Александр Дюма
The Countess of Charny; or, The Execution of King Louis XVI
CHAPTER XXI.
BEAUSIRE'S BRAVADO
Imprisoned in the Chatelet, Beausire was brought before the jury specially charged to deal with thefts committed in the taking of the Tuileries. He could not deny what was only too clearly brought forth, so he most humbly confessed his deed and sued for clemency.
His antecedents being looked up, they so little edified the court on his moral character, that he was condemned to five years in the hulks and transportation to the plantations.
In vain did he allege that he had been led into crime by the most commendable feelings, namely, to provide a peaceful future for his wife and child; nothing could alter the doom, and as the court was one without appeal, and the sentences active, it was likely to be executed immediately.
Better for him had it not been deferred for a day. Fate would have it that one of his old associates was put in prison with him on the eve of his sentence being carried out. They renewed acquaintance and exchanged confidences.
The new-comer was, he said, concerned in a well-matured plot which was to burst on Strand Place or before the Justice Hall. The conspirators were to gather in a considerable number, as if to see the executions taking place at either spot, and, raising shouts of "Long live the king!" "The Prussians are coming, hurrah!" "Death to the nation!" they were to storm the City Hall, call to their help the National Guards, two thirds Royalist, or at least Constitutional, maintain the abolition of the Commune, and, in short, accomplish the loyal counter-revolution.
The mischief was that Beausire's old partner was the very man who was to give the signal. The others in the plot, ignorant of his arrest, would hie to the place of execution, and the rising would fall to the ground from nobody being there to start the cries.
This was the more lamentable, added the friend, from there never being a better arranged plot, and one that promised a more certain result.
His arrest was the more regrettable still as, in the turmoil, the prisoner would most certainly be rescued and get away, so that he would elude the branding-iron and the galleys.
Though Captain Beausire had no settled opinions, he leaned toward royalty, so he began to deplore the check to the scheme, in the first place for the king's sake, and then for his own.
All at once he struck his brow, for he was illumined with a bright idea.
"Why, this first execution is to be mine!" he said.
"Of course, and it would have been a rich streak of luck for you."
"But you say that it will not matter who gives the cue, for the plot will burst out?"
"Yes. But who will do this, when I am caged, and can not communicate with the lads outside?"
"I," replied Beausire in lofty, tragic tones. "Will I not be on the spot, since it is I whom they are to put in the pillory? So I am the man who will cry out the arranged shouts; it is not so very hard a task, methinks."
"I always said you were a genius," remarked the captain's friend, after being wonder-struck.
Beausire bowed.
"If you do this," continued the Royalist plotter, "you will not only be delivered and pardoned, but still further, when I proclaim that the success of the outbreak is due to you, you can shake hands with yourself beforehand on the great reward you will earn."
"I am not going to do the deed for anything like lucre," said the adventurer, with the most disinterested of manners.
"We all know that," rejoined the friend; "but when the reward comes along, I advise you not to refuse it."
"Oh, if you think I ought to take it – " faltered the gambler.
"I press you to, and if I had any power over you, I should order you," resumed the companion, majestically.
"I give in," said Beausire.
"Well, to-morrow we will breakfast together, for the governor of the jail will not refuse this favor to two old 'pals,' and we will crack a jolly good bottle of the rosy to the success of this plot."
Though Beausire may have had his doubts on the kindness of prison governors, the request was granted, to his great satisfaction. It was not one bottle they drained, but several. At the fourth, Beausire was a red-hot Royalist. Luckily, the warders came to take him to the Strand before he emptied the fifth. He stepped into the cart as into a triumphal chariot, disdainfully surveying the throng for whom he was storing up such a startling surprise.
On Notre Dame Bridge, a woman and a little boy were waiting for him to come along. He recognized poor Oliva, in tears, and young Toussaint, who, on beholding his father among the soldiers, said:
"Serves him right; what did he beat me for?"
The proud father smiled protectingly, and would have waved a blessing but his hands were tied behind his back.
