The False Chevalier Part 9

"When his head is ours it will be better than his venison," he added.

About this man's face there was something strikingly horrible and subtle. His countenance was the image of a grinning death's-head. Its intelligent, stealthy, and sinister sunken eyes, its depressed nose and heartless fixed grin aroused repulsion. Its bearing of distinct courage alone somewhat reclaimed it. His cloak was thrown back, showing a gold lace belt stuck with knives and pistols, while on his head was a green cap, which Grancey recognised as the cap of the galley felons.

"What news of the Galley-on-land, Admiral?" asked the robber leader.

"All goes well."

"How many at our oars?"

"Two hundred and forty-eight."

"Besides friends?"

"Besides thirty-four friends. We are all in the salt country now except yourselves and the bench at Paris. We reviewed in the pines of Morlaix last month. Such brave ragmen! Forty-seven had killed a hog."

The circle's eyes glistened.

"Yes, the hogs fear us, but the Galley is dark as wind."

"You should have seen the hogs to-day," cried the cave leader; "stupid beasts, too fat to jump."

"Why didn't you stick them?"

"Sacre Dieu! not here; it's too near the Big Hog."

"The Big Hog does not worry us at Morlaix. Since the salt-tax is raised four _sous_ in the pound we are all in the Brittany marshes, pa.s.sing salt into Maine. In Maine a poor man can eat no meat because he can have no brine. You can guess that where the people squeal so there is room for our profit. We lie in the marshes; we gather our piles of salt; we creep out by night through the woods, and--flip--past the salt-guards into Maine. Guards, guards, guards--blue men, black men, green men--all over France. Sacre! they are an itch--a leprosy. Do we hate them, we all?"

"By the oath of the Green Cap," they cried all together.

"Well, we _were_ vagabonds," he continued, "in the Morlaix woods. Our great fire lit up the pines at midnight and our men of rags crept up on all sides to the feast. Some brought white bread, some black, some a pigeon or two from the lord's dovecotes, and every one his bottle of wine. There we told what we were doing and planned the campaign. You may swear we were jolly that night. They have sent me to visit your bench of Fontainebleau, and pray you for the ransom-money of Blogue, who lies in Bordeaux prison to be hanged. Two of his guards can be settled for eighty livres. You are rich, they say, and can pay it."

"Yes, we can afford it," cried the cavern-chief boastfully.

"I thought so, handsome ragmen," returned the visitor. He dropped the point for a moment and suddenly throwing his right hand free from his cloak rose into a curious strain of eloquence which made manifest the nature of this strange organisation, or at least the aims which the man of the death's-head chose to claim for it.

"Let us never forget, comrades, who we are--that our Order is the avenger of the wrongs of the people. Give me each your sufferings that I may treasure them in the common treasury. Give me the tears that have been shed, the deaths, the starvations, the griefs, the insults, the cruelties, that I may heap them one upon another in a secret place, whence, on a day which I see rising very bright out of the days of this generation, we shall thrust them out all bleeding and dreadful to fly forth together swift as eagles for the hearts of the rich. Hugues de la Tour, what wrongs have you to tell?"

"Admiral," cried the young man hoa.r.s.ely, after drinking a gulp from a bottle, his eyes bloodshot, and swinging his knife, "I have suffered till my blood runs like a current of fire against all who are in ease. I hate the King, the Church, the rich, the judges, the strong, the fair.

My father was a n.o.ble of the Court, my mother a Huguenot, and wedded to him by the rite of the Reformed Religion, his own pretended faith. With this excuse he threw her off. He denied her the name of wife and us of his children. His servants pushed her from his door. She died in a garret at Dijon. I took my little sister by the hand, and travelling to my father's door in Versailles awaited his entry into his carriage. We caught his skirts and cried, "Our father!" With his own hands he threw us to the pavement. For years I felt, brothers, what you have felt--cold, hunger, and disdain--but I h.o.a.rded the thought of 'Justice'

as the friend of the wronged.

"I at length pet.i.tioned the magistrature. My papers were unheeded. I appealed to the Minister. The Minister was silent. I found a way of presenting our griefs and claims to the King himself. For answer, a sealed warrant empowered the monster of our life to throw us into prison. There my poor sister died; I escaped. Join me to your galley-oars. I hate all monarchs, decrees, n.o.bles, priests, courtiers.

Crime is justice, justice is the system of crime!"

"Very good, Hugues la Tour," commended the Admiral, "you shall have your hands full of true justice."

"I," shouted a violent man of haggard countenance, "was a cultivator of Auvergne. By incredible hards.h.i.+p I made myself owner of a plot of ground. My woman and I lived scantily on our daily black bread and 'pepperpot'; we spent nothing; we had no comforts, but from year to year, as the _sous_ were piled away in our h.o.a.rd, we kept our eyes on the neighbouring acre of moorland. One year a drought came. Our _sous_ were diminished by famine. It was then the tax gatherer came upon us, his claims heavier than in the years before, for one of the village tax commissioners was jealous of us. The rest of our _sous_ were not sufficient; we could not borrow. A bailiff, a 'blue man,' was placed in our cabin at our cost. The suit went through the Court: we were discomfited. They took my possessions, as at the commencement they had designed to do. They starved my wife; they killed my children. I, too, will kill."

"I also," shouted another. "The t.i.the was my ruin."

"The worse avarice is the ca.s.sock's," said the visitor. "A day of blood approaches, a day of cutting of priests' throats and burning of churches."

