The Hero of the People 15 – Williams · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The Hero of the People 15The Man with the Model
18
Literature · Romance
The Hero of the People 15
The Man with the Model
WilliamsEnglish
With no need to be spurred in his quest, Gilbert darted through the rooms and as it would have taken too long to climb the walls, he made for the front door, which he opened himself and bounded out on the street.
Knowing Paris intimately, he reached the spot indicated by Andrea in her vision without delay and his first question to a storekeeper, who had witnessed the accident to the boy, confirmed the statement.
He proceeded straightway to the door in the alley, and knocked.
“Who knocks?” challenged a woman’s voice.
“I, the father of the wounded child whom you succored,” replied the knocker.
“Open, Albertine,” said a man’s voice: “it is Dr. Gilbert.”
He was let into a cellar, or rather cavern, down some moldering steps, lighted by a lamp set on the table cumbered with printed papers, books and manuscripts as Andrea had described.
In the shadow, and on a mattress, young Gilbert lay, but held out his arms to his father, calling him. However powerful the philosophical command in Gilbert, paternal love overruled decorum, and he sprang to the boy whom he pressed to his breast, with care not to hurt his bruised chest or his cut arm. After a long, fond kiss, he turned to thank the good Samaritan. He was standing with his feet far apart, one hand on the table, the other on his hip, lit by the lamp of which he had removed the shade the better to illumine the scene.
“Look, Albertine,” said he, “and with me thank the chance enabling me to do a good turn for one of my brothers.”
The speaker was a green and sallow man, like one of those country clowns whom Latona’s wrath pursued and who was turning to a frog. Gilbert shuddered, thinking that he had seen this abortion before as through a sheet of blood.
He drew nearer to Sebastian and hugged him once more. But triumphing over his first impulse, he went back to the strange man who had so appalled Andrea in the second-sight vision, and said:
“Receive all the thanks of a father, sir, for having preserved his son: they are sincere and come right from his heart.”
“I have merely done my duty as prescribed by nature and recommended by science,” replied the other. “I am a man, and as Terence says, nothing human is foreign to me; besides, I have a tender heart, and cannot see even an insect suffer; consequently still less my fellow man.”
“May I learn to what fervent philanthropist I have the honor to speak?”
“Do you not know your brother-physician?” said the surgeon, laughing in what he wanted to seem benevolence though it was ghastly. “I know you, Dr. Gilbert, the friend of the American patriots, and of Lafayette!” He laid peculiar stress on this name. “The republican of America and France, the honorable Utopist who has written magnificent articles on constitutional government, which you sent to Louis XVI. from the States, and for which he lodged you in the Bastile, the moment you touched French soil. You wanted to save him by clearing the road to the future, and he opened that into jail--regular royal gratitude!”
He laughed again, this time terribly and threateningly.
“If you know me it is a farther reason for me to insist on learning to whom I am indebted.”
“Oh, it is a long while since we made acquaintance,” said the surgeon. “Twenty years, sir, on the dreadful night of the thirtieth of May, 1770; the night when the fireworks exploded by accident among the people in the Paris square, and injured and killed many who came to rejoice over the wedding of the Archduchess and our Prince Royal, but who had to curse their names. You were but a boy whom Rousseau brought to me, wounded and crushed almost to death, and I bled you on a board amid the dead and the cut-off limbs. Yet that awful night is a pleasant memory to me for I was able to save many existences by my steel knowing where to dissever to preserve life and where to cut to spare pain.”
“You are Jean Paul Marat, then,” cried Gilbert, falling back a step despite himself.
“Mark, Albertine, that my name makes some effect,” said Marat with a sinister laugh.
“But I thought you were physician to Count Artois; why are you in this cave, why lighted by this smoky lamp?”
“I was the Prince’s veterinary surgeon, you mean. But he emigrated? no prince, no stables; no stables, no vet. Besides, I gave in my resignation, for I would no longer serve the tyrants.”
The dwarf drew himself up to the full extent of his form.
“But, in short, why are you in this hole?”
“Because, Master Philosopher, I am a sound patriot writing to decry the ambitious; Bailly fears me, Necker detests me, and Lafayette sets the National Guard on to hunt me down and has put a price on my head--the aspiring dictator! but I brave him! out of my hole, I pursue him, and denounce the Caesar. Do you know what he has done? He has had fifteen thousand snuffboxes made with his portrait on them, which hides some trick. So I entreat all good citizens to smash them when found. It is the rallying sign for the great Royalist Plot, for you cannot be ignorant that Lafayette is conspiring with the Queen while poor Louis is blubbering scalding tears over the blunders the Austrian is leading him into.
“The Queen,” said Gilbert pensively.
“Yes; don’t tell me that she is not plotting: lately she gave away so many white cockades that white ribbon went away up in the market. It is a fact, for I had it from one of the workgirls of Bertin the dressmaker, her Prime Minister in Fashions, who used to say: ‘I have been discussing matters this morning with her Majesty.'”
“And how do you denounce such things?” inquired the doctor.
