Chapter IX: The Wild Dogs

It was on a night of middle Vendémiaire in the year two (to affect the whimsical jargon of the _sans-culottes_) that I issued from my burrow with an intrepidity that was nothing more nor less than a congestion of the sensibilities. Fear at that time having fed upon itself till all was devoured, was converted in very many to a humorous stoicism that only lacked to be great because it could not boast a splendid isolation. “Suspect of being suspect”--Citizen Chaumette’s last slash at the hamstrings of hope--had converted all men of humane character to that religion of self-containment that can alone spiritually exalt above the caprices of the emotions. Thousands, in a moment, through extreme of fear became fearless; hence no man of them could claim a signal inspiration of courage, but only that subscription to the terms of it which unnatural conditions had rendered necessary to all believers in the ultimate ethical triumph of the human race.

I do not mean to say that I was tired of life, but simply that it came to me at once that I must not hold that test of moral independence at the mercy of any temporal tyranny whatsoever. Indeed I was still so far in love with existence physically, as to neglect no precaution that was calculated to contribute to the present prolonging of it. I wore my frieze night-cap, carmagnole, sabots, and black shag spencer with all the assumption I could muster of being to the shoddy born. I had long learned the art of slurring a sigh into a cough or expectoration. I could curse the stolid spectres of the tumbrils so as to deceive all but the recording angel, and, possibly, Citizen Robespierre.

Nevertheless, with me, as with others, precaution seemed but a condition of the recklessness whose calculations never extended beyond the immediate day or hour. We lived posthumous lives, so to speak, and would hardly have resented it, should an arbitrary period have been put to our revisiting of the “glimpses of the moon.”

On this night, then, of early September (as I will prefer calling it) I issued from my burrow, calm under the intolerable tyranny of circumstance. Desiring to reconstruct myself on the principle of an older independence, I was mentally discussing the illogic of a system of purgation that was seeking to solve the problem of existence by emptying the world, when I became aware that my preoccupied ramblings had brought me into the very presence of that sombre engine that was the concrete expression of so much and such detestable false reasoning. In effect, and to speak without circumbendibus, I found myself to have wandered into the Faubourg St Antoine--into the place of execution, and to have checked my steps only at the very foot of the guillotine.

It was close upon midnight, and, overhead, very wild and broken weather. But the deeps of atmosphere, with the city for their ocean bed, as it were, lay profoundly undisturbed by the surface turmoil above; and in the tranquil _Place_, for all the upper flurry, one could hear oneself breathe and think.

I could have done this with the more composure, had not another sound, the import of which I was a little late in recognising, crept into my hearing with a full accompaniment of dismay. This sound was like licking or lapping, very bestial and unclean, and when I came to interpret it, it woke in me a horrible nausea. For all at once I knew that, hidden in that dreadful conduit that strong citizens of late had dug from the Place St Antoine to the river, to carry away the ponded blood of the executed, the wild dogs of Paris were slaking their wolfish thirst. I could hear their filthy gutturising and the scrape of their lazy tongues on the soil, and my heart went cold, for latterly, and since they had taken to hunting in packs, these ravenous brutes had assailed and devoured more than one belated citizen whom they had scented traversing the Champs Elysées, or other lonely space; and I was aware a plan for their extermination was even now under discussion by the Committee of Public Safety.

Now, to fling scorn to the axe in that city of terror was to boast only that one had adjusted oneself to a necessity that did not imply an affectation of indifference to the fangs of wild beasts--for such, indeed, they were. So, a suicide, who goes to cast himself headlong into the river, may run in a panic from a falling beam, and be consistent, too; for his compact is with death--not mutilation.

Be that as it may, I know that for the moment terror so snapped at my heel that, under the very teeth of it, I leaped up the scaffold steps--with the wild idea of swarming to the beam above the knife and thence defying my pursuers, should they nose and bay me seated there at refuge--and stood with a white desperate face, scarcely daring to pant out the constriction of my lungs.

There followed no sound of concentrated movement; but only that stealthy licking went on, with the occasional plash of brute feet in a bloody mire; and gradually my turbulent pulses slowed, and I thought myself a fool for my pains in advertising my presence on a platform of such deadly prominence.

