Scaramouche (15 page)

Both cards were perfectly in order, having been issued to their owners by Pottier de Lille, the secretary of the section, who was in the Baron's pay. Burlandeux returned them without comment. Their correctness, however, did not dismay him.

"Well, citizens, what have you to say? You'll not pretend to be patriots in these dainty pimpish lodgings."

André-Louis laughed in his face. "You are under the common delusion, my friend, that dirt is a proof of patriotism. If that were so, you would be a great patriot."

Burlandeux became obscene. "You take this tone with me, do you? Ah, that! But we shall have to look into your affairs. You have been denounced to me as agents of a foreign power."

It was de Batz who answered, coolly. "Ah! Members of the Austrian Committee, no doubt." This was an allusion to a mare's nest which some months earlier had brought into ridicule the Representative Chabot, who claimed to have discovered it.

"By God, if you are amusing yourself at my expense, you'd better remember he laughs best who laughs last. Come now, my fine fellows. Am I to denounce you, or will you show me reason why I shouldn't?"

"What reason would satisfy you?" wondered de Batz. "These meetings that are held here? If they are not for treasonable purposes, what are they?"

"Am I the only man in Paris to receive visitors?"

"Visitors! Oh, visitors! But these are not ordinary visitors. They come too often, and always at the same time, and they are always the same. That's my information. No use to deny it. No use to tell me any of your lies."

The Baron's manner changed. "Will you leave by the door, or shall we throw you from the window?"

The cool incisive tone acted like a douche upon the burly municipal. He fell back a pace and drew himself up.

"Ah, name of a name! My damned little aristocrat..."

The Baron threw wide the door of the salon to interrupt him. "Outside, you filth! Back to your dunghill! At the double! March!"

"Holy Guillotine! We shall see if you talk like that when von come before the Committee." The purple municipal moved t o the door, deliberately so as to save his dignity. "You shall be taught a lesson, you cursed traitors with your aristocratic airs and graces. My name is Burlandeux. You'll remember that."

He was gone. They heard the outer door slam after him. André-Louis smiled deprecation.

"That is not quite how I should have handled him."

"It is not at all how he should have been handled. He should have been thrown from the window without warning. An indelicate fellow! Let him go before the Committee. Sénard will do his business."

"I would have given Sénard definite grounds upon which to deal with him if you had been less precipitate. However, that will be for another time. For he will certainly return to the assault. You should curb your humours, Jean."

"Curb my humours before an obscenity like that!" The Baron snorted. "Well, well! Where is Langéac?"

He summoned Tissot. Monsieur de Langéac had not yet arrived. The Baron glanced at the Sevres timepiece, and muttered an oath of exasperation.

"What's to astonish you?" wondered André-Louis. "The young gentleman is never punctual. A very unsatisfactory fellow, Jean, this Langéac. If he's typical of the tools d'Entragues employs it is not surprising that the Regent's credit prospers so little in the courts of Europe. Myself, I should be sorry to have him for my valet."

To aggravate his offence, when Langéac arrived at last, out of breath, he came startlingly brave in a coat of black stripes on a yellow ground, and a cravat that André-Louis likened unkindly to an avalanche.

"You want to take the eye, it seems. You'll be taking that of the National Widow. She has a taste in over-coquettish young gentlemen."

Langéac was annoyed. He had long since conceived a dislike for André-Louis, whose sneers he had earned every time he deserved them, which was often. "You don't dress like a sans-culotte, yourself."

"Nor yet like a zebra. It's well enough in a virgin forest, but a little conspicuous in Paris for a gentleman whose pursuits should make him study self-effacement. Have you heard of a revolution in France? No wonder municipal officers grow suspicious of the ci-devant Baron de Batz on the score of his visitors."

Langéac replied with vague invective, and so came under the condemnation of de Batz.

"Moreau is right. That coat is an advertisement of anticivism. A conspirator should be circumspect, in all thins."

"For a gentleman," said the fatuous Langéac, "there are limits to circumspection."

"But none for a fool," said André-Louis.

"I resent that, Moreau! You are insufferable. Insufferable, do you understand?"

