Александр Дюма
The Countess of Charny; or, The Execution of King Louis XVI
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CAGLIOSTRO'S ADVICE
On the evening of this awful day, while the pike-bearers were scouring Paris through streets illuminated but deserted, to exhibit rags dyed in blood, with shouts of "The tyrant is dead! behold his blood!" two men whose dress was different, sat in silence in a room in a house in St. Honore Street.
Dressed in black, one was sitting at a table, with his head resting on his hand, plunged into deep reverie, if not grief. The other, wearing a countryman's dress, strode up and down, with wrinkled forehead, gloomy eye, and folded arms. Every time his crossing line brought him by the table, he cast a glance on the thinker.
At last the countryman stopped and said, as he fixed his eye on the other:
"Come, now, Citizen Gilbert, am I a brigand because I voted for the king's death?"
The man in black raised his head, shook his melancholy brow, and said, holding out his hand to his companion:
"No, Billet, you are no more a brigand for that than I am an aristocrat for voting the other way. You voted according to your conscience, and I to mine. It is a terrible thing to take away from man that which you can not restore."
"So it is your opinion that despotism is inviolable," returned Billet, "liberty is revolt, and there is no justice on earth except such as kings, that is, tyrants, dispense? Then what remains for the people, the right to serve and obey? Do you, Gilbert, the pupil of Rousseau, say that?"
"No, Billet, for that would be an impiety against the people."
"Come," said the farmer, "I am going to talk to you with the roughness of my plain good sense, to which I do not mind your answering with all the sharpness of your fine wit. Do you admit that a nation, believing itself oppressed, should have the right to disestablish its church, lower or even demolish the throne, fight and make itself free?"
"Not a doubt of it."
"Then it has the right to gather in the spoils of the victory?"
"Yes, Billet; but not to compass such things with murder and violence. Remember that it is written, 'Thou shalt not kill thy neighbor.'"
"But the king was no neighbor of mine," returned Billet; "he was my enemy. I remember what my poor mother read me in the Bible of what Samuel said to the Israelites who asked him to appoint a king."
"So do I, Billet; and Samuel anointed Saul – he did not kill him.
"Oh, I know that if I get to arguing with you in book learning, I shall lose. So I simply ask you, were we right to take the Bastile?"
"Yes."
"When the king took away our right to hold a meeting, were we right to meet in another place?"
"You were."
"Had we the right, when the king gathered foreign troops at Versailles to feast them and overawe us, to take him away from among them and lodge him in Paris?"
"Yes."
"To bring him back when he tried to run away from the country?"
"Yes."
"Then we had a right to shut him up where he was so little out of mischief that he continued to correspond with the invader. Ought we not have brought him before the court for trial, to doom him, and – "
"Ay, to banish, to perpetually imprison, all except death, because, guilty in the result, he was not so in the intention. You judge him from the people's standing, Billet; but he acted like the son of kings. Was he a tyrant, as you call him? No. An oppressor of the people? No. An accomplice of aristocrats and an enemy of freedom? No."
"Then you judge him as royalty would?"
"No; for then he would have been acquitted."
"But you did so by voting for his life."
"No; with life imprisonment. Granting he was not your neighbor, but your enemy, he was a vanquished one, and ought not to have been slain in cold blood. That is not execution, but immolation. You have conferred on royalty something like martyrdom, and made justice seem vengeance. Take care! In doing too much, you have not done enough. Charles of England was executed, but his son reigned. But James II. was banished, and his sons died in exile. Human nature is humane, and you have alienated from the Republic for fifty or a hundred years the immense proportion of the population judging revolutions by their feelings. Believe me, my friend, Republicans ought most to bewail the death of Louis, for the blood will fall on them, and cost the Republic its life."
"There is some truth in what you say, Gilbert," said a voice at the door.
"Cagliostro!" exclaimed both debaters, turning with the same impulse.
"Yes; but there is also truth in what Billet said."
"That is the trouble in it," sighed Gilbert; "the cause we plead has two faces, and each, as he looks upon it, can say he is right."
"But he ought also to admit that he may be wrong."
"What is your opinion, master?" asked the doctor.
"Yes, your opinion?" said Billet.
"You have been trying the accused over again, but you should test the sentence. Had you doomed the king, you would have been right. You doomed the man, and you were wrong."
"I don't understand," said Billet.
