ACT I.
“Balthazar,” said a fine-looking lad in the prison of Orléans, “you are a brute!”
By way of reply to this testimonial to character, the gaoler struck the boy with his heavy bunch of keys on the head. The blow sent young Edmond staggering against the wall. He recovered himself, however, and dauntlessly repeated—
“Balthazar, you are nothing better than a brute!”
And Edmond Thierry was right. Balthazar was not only a brutal gaoler, but he took delight in his vocation. He had abandoned the honest calling of a “marbrier,” to take upon him the duties of guarding the victims whom Republican suspicion had consigned to captivity, and whom it destined to death. There is no doubt but that Balthazar was a brute.
But brute as he was, his prisoners despised him. They endured, but they defied him. His hand might smite, but his ferocity could not subdue them. They would be happy, and their determination only rendered him the more ferocious. From the old Briton gentleman, Pantin de la Guerre, to little Edmond Thierry, there was not one whom he would not daily cuff, and cuff all the harder from the conviction that they dared not, for their lives, strike again an officer of the Republic, one and indivisible.
Balthazar then was incontestably a brute; and young Thierry had just told him so, for the third time, when the youthful Madame de Charry opened the door of her cell and entered the gallery. The latter was secured at either end by an iron grating, which was always locked; but the cells themselves, twelve in number, with three or four occupants in each, were barred and fastened only at night. The “citizens” inhabiting them were untried aristocrats; and until the law condemned them to death, they were allowed the liberty of an obscure gallery, from which they could not by any means escape to freedom.
The proud beauty who, albeit so young, had been some months a widow, was passing on her way to an adjacent cell, but she paused for an instant to kiss young Edmond on the brow, and to address some words of remonstrance to Balthazar touching his treatment of the little King of the Gallery, as Thierry was called.
“May our holy mother the guillotine hug him as she did our other king, Capet!” said Balthazar. “The little reptile taunted me, because his father has escaped from Amiens and reached England; and he refused, moreover, to carry the pretty message I gave him from the public accuser, and addressed to you, citoyenne.”
The boy’s eyes filled with tears. They sprang, like the twin fountains of Benasji, from a divided source. Joy sent them gushing at the thought of his father’s escape; and sorrow paid its tribute at the peril which was then threatening his good friend, Madame de Charry.
That lady loosened her bracelet, readjusted it on her marble arm, and asked, as she did so, what the public accuser could possibly have to say to her.
“Ah! ah!” roared Balthazar, the brute; “he invites you to honour the tribunal with your presence tonight; and the faucheuse with the broad knife will send you an invitation to another party tomorrow.”
“Be it so,” said the young beauty, without apparent emotion. “In the meantime, vive le Roi! And now, my little King Edmond, let us leave citizen Balthazar to his reflections, and come with me to the soirée of Madame de Bohun.”
“They will cut off your head!” cried Balthazar, with a candour meant for cruelty.
“They!” said the lady, with great sweetness; “not if they are gallant gentlemen. They will be the very canaille of butchers indeed, if they strike off so pretty a head as mine: n’est-ce pas, mon roi?” said she to Edmond.
But the boy’s heart was too full to answer, for he loved the charming Stoic of Orléans. His courage, however, was not buried beneath his emotion; for as he entered the cell of the Countess de Bohun, he turned and gave the huge Balthazar a kick on the right shin, which made the tall savage turn pale. The giant vowed vengeance at a better opportunity, and he limped away to his kennel, cursing the authorities for keeping alive a Royalist child at the expense of the Republic, and for the particular annoyance of their own citoyen officiel.
It was a singular world that, which Balthazar held in durance within his stronghold of Orléans. It was an aristocratic, pleasure-seeking world: within one confined gallery all the pomps and vanities of the earth,—all the weaknesses of nature,—all the vices and some of the virtues of humanity reigned triumphant. The sword of Damocles hung over every head, but the symbol was taken for the oriflamme of pleasure. The fashions and pursuits of the old world were not forgotten within the prison walls. The rich arranged their domiciles with as much care and anxiety as though the boudoirs they fitted up in their dungeons were taken for a fixed term of years, instead of an uncertain tenure of minutes. Fashion had its rigid laws, Etiquette was enshrined, and Ennui denounced. The duties, dresses, and pleasures of the day were distinctly defined; and the duties generally consisted in getting ready the dresses for the better enjoyment of the pleasures. The separation of castes was rigorously observed, and common misfortune was not permitted to level ranks; the noble captive might be courteous to the commoner in captivity, but he would not associate with him. The wife of a noble would not visit the cell which contained the spouse of a professional man. During the day visits were not only regularly made between parties of the same degree, but were punctually returned; else discord arose thereat. Contests at chess, trials at cards, games at forfeits, shuttlecock, and ball, were matters of daily occurrence during the days, weeks, or months that preceded condemnation or enlargement. The high-caste nobility got up pic-nic dinners amongst themselves. Those who were of the very top cream of even that high caste found tea for large parties. Music was no rarity; singing awoke the echoes of every cell. In short, the habits, customs, manners, morals, frivolities, fashions, and virtues of the upper classes were openly practised. The greatest care was exhibited in matters of toilet. As republican simplicity grew more republican and more simple without, aristocratic fashions waxed more royal and more sumptuous within. A head after the fashion of Brutus, was never seen upon noble shoulders. Among the ladies there was a mania for flowers, feathers, and many-coloured ribbons. Some wore their own hair, and some wore wigs, but in either case the hair was curled and powdered, and the fair wearer was rouged, Spanish-whitened (where blanc d’Espagne was to be procured), pencilled, and plastered into all the beauty that could be achieved by burying her own beneath poisonous paint, black-lead, and adhesive mouches.
