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I Will Repay

B >> Baroness Emmuska Orczy >> I Will Repay




Juliette apparently had lost none of her calm, and there was no one
there sufficiently interested in her personality to note the tinge of
delicate colour which, at the first word of Déroulède, had slowly mounted
to her pale cheeks.

Tinville waited until the wave of excitement had broken upon the shoals
of expectancy.

Then he resumed:

"Then, Citizen Déroulède, what have _you_ to say, why sentence should not
be passed upon the accused?"

"I have to say that the accused is innocent of every charge brought
against her in your indictment," replied Déroulède firmly.

"And how do you substantiate this statement, Citizen-Deputy?" queried
Tinville, speaking with mock unctuousness.

"Very simply, Citizen Tinville. The correspondence to which you refer
did not belong to the accused, but to me. It consisted of certain
communications, which I desired to hold with Marie Antoinette, now a
prisoner in the Conciergerie, during my state there as
lieutenant-governor. The Citizeness Juliette Marny, by denouncing me,
was serving the Republic, for my communications with Marie Antoinette
had reference to my own hopes of seeing her quit this country and take
refuge in her own native land."

Gradually, as Déroulède spoke, a murmur, like the distant roar of a
monstrous breaker, rose among the crowd on the upper benches. As he
continued quietly and firmly, so it grew in volume and in intensity,
until his last words were drowned in one mighty, thunderous shout of
horror and execration.

Déroulède, the friend and idol of the people, the privileged darling of
this unruly population, the father of the children, the friend of the
women, the sympathiser in all troubles, Papa Déroulède as the little ones
called him - he a traitor, self-accused, plotting and planning for an
ex-tyrant, a harlot who had called herself a queen, for Marie
Antoinette the Austrian, who had desired and worked for the overthrow
of France! He, Déroulède, a traitor!

In one moment, as he spoke, the love which in their crude hearts they
bore him, that animal primitive love, was turned to sudden, equally
irresponsible hate. He had deceived them, laughed at them, tried to
bribe them by feeding their little ones!

Bah! the bread of the traitor! It might have chocked the children.

Surprise at first had taken their breath away. Already they had
marvelled why he should stand up to defend a wanton. And now, probably
feeling that he was on the point of being found out, he thought it
better to make a clean breast of his own treason, trusting in his
popularity, in his power over the people.

Bah!!!

Not one extenuating circumstance did they find in their hardened hearts
for him.

He had been their idol, enshrined in their squalid, degraded minds, and
now he had fallen, shattered beyond recall, and they hated and loathed
him as much as they had loved him before.

And this his enemies noted, and smiled with complete satisfaction.

Merlin heaved a sigh of relief. Tinville nodded his shaggy head, in
token of intense delight.

What that provincial coal-heaver had foretold had indeed come to pass.

The populace, that most fickle of all fickle things in this world, had
turned all at once against its favourite. This Lenoir had predicted,
and the transition had been even more rapid than he had anticipated.

Déroulède had been given a length of rope, and, figuratively speaking, had
already hanged himself.

The reality was a mere matter of a few hours now. At dawn to-morrow
the guillotine; and the mob of Paris, who yesterday would have torn his
detractors limb from limb, would on the morrow be dragging him, with
hoots and yells and howls of execration, to the scaffold.

The most shadowy of all footholds, that of the whim of a populace, had
already given way under him. His enemies knew it, and were exulting in
their triumph. He knew it himself, and stood up, calmly defiant, ready
for any event, if only he succeeded in snatching her beautiful head
from the ready embrace of the guillotine.

Juliette herself had remained as if entranced. The colour had again
fled from her cheeks, leaving them paler, more ashen than before. It
seemed as if in this moment she suffered more than human creature could
bear, more than any torture she had undergone hitherto.

He would not owe his life to her.

That was the one overwhelming thought in her, which annihilated all
others. His love for her was dead, and he would not accept the great
sacrifice at her hands.

Thus these two in the supreme moment of their life saw each other, yet
did not understand. A word, a touch would have given them both the key
to one another's heart, and it now seemed as if death would part them
for ever, whilst that great enigma remained unsolved.

The Public Prosecutor had been waiting until the noise had somewhat
subsided, and his voice could be heard above the din, then he said,
with a smile of ill-concealed satisfaction:

"And is the court, then, to understand, Citizen-Deputy Déroulède, that it
was you who tried to burn the treasonable correspondence and to destroy
the case which contained it?"

