[CHAPTER XLVIII]
SISTERS DEATH AND TRUTH
At a second-story window, in an unpretentious part of the Rue St. Honoré—known just then as the Rue Honoré, for the saints had been abolished, together with the terrestrial aristocracy—a young woman was sitting one late July afternoon employed in sewing. She was pale, thin, and poorly clad. Her fingers were very nervous as she hurried on with her work.
For three years the surges of the Revolutionary deluge had succeeded one another with ever-increasing rapidity, and at last threatened to swallow the entire inhabitants of the city. "The generation which saw the monarchical régime will always regret it," Robespierre was crying, "therefore every individual who was more than fifteen years old in 1789 should have his throat cut." "Away with the nobles!" was shouting another vicious leader, "and if there are any good ones so much the worse for them. Let the guillotine work incessantly through the whole Republic. France has nineteen millions too many inhabitants, she will have enough with five." "Milk is the nourishment of infants," announced another; "blood is that of the children of liberty."
The new doctrine was not merely being shouted; it was being carried into practice as fast as the executioner could work, and sometimes in a single afternoon the life-stream of two hundred hearts gushed out through two hundred severed necks on the Place de la Révolution. The King, and at last the Queen, were among the slaughtered. None knew but that his or her turn, or that of his dearest ones might come next. A too respectable dress, a thoughtless expression, the malice of an extortionate workman, or the offending of a servant, meant death. Even the wickedest were betrayed by their associates to the Goddess of Blood, and citizens, as they hurried along the deserted and filthy streets, looked at each other with suspicious eyes. On the throne of France's ancient sovereigns sat a shadowy monarch from hell, and all recognised his name and reign—The Reign of Terror.
In the midst of that thunder-fraught atmosphere sat this poor girl, mechanically glancing down the street from time to time at the silent houses, each with the legal paper affixed stating the names of the inmates, for the information of the revolutionary committees.
Her bearing, though humble, announced her as one of the hated class, and by scrutinising her thin features we see that she is "the Citizeness Montmorency, heretofore Baroness."
She was absorbed in thought. Recollections, one by one, of the changes which had made her an old woman in experience at the age when most maidens become brides, were crossing her mind. She recalled the alarming news brought to the Hôtel de Noailles of the march of the viragoes on Versailles, and with that news her suspense for the safety of Germain; the entry of General Lafayette (who was married to a Noailles) into the hotel towards morning, smilingly assuring the family that all was well; her agony upon word of the attack on the royal apartments; the deadly illness of Germain at the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital, whither some National Guards had taken him; the pauper bed and gown in which the Sisters of the Hospital kept him hidden from the roused populace who searched the wards for him; her own assumption of the humble dress of a servitor to nurse him; his pretended death and burial by substitute; his long delirium, her joy at his return to life; his gratitude and convalescence; the forced dispersal of the Sisters, and with it her removal of her charge to the half-deserted Hôtel de Poix; the mob sacking mansion after mansion around them and their inexplicable exemption; an anonymous warning at length to flee, and the subterfuges of Dominique to cover their removal to the present house.
She thought also of the faithfulness of Germain to the King throughout his misfortunes, and how in order to be ready for service in case of a royalist opportunity, he had refused even her own entreaties to flee.
And sewing on and looking with habitual apprehension down the street, she thought of the blanks in the old circle—sadly, but without tears, for she had grown beyond tears over memories, so often had she been called to shed them for events.