Scaramouche, Rafael Sabatini [inspirational books txt] 📗

his serfs to bathe and refresh his feet in their blood, he could still claim in his sufficient defence that it was his absolute feudal right to do so.

“Roughshod, these million Privileged ride over the souls and bodies of twenty-four million contemptible canaille existing but for their own pleasure. Woe betide him who so much as raises his voice in protest in the name of humanity against an excess of these already excessive abuses. I have told you of one remorselessly slain in cold blood for doing no more than that. Your own eyes have witnessed the assassination of another here upon this plinth, of yet another over there by the cathedral works, and the attempt upon my own life.

“Between them and the justice due to them in such cases stand these Lesdiguières, these King’s Lieutenants; not instruments of justice, but walls erected for the shelter of Privilege and Abuse whenever it exceeds its grotesquely excessive rights.

“Do you wonder that they will not yield an inch; that they will resist the election of a Third Estate with the voting power to sweep all these privileges away, to compel the Privileged to submit themselves to a just equality in the eyes of the law with the meanest of the canaille they trample underfoot, to provide that the moneys necessary to save this state from the bankruptcy into which they have all but plunged it shall be raised by taxation to be borne by themselves in the same proportion as by others?

“Sooner than yield to so much they prefer to resist even the royal command.”

A phrase occurred to him used yesterday by Vilmorin, a phrase to which he had refused to attach importance when uttered then. He used it now. “In doing this they are striking at the very foundations of the throne. These fools do not perceive that if that throne falls over, it is they who stand nearest to it who will be crushed.”

A terrific roar acclaimed that statement. Tense and quivering with the excitement that was flowing through him, and from him out into that great audience, he stood a moment smiling ironically. Then he waved them into silence, and saw by their ready obedience how completely he possessed them. For in the voice with which he spoke each now recognized the voice of himself, giving at last expression to the thoughts that for months and years had been inarticulately stirring in each simple mind.

Presently he resumed, speaking more quietly, that ironic smile about the corner of his mouth growing more marked:

“In taking my leave of M. de Lesdiguières I gave him warning out of a page of natural history. I told him that when the wolves, roaming singly through the jungle, were weary of being hunted by the tiger, they banded themselves into packs, and went a-hunting the tiger in their turn. M. de Lesdiguières contemptuously answered that he did not understand me. But your wits are better than his. You understand me, I think? Don’t you?”

Again a great roar, mingled now with some approving laughter, was his answer. He had wrought them up to a pitch of dangerous passion, and they were ripe for any violence to which he urged them. If he had failed with the windmill, at least he was now master of the wind.

“To the Palais!” they shouted, waving their hands, brandishing canes, and⁠—here and there⁠—even a sword. “To the Palais! Down with M. de Lesdiguières! Death to the King’s Lieutenant!”

He was master of the wind, indeed. His dangerous gift of oratory⁠—a gift nowhere more powerful than in France, since nowhere else are men’s emotions so quick to respond to the appeal of eloquence⁠—had given him this mastery. At his bidding now the gale would sweep away the windmill against which he had flung himself in vain. But that, as he straightforwardly revealed it, was no part of his intent.

“Ah, wait!” he bade them. “Is this miserable instrument of a corrupt system worth the attention of your noble indignation?”

He hoped his words would be reported to M. de Lesdiguières. He thought it would be good for the soul of M. de Lesdiguières to hear the undiluted truth about himself for once.

“It is the system itself you must attack and overthrow; not a mere instrument⁠—a miserable painted lath such as this. And precipitancy will spoil everything. Above all, my children, no violence!”

My children! Could his godfather have heard him!

“You have seen often already the result of premature violence elsewhere in Brittany, and you have heard of it elsewhere in France. Violence on your part will call for violence on theirs. They will welcome the chance to assert their mastery by a firmer grip than heretofore. The military will be sent for. You will be faced by the bayonets of mercenaries. Do not provoke that, I implore you. Do not put it into their power, do not afford them the pretext they would welcome to crush you down into the mud of your own blood.”

Out of the silence into which they had fallen anew broke now the cry of:

“What else, then? What else?”

“I will tell you,” he answered them. “The wealth and strength of Brittany lies in Nantes⁠—a bourgeois city, one of the most prosperous in this realm, rendered so by the energy of the bourgeoisie and the toil of the people. It was in Nantes that this movement had its beginning, and as a result of it the King issued his order dissolving the States as now constituted⁠—an order which those who base their power on Privilege and Abuse do not hesitate to thwart. Let Nantes be informed of the precise situation, and let nothing be done here until Nantes shall have given us the lead. She has the power⁠—which we in Rennes have not⁠—to make her will prevail, as we have seen already. Let her exert that power once more, and until she does so do you keep the peace in Rennes. Thus shall you triumph. Thus shall the outrages that are being perpetrated