The False Chevalier Part 16

Wife Gougeon screamed it. Even her husband opened his malign jaws from time to time and automatically gave vent to a harsh shout.

Thus sown, it became a cry springing up everywhere. The whole quarter of St. Marcel grew alive, and an immense crowd ran together into the neighbouring square. Little direction was needed to band them into a marching mob, waving clubs, pikes, and bottles, dancing, quarrelling and howling, with ribald songs and shouts of "To the execution!" In one thing they differed notably from a similar crowd in this century, could such be imagined. Ragged and wretched though they were, they wore _colour_ in profusion. The ma.s.s was a rich subject for the artist.

Among the women at the front was seen Wife Gougeon brandis.h.i.+ng her pistol. The Admiral and Hache were at her side haranguing the leaders.

Surging along, the demoniac screams of drunken women and the babel of shouting men, as they approached each new neighbourhood, seemed to stir it to its depths and to add to the rear a new contingent.

Thus their numbers swelled at every street, and the excitement increased to a pitch beyond description. They swept forward by the Rue Mouffetard and through the Latin Quarter till they reached the broad Boulevard St.

Germain. Turning along the latter through the Rue St. Jacques they suddenly increased their speed and uproar, and thundered across the Pet.i.t Pont Bridge and Isle of France, and once more across a bridge--that of Notre Dame--where they saw the Quai Le Pelletier on the other side lined with a black sea of people. At least a quarter of the population of Paris were crammed together within the available s.p.a.ce upon the quays and the neighbouring streets along the Seine, from the towered Chatelet--court-house and prison--some distance below, to the Place de Greve, some distance above, in front of the Hotel de Ville. A line of blue-coated, white-gaitered soldiers on each side kept the s.p.a.ce clear down the centre.

The people were looking forward to the spectacle of the morning with intense delight.

Meanwhile at the prison doors of the Chatelet the three poor wretches of prisoners were forced into a cart by gendarmes in the sight of the mult.i.tude. A man sat awaiting them in the cart, curled, powdered, dressed; and perfumed with foppish elegance, and his every motion made with a dainty sense of distinction. He was the people's hero--the public executioner. He took in his hands the ends of the rope which hung from the necks of his victims. Another figure mounted the cart behind them.

It was a priest, who knelt, bent his head, and offered to each of them the crucifix; and the cart then proceeded slowly along the soldier-lined streets, accompanied by half a dozen guards carrying their muskets on their shoulders, bayonetted.

The emotions meanwhile of the condemned were told in their bearing.

Young Hugues de la Tour stood up, and scornfully refusing the crucifix of the priest, looked around upon the scene with an air of irreconcilable indignation. His companions, Bec and Caron, the men who in the cave had spoken of themselves as ruined, the one by taxes, the other by the t.i.the, were more abject, and clutched the crucifix in despair.

Comments were shouted freely at the victims. Applause greeted the demeanour of la Tour, rough raillery the terror of his companions.

After this manner they jolted painfully along the cobbled paving, down through the swaying crowd towards the Place de Greve. Though the distance was not perhaps more than a couple of hundred yards the poor men underwent ages of tension. When they came to the Quai Le Pelletier, Hugues heard, as in a dream, a startling stentorian, familiar cry--

"Vive the Galley!"

His bloodshot eyes strained towards the place whence it came, and once more a voice, this time the shriek of a woman, pierced the air--

"Vive the Galley!"

The two other prisoners now raised their heads, still dazed and in a stupor.

Immediately a third voice, loud and shrill, but instinct with the thrill of command, took up the words. It was the Admiral, and his third "Vive the Galley!" was a signal.

Nine soldiers of the line of troops at the point nearest the prisoners were simultaneously thrown on the street, and a score of desperate men had broken into the centre and made a rush for the small guard around the carts. A cry, rising into a mult.i.tudinous commotion of shouts, went up from the gazing mob, ever on the verge of a tumult. At the same time there was a resistless swaying on all sides--the two lines of soldiers gave way for a few minutes, and people far and near rushed into the middle of the street. The vortex of St. Marcellese, at the Pont Notre Dame, already filled with winey purpose, pushed forward with a sudden bound towards their leaders and the death-cart, triumphing over their old enemies, the gendarmes, and preparing for every excess.