"You ought to have slain the king amid his guards and courtiers, while unknown to the people – when he was to them a tyrant. But, after having let him live and dwell under the eyes of the private soldier, the petty civil servant, the workman, as a man, this sham abasement elevated him, and he ought to have been banished or locked up, as happens to any man."
"I did not understand you," said Billet to the doctor, "but I do the Citizen Cagliostro."
"Just think of their five months' captivity molding this lump – who was born to be a parish beadle – into a statue of courage, patience, and resignation, on a pedestal of sorrow; you sanctified him so that his wife adored him. Who would have dreamed, my dear Gilbert," said the magician, bursting into laughter, "that Marie Antoinette would ever have loved her mate?"
"Oh, if I had only guessed this," muttered Billet, "I would have slain him before! I could have done it easily."
These words were spoken with such intense patriotism that Gilbert pardoned them, while Cagliostro admired.
"But you did not do it," said the latter. "You voted for death; and you, Gilbert, for life. Now, let me give you a last piece of advice. You, Gilbert, strove to be a member of the convention to accomplish a duty; you, Billet, to fulfill vengeance; both are realized. You have nothing more to do here. Be gone."
The two stared at him.
"To-morrow, your indulgence will be regarded as a crime, and on the next day your severity as bad. Believe me, in the mortal strife preparing between hatred, fear, revenge, fanaticism, few will remain unspotted; some will be fouled with mud, some with blood. Go, my friends, go!"
"But France?" said the doctor.
"Yes, France?" echoed Billet.
"Materially," said Cagliostro, "France is saved; the external enemy is baffled, the home one dead. The Revolution holds the ax in one hand and the tri-colored flag in the other. Go in tranquillity, for before she lays them down, the aristocracy will be beheaded, and Europe conquered. Go, my friends, go to your second country, America!"
"Will you go with me, Billet?" asked the doctor.
"Will you forgive me?" asked Billet.
The two clasped hands.
"You must go at once. The ship 'Franklin' is ready to sail."
"But my son?"
Cagliostro had opened the door.
"Come in, Sebastian," he said; "your father calls you."
The young man rushed into his father's arms, while Billet sighed.
"My carriage is at the door," said Cagliostro. Then, in a whisper to the doctor while Billet was asking news of the youth, he said, emphatically:
"Take him away; he must not know how he lost his mother. He might thirst for revenge."
Gilbert nodded and opened a money drawer.
"Fill your pockets," he said to Billet.
"Will there be enough in a strange country?" he asked.
"Bless you! with land at five dollars an acre, cleared, we can buy a county. But what are you looking round for?"
"For what would be no use to me, who can not write."
"I see; you want to send good-bye to Pitou. Let me."
"What have you written?"
"My dear Pitou, – We are leaving France – Billet, Sebastian, and I – and send you our united love. We think that as you are manager of Billet's farm, you do not need anything. One of these days we may write for you to come over and join us.
"Your friend,"Gilbert."
"Is that all?" asked the farmer.
"There is a postscript," said the writer, looking the farmer in the face as he said:
"Billet hopes you will take the best of care of Catherine."
Billet uttered a cry of gratitude and shook Gilbert's hand again.
Ten minutes afterward, the post-chaise carried far from Paris Gilbert and his friend and the son of Andrea of Charny.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE CROWN OF ANGE'S LOVE
A little over a year after the execution of the king and the departure of Gilbert, his son, and Billet, on a fine, cold morning of the hard winter of 1794, three or four hundred persons – that is, a sixth of the population of Villers Cotterets – waited on the square before the manor-house and in the mayor's yard for the coming out of two married folks whom Mayor Longpre was uniting in the holy bonds. These were Ange Pitou and Catherine Billet.
Alas! it had taken many grave events to bring the flame of Viscount Charny, the mother of little Isidore, to become Mistress Pitou.
Everybody was chattering over these events; but in whatever manner they related and discussed them, there was always something to the greater glory of the devotion of Ange Pitou and the good behavior of Billet's daughter.
Only, the more interesting the couple were, the more they were pitied.
Perhaps they were happier than any in the crowd; but human nature is inclined that way – it must pity or applaud!
On this occasion it was in the compassionate vein.
Indeed, what Cagliostro had foreseen, had come on rapidly, leaving a long track of blood after it.
On the 1st of February, 1793, the issue of more paper money was agreed. In March, the fugitive nobles were perpetually banished and their property confiscated. In November, a new kind of religion was proposed instead of the established church.
The result of the confiscation decree was, that Billet and Gilbert being considered fugitives, their lands were seized for the public good. The same fate befell the estates of the Charnys, the count having been killed and the countess murdered in prison.
