A low cackle--something like a laugh--broke from Chauvelin"s thin lips.
As usual he had witnessed the scene quite unmoved.
"My friend Martin-Roget forgot himself for the moment, citizen Carrier,"
he said suavely, "already he is ready to make amends."
Jacques Lalouet looked down for a moment with infinite scorn expressed in his fine eyes, on the presumptuous creature who had dared to defy the omnipotent representative of the People. Then he turned on his heel, but he did not go far this time: he remained standing close beside the door--the terrier guarding his master.
Carrier laughed loud and long. It was a hideous, strident laugh which had not a tone of merriment in it.
"Wake up, friend Martin-Roget," he said harshly, "I bear no malice: I am a good dog when I am treated the right way. But if anyone pulls my tail or treads on my paws, why! I snarl and growl of course. If the offence is repeated ... I bite ... remember that; and now let us resume our discourse, though I confess I am getting tired of your Kernogan rabble."
While the great man spoke, Martin-Roget had succeeded in pulling himself together. His throat felt parched, his hands hot and moist: he was like a man who had been stumbling along a road in the dark and been suddenly pulled up on the edge of a yawning abyss into which he had all but fallen. With a few harsh words, with a monstrous insult Carrier had made him feel the gigantic power which could hurl any man from the heights of self-a.s.surance and of ambition to the lowest depths of degradation: he had shown him the glint of steel upon the guillotine.
He had been hit as with a sledge-hammer--the blow hurt terribly, for it had knocked all his self-esteem into nothingness and pulverised his self-conceit. It had in one moment turned him into a humble and cringing sycophant.
"I had no mind," he began tentatively, "to give offence. My thoughts were bent on the Kernogans. They are a fine haul for us both, citizen Carrier, and I worked hard and long to obtain their confidence over in England and to induce them to come with me to Nantes."
"No one denies that you have done well," retorted Carrier gruffly and not yet wholly pacified. "If the haul had not been worth having you would have received no help from me."
"I have shown my grat.i.tude for your help, citizen Carrier. I would show it again ... more substantially if you desire...."
He spoke slowly and quite deferentially but the suggestion was obvious.
Carrier looked up into his face: the light of measureless cupidity--the cupidity of the coa.r.s.e-grained, enriched peasant--glittered in his pale eyes. It was by a great effort of will that he succeeded in concealing his eagerness beneath his habitual air of lofty condescension:
"Eh? What?" he queried airily.
"If another five thousand francs is of any use to you...."
"You seem pa.s.sing rich, citizen Martin-Roget," sneered Carrier.
"I have slaved and saved for four years. What I have ama.s.sed I will sacrifice for the completion of my revenge."
"Well!" rejoined Carrier with an expressive wave of the hand, "it certainly is not good for a pure-minded republican to own too much wealth. Have we not fought," he continued with a grandiloquent gesture, "for equality of fortune as well as of privileges...."
A sardonic laugh from young Lalouet broke in on the proconsul"s eloquent effusion.
Carrier swore as was his wont, but after a second or two he began again more quietly:
"I will accept a further six thousand francs from you, citizen Martin-Roget, in the name of the Republic and all her needs. The Republic of France is up in arms against the entire world. She hath need of men, of arms, of...."
"Oh! cut that," interposed young Lalouet roughly.
But the over-vain, high and mighty despot who was ready to lash out with unbridled fury against the slightest show of disrespect on the part of any other man, only laughed at the boy"s impudence.
"Curse you, you young viper," he said with that rude familiarity which he seemed to reserve for the boy, "you presume too much on my forbearance. These children you know, citizen.... Name of a dog!" he added roughly, "we are wasting time! What was I saying ...?"
"That you would take six thousand francs," replied Martin-Roget curtly, "in return for further help in the matter of the Kernogans."
"Why, yes!" rejoined Carrier blandly, "I was forgetting. But I"ll show you what a good dog I am. I"ll help you with those Kernogans ... but you mistook my words, citizen: "tis ten thousand francs you must pour into the coffers of the Republic, for her servants will have to be placed at the disposal of your private schemes of vengeance."
"Ten thousand francs is a large sum," said Martin-Roget. "Let me hear what you will do for me for that."
He had regained something of his former complacency. The man who buys--be it goods, consciences or services--is always for the moment master of the man who sells. Carrier, despite his dictatorial ways, felt this disadvantage, no doubt, for his tone was more bland, his manner less curt. Only young Jacques Lalouet stood by--like a snarling terrier--still arrogant and still disdainful--the master of the situation--seeing that neither schemes of vengeance nor those of corruption had ruffled his self-a.s.surance. He remained beside the door, ready to pounce on either of the two intruders if they showed the slightest sign of forgetting the majesty of the great proconsul.
VI
"I told you just now, citizen Martin-Roget," resumed Carrier after a brief pause, "and I suppose you knew it already, that I am surrounded with spies."
"Spies, citizen?" murmured Martin-Roget, somewhat taken aback by this sudden irrelevance. "I didn"t know ... I imagine.... Any one in your position...."
"That"s just it," broke in Carrier roughly. "My position is envied by those who are less competent, less patriotic than I am. Nantes is swarming with spies. Mine enemies in Paris are working against me. They want to undermine the confidence which the National Convention reposes in her accredited representative."
"Preposterous," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed young Lalouet solemnly.
