Chapter 41 Scaramouche The Kingmaker by Rafael Sabatini
THE THUNDERBOLT
It was in mid-Nivôse—which is to say, in the early days of the New Year—when André-Louis reappeared in Paris.
His return was opportune, and the hour fully ripe for that which he came back to do.
The contest between the parties of anarchy and moderation, the bitter struggle between the foul Hébert and the Titanic Danton touched its end. Feeling himself crushed under the weight of Danton's oratory which held him up to derision as an imbecile who succeeded only in making the revolution an object of hatred and ridicule, Hébert in his madness attempted to head an insurrection.
That was the end of him.
Beholding him stagger and desiring to speed his end, Robespierre roused himself from the inert vigilance in which hitherto he had observed the combat of his two rivals. Foreseeing his own trial of strength with the survivor, which must follow, he loosed now his valiant henchman Saint-Just against Hébert. This terrible young man, with the golden head and the liquid eyes through which his sadic soul looked out compassionately upon the world, delivered the death-blow in a speech of burning impassioned eloquence in which purity and virtue were flaunted like banners in the wind.
Hébert and those associated with him were arrested for conspiracy to the State. Their doom was sealed.
And so, at last, the lists were cleared for the final struggle for supremacy. Already Dantonists and Robespierrists were buckling their harness. If Danton prevailed it was, as we know, the view of de Batz that he might be wont to play in France the part that Monk had played in England, and lend his influence to the restoration of the throne. But if the fall of Robespierre could be brought about in such a way as to cover his party with infamy, in such a way as to make clear to the famished people that they had been deluded by a gang of corrupt self-seeking scoundrels, whose doctrines of equality and fraternity had been so much hypocrisy employed to magnify themselves, then the hopes of de Batz would be changed to certainty. The end of the revolution and the revolutionaries would be assured.
You conceive, therefore, how breathless was his greeting of André-Louis on his return from Blérancourt, how eager his demands for news of how the adventure there had sped, what fruits it had borne.
There exists among the papers of André-Louis Moreau the draft of an article which he had prepared for the Vieux Cordelier. This draft he now laid before de Batz. Here are the terms of it:
Citizens: If chaos is upon the face of the land and starvation in your midst, it is because the despotism from which you hoped to deliver France when you gave her a constitution, has had no other result than to substitute one set of tyrants for another. The fault does not lie in the constitution. Properly administered it would have borne all the rich fruits expected of it. But the constitution has not been properly administered. The government has been in the hands of self-seeking scoundrels, corrupt and hypocritical, whose only object has been to serve their own interests, abuse their sacred trust, and enrich themselves at the price of your own starvation. When it became necessary for the party of the Mountain to which François Chabot belonged, for the Robespierrists amongst whom he was regarded as a leader, to exculpate themselves from the stain which his villainy had cast upon them all, there was none more eloquent in expressing abhorrence of that man's misdeeds than the Representative Florelle de Saint-Just. It was Saint-Just more than any other who, by his denunciations of Chabot and his fellow-conspirators against the public welfare, calmed your just wrath and restored your shaken faith in the National Convention. Saint-Just convinced you that with the removal of those scoundrels the work of purification was complete; and he promised you under a purer government a speedy end to the misery which he cajoled you into continuing out of patriotism to endure. You listened to him where you might not have listened to another, because he had known how to persuade you that he was the soul of truth and the mirror of purity in his private as in his public life. In your eyes Saint-Just affected the austerity of Scipio. In the Convention, when questions of public morals are to be debated, Saint-Just is ever given the lead out of regard for his virtues even more than for his talents.
It is my task, citizens, to pluck the mask from this arch-hypocrite, this fidus Achates of the Incorruptible Robespierre. I accuse this public idol, this false Republican, this ci-devant Chevalier de Saint-Just, of a corruption infinitely deeper, of abuses infinitely more scandalous than any of those for which he denounced Chabot and Chabot's colleagues in rascality.
