Scaramouche (11 page)

"I dwell on this, monseigneur, to show you how far I was from any miscalculation of the public spirit upon which I was depending. The authorities were aware that their own existence was at stake that day." He raised his voice with sudden vehemence. "I do not hesitate to assert that their gamble in sending the King to execution was infinitely more desperate than mine in conceiving the attempt to rescue him."

He flung down that sentence like a gauntlet, and paused a moment to see if any would take it up, his eyes challenging in particular Monsieur d'Entragues. Then returning to his earlier, rather wistful tone, he resumed his narrative.

"Before seven o'clock that morning I was at the point I had chosen for the attempt, at the corner of the Rue de la Lune. I climbed to the top of the bastion and waited. Time passed. The crowd behind the military files increased in density and stood silent in the chill of awe which went deeper than the chill of that misty winter's morning. I scanned the throng for my five hundred, in ever increasing anxiety. I could discover none of them. At last, when already in the distance we could make out the approaching roll of the drums. I was joined on my eminence by two of my followers, the Marquis de la Guiche and Devaux. They shared my despair when I was unable to explain the absence of the others."

Afterwards, when all was over, I discovered that in the night the Committee of Surveillance, furnished, no doubt by our betrayer, with a list of the names and addresses of my five hundred, had taken its measures.

"Two gendarmes had waited upon each of my royalists They were placed under temporary arrest in their own lodgings, until noon, until it should be, too late for any attempt to thwart the intentions of the Convention. No further measures were taken against them. Five hundred men are not to be indicted upon the word of a single traitor, and there was no evidence against them otherwise. We had been too cautious. Also perhaps the moment was not one for proceedings against men who had sought to avert a deed by which the nation was temporarily appalled.

"That is all my tale. When the royal carriage was abreast of me, I lost my head. It does not often happen, Gascon though I may be. I leapt down from the bastion, Devaux and La Guiche followed me. I attempted to break through the crowd. I waved my hat. I raised a shout. Even then I hoped against hope that we three could accomplish the task alone and give a lead that would be followed. I raised a cry of 'Save the King!' Perhaps the thunder of the drums drowned my feeble voice for all except those immediately about me. These shrank from me in dread. Yet it is significant, monseigneur it shows yet again how well-judged were the assumptions upon which I acted, that no attempt was made to seize me. I departed unhindered with the only \two of my band who like myself had not spent the night at their usual lodging.

"That, monseigneur, is the full account of the failure of that Gasconnade of mine. As for the moneys that I have spent."

"Leave that," the Regent peevishly interrupted him. "Leave that." He sat there, his heavy body sagging limply, his double chin sunk to his breast, vacant-eyed, lost in thought. The narrative had shamed him for his cavalier reception of the intrepid Baron, and it had shamed those others with him. Even d'Entragues, that hostile critic stood silent and abashed.

But in vain persons shame is an emotion commonly with reactions of resentment against those who have provoked it. Presently, while de Batz waited, his highness rallied. He sat up, threw back his head, wrapped himself in a mantle of dignity, and delivered himself with pompous formality.

"We are grateful to you, Monsieur de Batz, for these explanations, no less than for your activities, which we regret with you should not have been attended by the success they appear to have deserved. At the moment that would seem to be all, unless..." He looked questioningly from d'Avaray to d'Entragues.

Answering that glance, Monsieur d'Avaray silently shook his head, made a faint gesture of protest with one of his delicate almost translucent hands. D'Entragues bowed stiffly.

"I have no comment, Monseigneur, for Monsieur de Batz."

The Baron looked at them with frank incredulity. They had no comments!

"I realize, of course," he said, and so level was his tone that they could only suspect his irony, "that what I have done deserves no commendation. Judgment must always be upon results." And then, in a vindictive desire to heap coals of fire upon their heads—heads which he began to account ignoble and contemptible—he went on smoothly: "But my task in the service of the monarchy is far from ended. My little army of loyal men is still on foot. I should not have quitted France but that I accounted it my duty to make a full report to your highness in person. Having made it, I crave your highness's leave to return, and such commands as you may have for me."

