XIII Citizen Amar, Meeting the Marquis, Is Unlucky and Vindictive
A fear vast and oppressive was upon the great city. The white cockades were gone. François burned all he could find. For a week no one came to fence in the morning. The afternoons were full, and there was much inquiry for Citizen Gamel. On the night of the 24th of this terrible January, 1793, François went out. Paris was recovering, and, as usual, forgetful, was eating and drinking and dancing, while all Europe was ringing with the news of this murder of a good man too weak for a mighty task.
When, later, François returned to the school of arms he smelt the odor of a pipe. “Ah!” he cried, “Toto, he has come. ’T is none too soon.” Candles lighted dimly the large hall and the rooms beyond it. He heard no sounds, and, suddenly becoming uneasy, hastened to enter the little salon. It was empty, as were all the rooms. On the bedroom floor lay scattered clothes. Scorched leaflets were fluttering like black crows over the ashes of a dying fire. They were fragments of burnt paper. An open desk was on the table, and everywhere were signs of haste.
François ran out to the kitchen, and called their only servant, a shrewd old woman. She said: “I heard thee, citizen. I was coming to tell thee that Citizen Gamel has gone.”
“Gone! Mon Dieu!”
“He has paid me, and well; and here is a box for thee, Citizen François. I hid it under the mattress. Oh, I have waited, but I am afraid.”
François took the box and its key, and went to his room. The box contained some five hundred francs in gold, and as much more in assignats—the notes of the day, and really worth but little. In a folded package were papers and a letter. It read thus:
“I am sorry to leave thee. A business affair has failed, and I go westward. I risk this to warn thee to fly. For two days thou art safe, but not longer. If a gentleman calls whom thou knowest, and asks for Monsieur Achille Gamel, tell him all. I inclose for thee a passport. No matter how I got it. It is good. Use it soon. I divide with thee my small store. Thou hast been honest; stay so. We may meet in better times.”
François laughed. “We must go, Toto. Well, it has a good side; thou wilt get thinner.” Then he read the passport. It described him well: Jean François, juggler (“Good!”), returning to Normandy; affairs of family; a father dying. “Good! Now I have one parent at least.” It was in due order. “Thou hast no papers, Toto; but thy black head is secure.”
At early morning on the 25th of January, he found a vender of antiquities, and quickly sold him, for two hundred francs, the antique arms in the fencing-room. He must remove them that coming night. Next he sought a maker of articles for the jugglers who were still to be found in every town; for neither at this time nor during the Terror did the people cease to amuse themselves. François bought a set of gaily tinted balls and the conjuring apparatus with which he was familiar. Once again in his room, he packed his clothes in a knapsack and his juggler’s material in a bag that he could carry. A long cloak which his master had left he set aside to take, and, thus prepared, felt that on the whole he had better risk waiting until the dawn of the following day before he set out on his wintry journey. The old woman had already fled in alarm.
On the following morning, at 9 A.M., François went into the great hall to secure pistols and the fine Spanish rapier which Gamel had given him. Here he paused, and re-read the passport. A blank space had been left for the insertion of the special locality to which the bearer might wish to go in Normandy.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, “that must do. I will go to Musillon. Perhaps I shall find Despard. He will help me to recover that desirable papa.” He went back to Gamel’s room, and carefully completed the passport by inserting the name of the village Musillon.
After this he returned to the hall, talking to the poodle as he went. “Toto, thou art uneasy,” he said; “and I too, my friend. Remember to howl no more at Jacobins. Thou art of the Left, a dog of the Left. Tiens! the bell.” He caught up his rapier, and opened the door. A powerful, broad-shouldered man entered. He was clad in gray, and wore the red bonnet the extreme Jacobins affected, and which Robespierre so much despised.
“Ah, no one here. That is well. I trust Gamel has gone.”
“Ah!” exclaimed François to himself. “’T is my confounded marquis. Now for ill luck.”
“Is Monsieur Gamel at home? Monsieur Achille Gamel?” He emphasized the title.
François understood, with no great amazement, that this was the man of whom Gamel’s letter spoke. He replied, “This way, please, monsieur.”
