris.' This sack he used to dispose of the clotted blood which came from his mouth. The citizens surrounded him, observing all his movements. Some of them even gave him a piece of white linen paper, which he put to the same use, keeping himself ever propped up on his left elbow, and using only his right hand. Two or three different times he was scolded at by citizens, but especially by a cannonier of the same district as himself, who reproached him, with military vigor, for his perfidy and scoundrelism. Towards six in the morning a surgeon who happened to be in the courtyard of the National Palace was called in to tend him. For precaution he placed a key in Robespierre's mouth, and found that his jaw was fractured. He drew two or three teeth, bandaged the wound, and had a hand-basin with water placed beside him. Robespierre made use of this, and also of pieces of paper folded several times, to clean out his mouth, still employing only his right hand. At the moment when it was least expected, he sat up, raised his stockings, slid quickly from the table, and ran to seat himself in an arm-chair. As soon as seated he asked for water and some clean linen. During all the time he had lain on the table, after he regained consciousness, he fixedly regarded all who surrounded him, especially those employes of the Committee of Public Safety whom he recognized. He often raised his eyes toward the platform; but apart from some almost convulsive movements, the bystanders constantly remarked in him a great impassibility, even during the dressing of his wound, which must have caused him the severest pain. His complexion, habitually bilious, assumed the pallor of death.
"At nine o'clock in the morning Couthon, and Gombeau, a conspirator of the Commune, were brought in on stretchers as far as the big staircase of the Committee, where they were deposited. The citizens detailed to watch them stood about, while a commissioner and an officer of the National Guard went to report to Billaud-Varenne, Barrere and Collot D'Herbois, then sitting in committee. They took an order to these three calling for Robespierre, Couthon and Gombeau to be removed at once to the Conciergerie Prison, a decree which was immediately carried out by the good citizens to whom had been confided the guard over the three prisoners.
"St. Just and Dumas were taken before the Committee in the audience hall, and at once taken on to the Conciergerie by those who had brought them in. St. Just gazed at the large engrossing of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and said, as he pointed towards it, 'Yet it was I who got that passed!'
"Such was the downfall of Robespierre. His agony was more cruel than his death. His erstwhile colleagues on the committees insulted him, struck at him, spat in his face; the clerks of the bureau pricked him with their penknives."
So died Robespierre by the guillotine. Let us glorify, sons of Joel, the memory of this great citizen, the Incorruptible revolutionist. And as sacred for us let the memory be of the other illustrious martyr-victims of Thermidor, like St. Just, Lebas, Couthon, Robespierre the younger; or martyrs obscure, like that throng of patriots whose blood flowed from the scaffold in torrents during the Four Days. The reaction of Thermidor smote with the guillotine without judgment; it assassinated the greater part of the last defenders of the Republic.
To-day, the 22nd of September, 1830, the thirty-eighth anniversary of the foundation of the French Republic in 1792, I, John Lebrenn, arrived at the sixtieth year of my life, add these pages to the legend of the Sword of Honor.
I have been for long back in Paris, established with my family in St. Denis Street. During my stay in Brittany, beginning after the days of Thermidor, 1794, I kept track of the more important historical events by means of the journals of the period. Later, on my return to Paris, I re-entered political life and took part in the events of the Eighteenth Brumaire, the Hundred Days, and the Revolution of 1830. In the following pages I shall endeavor to reproduce briefly the principal deeds of these three epochs—1800, 1815, and 1830.
Should I depart this life before the completion of my task, my son Marik Lebrenn, now arrived in his thirty-seventh year, will supply my place in the work, aided thereto by the material and notes left by me, and by his own memories. I have postponed from year to year this continuation to our family legends, awaiting the accomplishment of the two prophecies which hover ever above these accounts. One has been realized, in the period from 1800 to 1814; the other has had but one approach toward success—in July of this present year 1830.
Alas, we have already seen the sinister fulfilment of the prophecy of Robespierre the Incorruptible, the martyr of Thermidor—'The brigands have triumphed, the Revolution is lost.' The reins of the Revolution fell into hands that were corrupt, perfidious, criminal. The national representation was debauched, annihilated in the month of Brumaire by Bonaparte; military despotism seized the power, and civil war desolated the country.
The second prophecy of our family records—that there should be no more Kings—had already begun to move towards fulfilment. Since 1793 the tradition of republicanism had struck in the people's minds roots that were live, deep, and indestructible. The people protested against the Consulate of Bonaparte by the conspiracy of Topino Lebrun and Arena; it protested against the Empire by forming the secret society of the Philadelphians and by the conspiracy of General Mallet; it protested against the Restoration by several conspiracies, among them that of the four sergeants of La Rochelle.
Let us rest firm in the assurance that, despite these eclipses, the star of the Republic will yet rise over France, over the world, and our children will yet greet the appearance of the United States of Europe, the Universal Republic.
Meanwhile the disinherited shuddered and trembled before the fury of the counter-revolution. At Avignon, at Lyons, at Marseilles, prisoner patriots were massacred without even the excuse the latter had when in September they put the traitors to death in the name of public safety and of the fatherland, menaced from without and within. The victims of the royalist reaction were ten times as numerous as those of the Terror. The murders of Lyons pass all belief, and that in time of peace, without provocation or cause. In one single day and in one single prison one hundred and ninety-seven prisoners, among whom were three women, were assassinated by the royalist dandies known as the Jeunesse Dorée, or "Gilded Youth." At Marseilles, at the St. John Fortress, two hundred and ten patriots were slashed to pieces or burned in the same day.