"The treasonable correspondence was mine, and it was I who destroyed
it."

"But the accused admitted before Citizen Merlin that she herself was
trying to burn certain love letters, that would have brought to light
her illicit relationship with another man than yourself," argued
Tinville suavely. The rope was perhaps not quite long enough; Déroulède
must have all that could be given him, ere this memorable sitting was
adjourned.

Déroulède, however, instead of directing his reply straight to his enemy,
now turned towards the dense crowd of spectators, on the benches
opposite to him.

"Citizens, friends, brothers," he said warmly, "the accused is only a
girl, young, innocent knowing nothing of peril or of sin. You all have
mothers, sisters, daughters - have you not watched those dear to you in
the many moods of which a feminine heart is capable; have you not seen
them affectionate, tender, and impulsive? Would you love them so
dearly but for the fickleness of their moods? Have you not worshipped
them in your hearts, for those sublime impulses which put all man's
plans and calculations to shame? Look on the accused, citizens. She
loves the Republic, the people of France, and feared that I, an
unworthy representative of her sons, was hatching treason against our
great mother. That was her first wayward impulse - to stop me before I
committed the awful crime, to punish me, or perhaps only to warn me.
Does a young girl calculate, citizens? She acts as her heart dictates;
her reason but awakes from slumber later on, when the act is done.
Then comes repentance sometimes: another impulse of tendernes which we
all revere. Would you extract vinegar from rose leaves? Just as
readily could you find reason in a young girl's head. Is that a crime?
She wished to thwart me in my treason; then, seeing me in peril, the
sincere friendship she had for me gained the upper hand once more. She
loved my mother, who might be losing a son; she loved my crippled
foster-sister; for _their_ sakes, not for mine - a traitor's - did she
yield to another, a heavenly impulse, that of saving me from the
consequences of my own folly. Wat _that_ a crime, citizens? When you
are eiling, do not your mothers, sisters, wives tend you? when you are
seriously ill, would they not give their heart's blood to save you? and
when, in the dark hours of your lives, some deed which you would not
openly avow before the world overweights your soul with its burden of
remorse, is it not again your womenkind who come to you, with tender
words and soothing voices, trying to ease your aching conscience,
bringing solace, comfort, and peace? And so it was with the accused,
citizens. She had seen my crime, and longed to punish it; she saw
those who had befriended her in sorrow, and she tried to ease their
pain by taking _my_ guilt upon her shoulders. She has suffered for the
noble lie, which she had told on my behalf, as no woman has ever been
made to suffer before. She has stood, white and innocent as your
new-born children, in the pillory of infamy. She was ready to endure
death, and what was ten thousand times worse than death, because of her
own warm-hearted affection. But you, citizens of France, who, above
all, are noble, true, and chivalrous, you will not allow the sweet
impulses of young and tender womanhood to be punished with the ban of
felony. To you, women of France, I appeal in the name of your
childhood, your girlhood, your motherhood; take her to your hearts, she
is worthy of it, worthier now for having blushed before you, worthier
than any heroine in the great roll of honour of France."

His magnetic voice went echoing along the rafters of the great, sordid
Hall of Justice, filling it with a glory it had never known before.
His enthusiasm thrilled his hearers, his appeal to their honour and
chivalry roused all the finer feelings within them. Still hating him
for his treason, his magical appeal had turned their hearts towards her.

They had listened to him without interruption, and now at last, when he
paused, it was very evident, by muttered exclamations and glances cast
at Juliette, that popular feeling, which up to the present had
practically ignored her, now went out towards her personality with
overwhelming sympathy.

Obviously at the present moment, if Juliette's fate had been put to the
plebiscite, she would have been unanimously acquitted.

Merlin, as Déroulède spoke, had once or twice tried to read his friend
Foucquier-Tinville's enigmatical expression, but the Public Prosecutor,
with his face in deep shadow, had not moved a muscle during the
Citizen-Deputy's noble peroration. He sat at his desk, chin resting on
hand, staring before him with an expression of indifference, almost of
boredom.

Now, when Déroulède finished speaking, and the outburst of human enthusiasm
had somewhat subsided, he rose slowly to his feet, and said quietly:

"So you maintain, Citizen-Deputy, that the accused is a chaste and
innocent girl, unjustly charged with immorality?"