Still, not a soul seemed to be abroad. As I trod the fateful quarter ten minutes earlier, the last squalid roysterers had staggered from the wine-shops--the last gleams of light been shut upon the emptied streets. I was alone with the dogs and the guillotine.

Tiptoeing very gently, very softly, I was preparing to descend the steps once more, when I drew back with a muttered exclamation, and stood staring down upon an apparition that, speeding at that moment into the _Place_, paused within ten paces of the scaffold on which I stood.

Above the scudding clouds was a moon that pulsed a weak intermittent radiance through the worn places of the drift. Its light was always more suggested than revealed; but it was sufficient to denote that the apparition was that of a very pale young woman--a simple child she looked, whose eyes, nevertheless, wore that common expression of the dramatic intensity of her times.

She stood an instant, tense as Corday, her fingers bent to her lips; her background a frouzy wall with the legend _Propriété Nationale_ scrawled on it in white chalk. Significant to the inference, the cap of scarlet wool was drawn down upon her young _blondes_ curls--the gold of the coveted perukes.

Suddenly she made a little movement, and in the same instant gave out a whistle clear and soft.

Yes, it was she from whom it proceeded; and I shuddered. There below me in the ditch were the dogs; here before me was this fearless child.

For myself, even in the presence of this angel, I dared scarcely stir. It was unnatural; it was preposterous--came a scramble and a rush; and there, issued from the filthy sewer, was a huge boar-hound, that fawned on the little citoyenne, and yelped (under her breath) like a thing of human understanding.

She cried softly, “Down, Radegonde!” and patted the monster’s head with a pretty manner of endearment.

“Ah!” she murmured, “hast thou broken thy faith with thy hunger? Traitor!--but I will ask no questions. Here are thy comfits. My sweet, remember thy pedigree and thy mistress.”

She thrust a handful of sugar-plums into the great jaws. I could hear the hound crunching them in her teeth.

What was I to do?--what warning to give? This child--this frail wind-flower of the night--the guillotine would have devoured her at a snap, and laughed over the tit-bit! But I, and the nameless gluttons of the ditch!

They were there--part at least of one of those packs (recruited by gradual degrees from the desolated homes of the proscribed--of _émigrés_) that now were swollen to such formidable proportions as to have become a menace and a nightly terror. The dogs were there, and should they scent this tender quarry, what power was in a single faithful hound to defend her against a half hundred, perhaps, of her fellows.

Sweating with apprehension, I stole down the steps. She was even then preparing to retreat hurriedly as she had come. Her lips were pressed to the beast’s wrinkled head. The sound of her footstep might have precipitated the catastrophe I dreaded.

“Citoyenne! citoyenne!” I whispered in an anguished voice.

She looked up, scared and white in a moment. The dog gave a rolling growl.

“Radegonde!” she murmured, in a faint warning tone.

The brute stood alert, her hair bristling.

“Bid her away!” I entreated. “You are in danger.”

She neither answered nor moved.

“See, I am in earnest!” I cried, loud as I durst. “The wild dogs are below there.”

“Radegonde!” she murmured again.

“Ah, mademoiselle! What are two rows of teeth against a hundred. Send her away, I implore you, and accept my escort out of this danger.”

“My faith!” she said at last, in a queer little moving voice, “it may be as the citizen says; but I think dogs are safer than men.”

I urged my prayer. The beauty and courage of the child filled my heart with a sort of rapturous despair.

“God witness I am speaking for your safety alone! Will this prevail with you? I am the Comte de la Muette. I exchange you that confidence for a little that you may place in me. I lay my life in your hands, and I beg the charge of yours in return.”

I could hear her breathing deep where she stood. Suddenly she bent and spoke to her companion.

“To the secret place, Radegonde--and to-morrow again for thy _confiture_, thou bad glutton. Kiss thy Nanette, my baby; and, oh, Radegonde! not what falls from the table of Sainte Guillotine!”

She stood erect, and held up a solemn finger. The hound slunk away, like a human thing ashamed; showed her teeth at me as she passed, and disappeared in the shadows of the scaffold.

I took a hurried step forward. Near at hand the pure loveliness of this citoyenne was, against its surroundings, like a flower floating on blood.

