THE SEER
A few minutes later, the door opened to admit the imposing figure of the octogenarian, Martin. The king graciously motioned him to advance. He approached diffidently, a pale ray from the setting sun shining upon his face and lighting up a flaming mark across his breast. This was the red flannel scapula of the Heart of Jesus stamped with the words: "I shall reign."
"Come forward, my friend. Ask what you wish. We have seen you so often opposite the palace that we decided to attend to your request. Take a seat and do not be timid."
The monarch pointed to a tabouret, but the peasant did not heed the invitation. Glancing around the apartment, he suddenly noticed the voluptuous Pompeian lamp and then turned indignantly, almost threateningly, upon the king who, somewhat disconcerted—though he scarcely knew why—repeated:
"Ask what you wish."
"I ask for nothing," said the old man with emphasis. "I come not to implore from the king either honors or riches. I am sent by God to speak to your Royal Highness certain truths, to remind you of the past and to reveal to you the future. I come not of myself. I am the obscurest laborer in France, by name Martin. I live in a village of but twelve cottages. I am a Christian. I believe in our holy religion and our holy monarchy. When evil men rebelled against God and His earthly agent, my sword remained sheathed because to shed blood is forbidden. But I placed on my breast this Heart, that men might know that with my life I would maintain my faith."
"Good man, be seated," insisted the monarch.
"I have too great a reverence for your person to remain otherwise than standing. I should be kneeling, for so should I choose to honor the uncle and heir of my king."
"What do you mean? Am I not the king, himself?" And Louis XVIII smiled indulgently.
"Your Royal Highness well knows that I am of no importance," Martin calmly replied. "My custom has been to hold my tongue, work my team and pay my rent. My life has been passed in hard and constant labor, and I have wronged no man. My arms are still strong and my head steady, so I plow my own fields. But a month since I stopped working and left home and family to expose myself to the raillery of the foolish and the contempt of the powerful. The people jest at me in the streets and your Royal Highness probably considers me demented."
"My good fellow," said the king, "we always overlook much in the aged—"
"Your Royal Highness, if I offend, it is because I know not the usages of courts. Consign me to punishment if I deserve it, but let me first deliver my message."
"Say what you will, Martin. We listen."
"'Tis not Martin who speaks. Of himself, Martin would not dare. My words are from heaven."
"From heaven!" mockingly echoed, in refined irony, the admirer of Voltaire. "Perchance from God himself."
"Praised ever be his name!" reverently exclaimed the peasant, upon whom the sarcasm was lost. "Let me now begin. Be it known to your Royal Highness that on the sixteenth of January while ploughing in my field, I noted that the oxen were seized with fright. I marveled and asked myself the reason of it. Turning, I beheld at my side a beautiful boy in court-dress, with long curls falling upon his shoulders. A chill seized me while I was wondering how he came there. The boy laid his hand upon me, saying: 'Martin, go to him who sits upon the throne' and, without further words, he vanished. All this occurred so rapidly that I regarded the apparition as due to my advanced age. 'Bah!' said I to myself, ''tis because of the fog. One sees all sorts of strange things in a fog.' Two days later, in the twilight, while returning home, I saw the boy again at the cross-roads. He said: 'Martin, go to him' and again he vanished. I then fell kneeling. On the following day I saw him amid the willows, near the edge of the river. Finally, on the twenty-first of January I saw him on the border of the woods, leaning upon the trunk of an oak which we call the witch's tree. He said many things that I could not understand, some of which I have forgotten. Others are in my mind now but just as though they were shut in a box. When I open the lid and speak them, they will fly away like released birds and I shall no longer remember them. But until I speak them, they are in here as though red branded," and he motioned toward his forehead.
The date January twenty-first made the monarch shudder.
"Describe the boy's appearance and do not be afraid to tell me all."
"I do not fear," declared the peasant. "What could be done to me? Might my life be taken? I am over eighty-five, a dry trunk awaiting the ax. An open grave already yawns for me. The apparition, your Royal Highness, was a beautiful creature and, excepting the dress, like the figure of the archangel Raphael in the parish church. For this reason and in order to set my conscience at rest, I consulted our priest, but he, not daring to give advice, sent me to the bishop, by whom I was told that I related only delusions. I then resolved to keep silent, but the spectre came again, pale, terrible, saying, 'Martin! Martin!' 'Twas night and I in my cot, but, in spite of the late hour, I seized my pouch and staff and, begging my bread along the roadside, journeyed to Paris."
"Go on, go on—The king awaits Martin's revelations."
"Martin's revelations? Here is one, your Royal Highness: The throne is usurped."
"I do not follow your line of reason. Do you mean that there are two kings?" inquired the Bourbon, laughing and remembering Lecazes back of the screen. "Did not my brother die and his son also? Am I not, therefore, the heir to the throne?"
