Читать книгу Wonderful Escapes - Frederic Tscharner Bernard - Страница 18

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During the massacre of St. Bartholomew the murderers found their way into the Rue de la Seine, where lived Monsieur de la Force and his two sons, who were noted for their courageous profession of the condemned doctrines. Monsieur de la Force was strongly urged by his brother to escape, but he refused, because his eldest son, who had been very ill, was not yet able to travel, and he would not leave him behind. He had barely taken his heroic resolution before he was surrounded and made prisoner by a band of zealots, red-handed from the work of death. They threatened him, but desisted for a time when he offered their chief two thousand crowns of ransom. He was then led away with his two sons to a house in the Rue des Petits-Champs, and left there in the custody of two Swiss soldiers, after he had given his solemn word of honour that he would not try to escape. The soldiers felt some pity for the hapless gentleman, and gave him to understand that they would not stand in the way of his flight; but he was a slave to his word, and he refused either to move himself or to allow even his youngest son to be taken to a place of safety.

On the next day, according to the Memoirs of La Force, Count Coconas, with a party of fifty soldiers, came to the house in the Rue des Petits-Champs, and told Monsieur de la Force that he had come to fetch him by order of Monsieur the King’s brother. There was a purposed vagueness in the words which did not escape the unhappy gentleman’s notice, and he asked where he was to be taken, at the same time beginning to make some few alterations in his dress, as if he thought it best to pretend to believe what he had heard. But Coconas spared him this trouble, and at the same time relieved himself of the irksomeness of concealment, by tearing hat and cloak out of his hands before he could put them on. Then both father and sons knew what was intended for them, and began to prepare their minds for death. It soon became evident that they were not being conducted to the apartments of Monsieur in the Louvre; but when De la Force pointed this out to the escort, and complained bitterly of the breach of faith towards him after his offer of ransom had been accepted, they answered not a word, but pushed their victims on towards the slaughterhouse.

The father, bareheaded and without his cloak, walked first; the sons, in the same half-naked condition, followed—the elder, who could scarcely move, but to whom terror had given a little strength, being second; and the younger the last in the dismal column. In this way they were taken the entire length of the Rue des Petits-Champs, until they came to the rampart, when the officer in charge, without a word of warning, called out, “Kill! kill!” and in an instant, a circle of soldiers was formed round the victims, and the daggers were at work. The eldest son fell first with the cry, “O my God, I am dead!” The father, turning instinctively to help him, was struck as he was bending over the body, and fell across him—his shield even in death. The youngest son, by nothing less than a miracle of presence of mind, repeated his brother’s cry before a single dagger had reached him, and fell with the others, though his skin was not so much as scratched. But his body was covered all over with the blood that welled from their wounds, and the assassins stripped him almost naked without once suspecting that he had not received a mortal thrust. When they had treated all their victims in this way, they left their naked and still warm bodies with the contemptuous expression, “There they lie, all three.”

The eldest son was quite dead; his diseased frame had probably offered no resistance to the shock of the first blow; the father was mortally wounded, but he lay a long while gasping out his life, while the frame of his youngest and unhurt child, who had nestled close to him the better to feign death, vibrated to every shudder. The child was, of course, quite conscious, and perhaps his position was the more pitiable of the two, for he lay side by side with death, or worse than death, without daring to stir or to utter a single cry of horror, lest he should bring the assassins back. He remained in this sickening companionship till about four in the afternoon, when some persons crept out of the neighbouring houses to look at the bodies and secure what few valuables the soldiers had left behind. One of these marauders, a marker at tennis, in taking off the stockings of the living child, turned him over with his face to the sky, with the exclamation, “Alas! poor little one, what harm has he done?” “I am not dead,” whispered young Caumont, raising himself gently: “pray, pray, save my life!”

“Hush!” said the man; “keep quiet: they are still there,” and pointing to a group of the murderers who were still hovering about the place, he went away, but returned after a little while, when the coast was clear, and told the child to get up. He had brought a tattered, dirty cloak with him, which he threw over Caumont’s naked shoulders; and in this guise of poverty and wretchedness he drove the child before him through the streets, pretending that he was chastising a runaway nephew who had sold his clothes. By this ruse he contrived to pass almost unquestioned through several groups both of citizens and of soldiers, and to lead the boy to the miserable garret in which he and his family lived.

