Tom Burke Of "Ours" Volume I Part 47

"_Parbleu!_ Jacques," said the officer, addressing another who sat, while his wounds were being bound up, on a chair near, "this affair is worse than we thought of. Here 's one of the huitime in the thick of it."

"I hope, sir," said I, addressing the young man, whose arm was bleeding profusely from a sabre wound,--"I hope, sir, your wound may not be of consequence."

He looked up suddenly, and while a smile of the most insulting sarcasm curled his bloodless lip, answered,--

"I thank you, sir, for your sympathy; but you must forgive me, if one of these days I cannot bandy consolations with you."

"You are right, Lieutenant," said a dragoon, who lay bleeding from a dreadful cut in the forehead; "I'd not exchange places with him myself this minute for all his epaulettes."

With an overwhelming sense of my own degraded position, when to such taunts as these I dared not reply, I stood mute and confounded.

Meantime the soldiers were engaged in collecting together the scattered weapons, fastening the wrists of the prisoners with cords, and ransacking the house for such proofs of the conspiracy as might criminate others at a distance. By the time these operations were concluded, the day began to break, and I could distinguish in the courtyard several large covered carts or charrettes destined to convey the prisoners. One of these was given up entirely to the chief, who, although only slightly wounded, would never a.s.sist himself in the least, but lay a heavy, inert ma.s.s, suffering the others to lift him and place him in the cart. Such as were too badly wounded to be moved were placed in a room in the chteau, a guard being left over them.

A sergeant of the _gendarmerie_ now approached me as I stood, and commenced, without a word, to examine me for any papers or doc.u.ments that might be concealed about my person.

"You are in error," said I, quietly. "I have nothing of what you suspect."

"Do you call this nothing?" interrupted he, triumphantly, as he drew forth the parchment commission I had placed in my bosom, and forgot to restore to De Beauvais. "_Parbleu!_ you'd have had a better memory had your plans succeeded."

"Give it here," said an officer, as he saw the sergeant devouring the doc.u.ment with his eyes. "Ah!" cried he, starting, "he was playing a high stake, too. Let him be closely secured."

While the orders of the officer were being followed up, the various prisoners were secured in the carts, mounted dragoons stationed at either side, their carbines held unslung in their hands. At last my turn came, and I was ordered to mount into a _charrette_ with two gendarmes, whose orders respecting any effort at escape on my part were pretty clearly indicated by the position of two pistols carried at either side of me.

A day of heavy, unremitting rain, without any wind or storm, succeeded to the night of tempest. Dark inky clouds lay motionless near the earth, whose surface became blacker by the shadow. A weighty and lowering atmosphere added to the gloom I felt, and neither in my heart within nor in the world without could I find one solitary consolation.

At first I dreaded lest my companions should address me,--a single question would have wrung my very soul; but happily they maintained a rigid silence, nor did they even speak to each other during the entire journey. At noon we halted at a small roadside cabaret, where refreshments were provided, and relays of horses in waiting, and again set out on our way. The day was declining when we reached the Bois de Boulogne, and entered the long avenue that leads to the Barriere de l'toile. The heavy wheels moved noiselessly over the even turf, and, save the jingle of the troopers' equipments, all was hushed. For above an hour we had proceeded thus, when a loud shout in front, followed by a pistol-shot, and then three or four others quickly after it, halted the party; and I could mark through the uncertain light the mounted figures das.h.i.+ng wildly here and there, and plunging into the thickest of the wood.

"Look to the prisoners," cried an officer, as he galloped down the line; and, at the word, every man seized his carbine, and held himself on the alert.

Meanwhile the whole cavalcade was halted, and I could see that something of consequence had occurred in front, though of what nature I could not even guess. At last a sergeant of the gendarmes rode up to our side splashed and heated.

"Has he escaped?" cried one of the men beside me.

"Yes!" said he, with an oath, "the brigand has got away; though how he cut the cords on his wrists, or by what means he sprang from the charrette to the road, the devil must answer. Ha! there they are firing away after him. The only use of their powder is to show the fellow where they are."

