CHAPTER V. THE TEMPLE PRISON
It was close on midnight when the two friends finally parted companyoutside the doors of the theatre. The night air struck with bitingkeenness against them when they emerged from the stuffy, overheatedbuilding, and both wrapped their caped cloaks tightly round theirshoulders. Armand--more than ever now--was anxious to rid himself ofde Batz. The Gascon's platitudes irritated him beyond the bounds offorbearance, and he wanted to be alone, so that he might think overthe events of this night, the chief event being a little lady with anenchanting voice and the most fascinating brown eyes he had ever seen.
Self-reproach, too, was fighting a fairly even fight with the excitementthat had been called up by that same pair of brown eyes. Armand for thepast four or five hours had acted in direct opposition to the earnestadvice given to him by his chief; he had renewed one friendship whichhad been far better left in oblivion, and he had made an acquaintancewhich already was leading him along a path that he felt sure his comradewould disapprove. But the path was so profusely strewn with scentednarcissi that Armand's sensitive conscience was quickly lulled to restby the intoxicating fragrance.
Looking neither to right nor left, he made his way very quickly up theRue Richelieu towards the Montmartre quarter, where he lodged.
De Batz stood and watched him for as long as the dim lights of thestreet lamps illumined his slim, soberly-clad figure; then he turned onhis heel and walked off in the opposite direction.
His florid, pock-marked face wore an air of contentment not altogetherunmixed with a kind of spiteful triumph.
"So, my pretty Scarlet Pimpernel," he muttered between his closed lips,"you wish to meddle in my affairs, to have for yourself and your friendsthe credit and glory of snatching the golden prize from the clutches ofthese murderous brutes. Well, we shall see! We shall see which is thewiliest--the French ferret or the English fox."
He walked deliberately away from the busy part of the town, turninghis back on the river, stepping out briskly straight before him, andswinging his gold-beaded cane as he walked.
The streets which he had to traverse were silent and deserted, saveoccasionally where a drinking or an eating house had its swing-doorsstill invitingly open. From these places, as de Batz strode rapidly by,came sounds of loud voices, rendered raucous by outdoor oratory; volleysof oaths hurled irreverently in the midst of impassioned speeches;interruptions from rowdy audiences that vied with the speaker ininvectives and blasphemies; wordy war-fares that ended in noisyvituperations; accusations hurled through the air heavy with tobaccosmoke and the fumes of cheap wines and of raw spirits.
De Batz took no heed of these as he passed, anxious only that the crowdof eating-house politicians did not, as often was its wont, turn outpele-mele into the street, and settle its quarrel by the weightof fists. He did not wish to be embroiled in a street fight, whichinvariably ended in denunciations and arrests, and was glad whenpresently he had left the purlieus of the Palais Royal behind him, andcould strike on his left toward the lonely Faubourg du Temple.
From the dim distance far away came at intervals the mournful sound of aroll of muffled drums, half veiled by the intervening hubbub of thebusy night life of the great city. It proceeded from the Place de laRevolution, where a company of the National Guard were on night watchround the guillotine. The dull, intermittent notes of the drum came asa reminder to the free people of France that the watchdog of a vengefulrevolution was alert night and day, never sleeping, ever wakeful,"beating up game for the guillotine," as the new decree framed to-day bythe Government of the people had ordered that it should do.
From time to time now the silence of this lonely street was broken bya sudden cry of terror, followed by the clash of arms, the inevitablevolley of oaths, the call for help, the final moan of anguish. Theywere the ever-recurring brief tragedies which told of denunciations, ofdomiciliary search, of sudden arrests, of an agonising desire forlife and for freedom--for life under these same horrible conditions ofbrutality and of servitude, for freedom to breathe, if only a day or twolonger, this air, polluted by filth and by blood.
De Batz, hardened to these scenes, paid no heed to them. He had heard itso often, that cry in the night, followed by death-like silence; itcame from comfortable bourgeois houses, from squalid lodgings, orlonely cul-de-sac, wherever some hunted quarry was run to earth by thenewly-organised spies of the Committee of General Security.