Caumont hid himself for a while in the straw of the marker’s bed, and tried to get a little sleep. In the meantime the man had observed that he wore several rings of great value; and he asked for them in return for his hospitality as soon as the child awoke. Caumont unhesitatingly drew them one by one off his fingers with the exception of a certain diamond, which had been his mother’s gift; and in answer to a question by the marker’s wife, he told her why he wished to keep it. The woman angrily replied that he ought to grudge nothing to persons who had shown him so much kindness, and who could not afford to be out of pocket by their good actions; and the child knowing how much he was in their power, reluctantly yielded up the coveted reward. She then gave him a meal of very unpalatable food, and her husband offered to guide him to any place of safety he might select. The child at first chose the Louvre, where his sister, Madame de Larchant, was near

“Hush!” said the man, “keep quiet, they are still there.”

the person of the Queen; but the man positively refused to take him there on account of the great risk of his being recognised by some of the guards. “Take me to the arsenal then,” said young De Caumont, “to the house of Madame de Brisambourg, my aunt.” “Agreed,” replied the tennis-marker; “it is a long way, but we will go round by the ramparts, and perhaps we shall be so lucky as not to meet a single person on the road.”

Early the next morning little Caumont, once more disguised in the dirtiest garments, and wearing a red hat bearing a leaden cross, set out with the tennis-marker for the arsenal, which they reached without any noteworthy incident. At the outer gate, Caumont told his guide to go no farther, but to wait until some one should return to him with the dress and thirty crowns. The child at the same time stood ready to enter the arsenal, but he could not summon up courage to call out to the soldiers to open the gate. At length, however, some one came out, and he passed in without having to submit to the dreaded scrutiny. He traversed the first court, and saw several people whom he thought he knew; but he was so effectually concealed in his rags that none of them had a moment’s suspicion of his real identity.

In the massacre in which Caumont had so narrowly escaped death, a page named La Vigerie, and called L’Auvergnat, to distinguish him from a namesake, had met with an equally miraculous preservation. He was with M. de la Force and his two sons in the house in the Rue des Petits-Champs when the Count de Coconas and his party arrived; and he was about to follow his master, when one of the Swiss soldiers said to him, “Look out for yourself; they are going to be killed.” He accordingly stayed behind; and as soon as the party had left he stole quietly out of the house, and followed them at a distance without attracting notice, for he wore the livery of the Count de la Marck, one of the chiefs of the massacre. He watched the assassins at their bloody work, and then hurried away to Madame de Brisambourg at the arsenal, with the news of her brother-in-law’s death. He was kindly received, and though the lady was well-nigh overwhelmed with grief, she took ample measures to provide for his safety.

The young De la Force had stood for some time trembling before Madame de Brisambourg’s door, when it was opened from within, and he saw this page standing in the entry. He called out to him, but in so weak a voice that he was not heard, and the door was closed again. But shortly after it opened a second time, and then he made himself heard, calling out two or three times in the energy of his misery and his despair, “Auvergnat! Auvergnat!” The page ran out, and for a time failed to recognise his young master in the dirty and ill-dressed little boy who began to appeal to him for protection. “Do you not know me, Auvergnat?” inquired the child, looking him full in the face. The Auvergnat returned his gaze, and when at length he found out who it was, his astonishment at this return to life of one slain, as he thought, before his very eyes was almost ludicrous to witness. He at once seized Caumont by the hand, and hurried away with him to a gentleman of the household, by whom he was taken to Madame de Brisambourg. The lady fell on his neck, and for some time could not speak for sobs.

When she was a little recovered Caumont told her his story, and her first care was to have his dress changed, and to send back the bundle of dirty clothes with the promised reward of thirty crowns to the tennis-marker at the outer gate. She then had him put to bed in the room occupied by her waiting-women. After he had slept a little he got up, and dressing himself, by his aunt’s direction, in the livery of the Marshal de Biron, Grand Master of the Artillery, was taken to see that nobleman, and allowed to enter his service as a page, with the Auvergnat for a play-fellow.