"I would not change places with our captain this evening," cried one of the gendarmerie. "Returning to Paris without the red beard--"

"_Ma foi_, you're not wrong there. It will be a heavy reckoning for him with dark Savary; and as to taking a Breton in a wood--"

The word to march interrupted the colloquy, and again we moved forward.

By some strange sympathy I cannot account for, I felt glad that the chief had made his escape. The gallantry of his defence, the implicit obedience yielded him by the others, had succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng an interest for him in my mind; and the very last act of daring courage by which he effected his liberty increased the feeling. By what an easy transition, too, do we come to feel for those whose fate has any similarity with our own! The very circ.u.mstance of common misfortune is a binding link; and thus I was not without an anxious hope that the chief might succeed in his escape, though, had I known his intrigue or his intentions, such interest had scarcely found a place in my heart.

Such reflections as these led me to think how great must be the charm to the human mind of overcoming difficulty or confronting danger, when even for those of whom we know nothing we can feel, and feel warmly, when they stand before us in such a light as this. Heroism and bravery appeal to every nature; and bad must be the cause in which they are exerted, before we can venture to think ill of those who possess them.

The lamps were beginning to be lighted as we reached the Barrire, and halted to permit the officer of the party to make his report of who we were. The formality soon finished, we defiled along the Boulevard, followed by a crowd, that, increasing each moment, at last occupied the entire road, and made our progress slow and difficult. While the curiosity of the people to catch sight of the prisoners demanded all the vigilance of the guards to prevent it, a sad and most appalling stillness pervaded the whole mult.i.tude, and I could hear a murmur as they went that it was Generals Moreau and Pichegru who were taken.

At length we halted, and I could see that the foremost charrette was entering a low archway, over which a ma.s.sive portcullis hung. The gloomy shadow of a dark, vast ma.s.s, that rose against the inky sky, lowered above the wall, and somehow seemed to me as if well known.

"This is the Temple?" said I to the gendarme on my right.

A nod was the reply, and a half-expressive look that seemed to say, "In that word you have said your destiny."

About two years previous to the time I now speak of, I remember one evening, when returning from a solitary walk along the Boulevard, stopping in front of a tall and weather-beaten tower, the walls black with age, and pierced here and there with narrow windows, across which strong iron stanchions ran transversely. A gloomy fosse, crossed by a narrow drawbridge, surrounded the external wall of this dreary building, which needed no superst.i.tion to invest it with a character of crime and misfortune. This was the Temple,--the ancient castle of the knights whose cruelties were written in the dark obbliettes and the noisome dungeons of that dread abode. A terrace ran along the tower on three sides. There, for hours long, walked in sadness and in sorrow the last of France's kings,--Louis the Sixteenth,--his children at his side. In that dark turret the Dauphin suffered death. At the low cas.e.m.e.nt yonder, Madame Royale sat hour by hour, the stone on which she leaned wet with her tears. The place was one of gloomy and sinister repute: the neighborhood spoke of the heavy roll of carriages that pa.s.sed the drawbridge at the dead of night; of strange sounds and cries, of secret executions, and even of tortures that were inflicted there. Of these dreadful missions a corps called the "Gendarmes d'lite" were vulgarly supposed the chosen executors, and their savage looks and repulsive exterior gave credibility to the surmise; while some affirmed that the Mameluke guard the Consul had brought with him from Egypt had no other function than the murder of the prisoners confined there.

Little thought I then that in a few brief months I should pa.s.s beneath that black portcullis a prisoner. Little did I antic.i.p.ate, as I wended my homeward way, my heart heavy and my step slow, that the day was to come when in my own person I was to feel the sorrows over which I then wept for others.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII. THE TEMPLE

This was the second morning of my life which opened in the narrow cell of a prison; and when I awoke and looked upon the bare, bleak walls, the barred window, the strongly bolted door, I thought of the time when as a boy I slept within the walls of Newgate. The same sad sounds were now about me: the measured tread of sentinels; the tramp of patrols; the cavernous clank of door-closing, and the grating noise of locking and unlocking heavy gates; and then that dreary silence, more depressing than all,--how they came back upon me now, seeming to wipe out all s.p.a.ce, and bring me to the hours of my boyhood's trials! Yet what were they to this? what were the dangers I then incurred to the inevitable ruin now before me? True, I knew neither the conspirators nor their crime; but who would believe it? How came I among them? Dare I tell it, and betray her whose honor was dearer to me than my life? Yet it was hard to face death in such a cause; no sense of high though unsuccessful daring to support me; no strongly roused pa.s.sion to warm my blood, and teach me bravely to endure a tarnished name. Disgrace and dishonor were all my portion,--in that land, too, where I once hoped to win fame and glory, and make for myself a reputation among the first and greatest.

