The Galley Slave's Ring; or, The Family of Lebrenn
by Eugène Sue · English · Gutenberg #37225 · 330,572 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Galley Slave's Ring; or, The Family of Lebrenn
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Galley Slave's Ring; or, The Family of Lebrenn
Author: Eugène Sue
Translator: Daniel De Leon
Release date: August 27, 2011 [eBook #37225]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37225
Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GALLEY SLAVE'S RING; OR, THE FAMILY OF LEBRENN ***
Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)
THE GALLEY SLAVE'S RING
THE FULL SERIES OF
The Mysteries of the People
OR
History of a Proletarian Family
Across the Ages
By EUGENE SUE
_Consisting of the Following Works:_
THE GOLD SICKLE; or, _Hena the Virgin of the Isle of Sen_.
THE BRASS BELL; or, _The Chariot of Death_.
THE IRON COLLAR; or, _Faustina and Syomara_.
THE SILVER CROSS; or, _The Carpenter of Nazareth_.
THE CASQUE'S LARK; or, _Victoria, the Mother of the Camps_.
THE PONIARD'S HILT; or, _Karadeuoq and Ronan_.
THE BRANDING NEEDLE; or, _The Monastery of Charolles_.
THE ABBATIAL CROSIER; or, _Bonaik and Septimine_.
THE CARLOVINGIAN COINS; or, _The Daughters of Charlemagne_.
THE IRON ARROW-HEAD; or, _The Buckler Maiden_.
THE INFANT'S SKULL; or, _The End of the World_.
THE PILGRIM'S SHELL; or, _Fergan the Quarryman_.
THE IRON PINCERS; or, _Mylio and Karvel_.
THE IRON TREVET; or _Jocelyn the Champion_.
THE EXECUTIONER'S KNIFE; or, _Joan of Arc_.
THE POCKET BIBLE; or, _Christian the Printer_.
THE BLACKSMITH'S HAMMER; or, _The Peasant Code_.
THE SWORD OF HONOR; or, _The Foundation of the French Republic_.
THE GALLEY SLAVE'S RING; or, _The Family Lebrenn_.
Published Uniform With This Volume By
THE NEW YORK LABOR NEWS CO.
28 CITY HALL PLACE NEW YORK CITY
THE
GALLEY SLAVE'S RING
OR
THE FAMILY OF LEBRENN
A Tale of The French Revolution of 1848
By EUGENE SUE
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH
By DANIEL DE LEON
NEW YORK LABOR NEWS COMPANY. 1911
Copyright, 1911, by the
NEW YORK LABOR NEWS CO.
INDEX
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE I
CHAPTER
I GILDAS AND JEANIKE 1
II GEORGE DUCHENE 19
III MARIK LEBRENN 40
IV PRADELINE 60
V CARDINAL AND COUNT 70
VI JOEL AND NEROWEG 82
VII "THE SWORD OF BRENNUS" 103
VIII ON THE EVE OF BATTLE 113
IX POPULAR JUSTICE 127
X ON THE BARRICADE 139
XI LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC! 161
XII THE GALLEY-SLAVE AND THE GENERAL 168
XIII HOME AGAIN 181
XIV SACROVIR'S BIRTHDAY 190
XV THE MYSTERIOUS CHAMBER 198
EPILOGUE 219
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
With this story, _The Galley Slave's Ring; or, The Family of Lebrenn_,
closes the series of the nineteen historic novels comprised in Eugene
Sue's monumental work _The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a
Proletarian Family Across the Ages_.
They who have read the preceding eighteen stories will agree that from
the moment they began the first volume of the series, _The Gold Sickle;
or, Hena the Virgin of the Isle of Sen_, down to the eighteenth, _The
Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic_, they enjoyed
a matchless promenade as they followed Sue through the Ages of History,
from the time of the invasion of Gaul by Julius Caesar, shortly before
Christ, down to the great epoch marked by the French Revolution. Nor
will their expectations concerning this closing story be disappointed.
_The Galley Slave's Ring; or, The Family of Lebrenn_ is staged on the
Age that witnessed the downfall of Louis Philippe--the last of the
Bourbon line--and the aspirations that raised the Second Republic. While
several of the figures are historic, in this story historic characters
step forth less pronouncedly than historic principles. In this story are
found the Principles, the old and the newest, that have since occupied
the stage of man's history, and the clash of which, down to our own
days, occupies man's attention.
Inestimable as the previous stories are to the understanding of the Age
of the present story, the present story, enlivened with the vein of
romance, is inestimable to the understanding of our own Age.
DANIEL DE LEON.
Milford, Conn., February, 1911.
CHAPTER I.
GILDAS AND JEANIKE.
On February 23, 1848, the epoch when, for several days previous, all
France, and especially Paris, was profoundly stirred by the question of
the _reform_ banquets, there was to be seen on St. Denis Street, a short
distance from the boulevard, a rather large shop surmounted by the sign
LEBRENN, LINEN DRAPER.
THE SWORD OF BRENNUS.
In fact, a picture, pretty well drawn and painted, represented the well
known historic incident of Brennus, the chief of the Gallic army,
throwing with savage and haughty mien his sword into one of the scales
of the balance that held the ransom of Rome, vanquished by our Gallic
ancestors, about two thousand and odd years ago.
At first, the people of the St. Denis quarter derived a good deal of fun
from the bellicose sign of the linen draper. In course of time they
forgot all about the seemingly incongruous sign in the recognition of
the fact that Monsieur Marik Lebrenn was a most admirable man--a good
husband, a conscientious father of his family, and a merchant who sold
at reasonable prices excellent merchandise, among other things superb
Brittany linen, imported from his native province. The worthy tradesman
paid his bills regularly; was accommodating and affable towards
everybody; and filled, to the great satisfaction of his "dear comrades,"
the function of captain in the company of grenadiers of his battalion in
the National Guard. All told, he was held in general esteem by the
people of his quarter, among whom he was justified to consider himself
as a _notable_.
On the rather chilly morning of February 23, the shutters of the linen
draper's shop were as usual removed by the shop-lad, assisted by a
female servant, both of whom were Bretons like their master, Monsieur
Lebrenn, who was in the habit of taking all his attendants, clerks as
well as domestic servitors, from his own country.
The maid, a fresh and comely lass of twenty years, was named Jeanike.
The lad who tended the shop was called Gildas Pakou. He was a robust
youngster from the region of Vannes, whose open countenance bore the
impress of wonderment, seeing he was only two days in Paris. He spoke
French quite passably; but in his conversations with Jeanike, his
"country-woman," he preferred the idiom of lower Brittany, the old
Gallic tongue that our ancestors spoke before the conquest of Gaul by
Julius Caesar.[1]
Gildas Pakou seemed preoccupied, although busy carrying to the interior
of the shop the shutters that he removed from the outside. He even
paused for a moment in the middle of the shop, and, leaning both his
arms and his chin upon the edge of one of the boards that he had
unfastened, seemed profoundly steeped in thought.
"What are you brooding over, Gildas?" inquired Jeanike.
"Lassy," he answered in his Breton tongue, and with a distant and almost
comical look, "do you remember the song of our country--Genevieve and
Rustefan?"[2]
"Sure! I was sung to sleep in my cradle with it. It starts this way:
"When little John led his sheep out to pasture,
He then little thought that a priest he would be."
"Well, Jeanike, I am like little John. When I was at Vannes I little
dreamed of what I was to see in Paris."
"And what do you find so startling in Paris, Gildas?"
"Everything, Jeanike."
"Indeed!"
"And a good many other things, besides!"
"That's a good many."
"Now listen. Mother said to me: 'Gildas, Monsieur Lebrenn, our
countryman, to whom I sell the linen that we weave in the evenings,
takes you as an assistant in his shop. His is a home of the good God.
You, who are neither bold nor venturesome, will find yourself there as
comfortable as here in our little town. St. Denis Street in Paris, where
your employer lives, is a street inhabited only by honest and peaceful
merchants.' Well, now, Jeanike, no later than yesterday evening, the
second day after my arrival, did you not hear cries of: 'Close the
shops! Close the shops!' And did you not thereupon see the
night-patrols, and hear the drums and the hurried steps of large numbers
of men who came and went tumultuously? There were among them some whose
faces were frightful to behold, with their long beards. I positively
dreamed of them, Jeanike! I did!"
"Poor Gildas!"
"And if that were only all!"
"What! Is there still more? Have you, perchance, anything to blame our
master for?"
"Him? He is the best man in all the world. I'm quite sure of that.
Mother told me so."
"Or Madam Lebrenn?"
"The dear, good woman! She reminds me of my own mother with her sweet
temper."
"Or mademoiselle?"
"Oh! As to her, Jeanike, we may say of her in the words of the Song of
the Poor:[3]
"Your mistress is handsome and brimful of kindness;
As lovely her face, yet her deeds with it vie,
And her looks and her kindness have won all our hearts."
"Oh, Gildas! How I do love to hear those songs of our country. That
particular one seems to have been composed expressly for Mademoiselle
Velleda, and I--"
"Tush, Jeanike!" exclaimed the shop-assistant, breaking in upon his
companion. "You asked me what there is to astonish me. Tell me, do you
think that mademoiselle's name is a Christian woman's name? _Velleda!_
What can that mean?"
"What do I know! I suppose 'tis a fancy of monsieur and madam's."
"And their son, who went back yesterday to his business college."
"Well?"
"What another devil's own name is that which he also has? One ever seems
to be about to swear when pronouncing it. Just pronounce that name,
Jeanike. Come, pronounce it."
"It is very simple. The name of our master's son is Sacrovir."
"Ha! ha! I knew it would be so. You did look as if you were
swearing--Sacr-r-r-rovir."
"Not at all! I did not roll the r's like you."
"They roll of themselves, my lassy. But, after all, do you call that a
name?"
"That also is a fancy of monsieur and madam's."
"Very well, and what about the green door?"
"The green door?"
"Yes, in the rear of the room. Yesterday, at broad noon, I saw our
master go in with a light in his hand."
"Quite natural, seeing the shutters are always kept closed--"
"And you find that natural, do you, Jeanike? And why should the shutters
always be kept closed?"
"How do I know! It may be another--"
"Notion of monsieur and madam's, are you going to tell me?"
"Sure!"
"And what is kept in that apartment where it is night in broad day?"
"How do I know, Gildas! Only madam and monsieur ever go in there; never
their children."
"And nothing of all that seems to you at all surprising, Jeanike!"
"No, because I have become accustomed to it. You will presently feel
about it as I do."
The girl stopped short, and after casting a furtive look in the
direction of the street, she said to her companion:
"Did you see that?"
"What?"
"The dragoon."
"A dragoon, Jeanike!"
"Yes; and I beg you go out and see if he is coming back--towards the
shop. I shall tell you more about it later. Go, quick! quick!"
"The dragoon has not come back," answered the lad, naively. "But what
can you have in common with the dragoon, Jeanike?"
"Nothing at all, thank God; but they have their barracks near by."
"A bad neighborhood for young girls, close to these men with helmets and
sabers," remarked Gildas sententiously. "A bad neighborhood. That
reminds me of the song, The Demand:
"In my dove-cote a little dove
Once had I,
When low the sparrow hawk swooped down
Upon her like a gust of wind;
He frightened my wee dove away
And now none
Knows what has become of her.[4]
"Do you understand, Jeanike? The doves are young girls; the
sparrow-hawk--"
"Is the dragoon. You are speaking more wisely than you know, Gildas."
"What, Jeanike! Can you have realized that the neighborhood of
sparrow-hawks--that is, dragoons--is unwholesome for you?"
"I was not thinking of myself."
"Of whom, then?"
"Tush, Gildas! You are a loyal fellow. I must ask your advice. This is
what has happened: Four days ago, mademoiselle, who usually stays in the
rear of the shop, was at the desk in the absence of madam. I happened to
look out on the street, when I saw a military man stop before our
windows."
"A dragoon? A sparrow-hawk of a dragoon? Was it, Jeanike?"
"Yes; but he was not a soldier; he wore large gold epaulettes, and a
cockade on his hat. He must have been at least a colonel. He stopped
before the shop, and looked in."
The conversation of the two Breton country folks was interrupted by the
brusque entrance of a man of about forty years, clad in a cutaway coat
and trousers of black velvet, the usual railway employees' garb. His
energetic face was partially covered with a thick brown beard. He seemed
uneasy, and stepped into the shop precipitately, saying to Jeanike:
"Where is your master, my child? I must see him immediately. Pray, go
and tell him that Dupont wants him. Remember my name well--Dupont."
"Monsieur Lebrenn went out this morning at daybreak, monsieur," answered
Jeanike. "He has not yet come back."
"A thousand devils! Can he have gone there?" the new arrival muttered to
himself.
He was about to leave the shop as precipitately as he had stepped in
when a new thought struck him, and turning back to Jeanike he said:
"My child, tell Monsieur Lebrenn, the moment he comes back, that Dupont
has arrived."
"Yes, monsieur."
"And that if he--Monsieur Lebrenn," added Dupont, hesitating like one
hunting for a word; and then having found it, he proceeded saying: "Say
to your master that, if he did not go this morning to inspect his
_supply of grain_--you catch those words: _his supply of grain_--he
should not go there before seeing Dupont. Can you remember that, my
child?"
"Yes, monsieur. But if you would like to leave a note for Monsieur
Lebrenn--"
"Not at all!" answered Dupont impatiently. "That's unnecessary--only
tell him--"
"Not to go and inspect his supply of grain before seeing Monsieur
Dupont," Jeanike completed the sentence. "Is that it, monsieur?"
"Exactly," the latter answered. "Good-bye, my child." So saying, he went
away in hot haste.
"Well, now, Monsieur Lebrenn, it seems, is also a groceryman," observed
Gildas in amazement to his companion. "He seems to keep supplies of
grain in store."
"That's the first I heard of it."
"And that man! He looked very much disconcerted. Did you notice him? Oh,
Jeanike! There is no doubt about it, this is a puzzling sort of a
house."
"You have just landed from the country. Everything surprises you. But
let me finish my story about the dragoon."
"The story of that sparrow-hawk with gold epaulettes and a cockade in
his hat, who stopped to look at you through the show-window, Jeanike?"
"It was not me he looked at."
"Whom, then?"
"Mademoiselle Velleda."
"Indeed?"
"Mademoiselle was busy sewing. She did not notice that the military man
was devouring her with his eyes. And I felt so ashamed for her sake that
I did not dare notify her that she was being glowered at."
"Oh, Jeanike, that reminds me of a song that--"
"Let me first come to the end of my story, Gildas. You may then sing
your song to me, if you like. The military man--"
"The sparrow-hawk--"
"Be it so--stood there glowering at mademoiselle with both his eyes
aflame."
"With his two sparrow-hawk eyes, Jeanike!"
"But let me finish. Presently mademoiselle noticed the attention that
she was the object of. She colored like a ripe cherry, told me to watch
the shop, and withdrew to the room in the rear. And that's not yet all.
The next day, at the same hour, the colonel turned up again, but this
time in civilian dress, and there he planted himself again at the
window. Madam happened to be in the shop, and he did not stay long. Day
before yesterday he turned up again without being able to see
mademoiselle. Finally, yesterday, Madam Lebrenn being in the shop, he
stepped in and asked her--his language was very polite--whether she
could furnish him with a certain grade of linen. Madam said she could,
and it was agreed that the colonel would come back to-day to close the
bargain with Monsieur Lebrenn."
"And do you believe, Jeanike, that madam was aware that the military
man had come several times before, and peeped through the window?"
"I don't know, Gildas; and I am not sure whether I should notify madam.
A minute ago I begged you to look and see if the dragoon did not come
back. I feared he was charged to spy upon us. Fortunately it was not so.
Would you advise me to notify madam, or to say nothing? To speak may
alarm her; to keep silent may, perhaps, be wrong. What is your opinion?"
"It is my opinion that you should notify madam. She may become justly
suspicious of that big order for linen. Hem!--hem!"
"I shall follow your advice, Gildas."
"And you will be wise if you do! Oh, my dear lassy, these men with
helmets--"
"Well, now, I am ready. Let's have your song."
"It is an awful story, Jeanike! Mother told it to me a hundred times in
the evenings, just as my grandmother had told it to her, and just as my
grandmother's grandmother--"
"Come, Gildas," broke in Jeanike, laughing. "If you keep up at that rate
from grandmother to grandmother, you are bound to go back to our mother
Eve."
"Sure! Do our countrypeople not transmit from generation to generation
narratives that go back to--"
"A thousand and fifteen hundred years, and even further back, like the
stories of Myrdin and of The Baron of Jauioz, with which I have been
rocked to sleep in my cradle. I am well aware of it, Gildas."
"Well, Jeanike, the song that I have in mind is about people who wear
helmets, and prowl around young girls. It is a frightful story. It is
called The Three Red Monks," said Gildas, looking formidable;--"The
Three Red Monks; or, The Sire of Plouernel."
"What's that?" asked Jeanike interestedly, being struck by the name.
"The Sire of--"
"The Sire of Plouernel."
"Singular!"
"Singular what?"
"I've heard Monsieur Lebrenn mention that name, more than once."
"The name of the Sire of Plouernel? On what occasion?"
"I'll tell you later. First of all, let's have the song of the Three Red
Monks. It will interest me doubly."
"You must know, first of all, my lassy, that the red monks were
Templars, and wore a sword and helmet, just like that sparrow-hawk of a
dragoon."
"Very well, now go on. Madam may come down any moment, and monsieur is
due here now."
"Listen attentively, Jeanike."
And Gildas commenced the following recitative. It was not sung, exactly,
but was chanted like a psalm in a grave and melancholic voice:
"At every limb I shudder,
I shudder at the sorrows that afflict our people.
I shudder at the thought of the event that took place,
That has just taken place in the town of Kemper,
That took place at Kemper just a year ago.
"Katelik walked her way as she counted her beads,
When three monks in red, all three Templars were they,
And armed at all points, joined Katelik; three monks,
Astride of their huge barbed steeds,
Barbed from mane down to hoofs.
"'Come with us, you pretty young maid;
Come to the convent with us.
Neither gold will you want for,
Nor eke silver coin.'
'May it please, Sires, your graces,
Not I will join you in your ride,'
Said young Katelik. 'I fear your swords,
That hang by your sides.
No, Sires,
I shall not, nor can I go with you.
Too wicked the tales that one hears about you.'
"'Come with us, come to the convent, young maid.
Feel not alarmed about us.'
'No, I shall not proceed to the convent.
Seven young maids of the fields
Once went there, 'tis said;
Seven handsome maids, ripe for their nuptials they were.
Yet they never came out from the convent again.'
"'If seven young maids,' cried up Gonthram of Plouernel,
One of the three monks in red,
'If seven young maids went in,
You, pretty maid, the eighth will be.'
With this she was seized,
And pulled up on horseback;
With this the three rode to the convent in hot haste,
The maid laid across the saddle,
And gagged to smother her cries."
"Oh, the poor dear girl!" exclaimed Jeanike, clasping her hands. "And
what is to become of her in that convent of the red monks?"
"You will learn presently, my lassy," answered Gildas with a sigh; and
he proceeded with his recitation:
"Seven months later, or eight,
Or perhaps even more,
Great was the dilemma of the monks in their Abbey,
'What, brothers,' they said,
'Shall with this girl now be done?'
'Let us bury her, to-night let us bury her,
At the foot of the main altar.
None of her folks will there seek to find her.'"
"Great God!" cried Jeanike. "They must have killed her, those bandit
monks, and were in a hurry to rid themselves of the body."
"I tell you once more, my lassy, these people with helmets and swords
are always up to some mischief or other," remarked Gildas dogmatically;
and he proceeded:
"Lo, toward night-fall the vault of heaven is rent.
Rain, wind, hail; thunder the most frightful cracks the air.
A poor knight, his clothes drenched with rain,
Looks about for asylum,
Arrives at the church-door of the Abbey.
He peeps through the key-hole.
He sees a small taper burning;
He sees monks digging at the foot of the altar;
He sees the young girl lying prostrate,
Her little bare feet tied together;
He hears her, desolate, moaning, lamenting,
Begging for mercy.
"'Oh, Sires,' she cried, 'for our dear Lord's sake,
Let me live.
I shall wander about in the dark by night;
By day I shall hide.'
The taper went out.
But the knight, he budged not away from the door,
And he heard the voice of the young girl
Imploring from the depth of the grave,
And praying:
_'Pray give me some oil, and baptismal
For the babe I carry with me!_'
"The knight, he galloped away to Kemper,
To the Count-Bishop's palace he rode in full haste.
'Sire Bishop of Cornouailles, wake up!
Wake up quick!' cried the knight,
As he battered at the gate.
'You lie snugly in your bed,
Stretched out cosily upon soft down;
But a young girl there is who is now groaning
At the bottom of a pit of hard earth,
And is praying for some oil,
And baptismal for the babe that is with her;
Extreme unction she prays for herself.'
"By orders the Count-Bishop hastened to issue in advance,
The grave at the foot of the altar was dug open; and,
Just as the Bishop arrived, the poor young girl
Was drawn up from the depths of her grave.
She was drawn up, her babe sound asleep on her breast.
Her teeth had torn the flesh on her arms,
Her nails had torn the flesh on her breast,
On her white breast down to her heart.
"And the Bishop,
When this sight he saw,
Fell down on both knees, and wept by the grave.
Three days and three nights he spent there in prayer.
At the end of the third day,
All the red monks standing round,
The babe of the dead girl stirred by the light of the tapers,
It opened its eyes,
It rose,
It walked,
It walked straight to the three monks in red,
And it spoke, and said:
'It is he--
Gonthram of Plouernel."[5]
"Well, now, my lassy," asked Gildas as he shook his head warningly, "is
not that a terrible story? Did I not tell you that those helmet-wearers
were ever prowling around young girls like so many ravishing
sparrow-hawks? But Jeanike, what are you pondering? You do not answer
me. You seem steeped in revery."
