The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic. Эжен Сю
dear husband," interposed Madam Desmarais, interrupting her daughter to retard an explanation of which she dreaded the issue: "You have not yet told us what compelled your departure from Versailles, and why you are in Paris instead of in session with the National Assembly."
"Last evening and night the most sinister rumors were in circulation about Versailles. According to some, the court party had secured from the King the dissolution of the Assembly. The members of the Left were to be arrested as seditious characters, and imprisoned or banished from the kingdom."
"Great heaven—that is where you sit, my friend! To what danger have you not been exposed!"
"They would not have taken me from my curule chair alive," responded the attorney grandly. "But the court party, frightened by the peals of the cannon at the Bastille, the roar of which carried to Versailles, drew back before the fearsome consequences of such an attempt."
"I breathe again," exclaimed Madam Desmarais with a sigh of relief. "You are neither a fugitive nor proscribed. God be praised!"
"Still, other reports agitated Versailles and the Assembly on the score of the uneasiness in Paris. During the night they saw, from the housetops, the gleam of burning barriers. In the morning a courier despatched by Baron Bezenval, commandant of Paris, brought news to the government that the people of the suburb of St. Antoine, assisted by those from the other suburbs, were besieging the Bastille. This sort of aggression was considered by the majority of the representatives an enterprise as blameworthy as it was senseless. No one could conjecture that a mob of people, in rags, almost without arms, could take a fortress defended by a garrison and a battery of artillery. The attempt was in the highest degree extravagant."
"The victory of the people was truly heroic," answered Madam Desmarais. "It really savors of the miraculous."
"Alas, a few more miracles of that stamp and the royal power is overthrown, and we fall into anarchy," moodily replied the advocate. "The people, drunk with its triumph, will not content itself with wise reforms. Having overthrown the royalty, the nobility, and the clergy, it will turn on the bourgeoisie, and we, its allies during the combat, shall become its victims after the victory. It will push to the end the logic of its principles."
"Good heavens, my friend, you express to-day the same opinions you till lately fought in my brother!"
"Your brother Hubert is a violent man who knows nothing of politics," answered the attorney, much embarrassed by his wife's observation; and he added, "This morning the National Assembly, wishing to ascertain the truth as to the conflicting rumors of events in Paris, commissioned several of its members, myself among the number, to learn by actual witness the march of affairs, and, if possible, to check the shedding of blood. In spite of our haste to the city, when we arrived the people were already masters of the Bastille and had already disgraced their victory by slaughtering the Marquis De Launay, governor of the fortress, and several officers. These murders were then followed by ghoulish scenes, which I beheld with my own eyes. But everything in its time. My colleagues and I went to the City Hall. We succeeded, with much effort, in working our way through the swarms of people in arms. We saw the unhappy Flesselles, President of the Committee of Notables, livid, whelmed with blows and insults, his clothing torn to ribbons, dragged into the square and massacred: after the noble, the bourgeois! Among the assassins I remarked a brawny giant, with the face of a gallows-bird, and a little short man whose visage half vanished under a shock of red beard, evidently false, who dragged at his side a young boy of eight or nine years. At one instant I thought that the unhappy Fleselles might be saved, but the declamations of the red-bearded man and the giant raised to a paroxysm the fury of a band of savages whom they seemed to direct, and I knew then that the Provost of the merchants was lost. The fellow with the red beard drew up to him and cracked his head at one blow, with the butt of his pistol. The savage band hurled itself upon the unfortunate man as he fell to earth, and riddled him with wounds. The giant put the climax to the horrible deed: he cut off the head and impaled it on the end of a pike. Then the whole band of scoundrels, the little boy along with the rest, began to dance around the hideous trophy, singing and shouting."
"My blood freezes in my veins, my friend, when I think of the danger you ran in the midst of that frantic populace," said Madam Desmarais. "Those madmen are worse than cannibals—and Paris seems to be in their power."
"That is what I saw; but unfortunately that is not the only crime there is to deplore. Other murders followed this first one. The blood thus shed threw the populace into a species of frenzy. Finally I was able to escape, to get out of the crowd, and I hastened to you, dear wife, and to our daughter. These are the crimes that the takers of the Bastille either perpetrated, or are accomplices in. By giving the signal for insurrection, they have thrown the people into all the dangers of a revolt. That is why John Lebrenn is no better in my eyes than a common bandit."
"You are unjust, father, toward him whom you called your friend," ventured Charlotte, in a voice firm with resolution. "On reflection you will return to sentiments that are more just to Monsieur Lebrenn."
Struck with astonishment at his daughter's words and tone, the advocate questioned his wife with a look, as if to seek the cause of this strange appeal on the part of Charlotte for Monsieur John.
"It is I, father, who can give you the explanation you seek of my mother. I shall not falter in doing so," said Charlotte; and after a momentary pause she continued:
"I shall not recall to you how many times you have uttered yourself in terms of friendship and esteem for Monsieur Lebrenn. The good opinion you held of him was merited, and I dare vouch that he will continue to show himself worthy of it. I shall not recall to you the proofs of devotion Monsieur Lebrenn has given you, notably at the time of your election. It is not willingly that I bring back to your memory the incident of the outrage of which you were the victim at the instigation of Monsieur the Count of Plouernel, and which you communicated to Monsieur Lebrenn in confidence one evening about two months ago. It costs me much to reopen in your heart that rankling wound. But do you remember the generous choler with which Monsieur Lebrenn was seized at your revelation? 'I am but a mechanic, and without doubt this great lord will consider me unworthy to raise a sword against him,' said Monsieur John to you, 'but I swear to God, I shall punish the wretch with these stout arms that heaven has bestowed upon me.' Already he was bounding towards the door to be off to avenge your insult, when you and my mother stopped him with great difficulty, plying your supplications to make him promise not to attack your enemy. And then, clasping him in your arms, you said to him, your voice quivering with emotion, and your eyes filled with tears, 'Ah, my friend, you shall be my son; for no otherwise than as a son did you feel the insult I received. This mark of attachment, joined to all the other proofs of your affection, renders you so dear to my heart that from this moment I shall look upon you as one of the members of our family. You have won all our hearts—'"
"And what has all this to do with the excesses which Monsieur Lebrenn has been one of the instigators of, and with the assassinations which I have witnessed? Come, speak clearly, explain yourself. I understand nothing of all this pathos."
"By what right, father, do you render Monsieur Lebrenn responsible for a murder to which he was an entire stranger?"
"But whence this great interest, my daughter, in taking the part of Monsieur Lebrenn against your father?"
"In spite of my ignorance of politics, dear father, I know that in attacking the Bastille the people wished to destroy the house of durance where shuddered so many innocent victims. And perhaps Monsieur Lebrenn, in joining himself with the insurgents, hoped to find his father in one of the dungeons of the fortress."
"And if by chance he should discover him!" exclaimed advocate Desmarais, more and more surprised and irritated at his daughter's persistence in defending Lebrenn. "Does that chance absolve him from the excesses for which the taking of the Bastille was the signal? Ought not the responsibility for these acts fall upon those who took part in the attack, among others on Monsieur Lebrenn, who, it seems, is one of the leaders of the insurrection?"
"Does the memory of services rendered, father, weigh so heavily upon you that you seek to evade all recollection of them, under the pretext of a responsibility