LXXVI
Juliette had not gone to bed, this snowy night of the Noël. She had said her Rosary and waited until the Christmas carillon. Then she knelt and prayed for her own pardon, for light and guidance, for a blessing upon those living friends she held most dear, for the souls of the beloved departed. And then she had waited, pacing solitary in her bedroom or sitting by her fire, for the sound of Breagh's return.
Madame Potier had gone to the Midnight Mass at the Cathedral. There would be crowds of communicants—she might not reach home before three. And in her absence had Juliette wished to sleep, sleep would have been banished by the sounds of revelry going on in the regions belowstairs.
Those first shouts for the Kaiser had been followed by others for the Chancellor. Even in her remote eyrie she could hear the clinking of glasses and the popping of corks. Then after a wild outburst of cheering she had seen, peeping between the frost flowers on her window into the snowy, moonlit garden, the great figure in the white Cuirassier cloak move down the path between the snow-laden trees.
She was possessed by a great sense of loneliness, and a vague unreal sensation of living somebody else's life, and not the life proper of Juliette Bayard. She locked her door and built up the fire to a cheerful hearth blaze, and sat upon the rug in her white dressing gown, combing and brushing her glorious hair.
Never again need those superb waves of jet-black spun silk be confined in the chenille net of Madame Charles Tessier. One could be charming if one chose—there was no grim reason for being ugly, thought Mademoiselle, as she brushed and brushed....
What was that?
So strange a sound from below that she dropped comb and hairbrush and sprang to her feet quivering.... She had heard such a groan uttered when the lance of the Uhlan had plunged through the body of my Cousin Boisset....
Again! ... the sound of a door thrust violently open. Heavy footsteps thudded on the gaslit landing of the next floor, and a muffled voice cried out as though for help.
A man's voice.... Again it cried. No voice sounded in answer. She unlocked her door, and set her foot upon the stairs.
A few steps down.... Then she saw him, the tottering giant with the distorted, blue face, and the open mouth that trickled with saliva and blood. What had befallen Juliette's enemy and France's pitiless oppressor? His huge staring eyes were fixed on her. Tears rolled from them as the deep groans issued from his gaping mouth and his broad chest heaved and labored vainly for air.
"Choking! Help!" his gesture seemed to say to her, and a terrible shudder convulsed her as the huge body crashed down prone at her feet.
With a strange mingling of pity and aversion she knelt down beside him and looked at him closely by the light of the flaring gas jet that illuminated the landing and stairs.
He had turned a little in falling. His blackening face and staring, agonized eyes spoke to his desperate condition.... What was to be done?... The obstruction in the throat must be removed somehow.... She rose up and went into the empty room upon her left hand, and felt in the darkness for the bell. There was none. The bell rope had been pulled down by the hand of the Minister, for this was the torture chamber, where M. Thiers underwent his periodical ordeal of thumbscrew and rack.
Air.... He must have fresh air. She desperately flung both the windows open, admitting a gush of piercing cold. He still groaned, but more faintly. The man was dying. Was not this the Judgment of Heaven?
In the hour of his triumph the sword had fallen. France would be saved—there would be no bombardment of Paris if the enemy were to die to-night. This she told herself, standing in the sharp draught from the open windows, and knew a thrill of intolerable triumph, thinking:
"Our Lord has delivered him into hands as weak as mine!"
Ting!...
Her heart leaped and stood still. She looked breathlessly from the window. Along the middle of the snowy Rue de Provence, where pedestrians must walk to avoid the dangers of the frozen sideways, a lantern moved, carried by a squat, muffled shape. A taller figure followed, moving steadily.
Ting-ting-ting!...
A shock and thrill of mingled awe and terror passed through her. To some dying Catholic, saint or sinner, in the dawn of this day of the Christ-birth, the Body of the Virgin-born was being conveyed.... Was it not to aid a soul in dire temptation—two souls, it might be—that He had bidden His minister pass this way?
She bent the knee and made the Sign of the Cross, trembling, then rose and sped back to the suffocating man. With a strength that she could not have believed herself possessed of, she raised his discolored head upon her lap.... His great jaws were wide open. She thrust the tiny hand within them. Shuddering, sickening, she probed with her slender fingers, thrusting them down into the contracting, gulping throat.
Something bright projected beneath the swollen uvula, wedged firmly into the membrane, blocking the orifice of the trachea. She nipped the projecting end in the little fingers and pulled. It yielded. He gave a gulp of relief. As the big teeth snapped together, she plucked the little hand from peril, bringing with it the broken silver pin.