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I Will Repay

B >> Baroness Emmuska Orczy >> I Will Repay




"Déroulède is too important a man to be tried without proofs. The whole
mob of Paris would have turned on us for having arraigned him, for
having dared lay hands upon his sacred person."

"Without proofs? Who said there were no proofs?" queried Lenoir.

"I found the burnt papers and torn letter-case in the woman's room.
She owned that they were love letters, and that she had denounced Déroulède
in order to be rid of him."

"Then let me tell you, Citizen-Deputy Merlin, that a true patriot would
have found those papers in Déroulède's, and not the woman's room; that in
the hands of a faithful servant of the Republic those documents would
not all have been destroyed, for he would have 'found' one letter
addressed to the Widow Capet, which would have proved conclusively that
Citizen-Deputy Déroulède was a traitor. That is what a true patriot would
have done - what I would have done. _Pardi!_ since Déroulède is so
important a personage, since we must all put on kid gloves when we lay
hands upon him, then let us fight him with other weapons. Are we
aristocrats that we should hesitate to play the part of jackal to this
cunning fox? Citizen-Deputy Merlin, are you the son of some ci-devant
duke or prince that you dared not _forge_ a document which would bring
a traitor to his doom? Nay; let me tell you, friends, that the
Republic has no use for curs, and calls him a traitor who allows one of
her enemies to remain inviolate through his cowardice, his terror of
that intangible and fleeting shadow - the wrath of a Paris mob."

Thunderous applause greeted this peroration, which had been delivered
with an accompaniment of violent gesture and a wealth of obscene
epithets, quite beyond the power of the mere chronicler to render.
Lenoir had a harsh, strident voice, very high pitched, and he spoke
with a broad, provincial accent, somewhat difficult to locate, but
quite unlike the hoarse, guttural tones of the low-class Parisian. His
enthusiasm made him seem impressive. He looked, in his ragged,
dust-stained clothes, the very personification of the squalid herd
which had driven culture, art, refinement to the scaffold in order to
make way for sordid vice, and satisfied lusts of hate.





CHAPTER XXI

A Jacobin orator.


Tinville alone had remained silent during Lenoir's impassioned speech.
It seemed to be his turn now to become surly. He sat picking his
teeth, and staring moodily at the enthusiastic orator, who had so
obviously diverted popular feeling in his own direction. And Tinville
brooked popularity only for himself.

"It is easy to talk now, Citizen - er - Lenoir. Is that your name?
Well, you are a comparative stranger here, Citizen Lenoir, and have not
yet proved to the Republic that you can do ought else but talk."

"If somebody did not talk, Citizen Tinville - is that your name?"
rejoined Lenoir, with a sneer - "if somebody didn't talk, nothing would
get done. You all sit here, and condemn the Citizen-Deputy Merlin for
being a fool, and I must say I am with you there, but..."

"_Pardi!_ tell us your 'but' citizen," said Tinville, for the
coal-heaver had paused, as if trying to collect his thoughts. He had
dragged a wine barrel to collect his thoughts. He had dragged a wine
barrel close to the trestle table, and now sat astride upon it, facing
Tinville and the group of Jacobins. The flickering tallow candle
behind him threw into bold silhouette his square, massive head, crowned
with its Phrygian cap, and the great breadth of his shoulders, with the
shabby knitted spencer and low, turned-down collar.

He had long, thin hands, which were covered with successive coats of
coal dust, and with these he constanly made weird gestures, as if in
the act of gripping some live thing by the throat.

"We all know that the Deputy Déroulède is a traitor, eh?" he said,
addressing the company in general.

"We do," came with uniform assent from all those present.

"Then let us put it to the vote. The Ayes mean death, the Noes
freedom."

"Ay, ay!" came from every hoarse, parched throat; and twelve gaunt hand
were lifted up demanding death for Citizen-Deputy Déroulède.

"The Ayes have it," said Lenoir quietly, "Now all we need do is to
decide how best to carry out our purpose."

Merlin, very agreeable surprised to see public attention thus diverted
from his own misdeeds, had gradually lost his surly attitude. He too
dragged one of the wine barrels, which did duty for chairs, close to
the trestle table, and thus the members of the nameless Jacobin club
made a compact group, picturesque in its weird horror, its
uncompromising, flaunting ugliness.

"I suppose," said Tinville, who was loth to give up his position as
leader of these extremists - "I suppose, Citizen Lenoir, that you are
in position to furnish me with proofs of the Citizen-Deputy's guilt?"