At Orléans the necessity for some change of air, and for taking some exercise, caused the younger people, on certain days of the week, when permitted, to have recourse to the vast courtyard of the prison. Fashion here reigned as she had been wont to do at the Tuileries. Here were given concerts al fresco; and les graces became the favourite game of the hour. It even occasionally happened—for Love, like Virtue, will make his way into strange places—that affections were aroused, and attachments between young hearts worthy of a purer locality sprang up, throwing a charm over the wearisomeness of captivity. Death stood on permanent guard, looking over the wall of that vast prison; and his gaunt, long arm often plunged into the crowd below, and dragged up a victim. But each individual there, caring little for the teaching of the past or the prospects of the future, endured and yet forgot everything. Each considered every fellow-captive exposed to death, but none was without hope for himself. Like the selfish Neapolitans, who, when they see a neighbour borne to the grave, shrug their shoulders, and cry, “Salute a noi!” so did the Orléans prisoners, on losing an old companion, bury sympathy for the departed in congratulations at their own escape.
It was early in a summer’s afternoon when Madame de Charry, with Edmond, entered the cell whose oldest occupant and recognized proprietor was the Countess de Bohun, a lady who had once borne the honoured name of De Girardin. A large party was assembled, and, save the locality, the hour, and the absence of lights, there was little to distinguish it from a party in the Chaussée d’Antin. Some were at cards, some were looking at pictures, some were circulating scandal, and a few were sipping eau sucrée, heightened as to flavour with a little capillaire. François Vouillet, the son of a chair-mender, was there playing the guitar. His poverty had not saved him from the suspicion of holding aristocratic opinions, nor had his misfortune procured for him any commiseration from the aristocrats. He attended among them as a hired musician, and he played for the dinner which he could not purchase. The appearance of the new-comers interrupted the song, for a shout of Vive le Roi hailed the arrival of Edmond, and the most courteous welcomings that of his companion. M. de Bohun, who was attired in a flannel dressing-gown, and the only individual in the cell not in full dress, advanced to Madame de Charry and gallantly kissed her on the brow.
“You are becoming Republican in your tastes,” said that exquisite lady, as she pointed to the flannel robe de chambre.
“Madame,” said the Count, laughing, “I am twice as aristocratic as the Prince de Ligne, the very quintessence of a knight and a nobleman. It is not two years since we visited him at Vienna, and he received the Countess and myself in no other dress than his shirt.”
“Oh!” exclaimed all the ladies at once.
“It is true,” exclaimed Madame de Bohun, corroboratively, “and yet short of the truth: he had one arm withdrawn from the sleeve, and within it he took my own, and led me into the apartment of his young daughter-in-law.”
It was within an hour of the evening period for locking up, when the wife of Balthazar entered the room with but scant attention to ceremony, and telling Edmond as she passed him, that she had just well-beaten her husband for his cruelty towards the “little king” of the prison, she advanced towards Madame de Charry and whispered something in her ear. With all her courage, the fair creature slightly trembled; but she arose, begged the Chevalier Fabien to play out her cards, and promised speedily to return. An inquiring look was directed to her by all the company, but she gave it no reply, either by word or gesture. She left the cell, accompanied by the gaoler’s wife, and followed by Edmond. The latter, in speechless fear, saw her descend to the courtyard between two gendarmes. The wicket was locked upon him, but from the window he beheld her rudely pushed into a building in which the revolutionary tribunal was wont to hold its bloody sittings.
The “little king” burst into tears, a weakness of which he became half-ashamed when he felt the arm of the gaoler’s wife passed round his neck, and heard words of condolence fall from the lips of the subduer of the prison tyrant.
From this period they stood in utter silence for a quarter of an hour, at the end of which time they saw Madame de Charry brought out from the building and made to enter a cart, which was driven and backed up to the steps expressly to receive her. At the sound of a broken glass and a boy’s scream, her face, pale and dignified, was turned to the window, through which Edmond had thrust his head. She smiled the sweet smile of a dying saint, and the radiancy of a martyr seemed to glow around her as she pointed to heaven, and with her eyes still fixed on the boy, uttered the words, “Espérance! Adieu!” In another moment the cart received two more victims, and, with its load of courageous misery, soon after disappeared beneath the archway that led to the exterior of the prison. Before the chimes of the cathedral had struck the next quarter, three lives had been sacrificed, and Monsieur de Fabien had just won the game with his cousin’s cards.
“Citizen Fabien!” roared the voice of Balthazar at the door of the cell.
“May I not speak a word with Madame de Charry before you lock us up for the night?” said the Chevalier.
“The Citoyenne Charry has been dead these ten minutes,” answered the brute with his usual bluntness, “and Citizen Fabien will never be locked up here again.”
“Bah!” said the Chevalier, who not only felt sick, but looked so.
“The authorities are at the door, ready to read to you the decree which discharges you from custody. The tribunal is growing tender; it has demanded but three lives today. It sees no ground for accusing you, and it has ordered the Citizen Edmond Thierry to find his way to his father,—if he can. The ungrateful villain nearly threw me on my back as I opened the wicket to set him free.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said De Fabien, who suddenly recovered both his courage and his colour, “I wish you a good night, and luck like mine. I am now eligible to the bals à la guillotine, for I have had a relative who has been beheaded.”
“Poor Madame de Charry!” exclaimed the sympathetic ladies, as the tears ran down their cheeks with laughing at the Chevalier’s drollery.
“Poor me!” said M. de Bohun, “for now Edmond is gone, who will sew on a button for me, or mend a rent in my clothes?”