The Scarlet Pimpernel Series – All 35 Titles in One Edition. Emma Orczy
first the people did not take much notice of Conty; the men had gone and there was nothing much to do but go back to one's own hovels and mope there till they returned. But when presently the musicians, in response to the speaker's challenge, took up the strains of the revolutionary song, they straightened out their backs, turned about the better to hear the impassioned oratory which now poured from Citizen Conty's lips.
He was in his element. He held all these poor, half-starved people in a fever by the magic of his oratory, and he would not allow their fever to cool down again. From an abstract reference to any château to the actual mention of La Rodière did not take him long. Now he was speaking of Docteur Pradel, the respected citizen of Choisy, the friend of the poor, who had dared to express his political opinions in the presence of those arrogant ci-devants, and what had happened? He had been insulted, outraged, thrashed like a dog!
"And you, citizens," he once more bellowed, "though the government has not called upon you to fashion bayonets and sabres, are you going to sit still and allow your sworn enemies, the enemies of France, to ride rough-shod over you now that our glorious revolution has levelled all ranks and brought the most exalted heads down under the guillotine? You have no sabres or bayonets, it is true, but you have your scythes and your axes and you have your fists. Are you going to sit still, I say, and not show those traitors up there on the hill that there is only one sovereignty in the world that counts and which they must obey, the sovereignty of the people?"
The magic words had their usual effect. A perfect storm of applause greeted them, and all at once they began to sing: "Allons enfants de la patrie!" and the musicians blew their trumpets and banged their drums and soon there reigned in the restaurant the sort of mighty row beloved by agitators.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
At the Château
It did not take Conty long after that to persuade a couple of hundred people who were down in the dumps and saw no prospect of getting out of them that it was their duty to go at once to the Château de la Rodière and show those arrogant ci-devants that when the sovereignty of the people was questioned, it would know how to turn the tables on those who dared to flout it. So most of what was left of the population of Choisy assembled on the Grand' Place, there formed itself into a compact body and started to march through the town, and thence up the hill, headed by a band of musicians who had sprung up from nowhere a few days ago and had since then greatly contributed to the gaiety inside the cafés and restaurants by their spirited performance of popular airs. On this great occasion they headed the march with their fiddles and trumpets and drum. There were five of them altogether and their leader, a great hulking fellow who should have been fighting for his country instead of scraping the catgut, was soon very popular with the crowd. His rendering of the "Marseillaise" might be somewhat faulty, but he was such a lively kind of vagabond that he put everyone into good humour long before they reached the château.
And they remained in rare good humour. For them this march, this proposed baiting of the aristos was just an afternoon's holiday, something to take them out of themselves, to help them to forget their misery, their squalor, the ever-present fear that conditions of life would get worse rather than better. Above all, it lured them into the belief that this glorious revolution had done something stupendous for them — they didn't quite know what, poor things, but there it was: the millennium, so the men from Paris kept on assuring them.
Actually a mob — an angry mob — say in England, in Russia or Germany, is usually just a mass of dull, tenacious and probably vindictive humanity; but in France, even during the fiercest days of revolution, there was always an element of inventiveness, almost of genius, in the crowd of men and women that went hammering at the gates of châteaux, insisted on seeing its owners, even when, as in Versailles, these were still their King and Queen, and devised a score of ways of humiliating and baiting them without necessarily resorting to violence. Thus, a French mob is unlike any other in the world.
And so it was in this instance with the hundred or two of women and derelicts who marched up the hill to La Rodière in the wake of an unwashed, out-at-elbows, raffish troupe of musicians. They stumped along, those, at any rate who were able-bodied, shouting and singing snatches of the "Marseillaise," not feeling the cold, which was bitter, nor the fatigue of breasting the incline up to the château, on a road slippery with ice and snow. They were as lively as they could be, not knowing exactly what they were going to do once they got up there and came face to face with the ci-devant Marquis and Marquise, for whom they had worked in the past and from whom they had received alternately many kindnesses and many blows.
And right in the rear of them all there walked two men. One of them was Citizen Conty, the paid agent of the government; the other was small and spare, was dressed from head to foot in sober black, his voluminous black cloak effectually concealing the tri-colour scarf which he wore round his waist. He never spoke to his companion while they both trudged up the road in the wake of the crowd, but now and then he would throw quick, searching glances on the surrounding landscape and up at the cloud-covered sky, almost as if he were seeking to wrest from the heavens or the earth some secret which Nature alone could reveal. This was Citizen Chauvelin, at one time representative of the revolutionary government at the English Court, now a member of the newly constituted Committee of Public Safety, the most powerful organisation in the country, created for the suppression of treason and the unmasking of traitors and of spies.
At the top of the hill there, where the narrow footpath abuts on the main road, the two men came to a halt. Chauvelin said curtly to his companion:
"You may go back now, Citizen Conty."
Conty was only too thankful to obey; he turned down the path and was soon out of sight and out of earshot.
Chauvelin walked on in the direction of the château. The crowd was a long way ahead now, even the stragglers had caught up with them, and there was lusty cheering when the gates of La Rodière first came into view.
Chauvelin came to a halt once more. There was no one in sight, and the perfect quietude of the place was only disturbed by the sound of revellings gradually dying away in the distance. Chauvelin now gave a soft, prolonged whistle, and a minute or two later a man in the uniform of the Gendarmerie Nationale, but wrapped in a huge cloak from head to foot so that his accoutrements could not be seen, came out cautiously from the thicket close by. Chauvelin beckoned to him to approach.
"Well, citizen sergeant," he demanded, "did you notice any man who might be that damnable English spy?"
"No, citizen, I can't say that I did. I was well placed, too, and could see the whole crowd file past me, but I couldn't spot any man who appeared abnormally tall or who looked like an Englishman."
"I expect you were too dense to notice," Chauvelin retorted dryly. "But, anyway, it makes no matter. I will spot him soon enough. As soon as I do I will give the signal we agreed on. You remember it?"
"Yes, citizen. A long whistle twice and then one short one."
"How many men have you got?"
"Thirty, citizen, and three corporals."
"Where are they?"
"Twenty, with two corporals, in the stables. Ten with one corporal in the coach-house."
"Any outdoor workers about? Grooms or gardeners?"
"Two gardeners, citizen, and one in the stables."
"They understand?"
"Yes, Citizen. I have promised them fifty livres each if they keep their eyes and mouth shut, and certain arrest and death if they do not. They are terrified and quite safe to hold their tongue."
"My orders, citizen sergeant, are that the men remain where they are till they hear the signal, two prolonged whistles, followed by one short one. Like this" — and he took a toy whistle out of his waistcoat pocket and blew softly into it, twice and once again, in the manner which he had described.
"As