"How is it that the agitation prevailing in Paris since day before yesterday and up to this very night does not compel the Count to be at the head of his regiment of the Guards?"
"Monsieur the Abbot is unaware that my lord journeyed this morning to Versailles to hand in his resignation, and to surrender the command of his regiment."
"To surrender the command of his regiment!" echoed the Jesuit, stupefied, and as if he could not believe what he heard. "What--"
At that moment Lorrain left the hall, walking backward as his master entered.
Count Gaston of Plouernel had reached at this time his thirtieth year.
The facial traits of his Germanic ancestry were reproduced in him. The whole effect of his person was one of audacity, haughtiness and arrogance. He presented the accepted type of the great seigneur of his time, and wore with grace his costume of plain blue cloth of Tours, spangled with silver and embroidered in gold. His taffeta vest was half lost to view under the billows of Alencon point lace which formed his shirt frill and rivalled for costly workmanship the flowing ruffles of his cuffs. His red-heeled shoes were fastened with diamond buckles.
Diamonds also glittered in the hilt of his small-sword, which he wore ostentatiously slung under one of the tails of his coat.
At the sight of Abbot Morlet the Count seemed greatly surprised. He cordially extended to him his hand, however, saying:
"Well! good day, holy Father. What good wind blows you to us? I thought you at this time still a hundred leagues from Paris!"
"I just got in, and after attending to some indispensable duties, hurried over to you, to communicate to you, my dear Count--to you, one of the leaders of the court party--important information I had picked up during my trip through several of our provinces. Judge of my surprise!
When I arrived here, I learned from your first lackey--that you had this very day given up the command of your regiment. That"s the way of it.
The monarchy, the n.o.bility, the clergy, are attacked as they never have been through the worst days of our history. And it is at such an hour that you, one of the greatest lords of France, you, a man of spirit and of courage, sheath your sword--at this hour when the battle is engaged with the Third Estate! Ah, Count, if you did not belong to the house of Plouernel, I would say that you were a coward and a traitor. But, as you are neither coward nor traitor, I shall make bold to say that you are a madman."
"On the contrary, my dear Abbot, never have I acted more wisely. Never have I more studiously served our cause, or proven better my signal devotion, not to the King--his weakness revolts me--but to the Queen, to royalty!"
"So, you have judged it wise and politic to abandon the command of your regiment in our present circ.u.mstances? Is it for me, only to-day arrived, to have to inform you that Paris is laboring under the greatest excitement, and perhaps on the verge of a formidable insurrection?
Didn"t I see them, on the other side of the Seine, beginning to throw up their barricades? Didn"t I meet on every street corner groups of malcontents, harangued by caballers of the Third Estate?"
"That is all true, Abbot. We are drawing near the moment of a decisive crisis. The fever of revolution has lasted since day before yesterday, since Sat.u.r.day, the 11th of July. The first act took place in the Palais Royal,[6] when the recall of Necker became known to the public. A young man named Camille Desmoulins stirred up the gullible clowns in the gardens by crying out that the King was centering his troops on Paris, with the purpose of dissolving the National a.s.sembly, arresting the leaders, and ma.s.sacring the people of Paris. The most resolute of his hearers cried _To arms! To the barricades!_ and suited the action to the word. Bezenval, the military commander of Paris, informed of the tumult, ordered the dragoons of the Marquis of Crussol to horse. The dragoons sabered the rabble. But that only angered the populace, and the agitation spread to the suburbs. A soldier of my command told the people that several French Guards had been sent to the Abbey Prison; for you must know, good Father, that insubordination had crept into my regiment.
I had sent the mutineers in irons to the Abbey to await the time to administer to them the scourging they deserved, when the populace hurled themselves against the prison, put to rout the sentries, and liberated the mutinous Guards. The latter received as great an ovation as if they had had the honor of being Monsieur Necker, or Monsieur Mirabeau!"
"This detestable spirit of rebellion is only too like that which infests many of our provinces. But these saturnalia were, I hope, put down with the greatest severity?"
