Читать книгу The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic - Эжен Сю - Страница 17

Table of Contents

The deputy of the Third Estate was a man in the prime of life; his intellectual face betrayed more of diplomacy than of frankness. The disorder of his apparel and the perspiration that covered his brow bespoke the precipitancy of his return. His pallor, the contortion of his features, the fear portrayed upon them, disclosed the anxiety of his mind. But his whole expression relaxed at sight of Charlotte and her mother. He pressed them several times in turn to his bosom, and cried joyously:

"Dear wife—dear daughter—embrace me again! I never before thought what a consolation in these cursed times the sweet joys of the domestic hearth would prove."

And again embracing his wife and daughter, the advocate added, "Blessings on you both for your presence. You have made me forget for a moment the atrocities committed by a cannibal people!"

As Monsieur Desmarais uttered these last words, a storm of triumphal outcries, first distant, then gradually drawing nearer, smote upon his ear: "Victory! The Bastille is taken by the people! Down with the court! Down with the traitors! Down with the King! Death to the King! Long live the Nation!"

Then as gradually the cries moved away and died out in the distance.

"The Bastille is taken—but how much blood had to be shed in the heroic attack!" thought Charlotte, endeavoring to curb her apprehensions for John Lebrenn. Then, carrying her handkerchief to her lips to smother a sob, she added to herself, "He is dead, perhaps. O, God, have pity on my grief."

"What mean these cries, my friend?" asked Madam Desmarais of her husband. "Is it possible that the Bastille has fallen into the hands of the people? Can the working classes have overcome the army? In what sort of times do we live?"

"The Bastille is taken! Cursed day—the people are on top!"

Charlotte heard with astonishment the execrations of her father on the victory just won by the people. But before she was able to explain to herself this revulsion in her father's beliefs, Gertrude re-entered the room, calling out through the open door—

"Good news again! Mother Lebrenn, our neighbor, has sent one of her apprentices to inform you that she has just received a note from Monsieur John, saying that he received a slight gunshot wound in the shoulder during the battle—and announcing that the people is everywhere victorious!"

"John Lebrenn!" exclaimed Monsieur Desmarais, enraged. "He took part in that insurrection! Send answer to Mother Lebrenn that I take no interest in parties to massacre!" Then recollecting himself, he added, "No—say to the apprentice that you have delivered the message."

"Not a word of interest, and John wounded," thought Charlotte. "Ah, at least, thanks to You, my God, John's wound is slight. I need not tremble for his life."

"If the revolution one of these days miscarries, it will be the fools of the stamp of this Lebrenn who will be to blame," continued Desmarais bitterly. "They will not comprehend that the ideal government is a bourgeois, constitutional monarchy, amenable to the courts, disarmed, and subordinated to an assembly of representatives of the Third Estate. These miserable workingmen dishonor the revolution by assassination."

"Father," responded Charlotte firmly, her forehead flushed with a generous resolve, "Monsieur John Lebrenn can not be called an assassin."

"I, too, believed in the honesty of that workman whom I showered with favors, in spite of the warnings of your uncle Hubert," replied Desmarais. "But when John Lebrenn takes part in this insurrection, I withdraw my esteem. I look upon him as a brigand!"

"John Lebrenn a brigand!" exclaimed Charlotte, unable to restrain her indignation. "Is it you, father, who thus insult a man whom you but now called your friend! What a contradiction in your language!"

"My dear husband," interposed Madam Desmarais, interrupting her daughter to retard an explanation of which she dreaded the issue: "You have not yet told us what compelled your departure from Versailles, and why you are in Paris instead of in session with the National Assembly."

"Last evening and night the most sinister rumors were in circulation about Versailles. According to some, the court party had secured from the King the dissolution of the Assembly. The members of the Left were to be arrested as seditious characters, and imprisoned or banished from the kingdom."

"Great heaven—that is where you sit, my friend! To what danger have you not been exposed!"

"They would not have taken me from my curule chair alive," responded the attorney grandly. "But the court party, frightened by the peals of the cannon at the Bastille, the roar of which carried to Versailles, drew back before the fearsome consequences of such an attempt."

"I breathe again," exclaimed Madam Desmarais with a sigh of relief. "You are neither a fugitive nor proscribed. God be praised!"