Five and thirty livres for every head that falls trunkless into thebasket at the foot of the guillotine! Five and thirty pieces of silver,now as then, the price of innocent blood. Every cry in the night, everycall for help, meant game for the guillotine, and five and thirty livresin the hands of a Judas.
And de Batz walked on unmoved by what he saw and heard, swinging hiscane and looking satisfied. Now he struck into the Place de laVictoire, and looked on one of the open-air camps that had recently beenestablished where men, women, and children were working to provide armsand accoutrements for the Republican army that was fighting the whole ofEurope.
The people of France were up in arms against tyranny; and on the openplaces of their mighty city they were encamped day and night forgingthose arms which were destined to make them free, and in the meantimewere bending under a yoke of tyranny more complete, more grindingand absolute than any that the most despotic kings had ever dared toinflict.
Here by the light of resin torches, at this late hour of the night,raw lads were being drilled into soldiers, half-naked under the cuttingblast of the north wind, their knees shaking under them, their arms andlegs blue with cold, their stomachs empty, and their teeth chatteringwith fear; women were sewing shirts for the great improvised army,with eyes straining to see the stitches by the flickering light ofthe torches, their throats parched with the continual inhaling ofsmoke-laden air; even children, with weak, clumsy little fingers, werepicking rags to be woven into cloth again all, all these slaves wereworking far into the night, tired, hungry, and cold, but workingunceasingly, as the country had demanded it: "the people of France inarms against tyranny!" The people of France had to set to work to makearms, to clothe the soldiers, the defenders of the people's liberty.
And from this crowd of people--men, women, and children--there camescarcely a sound, save raucous whispers, a moan or a sigh quicklysuppressed. A grim silence reigned in this thickly-peopled camp; onlythe crackling of the torches broke that silence now and then, or theflapping of canvas in the wintry gale. They worked on sullen, desperate,and starving, with no hope of payment save the miserable rations wrungfrom poor tradespeople or miserable farmers, as wretched, as oppressedas themselves; no hope of payment, only fear of punishment, for that wasever present.
The people of France in arms against tyranny were not allowed to forgetthat grim taskmaster with the two great hands stretched upwards, holdingthe knife which descended mercilessly, indiscriminately on necks thatdid not bend willingly to the task.
A grim look of gratified desire had spread over de Batz' face as heskirted the open-air camp. Let them toil, let them groan, let themstarve! The more these clouts suffer, the more brutal the heel thatgrinds them down, the sooner will the Emperor's money accomplish itswork, the sooner will these wretches be clamoring for the monarchy,which would mean a rich reward in de Batz' pockets.
To him everything now was for the best: the tyranny, the brutality, themassacres. He gloated in the holocausts with as much satisfaction as didthe most bloodthirsty Jacobin in the Convention. He would with his ownhands have wielded the guillotine that worked too slowly for his ends.Let that end justify the means, was his motto. What matter if the futureKing of France walked up to his throne over steps made of headlesscorpses and rendered slippery with the blood of martyrs?
The ground beneath de Batz' feet was hard and white with the frost.Overhead the pale, wintry moon looked down serene and placid on thisgiant city wallowing in an ocean of misery.
There, had been but little snow as yet this year, and the cold wasintense. On his right now the Cimeti
ere des SS. Innocents lay peacefuland still beneath the wan light of the moon. A thin covering of snow layevenly alike on grass mounds and smooth stones. Here and there a brokencross with chipped arms still held pathetically outstretched, as if ina final appeal for human love, bore mute testimony to senseless excessesand spiteful desire for destruction.
But here within the precincts of the dwelling of the eternal Master asolemn silence reigned; only the cold north wind shook the branches ofthe yew, causing them to send forth a melancholy sigh into the night,and to shed a shower of tiny crystals of snow like the frozen tears ofthe dead.
And round the precincts of the lonely graveyard, and down narrow streetsor open places, the night watchmen went their rounds, lanthorn in hand,and every five minutes their monotonous call rang clearly out in thenight:
"Sleep, citizens! everything is quiet and at peace!"