The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty

CHAPTER XXV
DOWN AMONG THE DEAD

IT was nearly midnight when a man hesitatingly walked up to the iron gateway of St. Jean’s burying-ground, in Croix Blanche Street.

As midnight boomed, he saw a spectre cross the grounds under the yews and cypresses, and, approaching the grating, turn a key harshly in the gatelock to show that, if he were a ghost and had the leave to quit his grave, he also had that to go beyond the cemetery altogether.

“Do you not recognize me, Captain B.?” queried the jesting voice of Cagliostro, “or did you forget our appointment?”

“I am glad it is you,” said the man in the French Guards sergeant dress, breathing as if his heart were relieved of great weight. “These devilish streets are so dark and deserted that I do not know but it is better to run up against any body than not to meet a soul.”

“Pshaw,” returned the magician, “the idea of your fearing any thing at any hour of the day or night! You will never make me believe that of a man like you who would go anywhere with a sword by his side. However, step on this side of the railings, and you will be tranquil, my dear Captain Beausire, for you will meet no one but me.”

Beausire acted on the invitation, and the key grated again in the lock, to fasten the gate behind him.

“Keep to this little path,” continued Cagliostro, “and at twenty paces you will come upon a little broken altar, on the steps of which we can nicely manage our little business.”

“Where the mischief do you see any path?” he grumbled, after starting with a good will. “I meet nothing but nettles tearing my ankles and grass up to my knees.”

“I own that this cemetery is as badly kept as any I know of; but it is not astonishing, for here are buried only the condemned prisoners executed in the City, and no one plants flowers for such poor fellows. Still we have some undeniable celebrities here, my dear Beausire. If it were daylight I would show you where lies Bouteville Montmorency, decapitated for having fought a duel; the Knight of Rohan who suffered the same fate for conspiring against the Government; Count Horn broken on the wheel for murdering a Jew; Damiens who tried to kill Louis XVI., and lots more. Oh, you are wrong to defame St. Jean’s; it is badly kept but it well keeps its famous ones.”

Beausire followed the guide so closely that he locked steps with him like a soldier in the second rank with the predecessor so that when the latter stopped suddenly he ran up against him.

“Ah! this is a fresh one; the grave of your comrade Fleurdepine, one of the murderers of François the Assemblymen’s baker, who was hanged a week ago by sentence at the Chatelet; this ought to interest you, as he was, like you, a corporal, a sergeant by his own promotion, and a crimp – I mean a recruiter.”

The hearer’s teeth chattered; the thistles he walked among seemed so many skeleton fingers stretched up to trip him, and make him understand that this is the place where he would have his everlasting sleep.

“Well, we have arrived,” said the cicerone, stopping at a mound of ruins.

Sitting down on a stone he pointed out another to his companion, as if placed for a conversation. It was time, for the ex-soldier’s knees were knocking together so that he fell rather than sat on the elevation.

“Now that we are comfortable for a chat,” went on the magician, “let us know what went on under the Royale Place arches. The meeting must have been interesting?”

“To tell the truth, count, I am so upset that I really believe you will get a clearer account by questioning me.”

“Be it so, I am easy going, and the shape of news little matters provided I get it. How many of you met at the arches?”

“Six, including myself.”

“I wonder if they were the persons I conjecture to be there? Primo, you, no doubt.”

Beausire groaned as though he wished there could be doubt on that head.

“You do me much honor in commencing by me, for there were very great grandees compared with me.”

“My dear boy, I follow the Gospel: ‘The first shall be last.’ If the first are to be last, why, the last will naturally lead. So I begin with you, according to Scripture. Then there would be your comrade Tourcaty, an old recruiting officer who is charged to raise the Brabant Legion?”

“Yes, we had Tourcaty.”

“Then, there would be that sound royalist Marquie, once sergeant in the French Guards, now sub-lieutenant in a regiment of the centre line. Favras, of course? the Masked Man? Any particulars to furnish about the Masked Man?”

The traitor looked at the inquirer so fixedly that his eyes seemed to kindle in the dark.

“Why, is it not – “ but he stopped as if fearing to commit a sacrilege if he went farther.

“What’s this? have you a knot in your tongue? Take care of being tongue-tied. Knots in the tongue lead to knots round the neck, and as they are slip ones, they are the worst kind.”

“Well, is it not the King’s b-b-brother?” stammered the other.

“Nonsense, my dear Beausire, it is conceivable that Favras, who wants it believed that he clasps hands with a royal prince in the plot, should give out that the Mask hides the King’s brother, Provence, but you and your mate, Tourcaty, recruiting-sergeants, are men used to measure men by their height in inches and lines, and it is not likely you would be cheated that way.”

