The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
was to be despatched with cold steel as silently as possible.
Once outside, the patrol would turn the corner into the Rue Charlot. Here André-Louis's little band would be waiting to escort the royal ladies to a courtyard where Balthazar Roussel had a coach in readiness in which to convey them across Paris to his house in the Rue Helvétius. There they must lie hidden until the hue-and-cry had died down and an opportunity presented itself to carry them off to Roussel's country house at Brie-Comte-Robert.
The part of Cortey and his men would consist in keeping out of the way of the false patrol which would substitute them. They might subsequently be censured for incompetent vigilance; but hardly for more.
As a result of Langéac's communication de Batz and André-Louis paid a visit to Cortey's shop on the following evening, for any final understanding that might be necessary with the grocer-captain. Sergeant Michonis was with him at the time. Whilst they were in talk in the otherwise untenanted shop, André-Louis, chancing to turn, beheld a bulky figure surmounted by an enormous cocked hat silhouetted in the dim light against the window, as if inspecting the wares exhibited there.
He detached himself from the others and sauntered to the door, reaching it just in time to see the figure beating a retreat down the Rue des Filles Saint-Thomas.
De Batz presently joined him, emerging, and André-Louis gave him the news.
'We are under the observation of our friend Burlandeux. He must have trailed us from the Rue de Ménars.'
De Batz made light of it. 'He has seen me buying groceries, then.'
'He may link Cortey with us afterwards, and perhaps Michonis.'
'In that case I shall have to devote a little attention to him. At present his affair must wait. There are more pressing matters.'
These matters were all carefully disposed of in the course of the next twenty-four hours, and on Friday night André-Louis found himself pacing the length of the Rue Charlot in the neighbourhood of the Temple with Langéac and the Marquis de la Guiche—the same who had been associated with de Batz in the attempt to rescue the King. In their pacings they passed ever and anon the cavernous porte-cochère of No. 12, behind whose closed gates the carriage waited with harnessed horses in the charge of young Balthazar Roussel.
The moon riding near the full in the serene June sky, the street lamps had not been lighted. André-Louis and his companions had chosen the side of the street where the shadows lay blackest. They were not the only ones abroad in that quiet place at this midnight hour. Another three—Devaux, Marbot, and the Chevalier de Larnache—made a similar pacing group that crossed and recrossed the steps of the other three. Once when a patrol had come marching down the street, these six had disappeared with almost magic suddenness into the black shadows of doorways, to re-emerge when the retreating footsteps of the soldiers had faded in the distance.
Midnight struck, and the six of them came together at the corner of the Rue du Temple, ready for the action which they now supposed imminent.
Action was imminent, indeed; but not of the kind they expected.
Burlandeux had been busy. He had carried a denunciation before the Revolutionary Committee of his own section, which happened to be that of the Temple. The terms of it are best given in those employed by one of its members, a cobbler named Simon, who, officious, fanatical, and greedy of fame, had gone off with it to the Committee of Public Safety at the Tuileries.
He came, he announced, to inform them that the heretofore Baron de Batz had been denounced to his section as a counter-revolutionary conspirator. It had been observed that he associated too frequently for innocence with a grocer named Cortey, who was in command of the National Guard of the Section Lepelletier. It had also been observed that another assiduous visitor of this Cortey was the municipal Michonis, who was employed at the Temple, and only last night Cortey, Michonis, de Batz, and a man named Moreau held what appeared to the observer to be a consultation in the grocer's shop.
'That is all that our informer can tell us,' the Citizen Simon concluded. 'But I am not a fool, citizens. I have my wits, God be thanked, and they show me at once a suspicious and dangerous combination in all this.'
The half-dozen members of the Committee of Public Safety, assembled in haste to hear the denunciation which the cobbler had described as urgent, were not disposed to take him seriously. In the absence of the president of the Committee, the chair had been taken by a representative named Lavicomterie. Now it happened that this Lavicomterie was one of de Batz's associates, whilst Sénard, the secretary and factotum of the Committee, who was also present and whose voice carried a deal of weight with its members, was in the Baron's pay. The mention of the Baron's name had rendered both these patriots extremely attentive.
When the squat, unclean, repellent Simon had brought his denunciation to a close, Lavicomterie led the opinion of his fellow committeemen by a laugh.
'On my soul, citizen, if this is all the matter, you had best begin by proving that these men were not buying groceries.'
Simon scowled. His little eyes, beady as a rat's in his yellow face, were malevolent.
'This is not a matter to be treated lightly. I will ask you all, citizens, to bear in mind that this grocer takes turn at patrolling the Temple. Michonis is regularly on guard there. Do you see nothing in the association?'
'It makes it natural,' ventured Sénard.
'Ah! And de Batz, then? This foreign agent? What are they doing shut up in the shop with him and this other fellow who is his constant companion?'
'How do you know that de Batz is a foreign agent?' asked a member of the Committee.
'That is in the information I have received.'
Lavicomterie followed up his associate's question. 'Where is the evidence of so very grave a charge?'
'Can anyone suppose that a ci-devant aristocrat, a ci-devant Baron, would be in Paris on any other business?'
'There are a good many ci-devants in Paris, Citizen Simon,' said Sénard. 'Do you charge them all with being foreign agents? If not, why do you single out the Citizen de Batz?'
Simon almost foamed at the mouth. 'Because he consorts with the sergeant who is in charge of the guard at the Temple and with the captain of the National Guard that is to do patrol duty there tonight. Sacred name of a name! Do you still see nothing in it?'
Lavicomterie would perhaps have brushed the matter finally aside and dismissed the fellow. But a member of the Committee, taking the view that Michonis should instantly be sent for and examined, and others supporting him in this, Lavicomterie dared offer no opposition.
As a sequel, soon after eleven o'clock that night, the Citizen Simon, swollen with importance and accompanied by a half-a-dozen lads of his section—for he was prepared at need to exceed his orders and proceed upon his own initiative—presented himself at the gate of the Temple. Having displayed the warrant granted him by the Committee of Public Safety, he made his way at once to the Queen's chamber in the tower, to assure himself that all was well.
Silently he surveyed the three pale-faced ladies in black who occupied that cheerless room and the boy who was now King of France, asleep on a wretched truckle-bed, then turned his attention to Michonis. He presented him with an order to surrender his charge temporarily to the bearer, and himself attend at once before the Committee of Public Safety, which was sitting to receive him.
Michonis, a tall, loose-limbed fellow, could not exclude from his frank, good-humoured countenance a dismay that amounted almost to anguish. At once he concluded that there had been betrayal. But the danger of losing his own head over the business troubled him less than the thought of the bitter sorrow that was coming to these sorely tried royal ladies whose hopes of deliverance now ran so high. This seemed to him one of Fate's refinements of cruelty. He was anxious, too, on the score of de Batz, who might now walk into a trap from which there would be no escape. He was wondering how he might warn the Baron when Simon, whose close-set eyes had been watching his face, put an end to that conjecture by informing Michonis that he would send him before