She smiled, and looked me earnestly in the face. We were but phantoms to one another in that moony twilight; but in those fearful times men had learned to adapt their eyesight to the second plague of darkness.

“Is it true?” she said, softly. “Monsieur le Comte, it must be long since you have received a curtsey.”

She dropped me one there, bending to her own prettiness like a rose; and then she gave a little low laugh. Truly that city of Paris saw some strange meetings in the year of terror.

“I, too,” she said, “was born of the _noblesse_. That is a secret, monsieur, to set against yours.”

I could but answer, with some concern--

“Mademoiselle, these confessions, if meet for the holy saint yonder, are little for the ears of the devil’s advocates. I entreat let us be walking, or those in the ditch may anticipate upon us his benediction.”

“_Ma foi!_” she said, “it is true. Come, then!”

We went off together, stealing from the square like thieves. Presently, when I could breathe with a half relief, “You will not go to-morrow?” I said.

“To feed Radegonde! Ah, monsieur! I would not for the whole world lose the little sweet-tooth her goodies. Each of us has only the other to love in all this cruel city.”

“So, my child! And they have taken the rest?”

“Monsieur, my father was the rest. He went on the seventeenth Fructidor; and since, my veins do not run blood, I think, but only ice-water, that melts from my heart and returns to freeze again.”

I sighed.

“Nay,” she said, “for I can laugh, as you see.”

“And the dog, my poor child?”

“She ran under the tumbril, and bit at the heels of the horses. She would not leave him, monsieur; and still--and still she haunts the place. I go to her,--when all the city is silent I go to her, if I can escape, and take her the sweetmeats that she loves. What of that? It is only a little while and my turn must come, and then Radegonde will be alone. My hair, monsieur will observe, is the right colour for the perukes.”

She stayed me with a touch.

“I am arrived. A thousand thanks for your escort, Monsieur le Comte.”

We were by a low casement with a ledge before it--an easy climb from the street. She pushed the lattice open, showing me it was unbolted from within.

“She thinks me fast and asleep,” she said. “Some day soon, perhaps, but not yet.”

I did not ask her who _she_ was. I seemed all mazed in a silent dream of pity.

“It is quite simple,” she said, “when no cavalier is by to look. Will the citizen turn his head?”

She was up in an instant, and stepping softly into the room beyond, leaned out towards me. On the moment an evil thing grew out of the shadow of a buttress close by, and a wicked insolent face looked into mine with a grin.

“A sweet good-night to Monsieur le Comte,” it said, and vanished.

Shocked and astounded, I stood rooted to the spot. But there came a sudden low voice in my ear:

“Quick, quick! have you no knife? You must follow!”

I had taken but a single uncertain step, when, from a little way down the street we had traversed, there cut into the night a sharp attenuated howl; and, in a moment, on the passing of it, a chorus of hideous notes swept upon me standing there in indecision.

“My God!” I cried--“the dogs!”

She made a sound like a plover. I scrambled to the ledge and dropped into the room beyond. There in the dark she clutched and clung to me. For though the cry had been bestial, there had seemed to answer to it something mortal--an echo--a human scream of very dreadful fear,--there came a rush of feet like a wind, and, with ashy faces, we looked forth.

They had him--that evil thing. An instant we saw his sick white face thrown up like a stone in the midst of a writhing sea; and the jangle was hellish. Then I closed the lattice, and pressed her face to my breast.

He had run from us to his doom, which meeting, he had fled back in his terror to make us the ghastly sport he had designed should be his.

How long we stood thus I know not. The noise outside was unnameable, and I closed her ears with her hair, with my hands--nay, I say it with a passionate shame, with my lips. She sobbed a little and moaned; but she clung to me, and I could feel the beating of her heart. We had heard windows thrown open down the street--one or two on the floors above us. I had no heed or care for any danger. I was wrapt in a fearful ecstasy.

By-and-by she lifted her face. Then the noise had ceased for some time, and a profound silence reigned about us.

“Ah!” she said, in a faint reeling voice. “Radegonde was there; I saw her!”

“Mademoiselle--the noble creature--she hath won us a respite.”

Her breath caught in the darkness.

“Yes,” she said. “There is a peruke that must wait.”