But let us draw the veil over these saturnalia of blood, these orgies of the White Terror, and compose our minds in thoughts of the republican armies. Our armies learned with grief of the fall of Robespierre; but then, submissive to the civil and military powers, and respecting the decrees of the Convention, they accepted the Thermidor government; and under the command of Hoche, Marceau, Jourdan, Moreau, Augereau, and Joubert, they continued to battle against the coalized Kings. Holland, freed by our arms, set itself up anew as a Republic; Prussia and Spain sued for peace and obtained it; the royalists, encouraged by the reaction, attempted again to arouse the Vendee, with the support of the English, who made a descent upon Quiberon; but Hoche snuffed out that civil war in its first flickers. The Convention modified on the 15th Thermidor, year III (August 2, 1795), the Constitution of 1793. The mass of the proletariat was stripped of its political rights. According to the Constitution of 1793, all citizens twenty-one years old, born and living in France, were electors, and members of the sovereign people; according to the Constitution of 1795, on the contrary, it was necessary to pay a direct tax in order to be eligible to the electoral right. The Constitution of the year III, further, divided the legislative power into two bodies, the Council of Five Hundred, and the Council of Ancients; to be a member of the latter, one must have attained the age of forty. The executive power, or Directorate, was to be composed of five members, chosen by the Councils, which were themselves elected by a taxpayers' and indirect vote, in two degrees. Primary assemblies nominated electors, and these latter chose the deputies to the Councils. The imposition of a tax qualification excluded the proletariat from the count, and delivered it up to the will of a reactionary bourgeoisie; hence the royalist party had not the slightest doubt of the success of its candidates. The majority of the old Convention, composed in part of lukewarm oligarchic republicans, but in the main of corrupted legislators who were opposed to a restoration of the monarchy (whose vengeance they feared, most of them having been regicides), attempted to obviate the certain success of the royalists by decreeing that two-thirds of the old members must be re-elected. This restraint imposed upon the freedom of the ballot was at once iniquitous and absurd, and paved the way for a new civil war. The Constitution of the year III and the clause relative to the re-election of two-thirds of the members of the Convention was submitted to the sanction of the primary assemblies, composed of taxpayers. Among these, thanks to the exclusion of the proletariat, the reaction was on top. Certain of a majority in the approaching elections, and expecting consequently to control both the Councils and Directorate, the reaction had anticipated dealing the last blows to the expiring Republic, and re-establishing the monarchy. But defeated in their hope by the decree rendering obligatory the re-election of two-thirds of the Conventionals, the royalists incited the primary assemblies against this decree. On the 11th Vendemiaire, year IV (October 3, 1795) the bourgeois and aristocratic Sections of the center of Paris—Daughters of St. Thomas and Hill of the Mills among others—came to the front of the movement, and a horde of Emigrants and ex-suspects raised an insurrection. The rebels declared the decree compelling the re-election of two-thirds of the old Conventionals an assault upon the rights of the 'sovereign people'; they took up arms and organized a council of resistance under the presidency of the Duke of Nivernais. The Convention named a committee of defense and called to its assistance the patriots of the suburbs. Twelve or fifteen hundred patriots responded to the appeal. The royalists, to the number of forty thousand men, or thereabouts, under the command of Generals Danican, Duhoux, and the ex-bodyguard Lafond, marched against the troops of the Convention, and won at first some advantage over them. Barras, commander-in-chief of the forces at the disposal of the Assembly, called to his staff a young artillery officer named Bonaparte, whose military renown dated from the siege of Toulon. The latter hastily brought up the cannon from the camp of Sablons, made an able strategic disposition of his forces, and, with the aid of the patriots of '93, wiped out the royalist insurrection before the Church of St. Roche, on the 13th Vendemiaire, year IV. The Convention employed its last session in organizing the Councils; that of the Ancients was composed of two hundred and fifty members; the remaining elected deputies formed the Council of the Five Hundred.
The members of the Directorate elected by these Councils were Carnot, Rewbell, Lareveillere-Lepaux, Letourneur, and Barras—all of them, except Barras, men of honesty, only moderate republicans, but sincere.
The 4th Brumaire, year IV (October 26, 1795), the Convention pronounced its own dissolution. It had been in session since the proclamation of the Republic, September 21, 1792.
The studio of Citizen Martin, painter, member of the Council of Five Hundred, and former captain and then battalion commander of the Paris Volunteers who fought at Weissenburg, was decorated in martial fashion with pictures and sketches depicting episodes in the republican wars, placed here and there on easels; models of antique statuary and studies of nature graced the walls. On one side was a gay display composed of the epaulets of Commander Martin, his arms of war, and his military hat, whose two bullet holes bore witness to its wearer's intrepidity. One morning early in November, 1799, the painter himself was gladsomely embracing John Lebrenn, who had just deposited on a stool the traveling bag he carried.
"Well, but I'm glad to see you, my friend," said John warmly, "after so many chances and such a long separation!"
"It was made less grievous for me," rejoined Martin, "by our correspondence. What is the news of your worthy wife, your little Marik, and Madam Desmarais?"
"They were all well when I left them."
"And your cloth business—does it prosper as you would wish?"
"Our labor furnishes us the means to supply our modest wants; we desire nothing more. Our life is rolling on peacefully at Vannes, that old town of Armorica, the cradle of our family."