The consequence to Catherine was that she was turned out of Billet's farm, which was national property. Pitou wanted to protest, but Pitou was a moderate and a "suspect," and wise souls advised him not to oppose the orders of the nation in will or deed.
So Catherine and Pitou had gone over to Haramont.
She had thought of taking refuge in Daddy Clovis's lodge, but he appeared at the door to lay his finger on his lips and shake his head in token of impossibility; the place was already occupied.
The law on the banishment of refractory priests was still in force, and it is easy to understand that Father Fortier had banished himself, as he would not take the oath. But he had not felt like passing the frontier, and his exile was limited to his leaving his house in charge of his sister, to see the furniture was not stolen, and asking Clovis for shelter, which was granted.
This retreat was only a cave, and it would with difficulty hold, in addition to the corpulent priest, Catherine, little Isidore, and Pitou.
Besides, we recall the refusal of the priest to bury Mrs. Billet. Catherine was not good Christian enough to overlook the unkindness, and had she been so, the Abbe Fortier was too good a Catholic to forgive her.
So they had to give up the idea of staying with old Clovis.
This choice lay between Aunt Angelique's house and Pitou's lodgings at Haramont.
They dared not think of the former. As the revolution had followed its course, Angelique had become more and more diabolic, which seems incredible, and thinner, which seems impossible.
This change in her temper and her physique arose from the fact that the churches were closed at Villers as elsewhere, awaiting the invention of a reasonable and civic cult, according to the Board of Public Instruction. The churches being shut, Aunt Angelique's principal revenue, from letting seats, fell into disuse.
It was the drying up of her income which made her Tartar – we beg pardon, tarter and bonier than ever.
Let us add that she had so often heard the story of Pitou and Billet capturing the Bastile, and had so often seen them start off for Paris whenever any great event was to take place, that she did not in the least doubt that the French Revolution was led by Ange Pitou and Farmer Billet, with Citizens Danton, Marat, Robespierre & Co., playing the secondary parts.
The priest's sister fostered her in these somewhat erroneous opinions, to which the regicidal vote of Billet had given the seal on heated fanaticism.
Pitou ought not to think of placing the regicide's daughter under Angelique's roof.
As for the petty accommodation at Haramont, how could he think of installing two – there were three – souls in two rooms; while if they were comfortable, it would set evil tongues wagging?
It was more out of the question than Clovis's hut.
So Pitou made up his mind to beg shelter for himself of Desire Maniquet. That worthy son of Haramont gave the hospitality which Pitou paid for in kind; but all this did not provide Catherine with a fixed habitation.
Pitou showed her all the attentions of a loving friend and the affection of a brother; but poor Catherine was well aware that he did not love her like friend or brother.
Little Isidore had something of the same idea; for the poor child, having never known the Viscount of Charny, loved him more perhaps, for Pitou was not merely the sweetheart of Catherine, but his slave.
A skillful strategist must have understood that the way to win Catherine's heart was through the help of the little one.
But we hasten to say that no such calculation tarnished the purity of Pitou's sentiments. He was just the simple fellow we met him at the first, unless, on becoming a man, he became simpler than ever.
All his good gifts touched Catherine. She saw that Pitou adored her ardently, to the point of fanaticism, and she caught herself wishing that she could repay so great a love and utter devotion with something better than friendship.
Gradually, by dint of dwelling on her isolation from all the world, Pitou excepted, and on her boy being left alone if she were to die, Pitou again excepted, she came to giving Pitou the only reward in her power – her hand.
Alas, her first love, that perfumed flower of youth, was in heaven!
For six months Catherine had been nourishing this conclusion without Pitou suspecting that the wind was blowing up in his favor, though her welcoming was a shade warmer and her parting a trifle more lingering each time; so she was forced to speak the first – but women take the lead in such matters.
One evening, instead of offering her hand, she held up her cheek for a kiss. Pitou thought she had forgot, and was too honest to take advantage of a mistake.
But Catherine had not let go his hand, and she drew him closer to her. Seeing him still hesitate, little Isidore joined in, saying:
"Why won't you kiss Mamma Catherine, Papa Pitou?"
"Good gracious!" gasped Pitou, turning pale as if about to die, but letting his cold and trembling lip touch her cheek.
Taking the boy up, she put him in Pitou's arms, and said:
"I give you the boy, Ange; will you have the mother?"
