Chapter 25 Scaramouche The Kingmaker by Rafael Sabatini
THE INTERDICT
Life in Paris was becoming uncomfortable. The results of government by Utopian ideals began to make themselves felt. In the words of Saint-Just, "misery had given birth to the Revolution, and misery might destroy it." The immediate cause lay in the fact that, again to quote the fidus Achates of Robespierre, "the multitude which had recently been living upon the superfluities of luxury and by the vices of another class," found itself without means of subsistence.
In less revolutionary language this means that the vast mass of the people which found employment so long as there was a wealthy nobility to employ it, was now, under the beneficent rule of equality, unemployed and faced with destitution. Not only were these unfortunates without the means to purchase food, but food itself was becoming difficult to purchase. The farmers were becoming increasingly reluctant to market their produce, in exchange for paper money which was daily depreciating in value.
For this depreciation, partly resulting from the flood of assignats in which the country was submerged, the Convention denounced the forgers who were at work. The Convention beheld in them the agents of the foreign despots who sought by these means to push the Nation into bankruptcy. This was, of course, a gross exaggeration; it possessed nevertheless some slight basis of truth. We do know of the activities of that printing-press at Charonne, and of the reckless prodigality with which de Batz was putting in circulation the beautiful paper money manufactured there by the extraordinarily skilful Balthazar Roussel. De Batz served two purposes at once: directly, he corrupted by means of this inexhaustible wealth those members of the government whom he found corruptible: indirectly, he increased the flood of forgeries that was so seriously embarrassing the Convention and diluting the shrunken resources of the Nation.
Saint-Just had a crack-brained notion of relieving matters by using grain as currency. Thus he felt that the agriculturists might be induced to part with it in exchange for other substances. But agriculturists, being by the very nature of their activities self-supporting, the scheme, otherwise impracticable, held little promise of success and was never put into execution. Industry and manufacture languished. Conscription was absorbing some seven hundred and fifty thousand men into its fourteen armies. But apart from this there was little employment to be found. The tanneries were idle, iron and wool were almost as scarce as bread. What little was produced barely sufficed for home consumption, so that nothing was left for export, and consequently the foreign exchanges rose steadily against France.
To the physical depression arising out of this came in the early days of that July of 1793, style esclave, Messidor of the Year 2 by the calendar of Liberty One and Indivisible, a moral depression resulting from the disasters to French arms, despite the unparalleled masses which conscription had enrolled.
And when on the anniversary that year of the fall of the Bastille came the assassination of the popular idol Marat by a young woman concerned to avenge the unfortunate Girondins, Paris went mad with rage.
Charlotte Corday was guillotined in a red shirt—the Convention decreed Pantheon honours to the murdered patriot, and never was there such a funeral as the torchlight procession in which his remains were borne to their tomb.
François Chabot, discerning parallels between Marat's position and his own, thundered in the Convention denunciations which reflected his own fear of assassination.
But the Convention had other distractions. At the moment Condée was occupied by the Austrians, and then in Thermidor Valenciennes suffered the same fate and Kléber capitulated at Mainz. The Vendee was in flagrant insurrection, and in the south there were mutterings of a royalist storm.
A cause for all these disasters, and for the menace of worse that seemed to overhang the land, had to be discovered by the Utopians who had endowed France and who hoped to endow the world with the glorious rule of Universal Brotherhood. It was discovered in the machinations of aristocrats at home and of Pitt and Coburg abroad. Against Pitt and Coburg the Convention could only inveigh. But against her home conspirators she could take action. And to this end was passed the Law of Suspects which was to overwhelm the new Revolutionary Tribunal with work and bring the guillotine into daily function.
Thus the Reign of Terror was established. Danton, newly-married, having been active in establishing it, went off to his lands at Arcis-sur-Aube, there to devote himself to agriculture and uxoriousness. Robespierre became more than ever the focus of popular hope and popular idolatry, with Saint-Just at his side to inspire him, and his little group of supporters to ensure that his will should be paramount. Already there were rumours that he aimed at a dictatorship. Saint-Just had boldly declared that a dictator was a necessity to a country in the circumstances in which France found herself, without however explaining how this could be reconciled with the purity of views which beheld tyranny in all individual authority.
For François Chabot, that other stout henchman of the Incorruptible Maxmilien, these continued to be busy days. The Law of Suspects gave a free rein to his passion for denunciation, and almost daily now his capucinades were to be heard from the tribune of the Convention.
