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

“In the King’s palace. Only instead of its being a clothes-press door, or rather that of a safe in the wall, it is a cupboard door this time.”

“Are you gaming me that the King, while he certainly dabbles in locksmithery, sent for you to do up a door?”

“He did, though. Poor fellow, he thought he was smart enough to get on without me, and began to make a lock. ‘What good is Gamain anyhow?’ but he got mixed up with the works in the lock and had to fall back on Gamain after all.”

“So you were hunted up by one of his trusty flunkeys, Hue, or Durey or Weber, eh?”

“That is just where you make a mistake. He has taken a green hand on to help him, who is as much of an amateur as himself; a young sprig who popped in upon me one morning at Versailles, and says he: ‘Look here, Daddy Gamain, the King and me tried to make a lock, and by Jove we have made a muddle of it. The old thing won’t work! ‘What have I to do with it?’ I wanted to know. ‘You are wanted to set it right,’ says he, and as I said that it was a plant and he did not come from the King, he slaps some gold on the bench and says: ‘Is not this earnest enough? here are twenty-five louis which the King sends you to remove any doubts.’ He gave me them, too.”

“So these are what you are sporting round with you?”

“No: these are another lot. These were for traveling expenses and a sort of a payment on account!”

“Fifty louis for filing up an old lock? there is a snake in the grass, Friend Gamain.”

“Just what I said to myself: particularly as the ’prentice does not seem a regular craftsman but dodged my question about work and where you stop when you are on tramp in France, as well as who is Mother Marianne.”

“But you are not the man to be taken in when you see a boy at work.”

“I do not say so much as that. The lad plied the file and the chisel handily. I have seen him cut a rod of iron through velean at a blow, and put a hole in a band with a rattail file as if using a gimlet on a lath. But there is more theory than practice about his style: he no sooner finishes the job than he washed his hands, and what hands? so white that never did a locksmith boast the like. You don’t see me scrubbing my hands till they are white!”

With pride he showed his grubby, black and callous hands which indeed seemed to defy all the cosmetics and skin-bleaches in the world.

“But in short what did you do when you got to the King’s?” asked the other, bringing the man to the point most interesting to him.

“It looked as though we were expected: in the forge the King showed me a lock commenced not badly, but he had got in a corner. It was one with three wards, d’ye see, which few locksmiths can grapple with and royal ones least of all. I looked at it and saw where the key caught. ‘All right,’ I says; ‘let me alone with it for an hour and it will work as if greased,’ ‘Go ahead,’ said the King, ‘consider yourself at home; call for anything you like while we get the cupboard ready on which the lock goes.’ On which he went out with the imp of a ’prentice.”

“By the main stairs?” queried the gunsmith carelessly.

“No: by a secret one leading to his study. When I got through, I had done something, too; I said to myself: ‘It is all bosh about this here cupboard; they are laying their heads together for some mischief.’ So I crept down softly and opening the study door, I got a glimpse of what they were up to.”

“And what were they up to?” inquired the gunsmith.

“Well, I did not catch them in the act, for they must have heard me coming, for I have not the light step of a dancer. They pretended to be up and coming to me, and the King said, ‘Oh this is you, and you have finished? Come along for I have something else for you to do.’ So he hurried me through the study, but not so fast that I did not spy spread out on a table a big map which I believe to be France on account of a lily-flower printed in one corner. From the midst three rows of pins ran out to the edges like files of soldiers, for they were stuck in at regular spaces.”

“Really, you are wonderfully sharp,” said the stranger in affected admiration: “So you believe that instead of bothering about their cupboard, they were busy with this map?”

“I am sure of it: the pins had wax heads of different colors, black, blue and red; and the King was using a red one to pick his teeth with, without thinking what he was about.”

“Gamain, if I discovered some new kind of gun, hang me if I would let you come into my workshop, even to pass through it, or I would bandage your eyes as on the day you were taken to the great nobleman’s house though you did perceive that the house had ten steps to the stoop and that it fronted on the main avenue.”

“Wait a bit,” said the smith, enchanted at the eulogies; “you have not heard all – there is really a safe in the wall.”

“What wall?”

“Of the inner corridor running from the royal alcove to the young prince’s room.”

“What you say is very queer. And was this safe open?”

“Is it likely? I squinted round in all ways but it was no use my asking myself: ‘Where on earth is this secret press?’ Then the King gave me a look and says he: ‘Gamain, I have always had trust in you. So I would not let anybody but you know the secret.’ While speaking, the King lifted a panel, while the boy held a light, for the corridor has no windows, and showed me a two foot round hole. Seeing my astonishment, he winked to our companion and said: ‘Do you see that hole, my friend; I made it to keep money in; this young fellow helped me during the four or five days he has been staying in the palace. Now we want the lock put on the panel so that it will be hidden and not interfere with its sliding. Do you want an aid, in which case this young man will help you? or can you do without? if so I will set him to work elsewhere. ‘Tut,’ I said, ‘you know that I like to go alone when I am the job. It is four hour’s work for a good hand but I am a master and will be through in three. Go and attend to your work, young fellow; and your Majesty may stick to his. And in three hours fetch along anything you want kept in this meat-safe.’

