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I Will Repay

B >> Baroness Emmuska Orczy >> I Will Repay




Sir Percy deposited his large person in the capacious depths of a
creaky chair, stretched his long limbs out before him, and said quietly:

"I am only staying in this demmed hole until the moment when I can drag
you out of this murderous city."

Déroulède shook his head.

"You'd best go back to England, then," he said, "for I'll never leave
Paris now."

"Not without Juliette Marny, shall we say?" rejoined Sir Percy placidly.

"And I fear me that she has placed herself beyond our reach," said
Déroulède sombrely.

"You know that she is in the Luxembourg Prison?" queried the Englishman
suddenly.

"I guessed it, but could find no proof."

"And that she will be tried to-morrow?"

"They never keep a prisoner pining too long," replied Déroulède bitterly.
"I guessed that too."

"What do you mean to do?"

"Defend her with the last breath in my body."

"You love her still, then?" asked Blakeney, with a smile.

"Still?" The look, the accent, the agony of a hopeless passion
conveyed in that one word, told Sir Percy Blakeney all that he wished
to know.

"Yet she betrayed you," he said tentatively.

"And to atone for that sin - an oath, mind you, friend, sworn to her
father - she is already to give her life for me."

"And you are prepared to forgive?"

"To understand _is_ to forgive," rejoined Déroulède simply, "and I love
her."

"Your madonna!" said Blakeney, with a gently ironical smile.

"No; the woman I love, with all her weaknesses, all her sins; the woman
to gain whom I would give my soul, to save whom I will give my life."

"And she?"

"She does not love me - would she have betrayed me else?"

He sat beside the table, and buried his head in his hands. Not even
his dearest friend should see how much he had suffered, how deeply his
love had been wounded.

Sir Percy said nothing, a curious, pleasant smile lurked round the
corners of his mobile mouth. Through his mind there flitted the vision
of beautiful Marguerite, who had so much loved yet so deeply wronged
him, and, looking at his friend, he thought that Déroulède too would soon
learn all the contradictions, which wage a constant war in the
innermost recesses of a feminine heart.

He made a movement as if he would say something more, something of
grave import, then seemed to think better of it, and shrugged his broad
shoulders, as if to say:

"Let time and chance take their course now."

When Déroulède looked up again Sir Percy was sitting placidly in the
arm-chair, with an absolutely blank expression on his face.

"Now that you know how much I love her, my friend," said Déroulède as soon
as he had mastered his emotions, "will you look after her when they
have condemned me, and save her for my sake?"

A curious, enigmatic smile suddenly illumined Sir Percy's earnest
countenance.

"Save her? Do you attribute supernatural powers to me, then, or to The
League of The Scarlet Pimpernel?"

"To you, I think," rejoined Déroulède seriously.

Once more it seemed as if Sir Percy were about to reveal something of
great importance to his friend, then once more he checked himself. The
Scarlet Pimpernel was, above all, far-seeing and practical, a man of
action and not of impulse. The glowing eyes of his friend, his
nervous, febrile movements, did not suggest that he was in a fit state
to be entrusted with plans, the success of which hung on a mere thread.

Therefore Sir Percy only smiled, and said quietly:

"Well, I'll do my best."





CHAPTER XXIII

Justice.


The day had been an unusally busy one.

Five and thirty prisoners, arraigned before the bar of the Committee of
Public Safety, had been tried in the last eight hours - an average of
rather more than four to the hour; twelve minutes and a half in which
to send a human creature, full of life and health, to solve the great
enigma which lies hidden beyond the waters of the Styx.

And Citizen-Deputy Foucquier-Tinville, the Public Prosecutor, had
surpassed himself. He seemed indefatigable.

Each of these five and thirty prisoners had been arraigned for treason
against the Republic, for conspiracy with her enemies, and all had to
have irrefutable proofs of their guilt brought before the Committee of
Public Safety. Sometimes a few letters, written to friends abroad, and
seized at the frontier; a word of condemnation of the measures of the
extremists; and expression of horror at the massacres on the Place de
la Révolution, where the guillotine creakde incessantly - these were
irrefutable proofs; or else perhaps a couple of pistols, or an old
family sword seized in the house of a peaceful citizen, would be
brought against a prisoner, as an irrefutable proof of his warlike
dispositions against the Republic.

Oh! it was not difficult!

Out of five and thirty indictments, Foucquier-Tinville had obtained
thirty convictions.

