Читать книгу The Whites and the Blues - Alexandre Dumas - Страница 36

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When Charles went down he could view the whole scene at a single glance from the doorstep. Mademoiselle de Brumpt, in haste, no doubt, to place herself in safety, and anxious to reassure her father, had disappeared. The two men with the red caps and the black blouses were setting up the scaffold with a promptitude which evinced great familiarity with the task. Master Nicholas held Schneider by the arm; the latter refused to descend from the carriage, and the two Hussars of Death, seeing the situation, went around to the other door, and began to prick him with the points of their sabres. A cold, icy rain was falling, which penetrated the clothing like needles, yet Schneider was wiping the sweat from his dripping brow. Half-way from the carriage to the guillotine they took off his hat because of the national cockade, and then his coat because it was that of a soldier. Cold and terror made the unhappy man shiver as he ascended the steps of the guillotine.

Then a cry sprang from ten thousand throats which sounded as one—"Under the knife! Under the knife!"

"My God!" murmured Charles, quivering with terror as he leaned against the wall, and yet rooted to the spot by an unconquerable curiosity, "are they going to kill him? are they going to kill him?"

"No, don't worry," replied a voice, "he will get off with a fright this time. But it would do no great harm to finish him up at once."

Charles recognized the voice immediately; he turned his head in the direction whence it came and perceived Sergeant Augereau.

"Ah!" he exclaimed joyfully, as if he himself had escaped a great danger; "ah, it is you, my worthy friend! And Eugene?"

"Safe and sound like yourself. We went back to the hotel yesterday, and there we learned of your arrest. I hurried to the prison and found that you were there; when I returned at one o'clock you were still there. At three, I heard that Saint-Just had sent for you, so I made up my mind to wait here in the square till you came out, for I was very sure that he would not eat you. All at once I saw you near him at the window, and, as you seemed to be on the best terms possible with each other, I was reassured. And now you are free?"

"Free as the air."

"There is nothing to keep you here any longer?"

"I only wish I had not come."

"I don't agree with you. It seems to me a good thing to be friends with Saint-Just, even better than with Schneider, especially now that he is the stronger. As for Schneider, you didn't have time to become very much attached to him; so you will probably not be inconsolable over his loss. What has happened this evening will be a warning to Tétrell, who, by the way, has not budged, but who must not be allowed the time to take his revenge."

Just then they heard a confusion of cries, cheers and shouts.

"Oh! what is that?" cried Charles, hiding his head on his friend's breast.

"Nothing," replied Augereau, raising himself upon the tips of his toes. "Nothing, except that they are fastening him under the knife—doing to him just what he did yesterday to the mayor and the deputy at Eschau; each one in his turn. Fortunate are those, my good friend, who come from that place with their heads on their shoulders."

"Terrible! terrible!" murmured Charles.

"Terrible, yes; but we see that or worse every day. Say good-by to your worthy professor; you will probably never see him again, as they are going to send him to Paris as soon as they take him down from that platform, and I don't envy him his promotion. And now let us go and get some supper. You must be starved, my poor boy!"

"I never thought of that," said Charles; "but now that you remind me of it, I remember that it is a far cry from breakfast."

"All the more reason to return to the Hôtel de la Lanterne as soon as possible."

"Come on, then."

Charles glanced at the square a last time.

"Farewell! poor friend of my father," he said. "When he sent me to you he believed that you were still the good and learned monk whom he had known. He did not know that you had become the bloody tyrant that I have found you, and that the spirit of the Lord had departed from you. Quos vult perdere Jupiter dementat. Come."

This time it was the boy who hurried Pierre Augereau toward the Hôtel de la Lanterne.

Two persons were anxiously awaiting Charles's return; Madame Teutch and Eugene.

Madame Teutch, in her double rôle of hostess and woman, began by fondling Charles, and it was not until she had looked him all over, to convince herself that it was indeed he, and had kissed him to make sure that he was not a ghost, that she gave him to Eugene.

The greetings of the two young friends were equally tender though less demonstrative. Nothing binds friendship so rapidly as dangers shared in common; and since they had known each other, events had not been wanting to lead their friendship to a point equalled only by the ancients.

This friendship was further increased by the knowledge that they were soon to part. It was imprudent for Eugene, who had, moreover, nearly finished his researches, to remain longer in Strasbourg, where he was exposed to the vengeance of Tétrell, who might brood over the insult he had received for a certain time, but who would surely not forget it. As for Charles, there was no further reason for him to remain in Strasbourg once Schneider was no longer there, since he had come to the city for the sole purpose of studying under him.

Eugene was, therefore, to return to Paris, where his mother and sister were working for the liberation of his father; and Charles, utilizing the second letter that his father had given him, was to enter upon his military apprenticeship, instead of becoming Euloge Schneider's pupil.

It was agreed that the two boys should set out the next morning at daybreak. This resolution drove Madame Teutch to despair, for, as she said, she felt as if she had a little family, and she loved them as if they were her own children. But she was too reasonable to attempt to delay, much less to prevent, a departure which she knew to be inevitable and, above all, urgent. She entered therefore into all their plans; the only condition that she made was that she herself might be allowed to give them the last meal that they were to take in her house.

Not only was the offer accepted, but the young comrades, who regarded Madame Teutch, if not as a mother, at least as a friend, insisted that she should do the honors of the repast; an invitation which pleased her so greatly that she immediately gave orders to the cook for the best supper he could provide, and then hastened up to her room to don the handsomest gown she possessed.