The City Hall Square was crammed with people. They knew that this felon had robbed in the palace, and they had no pity for him. Hence, the Guards had their work cut out to keep them back when the cart stopped at the pillory foot.
Beausire looked on at the uproar and scuffling, as much as to say: "You shall see some fun in awhile; this is nothing to the joker I have up my sleeve!"
When he appeared on the pillory platform, there was general hooting; but at the supreme moment, when the executioner opened the culprit's shirt and pulled down the sleeve to bare the shoulder, and then stooped down to take the red-hot brand, that happened which always does – all was silent before the majesty of the law.
Beausire snatched at this lull, and gathering all his powers, he shouted in a full, ringing and sonorous voice:
"Long live the king! Hurrah for the Prussians! Down with the nation!"
However great a tumult the prisoner may have expected, the one this raised much exceeded it; the protest was not in shouts, but howls. The whole gathering uttered an immense roar and rushed on the pillory.
This time the guards were insufficient to protect their man. Their ranks were broken, the scaffold swarmed upon, the executioner thrown over, and the condemned one torn from the stand and flung into the surging mob.
He would have been flayed, dismembered, and torn to pieces but for one man, arrayed in his scarf as a town officer, who luckily saw it all from the City Hall steps.
It was the Commune attorney, Manuel. He had strongly humane feelings, which he often had to keep hidden, but they moved him at such times.
With great difficulty he fought his way to Beausire, and laying hold of him, said in a loud voice:
"In the name of the law, I claim this man!"
There was hesitation; he unloosed his scarf, floating it like a flag, and called for all good citizens to assist him.
A score clustered round him and drew Beausire, half dead, from the crowd. Manuel had him carried into the Hall, which was seriously threatened, so deep was the exasperation. Manuel came out on the balcony.
"This man is guilty," he said, "but of a crime for which he has not been tried. Let us select a jury from among us to assemble in a room of the City Hall. Whatever the sentence, it shall be executed; but let us have a legal sentence."
Is it not curious that such language should be used on the eve of the massacre of the prisoners, by one of the men accused of having organized it, at the peril of his life?
This pledge appeased the mob. Beausire was dragged before the improvised jury. He tried to defend himself, but his second crime was as patent as the first; only in the popular eye it was much graver.
Was it not a dreadful crime and deserving of condign punishment to cheer the king who was put in prison as a traitor, to hurrah for the Prussians who had captured a French town, and to wish death to the nation, in agony on a bed of pain?
So the jury decided not only that the culprit deserved the capital penalty, but that to mark the shame which the law had sought to define by substituting the guillotine for the gallows, that he should be hanged, and on the spot where he committed the offense.
Consequently the headsman of Paris had his orders to erect a gibbet on the pillory stand.
The view of this work and the certainty that the prisoner could not escape them, pacified the multitude.
This was the matter which the Assembly was busied with. It saw that everything tended to a massacre – a means of spreading terror and perpetuating the Commune. The end was that they voted that the Commune had acted to merit the gratitude of the country, and Robespierre, after praising it, asserted that the House had lost the public confidence, and that the only way for the people to save themselves was to retake their powers.
So the masses were to be without check, but with a heart full of vengeance, and charged to continue the August massacre of those who had fought for the palace on the tenth, by following them into the prisons.
It was the first of September, and a storm seemed to oppress everybody with its suspended lightning.
CHAPTER XXII.
SET UPON DYING
Thus stood matters, when Dr. Gilbert's "officiator" – the word servant was abolished as non-republican – announced at nine in the evening that his carriage was at the door.
He donned his hat, buttoned up his outer coat, and was going out, when he saw the door-way blocked by a man in a cloak and a slouch hat. Gilbert recoiled a step, for all was hostile that came in the dark at such a period.
"It is I, Gilbert," said a kindly voice.
"Cagliostro!" exclaimed the doctor.
"Good; there you are forgetting again that I am no longer under that name, but bear that of Baron Zannone. At the same time, Gilbert, for you I am changed in neither name nor heart, and am ever your Joseph Balsamo, I hope."
