Robert Tournay: A Romance of the French Revolution

by William Sage

Colonel Robert Tournay of the Republican army sat over his coffee in the café of the "Bon Patriot" one December morning in the year 1793 of the Gregorian Calendar, and the year 2 of the French Republic.

The four years that had passed since the July afternoon, when he first entered Paris through the southern gate, had been full of stirring events in which Tournay had taken such an active part as to make the time equal to many years of an ordinary lifetime,—years which had drawn lines upon his forehead that are not usual upon the brow of twenty-six. His figure was considerably heavier, but even more elastic and muscular, telling of a life of constant bodily exercise.

Shortly after his return to Paris from Versailles on the eventful day when the Demoiselle de la Liberté, accompanied by her forty thousand, brought the baker and his family back to their people, Tournay had enrolled himself in the National Guard to protect Paris and the country against foreign invasion.

From Paris to the army at the front was the next step, where he served with such bravery as to gain promotion to his present rank. Promotions were rapid in those days, and men rose from the lowest social ranks to the highest military positions, if they proved their fitness by valor and ability.

By the winter of '93 Tournay had won the shoulder-straps of a colonel, and had now been sent to Paris by General Hoche with dispatches to the National Convention. His dispatches had been delivered and he was waiting impatiently for the reply which he was to take back to the front. More than eighteen months had passed since he had been in Paris, and the scenes in the city streets had a new charm for him. It was with a feeling of pride that he looked out from the windows of the "Bon Patriot" and saw the active, bustling crowds on the boulevards and realized that the Republic was an accomplished fact and that he had done his part toward creating it. And yet there was some sadness mingled with his pride. Although an ardent Republican he could not sympathize in all the horrors of the Revolution,—indeed he had been greatly shocked by them. Yet his long absence from Paris had prevented him from witnessing the worst phases of the reign of terror, and thus he could not fully realize them. He was, moreover, first of all, a man of the people. He had resented from childhood the cruelty and oppressions under which they had suffered, and his joy at the abolition of unjust laws, his pride in the assertion of equality for all men, overweighed his regret for the bloodshed that had accompanied the triumph of their cause and the gaining of the Republic.

Sitting over his coffee, he recalled his early life at La Thierry. Since the day of his flight, he had never returned there, and with the exception of an annual letter from his father, who although a Royalist could not quite make up his mind to cast off his only son, he had no communication with the inhabitants of the château. From these occasional and brief epistles he had learned that the Baron de Rochefort had gone to England almost at the outbreak of the Revolution. In a more roundabout way he learned the cause of the baron's departure to be a secret mission to the Court of St. James on behalf of the tottering French monarchy. The mission had come to naught; the baron had fallen ill in London and died there a few months after his arrival.

Edmé, his only child, was therefore left at La Thierry, where she lived in great seclusion, with Matthieu Tournay still in faithful attendance. The marriage with the Marquis de Lacheville had never taken place. As the Revolution progressed and the de Rochefort fortune dwindled, the marquis's ardor, never at glowing heat, cooled perceptibly, and during the past two years nothing had been heard of him at the château. It was thought that he had either gone abroad or was living in seclusion in Paris.

Tournay had sometimes felt a little anxious as to the safety of Mademoiselle Edmé and his father, but the letters he received from old Matthieu were reassuring, and as the place was a secluded one and the family not known to have shared actively in the royalist cause, his anxieties had for some time been allayed and he thought of them now as likely to escape suspicion and to remain there in quiet obscurity.

Tournay was roused from his reverie by the conversation of two men at an adjoining table, or, more strictly speaking, a man and a boy, for the younger was not over seventeen years of age. His face was quite innocent of any beard. On his yellow curls he wore the red nightcap of the Jacobins and his belt was an arsenal of knives and pistols. Taking up a glass of beer he blew off the froth with a quick puff of the lips.

"Thus would I blow off the heads of all kings," he said in a voice that courted attention; "I give you a toast, comrade: death to every tyrant in Europe."