Lord Tony's Wife (17 page)

And Carrier—with powers as of a proconsul—arrives in Nantes town and sets to work to organize his household. Civil and military—with pomp and circumstance—for the son of a small farmer, destined originally for the Church and for obscurity is now virtual autocrat in one of the great cities of France. He has power of life and death over thousands of citizens—under the direction of justice, of course! So now he has citizens of the bedchamber, and citizens of the household, he has a guard of honour and a company of citizens of the guard. And above all he has a crowd of spies around him—servants of the Committee of Public Safety so they are called—they style themselves “La Compagnie Marat” in honour of the great patriot who was foully murdered by a female wolfling.

So la Compagnie Marat is formed—they wear red bonnets on their heads–no stockings on their feet—short breeches to display their bare shins: their captain, Fleury, has access at all times to the person of the proconsul, to make report on the raids which his company effect at all hours of the day or night. Their powers are supreme too. In and out of houses—however private—up and down the streets—through shops, taverns, and warehouses, along the quays and the yards—everywhere they go. Everywhere they have the right to go! to ferret and to spy, to listen, to search, to interrogate—the red-capped Company is paid for what it can find. Piece-work, what? Work for the guillotine!

And they it is who keep the guillotine busy. Too busy in fact. And the court of justice sitting in the Hτtel du Dιpartement is overworked too. Carrier gets impatient. Why waste the time of patriots by so much paraphernalia of justice? Wolves and wolflings can be exterminated so much more quickly, more easily than that. It only needs a stroke of genius, one stroke, and Carrier has it.

He invents the Noyades!

The Drownages we may call them!

They are so simple! An old flat-bottomed barge. The work of two or three ship’s carpenters! Portholes below the water-line and made to open at a given moment. All so very, very simple. Then a journey downstream as far as Belle Isle or la Marιchale, and “sentence of deportation” executed without any trouble on a whole crowd of traitors—“vertical deportation” Carrier calls it facetiously and is mightily proud of his invention and of his witticism too.

The first attempt was highly successful. Ninety priests, and not one escaped. Think of the work it would have entailed on the guillotine—and on the friends of Carrier who sit in justice in the Hτtel du Dιpartement! Ninety heads! Bah! That old flat-bottomed barge is the most wonderful labour-saving machine.

After that the “Drownages” become the order of the day. The red-capped Company recruits victims for the hecatomb and over Nantes Town there hangs a pall of unspeakable horror. The prisons are not vast enough to hold all the victims, so the huge entrepτt, the bonded warehouse on the quay, is converted: instead of chests of coffee it is now encumbered with human freight: into it pell-mell are thrown all those who are destined to assuage Carrier’s passion for killing: ten thousand of them: men, women, and young children, counter-revolutionists, innocent tradesmen, thieves, aristocrats, criminals, and women of evil fame—they are herded together like cattle, without straw whereon to lie, without water, without fire, with barely food enough to keep up the last attenuated thread of a miserable existence.

And when the warehouse gets over full, to the Loire with them!—a hundred or two at a time! Pestilence, dysentery decimates their numbers. Under pretence of hygienic requirements two hundred are flung into the river on the 14th day of December. Two hundred—many of them women—crowds of children and a batch of parish priests.

Some there are among Carrier’s colleagues—those up in Paris—who protest! Such wholesale butchery will not redound to the credit of any revolutionary government—it even savours of treachery—it is unpatriotic! There are the emissaries of the National Convention, deputed from Paris to supervise and control—they protest as much as they dare—but such men are swept off their feet by the torrent of Carrier’s gluttony for blood. Carrier’s mission is to “purge the political body of every evil that infests it.” Vague and yet precise! He reckons that he has full powers and thinks he can flaunt those powers in the face of those sent to control him. He does it too for three whole months ere he in his turn meets his doom. But for the moment he is omnipotent. He has to make report every week to the Committee of Public Safety, and he sends brief, garbled versions of his doings. ‘He is pacifying La Vendιe! he is stamping out the remnants of the rebellion! he is purging the political body of every evil that infests it.’ Anon he succeeds in getting the emissaries of the National Convention recalled. He is impatient of control. ‘They are weak, pusillanimous, unpatriotic! He must have freedom to act for the best.’

