La Boulaye eyed him a second with a glance before which the aristocrat grew pale, and already regretted him of his words. The veins in the Deputy"s temples were swollen.
"I warned you," said he, in a dull voice. Then to the soldiers standing on either side of Ombreval--"Take him out," he said, "mount him on horseback. Let him ride with his hands pinioned behind his back, and his feet lashed together under the horse"s belly. Attend to it!"
"Monsieur," cried the young man, in an appealing voice, "I will give you my word of honour not to escape. I will--"
"Take him out," La Boulaye repeated, with a dull bark of contempt. "You had your chance, Citizen-aristocrat."
Ombreval set his teeth and clenched his hands.
"Canaille!" he snarled, in his fury.
"Hold!" Caron called after the departing men.
They obeyed, and now this wretched Vicomte, of such unstable spirit dropped all his anger again, as suddenly as he had caught it up. Fear paled his cheek and palsied his limbs once more, for La Boulaye"s expression was very terrible.
"You know what I said that I would have done to you if you used that word again?" La Boulaye questioned him coldly.
"I--I was beside myself, Monsieur," the other gasped, in the intensity of his fear. And at the sight of his pitiable condition the anger fell away from La Boulaye, and he smiled scornfully.
"My faith," he sneered. "You are hot one moment and cold the next.
Citizen, I am afraid that you are no better than a vulgar coward. Take him away," he ended, waving his hand towards the door, and as he watched them leading him out he reflected bitterly that this was the man to whom Suzanne was betrothed--the man whom, not a doubt of it, she loved, since for him she had stooped so low. This miserable craven she preferred to him, because the man, so ign.o.ble of nature, was n.o.ble by the accident of birth.
PART III. THE EVERLASTING RULE
Love rules the court, the camp, the grove, And men below and saints above, For love is Heaven and Heaven is love.
--The Lay of the Last Minstrel.
CHAPTER XVI. CECILE DESHAIX. In his lodgings at the corner of the Rue-St. Honore and the Rue de la Republique--lately changed, in the all-encompa.s.sing metamorphosis, from "Rue Royale" sat the Deputy Caron La Boulaye at his writing-table.
There was a flush on his face and a sparkle in the eyes that looked pensively before him what time he gnawed the feathered end of his quill.
In his ears still rang the acclamations that had greeted his brilliant speech in the a.s.sembly that day. He was of the party of the Mountain--as was but natural in a protege of the Seagreen Robespierre--a party more famed for its directness of purpose than elegance of expression, and in its ranks there was room and to spare for such orators as he. The season was March of "93--a season marked by the deadly feud raging "twixt the Girondins and the Mountain, and in that battle of tongues La Boulaye was covering himself with glory and doing credit to his patron, the Incorruptible. He was of a rhetoric not inferior to Vergniaud"s--that most eloquent Girondon--and of a quickness of wit and honesty of aim unrivalled in the whole body of the Convention, and with these gifts he hara.s.sed to no little purpose those smooth-tongued legislators of the Gironde, whom Dumouriez called the Jesuits of the Revolution. His popularity with the men of the Mountain and with the ma.s.ses of Paris was growing daily, and the crushing reply he had that day delivered to the charges preferred by Vergniaud was likely to increase his fame.
Well, therefore, might he sit with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes chewing the b.u.t.t of his pen and smiling to himself at the memory of the enthusiasm of which he had been the centre a half-hour ago. Here, indeed, was something that a man might live for, something that a man might take pride in, and something that might console a man for a woman"s treachery. What, indeed, could woman"s love give him that might compare with this? Was it not more glorious far to make himself the admired, the revered, the very idol of those stern men, than the beloved of a simpering girl? The latter any c.o.xcomb with a well-cut coat might encompa.s.s, but the former achievement was a man"s work.
And yet, for all that he reasoned thus speciously and philosophically, there was a moment when his brow grew clouded and his eyes lost their sparkle. He was thinking of that night in the inn at Boisvert, when he had knelt beside her and she had lied to him. He was thinking of the happiness, that for a few brief hours had been his, until he discovered how basely she had deceived him, and for all the full-flavour of his present elation it seemed to him that in that other happiness which he now affected to despise by contrast, there had dwelt a greater, a more contenting sweetness.
Would she come to Paris? He had asked himself that question every day of the twenty that were spent since his return. And in the meantime the Vicomte d"Ombreval lay in the prison of the Luxembourg awaiting trial.