"I do," protested Déroulède loudly.

"And will you tell the court why you are so ready to publicly accuse
yourself of treason against the Republic, knowing full well all the
consequences of your action?"

"Would any Frenchman care to save his own life at the expense of a
woman's honour?" retorted Déroulède proudly.

A murmur of approval greeted these words, and Tinville remarked
unctuously:

"Quite so, quite so. We esteem your chivalry, Citizen-Deputy. The
same spirit, no doubt, actuates you to maintain that the accused knew
nothing of the papers which you say you destroyed?"

"She knew nothing of them. I destroyed them; I did not know that they
had been found; on my return to my house I discovered that the
Citizeness Juliette Marny had falsely accused herself of having
destroyed some papers surreptitiously."

"She said they were love letters."

"It is false."

"You declare her to be pure and chaste?"

"Before the whole world."

"Yet you were in the habit of frequenting the bedroom of this pure and
chaste girl, who dwelt under your roof," said Tinville with slow and
deliberate sarcasm.

"It is false."

"If it be false, Citizen Déroulède," continued the other with the same
unctuous suavity, "then how comes it that the correspondence which you
admit was treasonable, and therefore presumably secret - how comes it
that it was found,still smouldering, in the chaste young woman's
bedroom, and the torn letter-case concealed among her dresses in a
valise?"

"It is false."

"The Minister of Justice, Citizen-Deputy Merlin, will answer for the
truth of that."

"It is the truth," said Juliette quietly.

Her voice rang out clear, almost triumphant, in the midst of the
breathless pause, caused by the previous swift questions and loud
answers.

Déroulède now was silent.

This one simple fact he did not know. Anne Mie, in telling him the
events in connection with the arrest of Juliette, had omitted to give
him the one little detail, that the burnt letters were found in the
young girl's bedroom.

Up to the moment when the Public Prosecutor confronted him with it, he
had been under the impression that she had destroyed the papers and the
letter-case in the study, where she had remained alone after Merlin and
his men had left the room. She could easily have burnt them there, as
a tiny spirit lamp was always kept alight on a side table for the use
of smokers.

This little fact now altered the entire course of events. Tinville had
but to frame an indignant ejaculation:

"Citizens of France, see how you are being befooled and hoodwinked!"

Then he turned once more to Déroulède.

"Citizen Déroulède..." he began.

But in the tumult that ensued he could no longer hear his own voice.
The pent-up rage of the entire mob of Paris seemed to find vent for
itself in the howls with which the crowd now tried to drown the rest of
the proceedings.

As their brutish hearts had been suddenly melted on behalf of Juliette,
in response to Déroulède's passionate appeal, so now they swiftly changed
their sympathetic attitude to one of horror and execration.

Two people had fooled and deceived them. One of these they had
reverenced and trusted, as much as their degraded minds were capable of
reverencing anything, therefore _his_ sin seemed doubly damnable.

He and that pale-face aristocrat had for weeks now, months, or year
perhaps, conspired against the Republic, against the Revolution, which
had been made by a people thirsting for liberty. During these months
and years _he_ had talked to them, and they had listened; he had poured
forth treasures of eloquence, cajoled them, as he had done just now.

The noise and hubbub were growing apace. If Tinville and Merlin had
desired to infuriate the mob, they had more than succeeded. All thas
was most bestial, most savage in this awful Parisian populace rose to
the surface now in one wild, mad desire for revenge.

The crowd rushed down from the benches, over one another's heads, over
children's fallen bodies; they rushed down because they wanted to get
at him, their whilom favourite, and at his pale-faced mistress, and
tear them to pieces, hit them, scratch out their eyes. They snarled
like so many wild beasts, the women shrieked, the children cried, and
the men of the National Guard, hurrying forward, had much ado to keep
back this food-tide of hate.

Had any of them broken loose, from behind the barrier of bayonets
hastily raised against them, it would have fared ill with Déroulède and
Juliette.

The Pesident wildly rang his bell, and his voice, quivering with
excitement, was heard once or twice above the din.

"Clear the court! Clear the court!"

But the people refused to be cleared out of court.

"_A la lanterne les traîtres! Mort à Déroulède. A la lanterne! l'aristo!_"

And in the thickest of the crowd, the broad shoulders and massive head
of Citizen Lenoir towered above the others.

