The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty
One day when the lady was in the same quandary as yourself, I mean the
police were hunting after her, I offered her an asylum in my residence.
The lady hesitated, fearing that I was no Joseph--unless so christened.
I gave her my word to respect her, and this is true, eh?”
“I swear it, on my little Toussaint,” said Oliva-Nicole.
“So you believe that I will pay the sum mentioned on the day when the
King shall have been abducted or Marquis Favras arrested, to say nothing
of my serving the running knot strangling him a while ago. For this
affair, at all events, there shall be no halter or gibbet, for I cannot
bind myself any farther. You understand: The man who is born to
be--ahem!”
“My lord, it is as if the courts had awarded us the money,” said the
woman.
“Well, my beauty,” said Cagliostro, putting the ten gold pieces on the
table in a row, “just imbue the captain with this belief of yours.”
He waved his hand for the gambler to confer with his partner. Their
parley lasted only five minutes, but it was most lively. Meanwhile
Cagliostro looked at the cards and the one by which tally was kept.
“I know the run,” he observed, “it is that invented by John Law who
floated the Mississippi Bubble. I lost a million on it.”
This remark seemed to give fresh activity to the dialogue of Beausire
and his light-o-love. At last Beausire was decided; he came forward to
offer his hand to Cagliostro like a horse-dealer about to strike a
bargain. But the other frowned.
“Captain, between gentlemen the parole suffices. Give me yours.”
“On the faith of Beausire, it shall be done.”
“That is enough for me,” said the other, drawing out a diamond-studded
watch on which was a portrait of Frederick the Great. “It is now a
quarter to nine. At nine precisely you are expected under the Royale
Place arcades, near Sully House. Take these ten pieces, pocket them, put
on your coat and buckle on your sword--and do not keep them waiting.”
“Where am I to see your lordship next?” inquired Beausire, obeying the
instructions, without asking reiteration.
“In St. Jean’s Cemetery, if you please. When we have such deadly matters
to discuss the company of the dead is better than the living. Come when
you are free; the first to arrive waits for the other. I have now to
chat with the lady.”
The captain stood on one foot.
“Be easy; I did not make bold when she was a single woman; I have the
more reason to respect her since she is a mother of a family. Be off,
captain.”
Beausire threw a glance at his wife, by courtesy, at all events,
tenderly hugged little Toussaint, saluted the patron with respect mixed
with disquiet, and left the house just as Notre Dame clock bell was
striking the three-quarters after eight.
CHAPTER XXV.
DOWN AMONG THE DEAD
It was nearly midnight when a man hesitatingly walked up to the iron
gateway of St. Jean’s burying-ground, in Croix Blanche Street.
As midnight boomed, he saw a spectre cross the grounds under the yews
and cypresses, and, approaching the grating, turn a key harshly in the
gatelock to show that, if he were a ghost and had the leave to quit his
grave, he also had that to go beyond the cemetery altogether.
“Do you not recognize me, Captain B.?” queried the jesting voice of
Cagliostro, “or did you forget our appointment?”
“I am glad it is you,” said the man in the French Guards sergeant dress,
breathing as if his heart were relieved of great weight. “These devilish
streets are so dark and deserted that I do not know but it is better to
run up against any body than not to meet a soul.”
“Pshaw,” returned the magician, “the idea of your fearing any thing at
any hour of the day or night! You will never make me believe that of a
man like you who would go anywhere with a sword by his side. However,
step on this side of the railings, and you will be tranquil, my dear
Captain Beausire, for you will meet no one but me.”
Beausire acted on the invitation, and the key grated again in the lock,
to fasten the gate behind him.
“Keep to this little path,” continued Cagliostro, “and at twenty paces
you will come upon a little broken altar, on the steps of which we can
nicely manage our little business.”
“Where the mischief do you see any path?” he grumbled, after starting
with a good will. “I meet nothing but nettles tearing my ankles and
grass up to my knees.”
“I own that this cemetery is as badly kept as any I know of; but it is
not astonishing, for here are buried only the condemned prisoners
executed in the City, and no one plants flowers for such poor fellows.
Still we have some undeniable celebrities here, my dear Beausire. If it
were daylight I would show you where lies Bouteville Montmorency,
decapitated for having fought a duel; the Knight of Rohan who suffered
the same fate for conspiring against the Government; Count Horn broken
on the wheel for murdering a Jew; Damiens who tried to kill Louis XVI.,
and lots more. Oh, you are wrong to defame St. Jean’s; it is badly kept
but it well keeps its famous ones.”
Beausire followed the guide so closely that he locked steps with him
like a soldier in the second rank with the predecessor so that when the
latter stopped suddenly he ran up against him.
“Ah! this is a fresh one; the grave of your comrade Fleurdepine, one of
the murderers of François the Assemblymen’s baker, who was hanged a week
ago by sentence at the Chatelet; this ought to interest you, as he was,
like you, a corporal, a sergeant by his own promotion, and a crimp--I
mean a recruiter.”
The hearer’s teeth chattered; the thistles he walked among seemed so
many skeleton fingers stretched up to trip him, and make him understand
that this is the place where he would have his everlasting sleep.
“Well, we have arrived,” said the cicerone, stopping at a mound of
ruins.
