Robespierre

The Story of Victorien Sardou's Play Adapted and Novelized under his authority

BY

ANGE GALDEMAR

NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1899

Copyright, 1899, BY ANGE GALDEMAR.

University Press: JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.

[Transcriber's note: The chapter titles below do not all match the titles at the chapters.]

Contents

CHAPTER

I The Discovery

II The Voice of the Past

III The Englishman

IV The Arrest

V The Scaffold amid Flowers

VI The Prison of La Bourse

VII The Fête of the Supreme Being

VIII Beset by Memories and Forebodings

IX Hours of Anguish

X The Tumbrils

XI "All These Gliding Ghosts"

XII The Eve of the Battle

XIII A Broken Idol

XIV The Knell of the Tocsin

XV Death's Kindly Veil

MON CHER GALDEMAR,—

J'achève la lecture du roman qu'avec mon autorisation vous avez tiré de mon drame "Robespierre." Je ne saurais trop me féliciter de vous avoir encouragé à entreprendre ce travail, où vous avez, de la façon la plus heureuse, reproduit les incidents dra-matiques de ma pièce et préparé votre lecteur à apprécier l'admirable évocation du passé que Sir Henry Irving lui présente sur la scène du Lyceum. Je ne doute pas que le succèes de votre livre ne soil tel que vous le souhaite ma vieille et constante amitié.

[Signature: Victor Sardoz]

MARLY-LE-ROI.

Robespierre

CHAPTER I THE DISCOVERY

The Hôtel de Pontivy was situated in the Rue des Lions-Saint-Paul, in the very heart of the Marais Quarter, which as early as the opening of this story, the June of 1775, seemed to form by itself a little province in Paris.

It was a magnificent spring night. The sky, luminous with a galaxy of stars, was reflected on the dark waters of the Seine lazily flowing by. A hush rested on the Rue des Lions-Saint-Paul, which lay enshrouded in gloom and silence, indifferent to the fairy charms of the hour.

Enclosed in high walls thickly clad with ivy, dark and mysterious as a prison, the Hôtel de Pontivy had all the aspect of some chill cloister apart from men and movement. And yet behind those shutters, where life seemed to pause, wrapped in slumber, some one is keeping watch—the master of the house, Monsieur Jacques Bernard Olivier de Pontivy, Councillor to the King's Parliament, sits late at his work, taking no count of time.

But Monsieur de Pontivy has at last decided; he raises his eyes to the clock.

"Twenty past two!" he exclaims. "I really cannot wake that poor fellow!"

Through the deep stillness of the vast room, with blinds and curtains drawn, a stillness enhanced by the glare of candelabra lighted up, as if in broad day, the heavy, green-repp armchairs, and bookshelves of massive oak ornamented with brass rose-work, passing a litter of cardboard boxes and waste-paper basket, and in the centre the ministerial desk overladen with books and bundles, the councillor makes his way towards a bureau that he has not yet opened.

"Perhaps it may be here," he says, as he turns over a whole file of letters, old and new, receipts, accounts, plans and invoices—one of those mixed files put aside for future classification. Perhaps the paper had been slipped in there by mistake? Monsieur de Pontivy set to work methodically, turning the papers over one by one, stopping here and there to read a word that caught his attention, or threw a sudden light on things long forgotten, and awakened projects long dormant.

"Oh! I must think over that," he exclaimed, as he put one or another aside.

Now and again a ray of joy lit up his countenance, as he thought he had found the missing paper, and as disappointment followed he renewed the search with unabated ardour.

For more than half an hour he went on thus, seeking the lost document, a lawyer's opinion recently received, which would assist him in elucidating a difficult point which was to be secretly debated the next day in Parliament, before judgment was delivered. He had thoughtlessly let his young secretary retire without asking him the whereabouts of this document, which he alone could find.

Monsieur de Pontivy had hastened to his study this evening directly dinner was over, to mature in solitude the arguments which were to triumph on the morrow, and of which he wished to make a short, concise summary before retiring to rest.