"Yes; and the proof is that I was going to find you."
"I suspected as much, and that is what has brought me," said the magician. "For you can imagine that in such times I do not go into the country, as Robespierre is doing."
"That is why I feared that I should not find you at home, and I am happy to meet you. But come in, I beg."
"Well, here I am. Say your wish," said Cagliostro, following the master into the most retired room.
"Do you know what is going on?" asked the host, as soon as both were seated.
"You mean what is going to happen; for at present nothing is doing," observed the other.
"No, you are right; but something dreadful is brewing, eh?"
"Dreadful, in sooth; but such is sometimes needful."
"Master, you make me shudder," said Gilbert, "when you utter such sayings with your inexorable coolness."
"I can not help it. I am but the echo of fate."
Gilbert hung his head.
"Do you recall what I told you when I warned you of the fate of Marquis Favras?"
The physician started; strong in facing most men, he felt weak as a child before this mysterious character.
"I told you," went on the enigma, "that if the king had a grain of common sense, which I hoped he had not, he would exercise the wish for self-preservation to flee."
"He did so."
"Yes; but I meant while it was in good time; it was, you know, too late when he went. I added, you may remember, that if he and the queen and the nobles remained, I would bring on the Revolution."
"You are right again, for the Revolution rules," said Gilbert, with a sigh.
"Not completely, but it is getting on. Do you further recall that I showed you an instrument invented by a friend of mine, Doctor Guillotin? Well, that beheading machine, which I exhibited in a drinking-glass to the future queen at Taverney Manor, you will remember, though you were but a boy at the time – no higher than that – yet already courting Nicole – the same Nicole whose husband, Beausire, by the way, is being hung at the present speaking – not before he deserved it! Well, that machine is hard at work."
"Too slowly, since swords and pikes have to be supplementing its blade," said Gilbert.
"Listen," said Cagliostro; "you must grant that we have a most block-headed crew to deal with. We gave the aristocrats, the court, and the monarchs all sorts of warnings without their profiting or being advised by them. We took the Bastile, their persons from Versailles, their palace in Paris; we shut up their king in the temple, and the aristocrats in the other prisons; and all serves for no end. The king, under lock and bolt, rejoices at the Prussians taking his towns, and the lords in the abbey cheer the Germans. They drink wine under the noses of poor people who can not get wholesome water, and eat truffle pies before beggars who can not get bread. On King Wilhelm of Prussia being notified that if he passes Longwy into French territory, as it will be the warrant for the king's death, he replies: 'However imbittered may be the fate of the royal family, our armies must not retrograde. I hope with all my heart to arrive in time to save the King of France, but my duty before all is to save Europe.' And he marches forward to Verdun. It is fairly time to end this nonsense."
"End with whom?" cried Gilbert.
"With the king, the queen, and their following."
"Would you murder a king and a queen?"
"Oh, no; that would be a bad blunder. They must be publicly tried, condemned, and executed, as we have the example set by the execution of Charles I. But, one way or another, doctor, we must get rid of them, and the sooner the better."
"Who has decided this?" protested Gilbert. "Let me hear. Is it the intelligence, the honor, and the conscience of the people of whom you speak? When genius, loyalty, and justice were represented by Mirabeau, Lafayette, and Vergniaud, if you had said 'Louis must die,' in the name of those three I should still have shuddered, but I should doubt. In whose name do you pronounce now? Hissed actors, paltry editors, hot-heads like Marat, who have to be bled to cool them when they shriek for thousands of heads. Leave these failures who think they are wonders because they can undo in a stroke the work which it has taken nature a few score years, for they are villains, master, and you ought not to associate with such burlesques of men."
"My dear Gilbert, you are mistaken again," said the prime mover; "they are not villains; you misuse the word. They are mere instruments."
"Of destruction."
"Ay; but for the benefit of an idea. The enfranchisement of the people, Gilbert; liberty, the Republic – not merely French – God forbid me having so selfish an idea! but universal, the federation of the free world. No, these men have not genius, or honor, or conscience, but something stronger, more inexorable, less resistible – they have instinct."
