The Hero of the People 25 – Williams · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The Hero of the People 25Down Among the Dead
18
Literature · Romance
The Hero of the People 25
Down Among the Dead
WilliamsEnglish
It was nearly midnight when a man hesitatingly walked up to the iron gateway of St. Jean’s burying-ground, in Croix Blanche Street.
As midnight boomed, he saw a spectre cross the grounds under the yews and cypresses, and, approaching the grating, turn a key harshly in the gatelock to show that, if he were a ghost and had the leave to quit his grave, he also had that to go beyond the cemetery altogether.
“Do you not recognize me, Captain B.?” queried the jesting voice of Cagliostro, “or did you forget our appointment?”
“I am glad it is you,” said the man in the French Guards sergeant dress, breathing as if his heart were relieved of great weight. “These devilish streets are so dark and deserted that I do not know but it is better to run up against any body than not to meet a soul.”
“Pshaw,” returned the magician, “the idea of your fearing any thing at any hour of the day or night! You will never make me believe that of a man like you who would go anywhere with a sword by his side. However, step on this side of the railings, and you will be tranquil, my dear Captain Beausire, for you will meet no one but me.”
Beausire acted on the invitation, and the key grated again in the lock, to fasten the gate behind him.
“Keep to this little path,” continued Cagliostro, “and at twenty paces you will come upon a little broken altar, on the steps of which we can nicely manage our little business.”
“Where the mischief do you see any path?” he grumbled, after starting with a good will. “I meet nothing but nettles tearing my ankles and grass up to my knees.”
“I own that this cemetery is as badly kept as any I know of; but it is not astonishing, for here are buried only the condemned prisoners executed in the City, and no one plants flowers for such poor fellows. Still we have some undeniable celebrities here, my dear Beausire. If it were daylight I would show you where lies Bouteville Montmorency, decapitated for having fought a duel; the Knight of Rohan who suffered the same fate for conspiring against the Government; Count Horn broken on the wheel for murdering a Jew; Damiens who tried to kill Louis XVI., and lots more. Oh, you are wrong to defame St. Jean’s; it is badly kept but it well keeps its famous ones.”
Beausire followed the guide so closely that he locked steps with him like a soldier in the second rank with the predecessor so that when the latter stopped suddenly he ran up against him.
“Ah! this is a fresh one; the grave of your comrade Fleurdepine, one of the murderers of François the Assemblymen’s baker, who was hanged a week ago by sentence at the Chatelet; this ought to interest you, as he was, like you, a corporal, a sergeant by his own promotion, and a crimp--I mean a recruiter.”
The hearer’s teeth chattered; the thistles he walked among seemed so many skeleton fingers stretched up to trip him, and make him understand that this is the place where he would have his everlasting sleep.
“Well, we have arrived,” said the cicerone, stopping at a mound of ruins.
Sitting down on a stone he pointed out another to his companion, as if placed for a conversation. It was time, for the ex-soldier’s knees were knocking together so that he fell rather than sat on the elevation.
“Now that we are comfortable for a chat,” went on the magician, “let us know what went on under the Royale Place arches. The meeting must have been interesting?”
“To tell the truth, count, I am so upset that I really believe you will get a clearer account by questioning me.”
“Be it so, I am easy going, and the shape of news little matters provided I get it. How many of you met at the arches?”
“Six, including myself.”
“I wonder if they were the persons I conjecture to be there? Primo, you, no doubt.”
Beausire groaned as though he wished there could be doubt on that head.
“You do me much honor in commencing by me, for there were very great grandees compared with me.”
“My dear boy, I follow the Gospel: ‘The first shall be last.’ If the first are to be last, why, the last will naturally lead. So I begin with you, according to Scripture. Then there would be your comrade Tourcaty, an old recruiting officer who is charged to raise the Brabant Legion?”
“Yes, we had Tourcaty.”
“Then, there would be that sound royalist Marquie, once sergeant in the French Guards, now sub-lieutenant in a regiment of the centre line. Favras, of course? the Masked Man? Any particulars to furnish about the Masked Man?”
The traitor looked at the inquirer so fixedly that his eyes seemed to kindle in the dark.
“Why, is it not--“ but he stopped as if fearing to commit a sacrilege if he went farther.
“What’s this? have you a knot in your tongue? Take care of being tongue-tied. Knots in the tongue lead to knots round the neck, and as they are slip ones, they are the worst kind.”
“Well, is it not the King’s b-b-brother?” stammered the other.
“Nonsense, my dear Beausire, it is conceivable that Favras, who wants it believed that he clasps hands with a royal prince in the plot, should give out that the Mask hides the King’s brother, Provence, but you and your mate, Tourcaty, recruiting-sergeants, are men used to measure men by their height in inches and lines, and it is not likely you would be cheated that way.”
“No, it is not likely,” agreed the soldier.
“The King’s brother is five feet three and seven lines,” pursued the magician, “while the Masked Man is nearly five feet six.”
“To a T.,” said the traitor, “that occurred to me; but who can it be if not the King’s brother?”