He would wade, he announced, through mud and blood in the service of the people. He would tear out his heart and give it to be eaten by the irresolute in republicanism, that thus they might assimilate the pure patriotism by which it was inspired.
Daily now the bread queues increased at the bakers; daily the populace, its passions whetted by famine, grew more bloodthirsty; daily the tumbrils, with their escorts of National Guards and rolling drums, rumbled down the Rue Saint Honoré to the Place de la Revolution. Nevertheless the curtain still rose punctually every evening at the Opera, there was an undiminished attendance at the Fifty and other gaming-houses in the Palais Egalité—heretofore Palais Royal—and elsewhere, and life in the main pursued a normal course on this swiftly thinning crust of a volcano.
De Batz watched, organized and waited. His work lay in Paris, and in Paris he would remain whatever might be happening elsewhere. The Marquis de la Guiche, that most enterprising and daring of his associates, who went by the name of Sevignon, would have lured him away to join the insurrectionaries in the South. The Marquis, himself a soldier, reminded de Batz that he was a soldier, too, and pointed out that in the South a soldier's work awaited him. But de Batz would not move, such was his faith in the schemes of André-Louis, and in the end La Guiche departed alone to carry his sword where there was employment for it. The Baron did not oppose his departure. But he regretted it deeply, for there was no man more whole-heartedly devoted to the restoration of the monarchy than this utterly fearless, downright Marquis de la Guiche, who had been the only one to stand by him in that attempt to rescue the King.
He overcame, however, his regrets and remained at the post he had allotted himself. Here all was going as it should. At the present pace the revolution could not last much longer. Soon now this unfortunate populace must be brought to realize that its sufferings were the result of the incompetence of its rulers and of the chaos which had been born of their idealism. If, without awaiting this, it could be made to discover that the elected were corrupt and dishonest, and it could assign to their corruption, and not merely to incompetence, the hunger which it was made to endure, then a storm should arise that must sweep away for ever those windy rhetoricians. This had been the thought of André-Louis. The soundness of its foundation was being confirmed by the march of events observed at close quarters. Meanwhile the captivity of the Queen and her family continued. A month and more had passed since the attempt to rescue her, and nothing further had been heard of the negotiations with Vienna for the exchange of prisoners. De Batz began to be uneasy. Reasonably he suspected that the negotiations had aborted. The Queen's salvation must depend now upon the speedy exploding of the revolution. Therefore he spurred on André-Louis in the delicate task to which his confederate had set his hand.
André-Louis required no spurring. The task itself absorbed him. He approached it like a chess-player carefully studying the sequence of moves by which the end was to be reached.
François Chabot was his immediate object, to be gained by the brothers Frey, mere pawns to be taken or not in passing as the developments should indicate. And the Freys were making things easy for him. His skilfully masked approach of defences, which the brothers knew in their consciences to be extremely vulnerable, had not failed of its intimidation. Junius, having considered, had discovered that their security lay in welcoming an association which they dared not take the risk of refusing. He had been helped to his decision by a hint from Proly that de Batz was in alliance with Moreau, and that de Batz wielded a wide and mysterious influence, a power which it was not prudent to provoke.
So the Freys opened their doors to the Baron and his friend, and had no immediate cause to regret it. On the contrary, the Baron, disposing of very considerable sums, showed himself from the outset able and willing to co-operate with the Freys in any of the financial ventures which engaged them and for which funds were necessary. Soon, indeed, the brothers came to congratulate themselves upon an association which at first had been forced upon them against their inclinations. The Baron displayed a shrewdness in finance which commended him increasingly to the respect and even friendship of the Freys, and which resulted in some transaction of considerable profit to them both.
André-Louis, too, being associated with the Baron, was by now on intimate terms with these Jewish bankers, a constant visitor at their substantial house in the Rue d'Anjou, and at their well-furnished table, which had first rendered apparent to the starveling Chabot the advantages of accepting the friendship of these very zealous apostles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The quiet, comely little Léopoldine never failed to make him welcome to dinner at her brothers' house, and made no secret of the fact that she found a pleasure in his company. Her gentle brown eyes would soften as they watched him; her ears were attentive to all that he said, and her lips ready to smile at any sally of his. Thus very soon he was entirely at home with the Freys. They made him feel—as they had made Chabot feel—almost one of the family.
One evening after he and de Batz had dined at the Rue d'Anjou, and whilst they were still at table, Chabot being of the party, Junius expounded to them a scheme in which he believed that millions could be made.
He and his brother were fitting out at Marseilles a corsair fleet to operate in the Mediterranean, raiding not only the ships of enemy powers but also those ports on the Spanish and Italian coast which could easily be surprised.
