The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
you with glory.'
But not even the fantastic vanity of Robespierre could tempt him to succumb to this appeal.
'I would not rob you of a single ray of the glory which belongs to you, Chabot. Besides, I am tidy in all my habits. I like a proper observance of the forms, and you are out of order here. You should not have come to me at all. Your place is before the Committee of Public Safety. Go to the Committee, then, without further waste of time.' And the Incorruptible lowered his eyes to the task in hand, and began to squeeze the second half of his orange.
Chabot understood that he was dismissed. He was not sure that he was not condemned. He gulped in panic, and with his panic was mixed a high measure of incredulity. To one who had been a Capuchin, and who as a Capuchin had listened to confessions, the stupidity and wickedness of the human heart should have brought no surprises. Yet surprised he was by the wickedness and stupidity which he now construed to be actuating Robespierre. Was it really possible that, in his overweening conceit, this pompous little dullard was underestimating the value to him of such a man as Chabot? Did the creature really think that he had climbed by his own merit and his own unaided effort to the high place he held? Did his vanity blind him to the fact that it was by association with such men as Chabot, Bazire, and Saint-Just that he had been hoisted into his supremacy? And dared he withhold his protecting ægis now from one of these? Dared he allow him to be cast to the lions? Had he no thought for the weakening of his own position that must result from the loss of such a supporter as Chabot?
It was incredible. But, beholding him there, so calmly squeezing his orange, and pressing the extruded pulp against the rim of his cup, Chabot could no longer doubt that, however incredible, the thing was true.
He mumbled words which Robespierre supposed to be of leave-taking. Actually it was a Latin tag: 'Quem Deus vult perdere ...' And on that he went out on feet uncertain as a drunkard's.
He repaired straight to the Tuileries, and into the presence of the Committee of Public Safety, five members of which were in session, Barère presiding. On the way he had collected his courage once more. He had but to think of the past, of the triumphs his eloquence had won, of the great man that he had become. It was unimaginable that he should not be believed.
He maintained his recovered confidence even when he stood before that terrible committee, whose members, already fully informed, through their ubiquitously active spies, of last night's events at the Jacobins, received him with a coldness such as none would yesterday have dared to show to so great a man.
He told his tale in terms of passionate rhetoric; the burning patriot, the saint who was ready at need to become a martyr in the holy cause of Liberty. He did not move them. They were not the mob. They were cold, calculating men of affairs. Not even the fact that they were of his own party, men of the Mountain all of them, disposed them in his favour.
It was in vain that he paraded the astuteness by means of which he had fooled the conspirators into believing him one of themselves; in vain that he expounded and exalted his devotion to the cause of Liberty; in vain that in a supreme gesture of contempt he flung the hundred thousand francs upon the table before them. And it was equally in vain that he demanded of them a safe-conduct so as to enable him to continue his investigations. It may have occurred to them that he might use it to place himself beyond the frontier.
At last before their impassivity he realized that he was lost. Desperately he played his last card.
'These traitors are to meet at my house tomorrow evening at eight o'clock.' And now at last he named names, thinking perhaps to impress them with those of three members of the Convention, of the party of the Mountain, one of whom, indeed, was of the first importance: Bazire, Delaunay, Julien, and the banker Benoît.
Thus the little craven betrayed his associates in the hope of saving his own neck by turning witness against them.
'Send to my house tomorrow night at eight, and you shall take the lot. I'll have them there for you.'
'You establish your patriotism,' said Barère. But he was smiling curiously. He added: 'But are you sure that you have named them all?'
Chabot sucked in his plump cheeks under the shock of that question. It suggested that he told the Committee nothing that it did not already know. Indeed, not quite all that it did know. It seemed he was only just in time.
'Faith, I was forgetting one, who is of less importance. A fellow named Moreau.'
'Ah, yes,' said Barère, still with that curious smile on his high-bred face. 'I thought you had overlooked Moreau. Well, well, it is understood. At eight o'clock tomorrow.' The others nodded.
Chabot lingered, perplexed. There had been no word of thanks, yet they seemed to dismiss him. It could not be.
'Why do you wait, Chabot?' It was Billaud-Varennes who put the question.
'Is that all?' he asked, bewildered.
'Unless you have more to say. That is all. Until eight o'clock tomorrow.'
He went out awkwardly, like a dismissed lackey rather than a master turning his back upon his servants; for until this morning that had more nearly approached their respective positions.
He walked home haunted by that enigmatic smile on the lips of Barère. What had the insolent fellow meant by it? Was he presuming upon what had happened last night at the Jacobins to be putting on airs and graces with a patriot of Chabot's consequence? The damned aristocrat! For Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac of Tarbes was a gentleman by birth. He belonged to a class that Chabot from his earliest days had hated with the instinctive hatred of the base for his betters. It was a fact concerning him that Chabot had overlooked. He would be giving a little attention presently to this Monsieur Barère de Vieuzac. He would have the damned head off that vile aristocrat before many weeks were over.
And how the devil did he come to know that André-Louis Moreau was in the affair?
If Chabot had possessed the answer to that question, he would have been a little less confident about his future ability to deal with Barère. He was not to know that upon the table of the Committee of Public Safety had lain since yesterday a full report of the India Company swindle from the pen of the Committee's very diligent secret agent, André-Louis Moreau, and that the Committee had already decided upon its course of action which was nowise influenced by the visit of Chabot.
It was not quite the course of action now agreed with him. The arrests took place next day and they took place at eight o'clock. But it was at eight o'clock in the morning, without waiting for Chabot to bring the conspirators together. They were arrested separately. Chabot, half-stupefied, wildly protesting error in terms of coarsest blasphemy, then as wildly protesting that the person of a deputy was inviolable, was dragged from the side of his little Poldine, who stopped her ears shuddering at his obscenities. With each of the others named—excepting only André-Louis Moreau—it fared the same. And at the same hour yet another was arrested: Fabre d'Églantine, whom Chabot had not named, but whom André-Louis had not omitted from his report.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THORIN'S LETTER
By noon that day the town was in a ferment. Crowds were assembling in the Gardens of the Tuileries. Crowds paraded through the streets howling death to all and sundry. Crowds besieged the hall of the Jacobins. Crowds clamoured about the precincts of the Convention. From the galleries the women of the markets hurled shrill insults at the absent fallen legislators, demanding to know whom they could trust.
That demand was on the lips of every patriot that morning. If Chabot was false to his duty, whom could they believe true to it? If Chabot abused his position to swindle the people, whom could they believe honest?
There were those who mingled with the crowds to fan their anger, and direct its course; men of rough, patriotic appearance from the red bonnets on their heads to the clogs on their feet, who fiercely proclaimed that France had exchanged one set of tyrants