Scaramouche (32 page)

The Freys heard his story in dismay. He spared them nothing. But when he spoke of that secret, invisible enemy, the dismay of Junuis was converted into contempt. Junius was a hard-headed, practical man of affairs. He had no patience with mere instinctive feelings and with a babble of ghostly antagonism. He demanded substance, proofs, and fancied, being practical, that he discovered them for himself.

"Pish! A secret enemy What secret enemy should you have? Is there some husband whose wife you have debauched? Someone you have swindled? Or the friend or relative of someone whom you have guillotined? Can you think of any such?"

Chabot could not. He had in his time been guilty of all these crimes and more. But he was not aware that he had left any avenger on his heels.

"Well, then Well, then! Your secret enemy is simply the vulgar envy which any access of prosperity will provoke. Shall a man of your position, of your popularity—the greatest man in France next to Robespierre—be swept away by that mean sentiment? The Jacobins may storm, inflamed by this scoundrel Dufourny. But the Jacobins are not the People. It is the People, the sovereign People, who are the ultimate arbiters in France to-day. Make your appeal to them. They will not forsake you. Take courage, man."

He took it, under the vigorous drive of that undaunted Jew. In the night he considered his position and the course to be taken, and he reached a resolve before morning. He would go to Robespierre. The Incorruptible could not be indifferent to his fate. He was too valuable to the party of the Mountain, and a struggle lay ahead of that party.

There were rumours of strife to come, arising out of the discrepancy between Danton's views of policy and Robespierre's. Robespierre would need to rally all his friends about him for that contest. And of them all, with the possible exception of Saint-Just, who had been climbing so rapidly of late, none was more valuable than Chabot.

His confidence restored by this reflection and by the perception now of the tale he was to tell, he went off betimes to the Rue Saint Honoré and the house of the cabinet-maker Duplay, where the Incorruptible was lodged.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE INCORRUPTIBLE

Across a courtyard stacked with broad planks of cedar, walnut and mahogany, where wood-shavings curled and clung about his ankles, and where a couple of young men were industriously sawing a baulk of timber, the Citizen-Representative Chabot gained the house and ascended the dark staircase to the first floor.

His knock was answered by Elizabeth Duplay, one of the two daughters of the cabinet-maker with whom Maximilien Robespierre was lodged, one of the two vestals who ministered to the arch-priest of the Republic. No breath of scandal had ever blown over these relations. If Robespierre feared money, he feared women more. Indeed, an aversion to women had always marked his nature, a curious aversion which upon occasion had found an expression almost feral.

The great Montagnard lived simply and was readily accessible. Moreover, Elizabeth Duplay had often opened to the Citizen-Representative Chabot, and he was well-known to her, although at the moment and in the uncertain light of the landing she had to look twice before she recognized under his preposterous finery one whom she had never seen other than red-bonneted and ill-clad, like a man of the people.

He was ushered into a fair room that overlooked the street, a room simple, austere, immaculate as the man who tenanted it. The windows were hung with curtains of Persian blue, softening and subduing the daylight, and there was about the sparse furniture, as about the man himself, a neat and elegant asceticism.

Robespierre stood before his writing-table, a slight, almost boyish, figure in a tight coat that was striped in two shades of blue, and all about him—evidences of his abnormal vanity and egotism—reproductions of himself served to decorate his shrine. Here it was a sketch by David; there the portrait in oils which had hung in the Salon two years ago; from the overmantel a bust of himself looked down upon the original, reproducing the meanness of the square face, the cruel spite that was never absent from the lips of that wide mouth, belying the humour to have been suspected from the tilt of his curious nose that was so wide at the root.

When Chabot entered, he was hi the act of squeezing an orange into a broad cup. He suffered from an insufficiency of bile, and to excite it drank orange-juice continuously. To see who came, he thrust the horn-rimmed spectacles upwards on to his massive forehead, sparsely covered by the curls of his scrupulously dressed and powdered hair. His myopic green eyes peered across the room, and the set grin that never left his lips widened slightly in recognition.

Beyond that he made no welcoming movement. But having set down the cup, and placed the orange hemisphere upon a plate beside its other half, he stood waiting for Chabot to speak. It was an ominous reception, which in itself informed Chabot of that which he most dreaded.

