Gerald Fitzgerald: The Chevalier Part 39

For a few minutes every attention was directed toward her; and it was only as she showed signs of recovery, some one asked--

'What has become of De Noe and his friend?'

They were gone.

CHAPTER VI. 'LA GRUE'

When Gerald gained the street, it was to find it crammed with a dense mob, whose wild cries and screams filled the air. No sooner was he perceived by some of the mult.i.tude than a hundred yells saluted him, with shouts of 'Down with the aristocrat; down with the tyrant, who insults the friend of the people.' It was a mob who, in fervour of enthusiasm for Mirabeau's memory, had closed each of the theatres in succession, dispersed all meetings of public festivity, and even invaded the precincts of private houses, to dictate a more becoming observance toward the ill.u.s.trious dead. Few men could bear such prescription less patiently than Fitzgerald. The very thought of being ruled and directed by the 'canaille' was insupportably offensive, and he drove back those who rudely pressed upon him, and answered with contempt their words of insult and outrage.

'Who is it that insults the majesty of the people?' cried one; 'let us hear his name.'

'It is Louvet'--'It is Plessard'--'It is Lestocq'--'It is that miserable Custine '--shouted several together.

'You are all wrong. I am a stranger, whose name not one of you has ever heard----'

'A spy! an emissary of Pitt and Cobourg!'

'I am a foreigner, with whose sentiments you have no concern. I do not obtrude my opinions upon you.'

'What do we care for that?' shouted a deep voice. 'You have dared to offend the most sacred sentiments of a nation, and to riot in a festive orgie while we weep over the deathbed of a patriot.'

'_A la Grue! a la Grue!_' screamed the wild ma.s.s in a yell of pa.s.sion.

Now the Grue was an immense crane--used in some repairs of the Pont Neuf--which still held its place at the approach to the bridge. It was here that a sort of public tribunal held its nightly sittings by the light of a gigantic lantern, suspended from the crane; and which, report alleged, had more than once given way to a very different pendant. It is certain that two men, taken in the act of robbery, had been hanged by the sentence of this self-const.i.tuted tribunal, which, in open defiance of the authorities, continued to a.s.semble there. The cry, '_A la Grue!

a la Grue!_' had, therefore, a dreadful significance; and there was a terrible import in the savage roar of the mob as they ratified the proposal.

'We will try him fairly. He shall be judged deliberately, and be allowed to speak in his own defence,' said several, who believed that their words were those of moderation and equity:

Powerless against the overwhelming ma.s.s, and too indignant to proffer one single word of palliation, Gerald was hurried along towards the quay.

There was something singularly solemn in the measured tread of that vast mult.i.tude, as, in a mockery of justice, they marched along. At first not a word was spoken; but suddenly a deep voice in the front rank began one of the popular chants of the day, the whole dense ma.s.s joining in the refrain. Nothing could be ruder than the verses, save the accents that intoned them; but there was in the very roar and resonance a depth that imparted a sense of force and power.

We offer a rough version of the unpolished chant--

'The Cour Royale has a princely hall, And many come there to sue; But I love the sight of a stilly night, And the crowd beneath the Grue.

No lawyer clown, with his cap and gown, Has complex work to do; For the h.o.r.n.y hand and the face that's tanned Are the judges beneath the Grue.

At best, this life is a fleeting strife, For me as well as for you; But our work is brief with a rogue or thief When he stands beneath the Grue.

No bribes resort to our humble court, All is open and plain to view; And the people's voice and the people's choice Are the law beneath the Grue.

The Grue! the Grue! the Grue!

I ween there are but few Who have hearts for hope as they see the rope That dangles beneath the Grue.'

As they sang a number of voices in front of them took up the strain, till the crowd seemed to make the very air ring with their hoa.r.s.e chant.

In this way they reached the Seine, over whose dark and rapid flood the fatal crane seemed to droop sadly. Several hundred people were a.s.sembled here, a confused murmur showing that they were engaged in conversing rather than in that judicial function it was their pride to discharge.

'A rebel against the majesty of the people and the fame of its greatest martyr,' said a deep voice, as he announced the crime of Fitzgerald, and pushed him forward to the place reserved for the accused. 'While a nation humbles itself in sorrow, this man chooses the hour for riotous dissipation and excess. We met him as he issued forth from the woman Roland's house, so that he cannot deny the charge.'

'Accused, stand forward,' said a coa.r.s.e-looking man, in a mechanic's dress, but whose manner was not devoid of a certain dignity. 'You are here before the French people, who will judge you fairly.'

'Were I even conscious of a crime, I would deny your right to try me.'

'Young man, you do but injury to yourself in insulting us, was the grave rebuke, delivered with a calm decorum which seemed to have its influence on Fitzgerald.

'Who accuses him?' asked the judge aloud.

'I'--'and I '--'and I'--'all of us,' shouted a number together, followed by a burst of, 'Let Lamarc do it; let Lamarc speak'; and a pale, very young man, of gentle look and slight figure, came forward at the call.

With the ease of one thoroughly accustomed to address public a.s.semblies, and with an eloquence evidently cultivated in very different spheres, the young man p.r.o.nounced a glowing panegyric on Mirabeau. It was really a fine and scarce exaggerated appreciation of that great man. Haughtily disclaiming the right of any less ill.u.s.trious than Riquetti himself to sit in judgment upon the excesses of his turbulent youth, the orator even declared that it was in the pa.s.sionate commotion of such temperaments that grand ideas were fostered, just as preternatural fertility is the gift of countries where earthquakes and volcanoes have convulsed them.

