The Hero of the People 21 – Williams · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The Hero of the People 21What a Cut-Off Head May Counsel
18
Literature · Romance
The Hero of the People 21
What a Cut-Off Head May Counsel
WilliamsEnglish
When Gilbert appeared before the Queen, she uttered a scream, for his ruffles and part of his coat were torn and drops of blood stained his shirt.
“I ask pardon for presenting myself to your Majesty in this attire,” he said, “but your trusty servant who came to learn why I was late to the appointment, will tell you that he found me in the midst of a mob, trying to save a baker who was done to death for withholding bread. They cut the poor fellow to pieces: and to make matters worse, in parading his head on a pike it was shown to his wife who fell down and alas! has been prematurely confined.”
“Poor woman,” cried the Queen, “if she does not die I will see her to-morrow and, any way, her child shall be maintained out of my private purse.”
“Ah, madam,” exclaimed Gilbert, “why cannot all France see these tears in your eyes and hear these words from your lips!”
But almost instantly the monarch returned to master the woman. She said with a change of tone:
“And are these, sir, the fruits of your revolution? after slaying the great lords, the officials and the soldiery, the people are killing one another; is there no means of dealing out justice to these cutthroats?”
“We will try to do so; but it would be better to prevent the murders than wait and punish the murderers.”
“How? the King and I ask nothing more fervently.”
“All these woes come from the people having lost confidence in those set above them. Nothing of the kind would occur if they were ruled by men with the public confidence.”
“You allude to this Mirabeau and Lafayette?”
“I hoped that your Majesty had sent to tell me that the King was no longer hostile to the Cabinet I proposed.”
“In the first place, doctor,” replied the royal lady, “you fall into a grave error shared with many more, I admit: you think that I have influence over the King. You believe that he follows my inspirations? You mistake: if any body has a sway over him, it is Lady Elizabeth; the proof is that she yesterday sent one of my servitors, Count Charny, on an errand without my knowing whither he goes or what is its aim.”
“Still, if your Majesty will surmount her repugnance to Mirabeau, I can answer for bringing the King round to my views.”
“Is not such repugnance based on a motive, tell me?” counterqueried the lady.
“In politics, there should be neither sympathy nor antipathy; only the meetings of principles and combinations of gains, and I ought to say that gains are surer than principles.”
“Do you believe that this man who has publicly insulted me, would consent to join us?”
“He is entirely yours: when a Mirabeau turns from monarchy, it is like a horse that shies; reminded of his allegiance by whip or spur, he will resume his place in the right road.”
“But he is for the Duke of Orleans?”
“So far from him is he, that on hearing of the duke going over to England when Lafayette threatened him, he said: ‘They say I am in his pay! I would not have him for my lackey.'”
“That reconciles him some with me,” said the lady, trying to smile: “if I could believe he might be relied on----“
“Well?”
“Perhaps I should be nearer him than the King.”
“Madam, I saw him at Versailles when the mob stormed the palace: then he thought the Royal Family ought to flee but I have had a note from him this day.”
He took out a slip of rough paper.
“Excuse the writing--it is on paper found in a wine saloon and written on the counter.”
“Never mind that: it is in keeping with the present style of politics.”
Taking the paper, the Queen read:
“This bread riot changes the face of things. A great deal can be drawn from this cut-off head. The Assembly will be frightened and call for martial law. If there be a Mirabeau-Lafayette Cabinet, Mirabeau will answer for all?”
“It is not signed,” objected the Queen.
“He handed it to me himself. My advice is that he is perfectly right and that this alliance alone can save France.”
“Be it so, let the gentleman put the project on paper and I will lay it before the King, as well as support it.”
“Then I will go to the Assembly and see him. In two hours I shall return.”
The Queen waited in impatience, always fond of plotting and agitation as she was. His answer was that Mirabeau had become the spokesman of the court.
In fact, after a hot discussion, martial law was voted by the Assembly. The crime of treason was to be tried at the Chatelet Royal Court, which meant that royalty still held three fourths of the active power.
Gilbert did not go near the Queen until the cases were tried here which would test the alliance.
The triumph was great to have them tried under the Royal party’s thumb. The first trial was of three men who had killed the baker of the Assemblymen, François; two of whom were hanged on the mere accusation and public notoriety; the third was tried and sent to the gallows likewise.
Two other cases were on the docket.
Both the accused prisoners were on the court side, the contractor Augeard and Inspector General Pierre Victor Benzenval, of the Swiss Guards.
Augeard was suspected of supplying the funds for the Queen’s camerailla to pay the troops gathered in July to fight the Parisians: the contractor was not much known and the people bore him no grudge so that he was acquitted without protest.