Suddenly she backed from me, and put the hair from her eyes.

“If you dare, monsieur, it necessitates that we make our adieux.”

“Au revoir, citoyenne. It must be that, indeed.”

She held out her hand, that was like a rose petal. I put my lips to it and lingered.

“Monsieur, monsieur!” she entreated.

The next moment I was in the street.

* * * * * * *

Who was my little citoyenne? Ah! I shall never know. The terror gripped us, and these things passed. Incidents that would make the passion of sober times, the spirit of revolution dismisses with a shrug. To die in those days was such a vulgar complaint.

But I saw her once more, and then when my heart nestled to her image and my veins throbbed to her remembered touch.

I was strolling, on the morning following my strange experience, in the neighbourhood of the Champs Elysées, when I was aware of a great press of people all making in the direction of that open ground.

“What arrives, then, citizen?” I cried to one who paused for breath near me.

He gasped, the little morose. To ask any question that showed one ignorant of the latest caprice of the Executive was almost to be “suspect.”

“Has not the citizen heard? The Committee of Safety has decreed the destruction of the dogs.”

“The dogs?”

“Sacred Blood!” he cried. “Is it not time, when they take, as it is said they did last night, a good friend of the Republic to supper?”

He ran on, and I followed. All about the Champs Elysées was a tumultuous crowd, and posted within were two battalions of the National Guard, their blue uniforms resplendent, their flint-locks shining in their hands. They, the soldiers, surrounded the area, save towards the Rue Royale, where a gap occurred; and on this gap all eyes were fixed.

Scarcely was I come on the scene when on every side a laughing hubbub arose. The dogs were being driven in, at first by twos and threes, but presently in great numbers at a time. For hours, I was told, had half the _gamins_ of Paris been beating the coverts and hallooing their quarry to the toils.

At length, when many hundreds were accumulated in the free space, the soldiers closed in and drove the skulking brutes through the gap towards the Place Royale. And there they made a battue of it, shooting them down by the score.

With difficulty I made my way round to the _Place_, the better to view the sport. The poor trapped _fripons_ ran hither and thither, crying, yelping--some fawning on their executioners, some begging to the bullets, as if these were crusts thrown to them. And my heart woke to pity; for was I not witnessing the destruction of my good friends?

The noise--the volleying, the howling, the shrieking of the _canaille_--was indescribable.

Suddenly my pulses gave a leap. I knew her--Radegonde. She was driven into the fire and stood at bay, bristling.

“Nanette!” cried a quick acid voice; “Nanette--imbecile--my God!”

It all passed in an instant. There, starting from the crowd, was the figure of a tall sour-featured woman, the tiny tricolour bow in her scarlet cap; there was the thin excited musketeer, his piece to his shoulder; there was my citoyenne flung upon the ground, her arms about the neck of the hound.

* * * * * * *

Whether his aim was true or false, who can tell? He shot her through her dog, and his sergeant brained him. And in due course his sergeant was invited for his reward to look through the little window.

These were a straw or two in the torrent of the revolution.

* * * * * * *

It was Citizen Gaspardin who accepted the contract to remove the carcasses (some three thousand of them) that encumbered the Place Royale as a result of this drastic measure. However, his eye being bigger than his stomach, as the saying is, he found himself short of means adequate to his task and so applied for the royal equipages to help him out of his difficulty. And these the Assembly, entering into the joke, was moved to lend him; and the dead dogs, hearsed in gilt and gingerbread as full as they could pack, made a rare procession of it through Paris, thereby pointing half-a-dozen morals that it is not worth while at this date to insist on.

I saw the show pass amidst laughter and clapping of hands; and I saw Radegonde, as I thought, her head lolling from the roof of the stateliest coach of all. But her place should have been on the seat of honour.

And the citoyenne, the dark window, the ripping sound in the street, and that bosom bursting to mine in agony? Episodes, my friend--mere travelling sparks in dead ashes, that glowed an instant and vanished. The times bristled with such. Love and hate, and all the kaleidoscope of passion--pouf! a sigh shook the tube, and form and colour were changed.

But--but--but--ah! I was glad thenceforth not to shudder for my heart when a _blonde perruque_ went by me.