Femme Gougeon, as leader of a horde of viragoes, was rus.h.i.+ng among them shrieking more fiendishly than ever. While some held down the guard or wrested away their arms, the prisoners were lifted out of the cart and began to be hurried along towards the bridge, Bec and Caron struggling like maniacs with their fetters. The mob had at this moment complete mastery.

It lasted only a few seconds. Drums began to beat towards the Place de Greve. The tocsin bell of the Hotel de Ville sounded. There was a shock--a check of the crowd's volitions. A heavy rolling-back movement took place, and a public roar of fear was heard. People on the edges ran to shelter, and in a few moments more a volley of musketry sounded down the street. The crowd broke in all directions. It scattered away as suddenly as it had risen, and through the clearing smoke the soldiers could be seen closing up and again preparing to fire in volley. The prisoners were left in the hands only of the Admiral and Hache.

"Come, come," cried the latter, urging them to run.

"Brave men, save yourselves; as for us we are lost," was the reply of la Tour.

So Hache and the Admiral disappeared.

Bec and Caron lay prostrate on the deserted pavement. Hugues stood up proudly until a musket-ball broke his arm and knocked him over.

Then the dead and wounded could be counted, scattered over the scene of the _melee_.

Sickening it would be to tell in full of the execution which followed.

The Place de Greve was surrounded by an entire regiment, keeping back the crowd, who soon, remastered by overpowering curiosity, struggled for standing room and strained their necks to see. A conspicuous platform had been erected in front of the Hotel de Ville. Caron was the first to suffer. At the order of the executioner he was caught hold of by two a.s.sistants, thrown down, and bound to a large St. Andrew's cross of plank which lay on the platform. The black-robed confessor knelt down at his head and held up the crucifix before him, at the same time hiding his own face by his book and the sleeve of his gown. The executioner adjusted his wig elegantly, took up and minutely examined his crowbar, and casting first a c.o.xcomb look at the breathless spectators, brought the bar into the air with a flourish, and down with a crash on the right thigh of the poor prisoner. The agonising cry of the helpless man was drowned in a tremendous outburst of applause from the crowd. When he had been disposed of in each of his four limbs, Bec was treated in the same manner. Then the a.s.sistants, seizing Hugues, threw him on the cross, bound him, and the executioner lifted his bar in the air----

CHAPTER XVII

THE SAVING OF LA TOUR

Jude, who had the instincts of a Spanish Dominican, kept the closest watch upon the judicial proceedings against the highwaymen. He was promptly at the Chatelet at the time of their brief and summary trial, and procuring a _caleche_, sped Versaillesward to retail the news to the Noailles household. Having done so with considerable _eclat_ to her Excellency, he pictured to himself an entrancing dream--that of awaking a joyful sympathy between himself and Cyrene through this highly congratulatory matter. She would smile upon him so divinely, so highly applaud his zeal, and begin to compare him favourably with that new b.u.t.terfly, Repentigny, whose day must thenceforth come to an end.

It was night before he discovered her whereabouts, for she was at a ball, accompanying the Marechale de Noailles, chief lady of honour of the Queen. The Marechale was just then occupying the suite of apartments allotted to her in the Palace, and there Jude waited impatiently until half-past three before the young widow arrived in her boudoir accompanied by her maid.

"You did not expect me here, Madame Baroness," he said.

"In truth I did not, sir," she replied with cold surprise.

"I am the bearer of good news to you."

"Indeed!"

"Madame was robbed last month at Fontainebleau."

"And you bring back my jewels, good Abbe?" She began already to seem more radiant to him than he had dreamed.

"Not that quite."

"You mystify me."

"Madame will remember that three of the villains were caught."

"And Monsieur de Repentigny has found the others?" she cried, her countenance lighting again.

The Abbe's face fell.

"No, I have more agreeable news."

"You are too slow, as usual."

"Complete justice has been done!"

Her face suddenly turned to motionless marble.

"You mean on those three men?" she asked, with horror, which surprised him.

"Certainly."

"How?"