"Still, other reports agitated Versailles and the Assembly on the score of the uneasiness in Paris. During the night they saw, from the housetops, the gleam of burning barriers. In the morning a courier despatched by Baron Bezenval, commandant of Paris, brought news to the government that the people of the suburb of St. Antoine, assisted by those from the other suburbs, were besieging the Bastille. This sort of aggression was considered by the majority of the representatives an enterprise as blameworthy as it was senseless. No one could conjecture that a mob of people, in rags, almost without arms, could take a fortress defended by a garrison and a battery of artillery. The attempt was in the highest degree extravagant."

"The victory of the people was truly heroic," answered Madam Desmarais. "It really savors of the miraculous."

"Alas, a few more miracles of that stamp and the royal power is overthrown, and we fall into anarchy," moodily replied the advocate. "The people, drunk with its triumph, will not content itself with wise reforms. Having overthrown the royalty, the nobility, and the clergy, it will turn on the bourgeoisie, and we, its allies during the combat, shall become its victims after the victory. It will push to the end the logic of its principles."

"Good heavens, my friend, you express to-day the same opinions you till lately fought in my brother!"

"Your brother Hubert is a violent man who knows nothing of politics," answered the attorney, much embarrassed by his wife's observation; and he added, "This morning the National Assembly, wishing to ascertain the truth as to the conflicting rumors of events in Paris, commissioned several of its members, myself among the number, to learn by actual witness the march of affairs, and, if possible, to check the shedding of blood. In spite of our haste to the city, when we arrived the people were already masters of the Bastille and had already disgraced their victory by slaughtering the Marquis De Launay, governor of the fortress, and several officers. These murders were then followed by ghoulish scenes, which I beheld with my own eyes. But everything in its time. My colleagues and I went to the City Hall. We succeeded, with much effort, in working our way through the swarms of people in arms. We saw the unhappy Flesselles, President of the Committee of Notables, livid, whelmed with blows and insults, his clothing torn to ribbons, dragged into the square and massacred: after the noble, the bourgeois! Among the assassins I remarked a brawny giant, with the face of a gallows-bird, and a little short man whose visage half vanished under a shock of red beard, evidently false, who dragged at his side a young boy of eight or nine years. At one instant I thought that the unhappy Fleselles might be saved, but the declamations of the red-bearded man and the giant raised to a paroxysm the fury of a band of savages whom they seemed to direct, and I knew then that the Provost of the merchants was lost. The fellow with the red beard drew up to him and cracked his head at one blow, with the butt of his pistol. The savage band hurled itself upon the unfortunate man as he fell to earth, and riddled him with wounds. The giant put the climax to the horrible deed: he cut off the head and impaled it on the end of a pike. Then the whole band of scoundrels, the little boy along with the rest, began to dance around the hideous trophy, singing and shouting."

"My blood freezes in my veins, my friend, when I think of the danger you ran in the midst of that frantic populace," said Madam Desmarais. "Those madmen are worse than cannibals—and Paris seems to be in their power."

"That is what I saw; but unfortunately that is not the only crime there is to deplore. Other murders followed this first one. The blood thus shed threw the populace into a species of frenzy. Finally I was able to escape, to get out of the crowd, and I hastened to you, dear wife, and to our daughter. These are the crimes that the takers of the Bastille either perpetrated, or are accomplices in. By giving the signal for insurrection, they have thrown the people into all the dangers of a revolt. That is why John Lebrenn is no better in my eyes than a common bandit."

"You are unjust, father, toward him whom you called your friend," ventured Charlotte, in a voice firm with resolution. "On reflection you will return to sentiments that are more just to Monsieur Lebrenn."

Struck with astonishment at his daughter's words and tone, the advocate questioned his wife with a look, as if to seek the cause of this strange appeal on the part of Charlotte for Monsieur John.

"It is I, father, who can give you the explanation you seek of my mother. I shall not falter in doing so," said Charlotte; and after a momentary pause she continued:

"I shall not recall to you how many times you have uttered yourself in terms of friendship and esteem for Monsieur Lebrenn. The good opinion you held of him was merited, and I dare vouch that he will continue to show himself worthy of it. I shall not recall to you the proofs of devotion Monsieur Lebrenn has given you, notably at the time of your election. It is not willingly that I bring back to your memory the incident of the outrage of which you were the victim at the instigation of Monsieur the Count of Plouernel, and which you communicated to Monsieur Lebrenn in confidence one evening about two months ago. It costs me much to reopen in your heart that rankling wound. But do you remember the generous choler with which Monsieur Lebrenn was seized at your revelation? 'I am but a mechanic, and without doubt this great lord will consider me unworthy to raise a sword against him,' said Monsieur John to you, 'but I swear to God, I shall punish the wretch with these stout arms that heaven has bestowed upon me.' Already he was bounding towards the door to be off to avenge your insult, when you and my mother stopped him with great difficulty, plying your supplications to make him promise not to attack your enemy. And then, clasping him in your arms, you said to him, your voice quivering with emotion, and your eyes filled with tears, 'Ah, my friend, you shall be my son; for no otherwise than as a son did you feel the insult I received. This mark of attachment, joined to all the other proofs of your affection, renders you so dear to my heart that from this moment I shall look upon you as one of the members of our family. You have won all our hearts—'"

"And what has all this to do with the excesses which Monsieur Lebrenn has been one of the instigators of, and with the assassinations which I have witnessed? Come, speak clearly, explain yourself. I understand nothing of all this pathos."