“No, it is not likely,” agreed the soldier.

“The King’s brother is five feet three and seven lines,” pursued the magician, “while the Masked Man is nearly five feet six.”

“To a T.,” said the traitor, “that occurred to me; but who can it be if not the King’s brother?”

“Excuse me, I should be proud and happy to teach you something,” retorted Cagliostro: “but I came here to be taught by you.”

“But if your lordship knows who this man is,” said the ex-corporal, becoming more at home, “might I ask his name?”

“A name is a serious thing to divulge,” responded the strange man: “and really I prefer you should guess. Do you know the story of Œdipus and the Sphinx?”

“I went to see a tragedy of that title and fell asleep, unfortunately, in the fourth act.”

“Plague take me, but you ought not to call that a misfortune!”

“But I lose by it now.”

“Not to go into details, suffice it that Œdipus, whom I knew as a boy at one royal court and as a man at another, was predicted to be the murderer of his father and the husband of his mother. Believing King Polybius this father, he departed from his realm, but would not take a hint from me about the road. The result was that he met his own sire on the road where, as neither would turn out, a fight ensued in which he slew his father. Some time after he met the Sphinx. It was a monster with a woman’s head on a lion’s body which I regret never to have seen, as it was a thousand years after her death that I travelled that road. She had the habit of putting riddles to the wayfarers and eating those who could not read them aright. To my friend Œdipus she put the following:

“'What animal goes upon four legs at morning, two at noon and three at night?'”

“Œdipus answered off-hand: ‘Man, who in the morning of life as a child crawls on all fours; as an adult walks upright; as an old man hobbles with a stick.'”

“That is so,” exclaimed Beausire: “it crossed the sphinx!”

“She threw herself down a precipice and the winner went on to where he married his father’s widow to accomplish the prophecy.”

“But what analogy between the Sphinx and the Masked Man?”

“A close one. I propose an enigma; only I am not cruel like the Sphinx and will not devour you if you fail to guess. Listen: Which lord at the court is grandson of his father, brother of his mother and uncle of his sisters?”

“The devil!” burst forth Beausire, falling into a reverie. “Can you not also help me out here, my lord?”

“Let us turn from pagan story to sacred history, then. Do you know the tale of Lot?”

“Lot and the Pillar of Salt, and his daughters?”

“The same.”

“Of course, I do. Wait a bit, do they not say that old King Louis XIV, and his daughter the Lady Adeliade – “

“You are getting warm, captain – “

“In that case the Masked Man would be Count Louis Narbonne!”

“Now that we are no longer in doubt about this conspirator, let us finish with the aim of the plot. The object is to carry off the King? And take him to Peronne? what means have you?”

“For money we have two millions cash – “

“Lent by a Genoese banker? I know him. Any other funds?”

“I know of none.”

“So much for the money: now for the men.”

“General Lafayette has authorized the raising of a legion to fly to the help of Brabant revolting against the Empire.”

“Under cover of which you form a royalist legion? I see the hand of Lafayette in this,” muttered Cagliostro. “But you will want more than a legion to carry out this plan – an army.”

“Oh, we have the army. Two hundred horsemen are gathered at Versailles ready to start at the appointed hour: they can arrive in three columns at Paris by two in the morning. The first gets in to kill General Lafayette: the second to settle old Necker; the third will do for Mayor Baily.”

“Good!” exclaimed the listener.

“This done, the cannons are spiked, and all rally on the Champs Elysées, and march on the Tuileries where our friends will be masters.”

“What about the National Guards there?”

“The Brabant Column attends to them: it joins with it part of the Guards which has been bought over: four hundred Swiss, three hundred country friends, and so on. These will have taken possession of all the gates by help within. We rush in on the King, saying: ‘Sire, the St. Antoine ward is in insurrection; a carriage is ready – you must be off!’ if he consents, all right: if he resists, we hustle him out and drive him to St. Denis.”

“Capital!”

“There we find twenty thousand infantry, with all the country royalists, well armed, in great force, who conduct the King to Peronne.”

“Better and better. What do you do there?’

“The gathering there brings our whole array up to one hundred and fifty thousand men.”

“A very pretty figure,” commented the Chief of the Invisibles.

“With the mass we march on Paris, cutting off supplies above and below on the river. Famished Paris capitulates; the Assembly is kicked to pieces, and the King enjoys his own again on the throne of his fathers.”