"If I furnish you with such proofs, Citizen Tinville," retorted the
other, "will you, as Public Prosecutor, carry the indictment through?"

"It is my duty to publicy accuse those who are traitors to the
Republic."

"And you, Citizen Merlin," queried Lenoir, "will you help the Republic
to the best of yourn ability to be rid of a traitor?"

"My services to the cause of our great Revolution are too well known -"
began Merlin.

But Lenoir interrupted him with impatience.

"_Pardi!_but we'll have no rhetoric now, Citizen Merlin. We all know
that you have blundered, and that the Republic cares little for those
of her sons who have failed, but whilst your are still Minister of
Justice the people of France have need of you - for bringing _other_
traitors to the guillotine."

He spoke this last phrase slowly and significantly, lingering on the
word "other," as if he wished its whole awesome meaning to penetrate
well into Merlin's brain.

"What is your advice then, Citizen Lenoir?"

Apparently, by unanimous consent, the coalheaver, from some obscure
province of France, had been tacitly acknowledged the leader of the
band. Merlin, still in terror for himself, looked to him for advice;
even Tinville was ready to be guided by him. All were at one in their
desire to rid themselves of Déroulède, who by his clean living, his
aloofness from their own hideous orgies and deadly hates, seemed a
living reproach to them all; and they all felt that in Lenoir there
must exist some secret dislike of the popular Citizen-Deputy, which
would give him a clear insight of how best to bring about his downfall.

"What is your advice?" had been Merlin's query, and everyone there
listened eagerly for what was to come.

"We are all agreed," commenced Lenoir quietly, "that just at this
moment it would be unwise to arraign the Citizen-Deputy without
material proof. The mob of Paris worship him, and would turn against
those who had tried to dethrone their idol. Now, Citizen Merlin failed
to furnish us with proofs of Déroulède's guilt. For the moment he is a
free man, and I imagine a wise one; within two days he will have
quitted this country, well knowing that, if he stayed long enough to
see his popularity wane, he would also outstay his welcome on earth
altogether."

"Ay! Ay! said some of the men approvingly, whilst others laughed
hoarsely at the weird jest.

"I propose, therefore," continued Lenoir after a slight pause, "that it
shall be Citizen-Deputy Déroulède himself who shall furnish to the people
of France proofs of his own treason against the Republic."

"But how? But how?" rapid, loud and excited queries greeted this
extraordinary suggestion from the provincial giant.

"By the simplest means imaginable," retorted Lenoir with imperturbable
calm. "Isn't there a good proverb which our grandmothers used to
quote, that if you only give a man a sufficient length of rope, he is
sure to hang himself? We'll give our aristocrate Citizen-Deputy plenty
of rope, I'll warrant, if only our present Minister of Justice," he
added, indicating Merlin, "will help us in the little comedy which I
propose that we should play."

"Yes! Yes! Go on!" said Merlin excitedly.

"The woman who denounced Déroulède - that is our trump card," continued
Lenoir, now waxing enthusiastic with his own scheme and his own
eloquence. "She denounced him. Ergo, he had been her lover, whom she
wished to be rid of - why? Not, as Citizen Merlin supposed, because he
had discarded her. No, no; she had another lover - she has admitted
that. She wished to be rid of Déroulède to make way for the other, because
he was too persistent - ergo, because he loved her."

"Well, and what does that prove?" queried Tinville with dry sarcasm.

"It proves that Déroulède, being in love with the woman, would do much to
save her from the guillotine."

"Of course."

"_Pardi!_ let him try, say I," rejoined Lenoir placidly. "Give him the
rope with wich to hang himself."

"What does he mean?" asked one or two of the men, whose dull brains had
not quite as yet grasped the full meaning of this monstrous scheme.

