The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
dear!' he said, and paused to take her hand, and bear it to his lips.
Thus he effected in good order his retreat from a position towards which he had prematurely advanced. He stood once more upon the solid ground of friendship, thence, later, to direct an attack for which experience told him that the opportunity would not now be indefinitely postponed. And in the mean time her own sympathy should be employed to undermine her defences.
But back at the châlet that evening, he was to be informed by the waiting d'Entragues of that other obstacle which he had been accounting so definitely surmounted.
'He lives!' Monsieur had cried, and in that cry, in its pitch, and the suddenly disordered appearance of him, he had completely betrayed himself to his astute minister.
'Not only does he live; but he is well and active.'
'My God!' said the Regent, and sat down heavily, taking his head in his hands. There was a pause.
'I have a letter from him for Mademoiselle de Kercadiou,' d'Entragues softly informed him. Monsieur said nothing. He sat on, like a man stunned. D'Entragues waited in silence, watching him, the ghost of a smile at the corners of his tight mouth. At last: 'Does your Highness desire it to be delivered?' he asked.
Such was his tone that at last the Regent lowered his hand and looked at him. The round face was startled, almost scared.
'Delivered?' he asked hoarsely. 'But what else, d'Entragues? What else?'
D'Entragues drew a long breath audibly, like a sigh. 'I have been thinking, Monseigneur.'
'You have been thinking? And then?'
The letter was in d'Entragues's hands, poised by its edges between his forefingers. He rotated it slowly as he spoke. 'It seems almost a refinement of cruelty.' He paused there, and then, in answer to the question in Monsieur's stare, he went on. 'This rash young man and that fanfarron de Batz continue in reactionary activities, likely to result in nothing but the fall of their own heads under the guillotine.'
'What then? What is in your mind?'
D'Entragues raised his brows as if deprecating the sluggishness of his master's wits. 'This gentle young lady has already suffered her bereavement. She has endured her agony. She has recovered from it. Time has begun to heal the wound. Is her anguish to be suffered all over again at some time in the near future, when that, which in this case was a misapprehension of that idiot Langéac, shall come to be the actual fact?'
Monsieur considered. His breathing was slightly laboured.
'I see,' he said. 'Yes. But if, after all, Moreau should survive all these perils he is facing?'
'That is so improbable as not to be worth taking into account. He has escaped this time by a miracle. Such miracles do not happen twice in a man's life. And even if it did ...' He broke off, ruminating.
'Yes, yes,' the Regent rapped at him. 'What then? What then? That is what I want to know. What then?'
'Even then no harm would have been done, and perhaps some good. It is clear to all that this is a mésalliance for Mademoiselle de Kercadiou. She is deserving of something far better than this nameless fellow, this bastard of God knows whom. If in the persuasion that he is dead, she puts him from her mind, as she is doing already, and if before he comes to life again—if he ever should, which is so very unlikely—her affections, liberated from his thrall, shall have fixed themselves elsewhere, upon someone worthier, would not that be something to the good?'
The Regent was continuing to stare at him. 'That letter?' he said at last.
D'Entragues shrugged. 'Need any know that it ever arrived? It is a miracle that it did. The fellow who brought it suffered a concussion that delayed him three weeks upon the road. He might easily have suffered death.'
'But, my God! I know of its existence.'
'Could your Highness blame yourself for silence where it may do so much good, and when speech might be the cause of such ultimate suffering to a lady who deserves well?'
The tortured Prince took his head in his hands again. At long last he spoke without looking up.
'I give you no orders, d'Entragues. I desire to know nothing more of this. You will act entirely upon your own discretion.'
The smile which hitherto had been a ghost took definite shape upon the lips of Monsieur d'Entragues. He bowed to the averted, huddled figure of his Prince.
'Perfectly, Monseigneur,' he said.
CHAPTER XXV
THE INTERDICT
Life in Paris was becoming uncomfortable. The results of government by utopian ideals began to make themselves felt. In the words of Saint-Just, 'Misery had given birth to the Revolution, and misery might destroy it.' The immediate cause lay in the fact that, again to quote the fidus Achates of Robespierre, 'the multitude which had recently been living upon the superfluities of luxury and by the vices of another class,' found itself without means of subsistence.
In less revolutionary language this means that the vast mass of the people, which found employment so long as there was a wealthy nobility to employ it, was now, under the beneficent rule of equality, unemployed and faced with destitution. Not only were these unfortunates without the means to purchase food, but food itself was becoming difficult to purchase. The farmers were becoming increasingly reluctant to market their produce, in exchange for paper money which was daily depreciating in value.
For this depreciation, partly resulting from the flood of assignats in which the country was submerged, the Convention denounced the forgers who were at work. The Convention beheld in them the agents of the foreign despots who sought by these means to push the Nation into bankruptcy. This was, of course, a gross exaggeration; it possessed, nevertheless, some slight basis of truth. We do know of the activities of that printing-press at Charonne, and of the reckless prodigality with which de Batz was putting in circulation the beautiful paper money manufactured there by the extraordinarily skilful Balthazar Roussel. De Batz served two purposes at once. Directly he corrupted by means of this inexhaustible wealth those members of the Government whom he found corruptible. Indirectly he increased the flood of forgeries that was so seriously embarrassing the Convention and diluting the shrunken resources of the Nation.
Saint-Just had a crack-brained notion of relieving matters by using grain as currency. Thus he felt that the agriculturists might be induced to part with it in exchange for other substances. But agriculturists, being by the very nature of their activities self-supporting, the scheme, otherwise impracticable, held little promise of success and was never put into execution. Industry and manufacture languished. Conscription was absorbing some seven hundred and fifty thousand men into its fourteen armies. But apart from this there was little employment to be found. The tanneries were idle, iron and wool were almost as scarce as bread. What little was produced barely sufficed for home consumption, so that nothing was left for export, and consequently the foreign exchanges rose steadily against France.
To the physical depression arising out of this came, in the early days of that July of 1793, style esclave, Messidor of the Year 2 by the calendar of Liberty One and Indivisible, a moral depression resulting from the disasters to French arms, despite the unparalleled masses which conscription had enrolled.
And when, on the anniversary that year of the fall of the Bastille, came the assassination of the popular idol Marat by a young woman concerned to avenge the unfortunate Girondins, Paris went mad with rage.
Charlotte Corday was guillotined in a red shirt, the Convention decreed Panthéon honours to the murdered patriot, and never was there such a funeral as the torchlight procession in which his remains were borne to their tomb.
François Chabot, discerning parallels between Marat's position and his own, thundered in the Convention denunciations which reflected his own fear of assassination.
But