That he had not yet been arraigned he had to thank the efforts of La Boulaye. The young Deputy had informed Robespierre that for reasons of his own he wished the ci-devant Vicomte, to be kept in prison some little time, and the Incorruptible, peering at him over his horn-rimmed spectacles, had shrugged his shoulders and answered:
"But certainly, cher Caron, since it is your wish. He will be safe in the Luxembourg."
He had pressed his protege for a reason, but La Boulaye had evaded the question, promising to enlighten him later.
Since then Caron had waited, and now it was more than time that Mademoiselle made some sign. Or was it that neither Ombreval"s craven entreaties nor his own short message had affected her? Was she wholly heartless and likely to prove as faithless to the Vicomte in his hour of need as she had proved to him?
With a toss of the head he dismissed her from his thoughts, and dipping his quill, he began to write.
From the street came the dull roll of beaten drums and the rhythmical fall of marching feet. But the sound was too common in revolutionary Paris to arrest attention, and he wrote on, heeding it as little as he did the gruff voice of a pastry-cook crying his wares, the shriller call of a milkman, or the occasional rumblings of pa.s.sing vehicles. But of a sudden one of those rumblings ceased abruptly at his door. He heard the rattle of hoofs and the grind of the wheel against the pavement, and looking up, he glanced across at the ormolu timepiece on his overmantel.
It was not yet four o"clock.
Wondering whether the visitor might be for him or for the tenant of the floor above, he sat listening until his door opened and his official--the euphemism of "servant" in the revolutionary lexicon--came to announce that a woman was below, asking to see him.
Now for all that he believed himself to have become above emotions where Mademoiselle de Bellecour was concerned, he felt his pulses quicken at the very thought that this might be she at last.
"What manner of woman, Brutus?" he asked.
"A pretty woman, Citizen," answered Brutus, with a grin. "It is the Citoyenne Deshaix."
La Boulaye made an impatient gesture.
"Fool, why did you not say so," he cried sharply.
"Fool, you did not ask me," answered the servant, with that touching, fraternal frankness adopted by all true patriots. He was a thin, under-sized man of perhaps thirty years of age, and dressed in black, with a decency--under La Boulaye"s suasion--that was rather at variance with his extreme democracy. His real name was Ferdinand, but, following a fashion prevailing among the ultra-republicans, he had renamed himself after the famous Roman patriot.
La Boulaye toyed a moment with his pen, a frown darkening his brow.
Then:
"Admit her," he sighed wearily.
And presently she came, a pretty woman, as Brutus had declared, very fair, and with the innocent eyes of a baby. She was small of stature, and by the egregious height of her plume-crowned head-dress it would seem as if she sought by art to add to the inches she had received from Nature. For the rest she wore a pink petticoat, very extravagantly beflounced, and a pink corsage cut extravagantly low. In one hand she carried a fan--hardly as a weapon against heat, seeing that the winter was not yet out--in the other a huge bunch of early roses.
"Te voile!" was her greeting, merrily--roguishly--delivered, and if the Revolution had done nothing else for her, it had, at least, enabled her to address La Boulaye by the "Thou" of intimacy which the new vocabulary prescribed.
La Boulaye rose, laid aside his pen, and politely, if coolly, returned her greeting and set a chair for her.
"You are," said he, "a very harbinger of Spring, Citoyenne, with your flowers and your ravishing toilette."
"Ah! I please you, then, for once," said she without the least embarra.s.sment. "Tell me--how do you find me?" And, laughing, she turned about that he might admire her from all points of view.
He looked at her gravely for a moment, so gravely that the laughter began to fade from her eyes.
"I find you charming, Citoyenne," he answered at last. "You remind me of Diana."
"Compliments?" quoth she, her eyebrows going up and her eyes beaming with surprise and delight. "Compliments from La Boulaye! But surely it is the end of the world. Tell me, mon ami," she begged, greedily angling for more, "in what do I remind you of the sylvan G.o.ddess?"
"In the scantiness of your raiment, Citoyenne," he answered acidly. "It sorts better with Arcadia than with Paris."
Her eyebrows came down, her cheeks flushed with resentment and discomfiture. To cover this she flung her roses among the papers of his writing-table, and dropping into a chair she fanned herself vigorously.
"Citoyenne, you relieve my anxieties," said he. "I feared that you stood in danger of freezing."