"You propose to return? To Paris?"

"I have said, monseigneur, that I would not have left but for the duty to report to you."

"And what do you hope to do there now?"

"Perhaps—unless I have entirely forfeited your confidence—your highness will instruct me in your wishes."

The Regent was at fault. He turned to d'Entragues for assistance. D'Entragues was equally destitute of ideas, and said so in many words.

"We will consider, Monsieur de Batz," the Regent informed him. "We will consider, and inform you. We need not detain you longer at the moment."

With condescension, as if to temper the chill of that dismissal, Monsieur held out his plump white hand. The Baron took it, bowed very low over it, and bore it to lips that were faintly twisted in a smile.

Then he straightened himself, turned sharply on his red heels, and ignoring the others marched stiffly out of that cedar-panelled, low-ceilinged, uncarpeted audience-chamber.

CHAPTER XII

THE VULNERABLE POINT

On the steps of the Bear Inn next morning the Baron de Batz came face to face with Monsieur Moreau. He halted in surprise. "Ah!" said he. "It is our friend the Paladin."

"Ah!" said André-Louis. "It is our Gascon gentleman who is in love with peril."

The Baron laughed on that, and proffered his hand.

"Faith! Not always. I have been through the worst peril that can beset a man t the peril of losing his temper. Does it ever happen to you?"

"Never. I have no illusions."

"You do not believe in fairies, or even in the gratitude of princes?"

"It is possible to believe in fairies," was the gloomy answer. André-Louis was plunged in gloom. It appeared that his journey from Dresden had been in vain. The Regent's opposition to Monsieur de Kercadiou's departure had put an end to indecision. The Regent's assurance that their return to France was imminent, encouraged Monsieur de Kercadiou to insist that the marriage must wait until they should be back at Gavrillac. Against this, André-Louis had argued in vain. His godfather accounted himself pledged and would not listen.

Yet because Aline was now on the side of André-Louis, her uncle consented to compromise.

"If," he had said, "within a year the path of our return does not lie clearly open, I will submit to whatever you may decide." To hearten them he added; "You will see that you will not have to wait the half of that time."

But André-Louis was not heartened. "Do not deceive yourself, monsieur. In a year from now the only difference will be that we shall be a year older, and sadder by the further extinction of hope."

Because of this, his present meeting with de Batz was to prove critical and bear unexpected fruit.

They moved into the common-room together and sat down to a flagon of the famous Rupertsberger, with a dried sausage to prepare the palate for its benign flavour. Over this the Baron told again, and with greater wealth of detail, the story of his Parisian adventure.

"It was a miracle that you escaped," was André-Louis' final comment, after he had expressed his wonder at so much cool heroism.

De Batz shrugged. "Faith, no miracle at all. All that a man needs is common sense, common prudence and a little courage. You others here abroad judge by the reports that reach you of violence and outrage; and since you hear nothing else you conceive that violence and outrage have become the sole occupation of the Parisians. Thus the man who reads history imagines that the past was nothing but a succession of battles, since the infinitely greater periods of peace and order call for no particular comment. You hear of an aristocrat hunted through the streets, and hanged on a lantern at the end of the chase, or of a dozen others carted to the Place de la Revolution and guillotined, and you conceive that every aristocrat who shows himself in public is either lanterned or beheaded. I have actually heard it so asserted. But it is nonsense. There must be in Paris to-day some forty or fifty thousand royalists of one kind and another, moving freely: a fifth of the total population. Another fifth of it, if not more, is of no particular political colour but ready to submit to whatever government is up.

"Naturally these people do not commit extravagances to attract resentful attention. They do not wave their hats and shout 'Live the King!' at every street corner. They go quietly about their business; for the ordinary business of life goes on, and ordinary, quiet citizens suffer little interference. It is true that there is unrest and general uneasiness, punctuated by violent explosions of popular temper accompanied by violence and bloodshed. But side by side with it the normal life of a great city flows along. Men buy and sell, amuse themselves, marry, get children, and die in their beds, all in the normal manner. If many churches are closed and only constitutional priests are suffered to minister, yet all the theatres flourish and no one concerns himself with the politics of the actors.

