In the Reign of Terror: The Adventures of a Westminster Boy

Without a word Harry turned away. He had told himself there was no hope; but he knew by the bitter pang he felt now that he had hoped to the last. Then he walked slowly away to tell the news.

There were comparatively few people about the streets, and these all of the lower order. Every shop was closed. Men with scared faces stood at some of the doors to gather the news from passers-by, and pale women looked timidly from the upper windows. When he reached the house he could not summon courage to enter it, but stood for a long time outside, until at last he saw Louise Moulin put her head from the window. He succeeded in catching her eye, and placing his finger on his lips signed to her to come down. A minute later she appeared at the door.

"Is it all true, Monsieur Sandwith? They say they are murdering the prisoners. Surely it must be false! They could never do such a thing!"

"It is true, Louise. I have seen it myself. I went with a disguise to try and rescue our dear lady, even if I could not save the marquis; but I could not get to her—the wretches have murdered them both."

"Oh, my dear lady!" the old woman cried, bursting into tears. "The pretty babe I nursed. To think of her murdered; and the poor young things upstairs—what shall I do!—what shall I do, Monsieur Sandwith!"

"You must break it to them, Louise. Do they know how great the danger is?"

"No. I have kept it from them. They can see from the window that something unusual is going on; everyone can see that. But I told them it was only that the Prussians were advancing. They are anxious—very anxious—but they are quite unprepared for this."

"Break it gradually, Louise. Tell them first that there are rumours that the prisons have been attacked. Come down again presently as if to get more news, and then tell them that there are reports that the prisoners have been massacred, and then at last tell them all the truth."

"But will you not come up, Monsieur Sandwith—they trust you so much? Your presence will be a support to them."

"I could do nothing now," Harry said sadly. "God only can console them. They had best be by themselves for awhile. I will come in this evening. The first burst of grief will be over then, and my talk may aid them to rouse themselves. Oh, if we had but tried to get them out of prison sooner. And yet who could have foreseen that here in Paris thousands of innocent prisoners, men and women, would be murdered in cold blood!"

Finding that she could not persuade Harry to enter, Louise turned to perform her painful duty; while Harry, thoroughly exhausted with the night of horrors, made his way home, and throwing himself on the bed, fell asleep, and did not wake until evening. His first step was to plunge his head into water, and then, after a good wash, to prepare a meal. His sleep had restored his energy, and with brisk steps he made his way through the streets to Louise Moulin. He knocked with his knuckles at the outer door of her apartments. The old nurse opened it quietly.

"Come in," she said, "and sit down. They are in their room, and I think they have cried themselves to sleep. My heart has been breaking all day to see them. It has been dreadful. Poor little Virginie cried terribly, and sobbed for hours; but it was a long time before the others cried. Marie fainted, and when I got her round lay still and quiet without speaking. Jeanne was worst of all. She sat on that chair with her eyes staring open and her face as white as if she were dead. She did not seem to hear anything I said; but at last, when Virginie's sobs were stopping, I began to talk to her about her mother and her pretty ways when she was a child, and then at last Jeanne broke down, and she cried so wildly that I was frightened, and then Marie cried too; and after a while I persuaded them all to lie down; and as I have not heard a sound for the last hour I hope the good God has sent them all to sleep."

"I trust so indeed, Louise. I will stay here quietly for an hour, and then if we hear nothing I will go home, and be back again in the morning. Sleep will do more for them than anything I can say."

At the end of an hour all was still quiet, and Harry with a somewhat lightened heart took his departure.

At nine o'clock next morning he was again at the house. When he entered Virginie ran to him, and throwing her arms round his neck again burst into a passion of tears. Harry felt that this was the best thing that could have happened, for the others were occupied for some time in trying to soothe her, crying quietly to themselves while they did so. At last her sobs became less violent.

"And now, Harry," Marie said, turning to him, "will you tell us all about it?"

"I will tell you only that your dear father and mother died, as you might be sure they would, calmly and fearlessly, and that they suffered but little. More than that I cannot tell you now. Some day farther on, when you can bear it, I will tell you of the events of the last forty-eight hours. At present I myself dare not think of it, and it would harm you to know it.

