Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini (important of reading books TXT) 📕

You may have realized that M. de Kercadiou was of those who make friends with men of all classes. His ancient lineage placed him on terms of equality with members of the noblesse; his simple manners - something between the rustic and the bourgeois - and his natural affability placed him on equally good terms with those who by birth were his inferiors. In Meudon he was known and esteemed of all the simple folk, and it was Rougane, the friendly mayor, who, informed on the 9th of August of the storm that was brewing for the morrow, and knowing of mademoiselle’s absence in Paris, had warningly advised him to withdraw her from what in the next four-and-twenty hours might be a zone of danger for all persons of quality, particularly those suspected of connections with the Court party.

Now there was no doubt whatever of Mme. de Plougastel’s connection with the Court. It was not even to be doubted - indeed, measure of proof of it was to be forthcoming - that those vigilant and ubiquitous secret societies that watched over the cradle of the young revolution were fully informed of the frequent journeyings of M. de Plougastel to Coblenz, and entertained no illusions on the score of the reason for them. Given, then, a defeat of the Court party in the struggle that was preparing, the position in Paris of Mme. de Plougastel could not be other than fraught with danger, and that danger would be shared by any guest of birth at her hotel.

M. de Kercadiou’s affection for both those women quickened the fears aroused in him by Rougane’s warning. Hence that hastily dispatched note, desiring his niece and imploring his friend to come at once to Meudon.

The friendly mayor carried his complaisance a step farther, and dispatched the letter to Paris by the hands of his own son, an intelligent lad of nineteen. It was late in the afternoon of that perfect August day when young Rougane presented himself at the Hotel Plougastel.

He was graciously received by Mme. de Plougastel in the salon, whose splendours, when combined with the great air of the lady herself, overwhelmed the lad’s simple, unsophisticated soul. Madame made up her mind at once.

M. de Kercadiou’s urgent message no more than confirmed her own fears and inclinations. She decided upon instant departure.

“Bien, madame,” said the youth. “Then I have the honour to take my leave.”

But she would not let him go. First to the kitchen to refresh himself, whilst she and mademoiselle made ready, and then a seat for him in her carriage as far as Meudon. She could not suffer him to return on foot as he had come.

Though in all the circumstances it was no more than his due, yet the kindliness that in such a moment of agitation could take thought for another was presently to be rewarded. Had she done less than this, she would have known - if nothing worse - at least some hours of anguish even greater than those that were already in store for her.

It wanted, perhaps, a half-hour to sunset when they set out in her carriage with intent to leave Paris by the Porte Saint-Martin. They travelled with a single footman behind. Rougane - terrifying condescension - was given a seat inside the carriage with the ladies, and proceeded to fall in love with Mlle. de Kercadiou, whom he accounted the most beautiful being he had ever seen, yet who talked to him simply and unaffectedly as with an equal. The thing went to his head a little, and disturbed certain republican notions which he had hitherto conceived himself to have thoroughly digested.

The carriage drew up at the barrier, checked there by a picket of the National Guard posted before the iron gates.

The sergeant in command strode to the door of the vehicle. The Countess put her head from the window.

“The barrier is closed, madame,” she was curtly informed.

“Closed!” she echoed. The thing was incredible. “But… but do you mean that we cannot pass?”

“Not unless you have a permit, madame.” The sergeant leaned nonchalantly on his pike. “The orders are that no one is to leave or enter without proper papers.”

“Whose orders?”

“Orders of the Commune of Paris.”

“But I must go into the country this evening.” Madame’s voice was almost petulant. “I am expected.”

“In that case let madame procure a permit.”

“Where is it to be procured?”

“At the Hotel de Ville or at the headquarters of madame’s section.”

She considered a moment. “To the section, then. Be so good as to tell my coachman to drive to the Bondy Section.”

He saluted her and stepped back. “Section Bondy, Rue des Morts,” he bade the driver.

Madame sank into her seat again, in a state of agitation fully shared by mademoiselle. Rougane set himself to pacify and reassure them. The section would put the matter in order. They would most certainly be accorded a permit. What possible reason could there be for refusing them? A mere formality, after all!

His assurance uplifted them merely to prepare them for a still more profound dejection when presently they met with a flat refusal from the president of the section who received the Countess.

“Your name, madame?” he had asked brusquely. A rude fellow of the most advanced republican type, he had not even risen out of deference to the ladies when they entered. He was there, he would have told you, to perform the duties of his office, not to give dancing-lessons.

“Plougastel,” he repeated after her, without title, as if it had been the name of a butcher or baker. He took down a heavy volume from a shelf on his right, opened it and turned the pages. It was a sort of directory of his section. Presently he found what he sought. “Comte de Plougastel, Hotel Plougastel, Rue du Paradis. Is that it?”

