Bab Bab 8 · OMNES OMNIBUS

. OMNES OMNIBUS

Andre-Louis rode forth from Rennes committed to a deeper adventure than

he had dreamed of when he left the sleepy village of Gavrillac. Lying

the night at a roadside inn, and setting out again early in the morning,

he reached Nantes soon after noon of the following day.

Through that long and lonely ride through the dull plains of Brittany,

now at their dreariest in their winter garb, he had ample leisure in

which to review his actions and his position. From one who had taken

hitherto a purely academic and by no means friendly interest in the new

philosophies of social life, exercising his wits upon these new ideas

merely as a fencer exercises his eye and wrist with the foils, without

ever suffering himself to be deluded into supposing the issue a real

one, he found himself suddenly converted into a revolutionary firebrand,

committed to revolutionary action of the most desperate kind. The

representative and delegate of a nobleman in the States of Brittany, he

found himself simultaneously and incongruously the representative and

delegate of the whole Third Estate of Rennes.

It is difficult to determine to what extent, in the heat of passion and

swept along by the torrent of his own oratory, he might yesterday have

succeeded in deceiving himself. But it is at least certain that, looking

back in cold blood now, he had no single delusion on the score of what

he had done. Cynically he had presented to his audience one side only of

the great question that he propounded.

But since the established order of things in France was such as to make

a rampart for M. de La Tour d’Azyr, affording him complete immunity for

this and any other crimes that it pleased him to commit, why, then the

established order must take the consequences of its wrong-doing. Therein

he perceived his clear justification.

And so it was without misgivings that he came on his errand of sedition

into that beautiful city of Nantes, rendered by its spacious streets and

splendid port the rival in prosperity of Bordeaux and Marseilles.

He found an inn on the Quai La Fosse, where he put up his horse, and

where he dined in the embrasure of a window that looked out over the

tree-bordered quay and the broad bosom of the Loire, on which argosies

of all nations rode at anchor. The sun had again broken through the

clouds, and shed its pale wintry light over the yellow waters and the

tall-masted shipping.

Along the quays there was a stir of life as great as that to be seen

on the quays of Paris. Foreign sailors in outlandish garments and of

harsh-sounding, outlandish speech, stalwart fishwives with baskets of

herrings on their heads, voluminous of petticoat above bare legs and

bare feet, calling their wares shrilly and almost inarticulately,

watermen in woollen caps and loose trousers rolled to the knees,

peasants in goatskin coats, their wooden shoes clattering on the

round kidney-stones, shipwrights and labourers from the dockyards,

bellows-menders, rat-catchers, water-carriers, ink-sellers, and other

itinerant pedlars. And, sprinkled through this proletariat mass that

came and went in constant movement, Andre-Louis beheld tradesmen in

sober garments, merchants in long, fur-lined coats; occasionally

a merchant-prince rolling along in his two-horse cabriolet to the

whip-crackings and shouts of “Gare!” from his coachman; occasionally a

dainty lady carried past in her sedan-chair, with perhaps a mincing abbe

from the episcopal court tripping along in attendance; occasionally an

officer in scarlet riding disdainfully; and once the great carriage of

a nobleman, with escutcheoned panels and a pair of white-stockinged,

powdered footmen in gorgeous liveries hanging on behind. And there were

Capuchins in brown and Benedictines in black, and secular priests in

plenty--for God was well served in the sixteen parishes of Nantes--and

by way of contrast there were lean-jawed, out-at-elbow adventurers, and

gendarmes in blue coats and gaitered legs, sauntering guardians of the

peace.

Representatives of every class that went to make up the seventy thousand

inhabitants of that wealthy, industrious city were to be seen in

the human stream that ebbed and flowed beneath the window from which

Andre-Louis observed it.

Of the waiter who ministered to his humble wants with soup and bouilli,

and a measure of vin gris, Andre-Louis enquired into the state of public

feeling in the city. The waiter, a staunch supporter of the privileged

orders, admitted regretfully that an uneasiness prevailed. Much would

depend upon what happened at Rennes. If it was true that the King had

dissolved the States of Brittany, then all should be well, and the

malcontents would have no pretext for further disturbances. There had

been trouble and to spare in Nantes already. They wanted no repetition

of it. All manner of rumours were abroad, and since early morning there

had been crowds besieging the portals of the Chamber of Commerce for

definite news. But definite news was yet to come. It was not even known

for a fact that His Majesty actually had dissolved the States.

