Part 54 (1/2)
”Correct,” said he to the guard, chuckling, and the guard needed no more. They began to drag the ”sheep” away.
The ”sheep” was Jude.
”I am yours--you promised me my life,” he desperately screamed back. The Admiral smiled contemptuously; his eyes were very bright and hard.
”I promised that Repentigny should die first; you afterwards; I grant you the privilege of going second.” The _Sans-culottes_, their noisy laughs resounding through the corridor and echoed by the baying of the mastiffs, dragged the spy away.
La Tour could not move the Admiral to any leniency for Germain. The bandit followed each of his prayers by a sinister silence. At length la Tour was compelled by lack of time to give him up and speed to the revolutionary tribunal itself, in session underneath. He was just in time to make his appeal, for Lecour was already brought before the jury and the five judges.
The strenuous efforts of Hugues were nullified by the persistent refusal of the Canadian to take advantage of the device proposed to him, by his would-be preserver--of declaring himself a non-aristocrat. La Tour vehemently urged him at least to cry--”_Vive la Republique!_” At that Lecour seemed to conceive an idea, and stepping forward cried instead in a voice of decision--
”Long live the King!”
His sentence was signed immediately.
Sanson's death-carts rolled into the courtyard. The hour for the daily public show had arrived. The rest of the prisoners on trial were peremptorily shoved through the mill of condemnation and all were hustled up to the toilette of the executioner. Hands tied, hair cut, feet bared, half a dozen were pushed up into each cart, seated three on a side, and the carts set out. Seven in the line, the roughest, rudest vehicles in the town, they jerked over the uneven cobbles, rumbled across the Pont-Neuf, and crept along the Rue de la Monnaie and then along the Rue Honore, regardless, both they, their carters, their executioner's men, and their Dragoon escorts, of the agony they freighted. The streets themselves wore unfeeling faces. The merchants had closed their shutters and across the facades of many houses were large inscriptions such as, ”THE REPUBLIC ONE AND INDIVISIBLE,”
”LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY, _or Death_.” And the sun poured down its untempered rays on the condemned. But more pitiless than carts or streets or sun were the coa.r.s.e Jacobins who ran alongside.
With what fine wit they shouted--
”Long live the razor of the Republic!”
A newsvendor began to sing, and was joined in chorus--
”Doctor Guillotin, That great _medecin_ Love of human kind Preoccupies his mind.”
As to the company of the lost in the carts, they consisted of a strange variety. In the first, the princ.i.p.al persons were a majestic woman and her two daughters, sitting erect, with hands tied, costumed freshly and invested still with the old carefulness of manner; but the eyes of the youngest were staring with horror. There was a large dog in the same cart, condemned for carrying despatches. In the next a National a.s.sembly-man, betrayed by Robespierre, tore his hair and raved on his fate. Opposite him two poor sewing-women, falsely accused by a neighbour, sat helplessly, their eyes shut, their lips incessantly repeating prayers; by their side, a boy of eight, with bright, fair features, sobbing, his little hands tied, as the executioner's man showed the crowd with a laugh. His crime was that his father had been a Count. Third came the cart containing Germain, to whom all eyes were directed. On the seat opposite him was Jude, frantically entreating the saints, the driver, the guards, and the crowd to take pity on his soul.
”Buy the bulletin of the revolutionary tribunal; judgements of to-day!
The horrible aristocrat Repentigny brought to justice! Here he is! here is the one who defied the jury!”
”Bodyguard of Capet!”
”Here is the one who killed Bec and Caron!” shrilled Wife Gougeon.
”Long live the Galley-on-Land!”
These cries gradually roused Lecour, and for the first time, putting it all together and recognising faces, he realised the truth of the Admiral's boast that he had been pursued all these years by the crew about him--the organisation of the cave of Fontainebleau. The long-lit hatred of so many eyes stabbed his heart to the quick. Yet of the inward Pa.s.sion of his journey there was no outward appearance. He sat quiet of visage, clinging to the one underlying thought that he had been able to free Cyrene. Alas! how long even yet could it be before she would be riding the same ride?