Scaramouche (31 page)

CHAPTER XXXII

UNMASKED

A big, heavy man this Philippeaux, with a ponderous voice that came sluggishly but impressively forth. A voice that compelled attention if it did not charm.

The unconscious puppet of André-Louis Moreau, he uttered words which he believed to be his own to express sentiments which were also his. Scarcely aware of it, so craftily had André-Louis used him, he repeated the very phrases with which André-Louis, in a magnificent assumption of republican zeal, had almost deafened him the day before.

"Let the mask of charlatanism fall!" had been André-Louis' fierce apostrophe, and Philippeaux's fancy, captured by the image had not scrupled to appropriate it for his own.

"Let the mask of charlatanism fall!" was now the opening cry with which he startled the Convention. "Let virtue stand forth naked, so that the people may behold her. Let the people know that those who proclaim themselves the friends of the people are indeed labouring for the people's welfare. And let us begin by being rigorous with ourselves."

He paused there, and then, to the gaping assembly which so far had understood nothing, he flung his terrible gage of battle.

"I demand that every member of the Convention shall declare within one week from to-day what was the extent of his fortune before the Revolution. If this has since increased, the extent of the increase shall be indicated and the means by which it has been brought about. I move a decree under which any member of the Convention who shall not have satisfied this demand within the appointed time shall be declared a traitor to his country."

If the majority of the Convention heard him unmoved by any panic, yet there was a considerable minority to whom Philippeaux's motion brought the icy touch of fear. For many there were who had grown wealthy in ways which it could not suit them to disclose. Of all these none were more deeply stricken than the members of that little group responsible for the India Company manipulation. Chabot, Delaunay, Bazire and Julien were swept by terror. Julien, the shrewdest of them all, and possibly the greatest rascal, considered instant flight. He perceived that all was lost; saw clearly the penalty that must wait upon revelation. He was grateful that Philippeaux gave them a week in which to render their accounts. Within that week, Julien would see to it that he was beyond the reach of the talons of the law. Delaunay remained stolid after the first shock. He was as deliberate of mental as of physical movement. He required time in which to consider this thing, to study its every side. Meanwhile he would jump at no conclusions. Bazire had the quality of courage. He would make no weak surrender. He would fight this matter as long as he had breath. Chabot's instinct, too, was to fight. But in him the instinct sprang from the opposite cause. It sprang from fear. His was the instinct of the animal at bay. And frenziedly, like an animal at bay, without thought or calculation, he was fighting presently in the tribune, recklessly combating the motion of Philippeaux.

Hardly ever had he spoken upon any theme without founding his arguments upon a denunciation. Always for Chabot was there someone to denounce, someone to hound to trial and the scaffold. It was as the arch-denouncer that his popularity was established. So now. Pale, breathless, a little wild of eye and manner, he denounced.

"Counter-revolutionaries are at work to sow dissension in the Convention, to bring its members under unjust suspicion." Thus he began, little suspecting how true was what he said. "Who has told you, citizens, that these counter-revolutionaries do not aim at sending you to the scaffold? It has been whispered to me, but until this moment I have not believed it, that we are to be taken in turn. One to-day, Danton to-morrow: after him Billaud-Varennes; they will end at Robespierre himself." Thus recklessly, yet oddly accurate without suspecting it, he named names, hoping perhaps to range those whom he mentioned on his side. "Who has told you that it is not the aim of these traitors to solicit upon forged evidence a decree of accusation against the foremost patriots here?"

Let him throw into his rhetorical questions all the force of which he was capable, he remained conscious that he stirred the main body of his audience below to no interest, whilst above him in the galleries there was a dull muttering, that reminded him of the first distant rumblings of thunder Was the storm about to break about his head? Had he come so far, merely to end like this? His terror deepened. He clutched the ledge of the tribune to support himself. He stood on tiptoe in some vague hope of dominating by an increase of height. He moistened his dry lips with his tongue, and began again.

But he was no longer the great denouncer. He was suddenly become a suppliant. And his supplication, in accents such as none had yet heard from the truculent little ex-capuchin's lips, was that the Convention should never admit a decree which might strike a single one of its members before he had been heard.

A voice interrupted him. "And the Girondins, Chabot? Were they heard?"

His staring wild eyes sought the speaker among the serried ranks of the legislators sitting below him. His wits became paralysed. He had no answer to that interpellation. It was as if the blood of the murdered Girondins rose up to choke him.

Then the words that he might have uttered came in another voice, a steady, dominant voice. It was the voice of Bazire, the man who had kept his courage, and with his courage his wits. He had risen in his place.

"The Girondins," he declared firmly, "were condemned by public opinion. There is no parallel. Here and now it is pretended upon the vaguest charges to direct an attack against true friends of liberty. I support the proposal of Chabot. I demand that it be adopted."

There was one who opposed him, one who, whilst agreeing that a deputy should be heard before being charged, yet demanded that any who attempted to evade the proposed decree should be declared outside the law.

Bazire, however, was equal even to this. "No sentence can be passed upon one who evades accusation. Such a man would merely be acting upon an elementary instinct of liberty. When the Girondins decreed Marat's arrest, Marat went into hiding. Dares any man to blame the conduct of that great hero?"

Of course none dared. And then Julien, taking courage from the audacity of his confederate, added a word that brought the matter to an end.

"A private individual who evades accusation is not outlawed on that account. Will you, then, make sterner taws for the representatives of the people than for private individuals?"

A Convention in which too many had cause to desire no such investigation as Philippeaux demanded was glad to fasten upon the logic of Julien's question as a means of closing the debate. The principle of Chabot's proposal was accepted, and the little group of swindlers associated with him breathed freely again.