Junius coloured the undertaking so speciously as to make it appear of outstanding national importance, a patriotic enterprise of advantage to the Republic since it harrassed her enemies. André-Louis appeared to be profoundly impressed. He praised the project in high terms for both its financial and patriotic soundness, that de Bate at once offered a contribution of a hundred thousand livres.
Junius smiled approval upon him. "You are quick to judge opportunity, my friend."
Chabot was looking at him with round eyes. "You have the advantage of being wealthy," he said with a sigh of envy.
"If you would enjoy the same advantage, this is your opportunity, Citizen-Representative."
"I?" Chabot smiled sourly. "I have not the necessary means to acquire a share. My labours have all been in the service of humanity. They bring no pecuniary reward."
"Think of the treasure you might have amassed in Heaven if the Republic had not abolished it," said André-Louis.
"My friend, you are flippant," the representative reproved him. "You gibe upon sacred subjects. It is not worthy."
"Do you still regard Heaven as a sacred subject?"
"I so regard the Republic," Chabot thundered. "You permit yourself to jest about it. A sacrilege."
De Batz intervened to place his purse at the disposal of the representative, so that he might acquire a share in this venture. Chabot, however, would not be tempted. If the business went awry, as well it might, for the risks connected with it were not to be denied, he would be without means to repay. He would be left in debt, and that was a dangerous situation for a Representative of the People. The Baron did not pursue the matter. He returned instead to the subject of his own investment, settling the details.
On their way home, through deserted streets at a late hour of that summer night, André-Louis approved him.
"You were quick to take the hint, Jean."
"Even although I did not perceive your aim. My trust in you becomes almost child-like, André."
"My aim is twofold. To seduce Chabot by showing him how easily and safely he may grow rich by trusting us, and so to display our powers to the Freys that they will not venture to oppose us, whatever we demand. You shall see some pretty happenings shortly."
But the month was out before André-Louis made any further move. He concerned himself, meanwhile, jointly with de Batz, in some transactions in émigré property by which Delaunay and Julien were allowed to profit modestly, so as to encourage them.
Then one August morning he went off alone to the Tuileries. Awaiting the end of the morning session, he paced the hall mingling with the incredibly assorted attendance attracted by different motives to this vestibule of government. The preponderance was of rough men of the people, uncouth, ill-kempt, loud of voice and foul of utterance, some of them red-capped, all making great parade of revolutionary colours. As a leaven there were amongst them a few exquisites with powdered heads and striped coats, and a goodly proportion of men of the lawyer class in sober, well-cut raiment wearing their hair in clubs, with here and there the blue and white of an officer or the blue and red of a National Guardsman; and there were some women present, too, for the most part coarse slatterns from the markets who took an interest in politics, bare of arms and almost bare of bosom, the tricolour cockade in their mob-caps. All intermingled and rubbed shoulders on terms of the equality dictated by the revolutionary rule.
Sitting apart on one of the benches ranged against a wall, André-Louis watched the scene with interest whilst he waited, himself scarcely observed. Ever and anon when a representative or other person of consequence arrived or departed, the thin crowd would range itself aside to give him passage, its members saluting him as he passed, some respectfully but most of them familiarly.
Many of these were known to André-Louis. There was Chabot, short, sturdy and ill-clad, with a red cap on his brown curls, undisputedly the greatest man with the populace now that Marat was dead. Pleasantries, at once obscene and affectionate, hailed him as he strutted through the crowd, and were returned by him in kind. In contrast, there was a young man of striking beauty of face and figure, dressed with conspicuous elegance, with whom none dared take such liberties. He was deferentially greeted as he passed, and he acknowledged the greetings with a casual haughtiness which no aristocrat of the old régime could have exceeded. This was the terrible Chevalier de Saint-Just, a gentleman by birth, a rogue by nature, who had lent the fire of his eloquence and personality to hoist Robespierre to the first place in the State.
There was another, an older man, also of a good presence and careful attire, languid of air and affected of manner, in whom André-Louis recognized the dramatist and legislator Fabre, who had assumed the poetical name of d'Eglantine and who had attached himself to the tribune Danton.
At last among those issuing from the Convention he beheld the man he awaited, and rose to intercept him.
"A word with you on a matter of national importance, Delaunay."
The representative used him with the deference due to the man by whom we hope to profit. They extricated themselves from the throng, and sought the bench which André-Louis had lately occupied.
"Things move slowly, Delaunay."
