IV Brewings of the Storm
When Barabant had groped his way up the tortuous ascent, he was surprised to find his door open, sending a feeble glow over the remainder of his journey. He crossed the threshold on tiptoe, and, to his amazement, beheld a man, in the uniform of the National Guard, stretched out upon his bed, and two lank legs that, over-lapping, were perched on the footboards. He came forward, advanced another step, and recognized Dossonville.
Barabant, believing him to be shamming, went softly to the farther corner and installed himself to wait. But the steady, tranquil breathing of the sleeper soon convinced him. With a sudden inspiration, he stole to the threshold, grasping the handle of the door. The next moment there thundered upon the slumberer the cry:
“Arrest him! The aristocrat!”
As though propelled from a catapult, the lank form in one bound shot over the end of the bed, threw two chairs in front of him as a rampart, snatched out his sword, and beheld, in this bellicose posture, no horrid band of Jacobins, but the lithe figure of Barabant, laughing silently, with folded arms.
“Tonnerre de Dieu! Why did you do that?”
Dossonville returned the sword to the scabbard, pushed aside the rampart, and extended his hand, saying, “I was asleep; serves me right; but you have a rude manner of jesting.”
“I did not suspect your conscience was so uneasy,” Barabant said, retaining the quizzical smile.
“Oho!”
With his lips in this startled oval, Dossonville halted. His eyes contracted into slits as he said dryly, “So that was a ruse.”
“If you like.”
“Hello! it was well conceived. Tiens, tiens, tiens!” His eyes continued their scrutiny. “I have, perhaps, not done justice to your acumen. My compliments and my excuses.”
He swung his bonnet in a long, awkward, trailing swoop across his feet. Barabant executed a bow of equal assurance.
Dossonville returned to uprightness with a snap of his heels, and a certain asperity rang in the next question.
“And why did you deem the experiment necessary?”
“Before intrusting my safety I prefer to reassure myself.”
“You saw that at the cry of ‘aristocrats’ I sprang to my guard.”
“I said ‘the aristocrat.’”
“I understood, ‘Arrest him, aristocrats!’”
The two men, Dossonville cool, Barabant amused, measured looks, until, dismissing the subject with a motion of his arm, Dossonville seated himself.
“Well, what do they say of me?”
Barabant, who did not intend to surrender his vantage, straddled his chair, rested his arms on the back, and, looking him magisterially in countenance, answered:
“Citoyen Dossonville, you seem to be a mystery. No one knows where to place you. You consort with patriots and traitors alike.”
Dossonville, facing this accusation, appeared to reflect a moment.
“That’s true. I do not hide it—from patriots.” His voice gave a meaning inflection to the ending; then he added, irritably: “There are more ways than one of serving the nation. I repeat, leave me mine.” He broke off. “Have you written anything? Give it to me.”
Barabant extended the precious manuscript. He took it, but before spreading it upon his knee, he said: “After all, you are right. I have a way to convince you. You shall see. But first for this.”
He began to read, with approval. “Good—good”; “very good”; “excellent.”
At the end he brought his hand down upon his knee with a slap. “Tonnerre de Dieu, that is well put!”
Barabant, who was soaring in the seventh heaven, made a superhuman effort and forced back a smile. Dossonville, much amused, tapped him on the shoulder.
“Come, it is not a crime to be pleased with one’s self.”
“You think it will do?” Barabant stammered.
“Splendid! And now to convince this suspicious republican.” He eyed him a moment, enjoying the surprise his next words would cause. “Suppose you return with me to Santerre.”
Barabant, astounded at this acquaintance with his doings, dropped his jaw.
“So, do you think I would employ you without some knowledge of your actions?” He enjoyed for a moment Barabant’s embarrassment. “Come, and Santerre shall reassure you.” At the door he paused, cast a rapid glance at the impoverished fittings, and drew out his purse. “Republican or not, the essential thing is to dine.” Then evading the young fellow’s thanks, he led the way into the city.
It was now toward twilight. The streets were choked with laborers returning home. In the air was an unwonted stir, a muttering, defiant and eager, as the crowd discussed openly, with impassioned questions, the prospective attack on the Tuileries.
“It is for to-night, sure?”
“For to-night, yes, at the tocsin.”
“It’s true, is it, the National Guards are coming over?”
“They’ve armed the Marseillais.”
“Who?”
“Pétion.”
“Vive Pétion!”
Hundreds of National Guards fraternized with the crowd, reassuring them. Occasionally was to be seen the glimmer of a weapon, a scythe, a cutlass, or a half-concealed dagger. Questioners stopped them from time to time.
“Is it true, we are to attack to-night?”
Dossonville shrugged his shoulders.
“If the tocsin sounds you are. That is all I know.”
From time to time there were new accessions in the streets; until, as the two approached the Rue St. Antoine, they were forced to beg their way at every step.