“Excuse me, I should be proud and happy to teach you something,” retorted Cagliostro: “but I came here to be taught by you.”
“But if your lordship knows who this man is,” said the ex-corporal, becoming more at home, “might I ask his name?”
“A name is a serious thing to divulge,” responded the strange man: “and really I prefer you should guess. Do you know the story of Œdipus and the Sphinx?”
“I went to see a tragedy of that title and fell asleep, unfortunately, in the fourth act.”
“Plague take me, but you ought not to call that a misfortune!”
“But I lose by it now.”
“Not to go into details, suffice it that Œdipus, whom I knew as a boy at one royal court and as a man at another, was predicted to be the murderer of his father and the husband of his mother. Believing King Polybius this father, he departed from his realm, but would not take a hint from me about the road. The result was that he met his own sire on the road where, as neither would turn out, a fight ensued in which he slew his father. Some time after he met the Sphinx. It was a monster with a woman’s head on a lion’s body which I regret never to have seen, as it was a thousand years after her death that I travelled that road. She had the habit of putting riddles to the wayfarers and eating those who could not read them aright. To my friend Œdipus she put the following:
“'What animal goes upon four legs at morning, two at noon and three at night?'”
“Œdipus answered off-hand: ‘Man, who in the morning of life as a child crawls on all fours; as an adult walks upright; as an old man hobbles with a stick.'”
“That is so,” exclaimed Beausire: “it crossed the sphinx!”
“She threw herself down a precipice and the winner went on to where he married his father’s widow to accomplish the prophecy.”
“But what analogy between the Sphinx and the Masked Man?”
“A close one. I propose an enigma; only I am not cruel like the Sphinx and will not devour you if you fail to guess. Listen: Which lord at the court is grandson of his father, brother of his mother and uncle of his sisters?”
“The devil!” burst forth Beausire, falling into a reverie. “Can you not also help me out here, my lord?”
“Let us turn from pagan story to sacred history, then. Do you know the tale of Lot?”
“Lot and the Pillar of Salt, and his daughters?”
“The same.”
“Of course, I do. Wait a bit, do they not say that old King Louis XIV, and his daughter the Lady Adeliade----“
“You are getting warm, captain----“
“In that case the Masked Man would be Count Louis Narbonne!”
“Now that we are no longer in doubt about this conspirator, let us finish with the aim of the plot. The object is to carry off the King? And take him to Peronne? what means have you?”
“For money we have two millions cash----“
“Lent by a Genoese banker? I know him. Any other funds?”
“I know of none.”
“So much for the money: now for the men.”
“General Lafayette has authorized the raising of a legion to fly to the help of Brabant revolting against the Empire.”
“Under cover of which you form a royalist legion? I see the hand of Lafayette in this,” muttered Cagliostro. “But you will want more than a legion to carry out this plan--an army.”
“Oh, we have the army. Two hundred horsemen are gathered at Versailles ready to start at the appointed hour: they can arrive in three columns at Paris by two in the morning. The first gets in to kill General Lafayette: the second to settle old Necker; the third will do for Mayor Baily.”
“Good!” exclaimed the listener.
“This done, the cannons are spiked, and all rally on the Champs Elysées, and march on the Tuileries where our friends will be masters.”
“What about the National Guards there?”
“The Brabant Column attends to them: it joins with it part of the Guards which has been bought over: four hundred Swiss, three hundred country friends, and so on. These will have taken possession of all the gates by help within. We rush in on the King, saying: ‘Sire, the St. Antoine ward is in insurrection; a carriage is ready--you must be off!’ if he consents, all right: if he resists, we hustle him out and drive him to St. Denis.”
“Capital!”
“There we find twenty thousand infantry, with all the country royalists, well armed, in great force, who conduct the King to Peronne.”
“Better and better. What do you do there?’
“The gathering there brings our whole array up to one hundred and fifty thousand men.”
“A very pretty figure,” commented the Chief of the Invisibles.
“With the mass we march on Paris, cutting off supplies above and below on the river. Famished Paris capitulates; the Assembly is kicked to pieces, and the King enjoys his own again on the throne of his fathers.”
“Amen!” sang Cagliostro. “My dear Beausire,” he went on, rising, “your conversation is most agreeable; but as they say of the greatest orators, when they have spoken all that is in them, nothing more is to be got. You are done?”
“Yes, my lord, for the moment.”
“Then, good-night: when you want another ten louis call for them at my home, at Bellevue.”
“At the Count of Cagliostro’s?”
“No; they would not know who you meant. Ask for Baron Zannone.”
“But that is the banker who cashed up the two millions on the King’s brother’s notes!” ejaculated Beausire.
“That is not unlikely; only I do such a large business that I have confounded it with the others. That is why it was not clear in my mind but now you remind me, I believe I did something of the kind.”
Beausire went his way, stupefied that a banker could forget a matter of two millions, and beginning to believe that he was quite right in siding with the lender rather than with the borrower. He bowed lowly while the count favored him with a slight nod at the cemetery gateway.