"It is, indeed, quite extraordinary, Gildas. Was that bandit of a red
monk named the Sire of Plouernel?"
"Yes."
"Often have I heard Monsieur Lebrenn mention the name of that family as
if he had some cause of complaint against them, and say, whenever he
referred to some wicked man: He must be a son of Plouernel!' as one
would say: 'He must be a son of the devil!'"
"That is a puzzle--a puzzling house this is," remarked Gildas
meditatively, and even in a tone of uneasiness. "To think of Monsieur
Lebrenn having complaint against the family of a red monk, who has been
dead eight or nine hundred years. All the same, Jeanike, I hope the
story may stand you in good stead."
"Go to, Gildas!" exclaimed Jeanike, laughing. "Do you imagine there are
any red monks in St. Denis Street, and that they carry off young girls
in omnibuses?"
As Jeanike was saying this, a valet in morning livery stepped into the
shop and asked for Monsieur Lebrenn.
"He is not in," said Gildas.
"Then, my good lad," answered the valet, "you will please tell your
master that the colonel expects to see him this morning, before noon, to
settle with him a matter about some linen that he spoke about with your
mistress yesterday. Here is my master's address," added the valet,
placing a visiting card upon the counter. "Above all be certain to urge
your master to be punctual. The colonel does not like to be kept
waiting."
The valet left. Gildas took up the card mechanically, read it and cried
out, turning pale:
"By St. Anne of Auray! It is incredible--"
"What is it, Gildas?"
"Read, Jeanike!"
And with a trembling hand he reached out the card to the young girl who
read:
COUNT GONTHRAM OF PLOUERNEL.
Colonel of Dragoons.
18 Paradis-Poissonniere Street.
"A puzzling, a fear-inspiring house this is!" Gildas repeated several
times, raising his hands to heaven, while Jeanike herself looked as
astonished and almost as frightened as the young shop-assistant.
CHAPTER II.
GEORGE DUCHENE.
While the events narrated in the preceding chapter were happening in the
shop of Monsieur Lebrenn the linendraper, another scene was taking place
at almost the same hour on the fifth story of an old house, opposite the
one which the Breton merchant occupied.
I shall take my reader into a modest little room that is fitted out with
extreme neatness; an iron bedstead, a wardrobe, two chairs and a table
above which stood a shelf filled with books--such was its furniture. At
the head of the bed hung from the wall a species of trophy, consisting
of a military cap and two light infantry under-officer's epaulettes,
above which, spread in a black frame, was an honorable discharge from
service. In a corner of the chamber, and disposed upon a board, were
several carpenter's tools.
Upon the bed lay a freshly furbished carbine, and upon a little table a
little heap of balls, a gunpowder pouch, and a mold to prepare
cartridges in, a number of which had already been gotten ready.
The tenant of the apartment, a young man of about twenty-six, with a
virile and handsome face, and wearing a mechanic's blouse, was already
up. With his elbows leaning on the sill of his attic window, he seemed
to be looking intently at the house of Monsieur Lebrenn, especially at
one of the four windows, between two of which the famous sign of _The
Sword of Brennus_ was fastened.
That one particular window, furnished with very white curtains closely
drawn together, presented nothing remarkable to the sight, except for a
wooden box, painted green and daintily wrought with ovolos and other
carvings, that filled the full width of the outer sill and contained
several winter heliotropes besides some crocuses in full bloom.
The features of the tenant of the attic as he contemplated the window in
question, bore an expression of such profound melancholy that it was
almost painful to behold. After a while a tear, that fell from the young
man's eyes, rolled down upon his brown moustache.
The sound of a clock that struck half past six drew George Duchene--that
was the young man's name--from his revery. He passed his hand over his
moist eyes, and left the window murmuring bitterly:
"Bah! To-day, or to-morrow, a bullet through my breast will deliver me
from this insane love. Thanks to God, there will soon be a serious
engagement. My death will at least serve the cause of freedom."
George remained pensive for a while, and then added:
"But grandfather--I forgot him!"
He then proceeded to a corner of the room where stood a little stove
half filled with burning coals, and which he had been using to found
his bullets. He placed on the fire a small earthen dish filled with
milk, crumbled into it some slices of white bread, and in a few minutes
had ready for use a toothsome bowl of milk soup that the expertest
housekeeper might have been jealous of.
After concealing the carbine and munitions of war under his mattress,
George took up the bowl, opened a door that was cut in the board
partition of his apartment, and passed into a contiguous room, where a
man of advanced age and with a kind and venerable face framed in long
white hair, lay on a much better bed than George's. The old man seemed
exceedingly weak; his thin and wrinkled hands were agitated by a
continuous tremor.
"Good morning, grandfather," said George, tenderly embracing the old
man. "Did you rest well during the night?"
"Quite well, my boy."
"Here is your milk soup. I'm afraid I kept you waiting."
"Not at all. It is only just day. I heard you rise and open your
window--about an hour ago."
"That's so, grandfather. I felt my head heavy--I wanted to breathe the
early air."
"I also heard you during the night walk up and down your room."
"Poor grandfather! Did I keep you awake?"
"No, I was not sleepy. But, George, be frank with me. There's something
troubling you."
"Me? Nothing at all."
"For several months you have looked depressed; you have grown pale; you
have changed so much as not to be recognizable. You are no longer as
light of heart as you were when you returned from your regiment."
"I assure you, grandfather--"
"You assure me--you assure me! I know perfectly well what I see. As far
as that is concerned I can not be deceived. I have a mother's
eyes--come, now--"
"That's true," replied George smiling. "I think it is _grandmother_ I
should call you--because you are good, tender and uneasy about me, like
a true grandma. But believe me, you alarm yourself unnecessarily. Here,
hold your spoon; wait a minute till I place the table on your bed. You
will be more at ease."
George took from a corner a pretty little shining walnut table of the
shape of the trays used by patients for eating on in their beds. After
placing upon it the bowl of soup, he gently pushed it in front of the
old man.
"There is none like you, my boy, for such thoughtfulness," observed the
grandfather.
"It would have been a devilish thing, grandfather, if, with all my
carpenter's skill, I had failed to put together this little table that
is so handy for you."
"Oh! You have an answer for everything--I know that," observed the old
man, smiling.
And with a shaky hand he began his meal. So tremulous were his motions
that several times the spoon struck against his teeth.
"Oh, my poor boy!" exclaimed the old man sadly. "Just see how my hands
tremble. It seems to me they grow worse every day."
"Nonsense, grandfather! To me, on the contrary, your hands seem to be
growing steadier--"
"Oh, no! 'Tis all over--all over. There is no remedy can bring me help
in my infirmity."
"Why, do you prefer me to take your hopeless view of the case--"
"That's just what I should have done since this affliction began. And,
yet, I can not accustom myself to the idea of being an invalid, and a
burden to others unto the end of my life."
"Grandfather! Grandfather! If you talk that way we shall have to fall
out."
"I wonder what made me commit the stupidity of taking to the trade of
gilder of metals. At the end of twenty years, often before that,
one-half of those artisans shake like myself; but, differently from
myself, they have no grandchildren who spoil them--"
"Grandfather!"
"Yes, you spoil me; I repeat it--you spoil me--"
"Let it be so! Now, then, I shall give you tit for tat; it is the only
way to spike your guns, as we were taught in the regiment. Well, I knew
a fine man; his name was father Morin; he was a widower with a daughter
of about eighteen. The worthy man married his daughter to a gallant
young fellow, but over-much given to resent wrong, and one day he
received an ugly blow in a fight, so ugly that two years after his
marriage he died, leaving his young wife with a boy in her arms."
"George! George!"
"The poor young mother nursed her child. Her husband's death was such a
shock to her that she followed him shortly after--and her little boy
remained upon the hands of his grandfather."
"Good God, George! How merciless you are! What is the sense in ever
coming back to all that?"
"He loved the boy so much that he would not part with him. During the
day, when he had to work in the shop, a good neighbor kept the urchin
with her. But, the instant the grandfather returned home, he had but one
thought on his mind, but one cry on his lips--'My little George.' He
looked after him as lovingly as the best and tenderest of mothers. He
ruined himself getting pretty clothes and pretty hats for the chap. He
rigged the little fellow up to his own taste, and the grandfather was
very proud of his grandchild. And so it came about that all the people
in the neighborhood, who loved the worthy man greatly, began to call him
the _nurse-father_."
"But, George!"
"In that way he brought up the boy, cared for him night and day,
attended to all his needs, sent him to school, then to his
apprenticeship, until--"
"So much the worse!" cried out the old man, unable any longer to contain
himself. "Seeing we are to tell the truth to each other, I shall have my
turn, and we shall see! First of all, you were the son of my daughter
Georgiana, whom I doted upon. I only did my duty--take that, to begin
with--"
"Neither have I done any more than my duty."
"You? Don't tell me that!" cried the old man, vehemently brandishing his
spoon. "You! This is what you did: Good luck saved you from drawing the
lot of going into the army--"
"Grandfather! Take care!"
"Oh, you can not frighten me!"
"You will upset your bowl of soup if you go on in that way."
"I 'go on'! The devil take it! Do you think I have no blood left in my
veins? Yes, answer, you who are always speaking of other people! When my
infirmity began, what is it that you did, unhappy boy? You went in
search of a merchant of men."
"Grandfather, your soup will grow cold; for heaven's sake take it while
it is warm."
"Ta, ta, ta! You want to shut my mouth. I am not your dupe. Yes! And
what did you say to the merchant of men? 'My grandfather is ailing; he
can hardly any longer earn his living; I am his only support; I may fail
him, either through sickness, or through lack of work; he is old; secure
to him a little life annuity, and I shall sell myself to you.' And you
did it!" cried the old man with tears in his eyes, and raising his spoon
to the ceiling with such vehemence that, if George had not quickly
seized the table it would have tumbled down to the floor with the bowl
of soup and all.
The young man exclaimed:
"'Sdeath, grandfather! Keep quiet! You are carrying on like the devil in
a sacristy. You will upset everything."
"I don't care! It will not keep me from telling you why and how it came
about that you became a soldier, and how you sold yourself for me--to a
merchant of men--"
"All that talk is a pretext to keep you from eating your soup. I see,
you think it is not well made."
"Just listen to him! I, find his soup bad! Well, well!" exclaimed the
old man in pitiful accents, "That devil of a boy has made up his mind to
break my heart!"
Father Morin furiously dipped his spoon into the bowl, and precipitately
carrying it to his mouth said while eating: "You see--you see--how bad I
find your soup--see-see--Oh! it is bad--see--see--Oh, I don't like it at
all!"
"For heaven's sake, now you are going too fast," cried George, holding
back his grandfather's arm. "You will choke yourself."
"That's also your fault! To tell me I find your soup bad, while it
tastes delicious!" complained the old man, moderating his pace and
smacking his lips with great gusto. "It is the gods' own nectar!"
"Without vainglory," replied George, smiling, "I enjoyed a great
reputation in the regiment for my leek soup. Good, I shall now fill your
pipe."
George then leaned over to the old man and said to him as he patted him
on the back:
"That's right--my good old grandfather loves to pull at his little pipe
in his bed, do you not?"
"What shall I say, George? You turn me into a Pacha; aye, a Pacha!"
answered the old man, while his grandson went for the pipe that lay on a
table, filled it with tobacco, lighted it, and presented it to old
father Morin. The old man was thereupon propped up well in his bed, and
began to smoke his delicious pipe.
George sat down at the foot of the bed, and said:
"What do you propose to do to-day?"
"I shall take my little stroll on the boulevard, where, if the weather
is good, I shall sit down for a while on a bench."
"Hem! Grandfather, I think you would better postpone your promenade. You
must have noticed yesterday how large the crowds were that gathered at
several places. They almost came to blows with the municipalists and
city sergeants. It may be even worse to-day."
"I know it, my boy. Are you taking a hand in these tussles? I know full
well how tempting it is to do so when one's rights are invaded. It is
unworthy of the government to forbid the banquets. But I shall feel very
uneasy on your score."
"You need not feel uneasy about me, grandfather. There is nothing to
fear, as far as I am concerned. But take my advice. Do not go out
to-day."
"Very well, my boy, I shall stay indoors. I shall entertain myself a
little reading your books, and shall look at the passers-by from the
window, smoking my pipe the while."
"Poor grandfather," observed George with a smile. "From our high floor
you see hardly more than moving hats."
"That's all one. It will be enough to entertain me. Besides, I can look
at the opposite houses. Our neighbors often sit at their windows.
But--hold! It strikes me now--by the way of the houses on the other side
of the street, there is a thing I have meant to ask you, and always
forgot. Tell me what that sign means which I see before the
linendraper's house. What is the meaning of that helmeted warrior
throwing his sword into the scales? You who did the carpentering work in
the shop, when it was recently renovated, you should know the why and
wherefore of its sign."
"I did not know it either until my master detailed me to work in
Monsieur Lebrenn's shop."
"All over the quarter people speak of him as a straight-forward man. All
the same, what devil of a notion is that of choosing such a looking
sign--_The Sword of Brennus!_ If he were an armorer, the thing might
pass. True enough, there are scales in the picture, and scales suggest
commerce--but why does the warrior with his helmet on and the air of an
Artaban throw his sword into the scale?"
"I'll tell you. But really, I feel bashful, at my age, to presume to
hold a lecture to you."
"Why bashful? Why that? Instead of going out on Sundays for a walk
where people congregate near the fortifications, you read, you learn,
you instruct yourself. You may well hold a lecture to your
grandfather--there is no harm in that!"
"Well--the warrior with a helmet, that Brennus, was a Gaul, one of our
ancestors, the chieftain of the army which, two thousand years and how
much more ago I do not know, marched into Italy to attack Rome in order
to punish the city for some act of treachery. The city surrendered to
the Gauls and was spared in consideration of a ransom in gold. But, not
considering the ransom large enough, Brennus threw his sword into the
scale that held the weights."
"In order to secure a larger ransom, the shrewd old fellow! He did the
opposite of what the fruit-venders do who help the scales in their
interest with their thumbs. I understand that part of it. But there are
yet two things I do not understand at all. In the first place you said
that that warrior, who lived more than two thousand years ago, was one
of our ancestors!"
"Yes, that Brennus and the Gauls of his army belonged to the race from
which we descend--almost all of us in this country of France."
"One moment--you say they were Gauls?"
"Yes, grandfather."
"Then we are descendants of the Gallic race?"
"Certainly."
"But we are Frenchmen. How do you account for that, my boy?"
"Simply this way--our country, our mother country, was not always called
France."
"Hold on! Hold on! Hold on!" exclaimed the old man, taking the pipe out
of his mouth. "How is that? France was not always called France?"
"No, grandfather. During ages immemorial our country was called _Gaul_,
and was a republic, as glorious, as powerful, but happier, and twice as
large as France during the Empire."
"The devil you say!"
"Unfortunately, about two thousand years ago--"
"Is that all? Two thousand years! How you do fling around the years, my
boy!"
"Dissensions broke out in Gaul; the several provinces rose against one
another--"
"Ah! That's ever the trouble! That was the very trick of the clergy and
the royalists during the Revolution--"
"And so, grandfather, that befell to Gaul, centuries ago, that befell to
France in 1814 and 1815."
"A foreign invasion!"
"Exactly. The Romans, once vanquished by Brennus, had in the meantime
become powerful. They profited by the divisions among our fathers; and
they invaded the land--"
"Exactly as the Cossacks and the Prussians invaded us!"
"Exactly so. But what the Cossack and Prussian Kings, the good friends
of the Bourbons, did not dare to do--not that they lacked the wish--the
Romans did. Despite a heroic resistance, our ancestors, ever brave as
lions, but unfortunately divided, were reduced to slavery, as the
Negroes are to-day in some colonies."
"Is such a thing possible!"
"Yes. They wore iron collars, bearing the initials of their masters,
when those initials were not branded on their foreheads with a hot
iron."
"Our fathers!" cried the old man, joining his hands with pain and
indignation. "Our fathers!"
"And when they tried to run away, their masters had their noses and ears
cropped, if not their hands and feet."
"Our fathers!"
"Other times their masters would cast them to wild beasts for amusement,
or cause them to be put to death under frightful tortures if they
refused to cultivate, under the conqueror's lash, the very lands that
had belonged to them--"
"But listen," interposed the old man, gathering his recollections; "that
puts me in mind of a song of our old friend, the friend of us poor
folks--"
"The song of our Beranger, not so, grandfather--_The Gallic Slaves_?"
"Yes, my boy. It begins--let me see--yes--this is it:
"Some ancient Gauls, the wretched slaves,
One night, when all around were sleeping--
And the refrain ran:
"Poor Gauls, 'fore whom the world once trembled,
Let us drink to intoxication!"
Then it was our own fathers, the Gauls, that Beranger was referring to?
Alas! Poor fellows, like so many others, no doubt, they took to
drunkenness in order to forget their misfortunes."
"Yes, grandfather; but soon they realized that to forget one's sorrows
does not deliver one therefrom; that to break the yoke is better."
"Right they were!"
"Accordingly, the Gauls, after innumerable insurrectionary efforts--"
"Well, my boy, meseems the method is not new, but ever is the right one.
Ha! Ha!" added the old man, striking the bowl of his pipe with his nail.
"Ha! Ha! Do you notice, George, sooner or later, it has to come to a
Revolution--so it was in '89--so it was in 1830--so it may be to-morrow,
perhaps!"
"Poor grandfather!" thought George to himself. "He little knows how near
the truth he is."
And he proceeded aloud:
"Right you are! When it comes to the matter of freedom, the people must
help themselves, and stick their own fingers into the dish--otherwise
there will be only crumbs to pick, and the people will be robbed, as
they were robbed eighteen years ago."
"And brazenly were they robbed, my poor boy! I saw it done, myself. I
was there."
"Fortunately you know the proverb, grandfather--_The scalded
cat_--enough said. The lesson will have been a good one. But to return
to our Gauls. They did as you say--resorted to Revolution. She never
leaves her children in the lurch. The latter, by dint of perseverance,
of energy and of their own blood copiously poured out, succeeded in
re-conquering a portion of their former freedom from the mailed hand of
the Romans, who, moreover, had not un-christened Gaul, but only called
her 'Roman' Gaul."
"Just as we to-day speak of French Algeria, I suppose?"
"Exactly so, grandfather."
"Well, thanks to God, our brave Gauls did, with the help of
Insurrection, get back a little into the saddle! That soothes my blood
somewhat."
"Oh, grandfather, wait, only wait!"
"Why?"
"What our fathers suffered was as nothing to what they were still to
suffer."
"Think of it! And I thought they were out of the woods. What's it that
happened to them?"
"Figure to yourself a horde of barbarians, semi-savages, named _Franks_.
Thirteen or fourteen hundred years ago they emerged from the recesses of
the forests of Germany. Genuine Cossacks they were, in their way. They
fell upon the Roman armies. These, enervated by their conquest of Gaul,
were rolled in the dust and driven out, and then the Frankish
conquerors, in turn, took possession of our poor country. They stripped
her even of her name. They called her _France_, after themselves, in
token of possession."
"The brigands!" cried the old man. "I like the Romans better, by my
faith! At least they left us our name."
"That's so. Besides, the Romans were, at least, the most civilized
people then living, except for the barbarity of their system of slavery.
They covered Gaul with magnificent structures, and will ye nil ye, they
restored to our ancestors a part of their pristine freedom. The Franks,
on the contrary, were, as I said, genuine Cossacks. Under their
domination the Gauls had to start all over again."
"Good God! Good God!"
"Those hordes of Frankish bandits--"
"Call them Cossacks! Give their true name!"
"They were even worse, if possible, grandfather! Those Frankish bandits,
those Cossacks, if you prefer, called their chiefs _Kings_. The kingly
leaven perpetuated itself in our country, whence it happens that for so
many years we have tasted the sweets of Kings of Frankish origin, whom
the royalists call _Kings by divine right_."
"Say by _Cossack right_! A fine present!"
"The chiefs of lower category were called _dukes_, and _counts_. Their
seed likewise perpetuated itself upon our soil, whence it happens that
for so long a time we have enjoyed the luxury of a nobility of Frankish
origin, who treated us as a conquered race."
"What's that you are telling me!" ejaculated the perplexed-looking old
man. "If I grasp the meaning of what you say, my boy, the Frankish
bandits, those Cossacks, Kings and chieftains, once masters of Gaul,
parceled out among themselves the lands that the Gauls had partly
reconquered from the Romans?"
"Yes, grandfather. The Frankish Kings and seigneurs robbed the Gauls of
their property, and divided among themselves the soil and the people
upon it, just as a domain and its live stock are divided."
"And our fathers, despoiled of their goods by those Cossacks--"
"Our fathers were anew reduced to slavery, as they were under the
Romans, and were forced to cultivate for the benefit of the Frankish
Kings and seigneurs the land that had belonged to themselves, to them
the Gauls since Gaul was Gaul."
"Accordingly, my boy, the Frankish Kings and seigneurs, after having
robbed our fathers of their property, started to live on their sweat--"
"Just so, grandfather. They sold them--men, women, children, girls--in
open market. If they resisted at work, their masters whipped them as
recalcitrant animals are whipped, if they did not kill them in their
anger, or out of pure cruelty, as often happened, just as one might kill
his dog or horse. The theory was that our fathers and mothers belonged
to the Frankish Kings and seigneurs neither more nor less than cattle
belong to their owner. All this by virtue of the Frankish conquest of
Gaul[6]. This state of things lasted until the revolution of 1789, which
you witnessed, grandfather. You will remember the enormous difference
there still existed at that time between a nobleman and a workingman,
between a seigneur and a peasant."