“Amen!” sang Cagliostro. “My dear Beausire,” he went on, rising, “your conversation is most agreeable; but as they say of the greatest orators, when they have spoken all that is in them, nothing more is to be got. You are done?”

“Yes, my lord, for the moment.”

“Then, good-night: when you want another ten louis call for them at my home, at Bellevue.”

“At the Count of Cagliostro’s?”

“No; they would not know who you meant. Ask for Baron Zannone.”

“But that is the banker who cashed up the two millions on the King’s brother’s notes!” ejaculated Beausire.

“That is not unlikely; only I do such a large business that I have confounded it with the others. That is why it was not clear in my mind but now you remind me, I believe I did something of the kind.”

Beausire went his way, stupefied that a banker could forget a matter of two millions, and beginning to believe that he was quite right in siding with the lender rather than with the borrower. He bowed lowly while the count favored him with a slight nod at the cemetery gateway.

CHAPTER XXVI
GAMAIN PROVES HE IS THE MASTER

THE reader will not be much surprised, after the permission Lafayette gave for the King to have his locksmith call to relieve him of a trouble in lockmaking, that Gamain should present himself at the palace with his apprentice who gave the name of Louis Lecomte.

Though there was nothing in the pair aristocratic, King Louis ran to the forge door on hearing the announcement and bade them enter.

“Here I am,” returned Gamain, with the familiarity of a crony.

Whether he was less used to royal company, or endowed by more respect for crowned heads under whatever attire they appeared, the boy kept on the sill, at a space from his master, with his cap in his hand near the door closed by the valet behind both.

He may have been better placed there to catch the gleam of glee in the King’s dull eye, and to give unseen a respectful nod.

“Glad to see you, my old Gamain,” said Louis; “I really did not look for you – I thought you had forgotten old times.”

“And that is why you have taken on a ’prentice,” said Gamain. “You did right enough to have help when I was not on hand, but unfortunately an apprentice is not a master.”

“How could I help it? I was assured that you did not care to come near me from fear of injuring yourself.”

“Faith, it was not hard to learn at Versailles that it was not healthy to be friend of yours – as witness that brace of your Lifeguardsman whom they cut off the heads of! ay, and by the same token had the Queen’s barber Leonard dress them in the latest fashion, which I saw in a saloon at Secres.”

A cloud passed over the royal brow and the apprentice hung his head.

“But folks say that you are getting on nicely since you came back to town, and that you can make the Parisians do anything you like; not that it is astonishing, for the Parisians are ninnies and the Queen is such a weedler when she likes to be.”

Louis made no remark, but his cheeks were colored. The young man seemed pained by the locksmith’s familiarity. After wiping his forehead with a handkerchief, rather fine for a locksmith’s help, he approached the King to whom he said:

“Does your Majesty allow me to tell how we have Master Gamain here and how I am in your employment?”

“Yes, my dear Louis,” said the King.

“That is the style! ‘My dear Louis!’ as long as your arm. To a fortnight’s acquaintance, a workman, a ’prentice! why, what are you going to call me, who has known you these five and twenty years? who put the file in your fist? who am the master? this is the advantage of having white hands and a glib tongue.”

“I will call you ‘My good Gamain’ if you like. I speak to the lad affectionately because I owe to him the joy of seeing my old master again: not because he speaks prettily or keeps his hands smooth, for you know I think nothing of these fine ways – but I like him for proving it was false what they said about my never seeing you any more.”

“Well, it was not me that held back, but that wife of mine. She was always saying: ‘Gamain, you have bad acquaintances, those who fly too high for you. It is not good to hobnob with aristocrats nowadays. We have a little property – look after it. Let us rear our young ones: and let the Dauphin learn locksmithing from others than you, if he wants to, like his father before him. There are plenty of smiths in France.'”

Louis glanced at the apprentice, and stifling a sigh, partly sad and partly rallying, said:

“No doubt, but there are few like you.”

“Just what I said to the master when I called on him,” said the young man, “I told him the King was making a hidden-bolt lock; and that he had got along very well till he came to the sliding bolt itself – “

“I should think so,” interrupted Gamain: “bless you, the bolt is the backbone of a lock. It is not given to everybody to get over that difficulty.”

“No, nor mine in passing the examination you put me through to be convinced I came from the King,” replied the young man, laughing. “You said it was a trap laid by your enemies; but the twenty-five yellow boys sent by his Majesty convinced you. So off we started, and here we are.”

“And welcome,” said the royal smith, thanking the speaker with a glance; “and now, Master Gamain, as you appear in a hurry, let us tackle the job.”

