The Trampling of the Lilies Page 4

  CHAPTER IV. THE DISCIPLES OF ROUSSEAU

  The Marquis of Bellecour would, perhaps have philosophised lesscomplacently had he known that the secretary was far from dead, and thatwhat the executioner had, genuinely enough, mistaken for death was nomore than a passing swoon. Under ordinary circumstances he might nothave been satisfied to have taken the fellow's word; he would himselfhave ascertained the truth of the statement by a close inspection of thevictim. But, as we have seen, the news came as so desirable a solutionto the altercation that was waxing 'twixt himself and Des Cadoux that hewas more than glad to avail himself of it.

  The discovery that Caron lived was made while they were cutting him downfrom his pillory, and just as the Marquis was turning to go within. Aflutter of the eyelids and a gasp for breath announced the fact, andthe executioner was on the point of crying out his discovery whenMademoiselle's eyes flashed him a glance of warning, and her voicewhispered feverishly:

  "Hush! There are ten louis for each of you if you but keep silent andcarry him to Master Duhamel as I told you."

  The secretary opened his eyes but saw nothing, and a low moan escapedhim. She shot a fearful glance at the retreating figure of her father,whilst Gilles--the executioner--hissed sharply into his ear:

  "Mille diables! be still, man. You are dead."

  Thus did he escape, and thus was he borne--a limp, agonised, andbleeding mass, to the house of Duhamel. The old schoolmaster receivedthem with tears in his eyes--nor were they altogether tears of sorrow,for all that poor Caron's mangled condition grieved him sorely; theywere in a measure tears of thankfulness; for Duhamel had not dared hopeto see the young man alive again.

  At the pedagogue's door stood a berline, and within his house there wasa visitor. This was a slight young man of medium stature, who had notthe appearance of more than twenty-five years of age, for all that, asa matter of fact, he was just over thirty. He was dressed with soscrupulous a neatness as to convey, in spite of the dark colour of hisgarments, an impression almost of foppishness. There was an amplitudeabout his cravat, an air of extreme care about the dressing of his wigand the powdering of it, and a shining brightness about his buttons andthe buckles of his shoes which seemed to proclaim the dandy, just asthe sombreness of the colour chosen seemed to deny it. In his singularlypale countenance a similar contradiction was observable. The weak,kindly eyes almost appeared to give the lie to the astute prominence ofhis cheekbones; the sensitiveness of the mouth seemed neutralised by thethinness of the lips, whilst the oddly tip-tilted nose made a mock ofthe austerity of the brow.

  He was perfectly at ease in his surroundings, and as La Boulaye wascarried into the schoolmaster's study and laid on a couch, he cameforward and peered curiously at the secretary's figure, voicing aninquiry concerning him.

  "It is the young man of whom I was telling you, Maximilien," answeredDuhamel. "I give thanks to God that they have not killed him outright.It is a mercy I had not expected from those wolves, and one which, on mysoul, I cannot understand."

  "Monsieur," said Gilles, "will understand it better perhaps if I tellyou that the Marquis believes him to be dead. He was cut down for dead,and when we discovered that he still lived it was Mademoiselle whoprevailed upon us to save him. She is paying us to keep the secret, butnot a fortune would tempt me if I thought the Seigneur were ever likelyto hear of it. He must be got away from Bellecour; indeed, he must begot out of Picardy at once, Monsieur. And you must promise me that thisshall be done or we will carry him back to the Chateau and tell theMarquis that he has suddenly revived. I must insist, Monsieur; for ifever it should transpire that he was not dead the Seigneur would hangus."

  The stranger's weak eyes seemed to kindle in anger, and his lips curleduntil they exaggerated the already preposterous tilt of his nose.

  "He would hang you, eh?" said he. "Ma foi, Duhamel, we shall change allthis very soon, I promise you."

  "God knows it needs changing," growled Duhamel. "It seems that it wasonly in the Old Testament that Heaven interfered with human iniquity.Why it does not rain fire and brimstone on the Chateau de Bellecourpasses the understanding of a good Christian. I'll swear that in neitherSodom nor Gomorrah was villainy more rampant."

  The stranger plucked at his sleeve to remind him of the presence of theservants from the Chateau. Duhamel turned to them.

  "I will keep him concealed here until he is able to get about," heassured them. "Then I shall find him the means to leave the province."

  But Gilles shook his head, and his companion grunted an echo of hisdisapproval.

  "That will not serve, master," he answered sullenly. "What if theSeigneur should have word of his presence here? It is over-dangerous.Someone may see him. No, no, Either he leaves Bellecour this very night,and you swear that he shall, or else we carry him back to the Chateau."

  "But how can I swear this?" cried Duhamel impatiently.

  "Why, easily enough," put in the stranger. "Let me take him in myberline. I can leave him at Amiens or at Beauvais, or any one of theconvenient places that I pass. Or I can even carry him on to Paris withme."

  "You are very good, Maximilien," answered the old man, to which theother returned a gesture of deprecation.

  In this fashion, then, was the matter settled to the satisfaction of theSeigneur's retainers, and upon having received Duhamel's solemn promisethat Caron should be carried out of Bellecour, and, for that matter, outof Picardy, before the night was spent, they withdrew.

  Within the schoolmaster's study he whom Duhamel called Maximilien strodeto and fro, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bent, his chinthrust forward, denouncing the seigneurial system, of whose atrocity hehad received that evening instances enough--for he had heard the wholestory of La Boulaye's rebellion against the power of Bellecour and thecauses that had led to it.