"I know how greatly the country should please you."
"And nevertheless, we must soon leave our nest, for it is impossible there to give my son a suitable education. In a year or two, or perhaps even sooner, we shall return to Paris, where we shall continue our Breton cloth commerce. Such, at least, is my intention and that of my dear wife and her mother."
"Hurrah! May your plan be realized, the sooner the better, my dear friend. Then we shall no longer be reduced to a correspondence for consolation."
"Your last letters," replied John, "decided me to come to Paris, seeing the Republic was in danger of perishing. I think I could be useful to you in such a case, and also perhaps to the Republic, by still pulling a trigger against her enemies."
"The political situation is indeed grave. Nevertheless, there is no ground for fearing a catastrophe very soon. In the Council of Five Hundred there is an imposing republican majority; we are decided to preserve liberty, and to fight the clericals, Jesuits and monarchists to the finish."
"I doubt not your energy nor that of your friends; but the Republic has now been for some time deprived of the popular element, its life, its spirit, its strength."
"True; since Thermidor a great gap has been made in the republican ranks. You may be sure that General Bonaparte, for all his military renown, would never have dared affront Vergniaud, Danton, or Robespierre, had they been in the Council of Five Hundred. At their voice the people would rise in arms, and the ambitious dictator would be sent before the revolutionary tribunal."
"Belated regrets, my friend. But explain to me how it is that the Directorate, knowing full well the intrigues organized in Napoleon's favor by his brothers, by Fouché, and by that former Bishop Talleyrand, than whom no meaner rascal ever lived—how the Directorate was so weak as not to send this General Bonaparte before a court-martial, guilty as he was of deserting the army in Egypt, more than six hundred leagues from France? In the height of the Convention such an act would not have passed unpunished."
"For this weakness of the Directorate, and our own indecision in the Council of Five Hundred, there are many causes. Sieyès is the soul of the conspiracy against the Constitution of the year III, which he himself framed, while we republicans rather defend that Constitution, defective as it is, in order not to throw the Republic open to new dangers. Sieyès, a member of the Directorate, and Roger Ducos, his colleague and accomplice, are at the head of the sworn enemies of the present Constitution. Among these oppositionists are the majority of the Council of Ancients and some members of the Council of Five Hundred; then come a crowd of intriguers of all sorts, stock brokers, men with frayed reputations, get-rich-quick contractors, bourgeois weather-vanes, corruptionists, harpies, repentant Terrorists, like Fouché and your brother-in-law Desmarais, who is now a member of the Council of Ancients. Sieyès's object is to overthrow the Constitution of the year III by a coup d'etat and replace it by a bourgeois oligarchy; on top of which would come a constitutional monarchy similar to that of '92, and then it would be done for the Republic. That is the plan of the opposition. Now here is the situation of us republicans, who constitute the majority of the Council of Five Hundred. We count on the support of two members of the Directorate, Moulins and Gohier, devoted to the Republic. Then in case of a conflict, we have cause to hope that General Bernadotte, whose influence may serve to blanket Bonaparte's, will march on our side. The Council of Five Hundred has, moreover, for braces, the remains of the several republican parties—Girondins, Mountainists, Jacobins, Terrorists—as well as a large number of former members of the Commune who escaped the scaffold after Thermidor, and belong to the bourgeoisie—men of progress and free thought."
"And the people," inquired John again, "the workingmen of the suburbs, are they also sunk in inertia? They should form a strong element for you."
"Alas, they live indifferent to public affairs, except some workingmen in Santerre's brewery and some old sans-culottes, such as your old foreman Castillon—whom you will no doubt see this morning, as I notified him of your arrival."
"Thank you, friend, for having arranged this pleasure for me. I shall be happy to see our brave Castillon."
"He is still the industrious and honest artisan of yore; only, credulous and naïve as a veritable child of the people, he is like so many other sincere republicans, a great partisan of Bonaparte's."
"Castillon, once so devoted to the Republic!"
"Exactly, since there is not a better republican—God save the mark!—than this very General Bonaparte, according to Castillon and his friends."
Just then Martin's servant entered to hand him a letter, saying: "An ordnance dragoon has just brought this epistle, citizen, and awaits your answer."
Martin tore open the envelope and read aloud:
"Perhaps you recall, sir, an under-officer in the Third Hussars, who in the days of terrorism when the nation's honor sought refuge in the armies, fought with you in the defense of a battery at the battle of Weissenburg. This under-officer has made his way. He has had the happy fortune of serving under the orders of the greatest captain of ancient and modern times, on whom to-day hangs the safety of France.
"Knowing, sir, your renown as a painter of battles, I desire to engage you on a picture. I beg you to let me know at what hour to-day you can grant me an interview on the subject of this work, on which you may set your own price.
"Accept, sir, my best sentiments,
"OLIVER,
"Colonel of the Seventh Dragoons,
aide-de-camp to General Bonaparte.
"Tell the soldier I await his colonel this morning," added Martin to the domestic, after a moment's thought.
The servant left the studio, and Lebrenn, to whom Martin had passed the letter, began:
"My sister's forecast, I see, was not wide of the mark. 'Oliver,' she said to me, 'loves battles. He sees in war only a trade, a means to carve out a fortune—pride and ambition.' And Oliver has become a colonel and one of the staff officers of Bonaparte."