"If you will make transcendentally foolish statements, by way of justifying transcendentally foolish actions, can you expect congratulations? But I am sorry you find me insufferable."

"And, anyway," said de Batz, "shall we come to business? I am supposing that you will have something to report. Have you seen Cortey?"

The question recalled Langéac from his annoyance. "I have just left him. The affair is for Friday night."

De Batz and André-Louis stiffened into attention. Langéac supplied details.

"Cortey will be on guard at the Temple from midnight with twenty men, every one of whom he swears he can trust, and Michonis will be on duty in the Queen's prison and ready for us. Cortey has seen him. Michonis answers for it that the other municipals will be out of the way. Cortey would like a final word with you on the arrangements as soon as may be."

"Naturally," said de Batz. "I'll see him to-morrow. We've two days, and at need we could be ready in two hours."

"Is there anything for me to do?" asked Langéac, his manner still a little sulky.

"Nothing now. You will be of Moreau's party, to cover the retreat. You will assemble in the Rue Chariot at eleven o'clock. See that you are punctual. We shall convey the royal ladies and the Dauphin to Roussel's in the Rue Helvétius for the night, and we shall hope to get them out of Paris a day or two later. But I will attend to all that. For you nothing more now, Langéac, until eleven o'clock on Friday night."

CHAPTER XVI

IN THE RUE CHARLOT

Cortey, known when in uniform as Captain Cortey, the commandant of the National Guard of the Section Lepelletier, kept when out of uniform a grocer's shop at the corner of the Rue de la Loi. An orderly citizen and at heart a monarchist, he had enlisted in the guard of the section when it was still entirely monarchical. He remained in it out of prudence now that its character had become entirely republican.

Because in its ranks there were still a good many who shared his sentiments it had been possible for Cortey to get together a little band of men for the attempt that was now fixed for Friday night. It was one of those periodic occasions on which it fell to the duty of the Section Lepelletier to supply the guard for the Temple, where the royal prisoners were confined.

As captain of the guard, it lay to a limited extent within Cortey's power to select the men for duty under him, and one of the twenty now selected was in the conspiracy for the rescue of the Queen. They were to co-operate with de Batz and with Sergeant Michonis, the municipal in charge of the guard within the prison.

The plan, every detail of which had been carefully worked out, was an extremely simple one. The municipals within the Temple were not in the habit of wearying themselves unduly with a vigilance which the locks and bolts and the National Guard on patrol duty outside rendered superfluously formal. So long as one of their number complied with the order of the Committee of General Safety by stationing himself within the chamber occupied by the royal prisoners, the others were in the habit of retiring to the Council Chamber, and there, within hail in case of need, they commonly spent the night playing cards.

For Friday night next, Michonis would, himself, assume the duty of guarding the prisoners, and he had undertaken to answer for it that his eight fellow-municipals should be out of the way. To the three royal ladies he would convey three uniforms of the National Guard which they were to assume by midnight. At t hat hour a party of a dozen men, also in uniforms of the National Guard, would knock for admission at the Temple Gate. The porter, supposing them to be a patrol on a round of inspection within the prison, would offer no obstacle to their entrance. They would ascend the tower to the Queen's chamber, gag and bind Michonis, so that afterwards he should present the appearance of having been overpowered. They would then place the three disguised royal ladies and the little Dauphin in their midst, descend the staircase, and issue with them from the prison. It was not likely that the sleepy porter would notice the increase in the number of persons composing the patrol. If he did, it would be the worse for him, as for any other who should happen to surprise them before they were clear of the prison. In this respect the orders of de Batz were precise and ruthless. Anyone challenging them was to be dispatched with cold steel as silently as possible.

Once outside, the patrol would turn the corner into the Rue Charlot. Here André-Louis' little band would be waiting to escort the royal ladies to a courtyard where Balthazar Roussel had a coach in readiness in which to convey them across Paris to his house in the Rue Helvétius. There they must lie hidden until the hue-and-cry had died down and an opportunity presented itself to carry them off to Roussel's country house at Brie-Comte-Robert.

The part of Cortey and his men would consist in keeping out of the way of the false patrol which would substitute them. They might subsequently be censured for incompetent vigilance; but hardly for more.