It was not so with Benzenval, who was notorious. He had commanded the Swiss regiments during the riots and the week of the attack on the Bastile. It was remembered that he had charged the crowds, who wanted to pay him out.
But the most precious orders had been sent out by the King and the court; under no pretext must Benzenval be punished. It took at least this two-fold protection to save him. He had acknowledged himself guilty by taking to flight after the Bastile fell: caught half way to the frontier, he had been brought back to the capital.
Nevertheless he was acquitted.
Amid the hooting, angry crowd, leaving the court, was a man, dressed like a plain storekeeper who familiarly laid his hand on the shoulder of a gentleman dressed better than he, and said:
“Well, what does Dr. Gilbert think of these acquittals?”
The other started, but recognized the speaker by sight as well as by the voice, and replied:
“The Master!--you ought to be asked that, not me, for you know all, present, past and future!”
“Well, I should say: The third prisoner will catch it severely, even though he be innocent.”
“Why should the innocent, if coming next, be wrongfully punished?” inquired the doctor.
“For the simple reason that in this world the good pay for the bad,” returned the Chief of the Invisibles with the irony natural to him.
“Good-bye, Master,” said Gilbert, offering his hand; “for I have business.”
“With whom? Mirabeau, Lafayette or the Queen?”
Gilbert stopped and eyed Cagliostro uneasily.
“Let me tell you that you ofttimes frighten me,” he said.
“On the contrary, I want to encourage you,” said the magician. “Am I not your friend? You may be sure of that: I will afford you a proof if you will come with me home. I will give you such hidden particulars of this negociation which you believe secret, that you who fancy you are managing it, will confess ignorance of it.”
“Listen,” said Gilbert; “perhaps you are jesting with me by one of those marvellous funds of information familiar to you; but no matter! circumstances amid which we are treading are so grave that I would accept enlightenment though from Old Harry himself. I am following you therefore whithersoever you lead me.”
“Be easy, it will not be far and to a place not unknown to you; only let me hail this passing hack; the dress I came out in did not allow me to use my carriage and horses.”
They got into the hackneycoach which came on at a sign.
“Where am I to drive you, master?” inquired the Jehu, to Cagliostro as though, somehow, he saw that he was the leader of the pair, though the more plainly dressed.
“Where you know,” answered the Chief, making a masonic sign, “The Temple.”
The driver looked at the Grand Copt with amazement.
“Excuse me, Thou Supreme, I did not know you,” he said, replying with another sign.
“It is not thus with me,” replied Cagliostro, with a firm and lofty voice, “innumerable as are those whom the uninitiated eyes see not, I know all from the topmost to the lowest of those who bring the bricks and hew the stones.”
The coachman shut the door, got upon the box, and took the carriage at a gallop to St. Claude Street. The carriage was stopped and the door opened with a zeal which testified to the man’s respect.
Cagliostro motioned for Gilbert to alight first and as he descended, he said to the jarvey:
“Any news?”
“Yes, Master,” said the knight of the whip, “and I should have made my report this evening if I had not the luck to meet you.”
“Speak.”
“My news is not for outsiders.”
“Oh, the bystander is not an outsider,” returned Cagliostro, smiling.
But Gilbert moved off a little, though he could not help glancing and listening partially. He saw a smile on the hearers’s face as the man told his story. He caught the name of Favras and Count Provence, before the report was over, when the magician took out a goldpiece and offered it.
“The Master knows that it is forbidden to receive pay for giving information,” he objected.
“I am not paying for your report, it is plain, but for your bringing us,” said the conspirator.
“That I can accept. Thank you,” he said, taking the coin, “I need not work any more to-day.”
He drove away, leaving Gilbert amazed at what he had witnessed, and he crossed the threshold reeling like a tipsy man.
He knew this house from having traversed it years ago under impressive circumstances; little was changed in it, even to the same servant Fritz, only he had aged sixteen years.
Ushered into a sitting room, the count bade his guest take a seat.
“I am entirely yours, doctor,” said he.
The younger man forgot his present curiosity in the memories evoked by this room. Cagliostro looked at him like Mephistopheles regarding Faust in his brown studies.
“This room seems to set you thinking, doctor,” he said audibly.
“It does, of the obligations I am under to you.”
“Pooh, bubbles!”
“Really, you are a strange man,” said Gilbert, speaking as much to himself as to the other, “and if reason allowed me to put faith in what we learn from legends, I should be inclined to take you for a magician.”