"'Sdeath! It was the difference between master and slave."
"Or, if you prefer the term, between _Frank_ and _Gaul_, grandfather."
"But, my little man, how did it happen that our forefathers the Gauls
allowed themselves to be martyrized in that fashion by a handful of
Franks--no, Cossacks, I mean, for so many centuries?"
"Oh, grandfather! The Franks possessed the soil which they had stolen;
hence they possessed the fullness thereof. Their army, a numerous body,
consisted of pitiless recruits from their own country. Besides, almost
exhausted by their long struggle against the Romans, a frightful
affliction was furthermore in store for our fathers--the priests."
"That's all that was wanting to finish them up!"
"To their eternal shame, the larger portion of the Gallic bishops,
immediately upon the Frankish invasion, betrayed their own country, and
made common cause with the Frankish Kings and seigneurs, whom they
speedily dominated through cunning and flattery, and from whom they
wheedled all the lands and money possible. Accordingly, just as with the
conquerors themselves, a large number of holy priests held serfs whom
they either sold or exploited, and lived amidst shocking debauchery,
degrading, tyrannizing and brutifying at their own sweet pleasure the
Gallic masses to whom they preached resignation, and respect for, and
obedience to the Franks, threatening with the devil and his horns
whatever wretched being might attempt a revolt for the independence of
his country from the foreign Kings and seigneurs, the only source of
whose power and wealth was violence, rapine and murder."[7]
"I see it all! But, my little man, did our forefathers allow themselves
to be shorn without kicking--all that time, from the conquest down to
the Revolution, when we turned upon those Frankish Kings and seigneurs,
and, along with them, their clergy, who stuck to the habit of gathering
fat upon their ribs?"
"It is not likely that everything went on without numerous revolts on
the part of the serfs against the Kings, the seigneurs and the priests.
But, grandfather, I have told you the little that I know, and even that
little I learned only while carpentering in the shop of Monsieur
Lebrenn, the linendraper opposite us."
"How did it happen, my boy?"
"While I was at work, Monsieur Lebrenn, who is the best man I know, used
to chat with me. He would talk about the history of our fathers, of
which I knew as little as you. Once my curiosity was pricked--and it
was not slight--"
"I can well imagine that."
"I put a thousand questions to Monsieur Lebrenn, all the while hammering
and joining. He answered me with truly paternal kindness. In that way I
came to know the little that I have told you. But," added George with a
sigh that he was unable to suppress, "my job being done, the history
lessons were interrupted. Accordingly, I have told you all I know,
grandfather."
"So, then, the linendraper who lives opposite is as learned as all
that?"
"He is as learned as he is a true patriot. He is an _old Gaul_, as he
loves to style himself. And sometimes," added George, unable to avoid
blushing slightly, "I heard him say to his daughter, as he proudly
embraced her on account of some clever answer or other that she made,
'Oh, as to you--you are a true Gallic girl!'"
At this moment father Morin and George heard someone rapping at the door
of the first chamber.
"Walk in!" cried George.
Someone stepped into the front room that connected with the one occupied
by the old man.
"Who is there?" George asked.
"I--Lebrenn," answered a voice.
"What! The worthy linendraper that we have been speaking about? The _old
Gaul_?" whispered the venerable grandfather. "Go quick and see what he
wants, my boy, and shut the door after you."
As much embarrassed as surprised at this visit, George stepped out of
his grandfather's room, and found himself facing Marik Lebrenn.
CHAPTER III.
MARIK LEBRENN.
Marik Lebrenn was a man of about fifty years of age, although looking
rather younger. His high stature; his nervy, muscular neck, arms and
shoulders; the proud and resolute carriage of his head; his open and
strikingly strong countenance; his sea-blue eyes with their firm and
penetrating glance; his thick, heavy and light auburn hair, slightly
streaked with grey and starting rather low upon a forehead that seemed
to partake of the hardness of marble;--all these features betrayed the
characteristic type of the Breton race, among which the Gallic tongue
and blood have pre-eminently preserved themselves unalloyed down to our
own days. Upon the ruddy and thick lips of Monsieur Lebrenn sat a
perpetual smile that one time betokened kindheartedness, other times
bore the impress of that wit and satire, which our old books term
_salty_, when they describe the racy jokes, or the old Gallic character,
that ever is inclined to teasing. I shall close the description of the
merchant, by clothing him in a large olive overcoat and trousers of a
grey material.
Astonished, almost speechless at the unexpected visit, George Duchene
waited in silence for Lebrenn to speak. The latter said:
"Monsieur George, about six months ago you were assigned by your
employer to attend to some repairs in my shop. I was very much pleased
with your intelligence and skill."
"You proved as much to me, monsieur, by your kindness."
"You were entitled to it. I noticed that you were industrious, and
anxious to learn. I was aware, besides, as all our neighbors are, of
your worthy conduct towards your grandfather, who occupies these
lodgings for the last fifteen years."
"Monsieur," remarked George, not a little embarrassed by these praises,
"my conduct--"
"Is perfectly simple, is it not? Very well. Your job in my shop kept you
three months. Very well pleased with our relations to each other, I said
to you, and did so in all frankness: 'Monsieur George, we are neighbors;
call and see me, either Sundays, or any other day after your work hours;
I shall be pleased, very pleased.'"
"Indeed, monsieur, you said so."
"And yet, Monsieur George, you never set your foot in my house."
"I beg you, monsieur, do not attribute my reserve to either ingratitude
or forgetfulness."
"What, then, should I attribute it to?"
"Monsieur--"
"Come, Monsieur George, be frank--you love my daughter."
The young man trembled from head to foot. His color left his cheeks,
paleness and blushes alternated with each other. Finally he answered
Lebrenn with a tremulous and moved voice:
"It is true, monsieur. I love mademoiselle, your daughter."
"So that, your work in my shop being done, you did not return to my
house out of fear that your love might carry you away?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"And you never mentioned your love to anyone, even to my daughter?"
"Never, monsieur."
"I knew it. But why did you refuse to place confidence in me, Monsieur
George?"
"Monsieur," answered the embarrassed young man, "I--did--not dare--"
"Why not! Perchance because I am what is called a _bourgeois_--a rich
man compared to you, who live from day to day by the wages that you
earn?"
"Yes, monsieur."
After a moment's silence the merchant proceeded:
"Permit me, Monsieur George, to put a question to you. You may answer
it, if you think proper."
"I listen, monsieur."
"About fifteen months ago, shortly after your discharge from the army,
you expected to marry?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"A young flower girl, an orphan named Josephine Eloi?"
"Yes, monsieur; it is all so."
"Will you tell me the reason why the marriage did not take place?"
The young man colored; an expression of pain contracted his countenance;
he hesitated to answer.
Lebrenn watched him attentively. Pained and surprised at George's
silence, he could not withhold a bitter and severe cry:
"I see--seduction, then abandonment and oblivion. Your embarrassment
proclaims it all but too loudly."
"You are mistaken, monsieur," George quickly answered. "My embarrassment
and emotion are caused by cruel recollections. I shall tell you what
happened. I never lie--"
"I know you do not, Monsieur George."
"Josephine dwelt in the same house with my employer. In that way I
became acquainted with her. She was very pretty, and, although
illiterate, highly gifted. I knew she was inured to work and poverty. I
believed her wise. A bachelor's life weighed upon me. I also thought of
my grandfather. A wife would have assisted me in taking better care of
him. I proposed marriage to Josephine. She seemed delighted, and she
herself named the date of our wedding. They lied to you, monsieur, who
spoke of seduction and abandonment!"
"I believe you," said Lebrenn, cordially extending his hand to the
young man. "I am happy to be able to believe you. But how did your
marriage fall through?"
"A week before the day for our wedding Josephine disappeared, leaving a
letter for me saying that all was broken off. I subsequently learned
that, yielding to the evil advice of one of her girl friends, a lost
woman, she followed her example. Having lived in misery all her life,
enduring grievous privations despite her long hours, twelve and fifteen
of work a day, Josephine recoiled before the life that I offered her--a
life of toil and poverty like her own."
"And like so many others," interjected Lebrenn, "she succumbed to the
temptations of a less toilsome life. Oh! Poverty! Poverty!"
"I have never seen Josephine again, monsieur. She is now, I am told, a
coryphee in one of the public dancing halls. She dropped her old name
for one that I do not know, coined according to her habit of improvising
upon all manner of subjects some of the wildest of songs. In short, she
is lost forever. And yet, the girl had excellent qualities of heart. You
now understand, monsieur, the cause of the sad emotion that came over me
when you mentioned Josephine's name a minute ago."
"Your emotion testifies in favor of your heart, Monsieur George. You
have been calumniated. I doubted the truth of what I was told; I am now
certain. Let us say no more upon that subject. I now wish to tell you
what happened at my house three days ago. I was, in the evening, in my
wife's room, together with my daughter. The girl had sat silent and
meditative for a while. Suddenly, taking my hand and her mother's, she
said to us: 'I have a secret to confide to you. I have long put off
speaking, because I have long been reflecting, lest I speak hastily. I
love Monsieur George Duchene'--"
"Great God! monsieur," cried George, clasping his hands, and seized with
inexpressible ecstasy. "Is it possible! Mademoiselle, your daughter!"
"That was the language of my daughter to us," proceeded Lebrenn with
deliberation. "'I am pleased, my child, at your frankness,' I answered
her; 'but how came this love about?' 'First, father, through learning of
George's conduct towards his grandfather; then through hearing you often
praise his character, his industrious habits, and his efforts to
cultivate his mind. Finally, he won his way to my heart with his gentle
and refined manners, with his frankness, and his conversation, as I
heard him talk with you. I never said to him a word that could make him
suspect my sentiments for him. On his part, he never dropped his extreme
reserve towards me. I would be happy were he to share the sentiments I
entertain for him, and if you, father and mother, think such a marriage
proper. If you think otherwise I shall respect your wishes, knowing that
you respect my freedom. If I can not marry Monsieur George I shall
remain single. You have often told me, father, that I had a will of my
own. You will not doubt my resolution. If this marriage be out of the
question, you will not find me either sulky or dejected. Your affection
will console me. Ever happy, as in the past, I shall ever care for you,
for mother and for brother. I have told you the truth. Now, I wish you
to decide. I shall wait.'"
George listened to Lebrenn with ever increasing astonishment. He could
not believe his own ears. Finally he cried in broken accents:
"Monsieur, is this a dream?"
"Not in the least. My daughter never was more wide awake, I assure you.
I know the openness of her nature, also her firmness. Both my wife and I
are certain of that--if this union can not be effected, Velleda's
affection for us will not change, but neither will she marry anyone
else. Now, then, seeing it is quite natural that a young and handsome
girl of eighteen should marry, and seeing, furthermore, that Velleda's
choice is worthy of herself and us, my wife and I, after mature
reflection, might gladly decide to accept you as our son-in-law."
Impossible to describe the look of glad surprise, of intoxication, that
was stamped upon George's features at these words of the merchant's. He
remained mute, he seemed stupefied.
"Come, Monsieur George," the linendraper proceeded with a smile, "what
is there so very extraordinary, so incredible, in what I have been
telling you? For three whole months you were at work in my shop. I
already knew that, in order to insure your grandfather's existence, you
turned soldier. Your rank of under-officer, besides two wounds, proves
that you served with honor. During your three months with me I was
able--my eyes are sufficiently keen--to gauge your worth in point of
heart, intelligence and skill at your trade. Delighted with our
acquaintance, I invited you to call upon us. Your reserve in this
instance is an additional proof of the delicacy of your character. On
top of all that, my daughter loves you and you love her. You are
twenty-seven years old, she eighteen. She is a charming being; you a
handsome fellow. You are poor; I have enough for two. You are a
mechanic, so was my father. What in the devil's name is there to amaze
you so much? You look as if you had been treated to a fairy tale."
These kind words failed to put an end to George's stupor. He really
believed himself treading on enchanted ground, as the merchant had
indicated. With moist eyes and a throbbing heart the young man could
barely mutter:
"Oh, monsieur! Excuse my embarrassment--I feel so dazed with joy at all
I have heard--at your saying that you consent to my marrying--"
"One moment!" quickly interposed the linendraper. "One moment! Take note
that, with all the good opinion I entertain for you, what I said was we
_might_ decide to accept you as our son-in-law. It was conditional. The
conditions were these: first, that you were not guilty of the unworthy
act of seduction, that you were charged with--"
"Monsieur, did I not swear to you?"
"You did. I believe you. I mention that first condition simply because I
had it on my mind when I came in. As to the second--there is a second--"
"What is it, monsieur?" asked George with inexpressible anxiety, and
beginning to apprehend he had too readily indulged in an insensate hope.
"Listen to me, Monsieur George. We have talked very little politics
together. During the time that you worked at my place, our conversation
always turned upon the history of our forefathers. Nevertheless, I know
you entertain very liberal ideas. Let us be short about it--you are a
Socialist republican."
"I have heard you say, monsieur, that all opinion, sincerely held, was
honorable."
"And I do not take that back. I do not blame you. But between the desire
to cause one's opinion to prevail by peaceful means, and schemes to
bring about its triumph by violence, by the force of arms--between the
two there yawns a deep abyss. Not true, Monsieur George?"
"Yes, monsieur," answered the young man, looking at the linendraper with
surprise mingled with uneasiness.
"Now, then, never is an armed demonstration attempted single-handed. Is
not that also true, Monsieur George?"
"Monsieur," the young man answered with a feeling of increasing
uneasiness, "I do not know--"
"Yes, you are bound to know that people ordinarily associate with others
of their own opinion. In short, people affiliate in _secret
societies_--and, on the day of battle, turn up boldly upon the street.
Is that not true, Monsieur George?"
"I know, monsieur, that the revolution of 1830 was accomplished in that
manner," answered George in a high state of anxiety, while his heart
felt more and more wrung with pain.
"Certainly," resumed Monsieur Lebrenn, "certainly it was done in that
way, and others before it; and still others in the future will take the
same course. Nevertheless, as with revolutions, insurrections do not
always succeed. Seeing that people who play at that game stake their
heads, you will realize, Monsieur George, that my wife and I would be
rather disinclined to give our daughter to a man who did not belong to
himself; who, at any moment, might take up arms, and march with the
secret society that he is a member of at the risk of his life, as
behooves a man of honor and conviction. It is all very lofty, very
heroic, I admit. The inconvenience lies in that the Chamber of Peers,
failing to appreciate that sort of heroism, may send the conspirators to
Mt. St. Michel, unless it order their heads cut off. Now, then, I put
the question to you as a matter of conscience, Monsieur George, would it
not be a sad thing for a young woman to be exposed at any time to see
her husband without a head, or consigned to imprisonment for life?"
George, grief-stricken and in consternation, had turned pale. He
answered Lebrenn in a depressed voice:
"Monsieur--two words--"
"Allow me, I shall be done in a second," interposed the linendraper; and
he proceeded in a grave, almost solemn voice:
"Monsieur George, I place implicit confidence in your word. I have
tested you. Swear to me that you do not belong to any secret society. I
will believe you, and you shall be my son-in-law--or, rather, my own
son," added Lebrenn, reaching out his hand to George, "seeing that since
I became acquainted with you and learned to esteem you, I ever felt for
you, I repeat it, as much interest as sympathy."
The merchant's praises, together with the cordiality of his manner,
intensified the severity of the blow that smote the hopes of George. He,
hitherto so determined and energetic, felt himself weakening. He covered
his face in his hands, and could not restrain his tears.
Lebrenn contemplated him with commiseration. In a moved voice he
addressed the young man:
"I am awaiting your oath, Monsieur George."
The young man turned his head aside to wipe away his tears. He then
faced the father of his beloved and said:
"I can not, monsieur, give you the oath that you request."
"Then--your marriage to my daughter--"
"I must renounce it, monsieur," answered George painfully.
"Accordingly, Monsieur George," resumed the merchant, "you admit that
you belong to a secret society?"
The young man's silence was his only reply.
"Well," said the merchant, heaving a sigh of regret, and rising; "it is
all ended--fortunately my daughter is a brave girl."
"I also shall be so, monsieur."
"Monsieur George," continued the merchant, reaching out his hand to the
young carpenter, "you are a man of honor. I need not demand of you
secrecy concerning this interview. As you may judge, my inclinations
were most favorable towards you. It is not my fault if my plans--I shall
say more--my wishes, my warm wishes, to see my daughter and you united
meet with an insuperable obstacle."
"Never, monsieur, shall I forget the token of esteem with which you have
honored me. You act with the wisdom and discretion of a father. I can
not--let it cost me what grief it may--but bow respectfully to your
decision. I should, I admit it, myself have forestalled this subject
with you--I should have loyally apprized you of the sacred engagement
that binds me to my party. I am certain I would have made the confession
to you, so soon as I had recovered from the intoxication of happiness
that your words threw me into. I would have had time to consider the
duties imposed upon me by that unexpected happiness--this marriage.
Pardon me, monsieur," George proceeded, in a voice that trembled with
anguish, "pardon me. I have no longer the right to speak of that
beautiful dream. But what I shall ever remember with pride is your
having said to me: 'You can be my son.'"
"It is well, Monsieur George; I expected no less from you," said
Lebrenn, moving towards the door.
And, giving his hand once more to the young man, he added with emotion:
"Once more, adieu."
"Adieu, monsieur," responded George, taking the outstretched hand of
the merchant. But the latter, suddenly throwing his arms around the
young artisan, pressed him to his breast, crying in a voice that shook
with joy, and with eyes moist with tears:
"Well done, George! Honest man! Loyal heart! I judged you rightly!"
Puzzled at these words, and at the conduct of the linendraper, George
looked at him unable to utter a word. The latter whispered to him:
"Six weeks ago--_Lourcine Street_."
A tremor ran over George's frame. In alarm he exclaimed:
"Mercy, monsieur!"
"Number seventeen, fourth floor, in the rear."
"Monsieur, I beg of you!"
"Did not a mechanic named Dupont introduce you blindfolded?"
"Monsieur, I can make no answer."
"Five members of a secret society received you. You took the usual
pledge. And you were led out again, still blindfolded. Not so?"
"Monsieur," cried George as stupefied as he was terror-stricken at the
revelation, and seeking to regain composure. "I do not understand what
you are saying--"
"I was, that evening, the chairman of the committee, my brave George."
"You, monsieur!" cried the young man still hesitating to believe
Lebrenn. "You!"
"Yes, I."
And seeing incredulity still depicted on George's countenance, the
merchant proceeded:
"Yes, I presided. And here is the proof."
Saying which he whispered a few words in George's ear.
Unable any longer to doubt, the young man cried, looking at the
merchant:
"But, monsieur--the oath that you demanded of me a while ago?"
"It was a last test."
"A test?"
"You must pardon me for it, my brave George. A father is mistrustful.
Thank heaven you did not belie my expectations. You stood the test
gallantly. You preferred the ruin of your dearest hopes to a lie,
notwithstanding you must have felt sure that I relied upon your word
with implicit confidence, whatever you may have said."
"Monsieur," replied George with a hesitation that deeply touched the
merchant, "can I now--can I this time--can I hope--with certainty? I
conjure you, speak! If you only knew what anguish I went through a while
ago!"
"Upon my word as an honest man, my dear George, my daughter loves you.
My wife and I consent to your marriage. And we look forward to it with
delight because we see in it a future of happiness for our child. Is
that plain?"
"Oh, monsieur!" cried George pressing with effusion the hand of the
merchant, who said:
"As to the exact day of your marriage, my dear George, the events of
yesterday--those that are in train to-day--the course that our secret
society is to follow--"
"You, monsieur?" cried George with renewed amazement, and unable to
avoid interrupting Lebrenn to express his astonishment, for a moment
forgotten in his transport of joy; "You, monsieur, are, indeed, a member
of our secret society? Indeed, I am dumbfounded!"
"Not bad!" exclaimed the merchant smiling. "Here we have our dear George
about to start all over anew with his astonishment. And why, pray,
should not I also belong to your secret society? Perchance, because,
without being rich, exactly, I enjoy some comfort and have a few duds to
sell? What business have I, I suppose you are thinking, with a party,
the aim of which is the conquest for the proletariat of political life,
through universal suffrage, and of property through the organization of
labor? Why, my good George, just because I _have_, it is my duty to
assist my brothers to conquer what they _have not_."
"These are generous sentiments, monsieur!" exclaimed George. "Rare,
indeed, are the men who, having arrived at comfort, turn around to give
a helping hand to their less fortunate brothers."
"No, George; no. That is not so rare. When, perhaps within not many
hours, you will see running to arms all the members of our society, one
of the chiefs of which I have been for some time, you will find among
them merchants, artists, manufacturers, literary people, lawyers, men of
learning, physicians, in short--_bourgeois_, most of whom, like myself,
live in modest comfort, all of them animated with no higher ambition
than the emancipation of their brothers, the common people, and anxious
to drop their guns, after the struggle, in order to return to their
industrial and peaceful occupations."
"Oh, monsieur, how surprised and happy I am at what you tell me!"