As a result of Langéac's communication, de Batz and André-Louis paid a visit to Cortey's shop on the following evening, for any final understanding that might be necessary with the grocer-captain. Sergeant Michonis was with him at the time. Whilst they were in talk in the otherwise untenanted shop, André-Louis, chancing to turn, beheld a bulky figure surmounted by an enormous cocked hat silhouetted in the dim light against the shop window, as if inspecting the wares exhibited there.

He detached himself from the others and sauntered to the door, reaching it just in time to see the figure beating a retreat down the Rue des Filles St. Thomas.

De Batz presently joined him, emerging, and André-Louis gave him the news.

"We are under the observation of our friend Burlandeux, He must have trailed us from the Rue de Ménars."

De Batz made light of it. "He has seen me buying groceries then."

"He may link Cortey with us afterwards, and perhaps Michonis."

"In that case I shall have to devote a little attention to him. At present his affair must wait. There are more pressing matters."

These matters were all carefully disposed of in the course of the next twenty-four hours, and on Friday night André-Louis found himself pacing the length of the Rue Chariot in the neighbourhood of the Temple with Langéac and the Marquis de la niche—the same who had been associated with de Batz in the attempt to rescue the King. In their pacings they passed ever and anon the cavernous porte-cochère of No. 12, behind whose closed gates the carriage waited with harnessed horses in the charge of young Balthazar Roussel.

The moon riding near the full in the serene June sky, the street lamps had not been lighted. André-Louis and his companions had chosen the side of the street where the shadows lay blackest. They were not the only ones abroad in that quiet place at this midnight hour. Another three—Devaux, Marbot and the Chevalier de Larnache—made a similar pacing group that crossed and recrossed the steps of the other three. Once when a patrol had come marching down the street, these six had disappeared with almost magic suddenness into the black shadows f doorways, to re-emerge when the retreating footsteps of the soldiers had faded in the distance.

Midnight struck, and the six of them came together at the corner of the Rue du Temple, ready for the action which they now supposed imminent.

Action was imminent, indeed; but not of the kind they expected.

Burlandeux had been busy. He had carried a denunciation before the Revolutionary Committee of his own section, which happened to be that of the Temple. The terms of it are best given in those employed by one of its members, a cobbler named Simon who, officious, fanatical and greedy of fame, had gone off with it to the Committee of Public Safety at the Tuileries.

He came, he announced, to inform them that the heretofore Baron de Batz had been denounced to his section as a counterrevolutionary conspirator. It had been observed that he associated too frequently for innocence with a grocer named Coney who was in command of the National Guard of the Section Lepelletier. It had also been observed that another assiduous visitor of this Cortey was the municipal Michonis, who was employed at the Temple, and only last night Cortey, Michonis,

Batz and a man named Moreau held what appeared to the observer to be a consultation in the grocer's shop.

"That is all that our informer can tell us," the Citizen Simon concluded. "But I am not a fool, citizens. I have my wits, God be thanked, and they show me at once a suspicious and dangerous combination in all this."

The half-dozen members of the Committee of Public Safety, assembled in haste to hear the denunciation which the cobbler had described as urgent, were not disposed to take him seriously. In the absence of the president of the committee, the chair had been taken by a Representative named Lavicomterie. Now it happened that this Lavicomterie was one of de Batz's associates, whilst Sénard, the secretary and factotum of the committee, who was also present and whose voice carried a deal of weight with its members, was in the Baron's pay. The mention of the Baron's name had rendered both these patriots extremely attentive.

When the squat, unclean, repellent Simon had brought his denunciation to a close, Lavicomterie led the opinion of his fellow committee-men by a laugh.

"On my soul citizen, if this is all the matter, you had best begin by proving that these men were not buying groceries."

Simon scowled. His little eyes beady as a rat's in his yellow face, were malevolent.

"This is not a matter to be treated lightly. I will ask you all, citizens, to bear in mind that this grocer takes turn at patrolling the Temple. Michonis is regularly on guard there. Do you see nothing in the association?"

"It makes it natural," ventured Sénard.

"Ah! And de Batz, then? This foreign agent? What are they doing shut up in the shop with him and this other fellow who is his constant companion."