“That is correct, monsieur,” she answered, with what civility she could muster before the fellow’s affronting rudeness.

There was a long moment of silence, during which he studied certain pencilled entries against the name. The sections had been working in the last few weeks much more systematically than was generally suspected.

“Your husband is with you, madame?” he asked curtly, his eyes still conning that page.

“M. le Comte is not with me,” she answered, stressing the title.

“Not with you?” He looked up suddenly, and directed upon her a glance in which suspicion seemed to blend with derision. “Where is he?”

“He is not in Paris, monsieur.

“Ah! Is he at Coblenz, do you think?”

Madame felt herself turning cold. There was something ominous in all this. To what end had the sections informed themselves so thoroughly of the comings and goings of their inhabitants? What was preparing? She had a sense of being trapped, of being taken in a net that had been cast unseen.

“I do not know, monsieur,” she said, her voice unsteady.

“Of course not.” He seemed to sneer. “No matter. And you wish to leave Paris also? Where do you desire to go?”

“To Meudon.”

“Your business there?”

The blood leapt to her face. His insolence was unbearable to a woman who in all her life had never known anything but the utmost deference from inferiors and equals alike. Nevertheless, realizing that she was face to face with forces entirely new, she controlled herself, stifled her resentment, and answered steadily.

“I wish to conduct this lady, Mlle. de Kercadiou, back to her uncle who resides there.”

“Is that all? Another day will do for that, madame. The matter is not pressing.”

“Pardon, monsieur, to us the matter is very pressing.”

“You have not convinced me of it, and the barriers are closed to all who cannot prove the most urgent and satisfactory reasons for wishing to pass. You will wait, madame, until the restriction is removed. Good-evening.”

“But, monsieur… “

“Good-evening, madame,” he repeated significantly, a dismissal more contemptuous and despotic than any royal “You have leave to go.”

Madame went out with Aline. Both were quivering with the anger that prudence had urged them to suppress. They climbed into the coach again, desiring to be driven home.

Rougane’s astonishment turned into dismay when they told him what had taken place. “Why not try the Hotel de Ville, madame?” he suggested.

“After that? It would be useless. We must resign ourselves to remaining in Paris until the barriers are opened again.”

“Perhaps it will not matter to us either way by then, madame,” said Aline.

“Aline!” she exclaimed in horror.

“Mademoiselle!” cried Rougane on the same note. And then, because he perceived that people detained in this fashion must be in some danger not yet discernible, but on that account more dreadful, he set his wits to work. As they were approaching the Hotel Plougastel once more, he announced that he had solved the problem.

“A passport from without would do equally well,” he announced. “Listen, now, and trust to me. I will go back to Meudon at once. My father shall give me two permits - one for myself alone, and another for three persons - from Meudon to Paris and back to Meudon. I reenter Paris with my own permit, which I then proceed to destroy, and we leave together, we three, on the strength of the other one, representing ourselves as having come from Meudon in the course of the day. It is quite simple, after all. If I go at once, I shall be back to-night.”

“But how will you leave?” asked Aline.

“I? Pooh! As to that, have no anxiety. My father is Mayor of Meudon. There are plenty who know him. I will go to the Hotel de Ville, and tell them what is, after all, true - that I am caught in Paris by the closing of the barriers, and that my father is expecting me home this evening. They will pass me through. It is quite simple.”

His confidence uplifted them again. The thing seemed as easy as he represented it.

“Then let your passport be for four, my friend,” madame begged him. “There is Jacques,” she explained, indicating the footman who had just assisted them to alight.

Rougane departed confident of soon returning, leaving them to await him with the same confidence. But the hours succeeded one another, the night closed in, bedtime came, and still there was no sign of his return.

They waited until midnight, each pretending for the other’s sake to a confidence fully sustained, each invaded by vague premonitions of evil, yet beguiling the time by playing tric-trac in the great salon, as if they had not a single anxious thought between them.

At last on the stroke of midnight, madame sighed and rose.

“It will be for to-morrow morning,” she said, not believing it.

“Of course,” Aline agreed. “It would really have been impossible for him to have returned to-night. And it will be much better to travel to-morrow. The journey at so late an hour would tire you so much, dear madame.”

Thus they made pretence.

Early in the morning they were awakened by a din of bells - the tocsins of the sections ringing the alarm. To their startled ears came later the rolling of drums, and at one time they heard the sounds of a multitude on the march. Paris was rising. Later still came the rattle of small-arms in the distance and the deeper boom of cannon. Battle was joined between the men of the sections and the men of the Court. The people in arms had attacked the Tuileries. Wildest rumours flew in all directions, and some of them found their way through the servants to the Hotel Plougastel,