The gentleman followed without a word.
“Read this,” said François; “and, pardon me, but read it quickly. My head appears to me to be less securely attached to my body than common.”
“Dame! You are as jolly as ever, my delightful thief.”
“I beg that monsieur will read this letter, and at once. Nom de ciel! there is no time to be lost.” And still he laughed. “We are in a trap, monsieur.”
The marquis was not to be hurried; it was not his way. “St. Gris! you can laugh. I envy you. In France men grin, for they must; but laughter is dead. Ah!” and he fell to considering the letter. Then he folded it deliberately. “Burn it,” he said. “So; that is well; and now, my good thief, I came to warn Gamel. He has wisely fled. Of course there was a plot, and, as usual, it failed. You, who are not in it, are like enough to pay other folks’ debts. I have a certain mild interest in honest rascality. You are a marked man. No cabbage of the field is more sure of the knife. Go, and soon.”
“I have heard from Gamel, monsieur. He assured me that I was safe here for a day or two—I know not how he knew that.”
“I do, but I scarcely share his confidence. Go soon.”
“I shall go at dawn to-morrow.”
“No; go to-day—this evening.”
“I will. Monsieur will pardon me if I ask if madame, monsieur’s daughter, is well and safe? There are few who have been kind to me, and—”
“My child is well,” said the marquis, “and in Normandy; but if safe or not, who can say, while these wolves destroy women and children? Safe! I would give my soul to be sure of that.” His face showed the transient emotion he felt; and suddenly, as if annoyed at his own weakness, he drew himself up and said abruptly: “Go—and go quickly! I shall leave at once—”
At this moment the bell rang violently.
“The devil!” cried the marquis. “Go and see, and do not shut the inner door; I must hear.” With this he entered the pistol-gallery and waited. François obeyed, and, with the sheathed rapier still in his hand, crossed the hall. Again the bell rang.
“He is in a mischief of a hurry. No noise, Toto!”
As he opened the outer door, the man of the warped face broke in, and, passing him at once, walked across the little reception-room and into the great hall beyond. Again his height and massive build struck the fencing-master.
“Where is Gamel, citizen?—and no lies to me! Where is Gamel, I say?”
“He has gone away. Why, I do not know. Will the citizen search his rooms?”
“Search! Not I. I will call the municipals. What are those rooms over there? And arms! Why have they not been sent to the committee for our patriot children on the frontier?”
“Perhaps Citizen Amar would kindly inspect them, and then, if required, we can send them. Many have been already sent. Behold, citizen, a war-club of Ashantee, a matchlock, a headsman’s sword. Parbleu! the guillotine is better.”
“I see, citizen; I see. But now of Gamel. He was to be here to-day, I hear. I will return presently with the officers; and, friend citizen, it will be well for thee to assist, and heartily. This Gamel was in some plot to save the Citizen Capet. Like master, like man. Have ready the lists of those aristocrats who fence here in the morning. Thou canst save thy head by making a clean breast of it. I shall return in half an hour. Have everything ready.”
At this the dreaded Jacobin, having looked over the arms and duly impressed the fencing-master, moved toward the door of exit. Should Amar leave the room, François felt that his own fate was certain. He had been too much with Gamel. Less things every day cost the heads of men. There was death or life in the next five minutes. François was not one to hesitate. Preceding the Jacobin, he quietly set his back to the door, and, locking it, put the key in his pocket. This action was so dexterous and swift that for a moment the Jacobin did not perceive that he was trapped. He was thinking if there was anything more to be said. He looked up. “Well, open the door, citizen.” As he spoke, the two strangest faces in Paris were set over against each other. Here was comedy, with long lean features, twinkling eyes above, and below the good humor of a capacious mouth set between preposterous ears. And there was tragedy, strong of jaw, long hair lying flat in black, leech-like flakes on a too prominent brow, and small eyes, deep-set, restless, threatening, seen like those of a wolf in cave shelters—a face no man trusted, a face on which all expressions grew into deformity; not a mere beast; a terribly intelligent bigot of the new creed, colossal, alert, unsparing, fearless, full of vanity.