"Like Attila's."
"You have hit it. Of Attila, who called himself the Scourge of God, and came with the barbaric blood of the north to redeem Roman civilization, corrupted by the feasting, debauched emperors."
"But, in brief, to sum up instead of generalizing, whither will tend a massacre?" asked Gilbert.
"To a plain issue. We will compromise the Assembly and Commune and the people of Paris. We must soak Paris in blood; for you understand that Paris is the brain of France, or of Europe, so that Paris, feeling that there is no forgiveness possible for her, will rise like one man, urge France before her, and hurl the enemy off the sacred soil."
"But you are not a Frenchman; what odds is it to you?" asked Gilbert.
"You were not an American, but you were glad to have the rebel Paul Jones take you to America and aid the rebels to free the Colonies from the British yoke. How can a man of superior mettle and intelligence say to another: 'Do not meddle with us, for you are not French?' Are not the affairs of France those of the world? Is France working solely for herself now, think you? Hark you, Gilbert; I have debated all these points with a mind far stronger than yours – the man or devil named Althotas; and one day he made a calculation of the quantity of blood which must be shed before the sun rises on the free world. His reasonings did not shake my conviction. I marched on, I march on, and on I shall march, overturning all that stands in my path, and saying to myself, in a calm voice, as I look around with a serene look: Woe to the obstacle, for this is the future which is coming! Now you have the pardon of some one to ask? I grant it beforehand. Tell me the name of the man or the woman?"
"I wish to save a woman whom neither of us, master, can allow to die."
"The Countess of Charny?"
"The mother of Sebastian Gilbert."
"You know that it is Danton who, as Minister of Justice, has the prison keys."
"Yes; but I also know that the chief of the Invisibles can say to Danton, 'Open or shut that door.'"
Cagliostro rose, and going over to a writing-desk, wrote a cabalistic sign on a small square of paper. Presenting this to Gilbert, he said:
"Go and find Danton, and ask him anything you like." Gilbert rose.
"What are you going to do when the king's turn comes?"
"I intend to be elected to the convention, so as to vote with all my power against his death."
"Be it so; I can understand that," said the leader. "Act as your conscience dictates, but promise me one thing."
"What is it?"
"There was a time when you would have promised without a condition, Gilbert."
"At that time you would not have told me that a nation could heal itself by murdering, or a people gain by massacre."
"Have it your own way. Only promise me that, when the king shall be executed, you will follow the advice I give you."
"Any advice from the master will be precious," he said, holding out his hand.
"And will be followed?" persisted Cagliostro.
"I swear, if not hurtful to my conscience."
"Gilbert, you are unjust. I have offered you much; have I ever required aught of you?"
"No, master," was Gilbert's reply; "and now, furthermore, you give me a life dearer than mine own."
"Go," said the arch-revolutionist, "and may the genius of France, one of whose noblest sons you are, ever guide you."
The count went out, and Gilbert followed him, stepping into the carriage still waiting, to be driven to the Minister of Justice.
Danton was waiting for one of two things: if he turned to the Commune, he and Marat and Robespierre would rule, and he wanted neither of them. Unfortunately, the Assembly would not have him, and its support to rule alone was the other alternative.
When Gilbert came, he had been wrestling with his wife, who guessed that the massacre was determined upon. He had told her that she talked like a woman in asking him to die rather than let the red tide flow on.
"You say that you will die of the stain, and that my sons will blush for me. No; they will be men some day, and if true Dantons, they will carry their heads high; if weak, let them deny me. If I let them commence the massacre by me, for opposing it, do you know what will become of the revolution between that blood-thirsty maniac, Marat, and that sham utopist, Robespierre? I will stay the bloodshed if I can, and if not, I will take all the guilt on my shoulders. The burden will not prevent me marching to my goal, only I shall be the more terrible."
Gilbert entered.
"Come, Doctor Gilbert, I have a word for you."
Opening a little study door, he led the visitor into it.
