Part 36 (1/2)
At the same instant Madam Desmarais was saying to herself:
”Let me hasten to write to my brother that he may even to-night quit Paris, by the St. Victor barrier.” And, rus.h.i.+ng to her husband as the double doors of the parlor swung to, she exclaimed joyfully:
”Ah, my friend, what a fine fellow that commissioner is! He does like you--he _roars with the tigers and howls with the wolves_!”
”What!” exploded the lawyer, taken aback. ”Do you mean to say--?”
”I mean this worthy man understood that in demanding my arrest, poor friend, you were only playing a role. Not so, Charlotte?”
”Oh, yes! For he said to mother, 'In these times of revolution, honest men are obliged to wear a mask.'”
”And I made answer,” continued Madam Desmarais, ”that, in fact, you were obliged to _howl with the wolves_, as you have so often repeated to me to-day.”
”Wretched woman!” screamed the lawyer, as he sprang at his wife, his fist raised in a paroxysm of rage.
”Father, recollect yourself, for pity!”
A moment later Desmarais's fury gave way to prostration. His features were overspread with an ashen pallor, he reeled, and had barely time to throw himself into an arm-chair, mumbling as if his senses had forsaken him--”I am lost!--The guillotine!”
Madam Desmarais and her daughter flew to the advocate's side, raised his inert head, and made him breathe their salts. Hardly had he come to himself when Gertrude entered and announced:
”Monsieur Billaud-Varenne asks to speak with monsieur, on a very urgent matter.”
The announcement of the visit of his colleague seemed to reanimate the lawyer. A glow of hope shone in his almost deathly countenance. He rose abruptly, saying:
”Billaud must have seen St. Just. If he accepts my proposition, I am saved!” Then, in a curt, hard voice he addressed his wife: ”Retire to your apartment, madam; I have to talk business, grave political business, with Citizen Billaud-Varenne.”
Followed by her daughter, Madam Desmarais went out, and her husband ordered Gertrude to show Citizen Billaud-Varenne into the parlor. As the maid left, the two police agents placed on watch were seated near the parlor door.
”Come now, let's compose ourselves,” muttered the advocate, mopping the perspiration which beaded his brow. ”Billaud-Varenne is another sort of monster, and perhaps more dangerous than Marat. What answer will he bring me? If St. Just consents to be my son-in-law, I have nothing more to fear! If not--ah! What a h.e.l.l!”
Billaud-Varenne entered. The Representative of the people was not a monster, as the advocate had christened him; but a man of inflexible convictions and rigid probity, besides being the possessor of some fortune. He did not touch, any more than Lepelletier St. Fargeau, Herault of Sech.e.l.les, and other wealthy citizens, the compensation allowed to a Representative. Gifted with natural eloquence, always sanguine, there was no patriot more devoted to the Revolution than Billaud-Varenne. He wore a short-haired black wig, and a maroon suit with steel b.u.t.tons; like Robespierre, St. Just, Camille Desmoulins and other Jacobins, he carried dignity even into the care of his person and his clothes.
”Eh, well, colleague,” quoth Billaud-Varenne on entering, ”what am I to surmise by this visit of the Section commissioner, whom I just met leaving your rooms?”
”Confess that it is a spicy incident to find, in the house one of us Mountainists a deposit of royalist poniards!”
”That is very easily explained: You receive a case from the depot, you don't know what is in it--nothing simpler.”
”Do you think, my dear colleague, that it seemed so simple to the commissioner?”
”He could know nothing to the contrary. But, between ourselves, you exhibited extreme rigor towards your wife.”
”You know that also--?”
”I know that you applied for her arrest, and that you demanded two watchmen, whom I found out there, in the ante-room. The precaution seems to me excessive.”
”You disapprove of this measure, you, Billaud-Varenne, you, man of iron?”
”I disapprove of your whole procedure. My dear colleague, there are painful duties to which one resigns himself; but there are useless harshnesses which one does not call down upon his dear ones. That is my way of looking at it.” Without noticing, or without seeming to notice, the uneasiness which his last words produced in Desmarais, Billaud-Varenne proceeded: