Chapter VIII: Further Obstinacy of a Conspirator

“Je n’oublierai jamais ce regard qui devait s’éteindre sitôt.”
—CHATEAUBRIAND (of Marie Antoinette).

At a little table in the Café de Foy, once a Revolutionary, now a Royalist resort, the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay sat the next morning and waited for his cousin. The busy life of the Palais-Royal went on about him, but for once he seemed oblivious of it; he even looked a little grave.

Louis de Chantemerle had worn all his life a very subtle disguise—an impenetrable armour of gaiety, more baffling than gravity, over an extreme reserve. To call his customary outer self a disguise at all is perhaps misleading, for that self went much deeper. He was really what he appeared to be, careless, pleasure-loving, airily indifferent. But the reserve was there, and it was the very mocking frankness which he so successfully opposed to all attempts at its exhumation which proved his concern that his soul should be decently covered up. Few things were not to him objects of raillery, and the most worthy objects and individuals had an unhappy knack of presenting themselves to him in a ludicrous light. Nature had given him parts with a temperament which forbade him to make use of them; he had too much wit, in fact, to be anything but a fine gentleman.

And yet all these sterile qualities were counterbalanced by his charm; not the charm of manner which, with his personal beauty, his birth and his gifts, had served him so well in his own path of life, but an attraction less easy of definition. In a life of light-hearted self-indulgence, of a fastidious but by no means innocent pursuit of pleasure, Louis had somehow preserved a singular inward untaintedness. He had some claims to the name of profligate; no moralist could easily have been confuted who had called him a rake, a gambler, a spendthrift, or a duellist. He was headstrong, wayward, and indolent, extremely obstinate at times, and excessively easy-going at others. Save for one notable exception, now six months old, he had invariably done what he pleased. With all this, he had kept the heart of a boy—if of a naughty boy—and a fascination for which, as M. des Graves had once said, an evangelist might have prayed in vain.

Louis had enough on his mind at this moment, however, to sober even his persistent gaiety. In the first place, he was himself, along with nearly all his friends—and knew it well—in the most imminent personal danger. The vessel launched by the young ultra-Royalists to be the ark of the drowning monarchy was vastly more like to prove the coffin of all the crew. A day’s research had sufficed to establish its unseaworthiness. In the second place, the inevitable parting with Lucienne was now upon him. And though he had said good-bye to her on the day when honour demanded it, yet in his constant visits to the Tuileries he had sometimes caught sight of her; and though all the time he was uneasy as to her personal safety in Paris, still the day when she must leave it was always not yet, so that she still shed a dim fragrance over his existence, like a flower out of reach. But the day of transplanting had come at last.

He got up and strolled to the door. Outside, on the verge of the garden, were the tables from one of which Camille Desmoulins had hounded on the populace to the destruction of the Bastille nearly three years ago. To-day a couple of young men of his own stamp were sitting at the nearest, each with a second chair on whose rungs he rested his feet. One of them wore a waistcoat powdered with fleur-de-lys, and a minute tricolour cockade at the back of his hat—a situation chosen to show his contempt for the emblem. Pitched battles between the _jeunesse dorée_ and the Jacobin faction had given the Café de Foy for the time being to the Royalists, and a lively zest was lent to its occupation by the knowledge that to-morrow it might be closed, or raided again by the enemy. Jousserand, the proprietor, good peaceable man, had put up the price of his liquid refreshments, a change which had made for a more aristocratic clientele; but the cap of liberty had before now been hung up in the Café de Foy.

The Vicomte de Saint-Ermay, acknowledging the salutation of his acquaintances, searched among the shifting groups in the garden for the sight of his cousin. All the other cafés were in full swing, and it was difficult to distinguish an acquaintance among the throngs that surged round the Grand Café or the Café de Valois, on the opposite side, or the Café de Chartres and the Grotte Lyrique at the other end, under the Galerie de Beaujolais. As he gazed the young man with the cockade asked him laughing if he were reviving the once familiar jest of last summer, when a young Royalist would mount daily to the belvedere of the Café de Foy under pretence of looking whether the army of the _émigrés_ were not yet advancing from Coblentz. Louis replied a trifle absently, and at that moment caught sight of his cousin’s tall figure passing in front of the Jacobin Café Corazza. He waited until he was sure that Gilbert had seen him, and returned to the table in the corner which he had quitted.

A moment later the Marquis entered and came straight up to him. The few habitués who preferred to drink their coffee inside the building turned round to look at him, but the place was now nearly empty.

“Well?” asked Château-Foix significantly.

