Bab Bab 23 · PRESIDENT LE CHAPELIER

. PRESIDENT LE CHAPELIER

The ferment of Paris which, during the two following days, resembled an

armed camp rather than a city, delayed the burial of Bertrand des Amis

until the Wednesday of that eventful week. Amid events that were shaking

a nation to its foundations the death of a fencing-master passed almost

unnoticed even among his pupils, most of whom did not come to the

academy during the two days that his body lay there. Some few, however,

did come, and these conveyed the news to others, with the result that

the master was followed to Pere Lachaise by a score of young men at the

head of whom as chief mourner walked Andre-Louis.

There were no relatives to be advised so far as Andre-Louis was aware,

although within a week of M. des Amis’ death a sister turned up from

Passy to claim his heritage. This was considerable, for the master had

prospered and saved money, most of which was invested in the Compagnie

des Eaux and the National Debt. Andre-Louis consigned her to the

lawyers, and saw her no more.

The death of des Amis left him with so profound a sense of loneliness

and desolation that he had no thought or care for the sudden access

of fortune which it automatically procured him. To the master’s sister

might fall such wealth as he had amassed, but Andre-Louis succeeded

to the mine itself from which that wealth had been extracted, the

fencing-school in which by now he was himself so well established as an

instructor that its numerous pupils looked to him to carry it forward

successfully as its chief. And never was there a season in which

fencing-academies knew such prosperity as in these troubled days, when

every man was sharpening his sword and schooling himself in the uses of

it.

It was not until a couple of weeks later that Andre-Louis realized what

had really happened to him, and he found himself at the same time an

exhausted man, for during that fortnight he had been doing the work of

two. If he had not hit upon the happy expedient of pairing-off his

more advanced pupils to fence with each other, himself standing by to

criticize, correct and otherwise instruct, he must have found the task

utterly beyond his strength. Even so, it was necessary for him to fence

some six hours daily, and every day he brought arrears of lassitude

from yesterday until he was in danger of succumbing under the increasing

burden of fatigue. In the end he took an assistant to deal with

beginners, who gave the hardest work. He found him readily enough

by good fortune in one of his own pupils named Le Duc. As the summer

advanced, and the concourse of pupils steadily increased, it became

necessary for him to take yet another assistant--an able young instructor

named Galoche--and another room on the floor above.

They were strenuous days for Andre-Louis, more strenuous than he had

ever known, even when he had been at work to build up the Binet Company;

but it follows that they were days of extraordinary prosperity. He

comments regretfully upon the fact that Bertrand des Amis should

have died by ill-chance on the very eve of so profitable a vogue of

sword-play.

The arms of the Academie du Roi, to which Andre-Louis had no title,

still continued to be displayed outside his door. He had overcome the

difficulty in a manner worthy of Scaramouche. He left the escutcheon and

the legend “Academie de Bertrand des Amis, Maitre en fait d’Armes des

Academies du Roi,” appending to it the further legend: “Conducted by

Andre-Louis.”

With little time now in which to go abroad it was from his pupils

and the newspapers--of which a flood had risen in Paris with the

establishment of the freedom of the Press--that he learnt of the

revolutionary processes around him, following upon, as a measure of

anticlimax, the fall of the Bastille. That had happened whilst M. des

Amis lay dead, on the day before they buried him, and was indeed the

chief reason of the delay in his burial. It was an event that had its

inspiration in that ill-considered charge of Prince Lambesc in which the

fencing-master had been killed.

The outraged people had besieged the electors in the Hotel de Ville,

demanding arms with which to defend their lives from these foreign

murderers hired by despotism. And in the end the electors had consented

to give them arms, or, rather--for arms it had none to give--to permit

them to arm themselves. Also it had given them a cockade, of red and

blue, the colours of Paris. Because these colours were also those of the

liveries of the Duke of Orleans, white was added to them--the white of

the ancient standard of France--and thus was the tricolour born. Further,

a permanent committee of electors was appointed to watch over public

order.