At first it seemed as if he had been urging on the mob in its fury.
His strident voice, with its broad provincial accent, was heard
distinctly shouting loud vituperations against the accused.

Then at a given moment, when the tumult was at its height, when the
National Guard felt their bayonets giving way before this onrushing
tide of human jackals, Lenoir changed his tactics.

"_Tiens! c'est bête!_" he shouted loudly, "we shall do far better with
the traitors when we get them outside. What say you, citizens? Shall
we leave the judges here to conclude the farce, and arrange for its
sequel ourselves outside the 'Tigre Jaune'?"

At first but little heed was paid to his suggestion, and he repeated it
once or twice, adding some interesting details:

"One is freer in the streets, where these apes of the National Guard
can't get between the people of France and their just revenge. _Ma
foi!_" he added, squaring his broad shoulders, and pushing his way
through the crowd towards the door, "I for one am going to see where
hangs the most suitable _lanterne._"

Like a flock of sheep the crowd now followed him.

"The nearest _lanterne!_" they shouted. "In the streets - in the
streets! _A la lanterne!_ The traitors!"

And with many a jeer, many a loathsome curse, and still more loathsome
jests, some of the crowd began to file out. A few only remained to see
the conclusion of the farce.





CHAPTER XXVI

Sentence of death.


The "Bulletin du Tribunal Révolutionnaire" tells us that both the accused
had remained perfectly calm during the turmoil which raged within the
bare walls of the Hall of Justice.

Citizen-Deputy Déroulède, however, so the chroniclers aver, though
outwardly impassive, was evidently deeply moved. He had very
expressive eyes, clear mirrors of the fine, upright soul within, and in
them there was a look of intense emotion as he watched the crowd, which
he had so often dominated and controlled, now turning in hatred against
him.

He seemed actually to be seeing with a spiritual vision, his own
popularity wane and die.

But when the thick of the crowd had pushed and jostled itself out of
the hall, that transient emotion seemed to disappear, and he allowed
himself quietly to be led from the front bench, where he had sat as a
privileged member of the National Convention, to a place immediately
behind the dock, and between two men of the National Guard.

From that moment he was a prisoner, accused of treason against the
Republic, and obviously his mock trial would be hurried through by his
triumphant enemies, whilst the temper of the people was at boiling
point against him.

Complete silence had succeeded to the raging tumult of the past few
moments. Nothing now could be heard in the vast room, save
Foucquier-Tinville's hastily whispered instructions to the clerk
nearest to him, and the scratch of the latter's quill pen against the
paper.

The President was, with equal rapidity, affixing his signature to
various papers handed up to him by the other clerks. The few remaining
spectators, the deputies, and those among the crowd who had elected to
see the close of the debate, were silent and expectant.

Merlin was mopping his forehad as if in intense fatigue after a hard
struggle; Robespierre was coolly taking snuff.

From where Déroulède stood, he could see Juliette's graceful figure
silhouetted against the light of the petrol lamp. His heart was torn
between intense misery at having failed to save her and a curious,
exultant joy at thought of dying beside her.

He knew the procedure of this revolutionary tribunal well - knew that
within the next few moments he too would be condemned, that they would
both be hustled out of the crowd and dragged through the streets of
Paris, and finally thrown into the same prison, to herd with those who,
like themselves, had but a few hours to live.

And then to-morrow at dawn, death for them both under the guillotine.
Death in public, with all its attendant horrors: the packed tumbril;
the priest, in civil clothes, appointed by this godless government,
muttering conventional prayers and valueless exhortations.

And in his heart there was nothing but love for her - love and an
intense pity - for the punishment she was suffering was far greater
than her crime. He hoped that in her heart remorse would not be too
bitter; and he looked forward with joy to the next few hours, which he
would pass near her, during which he could perhaps still console and
soothe her.

She was but the victim of an ideal, of Fate stronger than her own will.
She stood, an innocent martyr to the great mistake of her life.

But the minutes sped on. Foucquier-Tinville had evidently completed
his new indictments.

The one against Juliette Marny was read out first. She was now accused
of conspiring with Paul Déroulède against the safety of the Republic, by
having cognisance of a treasonable correspondence carried on with the
prisoner, Marie Antoinette; by virtue of which accusation the Public
Prosecutor asked her if she had anything to say.