"If things were otherwise, if they even approached the conception of them that is held abroad, the revolution would soon come to an end for it would consume itself. A few days of such utter chaos as is generally pictured, and the means of sustaining life would no longer circulate the inhabitants of Paris would perish of starvation."

André-Louis nodded. "You make it clear There must be a great deal of misconception."

"And a great deal that is deliberately manufactured; counterrevolutionary rumours to stir up public feeling abroad. The factory is over there in that wooden chalet, where Monsieur keeps his court and his chancellery. It is diligently circulated by the Regent's agents, who are scattered over Europe and marshalled by the ingenious Monsieur d'Entragues the muck-rake in chief."

André-Louis stared at him 'You express yourself like a republican."

"Do not be deceived by it. Look to my actions. It is merely that I permit myself the luxury of despising Monsieur le Comte d'Entragues and his methods. I do not like the man and he does me the honour not to like me. A mean, jealous creature, with inordinate ambitions. He aims at being the first man in the State when the monarchy is restored and he is fearful and resentful of any man who might gain influence with the Regent. The man whom he most hates and fears is d'Avaray, and unless the favourite looks well to himself, d'Entragues will ruin him yet with Monsieur. For he burrows craftily underground, leaving little trace upon the surface He is subtle and insinuating as a serpent."

"To come back," said André-Louis, who cared nothing about Monsieur d'Entragues. "It still remains a miracle that you should have gone about such a task as yours in Paris and maintained the air of pursuing what you call the ordinary business of life."

"I was prudent; of course. I did not often trip.

"Not often! But to have tripped once should have broken your neck."

De Batz smiled. "I carried a life-preserver. Monsieur furnished me before I set out with a thousand louis towards the expenses of my campaign. I was able to add to it four times as much, and I could have added as much more as was necessary. You see that I was well supplied with money."

"But how could money have availed you in such extremities?"

"I know of no extremity in which money will not avail a man. For a weapon of defence as of offence, steel cannot begin to compare with gold With gold I choked the mouths of those who would have denounced me. With gold I annihilated the sense of duty of those who should have hindered me." He laughed into André-Louis' round eyes. "Aura sacra fames! The greed of it is common to mankind; but never have I found that greed so fierce as among Messieurs the sansculottes. That greed, I believe, is at the root of their revolutionary fervour. I surprise you it seems."

"A little, I confess."

"Ah!" The Baron held his glass to the light, and considered the faint opalescence which the wintry sunshine brought into the golden liquid. "Have you ever considered equality, its mainsprings and true significance?"

"Never. Because it is chimerical. It does not exist. Men are not born equally equipped. They are born noble or ignoble, sane or foolish, strong or weak, according to the blend of natures, fortuitous to them, which calls them into existence."

The Baron drank, and set down his glass. He dabbed his lips with a fine handkerchief.

"That is merely metaphysical, and I am being practical. It is possible to postulate a condition of equality. It has, in fact, been postulated by the apostles of that other singular delusion, liberty. The idea of equality is a by-product of the sentiment of envy. Since it must always prove beyond human power to raise the inferior mass to a superior stratum, apostles of equality must ever be inferiors seeking to reduce their betters to their own level. It follows that a nation that once admits this doctrine of equality will be dragged by it to the level, moral, intellectual and political, of its most worthless class. This within practical limitations. Because, after all, such qualities as nobility, intelligence, learning, virtue and strength cannot be stripped from those who possess them, to be cast into a commonwealth and shared by all. The only things of which men can be deprived in that way and to that end are their material possessions.

