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

“My lord!”

“Do not let us get warm, sir: we quarrelled once and you were obliged to go out and pick up your sword which I threw out of the window. You will remember?” went on the count, seeing that the man made no reply: “it is a good thing to have a memory. I ask you again would you change your actual position, though down to the solitary louis you ‘extracted’ from young Toussaint” – this time the allegation passed without protest – “for the precarious scrape from which I relieved you?”

“No, my lord, you are right – I should not change. At that epoch, alas! I was parted from my darling Nicole.”

“To say nothing of being hunted by the police, on account of your robbing the Portuguese Embassy. What the mischief has become of that case, a villainous one, as I remember it, Captain B.?”

“It has been dropped, my lord,” was the reply.

“So much the better: though I would not reckon on its not being picked up again. The police are awful for raking up past grievances, and the ruling powers might want to be on good terms with Portugal. However, that apart, in spite of the hard lines to which you are reduced, you are happy. If you had a thousand louis, your felicity would be complete, eh?”

Nicole’s eyes glittered and her partner’s flashed flames.

“Lord be good to us,” cried the latter: “with half I would buy a lot in the country and live a rural life on the rest like a country squire!”

“Like Cincinnatus!”

“While Nicole would educate the boy.”

“Like Cornelia! Death of my life, Captain Beausire! not only would this be exemplary but touching: do you hope to earn as much as that in the piece of business you have in hand?”

“What business?” queried the other, starting.

“That you are carrying on as sergeant of the Guards; for which you are to meet a man, this evening, under the Palais Royal arcades.”

“Oh, my lord,” moaned Beausire, turning pale as a corpse and wringing his hands. “Do not destroy me!”

“Why, you are going distracted now? Am I the Chief of Police to ruin you?”

“There, I told you, you are getting into a pretty pickle,” exclaimed Nicole. “I know nothing about it, my lord, but whenever he hides any game from me, I know it is a bad one.”

“But you are wrong, my dear lady, for this is an excellent speculation.”

“Is it not?” cried the gambler. “The count, as a nobleman, understands that all the nobility are in this scheme – “

“For it to succeed. It must be allowed though, that the people are interested in its failure. If you will believe me, captain – you understand that a friend is giving advice – you will take no part in it for the peers or the people. Better act for yourself.”

“Certainly, for yourself,” said Nicole. “Blest if you have not toiled long enough for others: so that it is high time you looked after Number One.”

“You hear the lady, who speaks like a born orator. Bear this in mind, Friend Beausire, all spec’s have a good and a bad side, one for the winners, one for the losers: no affair however good, can benefit everybody; the whole trouble is to hit on the right side.”

“And you do not think I am there, eh?”

“Not at all; I would even add, if you are willful – for you know I dabble in telling fortunes – that you will not only risk your honor, and the fortune you seek – but your life. You will most likely be hanged!”

“They do not hang noblemen,” objected Beausire, wiping the perspiration streaming from his brow.

“That is so: but to avoid the gallows-tree and have your head cut off, you would have to prove your family-tree; it would take so long that the court would lose patience, and string you up for the time being – leaving your widow to demand compensation if you turned out to have deserved decapitation. Still you may say that it does not matter, as it is the crime that casts shame and not the scaffold, to quote a poet. Still again, I dare say you are not so attached to your opinions that you would lay down your life for them; I understand this. Deuse take us, but we have only one life, as another poet says, not so great as the other, but as truthful.”

“My lord,” faltered the ex-guardsman, “I have remarked in my too brief acquaintance with your lordship, that you have a way of speaking of some things which would make the hair of a more timid man than me bristle on his head.”

“Hang me if that is my intention,” responded Cagliostro; “Besides you are not a timid man.”

“No: yet there are circumstances,” began Beausire.

“I understand; such as when one has the jail for theft behind one and the gallows for high treason before one – for I suppose they give that name to the crime of kidnapping the King.”

“My lord,” cried Beausire, terrified.