"Not a whit, my dear Father. A King who pretends to the t.i.tle of "Father of the people" does not punish them--or very little. What was the result? The mildness of the reproof redoubled the rabble"s audacity. The success of the expedition against the Abbey whetted their appet.i.te, and they turned their attention to the prison of La Force, where they delivered all the debtors. The insurrection growing more and more serious, the Prince of Lambesc at length received orders from Marshal Broglie, the new Minister of War, to mount his regiment, the Royal Germans, and charge upon this impious populace, then excitedly huddled in the garden of the Tuileries. At the same time I was ordered to bring up my regiment, to support, if necessary, the cavalry of Lambesc."
"The French Guards commanded by a colonel like you, Count, should easily mow down these rebels. And yet you abandon your command. Your conduct is an enigma."
"On the contrary, nothing is more clear. Do you know the difference between a German and a Frenchman?"
"What do you mean?"
"Picture to yourself a tribune of the cross-roads, an insolent droll named Gonchon,[7] who never spoke of himself but in the third person, come to harangue the German soldiers in the name of the brotherhood of man. The German soldier, understanding nothing of that demagogic trash, draws at the command of his colonel, and sabers both Gonchon and the mob! That is what the dragoons of Lambesc did; that is what the cavalry of Berchiny would have done gladly, and the cavalry of Esterhazy and of Roemer, or the regiments of Desbach, of Salis, or the Royal Swiss."
"Good! That is the medicine for this canaille."
"But hardly had Lambesc and his horse sabered the rabble in the garden of the Tuileries, when that very mob poured back into Louis XV Place, where I had stationed myself at the head of my regiment in battle array.
I gave the order to fire on the ructious rabble. Murmurs broke out among the soldiers in the ranks; some made answer, _We will not fire on the people!_ I ordered the mutinous men to be seized and shot on the spot. The murmurs grew louder. I repeated the order. Bang! Several soldiers struck me in the face! Whole companies broke ranks, waving the b.u.t.ts of their muskets in the air."
"Everything is lost if we cannot count on the army!" cried the Abbot in dismay.
"You have said it, Abbot--unless the court party is resolved to serve royalty to the exclusion of the King. In the face of the stand taken by my men, there was nothing to do but march them back to their quarters.
This morning I repaired to Versailles, and on gaining an audience with the King I pleaded with his Majesty to authorize me to call a court-martial to judge and condemn to death within the hour about a hundred soldiers and under-officers of my regiment, the ringleaders of the revolt. After long consideration, his Majesty answered with a sour air that "if it was a matter of shooting a half dozen or so insubordinates, he saw no great obstacle in the way, but that he would not listen at all to any ma.s.s slaughters." Thereupon the King crabbedly turned his back on me, shrugged his shoulders, and took himself off to his private apartments. That is why, my good Father, I have renounced my command in the French Guards. But rea.s.sure yourself," he added, in response to the dumbfounded look the Abbot wore. "I shall remain neither pa.s.sive nor idle. I hope to serve our cause more actively, and, without contradiction, more usefully, now, than if I still were at the head of my regiment."
"That a.s.surance overwhelms me with joy, dear Count," cried the Abbot "What are your plans?"
"First, I give to-night a supper, a convivial repast in which I bring together the influential heads of the court party, for the purpose of deciding on our final measures--presided over by the most remarkable and adorable woman I have ever met."
The Jesuit gazed at Monsieur Plouernel in amaze, and answered: "Are you speaking seriously? Are you really dreaming of having a political meeting of such importance presided over by--a woman?"
"Your astonishment will cease, my dear Abbot, when you make the acquaintance of Madam the Marchioness Aldini, a Venetian by birth, the widow of Marquis Aldini, a great Florentine lord who left his wife an immense fortune. The Marchioness has resided in Paris for now nearly a month."
"You know the lady for only a month, and you dare initiate her into the secrets of our party!"
