The Sword of Honor.
by Eugene Sue.
PREFACE.
Most persons know the French Revolution as a tremendous outburst in human affairs. Many know it as one of the race"s great steps forward.
That, however, it was the revolution which carried into power the then rising bourgeois, now capitalist, cla.s.s; that this cla.s.s, while appealing for and using the help of the working cla.s.s, secretly hated and feared the demands of the latter, and blocked them at every opportunity; that finally the bourgeoisie, having obtained as revolutionists, by the aid of the workers, their end of the revolution, became as violently reactionary as had been the n.o.bility they fought, and ruthlessly shot and guillotined to pieces the then definite proletarian movement for full political equality and collective ownership of the tools of production--that is an insight into the French Revolutionary period hitherto vouchsafed to few. To that insight Eugene Sue"s genius has, with the present thrilling novel, made straight the way for all.
This, _The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic_, is the eighteenth and culminating unit in Sue"s great historic-fiction series, _The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages_. Following close upon the previous volume, _The Blacksmith"s Hammer; or, The Peasant Code_, in which the popular storm was seen gathering head under the atrocities of the gilded age of the Grand Monarch, the present story portrays that storm breaking in all the acc.u.mulated vigor of its centuries of postponement, and sweeping away the empty lay figures of an outgrown feudalism. True, one barrier to human liberty was thrown down only to disclose another. To the empire of birth and privilege was to succeed the empire of the shekel; to the rule of do-nothing kings, the rule of do-nothing plutocracy. But it is in the act of drilling itself for the overthrow of that final parasite cla.s.s--for the final conquering, in other words, of freedom for the race--that Sue portrays the proletariat in the next and closing work of the series, _The Galley Slave"s Ring; or, The Family of Lebrenn_. Though he minimizes none of the difficulties, his message for the future is of hope only.
Nothing is more unanimous among historians of the period than expressions of commiseration for the condition of the French people before the Revolution. Yet nothing, on the other hand, is more unanimous either than the condemnation showered upon this people the moment it seizes the reins and enters upon the task of putting down its age-long tyrannizers. Into this absurd breach of consistency Sue"s genius saved him from falling. In his pages Marat, Danton and Robespierre walk to their doom with head erect, clean from the s.m.u.t slung at them by their bourgeois enemies, for whom _they were going too far_. Friends of the People once, so they remained to the end; and in that mantle Sue has preserved their memory for all time. For him who would rail at their summary deeds Sue has far from spread a bed of roses. The memory of the royalist ma.s.sacres in the Vendee and of the triumphant bourgeois ma.s.sacres during the White Terror, rescued by his pen from the oblivion in which they were sought to be buried, have thrown the Revolutionary Terror into its proper perspective. It is a bagatelle beside the acts committed by its denouncers.
Sue"s clear presentation of the maxim, "To the peasant the land, to the workman the tool"; his unflinching delineation of the debauchery of court and ecclesiastical circles of the time; his revelation of the role of the political machine under the guise of religion sending out its arms as willing regicides or _agents provocateurs_ by turn; and his clear depiction of the cowardly, grasping, double-dealing and fraud-perpetrating character of the bourgeois, all of which is presented in the easy reading of a story, make this thrilling work of fiction an unsurpa.s.sable epitome of the period in which its action elapses.
Finally, it is the distinctive test of good literature upon any topic, that it does not sate, but incites to further thought and study. Not the least of the values of _The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic_, is that it performs this reverent duty matchlessly for the momentous period of which it treats.
SOLON DE LEON.
New York, April, 1910.
INTRODUCTION.
I, John Lebrenn, the son of Ronan, whose father was Alain, the last son of Salaun Lebrenn the mariner, now take up the thread of our family history, by writing the following narrative.