I hold proofs, complete and overwhelming, that this wolf in sheep's wool, this aristocrat in a tricolour cockade, this ci-devant Chevalier de Saint-Just, is true to the worst form of the aristocratic stock from which he springs.
Under the old regime, no privilege was more terrible, no power more odious than that by which an innocent but inconvenient man might be flung into prison under a letter of cachet, and left to rot there without trial, forgotten, blotted out, dead whilst still alive. This abomination the Chevalier de Saint-Just has dared to revive for his own inexpressibly vile purposes. Of this abuse of a power entrusted to him in the name of Liberty and of the service of humanity, the ci-devant Chevalier de Saint-Just is guilty. On a false charge he has caused the arrest and imprisonment of a man who was inconvenient to him, a man whom he feared because it was in that man's power and it was that man's right to denounce the debauchery of this Apostle of morality, this austere professor of all the Virtues.
Here follows in detail the story of Thorin, an account of Saint-Just's secret relations with Thorin's wife, and an insistence upon the circumstance that Saint-Just is betrothed in marriage to the sister of the Representative Lebas.
Then comes the story of the plundered half-million, and of the broad acres at La Beauce acquired by Saint-Just in the name of his agent and relative Bontemps, a subterfuge which must have left his misappropriations undetected but for an accidental discovery at Blérancourt made in the course of investigating the case of the Citizen Thorin.
The article closes with a brief peroration in which the sufferings of the people are subtly stressed, the corruption which has caused it is bitterly denounced, and the head of this corrupt hypocrite is demanded.
De Batz read that note to the end with quickened pulses and a flush upon his sallow face. His eyes were gleaming when he looked up into André-Louis'.
"And the proofs of this? The proofs?" he asked half-fearfully, from sheer incredulity.
André-Louis displayed a roll of documents bound with tape.
"They are all here. For every word in that note there is more than proof. Depositions of Thorin's sister and his cousin, concerning the relations between Thorin's wife and Saint-Just. Notes of proceedings, and admissions of Thuillier and of Bontemps all duly attested. Documents found among the papers of Thuillier, particularly a letter in Saint-Just's hand instructing him in the matter of Thorin's arrest and suppression. Documents found among the papers of Bontemps, corroborating his attested admissions that he had purchased in his own name land to the value of half a million francs for Saint-Just. All are here. Nor is that the end of the evidence. Thorin's cousin and sister may be brought from Blérancourt to testify. Thorin himself will have to be produced and heard. Thuillier and Bontemps are in gaol at Blérancourt whence they will have to be brought before the Convention to give evidence. It is complete. The avalanche must follow upon publication."
De Batz trembled with agitation. "My God! My God! This more than compensates for the fall of Toulon. No royalist victory there could have been worth as much as this. It's a miracle. We have them. The Chabot business scarcely cold, and now this! It's not merely the end of the Robespierrists, it's the end of the revolution. This thunderbolt when it falls will shatter the convention. It could not come more seasonably. The people are at the end of their endurance. Do you imagine that they will consent to continue to starve to keep these rascals in power? By God, I'll get my men to work as they have never worked before. If we can't drive Paris into a frenzy over this, then I'm a fool."
He set a hand on André-Louis' shoulder and smiled into his eyes. "You have done well, my kingmaker. It was your dream from the outset that day at Hamm. It is your hand and your wits that have made the dream a reality that have forged this thunderbolt. And yours, André, shall be the credit. If there is any gratitude at all in princes rich shall be your reward."
"Yes," said André-Louis with a wistful smile. "Rich it shall be, for it brings me all the riches that I covet. It brings me Aline. Aline, at last, at long last."
De Batz laughed like a boy as he clapped him on the shoulder. "My dear Romantic!" he ejaculated.
"It moves your mockery, eh, Jean?"
"My mockery? No. My wonder." He grew sober. "Perhaps my envy. Who knows? If ever I had possessed such an inspiration to high endeavour I might have accounted, as you do, all other ambitions mean. I can understand it if I have never experienced it. God bring you to your heart's desire, mon petit. You have earned it, and one day soon the King of France shall thank you." He took up the bundle of documents which André-Louis had cast upon the table. "Bestow these in safety until Desmoulins comes to look them over in the morning. I'll send him word by Tissot."