It looked, indeed, as if Chabot had triumphed. But the man who had inspired Philippeaux was at hand to inspire others. From the gallery André-Louis had listened and observed. That evening he might have been seen dining at Fevrier's with an out-at-elbow lawyer named Dufourny, who enjoyed a reputation for advanced patriotism and was a prominent figure in the Jacobin Club.

On the following evening the two were again to be seen together, this time in the Jacobin Club, itself; and there Dufourny raised his voice against the conduct yesterday of Chabot and Bazire in their opposition to Philippeaux, and to invite the Jacobins to demand of the Convention a strict examination of the motives of those two representatives.

The proposal was received with an applause which in itself revealed the extent to which suspicion of Chabot, until yesterday so dominantly popular a figure, had already undermined his position.

Chabot, who was present, felt his knees knocking together in their new satin breeches. He could have wept to think how easily he had been caught in that snare of money. But there was worse to come. Dufourny had but opened the floodgates. The torrent was yet to roll forth.

Yielding to counsels of despair, Chabot conquered his terror so tar as to ascend the tribune there to render his explanations.

He began again in his old denunciatory terms. He spoke of treason and conspiracy and of the agents of Pitt and Coburg. But for once the phrases with which he had been wont to rivet the attention of the vulgar earned him only derision. He was interrupted, he was mocked, he was ordered to speak to the point, to tell them not of Pitt and Coburg, but of himself. And then, when under that volley of sarcasm, for which no past experience had prepared him, he faltered, sweated, stammered, and finally turned in defeat to descend from the tribune, a woman's voice made his blood run cold with her shrill cry:

"To the guillotine!"

That terrible apostrophe was taken up on every side until the vaulted hall rang with it.

It arrested his descent. Leaden-hued of face he stood and raised his clenched hand above his head. Because At was seen that he was about to speak the clamours fell silent.

In a cracked voice, oddly unlike his usual smooth, oily accents, he screamed at them: "In despite of my enemies, in despite of revolutionary women, it shall come to be recognized that I am the saviour of the public weal!"

With that vague assertion he stumbled down the steps on knees that were turned to water under him.

He collapsed weakly on a bench against the wall near the tribune, conscious only of glances that were unfriendly and mocking, turned upon him who yesterday had seemed to himself a demi-god.

Dufourny leapt to replace him in the tribune.

"He dares to call himself the saviour of the public weal! He dares! This man who has braved public opinion by marrying a foreigner, an Austrian!"

Chabot reared his head at that. This was an attack from a fresh quarter, on fresh grounds. Did the old one not suffice? Was there a plot here to destroy him? Looking wildly round, his glance met the dark eyes of André-Louis Moreau, regarding him curiously. And something in that glance went through him like a sword of ice. What was Moreau doing here? And what had he been doing in company with that scoundrel Dufourny? He groped in vagueness, Then, abandoned that to listen to the damning words that Dufourny was pouring forth.

"What effrontery, what contempt for the people and for popular feeling in the very hour chosen by Chabot for such a marriage! He celebrates it at a time when Antoinette stood for her crimes before the Revolutionary Tribunal, when the nation, beset by the hirelings of foreign despots, was at the height of its execration of foreigners; when our brothers who are upon the frontiers have left us their widows, their sisters, their relatives to comfort and succour. It is in such a moment that Chabot contracts a wealthy marriage with an Austrian woman."

Execration answered and confirmed him. Dufourny paused until it had passed.

"A woman is a garment for a man. If such a garment was necessary for Chabot, he should have remembered that the nation had proscribed foreign materials. Before taking such a wife, a man should inform himself if those to whom she is related are not legitimately to be suspected of having bonds of interest with the enemies of France."

At this Chabot bounded to his feet. On this at least he could deliver a clear answer. He began to defend the Freys, to speak of Junius as a worthy member of this very club, a philosopher, a patriot, the first thinker in Europe, one who had made sacrifices in coming to live in the benign shadow of the Tree of Liberty.

"Sacrifices which enable him to reckon his wealth in millions," a voice interrupted him.

Even in the disordered state of his senses he fancied that he recognized the voice for that of André-Louis Moreau. But he was given little time in which to reflect. The clamours thundered about him again. He was accused now of prevarication, of impudent falsehoods uttered to protect an Austrian Jew, a ghoul who battened on the calamities of the nation, an agent of Coburg's in their midst.

And to his offences against the nation was added now the accusation of an offence against humanity. Again it was Dufourny who voiced it, waiting for a moment of silence so that no syllable of it should be lost.

"Before this marriage of yours, Chabot, you had a companion, a mistress, a Frenchwoman, who has since become a mother, What have you done with her? Why did you abandon her, leaving her to starve, together with your child?"

At this a menace of violence from the women was added to the general execration. It was remembered against him that he had been a priest. The very apostasy, which hitherto had magnified him into a shining example of progressive republicanism, was discounted now as something done in the indulgence of a dissolute nature.

Under this formidable onslaught the ignoble spirit of this man, who had so callously procured the breaking of so many noble spirits, broke at last completely. He burst into tears, and with wild, lachrymose denunciations of those who now denounced him, he staggered forth from that club which had become for him a place of terrors.

He went home to the elegant apartments and the recently-acquired luxuries of the Rue d'Anjou, luxuries for which it now seemed that he was likely to pay with his neck, and as he went he asked himself what enemy was this who so suddenly and without warning had leapt at him out of the void to fasten upon his throat.