"By what right, father, do you render Monsieur Lebrenn responsible for a murder to which he was an entire stranger?"

"But whence this great interest, my daughter, in taking the part of Monsieur Lebrenn against your father?"

"In spite of my ignorance of politics, dear father, I know that in attacking the Bastille the people wished to destroy the house of durance where shuddered so many innocent victims. And perhaps Monsieur Lebrenn, in joining himself with the insurgents, hoped to find his father in one of the dungeons of the fortress."

"And if by chance he should discover him!" exclaimed advocate Desmarais, more and more surprised and irritated at his daughter's persistence in defending Lebrenn. "Does that chance absolve him from the excesses for which the taking of the Bastille was the signal? Ought not the responsibility for these acts fall upon those who took part in the attack, among others on Monsieur Lebrenn, who, it seems, is one of the leaders of the insurrection?"

"Does the memory of services rendered, father, weigh so heavily upon you that you seek to evade all recollection of them, under the pretext of a responsibility which you endeavor to load on a generous man for the crimes committed by others?"

"Do you know, Charlotte," answered the advocate severely, after a few moments' reflection, "that your persistence in defending that man would justly give me strange suspicions regarding your conduct?"

"My friend," interrupted Madam Desmarais, "do not attach any importance to a few words which have escaped our daughter in a moment of excitement."

"You are mistaken, dear mother. I am perfectly calm. But I can not submit to hearing a man of heart and honor calumniated without protesting against what I regard as a great wrong to him. Why should I not say to father what I have just said to you, mother—that for two months my faith has been pledged to Monsieur John Lebrenn, that I have sworn to him to have no other husband than he? And I shall add, before you, my father, and you, my mother, that I shall be true to my promise."

"Great God!" cried the advocate, stunned with amazement, "that miserable workman has dared to raise his eyes to my daughter! He has stolen my child from me! Death and damnation, I shall have vengeance!"

"You are in error, father; your daughter has not been stolen away," proudly returned Charlotte. "That miserable workingman in whose presence you have so many times argued against the privileges of birth, against the artificial distinctions which separate the classes in society—that miserable workingman whom you treated as a friend, an equal, when you judged his support necessary to your ambition—that miserable workingman placed his faith in the sincerity of your professions, father, he saw in me his equal—and his love has been as pure, as respectful as it has been deep—and devoted—and my heart—is given to him—"

"You are a brazen hussy!" yelled the lawyer, pale with rage. "Leave my presence! You disgrace my name!"

"On the contrary, father, I hope I do honor to your name, in putting into practise those principles of equality and fraternity whose generous promoter you have made yourself."

At that moment the noise of many voices was heard under the windows of the Desmarais apartment, crying enthusiastically: "Long live Citizen Desmarais! Long live the friend of the people! Long live our representative!" These eloquent testimonies of the popular affection for Monsieur Desmarais offered so strange a contradiction to the reproaches which he had just addressed to Charlotte, that under the impression of the contrast the lawyer, his wife and his daughter fell silent.

"Do you hear them, father?" Charlotte at last ventured. "These brave people believe, the same as I, in the sincerity of your principles of equality. They acclaim you as the friend of the people."

At the same instant Gertrude ran into the room breathless with excitement, exclaiming: "A troop of the vanquishers of the Bastille, with Monsieur John Lebrenn at their head, has halted before the house. They want monsieur to appear on the balcony and address them."

"Death of my life! This is too much," snarled the advocate, at the moment that new cries resounded from without:

"Long live Citizen Desmarais. Long live the friend of the people! Come out! Come out! Long live the Nation! Down with the King! Death to the aristocrats!"

"My friend, you can not hesitate. You will run the greatest danger by not appearing and saying a few good words to these maniacs. In bad fortune we must show a good heart," said Madam Desmarais, alarmed; then addressing Gertrude: "Quick, quick, open the window to the balcony."