"Your revolutionaries, these dishonest rogues who delude the ignorant masses with the cant of liberty, equality and fraternity and with promises of a millennium which they know can never be achieved, are well aware of this. They know that there is no power that can lift from the gutter those who have inherited it. The only attainable equality is one which will reduce the remainder of the nation to that gutter, so as to make things still more uncomfortable for the deluded unfortunates who writhe there. But meanwhile, plying their cant, deceiving the masses with their false promises, these men prosper in themselves. That is all their aim: the ease they envied in those they have pulled down, the wealth they coveted which procures this ease. These things they ensure for themselves in unstinted measure."

"But is that possible in the France of to-day? Are the men who made the revolution really deriving material profit from it?"

"What is there in this to astonish you? Is not the Assembly recruited from the gutter, from famished failures in the law, like Desmoulins and Danton, from starveling journalists like Marat and Hébert, and unfrocked capuchins like Chabot. Shall these men who are now in the saddle suddenly repress the envy which inspired them or stifle the covetousness which went hand in hand with that envy? They are all dishonest and corrupt, and if this applies to those in command, shall it apply less to the underlings?" He laughed. "I doubt if there is a man in the whole National Convention whom I could not buy."

André-Louis was very thoughtful. "I understand a great deal that hitherto had not occurred to me," he said slowly. "When this movement first began, when I played my part in it, it was a movement of idealists who sought to correct abuses, to bring to men an equality of opportunity and an equality before the law which in the past had been denied them."

"Nearly all those visionaries have been swept away by the tide from the gutter to which they opened the floodgates. A handful remains perhaps. The men of the Gironde, lawyers all, and men of ability who make a great parade of republican virtue. But even they have shown themselves dishonest. They voted for the death of the King, against their principles, and merely so as to ensure that they might cling to power. Oh, believe me, I wrought no miracle in preserving myself in Paris, and it will require no miracle to safeguard me there again."

"You are returning?"

"Of course. Shall I grow rusty in exile while there's work to be done at home? I may have failed to save the King, thanks to that blundering, jealous fool d'Entragues, who kept me wasting time in Coblentz when I should have been in Paris; but I shall hope to succeed better with the Queen."

"You mean to attempt her rescue?"

"I do not think it offers difficulties that gold and steel will not overcome."

The wine was finished. André-Louis stood up. His dark eyes considered the resolute, carelessly smiling countenance of the Baron.

"Monsieur de Batz," he said, "minimize it as you will, I think you are the bravest man I have ever known."

"You honour me, Monsieur Moreau. Have you the ear of the Regent?"

"I! Indeed, no."

"A pity! You might persuade him of the virtue you discern in me. He has no great opinion of me at present. But I shall hope to improve it. I owe it to myself."

They talked no more that day, but they met again as if by mutual attraction on the morrow. And then it was André-Louis who talked, and the Baron who listened.

"I have been pondering what you told me yesterday, Monsieur de Batz. If you accurately represent the situation, this revolutionary stronghold is vulnerable, it seems to me, at several points. My interest springs from my own aims. That is common enough if not commonly admitted. I am frank, Monsieur le Baron. All my hopes in life have become bound up with the restoration of the monarchy, and I see no ground to expect that the restoration of the Bourbons will ever be brought about as a result of European intervention. If the monarchy is to be restored in France, the restoration must come as a result of a movement from the inside. Almost I perceive—or seem to perceive—from what you told me yesterday how this movement might be given an impetus."

"How?" The Baron was alert.

André-Louis did not immediately answer. He sat in silence, considering, as if passing his ideas in review before giving them utterance. Then he looked round and up at the railed galleries above the common-room. They were quite alone. It was still too early in the day for the inhabitants of Hamm to come there to their beer and cards and dice and backgammon.

He leaned across the narrow yellow table, directly facing the Baron, and there was a glitter in his dark eyes, a faint stir of blood on his prominent cheek-bones.

"You'll say this is a madman's dream."

"I've dreamt a good many of them myself. Take heart."

"Two things that you said yesterday have remained with me to be the seed of thought. One was your exposition of the general dishonesty, the corruptibility of those in power to-day in France. The other was your assertion that if the chaos existed there which abroad it is believed exists, the revolution would burn itself out in a few days."