The Sword of Honor Part 42

The Abbot moved impa.s.sively toward the door, only replying to the looks of wonder on every face with the words, "I have said."

But Hubert blocked his pa.s.sage, and cried: "Miserable ca.s.sock, hypocrite, c.o.c.k-roach! Would you be also capable of denouncing us?"

"I am capable of everything to the end of preventing an act reprobated by the General of my Order. The General of the Jesuits has spoken; all must obey him--even Kings, even the Pope. Silence and obedience are the words!"

So saying, and profiting by the stupor into which his audacity and self-possession threw the other conspirators, the Jesuit left the room.

"We are off, G.o.d-son," he said to little Rodin when he had descended to the second floor. "Come, my child; other cares call me elsewhere."

"Me also," responded the boy, blessing himself and rising. "I am ready to follow you, good G.o.d-father. Command. To hear you is to obey."

CHAPTER XV.

THE KING ON TRIAL.

As already recounted, John Lebrenn, in his capacity as munic.i.p.al officer, was charged on the night of December 10, 1793, with the task of watching over Louis XVI, detained, with his family, at the Temple.

Occupying a room before the chamber of the ex-King, Lebrenn felt for the prisoner a sort of compa.s.sion, as he reflected that this man, not without his good inclinations, and endowed with certain undeniable domestic virtues, had been pushed by his position as King to wrongful acts which were about to bring down a terrible punishment upon his head.

Louis submitted to his confinement with mingled carelessness and resignation, rarely displaying either annoyance or anger at the rigorous surveillance of which he was the object; he hoped that the penalty p.r.o.nounced against him by the Convention would not exceed imprisonment until after the peace, and then banishment. For his wife, his sister, and his son and daughter, he showed great solicitude; one proof of the inherent sin of royalty, which could transform a good husband, a good brother, and a good father--a man without malice in his private life--into an execrable tyrant, capable of every transgression.

The curtains which screened the gla.s.s door separating the ante-chamber from that occupied by the fallen King accidentally falling apart in the middle, they revealed to John Lebrenn Louis XVI pacing up and down the room, although his usual bed-time had long sounded. The King seemed to be in a state of agitation which accorded ill with his apathetic nature.

On the morrow he was to appear at the bar of the Convention; and during the day he had learned from Clery, his man-in-waiting, who, due to his secret connection with the royalists, was informed of their moves, that a plan was afoot to s.n.a.t.c.h him from his escort on the way from the Temple to the Convention. Quite likely to turn his mind from these thoughts, he opened the door leading into the room guarded by John Lebrenn, in order to speak with him. The countenance of his watchman seemed to inspire some confidence in the prisoner; perhaps he remarked on the young man's features an expression of compa.s.sion, easy to confound with the respectful interest of a subject for a prisoner King.

He stepped into the room of his guard. Not out of respect for the King, but out of commiseration for the captive man, the soldier rose from the camp cot on which he had been sitting. Louis addressed him affably, as follows:

"My friend, I am not disposed to sleep, to-night. If you will, let us talk together, that my sleeplessness may be rendered less irksome."

"Willingly, Sire," replied Lebrenn.

This was the first time since his captivity that Louis XVI heard one of his captors address him by that t.i.tle 'Sire.' They called him habitually 'citizen,' or 'monsieur,' or 'Louis Capet.' Seeking to read the inner thoughts of the man before him, Louis resumed, after a moment's silence:

"My friend, I do not think I am mistaken in believing that you pity my lot? I have been calumniated, but the light will break some day, perhaps soon: thank G.o.d, I still have friends. I know not what it is that tells me you are one of those faithful and devoted subjects of whom I speak."

"Sire, I am too loyal to leave you a single instant in error. I do not accept the designation of 'subject,' Sire! I am a citizen of the French Republic."

"Enough, monsieur; I was mistaken," bitterly replied Louis.

"Nevertheless, I thank you for your frankness."

"My words were dictated by my dignity, first of all; next, by my pity for the misfortunes, not of the King, but of the man."

"Sir," cried Louis XVI haughtily, "I require no one's pity; the commiseration of heaven and my conscience are enough. Let us stop there."

"Sire, I did not seek the honor of this conversation; and, should it continue, it is well that you be under no illusion as to my sentiments towards royalty. The Revolution and the Republic have no more devoted soldier than myself. Now, Sire, I am at your service."

Louis XVI was not utterly lacking in sense; his first resentment past, he admitted to himself that the conduct of this munic.i.p.al officer was all the more praiseworthy, inasmuch as while declaring himself a revolutionist and a republican, he nevertheless treated a captive King with respect.

"I was rude just now, I am sorry for it," he said at length. "Hoping for a moment to discover in you a faithful subject, I found myself face to face with an enemy. The disappointment was great. Still, let us talk a little on this subject of your hatred for royalty. What harm have this royalty, this n.o.bility, this clergy, against which you rail, done to you and your like?"

"I could, Sire, reply to you in a few words, by facts and not by railings. But I wish not to wound your preconceived ideas, and above all to avoid giving you cause to make a sad comparison. This, Sire, is the third time, in the course of fourteen centuries, that a descendant of my family encounters one of the heirs of the monarchy of Clovis; and that under circ.u.mstances--"

"Doubtless the circ.u.mstances were intensely interesting. What were they?

You pique my curiosity."

"Sire, the circ.u.mstances are sinister. It would be painful to me to give you cause to draw the sad comparison between your present position and that of the princes, your predecessors."

"Tell me that part of your legends, Monsieur Lebrenn. My curiosity is highly excited, and my confidence in a brighter future will not be dimmed by your recital."