"You don't understand what I mean, citizens; you think I am mad, or
drunk, or a traitor like Déroulède? _Eh bien!_ give me your attention five
minutes longer, and you shall see. Let me suppose that we have reached
the moment when the woman - what is her name? Oh! ah! yes! Juliette
Marny - stands in the Hall of Justice on her trial before the Committee
of Public Safety. Citizen Foucquier-Tinville, one of our greatest
patriots, reads the indictment against her: the papers surreptitiously
burnt, the torn, mysterious letter-case found in her room. If these
are presumed, in the indictment, to be treasonable correspondence with
the enemies of the Republic, condemnation follows at once, then the
guillotine. There is no defence, no respite. The Minister of Justice,
according to Article IX of the Law framed by himself, allows no
advocate to those directly accused of treason. But," continued the
giant, with slow and calm impressiveness, "in the case of ordinary,
civil indictments, offences against public morality or matters
pertaining to the penal code, the Minister of Justice allows the
accused to be publicly defended. Place Juliette Marny in the dock on a
treasonable charge, she will be hustled out of the court in a few
minutes, amongst a batch of other traitors, dragged back to her own
prison, and executed in the early dawn, before Déroulède has had time to
frame a plan for her safety or defence. If, then, he tries to move
heaven and earth to rescue the woman he loves, the mob of Paris may, -
who knows? - take his part warmly. They are mad where Déroulède is
concerned; and we all know that two devoted lovers have ere now found
favour with the people of France - a curious remnant of sentimentalism,
I suppose - and the popular Citizen-Deputy knows better than anyone
else on earth, how to play upon the sentimental feelings of the
populace. Now, in the case of a penal offence, mark where the
difference would be! The woman Juliette Marny, arraigned for
wantonness, for an offence against public morals; the burnt
correspondence, admitted to be the letters of a lover - her hatred for
Déroulède suggesting the false denunciation. Then the Minister of Justice
allows an advocate to defend her. She has none in court; but think you
Déroulède would not step forward, and bring all the fervour of his
eloquence to bear in favour of his mistress? Can you hear his
impassioned speech on her behalf? - I can - the rope, I tell you,
citizens, with which he'll hang himself. Will he admit in open court
that the burnt correspondence was another lover's letters? No! - a
thousand times no! - and, in the face of his emphatic denial of the
existence of another lover for Juliette, it will be for our clever
Public Prosecutor to bring him down to an admission that the
correspondence was his, that it was treasonable, that she burnt them to
save him."

He paused, exhausted at last, mopping his forehead, then drinking large
gulps of brandy to ease his parched throat.

A veritable chorus of enthusiasm greeted the end of his long
peroration. The Machiavelian scheme, almost devilish in its cunning,
in its subtle knowledge of human nature and of the heart-strings of a
noble organisation like Déroulède's, commended itself to these patriots,
who were thirsting for the downfall of a superior enemy.

Even Tinville lost his attitude of dry sarcasm; his thin cheeks were
glowing with the lust of the fight.

Already for the past few months, the trials before the Committee of
Public Safety had been dull, monotonous, uninteresting. Charlotte
Corday had been a happy diversion, but otherwise it had been the case
of various deputies, who had held views that had become too moderate,
or of the generals who had failed to subdue the towns or provinces of
the south.

But now this trial on the morrow - the excitement of it all, the trap
laid for Déroulède, the pleasure of seeing him take the first step towards
his own downfall. Everyone there was eager and enthusiastic for the
fray. Lenoir, having spoken at such length, had now become silent, but
everyone else talked, and drank brandy, and hugged his own hate and
likely triumph.

For several hours, far into the night, the sitting was continued. Each
one of the score of members had some comment to make on Lenoir's
speech, some suggestion to offer.

Lenoir himself was the first to break up this weird gathering of human
jackals, already exulting over their prey. He bad his companions a
quiet good-night, then passed out into the dark street.

After he had gone there were a few seconds of complete silence in the
dark and sordid room, where men's ugliest passions were holding
absolute sway. The giant's heavy footsteps echoed along the ill-paved
street, and gradually died away in the distance.

Then at last Foucquier-Tinville, the Public Prosecutor, spoke:

"And who is that man?" he asked, addressing the assembly of patriots.

Most of them did not know.

"A provincial from the north," said one of the men at last; "he has
been here several times before now, and last year he was a fairly
constant attendant. I believe he is a butcher by trade, and I fancy he
comes from Calais. He was originally brought here by Citizen Brogard,
who is good patriot enough."

One by one the members of this bond of Fraternity began to file out of
the Cheval Borgne. They nodded curt good-nights to each other, and
then went to their respective abodes, which surely could not be
dignified with the name of home.

Tinville remained one of the last; he and Merlin seemed suddenly to
have buried the hatchet, which a few hours ago had threatened to
destroy one of the other of these whilom bosom friends.

Two or three of the most ardent of these ardent extremists had gathered
round the Public Prosecutor, and Merlin, the framer of the Law of the
Suspect.

"What say you, citizens?" said Tinville at last quietly. "That man
Lenoir, meseems, is too eloquent - eh?"

"Dangerous," pronounced Merlin, whilst the others nodded approval.