"Still surprised! Poor George! And why so? Because there are
_bourgeois_--or, to use the full, big term, _republican Socialist
bourgeois_? Come, now, George, speaking seriously, is not the cause of
the bourgeois that of the proletariat? Is there any doubt but that I,
for instance, yesterday a proletarian, whom good luck has so far
favored, might, through some stroke of bad luck, become again a
proletarian to-morrow; and, if not I, my son? Am not I--and my case is
that of all other small traders--at the mercy of the barons of high
finance, of the strong iron safes, just as our forefathers were at the
mercy of the barons of the strong forts? Are not the small holders as
much enslaved and plundered by the Dukes of Mortgage, by the Marquises
of Usury, by the Counts of Speculation? Are we, the merchants, not
daily, despite all our probity, despite all our labors, despite all our
economy, despite all our intelligence--are not we, despite all that,
ever on the brink of ruin through any crisis that may hap to come upon
us, whenever, either through the fear, the cupidity or the whim of the
satraps, it pleases those autocrats of capital to stop credit and to
reject our signature, however honorable the same may be? Would we, were
credit, instead of being the monopoly of the few that it is to-day,
democratically organized by the state, as it ought to be,--would we be
then exposed to ruin by the sudden withdrawal of capital, by usurious
extortion, of discount, or as the consequence of a merciless
competition? Are not we to-day, we old men, on the eve of finding
ourselves in as precarious a position as was that of your grandfather,
that brave invalid of toil, who, after thirty years of work and probity,
would have died of want but for your devotion to him, my dear George?
Have I, already once ruined like so many other merchants, the certainty
that my son will always find the means of earning his daily bread, that
he will not be forced to experience, like you, George, like all other
proletarians, the trials of being laid-off--that homicidal manoeuvre
which causes you to die a little every day for want of sufficient food?
And my daughter--but no! I know her too well! She would sooner die! But
how many young girls, brought up in comfort, and whose fathers were,
like myself, modest merchants, have not been plunged into atrocious
misery--and, not infrequently, from such misery hurled into the abyss of
vice, like the wretched working girl whom you would have married! No,
no, George! The intelligent bourgeois, and they are numerous, do not
separate their cause from that of their brothers of the common people.
Proletarians and bourgeois have for centuries fought side by side, heart
by heart, in order to regain their freedom. Their blood has mingled in
order to cement the holy union of the conquered against the conquerors!
of the vanquished against the vanquishers! of the weak and the
disinherited against force and privilege! How, then, should the
interests of the bourgeois and the proletarians not be common? They
have ever had the same enemy to contend with. But, enough of politics,
George. Let us talk of yourself and my daughter. The commotion in Paris
began last evening, it is at its height this morning. Our sections have
been notified to hold themselves in readiness. We expect a call to arms
from one moment to another. Are you aware of that?"
"Yes, monsieur; I have been notified."
"This evening, or to-night, we shall have to descend into the street. My
wife and daughter do not know this. Not that I mistrust them," added the
merchant with a smile, "they are true Gallic women, worthy of our
mothers, the valiant women, who, with act and voice, encouraged their
fathers, brothers, sons and husbands in battle. But you know our
by-laws. They impose upon us absolute silence towards outsiders. George,
within three days either the throne of Louis Philippe will be
overthrown, or our party will have been once more vanquished. But not
discouraged. To it belongs the future. At this appeal to arms, you or I,
you and I, my friend, may be laid low upon the barricade."
"Such is the chance of war, monsieur; may you be spared!"
"To inform my daughter in advance that I consent to her marriage with
you, and that you love her, would be only to increase her sorrow in case
you succumb in the fray."
"It would, monsieur."
"I, therefore, request you, George, to await the issue of this crisis
before speaking to my daughter. Should I be killed, my wife will be
apprised of my last wishes, that you marry Velleda."
"Monsieur," replied George, profoundly moved, "what I feel at this
moment can not be expressed. All I can say to you is--I shall approve
myself worthy of your daughter--worthy of you; I am not overcome by the
magnitude of the obligation that you put me under--my heart and my life
will prove equal to it, I assure you, monsieur."
"I believe you, my brave George," said the linendraper, affectionately
pressing the young man's hands in his own. "One word more. Have you
arms?"
"I have a carbine hidden here, and fifty cartridges that I manufactured
last night."
"Should the insurrection explode this evening, a very likely occurrence,
we shall barricade the street up to my house. The post is excellent. We
have several stacks of arms and ample powder. I went out this morning to
inspect the deposits of ammunition that it was feared the police spies
had discovered. I found the rumor false. At the first commotion, return
to your apartment, George. I shall communicate with you--and then,
'sdeath! Firm on the barricades! Tell me, is your grandfather discreet?"
"I answer for him, as for myself, monsieur."
"Is he there in the next room?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"Very well, grant me the favor of allowing me to impart to him news that
will give him joy."
Monsieur Lebrenn stepped into the room of the old man, who was still
smoking his pipe "like a Pacha," as he expressed it.
"Good father," said the linendraper to him, "your grandson has so good
and so generous a heart that I give him my daughter, with whom he is
crazily in love. All I ask of you is to keep the secret for a few days,
after which you are entitled to the expectation of soon seeing yourself
promoted to the dignity of great-grandfather. George will explain the
whole thing to you. Adieu, my good old man. And you George--so long!"
Leaving George alone with his grandfather, Lebrenn proceeded to the
residence of the Count of Plouernel, the colonel of dragoons who was
waiting for the linendraper, to consider the purchase of a large supply
of linen.
CHAPTER IV.
PRADELINE.
Gonthram Neroweg, Count of Plouernel, occupied a cosy little house on
Paradis-Poissonniere Street, built by his own grandfather. The somewhat
_rococo_ elegance of the establishment suggested it must have been
constructed about the middle of the last century, and had done service
as a city residence. The quarter of the Poissonnieres, or Fish-markets,
as the neighborhood was called in the days of the Regency, but now
almost deserted, was perfectly appropriate for those mysterious retreats
that are devoted to the cult of Venus Aphrodite.
The Count of Plouernel was breakfasting _tete-a-tete_ with a pretty girl
of about twenty years--a brunette, lively and laughterful, who had been
surnamed Pradeline because of her readiness, at the suppers of which she
always was the soul and often the queen also, in improvising upon all
imaginable subjects, ditties that the celebrated improviser, whose name
she bore with a feminine termination, would surely not have cared to
father, but which had at least the redeeming feature of lacking neither
in point nor in mirthfulness.
The Count of Plouernel, having heard speak of Pradeline, invited her to
sup the previous night with him and some of his friends. After the
supper, which was prolonged until three in the morning, the right of
hospitality for the night had been earned by the girl. After the
hospitality came breakfast the following morning. The two companions
were, accordingly, at table in a little boudoir fitted out in Louis XV
style, and contiguous to the bed chamber. A good fire blazed in the
marble-tipped hearth. Thick curtains of light blue damask, covered with
roses, softened the glare of the daylight. Flowers filled large
porcelain vases. The atmosphere was warm and perfumed. The wines were
choice, the dishes toothsome. Pradeline and the Count of Plouernel were
doing honor to both.
The colonel was a man of about thirty-eight years of age--tall, and at
once lithe and robust. His face, though rather haggard, on that morning,
was of a species of bold beauty, and strongly betrayed his German or
Frankish stock, the characteristic traits of which Tacitus and Caesar
frequently described. His hair was light blonde, his moustache long and
reddish, his eyes light grey, and his nose hooked like an eagle's beak.
Wrapped in a costly morning gown, the Count of Plouernel seemed no less
hilarious than the young girl.
"Come, Pradeline," said he, pouring out to her a glass of generous old
Burgundy wine, "to the health of your lover."
"Nonsense! Do you think I keep a lover?"
"You are right. To the health of your lovers!"
"You don't seem to be jealous, darling!"
"And you?"
At this question Pradeline nonchalantly opened her red corsage, and
clinking her glass with the blade of her knife she answered the Count of
Plouernel with an improvisation to the tune then in vogue of _La Rifla_:
"For ague-cheeked Sir Fidelity
I only have duplicity.
When some gay lover pleases me,
'Tis quickly done! He pleases me--
La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla-fla-fla-fla,
La rifla-fla-fla-fla-fla-fla-fla."
"Bravo, my dear!" cried the colonel, laughing boisterously.
And joining in chorus with Pradeline, he sang, also clinking his glass
with the edge of his knife:
"When some gay lover pleases me,
'Tis quickly done! He pleases me.
La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla-fla-fla-fla,
La rifla-fla-fla-fla-fla-fla-fla."
"And now, my little girl," he proceeded to say at the close of the
refrain, "since you are not jealous, give me some advice--some friendly
advice. I am in love--desperately in love."
"Is it possible!"
"If she were a woman of the world I would not ask your advice, but--"
"Well! Well! Am I, perchance, not a woman? and of the world, too?"
"Of all the world, not true, my dear?"
"Naturally, seeing I'm here--which is little to your credit, my dear,
and less creditable to me. But that matters not. Proceed, and don't be
rude again--if you can avoid it."
"Oh! The little one gives me a lesson in politeness!"
"You want my advice; you see I can give you lessons. Proceed, what have
you to say?"
"You must know I am in love with a shop-girl, that is to say, her father
and mother keep a shop. You surely know the ways of such folks, their
customs and habits. What means would you advise me to employ in order to
succeed?"
"Make yourself beloved."
"That takes too long. When a violent fancy seizes me, I find it
impossible to wait."
"Indeed! 'Tis wonderful, but, darling, you interest me greatly. Let's
see. First of all is the shop-girl poor? Is she in great want? Does she
seem very hungry?"
"How? Whether she is hungry? What the devil do you mean?"
"Colonel, I can not deny your personal attractions--you're handsome,
you're brilliant, you're charming, you're adorable, you're delicious--"
"Irony?"
"What do you think! Would I dare to? Well, as I was saying, you're
delicious! But, in order for the poor girl to appreciate you duly, she
must first be dying of hunger. You have no idea how hunger--helps to
find people adorable."
Whereupon Pradeline sailed in to improvise a new ditty, not, this time,
in merry vein, but with marked bitterness, and keeping time with such a
slow measure that her favorite tune sounded melancholic:
"You're hungry and you weep,
Come, maid, and fall asleep;
Come, you'll have plenty of gold,
Thyself to me be sold.
La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla--"
"The devil take that song! This one is not at all jolly," remarked the
Count of Plouernel, struck by the melancholic accents of the young girl,
who, however, quickly resumed her reckless bearing and wonted
cheerfulness. "I understand the allusion," he added; "but my pretty
shop-girl is not hungry."
"The next thing--is she coquettish? Does she love to be prinked? Does
she like jewelry, or theaters? These are famous means to blast a poor
girl."
"I presume she likes all those things. But she has a father and mother,
and they probably keep a close watch over her. In view of all this I
had a plan--"
"You? At last you have a plan of your own! And what is it?"
"It is to make frequent and large purchases in that shop, even to loan
them money at a pinch, because I know those small traders must ever be
hard pushed for cash to pay their bills."
"In other words, you believe they will be ready to sell you their
daughter--for cash?"
"No; but I figure that they will at least shut their eyes--I would then
be able to dazzle the minx with presents, and proceed rapidly to my
goal. Well, how does my plan strike you?"
"I'll be blown! How can I tell?" answered Pradeline, affecting
innocence. "If things are done in your upper world in that manner, if
parents sell their daughters, perhaps the thing is done in the same way
among the poorer folks. Still, I don't believe it. These people are too
bourgeois, they are too niggardly, you see?"
"My little girl," said the Count of Plouernel haughtily, "you are
emancipating yourself prodigiously."
At this reproach the young girl broke out with a peal of laughter, which
she interrupted to sing in merry notes this new improvisation:
"O! See that bold signor,
So full of pride, honor?
To such a haughty flea
All bourgeois bend the knee!
La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla--"
After which Pradeline rose, took from the mantlepiece a cigar that she
deftly lighted, and proceeded to hum her refrain between the puffs of
smoke that she blew out of her cherry lips. She then stretched herself
at full length upon a lounge, and drove in silence the bluish smoke of
her choice Havana towards the ceiling.
Forgetting the anger with which he was seized shortly before, the Count
of Plouernel could not avoid laughing at the originality displayed by
the young girl, and said:
"Come, my little pet; let us talk seriously. I am not asking for songs,
but for advice."
"I must first be informed of the quarter of the town in which your love
is located," observed the young girl dogmatically, turning over on the
lounge. "The knowledge of the quarter is very important in such matters.
What may be done in one quarter, can not be done in another. Darling,
there are prudish quarters, devout quarters, and _decollete_ quarters."
"Profoundly reasoned, my charmer. The influence of a quarter upon the
virtue of its women is considerable. Without running any risk I may tell
you that my shop-girl lives on St. Denis Street."
The young girl, who, stretched out upon the lounge, had been leisurely
and nonchalantly rolling the clouds of smoke from her cigar before her,
started at the mention of St. Denis Street, and rose so suddenly that
the Count of Plouernel looked at her in astonishment, and cried:
"What the devil has come over you?"
"What has come over me--" answered Pradeline, quickly recovering her
composure and wonted nonchalance, "what has come over me is that your
horrible cigar has burnt me--but that's no matter. You were saying,
darling, that your love is located in St. Denis Street? Well, now I have
something to go by; but not yet enough."
"And you shall not learn any more, my little beauty."
"The pest take this cigar!" exclaimed Pradeline, again shaking her head.
"It will blister me! It will blister me surely!"
"Would you like some cold water?"
"No, it will soon be over. So, then, your love lives in St. Denis
Street. You should also let me know--is the place at the head or the
foot of the street? There is quite some difference between the head and
the foot of a street, you must admit. The proof is, that the prices of
the shops are dear at one end and cheap at the other. According as the
rent runs high or low, a lover's generosity must keep step and be
proportionately great or less so. You can not get over this positive
fact."
"It is a very positive fact. Well, I shall confide to you that my love
lives not far from the St. Denis Gate."
"I need put no further questions to render my opinion," said Pradeline
with a voice that she was at great pains to modulate into comical tones.
Nevertheless, a closer observer than the Count of Plouernel would have
noticed a vague shadow of uneasiness flit over the otherwise gay girl.
"Well, what is your advice?"
"First of all--you should--" but, suddenly breaking off, the young girl
said:
"Someone raps at the door, darling."
"You think so?"
"I am quite certain. Listen! Don't you hear?"
In fact the rapping was renewed.
"Walk in!" cried the Count.
A valet presented himself, looking disconcerted, and said to the Count
anxiously:
"Monsieur Count, his Eminence--"
"My uncle!" exclaimed the Count of Plouernel, looking no less
disconcerted than his valet, and hastily rising to his feet.
"Yes, Monsieur Count. Monsignor the Cardinal arrived last night in the
city from his trip abroad, and--"
"A Cardinal!" cried Pradeline, interrupting the valet with boisterous
peals of laughter, already oblivious of the matters that seemed to
preoccupy her mind a minute before. "A Cardinal! That's a rare sight!
That's a thing one does not find every day at Mabille's or at
Valentino's! A Cardinal! I've never seen one. I must give myself a
treat."
Whereupon she forthwith improvised to the tune of her favorite song:
"The young Queen Bacchanal
She saw a Cardinal,
And said: Let's have some fun,
And make him dance and run--
La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla-fla-fla-fla,
La rifla-fla-fla-fla-fla-fla-fla!"
So saying, Pradeline raised the hem of her dress and started to pirouet
around the room with great grace and utterly unconstrained, all the
while singing her latest improvisation, while the valet, standing
motionless at the half-opened door was with difficulty keeping a serious
face, and the Count of Plouernel, nettled at the freedom of the brazen
minx, called to her:
"Come, my dear; that's foolish; keep still."
Cardinal Plouernel, just announced, not caring to be kept waiting in his
nephew's ante-chamber, and little imagining him to be in such profane
company, had followed upon the heels of the valet, and entered the room
just as Pradeline, throwing out her well shaped limb, undulated her
upper body as she sang:
"Oh, let us have some fun,
And make him dance and run!
La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla--"
At the sight of the Cardinal the Count of Plouernel ran to the door, and
repeatedly and effusively embracing his uncle, gently pushed him back
into the salon from which he came. The valet, like the experienced
menial that he was, discreetly shut the door of the boudoir upon his
master, and drew the bolt.
CHAPTER V.
CARDINAL AND COUNT.
Cardinal Plouernel was a man of sixty-five years of age, lean, lank and
leathery of skin. Except for the difference in age, he was possessed of
the identical type of face as his nephew. His long neck, bald head,
large and crooked nose like the beak of a bird of prey, and wide-set,
round and penetrating eyes, imparted to his physiognomy, if analyzed and
the high grade of intelligence that they denoted left out of
consideration, a singular resemblance to that of a vulture.
To sum up, the priest, if clad in his red robes of Prince of the Church,
could not choose but present a fear-inspiring aspect. On a visit to his
nephew, he was clad simply in a long black coat, strictly buttoned up to
his throat.
"Pardon, dear uncle," said the Count, smiling. "Not being aware of your
return to town, I did not expect this matitudinal call."
The Cardinal was not the man to be astonished at a colonel of dragoons
keeping a mistress. He made answer in his brief manner:
"I am pressed for time. Let us talk to the point. On my way from abroad
I made a wide tour through France. We are on the verge of a revolution."
"Indeed, uncle?" asked the colonel incredulously. "Do you really
believe--"
"I believe a revolution is at hand."
"But, uncle--"
"Have you available funds about you? If not, I can help you out."
"Funds--what for?"
"To exchange into gold, or for good drafts upon London. The latter are
more convenient on a voyage."
"What! A voyage, uncle? What voyage?"
"The voyage that you are to make by keeping me company. We shall depart
this evening."
"Depart--this evening!"
"Would you prefer to serve the Republic?"
"The Republic!" exclaimed the Count of Plouernel. "What Republic?"
"The one that will be proclaimed in Paris, within shortly, after the
downfall of Louis Philippe."
"The downfall of Louis Philippe! The Republic in France--and within
shortly!"
"Yes, the French Republic--one, and indivisible--proclaimed in our
interest--provided we know how to wait--"
And the Cardinal indulged in a singular smile as he inhaled a pinch of
snuff.
The Count contemplated him dumbfounded. He looked as if he had just
dropped down from the clouds.
"I see, my poor Gonthram, you must have been either blind or deaf," the
Cardinal proceeded, shrugging his shoulders. "Do you see nothing in
those revolutionary banquets that have succeeded one another throughout
the principal cities of France during the last three months?"
"Ha! Ha! Ha! uncle," answered the Count, laughing out aloud; "do you
take those bibbers of blue wine, those swallowers of veal--at twenty
sous a plate--to be capable of making a revolution?"
"The simpletons--I can not blame them, so much the worse--the simpletons
have turned the heads of the bigger simpletons who listened to them.
There is nothing, in and of itself, so stupid as gunpowder; is there?
Yet that does not prevent it from exploding. Well, these banqueters have
played with gunpowder. The mine is about to explode, and it will blow up
the throne of the Orleans dynasty."
"You are joking, uncle. There are fifty thousand soldiers in the city.
If the mob but raise a finger it will be mowed down like grass.
Everybody is so completely at ease regarding the state of Paris that,
despite the seeming commotion of yesterday, the troops have not even
been furnished with passwords in the barracks."
"Is that so? Well, so much the better!" put in the Cardinal, rubbing his
hands. "If their government is seized with the vertigo, these Orleans
will quickly vacate their seats for the Republic, and our turn will come
all the sooner."
At this point his Eminence was interrupted by two raps given at the door
of the salon that communicated with the boudoir. Promptly upon the raps
followed the following ditty, still to the tune of _La Rifla_, and sung
by Pradeline in measured rhythm on the other side of the door:
"To get out of this scrape--
I sorely need my cape,
On this occa-si-on,
Your bene-dic-ti-on.
La rifla-fla-fla-fla, la rifla!"
"Oh, uncle!" said the colonel in anger, "Pay no attention, I beg you, to
the insolence of that foolish little minx."
And rising, the Count of Plouernel took from the sofa where they had
lain since the previous evening the cape and hat of the brazen girl,
rang the bell quickly, and, throwing the articles at the valet who
answered the summons, said to him:
"Deliver these traps to the hussy, and have her leave the house
instantly."
And then, returning to his Eminence, who had remained impassive, and was
at the moment in the act of opening his snuff-box, he continued:
"I assure you, uncle, that I am ashamed. But droll creatures like that
respect nothing."
"She has very well shaped limbs," mused the Cardinal, taking his snuff;
"she is quite comely, the droll creature. Nevertheless, in the Fifteenth
Century, we would have ordered her roasted alive like a little Jewess,
in reward for such a joke. But patience. Oh, my friend, never--never
before were our chances so favorable!"
"Our chances favorable if the Orleans dynasty is chased away and the
Republic is proclaimed?"
The Cardinal again shrugged his shoulders and proceeded to explain:
"Either one thing or the other will happen--either the Republic of the
bare-footed mob will be anarchy, the dictatorship, emigration, pillage,
paper money, the guillotine, and war with all Europe--and then the thing
will last six months at the longest, and Henry V will be brought back
triumphantly by the Holy Alliance; or, on the contrary, their Republic
will be benign, stupid, legal and moderate with universal suffrage for
its foundation--"
"And, if so, uncle?"
"If so, it will last longer, but we shall lose nothing by waiting.
Wielding our influence as large landed proprietors, and operating
through the lower clergy upon the peasants, we shall become masters at
the hustings, obtain the majority in the Chamber, and hamper the passage
of every measure that might, I will not say cause the Republic to be
loved, but even cause such a revolutionary state of things to seem
tolerable. We shall sow the seeds of mistrust and fear in all minds.
