Scaramouche (33 page)

"Faith, I was forgetting one, who is of less importance. A fellow named Moreau."

"Ah yes," said Bathe still with that curious smile on his high-bred face. "I thought you had overlooked Moreau. Well, well, it is understood. At eight o'clock to-morrow." The others nodded.

Chabot lingered, perplexed. There had been no word of thanks, yet they seemed to dismiss him. It could not be.

"Why do you wait, Chabot?" It was Billaud-Varennes who put the question.

"Is that all?" he asked, bewildered.

"Unless you have more to say That is all. Until eight o'clock to-morrow."

He went out awkwardly, like a dismissed lackey rather than a master turning his back upon his servants; for until this morning that had more nearly approached their respective positions.

He walked home haunted by that enigmatic smile on the lips of Barère. What had the insolent fellow meant by it? Was he presuming upon what had happened last night at the Jacobins to be putting on airs and graces with a patriot of Chabot's consequence. The damned aristocrat! For Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac of Tarbes was a gentleman by birth. He belonged to a class that Chabot from his earliest days had hated with the instinctive hatred of the base for his betters. It was a fact concerning him that Chabot had overlooked. He would be giving a little attention presently to this Monsieur Barère de Vieuzac. He would have the damned head off that vile aristocrat before many weeks were over.

And how the devil did he come to know that André-Louis Moreau was in the affair?

If Chabot had possessed the answer to that question, he would have been a little less confident about his future ability to deal with Barère. He was not to know that upon the table of the Committee of Public Safety had lain since yesterday a full report of the India Company swindle from the pen of the Committee's very diligent secret agent André-Louis Moreau, and that the Committee had already decided upon its course of action which was nowise influenced by the visit of Chabot.

It was not quite the course of action now agreed with him. The arrests took place next day and they took place at eight o'clock. But it was at eight o'clock in the morning, without waiting for Chabot to bring the conspirators together. They were arrested separately. Chabot, half-stupefied, wildly protesting error in terms of coarsest blasphemy, then as wildly protesting that the person of a deputy was inviolable, was dragged from the side of his little Poldine, who stopped her ears, shuddering at his obscenities. With each of the others named—excepting only André-Louis Moreau—it fared the same. And at the same hour yet another was arrested: Fabre d'Eglantine whom Chabot had not named, but whom André-Louis had not omitted from his report.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THORIN'S LETTER

By noon that day the town was in a ferment. Crowds were assembling in the Gardens of the Tuileries Crowds paraded through the streets howling death to all and sundry. Crowds besieged the hall of the Jacobins. Crowds clamoured about the precincts of the Convention. From the galleries the women of the markets hurled shrill insults at the absent fallen legislators, demanding to know whom they could trust.

That demand was on the lips of every patriot that morning. If Chabot was false to his duty, whom could they believe true to it? If Chabot abused his position to swindle the people, whom could they believe honest?

There were those who mingled with the crowds to fan their anger, and direct its course; men of rough patriotic appearance from the red bonnets on their heads to the clogs on their feet, who fiercely proclaimed that France had exchanged one set of tyrants for another which battened still more greedily upon her misery. An unfortunate dandy crossing the terrace of the Feuillants was seized and butchered as an expression of popular rage, for no better reason than because his head was powdered and some virgo had raised the cry that he dusted his head with flour whilst the people had no bread.

Things began to look so wicked that the National Guards were brought out to restore some order and afford protection to the threatened Conventionals until the people's anger should have cooled.

De Batz kept his room in the Rue-de-Ménars, so that any of those industrious agents of his at their inflammatory work should know where to find him if he were needed. He chafed there in impatience, pacing to and fro in the little salon, and pausing ever and anon to listen to the uproar of that November morning. He was fretted too by the absence of André-Louis, who had gone out early, leaving no word of what business took him abroad.

It was a little past noon when he returned. His pallor; the compression of his lips, and a feverish glitter in his eyes gave evidence of suppressed excitement.

"Where have you been?" de Batz greeted him.

André-Louis took off the great-coat in which he was wrapped. "To receive the thanks of the Committee of Public Safety." And to the frowning Baron he gave at last the news of what he had done, of the report which he had drawn up for the Committee's information.

"You did this?" There was a rumble of resentment in the Gascon's voice.

"Faith, it was becoming necessary to establish my position. An agent must do something to justify himself. After the outbreak in the Convention yesterday I foresaw what must happen. I have the measure of Chabot. If I anticipated the betrayal of his associates which he would inevitably make, I hurt no one and profited myself. I take long views, Jean."

"But very secret ones." De Batz was annoyed. "Why did you withhold your confidence?"

