Orphans of the Storm Part 6

De Vaudrey had nearly lost all control of his temper. In a moment the outbreak which the Countess was so anxious to avoid would have broken forth, had not the Count without giving his nephew time to speak said quickly:

"I leave you with the Countess. I hope that your respect and affection for her will cause you to lend more weight to her counsels than you are disposed to give to mine."

As if fearing that he might have tried the young man's temper too far, or that he did not wish to prolong a useless scene, the Count left the room. De Vaudrey was alone with his Aunt.

The Countess went up to the n.o.ble-looking young man, and taking his hand in hers, asked in a sweet, winning voice:

"Who is this woman you love? What obstacle prevents the avowal of your pa.s.sion? If it is only a matter of fortune, take mine; it is all at your disposal, and I will give it to you cheerfully."

"Ah, where shall I find a heart like yours?" exclaimed the Chevalier in a voice trembling with emotion. "You have divined my secret. I adore a young girl as charming as she is pure. Yet never have I dared to whisper my pa.s.sion!"

"Her name--her family?" asked the Countess eagerly.

"She was born of the people," said de Vaudrey proudly, yet tenderly.

"She is an orphan and lives by the labor of her hands."

The Countess, who had never for a moment imagined such an answer to her question, was surprised, and she showed plainly that grief was mingled with her surprise.

"And you would make such a woman your wife?" she asked reproachfully.

"Do not judge her until you have seen her," entreated the Chevalier.

"Consent to see her, and then advise me."

The young man took the Countess's hands in his, and looked imploringly into her face.

But his Aunt turned away from him with a gesture of sorrow.

"In such a marriage," she said sadly, "there can be no happiness for you, and for her, only misery. Alas! I know too well the result of those unequal unions. You must renounce her. You owe obedience to your family and your King." She burst into a flood of tears.

Diffidently the young man sought to comfort the Countess whose emotion seemed to have its spring in some hidden sorrow. He promised at last for her sake to consider again the horribly odious proposal of a State marriage, and drying her tears as well as he could, went his way, a victim of torn desires and intensest anguish....

CHAPTER IX

FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE

The giant stranger who had talked to Henriette and made friends with de Vaudrey was Jacques Danton. He and his colleague, Maximilien Robespierre, were destined to be the outstanding figures of the French Revolution. It is worth while to stop here for a little and consider these two men in their historical aspects and for the profound influence which they exerted on the lives of our characters.

As the storm clouds blacken the sky and the sullen sea (not yet lashed to fury) is ridged in deep, advancing breakers, the mariner's eye discerns these stormy petrels flying about or momentarily perched on the masts of the s.h.i.+p of State.

Mark them well--Danton and Robespierre: today, merely "esurient advocates," petty men of law come up from the provinces to win their fortunes in Paris; tomorrow, leaders of faction; some months or years later, the rulers of France!

[Ill.u.s.tration: PIERRE BECOMES THE DEVOTED WORs.h.i.+PPER OF LOUISE WHOM HE HAS SAVED FROM THE RIVER]

Danton--"the huge, brawny figure, through whose black brows and rude flattened face there looks a waste energy as of Hercules not yet furibund."

Robespierre--aptly described as the meanest man of the Tiers Estat: "that anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles; his eyes, troubled, careful; with upturned face, snuffing dimly the uncertain future-time; complexion of a multiplex atrabiliar color, the final shade of which may be the pale sea-green!"

Such were they, afterwards to be known respectively as "the pock-marked Thunderer" and the "sea-green Incorruptible" of the Revolution. The slight, fox-like man had got himself elected to the States-General which in May, 1789, convened at Versailles to take up the troubled state of the country, whilst the lion-like and fiery Danton was the president of the Cordeliers electoral district of Paris--the head of a popular faubourg faction, not yet of power in the State.

The new helmsmen of the State, headed by Mirabeau, steered with considerable success among waters as yet but partly roiled. At Versailles an outward and visible Liberalism triumphed. The Third Estate or Commons, consolidating its authority as a permanent a.s.sembly, took measures to end the national bankruptcy and tried to cope with the awful menace of starvation. It was a bourgeois body, thinly sprinkled with members of the n.o.bility and clergy; its aim, to abolish the worst seigniorial abuses, restore prosperity, and support the throne by a system of const.i.tutional guarantees.

But when the Storm broke, it was not at Versailles where these lawgiving Six Hundred debated the state of the Nation, but at Paris that the group known as "Friends of the People" lashed the popular discontents to unmeasured and ungovernable fury.