"This order for a picture," replied Martin, "is only a pretext to renew acquaintanceship with me, and attempt to bring me over into the party of his general."
"Painful as a meeting with Oliver will be, I almost congratulate myself on the opportunity. Who knows but I may be able to bring home the truth to him who was once my apprentice, and perhaps, thanks to my old influence over him, open his eyes to the light?"
"I would like to think, at least, that he will not show himself a monster of ingratitude toward you. I know all that he owes to your family, and above all to the devotion of your sister."
"Oliver wrote me several times from Italy to inform me of his rapid promotion in the army. Then the correspondence gradually died out, and now for two years I have completely ceased to receive news from him. Such have been his forgetfulness and ingratitude!"
At this moment who should enter the studio but Castillon, accompanied by Duchemin, the old quartermaster of the field-artillery of the Army of the Rhine and Moselle. The latter wore the fatigue uniform of the artillery, and the straps of his rank; his left arm hung in a scarf. His face, bronzed by the sun of Egypt, was dark as an Arab's. Unable to repress his tears of joy, Castillon fell into Lebrenn's arms, crying "Oh! Friend John!"
"Embrace me, my old Castillon," replied the latter, with unrestrained warmth. "I find you still as I left you, the best of men."
Lebrenn and his former foreman continued their conversation to one side, in low tones, while Duchemin said to Martin, who was studying his face as if seeking to trace a resemblance:
"You don't recognize me, captain?"
"It seems to me I have seen you——" replied Martin dubiously.
"That blasted sun of Egypt has spoiled my complexion, else you'd remember Duchemin, once cannonier in the Army of the Rhine and Moselle, where we served together."
"Aye, now I remember you, old comrade," cried the artist, seizing the other's hand. "And how is Carmagnole—and Reddy?" he added with a grin.
"My poor Reddy—he went the way of Double-grey," sighed the artillerist. "He died like a brave war-horse. He received a ball in the body at the battle of Altenkirchen. As to Carmagnole, my sweetheart of a spit-fire, she split laughing, my pretty piece, while sending a triple charge of grape-shot into the Austrians. After which, widowed of my Carmagnole, I set out for the Orient."
"And so you went through the campaign in Egypt?"
"Bad luck to it, yes! A devil of a war! And Bonaparte!—Twist his noose without drum or trumpet! To leave the army in the lurch! Name of names, what cries, what shouts there were against the 'Little Corporal,' when it became known he had abandoned us. Had we caught him, we'd have tied his necktie for him!"
"You left Egypt, then, after him?"
"Three days after, with a convoy of wounded men they were sending back to France. Our ship had the luck to dodge the English cruisers and disembark us at Toulon. Thence I demanded to be sent during my recovery to my old Paris, to see again my St. Antoine and the sans-culottes of '93. They are not very thick now, but those who are still of this world are all good and solid, witness comrade Castillon, one of the first I encountered in the suburb. He told me that he was on his way to visit you, captain, and as an old soldier of the Rhine and Moselle and a pure Jacobin, I thought I might be permitted to follow along with him."
"You could not afford me a greater pleasure, comrade," the painter assented, cordially. "The faithful of '93 are scarce in these times."
"Monsieur Colonel Oliver asks to see you, citizen," announced the servant.
"Let Colonel Oliver enter. You, Castillon, and you, Duchemin, are going to St. Antoine to have a talk with Santerre's workmen?"
"To meet here again at eight this evening, and decide what we shall do, in view of developments," added Lebrenn.
Colonel Oliver was introduced. The brilliant uniform of the dragoons besat him with natural grace; but his face was haughty, imperious and rude; every line in it denoted the arrogance of command. He did not at first recognize, or rather he paid no attention to, Lebrenn, Castillon and Duchemin; but addressed himself straightway to Martin:
"I am delighted, citizen, to take this opportunity of renewing acquaintance with an old brother in arms."
"Citizen," politely rejoined Martin, "I am no less happy than yourself at the circumstance that brings us together, as well as three of our old comrades of the Army of the Rhine;" and he indicated the three friends.
Greatly surprised, Oliver held out his hand and quickly ran over to Lebrenn, crying, "Good meeting! You here? How are Madam Lebrenn and your son?"
"All the family are in good health; my son is growing up, and I hope to make a good republican out of him."
Castillon now approached, and slapping the colonel familiarly over the shoulder, called out, "Say now, my boy—has your rank of colonel made you near-sighted?"
Oliver trembled and turned purple with rage. He looked Castillon up and down, and replied: "Who are you, sir, to permit yourself such familiarity?"
"Well, well! Forsooth, it is I, Castillon, your old foreman, who taught you how to handle a file and hammer a piece of iron, when you were our apprentice."
"Give you good day, my dear sir, give you good day," retorted Oliver haughtily and impatiently; and continuing his conversation with Lebrenn: "And what chance brings you to Paris? Tell me about it."
But Castillon touched Oliver on the arm before he had time to get an answer, and said: "Say, my boy, have you truly become, to all intents and purposes, an aristocrat, since you belong to the staff of General Bonaparte, as Duchemin says, our old comrade of the Lines of Weissenburg, here, whom you don't seem to recognize either?"
"Hush, my old fellow," said Duchemin in Castillon's ear, "else he will have the commandant of Paris toss me into the headquarters of police, and then we won't be able to go to St. Antoine."