The Vicomte shrugged his shoulders. “Sit down, mon cher. I am desirous of making you a full and leisurely apology. You will take coffee? François, coffee for two and plenty of cream! Do you know, Gilbert, that since the patriotic Assembly took to sitting so assiduously, you can always get cream in the Palais-Royal at any time, since nobody knows at what hour our dear deputies may come in here and demand refreshment after so much talking. So there is one good result, at least, of the present tenancy of the Manège.”

“I suppose,” said Gilbert when the coffee had been brought, “that your reference to an apology means——”

“That your surmises, my dear cousin, are probably correct. As I cannot yet be sure, I make the apology conditional—like the baptism of heretics. In a day or two you may be in possession of the precious thing without reservation.”

“What have you found out?” asked the Marquis, divided between relief and apprehension.

“Very little,” returned his cousin, helping himself to cream. “That’s the damnable part of it. I spent the whole of yesterday seeing people and talking to them and telling them of the King’s prohibition. The net result of my enquiries was that I elicited these facts. First, that D’Aubeville had yesterday morning received an anonymous letter of warning; secondly, that the Comte de Périgny’s latest deity—one of the ladies here at the Palais-Royal—had had a fit of hysterics for which—it’s a long story—he could assign no other cause than anxiety for his safety based on some information the nymph wouldn’t divulge; and, thirdly—but this may not be a fact, a rumour of something Madame Roland said at her salon a night or two ago. You have heard of Louvet?”

“I have heard of his book.”

“You surprise me. _Faublas_ is not exactly for the virtuous. But Louvet is now a member of the Legislative, and better known for that rather amusing pink sheet of his, _La Sentinelle_, which you may have noticed decorating the walls of this city. Well, Louvet is a devotee also of Buzot’s Egeria, who is not, I believe, over well disposed towards Madame d’Espaze. Egeria—as the tale goes—said to him two nights ago, as he was leaving, ‘Do you never go to the Salon du Luxembourg?’—meaning, of course, Madame d’Espaze’s house in the Rue de Tournon—‘I should advise you to make haste to sample it before it closes.’ Now there is no reason why Célie—why Madame d’Espaze should close her salon, or why anybody should close it for her, unless the purpose which it has served should suddenly come to an end. Anyhow, Madame Roland meant something, and let it slip. The tale may not, however, be true; naturally, I hadn’t it at first hand. You are not drinking your coffee, and Jousserand’s feelings will be hurt.”

The Marquis drank. “Is there anything else?” he asked.

“Lots of little things,” replied the Vicomte composedly. “I won’t bore you with them; I am not sure that I haven’t forgotten some of them already. Anyhow, there were some pretty long faces yesterday between these various items of information and this.” He indicated the King’s ring on his finger, next to the plain silver circlet inside which was engraved, as Gilbert knew, _Deus salvum fac regem, reginam, et delphinum!_—words which might any day cost the wearer his life. “And I owe it to you to a knowledge that I did not, on Saturday night, carry to our fair hostess’s agreeable salon as unbiassed a mind as would have been mine before your arrival and denunciation. I observed a few trifles.”

“But now you have definitely broken off negotiations with the Gironde!”

Louis made a little grimace. “We can’t exactly do that. The stage of negotiations is past. If they are acting in bad faith it is all up with us, and we have nothing further to do but to stop in our mouse-trap and await the cat or a bucket of water.” He stirred his coffee with an admirable equanimity which Gilbert hardly felt capable of imitating.

“Then what will you do?” he asked, frowning. “You must do something.”

“What can we do?” demanded Louis. “My friend the Chevalier d’Aubeville, who has a head on his shoulders—as yet—thinks we should seem to go on as we have begun, if it is possible to do so without implicating ourselves still further, lest we precipitate the crisis by showing suspicion. One or two believe that matters will not come to a point, as far as our own personal safety is concerned. They conceive that the aim of the transaction is to implicate and to discredit . . . another.” He lifted his hat as he spoke, with a face grown grave.

“That is very possible,” returned Gilbert reflectively. “And that aim—is it likely to have been attained? Never mind, mon cher,” he went on kindly, “we won’t discuss it. Let us for the moment consider your own personal plans.”

“I haven’t any,” said the young conspirator, pushing away his empty cup. “I shall stop here with the rest, and see what happens. I cannot run away now.”

“No, of course not,” agreed the Marquis. “Still, I had hoped—before this happened—that you would be free to do a little office for me.” He was not very greatly surprised at his kinsman’s resolution to go through with the affair in which he had become entangled, nor in his heart did he blame it, yet he hoped that, if he played his cards carefully, he might still prevail on him to get out of harm’s way before it was too late.

Louis looked enquiringly at him.

“This is what I wanted you to do for me,” resumed Château-Foix, putting his elbows on the table and lowering his voice. “It is absolutely imperative that I return home with as little delay as possible.”

“You surely don’t need _my_ assistance with your devoted tenantry?”