He closed the door and came forward. He did not strut this morning. He dragged his feet a little. Of the swaggering forward thrust of his incipient paunch which normally announced his aggressive self-sufficient nature there was little sign. He was pale, and blear-eyed. Even the Polichinelle nose that sprouted from that lamentably sloping forehead seemed to have shrunk overnight to less aggressive proportions. The coward latent in every bully had come to the surface. He had spent the wakeful night in tears, in lamentations of his fate, which he assigned to the malignity of others rather than to any fault in himself. He had played the hypocrite so long that it is possible that he deceived even himself, and that actually he believed at least some part of the tale with which he came to seek the assistance of the one man in France whose power might shield him.

"I disturb you early, Robespierre. But my duty requires it. I come to save the Republic. I hold the thread of the most dangerous conspiracy that has yet been organized for the ruin of Liberty."

For a long moment the green eyes considered him. They were ice-cold in their regard, and ice-cold was the voice in which at last the arch-priest of Liberty delivered himself.

"Why then, you must reveal it."

"Of course. But to do this it is necessary that I should continue to associate with the conspirators. I have pretended to be one with them so that I might penetrate their designs. I have pretended to yield to the temptation of sharing in their plunder, so that I might discover the extent of their aims. I begin to perceive that these are counter-revolutionary: that a terrible, and incredible conspiracy is at work; actively at work; and already widespread. It is in my power to have these men taken red-handed, the proofs upon them.

"No man could render a greater service to his country."

"Ha! You see that. You see that!"

"It leaps to the eye." If there was irony in the cold, level voice, it was too subtle for Chabot. He was beginning to take courage.

"It does. Of course it does."

"You must not hesitate, Chabot." And then he added: "You will have proofs. What are they?"

And now what the little scoundrel said was strictly true. He pulled out a packet of assignats.

"Here are a hundred thousand francs. They were handed to me as a bribe not to oppose certain financial projects of these scoundrels. If I had yielded to my natural impulse, which was to reject with horror this monstrous proposal and at once denounce the villains who made it, I must have missed the chance of sounding their design to its infamous depths. You see, Robespierre, how hard a choice was laid before me; what self-control I was forced to summon to my aid. But the thing has gone far enough. I scarcely dare let it go further lest I should myself come under suspicion. For the sake of my country, for the sake of the Republic which has never had a more loyal servant, I have placed myself in jeopardy. But I must clear this up. It is my intention at once to take this packet to the Committee of Public Safety and at the same time reveal the name of the traitors."

"Then why do you come to me? You are wasting valuable time. The Committee of Public Safety will certainly receive you with the cordiality and gratitude for which the occasion calls."

Chabot stood hesitating, uneasy, shifting on his feet.

"Make haste, my friend," the Incorruptible admonished him. "Make haste." He stepped aside from the table as he spoke, moving stork-like on his thin legs in their thin silk stockings above his preposterously high heels.

"Yes...but...name of a name! I don't want it supposed from my association with these vile conspirators that I am one of them."

"Why should it be? Who could suppose this of you?" But there was no warmth of conviction in that voice. Its tone remained dead-level. Its words were mechanical if they were not actually mocking.

"There are the appearances. All men are not as you, Robespierre. They have not your nice balance of judgment. They make hasty assumptions upon insufficient grounds. That is why I feel myself in need of some security."

"It is a question, you say, of saving your country. Can such a patriot as you are hesitate from personal considerations?"

"No." Chabot was vehement. He adopted something of his tribune-manner. "I am ready enough to die for my country. But I do not want to die under a stigma of guilt. I must think of my family: my mother and my sister. I do not want them to die of broken hearts, and it is what would happen to them. Especially my sister. A fierce patriot my sister, who said to me once, not long ago: 'François, if ever it should happen that you should betray the cause of the People, I should be the first to plunge a dagger into your heart.'"

"The Roman spirit," was Robespierre's comment.

"Oh, a Roman of the Romans my sister."

Robespierre nodded. "You are fortunate in your family." He strutted back to the table, and once more took up the half-orange, and the cup and resumed his squeezing, speaking coldly the while.

"Your alarm is surely idle. You have no cause to doubt that the Committee of Public Safety will co-operate with you in whatever measures may be necessary to discover this conspiracy"

Chabot turned cold. "To be sure. To be sure. But if I had some guarantee, if—"

"You have," said the icy voice. "Your intentions are your guarantee. What better could you desire?"