Dossonville, his head flung back, reviewed the throng from his great height.
“What a people! Is there anything they will not dare?” he exclaimed. “Brave people! Sublime people!”
They passed through a side street, deserted except for some straggler hastening toward the human torrent. Dossonville, in a burst of confidence, laid his hand on his companion’s shoulder.
“That was good to see. I, Citoyen Barabant—I take nothing seriously. Men, individuals, are but blind little animals wriggling for a day or so. I have seen too much of selfishness, of wickedness, of deceits and hypocrisy, to be moved by human motives. Nothing really matters, nothing is serious. But when I see such a sight as that, a whole people rising with one accord, ah, then that thrills me; yes, I am moved!”
Barabant was silent, more perplexed concerning his companion than ever, and in this reflective mood he persevered, resolving to be on his watch for artifices and tricks. About the brasserie of the famous brewer the throng was massed so tightly that the two companions would have stuck thirty feet away, unable to turn, had not Santerre, from an upper window, perceived the lanky form of Dossonville. The moment his eye fell upon that appealing figure, he started up, as though awaiting him, and hurrying down-stairs, appeared at the entrance, where, by dint of command and abuse, he managed to open a passage, through which the crowd disgorged them.
Barabant, at a nod from Dossonville, remained in an anteroom listening to the compressed rumble of the crowd, that reached him through the open window on the warm, suffocating air. He did not have long to wait. Santerre soon reappeared, excited and red with the emotion communicated to his fleshy head. Dossonville, more tranquil, called him to them.
“I must take a message to the Bonnet Rouge,” he said. “It is urgent. So I must leave you—only, I do not forget.” He glanced at him, adding slyly: “Is there anything you care to ask of the Citoyen Santerre?”
Barabant, gulping down his confusion, cried: “Nothing.”
“Good. Then you are no longer afraid you are dealing with an agent of the perfidious Pitt?”
Barabant seized the occasion to vanish through the side exit, carrying with him the memory of a chuckle.
Nicole no sooner had dismissed Barabant than she regretted the act. Her intuition had warned her that caprice was necessary to counteract her bonhomie, which might have produced in the young man an assurance of facile conquest. But, left to her own devices, to her astonishment she found the solitude oppressive. She made an effort to dispel the ennui by seeking Goursac; but no sooner had she perceived him than, apprehending the banter in which he was privileged to indulge, she halted and then turned away.
Toward evening, according to her custom, she joined Louison in search of supper.
“What have you done with your companion?” the girl asked at once.
“I dismissed him long ago,” Nicole answered carelessly: from that quarter she welcomed attack. “A man interferes with the business.”
“How did you meet him?”
“Why, I thought you knew! He has taken the room across from us!”
“Ah, indeed. He seems interesting.” She took her companion’s arm and said abruptly, “I have taken a fancy to him, so garde à toi!”
Nicole, not certain whether she spoke in jest or in earnest, abandoned uneasily the conversation, saying, “Where do we dine to-night?”
“At the Bonnet Rouge.”
“Why there?”
“It is the rendezvous for the Marseillais. If there is to be an attack, we’ll have the news.”
“Do you think it will be for to-night?”
“Yes; there is something in the air that makes me think so.”
Their way soon involved them in a network of dusky, gaping streets. On each side somber walls, peopled with dim, curious flecks of headgear, strained upward and back in a bulging effort to draw down a little more of the allotted strip of sky. The windows of taverns, on the ground floor, were beginning to redden and to cast faint streaks across the black, oozing streets; but the frugal inhabitants of upper stories, in deference to the price of candles, still hung on the sills, causing the evening to resound with the nervous chatter of window-to-window speculation.
At times the tension of conjecture and discussion would be broken by the bass voice of a passing laborer thundering forth,
“Ça ira! Ça ira! Ça ira!”
Above the soprano of women’s voices and the thin piping of children responded feverishly:
“La liberté s’établira:
Malgré les tyrans tout réussira!”
They found the cabaret beginning to fill up by twos and threes—workingmen for the most part: water-carriers divesting themselves of their barrels at the door with a sigh of contentment; wood-carriers, with relaxed limbs, slipping gratefully into the hard wooden benches; women of the markets, corpulent, quick-tongued, smelling of onion and garlic; erstwhile actors still with the strut of the stage; an occasional bourgeois in misfortune; a handful of gamins, impudent and witty—all discussing feverishly the projected attack.
The two girls, perceiving the congestion in the outer room, elbowed their way to where, by an inner door, a waiter of exceptional but broken height was scanning the crowd with an eye to orders.
“Well, Citoyen Boudgoust, what news?”
At Louison’s question, he showed the palms of his hands, finally volunteering:
“Santerre is to send us word.”
“There’s room beyond?”
“You are going to eat?”
