Buch lesen: «The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty»

CHAPTER I
LOCKSMITH AND GUNSMITH

THE French Revolution had begun by the Taking of the Bastile by the people of Paris on the Fourteenth of July, 1789, but it seemed to have reached the high tide by King Louis XVI, with his Queen Marie Antoinette and others of the Royal Family, leaving Versailles, after some sanguinary rioting, for the Capital, Paris.

But those who think, in such lulls of popular tempests, that all the mischief has blown over, make a mistake.

Behind the men who make the first onset, are those who planned it and who wait for the rush to be made and, then, while others are tried or satisfied, glide into the crowds to stir them up.

Mysterious agents of secret, fatal passions, they push on the movement from where it paused, and having urged it to its farthest limit, those who opened the way are horrified, at awakening to see that others attained the end.

At the doorway of a wine saloon at Sevres by the bridge, over the Seine, a man was standing who had played the main part, though unseen, in the riots which compelled the Royal Family to renounce an attempt to escape out of the kingdom like many of their sycophants, and go from Versailles Palace to the Tuileries.

This man was in the prime of life: he was dressed like a workingman, wearing velveteen breeches shielded by a leather apron with pockets such as shinglers wear to carry nailes in, or blacksmith-farriers or locksmiths. His stockings were grey, and his shoes had brass buckles; on his head was a fur cap like a grenadier’s cut in half or what is called nowadays an artillerist’s busby. Grey locks came straggling from under its hair and mingled with shaggy eyebrows; they shaded large bulging eyes, keen and sharp, quick, with such rapid changes that it was hard to tell their true color. His nose was rather thick than medium, the lips full, the teeth white, and his complexion sunburnt.

Without being largely built, this man was well formed: his joints were not course and his hands were small and might have seemed delicate but for their being swart like those of workers in metal.

Despite the vigor of the biceps muscle shown from his having rolled up his shirt sleeves, the skin was remarkable for its whiteness, and almost aristocratically fine.

Within his reach was a richly gold-inlaid double-barrelled fowling piece, branded with the name of Leclere, the fashionable gunsmith of Paris. You may ask how could such a costly firearm come into the hands of a common artisan? In times of riot it is not always the whitest hands which grasp the finest weapons.

This man had only arrived from Versailles since an hour, and perfectly well knew what had happened there: for to the landlord’s questions as he supplied him with a bottle of wine which he did not touch, he had answered as follows:

“The Queen is coming along with the King and the Dauphin. They had started at half afternoon, having at last decided to live at the Tuileries; in consequence of which for the future Paris would no longer want for bread, as it would have in her midst, the Baker, the Baker’s Wife and the Baker’s Boy, as the popular slang dubbed the three ‘Royals'.”

As for himself, he was going to hang round to see the procession go by.

This last assertion might be true, although it was easy to tell that his glance was more often bent on the side towards Paris than Versailles, which led one to surmise that he did not feel obliged to tell Boniface exactly what his intentions were.

In a few seconds his attraction seemed gratified, for he spied a man, garbed much like himself, and appearing of the same trade, outlined on the ridge of the road. He walked heavily like one who had journeyed from afar.

His age appeared to be like his awaiter’s, that is, what is called the wrong side of forty. His features were those of a common fellow with low inclinations and vulgar instincts.

The stranger’s eye was fastened on him with an odd expression as if he wished with a single scrutiny to measure the gold, if any, and the alloy in his composition.

When the wayfarer from the town was within twenty steps of this man lounging in the doorway, the latter stepped inside, poured the wine from the bottle into two glasses and returning to the doorstep with one tumbler held up, he hailed him:

“Hello, mate! it is pretty cold weather, and the road is a long one. What do you say to our having a drop of the red to cheer us up and warm us?”

The workman from town looked round to make sure that he was alone and that the greeting was addressed to him.

“Speaking to me, are you?”

“Who else, as you are alone?”

“And offering me a go of wine?”

“Why not, as we are brothers of the file and bossing-hammer alike? or some at nigh.”

“Anybody can belong to a trade,” said the other looking hard at the speaker; “but the point is, are you a greenhand or a master of the craft?”

