Читать книгу The Last Hope - Henry Seton Merriman - Страница 8

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Dormer Colville smiled doubtfully. He was too polite, it seemed, to be sceptical, and by his attitude expressed a readiness to be convinced as much from indifference as by reasoning.

“It is intolerable,” said the Marquis de Gemosac, “that a man of your understanding should be misled by a few romantic writers in the pay of the Orleans.”

“I am not misled, Marquis; I am ignorant,” laughed Colville. “It is not always the same thing.”

Monsieur de Gemosac threw away his cigarette and turned eagerly toward his companion.

“Listen,” he said. “I can convince you in a few words.”

And Colville leaned back against the weather-worn seat with the air of one prepared to give a post-prandial attention.

“Such a man was found as you yourself suggest. A boy was found who could not refuse to run that great risk, who could not betray himself by indiscreet speech—because he was dumb. In order to allay certain rumours which were going the round of Europe, the National Convention sent three of its members to visit the Dauphin in prison, and they themselves have left a record that he answered none of their questions and spoke no word to them. Why? Because he was dumb. He merely sat and looked at them solemnly, as the dumb look. It was not the Dauphin at all. He was hidden in the loft above. The visit of the Conventionals was not satisfactory. The rumours were not stilled by it. There is nothing so elusive or so vital as a rumour. Ah! you smile, my friend.”

“I always give a careful attention to rumours,” admitted Colville. “More careful than that which one accords to official announcements.”

“Well, the dumb boy was not satisfactory. Those who were paid for this affair began to be alarmed. Not for their pockets. There was plenty of money. Half the crowned heads in Europe, and all the women, were ready to open their purses for the sake of a little boy, whose ill-treatment appealed to their soft hearts: who in a sense was sacred, for he was descended from sixty-six kings. No! Barras and all the other scoundrels began to perceive that there was only one way out of the difficulty into which they had blundered. The Dauphin must die! So the dumb boy disappeared. One wonders whither he went and what his fate might be—”

“With so much to tell,” put in Dormer Colville, musingly; “so much unspoken.”

It was odd how the rôles had been reversed. For the Marquis de Gemosac was now eagerly seeking to convince his companion. The surest way to persuade a man is to lead him to persuade himself.

“The only solution was for the Dauphin to die—in public. So another substitution was effected,” continued Monsieur de Gemosac. “A dying boy from the hospital was made to play the part of the Dauphin. He was not at all like him; for he was tall and dark—taller and darker than a son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette could ever have been. The prison was reconstructed so that the sentry on guard could not see his prisoner, but was forced to call to him in order to make sure that he was there. It was a pity that he did not resemble the Dauphin at all, this scrofulous child. But they were in a hurry, and they were at their wits’ ends. And it is not always easy to find a boy who will die in a given time. This boy had to die, however, by some means or other. It was for France, you understand, and the safety of the Great Republic.”

“One hopes that he appreciated his privilege,” observed Colville, philosophically.

“And he must die in public, duly certified for by persons of undoubted integrity. They called in, at the last moment, Desault, a great doctor of that day. But Desault was, unfortunately, honest. He went home and told his assistant that this was not the Dauphin, and that, whoever he might be, he was being poisoned. The assistant’s name was Choppart, and this Choppart made up a medicine, on Desault’s prescription, which was an antidote to poison.”

Monsieur de Gemosac paused, and, turning to his companion, held up one finger to command his full attention.

“Desault died, my friend, four days later, and Choppart died five days after him, and the boy in the Temple died three days after Choppart. And no one knows what they died of. They were pretty bunglers, those gentlemen of the Republic! Of course, they called in others in a hurry; men better suited to their purpose. And one of these, the citizen Pelletan, has placed on record some preposterous lies. These doctors certified that this was the Dauphin. They had never seen him before, but what matter? Great care was taken to identify the body. Persons of position, who had never seen the son of Louis XVI, were invited to visit the Temple. Several of them had the temerity to protect themselves in the certificate. ‘We saw what we were informed was the body of the Dauphin,’ they said.”

Again the old man turned, and held up his hand in a gesture of warning.

