The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty

Casting a long look around, Gilbert was encouraged by seeing that most were not so very hostile to the royal cause.

“Whom do you see here hostile to royalty?” he inquired of his guide.

“In my eyes there are but two.”

“Oh, that is not many among four hundred men.”

“It is quite enough when one will be the slayer of Louis XVI. and the other his successor.”

“A future Brutus and a future Caesar here?” exclaimed the doctor starting.

“Oh, apostle with scales over your eyes,” said Cagliostro; “you shall not only see them but touch them. Which shall I commence with?”

“By the overthrower; I respect chronology: let us have Brutus first.”

“You know that men do not use the same means to accomplish a like work,” said Cagliostro, animated as by inspiration. “Therefore our Brutus will not resemble the antique one.”

“That makes me the more eager to see ours.”

“There he is.”

He pointed to a man leaning against the rostrum in such a position that his head alone was in the light. Pale and livid, this head seemed dissevered from the trunk. The eyes seemed to shine with a viper’s expression, with almost scornful hatred, knowing his venom was deadly. Gilbert felt a creeping of the flesh.

“You were right to warn me,” he said; “this is neither Brutus nor Cromwell.”

“No, it is rather Cassius the pale-faced and leaned man whom the Emperor dreaded most. Do you not know him?”

“No; or rather I have seen him in the Assembly. He is one of the longest-winded speechifyers of the Left, to whom nobody listens. A pettifogger from Arras – “

“The very man.”

“His name is Maximilian Robespierre.”

“Just so. Look at him. You are a pupil of Lavater the physiognomist.”

“I see the spite of mediocrity for genius as he watches Barnave.”

“In other words you judge like the world. I grant that he cannot expect to make a hit among all these proven orators; but at least you cannot accuse him of immorality; he is the Honest Man: he never steps outside of the law, or only to act within a new law which he legally makes.”

“But what is this Robespierre?” asked the other.

“You ask that as Strafford did of the future Lord Protector: ‘What is this Cromwell? a brewer!’ But he cut off his head, mark, you aristocrat of the Seventeenth Century!”

“Do you suggest that I run the same risk as Charles First’s Minister,” said Gilbert, trying to smile, but it was frozen on his lips.

“Who can tell?” replied the diviner.

“The more reason for me to inquire about him.”

“Who is Robespierre? he was born in Arras, of Irish extraction, in 1758. He was the best pupil in the Jesuits’ College and won a purse on which he came to study at Paris. It was at the same college where your young Sebastian had an experience. Other boys went out sometimes from those sombre aisles which bleach the pallid, and had holidays with their families and friends; young Robespierre was cooped up and breathed the bad air of loneliness, sadness and tedium; three bad things which rob the mind of its bloom and blight the heart with envy and hatred. The boy became a wilted young man. His benefactor had him appointed judge, but his tender heart would not let him dispose of the life of a man; he resigned and became a lawyer. He took up the case of peasants disputing with the Bishop of Arras and won their just claim; the grateful boors sent him up to the Assembly. There he stood between the clergy’s profound hatred for the lawyer who had dared speak against their bishop and the scorn of the nobles for the scholar reared by charity.”

“What is he doing?”

“Nothing for others but much for the Revolution. If it did not enter into my views that he should be kept poor, I would give him a million francs to-morrow. Not that I should buy him, for he is joked with as the Incorruptible! Our noble debaters have settled that he shall be the butt of the House, for all assemblies must have one. Only one of his colleagues understands and values him – it is Mirabeau. He told me the other day, ‘that man will go far for he believes what he says!'”

“This grows serious,” muttered Gilbert.

“He comes here for he gets an audience. The Jacobin is a young minotaur: suckling a calf, he will devour a nation in a while. I promised to show you an instrument for lopping off heads, did I not? Well, Robespierre will give it more work than all those here.”

“Really, you are funereal, count,” said Gilbert; “if your Caesar does not compensate for your Brutus, I may forget what I came here for.”

“You see my future Emperor yonder, talking with the tragic actor Talma, and with another whom he does not know but who will have a great influence over him. Keep this befriender’s name in mind – Barras, and recall it one of these days.”

“I do not know how right you are, but you choose your typical characters well,” said Gilbert; “this Caesar of yours has the brow to wear a crown and his eyes – but I cannot catch the expression – “

“Because his sight is diverted inwards – such eyes study the future, doctor.”

“What is he saying to Barras?”

“That he would have held the Bastile if he were defending it.”

“He is not a patriot, then?”

“Such as he are nothing before they are all in all.”

“You seem to stick to your idea about this petty officer?”

“Gilbert,” said the soothsayer, extending his hand towards Robespierre, “as truly as that man will re-erect the scaffold of Charles Stuart, so truly will ‘this one'” – he indicated the lieutenant of the line regiment – “will re-erect the throne of Charlemagne.”

“Then our struggle for liberty is useless,” said Gilbert discouraged.

“Who tells you that he may not do as much for us on his throne as the other on his scaffold?”

“Will he be the Titus, or Marcus Aurelius, the god of peace consoling us for the age of bronze?”

“He will be Alexander and Hannibal in one. Born amid war, he will thrive in war-fare and go down in warring. I defy you to calculate how much blood the clergy and nobles have made Robespierre lose by his fits of spite against them; take all that these nobles and priests will lose, multiply upon multiplications, and you will not attain the sea of blood this man will shed, with his armies of five hundred thousand men and his three days’ battles in which hundreds of cannon-shots will be fired.”

“And what will be the outcome of all this turmoil – all this chaos?”

“The outcome of all genesis, Gilbert. We are charged to bury this Old World. Our children will spring up in a new one. This man is but the giant who guards the door. Like Louis XIV., Leo X. and Agustus, he will give his name to the era unfolding.”

“What is his name?” inquired Gilbert, subjugated by Cagliostro’s convinced manner.

“His name is Buonaparte; but he will be hailed in History as Napoleon. Others will follow of his name, but they will be shadows – the dynasty of the first Charlemagne lasted two hundred years; of this second one, a tithe: did I not tell you that in a hundred years the Republic will have the empire of France?”

Gilbert bowed his head. He did not notice that the debates were opened. An hour passed when he felt a powerful hand grip his shoulder.

He turned: Cagliostro had disappeared and Mirabeau stood in his place – after the eagle, the lion.