PROLOGUE TO PART THE FIRST.
In an apartment at Paris, one morning during the Reign of Terror, a man,whose age might be somewhat under thirty, sat before a table coveredwith papers, arranged and labelled with the methodical precision of amind fond of order and habituated to business. Behind him rose a tallbookcase surmounted with a bust of Robespierre, and the shelves werefilled chiefly with works of a scientific character, amongst which thegreater number were on chemistry and medicine. There were to be seenalso many rare books on alchemy, the great Italian historians, someEnglish philosophical treatises, and a few manuscripts in Arabic. Theabsence from this collection of the stormy literature of the day seemedto denote that the owner was a quiet student, living apart from thestrife and passions of the Revolution. This supposition was, however,disproved by certain papers on the table, which were formally andlaconically labelled "Reports on Lyons," and by packets of letters inthe handwritings of Robespierre and Couthon. At one of the windows ayoung boy was earnestly engaged in some occupation which appeared toexcite the curiosity of the person just described; for this last, afterexamining the child's movements for a few moments with a silent scrutinythat betrayed but little of the half-complacent, half-melancholyaffection with which busy man is apt to regard childhood, rosenoiselessly from his seat, approached the boy, and looked over hisshoulder unobserved. In a crevice of the wood by the window, a hugeblack spider had formed his web; the child had just discovered anotherspider, and placed it in the meshes: he was watching the result of hisoperations. The intrusive spider stood motionless in the midst of theweb, as if fascinated. The rightful possessor was also quiescent; buta very fine ear might have caught a low, humming sound, which probablyaugured no hospitable intentions to the invader. Anon, the strangerinsect seemed suddenly to awake from its amaze; it evinced alarm, andturned to fly; the huge spider darted forward; the boy uttered a chuckleof delight. The man's pale lip curled into a sinister sneer, andhe glided back to his seat. There, leaning his face on his hand, hecontinued to contemplate the child. That child might have furnished toan artist a fitting subject for fair and blooming infancy. His lighthair, tinged deeply, it is true, with red, hung in sleek and glitteringabundance down his neck and shoulders. His features, seen in profile,were delicately and almost femininely proportioned; health glowed onhis cheek, and his form, slight though it was, gave promise of singularactivity and vigour. His dress was fantastic, and betrayed the taste ofsome fondly foolish mother; but the fine linen, trimmed with lace, wasrumpled and stained, the velvet jacket unbrushed, the shoes soiled withdust,--slight tokens these of neglect, but serving to show that thefoolish fondness which had invented the dress had not of late presidedover the toilet.
"Child," said the man, first in French; and observing that the boyheeded him not,--"child," he repeated in English, which he spoke well,though with a foreign accent, "child!"
The boy turned quickly.
"Has the great spider devoured the small one?"
"No, sir," said the boy, colouring; "the small one has had the best ofit."
The tone and heightened complexion of the child seemed to give meaningto his words,--at least, so the man thought, for a slight frown passedover his high, thoughtful brow.
"Spiders, then," he said, after a short pause, "are different from men;with us, the small do not get the better of the great. Hum! do you stillmiss your mother?"
"Oh, yes!" and the boy advanced eagerly to the table.
"Well, you will see her once again."
"When?"
The man looked towards a clock on the mantelpiece,--"Before that clockstrikes. Now, go back to your spiders." The child looked irresolute anddisinclined to obey; but a stern and terrible expression gathered slowlyover the man's face, and the boy, growing pale as he remarked it, creptback to the window.
The father--for such was the relation the owner of the room bore tothe child--drew paper and ink towards him, and wrote for some minutesrapidly. Then starting up, he glanced at the clock, took his hat andcloak, which lay on a chair beside, drew up the collar of the mantletill it almost concealed his countenance, and said, "Now, boy, comewith me; I have promised to show you an execution: I am going to keep mypromise. Come!"
The boy clapped his hands with joy; and you might see then, child ashe was, that those fair features were capable of a cruel and ferociousexpression. The character of the whole face changed. He caught up hisgay cap and plume, and followed his father into the streets.
Silently the two took their way towards the Barriere du Trone. At adistance they saw the crowd growing thick and dense as throng afterthrong hurried past them, and the dreadful guillotine rose high in thelight blue air. As they came into the skirts of the mob, the father, forthe first time, took his child's hand. "I must get you a good place forthe show," he said, with a quiet smile.
There was something in the grave, staid, courteous, yet haughty bearingof the man that made the crowd give way as he passed. They got near thedismal scene, and obtained entrance into a wagon already crowded witheager spectators.