Having returned home sooner than usual that afternoon, the fancy had seized him to advance the dinner-hour, but learning that his daughter had not returned, he was obliged to forego his whim. This hour was rarely changed, the regulations of the house being rigorous to a degree, but Monsieur de Pontivy in the excess of his despotic authority was none the less displeased, being early himself, to find no one awaiting him. So when he heard the rumbling of the heavy coach which brought back Clarisse and her governess, Mademoiselle Jusseaume, he sought for a pretext to vent his ill-humour on them.

He had commenced to walk impatiently backwards and forwards the whole length of the room, casting hasty glances out of the window, wondering at the child's delay in coming to him, when the door opened and a head appeared in the doorway, fair, with pale, delicate features, large blue eyes, wide open to the day, in whose clear depths, half-hidden by the fresh candour of first youth, lay a tinge of melancholy.

It was Clarisse.

What an apparition, in such an austere and dreary place, that frail, white-robed form standing on the threshold, a tender smile of dawn in the dark room! She entered on tip-toe, approaching her father with greeting in her eyes and on her lips; he, continuing his walk, had his back towards her.

"Already here?" she asked, and her voice fell on the silence like an angelus.

Monsieur de Pontivy turned abruptly.

"How is it that you enter without knocking?"

The smile died on the child's lips. She murmured, disconcerted and abashed—

"I never used to knock, father, on entering your room."

"Then make it a point to do so in future. You are no longer a child; so learn to be discreet and to respect closed doors. A closed room, mademoiselle, is a sanctuary."

The young girl was accustomed to sermons, but had not expected one of that kind just then. She stood irresolute, hesitating whether to advance or retire.

"Must I go?" she hazarded, trembling.

Monsieur de Pontivy, satisfied at having vented his ill-humour, stooped to kiss his daughter's forehead, and then added, as if to soften the effects of his reception—

"Where have you been to-day?"

"On the boulevards."

"Were there many people?"

The young girl, reassured by this encouragement, began brightly—

"Oh yes, and only imagine...!"

"That will do! You can tell me that at table."

But at table she was supposed only to reply to her father, and he, lost in meditation, did not question her that day. And so passed all the meals she partook of with her father and young de Robespierre, Monsieur de Pontivy's secretary, whom the councillor made welcome every day at his table, glad to have so near at hand one whose memory and aid were easily available.

Timid at first, confining himself to the points put to him, the young secretary had gradually become bolder, and sometimes, to Clarisse's great delight, would lead the conversation on to subjects of literature and art, opening out a new world before her, and shedding rays of thought in her dawning mind. She found a similar source of pleasure on Sundays in the reception-room, while Monsieur de Pontivy's attention was absorbed by his dull and solemn friends in interminable games of whist, and Robespierre entertained her apart, quickening her young dreams by the charm of an imagination at once brilliant and graceful. It was as dew falling from heaven on her solitude.

Alas, how swiftly those hours flew! Clarisse was just sixteen. She could not remember one day of real joy. Her mother she had lost long ago; her brother Jacques, two years younger than herself, was always at school at the College de Navarre, and she saw him only once a fortnight, at lunch, after mass, on Sunday. At four o'clock an usher fetched him, when he had submitted his fortnight's school-work for the inspection of his father, who more often than not found fault with his efforts, so that the lad frankly confessed to his sister that, upon the whole, he preferred those Sundays on which he remained at school.

From her cradle Clarisse had been given over to nurses and chamber-maids, and at the age of eight she was confided to the care of nuns, just when she was emerging from the long torpor of childhood. Here she remained until the day when Monsieur de Pontivy, whose paternal solicitude had, up to then, been limited to taking her to the country for the holidays, claimed her, and installed her in his town residence under the charge of a governess. But Clarisse had only changed convents. For going out but seldom, except to mass and vespers on Sundays, at St. Paul's Church, or on fine days for a drive in the great coach with her governess, she continued to grow like a hot-house plant, closed in by the high walls of the house where nothing smiled, not even the garden uncultivated and almost abandoned, nor the courtyard where a few scattered weeds pushed their way between the stones.

It is true the young girl fully made up for this in the country, during the summer months at the Château de Pontivy, two miles from Compiègne, where her father spent his holidays. But they were so short, those precious holidays! The autumn roses had scarcely unfolded when she was compelled to return with her father to Paris; and all the charm and sweetness of September, with the tender tints of its dying leaves, were unknown to her, though a semblance of its grace crept into her room sometimes in the Rue des Lions-Saint-Paul, and stole like melancholy into her young soul, but new-awakened to the ideal, arousing a regret for joys denied.