“I reckon we shall tell how far we have learnt the trade while drinking and chatting together.”

“All right then!” said the other, walking up to the door, while the inviter showed the table set out with the wine. The man took the tumbler, eyed the contents as if he had doubts, but they disappeared when the stranger poured himself out a second brimmer.

“Why, hang it all, are you getting so proud that you will not drink with a shopmate?”

“No, dash me if I am – here is Good Luck to the Nation!”

The workman’s grey eyes were fixed on the toast-giver’s.

He tossed off the glass at a draft, and wiped his lips on his sleeve.

“Deuse take it, but it is Burgundy wine,” he remarked.

“And good liquor, too, eh? the vintage was recommended to me; and happening along I dropped in, and I am not repenting it. But why not sit down and be at home? there is some more in the bottle and more in the cellar when that is gone.”

“I say, what are you working at here?”

“I have knocked off for the day. I finished a job at Versailles and I am going on to Paris with the royal procession as soon as it comes along.”

“What procession?”

“Why, the King and the Queen and the little Prince, who are returning to the city with the Fishmarket women and two hundred Assemblymen, all under protection of Gen. Lafayette and the National Guard.”

“So the fat old gentleman has decided to come to town?”

“They made him do it.”

“I suspected so when I started for Paris at three this morning.”

“Hello! did you leave Versailles at three without any curiosity about what was going off?”

“No, no, I itched to know what the gent was up to, being an acquaintance, a chum of mine, by the way, though I am not bragging; but you know, old man, one must get on with the work. I have a wife and children to provide for, and it is no joke now. I am not working at the royal forge.”

The listener let what he heard pass without putting any questions.

“So, it was on a pressing job that you went back to Paris?” he only inquired.

“Just that, as it appears, and handsomely paid too,” said the workman, jingling some coin in his pocket, “though it was paid for by a kind of servant, which was not polite, and by a German, too, which blocked me from having any pleasant chatter during the work. I am not one for gab, but it amuses one if no harm is spoken of others.”

“And it is no harm when harm is spoken of the neighbors, eh?”

Both men laughed, the stranger showing sound teeth against the other’s snaggy ones.

“So, then, you have knocked off a good job, wanted doing in a hurry, and well paid?” said the former, like one who advances only a step at a time, but still does advance. “Hard work, no doubt?”

“You bet it was hard. Worse than a secret lock – an invisible door. What do you think of one house inside of another? some one who wants to hide away, be sure. What a game he could have – in or out, as he pleased. ‘Your master in?’ ‘No, sir: just stepped out.’ ‘You are a liar – he came in just now.’ ‘You had better look, since you are so cocksure.’ So they look round, but I defy them to find the gentleman. An iron door, you will understand, which closes on a beading-framed panel, while it runs on balls in a groove as on wheels. On the metal is a veneer of old oak, so that you can rap with your knuckles on it and the sound is identical with that of a solid plank. I tell you when the job was done, it would take me in myself.”

“Where the mischief would you do a job like that? but I suppose you would not tell even a pal?”

“I cannot tell because I do not know.”

“What hoodwinked you?”

“Guess again and you will be wrong. A hack was waiting for me at the city turnpike bars. A chap came up and asked: ‘Are you so and-so?’ I said ‘I am.’ ‘Good, we are waiting for you: jump in.’ So I got inside the coach, where they bandaged my eyes, and after the wheels had gone round for about half an hour, a big carriage-door was opened. They took me out and up ten steps of a flight of stairs into a vestibule, where I found a German servant who said to the others: ‘Goot! make scarce of yourseluffs; no longer want we you.’ They slung their hook out of it, while the blinders were taken me off, and I was shown what I had to do. I had pitched into the work like a good hand, and was done in an hour. They paid me in bran-new gold, tied up my eyes, put me back in the carriage, dropped me on the same spot where I was taken up, wished me safe home – and here I am.”

“Without your having seen anything, even out of the tail of the eye? Deuse take me if ever I heard of a bandage which would stop a man catching a glimpse on one side or t’other. Better own up that you had a peep at something?” pursued the stranger.