"You might have opposed me. You can be obstinate. Besides, I haven't withheld it. I am telling you now. There was no need to tell you at all."

"Much obliged for your frankness. Whom did you denounce in your report?"

"All those whom I judged that Chabot would denounce—all save one, Benoit, whom I excluded but whom Chabot betrayed. I might have known he would. Yet Benoit may save himself. As for the others, they make up a fine baker's batch!" He used the cynical term "fournée" that was already current to describe the daily immolations.

He explained himself a little more. Some of the Baron's annoyance melted. But not all of it. He still complained that André-Louis was too secretive.

"Have I blundered anywhere? You hear what is going on." André-Louis defended himself. "My God, Jean, we've raised a storm that will take some calming."

It was so, indeed. You may read in the Moniteur of the agitations of the days that followed; the furious invectives in the Convention against corruption, by which those who remained sought to restore in themselves the shaken confidence of the people; the very terms of the accusation levelled at Chabot and his associates: "Peculation and conspiracy tending to vilify and destroy by corruption the Revolutionary Government."

But the storm was not yet to be allayed. To placate the wrath of the outraged people, many more arrests were decreed, arrests which included the brothers Frey and even the unfortunate Léopoldine. Robespierre himself took fright at the violence of this earthquake which shook the Mountain to its very foundations, and threatened to hurl him from his eminence on its summit. He sent in haste to recall Saint-Just from Strasbourg, so that in this hour of dreadful need he might have beside him that bright revolutionary arch-angel.

Saint-Just arrived, and went earnestly and craftily to work to restore the shaken confidence.

Oratory is impressive according to the lips from which it falls. Saint-Just's lips were believed to be pure. There was faith in him because of his reputation for asceticism and Spartan frugality. He had been an example of all the civic virtues. The purity of morals which he passionately demanded was no more than that which he practised himself.

So that when Saint-Just came to condemn in unmeasured terms the corruption of those fellow Conventionals who had been imprisoned, it seemed to the people that at last they heard their own voice presenting an indictment to the Convention.

And so craftily did Saint-Just go to work that he not merely stilled resentment against the Mountain, he actually made capital for it out of the event.

He made of the shameless peculation which had brought about the downfall of Chabot and his associates a pretext for all those evils under which the people groaned and had been growing restive. They went hungry, he assured them, because a pack of rogues had embezzled the public substance. He thanked Heaven that discovery had come before the harm was beyond repair.

So soon as the devoted legislators who remained had straightened out the tangle left by that corruption, there would be an end to all distress.

Conquered by his arguments, above all believing in that closing promise, confidence was at last restored, and with it peace and the will to endure the inevitable hardships which the transition from tyranny to liberty was imposing.

Saint-Just's victory on behalf of his party was assisted by a fortunate turn in the tide of war. He was able to point to the good work he had done in Strasbourg. Toulon, it was true, remained a focus of reactionary activity, held by royalists and foreigners thanks to the wiles of the perfidious Pitt. But elsewhere the arms of the Republic were victorious, and on the frontiers the enemies of liberty were being firmly held.

Further to divert the public attention came a side-show, a struggle of Titans. Danton and Hébert were locked in death-grips, and it says much for the indomitable courage of Danton that he should have chosen this moment for a trial of strength with one who exercised such control over the Commune, the police, the Revolutionary Army and even the Revolutionary Tribunal, as the scoundrelly editor of the Père Duchesne, the man who more than any other was the advocate of bloodshed, the enemy of all authority, the anarch who, having laboured to dethrone a king, had since laboured to dethrone God Himself.

Danton's constructive mind accounted that the ground had been sufficiently cleared by the immolation of the Girondins. In his view it was time to restore order and authority. He had come back from Arcis to preach moderation, and he had met the ruthless opposition of Hébert. Battle was joined between them.

Robespierre held aloof, watching, well content. Whether intoxicated with the growth of his power he perceived the way to a dictatorship, or whether he would be content with a triumvirate in which he would rule with his two acolytes Saint-Just and Couthon, it was to his interests that the rival forces represented by Hébert and Danton should first engage each other He would deal with the survivor when the time came.

Equally watchful was de Batz. It was not without disappointment that he had seen that' very promising storm allayed by the eloquence of Saint-Just. At the same time he lent an ear to André-Louis' confident assurances that what had been done once could be done again.

"Next time," said André-Louis, "there will be no recovery. Public confidence, badly shaken by this blow, will collapse completely under a second one. Be sure of that."

"I can be sure of that, but not of another opportunity."