These holidays were shorter since Monsieur de Pontivy recommenced his duties as councillor to the Parliament which the King had just re-established, and Clarisse began again to feel lonely, so lonely that she looked forward impatiently to the dinner-hour, when the young secretary brought with him some gay reports and rumours of Paris, planted germs of poetry in her soul, and initiated her into those charming trifles which constitute fashionable life.

All her suppressed tenderness and affection, which asked nothing better than to overflow, were concentrated on her governess, Mademoiselle Jusseaume, an excellent creature, upright and generous, but impulsive, inconsequent, and without authority. She was a good Catholic, and saw that her charge scrupulously observed her religious duties. She kept her place, was submissive, discreet, and always contented; and this was more than enough to satisfy Monsieur de Pontivy, who classed all womankind in one rank, and that the lowest.

Of his two children the one in whom Monsieur de Pontivy took the greater interest was his son, the heir to his name, and to whom would descend later on the office of councillor. But as this was as yet a distant prospect, he contented himself with superintending his education as much as possible, absorbed as he was in high functions which he fulfilled with that perseverance and assiduity, that desire to give incessant proofs of staunch fidelity, which arise from an immeasurable pride.

Such a character can well be imagined. Heartless, hard, and implacable, strictly accomplishing his duty, honest to a fault, making ever an ostentatious display of his principles, doing no man harm, but also suffering no man to harm him, under an apparent coldness he masked an excess of violence that the least suspicion or provocation would arouse.

Clarisse had her black-letter days—days of scolding, when with eyes brimful of tears she retired to her room, forbidden even to seek refuge with her governess; and looking back through the mists of childhood, she endured again those terrible scenes of anger, the horror of which haunted her still.

The two women understood each other instinctively, almost without the aid of words, living as they did that sequestered existence, in constant communion, both losing themselves in the same vague dreams, trembling on the borders of the unknown; each leaning on the other, with this only difference that Clarisse with an indefinable feeling of dawning force took the lead.

The same dim future smiled on both, the same far-off paradise of delusive hopes in which they would gladly lose themselves, until Mademoiselle Jusseaume, suddenly conscious of responsibility, would rouse herself, blushing and trembling, as if at some guilty thought. For in their day-dreams Monsieur de Pontivy had no part, did not exist. Was he to disappear? Was he to die? In any case he was always absent from these speculations, and Mademoiselle Jusseaume, the soul of righteousness, felt that this was altogether wrong.

"You must love your father," she would say, as if stirred by some secret impulse, and the remark fell suddenly and unexpectedly on the silence of the little room where the two were apparently deeply absorbed in the mazy dancing of the flies.

"But I do love him!" Clarisse would answer without surprise, as if replying to some inner thought.

She was, indeed, convinced of it, poor child! Filial love beamed in her eyes, love for her father: a mixture of respect for his age and position, and of gratitude for his rare kindnesses, while he did not realise the gulf that separated him from his daughter, a gulf which a little tenderness, an occasional response, a smile however slight, might have sufficed to bridge. He did not realise the riches of this mine, or seek its treasures of youth, of grace, and of love abounding in every vein. He had but to bend down, look into her large blue eyes, those eyes where the dreams floated, to find a world of love.

However, he had other things to think about; Monsieur de Pontivy, King's Councillor to the ancient Parliament, and unanimously returned to the new; a man of position, rich, influential, highly connected, of the old provincial noblesse, admitted to the council of the King, honoured at Court, respected in the town, feared at home by a whole crowd of cringing lackeys trembling before this potentate of fortune and intellect, who seemed to them the very embodiment of justice. His daughter, indeed! He had three years before him to think of her, which meant in his acceptance of the term but a speedy riddance of her, to his own and her best advantage, a chance to establish her well in the world in which he moved, in which his position would enable him to procure for her without much difficulty an alliance worthy of her name and rank. Meanwhile he was happy, or rather contented with his lot. Had not the young King but lately said to him, when he was admitted to a private audience to render homage and tender his assurances of fidelity and respect to the successor of Louis XV.:—

"Monsieur de Pontivy, I know the services you have rendered to France, and I can only ask you to continue them."