“Well, I did make a misstep at the first stone of the stairs so that, in throwing up my hands to keep from falling, I got a peep from its disarranging the handkerchief. I saw a regular row of trees on my left hand which made me think that I was in some avenue. That is all, on my honor.”

“I can’t say it is much. For the main avenue is long and more than one house has a carriage-doorway betwixt the St. Honore Coffeehouse and the Bastile.”

“The fact is,” said the locksmith, scratching his head, “I don’t think I am up to telling the house.”

The questioner appeared satisfied, although his countenance did not usually betray his feelings.

“But,” exclaimed he, as if skipping to another topic, “are there no good locksmiths at Paris that they have to send to Versailles for one?”

CHAPTER II
THE THREE ODDITIES

THE locksmith lifted his tumbler to his eye’s level, admired the liquor with pleasure, and said after sipping it with gratification:

“Bless you, yes, plenty of locksmiths at Paris.”

He drank a few drops more.

“Ay, and masters of the craft.” He drank again. “Yes, but there is a difference between them.”

“Hang me,” said the other, “but I believe you are like St. Eloi, our patron saint, master among the master-workmen.”

“Are you one of us?”

“Akin, my boy: I am a gunsmith. All smiths are brothers. This is a sample of my work.”

The locksmith took the gun from the speaker’s hands, examined it with attention, clicked the hammers and approved with a nod of the sharp action of the lock: but spying the name on the plate, he said:

“Leclere? this won’t do, friend, for Leclere is scanty thirty, and we are both a good forty, without meaning to hurt your feelings.”

“Quite true, I am not Leclere, but it is the same thing, only a little more so. For I am his master.”

“Oh, capital!” chuckled the locksmith; “it is the same as my saying ‘I am not the King but I am the same thing, only more so, as I am his master.'”

“Oho,” said the other rising and burlesquing the military salute, “have I the honor of addressing Master Gamain, the King of Locksmiths?”

“Himself in person, and delighted if he can do anything for you,” replied Gamain, enchanted at the effect his name had produced.

“The devil! I had no idea I was talking to one of the high flyers in our line,” said the other. “A man so well considered.”

“Of such consequence, do you mean?”

“Well, maybe I have not used the right word, but then I am only a poor smith, and you are the master smith for the master of France. I say,” he went on in another tone, “it can’t be always funny to have a king for a ‘prentice, eh?”

“Why not?”

“Plain enough. You cannot eternally be wearing gloves to say to the mate on your bench: ‘Chuck us the hammer or pass the retail file along.'”

“Certainly not.”

“I suppose you have to say: ‘Please your gracious Majesty, don’t hold the drill askew.'”

“Why, that is just the charm with him, d’ye see, for he is a plain-dealer at heart. Once in the forge, when he has the anvil to the fore, and the leathern apron tied on, none would ever take him for the Son of St. Louis, as he is called.”

“Indeed you are right, it is astonishing how much he is like the next man.”

“And yet these perking courtiers are a long time seeing that.”

“It would be nothing if those close around him found that out,” said the stranger, “but those who are at a distance are beginning to get an idea of it.”

His queer laugh made Gamain look at him with marked astonishment. But he saw that he had blundered in his pretended character by making a witticism, and gave the man no time to study his sentence, for he hastened to recur to the topic by saying:

“A good thing, too; for I think it lowers a man to have to slaver him with Your Majesty here and My Noble Sire there.”

“But you do not have to call him high names. Once in the workshop we drop all that stuff. I call him Citizen, and he calls me Gamain, but I ain’t what you would call chummy with him, while he is familiar with me.”

“That is all very well; but when the dinner hour comes round I expect he sends you off to the kitchen to have your bread and cheese with the flunkeys.”

“Oh, Lor', No! he has never done that; quite the other way about, for he gets me to bring in a table all set into the workshop and he will often put his legs under the mahogany with me, particularly at breakfast, saying: ‘I shall not bother about having breakfast with the Queen, as I should have to wash my hands.'”

“I can’t make this out.”

“You can’t understand that when the King works like us, he has his hands smeared with oil and rust and filings, which does not prevent us being honest folks, and the Queen would say to him, with her hoity-toity prudish air: ‘Dirty beggar, your hands are foul.’ How can a man have a fop’s hands if he works at the forge?”