“If they wanted a witness whose testimony was without question—whose word would have laid the whole question in that lost and forgotten grave for ever—they had one in the room above. For the Dauphin’s sister was there, Marie Thérèse Charlotte, she who is now Duchess of Angoulême. Why did they not bring her down to see the body, to testify that her brother was dead and the line of Louis XVI ended? Was it chivalry? I ask you if these had shown chivalry to Madame de Lamballe? to Madame Elizabeth? to Marie Antoinette? Was it kindness toward a child of unparalleled misfortune? I ask you if they had been kind to those whom they called the children of the tyrant? No! They did not conduct her to that bedside, because he who lay there was not her brother. Are we children, Monsieur, to be deceived by a tale of a sudden softness of heart? They wished to spare this child the pain! Had they ever spared any one pain—the National Assembly?”

And the Marquis de Gemosac’s laugh rang with a hatred which must, it seems, outlive the possibility of revenge.

“There was to be a public funeral. Such a ceremony would have been of incalculable value at that time. But, at the last minute, their courage failed them. The boy was thrown into a forgotten corner of a Paris churchyard, at nine o’clock one night, without witnesses. The spot itself cannot now be identified. Do you tell me that that was the Dauphin? Bah! my friend, the thing was too childish!”

“The ignorant and the unlettered,” observed Colville, with the air of making a concession, “are always at a disadvantage—even in crime.”

“That the Dauphin was, in the mean time, concealed in the garret of the Tower appears to be certain. That he was finally conveyed out of the prison in a clothes-basket is as certain, Monsieur, as it is certain that the sun will rise to-morrow. And I believe that the Queen knew, when she went to the guillotine, that her son was no longer in the Temple. I believe that Heaven sent her that one scrap of comfort, tempered as it was by the knowledge that her daughter remained a prisoner in their hands. But it was to her son that her affections were given. For the Duchess never had the gift of winning love. As she is now—a cold, hard, composed woman—so she was in her prison in the Temple at the age of fifteen. You may take it from one who has known her all his life. And from that moment to this—”

The Marquis paused, and made a gesture with his hands, descriptive of space and the unknown.

“From that moment to this—nothing. Nothing of the Dauphin.”

He turned in his seat and looked questioningly up toward the crumbling church, with its square tower, stricken, years ago, by lightning; with its grass-grown graveyard marked by stones all grey and hoary with immense age and the passage of cold and stormy winters.

“Who knows,” he added, “what may have become of him? Who can say where he lies? For a life begun as his began was not likely to be a long one. Though troubles do not kill. Witness myself, who am five years his senior.”

Colville looked at him in obedience to an inviting gesture of the hand; looked as at something he did not understand, something beyond his understanding, perhaps. For the troubles had not been Monsieur de Gemosac’s own troubles, but those of his country.

“And the Duchess?” said the Englishman at length, after a pause, “at Frohsdorf—what does she say—or think?”

“She says nothing,” replied the Marquis de Gemosac, sharply. “She is silent, because the world is listening for every word she may utter. What she thinks … Ah! who knows? She is an old woman, my friend, for she is seventy-one. Her memories are a millstone about her neck. No wonder she is silent. Think what her life has been. As a child, three years of semi-captivity at the Tuileries, with the mob howling round the railings. Three and a half years a prisoner in the Temple. Both parents sent to the guillotine—her aunt to the same. All her world—massacred. As a girl, she was collected, majestic; or else she could not have survived those years in the Temple, alone—the last of her family. What must her thoughts have been, at night in her prison? As a woman, she is cold, sad, unemotional. No one ever lived through such troubles with so little display of feeling. The Restoration, the Hundred Days, the second Restoration, Louis XVIII, and his flight to England; Charles X and his abdication; her own husband, the Duc d’Angoulême—the Dauphin for many years, the King for half an hour—these are some of her experiences. She has lived for forty years in exile in Mittau, Memel, Warsaw, Königsberg, Prague, England; and now she is at Frohsdorf, awaiting the end. You ask me what she says? She says nothing, but she knows—she has always known—that her brother did not die in the Temple.”

“Then—” suggested Colville, who certainly had acquired the French art of putting much meaning into one word.