When the citizen commissioner said, “Open,” François replied:
“Not just yet, citizen.”
“What is this?” shouted Amar. “Open, I say, in the name of the law!”
“Not I.” And François, with a quick motion, threw off the sheath of the rapier. It fell with a great clatter on the far side of the room.
“Open, I say!”
At this moment Ste. Luce came across the hall.
“What the deuce is all this, François?”
Amar turned his square shoulders, and looked at the marquis.
“I presume thee, too, to be one of this rascal Gamel’s band. If thou dost think I, Pierre Amar, am afraid of thee, thou art going to find out thy mistake. What is thy name?”
“Go to the devil!” cried the marquis. The Jacobin darted toward the window; but François was too quick for him, and instantly had him by the collar, the point of the rapier touching his back. “Move a step, and thou art a dead man.” The face, crooked with passion, half turned over the shoulder.
“Misery! What a beauty! Didst thou think I valued my head so little as to trust thee, scum of the devil’s dish-water?” For some reason this huge animal filled François with rage, and he poured out a flood of the abusive slang of the Cité as the marquis came up.
“Drop that window-curtain!” said the thief. “And now, what to do, monsieur?”
The captured man showed the utmost courage, and no small lack of wisdom. “Dog of an aristocrat! I know thee. It was thou didst kill Jean Coutier, last month. I saw thee, coward! We knew not thy name. Now we shall take pay for that murder.”
The marquis grew white to the eyes, with a certain twitching of the lips to be seen as François again asked:
“What shall we do with him? Shall we tie him?”
“No; kill him. What! you will not? Give me your rapier. ’T is but one wolf less.”
François was more than unwilling. The intense hatred of the noble for the Jacobin he did not share; indeed, he liked the man’s fearlessness, but, nevertheless, meant to provide for his own security. His conscience, such as it was, refused to sanction cold-blooded murder.
“I cannot. Go away! I will take care of this rascal.”
“There is no time to lose,” said the marquis. “Kill the brute.”
“Not I,” said François.
“Thou art coward enough to kill a man in cold blood!” cried Amar. “This is the fine honor you talk of. Better go. All thy kind are running; but, soon or late, the guillotine will get thy hog-head, as it did thy Jew-nosed king’s.”
“The face and the tongue are well matched,” said Ste. Luce, quietly. “It will take a good ten minutes to tie and gag him. You will not kill him? Then give the fellow a blade, and—I will see to the rest. Are you man enough to take my offer? Quick, now!”
“Try me. I am no weakling, like poor Coutier.”
“Find him a blade, François. I will watch him. Be quick!” He took the rapier, and stood by the motionless figure, whose uneasy eyes followed the thief as he went and came again.
“The blades are of a length, François? Yes. Lock the door. Ah, it is done. Good! Now, keep an eye on him, François. Take care of yourself if he has the luck to kill me. However, that is unlikely. Ah, you have a sword, François.”
“The citizen talks a good deal,” said Amar, trying his blade on the floor.
“Yes,” said the marquis, negligently untying his cravat. “It is so rare, in these democratic days, that one has a chance to talk with one of you gentlemen.”
“Bah!” cried the Jacobin, “we shall see presently.” As he spoke, he laid his sword on a chair and began to strip. As he took off his coat and waistcoat, he folded them with care, and laid them neatly on a bench.
The marquis also stripped to his waistcoat, but it was with more haste. He threw his coat to François, and took his place in the middle of the room, where he waited until his slower antagonist, in shirt and breeches, came forward to meet him. Both believed it to be a duel to the death, but neither face showed to François any sign of anxiety. The Jacobin said:
“The light is in thine eyes, citizen. If we were to move so as to engage across the room—”
“It is of no moment,” returned the marquis. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
François saw no better method of disposing of an awkward business. Nevertheless, he was uncomfortable. “What if this devil should kill the marquis?” He cried, “On guard, messieurs!” and stepped aside.