Soon, with its credit destroyed, with universal ruin, with disaster on
all sides, a chorus of curses will rise against the infamous Republic
that will then die peaceably after a trial that will for all time
disgust the people with it. At that psychologic moment we shall step
forward. The hungering people, the bourgeois, frightened out of their
senses, will throw themselves at our feet, praying to us with clasped
hands for Henry V, the savior of France. Finally, the hour for
stipulating conditions will arrive. These will be ours: Royalty, at
least such as it existed before 1789, that is, no more bourgeois
insolent and clamorous Chamber, holding the reins of government as much
as the King, seeing it decides upon appropriations and taxes--an
ignominious state of things; an end of the present mongrel system--_all_
or _nothing_, and we want _all_, to wit, an absolute King resting upon
an omnipotent clergy; a strong aristocracy and a merciless army; a
hundred thousand, two hundred thousand foreign troops, if needed; the
Holy Alliance will lend them to us. Misery will be so frightful, fear so
intense, the general lassitude such, that our conditions will be
accepted as soon as imposed. Thereupon we shall take prompt and terrible
measures--the only effective ones in such emergencies. Our measures will
be these: First of all, provost courts; reinstitution of the laws
pronouncing sacrilege and _lese majeste_ capital crimes, and making them
retroactive, back to 1830; execution to follow verdict within
twenty-four hours, in order to smother in their own poison all
revolutionists, all people tainted with impiousness; it will be an era
of terror--another St. Bartholomew, if necessary. France will not die
under the knife; on the contrary, she is suffering of plethora, she
needs a bleeding from time to time.[8] The second measure will be to
assign public instruction to the Society of Jesus--it alone is able to
emasculate the human species. The third measure will be to break the
sheaf of centralization; in it lay the strength of the Revolution; our
effort must be, on the contrary, to isolate the provinces as much as
possible from the small centers, where, unmolested, we shall hold sway
through the lower clergy; or, by virtue of our large holdings, restrain,
prevent, if at all possible, the intercommunication of one section of
the country with another. It is not helpful to us for people to draw
together and meet each other with frequency. With the view of dividing
and keeping them divided, we shall assiduously rekindle the rivalries,
jealousies, and where needed, the old provincial hatreds. To that end an
occasional little douse of civil war will be a helpful expedient. It
breeds and nurses the germs of implacable animosity."
The Cardinal stopped a moment to take another pinch of snuff, and then
concluded with these words:
"People who are divided by hatred never conspire."
The merciless logic of the priest repelled the Count of Plouernel.
Despite his own fatuity and caste prejudices, he rather leaned towards
modern thought. No doubt he would have preferred a reign of "legitimate
Kings." But he did not stop to think that he who wants the end must not
object to the means, and that, in order to be lasting in the eyes of its
partisans, a complete and absolute restoration could not possibly take
place and maintain itself except by the frightful means that the
Cardinal had just laid bare with complacent assurance. The colonel
replied with a smile:
"But, uncle, think of it! In these days of ours the idea of isolating
the population is chimerical. The thing is impossible! What about the
strategic highways! The railroads!"
"The railroads?" echoed the Cardinal angrily. "A devil's invention, good
only to cause the revolutionary fever to circulate from one end of
Europe to the other! For that very reason our Holy Father wants no
railroads in his states, and right he is. It is incredible that the
monarchs of the Holy Alliance could have allowed themselves to yield to
such diabolical innovations! They may have to pay dear therefor! What
did our forefathers do, at the time of the conquest, with a view to
subjugate and keep the yoke riveted to the neck of this perverse Gallic
race--our vassals by birth and by kind, that has so often risen in
rebellion against us? Our ancestors staked them within their separate
domains, forbidding them to step outside under penalty of death. Thus
chained to the glebe, thus isolated and brutified, the breed is more
easily kept under control--that must be the goal we should aim at
returning to."
"But I repeat--what about the railroads? You would not tear up the
highways and railroads, would you, uncle?"
"Why not? Did not the Franks, our ancestors, in pursuit of an unerring
policy, tear up the highways, the magnificent roads of communication
that they found in Gaul, and which those pagans of Romans had
constructed? Would it be so difficult a task to hurl against the
railroads the mass of brutes whom that infernal invention threw out of
their means of earning a livelihood? Anathema--anathema against those
proud monuments of haughty Satan! By the blood of my race! If he is not
curbed in his sacrilegious career, man will yet end--may God
forefend!--by changing this valley of tears into a terrestrial paradise,
wholly oblivious of the fact that original sin condemns him to perpetual
suffering!"
"Zounds! Dear uncle, not so fast!" interjected the colonel. "I am not
inclined to carry out my destiny with quite such scrupulous accuracy."
"You big baby!" replied the Cardinal impatiently, taking a fresh pinch
of snuff. "Do you not understand that, in order that the large majority
of the race of Adam suffer and be meritoriously conscious of its
suffering, it is requisite that there be always in evidence a neat small
number of happy people in the world?"
"Oh, I see! As a contrast; is that it, dear uncle?"
"Necessarily. The depth of the valley is not realized but for its
contrast with the mountain top. But enough of philosophy. As you know, I
have an accurate eye, quick and certain. The situation is such as I have
described it to you. I repeat--do as I have done. Realize all your
negotiable effects in gold, or in good drafts upon London. Send in your
resignation this minute, and let us depart to-morrow at the very latest.
Such is the blindness of those people that they apprehend nothing. You
said so yourself. There is hardly any military precaution taken. You
can, accordingly, without in any way wounding your military honor, quit
your regiment this instant."
"Impossible, my dear uncle--that would be an act of cowardice. If the
Republic is to be established, the thing will not be done without the
firing of some guns. I wish to do my part--I wish to be quits.
Politeness for politeness, with good round discharges of muskets! My
dragoons will want nothing better than a chance to charge upon the
canaille."
"Then you propose to defend the throne of the wretches of Orleans!"
exclaimed the Cardinal with a loud outburst of sardonic laughter.
"Dear uncle, you know very well I did not wheel in line in support of
the Orleans dynasty. No more than you, do I love them. I simply joined
the army, because I have a military turn of mind. The army has but one
opinion--discipline. In short, if your foresight is correct--and your
trained experience inclines me to the belief that you are not
mistaken--then a battle will be fought this very day. Under such
circumstances I would be a despicable wretch to hand in my resignation
on the eve of an encounter."
"Then you are determined to run the risk of being riddled with bullets
or brained by the mob on a barricade--in the interest of the Orleans
dynasty?"
"I am a soldier--I am determined to fulfil the duties of my profession."
"But, you devil of a stubborn block! Suppose you are killed, our house
would then fall from the lance to the distaff."
"I promised you I would marry at forty--"
"But until then--think of it--these street fights are disgraceful--to
die in the mud of the gutters, killed by a lot of beggars!"
"Before it came to that I would have treated myself to the sport of
hewing several of them down with my saber," coolly replied the colonel.
"In that event it will not be difficult for you to find some sturdy
Plouernel bastard of my own making--whom you will then adopt, uncle. He
will perpetuate my name. Bastards often have brought good luck to great
houses."
"Triple fool! To play with your life in that manner! And that at the
very moment when the future smiles upon us as it never smiled before! At
the moment when, after having been beaten, kicked and cuffed by the
descendants of the men who for fourteen centuries were our vassals and
serfs, we are about to wipe out at a single stroke these last fifty
years of shame! At the moment when, instructed by experience, and aided
by the course of events, we are about to resume our power and become
even mightier than we were in 1789! Go to--I pity you! You are right,
races degenerate!" exclaimed the intractable old man, rising. "I would
despair of our cause if all our people were like you."
The valet, stepping in again after rapping at the door, said to the
Count of Plouernel:
"Monsieur Count, the linendraper of St. Denis Street has arrived. He is
waiting in the ante-chamber."
"Take him to the salon of the portraits."
The valet left; the colonel said to the Cardinal, whom he saw angrily
picking up his hat and moving towards the door:
"For God's sake, uncle, do not go away angry, in that way--"
"I am not going away angry; I am going away ashamed."
"Come, dear uncle, you will think better of me."
"Will you, yes or no, depart with me for England?"
"Impossible, uncle."
"Then go to the devil!" was the rather uncanonical shout with which the
Cardinal furiously took his leave, slamming the door behind him.
CHAPTER VI.
JOEL AND NEROWEG.
Marik Lebrenn had been taken by order of the Count of Plouernel into a
richly furnished salon. From the walls hung a number of family
portraits.
Some wore the cuirass of knights, others the white cross and red cloak
of the Templars, others the civilian dress of noblemen, still others the
ermine of a peer of France, or the purple of the Princes of the Church.
It was likewise with the women. They wore monastic garbs, and court
costumes. But, whether it was that each painter had scrupulously
reproduced nature, or that they yielded to the requirements of a family
who held it a point of honor to make manifest an uninterrupted racial
affiliation in their line of descent, the generic type of the several
faces was reproduced in all. Some in beauty, others in ugliness, all by
the marked distance between the eyes, together with the pronounced hook
of the nose, recalled the bird of prey. Similarly, what by common accord
has been called the Bourbon type, which bears some resemblance to the
ovine breed, is visibly perpetuated in the house of the Capets.
Similarly, also, almost all the descendants of the house of Rohan had,
it is said, an erect tuft of hair that was long spoken of as the Rohan
crest.
As with almost all ancient family paintings, the Plouernel coat-of-arms
and the name of the original represented in the picture were designed in
a corner of the canvas. For instance, there were the names of Gonthram
V, Sire of Plouernel; Gonthram IX, Count of Plouernel; Hildeberta, Lady
of Plouernel; Meroflede, Abbess of Meriadek in Plouernel; and so on, the
names of the descendants, men and women, of the Plouernel lineage.
As he contemplated these family portraits Marik Lebrenn experienced a
singular mixture of curiosity, bitterness, and sentiments rather sad
than wrathful. He moved from one to the other of the portraits as if
they awakened a thousand memories within him. His eyes would rest
meditatively upon the motionless faces, mute as those of specters.
Several of the personages seemed to draw his attention violently. One of
them, evidently painted from indications or traditions transmitted
subsequent to the date--the year 297--that the portrait bore, must have
been the founder of this old house. The corner of the canvas bore the
name _Gonthram Neroweg_.
This personage was of colossal stature. His copper-red hair, combed back
Chinese style and held together on the top of his head with a gold band,
fell backward over his shoulders like the plume of a helmet. His cheeks
and chin were closely shaven, but a long moustache, as red as his hair,
drooped down to his chest, which was tattooed in blue and was partly
covered by a species of plaid or mantle barred yellow and red. A more
savage and ferocious face than that of this first of the Nerowegs can
not be easily imagined.
Undoubtedly, at the sight of this portrait, cruel thoughts agitated the
linendraper. After long contemplating it Marik Lebrenn could not refrain
from shaking his fist at him. It was an involuntary and childish
gesture, that he quickly felt ashamed of.
The second portrait that likewise seemed to impress the linendraper
keenly represented a woman clad in monastic garb. The picture bore the
date of 729, and the name of Meroflede, Abbess of Meriadek in Plouernel.
It seemed a singular detail, but this woman held, in one hand, an
abbatial crosier, and, in the other, a naked and bloodstained sword,
meant, undoubtedly, to convey the idea that the weapon did not always
rest inactive in its sheath. The woman was handsome, but of a haughty
and sinister beauty, a beauty that betrayed a violent temperament. Her
features bore the stamp of that lassitude that excesses leave in their
train. Her head was enveloped in long white and black veils. Her large
grey-green eyes sparkled under their thick red brows. Her blood-red lips
expressed at once wickedness and sensuousness. Finally, the crosier and
the bloody sword in the hands of an abbess imparted to the portrait a
weird, almost shocking appearance.
Lebrenn contemplated the image with disgust and horror, and muttered to
himself:
"Oh, Meroflede! Noble Abbess, consecrated by Satan! Messalina and
Fredegonde were immaculate virgins beside you, Marshal Retz a lamb, and
his infamous castle a sanctuary beside your damnable cloister!"
Emitting a sigh of sorrow and raising his eyes to heaven as if invoking
its mercy for the victims of Meroflede, he exclaimed:
"Poor Septimine! And you--ill-starred Broute-Saule!"
Lebrenn turned away his head in sadness, and long remained pensive. When
he again raised his eyes they fell upon another portrait. That one was
dated 1237. It represented a warrior with close-clipped hair, a long red
beard, and armed cap-a-pie. From his shoulders hung the red cloak with
the white cross of the Crusaders.
"Ah!" came from the linendraper with a fresh gesture of disgust and
indignation--"the _Red Monk_!"
And he passed his hand over his eyes as if to drive away the hideous
vision.
Soon, however, Lebrenn's face brightened up. He heaved a sigh of relief,
as if pleasant thoughts had succeeded the painful ones of just before.
His eyes rested delighted, almost moved with affection upon a portrait
dated 1463, and bearing the name of Gonthram XII, Sire of Plouernel.
This portrait represented a young man of thirty years of age. He was
clad in black velvet and wore the gold collar of the Order of St.
Michael. A more sympathetic face it would be difficult to conceive. The
looks, and the smile that flitted over the lips of this personage, were
expressive of touching melancholy.
"Oh!" said Lebrenn, "the sight of this one rests my mind--calms
it--consoles it. Thanks to God, he is not the only one who fell short of
the hereditary wickedness of his stock!"
Lebrenn's meditations were interrupted by the entrance of the Count of
Plouernel.
Lebrenn was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he started at the
entrance of the Count into the hall. Despite his self-control, the
linendraper, the descendant of Joel, whose family had, across the ages,
so often encountered that of Neroweg in deadly feud, could not help
betraying a certain degree of emotion at finding himself face to face
with a descendant of this ancient family. Moreover, it should be stated
that Lebrenn had been informed by Jeanike of the colonel's frequent
peering through the glass windows of his shop. Nevertheless, so far from
seeming concerned or irritated, Lebrenn assumed an air of naive and
embarrassed simplicity, which the Count of Plouernel attributed to the
respectful deference that he would naturally inspire in a resident of
St. Denis Street.
The Count, accordingly, addressed the merchant in an accent of
patronizing familiarity, pointing him to an easychair, while he let
himself down in another.
"Oh, monsieur," said Lebrenn, bowing clumsily, "indeed, you do me great
honor--"
"Come, come; no ceremonies, my dear sir," interjected the Count, and he
added interrogatingly; "my dear monsieur--Lebrenn--I believe?"
"Lebrenn," answered the merchant, with a bow. "Lebrenn, at your
service."
"Very good. I yesterday had the pleasure of seeing Madam Lebrenn, and of
mentioning to her a large order I have for linen goods for my regiment."
"Very happy, indeed, we are, monsieur, that you have honored our poor
shop with your custom. I came to learn from you how many meters of linen
you want, and of what quality. I have here some samples with me," he
added, affecting to be busily engaged rummaging in his coat pockets
after the samples. "Will it please you to choose--I shall give you the
price, monsieur--the exact price--the lowest figure--"
"That's not necessary, dear Monsieur Lebrenn. I can tell you in a few
words what I want. I have four hundred and fifty dragoons. I want a
supply of four hundred and fifty shirts for them, of good quality. I
also wish you to attend to the sewing. Your price shall be mine. You
see, dear Monsieur Lebrenn, that I know you to be the very cream of
honesty."
"Oh, monsieur!"
"The flower of linendrapers."
"Monsieur, monsieur, you embarrass me. I do not deserve--"
"You do not deserve! Come, my dear Monsieur Lebrenn; on the contrary,
you deserve that, and a good deal more."
"Monsieur, I shall hot venture to contradict you. When will you want the
shirts?" asked the merchant, rising. "If the matter is urgent, the labor
will come somewhat higher."
"Do me the favor, first of all, to resume your seat, my good man! Do
not take your leave from me so abruptly. I may have some other orders
for you."
"Monsieur, in obedience to your orders I shall sit down again. When will
you want the order filled?"
"Toward the end of next month."
"In that case, monsieur, the four hundred and fifty shirts, of good
quality, will cost seven francs apiece."
"Very well, upon my honor! That's cheap, my dear Monsieur Lebrenn. That
is a compliment that, I suppose, is not often heard from a purchaser,
hey?"
"No, it is not at all frequent; that's true, monsieur. But you mentioned
some other orders."
"Zounds, my good man! You do not take your eyes from the cards. Your
thoughts run to solid business."
"Eh! Eh! monsieur, one is a merchant in order to sell--"
"And are you selling much these days?"
"Hem--hem--so so, indifferently--"
"Indeed? Only so so? Well, so much the worse, my dear Monsieur Lebrenn!
That must go against your grain--because I presume you have a family to
maintain?"
"You are very considerate, monsieur. I have a son."
"And are you bringing him up to be your successor?"
"That's it, monsieur! He attends the Central School of Commerce."
"How old is the fine fellow? You have only one son, my dear Monsieur
Lebrenn?"
"Begging your pardon for contradicting you, I also have a daughter."
"A daughter also! The dear Lebrenn! If she at all looks like her mother
she must be a charming girl--"
"Eh! Eh!--she is slender--she is comely--"
"You must be proud of her. Come, confess it!"
"Zounds! I do not deny it, monsieur. More than that I can not say."
"Strange," thought the Count of Plouernel to himself, "the fellow has a
curiously old-fashioned style of expression. It must be something
peculiar to St. Denis Street. He puts me in mind of my old steward
Robert, who brought me up, and who spoke like the people of the previous
century."
The Count proceeded aloud:
"Forsooth! Coming to think of it, I should pay a visit to dear Madam
Lebrenn."
"Monsieur, she is at your service."
"You should know that I contemplate giving a tournament soon in the
large yard of my barracks, where my dragoons are to go through all
manner of exercises on horseback. You must promise me to come some
Sunday to the rehearsal with Madam Lebrenn; and I wish you to accept,
without any compliments, a little collation after we leave the place."
"Oh, monsieur, that's too much honor to us--you overwhelm me--"
"Never mind that; you are joking; is it agreed?"
"May I bring my boy along?"
"Zounds! Of course!"
"And also my daughter?"
"How can you put such a question to me, my dear Monsieur Lebrenn?"
"Indeed, monsieur? You won't object if my daughter--"
"Better still! I have an idea, my dear man; an excellent idea!"
"What is it, monsieur?"
"Did you ever hear of the tourneys of olden days?"
"Tourneys, monsieur?"
"Yes, in the days of chivalry."
"I beg your pardon, monsieur; plain people like us--"
"Well, dear Monsieur Lebrenn, in the days of chivalry, tourneys were
held, and at those tourneys several of my ancestors, whom you see
there," and he waved his hand towards the pictures, "took a hand."
"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the merchant, affecting great surprise, and
following with his eyes in the direction pointed by the colonel, "I was
thinking to myself, there is something of a family resemblance."
"You think so?"
"I do, monsieur--I beg your pardon for the great liberty--"
"Don't begin apologizing again! For God's sake, be not so very formal at
all points, my dear man! As I was saying, at those tourneys there always
was what was called a _Queen of Beauty_. She distributed the prizes to
the victors. Now, then, that shall be the role for your charming
daughter. She shall be the Queen of Beauty at the tournament that I am
about to give--she will be well worthy of the distinction."
"Oh, monsieur! That is too much! Oh, it is too much! Moreover, do you
not think that for a young girl--to be in that way--in plain
view--vis-a-vis to messieurs your dragoons--is a little--I beg your
pardon for the great liberty--but it is a little--what shall I say?--a
little--"
"Dismiss all such scruples, my dear Monsieur Lebrenn. The noblest dames
were in olden days chosen as the Queens of Beauty at the tourney. They
even gave a kiss to the victor, on his mouth."
"I understand that--they were accustomed thereto--while my daughter--you
see--confound it!--she is only eighteen, and has been brought up--like a
bourgeois girl."
"You need not feel uneasy on that score. I never thought for a moment
that your daughter should give the victor a kiss."
"That is good, monsieur! How kind you are! And if you will also consent
that my daughter do not embrace--"
"That goes without saying, my dear monsieur. You do not need my consent.
I am too happy, as it is, to have you and also your family, accept my
invitation."
"Oh, monsieur, all the honor is on our side!"
"Not at all, it is on my side!"
"Surely not! Surely not, monsieur! You are too kind! I can clearly see
that you mean to bestow great honor upon us."
"Well, have it your way, my good man! There are faces like yours--that
charm one on the spot. Besides, I found you to be so honest a man in
the matter of the price of the shirts--"
"It is only a matter of conscience, monsieur. Only a matter of
conscience."
"That I said to myself on the spot--This Monsieur Lebrenn must be an
admirable, an honest man. I would like to be pleasant to him--even to
oblige him, if I can."
"Oh, monsieur, I know not how to express to you--"
"Come, you told me a minute ago that business was poor--would you like
me to pay you in advance for my order?"
"Oh, no, no, no, monsieur; that is unnecessary."
"Do not be bashful! Be frank. The amount is large--I shall give you an
order upon my banker."
"I assure you, monsieur, that I do not need payment in advance."
"Times are so hard yet."
"Very hard, indeed, the times are; that's true, monsieur; we must hope
for better."
"Admit it, my dear Monsieur Lebrenn," said the Count, again pointing to
the pictures that ornamented the walls of the salon, "the times in which
those redoubtable seigneurs lived, were the real good times!"
"Truly so, monsieur."
"And who knows! Perhaps those better times may come back again!"
"Indeed! Do you think so?"
"Some other day we shall talk politics--I suppose you talk politics,
occasionally?"
"Monsieur, I do not indulge myself so far. You understand, a merchant--"
"Oh, my dear Monsieur Lebrenn! You are a man of the good old pattern;
that's what you are; I'm glad of it! Right you are not to meddle in
politics! It is the silly mania that spoiled everything. In those good
old times, that I was speaking about to you, nobody grumbled. The King,
the clergy and the nobility ordered--and everybody obeyed without saying
a word."
"Sure! Sure! It must have been very convenient, monsieur."
"Zounds! I should say so!"
"If I understand you rightly, monsieur, the King, the priests and the
seigneurs said: 'Do that!'--and it was done?"
