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

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СКАЧАТЬ you will also have to renounce your hopes of vengeance and reprisals. Will you be equal to that?"

      The young woman shook and her features darkened under the stress of the internal struggle which these words caused her. Finally she broke out in an altered voice:

      "What, Franz! Shall centuries of oppression not have their day of retribution? Shall the crimes of ages go unpunished? Shall the shades of our martyred fathers not be appeased by vengeance? Shall the example of inexorable justice not be given to the world, in the name of eternal good? What! They would deny us one day, one single day of legitimate reprisals after fifteen centuries of crime? Must the victims be constrained to pardon their executioners?"

      "Victoria, those who seek the birth of the reign of fraternity on earth hold blood in abhorrence. They hope to accomplish the freedom, the regeneration of mankind by mercy and pardon, and by educating the working class."

      "Then I renounce my vengeance!" said the young woman. "But if the eternal enemies of humanity oppose themselves, by trickery or by violence, to the emancipation of the oppressed; if on their part, the conflict is engaged without either mercy or pity, shall the victims have to kneel, and offer their throats to the knife?"

      "In that case, Victoria, may the blood fall on the heads of those who first shed it. Accursed be those who respond by treachery or violence to our words of love, of concord, of justice and of reparation! Then will be fulfilled once more, perhaps for the last time, that law of human progress, which, so many times across the ages, has encrimsoned the conquest of the most equitable reforms. Insurrection will have to impose upon the oppressors concessions the voluntary granting of which would have saved the world from all these woes. Accursed be those who shall then attempt to oppose force to the demands of the times. Then, Victoria, there shall be war, war tremendous, pitiless! It will be the unchaining of popular passions. No bridle can hold them. The justice of God will pass over a terror-stricken world. Then, in the midst of that tempest which shall overturn thrones and altars – then, Victoria, you shall appear, terrible as the Goddess of Vengeance, striking with her broad sword the old world, condemned in the name of the good of the peoples."

      "Oh, my life, my whole life for one hour of such vengeance!" cried the young woman, palpitating in wild exaltation. "Aye, let my life be a hundred times more miserable, more abject, more horrible than that which a King put upon me – I shall live it twice over in order to assist in the hour of this vengeance. A day, an hour of reprisals, for my life of misery!"

      "Come then, Victoria, you shall be ours as we shall be yours, in life, in death, in triumph, in vengeance!"

      So speaking, the Prince of Gerolstein led Victoria Lebrenn out of Samuel's chamber, across the garden, and into a deserted and half-subterranean green-house.

      CHAPTER III

      THE VOYANTS

      The half-underground hot-house into which Franz of Gerolstein conducted his new convert was dimly lighted by a lamp placed at the foot of a stairway leading still further beneath the earth. On the first step of this staircase Franz found a package from which he produced two loose robes and two masks. Addressing his companion, he said:

      "Put this robe on over your garments, and hide your countenance behind this mask."

      They descended the stairs, and arrived in a corridor, lighted by the hanging lamp whose rays had guided them from above. At the extremity of the passage stood a man cloaked in red and with a black mask over his visage. He held a naked sword in his hand, and advanced two steps to meet the newcomers.

      "Who are you?" he asked.

      "We are of the disinherited," replied Franz. "For father we had enslavement, for mother ignorance; our condition is misery. We are of the poor, the oppressed, the damned here below."

      "What do you wish, my brother?"

      "Liberty, knowledge, happiness."

      "Knock at that door," commanded the masked figure in red, stepping aside to make way for Franz and his companion. "Knock and it shall be opened unto you; seek, and ye shall find."

      The door opened, and as soon closed behind the two initiates. For a moment they were blinded by the brilliance which flooded the subterraneous chamber to which they had now penetrated. It was lighted by seventy candelabra, each bearing seven candles – again the mystic number. The walls were covered with red drapery; at the further end a raised platform formed a dais with closed curtains; on the front of the dais was the picture of a carpenter's level. Several steps from the platform, on a draped table, were thrown in confusion a royal crown, a scepter, a pontifical tiara, a bishop's crosier, several collars of chivalric orders, and a few ducal or princely coronets; besides these there lay in the heap some pouches, half open, and full of gold and silver pieces.

      Directly behind the table on which thus lay cluttered the emblems of religion, royalty, aristocracy and wealth, stood seven masked men, garbed in long robes, silent and erect, their arms crossed on their chests, seven specters, seven fantastic apparitions. The one whose duty it was to officiate at the reception of initiates stood in the center. Three Voyants were ranged to his right, three to his left. He addressed Victoria, who keenly felt the impression produced on her by the strange spectacle:

      "Woman, your age?"

      "Fifteen centuries, and more. I was born the first day of the enslavement and misery of my brothers."

      "What would you?"

      "The end of oppression. I wish to beat down thrones and altars, privileges of birth and of fortune, all the hoary monuments of ignorance, of slavery, and of iniquity, all the monopolies, all the privileges which flourish upon the people."

      "What will happen when the level shall have passed over the old world, and when the exploiters of the people shall have disappeared?"

      "The darkness of ages shall be superseded by the revivifying warmth and the fruitful light of the sun; harvests of abundance will cover with their sheaves the soil tilled by a fecund revolution."

      "Is your severance from the old world complete?"

      "I have broken with the old world, and rallied to the new."

      "Behold this pontifical tiara, this kingly crown; gaze on these symbols of nobility, these sacks of gold and silver. You may demand of kings, of priests, of nobles, of the rich, the enjoyments of life, all by devoting yourself body and soul to these idols and to tyranny."

      "It is my wish to overthrow those idols. I vow an implacable hatred to the enemies of the people."

      "From this hour," responded the cloaked president, apparently satisfied with the interrogatory, "you shall be ours as we will be yours. Our device so has it —All for each; each for all. By this device, co-operation will replace in the future the selfishness of the masters of the old world. Who caused all the evils of which selfishness has been the source? He who first dug a ditch about a piece of common land and said 'This is mine.' The usurpation was consecrated by men simple-minded enough to respect these arbitrary boundaries; the spoliation of several by one gradually became a right; the deed became the law, the exception the rule. The tyranny growing out of this principle, initiated by violence and perpetuated by custom, became rooted in the peoples' mind, till at length they came to own an infant mewling in the cradle for their King, and to kiss the boot of the Pope. What consequences have not come out of these aberrations! Peoples have throttled each other. The earth has its damned ones, more to be pitied than those with whom superstition peoples hell. The damned on earth call themselves vassals, serfs, proletarians, artisans, laborers! It is of these damned ones that СКАЧАТЬ