The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
because Aline was now on the side of André-Louis, her uncle consented to compromise.
'If,' he had said, 'within a year the path of our return does not lie clearly open, I will submit to whatever you may decide.' To hearten them he added: 'You will see that you will not have to wait the half of that time.'
But André-Louis was not heartened. 'Do not deceive yourself, Monsieur. In a year from now the only difference will be that we shall be a year older, and sadder by the further extinction of hope.'
Because of this his present meeting with de Batz was to prove critical and bear unexpected fruit.
They moved into the common room together, and sat down to a flagon of the famous old Rupertsberger, with a dried sausage to prepare the palate for its benign flavour. Over this the Baron told again, and with greater wealth of detail, the story of his Parisian adventure.
'It was a miracle that you escaped,' was André-Louis's final comment, after he had expressed his wonder at so much cool heroism.
De Batz shrugged. 'Faith, no miracle at all. All that a man needs is common-sense, common prudence, and a little courage. You others here abroad judge by the reports that reach you of violence and outrage; and, since you hear nothing else, you conceive that violence and outrage have become the sole occupation of the Parisians. Thus the man who reads history imagines that the past was nothing but a succession of battles, since the infinitely greater periods of peace and order call for no particular comment. You hear of an aristocrat hunted through the streets, and hanged on a lantern at the end of the chase, or of a dozen others carted to the Place de la Révolution and guillotined, and you conceive that every aristocrat who shows himself in public is either lanterned or beheaded. I have actually heard it so asserted. But it is nonsense. There must be in Paris today some forty or fifty thousand royalists of one kind and another, moving freely: a fifth of the total population. Another fifth of it, if not more, is of no particular political colour, but ready to submit to whatever government is up. Naturally these people do not commit extravagances to attract resentful attention. They do not wave their hats and shout "Live the King!" at every street corner. They go quietly about their business; for the ordinary business of life goes on, and ordinary, quiet citizens suffer little interference. It is true that there is unrest and general uneasiness, punctuated by violent explosions of popular temper accompanied by violence and bloodshed. But side by side with it the normal life of a great city flows along. Men buy and sell, amuse themselves, marry, get children, and die in their beds, all in the normal manner. If many churches are closed and only constitutional priests are suffered to minister, yet all the theatres flourish and no one concerns himself with the politics of the actors.
'If things were otherwise, if they even approached the conception of them that is held abroad, the revolution would soon come to an end, for it would consume itself. A few days of such utter chaos as is generally pictured, and the means of sustaining life would no longer circulate; the inhabitants of Paris would perish of starvation.'
André-Louis nodded. 'You make it clear. There must be a great deal of misconception.'
'And a great deal that is deliberately manufactured; counter-revolutionary rumours to stir up public feeling abroad. The factory is over there in that wooden châlet, where Monsieur keeps his court and his chancellery. It is diligently circulated by the Regent's agents who are scattered over Europe and marshalled by the ingenious Monsieur d'Entragues, the muck-rake in chief.'
André-Louis stared at him. 'You express yourself like a republican.'
'Do not be deceived by it. Look to my actions. It is merely that I permit myself the luxury of despising Monsieur le Comte d'Entragues and his methods. I do not like the man, and he does me the honour not to like me. A mean, jealous creature with inordinate ambitions. He aims at being the first man in the State when the monarchy is restored, and he is fearful and resentful of any man who might gain influence with the Regent. The man whom he most hates and fears is d'Avaray, and unless the favourite looks well to himself d'Entragues will ruin him yet with Monsieur. For he burrows craftily underground, leaving little trace upon the surface. He is subtle and insinuating as a serpent.'
'To come back,' said André-Louis, who cared nothing about Monsieur d'Entragues. 'It still remains a miracle that you should have gone about such a task as yours in Paris and maintained the air of pursuing what you call the ordinary business of life.'
'I was prudent, of course. I did not often trip.'
'Not often! But to have tripped once should have broken your neck.'
De Batz smiled. 'I carried a life-preserver. Monsieur furnished me before I set out with a thousand louis towards the expenses of my campaign. I was able to add to it four times as much, and I could have added as much more as was necessary. You see that I was well supplied with money.'
'But how could money have availed you in such extremities?'
'I know of no extremity in which money will not avail a man. For a weapon of defence as of offence, steel cannot begin to compare with gold. With gold I choked the mouths of those who would have denounced me. With gold I annihilated the sense of duty of those who should have hindered me.' He laughed into André-Louis's round eyes. 'Aura sacra fames! The greed of it is common to mankind; but never have I found that greed so fierce as among messieurs the sans-culottes. That greed, I believe, is at the root of their revolutionary fervour. I surprise you, it seems.'
'A little, I confess.'
'Ah!' The Baron held his glass to the light, and considered the faint opalescence which the wintry sunshine brought into the golden liquid. 'Have you ever considered equality, its mainsprings and true significance?'
'Never. Because it is chimerical. It does not exist. Men are not born equally equipped. They are born noble or ignoble, sane or foolish, strong or weak, according to the blend of natures, fortuitous to them, which calls them into existence.'
The Baron drank, and set down his glass. He dabbed his lips with a fine handkerchief.
'That is merely metaphysical, and I am being practical. It is possible to postulate a condition of equality. It has, in fact, been postulated by the apostles of that other singular delusion, liberty. The idea of equality is a by-product of the sentiment of envy. Since it must always prove beyond human power to raise the inferior mass to a superior stratum, apostles of equality must ever be inferiors seeking to reduce their betters to their own level. It follows that a nation that once admits this doctrine of equality will be dragged by it to the level, moral, intellectual, and political, of its most worthless class. This within practical limitations. Because, after all, such qualities as nobility, intelligence, learning, virtue, and strength cannot be stripped from those who possess them, to be cast into a common wealth and shared by all. The only things of which men can be deprived in that way and to that end are their material possessions. Your revolutionaries, these dishonest rogues who delude the ignorant masses with the cant of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and with promises of a millennium which they know can never be achieved, are well aware of this. They know that there is no power that can lift from the gutter those who have inherited it. The only attainable equality is one which will reduce the remainder of the nation to that gutter, so as to make things still more uncomfortable for the deluded unfortunates who writhe there. But meanwhile, plying their cant, deceiving the masses with their false promises, these men prosper in themselves. That is all their aim: the ease they envied in those they have pulled down, the wealth they coveted which procures this ease. These things they ensure for themselves in unstinted measure.'
'But is that possible in the France of today? Are the men who made the revolution really deriving material profit from it?'
'What is there in this to astonish you? Is not the Assembly recruited from the gutter, from famished failures in the law, like Desmoulins and Danton, from starveling journalists like Marat and Hébert, and unfrocked Capuchins like Chabot? Shall these men who are now in the saddle suddenly repress the envy which inspired them, or stifle the covetousness which went hand in hand with that envy? They are all dishonest and corrupt; and if this applies to those in command, shall it apply less to the underlings?' He laughed. 'I doubt if there is a man in the whole National Convention whom I could not buy.'