No wonder his friends declared that he had surpassed himself. It had
indeed been a glorious day, and the glow of satisfaction as much as the
heat, caused the Public Prosecutors to mop his high, bony cranium
before he had adjourned for the much-needed respite for refreshment.

The day's work was not yet done.

The "politicals" had been disposed of, and there had been such an
accumulation of them recently that it was difficult to keep pace with
the arrests.

And in the meanwhile the criminal record of the great city had not
diminished. Because men butchered one another in the name of Equality,
there were none the fewer among the Fraternity of thieves and petty
pilferers, of ordinary cut-throats and public wantons.

And these too had to be dealt with by law. The guillotine was
impartial, and fell with equal velocity on the neck of the proud duke
and the gutter-born _fille de joie,_ on a descendant of the Bourbons
and the wastrel born in a brothel.

The ministerial decrees favoured the proletariat. A crime against the
Republic was indefensible, but one against the individual was dealt
with, with all the paraphernalia of an elaborate administration of
justice. There were citizen judges and citizen advocates, and the
rabble, who crowded in to listen to the trials, acted as honorary jury.

It was all thoroughly well done. The citizen criminals were given
every chance.

The afternoon of this hot August day, one of the last of glorious
Fructidor, had begun to wane, and the shades of evening to slowly creep
into the long, bare room where this travesty of justice was being
administered.

The Citizen-President sat at the extreme end of the room, on a rough
wooden bench, with a desk in front of him littered with papers.

Just above him, on the bare, whitewashed wall, the words: "La République:
une et indivisible," and below them the device: "Liberté, Egalité,
Fraternité!"

To the right and left of the Citizen-President, four clerks were busy
making entries in that ponderous ledger, that amazing record of the
foulest crimes the world has ever known, the "Bulletin du Tribunal
Révolutionnaire."

At present no one is speaking, and the grating of the clerks' quill
pens against the paper is the only sound which disturbs the silence of
the hall.

In front of the President, on a bench lower than his, sits Citizen
Foucquier-Tinville, rested and refreshed, ready to take up his
occupation, for as may hours as his country demands it of him.

On every desk a tallow candle, smoking and spluttering, throws a weird
light, and more weird shadows, on the faces of clerks and President, on
blank walls and ominous devices.

In the centre of the room a platform surrounded by an iron railing is
ready for the accused. Just in front of it, from the tall, raftered
ceiling above, there hangs a small brass lamp, with a green _abat-jour._

Each side of the long, whitewashed walls there are three rows of
benches, beautiful old carved oak pews, snatched from Nôtre Dame and from
the Churches of St Eustache and St Germain l'Auxerrois. Instead of the
pious worshippers of mediaeval times, they now accommodate the
lookers-on of the grim spectacle of unfortunates, in their brief halt
before the scaffold.

The front row of these benches is reserved for those citizen-deputies
who desire to be present at the debates of the Tribunal Révolutonnaire.
It is their privilege, almost their duty, as representatives of the
people, to see that the sittings are properly conducted.

These benches are already well filled. At one end, on the left,
Citizen Merlin, Minister of Justice, sits; next to him Citizen-Minister
Lebrun; also Citizen Robespierre, still in the height of his
ascendancy, and watching the proceedings with those pale, watery eyes
of his and that curious, disdainful smile, which have earned for him
the nickname of "the sea-green incorruptible."

Other well-known faces are there also, dimly outlined in the
fast-gathering gloom. But everyone notes Citizen-Deputy Déroulède, the
idol of the people, as he sits on the extreme end of a bench on the
right, with arms tightly folded across his chest, the light from the
hanging lamp falling straight on his dark head and proud, straight
brows, with the large, restless, eager eyes.

Anon the Citizen-President rings a hand-bell, and there is a discordant
noise of hoarse laughter and loud curses, some pushing, jolting, and
swearing, as the general public is admitted into the hall.

Heaven save us! What a rabble!
Has humanity really such a scum?

Women with single ragged kirtle and shift, through the interstices of
which the naked, grime-covered flesh shows shamelessly: with bare legs,
and feet thrust into heavy sabots, hair dishevelled, and evil,
spirit-sodden faces: women without a semblance of womanhood, with
shrivelled, barren breasts, and dry, parched lips, that have never
known how to kiss. Women without emotion save that of hate, without
desire, save for the satisfaction of hunger and thirst, and lust for
revenge against their sisters less wretched, less unsexed than
themselves. They crowd in, jostling one another, swarming into the
front rows of the benches, where they can get a better view of the
miserable victims about to be pilloried before them.

