The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
you wonder that they will not yield an inch; that they will resist the election of a Third Estate with the voting power to sweep all these privileges away, to compel the Privileged to submit themselves to a just equality in the eyes of the law with the meanest of the canaille they trample underfoot, to provide that the moneys necessary to save this state from the bankruptcy into which they have all but plunged it shall be raised by taxation to be borne by themselves in the same proportion as by others?
“Sooner than yield to so much they prefer to resist even the royal command.”
A phrase occurred to him used yesterday by Vilmorin, a phrase to which he had refused to attach importance when uttered then. He used it now. “In doing this they are striking at the very foundations of the throne. These fools do not perceive that if that throne falls over, it is they who stand nearest to it who will be crushed.”
A terrific roar acclaimed that statement. Tense and quivering with the excitement that was flowing through him, and from him out into that great audience, he stood a moment smiling ironically. Then he waved them into silence, and saw by their ready obedience how completely he possessed them. For in the voice with which he spoke each now recognized the voice of himself, giving at last expression to the thoughts that for months and years had been inarticulately stirring in each simple mind.
Presently he resumed, speaking more quietly, that ironic smile about the corner of his mouth growing more marked:
“In taking my leave of M. de Lesdiguieres I gave him warning out of a page of natural history. I told him that when the wolves, roaming singly through the jungle, were weary of being hunted by the tiger, they banded themselves into packs, and went a-hunting the tiger in their turn. M. de Lesdiguieres contemptuously answered that he did not understand me. But your wits are better than his. You understand me, I think? Don’t you?”
Again a great roar, mingled now with some approving laughter, was his answer. He had wrought them up to a pitch of dangerous passion, and they were ripe for any violence to which he urged them. If he had failed with the windmill, at least he was now master of the wind.
“To the Palais!” they shouted, waving their hands, brandishing canes, and — here and there — even a sword. “To the Palais! Down with M. de Lesdiguieres! Death to the King’s Lieutenant!”
He was master of the wind, indeed. His dangerous gift of oratory — a gift nowhere more powerful than in France, since nowhere else are men’s emotions so quick to respond to the appeal of eloquence — had given him this mastery. At his bidding now the gale would sweep away the windmill against which he had flung himself in vain. But that, as he straightforwardly revealed it, was no part of his intent.
“Ah, wait!” he bade them. “Is this miserable instrument of a corrupt system worth the attention of your noble indignation?”
He hoped his words would be reported to M. de Lesdiguieres. He thought it would be good for the soul of M. de Lesdiguieres to hear the undiluted truth about himself for once.
“It is the system itself you must attack and overthrow; not a mere instrument — a miserable painted lath such as this. And precipitancy will spoil everything. Above all, my children, no violence!”
My children! Could his godfather have heard him!
“You have seen often already the result of premature violence elsewhere in Brittany, and you have heard of it elsewhere in France. Violence on your part will call for violence on theirs. They will welcome the chance to assert their mastery by a firmer grip than heretofore. The military will be sent for. You will be faced by the bayonets of mercenaries. Do not provoke that, I implore you. Do not put it into their power, do not afford them the pretext they would welcome to crush you down into the mud of your own blood.”
Out of the silence into which they had fallen anew broke now the cry of
“What else, then? What else?”
“I will tell you,” he answered them. “The wealth and strength of Brittany lies in Nantes — a bourgeois city, one of the most prosperous in this realm, rendered so by the energy of the bourgeoisie and the toil of the people. It was in Nantes that this movement had its beginning, and as a result of it the King issued his order dissolving the States as now constituted — an order which those who base their power on Privilege and Abuse do not hesitate to thwart. Let Nantes be informed of the precise situation, and let nothing be done here until Nantes shall have given us the lead. She has the power — which we in Rennes have not — to make her will prevail, as we have seen already. Let her exert that power once more, and until she does so do you keep the peace in Rennes. Thus shall you triumph. Thus shall the outrages that are being perpetrated under your eyes be fully and finally avenged.”
As abruptly as he had leapt upon the plinth did he now leap down from it. He had finished. He had said all — perhaps more than all — that could have been said by the dead friend with whose voice he spoke. But it was not their will that he should thus extinguish himself. The thunder of their acclamations rose deafeningly upon the air. He had played upon their emotions — each in turn — as a skilful harpist plays upon the strings of his instrument. And they were vibrant with the passions he had aroused, and the high note of hope on which he had brought his symphony to a close.
A dozen students caught him as he leapt down, and swung him to their shoulders, where again he came within view of all the acclaiming crowd.
The delicate Le Chapelier pressed alongside of him with flushed face and shining eyes.
“My lad,” he said to him, “you have kindled a fire to-day that will sweep the face of France in a blaze of liberty.” And then to the students he issued a sharp command. “To the Literary Chamber — at once. We must concert measures upon the instant, a delegate must be dispatched to Nantes forthwith, to convey to our friends there the message of the people of Rennes.”
The crowd fell back, opening a lane through which the students bore the hero of the hour. Waving his hands to them, he called upon them to disperse to their homes, and await there in patience what must follow very soon.
“You have endured for centuries with a fortitude that is a pattern to the world,” he flattered them. “Endure a little longer yet. The end, my friends, is well in sight at last.”
They carried him out of the square and up the Rue Royale to an old house, one of the few old houses surviving in that city that had risen from its ashes, where in an upper chamber lighted by diamond-shaped panes of yellow glass the Literary Chamber usually held its meetings. Thither in his wake the members of that chamber came hurrying, summoned by the messages that Le Chapelier had issued during their progress.
Behind closed doors a flushed and excited group of some fifty men, the majority of whom were young, ardent, and afire with the illusion of liberty, hailed Andre–Louis as the strayed sheep who had returned to the fold, and smothered him in congratulations and thanks.
Then they settled down to deliberate upon immediate measures, whilst the doors below were kept by a guard of honour that had improvised itself from the masses. And very necessary was this. For no sooner had the Chamber assembled than the house was assailed by the gendarmerie of M. de Lesdiguieres, dispatched in haste to arrest the firebrand who was inciting the people of Rennes to sedition. The force consisted of fifty men. Five hundred would have been too few. The mob broke their carbines, broke some of their heads, and would indeed have torn them into pieces had they not beaten a timely and well-advised retreat before a form of horseplay to which they were not at all accustomed.
And whilst that was taking place in the street below, in the room abovestairs the eloquent Le Chapelier was addressing his colleagues of the Literary Chamber. Here, with no bullets to fear, and no one to report his words to the authorities, Le Chapelier could permit his oratory a full, unintimidated flow. And that considerable oratory was as direct and brutal as the man himself was delicate and elegant.
He praised the vigour and the greatness of the speech they had heard from their colleague Moreau. Above all he praised its wisdom. Moreau’s words had come as a surprise to them. Hitherto they had never known him as other than a bitter critic of their