After that he remains virtual dictator, with none but obsequious, terrified myrmidons around him: these are too weak to oppose him in any way. And the municipality dare not protest either—nor the district council—nor the departmental. They are merely sheep who watch others of their flock being sent to the slaughter.

After that from within his lair the man tiger decides that it is a pity to waste good barges on the cattle: ‘Fling them out!’ he cries. ‘Fling them out! Tie two and two together. Man and woman! criminal and aristo! the theif and the ci-devant duke’s daughter! the ci-devant marquis with the slut from the streets! Fling them all out together into the Loire and pour a hail of grape shot above them until the last struggler has disappeared! Equality!’ he cries, ‘Equality for all! Fraternity! Unity in death!’

His friends call this new invention of his: ‘Marriage Rιpublican!’ and he is pleased with the mot.

And Republican marriages become the order of the day.

II

Nantes itself now is akin to a desert—a desert wherein the air is filled with weird sounds of cries and of moans, of furtive footsteps scurrying away into dark and secluded byways, of musketry and confused noises, of sorrow and of lamentations.

Nantes is a city of the dead—a city of sleepers. Only Carrier is awake—thinking and devising and planning shorter ways and swifter, for the extermination of traitors.

In the Hτtel de la Villestreux the tiger has built his lair: at the apex of the island of Feydeau, with the windows of the hotel facing straight down the Loire. From here there is a magnificent view downstream upon the quays which are now deserted and upon the once prosperous port of Nantes.

The staircase of the hotel which leads up to the apartments of the proconsul is crowded every day and all day with suppliants and with petitioners, with the citizens of the household and the members of the Compagnie Marat. But no one has access to the person of the dictator. He stands aloof, apart, hidden from the eyes of the world, a mysterious personality whose word sends hundreds to their death, whose arbitrary will has reduced a once flourishing city to abject poverty and squalor. No tyrant has ever surrounded himself with a greater paraphernalia of pomp and circumstance—no aristo has ever dwelt in greater luxury: the spoils of churches and chateaux fill the Hτtel de la Villestreux from attic to cellar, gold and silver plate adorn his table, priceless works of art hang upon his walls, he lolls on couches and chairs which have been the resting place of kings. The wholesale spoliation of the entire countryside has filled the demagogue’s abode with all that is most sumptuous in the land.

And he himself is far more inaccessible than was le Roi Soleil in the days of his most towering arrogance, than were the Popes in the glorious days of medieval Rome. Jean Baptiste Carrier, the son of a small farmer, the obscure deputy for Cantal in the National Convention, dwells in the Hτtel de la Villestreux as in a stronghold. No one is allowed near him save a few—a very few—intimates: his valet, two or three women, Fleury the commander of the Marats, and that strange and abominable youngster, Jacques Lalouλtm about whom the chroniclers of that tragic epoch can tell us so little—a cynical young braggart, said to be a cousin of Robespierre and the son of a midwife of Nantes, beardless, handsome and vicious: the only human being—so we are told—who had any influence over the sinister proconsul: mere hanger-on of Carrier or spy of the National Convention, no one can say—a malignant personality which has remained an enigma and a mystery to this hour.

None but these few are ever allowed now inside the inner sanctuary wherein dwells and schemes the dictator. Even Lamberty, Fouquet and the others of the staff are kept at arm’s length. Martin-Roget, Chauvelin and other strangers are only allowed as far as the anteroom. The door of the inner chamber is left open and they hear the proconsul’s voice and see his silhouette pass and repass in front of them, but that is all.

Fear of assassination—the inevitable destiny of the tyrant—haunts the man-tiger even within the fastnesses of his lair. Day and night a carriage with four horses stands in readiness on La Petite Hollande, the great, open, tree-bordered Place at the extreme end of the Isle Feydeau and on which give the windows of the Hτtel de la Villestreux. Day and night the carriage is ready—with coachman on the box and postillion in the saddle, who are relieved every two hours lest they get sleepy or slack—with luggage in the boot and provisions always kept fresh inside the coach; everything always ready lest something—a warning from a friend or a threat from an enemy, or merely a sudden access of unreasoning terror, the haunting memory of a bloody act—should decide the tyrant at a moment’s notice to fly from the scenes of his brutalities.