“Then why not seek him? you would ask. How do you know that she has not done so, my friend, with tears? But as years passed on, and brought no word of him, it became less and less desirable. While Louis XVIII continued to reign there was no reason to wish to find Louis XVII, you understand. For there was still a Bourbon, of the direct line, upon the throne. Louis XVIII would scarcely desire it. One would not expect him to seek very diligently for one who would deprive him of the crown. Charles X, knowing he must succeed his brother, was no more enthusiastic in the search. And the Duchess d’Angoulême herself, you ask? I can see the question in your face.”

“Yet,” conceded Colville. “For, after all, he was her brother.”

“Yes—and if she found him, what would be the result? Her uncle would be driven from the throne; her father-in-law would not inherit; her own husband, the Dauphin, would be Dauphin no longer. She herself could never be Queen of France. It is a hard thing to say of a woman—”

Monsieur de Gemosac paused for a moment in reflection.

“Yes,” he said at length, “a hard thing. But this is a hard world, Monsieur Colville, and will not allow either men or women to be angels. I have known and served the Duchess all my life, and I confess that she has never lost sight of the fact that, should Louis XVII be found, she herself would never be Queen of France. One is not a Bourbon for nothing.”

“One is not a stateswoman and a daughter of kings for nothing,” amended Colville, with his tolerant laugh; for he was always ready to make allowances. “Better, perhaps, that France should be left quiet, under the régime she had accepted, than disturbed by the offer of another régime, which might be less acceptable. You always remind me—you, who deal with France—of a lion-tamer at a circus. You have a very slight control over your performing beasts. If they refuse to do the trick you propose, you do not press it, but pass on to another trick; and the bars of the cage always appear to the onlooker to be very inadequate. Perhaps it was better, Marquis, to let the Dauphin go; to pass him over, and proceed to the tricks suitable to the momentary humour of your wild animals.”

The Marquis de Gemosac gave a curt laugh, which thrilled with a note of that fearful joy known to those who seek to control the uncontrollable.

“At that time,” he admitted, “it might be so. But not now. At that time there lived Louis XVIII and Charles X, and his sons, the Duc d’Angoulême and the Duc de Berri, who might reasonably be expected to have sons in their turn. There were plenty of Bourbons, it seemed. And now—where are they? What is left of them?”

He gave a nod of the head toward the sea that lay between him and Germany.

“One old woman, over there, at Frohsdorf, the daughter of Marie Antoinette, awaiting the end of her bitter pilgrimage—and this Comte de Chambord. This man who will not when he may. No, my friend, it has never been so necessary to find Louis XVII as it is now. Necessary for France—for the whole world. This Prince President, this last offshoot of a pernicious republican growth, will drag us all in the mud if he gets his way with France. And those who have watched with seeing eyes have always known that such a time as the present must eventually come. For France will always be the victim of a clever adventurer. We have foreseen it, and for that reason we have treated as serious possibilities these false Dauphins who have sprung up like mushrooms all over Europe and even in America. And what have they proved? What have the Bourbons proved in frustrating their frauds? That the son of Louis XVI did not die in the Temple. That is all. And Madame herself has gathered further strength to her conviction that the little King was not buried in that forgotten corner of the graveyard of Sainte Marguérite. At the same time, she knows that none of these—neither Naundorff, nor Havergault, nor Bruneau, nor de Richemont, nor any other pretender—was her brother. No! The King, either because he did not know he was King, or because he had had enough of royalty, never came forward and never betrayed his whereabouts. He was to be sought; he is still to be sought. And it is now that he is wanted.”

“That is why I offer to tell you this story now. That is my reason for bringing you to Farlingford now,” said Colville, quietly. It seemed that he must have awaited, as the wise do in this world, the propitious moment, and should it never come they are content to forego their purpose. He gave a light laugh and stretched out his long legs, contemplating his strapped trousers and neat boots with the eye of a connoisseur. “And should I be the humble means of doing a good turn to France and others, will France—and others—remember it, I wonder. Perhaps I hold in my hands the Hope of France, Marquis.”

He paused, and lapsed for a moment into thought. It was eight o’clock, and the long northern twilight was fading into darkness now. The bell of Captain Clubbe’s ship rang out the hour—a new sound in the stillness of this forgotten town.

“The Last Hope,” added Dormer Colville, with a queer laugh.