“Don’t talk to me about that – I might have married high if I could have kept my fingers nice,” sighed the stranger.

“Let me tell you that the old chap does not have a lively time in his geographical study or his library; but I believe he likes my company the best.”

“That is all very amusing for you, except having to endure so poor a pupil.”

“Poor,” repeated Gamain. “Oh, no, you must not say that. He is to be pitied, to tell the truth, in his coming into the world as a king, for he is but a man – and having to waste himself on a pack of nonsense instead of sticking to our art, in which he makes good way. He will never be but a third-rate king for he is too honest, but he would have made an excellent locksmith. There is one man I execrate for stealing away his time – that Necker fellow, who made him lose such a lot of time!”

“You mean with his accounts and financing.”

“Ay, his fine-Nancy-ing, indeed.”

“But you must make a fat thing out of such a lad to bring on.”

“No, that is just where you are in error: that is why I bear a grudge to him, Louis the Father of the Kingdom, the Restorer of the French Nation! People believe that I am rich as Creases, while I am as poor as Job.”

“You, poor? why, what does he do with all his money?”

“He gives half to the poor and the other half is got away by his parasites, so that he never has any brass. The Coigny, Polignac and Vaudreuil families eat him up, poor dear old boy! One day he wanted to cut down Lord Coigny’s appointments, and the gentleman waylaid him at our forge door: after going out for five minutes, the King came back, pale as a ghost, muttering: ‘Faith, I believe he would have caned me.’ ‘Did he get the appointments reduced, Sire?’ I inquired. ‘I let them stand,’ he said: ‘what else could I do?’ Another time he wanted to scold the Queen for giving Duchess Polignac three hundred thousand francs for the linen for her baby, and what do you think?”

“It is a pretty sum for a baby!”

“Right you are: but it was not enough: the Queen made him give her five hundred thousand. You have only to look how these Polignacs have got on, who had not a penny when they started in, but are running away from France with millions. I should not have minded if they had any talent, but just give those neerdowells a hammer or cold chisel; they could not forge a horseshoe: give them file and screw-driver and see how they would get on at a common lock! However, they can wag the tongue to some purpose, since they hounded the King on so that they leave him in a quagmire. He may flounder out as best he can, with the help of General Lafayette and Mayor Bailly, and Lord Mirabeau. I gave him good advice, but he would not listen to me, and he leaves me with fifteen hundred livres a-year, though I am his trainer, who first showed him to hold a file properly.”

“But I suppose that when you worked with him, there were some pickings?”

“But am I working with him now? Since the Taking of the Bastile, I have not set foot inside his palace. Once or twice I met him: the first time, as there was a crowd about in the street, he just bobbed his head; the next, on the Satory Road, he stopped the coach for the coast was clear. ‘Good morning, my poor Gamain, how goes it?’ he sighed. ‘How goes it with you, Sire? but I know it is rough – but that will be a lesson to you.’ ‘Are your wife and children well?’ he said to shift the talk. ‘All fine but with appetites like ogres.’ ‘You must make them a little present from me.’ He searched his pockets, but he could rake up only nine louis. ‘That is all I carry with me, my poor Gamain,’ he said with a kind of groan, ‘and I am ashamed to do so little.’ Of course, it was small cash for a monarch to give, short of ten gold pieces, so paltry a sum to a work-fellow – So – “

“You refused them?”

“Catch me? No, I said: ‘I had better grab, for he will meet somebody else not so delicate as me, who would take them.’ Still, he need not fret himself, I shall never walk into Versailles unless I am sent for, and I do not know as I shall then.”

“What a grateful heart this rogue has,” muttered the stranger, but all he said aloud was: “It is very affecting, Master Gamain, to see devotion like yours survive misfortune. A last glass to the health of your ‘prentice.”

“Faith, he does not deserve it, but never mind! here’s to his health, all the same!” He drank. “Only to think that he had thousands of bottles in his cellar which would beat this, and he never said to a footman: Take a basket of this lush to my friend Gamain!’ Not he – he would sooner have it swilled by his Lifeguardsmen, the Swiss, or his Flanders Regiment. They did him a lot of good, I do not think!”