“In my newspaper, the one I have just started, twenty numbers having appeared. It is ‘The Friend of the people or the Parisian Publicist,’ an impartial political organ. To pay for the paper and the printing--look behind you--I have sold the sheets and blankets off my bed.”
Turning, Gilbert indeed saw that Sebastian lay on the mattress absolutely bare, but he had fallen asleep, overcome with pain and fatigue. He went up to him to see that it was not a swoon, but reassured by the regular breathing he, returned to this journalist, who irresistibly inspired him with the interest we feel for a hyena, tiger or other wild beast.
“Who help you in this gigantic work?” he inquired.
“My staff?” sneered Marat. “Ha, ha, ha! the geese fly in files: the eagle soars alone. My helpers are these,” and he showed his head and hands. “I write the whole paper single handed--I can show you the copy, though it runs into sixteen pages octavo sometimes, and often I use small type though I commenced with large. So, it is not merely a newspaper--but a personality--it is Marat!”
“Enormous labor--how do you manage it?” asked the other doctor.
“It is the secret of nature--a compact I have made with death. I have given ten years of my life, so that I need no rest by day and no sleep by night. My existence is summed up in writing: I do it day and night. Lafayette’s police coop me up in this cell, where they chain me body and soul to my work: they have doubled my activity. It was heavy on me at first but I am inured to it. It delights me now to see poor humanity through this airhole, by the narrow and slanting beam. From my gloomy den I judge mankind living, and science and politics without appeal. With one hand I demolish the savants, with the other the politicians. I shall upset the whole state of things, like Samson destroying the Temple, and under the ruins perhaps crushing me, I shall bury the throne!”
In spite of himself the hearer shuddered: in his rags and the poverty-stricken vault this man repeated very nearly what Cagliostro had said in his palace under his embroidered clothes.
“But when you are so popular, why do you not try for a nomination in the National Assembly?” he asked.
“Because the day has not come for that,” replied the demagogue; expressing his regret, he continued, “Oh, were I a tribune of the masses, sustained by only a few thousand of determined men, I answer for the Constitution being perfectly safe in six weeks: the political machine should move better: no villain would dare play ticks with it: the Nation should be free and happy: in less than a year, it should be flourishing and redoubtable: and thus would it remain while I was erect.”
The vain creature was transformed under Gilbert’s eyes: his eyes became bloodshot; his yellow skin shone with sweat; the monster became great in his hideousness as another is grand in his beauty.
“Yes, but I am not a representative,” he proceeded, resuming his train of ideas from where he had interrupted himself: “I have not the thousands of followers. No, but I am a journalist, and have my weapons and ammunition, my subscribers and readers, for whom I am an oracle, a prophet and a diviner. I have my following for whom I am a friend, and I lead them on, trembling, from treachery to treachery, discovery to discovery, from one dreadful thing to another. In the first number of The Friend of the People, I denounced the upper classes saying that there were six hundred guilty wretches in France and that number of ropes-ends would do the job: but I made a mistake, ha, ha! The deeds of the fifth and sixth of October opened my eyes and I see that we must hang twenty thousand of the patricians.”
Gilbert smiled, for fury elevated to this point, seemed madness to him.
“Why, there is not enough hemp in France to do this work, and rope would go up in price,” he said.
“That is why I am looking round for some other means,” returned Marat, “more expeditious and novel. Do you know whom I expect this evening? one of our brother medicos, a member of the National Assembly whom you must know by name, Dr. Guillotin----“
“The one who moved that the Assembly, expelled from the Session Hall at Versailles, should meet in the Tennis Court a learned man?”
“Do you know what this able citizen has discovered? a marvellous machine which kills without pain, for death must be punishment not torture; he has invented it and we shall try it one of these mornings.”
Gilbert started: this was the second time that this brother Invisible reminded him of the Chief, Cagliostro; no doubt this death-machine was the same he had spoken of.
“But you are lucky--a knock! it is he. Run and open the door, Albertine.”
The hag, who was the wife--rather the female mate of Marat--rose from the stool on which she was squatting, and staggered half asleep towards the door.
Giddy with terror, Gilbert went instinctively towards Sebastian, ready to take him in his arms and flee.
“Just think of an automatic executioner,” said Marat, enthusiastically, “with no need of a man to set it going; which can, if the knife is changed a couple of times, cut off three hundred heads a-day!”
“And add,” said a bland, melodious voice, behind Marat, “which can cut off these heads without other sensation than a slight coolness around the neck.”
“Oh, is this you, doctor?” exclaimed Marat, turning towards a dapper little man of forty or so, whose gentle demeanor and spruce dress made a marked contrast with his host: in his hand he carried a small box such as children’s toys are kept in. “What are you bringing us?”
“A model of my machine, my dear Marat. But I see Dr. Gilbert here, unless I mistake,” said the little dandy, trying to pierce the obscurity.
“The same, sir,” said the other visitor bowing.
