Scaramouche, Rafael Sabatini [inspirational books txt] 📗

that excursion, so-called of Maenads, that march to Versailles of the market-women of Paris, led by the unique Maillard, and as an outcome in early October, the Palace of the Tuileries was cleared of all the vermin, human and otherwise, that infested it, to make room for the King. The King was to come and live among his people. His loving people desired to have him in their midst⁠—as a hostage for their own safety. If they must starve, he should starve with them.

André-Louis observed these things, and began to wonder where they would end. The only sane nobles appeared to him to be those who had crossed the frontier before the hotheads constituting the large majority of their party should have brought destruction upon the whole class. Meanwhile, he, himself, was kept busy in his flourishing academy; so busy that he contemplated acquiring the ground-floor of No. 13 and a third assistant; he was restrained, however, by the impossibility of inducing the ground-floor tenant, a haberdasher who throve on the custom of the fencing-school upstairs, to evacuate such advantageous premises.

With that exception the whole of No. 13 was now in his hands. He had lately acquired the first floor, converting it into a comfortable dwelling for himself and his two assistants, installing a housekeeper and a boy as page.

Now that the National Assembly sat in Paris he frequently saw Le Chapelier, and the intimacy grew between them. They commonly dined together at the Palais Royal or elsewhere, and through Le Chapelier André-Louis began to make a few friends; but he avoided the salons to which he was freely invited, those salons in which the fine new republican and philosophic spirit presided.

He was present at the Comédie Française one night in the following spring when Chénier’s Charles IX was being performed more or less under protest.

It was a stormy evening. Allusions from the stage were taken up now by one section, now by another, of the audience, to be used as catchwords between the politically hostile parties between the old regime and the new. The climax was ludicrously provided by some men in the pit, who insisted upon remaining covered. The Comédie Française contained a royal box, and it was an unwritten law that respect for royalty should go the length of demanding bared heads even when this royal box was untenanted.

The men who chose to remain covered did so as a republican protest against what they considered an empty sham. But, before the storm that arose when their action was denounced, before an uproar that rendered inaudible a word from the stage, they made haste to beat a retreat from their republican arrogance⁠—with one exception. One man stubbornly remained covered, and turned about his broad leonine head to laugh at those who demanded that he should take off his hat, his great voice trumpeting through the house: “Do you imagine that you can force me to take off my hat?”

It was the last provocation. Menaces were hurled at him. He rose to them undaunted, heaved himself up, displaying an enormous athletic frame, a Herculean neck bare to the breast below his head, an unspeakably hideous countenance. He laughed in their faces. He pressed his round headgear down more securely about his brows.

“Firm as the hat of Servandony!” he mocked them, and flourished an arm in defiance.

André-Louis laughed. There was something at once grotesque and magnificently heroic about that great figure, mocking and undaunted amid the ever increasing uproar. The affair might have ended badly had not the police intervened to arrest him and lead him out a prisoner. He was clearly not of those who yield.

“Who is he?” André-Louis asked of a neighbour, as the house was settling down again after the disorder.

“I don’t know,” he was answered. “I am told that his name is Danton, and that he is the president of the Cordeliers. He will come to a bad end, of course; madman, an original.”

Next day it was the talk of Paris, floating for a moment on the surface of more serious matter. In the fencing-academy nothing else was discussed but the Cômédie Française and the quarrel between Talma and Naudet that was at the root of all the mischief. But soon André-Louis had something else to engage his attention. He received a visit from Le Chapelier just before noon.

“I have news for you, André. Your godfather is at Meudon. He arrived there two days ago. Had you heard?”

“But no. How should I hear? Why is he at Meudon?”

He was conscious of a faint excitement, which he could hardly have explained.

“I don’t know. There have been fresh disturbances in Brittany. It may be due to that.”

“And so he has come for shelter to his brother?” asked André-Louis.

“To his brother’s house, yes; but not to his brother. Where do you live at all, André? Do you never hear any of the news? Étienne de Gavrillac emigrated months ago. He was of the household of M. d’Artois, and he crossed the frontier with him. By now, no doubt, he is in Germany with him, conspiring against France. For that is what the émigrés are doing. That Austrian woman at the Tuileries will end by destroying the monarchy.”

“Yes, yes,” said André-Louis, impatiently. Politics interested him not at all this morning. “But about Gavrillac?”

“Why, haven’t I told you that Gavrillac is at Meudon, installed in the house his brother has left? Dieu de Dieu! Don’t I speak French? I believe that Rabouillet, his intendant, is in charge of Gavrillac. I have brought you the news the moment I received it. I thought you would probably wish to go out to Meudon.”

“Of course. I will go at once⁠—that is, as soon as I can. I can’t today, nor yet tomorrow. I am too busy here.” He waved a hand towards the inner room, where proceeded the click-click of blades, the quick moving of feet, and the voice of the instructor Le Duc.

“Well, well, this is your own affair. You are