“You have hit it. I promised the mistress that I should be home by evening. Let us see this puzzler of a lock.”

The King put in his hands a lock three-parts finished.

“Lord help us,” said the man, grinning: “this is not a secret bolt but a trunk lock. You have three wards on it and the second ought to catch while the first is released by the key.”

He was using the key as he spoke and the others contemplated his demonstration with awe for his learning.

“But the second ward catches, like the Assembly when you want it to do something your way and says: ‘I won’t budge.'”

“But there must be some way of getting over the fix,” said the King.

“Of course; it would be a day’s work to an ordinary workman but I will knock it off in a couple of hours. Only,” said he, with the suspicious air of an artisan jealous of the secrets of the craft; “I want no fussing round me.”

What Gamain desired was the yearning of the King. His loneliness would allow him a dialogue apart with the Apprentice.

“But you may need something?”

“I will set the footman trotting.”

The King went himself to the door to acquaint François with the arrangement, and then led away the apprentice, Louis Lecomte, in whom the reader will have recognized Louis Bouille.

They went by a secret stairway into the royal study, where a table was covered by a large map of France, showing the King had been studying the route of the flight.

“Now that we are alone, count,” said he, “let me compliment you on your skill and thank you for your dedication of services to me.”

“And I ask to be excused for my apparel and the language I have had to use before you.”

“You speak like a brave gentleman and your apparel covers a loyal heart in any case. But we have no time to lose. Even the Queen is ignorant of your presence here; nobody is listening; so to the point.”

“Did not your Majesty send us a naval officer, the count of Charny, who brought a letter – “

“Insignificant,” interrupted the monarch, “a mere introduction to a verbal communication.”

“He fulfilled it and it was to make its performance certain that my father sent me to town to try to have an interview alone with your Majesty. The King can have the certainty of leaving France. My father is proud and happy of the honor done him.”

“Now for the principal point; what says he of the project?”

“That it is hazardous and requires great precautions but is not impossible.”

“Firstly, will not your father want the command over the adjoining districts?”

“It is his advice, but he would not like it to be thought personal ambition – “

“Pooh, do I not know his disinterestedness? did he explain about the best road to take?”

“In the first place he fears one thing: that many projects of flight have been proposed and that all these getting entangled, this one will meet some block which will be ascribed to fatality, when it will be the spite or the rashness of the other parties.”

“I promise, my dear Louis, to let the parties intrigue around me; it is their want and a necessity of my position. While they are following these threads which will end in nothing but leading them astray we will follow our own route with no other confidants, with more security from our greater secresy. But I do not want to leave the kingdom altogether. It is hard for a sovereign to get back if he does so. I have decided on Montmedy as the place of retirement, which is in the centre of your father’s command and at a suitable distance.”

“Has your Majesty planned out the flight or is this but a sketch?” queried the count.

“Nothing is settled,” replied Louis, “and all depends on circumstances. If I see the Queen and the Family running fresh dangers from the ruffians I will take an irrevocable decision.”

“My father thinks the dangers of the journey will be diminished by dividing the passengers.”

“Yes, but it is useless to discuss this point. In a solemn hour the Queen and I resolved to go together or not at all.”

The envoy bowed.

“At the meet moment the King has but to issue the orders to have them executed,” he said. “Now, for the route. There are three ways to Montmedy.”

“I have marked them on the map. The best is through Reims, but I was consecrated there and would be recognized by many. I choose the Chalons Road via Vacennes and going round Verdun. Let the regiments be posted in the petty towns between Chalons and Montmedy: I see no inconvenience in the first detachment awaiting me in the former place.”

“Sire, the location of the regiments will have to be settled. By the way, the King should know that there is no posting-house at Varennes.”

“I am glad you are so well informed,” observed the King, merrily; “it shows you have deeply studied the plans. But do not worry about such matters. Charny is my engineer, who has drawn up the maps and he will see to the supply of horses.”

“And now, Sire, that all is arranged on the main lines,” said the young conspirator, “will your Majesty allow me to quote some lines from an Italian author, which my father thought appropriate to the situation? They are:

“Delay is always prejudicial, and there is no wholly favorable time in any business; hence if one were to wait for a perfect chance, nothing would ever be done, or if done be bungled.”

“That is Machiavelli,” said the King. “I will remember the advice of that secretary to the Magnificent Republic of Venice. But hush! I hear steps – it is Gamain; let us go to meet him so that he may not think we were busy about something else than the cupboard the lock is for.”

He opened the secret door, in time, for the master locksmith was there, with the lock in his hand and a grin on his face.