"I--I can say nothing," another grumbled. "I have always been in rags and a vagabond. Is it my fault? Who taught me to steal, to strike?"

"Brave rowers," exclaimed the visitor, "I thank you, and as Blogue has to be ransomed, let us see what you have restored to justice."

"Here is for Blogue, and a little more," exclaimed the cavern-chief, throwing over a packet he had been making up, "when the disciples are lucky, the apostle must not lack."

He then spread out a large black kerchief, and placed upon it, one by one, in the sight of all, the watches, jewels and purses taken from the coach.

There was one part of this which was perhaps the only thing in their power by which they could have disturbed Lecour's self control just then. When he saw Cyrene's brooch in these felonious hands his blood boiled up and he stamped his foot involuntarily on the rock.

Horror! The loose shaly stones gave way with a rush beneath him. Down he slid into the cavern, saved in his descent only by the slope and ledges of the "fault." The astonished bandits fled back with a shout. Before Germain could move, however, the robber captain sprang upon him, and, locking him in a desperate embrace, they quickly rolled to the doorway where, in their struggle, the pile of firearms was swept out into the gorge. The giant lifted him bodily and threw him out down the face of the cliff. At this terrible moment the Indian quickness of his early life came to his rescue, for even as he fell he caught the rope, and slid down to the bottom. There he shouted for the gamekeepers. He could see the robbers looking over the entrance and seeming to debate.

Immediately after, two bodies shot down upon him from the cavern, and he found himself face to face with the big man and the Admiral. They sprang upon him in concert, and while the former held him, the second sped off up the gorge and was lost to sight. The robber captain detained him with a grip of immense power, until three more slid down and made off. Then, hearing the shouts of the gamekeepers close at hand, he sprang towards the opposite cliff, climbed straight up it from ledge to ledge with miracles of muscle, and disappeared over the top. Three wretches who were still in the cave were secured, fighting savagely. One was la Tour.

CHAPTER XI

THE COURT

A week or so later, Germain sent his mother the following letter:--

"THE PALACE, FONTAINEBLEAU, _8th September, 1786_.

"MY DEAR MOTHER,--My good fortune is inexpressible. The whole of your dreams for me are fulfilled: can you believe it, your son has--but I will not antic.i.p.ate. I can scarcely trust it myself to be true. I informed you in mine of three days ago, which goes in the same mail as this, of our capture of the gentry of the cavern. It left me pretty scratched.

"The morning following, a courier in a grand livery came riding to the chateau to bear me a command to attend the King's hunt. This command, or invitation, is conveyed by a great card, which I have before me, engraved in a beautiful writing surrounded by a border exquisitely representing hounds, deer, and winding-horns with their straps. It begins: '_From the King_.' Above are the arms of France, the signature is that of the chamberlain. You may think into what ecstasy it threw me when my valet handed me these. (You know everybody in society must have a valet here). My limbs seemed to lose their bruises, and I hastened to the Chevalier, who was much pleased with this testimony of the credit I appeared to have brought him, for, with the greatest affection and generosity, he continues to consider me in the light of a son. He told me how to act at the ceremonies and the hunt, and to take care not to ride across the path of the King, for that is a thing which makes his Majesty very angry. We talked it over perfectly. The only point to which he took objection was that the card was addressed to "Monsieur de Repentigny."

"'I hope,' he said, 'there will be no trouble about this. There was a Repentigny in the army of Canada. We must try to get rid of this name.'

"'If I am at fault with it,' returned I, 'I will make public at once how it has come to be attached to me without my seeking. Even if an owner of it should occur, he must as a man of honour accept my explanation.'

"'True,' answered he, 'I am here to witness that. Do not change it for a day or two. It would be excessively embarra.s.sing for you were it to be altered on this occasion, for the decrees have of late years been very strict about birth.'

"'Would these decrees exclude me from this invitation?' I asked him.

"'Unquestionably,' he replied. 'And that would be too cruel; you are as good a man as any of them.'

"'Very well,' I answered. 'Afterwards I can return to my proper station.'

"But, dear mother, you cannot think what these words meant to me, notwithstanding that I ought to have known it to be so. I left him at once and fled into the park in order to hide my suffering. Oh, it is too beautiful to lose--this sphere of honour and refinement, this world of the lovely, the ancestral, this supreme enchantment of the earth. Having tasted it, how can I return to the common and despised condition of mankind in general! Mother, you who have taught me that this is my true world, I leave it to you to answer.

"That afternoon we drove into the town of Fontainebleau, where there was a very fine haberdasher, just come from Paris, who agreed to make me the proper suit and to supply all the accessories. Two days after, I put on the uniform of a _debutant_, which cost me pretty dear but made a fine figure. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I longed for your spirit to have been in the gla.s.s only to see your son in such an array. The coat was dove-grey satin; waistcoat of dark red, finely figured, with silver b.u.t.tons; small clothes of red, white silk stockings, and jewelled shoes with the red heels which are worn at Court. I also bought a new dress sword. It has an openwork silver handle and guard; the blade sheathed in a white scabbard, which is silver-mounted. I wore large frills and a small French hat finely laced with gold; and I bought besides long hunting-boots.

"I drove in our coach to the Palace. As I entered the gates the officer of the guard espied the livery of the Chevalier, and immediately caused his company to salute me, observing which all the gentlemen standing near took off their hats and bowed to me. I drove into the Court of the White Horse, a great square, one of the five around which this vast palace is built, and at the entrance door I was met by my dear friend Baron de Grancey.