"How do you know that de Batz is a foreign agent?" asked member of the committee.

"That is in the information I have received."

Lavicomterie followed up his associate's question 'Where is the evidence of so very grave a charge?"

"Can anyone suppose that a ci-devant aristocrat, a ci-devant Baron would be in Paris on any other business?"

"There are a good many ci-devants in Paris, Citizen Simon," said Sénard. "Do you charge them all with being foreign agents? If not, why do you single out the Citizen de Batz?"

Simon almost foamed at the mouth. "Because he consorts with the sergeant who is in charge of the guard at the Temple and with the captain of the National Guard that is to do patrol duty there to-night Sacred name of a name! Do you still see nothing in it?"

Lavicomterie would perhaps have brushed the matter finally aside and dismissed the fellow. But a member of the committee, taking the view that Michonis should instantly be sent for and examined, and others supporting him in this, Lavicomterie dared offer no opposition.

As a sequel soon after eleven o'clock that night, the Citizen Simon, swollen in importance and accompanied by a body of half a dozen lads of his section—for he was prepared at need to exceed his orders and proceed upon his own initiative—presented himself at the gate of the Temple. Having displayed the warrant granted him by the Committee of Public Safety, he made his way at once to the Queen's chamber in the tower, to assure himself that all was well.

Silently he surveyed the three pale-faced ladies in black who occupied that cheerless room and the boy who was now King of France, asleep on a wretched truckle-bed, turned his attention to Michonis. He presented him with an order to surrender his charge temporarily to the bearer, and himself attend at once before the Committee of Public Safety, which was sitting to receive him.

Michonis, a tall, loose-limbed fellow, could not exclude from his frank, good-humoured countenance a dismay that amounted almost to anguish. At once he concluded that there had been betrayal. But the danger of losing his own head over the business troubled him less than the thought of the bitter sorrow that was coming to these sorely-tried royal ladies whose hopes of deliverance now ran so high. This seemed to him one of Fate's refinements of cruelty. He was anxious, too, on the score of de Batz, who might now walk into a trap from which there would be no escape. He was wondering how he might warn the Baron when Simon, whose close-set eyes had been watching his face, put an end to that conjecture by informing Michonis that he would send him before the Committee of Public Safety under guard.

"It is an arrest, then!" cried the dismayed municipal. "Your order says nothing of that."

"Not an arrest?" He was answered with a close-lipped mile. "Just a precaution."

Michonis displayed anger. "Your warrant for this?"

"My common sense. You may leave me to account for my actions."

And so Michonis, in fear and suppressed fury, departed from the Temple under the escort of two municipals, leaving Simon in charge there in his place.

The other municipals, who had looked forward to a night of ease over their cards, to which Michonis had educated them by now, were ordered by Simon to those various posts of duty on the staircase and elsewhere, which it had long since been regarded as superfluous to guard.

When the false patrol arrived at a few minutes before midnight, the diligent Simon was in the courtyard.

A lieutenant marched in his men—a dozen of them—and in their wake, before the gates could be closed, came a civilian, plainly dressed and brisk of step, whose face was lost in the shadow of a wide-brimmed hat.

Challenged by the guard, this civilian presented a sheet of paper. The sentry was unable to read; but the official aspect of the paper was unmistakable, and the round seal of the Convention at the head of it was an ideograph with which he was familiar.

Simon strolled forward. His own bodyguard of patriots was at hand there for any emergency such as the suspected treason of Cortey might provide.

"Who's this?" he asked.

A trim, stiffly-built figure stood unmoved before him, making no attempt to answer. The sentry handed the paper to Simon, and held up his lantern, so that the light fell on the sheet.

It was an order from the Committee of Public Safety to the Citizen Dumont, whom it described as a medical practitioner, to visit the Dauphin in his prison at the Temple and report at once upon his health.

Simon read the paper a second time, scanning it closely. Undoubtedly it was in order; seal and signature were all as they should be. But Simon was by no means satisfied. With an exaggerated sense of the authority in which he had so lately been vested, he accounted it odd that he should not have been informed by the committee of the existence of this order.