"Well!" rejoined Carrier with a savage oath, "you would have thought that the Convention would be only too thankful to get a strong man at the head of affairs in this hotbed of treason and of rebellion. You would have thought that it was no one"s affair to interfere with the manner in which I administer the powers that have been given me. I command in Nantes, what? Yet some busybodies up in Paris, some fools, seem to think that we are going too fast in Nantes. They have become weaklings over there since Marat has gone. It seems that they have heard rumours of our flat-bottomed barges and of our fine Republican marriages: apparently they disapprove of both. They don"t realise that we have to purge an entire city of every kind of rabble--traitors as well as criminals. They don"t understand my aspirations, my ideals," he added loftily and with a wide, sweeping gesture of his arm, "which is to make Nantes a model city, to free her from the taint of crime and of treachery, and...."
An impatient exclamation from young Lalouet once again broke in on Carrier"s rhetoric, and Martin-Roget was able to slip in the query which had been hovering on his lips:
"And is this relevant, citizen Carrier," he asked, "to the subject which we have been discussing?"
"It is," replied Carrier drily, "as you will see in a moment. Learn then, that it has been my purpose for some time to silence mine enemies by sending to the National Convention a tangible reply to all the accusations which have been levelled against me. It is my purpose to explain to the a.s.sembly my reasons for mine actions in Nantes, my Drownages, my Republican marriages, all the coercive measures which I have been forced to take in order to purge the city from all that is undesirable."
"And think you, citizen Carrier," queried Martin-Roget without the slightest trace of a sneer, "that up in Paris they will understand your explanations?"
"Yes! they will--they must when they realise that everything that I have done has been necessitated by the exigencies of public safety."
"They will be slow to realise that," mused the other. "The National Convention to-day is not what the Const.i.tutional a.s.sembly was in "92. It has become soft and sentimental. Many there are who will disapprove of your doings.... Robespierre talks loftily of the dignity of the Republic ... her impartial justice.... The Girondins...."
Carrier interposed with a coa.r.s.e imprecation. He suddenly leaned forward, sprawling right across the desk. A shaft of light from between the damask curtains caught the end of his nose and the tip of his protruding chin, distorting his face and making it seem grotesque as well as hideous in the dim light. He appeared excited and inflated with vanity. He always gloried in the atrocities which he committed, and though he professed to look with contempt on every one of his colleagues, he was always glad of an opportunity to display his inventive powers before them, and to obtain their fulsome eulogy.
"I know well enough what they talk about in Paris," he said, "but I have an answer--a substantial, definite answer for all their rubbish. Dignity of the Republic? Bah! Impartial justice? "Tis force, strength, Spartan vigour that we want ... and I"ll show them.... Listen to my plan, citizen Martin-Roget, and see how it will work in with yours. My idea is to collect together all the most disreputable and notorious evil-doers of this city ... there are plenty in the entrepot at the present moment, and there are plenty more still at large in the streets of Nantes--thieves, malefactors, forgers of State bonds, a.s.sa.s.sins and women of evil fame ... and to send them in a batch to Paris to appear before the Committee of Public Safety, whilst I will send to my colleagues there a letter couched in terms of gentle reproach: "See!" I shall say, "what I have to contend with in Nantes. See! the moral pestilence that infests the city. These evil-doers are but a few among the hundreds and thousands of whom I am vainly trying to purge this city which you have entrusted to my care!" They won"t know how to deal with the rabble," he continued with his harsh strident laugh. "They may send them to the guillotine wholesale or deport them to Cayenne, and they will have to give them some semblance of a trial in any case. But they will have to admit that my severe measures are justified, and in future, I imagine, they will leave me more severely alone."
"If as you say," urged Martin-Roget, "the National Convention give your crowd a trial, you will have to produce some witnesses."
"So I will," retorted Carrier cynically. "So I will. Have I not said that I will round up all the most noted evil-doers in the town? There are plenty of them I a.s.sure you. Lately, my Company Marat have not greatly troubled about them. After Savenay there was such a crowd of rebels to deal with, there was no room in our prisons for malefactors as well. But we can easily lay our hands on a couple of hundred or so, and members of the munic.i.p.ality or of the district council, or tradespeople of substance in the city will only be too glad to be rid of them, and will testify against those that were actually caught red-handed. Not one but has suffered from the pestilential rabble that has infested the streets at night, and lately I have been pestered with complaints of all these night-birds--men and women and...."
Suddenly he paused. He had caught Martin-Roget"s feverish gaze fixed excitedly upon him. Whereupon he leaned back in his chair, threw his head back and broke into loud and immoderate laughter.
"By the devil and all his myrmidons, citizen!" he said, as soon as he had recovered his breath, "meseems you have tumbled to my meaning as a pig into a heap of garbage. Is not ten thousand francs far too small a sum to pay for such a perfect realisation of all your dreams? We"ll send the Kernogan girl and her father to Paris with the herd, what?... I promise you that such filth and mud will be thrown on them and on their precious name that no one will care to bear it for centuries to come."
Martin-Roget of a truth had much ado to control his own excitement. As the proconsul unfolded his infamous plan, he had at once seen as in a vision the realisation of all his hopes. What more awful humiliation, what more dire disgrace could be devised for proud Kernogan and his daughter than being herded together with the vilest sc.u.m that could be gathered together among the flotsam and jetsam of the population of a seaport town? What more perfect retaliation could there be for the ignominious death of Jean Adet the miller?
Martin-Roget leaned forward in his chair. The hideous figure of Carrier was no longer hideous to him. He saw in that misshapen, gawky form the very embodiment of the G.o.d of vengeance, the wielder of the flail of retributive justice which was about to strike the guilty at last.
"You are right, citizen Carrier," he said, and his voice was thick and hoa.r.s.e with excitement. He rested his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. He hammered his nails against his teeth. "That was exactly in my mind while you spoke."
"I am always right," retorted Carrier loftily. "No one knows better than I do how to deal with traitors."