“No. I want you to take my place elsewhere. I want you to escort Lucienne over to England for me.”

To the Marquis’ amazement the smile of a moment before was wiped as completely off Saint-Ermay’s face as if he had struck him. A quite indefinable but perfectly visible change crossed it, as, drawing a little back, Louis said in a glacial tone: “I couldn’t possibly do that.”

Gilbert’s surprise began to approach the border-line of offence.

“It is not such an extraordinary proposition, surely?” he retorted. “You are to all intents and purposes my younger brother, and Lucienne goes under the wing of Madame Gaumont. An escort, however, is desirable; naturally, I meant to go myself, but it is out of the question. I must return to Chantemerle the moment she is out of Paris.”

“Isn’t it more out of the question,” asked the Vicomte, “to send her out of Paris in the dangerous company of a suspect like myself? Do you think that my escort (as things are tending) would do anything else but compromise her?”

There was so much sound sense in this objection that Château-Foix at once ruefully acknowledged the downfall of his diplomatic little house of cards. Behind a slight annoyance at his own short-sightedness lurked also a vague wonder at Louis’ evident distaste for the mission.

“I suppose that you are right,” he conceded regretfully. “It was foolish of me not to have thought of that—but the plan had occurred to me before I knew that you were so compromised. Well, she must go alone.”

“Madame Gaumont is worth an army of _ci-devants_ such as myself,” said Louis in a more natural manner. “The name of the late Gaumont is a passport with the patriotic. On my honour, I think Lucienne is safer without—without any other escort.” He got up, and went on with less of his usual levity: “I can’t leave the King, Gilbert. You will say, and justly, that my presence is not much guarantee for his safety, but I could leave him less easily now after compromising him—as you told me the other night I was doing.”

“My dear Louis——”

“No, you were quite right. But I _am_ a _chevalier du poignard_, as they call us. I am sworn not to desert . . . I have, to tell you the truth, his Majesty’s orders to remain. And there’s an end of it,” concluded the Vicomte, suddenly smiling.

Gilbert had never liked him quite so well as during the progress of this little harangue. For one thing, it was so rare to see him in earnest.

“I will say no more about it,” he replied. “We must wait and see what happens, as you say. And now, to recur to Lucienne, let us go and see if she has left the Tuileries yet. She was to go to Madame Gaumont’s house in the Rue Vieille-de-Temple at noon; if we get to the palace in time, we might accompany her.” He pulled out his watch and looked at it. “We have just time.”

“But you won’t want me,” said Louis.

“Nonsense,” retorted the Marquis, throwing him a kindly glance. “Lucienne will be delighted to see you; she is rather anxious about you, I fancy. Come, or we shall miss her.”

But the Vicomte still seemed in two minds about accepting this invitation. “Well, don’t at any rate tell her that I refused . . . that I could not take her. Oh, I suppose you have already told her, perhaps, that you were going to ask me? Have you?”

The Marquis, who had turned to go, turned round again surprised for the second time at something in his cousin’s tone, and especially at the emphasis laid upon the last two words.

“Yes, I did tell her,” he replied, staring. “But what of that? The matter is easily explained. My idea was a foolish one. Why, any one would think, my dear Louis, that you were afraid of Mademoiselle Lucienne d’Aucourt!”

“Oh, sooner than be suspected of that!” retorted Louis gaily, and, tossing an assignat on to the little table, he followed Gilbert out into the garden.

And to Château-Foix, immediately after he had spoken, came the remembrance that Lucienne too had not seemed to wish for Louis’ company. She too had said that he could not leave the King.

As soon as they turned out of the Palais-Royal into the Rue de Richelieu they could see that the Rue Saint-Honoré was blocked by a crowd. Against the wall a figure with gesticulating arms could be seen above the mass of upturned faces.

“More speechifying,” said Louis disgustedly. “Hang it! we shall have to go back and get out the other side. . . . No, here are some National Guards turning out of the Rue du Rempart.”

They went up to the outskirts of the crowd. The orator could be heard only intermittently; as far as could be gathered he was emitting a spouting stream of abuse directed, like a firehose, against the Tuileries, towards whose roofs, distinguishable across the Rue Saint-Honoré, he shook his fist. Such phrases as “Austrian Committee,” “_chevaliers du poignard_,” were indistinctly audible. Louis looked at the Marquis and silently shrugged his shoulders, but as the half-dozen National Guards began to cleave a way through the mob after their usual fashion, their muskets held horizontally at arms’ length above their heads, he beckoned to him and slipped into their wake. In the passage thus formed they ploughed a difficult way through the indignant crowd, a dirty member of which, suddenly shaking his fist under Gilbert’s nose with some passion, called him a swine of an aristocrat. The incident plainly afforded Louis a certain amount of pleasure, for, as he explained to his kinsman on their way down the Rue Nicaise, the Marquis would not be appreciated by the lower orders of Paris as greatly as he was at home.

