The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic. Эжен Сю

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СКАЧАТЬ cannon whence she dominated the throng, he beheld the woman with the red handkerchief and the dark robe. In spite of the change which her costume imparted to her features, the Jesuit was stupefied to recognize – Marchioness Aldini!

      Barely had he recovered from his surprise when the Marchioness descended from the piece of artillery. As hastily, the Jesuit quitted his companions in order to trace her, and, if possible, clear up the suspicions which in his mind surrounded this one-time Marchioness, now heroine of the people. Little Rodin followed his dear god-father, and the two, elbowing their way through the people of the quarter, who were seized with surprise and affright at the murderous cries uttered by the sinister band which approached, inquired, as they went, for the beautiful dark woman coiffed in a red handkerchief who had just leaped down from the cannon – having, so the Abbot pretended, a message for her. Finally a woman haberdasher, drawn to the threshold of her booth, replied to Abbot Morlet's interrogations:

      "Yes, the beautiful young woman you seek has entered house No. 17, along with our neighbor John Lebrenn. That is all I can tell you."

      "Then the Lebrenn family lives in this street, my dear woman?"

      "Certainly. Mother Lebrenn and her family occupy two rooms on the fourth floor of No. 17."

      "Thank you for your information, my dear woman," replied the Jesuit, with difficulty concealing the joy that the unexpected discovery caused him. "Many thanks!"

      "And so," continued the Abbot, "I recover the traces of that family whom we have lost from sight for over a century. What a lucky chance! Two woodcocks in one springe – Marchioness Aldini and the family of Lebrenn. An enemy spotted, is one-half throttled. Let us train our batteries to suit."

      "Dear god-father," put in little Rodin at that moment, with a determined air, "I am not afraid to look at heads mowed off."

      "My child," replied the Jesuit with fatherly pride and happiness, "it is not enough to have no fear; one must actually feel his heart grow lightened when he sees the enemies of our holy mother, the Church of Rome, put to death."

      "Dear god-father, was Monsieur Flesselles, then, an enemy of our holy mother, the Church?"

      "My child, the death of Monsieur Flesselles, innocent or guilty, was useful to the good cause."

      Meanwhile, Lehiron's band, just then passing under the windows of Desmarais's home, continued to shriek, "Death to the enemies of the people! Death to the bourgeois! To the lamp-post with Desmarais!"

      The cries had not yet reached the ears of the attorney, who had no sooner withdrawn from the balcony than his daughter, throwing herself into his arms, said to him in a voice broken with sobs of joy:

      "Thanks, Oh, thanks, father, for what you have just said!"

      "What are you thanking me for now?"

      "For the noble utterances you have just addressed to Monsieur John Lebrenn," replied Charlotte delighted, not noticing the brusque transformation which came over the face of the advocate at her words.

      "How! You have the presumption to abuse the necessity I found myself reduced to, in speaking a few words of good will to that laborer in order to save my house from pillage, and perhaps to protect my own life and that of my wife and daughter – you presume to abuse that necessity to oblige me to give my consent to your union with an ironsmith's apprentice? You are an unworthy daughter!"

      "Then – your cordial words, your touching protestations, were but lies!" murmured the young girl, crushed by her father's rough speech. "It was all comedy and imposture!"

      "Charlotte," continued Desmarais in a tone of harsh resolve, "cut short this passion which is a disgrace to all of us! I swear you shall never see that man again. To-morrow you leave Paris. It is my will."

      "Father, my father – I implore you – revoke that sentence – "

      "My dear friend," pursued Desmarais, addressing his wife and not heeding his daughter, "I shall delay for twenty-four hours my return to Versailles. Hasten all your preparations for the trip. We shall leave to-morrow morning. I shall take you along, as well as our daughter."

      "Pity, father! Do not drive me to despair – "

      "You know my will. Nothing can bend it."

      "Cursed be this day," cried the young girl with indignation; "cursed be this day when you force me to forget the respect I owe a father. Helas! it is you, you yourself, father, who just now, this very hour, protested your love for the people, your disdain for the privileges of birth and wealth. And now you declare before me that your protestations were false, that you despise the people, fear them, hate them. The imposture and the lie drive me to rebel."

      "Hold your tongue, unworthy minx! Do you not see the window is open, and that your imprudent words can be heard without? Have you resolved to get us all killed?" cried Desmarais, running to the window to close it.

      It was just the minute that Lehiron's band was passing the house. At the instant that the lawyer took hold of the casement fastening to draw shut the window, over the rail of the balcony, at the height of his own countenance, there appeared the livid head of Flesselles, impaled on its pike. A cry of fear broke from Desmarais, and he recoiled from the sill, clapping his hands before his eyes to shut out the grisly spectacle. The band halted before the attorney's door. Anew the cries burst loose without:

      "Long live the Nation!"

      "Death to the enemies of the people!"

      "To the lamp-post with the aristocrats! – to the lamp-post with Desmarais!"

      The clamors seemed to come so pat upon the words of Charlotte, that Madam Desmarais, stricken with affright, threw herself on her knees in an attitude of prayer, clasped her hands, and stammered out an appeal to God.

      "To the lamp-post with Desmarais! Death to the traitor!" shrieked Lehiron's band once more, and passed on its way. The cries of "Death!" faded away in the distance as Lehiron's troop followed in the wake of the conquerors of the Bastille. It was the pack of jackals following the lions.

      Desmarais gradually recovered from the state of rigid fright in which he was plunged, and cried out to Charlotte in a voice trembling with repressed rage:

      "Unnatural daughter! Parricide! Did you hear the cries of death hurled at your father by those cannibals of Paris, who carry in triumph the head of Flesselles? These men, who perhaps quite soon will have made your father undergo the same torture, are the friends, the brothers of John Lebrenn. Your lover is, like them, an assassin. Horror upon all this revolted plebs!"

      CHAPTER XII

      REUNITED FROM THE BASTILLE

      While advocate Desmarais was whelming his daughter with reproaches on the score of her love for John Lebrenn, the latter was at his mother's knee in their modest lodgings on the fourth floor of the old house in St. Honoré Street. In the larger of the two rooms composing the family's apartments, were to be seen two beds. One had never been occupied for years, since the day Ronan Lebrenn disappeared without a soul knowing what had become of him. The room also contained a sort of little bookshelf garnished with books printed with his own hand, a portable workbench at which John in the evenings finished up pieces belonging to his ironsmith's trade, tools, some little furniture, and a buffet of walnut-wood in which reposed the relics and legends of the family.

      Madam, or Mother, Lebrenn, as she was called in the neighborhood, was nearly sixty years of age. Domestic griefs, rather than years, had enfeebled and ruined her СКАЧАТЬ