Henty George Alfred
In the Reign of Terror: The Adventures of a Westminster Boy
"I will lend you a hand," a tall man in the dress of a mechanic, who had been standing next to him, said, and, lifting Victor's body on to his shoulder, made his way to the top of the stairs, Harry preceding him and opening a way through the crowd. In another minute they were in the open air.
"Thank you greatly," Harry said. "I do not know how I should have managed without your aid. If you put him down here I will try and bring him round."
"I live not far from here," the man said. "I will take him to my room. You need not be afraid," he added as Harry hesitated, "I have got my eyes open, you can trust me."
So saying he made his way through the crowd gathered outside. He was frequently asked who he was carrying, for the crowd feared lest any of their prey should escape; but the man's reply, given with a rough laugh—"It is a lad whose stomach is not strong enough to bear the sight of blood, and I tell you it is pretty hot in there,"—satisfied them.
Passing through several streets the man entered a small house and carried Victor to the attic and laid him on a bed, then he carefully closed the door and struck a light.
"You struck hard, my friend," he said as he examined Victor's head. "Ma foi, I should not have liked such a blow myself, but I don't blame you. You were but just in time to prevent his betraying himself, and better a hundred times a knock on the head than those pikes outside the door. I had my eye on him, and felt sure he would do something rash, and I had intended to choke him, but he was too quick for me. How came you to be so foolish as to be there?"
"We had friends in the prison, and we thought we might do something to save them," Harry answered, for he saw that it would be his best policy to be frank. "It was his father whom they brought out."
"It was rash of you, young sir. A kid might as well try to save his mother from the tiger who has laid its paw upon her as for you to try to rescue any one from the clutches of the mob. Mon Dieu! To think that in the early days I was fool enough to go down to the Assembly and cheer the deputies; but I have seen my mistake. What has it brought us? A ruined trade, an empty cupboard, and to be ruled by the ruffians of the slums instead of the king, the clergy, and the upper classes. I was a brass-worker, and a good one, though I say it myself, and earned good wages. Now for the last month I haven't done a stroke of work. Who wants to buy brass-work when there are mansions and shops to pillage? And now, what are you going to do? My wife is out, but she will probably be back soon. We will attend to this young fellow. She is a good nurse, and I tell you I think he will need all we can do for him."
"You don't think I have seriously injured him?" Harry said in a tone of dismay.
"No, no; don't make yourself uneasy. You have stunned him, and that's all; he will soon get over that. I have seen men get worse knocks in a drunken row and be at work again in the morning; but it is different here. I saw his face, and he was pretty nearly mad when you struck him. I doubt whether he will be in his right senses when he comes round; but never fear, we will look after him well. You can stay if you like; but if you want to go you can trust him to us. I see you can keep your head, and will not run into danger as he did."
"I do want to go terribly," Harry said, "terribly; and I feel that I can trust you completely. You have saved his life and mine already. Now you will not be hurt at what I am going to say. He is the son of the Duc de Gisons, the last man we saw brought out to be murdered. We have plenty of money. In a belt round his waist you will find a hundred louis. Please do not spare them. If you think he wants a surgeon call him in, and get everything necessary for your household. While you are nursing him you cannot go out to work. I do not talk of reward; one cannot reward kindness like yours; but while you are looking after him you and your wife must live."
"Agreed!" the man said, shaking Harry by the hand. "You speak like a man of heart. I will look after him. You need be under no uneasiness. Should any of my comrades come in I shall say: 'this is a young workman who got knocked down and hurt in the crowd, and whom, having nothing better to do, I have brought in here."'
"If he should recover his senses before I come back," Harry said, "please do not let him know it was I who struck him. He will be well-nigh heart-broken that he could not share the fate of his father. Let him think that he was knocked down by some one in the crowd."
"All right! That is easily managed," the man said. "Jacques Medart is no fool. Now you had best be off, for I see you are on thorns, and leave me to bathe his head. If you shouldn't come back you can depend upon it I will look after him till he is able to go about again."