"Your Royal Highness, the apparition giving warning that you should say these words to me, bade me reply: 'All the dead are not in their tombs.'"
The effect of these words upon the king was like a blow from an invisible power and he would have started from his chair had his bandaged legs permitted. But disabled as he was, he half raised himself, his hands cleaved the air and his pupils dilated while his face grew crimson.
"Does your Royal Highness require proofs of what I say?" exclaimed the old man, his green eyes darting fire. "Well, then, listen. I will reveal to you a secret thought which you have never imparted to man. Does your Royal Highness remember the morning when you accompanied his late Majesty to the chase and the fearful temptation which assailed you in the woods of Saint Humbert? The king was a dozen steps ahead of you. Your finger was already on the trigger. A branch impeded your arm—"
The alarmed monarch held his throbbing head in his hands while the merciless indictment grew more and more ominous.
"From your earliest years you coveted the throne. The ill-fated king was the obstacle and you sought to remove him. Unremitting were your fratricidal schemes. You scrupled not to encourage the discontented and to instigate the seditious. What obloquy to have made pacts with the violators of the crown and compromises with the destroyers of churches! Providence permitting, the monarchy would perish. It shall perish! I am chosen to announce its fall. Not through the sword of an enemy but by its own hand shall it come to its end."
The screen seemed to move and a rushing was audible, but the king remained silent, terrified and incapable of speech or motion.
"Your cousin, the Duke of Orleans, interposed between your Royal Highness and your partisans. Another crime,—was it? You continued to plot the destruction of your brother and the dishonor of the queen. Does your Royal Highness remember who wrote those scurrilous verses and the words dropped at the baptism of the king's daughter? What ferocious joy the first Dauphin's death caused you! Who notified the Convention that the royal family might be detained on the frontier—the mission of Valory? To what end was Favras sacrificed? Who burned the documents? Those ashes appeal! Blood, blood has been spilled! but only the first blood. More is to follow!"
As Martin paused, the only sound to be heard in the apartment was the chattering of the king's teeth. The screen creaked repeatedly as though to suggest and to warn, but the king remained speechless and the implacable peasant resumed:
"Your Royal Highness was not brave enough to head the Revolution which you had incited. You fled, notwithstanding your offer to your august brother to share his fate. While abroad, you disregarded his orders and intrigued for the foreign invasion of your country and for the erection of your brother's scaffold. Have you forgotten the king's letter to the Prince of Condé? He disclaimed all responsibility for the invasion. 'Let there be no war!' he entreated 'Behead me rather.' But there was war and his head fell besides. Oh the blood!—in pools, in puddles, in the air, on the guillotine! a deluge of blood,—reeking, sickening, revolting! Do you not see it now? Look! It trickles from the ceiling and stains these walls!"
With frenzied indignation the old man continued to gaze at a vision that no other eyes beheld. His arm was thrust forward and his forefinger almost touched the king's forehead.
"The wretched queen, bleeding and headless, speaks through me. Listen to her, shrieking 'Cain, Cain!'"
The screen creaked as though animated by furious protests and the king remonstrated with what strength he could muster, while the affrighted dog barked timidly and hid himself in the bearskin under his master's bandaged feet.
"For a time the crime was sterile and the Corsican star lighted the French sky. During that period the innocent boy lived concealed, unknown. Your Royal Highness was the hope of many who were ignorant of the boy's existence. I placed faith in you. We believed that the feet of the Corsican colossus were of clay and must soon sink into the earth. And they did sink. Your Royal Highness seized the crown. But why do you even today contrive pitfalls for the orphaned heir and place arms in the hands of the iniquitous?"
The king, with folded and almost supplicating hands, seemed like a criminal imploring clemency, while tremors shook his head and convulsive breathing agitated his breast. Martin suddenly changed his attitude of pitiless accuser and dropped on his knees, saying gently:
"The archangel declares that it is not yet too late for repentance, but that the time is brief and fleeting. Oh, your Highness, I adjure you to refrain from being anointed. Let not the oil from the holy vials be poured sacrilegiously upon your head. Dare not desecrate the sacred altars by requiem masses for those who have not yet died! No crime is so great as profanation. The tree is accursed, and it shall be uprooted!"
In a prophetic frenzy, he continued:
"It shall be swept away! It shall perish! Uprooted in Italy, uprooted in Spain, uprooted shall it be in France and everywhere!—The canker spreads, rises from limbs to heart—The corroded flesh—Pray God for mercy!"
The king no longer listened. His head fell upon the back of his chair, his face became purple and foam covered his lips as he lay a victim to syncope, which at times overcame him. Martin turned and addressed the screen.
"Concealed fox, come to your master's aid." And slowly he walked toward the door while the baron, in a panic ran to unfasten the monarch's neckpiece and fan him with a music sheet. Louis XVIII opened his terror-stricken eyes and stammered:
"Let the man go in peace. See that no harm is done him."