"Opportunity comes to him who watches. And I am watching. Robespierre is the only incorruptible. This struggle between Danton and Hébert may bring much to light at any moment. I am working with Desmoulins in the Dantonist interest, and so I am at the very centre of present political activities."

Inspired by some of his confidence, de Batz possessed himself in patience, and laboured unremittingly. His make-believe patriots were mingling with the crowds again, inflaming public opinion in Danton's favour upon every opportunity. His pamphleteers were at work, and André-Louis as a contributor to the Vieux Cordelier was seconding with his pen the labours of Desmoulins. He liked Desmoulins, detecting in him a kindred spirit; and he could work with him the more agreeable since this young man at least was not one of the faggots that was being dried for the fire.

Nor was this all. Unremittingly André-Louis studied the ground to discover a fresh vulnerable point in the position of the Mountain. It arose out of Desmoulins' alliance with Danton that he too kept an eye on the future, and worked for the time when Danton, having disposed of Hébert, should come to measure himself against the Robespierrists. In the course of this he made certain attacks upon Saint-Just. They were playful as yet, aiming at no more than to raise a laugh or two at Saint-Just's expense. But one of them had stung the young representative into a wickedly menacing retort.

"He regards his head," Desmoulins had written, "as the cornerstone of the Republic, and he carries it on his shoulders with the reverence due to the Saint Sacrament."

A few days after this, early one morning in November, Desmoulins broke in upon the labours of André-Louis. He was excited. His fine eyes were a little wild, and the brown hair was tumbled about a face that might have been noble but for the pockmarks and the pouting lips. The aggravation of his habitual stutter was a further index of the young man's perturbation.

"This fellow Saint-Just takes himself a thought too seriously. Regards himself as a cross between Brutus and Saint Aloysius of Gonzaga. But there's more of Cassius in him than of either of those."

"You imagine that you bring me news," said André-Louis, surprised only by the outburst. He rose from his table as he spoke, and went to throw some fir-cones on the dwindling fire, for there was a fog abroad and the morning was chill and damp.

"Ah, but do you know what he is saying? That whilst I have written of him that he carries his head like a Saint Sacrament, he will see to it that I shall carry mine like a Saint Denis. What do you think of that?"

As Saint Denis carries his head in the crook of his arm there was only one thing to think of it.

"It's a pretty retort."

"Pretty! It drips blood. A nice threat to be putting about. He'll have me guillotined, will he? He'll make me lose my head for a jest. I think he must have lost his own already since he dares to threaten a man openly in such terms."

"It's imprudent," André-Louis agreed soberly.

"More imprudent than he reckons, or than you suspect, my friend. I am not the man to scuttle before menaces. If this is a declaration of war, I am ready for it." He lugged a paper from his breast. "Here's a windfall. Read this. It should strip the mask from this hypocrite. He won't look so much like Saint Aloysius then."

It proved to be a letter from a man named Thorin who wrote from Blérancourt in bitter denunciation of Saint-Just, whom he styled obviously of malice aforethought, the ci-devant Chevalier de Saint-Just. It charged Saint-Just with having debauched Thorin's young wife and carried her off to Paris, where he kept her secretly as his mistress; and this at a time when, as all the world knew, Saint-Just had just become affianced in marriage to the sister of the Deputy Lebas.

He is true, wrote the indignant husband, to the dissolute aristocratic stock from which he springs. This ci-devant Chevalier de Saint-Just, who postures in Paris as a reformer, has yet to reform himself. The ci-devant Chevalier de Saint-Just is a thief and a scoundrel, as I am in a position to prove. They tell me that in the Convention he is an advocate of purity in private as in public life. Let his own advocacy be applied to him. Let him he purified. The guillotine is the great national purifier.

The writer went on to say that he addressed himself to Desmoulins because from certain phrases in the Vieux Cordelier he conceived that Desmoulins at least had begun to suspect the real nature of this debauched hypocrite. He desired not only to avenge the outrage he had suffered, but also to protect the unfortunate woman whom Saint-Just was no doubt upon the point of casting out to die upon the streets.

André-Louis took a deep breath. This came so opportunely to his needs that he could hardly believe in so much good fortune. If these accusations could be established Saint-Just would lie at their mercy. Here, indeed, was the vulnerable point André-Louis had been seeking.

In ordinary circumstances, and despite the cant of purity to which the Conventionals, especially since the fall of Chabot, were becoming so addicted, the matter of carrying off another man's wife would have been none too seriously viewed. But the circumstances dressed up the event into a monstrosity. The fact that Saint-Just had just betrothed himself to the sister of Lebas, discounted the possibility of any condoning genuine affection towards Madame Thorin, made her just the victim of his reckless lust.