III

Carrier in the small room which he has fitted up for himself as a sumptuous boudoir, paces up and down just like a wild beast in its cage: and he rubs his large bony hands together with the excitement engendered by his own cruelties, by the success of this wholesale butchery which he has invented and carried through.

There never was an uglier man than Carrier, with that long hatchet-face of his, those abnormally high cheek bones, that stiff, lanky hair, that drooping, flaccid mouth and protruding underlip. Nature seemed to have set herself the task of making the face of a true mirror of the soul—the dark and hideous soul on which of a surety Satan had already set his stamp. But he is dressed with scrupulous care—not to say elegance—and with a display of jewelry the provenance of which is as unjustifiable as that of the works of art which fill his private sanctum in every nook and cranny.

In front of the tall window, heavy curtains of crimson damask are drawn closely together, in order to shut out the light of day: the room is in all but total darkness: for that is the proconsul’s latest caprice: that no one shall see him save in semi-obscurity.

Captain Fleury has stumbled into the room, swearing lustily as he barks his shins against the angle of a priceless Louis XV bureau. He has to make report on the work done by the Compagnie Marat. Fifty-three priests from the department of Anjou who have refused to take the new oath of obedience to the government of the Republic. The red-capped Company who tracked them down and arrested them, vow that all these calotins have precious objects—money, jewelry, gold plate—concealed about their persons. What is to be done about these things? Are the calotins to be allowed to keep them or to dispose of them for their own profit?

Carrier is highly delighted. What a haul!

‘Confiscate everything,’ he cries, ‘then ship the whole crowd of that pestilential rabble, and don’t let me hear another word about them.’

Fleury goes. And that same night fifty-three priests are ‘shipped’ in accordance with the orders of the proconsul, and Carrier, still rubbing his large bony hands contentedly together, exclaims with glee:

‘What a torrent, eh! What a torrent! What a revolution!’

And he sends a letter to Robespierre. And to the Committee of Public Safety he makes report:

‘Public spirit in Nantes,’ he writes, ‘is magnificent: it has risen to the most sublime heights of revolutionary ideals.’

IV

After the departure of Fleury, Carrier suddenly turned to a slender youth, who was standing close by the window, gazing out through the folds of the curtain on the fine vista of the Loire and the quays which stretched out before him.

‘Introduce citizen Martin-Roget into the anteroom now, Lalouλt,’ he said loftily. ‘I will hear what he has to say, and citizen Chauvelin may present himself at the same time.’

Young Lalouλt lolled across the room, smothering a yawn.

‘Why should you trouble about all that rabble?’ he said roughly, ‘it is nearly dinner-time and you know that the chef hates the soup to be kept waiting.’

‘I shall not trouble about them very long,’ replied Carrier, who had just started picking his teeth with a tiny gold tool. ‘Open the door, boy, and let the two men come.’

Lalouλt did as he was told. The door through which he passed he left wide open, he then crossed the anteroom to a further door, threw it open and called in a loud voice:

‘Citizen Chauvelin! Citizen Martin-Roget!’

For all the world like the ceremonious audiences at Versailles in the days of the great Louis.

There was sound of eager whisperings, of shuffling of feet, of chairs dragged across the polished floor. Young Lalouλt had already and quite unconcernedly turned his back on the two men who, at his call, had entered the room.

Two chairs were placed in front of the door which led to the private sanctuary—still wrapped in religious obscurity—where Carrier sat enthroned. The youth curtly pointed to the two chairs, then went back to the inner room. The two men advanced. The full light of midday fell upon them from the tall window on their right—the pale, grey, colourless light of December. They bowed slightly in the direction of the audience chamber where the vague silhouette of the proconsul was alone visible.

The whole thing was a farce. Martin-Roget held his lips tightly closed together lest a curse or a sneer escaped them. Chauvelin’s face was impenetrable—but it is worthy of note that just one year later when the half-demented tyrant was in his turn brought before the bar of the convention and sentenced to the guillotine, it was citizen Chauvelin’s testimony which weighed most heavily against him.