"You don't reproach me with it, I hope," the representative grumbled.
"We will never quicken them, never come to big operations until Chabot's timidity is conquered."
"Agreed. But then?"
"This. The Freys, who control him, have sunk a fortune in a fleet of corsairs." He supplied some details. "An interdict upon that fleet would ruin them."
Delaunay was startled. "Do you want to ruin them?"
"Oh no. Merely to temper them. Merely to bend them to the proper shape for our ends."
André-Louis talked for some time, and evidently to some purpose; for three days later desolation descended upon that house in the Rue d'Anjou. From the tribune of the Convention the Deputy Delaunay had denounced the corsairs as robbers. "The Republic cannot sanction brigands by sea or land!" That had been his text. Upon this he had preached a sermon of Republican virtue and probity, at the end of which he had demanded an interdict against the corsair fleet. This had been voted by a Convention which had little interest in the matter.
De Batz and André-Louis sought the Freys. De Batz wore an air of consternation. "My friends, this is ruin for me!" In consternation he was answered that it was ruin for them no less.
Emmanuel was in tears, whilst Junius so far forgot himself in his rage as to inveigh against Chabot.
"That man has come here to guzzle at my table daily for the past three months, and now when he might have stood my friend, when by a word in time he might have averted this disaster, he keeps silent and leaves us to our fate. That is a friend for you! Ah, name of God!"
"You should have made him a partner in the venture," said de Batz. "I attempted it; but you did not support me."
"At least," said André-Louis, "make use of him in this extremity. If you don't, it is ruin. You have a responsibility towards de Batz, my friend. You will forgive my mentioning it."
"A responsibility. Oh, my God! He was a free agent. You knew what you were doing. I laid all my cards on the table. You saw precisely what was involved. Enough that we should be ruined in ourselves without being charged with responsibility for the ruin of others."
"And it won't help. What matters is to have things corrected, to have this ban lifted. Get Chabot here. Invite him to dinner. Amongst us we must constrain him."
Junius Frey obeyed; but he was not sanguine. He regarded an appeal to Chabot as a forlorn hope, and Chabot justified him of this when that same evening across the dinner table it was proposed to him that he should stand their friend and procure the repeal of the interdict.
"If I were to do as you require how should I ever justify myself before the tribunal of my conscience?"
Before the condemnation in his glance the long, bony Emmanuel seemed to wilt and even the sturdy Junius grew uncomfortable.
Giving no one time to answer him, Chabot launched himself upon an oration, a magnificent capucinade, some of the best sentiments of which were borrowed from the speech in which Delaunay had demanded the troublesome decree, but the terms of which were luridly Chabot's own. He inveighed fiercely against all dishonesty and peculation. He dwelt at length upon the corrupting power of gold which he described as the drag upon the wheels of progress towards that universal brotherhood which was to transform the earth into the likeness of a celestial abode.
"I remind you again," André-Louis cut in dryly, "that the Republic has abolished Heaven."
Thrown out of his rhetorical stride, Chabot glared annoyance. "I speak in images," he announced.
"You should select them more in accordance with the creed of reason," André-Louis reproved him. "Otherwise you are in danger of being suspected of cant, a disease of which you are certainly a victim."
To Chabot this was almost paralysing.
"A victim of cant? I?" He could hardly speak.
"Your ardour misleads you. Your virtuous passion sweeps you headlong down false tracks. Listen to me a moment, Citizen-Representative. In this imperfect world it is not often that good may be done without some harm resulting. In every projected action a wise statesman must consider which is to predominate. These corsairs are robbers. Admitted. To rob is a crime, and a pure republicanism cannot condone crime. Again admitted. But who is robbed? The enemies of France. For whose profit? That of the French Republic. And that which profits the Nation increases her strength and enables her the better to defeat her enemies at home and abroad. Thus there is a little personal harm to the end that there may be a great national good. This is a phase you have not considered. Mankind is not to be served by narrow views, Citizen-Representative. It is necessary to survey the whole field at once. If I steal the weapons from an assassin I commit a theft, which is a civic offence. But am I merely a robber, or am I a benefactor of mankind?"
There was loud, excited approval from the Freys and from de Batz. Little Léopoldine, who was at table with them, considered with glowing eyes the keen, pale face of the speaker. Chabot sat mute, bludgeoned by an argument which fundamentally was sound.
But when, taking advantage of this, de Batz renewed the appeal to him that he should make himself the champion of the corsairs and procure the repeal of the interdict, the conventional bestirred himself to resist. He waved a plump, ill-shaped and unclean hand.