This time, it was too much for the swain, whose head swam; he shut his eyes, and while he hugged the child, he dropped on a chair, and panted with the delicacy which only a delicate heart could appreciate:
"Oh, Master Isidore, how very fond I am of you!"
Isidore called Pitou "Papa Pitou," but Pitou called him "Master Isidore."
That is why, as he felt that love for her son had made Catherine love Ange, he did not say:
"Oh, how dearly I love you, Catherine!"
This point settled that Pitou thought more of Isidore than of Catherine, they spoke of marriage.
"I don't want to seem in a hurry," said the man, "but if you mean to make me happy, do not be too long about it."
Catherine took a month.
At the end of three weeks Ange, in full regimentals, went respectfully to pay a visit to Aunt Angelique, with the aim to inform her of his near at hand union with Catherine Billet.
Seeing her nephew from afar, she hastened to shut her door. But he did not hold back from the inhospitable door whence he had once been expelled.
He rapped gently.
"Who is there?" snarled Angelique, in her sourest voice.
"I – your dutiful nephew, Ange Pitou."
"Go on your bloody way, you September man of massacre!" cried Aunt Angelique.
"Auntie, I come to tell you of a bit of news which can not fail to make you jolly, because it is my happiness."
"What is the news, you red-capped Jacobin?"
"I will tell you if you open the door."
"Say it through the door; I shall not open it to a breechless outlaw like you."
"If there is no other way, here you have it – I am going to get married."
The door flew open as by magic.
"Who are you going to marry, you wretched fellow?" asked the old spinster.
"Catherine Billet, please."
"Oh, the villain, the scamp, the regicide!" said the good soul; "he marries a ruined girl! Get you gone, scapegrace; I curse you!"
With a gesture quite noble, she held up her dry and yellow hands toward her nephew.
"Dear aunt," replied the young man, "you ought to know that I am too well hardened to your maledictions to care a fig for them. I only wanted to do the proper thing by inviting you to dance at my wedding; if you won't come, still I have asked you to shake a leg – "
"Shake a – fy, for shame!"
"Fare thee well, sweet Aunt Angelique!"
Touching his cocked hat in the military manner, Pitou made a salute to his relative and hurried away.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE EFFECT OF HAPPY NEWS
Pitou had to tell his intended marriage to Mayor Longpre, who lived hard by. Less set against the Billet family than Aunt 'Gelique, he congratulated Pitou on the match.
Pitou listened to his praise without seeing where he was doing very much of a noble action.
By the way, as a pure Republican, Pitou was delighted to find that the Republic had done away with the publication of the banns and other ecclesiastical trammels which had always galled true lovers.
It was, therefore, settled between the mayor and the suitor that the wedding should take place on the following Saturday, at the town hall.
Next day, Sunday, the sale of the Charny estate and the Billet farm was to come off. The latter, at the upset price of four hundred thousand and the other at six hundred thousand in paper money; assignats were dropping fearfully; the gold louis was worth nine hundred and twenty francs in paper.
But, then, nobody ever saw a gold piece nowadays.
Pitou had run all the way back to acquaint Catherine with the good news. He had ventured to anticipate the marriage-day by forty-eight hours, and he was afraid he should vex Catherine.
She did not appear vexed, and he was lifted up among the angels – his namesakes.
But she insisted on his going once more to Aunt Angelique's, to announce the exact date of the wedding-day and invite her to be at the ceremony. She was the bridegroom's sole relative, and though not at all tender toward him, he ought to do the proper thing on his side.
The consequence was that on Thursday morning, Pitou went over to Villers Cotterets to repeat the visit.
Nine o'clock was striking as he got in sight of the house.
The aunt was not on the door-step, but the door was closed any way, as if she expected his call.
He thought that she had stepped out, and he was delighted.
He would have paid the visit, and a polite note with a piece of wedding-cake after the ceremony would acquit the debt to courtesy.
Still, as he was a conscientious fellow, he went up to the door and knocked; as no answer came to his raps, he called.
At the double appeal of knuckle and voice, a neighbor appeared at her own door.
"Do you know whether or no my aunt has gone out, eh, Mother Fagot?" asked Pitou.
"Has she not answered?" asked Dame Fagot.
"No; she has not, as you see; so I guess she has gone out for a gossip."
Mother Fagot shook her head.
"I should have seen her go out," she said; "my door opens the same way as hers, and it is pretty seldom that in getting up of a morning she does not drop into our house to get some warm ashes to put in her shoes, with which the poor dear lamb keeps her toes warm all the day. Ain't that so, Neighbor Farolet?"