"No," she replied loudly and firmly. "I pray to God for the safety and
deliverance of our Queen, Marie Antoinette, and for the overthrow of
this Reign of Terror and Anarchy."

These words, registered in the "Bulletin du Tribunal Révolutionnaire"
were taken as final and irrefutable proofs of her guilt, and she was
then summarily condemned to death.

She was then made to step down from the dock and Déroulède to stand in her
place.

He listened quietly to the long indictment which Foucquier-Tinville had
aldready framed against him the evening before, in readiness for this
contingency. The words "treason against the Republic" occured
conspicuously and repeatedly. The document itself is at one with the
thousands of written charges, framed by that odious Foucquier-Tinville
during these periods of bloodshed, and which in themselves are the most
scathing indictments against the odious travesty of Justice,
perpetrated with his help.

Self-accused, and avowedly a traitor, Déroulède was not even asked if he
had anything to say; sentence of death was passed on him, with the
rapidity and callousness peculiar to these proceedings.

After which Paul Déroulède and Juliette Marny were led forth, under strong
escort, into the street.





CHAPTER XXVII

The Fructidor Riots.


Many accounts, more or less authentic, have been published of the
events known to history as the "Fructidor Riots."

But this is how it all happened: at anyrate it is the version related
some few days later in England to the Prince of Wales by no less a
personage than Sir Percy Blakeney; and who indeed should know better
than The Scarlet Pimpernel himself?

Déroulède and Juliette Marny were the last of the batch of prisoners who
were tried on that memorable day of Fructidor.

There had been such a number of these, that all the covered carts in
use for the conveyance of prisoners to and from the Hall of Justice had
already been despatched with their weighty human load; thus it was that
only a rough wooden cart, hoodless and rickety, was available, and into
this Déroulède and Juliette were ordered to mount.

It was now close on nine o'clock in the evening. The streets of Paris,
sparsely illuminated here and there with solitary oil lamps swung
across from house to house on wires, presented a miserable and squalid
appearance. A thin, misty rain had begun to fall, transforming the
ill-paved roads into morasses of sticky mud.

The Hall of Justice was surrounded by a howling and shrieking mob, who,
having imbibed all the stores of brandy in the neighbouring drinking
bars, was now waiting outside in the dripping rain for the express
purpose of venting its pent-up, spirit-sodden lust of rage against the
man whom it had once worshipped, but whom now it hated. Men, women,
and even children swarmed round the principal entrances of the Palais
de Justice, along the bank of the river as far as the Pont au Change,
and up towards the Luxembourg Palace, now transformed into the prison,
to which the condemned would no doubt be conveyed.

Along the river-bank, and immediately facing the Palais de Justice, a
row of gallows-shaped posts, at intervals of a hundred yards or more,
held each a smoky petrol lamp, at a height of some eight feet from the
ground.

One of these lamps had been knocked down, and from the post itself
there now hung ominously a length of rope, with a noose at the end.

Around this improvised gallows a group of women sat, or rather
squatted, in the mud; their ragged shifts and kirtles, soaked through
with the drizzling rain, hung dankly on their emaciated forms; their
hair, in some cases grey, and in others dark or straw-coloured, clung
matted round their wet faces, on which the dirt and the damp had drawn
weird and grotesque lines.

The men were restless and noisy, rushing aimlessly hither and thither,
from the corner of the bridge, up the Rue du Palais, fearful lest their
prey be conjured away ere their vengeance was satisfied.

Oh, how they hated their former idol now! Citizen Lenoir, with his
broad shoulders and powerful, grime-covered head, towered above the
throng; his strident voice, with its raucous, provincial accent, could
be distinctly heard above the din, egging on the men, shouting to the
women, stirring up hatred against the prisoners, wherever it showed
signs of abating in intensity.

The coal-heaver, hailing from some distant province, seemed to have set
himself the grim task of provoking the infuriated populace to some
terrible deed of revenge against Déroulède and Juliette.

The darkness of the street, the fast-falling mist which obscured the
light from the meagre oil lamps, seemde to add a certain weirdness to
this moving, seething multitude. No one could see his neighbour. In
the blackness of the night the muttering or yelling figures moved about
like some spectral creatures from hellish regions - the Akous of
Brittany who call to those about to die; whilst the women squatting in
the oozing mud, beneath that swinging piece of rope, looked like a
group of ghostly witches, waiting for the hour of their Sabbath.

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