"But his scheme is good," suggested one of the men.

"And we'll avail ourselves of it," assented Tinville, "but
afterwards..."

He paused, and once more everyone nodded approval.

"Yes; he is dangerous. We'll leave him in peace to-morrow, but
afterwards..."

With a gentle hand Tinville caressed the tall double post, which stood
in the centre of the room, and which was shaped like the guillotine.
An evil look was on his face: the grin of a death-dealing monster,
savage and envious. The others laughed in grim content. Merlin
grunted a surly approval. He had no cause to love the provincial
coal-heaver who had raised a raucous voice to threaten him.

Then, nodding to one another, the last of the patriots, satisfied with
this night's work, passed out into the night.

The watchman was making his rounds, carrying his lantern, and shouting
his customary cry:

"Inhabitants of Paris, sleep quietly. Everything is in order,
everything is at peace."





CHAPTER XXII

The close of day.


Déroulède had spent the whole of this same night in a wild, impassioned
search for Juliette.

Earlier in the day, soon after Anne Mie's revelations, he had sought
out his English friend, Sir Percy Blakeney, and talked over with him
the final arrangements for the removal of Madame Déroulède and Anne Mie
from Paris.

Though he was a born idealist and a Utopian, Paul Déroulède had never for a
moment had any illusions with regard to his own popularity. He knew
that at any time, and for any trivial cause, the love which the mob
bore him would readily turn to hate. He had seen Mirabeau's popularity
wane, La Fayette's, Desmoulin's - was it likely that _he_ alone would
survive the inevitable death of so ephemeral a thing?

Therefore, whilst he was in power, whilst he was loved and trusted, he
had, figuratively and actually, put his house in order. He had made
full preparations for his own inevitable downfall, for that probable
flight from Paris of those who were dependent upon him.

He had, as far back as a year ago, provided himself with the necessary
passports, and bespoken with his English friend certain measures for
the safety of his mother and his crippled little relative. Now it was
merely a question of putting these measures into execution.

Within two hours of Juliette Marny's arrest, Madame Déroulède and Anne Mie
had quitted the house in the Rue Ecole de Médecine. They had but little
luggage with them, and were ostensibly going into the country to visit
a sick cousin.

The mother of the popular Citizen-Deputy was free to travel unmolested.
The necessary passports which the safety of the Republic demanded were
all in perfect order, and Madame Déroulède and Anne Mie passed through the
north gate of Paris an hour before sunset, on that 24th day of
Fructidor.

Their large travelling chaise took them some distance on the Norht
Road, where they were to meet Lord Hastings and Lord Anthony Dewhurst,
two of The Scarlet Pimpernel's most trusted lieutenants, who were to
escort them as far as the coast, and thence see them safely aboard the
English yacht.

On that score, therefore, Déroulède had no anxiety. His chief duty was to
his mother and to Anne Mie, and that was now fully discharged.

Then there was old Pétronelle.

Ever since the arrest of her young mistress the poor old soul had been
in a state of mind bordering on frenzy, and no amount of eloquence on
Déroulède's part would persuade her to quit Paris without Juliette.

"If my pet lamb is to die," she said amidst heart-broken sobs, "then I
have no cause to live. Let those devils take me along too, if they
want a useless, old woman like me. But if my darling is allowed to go
free, then what would become of her in this awful city without me? She
and I have never been separated; she wouldn't know where to turn for a
home. And who would cook for her and iron out her kerchiefs, I'd like
to know?"

Reason and common sense were, of course, powerless in face of this
sublime and heroic childishness. No one had the heart to tell the old
woman that the murderous dog of the Revolution seldom loosened its
fangs, once they had closed upon a victim.

All Déroulède could do was to convey Pétronelle to the old abode, which
Juliette had quitted in order to come to him, and which had never been
formally given up. The worthy soul, calmed and refreshed, deluded
herself into the idea that she was waiting for the return of her young
mistress, and became quite cheerful at sigth of the familiar room.

Déroulède had provided her with money and necessaries. He had but few
remaining hopes in his heart, but among them was the firmly implanted
one that Pétronelle was too insignificant to draw upon herself the
terrible attention of the Committee of Public Safety.

By the nightfall he had seen the good woman safely installed. Then
only did he feel free.

At last he could devote himself to what seemed to him the one, the
only, aim of his life - to find Juliette.

A dozen prisons in this vast Paris!

Over five thousand prisoners on that night, awaiting trial,
condemnation and death.