"Just so!"
"Pay!--and people paid?"
"Exactly."
"Go!--and people went?"
"Why! Yes! Yes!"
"In short, everything as on the parade ground--to the right!--to the
left!--forward!--double quick! People did not even have the trouble to
will this or that? The King, the seigneurs and the clergy took to
themselves the trouble of willing for us? And they have changed that!
They have changed all that!!!"
"Fortunately we need not despair, my dear Monsieur Lebrenn."
"May the good God hear you!" said the merchant, rising and bowing
respectfully to the Count. "Monsieur, to command."
"So, then, next Sunday--at the tournament. You will come, my good
fellow--you--your family--agreed?"
"Certainly, monsieur, certainly. My daughter will not fail to attend the
festivity--seeing she is to be the queen of--of?"
"Queen of Beauty, my dear fellow! It is not I who assign the role to
her--it is Nature!"
"Oh, monsieur, if you would only allow me--"
"What?"
"To repeat in your name to my daughter the gallantries that you have
uttered about her."
"Why, my dear fellow, not only do I authorize you to do so, but I
request you. Moreover, without further ceremony, I shall myself carry to
Madam Lebrenn and her charming daughter the invitation that I extend to
them."
"Oh, monsieur--the poor women--they will feel so flattered by your good
will towards us. I shall say nothing about myself; if I were to receive
the Cross of Honor I could not feel prouder."
"You are a first class fellow, my dear Lebrenn!"
"Your servant, monsieur, your servant with all my heart," repeated the
merchant, moving away.
The moment, however, that the linendraper reached the door, he seemed to
change his mind, scratched himself behind the ear, and returned to the
Count of Plouernel.
"Well, my dear fellow?" asked the Count, rather astonished at his
return. "What is the matter?"
"The matter is," said the merchant, continuing to scratch the back of
his ear, "meseems a thought strikes me--I beg your pardon for the great
liberty--"
"Zounds! Speak up! Why should you not have an idea--as well as anybody
else?"
"That's true, monsieur, it sometimes happens that the common people,
like the noble folks, do not _desiderate_--ideas."
"Do not _desiderate_--what the devil does that word mean? I do not
remember ever to have heard it."
"It is a good, square, old word, monsieur, which means _to lack_.
Moliere often uses it."
"How, Moliere!" exclaimed the astonished Count. "Do you read Moliere, my
good fellow? Indeed, I did notice, while you were speaking, that you
often used old turns of expression."
"I shall tell you why, monsieur: When I noticed that you spoke to me in
the style that Don Juan uses to Monsieur Dimanche, or Dorante to
Monsieur Jourdain--"
"What are you driving at?" put in the Count of Plouernel, more and more
taken aback, and beginning to suspect that the merchant was not quite so
simple as he seemed. "What do you mean?"
"Well," proceeded Lebrenn in his tone of bantering simplicity, "well,
when I noticed that, then, in order to reciprocate the honor that you
were doing me, monsieur, I, in turn, assumed the language of Monsieur
Dimanche, or of Monsieur Jourdain--I beg your pardon for my great
liberty--and meseems, according to what little judgment I have,
monsieur, meseems you would not greatly object to taking my daughter for
your mistress--"
"What!" cried the Count, utterly disconcerted by this brusque
apostrophe. "I do not know--I do not understand what you mean--"
"Oh, monsieur! I am but a plain man--I can only speak as my little
judgment dictates."
"Your little judgment! It serves you very poorly. Upon my honor, you are
crazy! Your idea lacks common sense."
"Indeed? Oh, well, so much the better! I said to myself, follow closely,
if you please, my plain way of reasoning--I said to myself: I am a good
bourgeois of St. Denis Street; I sell linen; I have a handsome daughter;
a young seigneur--because it does seem we are returning to the days of
young seigneurs--has seen my daughter; he covets her; he gives me a
large order; he adds offers of service, and, under the pretext--"
"Monsieur Lebrenn--there are jokes I do not tolerate from people!"
"I agree--but follow closely my plain way of reasoning, if you please,
monsieur: The young seigneur, I said to myself, proposes to give a
tournament in honor of my daughter's pretty eyes, and to come frequently
to see us, all with the only end in view, by thus playing the good
Prince, to succeed in seducing my child."
"Monsieur," cried the Count, growing purple with vexation and rage, "by
what right do you allow yourself to impute such intentions to me?"
"That's well, monsieur; I call that speaking to the point. You would
not, is it not true? scheme a plot that is not only so unworthy, but so
supremely ridiculous?"
"Enough, monsieur, enough!"
"Good! Good! You did not--I shall suppose you did not, and I feel better
at ease. Otherwise, you see, I would have been compelled to say to you,
humbly, respectfully, as becomes poor people of my class: Pardon me, my
young seigneur, for the great freedom that I am taking, but you see, the
daughters of the good bourgeois are not to be seduced in that way. Since
about fifty years ago, that sort of thing can no longer be done, not at
all, absolutely not. Monsieur Duke, or Monsieur Marquis still calls the
bourgeois, men and women, of St. Denis Street rather familiarly _dear
Monsieur Thing_, _dear Madam Thing_, looking, with habitual race
conceit, upon the bourgeoisie as an inferior species. But, zounds! To go
further than that would no longer be prudent! The bourgeois of St. Denis
Street are no longer afraid, as once they were, of _lettres de cachet_
to the Bastille. And if Monsieur Duke, or Monsieur Marquis took it into
his head to be discourteous to them--to them or to their family--bless
my soul! the bourgeois of St. Denis Street might bestow a thorough
drubbing--pardon me, monsieur, for this great freedom--I said, might
administer a thorough drubbing to Monsieur Marquis or Monsieur
Duke--even if he were of royal or imperial lineage."
"'Sdeath, monsieur!" ejaculated the colonel, hardly able to restrain his
anger, and turning pale with rage. "Are you making threats to me?"
"No, monsieur," calmly answered Lebrenn, dropping his tone of banter and
proceeding in firm and dignified accents; "no, monsieur; it is not a
threat, it is a lesson I am giving you."
"A lesson!" cried the Count of Plouernel, furious with rage. "A lesson!
to me!"
"Monsieur, despite all your race prejudice, you are a man of
honor--swear to me upon your honor that, in endeavoring to introduce
yourself into my house, that in tendering your services to me, it was
not your intention to seduce my daughter! Yes, swear to that upon your
honor, and, admitting my mistake, I shall retract all I said."
Thrown out of countenance by the alternative offered to him, the Count
of Plouernel blushed, lowered his eyes before the steady gaze of the
linendraper, and remained silent.
"Oh!" said the linendraper sorrowfully, as if musing to himself, but
loud enough to be heard by the Count of Plouernel. "They are
incorrigible; they have forgotten nothing, learned nothing; we still are
in their estimation a vanquished, conquered, subject race!"
"Monsieur!"
"Well, monsieur! I know my ground! No longer do we live in the days
when, after having violated my daughter, you would have ordered me
whipped with switches, and hanged afterwards before the gate of your
castle, as was the practice in former centuries--and as was done to one
of my own ancestors by that seigneur yonder--"
Saying this Lebrenn pointed at one of the portraits that hung from the
wall, to the profound astonishment of the Count of Plouernel.
"The matter looked quite simple to you," the merchant proceeded, "the
notion of taking my daughter for your mistress. I am no longer your
slave, your serf, your vassal, your chattel; playing the good Prince,
you graciously condescended to have me take a chair, and you even
addressed me patronizingly--'Dear Monsieur Lebrenn.' There are Counts no
longer, still you carry your title and the coat-of-arms of a Count.
Civil equality has been declared, and yet nothing would seem more
monstrous to you than to marry your daughter or your sister to a
bourgeois or a mechanic, whatever their worthiness and the honorable
character that they might bear. Would you dare to gainsay my words? No;
you might, perhaps, cite some exception, it would be but a fresh proof
that such unions remain misalliances in your eyes. Trifles, you may say;
they certainly are trifles--but what a grave symptom the attaching of so
much importance to trifles is! You and yours, were you to become
all-powerful in the nation to-morrow, would fatedly and necessarily, as
happened under the Restoration, seek by little and little to
re-establish your ancient privileges, which, from being trivial, would
then become hateful, disgraceful and oppressive to us, as they were for
centuries hateful, disgraceful and oppressive to our ancestors."
So stupefied was the Count of Plouernel at the transformation of the
bearing, tone and language of the linendraper that he did not interrupt
him. Assuming finally an air of haughtiness he replied ironically:
"I doubt not, monsieur, that the moral of the beautiful lesson in
history which you have had the kindness to read to me in your capacity
of linendraper probably is that the priests and nobles should be sent to
the lamp-post--as was the fashion in the good old days of 1793, and our
daughters and sisters married to the nearest valet at hand."
"Oh, monsieur," said the merchant in a tone of lofty sorrow, "let us not
mention reprisals. Forget what your fathers suffered during those
ominous years--I, on my part, will forget what our ancestors suffered,
at the hands of yours, and, not during a _few years_, but during FIFTEEN
CENTURIES OF TORMENT! Marry your daughters and sisters as it may please
you, it is your right; believe in misalliances, that is your affair.
These are facts that I mention; and, as a symptom, I repeat it, they are
grave; they prove that, in your estimation, there are and ever will be
two distinct races in the land."
"And supposing it is so, monsieur, what business is it of yours how we
look upon things?"
"The devil! It is very much our business, monsieur. _The Holy Alliance,
the divine and absolute right of Kings, the clerical party, aristocracy
by birth and omnipotent in the nation_--these are the inevitable
consequences of the opinion that there are two races, a superior and an
inferior one, one made to rule, the other to obey, and suffer. You asked
what was the moral of this lesson in history? It is this, monsieur," the
merchant proceeded: "Being jealous of the liberties that our fathers
conquered at the price of their blood and their martyrdom;--seeing we
do not wish to be treated any longer as a conquered race; I in my
capacity of an elector vote against your party so long as it remains
upon the field of legality; but when, as happened in 1830, your party
leaves the field of legality with the end in view of reducing us back to
arbitrary and clerical rule, that is to say, to the system that obtained
before 1789--that moment I go out into the street, and fire bullets into
your party."
"And it returns the compliment to yours."
"Very true--my arm was broken in 1830 by a Swiss ball. But, monsieur,
listen to reason: Why should there be feud, ever feud, ever bloodshed,
useful blood poured out by both sides? Why ever dream of a past that is
no more, and can nevermore be? You vanquished, despoiled, dominated,
exploited and tortured us fifteen centuries at a stretch! Have you not
had enough? Do we contemplate oppressing you, in turn? No, no, a
thousand times no! Liberty has cost us too dear to conquer; we prize it
too highly to seek to deprive others of it. It is not our fault, it is
yours; since 1789 your foreign alliances, civil war instigated by
yourselves, your constant attempts at counter-revolution, your intimate
relations with the clerical party--all that keeps thoughtful people in
alarm and afflicts them, while it irritates and exasperates the men of
action. I ask you again--what does it boot? Has mankind ever
retrograded? No, monsieur, never. You can, no one questions that, do
mischief; much mischief; but your divine right and your privileges are
done for. Let your party learn that lesson. You would then save the
nation, and yourself, perhaps, who knows what new disasters, because, I
tell you, the future belongs to democracy."
The linendraper's voice and accent were so impressive that, although not
convinced, the Count of Plouernel was touched by his words. His
indomitable race pride struggled with his impulse to acknowledge to the
merchant that he at least saw in him a generous adversary.
That moment the door was abruptly thrown open by an officer, the
major-adjutant of the Count's regiment, who, rushing in, hastily made
the military salute and said hurriedly:
"I beg your pardon, colonel, for coming in without being announced, but
orders have just been issued to have the regiment mount horse forthwith,
and remain ready for action on the square of the quarter."
The linendraper was about to leave the salon when the Count of Plouernel
said to him:
"Well, monsieur, to judge by the course things are taking, together with
your republican opinions, it is quite possible that I may have the honor
of meeting you to-morrow on a barricade."
"I know not what may happen, monsieur," answered the linendraper; "but I
neither fear nor desire such an encounter."
And then, with a smile, he added:
"I think, monsieur, that the order for linen may be canceled."
"I think so, too, monsieur," replied the colonel, bowing stiffly to
Lebrenn, who left the salon.
CHAPTER VII.
"THE SWORD OF BRENNUS."
While Marik Lebrenn was holding the conversation, just reported, with
the Count of Plouernel, the merchant's wife and daughter were, as was
their custom, busy in the shop, over which hung the sign--_The Sword of
Brennus_.
While her daughter was engaged with her needle, Madam Lebrenn saw to the
books of the establishment. She was a tall woman of forty. Her face, at
once serious and kind, preserved the traces of extraordinary beauty. In
the cadence of her voice, her carriage, and her countenance there was a
certain calmness and firmness that conveyed a high opinion of her
nature. A glance at her was enough to remind one that our mothers, the
Gallic women, took part in the councils of the nation on critical
occasions, and that such was the valor of those matrons that Diodorus
Siculus expresses himself in these terms:
"The women of Gaul vie with the men not in tallness only, they also
match them by their moral strength."
And Strabo adds these significant words:
"The Gallic women are fertile and good teachers."
Mademoiselle Velleda Lebrenn sat by the side of her mother. So marked
was the girl's exceptional beauty that none could behold her without
being struck by its radiance. Her mien was at once proud, ingenuous and
thoughtful. Nothing more limpid than the blue of her eyes; nothing more
dazzling than her complexion; nothing loftier than the carriage of her
charming head, crowned with long tresses of brown hair that here and
there gleamed in gold. Tall, lithesome and strong without masculinity,
the sight and nature of the beauty explained the paternal whim that
caused the merchant to give his child the name Velleda, the name of an
illustrious heroine in the patriotic annals of the Gauls. Mademoiselle
Lebrenn could be readily imagined with her brow wreathed in oak leaves,
clad in a long white robe belted with brass, and vibrating the gold harp
of the female druids, those wonderful teachers of our forefathers who,
exalting them with the thought of the immortality of the soul, taught
them to die with so much grandeur and serenity! In Mademoiselle Lebrenn
the type was reproduced of those Gallic women, clad in black, with arms
"so wonderfully white and nervy," as Ammienus Marcellinus expresses it,
who followed their husbands to battle, with their children in their
chariots of war, encouraged the combatants with word and gesture, and
mingled among them in the hour of victory or of defeat, ever preferring
death to slavery and shame.
Those whose minds were not stored with these tragic and glorious
remembrances of the past saw in Mademoiselle Lebrenn a beautiful girl of
eighteen, coiffed in her magnificent head of brown hair, and whose
elegant shape outlined itself under a pretty high-necked robe of light
blue poplin, which set off a little orange cravat tied around her neat,
white collar.
While Madam Lebrenn was casting up her accounts and her daughter sewed,
occasionally exchanging a few words with her mother, Gildas Pakou, the
shop-boy, stood at the door. The youngster was uneasy and greatly
disturbed in mind, so very much disturbed that it never occurred to him,
as was otherwise his wont, to recite promiscuously favorite passages
from his beloved Breton songs.
The worthy fellow was preoccupied with just one thought--the strange
contrast that he found between the reality and his mother's promises,
she having informed him that St. Denis Street in general, and the house
of Monsieur Lebrenn in particular, were particularly quiet and peaceful
spots.
Gildas suddenly turned about and said to Madam Lebrenn in a high state
of alarm:
"Madam! Madam! Listen!"
"What is it, Gildas?" asked Madam Lebrenn, proceeding unperturbed to
make her entries in the large ledger.
"But, madam, it is the drum! Listen! Besides--Oh, good God!--I see some
men running!"
"What of it, Gildas," returned Madam Lebrenn; "let them run."
"Mother," put in Velleda after listening a few seconds, "it is the call
to arms. There must be some fear that the agitation that has reigned in
Paris since yesterday may spread."
"Jeanike," Madam Lebrenn called out to the maid servant, "Monsieur
Lebrenn's National Guard uniform must be got ready. He may want it on
his return home."
"Yes, madam, I shall see to it," answered Jeanike, going to the rear
room.
"Gildas," Madam Lebrenn proceeded, "can you see the St. Denis Gate from
where you are?"
"Yes, madam," answered Gildas, all in a tremble; "would you want me to
go there?"
"No; be at ease; only let me know whether there is much of a crowd
gathering at that end of the street."
"Oh! yes, madam," answered Gildas, craning his neck. "It looks like an
ant-hill. Oh, good God! Madam! Madam! Oh, my God!"
"What is it now, Gildas?"
"Oh, madam! Down there--the drums--they were about to turn the corner--"
"Well?"
"A lot of men in blouses stopped them--they have broken the drums.
Listen! Madam! Look! The whole crowd is running this way. Do you hear
them screaming, madam? Should we not close the shop?"
"It is very evident, Gildas, you are none too brave," said Mademoiselle
Lebrenn without raising her eyes from her needlework.
At that moment a man clad in a blouse and dragging with difficulty a
small handbarrow that seemed to be heavily loaded, stopped before the
door, pulled the barrow up alongside the sidewalk, stepped into the
shop, and accosted the merchant's wife:
"Monsieur Lebrenn, madam?"
"This is his place."
"I have here four bales for him."
"Linen, I suppose?" asked Madam Lebrenn.
"Well, madam, I think so," answered the messenger with a smile.
"Gildas," she resumed, addressing the good fellow, who was casting ever
more uneasy glances into the street, "help monsieur carry the bales to
the rear of the shop."
The messenger and Gildas raised the bales out of the barrow. They were
long and thick rolls, and were wrapped in coarse grey cloth.
"This must be fiercely close-packed linen," remarked Gildas as, with
great effort, he was helping the barrowman to carry in the last of the
four rolls. "This thing is as heavy as lead."
"Do you really think so, my friend?" said the man in the blouse, fixedly
looking at Gildas, who modestly lowered his eyes and blushed.
The barrowman thereupon addressed himself to Madam Lebrenn, saying:
"There, my errand is done, madam. I must, above all things, recommend to
you that the bales be kept in a dry place, and no fire near, until
Monsieur Lebrenn arrives. That linen is very--very delicate."
And the barrowman mopped the sweat from his forehead.
"You must have had work to wheel those bales here all alone," remarked
Madam Lebrenn kindly; and opening the drawer in which she kept the small
change, she took out a ten-sou piece, which she pushed over the desk to
the barrowman. "Take this for your pains."
"Thank you very much, madam," answered the man, smiling. "I have been
paid."
"A messenger _thanks very much_, and refuses a tip!" said Gildas to
himself. "A puzzling--a very puzzling house this is!"
Herself considerably surprised at the manner in which the barrowman
formulated his declination, Madam Lebrenn raised her eyes and saw a man
of about thirty years, of an agreeable face, and who, an exceptional
thing with package carriers, had remarkably white hands, carefully
trimmed nails, and a neat gold ring on his little finger.
"Could you tell me, monsieur," asked the merchant's wife, "whether the
excitement in Paris is on the increase?"
"Very much so, madam. One can hardly move on the boulevard. Troops are
pouring in from all sides. Artillerymen are posted in front of the
Gymnasium with their fuses lighted. I came across two squadrons of
dragoons on patrol duty, with loaded carbines. Everywhere the roll of
the drum is calling to arms--although, I must say, the National Guard
does not seem to be in any great hurry. But you must excuse me, madam,"
added the barrowman, bowing politely to Madam Lebrenn and her daughter.
"It will be soon four o'clock. I am in a hurry."
He went out, took his handbarrow and wheeled it rapidly away.
On hearing of artillerymen stationed in the neighborhood with lighted
fuses in hand, Gildas was overwhelmed with a fresh flood of misgivings.
Nevertheless, rocked between fear and curiosity, he risked another peep
into the fearful St. Denis Street, which lay so near to the artillery
station.
At the moment that Gildas stretched his neck outside of the shop again,
the young girl who had taken breakfast with the Count of Plouernel that
very morning, and who improvised such giddy-headed ditties, emerged from
the alley of the house where George Duchene lodged, and which, as was
stated before, stood opposite the linendraper's shop.
Pradeline looked sad and uneasy. After taking a few steps on the
sidewalk, she approached the shop of Lebrenn as near as she dared, in
order to cast an inquisitive look within. Unfortunately, the shade over
the window intercepted the sight. True enough, the door was ajar. But
Gildas, who stood before it, entirely obstructed the passage.
Nevertheless, Pradeline, believing herself unobserved, persevered in her
efforts to obtain a look at the interior of the place. For some time
Gildas watched with increasing curiosity the suspicious manoeuvres of
the young girl. Appearances deceived him; he took himself to be the
object of Pradeline's obstinate glances. The prudish youngster lowered
his eyes and blushed till his ears tingled. His alarmed modesty ordered
him to go into the shop in order to prove to the brazen girl how little
he cared for her blandishments. Nevertheless certain promptings of
self-esteem held him nailed to the threshold, and more than ever he
muttered to himself:
"A puzzling town this is, where, not far from the artillery where fuses
are held lighted, young girls come to devour shop-boys with their eyes!"
He noticed that Pradeline crossed the street once more and stepped into
a neighboring cafe.
"The unfortunate girl! She surely means to drown her disappointment in
several glasses of wine. If she does she will be capable of coming out
again and pursuing me straight into the shop. Good God! What would Madam
Lebrenn and mademoiselle think of that!"
A new incident cut short, for a while, the chaste apprehensions of
Gildas. A four-wheeled truck, drawn by a strong horse, and containing
three large, flat chests about two meters high and inscribed _Glass_,
drew up before the shop. The vehicle was in charge of two men in
blouses. One of these, named Dupont, was the same who had been to the
shop early that morning in order to recommend to Monsieur Lebrenn not to
inspect his supply of grain. The other wore a thick grey beard. They
alighted from their seat, and Dupont, the driver, stepping into the
shop, greeted Madam Lebrenn and said:
"Has Monsieur Lebrenn not yet returned, madam?"