After a moment's silence, Colonel Oliver spoke, with difficulty holding himself in: "I would reply to Monsieur Castillon, that if I was his apprentice, it is nothing to blush for. He should understand that my age and the rank I owe to my sword render inappropriate the pleasantries permissible when I was eighteen."
"Pardon, excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis!" rejoined Castillon, not a whit put down by Oliver's manner. "Ah, that's how the staff of General Bonaparte comports itself!"
"As to you, who are still in the service," continued Colonel Oliver rudely to Duchemin, "do not forget that we put the insolent in cells, and shoot the unruly."
"I said nothing, Colonel," replied Duchemin quietly.
"Shut your mouth, hang-dog, and go to the devil!"
"Yes, hold your peace, old comrade, and make yourself scarce, since you have but the choice between a cell and the shooting squad," Castillon advised Duchemin; and then he turned on Oliver: "As to me, who, as a private citizen have hanging over me the shadow of neither, nor yet the awe of gold epaulets, I tell you this, Oliver, son of the people, a poor orphan, put on your feet by the goodness of our friend John—you contemn your brothers. A soldier of the Republic, you conspire against her. You're an ingrate and a traitor! But the day of remorse will come."
"Do not provoke me, wretch, or——" cried Colonel Oliver.
Castillon and Duchemin turned on their heels and went out, Martin accompanying them to the outer door, as Lebrenn had requested that he be left alone a few minutes with the colonel. The latter hung his head and maintained an embarrassed silence.
"Castillon's reproaches seem to have made some impression on you, Oliver," Lebrenn began, at last.
"Not at all; such insolence does not trouble me. But let us forget the wretches, and speak of you and your family, my dear Lebrenn."
"Let us speak rather of you, Oliver; let us speak also of my sister, whose memory should be sacred to you. Her forebodings of your future are realized; I fear her devotion to you has gone for naught."
"In what may my conduct justify your criticism? Has not my sword been ever at the service of the Republic?"
"At the service of your ambition! And at the present moment you seem to be in a mind to sacrifice the Republic."
Oliver responded with a start: "I firmly believe that France has need of order, repose, stability, and a firm hand. I believe that authority should be concentrated in the greatest captain of modern times."
"And what are your Bonaparte's titles—for you doubtless mean him—to the government of France?"
"His victories!"
"But is not the military glory of Hoche, Marceau, Joubert, Massena, Moreau, Kleber, Augereau, Bernadotte, Desaix, equal to that of your general? And even if he were the greatest captain the world has ever seen, it does not follow that he should be given the dictatorship. A nation should never place its destinies in the hands of one man and confide to him that exorbitant power, which smites with vertigo even the hardest heads."
At this juncture Martin returned, and by a look inquired of his friend the result of his interview with the colonel. Lebrenn shook his head in the negative. Martin then addressed the officer:
"I would have excused myself, citizen, for my absence just now, had I not left you in the company of our comrade John. Now I am at your service. Let us discuss the battle scene you wish to give me the commission for. Some explanation will be requisite."
"It is a brilliant charge executed by a squadron of my regiment against the Mamelukes of Hussein Bey. I can furnish you with a sketch of the field of battle made by one of my officers, and some notes I took on the feat of arms itself."
"Any such documents would much facilitate my work, and I can, if you desire it, citizen, commence work in a month—provided," he added with a smile, "I am not in the meantime banished or shot."
"And why should either of those fates befall you, monsieur?"
"I am one of the Council of Five Hundred, and strongly resolved, like the majority of my colleagues, to defend the Republic and the Constitution against all factions. But the defenders of the best cause may be defeated. In that case, your general, who seems to side with the conspirators, is capable, in the event of his triumph, of transporting the republican deputies to Cayenne, or having them shot on the plain of Grenelle."
"Monsieur, I have still to learn that the vanquisher of Lodi, Arcola, and the Pyramids is party to a conspiracy. But if he is conspiring, he has for accomplice the whole of France; and in that case the factious are those who attempt to oppose themselves to the national will."
Just then Duresnel, the young recruit of the Parisian battalion who served under Martin at Weissenburg was introduced into the studio. The colonel brusquely saluted the newcomer together with the two who were already present and left the apartment.
Duresnel looked at John Lebrenn several seconds, and then cried out:
"Eh! If I am not mistaken, I have the pleasure of meeting, at the house of a common friend, an old comrade of the Seventh Battalion of Volunteers?"
"A comrade who was a witness to your first feat of arms, Citizen Duresnel," rejoined Lebrenn cordially, "when after the charge of the German cuirassiers upon our battery, you and Castillon took the Grand Duke of Gerolstein prisoner."
The same day as that on which occurred the scene just described, that is to say, the 17th Brumaire, year VIII (November 7, 1799), the following events took place at the home of Monsieur Hubert, banker and member of the Council of Ancients and uncle to Charlotte. This exponent of high finance had tenfold increased his fortune by his enterprises in furnishing supplies to the army, or, in other words, robbing the people and famishing the soldiers. In conference with the banker was the reverend Father Morlet; politics was on the carpet.
"My reverend sir," asked Hubert, "will you please to tell me why the Catholic and royalist party is taking no hand in political affairs? Do you not comprehend that in supporting the dictatorship of Bonaparte you deal the last blow to the Republic?"
"And who will profit thereby? Just clarify me on that point."
"He will, as a matter of course."