The marquis saluted with grave courtesy; but the Jacobin, obeying the fashion of the schools of fence, went through the formula of appearing to draw the sword, and certain other conventional motions supposed to be exacted by etiquette. The marquis smiled as Amar led off in this ceremonious fashion. These preliminaries of the salle d’armes were usually omitted or curtailed in serious combats. The seigneur, amused, and following Amar’s lead, went through the whole performance. Meanwhile François looked the two men over, and was not ill pleased. This heavy fellow should prove no match for a practised duelist like Ste. Luce. He was soon undeceived.
Both men were plainly enough masters of their weapon, and for at least two minutes there was no advantage. Then Ste. Luce was touched in the left shoulder, and a distorted grimace of satisfaction ran over the face of the Jacobin. The marquis became more careful, and a minute or two later François saw with pleasure that Amar was breathing a trifle hard. He had half a mind to cry: “Wait! wait! He is feeling the strain.” He held his peace, and, with Toto, looked on in silence. The marquis knew his business well, and noted the quickening chest movements of his adversary. He began to smile, and to make a series of inconceivably quick lunges. Now and then the point of either blade struck fair on the convex steel shell-like guard which protected the hand. When this chanced, a clear, sweet note as of a bell rang through the great hall. The Jacobin held his own, and François, despite his anxiety, saw with the satisfaction of a master how lightly each rapier lay in the grasp of the duelist, and how dexterously the fingers alone were used to guide the blades.
Of a sudden the strange face was jerked as it were to left, and a savage lunge in tierce came perilously near to ending the affair. Ste. Luce threw himself back with the quickness of a boy. The point barely touched him. “St. Gris!” he called out gaily. “That was well meant. Now take care!”
“By St. Denis! ’t is a master,” muttered François. The marquis seemed of a sudden to have let loose a reserve of unlooked-for power. He was here and there about the massive and by no means unready bulk of Amar, swift and beautifully graceful.
Then of a sudden the marquis’s blade went out as quick as lightning, and just at the limit of a nearly futile thrust caught Amar over the right eye. “Dame! I missed those lanterns of hell!”
The Jacobin brushed away the blood which, running down his face, made his right eye useless for the time.
The marquis fell back, and dropped his point. “The deuce! The man cannot see. Tie a handkerchief around his head.”
The Jacobin was not sorry to have time to breathe.
“Thou art more than fair, citizen,” said Amar, getting his breath.
“Thanks,” returned the marquis, coldly. “Make haste, François.”
François took up a lace handkerchief which lay beside Ste. Luce’s coat on the seat where he had cast his clothes. While François bound the handkerchief around the head so as to stop the flow of blood, Amar turned to his foe.
“Citizen,” said the Jacobin, “thou hast been a gallant man in this matter. My life was thine to take. Let it end here. Thou art a brave man and a good blade.”
Ste. Luce looked at him with an expression of amused curiosity.
“What else?”
“I will not have thee pursued—on my honor.”
“Tie it firmly, François. You have just heard, my François, of the last Parisian novelty—a Jacobin’s honor! Be so good as to hurry, François.”
Had the stern Jacobin felt some sudden impulse of pity or respect? In all his after days he was unsparing, and certainly it was not fear which now moved him.
“As pleases thee,” he said simply. Ste. Luce made no answer. Again their blades met. And now the marquis changed his game, facing his foe steadily, while François gazed in admiration. Ste. Luce’s rapier was like a lizard’s movements for quickness. Twice he touched the man’s chest, and by degrees drove him back, panting, until he was against the door. Suddenly, seeming to recover strength, the Jacobin lunged in quarte, and would have caught the marquis fair in the breast-bone had he not thrown himself backward as he felt the prick. Instantly he struck the blade aside with his open left hand, and, as it went by his left side, drove his rapier savagely through Amar’s right lung and into the panel of the door. It was over. Not ten minutes had passed.
“Dame!” he cried, withdrawing his rapier, and retreating a pace or two. “He was worth fighting.”
The Jacobin’s face moved convulsively. He coughed, spattering blood about him. His right arm moved in quick jerks. His sword dropped, and stuck upright in the floor, quivering.
“Dog of an aristocrat!” he cried. His distorted face twitched; he staggered to left, to right, and at last tumbled in a heap, a massive figure, of a sudden inert and harmless.
The marquis stood still and looked down at his foe.
