Chapter X: The Vicomte Finishes His Toilet

“I tint half mysel’ when my gude lord I did tine:
A heart half sae brave a braid belt will never bin’,
Nor the grassy sods cover a bosom half sae kin’;
He's a drop o' dearest blude in this auld heart o' mine.
. . . . . . . .
O that I were with him i’ death’s gory fauld,
O had I but the iron on whilk hauds him sae cauld!”
—_Lament for Lord Maxwell_.

Gilbert hurried through the streets with a sick heart. He dared not hasten overmuch, for fear of attracting attention, and the transit between the Manège and the Rue d'Antin seemed interminable. At last he stood before the house in which his cousin lodged. The entrance was unguarded, the _concierge_ invisible, and Château-Foix slipped across the courtyard unnoticed. All was quiet, and he went rapidly up the stairs. The door of Louis’ bedroom stood wide, and so, concluding that apartment to be unoccupied, the Marquis knocked at the door of the sitting-room, which was shut. Receiving no answer, he turned the handle and went in. One glance was enough to show him what had happened.

The room was in the extreme of disorder. The drawers of the Boule cabinet against the wall had been wrenched open, and out of one or two dribbled odds and ends of all kinds. Across most of them, however, ran a strip of paper and a hasty seal. On the round table in the centre of the room was a china bowl of crimson roses, overturned and shattered, apparently by the sword which seemed to have been flung down on top of it, while the water, a damp patch in the sunlight, deepened the suggestive hue of the red English carpet. Gilbert recognised the costly weapon as his cousin’s; the naked steel—the scabbard lay upon the floor—shone through the red rose-petals like the menace of Fate across a flower-strewn existence.

The Marquis walked over to the cabinet. Had they found papers among its other contents? Something scrunched under his foot, and, stooping, he picked up a little miniature, broken across its laughing face. To the ring at the top was tied by a ribbon a curl of fair hair. With something between a sigh and a frown Gilbert slipped the broken gage, no frailer, perhaps, than its giver, into one of the half-open drawers, where a glance showed him that it might find suitable company. Ah well! better they should find things like these than papers. He turned as he did it at a sound behind him, and saw in the doorway the stricken face of Jasmin. The old man made a sort of rush at him, and stopped half-way, brought up by a respect too deep-rooted to be overthrown even at such a crisis.

“Pardon, Monsieur le Marquis,” he murmured brokenly. “Monsieur le Vicomte——”

“Is arrested?” asked Château-Foix with a great outward composure.

Jasmin nodded mutely, and two tears coursed slowly down his old cheeks.

“This morning?”

“About two hours ago. O mon Dieu! what shall we do, M. Gilbert?” he sobbed, reverting to a mode of address long since laid by.

The Marquis took a turn up and down in front of the violated cabinet. There were two things he must know.

“Did they find any papers?”

Jasmin put back his pocket-handkerchief. “No, Monseigneur. Praise to the saints, Monsieur le Vicomte burnt them all last night.”

“Thank God!” said Gilbert to himself. “And now, do you know where he was taken?”

Jasmin’s face fell. “They would not tell him.”

“You are quite sure you did not overhear their destination? Think.”

“I am quite sure, Monsieur le Marquis.”

“And no one else heard it?”

“No, no one. O Monseigneur,” burst out the old man, clasping his hands, “what will become of Monsieur le Vicomte? Nobody knows what a kind master he was—always was. And it seems but the other day he was a little boy, and I used——”

Château-Foix went up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Because your master is arrested, Jasmin,” he said kindly, “there is no need to preach his funeral sermon. He is in prison; we must find out where, and then we must get him out again. Sit down”—for the old man was shaking all over—“and tell me clearly the whole story from beginning to end. The more you can recollect, the easier you will make it for me to know what to do.”

But sit down the old servant would not.

“I brought Monsieur le Vicomte his coffee at the usual hour,” he began feverishly, “and soon afterwards he got up. He was very merry, and ordered me to lay out the new _carmélite_ suit, because it was such a fine morning, and he thought that very likely he should not wear it where he was going. It was like Fate, Monsieur le Marquis, for of course he did not mean prison.” Jasmin faltered, and then proceeded. “When he was half dressed, he sat down before the glass in his _peignoir_ as usual, and I dressed his hair. I remember, I had just tied the ribbon, when we heard a great knock at the door downstairs. ‘I wonder what that is,’ I said, and I stopped to listen. ‘Never mind,’ says Monsieur le Vicomte. ‘It may be the devil, from the fashion of his announcing himself, but I must be shaved all the same.’ So I had everything ready, and the very brush in my hand, when we heard loud voices downstairs, and then people coming up fast and noisily. ‘You can wait a little,’ says Monsieur le Vicomte very quietly, ‘for I think it _is_ the devil.’ And then he throws back his head, and says, laughing, ‘Open the door to him, Jasmin.’ But before I could get to it, it was thrown wide, and there were six or seven men in the vile red and blue uniform, and others behind, scum with pikes. They tumbled in as if they expected Monsieur le Vicomte to be getting out of the window, but there he sat leaning back in his chair, with his legs crossed, quite cool, looking at them with that way he has sometimes, Monsieur le Marquis.”