"Bonaparte's ambition is boundless," returned the Jesuit. "He is not ignorant that a monarchy which owes its restoration to a Monck has no more dire need than, as soon as it no longer needs his treasons, to rid itself of the traitor. It is thus more than probable that General Bonaparte prefers the role of a Cromwell, or a Caesar. In either of these two cases we Catholics and royalists must oppose him, for he would thus put off for a long time the return of the Old Regime. But as, after all, and in spite of its improbability, there is one chance in a thousand that he may be looking out for a restoration, we maintain for the present complete neutrality."
"Monsieur John Lebrenn asks to speak with you, sir," announced a valet.
"John Lebrenn in Paris!—Pray Monsieur Lebrenn to wait an instant!" cried the banker to the valet, who at once left the room to execute his master's orders.
"My dear Monsieur Hubert, I am not at all anxious for a meeting with that red-cap Jacobin, and for reasons of a particular nature," said the Jesuit.
"Step into my cabinet. Thence you can descend by the little staircase."
"In case of unforeseen developments, write me, or—you know——"
"Oh, I forgot to ask you about the Count of Plouernel."
"He is," replied the Jesuit, "at Vienna, with his wife, who has just presented him with a son, according to what the Count's brother, the Bishop in partibus, whom you know, has just written me."
"And your god-son, little Rodin?"
"He is growing up under the eye of the Lord. He is in Rome, attending the seminary of our Society."
The financier conducted Father Morlet to the door of the cabinet, and then rang for the valet to show in Monsieur Lebrenn at once.
"What can be the motive of my nephew's coming now to Paris?" pondered Hubert. "I hope he bears no bad news from my poor sister. Her last letters foreshadowed nothing untoward. Ah, here he is. Welcome, my dear nephew," he cried as he held out his hand, "welcome! And first of all put me at ease about my sister and niece. Are they well?"
"Charlotte and her mother are in perfect health," answered Lebrenn. "They charged me to visit you and tell you so, and I have made it a point to deliver the message the very day of my arrival. We are living happily in the peaceful town of Vannes, and still occupied in our cloth trade."
"From which I conclude that you no longer trouble yourself with politics. I congratulate you upon your wisdom, my dear nephew. The Republic is a chimera, as I said long ago. Look at it to-day, as good as dead, and to-morrow it will have heaved its last sigh. You come just in time to attend the funeral. May it never rise from its ashes."
"The Republic is like Lazarus in the Scriptures. It may be wrapped in its shroud, it will burst the stones of its sepulture. But let us leave politics aside; we are not agreed on the matter, and never will be. I am asked by my wife and her mother to inquire of you after the health of my father-in-law, your colleague in the Council of Ancients, of whom we have no news."
"My brother-in-law is still the same, dragging his miserable life from apostasy to apostasy, tormented by the fear of death."
"What an existence!"
"He is, indeed, the most cowardly of men, and at the same time the most talkative and vain of lawyers. Then, his position of Representative of the people in the Convention, and now as deputy in the Council of Ancients, flatters his vanity, and furnishes him with the opportunity to give a loose to his voluble oratory. So, tossed back and forth between his vanity, which impels him toward the hazards of political life, just now so tempestuous, and his cowardice, which makes him tremble each day lest he receive the reward of his apostasies, the miserable fellow's life is kept, as the Catholics say, in perpetual hell."
"Monsieur Desmarais!" announced the valet.
The lawyer, barely across the threshold, stopped stock still, as surprised as put out of sorts by the unexpected presence of his son-in-law; for a moment he was unable to utter a word, and Hubert said to him sardonically:
"How, brother! Is it so that you greet your son-in-law after so many years' separation?"
"Monsieur Lebrenn should know," at length replied the lawyer, regaining his self-assurance, "that a deep gulf separates honest men from the Jacobins of '93, the Septembrists, Terrorists, Communists, and other Socialists."
"Citizen Desmarais, we have known each other a long time," retorted Lebrenn. "You are the father of my dear wife, to whom my life owes its happiness. Whatever may be your words or your conduct toward me, there are limits which I shall never exceed in my treatment of you. You inspire me neither with anger nor hatred, but with a profound pity, for you are unhappy."
"What insolence! To hear such words issue from the lips of my daughter's husband, and be unable to punish him for them!"
"My pity for you is very natural," continued Lebrenn. "I pity your condition because you must feel a cruel chagrin at being separated from your wife and daughter."
"Scurrilous fellow!" bellowed the attorney, unable to contain himself. "It is you who came to sow trouble and discord between the members of my family and me."
"Citizen Desmarais, you are arrived at the decline of life; your solitude weighs upon you. You regret, you regret each day anew the sweets of the domestic hearth; our home is and always will be open to you. Renounce your life in politics, the incessant source of your anguish and your alarms, because of your lack of steadfastness. Return to your wife and daughter; they will forget the past. But when fear has its clutch upon you, you are like a person out of his mind; though you may be in perfect safety, yet you will perish anyhow. So then, when you please, Citizen Desmarais, you will find a place at our fireside. You will enjoy with us an existence as peaceful and happy as your present one is tortured."
Then to Hubert he added:
"Adieu, citizen. I shall return before my departure, to get your messages for Vannes."
"Adieu, dear nephew," answered the latter. "Although a Jacobin, you have my esteem."
Late that afternoon conspiracy held high carnival in the parlor of Lahary, an influential member of the Council of Ancients. The conspirators present were scattered in groups about the apartment, engaged in lively conversation, when Hubert the banker and advocate Desmarais made their entrance upon the scene.