CHAPTER VIII
Marie Arrested
On leaving Victor in the care of the man who had so providentially came to his aid, Harry hurried down the street towards the Abbaye, then he stopped to think—should he return there or make his way to the Bicetre. He could not tell whether his friends had, like the Duc de Gisons, been removed to the Abbaye. If they had been so, it was clearly impossible for him to aid them in any way. They might already have fallen. The crowd was too great for him to regain the gallery, and even there could only witness, without power to avert, their murder. Were they still at the Bicetre he might do something. Perhaps the assassins had not yet arrived there.
It was now nine o'clock in the evening. The streets were almost deserted. The respectable inhabitants all remained within their houses, trembling at the horrors, of which reports had circulated during the afternoon. At first there had been hopes that the Assembly would take steps to put a stop to the massacre, but the Assembly did nothing. Danton and the ministers were absent. The cannon's roar and the tocsin sounded perpetually. There was no secret as to what was going on. The Commune had the insolence to send commissioners to the bar of the Assembly to state that the people wished to break open the doors of the prisons, and this when two hundred priests had already been butchered at the Carmelites.
A deputation indeed went to the Abbaye to try to persuade the murderers to desist; but their voices were drowned in the tumultuous cries. The Commune of Paris openly directed the massacre. Billaud-Varennes went backwards and forwards to superintend the execution of his orders, and promised the executioners twenty-four francs a day. The receipt for the payment of this blood-money still exists.
On arriving in front of the Bicetre Harry found all was silent there, and with a faint feeling of hope that the massacre would not extend beyond the Abbaye, he again turned his steps in that direction.
The bloody work was still going on, and Harry wandered away into the quiet streets to avoid hearing the shrieks of the victims and the yells of the crowd. A sudden thought struck him, and he went along until he saw a woman come out of a house. He ran up to her.
"Madam," he said, "I have the most urgent need of a bonnet and shawl. Will you sell me those you have on? The shops are all shut, or I would not trouble you. You have only to name your price, and I will pay you."
The woman was surprised at this proposition, but seeing that a good bargain was to be made she asked twice the cost of the articles when new, and this Harry paid her without question.
Wrapping the shawl and bonnet into a bundle, he retraced his steps, and sat down on some doorsteps within a distance of the Abbaye which would enable him to observe any general movement of the crowd in front of the prison. At one o'clock in the morning there was a stir, and the body of men with pikes moved down the street.
"They are going to La Force," he said, after following them for some distance. "Oh, if I had but two or three hundred English soldiers here we would make mincemeat of these murderers!"
Harry did not enter La Force, where the scenes that were taking place at the Abbaye—for, in spite of the speed with which the mock trials were hurried through, these massacres were not yet finished there, so great was the number of prisoners—were repeated.
At La Force many ladies were imprisoned, among them the Princess de Lamballe. They shared the fate of the male prisoners, being hewn to pieces by sabres. The head of the princess was cut off and stuck upon a pike, and was carried in triumph under the windows of the Temple, where the king and queen were confined, and was held up to the bars of the room they occupied for them to see. Marie Antoinette, fearless for herself, fainted at the terrible sight of the pale head of her friend.
Harry remained at a little distance from La Force, tramping restlessly up and down, half-mad with rage and horror, and at his powerlessness to interfere in any way with the proceedings of the wretches who were carrying on the work of murder. At last, about eight o'clock in the morning, a boy ran by.
"They have finished with them at the Abbaye," he said with fiendish glee. "They are going from there to the Bicetre."
Harry with difficulty repressed his desire to slay the urchin, and hurried away to reach the prison of Bicetre before the band from the Abbaye arrived there. Unfortunately he came down by a side street upon them when they were within a few hundred yards of the prison. His great hope was that he might succeed in penetrating with the Marseillais and find the marquise, and aid her in making her way through the mob in the disguise he had purchased.