It begins in the Palais Royal where "there has been erected, apparently by subscription, a kind of Wooden Tent, most convenient--where select Patriotism can now redact resolutions, deliver harangues, with comfort, let the weather be as it will. Lively is that Satan-at-Home!

On his table, on his chair, in every cafe, stands a patriotic orator; a crowd round him within; a crowd listening from without, open-mouthed, through open door and window; with 'thunders of applause for every sentiment of more than common hardiness.'"

Strange that in a Royalist garden should sprout the seeds of a great Revolution! Stranger the crowds that gathered there, and the leaders both popular and Royalist--among the former, our fiery friend Danton, our cautious, snuffling Robespierre, and the boy of genius Camille Desmoulins, Danton's "slight-built comrade and craft-brother, he with the long curling locks, with the face of dingy blackguardism, wondrously irradiated with genius!"

General Lafayette and Minister from America Thomas Jefferson came there too now and again, to watch the crowds and hear the speeches.

Symbols of America's newly won freedom, they were objects of almost superst.i.tious veneration to the agitators for an enfranchised France.

Danton, Desmoulins and the rest crowded around them, eager to shake their hands and listen to their comments. In particular, Lafayette's sword--the gift of the American Congress a decade before, excited their admiration.

"From America's Congress!" repeated Danton fervently as he eyed the inscription on the scabbard. "Why, that's the kind of Government we want over here!" Tears came into the Frenchman's eyes, to think of the Liberty that Lafayette had helped to win.

The Palais Royal gardens were the property of the King's cousin, Louis Phillipe. Disgusted with not being in the councils of the monarch and leaning to democracy, he permitted the place to be used for public promenades, lovers' meetings--and popular harangues. Friends of the People, Friends of Phillipe, and Friends of the King freely rubbed elbows. The popular tide set so strongly that none dared openly oppose the demagogic orators. A bread famine had descended upon Paris. The scarcity of wheat and flour was an ever-present theme; the oppression of autocracy and seigniorage, another. The cry for direct action always woke echo in the popular breast, sick over the delays of the Versailles lawgivers, and nouris.h.i.+ng the hope of seizing pelf and power, rescuing their kinsfolk from the prisons, and beating down the Kings.h.i.+p and aristocracy to relinquish privileges and abate the hards.h.i.+ps of the Common Man!

Plain, embittered envy stalked abroad, too--envy of the aristocrats'

grand homes and unparalleled luxury, their fine equipages and clothing, costly foods and wines, their trains of lackeys and menials, the beauty and joie-de-vivre of their sons and daughters! The mechanic, the storekeeper, the unskilled laborer, the ranks of unemployed, and the submerged tenth obliged to live by their wits or starve, were as fuel to the spark of the orators' lightning.

'Twas unlike a well-ordered land wherein each one receives the well-merited reward of toil. Justice was not in the body politic.

Tyranny, extravagance and bankruptcy on the part of the ruling cla.s.s had wiped out the margin of plenty. Black ruin seemed to impend for all. It was a case of starve--or unite against the rulers and oppressors of society. Danton, the thunderer of mighty speech, dominated these gatherings, aided and abetted by the eagle-like Desmoulins and the crafty Robespierre.

"With the People's government," his swelling periods resounded, "there shall be no common man, no aristocrat--no rich nor poor--but all brothers--brothers--brothers!" Imagine if you can the fire-drama of his recital of generations of cruelties and wrongs--his picture of their miserable lot and of the envied aristocrats' pleasures--and then consider the pitch of frenzied republicanism to which this wonderful fraternal climax uplifted them! With crash of thunder and wrack of the elements the Storm must break, directly the popular feeling found immediate object of its ire.

CHAPTER X

THE ATTACK ON DANTON

But the royalists were not idle. Their spies attended the meetings.

Their swordsmen provoked street encounters with popular leaders.

They had always coped with popular ferments by picking off the individual leaders, and they did not doubt their ability to do the same thing now. As Danton spoke, an influential Royalist, pretending to handclap his sentiments, privately signaled to a number of these "spada.s.sins" or killers.

On his way home from the meeting Danton was attacked in the lonely street. He backed up to a house porch, quickly drew his own sword, and with herculean strength managed to cut down five or six spada.s.sins of the advance party.

Then he fled to the house where Henriette and also Robespierre lodged, rushed in and up the stairs. The following company were almost upon him. Their shouts and cries could be heard below.

Danton plumped into the first door at the left of the stair-head. He was there when Henriette, who had been momentarily away, returned to her room.

"The spies--spada.s.sins--they would take my life--" He was wounded. It was with a difficult hoa.r.s.eness that he spoke.