The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
to the guillotine. They did not desire his death. They would have saved him by suspending sentence.'
'The more ruthless were they in voting for his death. A cowardly act to save their waning popularity. Bah! If you have pity, save it for worthier objects than this crew of windy ideologues, who are ridden by Madame Roland, from Buzot her lover (in the spirit, so she pretends) to that pedant, her spiritual cuckold of a husband. To this in the end, by one road or another, must they have come. We have but shortened the journey for them.'
'What will be the end of them?'
'You have seen it. The rest is not important. It is odd to reflect that there is not a man amongst them who was not one of the architects of this Republic upon whose altar they are now sacrificed. Lanjuinais, the founder of the Jacobin Club; Barbaroux, who brought the Marseillais to the work of revolution; Saint-Étienne, responsible for the shaping of the civil constitution; Brissot, who intoxicated men with his revolutionary writings; Fauchet, the apostle of the Revolutionary Church; and the others who encompassed the overthrow of the throne. Are these men for a royalist's compassion? They're gone, and with them departs all chance of law and order in the State. The very manner of their going is the ruin of the Convention. Henceforth the august law-givers are the slaves of the sovereign rabble, which today has discovered its sovereignty. In the exercise of this sovereignty it must of necessity perish, for anarchy is of necessity self-destructive.' After a pause he added on a note of elation, gripping his companion's arm. 'This is monarchy's greatest hour since the Bastille was taken four years ago. Those who remain are easily swept away by the same forces that have removed the Girondins.'
He clapped the gloomy André-Louis on the shoulder. 'Rejoice, then, in Heaven's name, at this vindication of the theories with which you startled me at Hamm.'
CHAPTER XV
PRELUDE
André-Louis and the Baron dined that afternoon with Benoît, the wealthy Angévin banker in the Rue des Orties.
In Benoît's well-appointed establishment, as in his own well-nourished, hearty person, there was little to proclaim the levelling doctrines of democracy, of which he enjoyed the reputation of being a pillar. If his movements, gestures, accent, and turn of speech, and the very gravity of his bonhomie, suggested a plebeian origin, he yet bore himself with a general air of genial consequence. He was a man to whom wealth had brought assurance and self-confidence and the poise permitted by a sense of security. Nor was this security shaken by the successive earthquakes that disturbed the Nation, and in the course of which men of birth and quality were being constantly engulfed. Together with the millions in his safes there was that which in these unquiet and dangerous times amounted to an even more precious treasure in the shape of records of transactions on behalf of some of the architects of the revolution. There was no party in the State some of whose members had not operated through Benoît and profited by the operations to an extent the revelation of which might imperil their heads. Recommended to him one by another, they had come to regard him as a 'safe man.' And Benoît on his side knew himself for a safe man in another sense, since he held these patriots as hostages for his safety.
Benoît could have told the world the precise reason for Danton's anxiety to decree the sacredness of property; he could have explained exactly how the great tribune and powerful apostle of equality was becoming so considerable a landowner in the district of Arcis. He could have disclosed how that dishonest deputy Philippe Fabre, who called himself d'Églantine, had made thirty-six thousand livres on a government contract for army boots whose cardboard soles had quickly gone to pieces. He could have shown how Lacroix and at least a dozen other national representatives, who a couple of years ago had been starveling lawyers were now able to take their ease and keep their horses.
But Benoît was a 'safe man,' and to make assurance doubly sure he wasted no opportunity of adding to his precious hostages. Like a fat financial spider he span his stout web in the Rue des Orties and enmeshed in it many a peculative fly from among all these hungry, avid politicians, most of whom, in the opinion of de Batz, merely required to be tempted so as to succumb.
Of all de Batz's associates in this campaign of mine and sap which André-Louis had devised, none was more highly prized than Benoît of Angers. And since de Batz had shown him that the advantage of their association could be reciprocal, Benoît prized the Baron as highly in his turn. Also, being a man of some shrewd vision, it is probable that he reposed no faith in the perdurance of the present régime. Whilst avoiding politics, he saw to it, as a prudent man of affairs, that he possessed friends in both camps.
Today's invitation to dinner was no idle act of courtesy. Benoît's compatriot Delaunay, the representative for Angers in the National Convention, was to be of the party. Delaunay was in need of money. He had just succumbed to the charms of Mademoiselle Descoings the actress. But the Descoings was not to be cheaply acquired even by a national representative. She had lately learnt a lesson on the subject. For a brief season she had been the mistress of that coarse scoundrel François Chabot, dazzled at first by his prominence in the party of the Mountain. Intimate acquaintance with him had revealed to her that the effulgence of his deputyship was far from compensating for the unpleasantness of his habits and the sordid circumstances in which the lack of money compelled him to live. So she had gone her ways, and Delaunay was now discovering to his torment that the association with Chabot had taught her to be exacting and exigent.
Now the Deputy Delaunay, a very personable, insinuating man of forty, was shrewd enough to perceive the opportunities which his position afforded him, and, if he might have had scruples about making use of them, these were entirely stifled by his need of the Descoings. But to make money in the operations of which he perceived the chance, it is necessary to have money and Delaunay disposed of none. So he had sought his Angévin compatriot Benoît for the necessary financial assistance.
Benoît was not attracted by the partnership. He perceived, however, that it might meet certain requirements of de Batz, which the Baron had cautiously mentioned to him.
'I know a man,' he said, 'who commands ample funds, and who is always on the alert for precisely such affairs as you have in mind. I think you and he might very well accommodate yourselves. Come and dine with me one day next week, and make his acquaintance.'
Delaunay had readily accepted the invitation, and de Batz found the representative awaiting him when, with André-Louis, he was ushered into the banker's well-appointed parlour.
A man of great vigour and energy this Delaunay, as was to be seen at a glance. A little above middle height, he was massively built, with an enormous breadth of shoulders. His features were neat, and his mouth so small that it lent an almost infantile character to his smooth, round, healthily coloured face, and this despite the grey of his thick, clustering hair which was innocent of powder. But there was nothing infantile in the keenness of the intensely blue eyes under their black eyebrows or in the massive, intelligent forehead.
The banker, tall, florid, inclining to middle-aged portliness, and dressed with care from his powdered head to his buckled shoes, breezily conducted them to table.
There was no evidence here of the scarcity of food that was beginning to trouble Paris. A dish of trout stewed in red wine was followed by a succulent goose à l'Angévine with truffles from Périgord, to the accompaniment of a well-sunned, and well-matured wine of Bordeaux, which Delaunay praised in terms allusive to the events of the day.
'One might almost forgive the men of the Gironde for the sake of the grapes they grow.' He held his glass to the light as he spoke, and the glance of those intensely blue eyes grew tender as it surveyed the murrey-tinted wine. He sighed. 'Poor devils!' he said, and drank.
The Baron raised his brows in wonder, for Delaunay was staunchly of the Mountain party. 'You pity them?'
'We can afford to pity those who are no longer able to harm or hinder us.' The representative's voice was softly modulated; but, like the rest of him, suggested great reserves of power. 'Compassion is at times a luxury; especially when accompanied by relief. Now that the