“Enchanted to meet you, sir; you are only too welcome, and I shall be happy to have the opinion of so distinguished a man on my invention. I must tell you, my dear Marat, that I have found a skillful carpenter, named Guidon, to make my machine on the working scale. He is dear, though, wanting five thousand five hundred francs; but no sacrifice is too great for me to make for humanity. In two months it will be built, and we can try it: I shall propose it to the Assembly. I hope you will approve of it in your excellent new paper, though, in sober earnest, the machine recommends itself, as you will see with your own eyes, Dr. Gilbert. But a few lines in the People’s Friend will do no harm.”
“Be easy on that score; it is not a few lines but a whole number that I shall dedicate to it.”
“You are too good, Marat; but I am not going to let you puff a pig in a poke.”
He took out of his pocket a much smaller box, in which a sound indicated that some little live thing or several such were fidgeting in their prison. This noise did not escape Marat’s subtle hearing.
“What have you got there?” he asked, putting out his hand towards the box.
“Mind,” said the doctor, drawing it back, “do not let them escape as we could not catch them again; they are mice whose heads we are going to nick off with the machine. What, are you going to leave us, Dr. Gilbert?”
“Alas, yes, sir, to my great regret; but my son, wounded by being run over by a horse just now, has been relieved by Friend Marat, to whom I also owe my own life in an almost similar affair. I have to thank him again. The boy needs a fresh bed, cares and repose: so that I cannot witness your interesting experiment.”
“But you will come and see the one with the real machine, in two months, you promise, doctor?”
“I pledge my word.”
“Doctor,” said Marat, “I need not say, keep my abode secret. If your friend Lafayette were to discover it he would have me shot like a dog, or hung like a thief.”
“Shooting, hanging,” exclaimed Guillotin. “But we shall put an end to these cannibal deaths. We shall have a death, soft, easy, instantaneous, such as old people, disgusted with their life and wishful to pass away like sages and philosophers, will prefer to a natural one. Come and see how it works, Marat!”
And without troubling any farther about Dr. Gilbert, the enthusiast opened his larger box and began to set up on the table a model apparatus which the surgeon regarded with curiosity equal to his enthusiasm.
Gilbert profited by their being so engaged, to carry away Sebastian, guided by Albertine who fastened up the outer door after him.
Once in the street, he felt the night wind chill the perspiration gathered on his brow.
“Heavens,” he muttered, “what will happen to a city where the cellars perhaps hide five hundred lovers of mankind who are occupied with such work as we have a sample of there? one day they will perform in broad daylight before the crowd.”
It was little distance to his house in St. Honore Street.
The cold revived Sebastian but his father would not let him walk. When he knocked at his door, a heavy step was heard approaching.
“Is that you, Dr. Gilbert?” challenged one within.
“That is Pitou’s voice,” said the boy.
“Praise heaven, Sebastian is found,” shouted Pitou on opening the door. “Master Billet,” he shouted still more loudly, “Sebastian is found, and all right, I hope, doctor?”
“Without any serious hurt, anyway,” replied the other, “Come, Sebastian.”
He carried his son up to his bed.
Pitou followed with the light; by his mud-bespattered shoes and stockings it was plain that he had come a long journey.
Indeed, after taking the broken-hearted Catherine home and learning from her lips that her deep sorrow came from Isidore Charny being called away to Paris, he took leave of her and Mother Billet, weeping by her bedside, and went home to Haramont. He walked so slowly that he did not get there until daybreak.
He fell off to sleep so that it was not till he awoke, that he found the youth’s letter. Immediately he started to overtake him.
He girded up with a leather strap, took some bread and with a walking stick in his fist, proceeded to town, where he arrived at eight that night.
He found neither the doctor nor his son at home--only Farmer Billet.
This hearty, robust man, unnerved by the bloody scenes witnessed since the Taking of the Bastile, of which enterprise he was the leader, had no news for Pitou.
Their sad waiting was rewarded by the double arrival.
Though tranquil about Sebastian, Pitou, when sent to bed had his budget to unfold to the farmer. Let no reader think that he revealed Catherine’s secrets and spoke of her amour with the young noble. The honest soul of the Commander of the Haramont National Guard would not stoop to that story. But he told Billet that the harvest was bad, the barley a failure, part of the wheat wind-laid, and the barns but a third full--and that he had found Catherine on the road.
Billet was little vexed about the grain, but the illness of his daughter distressed him.
He ran to Dr. Gilbert with a sad face as the latter was finishing this note to Andrea: “Be of good heart; the child is found, with no one hurt.”
“Dr. Gilbert, you were right to retain me in town where I might be useful; but everything has been going wrong in the country while the good man is away.”
Gilbert agreed with his friend that a hearty buxom girl like Catherine should not faint on the public road. Feeling with a parent, he responded:
“Go home, my dear Billet, since land and family call you. But do not forget that I shall claim you in the name of the country.”
Thus Billet returned home after an absence of three months, although he had intended to be away only a week.
Pitou followed him, bearing twenty-five louis destined from Gilbert for the equipment and maintenance of the Haramont National Guard.