“We may believe the young chap had other fish to fry, for I saw nothing more of him: but when the time was up, the King came back. ‘U. P., it is all UP!’ said I, and I made him see that the door slid without the lock being in the way as neat as the Automatons of Vaucanson. ‘Good,’ said he; ‘just help me count the cash I am going to bestow here.’ A valet brought four fine bags of coin and we reckoned a million a-piece; there were twenty-and-five over. ‘There you are, Gamain,’ said the King, ‘Take them for your trouble!’ as though it was not disgraceful to give an old mate a beggarly twenty-five – a man with five children, and he has been handling two millions! What do you think of that?”

“The truth is that this is mean,” said the other, shrugging his shoulders.

“Wait, this is not all. I put the coin in my pocket and said. ‘I thank your Majesty: but Lord love you, I have not had sup or bite since morning and I am ready to burst!’ I had barely finished before the Queen walked in by a secret door, so that she was on the top of us without saying Lookout! She had a platter in her hand with a cake and a glass on it.

“'My dear Gamain, as you are hungry and thirsty, try our wine and cake!’ ‘Sorry to trouble you, Royal Madam,’ I said, but just think of a drop like that and a mouthful of wine like that fancy cake for a man. What do you expect sensible in that line from a Queen, though? it is plain that such folks are never really hungry and athirst. A glass of wine – oh, dear!”

“So you refused it?”

“It would have been better if I had; but I drank. As for the cake I rolled it up in my handkerchief, saying ‘What is no good for the father will do for the children.’ Then I thanked his Majesty, as though it were worth thanks, and I started off, saying that they will not catch me in their old palace in a hurry again.”

“And why do you say you had better have refused the drink?”

“Because they had put poison in it! Hardly had I got over the bridge before I was seized by thirst, such a raging thirst that between the liquor saloons and the river, I balanced myself. I could tell it was queer stuff they gave me for the more I took the thirstier I was. This kept on with my trying to correct that dose till I lost my senses. They may be easy on this score: if ever they come to me for a good character, I will say they gave me twenty-five louis for four hours’ work and counting a million, and for fear I should tell where they keep their treasure, they poisoned me like a dog!”

“And I, my dear Gamain,” said the hearer, rising as though he had all the information he wanted: “I will support your evidence by swearing that I saved you with the antidote.”

“That is why we are sworn comrades till death do us part,” exclaimed the smith, grasping the speaker’s hands.

Refusing with Spartan sobriety the wine which his friend offered him for the third or fourth time – for the amoniacal dose had sobered him as well as disgusted him with drink for a time, Gamain took the road for Versailles where he arrived safely at two in the morning with the King’s coin in his pocket and the Queen’s cake in another.

Left behind in the saloon, the pretended gunsmith drew out a set of tablets mounted in diamonds and gold, and wrote with fluid-ink pencil these two notes:

“An iron safe behind the King’s alcove, in the unlighted passage leading to the prince’s rooms. Make sure whether Louis Lecomte, locksmith’s boy, is not really Count Louis, son of Marquis Bouille, arrived eleven days ago from Metz.”

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE FIRST GUILLOTINE

ON Christmas Eve, a party was given at the Princess Lamballe’s, which the Queen’s presiding over made it really her own reception.

Isidore Charny had returned from Italy that morning and he had found King and Queen very kind to him. Two reasons influenced the latter: one his being the brother of Count Charny, which was a charm in his absence, and his bringing back news from the fugitive princes which suited her wishes.

They backed the Favras scheme and urged her to flee for Turin.

He left her only to go and acquaint Favras with the encouragement. The Queen had said nothing positive about the flight: but he took enough to the conspirator to fill him with joy. For the rest, the cash was in hand, the men notified to stand ready, and the King would only have to nod to have the whole plot set in motion.

The silence of the royal couple was the only thing which worried him. The Queen broke this by sending Isidore, and vague as were the words he repeated, they acquired weight from coming out of a royal mouth.

At nine the young viscount went to Lady Lamballe’s.

Count Provence was uneasy; Count Louis Narbonne walked about with the ease of a man quite at home among princes. Isidore was not known to any of the circle of the princes’ bosom friends, but his well-known name and the partiality accorded him by the princess led to all hands being held out to him.

Besides, he brought news from the foreign refuge where so many had relatives.

When he had delivered his budget, the conversation returned to its former channel; the young men were laughing about a machine for executing criminals which Dr. Guillotin had shown in a full size working model and had proposed to the National Assembly.