“This am I for the world, Gilbert: but not for you. I have never tried to dazzle you with jugglery. You know I have always let you see the bottom of the well and if you have seen Truth come up not so scantily clothed as the painters represent her, it is because I am a Sicilian and cannot help decorating my lady-love.”
“It was here, count, that you gave me a large sum of money that I might be rich in offering my hand to Andrea de Taverney, with the same ease as I might give a penny to a beggar.”
“You forget the most extraordinary part of it: the beggar brought back the sum, except for a couple of coins which he spent for clothes.”
“He was honest but you were generous.”
“Who tells you that it was not more easy for him who handled millions to give a hundred thousand crowns than for him who was penniless to bring back so large a sum as that was to him? Besides, all depends on the man’s state of mind. I was under the blow of the loss of the only woman I ever loved--my darling wife was murdered, and I believe you might have had my life for the asking.”
“Do you feel grief, and experience it like other men,” inquired Gilbert, eyeing him with marked astonishment.
“You speak of memories this room gives you,” sighed the other. “Were I to tell you--your hair would whiten--but let it pass; leave those events in their grave. Let us speak of time present, and of that to-come if you like.”
“Count, you returned to realism just now; again you turn to pretence, for you speak of the future with the voice of a conjurer asserting the power to read indecipherable hieroglyphics.”
“You forget that having more means at my beck and call than other men, I see more clearly and farther than they. You shall see that the pretence is but a veil--solid are the facts beneath. Come, doctor, how is your Fusion Cabinet getting on? the Mirabeau-Lafayette Ministry?”
“It is in the skies; you are trying to learn the facts by pretending to know more than the rumors.”
“I see that you are doubt incarnate, or wish not to see what you do not doubt. After telling you of things you do know I must tell of those beyond your ken. Well, you have recommended Mirabeau to the King as the only man who can save the monarchy. He will fail--all will fail, for the monarchy is doomed. You know that I will not have it saved. You have achieved your end; the two rulers will welcome your advocate: and you flatter yourself that the royal conversion is due to your irrefutable logic and irresistible arguments.”
Gilbert could not help biting his lip on hearing this ironical tone.
“Have you invented a stethoscope by which you can read the heart of kings? pass the wonderful instrument on to me, count: only an enemy of mankind would want to keep it to himself alone.”
“I told you I keep nothing back from you, dear doctor. You shall have my telescope and may look as you please through the small end which diminishes or the other which magnifies. The Queen gave way for two reasons: first, she met a great sorrow the night before and she must have some mental distraction; next, she is a woman and having heard Mirabeau spoken of as a tiger, she wants to see him and try to tame him. She thinks: ‘It will be fine revenge to bring him to lick my feet: if some good follows for France and the crown, so much the better.’ But you understand, this idea is quite secondary.”
“You are building on hypothesis and I want facts.”
“I see you refuse my glass and I must come back to material things: such as can be seen with the naked eye, Mirabeau’s debts, for instance.”
“What a chance you have to exhibit your generosity, by paying his debts as you once did Cardinal Rohan’s.”
“Do not reproach me with that speculation, it was one of my greatest successes. The Queen’s Necklace was a pretty affair, I think, and ruined the Queen in the general eye. At the same price I would pay Mirabeau’s debts. But you know that he is not looking to me for that, but to the future Generalissimo, Lafayette, who will make him caper for a beggarly fifty thousand francs, which he will not get any more than the dog gets the cake for which he has danced.
“Poor Mirabeau, how all these fools and conceited dunces make your genius pay for the follies of your youth! Yet all this is providential and heaven is obliged to proceed by human methods. All these politicians and wirepullers blame him for some virtue which is not theirs, and yet, if he dies to-morrow, the masses will award him an apotheosis, and all these pigmies, over whom he stands head and shoulders, will follow as mourners and howl: ‘Woe to France which has lost her greatest orator--woe to royalty which has lost its supporter!'”
“Are you going to foretell the death of Mirabeau?” cried Gilbert, almost frightened.
“Frankly, doctor, do you see any length of life for a man whose blood stews him, whose heart swells to suffocate him and whose genius eats him up? do you believe that even such powers will not be worn out in stemming the tide of mediocrity? his enterprise is the rock of Sisyphus. For two years they have been holding him down with the cry of Immorality. As if God moulded all men in the same form, and as if the circle enlarged for a great mind should not enclose greater vices. Mirabeau will not be Premier because he owes a hundred thousand francs debt, which would be settled were he a rich contractor’s son, and because he is condemned to death for having run away with an old imbecile’s wife--who smothered herself in charcoal fumes for the love of a strapping military captain! What a farce the tragedy of human life is! How I should weep over it if I had not made up my mind to laugh!”