'Deplore, if you will,' cried he, 'his faults, for his own sake; sorrow over the terrible necessities of a nature whose excitements must be sought for even in crime; mourn over one whose mysterious being demanded for mere sustenance the poisoned draughts of intemperance; but for yourselves and for your own sakes, rejoice that the age has given you Gabriel Riquetti de Mirabeau.'

'Who is it dares to say such words as these, cried a hoa.r.s.e, discordant voice, as forcing his way through the dense ma.s.s, a small, misshapen figure stood forward. Though bespeaking in his appearance a condition considerably above those around him, his dress was disordered, his cravat awry, and his features trembling with recent excitement. As the strong light fell upon him, Gerald could mark a countenance whose features once seen were never forgotten. The forehead was high, but retreating, and the eyes so sunk within their sockets that their colour could not be known, and their only expression a look of wolfish ferocity; to this, too, a haggard cheek and long, lean jaw contributed.

All these signs of a harsh and cruel nature were greatly heightened by his mode of speaking, for his mouth opened wide, exposing two immense rows of teeth, a display which they who knew him well said he was inordinately vain of.

'Is it to men and Frenchmen that any dares to speak thus?' yelled he, in a voice that overtopped the others, and was heard far and wide through the crowd. 'Listen to me, people,' screamed he again, as, ascending the sort of bench on which the judge was seated, he waved his hand to enforce silence. 'Kneel down and thank the G.o.ds that your direst enemy is dead!'

A low murmur--it was almost like the growl of a wild beast--ran through the a.s.sembly; but such was the courage of the speaker that he waited till it had subsided, and then in accents shriller than before repeated the same words. The hum of the mult.i.tude was now reduced to a mere murmuring sound, and he went on. It was soon evident how inferior the polished eloquence of the other must prove before such an audience to the stormy pa.s.sion of this man's speech. Like the voice of a destroying angel scattering ruin and destruction, he poured out over the memory of Mirabeau the flood of his invective. He reproduced the vices of his youth to account for the crimes of his age, and saw the treason to his party explained in his falsehood to his friends. There was in his words and in all he said the force of a mad mountain torrent, bounding wildly from crag to crag, sweeping all before it as it went, and yet ever pouring its flood deeper, fuller, and stronger. From a narrative of Riquetti's early life, with every incident of which he was familiar, he turned suddenly to show how such a man must, in the very nature of his being, be an enemy to the people. A n.o.ble by birth, an aristocrat in all his instincts, he could never have frankly lent himself to the cause of liberty. It was only a traitor he was, then, within their camp; he was there to learn their strength and their weakness, to delude them by mock concessions. It was, as he expressed it, by the heat of their own pa.s.sions that he welded the fetters for their own limbs.

'If you ask who should mourn this man, the answer is, His own order; and it is they, and they alone, who sorrow over the lost leader. Not you, nor I, nor that youth yonder, whom you pretend to arraign; but whom you should honour with words of praise and encouragement. Is it not brave of him, in this hour of b.a.s.t.a.r.d grief, that he should stand forth to tell you how mean and dastardly ye are! I tell you, once more, that he who dares to stem the false sentiments of misguided enthusiasm has a courage grander than his who storms a breach. My friends.h.i.+p is his own from this hour,' and as he said, he descended from the bench, and flung his arms around Fitzgerald.

Shouts of 'Well done, Marat, bravely spoken!' rent the air, and a hundred voices told how the current of public favour had changed its course.

'Let us not tarry here, young man,' said Marat. 'Come along with me; there is much to be done yet.'

While Gerald was not sorry to be relieved from a position of difficulty and danger, he was also eager to undeceive his new ally, and avow that he had no sympathy with the opinions attributed to him. It was no time, however, for explanations, nor was the temper of the mob to be long trusted. He therefore suffered himself to be led along by the friends of Marat, who, speedily making way for their chief, issued into the open street.

'Whither now!' cried one aloud.

'To the Bureau--to the Bureau!' said another.

'Be it so,' said Marat. 'The _Ami du Peuple_--so was his journal called--' must render an account of this night to its readers. I have addressed seven a.s.semblies since eleven o'clock, and save that one in the Rue de Grenelle, all successfully. By the way, who is our friend?

What is he called? Fitzgerald--a foreign name--all the better; we can turn this incident to good account. Are Frenchmen to be taught the path to liberty by a stranger, eh, Favart? That's the keynote for your overture!'

'The article is written--it is half-printed already,' said Favart. 'It begins better--"The impostor is dead: the juggler who gathered your liberties into a bundle and gave them back to you as fetters, is no more! "'

'_Ah, que c'est beau_, that phrase!' cried two or three together.

'I will not have it,' said Marat impetuously; 'these are not moments for grotesque imagery. Open thus: "Who are the men that have const.i.tuted themselves the judges of immortality? Who are these, clad in shame and cloaked in ignominy, who a.s.sume to dispense the glory of a nation? Are these mean tricksters--these fawners on a corrupted court--these slaves of the basest tyranny that ever defaced a nation's image, to be guardians at the gate of civic honours?"

'Ah! there it is. It was Marat himself spoke there,' said one.

'That was the clink of the true metal,' said Chaptal.