  "We will mend all this, I promise you, Duhamel," he was repeating. "Butnot until we have united to shield the weak from oppression, to restrainthe arrogant and to secure to each the possession of what belongs tohim; not until all men are free and started upon equal terms in the raceof life; not until we shall have set up rules of justice and of peace,to which all--rich and poor, noble and simple alike--shall be obligedto conform. Thus only can we repair the evil done by the caprice offortune, which causes the one to be born into silk and the other intofustian. We must subject the weak and the mighty alike to mutualduties, collecting our forces into the supreme power to govern usall impartially by the same laws, to protect alike all members of thecommunity, to repel our common foes and preserve us in never-endingconcord. How many crimes, murders, wars, miseries, horrors shall thus bespared us, Duhamel? And it will come; it will come soon, never fear."

  Caron stirred on the couch where Duhamel was tending him, and raised hishead to glance at the man who was voicing the doctrines that for yearshad dwelt in his heart.

  "Dear Jean Jacques," he murmured.

  The stranger turned sharply and stepped to the young man's side.

  "You have read the master?" he inquired, with a sudden, new-borninterest in the secretary.

  "Read him?" cried Carom forgetting for the moment the sore condition ofhis body in the delight of discovering one who was bound to him by suchbonds of sympathy as old Rousseau established.

  "Read him, Monsieur? There is scarce a line in all his 'Discourses' thatI do not know by heart, and that I do not treasure, vaguely hopingand praying that some day such a state as he dreamt of may find itselfestablished, and may sweep aside these corrupt, tyrannical conditions."

  Maximilien's eyes kindled.

  "Boy," he answered impressively, "Your hopes are on the eve of fruition,your prayers are about to be heard. Yes--even though it should entailtrampling the Lilies of France into the very dust.

  "Who are you, Monsieur?" asked La Boulaye, eyeing this prophet withgrowing interest.

  "Robespierre is my name," was the answer, and to La Boulaye itconveyed no enlightenment, for the name of Maximilien Marie Isidore deRobespierre, which within so ve
ry short a time was to mean so much inFrance, as yet meant nothing.

  La Boulaye inclined his head as if acknowledging an introduction, thenturned his attention to Duhamel who was offering him a cup of wine.He drank gratefully, and the invigorating effects were almostinstantaneous.

  "Now let us see to your hurts," said the schoolmaster, who had takensome linen and a pot of unguents from a cupboard. La Boulaye sat up, andwhat time Duhamel was busy dressing his lacerated back, the young mantalked with Robespierre.

  "You are going to Paris, you say, Monsieur?"

  "Yes, to the States-General," answered Maximilien.

  "As a deputy?" inquired Caron, with ever-heightening interest.

  "As a deputy, Monsieur. My friends of Arras have elected me to the ThirdEstate of Artois."

  "Dieu! How I envy you!" exclaimed La Boulaye, to cry out a momentlater in the pain to which Duhamel's well-intentioned operations weresubjecting him. "I would it might be mine," he added presently, "totake a hand in legislation, and the mending of it; for as it stands atpresent it is inferior far to the lawless anarchy of the aborigines.Among them, at least, the conditions are more normal, they offer betterbalance between faculty and execution; they are by far more propitiousto happiness and order than is this broken wreck of civilisation thatwe call France. It is to equality alone," he continued, warming tohis subject, "that Nature has attached the preservation of our socialfaculties, and all legislation that aims at being efficient shouldbe directed to the establishment of equality. As it is, the rich willalways prefer their own fortune to that of the State, whilst the poorwill never love--nor can love--a condition of laws that leaves them inmisery."

  Robespierre eyed the young man in some surprise. His delivery wasimpassioned, and although in what he said there was perhaps nothing thatwas fresh to the lawyer of Arras, yet the manner in which he said it wasimpressive to a degree.

  "But Duhamel," he cried to the schoolmaster, "you did not tell me thisyoung patriot was an orator."

  "Nor am I, Monsieur," smiled La Boulaye. "I am but the mouthpiece of thegreat Rousseau. I have so assimilated his thoughts that they come fromme as spontaneously as if they were my own, and often I go so far as todelude myself into believing that they are."

  No better recommendation than this could he have had to the attentionof Robespierre, who was himself much in the same case, imbued withand inspired by those doctrines, so ideal in theory, but, alas! sodifficult, so impossible in practice. For fully an hour they sat andtalked, and each improved in his liking of the other, until at last,bethinking him of the flight of time, Robespierre announced that he muststart.

  "You will take him to Paris with you, Maximilien?" quoth the oldpedagogue.

  "Ma foi, yes; and if with such gifts as Nature appears to have givenhim, and such cultivation of them as, through the teachings of Rousseau,he has effected, I do not make something of him, why, then, I amunworthy of the confidence my good friends of Arras repose in me."

  They made their adieux, and the schoolmaster, opening his door, peeredout. The street was deserted save for de Robespierre's berline and hisimpatient postillion. Between them Duhamel and Maximilien assisted Caronto the door of the carriage. The moving subjected him to an excruciatingagony, but he caught his nether lip in his teeth, and never allowed themto suspect it. As they raised him into the berline, however, he toppledforward, fainting. Duhamel hastened indoors for a cordial, and broughtalso some pillows with which to promote the young man's comfort on thejourney that was before him--or, rather, to lessen the discomfort whichthe jolting was likely to occasion him.

  Caron recovered before they started, and with tears in his eyes hethanked old Duhamel and voiced a hope that they might meet again erelong.

  Then Robespierre jumped nimbly into the berline. The door closed, thepostillion's whip cracked briskly, and they set out upon a journey whichto La Boulaye was to be as the passing from one life to another.

  PART II. THE NEW RULE

  Allons! Marchons! Qu'un sang impur Abreuve nos sillons! La Marseillaise.