CHAPTER XXII
The close of day.
Deroulede had spent the whole of this same night in a wild, impassionedsearch for Juliette.
Earlier in the day, soon after Anne Mie's revelations, he had sought outhis English friend, Sir Percy Blakeney, and talked over with him thefinal arrangements for the removal of Madame Deroulede and Anne Mie fromParis.
Though he was a born idealist and a Utopian, Paul Deroulede had neverfor a moment had any illusions with regard to his own popularity. Heknew that at any time, and for any trivial cause, the love which the mobbore him would readily turn to hate. He had seen Mirabeau's popularitywane, La Fayette's, Desmoulin's--was it likely that _he_ alone wouldsurvive the inevitable death of so ephemeral a thing?
Therefore, whilst he was in power, whilst he was loved and trusted, hehad, figuratively and actually, put his house in order. He had made fullpreparations for his own inevitable downfall, for that probable flightfrom Paris of those who were dependent upon him.
He had, as far back as a year ago, provided himself with the necessarypassports, and bespoken with his English friend certain measures for thesafety of his mother and his crippled little relative. Now it was merelya question of putting these measures into execution.
Within two hours of Juliette Marny's arrest, Madame Deroulede and AnneMie had quitted the house in the Rue Ecole de Medecine. They had butlittle luggage with them, and were ostensibly going into the country tovisit a sick cousin.
The mother of the popular Citizen-Deputy was free to travel unmolested.The necessary passports which the safety of the Republic demanded wereall in perfect order, and Madame Deroulede and Anne Mie passed throughthe north gate of Paris an hour before sunset, on that 24th day ofFructidor.
Their large travelling chaise took them some distance on the North Road,where they were to meet Lord Hastings and Lord Anthony Dewhurst, two ofThe Scarlet Pimpernel's most trusted lieutenants, who were to escortthem as far as the coast, and thence see them safely aboard the Englishyacht.
On that score, therefore, Deroulede had no anxiety. His chief duty wasto his mother and to Anne Mie, and that was now fully discharged.
Then there was old Petronelle.
Ever since the arrest of her young mistress the poor old soul had beenin a state of mind bordering on frenzy, and no amount of eloquence onDeroulede's part would persuade her to quit Paris without Juliette.
"If my pet lamb is to die," she said amidst heart-broken sobs, "then Ihave no cause to live. Let those devils take me along too, if they wanta useless, old woman like me. But if my darling is allowed to go free,then what would become of her in this awful city without me? She and Ihave never been separated; she wouldn't know where to turn for a home.And who would cook for her and iron out her kerchiefs, I'd like toknow?"
Reason and common sense were, of course, powerless in face of thissublime and heroic childishness. No one had the heart to tell the oldwoman that the murderous dog of the Revolution seldom loosened itsfangs, once they had closed upon a victim.
All Deroulede could do was to convey Petronelle to the old abode, whichJuliette had quitted in order to come to him, and which had never beenformally given up. The worthy soul, calmed and refreshed, deludedherself into the idea that she was waiting for the return of her youngmistress, and became quite cheerful at sight of the familiar room.
Deroulede had provided her with money and necessaries. He had but fewremaining hopes in his heart, but among them was the firmly implantedone that Petronelle was too insignificant to draw upon herself theterrible attention of the Committee of Public Safety.
By the nightfall he had seen the good woman safely installed. Then onlydid he feel free.
At last he could devote himself to what seemed to him the one, the only,aim of his life--to find Juliette.
A dozen prisons in this vast Paris!
Over five thousand prisoners on that night, awaiting trial, condemnationand death.
Deroulede at first, strong in his own power, his personality, hadthought that the task would be comparatively easy.
At the Palais de Justice they would tell him nothing: the list of newarrests had not yet been handled in by the commandant of Paris, CitizenSanterre, who classified and docketed the miserable herd of aspirantsfor the next day's guillotine.
The lists, moreover, would not be completed until the next day, when thetrials of the new prisoners would already be imminent.
The work of the Committee of Public Safety was done without much delay.
Then began Deroulede's weary quest through those twelve prisons ofParis. From the Temple to the Conciergerie, from Palais Conde to theLuxembourg, he spent hours in the fruitless search.
Everywhere the same shrug of the shoulders, the same indifferent replyto his eager query:
"Juliette Marny? _Inconnue._"
Unknown! She had not yet been docketed, not yet classified; she wasstill one of that immense flock of cattle, sent in ever-increasingnumbers to the slaughter-house.
Presently, to-morrow, after a trial which might last ten minutes, aftera hasty condemnation and quick return to prison, she would be listed asone of the traitors, whom this great and beneficent Republic sent dailyto the guillotine.
Vainly did Deroulede try to persuade, to entreat, to bribe. The sullenguardians of these twelve charnel-houses knew nothing of individualprisoners.
But the Citizen-Deputy was allowed to look for himself. He was conductedto the great vaulted rooms of the Temple, to the vast ballrooms of thePalais Conde, where herded the condemned and those still awaiting trial;he was allowed to witness there the grim farcical tragedies, with whichthe captives beguiled the few hours which separated them from death.
Mock trials were acted there; Tinville was mimicked; then the Place dela Revolution; Samson the headsman, with a couple of inverted chairs torepresent the guillotine.
Daughters of dukes and princes, descendants of ancient lineage, acted inthese weird and ghastly comedies. The ladies, with hair bound high overtheir heads, would kneel before the inverted chairs, and place thesnowwhite necks beneath this imaginary guillotine. Speeches weredelivered to a mock populace, whilst a mock Santerre ordered a mock rollof drums to drown the last flow of eloquence of the supposed victim.