Thanks to G.o.d, Oh, sons of Joel! my eyes have seen the beautiful day predicted to our ancestor Scanvoch the soldier by Victoria the Great, now more than fifteen centuries ago, and awaited from age to age by our family. I have witnessed the solemn judgment, the expiatory punishment of Louis Capet, called Louis XVI, the last of that line of Kings of Frankish origin. Rejoice, ye shades of my ancestors--ye martyrs of the Church, of the n.o.bility, and of Royalty! Rejoice, ye obscure soldiers who fought in the b.l.o.o.d.y conflicts that you engaged in from age to age, in resolute insurrections of the oppressed against the oppressors of centuries--of the sons of the conquered Gauls against the conqueror Franks! Rejoice! Old Gaul has recovered her ancient republican freedom!
She has broken the abhorred yoke of the Kings, and the infamous yoke of the Church of Rome.
I am writing this narrative in the year II of the French Republic, one and indivisible.
My great-grandfather, Salaun Lebrenn, died at Amsterdam in his ninety-first year, on December 20, 1715. His son Alain, born in 1685, was then thirty years of age. He worked in Amsterdam as a printer, one of the most lucrative trades, in that the large number of books, then being written against the Church and royalty, could be published only at Geneva, or in Holland, free countries in which the right of intellectual free research was recognized and protected. My ancestor Alain sold in 1715 the modest patrimony which he inherited from his father Salaun, left Holland, and settled down in France at the beginning of the Regency under Louis XV, the successor of Louis XIV. The freedom then enjoyed was great compared with conditions at the period of Louis XIV. Being exceptionally skilled at his trade, my grandfather secured the position of foreman in the printing house of one of the descendants of the famous Estienne, in whose establishment our ancestor Christian was long employed. Alain married the niece of his employer. Of that marriage was born, in 1727, my father Ronan. He followed my grandfather"s trade. The latter died in 1751. My father had two children--my sister Victoria, born in 1760, and myself, John Lebrenn, born in 1766.
My grandfather"s life was spent in peace and obscurity. But great misfortunes fell upon our family. As you will read in the course of the following history, Oh, sons of Joel! it was not vouchsafed to my father to witness, as I did, the brilliant victory that crowned fifteen centuries of incessant, painful and b.l.o.o.d.y endeavor, thanks to which our ancestors--successively slaves, serfs and va.s.sals--conquered, at the price of their lives and of innumerable rebellions, step by step, one by one, the franchises that the French Republic has now confirmed and consecrated in the face of the whole world, by proclaiming, in the name of the Rights of Man, the downfall of Kings and the sovereignty of the People.
PART I.
FALL OF THE BASTILLE.
CHAPTER I.
THE HOUSE IN ST. FRANCOIS STREET.
One night toward the middle of April, 1789, when the moon with its radiance clearly lighted the scene, a man, wrapped in a great-coat, and with his hat pulled far over his countenance, might have been seen carefully surveying the neighborhood of a building located in one of the most deserted streets of Paris, St. Francois Street, in the Swamp. A lofty wall, its black stones weathered with years of exposure, ran nearly the whole length of the thoroughfare, and served as facing to a terrace surmounted with trees that had laughed to scorn the storms of a century. Through their heavy foliage one caught glimpses of the stone front, the peaked roof, and the high brick chimneys of a mansion in the style of Louis XIV. A wall, pierced by several grated openings, formed a deep, semi-circular approach, leading up to a coach gate of ma.s.sive oak, studded with enormous spikes of iron. To judge from the thick layers of dust and cobwebs which covered the gate, many had been the days since it was opened. A little b.a.s.t.a.r.d gate, closed with a wicket, and no less ma.s.sively built than the princ.i.p.al entrance, gave on its other side onto a narrow and vaulted pa.s.sage. To the left of this pa.s.sage stood the door of a lodge the windows of which overlooked a s.p.a.cious garden, laid out in the fashion of the previous century, and ornamented with vases and statues of stone, stained and broken by time. In the center of the garden rose another dwelling whose doors had been walled up, and whose windows were sealed with plates of lead, soldered into iron frames set in the masonry.
One more little building, snuggled up against the entry-gate and evidently intended for the porter, was occupied only by a Jew and his wife. The couple this evening were chatting in a lower room whose half-open door communicated with the vaulted pa.s.sage running to the street.