But here, as at the other prisons, there was a method in the work of murder. The agents of the Commune took possession of the hall at the entrance and permitted none to pass farther into the prison, the warders and officials bringing down the prisoners in batches, and so handing them over for slaughter. In vain Harry tried to penetrate into the inner part of the prison. He was roughly repulsed by the men guarding the door; and at last, finding that nothing could be done, he forced his way out again into the open air, and hurrying away for some distance, threw himself on the ground and burst into a passion of tears.
After a time he rose and made his way back to the house where he had left Victor de Gisons. He found him in a state of delirium, acting over and over again the scene in the Abbaye, cursing the judge and executioners, and crying out he would die with his father.
"What does the doctor think of him?" he asked the woman who was sitting by Victor's bed.
"He did not say much," the woman replied. "He shook his head, and said there had been a terrible mental shock, and that he could not answer either for his life or reason. There was nothing to do but to be patient, to keep his head bandaged with wet cloths, and to give him water from time to time. Do not be afraid, sir; we will watch over him carefully."
"I would stay here if I could," Harry said; "but I have others I must see about. I have the terrible news to break to some young ladies of the murder of their father and mother."
"Poor things! Poor things!" the woman said, shaking her head. "It is terrible! My husband was telling me what he saw; and a neighbour came in just now and said it was the same thing at all the other prisons. The priest, too—our priest at the little church at the corner of the street, where I used to go in every morning to pray on my way to market—he was dragged away ten days ago to the Carmelites, and now he is a saint in heaven. How is it, sir, that God allows such things to be?"
"We cannot tell," Harry said sadly. "As for myself, I can hardly believe it, though I saw it. They say there are over four thousand people in the prisons, and they will all be murdered. Such a thing was never heard of. I can hardly believe that I am not in a dream now."
"You look almost like one dead yourself," the woman said pityingly. "I have made a bouillon for Jacques' breakfast and mine. It is just ready. Do take a mouthful before you go out. That and a piece of bread and a cup of red wine will do you good."
Harry was on the point of refusing; but he felt that he was utterly worn and exhausted, and that he must keep up his strength. Her husband, therefore, took her place by Victor's bedside in readiness to hold him down should he try to get up in his ravings, while the good woman ladled out a basin of the broth and placed it with a piece of bread and some wine on the table. Harry forced himself to drink it, and when he rose from the table he already felt the benefit of the meal.
"Thank you very much," he said. "I feel stronger now; but how I am to tell the story I do not know. But I must make quite certain before I go to these poor girls that their parents were killed. Three or four were spared at the Abbaye. Possibly it may have been the same thing at the Bicetre."
So Harry went back and waited outside the prison until the bloody work was over; but found on questioning those who came out when all was done that the thirst for blood had increased with killing, and that all the prisoners found in the Bicetre had been put to death.
"Ma foi!" the man whom he was speaking to said; "but these accursed aristocrats have courage. Men and women were alike; there was not one of them but faced the judges bravely and went to their death as calmly as if to dinner. There was a marquis and his wife—the Marquis de St. Caux they called him. They brought them out together. They were asked whether they had anything to say why they should not be punished for their crimes against France. The marquis laughed aloud.
"'Crimes!' he said. 'Do you think a Marquis de St. Caux is going to plead for his life to a band of murderers and assassins? Come, my love.'
"He just gave her one kiss, and then took her hand as if they were going to walk a minuet together, and then led her down between the lines of guards with his head erect and a smile of scorn on his face. She did not smile, but her step never faltered. I watched her closely. She was very pale, and she did not look proud, but she walked as calmly and steadily as her husband till they reached the door where the pikemen were awaiting them, and then it was over in a minute, and they died without a cry or a groan. They are wretches, the aristocrats. They have fattened on the life-blood of the people; but they know how to die, these people."
Without a word Harry turned away. He had told himself there was no hope; but he knew by the bitter pang he felt now that he had hoped to the last. Then he walked slowly away to tell the news.
There were comparatively few people about the streets, and these all of the lower order. Every shop was closed. Men with scared faces stood at some of the doors to gather the news from passers-by, and pale women looked timidly from the upper windows. When he reached the house he could not summon courage to enter it, but stood for a long time outside, until at last he saw Louise Moulin put her head from the window. He succeeded in catching her eye, and placing his finger on his lips signed to her to come down. A minute later she appeared at the door.