It was striking two, the busiest hour of the day upon the Bourse, when

Andre-Louis reached the Place du Commerce. The square, dominated by the

imposing classical building of the Exchange, was so crowded that he

was compelled almost to fight his way through to the steps of the

magnificent Ionic porch. A word would have sufficed to have opened a way

for him at once. But guile moved him to keep silent. He would come upon

that waiting multitude as a thunderclap, precisely as yesterday he

had come upon the mob at Rennes. He would lose nothing of the surprise

effect of his entrance.

The precincts of that house of commerce were jealously kept by a line

of ushers armed with staves, a guard as hurriedly assembled by the

merchants as it was evidently necessary. One of these now effectively

barred the young lawyer’s passage as he attempted to mount the steps.

Andre-Louis announced himself in a whisper.

The stave was instantly raised from the horizontal, and he passed and

went up the steps in the wake of the usher. At the top, on the threshold

of the chamber, he paused, and stayed his guide.

“I will wait here,” he announced. “Bring the president to me.”

“Your name, monsieur?”

Almost had Andre-Louis answered him when he remembered Le Chapelier’s

warning of the danger with which his mission was fraught, and Le

Chapelier’s parting admonition to conceal his identity.

“My name is unknown to him; it matters nothing; I am the mouthpiece of a

people, no more. Go.”

The usher went, and in the shadow of that lofty, pillared portico

Andre-Louis waited, his eyes straying out ever and anon to survey that

spread of upturned faces immediately below him.

Soon the president came, others following, crowding out into the

portico, jostling one another in their eagerness to hear the news.

“You are a messenger from Rennes?”

“I am the delegate sent by the Literary Chamber of that city to inform

you here in Nantes of what is taking place.”

“Your name?”

Andre-Louis paused. “The less we mention names perhaps the better.”

The president’s eyes grew big with gravity. He was a corpulent, florid

man, purse-proud, and self-sufficient.

He hesitated a moment. Then--“Come into the Chamber,” said he.

“By your leave, monsieur, I will deliver my message from here--from these

steps.”

“From here?” The great merchant frowned.

“My message is for the people of Nantes, and from here I can speak

at once to the greatest number of Nantais of all ranks, and it is my

desire--and the desire of those whom I represent--that as great a number

as possible should hear my message at first hand.”

“Tell me, sir, is it true that the King has dissolved the States?”

Andre-Louis looked at him. He smiled apologetically, and waved a hand

towards the crowd, which by now was straining for a glimpse of this slim

young man who had brought forth the president and more than half the

numbers of the Chamber, guessing already, with that curious instinct of

crowds, that he was the awaited bearer of tidings.

“Summon the gentlemen of your Chamber, monsieur,” said he, “and you

shall hear all.”

“So be it.”

A word, and forth they came to crowd upon the steps, but leaving clear

the topmost step and a half-moon space in the middle.

To the spot so indicated, Andre-Louis now advanced very deliberately.

He took his stand there, dominating the entire assembly. He removed

his hat, and launched the opening bombshell of that address which

is historic, marking as it does one of the great stages of France’s

progress towards revolution.

“People of this great city of Nantes, I have come to summon you to

arms!”

In the amazed and rather scared silence that followed he surveyed them

for a moment before resuming.

“I am a delegate of the people of Rennes, charged to announce to you

what is taking place, and to invite you in this dreadful hour of our

country’s peril to rise and march to her defence.”

“Name! Your name!” a voice shouted, and instantly the cry was taken up

by others, until the multitude rang with the question.

He could not answer that excited mob as he had answered the president.

It was necessary to compromise, and he did so, happily. “My name,” said

he, “is Omnes Omnibus--all for all. Let that suffice you now. I am a

herald, a mouthpiece, a voice; no more. I come to announce to you that

since the privileged orders, assembled for the States of Brittany in

Rennes, resisted your will--our will--despite the King’s plain hint to

them, His Majesty has dissolved the States.”

There was a burst of delirious applause. Men laughed and shouted, and

cries of “Vive le Roi!” rolled forth like thunder. Andre-Louis waited,

and gradually the preternatural gravity of his countenance came to be

observed, and to beget the suspicion that there might be more to follow.

Gradually silence was restored, and at last Andre Louis was able to

proceed.

“You rejoice too soon. Unfortunately, the nobles, in their insolent

arrogance, have elected to ignore the royal dissolution, and in despite

of it persist in sitting and in conducting matters as seems good to

them.”

A silence of utter dismay greeted that disconcerting epilogue to

the announcement that had been so rapturously received. Andre-Louis

continued after a moment’s pause:

“So that these men who were already rebels against the people, rebels,

against justice and equity, rebels against humanity itself, are now

also rebels against their King. Sooner than yield an inch of the

unconscionable privileges by which too long already they have

flourished, to the misery of a whole nation, they will make a mock

of royal authority, hold up the King himself to contempt. They are

determined to prove that there is no real sovereignty in France but the

sovereignty of their own parasitic faineantise.”