“Of course,” Louison said impatiently, as he barred the way. “Besides, mon ami, don’t you think we know what’s going on?”
He allowed them to pass, grumbling, “Every one comes to talk; no one to eat.”
In the farther hall the crowd was thinner and composed mostly of Marseillais and the National Guard, who looked up furtively, until half a dozen greetings removed their suspicions.
“Good evening, Citoyenne Nicole.”
In her astonishment, she turned to find Geneviève.
“What are you doing here, child?” she cried.
“I am listening.”
“You are no longer afraid?”
“We are to attack,” the girl said proudly, and her eyes snapped with defiant ardor.
“Bravo, little one!” laughed Nicole. “Sit with us, then.”
She turned to Louison in explanation.
“She is my protégée who is coming to me for lessons.”
Louison nodded without surprise and turned her slow, restrained gaze on the room, while the eyes of Nicole, full of enthusiasm, leaped from group to group in rapid, eager scrutiny, resting finally on a knot of Marseillais near by. One man dominated these uncouth, bristling, living arsenals—a squat figure, sprawling under the grotesque shadows of the lamp, which further distorted his huge bulk and bullet head. One ungainly, crooked hand leaned in ponderous support upon the table; the other was flourished above him in frantic gestures, magnetic, absurd, comic, and terrible, as he harangued his comrades, who acclaimed his exhortations with shouts that burst above the ceaseless roar of the room.
“They are not very coquette,” Nicole said critically, “and not very clean.”
“Ah, but think how they have marched, all the way from Marseilles!” Geneviève cried, in protest.
“You know them, then?” Nicole asked, astonished at this side of the girl.
“Yes.”
“And that bear of a man in the center, do you know his name?”
“Yes,” she answered, with a slight disconcertion. “He is the Citoyen Javogues.”
“He looks like an ogre.”
“Wait till you hear him.”
“Really!” answered Nicole, with a smile which threw the girl into confusion.
At this moment a rumble reached them from the outer room. Boudgoust, profoundly dejected, appeared, followed by the insouciant figure of Dossonville. Instantly the room was filled with cries.
“What news?”
“What news from Santerre?”
“We attack?”
“For to-night?”
Dossonville, facing the eager, breathless gallery, shrugged his shoulders, uttering but one word:
“Postponed.”
A roar of rage and disappointment drowned his voice.
“Citoyens!” he cried, “I am but announcing the decision; I did not make it. The tyrants are intrenched. Mandat is in ambush at the Pont Neuf and the Arcade St. Jean. The leaders have decided the moment is unfavorable.”
The storm of protests increased.
“More delay! Enough of waiting!”
“Mon Dieu, we are not cowards!”
“And the Prussians?”
“Hé, yes, are we to wait for the foreign bandits?”
“Javogues! Javogues!”
“Javogues, lead us!”
“Lead us, Javogues!”
Nicole felt through the child at her side a sudden trembling and drawing of breath. Then into the center of the suddenly quiet room lurched the squat figure, bareheaded, bare-armed, bare-chested but for a tattered shirt. He seemed rooted to the floor, like a mound transformed to human shape, quivering in the primeval mold and passions.
“Well, yes, I’ll lead you!” The huge fist, describing a circle, crashed upon a table. “We’re here to fight. We’ll wait no longer. Hesitate and bandy words and deliberate whoever wants—we are not such! We have suffered and ached. We have been crushed to the ground, saddled to the earth,—we, human beings, like cattle, and we remember our wrongs. Fear? Neither God nor men do we fear. We came here, we, marching from Marseilles,—all the way from Marseilles,—to wipe out the accursed tyrants, to make things go faster, and, by God, they shall go!”
Nicole saw the hideous face transformed, lighted up with the glow of martyrdom. From lungs of leather there burst a welcoming response. Dossonville, facing the fanatic without a change of position, waited imperturbably the lull. Geneviève was breathing hard, in her excitement seizing the hand of her protectress.
“Bravo, patriot, you are eloquent!” came at last the calm answer of Dossonville. “But what can you do? March and be made into beefsteaks? The people, it is true, are hungry, but not a step will the sections move without Santerre. Will you march alone? What say you?”
“I say they are traitors who would halt us!” burst forth Javogues, glancing at the man who dared to jest with him.
“Meaning Santerre?”
“Meaning those who bear false messages. I don’t like these manners. Who are you?”
“My friend,” Dossonville said, with cool scorn of the threatening throng, “you are curious.”
“Aristocrat!”
“Am I?”
“I say you are!”
“Indeed!”
“You will not answer?”
“Certainly! Citoyen Dossonville, at present lieutenant of the Section des Bonnes Nouvelles, in the past soldier, sailor, actor, innkeeper, a bit of everything except the law and the church. Citoyen Boudgoust,” he continued, shifting his head just enough to bring into range the apathetic waiter, “before this fire-eater is at my throat, come, vouch for me!”