"Is it all true, Monsieur Sandwith? They say they are murdering the prisoners. Surely it must be false! They could never do such a thing!"
"It is true, Louise. I have seen it myself. I went with a disguise to try and rescue our dear lady, even if I could not save the marquis; but I could not get to her—the wretches have murdered them both."
"Oh, my dear lady!" the old woman cried, bursting into tears. "The pretty babe I nursed. To think of her murdered; and the poor young things upstairs—what shall I do!—what shall I do, Monsieur Sandwith!"
"You must break it to them, Louise. Do they know how great the danger is?"
"No. I have kept it from them. They can see from the window that something unusual is going on; everyone can see that. But I told them it was only that the Prussians were advancing. They are anxious—very anxious—but they are quite unprepared for this."
"Break it gradually, Louise. Tell them first that there are rumours that the prisons have been attacked. Come down again presently as if to get more news, and then tell them that there are reports that the prisoners have been massacred, and then at last tell them all the truth."
"But will you not come up, Monsieur Sandwith—they trust you so much? Your presence will be a support to them."
"I could do nothing now," Harry said sadly. "God only can console them. They had best be by themselves for awhile. I will come in this evening. The first burst of grief will be over then, and my talk may aid them to rouse themselves. Oh, if we had but tried to get them out of prison sooner. And yet who could have foreseen that here in Paris thousands of innocent prisoners, men and women, would be murdered in cold blood!"
Finding that she could not persuade Harry to enter, Louise turned to perform her painful duty; while Harry, thoroughly exhausted with the night of horrors, made his way home, and throwing himself on the bed, fell asleep, and did not wake until evening. His first step was to plunge his head into water, and then, after a good wash, to prepare a meal. His sleep had restored his energy, and with brisk steps he made his way through the streets to Louise Moulin. He knocked with his knuckles at the outer door of her apartments. The old nurse opened it quietly.
"Come in," she said, "and sit down. They are in their room, and I think they have cried themselves to sleep. My heart has been breaking all day to see them. It has been dreadful. Poor little Virginie cried terribly, and sobbed for hours; but it was a long time before the others cried. Marie fainted, and when I got her round lay still and quiet without speaking. Jeanne was worst of all. She sat on that chair with her eyes staring open and her face as white as if she were dead. She did not seem to hear anything I said; but at last, when Virginie's sobs were stopping, I began to talk to her about her mother and her pretty ways when she was a child, and then at last Jeanne broke down, and she cried so wildly that I was frightened, and then Marie cried too; and after a while I persuaded them all to lie down; and as I have not heard a sound for the last hour I hope the good God has sent them all to sleep."
"I trust so indeed, Louise. I will stay here quietly for an hour, and then if we hear nothing I will go home, and be back again in the morning. Sleep will do more for them than anything I can say."
At the end of an hour all was still quiet, and Harry with a somewhat lightened heart took his departure.
At nine o'clock next morning he was again at the house. When he entered Virginie ran to him, and throwing her arms round his neck again burst into a passion of tears. Harry felt that this was the best thing that could have happened, for the others were occupied for some time in trying to soothe her, crying quietly to themselves while they did so. At last her sobs became less violent.
"And now, Harry," Marie said, turning to him, "will you tell us all about it?"
"I will tell you only that your dear father and mother died, as you might be sure they would, calmly and fearlessly, and that they suffered but little. More than that I cannot tell you now. Some day farther on, when you can bear it, I will tell you of the events of the last forty-eight hours. At present I myself dare not think of it, and it would harm you to know it.
"Do not, I pray you, ask me any questions now. We must think of the future. Fortunately you passed unsuspected the last time they searched the house; but it may not be so another time. You may be sure that these human tigers will not be satisfied with the blood they have shed, but that they will long for fresh victims. The prisons are empty now, but they will soon be filled again. We must therefore turn our thoughts to your making your escape from the city. I fear that there is peril everywhere; but it must be faced. I think it will be useless for us to try and reach the frontier by land. At every town and village they will be on the look-out for fugitives, and whatever disguise you might adopt you could not escape observation. I think, then, that we must make for the sea and hire a fishing-boat to take us across to England.