“Wretch, is it on kidnapping that you build your fortune?” demanded Oliva.

“Oh, he was not wrong to dwell in golden dreams, my dear lady; only, as I have already said, each affair has a dark side and a bright one and Beausire has the misfortune to take the dark one; all he has to do is to shift.”

“If there is time, what must I do?” asked the bully.

“Suppose one thing,” said the gentleman; “that your conspiracy fails. Suppose that the accomplices of the masked man and the one in the brown cloak are arrested; we may suppose anything in these times – suppose they are doomed to death! Suppose – for Augeard and Bezenval have been acquitted, so that anything unlikely may come round nowadays – suppose that you are one of these accomplices; you have the halter round your neck, when – say what they like – a man always shows a little of the white feather about then – “

“Do have done, my lord! I entreat you, for I seem to feel the rope throttling me!”

“That is not astonishing as I am supposing it is round your neck! Suppose, then, that they say to you: ‘Poor old Beausire, this is your own fault. Not only might you have dodged this Old Bony who clutches you in his claws, but gain a thousand louis to buy the pretty cottage under the green trees where you long to live with ever-lovely Oliva and merry little Toussaint, with the balance of what was partly spent for the purchase of your homestead. You might live, as you said, like a squire, in high boots in the winter and easy shoes the rest of the year; while, instead of this delicious lookout, you have the Execution-place, planted with two or three one or two-armed trees, of which the highest holds out its ugly branch unto you. Faugh! my poor Captain Beausire, what a hideous prospect!'”

“But how am I to elude it – how make the thousand to ensure my peace and that of dear Nicole and little Toussaint?”

“Your good angel would say: ‘Why not apply to the Count of Cagliostro, a rich nobleman who is in town for his pleasure and who is weary of nothing to do. Go to him and tell him – “

“But I do not know where he lives! I did not even know he is in town; I did not know he was still alive!” protested Beausire.

“He lives ever. It is because you would not know these facts that he comes to you, my dear Beausire, so that you will have no excuse. You have merely to say to him: ‘Count, I know how fond you are of hearing the news. I have some fresh for you. The King’s brother is conspiring with Marquis Favras. I speak from full knowledge as I am the right-hand man of the marquis. The aim of the plot is to take the King away to Peronne. If your lordship likes to be amused, I will tell him step by step how the moves are played.’ Thereupon the count, who is a generous lord, would reply: ‘If you will really do this, Captain Beausire, as all laborers are worthy of their hire, I put aside twenty-four thousand livres for a charitable act; but I will balk myself in this whim, and you shall have them on the day when you come and tell me either that the King shall be taken off or Marquis Favras captured – in the same way as you are given these ten louis – not as hand-money or as an advance, or a loan, but as a pure gift.”

Like an actor rehearsing with the “properties,” Cagliostro pulled out the weighty purse, stuck in finger and thumb and with a dexterity bearing witness to his experience in such actions, whipped out just ten pieces, neither more nor less, which Beausire – we must do him justice – thrust out his hand with alacrity to receive.

“Excuse me, captain,” said the other, gently fencing off the hand, “we are only playing at Supposes.”

“Yes, but through suppositions one arrives at the fact,” responded the cardplayer, whose eyes glowed like burning coals.

“Have we reached this point?”

Beausire hesitated; let us hasten to say that it was not honor, fidelity to plighted word, or a pricked conscience which caused the wavering. Did our readers know Beausire, they would not want this denial. It was the simple fear that the count would not keep his word.

“I see what you are passing through,” said the tempter.

“Ay, my lord, I shrink from betraying the trust a gentleman puts in me,” replied the adventurer. “It is very hard,” he seemed to say as he raised his eyes heavenward.

“Nay, it is not that, and this is another proof of the old saw that ‘No man knows himself',” said the count. “You are afraid that I will not pay you the sum stated. The objection is quite natural; but I shall give security.”

“My lord certainly need not.”

“Personal security, Madam Legay.”