X How Pierre Became a Jacobin and How a Nation Became Insane
Although the marquis was not again upon the scene, as the months went by Despard became by degrees more gloomy. At night, in place of the gay little café, he went out to the club of the Jacobins, and fed full of its wild declamations against the émigrés and the aristocrats. It amused François, who saw no further ahead than other men. Despard came home loaded with gazettes and pamphlets, and on these he fed his excitement long after his partner was asleep.
When, as time went by, Pierre’s vagaries increased, François found in them less subject for mirth. The fat little man sat up later and later at night. At times he read; at others he walked about muttering, or moving his lips without uttering a sound. What disturbed François most was that the poodle now and then showed fear of Pierre, and would no longer obey him as he had been used to do.
Meanwhile, as Pierre still attended sedulously to business, François could find no fault. He himself had become devoted to his art of palm-reading. He bought at the stalls old books, Latin and French, which treated of the subject, and tried to keep up the name his odd ways had made so profitable. Deceit was a part of his working capital; but deceit and credulity are apt to go together, as a great man has well said. Not for many louis would the conjurer have let any one read again the lines of his own hand. When Despard began to teach him the little he himself knew of palmistry, it had caused interest, and after a while a half-belief. This grew as he saw the evident disturbance to which the use of his art gave rise in certain of those who at first appeared to look upon it as an idle jest. The imaginative have need to be wary, and this man was imaginative, and had the usual notions of the gambler and thief as to omens and luck. I have said he had no definite working conscience. I have also said that he possessed an inborn kindness of heart; he had a long memory for benefits, and a short one for injuries. His courage was of fine quality: not even Quatre Pattes could terrify him.
The politics of the time were becoming month by month more troublous to such as kept their heads steady in the amazing tumble of what for centuries had been on top, and the rise of that which had been as long underneath. The increasing interest of Pierre in all that went on surprised François, and sometimes, as I have said, amused him. He could not comprehend why he should care whether the king ruled, or the Assembly. This mighty drama was nothing to him. He paid no taxes; he toiled not, nor spun, except nets of deceit; and whether or not commerce died and the plow stood idle in the furrow was to him of no moment. Meanwhile, before the eyes of a waiting, wondering world historic fate was shuffling the cards as neither war nor misrule had shifted them for many a day. Knave and king, spade and club, were now up, now down. Every one was in a new place. The old surnames were replaced by classical appellations. Streets, palaces, and cities were rebaptized with prenominal republican adjectives. Burgundy, Anjou, Navarre, and the other ancient provinces, knew no more their great names heroically famous.
All men were to be equal; all men were free to be what they could. But the freedom of natural or acquired inequality was not to be recognized. There were new laws without end. The Jacobin added a social creed. All men must tutoyer. “Your Majesty” was no more to be used. Because the gentles said “thou” and “thee” to one another and to an inferior, all men must “thou” as a sign that all are on a level.
A bit of paper was to be five francs—and take care of thy head if thou shouldst venture to doubt its value. As to all else, men accepted the numberless and bewildering decrees of the Assembly. But the laws of commerce no ruler can break. These are despotic, changeless, and as old as the act of barter between man and man. The assignats fell in value until two hundred francs would scarce buy a dinner. There, too, was a new navy and a new army, with confusing theories of equal rights for sailor, soldier, and captain.
A noble desire arose everywhere to exercise the new functions. What joy to cast a ballot, to act the part of officials, to play at soldiering! All the cross dogs in France are unchained and the muzzles off; and some are bloodhounds. What luxury to be judge, jury, and hangman, like the noble of long ago!
Even childhood caught the temper of the time. It played at being officer and prisoner, built and tore down bastilles, and at last won attention and a law all to itself when some young ruffians hung one of their number in good earnest for an aristocrat.
However indifferent was François at this time, the shifting drama amused him as some monstrous burlesque might have done. Its tragedies were as yet occasional, and he was by nature too gay to be long or deeply impressed. There was none he loved in peril, and how to take care of François his life had taught him full well.
“Allons zi gaiement!” he cried, in the tongue of his old quarter; and kept a wondering, anxious eye on Pierre.