There was a cabinet in a corner of the room, a rococo piece of the time of the fifteenth Louis, veneered in mahogany with Arcadian landscapes painted in its panels. Inside, one half of the back was secretly contrived to slide across the other half, disclosing a recess in the wall, where de Batz concealed all compromising papers. Of this cabinet each of them possessed a key, and it was in the recess behind it that André-Louis now bestowed those precious documents.
That done, he left the house to go and pay a visit to the Chevalier de Pomelles, at Bourg-Egalité, not as de Batz supposed with the object of informing him of his success at Blérancourt, but because of his consuming anxiety for direct news of Mademoiselle de Kercadiou. Surely by now some messenger would have arrived in Paris bearing the answer which he had begged to his last letter.
De Batz let him go. He might even have accompanied him if it had not been that the immediate consequences of André-Louis' return were to make him very busy. There was much to do to prepare his agents for the inflammatory campaign that would lie before them in the course of the next few days, as soon as they should have flung their bombshell; and de Batz would not waste a moment, now that he had something definite upon which to go to work.
He was still busy when André-Louis returned after nightfall. Yet absorbed as he was in the task to which he had set his wits and his hands, he did not on that account fail to observe the dejection in the young man's countenance. The earlier eagerness seemed all to have departed out of him; of the exhilaration begotten of his success there was no sign remaining.
At first de Batz misread these signs. "You are overtired, André. You should have left Pomelles until to-morrow."
André-Louis flung off his cloak, and stepped to the blazing fire. He stood with his hand upon the overmantel, leaning his forehead on his arm.
"I am not tired, Jean. I am disheartened. I came back in such confidence that by now at last there would be this sorely-awaited letter. And there is nothing."
"So that was why you were in such haste to seek Pomelles?"
"It passes all understanding. Two couriers have come from Hamm since Langéac arrived there with my letter. Yet there is no word from her." He wheeled to face de Batz. "My God! Do you know that it is almost more than I can bear. It is close upon a year since we parted, and in all this time, whilst I have written letter after letter, I never received a single line. I have been patient, and I have kept my wits on what there was to do. But behind it all there has ever been an ache, a yearning." He broke off with an impatient gesture. "Oh, talking will not help."
De Batz desired to comfort him.
"My dear André, consider that this silence probably results from a fear that if a letter were to miscarry it might betray you."
"I did consider it. That is why in my last I begged definitely, insistently, for be it no more than two lines over her initials. It is not like Aline to ignore such a request."
"Yet the explanation may be a simple one. And meanwhile you have been assured by almost every messenger arriving from Hamm that Mademoiselle de Kercadiou is well. Langéac had seen her just before he last came to Paris, a couple of months ago. That should reassure you."
"It does not. It makes it all the more odd." He turned again, and once more leaned his forehead on his arm.
The Baron rose and went to set an arm affectionately about his shoulders.
"Come, child, you are tired, and when we are tired we are pessimists. We fear the unimaginable at every turn. You know, I repeat, that she is well. Let that content you for the little while that now remains. Soon, very soon, you will have the happiness of seeing not her pothooks but herself. You will hear your praises from her lips. God, child, I envy you the joy to come. Dwell on that. The rest is naught."
André-Louis straightened himself. He tried to smile. But the effort did not quite succeed. "Thanks, Jean. You are a good fellow. But there's an evil premonition upon me. It's born perhaps of the sickness that comes of hope deferred."
"Premonition? Bah! Leave premonitions to old wives, and let's to supper. I've a couple of bottles of a Gascony wine that's as big a braggart as I am. It will paint the future a bright rose for you."
But proof was fast approaching that this evil premonition was anything but idle, that this dejection in the hour of triumph was justified by facts. The bearer of it was the Marquis de La Guiche, who had reached Paris that same evening.