Thus empowered the people went to work with such good effect that within

thirty-six hours sixty thousand pikes had been forged. At nine o’clock

on Tuesday morning thirty thousand men were before the Invalides. By

eleven o’clock they had ravished it of its store of arms amounting to

some thirty thousand muskets, whilst others had seized the Arsenal and

possessed themselves of powder.

Thus they prepared to resist the attack that from seven points was to

be launched that evening upon the city. But Paris did not wait for the

attack. It took the initiative. Mad with enthusiasm it conceived the

insane project of taking that terrible menacing fortress, the Bastille,

and, what is more, it succeeded, as you know, before five o’clock that

night, aided in the enterprise by the French Guards with cannon.

The news of it, borne to Versailles by Lambesc in flight with his

dragoons before the vast armed force that had sprouted from the

paving-stones of Paris, gave the Court pause. The people were in

possession of the guns captured from the Bastille. They were erecting

barricades in the streets, and mounting these guns upon them. The attack

had been too long delayed. It must be abandoned since now it could lead

only to fruitless slaughter that must further shake the already sorely

shaken prestige of Royalty.

And so the Court, growing momentarily wise again under the spur of fear,

preferred to temporize. Necker should be brought back yet once again,

the three orders should sit united as the National Assembly demanded. It

was the completest surrender of force to force, the only argument. The

King went alone to inform the National Assembly of that eleventh-hour

resolve, to the great comfort of its members, who viewed with pain and

alarm the dreadful state of things in Paris. “No force but the force of

reason and argument” was their watchword, and it was so to continue for

two years yet, with a patience and fortitude in the face of ceaseless

provocation to which insufficient justice has been done.

As the King was leaving the Assembly, a woman, embracing his knees, gave

tongue to what might well be the question of all France:

“Ah, sire, are you really sincere? Are you sure they will not make you

change your mind?”

Yet no such question was asked when a couple of days later the King,

alone and unguarded save by the representatives of the Nation, came to

Paris to complete the peacemaking, the surrender of Privilege. The Court

was filled with terror by the adventure. Were they not the “enemy,”

these mutinous Parisians? And should a King go thus among his enemies?

If he shared some of that fear, as the gloom of him might lead us to

suppose, he must have found it idle. What if two hundred thousand men

under arms--men without uniforms and with the most extraordinary motley

of weapons ever seen--awaited him? They awaited him as a guard of honour.

Mayor Bailly at the barrier presented him with the keys of the city.

“These are the same keys that were presented to Henri IV. He had

reconquered his people. Now the people have reconquered their King.”

At the Hotel de Ville Mayor Bailly offered him the new cockade, the

tricoloured symbol of constitutional France, and when he had given his

royal confirmation to the formation of the Garde Bourgeoise and to the

appointments of Bailly and Lafayette, he departed again for Versailles

amid the shouts of “Vive le Roi!” from his loyal people.

And now you see Privilege--before the cannon’s mouth, as it

were--submitting at last, where had they submitted sooner they might have

saved oceans of blood--chiefly their own. They come, nobles and clergy,

to join the National Assembly, to labour with it upon this constitution

that is to regenerate France. But the reunion is a mockery--as much a

mockery as that of the Archbishop of Paris singing the Te Deum for

the fall of the Bastille--most grotesque and incredible of all these

grotesque and incredible events. All that has happened to the National

Assembly is that it has introduced five or six hundred enemies to hamper

and hinder its deliberations.

But all this is an oft-told tale, to be read in detail elsewhere. I

give you here just so much of it as I have found in Andre-Louis’ own

writings, almost in his own words, reflecting the changes that were

operated in his mind. Silent now, he came fully to believe in those

things in which he had not believed when earlier he had preached them.

Meanwhile together with the change in his fortune had come a change

in his position towards the law, a change brought about by the other

changes wrought around him. No longer need he hide himself. Who in these

days would prefer against him the grotesque charge of sedition for

what he had done in Brittany? What court would dare to send him to the

gallows for having said in advance what all France was saying now? As

for that other possible charge of murder, who should concern himself

with the death of the miserable Binet killed by him--if, indeed, he had

killed him, as he hoped--in self-defence.