"No, monsieur."
"We have brought him three cases of looking glasses."
"Very well, monsieur," answered Madam Lebrenn. And calling Gildas, she
added:
"Help these gentlemen to bring in the looking glasses."
The shop-assistant obeyed, saying to himself:
"A puzzling house! Three chests with looking glasses--and so heavy!
Master, his wife and daughter must be very fond of looking at
themselves!"
Dupont and his grey-bearded companion had helped Gildas to place the
chests in the room behind the shop, as directed by Madam Lebrenn, when
she said to them:
"What is the news, messieurs? Is the agitation in Paris subsiding?"
"On the contrary, madam, 'tis getting hotter--and still hotter,"
answered Dupont with barely concealed satisfaction. "They have commenced
to throw up barricades in the St. Antoine quarter. To-night the
preparations--to-morrow, battle."
Hardly had Dupont uttered these words, when a formidable clamor was
heard from the distance, the words "_Long live the Reform!_" being
distinctly audible.
Gildas ran to the door.
"Let's hurry," said Dupont to his companion. "Our truck may be taken for
the center of a barricade; it would be premature--we have still several
errands to attend to;" and bowing to Madam Lebrenn, he added, "Our
regards to your husband, madam."
The two men leaped upon the seat of their truck, gave their horse the
whip, and drove away in the direction opposite to that whence the clamor
proceeded.
Gildas had closely followed with his eyes and with renewed uneasiness
the new concourse of people near the St. Denis Gate. Suddenly he saw
Pradeline emerge from the cafe which she had entered a few minutes
before, and direct her steps towards the shop, holding a letter in her
hand.
"What a persistent minx! She has been writing to me!" thought Gildas.
"The wretched woman is bringing me the letter herself! A declaration! I
am going to be disgraced in the eyes of my employers!"
The bewildered Gildas stepped in quickly, closed the door, turned the
key, and cuddled up quiet as a mouse close to the desk.
"Well," said Madam Lebrenn, "why do you lock the door, Gildas?"
"Madam, it is more prudent. I saw coming up from down below a band of
men--whose frightful faces--"
"Go to, Gildas, you are losing your head! Open the door."
"But madam--"
"Do as I tell you. Listen, there is someone trying to come in. Open the
door."
"It is that devil of a girl with her letter," thought Gildas to himself,
more dead than alive. "Oh, why did I leave my quiet little village of
Auray!"
And he opened the door with his heart thumping against his ribs.
Instead, however, of seeing before him the young girl with her letter,
he stood face to face with Monsieur Lebrenn and his son.
CHAPTER VIII.
ON THE EVE OF BATTLE.
Madam Lebrenn was agreeably surprised at seeing her son, whom she did
not expect, thinking he was at the College. Velleda tenderly embraced
her brother, while the merchant himself pressed the hand of his wife.
The resolute carriage of Sacrovir Lebrenn suggested the thought that he
was worthy of bearing the glorious name of the hero of ancient Gaul, one
of the greatest patriots of the land recorded in history.
Marik Lebrenn's son was a strapping lad of slightly over nineteen years.
He had an open, kind and bold countenance. A sprouting beard shaded his
lip and chin. His full cheeks were rosy, and looked bright with
animation. He very much resembled his father.
Madam Lebrenn embraced her son, saying:
"I did not expect the pleasure, son, of seeing you here to-day."
"I went to the College for him," explained the merchant. "You will
presently know the reason, my dear Henory."
"Without being exactly uneasy about you," said Madam Lebrenn to her
husband, "Velleda and I were beginning to wonder what kept you away so
long. It seems that the commotion in Paris is on the increase. Do you
know they sounded the call to arms?"
"Oh! Mother," cried Sacrovir with eyes that sparkled with enthusiasm,
"Paris has the fever--it follows that all hearts must be beating more
strongly. Without knowing one another, people look for and understand at
a glance. On all the streets the words you hear are ardent, patriotic
appeals to arms. In short, it smells of gunpowder. Oh, mother! mother!"
added the young man with exaltation, "what a beautiful sight is the
awakening of a people!"
"Keep cool, enthusiast that you are!" said Madam Lebrenn.
And with her handkerchief she wiped the perspiration that stood in drops
on her son's forehead. In the meantime Monsieur Lebrenn embraced his
daughter.
"Gildas," the merchant called out to his clerk, "some chests must have
been brought in during my absence."
"Yes, monsieur, linen bales and looking glasses. They have been
deposited in the rear room."
"Very well--they can remain there. Be careful no fire comes near the
bales."
"They must be inflammable stuff like bolting-cloth, muslin or gauze,"
Gildas thought to himself, "and yet they are heavy as lead--another
puzzling thing!"
"My dear friend," Lebrenn said to his wife, "I have matters to talk over
with you. Shall we go up to your room with the children, while Jeanike
sets the table? It is getting late. You, Gildas, may put up the
shutters. We shall have but few customers this afternoon."
"Close up the shop! Oh, monsieur, I think you are very right!" cried
Gildas delightedly. "I thought so long ago."
And as he ran to execute the orders of his employer, the latter said to
him:
"Stop a moment, Gildas. Do not close the front door. I expect several
people to call for me. If they come take them to the rear room and
notify me."
"Yes, monsieur," answered Gildas with a sigh, seeing he would have
preferred to see the shop closed tight, and the door protected with its
good strong iron bars, and bolted from within.
"And now, my dear," Lebrenn proceeded to say to his wife, "we shall go
up to your room."
It was by this time almost dark. The merchant's family mounted to the
first floor, and gathered in Madam Lebrenn's bedroom. The merchant then
addressed his wife in a grave voice:
"My dear Henory, we are on the eve of great events."
"I believe it, my friend," answered Madam Lebrenn thoughtfully.
"I shall tell you in a few words how the situation has shaped itself
to-day," proceeded Lebrenn. "Then judge whether my plan is good or bad;
oppose it, if you disapprove, or encourage me if you approve."
"I listen, my friend," answered Madam Lebrenn calm, serious and
thoughtful, like one of our mothers of old at the solemn councils where
their views prevailed more than once.
Monsieur Lebrenn proceeded:
"After having carried on their agitation in France during three months
by means of reform banquets, the deputies yesterday summoned the people
to the street. Heart seemed to have failed the intrepid agitators at the
last moment. They did not dare to appear at the rendezvous which they
themselves had set. The people came in order to maintain their right of
assemblage and to run their own business. It is now rumored that the
King has appointed a cabinet out of the leaders of the dynastic center.
This concession does not satisfy us. What we want, what the people want,
is the total overthrow of the monarchy; we want the Republic, which
means sovereignty for all--political rights for all--in order to insure
education, wellbeing, work, and credit to all, provided we are brave and
honest. That is our program, wife! Is it right or wrong?"
"Right!" answered Madam Lebrenn in a tone of firm conviction. "It is
right!"
"I told you what we want," proceeded Lebrenn. "I shall now mention what
we want no longer--we no longer want that two hundred thousand
privileged electors be the sole arbiters of the fate of thirty-eight
million proletarians or small holders, similar to what happened when a
trifling minority of conquerors, Roman or Frankish, despoiled, enslaved
and exploited our fathers for twenty centuries. No, we want an electoral
or industrial feudality no more than we will tolerate the feudality of
conquerors! Wife, is that right, or is it wrong?"
"It is right! Serfdom and even slavery have in reality perpetuated
themselves down to our own days," answered Madam Lebrenn with
indignation. "It is right! I am a woman, and I have seen women, the
slaves of an insufficient wage, die by degrees, exhausted by excessive
toil and want. It is right! I am a mother, I have seen young girls, the
virtual slaves of certain manufacturers, forced to choose between
dishonor and enforced idleness, which means hunger. It is right! I am a
wife, and I have seen fathers of families, honest, industrious and
intelligent traders, the slaves and victims of the whim or the usurious
cupidity of their seigneurs the large capitalists, suffer bankruptcy,
and be plunged into ruin and despair. Finally, your resolution is good
and just, my friend," added Madam Lebrenn, extending her hand to her
husband, "because, if you have hitherto been fortunate enough to escape
many a snare, it is your duty to go to the assistance of those of our
brothers who are afflicted with misfortunes that we remain exempt from."
"Brave and generous woman! You redouble my strength and courage," said
the merchant, pressing Madam Lebrenn's hand in ecstacy. "I expected no
less from you. But just as are the rights that we demand for our
brothers, they will have to be conquered by force, arms in hand."
"I believe it, my friend."
"Accordingly," proceeded the merchant, "to-night, the
barricades--to-morrow, battle. That is the reason why I fetched my son
from his College. Do you approve? Shall he remain with us?"
"Yes," answered Madam Lebrenn. "Your son's place is at your side."
"Oh, thank you, mother!" cried the young man, joyously embracing his
mother, who clasped him to her breast.
"Look at him, father," said Velleda to the merchant with a smile and
nodding toward Sacrovir, "he looks as happy as if he were graduated."
"But tell me, my friend," asked Madam Lebrenn, addressing the merchant,
"will the barricade, on which you and my son are to fight, be near our
place? on this street?"
"It will be at our very door," answered Lebrenn. "Agreed?"
"All the better!" exclaimed Madam Lebrenn. "We shall be there--near
you."
"Mother," interjected Velleda, "should we not prepare lint to-night, and
bandages? There will be many wounded."
"I was thinking of that, my child. Our shop will serve as
field-hospital."
"Oh, mother! Sister!" cried the young man. "We are to fight--and under
your very eyes--for liberty! How that will inspire us! Alas," he added
after a moment's reflection, "why should this be, this fratricidal
duel?"
"It is a sad fact, my boy," answered Lebrenn with a sigh. "Oh, may the
blood shed in such a strife fall upon the heads of those who compel the
people to take up arms for their rights--as we shall have to do
to-morrow--as our fathers have done in almost every century of our
history!"
"Thank God, at least in our days the struggle takes place without
hatred," replied the young man. "The soldier fights in the name of
discipline--the people in the name of their rights. It is a deadly duel,
but a loyal one, after which the surviving adversaries shake hands."
"But seeing these are survivers only, and I or my son may be laid low on
the barricade," replied Monsieur Lebrenn with a benign smile, "there is
one thing more I wish to impress upon you, my children. As you will see,
where others turn pale with fright we will smile with serenity. Why?
Because death does not exist for us; because, brought up in the belief
of our fathers, instead of seeing in what is called the close of life
only a dismal and fear-inspiring ending that plunges us into eternal
darkness we see in death only the severance of the soul from the body,
which emancipates the former, leaving it free to rejoin, or to wait for
the sooner or later arrival of, those whom we love, and reunite with
them on the other side of the veil, which, during our terrestrial life,
hides from us the marvelous, the dazzling mysteries of our future lives,
infinite lives as various as the divine power from which they emanate.
To us, death is but a new birth."
"That is the picture I have of death," cried Sacrovir. "I feel sure I
will die overmastered by curiosity. What new, wonderful, dazzling worlds
there will be to visit!"
"Brother is right," put in the young girl with no less curiosity. "It
must be beautiful to behold! novel! marvelous! And, besides, never more
to be separated from our beloved ones but temporarily in all eternity!
What a variety of infinite voyages there are to be made by us together
in our new incarnations in the stars! Oh, when I think of that, mother,
my head grows dizzy with impatience to see and know!"
"Go to, you inquisitive girl! Be not so impatient," answered Madam
Lebrenn, smiling, and in a tone of affectionate reproach. "You know,
when you were small, I always scolded you when, at your drawing lessons,
you seemed to give less thought to the model that you were copying than
to those that you were to copy later. Well, my dear child, do not allow
your curiosity, however natural it may be, to ascertain what is on the
other side of the curtain, as your father expresses it, to cause your
mind to wander too much away from that which is on this side."
"Oh, you may be easy, mother, on that score!" answered the young girl
affectionately. "On this side of the curtain are you and father and
brother--quite enough to keep my mind from wandering."
"Just see how time is wasted in philosophizing!" interjected Lebrenn.
"Jeanike will soon be calling us to supper, and still I shall not have
told you a word of what I meant to confide to you. In case _my curiosity
should be satisfied before yours_, my dear Henory," the merchant
proceeded to say to his wife, pointing to a desk, "you will find there
my last will. It is no secret to you. We have but one heart. But this,"
added Lebrenn, drawing a folded but not sealed letter from his pocket,
"concerns our dear daughter. You are to give it to her after reading it
yourself."
Velleda colored slightly, realizing that it referred to her marriage.
"As to you, my boy," proceeded the merchant, addressing his son, "take
this key," and he detached it from his watch chain. "It is the key of
the room with the closed windows which, until now, only your mother and
I have entered. On the 11th of September of next year you will be
twenty-one years of age. On that day, but not before, open the door.
Among other things you will find a manuscript in the cabinet. It will
impart to you the information of the immemorial tradition of our
family--because," added Lebrenn interrupting himself with a smile, "we
plebeians, we of the conquered race, we also have our archives,
proletarian archives, often as glorious, you may believe me, as those of
our conquerors. You will then learn, as I was saying, that, obedient to
a family tradition, at the age of twenty-one the eldest son or, in
default of a son, the eldest daughter, or our nearest of kin is to
acquaint himself with our family archives and several relics that are
gathered with them. And now, my loved ones," added Lebrenn in a moved
voice, rising and throwing his arms around his wife and children, "a
last embrace. Before to-morrow's sun goes down, we may be temporarily
separated; the possibility of a separation ever saddens one a little."
It was a touching picture. Monsieur Lebrenn held his wife and children
in a close embrace. His wife hung upon his neck, while with his right
arm he held his daughter, and with his left his son. He pressed them
all ardently to his breast, and they in turn held their father in their
loving arms.
The touching group, a symbol of the family, remained silent for a few
moments. Only the sound of exchanging kisses was heard. Their emotion
once calmed, the group separated; heads were again held up serene,
though affected: the mother and daughter grave and serious; the father
and son tranquil and resolute.
"And now," resumed the merchant, "to work, my children. You, wife, will
see to getting lint and bandages ready, with the help of your daughter
and Jeanike. Sacrovir and I, while waiting for the hour when the
barricades are to be simultaneously thrown up all over Paris, will
unpack the cartridges and arms which a large number of our brothers will
call for."
"But where are the arms, my friend?" inquired Madam Lebrenn.
"The chests," answered the merchant smiling, "the chests and bales that
came in to-day."
"Oh, I now understand!" exclaimed Madam Lebrenn. "But you will have to
take Gildas into your confidence. He is, no doubt, an honest lad. Still,
do you not fear--"
"At this hour, my dear Henory, the mask may be raised. An indiscretion
is no longer to be feared. If poor Gildas is afraid, I shall allow him
to hide himself in some nook in the garret--or in the cellar. And now,
first of all, to supper. After supper you and Velleda shall come up
again with Jeanike to get everything in readiness for the hospital. We
shall remain in the shop, Sacrovir and I, because we shall have a lot of
company to-night."
The merchant and his family descended back into the shop and went to
supper in the rear room, where their meal was hastily despatched.
The agitation grew intenser on the street with every minute. From the
distance the muffled rumbling could be heard of large surging masses. It
sounded threateningly, like the distant blast of an approaching storm. A
few windows on the street were lighted in honor of the change of Cabinet
officers. But some friends of Monsieur Lebrenn's, who came in and went
out again several times to bring tidings of what was afoot, reported
that the royal concessions were interpreted as a sign of weakness, that
the night would be decisive, that everywhere the people were arming
themselves by entering certain appointed houses and demanding guns,
after which they would take their departure, leaving on the door an
inscription in chalk--"Arms delivered."
After supper, Madam Lebrenn, her daughter and the maid returned upstairs
to the first floor, into a room that faced the street. The merchant, his
son and Gildas remained in the rear of the shop.
Gildas was gifted by nature with a robust appetite; nevertheless, he did
not partake of supper. His uneasiness grew at every instant; with more
insistence than ever he whispered to Jeanike, or muttered to himself:
"A puzzling house! A puzzling street! Altogether a puzzling city!"
"Gildas," called Lebrenn, "fetch me a couple of hammers and chisels. My
son and I shall open these cases, while you may rip up the bales."
"The bales of linen, monsieur?"
"Yes--rip them open with your knife."
Furnished with hammers and chisels, the merchant and Sacrovir began to
pry open the chests, while Gildas, who had rolled one of the bales flat
on the floor, knelt down beside it and made ready to cut it open.
"Monsieur!" he suddenly cried, frightened by the hard blows that Lebrenn
was dealing to the chest with his hammer. "Monsieur! If it please you,
take care--look at the lettering on the chests--_glass_! You will break
the looking-glasses to pieces!"
"Do not be frightened, Gildas," answered his employer, "these looking
glasses are of solid material."
"They are plated with lead and iron, my friend Gildas," added Sacrovir,
striking still more heavily.
"More and more puzzling!" muttered Gildas to himself as he again went
down on his knees beside one of the bales in order to rip it open. In
order to furnish himself with more light at his work he took a candle,
and placed it upon the floor beside him. He was just about to remove the
heavy outer wrappage of coarse grey burlap when Monsieur Lebrenn, who
only then noticed the illumination which his shop-assistant had provided
himself with, cried out:
"Hold, Gildas! Are you crazy? Put the candle back on the table, quick.
The devil take it! You would blow us all up, my boy!"
"Blow us all up!" echoed Gildas, terror-stricken, and he bounded away
from the bale, while Sacrovir himself placed the candle on the table.
"What should blow us up?"
"The cartridges, my lad, which these bales contain. You must look out
what you are doing."
"Cartridges!" ejaculated the amazed Gildas, stepping still further back,
and more and more overcome with fear, while his employer took out two
guns from the chest which he had just opened, and his son drew from the
same receptacle several braces of pistols, muskets and carbines.
At the sight of these weapons, and knowing himself surrounded by
cartridges, the head of Gildas swam, he grew pale, and leaning against a
table again muttered to himself:
"A puzzling house, this! Its bales of linen are filled with cartridges!
Its looking glasses turn into guns and muskets and pistols!"
"My good Gildas," said Lebrenn, addressing him affectionately, "there is
no danger whatever in unpacking these arms and munitions. That is all I
want you to do. After you have done that, you may, if you prefer, either
go down into the cellar, or climb up into the garret, where you can
remain in all security until after the battle. Because, I might as well
let you know, there will be fighting going on with the break of day.
Once you are ensconced in the hiding place that you may choose, all I
warn you against is sticking your nose either out of the sky-light or
out of the air-hole when the firing has begun--not infrequently bullets
fly astray."
The linendraper's words--stray bullets, fighting, firing--completely
plunged Gildas into a vertigo that is easily imaginable. He had not
expected to find in the St. Denis quarter a stronghold of belligerency.
Other events soon crowded upon each other, all conspiring to increase
the terror of Gildas. Fresh clamors, at first distant, drew perceptibly
nearer and nearer, and finally seemed to explode with such fury that not
only Lebrenn and his son, but Gildas also, ran to the shop door in order
to ascertain what was happening on the street.
CHAPTER IX.
POPULAR JUSTICE.
When, attracted by the growing tumult, Monsieur Lebrenn, his son and
Gildas reached the door of the shop, the street was already filled with
a large crowd.
Windows were flying open and inquisitive heads appeared at them.
Presently a flickering reddish glare lighted the house fronts. A vast
and swelling flood of people was rushing by. Some preceded, others
accompanied the sinister illumination. The uproar grew more and more
violent. Now and then, rising above the din, the angry cries could be
heard:
"To arms!" "Vengeance!"
Exclamations of horror kept chorus with the cries. Women, who, attracted
by the noise, looked out of their windows, recoiled with horror as if
anxious to escape the sight of some frightful vision.
Their hearts gripped with apprehension, and drops of sweat standing out
upon their foreheads, the linendraper and his son realized that some
horrible spectacle was approaching, and remained motionless upon their
threshold.
Finally the procession hove in sight.
An innumerable mass of men in blouses, in bourgeois dress and also in
the uniform of the National Guard, and brandishing guns, swords, knives
and sticks, preceded a cart, that was slowly drawn by a horse, and that
was surrounded by a number of men bearing torches.
In the cart lay heaped up a mass of corpses.
A tall man with a scarlet hat on his head, naked from the waist up, and
his breast bleeding from a recent wound, stood erect in the front part
of the cart, carrying aloft a burning flambeau, which he waved to right
and left.
He might have been taken for the genius of Vengeance and of Revolution.
At each movement of his flambeau, he lighted with a ruddy glare to the
left of him the bloodstained head of an old man, to the right the bust
of a woman whose arms, like her bleeding head, half veiled by her
disheveled hair, dangled down over the edge of the cart.
From time to time the man with the scarlet hat waved his torch and cried
out in stentorian tones:
"They are butchering our brothers! Vengeance! To the barricades! To
arms!"
And thousands of voices, trembling with indignation and rage, repeated:
"Vengeance! To the barricades! To arms!"
Whereupon thousands of arms, some equipped with weapons, others not,
rose up toward the somber and threatening sky as if to take it to
witness of the vengeful pledges.
In the meantime the exasperated mob that the funeral procession
recruited in its passage went steadily on increasing. It passed as a
bloody vision before the linendraper and his son. So painful was the
first impression of both that they could not utter a word. Their eyes
swam in tears at learning that the butchery of inoffensive and unarmed
people had taken place upon the Boulevard of the Capuchins.