“But your prediction?” cried Gilbert.
“I tell you,” said the diviner, in the prophet’s tone which was his alone, and allowed no reply, “Mirabeau will wear out his life without becoming Prime Minister. So great a bar is mediocrity. Go to the Assembly to-morrow and see. Meanwhile, come with me to the Jacobins Club, for these night-birds will hold their session in an hour. Do you belong?”
“No: Danton and Desmoulins entered me at the Cordeliers. We will go after dinner.”
Two hours subsequently, two man in gentlemanly black suits were set down from a plain private carriage at the door of St. Roch’s church, where the throng was great. They were Dr. Gilbert and Baron Zannone, as Cagliostro chose to call himself at this epoch.
“Will you come into the nave or sit in the gallery?” asked the magician.
“I thought the nave was kept for the members?” said the other.
“Just so, but am I not a member of all societies?” returned the Arch-master laughing. “Besides, this club is but the seat of the Invisibles, and you can enter as one of the Rosicrucians. We are sixty thousand strong in France alone in three months since foundation as Jacobins, and will be four hundred thousand in a year.”
“Though I am a Rose-Croix, I prefer to be in the gallery where I can see over the crowd and you can better tell me of the persons whom I descry.”
The seats were roughly knocked up in tiers and a wooden staircase led up them. Cagliostro made a sign and spoke a word to two who were sitting in the already filled seats and they got up to give them their places as if they had been sent before to keep them.
The place was ill lighted in the growing gloom but it was clear that these were the best sort of the revolutionists, while the uniforms of officers of the army and navy abounded. For the common brothers held their meetings in the crypt. Here the literati and artists were in the majority.
Casting a long look around, Gilbert was encouraged by seeing that most were not so very hostile to the royal cause.
“Whom do you see here hostile to royalty?” he inquired of his guide.
“In my eyes there are but two.”
“Oh, that is not many among four hundred men.”
“It is quite enough when one will be the slayer of Louis XVI. and the other his successor.”
“A future Brutus and a future Caesar here?” exclaimed the doctor starting.
“Oh, apostle with scales over your eyes,” said Cagliostro; “you shall not only see them but touch them. Which shall I commence with?”
“By the overthrower; I respect chronology: let us have Brutus first.”
“You know that men do not use the same means to accomplish a like work,” said Cagliostro, animated as by inspiration. “Therefore our Brutus will not resemble the antique one.”
“That makes me the more eager to see ours.”
“There he is.”
He pointed to a man leaning against the rostrum in such a position that his head alone was in the light. Pale and livid, this head seemed dissevered from the trunk. The eyes seemed to shine with a viper’s expression, with almost scornful hatred, knowing his venom was deadly. Gilbert felt a creeping of the flesh.
“You were right to warn me,” he said; “this is neither Brutus nor Cromwell.”
“No, it is rather Cassius the pale-faced and leaned man whom the Emperor dreaded most. Do you not know him?”
“No; or rather I have seen him in the Assembly. He is one of the longest-winded speechifyers of the Left, to whom nobody listens. A pettifogger from Arras----“
“The very man.”
“His name is Maximilian Robespierre.”
“Just so. Look at him. You are a pupil of Lavater the physiognomist.”
“I see the spite of mediocrity for genius as he watches Barnave.”
“In other words you judge like the world. I grant that he cannot expect to make a hit among all these proven orators; but at least you cannot accuse him of immorality; he is the Honest Man: he never steps outside of the law, or only to act within a new law which he legally makes.”
“But what is this Robespierre?” asked the other.
“You ask that as Strafford did of the future Lord Protector: ‘What is this Cromwell? a brewer!’ But he cut off his head, mark, you aristocrat of the Seventeenth Century!”
“Do you suggest that I run the same risk as Charles First’s Minister,” said Gilbert, trying to smile, but it was frozen on his lips.
“Who can tell?” replied the diviner.
“The more reason for me to inquire about him.”
“Who is Robespierre? he was born in Arras, of Irish extraction, in 1758. He was the best pupil in the Jesuits’ College and won a purse on which he came to study at Paris. It was at the same college where your young Sebastian had an experience. Other boys went out sometimes from those sombre aisles which bleach the pallid, and had holidays with their families and friends; young Robespierre was cooped up and breathed the bad air of loneliness, sadness and tedium; three bad things which rob the mind of its bloom and blight the heart with envy and hatred. The boy became a wilted young man. His benefactor had him appointed judge, but his tender heart would not let him dispose of the life of a man; he resigned and became a lawyer. He took up the case of peasants disputing with the Bishop of Arras and won their just claim; the grateful boors sent him up to the Assembly. There he stood between the clergy’s profound hatred for the lawyer who had dared speak against their bishop and the scorn of the nobles for the scholar reared by charity.”