And so one fine day in early August, Andre-Louis gave himself a holiday

from the academy, which was now working smoothly under his assistants,

hired a chaise and drove out to Versailles to the Café d’Amaury, which

he knew for the meeting-place of the Club Breton, the seed from which

was to spring that Society of the Friends of the Constitution better

known as the Jacobins. He went to seek Le Chapelier, who had been one

of the founders of the club, a man of great prominence now, president of

the Assembly in this important season when it was deliberating upon the

Declaration of the Rights of Man.

Le Chapelier’s importance was reflected in the sudden servility of the

shirt-sleeved, white-aproned waiter of whom Andre-Louis inquired for the

representative.

M. Le Chapelier was above-stairs with friends. The waiter desired to

serve the gentleman, but hesitated to break in upon the assembly in

which M. le Depute found himself.

Andre-Louis gave him a piece of silver to encourage him to make the

attempt. Then he sat down at a marble-topped table by the window looking

out over the wide tree-encircled square. There, in that common-room of

the café, deserted at this hour of mid-afternoon, the great man came to

him. Less than a year ago he had yielded precedence to Andre-Louis in

a matter of delicate leadership; to-day he stood on the heights, one

of the great leaders of the Nation in travail, and Andre-Louis was deep

down in the shadows of the general mass.

The thought was in the minds of both as they scanned each other, each

noting in the other the marked change that a few months had wrought.

In Le Chapelier, Andre-Louis observed certain heightened refinements of

dress that went with certain subtler refinements of countenance. He was

thinner than of old, his face was pale and there was a weariness in the

eyes that considered his visitor through a gold-rimmed spy-glass. In

Andre-Louis those jaded but quick-moving eyes of the Breton deputy noted

changes even more marked. The almost constant swordmanship of these

last months had given Andre-Louis a grace of movement, a poise, and a

curious, indefinable air of dignity, of command. He seemed taller by

virtue of this, and he was dressed with an elegance which if quiet was

none the less rich. He wore a small silver-hilted sword, and wore it as

if used to it, and his black hair that Le Chapelier had never seen other

than fluttering lank about his bony cheeks was glossy now and gathered

into a club. Almost he had the air of a petit-maitre.

In both, however, the changes were purely superficial, as each was

soon to reveal to the other. Le Chapelier was ever the same direct and

downright Breton, abrupt of manner and of speech. He stood smiling a

moment in mingled surprise and pleasure; then opened wide his arms. They

embraced under the awe-stricken gaze of the waiter, who at once effaced

himself.

“Andre-Louis, my friend! Whence do you drop?”

“We drop from above. I come from below to survey at close quarters one

who is on the heights.”

“On the heights! But that you willed it so, it is yourself might now be

standing in my place.”

“I have a poor head for heights, and I find the atmosphere too rarefied.

Indeed, you look none too well on it yourself, Isaac. You are pale.”

“The Assembly was in session all last night. That is all. These damned

Privileged multiply our difficulties. They will do so until we decree

their abolition.”

They sat down. “Abolition! You contemplate so much? Not that you

surprise me. You have always been an extremist.”

“I contemplate it that I may save them. I seek to abolish them

officially, so as to save them from abolition of another kind at the

hands of a people they exasperate.”

“I see. And the King?”

“The King is the incarnation of the Nation. We shall deliver him

together with the Nation from the bondage of Privilege. Our constitution

will accomplish it. You agree?”

Andre-Louis shrugged. “Does it matter? I am a dreamer in politics, not

a man of action. Until lately I have been very moderate; more moderate

than you think. But now almost I am a republican. I have been watching,

and I have perceived that this King is--just nothing, a puppet who dances

according to the hand that pulls the string.”

“This King, you say? What other king is possible? You are surely not

of those who weave dreams about Orleans? He has a sort of party, a

following largely recruited by the popular hatred of the Queen and the

known fact that she hates him. There are some who have thought of making

him regent, some even more; Robespierre is of the number.”