David Samuel was in the neighborhood of thirty, his wife Bathsheba, twenty-five. The lineage of Israel was strongly stamped on their features. Bathsheba, seated before a little table lighted by a copper lamp, was preparing to write at her husband"s dictation. The latter, sunk in an arm-chair, his forehead in his hands, was in grave mood, and said to his wife after a silence of several minutes:
"The more I think over the present state of affairs, the more am I convinced that it is the part of prudence and necessity for us to prepare against unfortunate eventualities. In spite of our precautions within and without, what goes on here may one day be uncovered by the creatures of the Lieutenant of Police. We would then both be imprisoned, my dear Bathsheba! Then, if I should die in prison--"
"Ah, my friend, what gloomy forebodings! Think not of such sad chances."
"Everything must be reckoned with. So, then, in case I die, our cousin Levi, on whom I count as on myself--you know him--"
"Your confidence is well placed."
"I am sure of it. I wish to charge him, in that case, to take my place in the sacred mission which my grandfather and father have handed down to me. That is why I wish to hold ready, in advance, the memorandum which will place our relative in possession of the knowledge he will need in order to replace me. Come then, write as I dictate."
At the moment that Samuel uttered these last words, he heard a knocking in a peculiar manner at the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d gate. First there were three blows, then two, separated from the others by a pause; and then two again; total, seven, the cabalistic number.
Samuel manifested no surprise at the signal. He left the room, traversed the pa.s.sage, drew close to the wicket, and asked in an undertone:
"Who knocks?"
"_A blind one._"
"What does he seek?"
"_The light._"
"What time is it?"
"_The hour of darkness, my brother!_"
Immediately upon the last response, Samuel swung back the gate. Two persons wrapped in cloaks hurried through the pa.s.sage and disappeared in the garden. The Jew secured again the gate, and returned to his wife, who, no more surprised than he by the mysterious entrance of the two newcomers, said:
"Dictate, my friend; I shall write."
"In the year 1660," began Samuel, "Monsieur Marius Rennepont, a rich Protestant shipowner and captain, lay in Lisbon. He had carried from France, on his ship, Monsieur the Duke of San Borromeo, one of Portugal"s greatest lords. The very day of his arrival in Lisbon, Monsieur Rennepont saw from his hotel on the Plaza Mayor, the preparations for an auto-da-fe. On inquiry he learned that the next day a Jew named Samuel was to be burnt in the cause of religion. Monsieur Rennepont, being a humane and generous-minded man, and, moreover, having sympathy for the fate of heretics as his own Protestant co-religionists were beginning in France to be persecuted in spite of the Edict of Nantes, resolved to s.n.a.t.c.h this Jew from the torture, and counted on the support and protection of the Duke of San Borromeo.
"The latter, more than once during the pa.s.sage, had made tender of his services to the captain. Chance so willed it that he was the elder brother of the Inquisitor of Lisbon. Monsieur Rennepont"s hopes were realized. The Duke of San Borromeo by his credit obtained from the tribunal of the Inquisition a commutation of the Jew"s sentence from capital punishment to one of perpetual banishment. Monsieur Rennepont, having saved his protege, made inquiries as to his character, and received the best accounts thereof. He proposed that the Jew accompany him to France, an offer which the latter accepted with grat.i.tude. Later on Monsieur Rennepont entrusted him with the money matters of his trade; and Samuel devoted himself body and soul to his benefactor.
"That Hebrew, my grandfather, was soon able to prove his grat.i.tude to Monsieur Marius Rennepont. The Protestant persecutions increased in fury. Those who refused to be converted were exposed to violence and exactions of every sort. Monsieur Rennepont had a son whom he loved pa.s.sionately. In order to ensure to this son the enjoyment of his goods by sheltering them from confiscation, he abjured the Protestant faith.
Dearly he paid for that moment of weakness. The Jesuit Society, for some hidden reason which my grandfather never could fathom, pursued from age to age with their secret surveillance and hatred a certain Lebrenn family, with which one of Monsieur Rennepont"s ancestors had been connected by marriage in the middle of the Sixteenth Century.[1] For reasons to be revealed later, that branch of the Renneponts had broken off its relations with the Lebrenns; it was even ignorant of whether its former allies had left any descendants.