Oh! the horror of it all--the pity, pathos, and misery of this ghastlyparody, in the very face of the sublimity of death!
Deroulede shuddered when first he beheld the scene, shuddered at thevery thought of finding Juliette amongst these careless, laughing,thoughtless mimes.
His own, his beautiful Juliette, with her proud face and majestic,queen-like gestures; it was a relief not to see her there.
"Juliette Marny? _Inconnue,_" was the final word he heard about her.
No one told him that by Deputy Merlin's strictest orders she had beenlabelled "dangerous," and placed in a remote wing of the LuxembourgPalace, together with a few, who, like herself, were allowed to see noone, communicate with no one.
Then when the _couvre-feu_ had sounded, when all public places wereclosed, when the night watchman had begun his rounds, Deroulede knewthat his quest for that night must remain fruitless.
But he could not rest. In and out the tortuous streets of Paris heroamed during the better part of that night. He was now only awaitingthe dawn to publicly demand the right to stand beside Juliette.
A hopeless misery was in his heart, a longing for a cessation of life;only one thing kept his brain active, his mind clear: the hope of savingJuliette.
The dawn was breaking in the far east when, wandering along the banks ofthe river, he suddenly felt a touch on his arm.
"Come to my hovel," said a pleasant, lazy voice close to his ear, whilsta kindly hand seemed to drag him away from the contemplation of thedark, silent river. "And a demmed, beastly place it is too, but at leastwe can talk quietly there."
Deroulede, roused from his meditation, looked up, to see his friend, SirPercy Blakeney, standing close beside him. Tall, debonnair,well-dressed, he seemed by his ve
ry presence to dissipate the morbidatmosphere which was beginning to weigh upon Deroulede's active mind.
Deroulede followed him readily enough through, the intricate mazes ofold Paris, and down the Rue des Arts, until Sir Percy stopped outside asmall hostelry, the door of which stood wide open.
"Mine host has nothing to lose from footpads and thieves," explained theEnglishman as he guided his friend through the narrow doorway, then up aflight of rickety stairs, to a small room on the floor above. "He leavesall doors open for anyone to walk in, but, la! the interior of the houselooks so uninviting that no one is tempted to enter."
"I wonder you care to stay here," remarked Deroulede, with a momentarysmile, as he contrasted in his mind the fastidious appearance of hisfriend with the dinginess and dirt of these surroundings.
Sir Percy deposited his large person in the capacious depths of a creakychair, stretched his long limbs out before him, and said quietly:
"I am only staying in this demmed hole until the moment when I can dragyou out of this murderous city."
Deroulede shook his head.
"You'd best go back to England, then," he said, "for I'll never leaveParis now."
"Not without Juliette Marny, shall we say?" rejoined Sir Percy placidly.
"And I fear me that she has placed herself beyond our reach," saidDeroulede sombrely.
"You know that she is in the Luxembourg Prison?" queried the Englishmansuddenly.
"I guessed it, but could find no proof."
"And that she will be tried to-morrow?"
"They never keep a prisoner pining too long," replied Derouledebitterly. "I guessed that too."
"What do you mean to do?"
"Defend her with the last breath in my body."
"You love her still, then?" asked Blakeney, with a smile.
"Still?" The look, the accent, the agony of a hopeless passion conveyedin that one word, told Sir Percy Blakeney all that he wished to know.
"Yet she betrayed you," he said tentatively.
"And to atone for that sin--an oath, mind you, friend, sworn to herfather--she is already to give her life for me."
"And you are prepared to forgive?"
"To understand _is_ to forgive," rejoined Deroulede simply, "and I loveher."
"Your madonna!" said Blakeney, with a gently ironical smile.
"No; the woman I love, with all her weaknesses, all her sins; the womanto gain whom I would give my soul, to save whom I will give my life."
"And she?"
"She does not love me--would she have betrayed me else?"
He sat beside the table, and buried his head in his hands. Not even hisdearest friend should see how much he had suffered, how deeply his lovehad been wounded.
Sir Percy said nothing, a curious, pleasant smile lurked round thecorners of his mobile mouth. Through his mind there flitted the visionof beautiful Marguerite, who had so much loved yet so deeply wrongedhim, and, looking at his friend, he thought that Deroulede too wouldsoon learn all the contradictions, which wage a constant war in theinnermost recesses of a feminine heart.
He made a movement as if he would say something more, something of graveimport, then seemed to think better of it, and shrugged his broadshoulders, as if to say:
"Let time and chance take their course now."
When Deroulede looked up again Sir Percy was sitting placidly in thearm-chair, with an absolutely blank expression on his face.
"Now that you know how much I love her, my friend," said Deroulede assoon as he had mastered his emotions, "will you look after her when theyhave condemned me, and save her for my sake?"
A curious, enigmatic smile suddenly illumined Sir Percy's earnestcountenance.
"Save her? Do you attribute supernatural powers to me, then, or to TheLeague of The Scarlet Pimpernel?"
"To you, I think," rejoined Deroulede seriously.
Once more it seemed as if Sir Percy were about to reveal something ofgreat importance to his friend, then once more he checked himself. TheScarlet Pimpernel was, above all, far-seeing and practical, a man ofaction and not of impulse. The glowing eyes of his friend, his nervous,febrile movements, did not suggest that he was in a fit state to beentrusted with plans, the success of which hung on a mere thread.
Therefore Sir Percy only smiled, and said quietly:
"Well, I'll do my best."