The deep roll of a drum, followed by the harsh turning of keys in the locks along the corridor, interrupted my sad musings; and the next minute my door was unbolted, and an official, dressed in the uniform of the prison, presented himself before me.

"Ah, monsieur! awake and dressed already!" said he, in a gay and smiling tone, for which the place had not prepared me. "At eight we breakfast here; at nine you are free to promenade in the garden or on the terrace,--at least, all who are not _au secret_,--and I have to felicitate monsieur on that pleasure."

"How, then? I am not a prisoner?"

"Yes, _parbleu!_ you are a prisoner, but not under such heavy imputation as to be confined apart. All in this quarter enjoy a fair share of liberty: live together, walk, chat, read the papers, and have an easy time of it. But you shall judge for yourself; come along with me."

In a strange state of mingled hope and fear I followed the jailer along the corridor, and across a paved courtyard into a low hall, where basins and other requisites for a prison toilet were arranged around the walls.

Pa.s.sing through this, we ascended a narrow stair, and finally entered a large, well-lighted room, along which a table, plentifully but plainly provided, extended the entire length. The apartment was crowded with persons of every age, and apparently every condition, all conversing noisily and eagerly together, and evidencing as little seeming restraint as though within the walls of a caf.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Templars 341]

Seated at a table, I could not help feeling amused at the strange medley of rank and country about me. Here were old _militaire_, with bushy beards and mustaches, side by side with muddy-faced peasants, whose long, yellow locks bespoke them of Norman blood; hard, weather-beaten sailors from the coast of Bretagne, talking familiarly with venerable seigneurs in all the pomp of powder and a queue; priests with shaven crowns; young fellows, whose easy looks of unabashed effrontery betrayed the careless Parisian,--all were mingled up together, and yet not one among the number did I see whose appearance denoted sorrow for his condition or anxiety for his fate.

The various circ.u.mstances of their imprisonment, the imputation they lay under, the acts of which they were accused, formed the topics of conversation, in common with the gossip of the town, the news of the theatres, and the movements in political life. Never was there a society with less restraint; each man knew his neighbor's history too well to make concealment of any value, and frankness seemed the order of the day. While I was initiating myself into so much of the habit of the place, a large, flat, florid personage, who sat at the head of the table, called out to me for my name.

"The governor desires to have your name and rank for his list," said my neighbor at the right hand.

Having given the required information, I could not help expressing my surprise how, in the presence of the governor of the prison, they ventured to speak so freely.

"Ha," said the person I addressed, "he is not the governor of the Temple; that's merely a t.i.tle we have given him among ourselves. The office is held always by the oldest _dtenu_. Now he has been here ten months, and succeeded to the throne about a fortnight since. The Abb, yonder, with the silk scarf round his waist, will be his successor, in a few days."

"Indeed! Then he will be at liberty so soon. I thought he seemed in excellent spirits."

"Not much, perhaps, on that score," replied he. "His sentence is hard labor for life at the Bagne de Toulon."

I started back with horror, and could not utter a word.

"The Abb," continued my informant, "would be right happy to take his sentence. But the governor is speaking to you."

"Monsieur le sous-lieutenant," said the governor, in a deep, solemn accent, "I have the honor to salute you, and bid you welcome to the Temple, in the name of my respectable and valued friends here about me.

We rejoice to possess one of your cloth amongst us. The last was, if I remember aright, the Capitaine de Lorme, who boasted he could hit the Consul at sixty paces with a pistol bullet."

"Pardon, governor," said a handsome man in a braided frock; "we had Ducaisne since."