Sitting down on a stone he pointed out another to his companion, as if
placed for a conversation. It was time, for the ex-soldier’s knees were
knocking together so that he fell rather than sat on the elevation.
“Now that we are comfortable for a chat,” went on the magician, “let us
know what went on under the Royale Place arches. The meeting must have
been interesting?”
“To tell the truth, count, I am so upset that I really believe you will
get a clearer account by questioning me.”
“Be it so, I am easy going, and the shape of news little matters
provided I get it. How many of you met at the arches?”
“Six, including myself.”
“I wonder if they were the persons I conjecture to be there? _Primo_,
you, no doubt.”
Beausire groaned as though he wished there could be doubt on that head.
“You do me much honor in commencing by me, for there were very great
grandees compared with me.”
“My dear boy, I follow the Gospel: ‘The first shall be last.’ If the
first are to be last, why, the last will naturally lead. So I begin with
you, according to Scripture. Then there would be your comrade Tourcaty,
an old recruiting officer who is charged to raise the Brabant Legion?”
“Yes, we had Tourcaty.”
“Then, there would be that sound royalist Marquie, once sergeant in the
French Guards, now sub-lieutenant in a regiment of the centre line.
Favras, of course? the Masked Man? Any particulars to furnish about the
Masked Man?”
The traitor looked at the inquirer so fixedly that his eyes seemed to
kindle in the dark.
“Why, is it not--“ but he stopped as if fearing to commit a sacrilege if
he went farther.
“What’s this? have you a knot in your tongue? Take care of being
tongue-tied. Knots in the tongue lead to knots round the neck, and as
they are slip ones, they are the worst kind.”
“Well, is it not the King’s b-b-brother?” stammered the other.
“Nonsense, my dear Beausire, it is conceivable that Favras, who wants it
believed that he clasps hands with a royal prince in the plot, should
give out that the Mask hides the King’s brother, Provence, but you and
your mate, Tourcaty, recruiting-sergeants, are men used to measure men
by their height in inches and lines, and it is not likely you would be
cheated that way.”
“No, it is not likely,” agreed the soldier.
“The King’s brother is five feet three and seven lines,” pursued the
magician, “while the Masked Man is nearly five feet six.”
“To a T.,” said the traitor, “that occurred to me; but who can it be if
not the King’s brother?”
“Excuse me, I should be proud and happy to teach you something,”
retorted Cagliostro: “but I came here to be taught by you.”
“But if your lordship knows who this man is,” said the ex-corporal,
becoming more at home, “might I ask his name?”
“A name is a serious thing to divulge,” responded the strange man: “and
really I prefer you should guess. Do you know the story of Œdipus and
the Sphinx?”
“I went to see a tragedy of that title and fell asleep, unfortunately,
in the fourth act.”
“Plague take me, but you ought not to call that a misfortune!”
“But I lose by it now.”
“Not to go into details, suffice it that Œdipus, whom I knew as a boy
at one royal court and as a man at another, was predicted to be the
murderer of his father and the husband of his mother. Believing King
Polybius this father, he departed from his realm, but would not take a
hint from me about the road. The result was that he met his own sire on
the road where, as neither would turn out, a fight ensued in which he
slew his father. Some time after he met the Sphinx. It was a monster
with a woman’s head on a lion’s body which I regret never to have seen,
as it was a thousand years after her death that I travelled that road.
She had the habit of putting riddles to the wayfarers and eating those
who could not read them aright. To my friend Œdipus she put the
following:
“'What animal goes upon four legs at morning, two at noon and three at
night?'”
“Œdipus answered off-hand: ‘Man, who in the morning of life as a
child crawls on all fours; as an adult walks upright; as an old man
hobbles with a stick.'”
“That is so,” exclaimed Beausire: “it crossed the sphinx!”
“She threw herself down a precipice and the winner went on to where he
married his father’s widow to accomplish the prophecy.”
“But what analogy between the Sphinx and the Masked Man?”
“A close one. I propose an enigma; only I am not cruel like the Sphinx
and will not devour you if you fail to guess. Listen: Which lord at the
court is grandson of his father, brother of his mother and uncle of his
sisters?”
“The devil!” burst forth Beausire, falling into a reverie. “Can you not
also help me out here, my lord?”
“Let us turn from pagan story to sacred history, then. Do you know the
tale of Lot?”
“Lot and the Pillar of Salt, and his daughters?”
“The same.”
“Of course, I do. Wait a bit, do they not say that old King Louis XIV,
and his daughter the Lady Adeliade----“
“You are getting warm, captain----“
“In that case the Masked Man would be Count Louis Narbonne!”
“Now that we are no longer in doubt about this conspirator, let us
finish with the aim of the plot. The object is to carry off the King?
And take him to Peronne? what means have you?”
“For money we have two millions cash----“
“Lent by a Genoese banker? I know him. Any other funds?”
“I know of none.”
“So much for the money: now for the men.”
“General Lafayette has authorized the raising of a legion to fly to the
help of Brabant revolting against the Empire.”
“Under cover of which you form a royalist legion? I see the hand of
Lafayette in this,” muttered Cagliostro. “But you will want more than a
legion to carry out this plan--an army.”
“Oh, we have the army. Two hundred horsemen are gathered at Versailles
ready to start at the appointed hour: they can arrive in three columns
at Paris by two in the morning. The first gets in to kill General