These words had spread through Versailles. The Councillor was overwhelmed with compliments of the kind more acceptable to certain natures for the spice of envy they contain, for is not the envy of our fellows the very sign and seal of our success?

Thus the influential Abbé de Saint-Vaast, the future Cardinal de Rohan, remarked to him some days after, whilst walking in the suite of the Queen at Versailles, "Such words, Monsieur de Pontivy, stand you in better stead than sealed parchment."

A smile of superiority, which he quickly changed to one of patronising condescension, played round the Councillor's lips at the thought that for a Rohan to compliment him meant that he sought something in return. Monsieur de Pontivy was not mistaken. The Abbé de Saint-Vaast wished to place with some lawyer in search of a secretary a young man who, having finished his college studies, intended to prepare for the Bar.

"I can recommend him," said the Abbé, "as intelligent, industrious, and of an excellent character; one of the best pupils of Louis-le-Grand, and recently chosen as most worthy the honour of welcoming the King and Queen, who visited the college on their way to the Pantheon."

"And his name?" asked Monsieur de Pontivy.

"Maximilien de Robespierre."

"And may I ask your lordship's reason for the particular interest taken in this young man?"

"Why, yes, of course! He comes from Arras, and was commended to me by the bishop of that town, with excellent testimonials from a priest of my diocese. I gave him a grant for the college, and as he has succeeded so far, I shall be glad to see him make his way. And, after all, are we not generally interested in the welfare of those we have helped—a feeling which you doubtless understand, Monsieur de Pontivy, since it is but human?"

"I understand it so well that I will take your nominee."

"Into your own service?"

"Yes, into my service. Pray do not thank me. I was in urgent need of one, and am too glad to accept him on your recommendation."

It was true, for Monsieur de Pontivy with his manifold occupations was at the moment without a secretary, and anxious to fill up the post so soon as he could find a worthy candidate. The offer of the Abbé was doubly acceptable to him as an opportunity to oblige a Rohan, and to enlist in his service a young man who had been chosen before all his fellow-students as most worthy to welcome the King and Queen.

The next day Robespierre was installed at the Hôtel de Pontivy. After some preliminary questions as to his parentage, his studies, his college life, Monsieur de Pontivy had adroitly brought the conversation to bear on the visit of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. The young man gave a detailed account, standing in a respectful attitude, his eyes lowered, and with an appearance of modesty, which to a mind less vain than that of Monsieur de Pontivy's would have suggested more self-sufficiency than was desirable.

"And the King, what did he say? And the Queen?"

"Their majesties did not speak to me," said the young man, rather confused.

"Ah!" exclaimed Monsieur de Pontivy, visibly satisfied.

"But the King smiled," continued Robespierre, "and received me graciously."

"And the Queen?"

The young man hesitated, but drawing himself up resolutely under the searching glance of the Councillor, he answered—

"Her Majesty was equally gracious."

But he was not telling the truth, for the Queen's thoughts had been bent all the time on hastening her departure. Monsieur de Pontivy examined the young man critically. He was dressed with the utmost simplicity, but a certain air of distinction was apparent in his whole person and manners. Spruce and neat in appearance, sprightly and brisk in manner, and at the same time respectful, decision of character and firm will were written on his brow; his eyes of a pale green were restless and piercing, though their gleam under the gaze of others was veiled, and so subdued as to lend to the whole countenance an unexpected tenderness.

"The young man is not so bad after all," mused Monsieur de Pontivy, and he thought he was justified in admitting him to his table now and again. Had he not been honoured with a royal glance? He could by no means be looked upon as a chance comer.

A chance comer he certainly was not, as Monsieur de Pontivy soon discovered by his work, quick, neat, perfectly accurate and orderly, and his method in arrangement and classification, rare in a young man of his years. Pursuing his law studies, he was naturally interested in the difficult and delicate questions which Monsieur de Pontivy had so often to treat, elucidating them under his direction, and astonishing him sometimes by his sagacious remarks, in which were revealed a rare instinct for solving legal subtleties.