“What is he doing?”
“Nothing for others but much for the Revolution. If it did not enter into my views that he should be kept poor, I would give him a million francs to-morrow. Not that I should buy him, for he is joked with as the Incorruptible! Our noble debaters have settled that he shall be the butt of the House, for all assemblies must have one. Only one of his colleagues understands and values him--it is Mirabeau. He told me the other day, ‘that man will go far for he believes what he says!'”
“This grows serious,” muttered Gilbert.
“He comes here for he gets an audience. The Jacobin is a young minotaur: suckling a calf, he will devour a nation in a while. I promised to show you an instrument for lopping off heads, did I not? Well, Robespierre will give it more work than all those here.”
“Really, you are funereal, count,” said Gilbert; “if your Caesar does not compensate for your Brutus, I may forget what I came here for.”
“You see my future Emperor yonder, talking with the tragic actor Talma, and with another whom he does not know but who will have a great influence over him. Keep this befriender’s name in mind--Barras, and recall it one of these days.”
“I do not know how right you are, but you choose your typical characters well,” said Gilbert; “this Caesar of yours has the brow to wear a crown and his eyes--but I cannot catch the expression----“
“Because his sight is diverted inwards--such eyes study the future, doctor.”
“What is he saying to Barras?”
“That he would have held the Bastile if he were defending it.”
“He is not a patriot, then?”
“Such as he are nothing before they are all in all.”
“You seem to stick to your idea about this petty officer?”
“Gilbert,” said the soothsayer, extending his hand towards Robespierre, “as truly as that man will re-erect the scaffold of Charles Stuart, so truly will ‘this one'”--he indicated the lieutenant of the line regiment--“will re-erect the throne of Charlemagne.”
“Then our struggle for liberty is useless,” said Gilbert discouraged.
“Who tells you that he may not do as much for us on his throne as the other on his scaffold?”
“Will he be the Titus, or Marcus Aurelius, the god of peace consoling us for the age of bronze?”
“He will be Alexander and Hannibal in one. Born amid war, he will thrive in war-fare and go down in warring. I defy you to calculate how much blood the clergy and nobles have made Robespierre lose by his fits of spite against them; take all that these nobles and priests will lose, multiply upon multiplications, and you will not attain the sea of blood this man will shed, with his armies of five hundred thousand men and his three days’ battles in which hundreds of cannon-shots will be fired.”
“And what will be the outcome of all this turmoil--all this chaos?”
“The outcome of all genesis, Gilbert. We are charged to bury this Old World. Our children will spring up in a new one. This man is but the giant who guards the door. Like Louis XIV., Leo X. and Agustus, he will give his name to the era unfolding.”
“What is his name?” inquired Gilbert, subjugated by Cagliostro’s convinced manner.
“His name is Buonaparte; but he will be hailed in History as Napoleon. Others will follow of his name, but they will be shadows--the dynasty of the first Charlemagne lasted two hundred years; of this second one, a tithe: did I not tell you that in a hundred years the Republic will have the empire of France?”
Gilbert bowed his head. He did not notice that the debates were opened. An hour passed when he felt a powerful hand grip his shoulder.
He turned: Cagliostro had disappeared and Mirabeau stood in his place--after the eagle, the lion.
Mirabeau’s face was convulsed with rage as he roared in a dull voice:
“We are flouted, deceived, betrayed! the court will not have me and you have been taken for a dupe as I for a fool. On my moving in the House that the Cabinet Ministers should be invited to be present at the Assembly sessions, three friends of the King proposed that no member of the House should be a minister. This laboriously managed combination dissolves at a breath from the King; But,” concluded Mirabeau, like Ajax, shaking his mighty fist at the sky, “by my name, I will pay them for this, and if their breath can shake a minister, mine shall overthrow the throne. I shall go to the Assembly and fight to the uttermost; I am one of those who blow up the fort and perish under the ruins.”
He rushed away, more terrible and handsomer for the divine streak which lightning had impressed on his brow.
Gilbert did not go to the House to witness his companion’s defeat--one very like a victory. He was musing at home over Cagliostro’s strange predictions. How could this man foresee what would be Robespierre and Napoleon? I ask those who put this question to me how they explain Mdlle. Lenormand’s prediction to the Empress Josephine? One often meets inexplicable things; doubt was invented to comfort those who cannot explain them but will not believe them.