"With you, no more. You know me, Robespierre. You, whose glance penetrates to the heart of things and of men, perceive my intentions clearly. But others may not weigh all the factors quite so scrupulously."

Robespierre set down the half-orange that was now squeezed to exhaustion. He took up the other half. Holding it to the rim of the cup, he paused, and his green eyes squarely encountered Chabot's uneasy glance.

"What do you want me to do?"

Promptly came Chabot's answer,

"Help me to save the country. Associate yourself with me in this glorious task worthy of your great patriotism. Join hands with me, so that together we may crush this hydra of treason. That is the task I offer you. A task whose fulfillment will cover you with glory."

But not even the fantastic vanity of Robespierre could tempt him to succumb to this appeal.

"I would not rob you of a single ray of the glory which belongs to you, Chabot. Besides, I am tidy in all my habits. I like a proper observance of the forms, and you are out of order here. You should not have come to me at all. Your place is before the Committee of Public Safety. Go to the Committee, then, without further waste of time." And the Incorruptible lowered his eyes to the task in hand, and began to squeeze the second half of his orange.

Chabot understood that he was dismissed. He was not sure that he was not condemned. He gulped in panic, and with his panic was mixed a high measure of incredulity. To one who had been a capuchin, and who as a capuchin had listened to confessions, the stupidity and wickedness of the human heart should have brought no surprises. Yet surprised he was by the wickedness and stupidity which he now construed to be actuating Robespierre. Was it really possible that in his overweening conceit this pompous little dullard was underestimating the value to him of such a man as Chabot? Did the creature really think that he had climbed by his own merit and his own unaided effort to the high place he held? Did his vanity blind him to the fact that it was by association with such men as Chabot, Bazire and Saint-Just that he had been hoisted into his supremacy? And dared he withhold his protecting aegis now from one of these? Dared he allow him to be cast to the lions? Had he no thought for the weakening of his own position that must result from the loss of such a supporter as Chabot?

It was incredible. But, beholding him there so calmly squeezing his orange, and pressing the extruded pulp against the rim of his cup, Chabot could no longer doubt that however incredible the thing was true.

He mumbled words which Robespierre supposed to be of leave-taking. Actually it was a Latin tag: "Quem Deus vult perdere..." And on that he went out on feet uncertain as a drunkard's.

He repaired straight to the Tuileries, and into the presence of the Committee of Public Safety, five members of which were in session, Barère presiding. On the way he had collected his courage once more. He had but to think of the past, of the triumphs his eloquence had won, of the great man that he had become. It was unimaginable that he should not be believed.

He maintained his recovered confidence even when he stood before that terrible Committee, whose members, already fully informed through their ubiquitously active spies of last night's events at the Jacobins, received him with a coldness such as none would yesterday have dared to show to so great a man.

He told his tale in terms of passionate rhetoric; the burning patriot, the saint who was ready at need to become a martyr in the holy cause of Liberty. He did not move them. They were not the mob. They were cold, calculating men of affairs. Not even the fact that they were of his own party, men of the Mountain all of them, disposed them in his favour.

It was in vain that he paraded the astuteness by means of which he had fooled the conspirators into believing him one of themselves, in vain that he expounded and exalted his devotion to the cause of liberty, in vain that in a supreme gesture of contempt he flung the hundred thousand francs upon the table before them. And it was equally in vain that he demanded of them a safe-conduct, so as to enable him to continue his investigations. It may have occurred to them that he might use it to place himself beyond the frontier.

At last, before their impassivity, he realized that he was lost. Desperately he played his last card.

"These traitors are to meet at my house to-morrow evening at eight o'clock." And now at last he named names, thinking perhaps to impress them with those of three members of the Convention, of the party of the Mountain, one of whom, indeed, was of the first importance: Bazire, Delaunay, Julien and the banker Benoit.

Thus the little craven betrayed his associates in the hope of saving his own neck by turning witness against them.

"Send to my house to-morrow at eight, and you shall take the lot. I'll have them there for you."

"You establish your patriotism," said Barère. But he was smiling curiously. He added: "But are you sure that you have named them all?"

Chabot sucked in his plump cheeks under the shock of that question. It suggested that he told the Committee nothing that it did not already know. Indeed, not quite all that it did know. It seemed he was only just in time.