"Messieurs," Lahary was saying, "there are a number of us present. Let us begin our deliberations. I shall preside. Our colleague Regnier has the floor."
Regnier at once began: "Gentlemen, yesterday, in a long conference held at the home of our friend the president of the Council of Ancients, various opinions were advanced and discussed, but we separated without having reached any conclusion, setting to-day for the final deliberation. We should no longer temporize. Time presses; public opinion, very uneasy, very restless, is watching; it apprehends a coup d'etat, they say, from moment to moment. This state of mind is particularly favorable to our projects, only we must make speed to profit by circumstances, and hasten events. Else the Council of Five Hundred will steal a march on us and appeal to an insurrection, in the name of the Constitution in danger. We should thus lose much of our vantage ground."
"Aye, let us haste," agreed Fouché. "Trust to my long experience. In revolutions, he who attacks has three chances to one."
"The experience and authority of our friend Fouché in matters of conspiracy can not be too highly estimated," Regnier hastened to put in. "I am for attacking, and that to-morrow, the 18th Brumaire. Here is my project. The Council of Five Hundred is the only real obstacle to the overthrow of the Constitution, which, it is decided, shall give way to another form of government, to be determined on later. The Council of Five Hundred, composed in its immense majority of republicans, is, then, the stumbling block to our projects. It must be either suppressed or annihilated."
"It is more than probable that the canaille of the suburbs will not budge an inch. Nevertheless, let us proceed prudently, as if an insurrection were really to be feared. Let us get all the police, horse and foot, upon the field to repress all suggestion of revolt," advised Fouché.
"To conjure away the peril of an insurrection, this is what I would propose," Regnier continued. "The Constitution of the year III vests exclusively in us, the Council of Ancients, the right to appoint or change the meeting-place of the Assemblies. Let us, in virtue of our constitutional right, transfer our seat and that of the Five Hundred to St. Cloud, which we can invest with five or six thousand troops, of which we will give the command to General Bonaparte. Things thus prepared, if the Council of Five Hundred refuses to adhere to our most drastic measures—a refusal who can doubt?—we shall pronounce the dissolution of their Council, and commission General Bonaparte to carry out the decree. Triumph is assured—"
"I am authorized by my brother," spoke up a new party to the debate, Lucien Bonaparte, "to declare to you that if he is placed in supreme command of the troops he will answer for everything, even to the burning of Paris."
"Those are extreme measures, but we must not recoil before them. We may have to burn Paris," chimed in the plotters in chorus.
"Yes, I share the opinion of my colleagues," declared Desmarais the lawyer. "The Council of Five Hundred, transferred to St. Cloud, becomes no longer an object of fear. But how can we justify that relegation in the eyes of the public?"
Fouché smiled sardonically. "Citizen Brutus Desmarais," said he, "you have forgotten the fifty thousand Septembrists who are in the catacombs! My spies and my horse police will spread themselves all over Paris to-morrow trumpeting to the good bourgeois that a tremendous plot has been unearthed to-night by Monsieur Fouché, Minister of Police. He, wishing to frustrate the abominable projects of the scoundrels of Terrorists, who are in league with the Five Hundred, all Jacobins, warned the Council of Ancients of what was on foot; and the noble conscript fathers, who would be the first to perish under the daggers of the bloodthirsty Terrorists, thereupon decided to remove the sessions of the national representation to St. Cloud."
"Hurrah for the great complot!" shouted Lemercier, opening his mouth for the first time. "And this reason can well be supported by another, by insisting above all that the lives of the Council of Ancients are menaced by their sitting any longer in Paris."
"Yes, yes—on with the 'great conspiracy'!" cried all.
"It is agreed, then," summed up Regnier, "that the discovery of this plot—excellent invention of the police!—is to justify the removal to St. Cloud. Now we must see that our project does not miss fire."
"For that purpose we must call a special session of our colleagues of the Council of Ancients, without informing them of the reason therefor," suggested Lemercier.
"I would observe to my honorable colleague, that, to my mind, it would be a very prudent move not to notify the republican minority which sits with us in the Council. These fellows would ask the most indiscreet questions, the most absurd, ridiculous questions. They wouldn't content themselves with the simple affirmation that there was a plot discovered; they would ask for proofs of the plot! And the details of its discovery! It would be most difficult to answer them!" put in Desmarais.
"Desmarais is right," assented Cornet, another of the conspirators. "My belief is that all of us here present should charge ourselves to go this evening to see our colleagues of the majority personally, let them know the reason for to-morrow morning's extraordinary session, and address letters of notification to them alone. Treason all along the line—our success depends upon it. Is my advice taken?"
"If the republican minority complains about not being notified, we can blame the inspectors of the hall," ventured Lemercier.
"It will be necessary, as a matter of precaution, to double the troops about the Council of Ancients," Lucien Bonaparte advised. "Everything must be foreseen. Squads of police agents should even be mixed with them."
"General Bonaparte, more than anyone else, will serve our ends," answered Regnier. "We shall count on General Bonaparte; say to him that he may count on us."
"Ah, there, Lucien," said Fouché with his withered leer, "if your brother orders the troops to march, how will you, as president of the Fire Hundred, whom you betray with such neatness and despatch, keep those prattlers from screeching like jays when they are dissolved?"
"I shall head off the storm, never fear," laughed Lucien.
"And now, dear colleagues," interrupted Regnier, "let us make haste. The day is nearly gone, and we have not a moment to lose. Let us go on. Who will undertake to prepare the letters of notification?"