And the men without a semblance of manhood. Bent under the heavy care
of their own degradation, dead to pity, to love, to chilvary; dead to
all save an inordinate longing for the sight of blood.

And God help them all! for there were the children too. Children -
save the mark! - with pallid, precocious little faces, pinched with the
ravages of starvation, gazing with dim, filmy eyes on this world of
rapacity and hideousness. Children who have seen death!

Oh, the horror of it! Not beautiful, peaceful death, a slumber or a
dream, a loved parent or fond sister or brother lying all in white
admidst a wealth of flowers, but death in its most awesome aspect,
violent, lurid, horrible.

And now they stare around them with eager, greedy eyes, awaiting the
amusement of the spectacle; gazing at the President, with his tall
Phrygian cap; at the clerks wielding their indefatigable quill pens,
writing, writing, writing; at the flickering lights, throwing clouds of
sooty smoke, up to the dark ceiling above.

Then suddenly the eyes of one little mite - a poor, tiny midget not yet
in her teens - alight on Paul Déroulède's face, on the opposite side of the
rooms.

"_Tiens!_ Papa Déroulède!" she says, pointing an attenuated litte finger
across at him, and turning eagerly to those around her, her eyes
dilating in wishful recollection of a happy afternoon spent in Papa
Déroulède's house, with fine white bread to eat in plenty, and great jars
of foaming milk.

He rouses himself from his apathy, and his great earnest eyes lose
their look of agonised misery, as he responds to the greeting of the
little one.

For one moment - oh! a mere fraction of a second - the squalid faces,
the miserable, starved expressions of the crowd, soften at sight of
him. There is a faint murmur among the women, which perhaps God's
recording angel registered as a blessing. Who knows?

Foucquier-Tinville suppresses a sneer, and the Citizen-President
impatiently rings his hand-bell again.

"Bring forth the accused!" he commands in stentorian tones.

There is a movement of satisfaction among the crowd, and the angel of
God is forced to hide his face again.





CHAPTER XXIV

The trial of Juliette.


It is all indelibly placed on record in the "Bulletin du Tribunal
Révolutionnaire," under date 25th Fructidor, year I. of the Revolution.

Anyone who cares may read, for the Bulletin is in the Archives of the
Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris.

One by one the accused had been brought forth, escorted by two men of
the National Guard in ragged, stained uniforms of red, white, and blue;
they were then conducted to the small raised platform in the centre of
the hall, and made to listen to the charge brought against them by
Citizen Foucquier-Tinville, the Public Presecutor.

They were petty charges mostly: pilfering, fraud, theft, occasionally
arson or manslaughter. One man, however, was arraigned for murder with
highway robbery, and a woman for the most ignoble traffic, which evil
feminine ingenuity could invent.

These two were condemned to the guillotine, the others sent to the
galleys at Brest or Toulon - the forger along with the petty thief, the
housebreaker with the absconding clerk.

There was no room in the prison for ordinary offences against the
criminal code; they were overfilled already with so-called traitors
against the Republic.

Three women were sent to the penitentiary at the Salpêtriere, and were
dragged out of the court shrilly protesting their innocence, and
followed by obscene jeers from the spectators on the benches.

Then there was a momentary hush.

Juliette Marny had been brought in.

She was quite calm, and exquisitely beautiful, dressed in a plain grey
bodice and kirtle, with a black band round her slim waist and a soft
white kerchief folded across her bosom. Beneath the tiny, white cap
her golden hair appeared in dainty, curly profusion; her child-like,
oval face was very white, but otherwise quite serene.

She seemed absolutely unconscious of her surroundings, and walked with
a firm step up to the platform, looking neither to the right nor to the
left of her.

Therefore she did not see Déroulède. A great, a wonderful radiance seemed
to shine in her large eyes - the radiance of self-sacrifice.

She was offering not only her life, but everything a woman of
refinement holds most dear, for the safety of the man she loved.

A feeling that was almost physical pain, so intense was it, overcame
Déroulède, when at last he heard her name loudly called by the Public
Prosecutor.

All day he had waited for this awful moment, forgetting his own misery,
his own agonised feeling of an irretrievable loss, in the horrible
thought of what _she_ would endure, what _she_ would think, when first
she realised the terrible indignity, which was to be put upon her.