"How can I be useful to you?" he asked.
Gilbert took out the paper the Invisible had given him and presented it to Danton.
"Ha! you come on his account, do you? What do you desire?"
"The liberation of a woman prisoned in the abbey."
"The name?"
"The Countess of Charny."
Danton took a sheet of paper and wrote the release.
"There it is," he said; "are there others you would wish to save? Speak; I should like to save some of the unfortunates."
"I have all my desire," said Gilbert, bowing.
"Go, doctor," said the minister; "and when you need anything of me, apply direct. I am happy to do anything for you, man to man. Ah," he muttered at the door, in showing him out, "if I had only your reputation, doctor, as an honorable man!"
Bearer of the precious paper which assured Andrea's life, the father of her son hastened to the abbey. Though nearly midnight, threatening groups still hung round the door. Gilbert passed through the midst of them and knocked at it. The gloomy panel in the low arched way was opened. Gilbert shuddered as he went through – it was to be the way to the tomb.
The order, presented to the warden, stated that instant release was to be given to the person whom Dr. Gilbert should point out. He named the Countess of Charny, and the governor ordered a turnkey to lead Gilbert to the prisoner's cell.
The doctor followed the man up three flights of a spiral staircase, where he entered a cell lighted by a lamp.
Pale as marble, in mourning, a woman sat at a table bearing the lamp, reading a shagreen prayer-book adorned with a silver cross. A brand of fire burned in the fire-place. In spite of the sound of the door opening, she did not lift her eyes; the steps approaching did not move her; she appeared absorbed in her book, but it was absence of mind, for Gilbert stood several minutes without her turning a leaf.
The warder had closed the door, with himself on the outer side.
"My lady the countess," ventured Gilbert, after awhile.
Raising her eyes, Andrea looked without perceiving at first; the veil of her mind was between her and the speaker, but it was gradually withdrawn.
"Ah, and is it you, Doctor Gilbert – what do you want?" she inquired.
"Madame, very ugly rumors are afloat about what is going to happen in the prisons."
"Yes; it is said that the prisoners are to be slaughtered," rejoined Andrea; "but you know, Doctor Gilbert, that I am ready to die."
"I come to take you away madame," he continued, bowing.
"Whither would you take me, doctor?" she asked, in surprise.
"Wherever you like, madame; you are free."
He showed her the release order signed by Danton, which she read; but instead of returning it, she kept it in her hand.
"I might have suspected this," she observed, trying to smile, but she had forgotten the way. "You were sure to try to prevent me dying."
"Madame, there is but one existence which would be dearer to me than my parents', had I ever known my parents – it is yours."
"Yes; and that is why you broke your promise to me."
"I did not, madame, for I sent you the poison."
"By my son?"
"I did not tell you by what hand I should send it."
"In short, you have thought of me, Gilbert. So you entered the lion's den for my sake, and came forthwith the talisman which unseals doors?"
"I told you, madame, that as long as I lived you should not die."
"Nay, Doctor Gilbert, I believe that this time I hold death by the hand," said Andrea, with something more like a smile than her previous attempt.
"Madame, I declare to you that I will stay you from dying, even though I have to employ force."
Without replying, Andrea tore the order into pieces and tossed them into the fire.
"Try it," she said.
Gilbert uttered an outcry.
"Doctor Gilbert," said she, "I have given up the idea of suicide, but not of dying. I long for death."
Gilbert let a groan escape him.
"All that I ask of you is that you will save my body from outrage after death – it has not escaped it in life. Count Charny rests in the family vault at Boursonnes. There I spent the happiest days of my life, and I wish to repose by him."
"Oh, in Heaven's name, I implore you – "
"And I implore you in the name of my sorrow – "
"It is well, lady; you were right in saying that I am bound to obey you in all points. I go, but I am not vanquished."
"Do not forget my last wish."
"If I do not save you in spite of yourself, it shall be accomplished," replied Gilbert.
Saluting her for the last time, he went forth, and the door banged to with that lugubrious sound peculiar to prison doors.