And now they heard at a distance the harsh and lumbering roll of thetumbril that bore the victims, and the tramp of the horses which guardedthe procession of death. The boy's whole attention was absorbed inexpectation of the spectacle, and his ear was perhaps less accustomedto French, though born and reared in France, than to the language ofhis mother's lips,--and she was English; thus he did not hear or heedcertain observations of the bystanders, which made his father's palecheek grow paler.
"What is the batch to-day?" quoth a butcher in the wagon. "Scarce worththe baking,--only two; but one, they say, is an aristocrat,--a ci-devantmarquis," answered a carpenter. "Ah, a marquis! Bon! And the other?"
"Only a dancer, but a pretty one, it is true; I could pity her, butshe is English." And as he pronounced the last word, with a tone ofinexpressible contempt, the butcher spat, as if in nausea.
"Mort diable! a spy of Pitt's, no doubt. What did they discover?"
A man, better dressed than the rest, turned round with a smile, andanswered: "Nothing worse than a lover, I believe; but that lover was aproscrit. The ci-devant marquis was caught disguised in her apartment.She betrayed for him a good, easy friend of the people who had longloved her, and revenge is sweet."
The man whom we have accompanied, nervously twitched up the collar ofhis cloak, and his compressed lips told that he felt the anguish of thelaugh that circled round him.
"They are coming! There they are!" cried the boy, in ecstaticexcitement.
"That's the way to bring up citizens," said the butcher, patting thechild's shoulder, and opening a still better view for him at the edge ofthe wagon.
The crowd now abruptly gave way. The tumbril was in sight. A man, youngand handsome, standing erect and with folded arms in the fatal vehicle,looked along the mob with an eye of careless scorn. Though he wore thedress of a workman, the most unpractised glance could detect, in hismien and bearing, one of the hated noblesse, whose characteristics cameout even more forcibly at the hour of death. On the lip was thatsmile of gay and insolent levity, on the brow that gallant if recklesscontempt of physical danger, which had signalized the hero-coxcombsof the old regime. Even the rude dress was worn with a certain airof foppery, and the bright hair was carefully adjusted, as if for theholiday of the headsman. As the eyes of the young noble wandered overthe fierce faces of that horrible assembly, while a roar of hideoustriumph answered the look, in which for the last time the gentilhommespoke his scorn of the canaille, the child's father lowered the collarof his cloak, and slowly raised his hat from his brow. The eye of themarquis rested upon the countenance thus abruptly shown to him, andwhich suddenly became individualized amongst the crowd,--that eyeinstantly lost its calm contempt. A shudder passed visibly over hisframe, and his cheek grew blanched with terror. The mob saw the change,but not the cause, and loud and louder rose their triumphant yell. Thesound recalled the pride of the young noble; he started, lifted hiscrest erect, and sought again to meet the look wh
ich had appalled him.But he could no longer single it out among the crowd. Hat and cloak oncemore hid the face of the foe, and crowds of eager heads interceptedthe view. The young marquis's lips muttered; he bent down, and then thecrowd caught sight of his companion, who was being lifted up fromthe bottom of the tumbril, where she had flung herself in horror anddespair. The crowd grew still in a moment as the pale face of one,familiar to most of them, turned wildly from place to place in thedreadful scene, vainly and madly through its silence imploring life andpity. How often had the sight of that face, not then pale and haggard,but wreathed with rosy smiles, sufficed to draw down the applause of thecrowded theatre; how, then, had those breasts, now fevered by the thirstof blood, held hearts spellbound by the airy movements of that exquisiteform writhing now in no stage-mime agony! Plaything of the city, minionto the light amusement of the hour, frail child of Cytherea and theGraces, what relentless fate has conducted thee to the shambles?Butterfly of the summer, why should a nation rise to break thee uponthe wheel? A sense of the mockery of such an execution, of the horribleburlesque that would sacrifice to the necessities of a mighty people soslight an offering, made itself felt among the crowd. There was a lowmurmur of shame and indignation. The dangerous sympathy of the mob wasperceived by the officer in attendance. Hastily he made the sign tothe headsman, and as he did so, a child's cry was heard in the Englishtongue,--"Mother! Mother!" The father's hand grasped the child's armwith an iron pressure; the crowd swam before the boy's eyes; the airseemed to stifle him, and become blood-red; only through the hum andthe tramp and the roll of the drums he heard a low voice hiss in his ear"Learn how they perish who betray me!"
As the father said these words, again his face was bare, and the woman,whose ear amidst the dull insanity of fear had caught the cry of herchild's voice, saw that face, and fell back insensible in the arms ofthe headsman.