“Who?” asked Andre-Louis, to whom the name was unknown.

“Robespierre--a preposterous little lawyer who represents Arras, a

shabby, clumsy, timid dullard, who will make speeches through his nose

to which nobody listens--an ultra-royalist whom the royalists and the

Orleanists are using for their own ends. He has pertinacity, and he

insists upon being heard. He may be listened to some day. But that

he, or the others, will ever make anything of Orleans... pish! Orleans

himself may desire it, but the man is a eunuch in crime; he would, but

he can’t. The phrase is Mirabeau’s.”

He broke off to demand Andre-Louis’ news of himself.

“You did not treat me as a friend when you wrote to me,” he complained.

“You gave me no clue to your whereabouts; you represented yourself as on

the verge of destitution and withheld from me the means to come to your

assistance. I have been troubled in mind about you, Andre. Yet to judge

by your appearance I might have spared myself that. You seem prosperous,

assured. Tell me of it.”

Andre-Louis told him frankly all that there was to tell. “Do you know

that you are an amazement to me?” said the deputy. “From the robe to the

buskin, and now from the buskin to the sword! What will be the end of

you, I wonder?”

“The gallows, probably.”

“Pish! Be serious. Why not the toga of the senator in senatorial France?

It might be yours now if you had willed it so.”

“The surest way to the gallows of all,” laughed Andre-Louis.

At the moment Le Chapelier manifested impatience. I wonder did the

phrase cross his mind that day four years later when himself he rode in

the death-cart to the Greve.

“We are sixty-six Breton deputies in the Assembly. Should a vacancy

occur, will you act as suppleant? A word from me together with the

influence of your name in Rennes and Nantes, and the thing is done.”

Andre-Louis laughed outright. “Do you know, Isaac, that I never meet you

but you seek to thrust me into politics?”

“Because you have a gift for politics. You were born for politics.”

“Ah, yes--Scaramouche in real life. I’ve played it on the stage. Let that

suffice. Tell me, Isaac, what news of my old friend, La Tour d’Azyr?”

“He is here in Versailles, damn him--a thorn in the flesh of the

Assembly. They’ve burnt his chateau at La Tour d’Azyr. Unfortunately he

wasn’t in it at the time. The flames haven’t even singed his insolence.

He dreams that when this philosophic aberration is at an end, there will

be serfs to rebuild it for him.”

“So there has been trouble in Brittany?” Andre-Louis had become suddenly

grave, his thoughts swinging to Gavrillac.

“An abundance of it, and elsewhere too. Can you wonder? These delays

at such a time, with famine in the land? Chateaux have been going up in

smoke during the last fortnight. The peasants took their cue from

the Parisians, and treated every castle as a Bastille. Order is being

restored, there as here, and they are quieter now.”

“What of Gavrillac? Do you know?”

“I believe all to be well. M. de Kercadiou was not a Marquis de La Tour

d’Azyr. He was in sympathy with his people. It is not likely that they

would injure Gavrillac. But don’t you correspond with your godfather?”

“In the circumstances--no. What you tell me would make it now more

difficult than ever, for he must account me one of those who helped to

light the torch that has set fire to so much belonging to his class.

Ascertain for me that all is well, and let me know.”

“I will, at once.”

At parting, when Andre-Louis was on the point of stepping into his

cabriolet to return to Paris, he sought information on another matter.

“Do you happen to know if M. de La Tour d’Azyr has married?” he asked.

“I don’t; which really means that he hasn’t. One would have heard of it

in the case of that exalted Privileged.”

“To be sure.” Andre-Louis spoke indifferently. “Au revoir, Isaac! You’ll

come and see me--13 Rue du Hasard. Come soon.”

“As soon and as often as my duties will allow. They keep me chained here

at present.”

“Poor slave of duty with your gospel of liberty!”

“True! And because of that I will come. I have a duty to Brittany: to

make Omnes Omnibus one of her representatives in the National Assembly.”

“That is a duty you will oblige me by neglecting,” laughed Andre-Louis,

and drove away.