"But we must not hurry. In the first place, we must settle all our plans carefully and prepare our disguises; in the next place, there will be such tremendous excitement when the news of what has happened here is known that it would be unsafe to travel. I think myself it will be best to wait a little until there is a lull. That is what I want you to think over and decide.
"I do not think there is any very great danger here for the next few days. For a little time they will be tired of slaying; and, from what I hear, the Girondists are marked out as the next victims. They say Danton has denounced them at the Jacobin Club. At any rate it will be better to get everything in readiness for flight, so that we can leave at once if we hear of any fresh measures for a search after suspects."
Harry was pleased to find that his suggestion answered the purpose for which he made it. The girls began to discuss the disguises which would be required and the best route to be taken, and their thoughts were for a time turned from the loss they had sustained. After an hour's talk he left them greatly benefited by his visit.
For the next few days Harry spent his time for the most part by the bedside of Victor de Gisons. The fever was still at its height, and the doctor gave but small hopes of his recovery. Harry determined that he would not leave Paris until the issue was decided one way or the other, and when with the girls he discouraged any idea of an immediate flight. This was the more easy, for the news from the provinces showed that the situation was everywhere as bad as it was at the capital.
The Commune had sent to all the committees acting in connection with them in the towns throughout the country the news of the execution of the enemies of France confined in the prisons, and had urged that a similar step should at once be taken with reference to all the prisoners in their hands. The order was promptly obeyed, and throughout France massacres similar to those in Paris were at once carried out. A carnival of murder and horror had commenced, and the madness for blood raged throughout the whole country. Such being the case, Harry found it by no means difficult to dissuade the girls from taking instant steps towards making their escape.
He was, however, in a state of great uneasiness. Many of the moderate deputies had been seized, others had sought safety in flight, and the search for suspected persons was carried on vigorously. Difficult and dangerous as it would be to endeavour to travel through France with three girls, he would have attempted it without hesitation rather than remain in Paris had it not been for Victor de Gisons.
One day a week after the massacres at the prisons he received another terrible shock. He had bought a paper from one of the men shouting them for sale in the street, and sat down in the garden of the Tuileries to read it. A great portion of the space was filled with lists of the enemies of the people who had been, as it was called, executed. As these lists had formed the staple of news for several days Harry scarce glanced at the names, his eye travelling rapidly down the list until he gave a start and a low cry. Under the heading of persons executed at Lille were the names of Ernest de St. Caux, Jules de St. Caux, Pierre du Tillet—"aristocrats arrested, August 15th, in the act of endeavouring to leave France in disguise."
For some time Harry sat as if stunned. He had scarce given a thought to his friends since that night they had left, the affairs of the marquis and his wife, of their daughters, and of Victor de Gisons, almost excluding everything else. When he thought of the boys it had been as already in England, under the charge of du Tillet.
He had thought, that if they had been arrested on the way he should have been sure to hear of it; and he had such confidence in the sagacity of Monsieur du Tillet that he had looked upon it as almost certain he would be able to lead his two charges through any difficulty and danger which might beset them. And now he knew that his hopes had been ill founded—that his friends had been arrested when almost within sight of the frontier, and had been murdered as soon as the news of the massacres in Paris had reached Lille.
He felt crushed with the blow. A warm affection had sprung up between him and Ernest, while from the first the younger boy had attached himself to him; and now they were dead, and the girls were alone in the world, save for himself and the poor young fellow tossing with fever! It was true that if his friends had reached England in safety they could not have aided him in the task he had before him of getting the girls away; still their deaths somehow seemed to add to his responsibilities.
Upon one thing he determined at once, and that was, that until his charges were safely in England they should not hear a whisper of this new and terrible misfortune which had befallen them.