Hardly had the cart of corpses disappeared when Lebrenn seized one of
the iron bars, used to fasten the shop window from within, brandished it
over his head, and cried out to the indignant mass of people who were
trooping by:
"Friends! Royalty throws us the gage of battle by butchering our
brothers! Let the blood of the victims fall upon the head of that
accursed royalty! To the barricades! Long live the Republic!"
Immediately the merchant and his son tore up the first paving stones.
The man's words and example produced a magic effect. From a thousand
throats the answer came back:
"To arms! To the barricades! Long live the Republic!"
The next moment the people had invaded the neighboring houses,
everywhere demanding arms, and levers and crowbars to tear up the
pavement. Soon as the first row of cobblestones was removed, those who
had neither iron bars, nor sticks, pulled up the pavement with their
bare hands and nails.
Monsieur Lebrenn and his son were hard at work raising the barricade a
few paces above their door when they were joined by George Duchene, the
young carpenter, who arrived in the company of a score of armed men, the
members of a demi-section of the secret society with which they,
together with the linendraper, were affiliated.
Among these new recruits were the barrowman and the two truckmen who had
brought the arms and munitions to the shop in the course of the
afternoon. Dupont, who had driven the truck, was a mechanic; of the
other two, one was a man of letters, the other an eminent scientist.
George Duchene approached Lebrenn as the latter, having stopped working
on the barricade for a moment, stood at the door of his shop
distributing arms and ammunition among the men of his own quarter upon
whom he felt sure he could rely, while Gildas, the previous poltroonery
of whom had been transformed into heroism from the instant the sinister
cart of corpses passed before him, emerged from the cellar with several
baskets of wine, which he poured out to the men at work at the
barricade, to steel them to their task.
Clad in his blouse, George carried a carbine in his hand and a bunch of
cartridges tied up in a handkerchief hanging from his belt. He said to
the merchant:
"I did not arrive earlier, Monsieur Lebrenn, because we had to cross a
large number of barricades. They are rising on all sides. I left
Caussidiere and Sobrier behind--they are making ready to march upon the
Prefecture; Lesserre, Lagrange, Etienne Arago are, at the earliest dawn,
to march upon the Tuileries, and barricade Richelieu Street. Our other
friends distributed themselves in various quarters."
"And the troops, George?"
"Several regiments fraternize with the National Guard and the people,
and join in the shouts of 'Long live the Reform!' 'Down with Louis
Philippe!' On the other hand, the Municipal Guard and two or three
regiments of the line show themselves hostile to the movement."
"Poor soldiers!" observed the merchant sadly. "They, like ourselves, are
under the identical and fatal spell that arms brothers against one
another. Well, let us hope this struggle will be the last. And your
grandfather, George; did you succeed in making him feel at ease?"
"Yes, monsieur; I just come from him. Despite his great age and
weakness, he wanted to accompany me. I finally managed to induce him to
stay indoors."
"My wife and daughter are yonder," said the merchant, pointing toward
the lattices on the first floor, through which the gleam of a lighted
lamp could be seen. "They are busy preparing bandages and lint for the
wounded. We shall set up a hospital in the shop."
Suddenly the cry: "Stop thief!" "Stop thief!" resounded in the middle of
the road, and a man who was running away as fast as his legs could carry
him was seized by four or five workingmen in blouses and armed with
guns. Among these a ragpicker with a long white beard, but still strong,
was conspicuous. His clothes were in tatters, and, although he carried a
musket under his arm he did not remove his pack from his shoulder. He
was one of the first to seize the runaway, and now held him firmly by
the collar, while a woman, running toward the group and panting for
breath, cried:
"Stop thief! Stop thief!"
"Did this fellow rob you, my good woman?" asked the ragpicker.
"Yes, my good man," she answered. "I was standing at my door. This man
ran up and said to me: 'The people are rising; we must have arms.'
'Monsieur, I haven't any,' I answered him. Thereupon he pushed me aside
and went into my shop, despite all I could do, saying: 'Well, if you
have no arms, I shall take money to buy some.' So saying, he opened my
till, took out of it thirty-two francs that I had there, and a gold
watch. I tried to hold him, but he drew a knife upon me--fortunately I
parried the blow with my hand--here, see the cut I got. I cried for
help, and he fled!"
The culprit was a good sized, robust, and well clad man, but of ignoble
countenance. Hardened vice had left its indelible impress upon his
wasted features.
"It is not true! I stole nothing!" he cried in a husky voice, struggling
to avoid being searched. "Let me go! What does it concern you, anyhow?"
"That may concern us considerably, my young fellow!" answered the
ragpicker, holding firm to his collar. "You stabbed this poor woman
after robbing her of her money and a watch in the name of the people.
Keep still! This demands an explanation."
"Here is the watch, for one thing," said a workingman after searching
the thief.
"Can you identify it, madam?"
"I should think so, monsieur! It is old and heavy."
"Correct!" replied the workingman. "Here it is, madam."
"And in his vest," said another workingman after searching another of
the thief's pockets, "six hundred-sou pieces and one forty-sou piece."
"My thirty-two francs!" cried the tradeswoman. "Thank you, my dear men,
thank you!"
"That part being settled, my young fellow, you must now settle scores
with us," proceeded the ragpicker. "You stole and meant to commit murder
in the name of the people, did you not? Answer!"
"What is all this pother about, my friends, are we engaged in a
revolution, or are we not?" answered the thief in a hoarse voice and
affecting a cynical laugh. "Well, then, let us break into the money
boxes!"
"Is that what you understand by a revolution?" asked the ragpicker. "To
break into the money boxes?"
"Well?"
"Accordingly, you believe the people rise in revolt for the purpose of
stealing--brigand that you are?"
"What other purpose have you, then, in insurrecting, you pack of
hypocrites? Is it, perhaps, for honor's sake?" replied the thief
brazenly.
The group of armed men, the ragpicker excepted, who stood around the
thief, consulted for a moment in a low voice. One of them, noticing the
door of a grocery store standing ajar went thither; two others went in
another direction, saying:
"I think we would better tell Monsieur Lebrenn of this affair, and ask
his opinion."
Still a fourth whispered a few words in the ear of the ragpicker, who
answered:
"I think so, too. It would be no more than he deserves. It may be a
wholesome example. But while we wait, send me Flameche to help me mount
guard over this bad Parisian."
"Halloa, Flameche!" called a voice. "Come and help father Bribri hold a
thief."
Flameche ran to the ragpicker. He was a true Parisian gamin. Wan, frail,
wasted away by want, the lad, who was gifted with an intelligent and
bold face, was sixteen years of age, but looked only twelve. He wore a
dilapidated pair of trousers, and old shoes to match, and a blue sack
coat that hung in shreds from his shoulders; for weapon he carried a
saddle-pistol. Flameche arrived jumping and leaping.
"Flameche," said the ragpicker, "is your pistol loaded?"
"Yes, father Bribri. It is loaded with two marbles, three nails and a
knuckle-bone--I rammed all my toggery into it."
"That will do to settle the _gentleman_ if he but budges. Listen, my
friend Flameche--finger on trigger, and barrel in vest."
"'Tis done, father Bribri."
With these words Flameche neatly inserted the muzzle of his pistol
between the shirt and the skin of the thief. Seeing that the latter
tried to resist, Flameche added:
"Don't fidget; don't fidget; if you do you may cause Azor to go off."
"Flameche means his dog of a pistol," added father Bribri by way of
translation.
"Frauds that you are!" cried the thief, carefully abstaining from
moving, but beginning to tremble, although he made an effort to smile.
"What do you propose to do? Come, now, be done with your fooling! I have
had enough of it."
"Wait a minute!" interjected the ragpicker. "Let us converse a spell.
You asked me why we are in insurrection. I shall satisfy your curiosity.
First of all, it is not to break into money boxes and loot shops. Mercy!
A shop is to a merchant what a sack is to me. Each to his trade and his
tools. We are in insurrection, my young fellow, because it annoys us to
see old folks like myself die of hunger on the street like a stray dog
when our strength to work is no more. We are in insurrection, my young
fellow, because it is a torment to us to hear ourselves repeat the fact
that, out of every hundred young girls who walk the streets at night,
ninety-five are driven thereto by misery. We are in insurrection, my
young fellow, because it riles us to see thousands of ragamuffins like
Flameche, children of the Paris pavements, without hearth or home,
father or mother, abandoned to the mercy of the devil, and exposed to
become, some day or other, out of lack for a crust of bread, thieves
and assassins, like yourself, my young fellow!"
"You need not fear, father Bribri," put in Flameche; "you need not
fear--I shall never need to steal. I help you and other traders in old
duds to pack your sacks and dispose of your pickings. I treat myself to
the best that the dogs have left over. I make my burrow in your bundle
of old clothes, and sleep there like a dormouse. No fear, I tell you,
father Bribri, I need not steal. As to me, when I insurrect, by the
honor of my name! it is because it finally rasps upon me not to be
allowed to angle for red fish in the large pond of the Tuileries--and I
have made up my mind, in case we come out victors, to fish myself to
death. Each one after his own fancy. Long live the Reform! Down with
Louis Philippe!"
And turning to the thief who, seeing the five or six armed workingmen
coming back, made an effort to slip away:
"Do not budge, mister! Or, if you do, I shall let Azor loose upon you."
Saying which he tightened his finger again on the trigger of his pistol.
"But what is it you have in mind to do with me?" cried the thief,
turning pale at the sight of three of the workingmen, who were getting
their guns ready, while another, coming out of the grocery that he had
just before stepped into, brought with him a poster made of brown paper
on which some lettering had been freshly traced with a brush dipped in
blacking.
A dismal presentiment assailed the thief. He straggled to disengage
himself and cried out:
"If you charge me with theft--take me before the magistrate."
"Can not be done. The magistrate is just engaged marrying his daughter,"
explained father Bribri calmly. "He is now at the wedding."
"Besides, he has the toothache," added Flameche; "he is at the
dentist's."
"Take the thief to the lamp-post," said a voice.
"I tell you that I demand to be taken to the magistrate!" repeated the
wretch, struggling violently to free himself, and he began to shout:
"Help! Help!"
"If you can read, read this," said one of the workingmen, holding up the
poster before the thief. "If you can not read, I shall read it for you:
"SHOT AS A THIEF."
"Shot?" stammered the fellow growing livid. "Shot? Mercy! Help!
Assassins! Murder! Watchmen, murder!"
"An example must be set for the likes of you, in order that they may not
dishonor the Revolution!" explained father Bribri.
"Now, down on your knees, you scoundrel!" ordered a blacksmith who still
had his leathern apron on. "And all of you, my friends, get your guns
ready! Down on your knees!" he repeated to the thief, throwing him down
on the ground.
The wretch sank upon his knees in a state of such utter collapse and
terror that, crouching upon the pavement, he could only extend his hands
and mutter in an almost inaudible voice:
"Oh, mercy! Not death!"
"You fear death! Wait, I shall bandage your eyes," said the ragpicker.
And letting down his sack from his shoulders, father Bribri took a large
piece of cloth out of it and threw it over the condemned man who, on his
knees and gathered into a lump, was almost wholly covered therewith.
Soon as that was done, the ragpicker stepped quickly back.
Three shots were fired at once.
Popular justice was done.
A few minutes later, fastened under his arms to the lamp-post, the
corpse of the bandit swung to the night breeze with the poster attached
to his clothes:
"Shot as a thief."
CHAPTER X.
ON THE BARRICADE.
Shortly after the execution of the thief day began to dawn.
Presently the men who were stationed on the lookout at the corners of
the streets in the neighborhood of the barricade, that now reached
almost as high as the first story windows of the linendraper's house,
were seen falling back; after firing their pieces, they cried out "To
arms!"
Almost immediately after, the drums, silent until then, were heard to
beat the charge, and two companies of the Municipal Guards turned in
from a side street and marched resolutely upon the barricade.
Instantaneously the interior of the improvised fortress was filled with
defenders.
Monsieur Lebrenn, his son, George Duchene and their friends took their
posts and held their guns in readiness.
Father Bribri, who was a great lover of tobacco, foreseeing that he
might soon not have leisure to take his pinch of snuff, inhaled a last
load out of his pouch, seized his musket and knelt down in front of a
species of loophole that was contrived between several cobblestones,
while Flameche, pistol in hand, climbed up the ledges like a cat, in
order to reach the summit of the barricade.
"Will you come down, you imp, and not make a target of your nose!" cried
out the ragpicker, pulling Flameche by the leg. "You will be shot to
dust."
"No fear, father Bribri!" replied Flameche, tugging away, and finally
succeeding in slipping from the old man's grip. "This is gratis--I wish
to treat myself to a first salvo, face to face--and have a good look at
things."
And raising half his body above the barricade, Flameche stuck out his
tongue to the Municipal Guard, which was approaching at the double
quick.
Addressing the combatants who surrounded him, Monsieur Lebrenn said:
"Those soldiers are, after all, our brothers. Let us make one last
attempt to avoid the effusion of blood."
"You are right--try again, Monsieur Lebrenn," came from the bare-armed
blacksmith as he flipped the stock of his gun with his nail; "but it
will be love's labor lost--as you will see."
The merchant climbed to the top of the heap of cobblestones. Standing
there, with one hand resting upon his gun, and waving a handkerchief
with the other, he signalled to the approaching soldiers that he wished
to speak to them.
The drums of the detachment ceased beating, rolled the order for
silence, and all listened.
At one of the windows on the first floor of the merchant's house his
wife and daughter stood partly concealed behind the blinds, which they
had slightly opened. They stood side by side, holding their breath,
pale, but calm and resolute. They did not remove their eyes from Lebrenn
as he was addressing the soldiers with his son--who had closely followed
his father up the barricade in order, if necessary, to cover him with
his own body--standing beside him, gun in hand. George Duchene was about
to join the two when he suddenly felt himself violently plucked back by
his blouse.
He turned and saw Pradeline. She had been running fast, as the redness
of her cheeks and short breath denoted.
The defenders of the barricade had seen the young girl approach; they
were surprised to see her among them. As she sought to push her way
through the crowd in order to reach George, they said to her:
"Don't stay here, young woman; it is too dangerous a place."
"You here!" cried George stupefied at the sight of Pradeline.
"George, listen to me!" the girl said to him imploringly. "I went twice
to your house yesterday, and failed to find you at home. I wrote to you
that I would call again this morning. To keep my appointment I had to
cross several barricades, and--"
"Stand back!" cried George, alarmed for her safety. "You will be
shot--this is no place for you."
"George, I have come to render you a service--I--"
Pradeline could not finish her sentence. Lebrenn, who had in vain been
parleying with the captain of the Municipal Guards, turned around and
cried out:
"They insist upon war! Very well, war it shall be! Wait for them to open
fire--then return it."
The Municipal Guard fired; the insurgents responded; soon a cloud of
smoke hovered above the barricade. Shots were fired from the neighboring
windows; shots came from the air-holes of the cellars; even the old
grandfather of George Duchene could be seen at his attic window throwing
upon the heads of the Municipal Guard, in default of better arms and
ammunition, all manner of household furniture and kitchen
utensils--tables, chairs, pots and pitchers; in short, everything that
could go through the window was hurled down by the good old invalid of
toil, as Lebrenn had justly styled him. It was an almost comic sight.
The old man seemed to be moving out by the window. When his supply of
projectiles was exhausted, he threw in despair even his cotton cap at
the troops. He then looked around, disconsolate at finding nothing more
handy to his purpose, but immediately a shout of triumph went up from
his throat, and he began to tear up the roof tiles that were within
reach of his hands, and to fling them one after the other down upon the
soldiers.
The engagement was hotly contested. After returning the discharges of
the insurgents with several rounds of shot, the Municipalists rushed
intrepidly upon the barricade with felled bayonets, expecting to carry
it by assault.
Several groups could be descried through the dense whitish smoke that
settled and rose over the top of the barricade. In one of these groups,
Marik Lebrenn, after having discharged his gun, was wielding it as a
club to drive the assailants back. His son and George, close behind
him, seconded his efforts vigorously. From time to time, and without
lagging in the fight, father and son cast a hurried glance at the half
open blinds above their heads, and off and on these words reached their
ears:
"Courage, Marik!" would come from Madam Lebrenn. "Courage, my son!"
"Courage, father!" echoed Velleda. "Courage, brother!"
A stray bullet shattered with a great clatter one of the thin slats of
the lattice behind which the two heroic women were posted. The two true
Gallic women, as Lebrenn called them, did not wince. They remained in
their places to watch the merchant and his son.
There was a moment when, after boldly struggling hand to hand with a
captain, and having beaten the officer down, Lebrenn was endeavoring to
regain his feet, which slipped and stumbled over the uncertain
cobblestones; on the instant a soldier who had succeeded in reaching the
top of the barricade, and from his elevated position towered over the
merchant, raised his gun, and was on the point of transfixing the
linendraper with his bayonet. George perceived the imminent danger of
Velleda's father; he threw himself in front of the threatened thrust;
the bayonet ran through his arm and he dropped to the ground. The
soldier was about to deal the merchant's protector a second thrust when
two small hands seized him by his legs, and holding him with the
convulsive grip of despair, caused him to lose his balance. Head
foremost the soldier rolled down the other side of the barricade.
George owed his life to Pradeline. Bold as a lioness, her hair
streaming, her cheeks aflame, the girl had managed to draw near to
George during the struggle. The very instant, however, after she had
saved him, a rebounding bullet struck her in the breast. She fell down
upon her knees and fainted--her last glances sought George.[9]
Father Bribri, seeing the young woman wounded, dropped his musket, ran
to her, and raised her up. He was looking around for some safe place to
lay her down when he noticed Madam Lebrenn and her daughter at the door
of the shop. They had just descended from the floor above, and were
busy, with the help of Gildas and Jeanike, making preparations to
receive the wounded.
Gildas was beginning to accustom himself to the firing. He aided father
Bribri to transport Pradeline into the rear room, where Madam Lebrenn
and her daughter immediately turned their attention to her.
The ragpicker was stepping out of the shop when there came, rolling down
to his feet, a frail body clad in tattered trousers and a ragged jacket,
all clotted with blood.
"Oh, my poor Flameche!" cried the old man, trying to pick up the boy.
"Are you wounded? It may not be dangerous--courage!"
"I am done for, father Bribri," answered the boy in a fast ebbing voice.
"It is a pity--I shall not--go--angling for the red fishes
in--the--pond--of--"
And he expired.
A big tear rolled down upon the scrubby beard of the ragpicker.
"Poor little devil! he was not a bad boy," father Bribri soliloquized
with a sigh. "He dies as he lived--on the Paris pavement!"
Such was the short funeral oration pronounced over Flameche's body.
At the moment that the poor boy died, George's grandfather, unable any
longer to restrain himself, decided, despite his feebleness, to join the
fray. He hurried down to the street, and ran to the barricade. From his
window, his ammunition, moveables and fixtures, being exhausted, he had
had leisure to follow the vicissitudes of the conflict. He saw the
little fellow fall; looked for him among the dead and the wounded; he
called to him in heartrending accents.
So stubborn was the resistance offered by the defenders of the barricade
that the Municipalists, after sustaining heavy losses, were compelled to
beat a retreat, which they effected in good order.
The firing had ceased for several minutes when suddenly a shot was heard
in the near vicinity, and, almost immediately after, the sound of horses
approaching at a gallop.
Presently, on the rear side of the barricade, a colonel of dragoons hove
in sight, followed by a number of horsemen, sabers in hand, like their
commander, driving before them a group of insurgents who fired at
intervals as they retreated on the run.
It was Colonel Plouernel. Separated from his squadron by an onrush of
insurgents, he was endeavoring to cut himself a passage to the
boulevard, not imagining he would find his path barred at that spot by a
barricade.
The combat, suspended for a moment, broke out afresh. At first the
defenders of the barricade believed that the small number of troopers
was the vanguard of a regiment which meant to take them in the rear, and
thus place them between two fires, by the return of the Municipalists to
the assault.
The fifteen or twenty dragoons commanded by Colonel Plouernel were
received with a general discharge of musketry. Several of the dragoons
fell; the colonel himself was wounded. But obedient to his natural
intrepidity, he drove his spurs into his horse's flanks, waved his sword
and cried out:
"Dragoons! Cut down this rabble with your swords!"
The colonel's horse gave an enormous bound; it brought him to the very
base of the barricade, but the animal slipped over the rolling
cobblestones and fell prone.
Although wounded and pinned to the ground under his mount, the Count of
Plouernel still defended himself with heroic valor. His every sword
thrust found its mark. But it was all of no avail; he was about to
succumb to superior numbers when, at the risk of his own life, Monsieur
Lebrenn, assisted by his son and George, although the latter was
wounded, threw themselves between the prostrate colonel and his
exasperated assailants, and succeeded in extricating him from under his
horse, and in pushing him into the shop.
"Friends! These dragoons are isolated; they are in no condition to
resist us; let us disarm them; let there be no useless carnage--they are
our brothers!" someone cried.
"Mercy to the soldiers--but death to their colonel!" cried the men who
had just been driven to the spot before the merciless and headlong
onslaught of the Count of Plouernel. "Death to the colonel!"
"Yes! Yes!" repeated several voices.
"No!" shouted back the linendraper, barring the door with his gun, while
George came to his support. "No! No! No massacre after battle! No
cowardice!"
"The colonel killed my brother with a pistol shot fired within an inch
of his face--down there, at the corner of the street," bellowed a man
with bloodshot eyes, his mouth foaming with rage, and brandishing a
sword. "Death to the colonel!"
"Yes! Yes! Death!" shouted several threatening voices. "Death!"
"No! You shall not kill a wounded man! You can not mean to murder an
unarmed man--a prisoner!"
"Death," shouted back an increasing number of angry voices. "Death!"
"V
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/37225