“I know,” said Gilbert, who was well acquainted with the polish and insolence of his cousin's sang-froid. “Go on.”

“After a moment a man in front pulled out a paper. ‘You are the _ci-devant_ Vicomte de Saint-Ermay,’ he says, ‘and I hold a warrant to arrest you for conspiracy on behalf of Capet against the nation. In the name of the sovereign people, I command you to follow me.’

“‘I know of only one sovereign in France,’ says Monsieur le Vicomte, ‘and he does not spell his name with those letters. Let me see your warrant.’

“The man in authority seemed to hesitate, Monsieur le Marquis, but I suppose that when he saw my master so quiet he thought that he could trust him with the accursed thing, and so he came forward and put it into his hand. Monsieur le Vicomte took it very gingerly, as if he were afraid of soiling his fingers—though indeed the paper was quite clean—and read it through once. Then he gave it back and got up from his chair.

“‘Thank you, my friend,’ he says with a little smile. ‘I shall be at your service in a few moments. Meanwhile pray make yourselves and your excellent colleagues at home.’

“‘You must come at once!’ says the man threateningly. ‘What are you going to do? Resistance is useless.’ I think he was angry because Monsieur le Vicomte was so polite.

“‘I should not dream of resisting you,’ says Monsieur le Vicomte very sweetly, and adds something about his being irresistible. ‘I am only going to finish my toilet.’ Then he turned to me and bade me bring him some fresh shaving water.

“Then the man swore, because, being very ill-favoured, he was certain now that Monsieur le Vicomte was laughing at him. ‘You shall come as you are,’ he said with several oaths.

“Monsieur le Vicomte said that that was impossible, and he threw open his dressing-gown. ‘I could not conceivably permit myself to shock the delicacy of the nation,’ he says, ‘by going through the streets in this state’—he was in his shirt and breeches, you understand, Monsieur le Marquis. ‘Surely you can amuse yourself while I finish dressing; I shall not be long.’

“They made a great clamour at that, and there was much swearing, and everybody seemed to be in the room at once. But the end of it was that they gave in, because the man in authority remembered that he must look for papers, and, as Monsieur le Vicomte pointed out, he could do that while he himself was being shaved. But when they asked where his papers were he said that last night the ashes were in the grate, but that if Jacques had done his work properly he was afraid they would not be there now. Then they went to see, Monsieur le Marquis, and anyhow it would have been of no use, because Monsieur le Vicomte never burnt them in that grate at all. I heard them breaking open drawers in there, and prayed to heaven that Monsieur Louis would not want me to shave him, because my hand was shaking so, and there were two men guarding the door, and two sitting on the bed with their muskets on their knees. But Monsieur le Vicomte would not take any denial—when he really meant a thing he never would—and I began and I cut him at once. ‘Give me the razor, Jasmin, you heart of hare,’ he says. ‘I do not want my throat cut before my time.’ So he took it, and finished shaving himself as cool as you please, and all the while they were stamping in and out, and swearing and breaking things, and telling Monsieur le Vicomte to make haste. But he took very little notice of them until he had finished shaving.

“‘Bring me my coat and waistcoat, Jasmin,’ he says then. ‘The citizen seems unfortunate in his game of hide-and-seek.’ I asked him if he would still have the _carmélite_, and he says, ‘Why not?’ so I brought it. But first the men turned out the pockets, and after that I thought that Monsieur le Vicomte would not put it on—but he did.”

Jasmin stopped.

“And then?”

“Then they took him away—in a coach,” replied the old man, his lips trembling, and suddenly, unconsciously, he sat down on the sofa behind him and bent forward, burying his face in his hands.

To Jasmin this was evidently the end, the tragic, overmastering end, of the story, but the Marquis had not time to taste this finality.

“You cannot have told me everything, Jasmin,” he said. “Surely Monsieur le Vicomte left some instructions, some——”

He broke off, rather startled, for the old man had sprung up. “Holy Virgin! I had forgotten for the moment. Heaven send we have not disturbed him! Pardon me, Monseigneur.” He went on tip-toe to the far side of the room, and Gilbert followed him, suddenly uncertain as to his sanity. And in a deep chair by the window, on one of Louis’ handsomest coats, slumbered the object of this solicitude, the beautiful Persian cat which Château-Foix had seen on his bed.