He had not been more than two days in the marshal’s apartments when word was brought that the King had heard of fugitives being concealed there, and had directed that the place should be searched. The marshal was greatly incensed, and he ordered four pieces of cannon to be pointed against the principal gate of the arsenal, to repel any attempt at intrusion. Whatever truth there may have been in this particular rumour, the Queen-mother had certainly heard of the escape and concealment of young De la Force; for a very few days after his arrival at the arsenal, she sent a gentleman to the marshal’s apartments, at the instance of a certain M. de Larchant, to demand him. While this messenger was discharging his errand, the child was hurried away into the room of the marshal’s daughters, and concealed between two beds, on which a few farthingales were thrown with such an appearance of carelessness that no one would ever have thought of looking for a fugitive there. When all was ready, the gentleman was invited to begin his search, and he passed through all the rooms without finding the boy. He then returned to the Louvre, with the tidings that the Queen had been deceived by a false rumour, greatly to the disgust and disappointment of M. de Larchant, for it was this person in effect who had mainly instigated the Queen-mother to order the search. He was actuated by the very vilest motives, being next heir after the three De la Forces to a very considerable property. His influence was all-powerful at the palace; and but for this circumstance it is more than probable that none of that family would have been marked for destruction at the massacre.

When the Queen’s gentleman had gone, young Caumont crept out from between the beds and went back to his old place of concealment in the marshal’s apartments. But it was not considered prudent to let him remain there, and the very next day, M. de Born, Lieutenant-general of the Artillery, and a friend of his aunt, took him very secretly to his own lodgings, where they breakfasted. M. de Born then told him that he was to enter the service of M. Guillon, Controller of the Artillery, as page, and that when asked his name he was to say he was son of M. de Beaupuy, a lieutenant under the Marshal de Biron. He at the same time cautioned him particularly against leaving the house when in M. Guillon’s service, and against talking, lest he should by some chance word betray the secret of his identity. The poor child promised faithfully to observe all these directions, and was led away to the controller’s house, trotting by the side of his new protector, who was on horseback because he had a wooden leg, and could not walk without pain.

Arrived at the house, M. de Born delivered the child over to the controller, in a speech full of praises of his friend’s goodness of heart, and lamentations about the disturbed state of the country, which made it very difficult for persons who had the care of young children and such helpless folk to know how best to provide for their security. M. Guillon listened, and readily undertook the charge of young De Beaupuy, as Caumont was called. This was done simply out of his friendship for M. de Born, for the two had been long acquainted; and the fact that, notwithstanding this intimacy, De Born did not think fit to entrust him with the whole secret, may serve to show in what extreme peril the young fugitive was judged to be. Guillon guessed it, nevertheless, from the evident anxiety of his friend, or at least he had a pretty shrewd suspicion that he had not heard all the truth.

Caumont had been some seven or eight days with the controller, and had not failed to do everything M. de Born had told him. His master came home every day to dinner, and it was the new page’s business to let him in; but one day opening the door in answer to a knock at the usual hour, Caumont was surprised to see, in place of M. Guillon, a person he had formerly known. He hastily shut the door in great terror; but the new comer only knocked more loudly than before, and called out that he had a very urgent message to deliver from Madame de Brisambourg. When he had thus gained admittance, he told the child that Madame de Brisambourg had sent him to say that she was in great trouble about her nephew, and wished to have news of him. This said he went away, and the terrified boy still suspecting him, jumped on horseback immediately, and rode to M. de Born to tell him what had happened. M. de Born took him to Madame de Brisambourg for an explanation, but the lady was equally astonished with himself, and said that no messenger had been sent by her.

The peril was immediate, and a council of the child’s friends was held without delay. It was seen that in the neighbourhood in which he then was, the safety of the little fugitive could no longer be reckoned on, and it was resolved to dispatch him into a distant part of the country. The marshal was accordingly prevailed on to apply to the King for a passport for his house-steward, whom he was sending with a page to Guyenne, to look after his affairs in that province. The request was granted; a trusty gentleman of the marshal’s personated the house-steward, and the page was, of course, no other than the poor hunted child. They set out, and thanks to M. de Born, passed safely through the gates of Paris; but when they were about a two days’ journey from the capital, the child was horrified at the sight of a fellow wearing his father’s dressing-gown, whom he recognised as one of the executioners of the Rue des Petits-Champs. The wretch was boasting of his exploits, but some chance words dropped by him acquainted Caumont with the fact that his uncle, with about a hundred of his gentlemen, had escaped the massacre. Farther on their guide put them all in great peril by his imprudence, in publicly condemning the massacre in a little inn in which they stayed. At length, after having escaped many dangers, they arrived on the eighth day of their journey at the chateau of Castelnaut-des-Mirandes, in Guyenne, where the child was received in the arms of his uncle, with every demonstration of gratitude and joy, and where he found plenty, peace, and security awaiting him after all his troubles. (Memoirs of Caumont de la Force.)