“What the deuce to do with him?” said François.
“Take his head, and drag him into your room. We can talk then.”
“Will monsieur take his feet?”
“What! I touch the dog? No, not I.”
François did not like it; but making no reply, he dragged the Jacobin’s helpless bulk after him, and, once in his room, pulled the mattress off the bed, and without roughness drew the man upon it.
Amar opened his eyes, and tried to speak. He could not; the flow of blood choked him. He shook his fist at Ste. Luce.
“Cursed brute,” cried François, “be still! He will begin to howl presently. The sons of Satan are immortal.”
“We must gag him, François.”
“But he will die; he will choke. See how he breathes—how hard.”
“Diable! it is he or I. Would he spare me, do you think? Don’t talk nonsense. Do as I tell you.”
François took up a towel. As he approached, Amar looked up at him. There was no plea in his savage face.
“Go on. What the deuce are you waiting for?” said Ste. Luce.
“I cannot do it,” said François. “End it yourself.”
“What! I? Strangle a dog! I! Dame! Let us go. What a fool you are!”
“Better go singly, then,” said the thief. He had no mind to increase his own risks by the dangerous society of the nobleman.
Amar was silent. The handkerchief had fallen from his head, but the wound bled no longer.
“What shall I do with the handkerchief, monsieur?”
“Do? Burn it. Faugh!” François cast it on the still glowing embers. “Now my clothes and my cloak,” said Ste. Luce; “and do not lose any time over that animal.”
He washed off the little blood on his clothes, and dressed in haste, saying: “Lucky that his point struck on my breast-bone. ’T is of no moment. The fellow has left me a remembrance. I am sorry I did not have the luck to kill him. Good-by, François. May we meet in better days.” He was gone.
François locked the door after him, and went back to his room. He sat down on the floor beside the mattress.
“Now listen, Master Amar. Canst thou hear me? Ah, yes. Well, I have saved thy life. Oh, thou wilt get well,—more ’s the pity!—and do some mischief yet. Now if I should kill thee I would be pretty safe. If I go away, and send thee a doctor, I am a lost man. What is that thou art saying? Ah!” and he leaned down to hear the broken whisper. “So thou wilt have my head chopped off. Thou art less afraid than I would be, were I thee. What shall we do, Toto?” and he laughed; somehow the situation had for him its humorous side.
“I can’t murder a man,” he said. “If ever I kill a man, I trust it may be one who hath not thy eyes and thy one-sided grin. To be haunted by a ghost like thee! The deuce! Not I! Sac à papier! I will take my chance.” He sat down, and wrote a short note to a surgeon on the farther side of Paris, one whom he knew to have been much commended to his pupils by Gamel.
“My unforgiving friend,” he said, “I shall lock thee in. Thou art too weak to move, and to try will cause thee to bleed. This note will get thee a surgeon in about six hours. I must leave thee. Be quiet, and be good. Here is a flask of eau-de-vie. Art still of a mind to give thy preserver to the guillotine?” The grim head nodded as the red froth leaked out over the lips. “‘Yes, yes,’ thou sayest. Thou art in a fine state of penitence. I hope we have seen the last of each other. One more chance. Promise me not to be my enemy. I will trust thee. Come, now.”
But the Jacobin was past speech. As François knelt beside him, he beckoned feebly.
“What is it?” As he bent lower, a grim smile went over the one movable side of Amar’s face, and, raising a feeble hand, he drew it across François’s neck.
“Mon Dieu!” cried he, recoiling, “thou art ripe for hell. Adieu, my unforgiving friend; and as thou hast no God, au diable, and may St. Satan look after thee—for love of thy looks. Come, doggie!” He put his pistols in the back of his belt, set his rapier in the belt-catch, threw his cloak over all, and picked up his bag and knapsack. He took one last look at Amar, and saying, “By-by, my angel,” left him, locking both doors as he went out.
François passed into the street, followed by the black poodle. In the Rue St. Honoré he paid the boy of a butcher with whom Gamel dealt to take his note when the midday meal should be over. And thus having eased his conscience and regulated the business of life, he set out to put between him and the Jacobin as many miles as his long legs could cover.