Déroulède at first, strong in his own power, his personality, had thought
that the task would be comparatively easy.

At the Palais de Justice they would tell him nothing: the list of new
arrests had not yet been handled in by the commandant of Paris, Citizen
Santerre, who classified and docketed the miserable herd of aspirants
for the next day's guillotine.

The lists, moreover, would not be completed until the next day, when
the trials of the new prisoners would already be imminent.

The work of the Committee of Public Safety was done without much delay.

Then began Déroulède's weary quest through those twelve prisons of Paris.
From the Temple to the Conciergerie, from Palais Condé to the Luxembourg,
he spent hours in the fruiless search.

Everywhere the same shrug of the shoulders, the same indifferent reply
to his eager query:

"Juliette Marny? _Inconnue._"

Unknown! She had not yet been docketed, not yet classified; she was
still one of that immense flock of cattle, sent in ever-increasing
numbers to the slaughter-house.

Presently, to-morrow, after a trial which might last ten minutes, after
a hasty condemnation and quick return to prison, she would be listed as
one of the traitors, whom this great and beneficent Republic sent daily
to the guillotine.

Vainly did Déroulède try to persuade, to entreat, to bribe. The sullen
guardians of these twelve charnel-houses knew nothing of individual
prisoners.

But the Citizen-Deputy was allowed to look for himself. He was
conducted to the great vaulted rooms of the Temple, to the vast
ballrooms of the Palais Condé, where herded the condemned and those still
awaiting trial; he was allowed to witness there the grim farcical
tragedies, with which the captives beguiled the few hours which
separated them from death.

Mock trials were acted there; Tinville was mimicked; then the Place de
la Révolution; Samson the headsman, with a couple of inverted chairs to
represent the guillotine.

Daughters of dukes and princes, descendants of ancient lineage, acted
in these weird and ghastly comedies. The ladies, with hair bound high
over their heads, would kneel before the inverted chairs, and place the
snowwhite necks beneath this imaginary guillotine. Speeches were
delivered to a mock populace, whilst a mock Santerre ordered a mock
roll of drums to drown the last flow of eloquence of the supposed
victim.

Oh! the horror of it all - the pity, pathos, and misery of this ghastly
parody, in the very face of the sublimity of death!

Déroulède shuddered when first he beheld the scene, shuddered at the very
thought of finding Juliette amongst these careless, laughing,
thoughtless mimes.

His own, his beautiful Juliette, with her proud face and majestic,
queen-like gestures; it was a relief not to see her there.

"Juliette Marny? _Inconnue,_" was the final word he heard about her.

No one told him that by Deputy Merlin's strictest orders she had been
labelled "dangerous", and placed in a remote wing of the Luxembourg
Palace, together with a few, who, like herself, were allowed to see no
one, communicate with no one.

Then when the _couvre-feu_ had sounded, when all public places were
closed, when the night watchman had begun his rounds, Déroulède knew that
his quest for that night must remain fruitless.

But he could not rest. In and out the tortuous streets of Paris he
roamed during the better part of that night. He was now only awaiting
the dawn to publicly demand the right to stand beside Juliette.

A hopeless misery was in his heart, a longing for a cessation of life;
only one thing kept his brain active, his mind clear: the hope of
saving Juliette.

The dawn was breaking in the far east when, wandering along the banks
of the river, he suddenly felt a touch on his arm.

"Come to my hovel," said a pleasant, lazy voice close to his ear,
whilst a kindly hand seemed to drag him away from the contemplation of
the dark, silent river. "And a demmed, beastly place it is too, but at
least we can talk quietly there."

Déroulède, roused from his meditation, looked up, to see his friend, Sir
Percy Blakeney, standing close beside him. Tall, débonnair,
well-dressed, he seemed by his very presence to dissipate the morbid
atmosphere which was beginning to weigh upon Déroulède's active mind.

Déroulède followed him readily enough through, the intricate mazes of old
Paris, and down the Rue des Arts, until Sir Percy stopped outside a
small hostelry, the door of which stood wide open.

"Mine host has nothing to lose from footpads and thieves," explained
the Englishman as he guided his friend through the narrow doorway, then
up a flight of rickety stairs, to a small room on the floor above. "He
leaves all doors open for anyone to walk in, but, la! the interior of
the house looks so uninviting that no one is tempted to enter."

"I wonder you care to stay here," remarked Déroulède, with a momentary
smile, as he contrasted in his mind the fastidious appearance of his
friend with the dinginess and dirt of these surroundings.

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