And as the supper preparations and Madame Teutch's toilet would consume at least half an hour, the two boys decided to employ that time in making ready for their departure.

The Paris diligence, in which Eugene had engaged a place, was to start at daybreak. Charles intended to accompany his friend to the diligence and then to start for Auenheim, where Pichegru had his headquarters.

Auenheim is some twenty-four miles distant from Strasbourg. It was one of the eight or ten fortresses which, like advance sentinels, watched over the safety of the frontiers around Strasbourg.

Charles had need of a good night's rest to prepare for such a fatiguing journey. And it was to secure an uninterrupted sleep that Madame Teutch advised the boys to look over their papers and to pack their trunks before supper.

In the meantime Augereau went to the barracks to leave word that, as he was to sup in the city, he did not know when he would return that evening, if he returned at all. As fencing-master he enjoyed many advantages over the other volunteers of Paris, who in their turn possessed immunities which the soldiers of the country were not allowed.

The two boys left the communicating door between their rooms open, so that they could still talk with each other, although each was in his own room.

Now that they were to part, each planned out his future as he intended it to be.

"I," said Eugene, as he classified his military documents, "shall never be anything but a soldier. I know but little Latin, for which I have a strong dislike, and still less Greek, of which I don't understand a word. On the other hand, give me a horse, I don't care what it is, and I can ride it; I can hit the bull's-eye at twenty paces every time, and Augereau had told you himself that I need fear no one with sword or sabre. As soon as I hear a drum or a trumpet, my heart beats and the blood rushes to my head. I shall certainly be a soldier like my father. Who knows? Perhaps I shall become a general like him. It's fine to be a general."

"Yes," replied Charles, "but just see to what that leads; look at your father. You are sure that he is innocent, are you not?"

"Of course I am!"

"Well, he is in danger of being exiled, or even of being put to death, as you told me."

"Pooh! Themistocles took part in the battles of Marathon and Salamis, and he died in exile. Exile, when it is undeserved, makes a hero of a general. When death strikes the innocent it makes of the hero a demigod. Wouldn't you like to be Phocion, even at the risk of having to drink hemlock like him?"

"Hemlock for hemlock," replied Charles, "I would rather drink that of Socrates; he is the hero for me."

"Ah! I don't dispute that! He began by being a soldier; at Potidæa he saved Alcibiades' life, and at Delium, that of Xenophon. Saving a man's life, Charles, was the act for which the Romans bestowed their most beautiful crown—the crown of oak."

"To save the life of two men, and to make sixty thousand perish, as Phocion, of whom you spoke just now, did in the forty-five battles which he fought, do you think that would be sufficient compensation?"

"Upon my word, yes, when those two men were Alcibiades and Xenophon."

"I am not as ambitious as you," said Charles, with a sigh. "You want to be an Alexander, a Scipio, or a Cæsar, while I should be content to be, I don't say, a Virgil—there never will be but one Virgil—but a Horace, a Longinus, or even an Apuleius. You want a camp, an army, tents, horses, bright uniforms, drums, bugles, trumpets, military music, the cracking of rifles, the thunder of cannon; for me the aurea mediocritas of the poet is enough—a little house full of friends, a great library full of books, a life work and dreams, the death of the righteous in the end, and God will have given me more than I dare to ask. Ah! if I only knew Greek!"

"But what are you going to Pichegru for except to become his aide-de-camp some day."

"No, to be his secretary now; there, my bag is strapped."

"And my trunk is packed."

Eugene went into Charles's room.

"Ah!" said he, "you are fortunate to be able to limit your desires; you have at least some prospect of arriving at your goal, while I—"

"Do you think then that my ambition is not as great as yours, my dear Eugene, and that it is less difficult to become a Diderot than a Maréchal de Saxe, a Voltaire than a Turenne? To be sure, I do not aspire to be either a Diderot or a Voltaire."

"Nor I the Maréchal de Saxe."

"Never mind, we can wish for it, anyway."

At that moment Pierre Augereau's voice could be heard crying at the foot of the stairs: "Now then, young men, dinner is ready!"

"Come, Monsieur Scholar!" said Eugene.

"Come, Citizen General!" said Charles.

By a rare coincidence each one had wished for that which God had destined him to have.

One last word concerning the terrible events of that day; after which we will return to our young friends.

At six o'clock a post-chaise was brought to the guillotine to which Eugene Schneider was tied. It contained two gendarmes, who got out and unfastening Schneider made him enter the carriage and take a seat in it; then they themselves took their places beside him. The post-chaise set off at a gallop on the road to Paris.

On the 12th Germinal, of the year II. (1st of April, 1794), Euloge Schneider, of Vepefeld, was beheaded during the sessions of the revolutionary tribunal, for having by extortions and immoral and cruel vexations, by the most revolting and sanguinary abuse in the name of the revolutionary commission, oppressed, stolen, assassinated, and ravished the honor, the fortune and the tranquillity of peaceable families.

A few days later the poet-shoemaker, Young, the musician, Edelmann, and the ex-prefect of the College of Besançon, Monnet, died upon the same scaffold.

Of the five heads of the individuals which were present at the famous dinner given by Euloge Schneider, when Mademoiselle de Brumpt came to beg for mercy in behalf of her father, that of Charles was the only one which had not been severed from its shoulders at the end of four months.