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

“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 Lafayette: the second to settle old Necker; the third will do for Mayor Baily.”

“Good!” exclaimed the listener.

“This done, the cannons are spiked, and all rally on the Champs Elysées, and march on the Tuileries where our friends will be masters.”

“What about the National Guards there?”

“The Brabant Column attends to them: it joins with it part of the Guards which has been bought over: four hundred Swiss, three hundred country friends, and so on. These will have taken possession of all the gates by help within. We rush in on the King, saying: ‘Sire, the St. Antoine ward is in insurrection; a carriage is ready – you must be off!’ if he consents, all right: if he resists, we hustle him out and drive him to St. Denis.”

“Capital!”

“There we find twenty thousand infantry, with all the country royalists, well armed, in great force, who conduct the King to Peronne.”

“Better and better. What do you do there?’

“The gathering there brings our whole array up to one hundred and fifty thousand men.”

“A very pretty figure,” commented the Chief of the Invisibles.

“With the mass we march on Paris, cutting off supplies above and below on the river. Famished Paris capitulates; the Assembly is kicked to pieces, and the King enjoys his own again on the throne of his fathers.”

“Amen!” sang Cagliostro. “My dear Beausire,” he went on, rising, “your conversation is most agreeable; but as they say of the greatest orators, when they have spoken all that is in them, nothing more is to be got. You are done?”

“Yes, my lord, for the moment.”

“Then, good-night: when you want another ten louis call for them at my home, at Bellevue.”

“At the Count of Cagliostro’s?”

“No; they would not know who you meant. Ask for Baron Zannone.”

“But that is the banker who cashed up the two millions on the King’s brother’s notes!” ejaculated Beausire.

“That is not unlikely; only I do such a large business that I have confounded it with the others. That is why it was not clear in my mind but now you remind me, I believe I did something of the kind.”

Beausire went his way, stupefied that a banker could forget a matter of two millions, and beginning to believe that he was quite right in siding with the lender rather than with the borrower. He bowed lowly while the count favored him with a slight nod at the cemetery gateway.

CHAPTER XXVI

GAMAIN PROVES HE IS THE MASTER

THE reader will not be much surprised, after the permission Lafayette gave for the King to have his locksmith call to relieve him of a trouble in lockmaking, that Gamain should present himself at the palace with his apprentice who gave the name of Louis Lecomte.