“What did you expect?” questioned the other, sipping his wine, “kings are ungrateful like this one. But hush! we are no longer alone.”

In fact, three persons were entering the drinking saloon, two men of the common sort and a fishfag, and they took seats at the table matching that at which Gamain and his “treater” were sitting.

The locksmith raised his eyes to them and stared with an attention making the other smile. They were truly worthy of some remark.

One of the two men was all body: the other all legs: it was hard to say anything about the woman.

All-Body resembled a dwarf: he was under five feet in hight: he may have lost an inch or so from his knees knocking although when he stood up, his feet kept apart. Instead of his countenance redeeming the deformity, it seemed to highten it; – for his oily and dirty hair was flattened down on his bald forehead; his eyebrows were so badly shaped as to seem traced at random; his eyes were usually dull but when lighted up sheeny and glassy as the toad’s. In moments of irritation, they threw out sparks like a viper’s, from concentrated pupils. His nose was flat, and deviated from the straight line so that his prominent cheek bones stood out all the more. Lastly, to complete the hideous aspect, his yellow lips only partly covered the few, black and loose teeth in his twisted mouth.

At first glance you would say that gall, not blood, flowed in his veins.

The other was so opposed to the short-legged one that he seemed a heron on its stilts. The likeness to the bird was the closer from his head being lost between his humped shoulders so as to be distinguished solely by the eyes, like blood-spots, and a long, pointed, beak-like nose. Like the heron, too, he seemed to have the ability to stretch his neck, and put out the eyes of one at a distance. His arms also were gifted with this elasticity, and while seated, he might pick up a handkerchief dropped at his feet without moving his body.

The third person was ambiguous; it being difficult to divine the sex. If a man, he was upwards of thirty-four, wearing a stylish costume of the fishmarket stallkeepers, with lace kerchief and tucker, and gold earrings and chain. His features, as well as could be made out through layers of rouge and flake white, together with beauty-patches of sticking plaster of all fancy shapes, were slightly softened as in degenerated races. As soon as one caught sight of him one wanted to hear him speak in the hope that the voice’s sound would give his dubious appearance a stamp by which he could be classed. But it was nothing to the purpose: his soprano voice left the curious observer still deeper plunged into doubt.

The shoes and stockings of the trio were daubed in mud to show that they had been tramping in the road for some time.

“Lord save us, I seem to know that woman, from having met her before,” said Gamain.

“Very likely at court,” sneered the pretended workman “their manners have been there quite a while and they have been visitors, the fishmarket dames, of late. But,” he went on, pulling his cap down on his brow and taking up his gun, “they are here on business: consequently, we had better leave them alone.”

“Do you know them?”

“By sight. Do you?”

“I say that I have met the woman before: tell me who the men are and I may put my finger on her name.”

“Of the two men, the knock-kneed one is the surgeon, Jean Paul Marat; while the humpback is Prosper Verrieres.”

“Aha!”

“Does not that put you on the right track?”

“My tongue to the dogs if it does!”

“The fishwoman is – “

“Wait, it is – but, no – impossible – “

“I see that you will not name him– the fishwoman is the Duke of Aiguillon.”

At this utterance of the title, the disguised nobleman started and turned, as well as his companions. They made a movement to rise as men do when in presence of a leader: but the pretended gunsmith laid a finger on his lips and passed them by.

Gamain followed him, believing he was in a dream.

At the doorway he was jostled by a running man, who seemed to be pursued by a mob, shouting:

“Stop him – that is the Queen’s hairdresser! stop the hairdresser!”

Among the howling and racing men were two who carried each a human head on a pikestaff. They were those of two Lifeguards, killed at Versailles in defending the Queen from the mob.

“Halloa, it is Leonard,” said the strange workman, to the fugitive.

“Silence, do not name me,” yelled the barber, dashing into the saloon.

“What do they chase him for?” inquired Gamain.

“The Lord knows,” was the response: “maybe they want him to curl the hair of the poor soldiers. In Revolutionary times, fellows have such quaint fancies!”

He mixed in with the throng, leaving Gamain, from whom he had probably extracted all he wanted, to make his way alone to his workshop at Versailles.