“He has been so restless since Monsieur Louis went,” explained Jasmin, coming softly away. “At last I brought him this coat to lie on. Poor Lucidor! it has soothed him. But”—he looked back—“I see that he has not touched his cream; how vexed Monsieur le Vicomte would be! I was to be sure that he had it at his usual time.”

“Were those my cousin's last instructions?” asked Gilbert sarcastically.

“Yes, Monseigneur,” responded the old servant, quite oblivious of the sneer.

The Marquis muttered under his breath something uncomplimentary to his kinsman. Such levity was incomprehensible to him.

“Are you sure there was nothing else?” he demanded impatiently. “No message for me—even though I am not a cat?”

Jasmin looked at him with a sort of reproachful astonishment. “Monsieur le Marquis, how could there be? We were not alone for a single moment. Do you think Monsieur le Vicomte would wish to implicate you? Indeed,” he finished nervously, “he would not think it safe for you to be here now, in case they return.”

“You need not alarm yourself, my good Jasmin,” returned Château-Foix. “I shall not stay, if you can give me no more information.” He walked musingly to the door. “By the way, would not the name of the prison have been in the warrant?”

“If it had been, Monsieur le Vicomte would not have asked it,” replied Jasmin, shaking his head. “He did ask it—so that I might hear, I suppose—but they would not tell him.”

Gilbert went out of the house feeling like a man who has unexpectedly come to the edge of a high cliff. Before him was nothingness. He almost felt that Louis’ arrest was less terrible than the absolute ignorance as to his whereabouts. True, he had spoken to Jasmin—more hopefully than conviction really warranted—about procuring his master’s release—but how was he to do it, even if he knew whither he had been taken? And not to know that was stupefying. Poor Louis, going light-hearted into the darkness with no last message for any one—save a pet! No, it was incredible that he should never see him again; his release only needed an unswerving determination and perseverance, and, once released, he would instantly get him out of Paris, and they would go back to Poitou together. Was not that the very aim of his coming to Paris? One's own kin are safe, of course, from the graver catastrophes, and who could fancy Louis other than fortunate? He had been so all his life.

The thought of leaving Paris brought to the Marquis, who was almost at his own hotel, the remembrance of another who was also to quit it for safety. He looked at his watch. He had promised to see Lucienne to-day; he was indeed to tell her whether or no Louis would escort her to England. Saint-Ermay’s refusal was now more providential than inexplicable, and he need not tell her that his cousin could not take her, but simply that it had been arranged otherwise. He need not, in fact, alarm and grieve her by letting her know at all of his arrest. Moreover, it was yet early, barely noon; much might be done before he went to see her; he might even carry her news of a peril past. But in his heart of hearts he did not think he could accomplish anything so quickly.

And when he returned, some five hours later, the hopeful visions which he had insisted upon seeing were transmuted into menacing phantoms of gloom. He was no wiser than when he had started out, and he was a great deal more depressed. With much difficulty he had succeeded in seeing Bertrand-Moleville. The Royalist ex-minister knew nothing, could do nothing. If there had been other arrests—and there must have been—they had been kept very quiet. Perhaps the Girondins had found the fish in their net less numerous than they had hoped. But the Comte de Périgny had vanished, as Gilbert discovered when he at last procured his address. In despair, Gilbert went to the Duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, whom he knew, and, in some sort, had followed. The Liberal leader and philanthropist, standing between the two parties, might, he thought, be induced to mediate, but Gilbert soon found that on that score he had nothing to hope from him. The Duc was kind and sympathetic, but, like most moderates, he knew himself more intolerable to the extremists than a Royalist, perhaps, would have been. He could only advise Château-Foix to go straight to one of the Girondin chiefs, suggesting for the purpose Roland, as an ex-minister and humane, or Condorcet, as an ex-aristocrat. But he did not disguise his belief that any application to the dominant party would be unsuccessful.

“We must face the truth,” he said gravely. “This is what they must have worked for, and can you expect them now to forego the fruits of victory?”

“You think, then, that I am to abandon hope?” Gilbert had asked rather bitterly, but the good Duke replied that what he meant was that no direct exertion of influence was likely to be of use. He promised the matter his earnest consideration, and undertook to communicate with the Marquis early next morning if he had any news.

Profoundly dispirited and weary, Gilbert threw himself down in his own room. But he was too anxious to rest, and, moreover, it was already after the hour he had named for seeing Lucienne. Yesterday he would perhaps have been there before the time, but to-day another face had power to banish hers. Great God! suppose that Fate _had_ sometimes the will to cheat the fortunate!