Yet for the sake of her, of her chances of safety and of ultimate
freedom, it was undoubtedly best that it should be so.

Arraigned for conspiracy against the Republic, she was liable to secret
trial, to be brought up, condemned, and executed before he could even
hear of her whereabouts, before he could throw himself before her
judges and take all guilt upon himself.

Those suspected of treason against the Republic forfeited, according to
Merlin's most iniquitous Law, their rights of citizenship, in publicity
of trial and in defence.

It all might have been finished before Déroulède knew anything of it.

The other way was, of course, more terrible. Brought forth amongst the
scum of criminal Paris, on a charge, the horror of which, he could but
dimly hope that she was too innocent to fully understand, he dared not
even think of what she would suffer.

But undoubtedly it was better so.

The mud thrown at her robes of purity could never cling to her, and at
least her trial would be public; he would be there to take all infamy,
all disgrace, all opprobrium on himself.

The strength of his appeal would turn her judges' wrath from her to
him; and after these few moments of misery, she would be free to leave
Paris, France, to be happy, and to forget him and the memory of him.

An overwhelming, all-compelling love filled his entire soul for the
beautiful girl, who had so wronged, yet so nobly tried to save him. A
longing for her made his very sinews ache; she was no longer madonna,
and her beauty thrilled him, with the passionate, almost sensuous
desire to give his life for her.

The indictment against Juliette Marny has become history now.

On that day, the 25th Fructidor, at seven o'clock in the evening, it
was read out by the Public Prosecutor, and listened to by the accused -
so the Bulletin tells us - with complete calm and apparent
indifference. She stood up in that same pillory where once stood poor,
guilty Charlotte Corday, where presently would stand proud, guiltless
Marie Antoinette.

And Déroulède listened to the scurrilous document, with all the outward
calm, his strenght of will could command. He would have liked to rise
from his seat then and there, at once, and in mad, purely animal fury
have, with a blow of his fist, quashed the words in
Foucquier-Tinville's lying throat.

But for the sake he was bound to listen, and, above all, to act
quietly, deliberately, according to form and procedure, so as in no way
to imperil her cause.

Therefore he listened whilst the Public Prosecutor spoke.

"Juliette Marny, you are hereby accused of having, by a false and
malicious denunciation, slandered the person of a representative of the
people; you caused the Revolutionary Tribunal, through this same
mischievous act, to bring a charge against this representative of the
people, to institute a domiciliary search in his house, and to waste
valuable time, which otherwise belonged to the service of the Republic.
And this you did, not from a misguided sense of duty towards your
country, but in wanton and impure spirit, to be rid of the surveillance
of one who had your welfare at heart, and who tried to prevent your
leading the immoral life which had become a public scandal, and which
has now brought you before this court of justice, to answer to a charge
of wantonness, impurity, defamation of character, and corruption of
public morals. In proof of which I now place before the court your own
admission, that more than one citizen of the Republic has been led by
you into immoral relationship with yourself; and further, your own
admission, that your accusation against Citizen-Deputy Déroulède was false
and mischievous; and further, and finally, your immoral and obscene
correspondence with some persons unknown, which you vainly tried to
destroy. In consideration of which, and in the name of the people of
France, whose spokesman I am, I demand that you be taken hence from
this Hall of Justice to the Place de la Révolution, in full view of the
citizens of Paris an its environs, and clad in a soiled white garment,
emblem of the smirch upon your soul, that there you be publicly whipped
by the hands of Citizen Samson, the public executioner; after which,
that you be taken to the prison of the Salpêtriere, there to be further
detained at the discretion of the Committee of Public Safety. And now,
Juliette Marny, you have heard the indictment preferred against you,
have you anything to say, why the sentence which I have demanded shall
not be passed upon you?"

Jeers, shouts, laughter, and curses greeted this speech of the Public
Prosecutor.

All that was most vile and most bestial in this miserable, misguided
people struggling for Utopia and Liberty, seemed to come to the
surface, whilst listening to the reading of this most infamous document.

The delight of seeing this beautiful, ethereal woman, almost unearthly
in her proud aloofness, smirched with the vilest mud to which the
vituperation of man can contrive to sink, was a veritable treat to the
degraded wretches.

The women yelled hoarse approval; the children, not understanding,
laughed in mirthless glee; the men, with loud curses, showed their
appreciation of Foucquier-Tinville's speech.