"Oh, Abbot, the Marchioness is more of our party than we ourselves! A patrician and a Catholic, she nurses an invincible horror for the populace and for revolutions. We shall never have a more ardent auxiliary than she. And then, she is beautiful--seductive--irresistible!"
"And where did you meet this beautiful personage?"
"One day last month I received a note stamped with outraged pride. The writer, Marchioness Aldini, addressed to me, as colonel of the Guards, a complaint against the insolence of several of my soldiers, who had beaten her lackeys. Struck with the lofty tone of the missive, I called on the Marchioness, who was occupying the establishment of the Countess of St. Megrin, now in England, and maintained there a house on the grandest scale. One of the Marchioness"s private valets introduced me to her in her parlor. Ah, Abbot! at the sight of her I stood spellbound, enchanted! The extreme beauty of the foreign dame, the fire of her glance, the expression of her face, the perfection of her stature, the complete admirableness of her person--all threw me into transports of admiration." Abbot Morlet puckered his brow dubiously, and the colonel continued: "In short, the Marchioness realized, she surpa.s.sed, an ideal a hundred times dreamt of by me, wearied as I am of the flirtatious beauties of the city and the court. What a difference, or rather what a distance, separates them from the Marchioness! Pride of patrician blood, resoluteness of character, ardor, impetuosity of pa.s.sion, all were legible in her countenance of a masculine paleness, in her look of flame. Something imperious in her posture, something virile in the accents of her tongue, gave to this extraordinary woman--none other like her!--an irresistible charm;--for, before she had spoken a word, I felt myself captured, enchained, bewitched."
"And the fascination grew and grew, if that is possible," put in the Jesuit sardonically, "when this beautiful lady opened her mouth? The siren took you by the eyes and by the ears. She greeted you, I presume, in the most charming and gallant manner?"
"Not a bit of it! On the contrary, she greeted me with an air of arrogance and irritation. She taxed me severely for the insolence of my soldiers."
"But the tigress finished by turning sweet?"
"Yes, after the greatest protestations on my part, and my a.s.surance that I would chastise the guilty soldiers."
"The anger of the Marchioness being calmed, the interview, no doubt, took a most tender turn?"
"We spoke of the affairs of the day."
"Strange, out of all whooping! A colonel of thirty, a man of the court, besides, to speak decorously of the events of the day--with a beautiful lady--and he so l.u.s.ty elsewhere!"
"So it was, nevertheless, reverend Father. I never even thought, at that first interview, of venturing upon the slightest word of gallantry, so struck was I with the spirit of the Marchioness. Blue death! I was pale with rage at hearing the Marchioness"s bitter sarcasms. I should have been glad--may G.o.d blast me!--to put myself at the head of my regiment and shoot down all the bourgeois in the States General."
"This retrospective zeal flows from an excellent sentiment; and I know not how sufficiently to applaud the beautiful Venetian for having aroused that sentiment in you. Strongly do I approve the belle"s sarcasms, her scorn for the ranters of the Third Estate, and the populace which supports them. Still, methinks it is very surprising that a stranger should interest herself so warmly in our affairs," added the Jesuit thoughtfully.
Without a pause, the priest continued: "Tell me, Count--Have you dealt out the punishment to the insolent soldiers who beat the lackeys of Madam the Marchioness?"
"It was impossible to discover them."
"And she hasn"t asked you for an account of their punishment? Strange!
Do you know what I think, Count? The outrage was an imaginary one. It was the Marchioness"s pretext to secure a first interview with you."
"Come, Abbot, you are insane! For what reason should she have sought to inveigle me into an interview?"
"I"ll tell you, Count, for I foresee the end of this adventure. You returned often to visit the Marchioness? You became enamored of her? And soon the beautiful Venetian, answering your pa.s.sion, granted you the boon of love for thanks--after having wheedled out of you all our party"s closest secrets."
"You are mistaken, holy Father. On the faith of a gentleman, the Marchioness loves me as pa.s.sionately as I love her; but she has placed certain conditions on her favors."
"And what may the conditions be with which she has hedged about her bounty?"