This question was addressed to a fresh character, who likewise opening his door, shoved his conversational oar into the parley.
"What are you talking about, Madame Fagot?"
"I was a-saying that Aunt Angelique had not gone out. Have you seen anything of her?"
"That I hain't, and I am open to wager that she has not gone out, otherwise her shutters would not be open, d'ye see."
"By all that is blue, that is true enough," remarked Pitou. "Heavens, I hope nothing unfortunate has happened to my poor aunt."
"I should not wonder," said Mother Fagot.
"It is more than possible, it is probable," said Farolet, sententiously.
"To tell the truth, she was not over-tender to me," went on Pitou; "but I do not want harm to befall her for all that. How are we going to find out the state of things?"
"That is not a puzzle," suggested a third neighbor, joining in; "send for Rigolot, the locksmith."
"If it is to open the door, he is not wanted," said Pitou; "I know a little trick of prying the bolt with a knife."
"Well, go ahead, my lad," said Farolet; "we are all witnesses that you picked the lock with the best intentions and your pocket-knife."
Pitou had taken out his knife, and in the presence of a dozen persons, attracted by the occurrence, he slipped back the bolt with a dexterity proving that he had used this means of opening the way more than once in his youth.
The door was open, but the interior was plunged into complete darkness. As the daylight gradually penetrated and was diffused, they could descry the form of the old girl on her bed.
Pitou called her by name twice. But she remained motionless and without response. He went in and up to the couch.
"Halloo!" he exclaimed, touching the hands; "she is cold and stark."
They opened the windows. Aunt Angelique was dead.
"What a misfortune!" said Pitou.
"Tush," said Farolet; "a hard winter is coming, and wood never so dear. She saves by departing where the firing is plentiful. Besides, your aunt did not dote on you."
"Maybe so," said Pitou, with tears as big as walnuts, "but I liked her pretty well. Oh, my poor auntie!" said the big baby, falling on his knees by the bed.
"I say, Captain Pitou," said Mme. Fagot, "if you want anything, just let us know. If we ain't good neighbors, we ain't good for anything."
"Thank you, mother. Is that boy of yours handy?"
"Yes. Hey, Fagotin!" called the good woman.
A boy of fourteen stood frightened at the door.
"Here I am, mother," he said.
"Just bid him trot over to Haramont to tell Catherine not to be uneasy about me, as I have found my Aunt 'Gelique dead. Poor aunt!" He wiped away fresh tears. "That is what is keeping me here."
"You hear that, Fagotin? Then off you go."
"Go through Soissons Street," said the wise Farolet, "and notify Citizen Raynal that there is a case of sudden death to record at old Miss Pitou's."
The boy darted off on his double errand.
The crowd had kept increasing till there were a hundred before the door. Each had his own opinion on the cause of the decease, and all whispered among themselves.
"If Pitou is no fool, he will find some hoard smuggled away in an old sock, or in a crock, or in a hole in the chimney."
Dr. Raynal arrived in the midst of this, preceded by the head tax-gatherer.
The doctor went up to the bed, examined the corpse, and declared to the amaze of the lookers-on that the death was due to cold and starvation. This redoubled Pitou's tears.
"Oh, poor aunt!" he wailed, "and I thought she was so rich. I am a villain for having left her to poverty. Oh, had I only known this! It can not be, Doctor Raynal!"
"Look into the hutch and see if there is any bread; in the wood-box and see if there is any fire-wood. I have always foretold that the old miser would end in this way."
Searching, they found not a crumb or a splinter.
"Oh, why did she not tell me this?" mourned Pitou. "I would have chopped up some wood for her and done some poaching to fill the larder. It is your fault, too," the poor fellow added, accusing the crowd; "you ought to have told me that she was in want."
"We did not tell you that she was in want," returned wiseacre Farolet, "for the plain reason that everybody believed that she was rolling in riches."
Dr. Raynal had thrown the sheet over the cold face, and proceeded to the door, when Pitou intercepted him.
"Are you going, doctor?"
"Why, what more do you expect me to do here?"
"Then she is undoubtedly dead? Dear me, to die of cold and hunger, too!"
Raynal beckoned him.
"Boy, I am of the opinion that you should none the less seek high and low," he said.
"But, doctor, after your saying she died of want – "
"Misers have been known to die the same way, lying on their treasures. Hush!" he said, laying a finger on his lips, and going out-doors.