The hang-down head wabbled a moment on the bent shoulders.
“Yes, yes, a good patriot, Citoyen Javogues, and an eater of little aristocrats.”
“As all good patriots should be!” retorted Dossonville, gravely. “There, citoyen, good patriots should not quarrel when there are so many tyrants to be digested. There is my hand—touch!”
Javogues stared at the proffered hand a moment stolidly, drunkenly, then deliberately folded his arms. A murmur of dissent gathered volume.
“Comrade, you are wrong!”
“Give him your hand!”
“Aye, touch together!”
Above the outburst the voice of Dossonville rose acridly.
“Dame! mon ami, you bring strange manners from Marseilles.”
“I bring something else.”
“And that is—”
“The way to tell a traitor.”
“And that is—”
“By the look in his eyes!” Raising his fist, the Marseillais lurched forward with the angry shout of “Spy!”
A dozen men rushed to separate them, while the Marseillais, echoing the accusation of their leader, surged furiously forward. Louison and Nicole, with a common impulse, seized Dossonville, and in the confusion drew him into the hall and out by a rear entrance into the cool of the night.
“Thanks, my dears!” he cried, once free of the turmoil, nonchalant and flippant as ever. “It is always difficult to find the right word on which to retreat with dignity. You saved me the trouble. What! it is you, Louison and Nicole? Diable! if it were only one I could offer my eternal devotion—for a week.”
“Citoyen,” cried Nicole, reprovingly, “you were wrong to bait him. You have gained an enemy.”
“On the contrary,” Louison interposed, and strangely on her cold face there was a flash of admiration. “Citoyen Dossonville, you were splendid!”
“No, I was a fool,” he said. “It is very stupid that some men must be at each other’s throats from the first glance. Diable! I have a feeling this fellow will bother me some day. However, it will add a little interest to these quiet times. Au revoir—I must be off. If I stay I shall be falling in love with both of you. What good would that do? Thanks, and good night!”
In the distance his footsteps grew faint, while for a time the gay chorus of the Carmagnole told of his passage.
Nicole, leaving Louison, sought Geneviève, and, with a desire to reconnoiter, struck out through the now quiet Faubourg toward the Hôtel de Ville. There, all was animation with the arrival of the delegates from the forty-eight sections, assembling to deliberate upon a plan of action, while from time to time messengers passed like streaks down the steps and across the crowd, leaving the disturbance of their trail on the surface.
They passed along the Seine, where the river, as though, too, at the end of the day it sought its rest, lay still and black, shot across with faint reflections. They arrived at the Tuileries only to be barred passage by a patrol. Everywhere as they made the rounds they found the palace guarded and prepared; while a hundred other scouts passed ceaselessly to and fro, examining the frowning walls, grim in the shadow of night.
A dozen rumors were current: the palace was filled with Swiss and Chevaliers du Poignard; there were cannons masked at every point; the windows were protected with screens of oak; the court were dancing inside, drinking to the white cockades, as they had done at Versailles. Others affirmed that the city was to be set on fire from the four quarters; that the king had fled; that the National Assembly was to be arrested. Nicole, her curiosity satisfied and wearying of these wild rumors, returned home. At the Faubourg St. Antoine they found everything tranquil, and retired for the night. It was then half-past ten.
In their room Geneviève hazarded the question for which Nicole had waited with amused patience.
“Tell me, Nicole, what did you think of him?”
“Of whom?”
“Of the Citoyen Javogues. Was I not right?”
“He frightens me,” Nicole said frankly. “He had the air of a butcher—a madman. Well, how shall I express it? He made me tremble, almost with a premonition of danger.”
“Ah, you cannot understand him,” Geneviève protested. “To me he is heroic!”
“What a little Jacobin!” Nicole said, with a smile. Without attaching further importance to what she considered the whim of a child, she added: “Well, mon enfant, here is your room. The half of it is yours for as long as you want it.”
She passed to the window, casting a longing glance at the dark window opposite. Surprised at Geneviève’s silence, she turned, a little provoked. The child was crying.
“Dear Geneviève!” she cried, springing to her side and taking her in her arms. “Don’t try to thank me; I understand.”
But the girl, through her sobs, murmured again and again, “Thank you, ah, thank you!”
“But it is I who am thankful,” Nicole protested. “You bring me something to love and to care for. I was getting used to solitude, which is dangerous.”
Checking her thanks, she snuffed the candle, stretching out upon the bed beside the girl.
“Yes, it is bad for one to be always alone,” she said.
Geneviève timidly covered her hands with kisses.
“No, no, kiss me on the cheek,” Nicole said. “And now, if you are going to obey, go right to sleep.”
The child nestled closer, drawing Nicole’s arm about her. The embrace seemed strange to Nicole, and, without quite understanding why, she sought to draw her arm away.