"I," volunteered Lahary, their host. "I shall see the inspectors of the hall, who are ours. They are all ready to sell themselves."
"My dear Lucien, you will make it your duty to signify to the General the result of our deliberations?" asked Regnier.
"I am going at once to my brother's, on Victory Street," answered the young man.
"Who," Regnier continued, "will post the inspectors of the hall to have the guards doubled to-morrow?"
"I; and I shall reinforce the posts with spies," replied Cornet.
"My other colleagues and I," Regnier went on, "shall partition among us the task of visiting our friends at once, at their homes, and informing them of the motive of to-morrow's special session."
"We ought above all to caution them to keep the strictest secrecy about the affair," counseled Boulay, from the Meurthe district. "Otherwise it will get noised about, and to-morrow we will see the republican minority march into the Council with their bothersome questions."
"It must be an absolute secret, and I particularly recommend this to our friends," assented Regnier.
"And I," Fouché added, "I shall go teach their lesson to my spies and agents of police, all blackguards and off-scourings, willing to do anything, if they are well paid."
Meanwhile Desmarais, aside, was saying in Lucien's ear: "And so, to-morrow evening the greatest captain of modern times, your illustrious brother, that grand man clad in the dictatorship which he alone can wield, will decide the form of government it pleases him to bestow upon France. We shall behold once more the glorious days of the monarchy."
"How! the dictatorship is to fall on Bonaparte!" cried Councillor Herwin, in surprise.
"We certainly shall not allow General Bonaparte to decide alone on the form of the government!" declared Cornet.
"What a stupid ass this Desmarais is!" said young Bonaparte to himself. "Messieurs," he added aloud, "I give you my word of honor as a man, my brother has no other ambition than to place his genius and his sword at the service of the Council of Ancients. He is outspokenly republican, and has no thoughts of a dictatorship."
Despite the reassuring effect of Lucien Bonaparte's words, his fellow conspirator Regnier thought it wisest also to jump into the breach. "We won't occupy ourselves, dear colleagues," he said, "with a premature question. Let us first turn down the Constitution of the year III, and pronounce the dissolution of the Council of Five Hundred which sustains it. That done, we shall take further counsel; but first let us triumph over the common enemy. And now, gentlemen—till to-morrow!"
To cries of "Till to-morrow!" "Till to-morrow, the day of great events!" the conspirators dispersed.
By eight o'clock on the morning of the 18th Brumaire, year VIII (November 9, 1799), the Council of Ancients were assembled in their hall. Several members of the republican minority, which had not been notified of the session, had nevertheless come to the Assembly, warned by public rumor of something unusual in the wind. These latter gathered in a group about the tribunal, engaged in animated conversation.
Lemercier, presiding officer of the Council, sounded his bell; silence fell upon the assembly, and the members took their seats.
"Messieurs, our colleague Cornet, chairman of the Committee of Inspectors, has the floor," he said.
Cornet mounted the tribunal and began: "Representatives of the people:—The confidence you have reposed in your Committee of Inspectors has laid it under the obligation of watching over your individual safety, with which the public safety is so closely bound up. For, when the representatives of a nation are menaced in their persons, so that they do not enjoy in their deliberations the most absolute independence, it is no longer a Republic. Your Committee of Inspectors knows that conspirators are pouring into Paris in swarms; that those who are already here do but await the signal to bare their poniards against the representatives of the nation, against the highest authorities and members of the Republic. In presence of the danger which encompasses you, Representatives of the people, your committee felt it incumbent upon it to call you together in special session to inform you thereon; it felt it to be its duty to spur the deliberations of the Council on in deciding what part it was to play in these circumstances. The Council of Ancients holds in its hands the means of saving the country and liberty; it would be doubting its prudence, it would be doubting its wisdom, to think that it will not grapple the problem with its accustomed courage and energy."
"It is inconceivable that neither I nor several of my colleagues received notice of this convocation of the Assembly. This omission—voluntary or involuntary—must be explained," interposed Montmayon, a member of the minority.
"You have not been given the floor!" yelled President Lemercier. "Your motion is out of order. I give the floor to Monsieur Regnier."
"Representatives of the people," declared the latter when he in turn had climbed up to the tribunal, "where is the man so stupid as still to doubt the dangers which encompass us? The proofs have been only too well multiplied. But this is not the time to unroll their lamentable length. Time presses! The least delay may prove so fatal that it would then no longer lie in your power to deliberate on remedies. God forbid that I should so insult the citizens of Paris as to believe them capable of assaulting the national representation! On the contrary, I doubt not but they would protect it with their own bodies, if need were; but this immense city is nursing within its bosom a horde of brigands, of bold and desperate scoundrels. They only await, with ferocious impatience, our first unguarded moment to strike us, and, consequently, to strike at the heart of the Republic itself."
Great cries of feigned indignation burst from the conspirators. Tumult rose in the hall. Aside to himself Hubert muttered—"Forward, with Fouché's Septembrists!"
"If there exists a conspiracy against the Republic—unmask it!" cried a member of the minority. "Your assertions are without bottom. Let's have the proofs!"
"You have not got the floor!" again declared President Lemercier.
Regnier continued: "I propose, gentlemen, according to the precise terms of the Constitution, the following motion and irrevocable decree; and I propose it to you with all the more confidence that a large number of our colleagues, honored by our confidence, share my views: