The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic. Эжен Сю
by a fecund revolution."
"Is your severance from the old world complete?"
"I have broken with the old world, and rallied to the new."
"Behold this pontifical tiara, this kingly crown; gaze on these symbols of nobility, these sacks of gold and silver. You may demand of kings, of priests, of nobles, of the rich, the enjoyments of life, all by devoting yourself body and soul to these idols and to tyranny."
"It is my wish to overthrow those idols. I vow an implacable hatred to the enemies of the people."
"From this hour," responded the cloaked president, apparently satisfied with the interrogatory, "you shall be ours as we will be yours. Our device so has it—All for each; each for all. By this device, co-operation will replace in the future the selfishness of the masters of the old world. Who caused all the evils of which selfishness has been the source? He who first dug a ditch about a piece of common land and said 'This is mine.' The usurpation was consecrated by men simple-minded enough to respect these arbitrary boundaries; the spoliation of several by one gradually became a right; the deed became the law, the exception the rule. The tyranny growing out of this principle, initiated by violence and perpetuated by custom, became rooted in the peoples' mind, till at length they came to own an infant mewling in the cradle for their King, and to kiss the boot of the Pope. What consequences have not come out of these aberrations! Peoples have throttled each other. The earth has its damned ones, more to be pitied than those with whom superstition peoples hell. The damned on earth call themselves vassals, serfs, proletarians, artisans, laborers! It is of these damned ones that we seek the redemption. Think you the overturning of thrones and altars will suffice for the deliverance of these victims? No, alas, no. To the tyranny of King and Church will succeed an exploitation still more tyrannical, that of the tribe of Business. Then the dispenser of work and of wages will exert an empire absolute over his wage-earning workingmen. On the ruins of the thrones and altars will soon grow up the oligarchy of merchants and bourgeois.
"That oligarchy must also in its end be overthrown," continued the initiator. "That is our final aim.[3] Our design is to unite by the bond of a common faith, thousands of initiates in every country of Europe—first in Germany, then in France, in England, and elsewhere; to bring them gradually, by initiation, into the knowledge of the object of our association; to have them swear obedience to its chiefs, visible and invisible, and chosen from all ranks of society, from the highest to the lowest; to recruit our partisans and co-workers in the very councils of the Kings themselves, in the heart of the palace of the Popes. Our enemies will find themselves, without their knowing it, perpetually under our eyes; their plots will be revealed to us; their own creatures, to all appearances the most devoted to them, will obey our orders, and undermine the foundations of their social edifice. Then in the hour of redemption the old world shall crumble and go down under its debris of priests, nobles, and Kings.
"Woman," continued the master of ceremonies, outstretching his hand toward Victoria, "you now know our purposes. Here are our sinews of action. An annual assessment levied on all our brothers, who number themselves by millions, makes us masters of a mighty treasure. That is the source of the wealth in which revel those of our number whose duty it is to mix with the mighty ones of the day, sharing in their dalliances and dissipations—foxes to deceive, wolves to devour our enemies. Victoria Lebrenn, it is for you, thanks to your remarkable gifts of nature, to become one of our most active auxiliaries. But to serve well our cause, it will be necessary that you abdicate your own will, and that you stand ready, at any hour of the day or night, to follow our orders."
"Command; I obey."
"I must first acquaint our brothers with the particulars of your life, as you have set them down in your own hand, and confided them to your converter."
Picking up a roll of manuscript, the presiding officer proceeded to read the story of Victoria Lebrenn, as follows:
"In the year 1772, being then eleven years and a half old, I was one day crossing the garden of the Tuileries, carrying dinner to my father, a workman in a printing shop in Bac Street. I paused a moment to watch some little children at play. A woman well dressed and with decent features drew close to me, examined me attentively, and made me some compliments on my good looks. Then noting the porringer with my father's dinner, and learning from me that I was on my way to him, she proposed that I go with her in her carriage. Delighted to have a carriage-ride for the first time in my life, I readily agreed. Near the Draw Bridge a coach was waiting, into which I got with my conductress. She offered me some lozenges from a box, which I accepted. The lozenges contained some species of narcotic, for in a few minutes I had fallen into a deep sleep.
"When I awoke, it was night. I was lying in a great bed with damask curtains. The ceiling of my chamber was of gold, and the room itself was richly furnished. Beside my pillow was seated the woman by whose agency I had been taken to the place. I asked her where I was. I wept at the anxiety of my parents; she calmed me, promising that they should soon be with me. She added that I was in the house of a person of great quality, who was interested in my youth, wished me much good, and would enrich my family. I knew I was not dreaming, but thought myself the heroine of a fairy tale. Two women entered. They made me rise, and put me in a perfumed bath. Then they dressed my hair, one of them winding a string of pearls through it. They dressed me in silk and lace, and served me with supper on plates of vermilion and gold. I experienced a sort of vertigo; I obeyed mechanically. Still, I kept asking for my father and mother. The woman of the carriage assured me that they would soon arrive, and be overjoyed to see me so beautiful. A hard-visaged man entered the chamber. I heard the old woman call him Monsieur Lebel, and speak to him with great respect. The man scrutinized me carefully. 'Little one,' he said to me, 'you must go to bed now.' Then he went out.
"Doubtless, in the course of the repast, they had served me with several glasses of heady wine, for I felt my reason clouding. I allowed myself to be put to bed, though not without again inquiring for my parents. They promised to take me back to them the next day. The woman and her two companions bade me good night, snuffed the candles in the candelabrum, and left me for light a single alabaster lamp, which threw a pale illumination over the spacious room. I was about to succumb less to sleep than to the leaden lethargy into which I had been plunged, when a start of fright restored to me, for a few moments, all my senses. My bed was set in an alcove. Two of the gilded panels which formed the alcove slid back in their grooves, and I beheld an old man in a dressing gown. I uttered a cry of astonishment—it was the King, Louis XV. I had seen him but a short time before at a public ceremony in Paris. I was stupefied into immobility. Close behind the King, in the secret passageway leading into the alcove, stood a beautiful young woman half-clad in a night robe, and holding a candle-stick. She laughed aloud, and said to the King, pushing him by the shoulder—'Go on, France, it is the loving hour!'
"That woman, I afterwards learned, was Countess Du Barry. I fainted with fear. I was the victim of an odious assault. Five days afterward, another poor child, aged like me, hardly twelve, the daughter of a miller of Trianon, was delivered after the same manner to the lust of Louis XV, and gave him the small-pox of which he died. Two days before his death, the woman of whom I have spoken, one of the royal procuresses, made me leave by night the little apartment in the palace of Versailles, and get with her into a carriage, assuring me she was about to restore me to my father, whom I continually called for, in tears. I still was not fully aware of my dishonor. Instead of returning me to my home, the procuress left me in an isolated dwelling not far from Versailles. High walls surrounded the garden; the only entry was by a gate which was kept under careful guard. Flight was impossible.
"In that house I found several young girls, of whom the youngest was barely my age, and the oldest, twenty. The place was the habitual haunt of great lords, prelates, and financiers. They came to sup with us—suppers that ended in shameful orgies. My companions, the immature victims, like myself, of kingly debauchery, gradually made known to me the extent of my disgrace. At first I was overcome by shame; then familiarity with vice, the contagion of example, the influence of the corrupt atmosphere in which I dwelt, stifled my better sentiments and my early training. I would never have dared at this time to return to my family. I reached my sixteenth year without having left that house of ill fame. By that time reflection and chagrin had matured my reason; then there began