They entered the palace by the great staircase in the Pavillon de l’Horloge, and had therefore to traverse the deserted state apartments before they could reach Madame Elisabeth’s quarters. The Salle des Suisses was empty, but in the Salle de l’Œil de Bœuf, in the embrasure of a window, two young men were talking. One of them saluted Louis with a smile as he passed, and the action drew the Marquis’s attention to him—a youth of twenty or so, tall, slight, and fair, with straight and regular features.

“Who was that?” he asked as soon as they were out of earshot. “He looked more like an Englishman than a Frenchman.”

“It was the Comte Henri de la Rochejaquelein,” replied Louis. “We were in the King’s Constitutional Guard together. The other was his cousin, the Marquis de Lescure. I should have thought you would have known him, for he is almost a neighbour of yours—at least he lives somewhere near Bressuire. La Rochejaquelein is not much further off for the matter of that—but he is an Angevin.”

“I think I have heard the name,” said Gilbert.

“M. de Lescure is like myself,” continued Louis, “under orders from his Majesty not to emigrate. As a matter of fact, he did once get as far as Tournay, but came back.”

“Are they, too, involved in your plot?”

Louis shook his head. “Lescure is too much of a saint to go to Madame d’Espaze’s salon, and has recently married a young wife into the bargain. And as for Henri, I tried to get him to join, but he would not.”

The block in the Rue de Richelieu had apparently proved fatal to the Marquis’s plan of escorting Lucienne to her new quarters. Just outside the Galerie de Diane the cousins met a waiting-woman of the Princess’s, who told Louis in response to his query that Mademoiselle d’Aucourt had left a few minutes ago. Madame Gaumont herself had come to fetch her charge.

The two men turned back into the Galerie de Diane.

“I am sorry,” said Gilbert. “Never mind; we will go and pay our respects to Madame Gaumont to-morrow. Let me see: to-day is Monday, the 2nd; they start on Thursday.”

“Yes,” assented the Vicomte in a colourless tone. They were both walking slowly with their eyes on the floor.

“She ought to have gone long ago.”

“It would have been better.”

“However, it is no use regretting that. The past few months have altered her, Louis,” said the Marquis, in a burst of confidence very rare with him.

Saint-Ermay lifted his head and looked at his cousin, whose eyes were still downcast, with a gaze a little startled, and his lips tightened. All at once his eyes wavered, a swift change passed over his face, and he caught at Gilbert's arm.

“Hush,” he said in a low voice, “the Queen!”

She came down the long gallery, alone. One of the two men who watched her had last seen her, beautiful and shining, “enchantée de la vie,” the brilliant centre of a brilliant court. He was not then, nor ever had been, her admirer; rather was he her critic. But now, as she moved slowly down the empty gallery, the sweep of her dress more audible than the faint tap of her high heels on the polished floor, a thrill that was pain ran through him. Her eyes looked as if they saw nothing around her, out of a face changed and aged beyond all speech—sad, patient, aloof, serene, still proud, so proud indeed that it was clear nothing said or done now, whether by foe or friend, could touch the shrine of suffering of which it was the curtain. The once bright hair above it was grey, but more than ever it was the face of a Queen.

Nearer she came and nearer, and seemed not to notice the two men by the wall, taking them perhaps for a couple of curious sightseers, or for some of the guards whose presence she was obliged to tolerate even in her bedchamber. She might have passed them, if Louis de Saint-Ermay had not dropped on one knee, not with intent to stay her, but with bent head, as one kneels at the passage of the Host.

The Queen stopped, with a faint and pathetic look of surprise, that showed how rare and perilous were such marks of respect, and Gilbert, his brain in a confusion of pain and pity, heard her say in a voice of ineffable sadness: “What! M. de Saint-Ermay! and are you not gone yet?”

“Never, Madame, while I am free to stay,” answered Louis very low.

The Queen smiled sadly, and then, shaking her head with something of the air of one who indulges a wilful child, she held out her hand, and he kissed it like a relic.

A moment later Gilbert too was bowing low over the same little hand, but of what the Queen said to him, or of what he replied, he heard nothing. Another moment again, and the Galerie de Diane was empty. Himself moved beyond what he could ever have imagined possible, he turned to his cousin. Louis was very pale, and his eyes were sparkling with a rage and devotion alike impotent.

“God damn them all to hell!” he said passionately. “Let us go—I can't bear this place!”

As he followed his cousin down the great staircase, and out into the Cour Royale, Gilbert had the thought, with which he certainly had not entered the Tuileries that morning, that, had he been in Louis’ place, perhaps he too would have refused to leave the sight of that tragic face, the sound of that proud, sad voice.