"Ah that, no! Shall I make myself the advocate of robbers? What will be thought of me?"
"So long as you can answer before the tribunal of your conscience, does it matter what will be thought of you elsewhere?" asked André-Louis.
Chabot scanned him for signs of mockery. But found none. André-Louis continued.
"Not to do that which you acknowledge to be right merely from fear of the appearances, is hardly worthy of one who dwells in the pure atmosphere of the Mountain."
"You are under a misapprehension," Chabot retorted. "A man in my position, bearing the sacred trust imposed upon me by the People, must set an example in all the virtues."
"Agreed. Oh, agreed. But is it a virtue merely to appear virtuous when in your heart you know that your action is not virtuous? Is the shadow more important than the substance, Citizen-Representative?"
"It might be. Suspicion is but a shadow. There may be no substance behind it. Yet if it fall across a man in these days..." He completed the sentence by a jab with the edge of his hand against his neck and a grim wink.
"So that it comes to this," said de Batz. "You are, after all, governed not by virtue but by fear."
Chabot became annoyed, and the Freys bestirred themselves to restore harmony. Junius filled the representative's glass, Emmanuel piled his plate. They protested that the repast was being ruined by the discussion. They would lose all the money engaged in the corsair venture and every franc besides rather than spoil the appetite of so worthy a guest.
"For the rest," said Junius, whilst Chabot fell once more to eating, "when have you ever known me to advocate any measures that were not founded upon the purest republican principles? Look into my history, François, which I have so fully disclosed to you. Remember all the sacrifices of fortune and of the toys that despotism describes as honours which I have made in order to come and dwell in the pure air of a republican nation that shall rival the glories of ancient Rome. Should I, then—can you suspect it?—mislead you now for the sake of a paltry personal profit; a profit which I should never have sought if I had not seen that France would profit to an even greater degree?"
Chabot continued to eat while he listened. He was noisy over it and not at all nice to observe.
André-Louis followed up that shrewd assault upon the ramparts of the representative's apprehensions.
"You do not perceive, and we have hesitated to point out to you, that the action to which we urge you is one in which you should cover yourself with glory. More shrewd than the superficial Delaunay, who demanded this decree, you perceive that by favouring the enemies of France it is actually harmful to the best interests of the Republic. I warn you that another will not overlook this as you have been doing, for it leaps to the eye as soon as mentioned. Will you leave it for someone else to garner the laurels with which we invite you to adorn your brows?"
With his mouth full, the representative stared at him. "What are the arguments that would carry that conviction?"
"You possess them already in what I have said. You shall have more if you need them. It is easy to plead convincingly and eloquently when a man pleads truthfully. Magna est veritas et prevalebit. Here we ask you to state nothing but the truth."
Chabot continued to stare at him, obviously shaken. Then he emptied his glass at a draught. And whilst he wavered, de Batz briskly pursued the attack.
"You have been prejudiced, Citizen-Representative, because you have misunderstood us. You have imagined that we are asking a service of you, when in fact we are showing you your opportunity."
"That's it," said Junius. "Name of a name! This good Chabot conceives that we are abusing the sacred duty of hospitality to take advantage of a guest. Ah, François! Name of a name! But that is to wrong me terribly."
"Leave it," said André-Louis on a sudden note of finality. "Since that is how Chabot feels, we must not press him. I will see Julien this evening. He will thank me for the chance which Chabot refuses."
But now Chabot displayed alarm.
"You go so fast!" he complained. "You reach conclusion before we have even had discussion. If I should come to see clearly that this interdict is against the best interests of the Nation, do you imagine that I should hesitate to demand its repeal? You must tell me more, Moreau. Let me have the arguments in detail. Meanwhile, I take your word for it that they are as pure and convincing as you all assert."
They applauded him. They congratulated him. They plied him with wine, and whilst he sipped it they talked philosophy and the Redemption of Man, the deliverance of the universe from the thraldom of despotism under which humanity was writhing and all the rest of the Utopian nonsense by which they would have reduced the world to the famine-stricken, blood-soaked state of France.
It was all very moving. Chabot, under the influence of wine and rhetoric, was brought to the verge of tears by pondering the unhappy lot of his fellow-men. All this, however, did not prevent him from turning a languishing eye ever anon upon the timid Léopoldine. His imagination likened her to a little partridge, so young, so shy and so tender; a toothsome morsel for an apostle of Freedom, for a patriot who, in his superb altruism and self-abnegation, was prepared to wade through mud and blood that he might redeem the world.