There was a faint splutter of applause, but the majority of the audience

remained silent, waiting.

“This is no new thing. Always has it been the same. No minister in

the last ten years, who, seeing the needs and perils of the State,

counselled the measures that we now demand as the only means of

arresting our motherland in its ever-quickening progress to the abyss,

but found himself as a consequence cast out of office by the influence

which Privilege brought to bear against him. Twice already has M. Necker

been called to the ministry, to be twice dismissed when his insistent

counsels of reform threatened the privileges of clergy and nobility. For

the third time now has he been called to office, and at last it seems

we are to have States General in spite of Privilege. But what the

privileged orders can no longer prevent, they are determined to

stultify. Since it is now a settled thing that these States General are

to meet, at least the nobles and the clergy will see to it--unless we

take measures to prevent them--by packing the Third Estate with their

own creatures, and denying it all effective representation, that they

convert the States General into an instrument of their own will for the

perpetuation of the abuses by which they live. To achieve this end they

will stop at nothing. They have flouted the authority of the King, and

they are silencing by assassination those who raise their voices to

condemn them. Yesterday in Rennes two young men who addressed the people

as I am addressing you were done to death in the streets by assassins at

the instigation of the nobility. Their blood cries out for vengeance.”

Beginning in a sullen mutter, the indignation that moved his hearers

swelled up to express itself in a roar of anger.

“Citizens of Nantes, the motherland is in peril. Let us march to her

defence. Let us proclaim it to the world that we recognize that the

measures to liberate the Third Estate from the slavery in which for

centuries it has groaned find only obstacles in those orders whose

phrenetic egotism sees in the tears and suffering of the unfortunate

an odious tribute which they would pass on to their generations still

unborn. Realizing from the barbarity of the means employed by our

enemies to perpetuate our oppression that we have everything to fear

from the aristocracy they would set up as a constitutional principle for

the governing of France, let us declare ourselves at once enfranchised

from it.

“The establishment of liberty and equality should be the aim of every

citizen member of the Third Estate; and to this end we should stand

indivisibly united, especially the young and vigorous, especially those

who have had the good fortune to be born late enough to be able to

gather for themselves the precious fruits of the philosophy of this

eighteenth century.”

Acclamations broke out unstintedly now. He had caught them in the snare

of his oratory. And he pressed his advantage instantly.

“Let us all swear,” he cried in a great voice, “to raise up in the name

of humanity and of liberty a rampart against our enemies, to oppose to

their bloodthirsty covetousness the calm perseverance of men whose cause

is just. And let us protest here and in advance against any tyrannical

decrees that should declare us seditious when we have none but pure and

just intentions. Let us make oath upon the honour of our motherland that

should any of us be seized by an unjust tribunal, intending against us

one of those acts termed of political expediency--which are, in effect,

but acts of despotism--let us swear, I say, to give a full expression

to the strength that is in us and do that in self-defence which nature,

courage, and despair dictate to us.”

Loud and long rolled the applause that greeted his conclusion, and he

observed with satisfaction and even some inward grim amusement that the

wealthy merchants who had been congregated upon the steps, and who now

came crowding about him to shake him by the hand and to acclaim him,

were not merely participants in, but the actual leaders of, this

delirium of enthusiasm.

It confirmed him, had he needed confirmation, in his conviction that

just as the philosophies upon which this new movement was based had

their source in thinkers extracted from the bourgeoisie, so the need

to adopt those philosophies to the practical purposes of life was most

acutely felt at present by those bourgeois who found themselves debarred

by Privilege from the expansion their wealth permitted them. If it might

be said of Andre-Louis that he had that day lighted the torch of the

Revolution in Nantes, it might with even greater truth be said that the

torch itself was supplied by the opulent bourgeoisie.

I need not dwell at any length upon the sequel. It is a matter of

history how that oath which Omnes Omnibus administered to the citizens

of Nantes formed the backbone of the formal protest which they drew up

and signed in their thousands. Nor were the results of that powerful

protest--which, after all, might already be said to harmonize with the

expressed will of the sovereign himself--long delayed. Who shall say how

far it may have strengthened the hand of Necker, when on the 27th of

that same month of November he compelled the Council to adopt the most

significant and comprehensive of all those measures to which clergy and

nobility had refused their consent? On that date was published the royal

decree ordaining that the deputies to be elected to the States General

should number at least one thousand, and that the deputies of the

Third Estate should be fully representative by numbering as many as the

deputies of clergy and nobility together.