[Chapter XI]
FERDINAND'S FATE
Two days later a tumultuous carnival animated Paris. Crowds jostled each other in the streets and gazed upon the procession of the Bull crowned with flowers and the triumphal car freighted with maidens in gala clothes and singing their applause. One of these maidens, a Versailles laundress, was a shining mark, by reason of the brilliancy of her complexion and the gleaming of her hair. On passing the Gate of Saint-Denis, seeing a small man of puny frame and bilious skin she called merrily out to him:
"Hello, Louis Pierre, old owl, de profundis face, don't you want to sup tonight with some happy people at the Inn Mariscale?"
The masks and students near laughed to split their throats, and the interrogated man hastened to conceal himself amid the crowd. He took refuge in his lodgings and devoured his dinner with an almost savage hunger, a strange action, for he was usually abstemious. Then he went out again and mingled with the crowd. He leaned against the glass windows of the royal theatre and watched the brilliant concourse within. A great festival was in progress. The program announced the "Carnival of Venice" and "The Marriage of Camacho." Carriages rolled, torches gleamed, the crowd surged. The Court was arriving. Louis Pierre felt his head swim. "Now, now!" a voice seemed mockingly to whisper. But in spite of the mandate, he remained inert. Action refused to travel from brain to hands.
"What ails me?" he asked himself. "Is it fear? Is it that I should not? Am I about to perpetrate an act of justice or a crime? Have not my warnings remained unheeded? I could do no more than I have done, unless, indeed, I should deliver myself into their hands—"
While thus he vacillated, Prince Ferdinand and his wife the Princess Caroline descended from their carriage and entered the theatre.
"Another opportunity lost! Vacillations, scruples, absurd perplexities, culpable weaknesses! Have not these people given entrance to the Cossacks and oppressed and rifled the innocent Naundorff? De Brezé's blood cries for vengeance. This besotted city steeped in a Carnival orgie! What is the Association doing? The Knights seem to sleep on their arms. But Brutus keeps vigil—. Notwithstanding my numerous letters, they have set no watch on me. 'Tis that Destiny protects me. I was born to put my project into execution.—Let us wait, and then—the ax to the trunk."
He walked away objectless through the royal gardens, stumbling at every moment upon groups who sang bacchanalian refrains and prurient couplets from Beranger. Women, with painted faces wearing flowers and greens, flung cynical jests in his face. A drunkard insulted him. He heeded nothing, thirsting only for the fresh night air, which in his feverish condition he inhaled voraciously. Incoherent words rumbling through his brain seemed to urge him to the deed.