In order to afford the girls some slight change, and anxious at their pale faces, the result of grief and of their unwonted confinement, Louise Moulin had persuaded them to go out with her in the early mornings when she went to the markets. The fear of detection was small, for the girls had now become accustomed to their thick shoes and rough dress; and indeed she thought that it would be safer to go out, for the suspicions of her neighbours might be excited if the girls remained secluded in the house. Harry generally met them soon after they started, and accompanied them in their walk.
One morning he was walking with the two younger girls, while Marie and the old nurse were together a short distance in front of them. They had just reached the flower-market, which was generally the main object of their walks—for the girls, having passed most of their time in the country, were passionately fond of flowers—when a man on horseback wearing a red sash, which showed him to be an official of the republic, came along at a foot-pace. His eyes fell upon Marie's face and rested there, at first with the look of recognition, followed by a start of surprise and satisfaction. He reined in his horse instantly, with the exclamation:
"Mademoiselle de St. Caux!"
For a moment she shrank back, her cheek paler even than before; then recovering herself she said calmly:
"It is myself, Monsieur Lebat."
"Citizen Lebat," he corrected. "You forget, there are no titles now—we have changed all that. It goes to my heart," he went on with a sneer, "to be obliged to do my duty; but however unpleasant it is, it must be done. Citizens," he said, raising his voice, "I want two men well disposed to the state."
As to be ill disposed meant danger if not death, several men within hearing at once came forward.
"This female citizen is an aristocrat in disguise," he went on, pointing to Marie; "in virtue of my office as deputy of Dijon and member of the Committee of Public Safety, I arrest her and give her into your charge. Where is the person who was with her? Seize her also on a charge of harbouring an enemy of the state!"
But Louise was gone. The moment Lebat had looked round in search of assistance Marie had whispered in Louise's ear: "Fly, Louise, for the sake of the children; if you are arrested they are lost!"
Had she herself been alone concerned, the old woman would have stood by Marie and shared her fate; but the words "for the sake of the children" decided her, and she had instantly slipped away among the crowd, whose attention had been called by Lebat's first words, and dived into a small shop, where she at once began to bargain for some eggs.
"Where is the woman?" Lebat repeated angrily.
"What is she like?" one of the bystanders asked.
But Lebat could give no description whatever of her. He had noticed that Marie was speaking to some one when he first caught sight of her face; but he had noticed nothing more, and did not know whether the woman was young or old.
"I can't tell you," he said in a tone of vexation. "Never mind; we shall find her later on. This capture is the most important."
So saying he set out, with Marie walking beside him, with a guard on either hand. In the next street he came on a party of four of the armed soldiers of the Commune, and ordered them to take the place of those he had first charged with the duty, and directed them to proceed with him to the Maine.
Marie was taken at once before the committee sitting en permanence for the discovery and arrest of suspects.
"I charge this young woman with being an aristocrat in disguise. She is the daughter of the ci-devant Marquis de St. Caux, who was executed on the 2d of September at Bicetre."
"Murdered, you mean, sir," Marie said in a clear haughty voice. "Why not call things by their proper name?"
"I am sorry," Lebat went on, not heeding the interruption, "that it should fall to my lot to denounce her, for I acknowledge that in the days before our glorious Revolution commenced I have visited at her father's chateau. But I feel that my duty to the republic stands before any private considerations."
"You have done perfectly right," the president of the committee said. "As I understand that the accused does not deny that she is the daughter of the ci-devant marquis, I will at once sign the order for her committal to La Force. There is room there still, though the prisons are filling up again fast."
"We must have another jail delivery," one of the committee laughed brutally; and a murmur of assent passed through the chamber.
The order was made out, and Marie was handed over to the armed guard, to be taken with the next batch of prisoners to La Force.
Harry was some twenty yards behind Marie and her companion when Lebat checked his horse before her. He recognized the man instantly, and saw that Marie's disguise was discovered. His first impulse was to rush forward to her assistance, but the hopelessness of any attempt at interference instantly struck him, and to the surprise of the two girls, who were looking into a shop, and had not noticed what was occurring, he turned suddenly with them down a side street.
