The Companions of Jehu by Alexandre Dumas (red scrolls of magic .txt) 📕

understand each other, colonel. I don’t say that the First Consul makes it; I say it is made in his name.”

“And who is the scoundrel that abuses the authority given him, to make war with a staff of executioners?”

“I have told you his name; he is called Thomas Millière. Question whom you please, colonel, and throughout all Vendée and Brittany you’ll hear but one voice on that man. From the day of the rising in Vendée and Brittany, now six years ago, Millière has been, always and everywhere, the most active agent of the Terror. For him the Terror did not end with Robespierre. He denounced to his superiors, or caused to be denounced to himself, the Breton and Vendéan soldiers, their parents, friends, brothers, sisters, wives, even the wounded and dying; he shot or guillotined them all without a trial. At Daumeray, for instance, he left a trail of blood behind him which is not yet, can never be, effaced. More than eighty of the inhabitants were slaughtered before his eyes. Sons were killed in the arms of their mothers, who vainly stretched those bloody arms to Heaven imploring vengeance. The successive pacifications of Brittany and Vendée have never slaked the thirst for murder which burns his entrails. He is the same in 1800 that he was in 1793. Well, this man—”

Roland looked at the general.

“This man,” continued the general, with the utmost calmness, “is to die. Seeing that society did not condemn him, I have condemned him.”

“What! Die at La Roche-Bernard, in the midst of the Republicans; in spite of his bodyguard of assassins and executioners?”

“His hour has struck; he is to die.”

Cadoudal pronounced these words with such solemnity that no doubt remained in Roland’s mind, not only as to the sentence, but also the execution of it. He was thoughtful for an instant.

“And you believe that you have, the right to judge and condemn that man, guilty as he is?”

“Yes; for that man has judged and condemned, not the guilty but the innocent.”

“If I said to you: ‘On my return to Paris I will demand the arrest and trial of that man,’ would you not trust my word?”

“I would trust your word; but I should say to you: ‘A maddened wild beast escapes from its cage, a murderer from his prison; men are men, subject to error. They have sometimes condemned the innocent, they might spare the guilty.’ My justice is more certain than yours, colonel, for it is the justice of God. The man will die.”

“And by what right do you claim that your justice, the justice of a man liable to error like other men, is the justice of God?”

“Because I have made God a sharer in that justice. Oh! my condemnation of that man is not of yesterday.”

“How do you mean?”

“In the midst of a storm when thunder roared without cessation, and the lightning flashed from minute to minute, I raised my arms to heaven, and I said to God: ‘O God! whose look is that lightning, whose voice is that thunder, if this man ought to die, extinguish that lightning, still the thunder for ten minutes. The silence of the skies, the darkness of the heavens shall be thy answer!’ Watch in hand, I counted eleven minutes without a flash or a sound. I saw at the point of a promontory a boat, tossed by a terrible tempest, a boat with but one man in it, in danger every minute of sinking; a wave lifted it as the breath of an infant lifts a plume, and cast it on the rocks. The boat flew to pieces; the man clung to the rock, and all the people cried out: ‘He is lost!’ His father was there, his two brothers were there, but none dared to succor him. I raised my arms to the Lord and said: ‘If Millière is condemned by Thee as by me, O God, let me save that man; with no help but thine let me save him!’ I stripped, I knotted a rope around my arm, and I swam to the rock. The water seemed to subside before my breast. I reached the man. His father and brothers held the rope. He gained the land. I could have returned as he did, fastening the rope to the rocks. I flung it away from me; I trusted to God and cast myself into the waves. They floated me gently and surely to the shore, even as the waters of the Nile bore Moses’ basket to Pharaoh’s daughter. The enemy’s outposts were stationed around the village of Saint-Nolf; I was hidden in the woods of Grandchamp with fifty men. Recommending my soul to God, I left the woods alone. ‘Lord God,’ I said, ‘if it be Thy will that Millière die, let that sentry fire upon me and miss me; then I will return to my men and leave that sentry unharmed, for Thou wilt have been with him for an instant.’ I walked to the Republican; at twenty paces he fired and missed me. Here is the hole in my hat, an inch from my head; the hand of God had aimed that weapon. That happened yesterday. I thought that Millière was at Nantes. To-night they came and told me that Millière and his guillotine were at La Roche-Bernard. Then I said: ‘God has brought him to me; he shall die.’”

Roland listened with a certain respect to the superstitious narrative of the Breton leader. He was not surprised to find such beliefs and such poetry in a man born in face of a savage sea, among the Druid monuments of Karnac. He realized that Millière was indeed condemned, and that God, who had thrice seemed to approve his judgment, alone could save him. But one last question occurred to him.

“How will you strike him?” he asked.

“Oh!” said Georges, “I do not trouble myself about that; he will be executed.”

One of the two men who had brought in the supper table now entered the room.

“Brise-Bleu,” said Cadoudal, “tell Coeur-de-Roi that I wish to speak to him.”

Two minutes later the Breton presented himself.

“Coeur-de-Roi,” said Cadoudal, “did you not tell me that the murderer Thomas Millière was at Roche-Bernard?”

“I saw him enter the town side by side with the Republican colonel, who did not seem particularly flattered by such companionship.”

“Did you not add that he was followed by his guillotine?”

“I told you his guillotine followed between two cannon, and I believe if the cannon could have got away the guillotine would have been left to go its way alone.”

“What precautions does Millière take in the towns he visits?”

“He has a special guard about him, and the streets around his house are barricaded. He carries pistols always at hand.”

“In spite of that guard, in spite of that barricade and the pistols, will you undertake to reach him?”

“I will, general.”

“Because of his crimes, I have condemned that man; he must die.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Coeur-de-Roi, “the day of justice has come at last!”