As for Déroulède, the mental agony he endured surpassed any torture which
the devils, they say, reserve for the damned. His sinews cracked in
his frantic efforts to control himself; he dug his finger-nails into
his flesh, trying by physical pain to drown the sufferings of his mind.

He thought that his reason was tottering, that he would go mad if he
heard another word of this infamy. The hooting and yelling of that
filthy mob sounded like the cries of lost souls, shrieking from hell.
All his pity for them was gone, his love for humanity, his devotion to
the suffering poor.

A great, an immense hatred for this ghastly Revolution and the people
it professed to free filled his whole being, together with a mad,
hideous desire to see them suffer, starve, die a miserable, loathsome
death. The passion of hate, that now overwhelmed his soul, was at
least as ugly as theirs. He was, for one brief moment, now at one with
them in their inordinate lust for revenge.

Only Juliette throughout all this remained calm, silent, impassive.

She had heard the indictment, heard the loathsome sentence, for her
white cheeks had gradually become ashy pale, but never for a moment did
she depart from her attitude of proud aloofness.

She never once turned her head towoards the mob who insulted her. She
waited in complete passiveness until the yelling and shouting had
subsided, motionless save for her finger-tips, which beat an impatient
tattoo upon the railing in front of her.

The Bulletin says that she took out her handkerchief and wiped her face
with it. _Elle s'essuya le front qui fut perlé de sueur._ The heat had
become oppressive.

The atmosphere was overcharged with the dank, penetrating odour of
steaming, dirty clothes. The room, though vast, was close and
suffocating, the tallow candles flickering in the humid, hot air threw
the faces of the President and clerks into bold relief, with curious
caricature effects of light and shade.

The petrol lamp above the head of the accused had flared up, and begun
to smoke, causing the chimney to crack with a sharp report. This
diversion effected a momentary silence among the crowd, and the Public
Prosecutor was able to repeat his query:

"Juliette Marny, have you anything to say in reply to the charge
brought against you, and why the sentence which I have demanded should
not be passed against you?"

The sooty smoke from the lamp came down in small, black, greasy
particles; Juliette with her slender finger-tips flicked one of these
quietly off her sleeve, the she replied:

"No; I have nothing to say."

"Have you instructed an advocate to defend you, according to your
rights of citizenship, which the Law allows?" added the Public
Prosecutor solemnly.

Juliette would have replied at once; her mouth had already framed the
No with which she meant to answer.

But now at last had come Déroulède's hour. For this he had been silent,
had suffered and had held his peace, whilst twice twenty-four hours had
dragged their weary lenghts along, since the arrest of the woman he
loved.

In a moment he was on his feet before them all, accustomed to speak, to
dominate, to command.

"Citiziness Juliette Marny has entrusted me with her defence," he said,
even before the No had escaped Juliette's white lips, "and I am here to
refute the charges brought against her, and to demand in the name of
the people of France full acquittal and justice for her."





CHAPTER XXV

The defence.


Intense excitement, which found vent in loud applause, greeted Déroulède's
statement.

"_Ça ira! ça ira! vas-y Déroulède!_" came from the crowded benches round; and
men, women, and children, wearied with the monotony of the past
proceedings, settled themselves down for a quarter of an hour's keen
enjoyment.

If Déroulède had anything to do with it, the trial was sure to end in
excitement. And the people were always ready to listen to their
special favourite.

The citizen-deputies, drowsy after the long, oppressive day, seemed to
rouse themselves to renewed interest. Lebrun, like a big, shaggy dog,
shook himself free from creeping somnolence. Robespierre smiled
between his thin lips, and looked across at Merlin to see how the
situation affected him. The enmity between the Minister of Justice and
Citizen Déroulède was well known, and everyone noted, with added zest, that
the former wore a keen look of anticipated triumph.

High up, on one of the topmost benches, sat Citizen Lenoir, the
stage-manager of this palpitating drama. He looked down, with obvious
satisfaction, at the scene which he himself had suggested last night to
the members of the Jacobin Club. Merlin's sharp eyes had tried to
pierce the gloom, which wrapped the crowd of spectators, searching
vainly to distinguish the broad figure and massive head of the
provincial giant.

The light from the petrol lamp shone full on Déroulède's earnest, dark
countenance as he looked Juliette's infamous accuser full in the face,
but the tallow candles, flickering weirdly on the President's desk,
threw Tinville's short, spare figure and large, unkempt head into
curious grotesque silhouette.

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