"To obey you, Sire, I shall. It was in the year 738 that one of my ancestors, named Amael, a soldier of fortune and companion to Charles Martel, found himself in Anjou, at the Convent of St. Saturnine. My ancestor was commissioned by Charles Martel to keep prisoner in the convent a poor boy of nine, the only son of Thierry IV, the do-nothing King, named Childeric. The child soon died, thus extinguis.h.i.+ng, in the last scion of the Merovingians, the stock of Clovis who had covered Gaul with ruins.[11] Two centuries and a half later, in 987, at the palace of Compiegne, another of my ancestors, the son of a forester of the royal domain, found himself alone in the chamber of Louis the Do-nothing with that prince; he saw him of a sudden faint, become deadly pale, and writhe in agony. He apostrophized the dying King thus: 'Louis, last year Hugh the Capet, Count of Paris, had your father Lothaire poisoned by the Queen his wife, a concubine of the Bishop of Laon. Louis, you are about to die of poison which your wife, Queen Blanche, has just given you. She has promised Hugh the Capet, her accomplice, to wed him during the coming year.' And so it was; the last of the Carlovingians dead, Hugh the Capet espoused his widow and had himself enthroned King of France.[12] There, Sire, that is how royal dynasties are founded and ended."

"These are strange chances, Monsieur Lebrenn," replied Louis XVI. "One of your ancestors charged to watch the last prince of the dynasty of Clovis; another ancestor sees perish the last scion of the monarchy of Charlemagne; and this night you are to watch over me, whom you probably consider as the last King of the dynasty of Hugh Capet. You will soon perceive your error."

"Sire," returned John Lebrenn, "you insisted on knowing the occurrences of which I just spoke, in connection with a question you put to me--"

"Aye, Monsieur Lebrenn; and in spite of the strangeness of the circ.u.mstances with which you have just made me acquainted, I repeat my question. What harm have royalty, n.o.bility and clergy ever done to you and yours, that you should hate them so?"

"To begin with, Sire, we know upon what crimes hang the rise and fall of dynasties; consequently we are unable to love and respect a royalty imposed upon us by conquest. All monarchies have had a similar origin.

The Count of Boulainvilliers, in this very century, established and demonstrated that the land of the Gauls belonged of fact and of right to the King and the n.o.bility, by the grace of G.o.d and the right of their good swords: the Gauls were a vanquished race."

For several seconds Louis did not speak. Then he began brusquely, "Triumph in your hate, monsieur; you are here as the jailer of the descendant of those Kings whom you and your fellows have abhorred for ages."

"The circ.u.mstance which has placed me near you, Sire, is of too high an order of morality to evoke in me a sentiment so miserable as that of sated hatred."

"What, then, is the feeling which you do entertain, monsieur?"

"A religious emotion, Sire; such as is bred in every honest heart by one of these mysterious decrees of eternal justice which, sooner or later, manifests itself in its divine grandeur and seizes the guilty ones, in whatever rank they may be stationed."

"So, monsieur, you make me a party to the evil my forefathers may have perpetrated upon their subjects?"

"Monarchs are rightfully regarded as parties to the crimes of their ancestors, the same as they pretend to be masters of the people by virtue of divine right and the conquests of those ancestors. All inheritance carries with it its responsibilities as well as its benefits. You surely would not dispute that, Sire?"

"To-morrow rebellious subjects will arrogate to themselves the right to summon their King before them to trial," murmured Louis, without noticing Lebrenn's question. "The will of heaven be done in all things; it will punish the wicked, and protect the just."

As Louis p.r.o.nounced these words, the porter of the Temple entered the room, saying, as he handed John the letter from advocate Desmarais, "Citizen officer, here is a letter just brought for you by Citizen Billaud-Varenne, who enjoined me to take it to you at once."

"Good night, Monsieur Lebrenn," said the King; and turning to the porter: "Send me my waiting-man Clery, to help me make my toilet. I wish to retire."

Louis XVI returned to his room, while John Lebrenn, greatly surprised to recognize Desmarais's hand-writing on the envelope which Billaud-Varenne had sent him, quickly tore it open, his heart, in spite of himself, beating loud against his ribs.

The missive read, Lebrenn for a moment thought he was dreaming. He hesitated to pin any faith to such unlooked-for good fortune, the realization of his dearest hopes. In vain did he seek to penetrate the motive for the singular condition placed by the lawyer upon his marriage. Examined in turn from the viewpoint of duty, of honor and of delicacy, the condition seemed to him on the whole acceptable; he simply bound himself for the future to a discretion from which he had not, in the past, varied a hair's breadth.

Why attempt to paint the ineffable felicity of John Lebrenn? The night pa.s.sed for him in a flood of joy.

In the morning he was one of the munic.i.p.al officers charged to conduct Louis XVI to the bar of the Convention. Towards nine o'clock Chambon, Mayor of Paris, accompanied by a court clerk came to deliver to the King the order to appear before the Convention.

A two-horse coach awaited Louis at the door of the great tower, within the precincts of the Temple. Generals Santerre and Witenkoff were stationed on horseback beside the windows. Louis climbed into the vehicle, and seated himself on the rear seat, beside the Mayor of Paris; John Lebrenn and one of his colleagues in the Munic.i.p.al Council occupied the front. As soon as the carriage issued from the courtyard of the Temple, the King realized, by the ma.s.s of military force with which his route to the National Convention was hemmed in, that the Committee of General Safety had been informed of the royalist intrigue, and had taken steps to make impossible any sudden a.s.sault calculated to carry off the prisoner.