"Do not, I pray you, ask me any questions now. We must think of the future. Fortunately you passed unsuspected the last time they searched the house; but it may not be so another time. You may be sure that these human tigers will not be satisfied with the blood they have shed, but that they will long for fresh victims. The prisons are empty now, but they will soon be filled again. We must therefore turn our thoughts to your making your escape from the city. I fear that there is peril everywhere; but it must be faced. I think it will be useless for us to try and reach the frontier by land. At every town and village they will be on the look-out for fugitives, and whatever disguise you might adopt you could not escape observation. I think, then, that we must make for the sea and hire a fishing-boat to take us across to England.

"But we must not hurry. In the first place, we must settle all our plans carefully and prepare our disguises; in the next place, there will be such tremendous excitement when the news of what has happened here is known that it would be unsafe to travel. I think myself it will be best to wait a little until there is a lull. That is what I want you to think over and decide.

"I do not think there is any very great danger here for the next few days. For a little time they will be tired of slaying; and, from what I hear, the Girondists are marked out as the next victims. They say Danton has denounced them at the Jacobin Club. At any rate it will be better to get everything in readiness for flight, so that we can leave at once if we hear of any fresh measures for a search after suspects."

Harry was pleased to find that his suggestion answered the purpose for which he made it. The girls began to discuss the disguises which would be required and the best route to be taken, and their thoughts were for a time turned from the loss they had sustained. After an hour's talk he left them greatly benefited by his visit.

For the next few days Harry spent his time for the most part by the bedside of Victor de Gisons. The fever was still at its height, and the doctor gave but small hopes of his recovery. Harry determined that he would not leave Paris until the issue was decided one way or the other, and when with the girls he discouraged any idea of an immediate flight. This was the more easy, for the news from the provinces showed that the situation was everywhere as bad as it was at the capital.

The Commune had sent to all the committees acting in connection with them in the towns throughout the country the news of the execution of the enemies of France confined in the prisons, and had urged that a similar step should at once be taken with reference to all the prisoners in their hands. The order was promptly obeyed, and throughout France massacres similar to those in Paris were at once carried out. A carnival of murder and horror had commenced, and the madness for blood raged throughout the whole country. Such being the case, Harry found it by no means difficult to dissuade the girls from taking instant steps towards making their escape.

He was, however, in a state of great uneasiness. Many of the moderate deputies had been seized, others had sought safety in flight, and the search for suspected persons was carried on vigorously. Difficult and dangerous as it would be to endeavour to travel through France with three girls, he would have attempted it without hesitation rather than remain in Paris had it not been for Victor de Gisons.

One day a week after the massacres at the prisons he received another terrible shock. He had bought a paper from one of the men shouting them for sale in the street, and sat down in the garden of the Tuileries to read it. A great portion of the space was filled with lists of the enemies of the people who had been, as it was called, executed. As these lists had formed the staple of news for several days Harry scarce glanced at the names, his eye travelling rapidly down the list until he gave a start and a low cry. Under the heading of persons executed at Lille were the names of Ernest de St. Caux, Jules de St. Caux, Pierre du Tillet—"aristocrats arrested, August 15th, in the act of endeavouring to leave France in disguise."

For some time Harry sat as if stunned. He had scarce given a thought to his friends since that night they had left, the affairs of the marquis and his wife, of their daughters, and of Victor de Gisons, almost excluding everything else. When he thought of the boys it had been as already in England, under the charge of du Tillet.

He had thought, that if they had been arrested on the way he should have been sure to hear of it; and he had such confidence in the sagacity of Monsieur du Tillet that he had looked upon it as almost certain he would be able to lead his two charges through any difficulty and danger which might beset them. And now he knew that his hopes had been ill founded—that his friends had been arrested when almost within sight of the frontier, and had been murdered as soon as the news of the massacres in Paris had reached Lille.

He felt crushed with the blow. A warm affection had sprung up between him and Ernest, while from the first the younger boy had attached himself to him; and now they were dead, and the girls were alone in the world, save for himself and the poor young fellow tossing with fever! It was true that if his friends had reached England in safety they could not have aided him in the task he had before him of getting the girls away; still their deaths somehow seemed to add to his responsibilities.

Upon one thing he determined at once, and that was, that until his charges were safely in England they should not hear a whisper of this new and terrible misfortune which had befallen them.

In order to afford the girls some slight change, and anxious at their pale faces, the result of grief and of their unwonted confinement, Louise Moulin had persuaded them to go out with her in the early mornings when she went to the markets. The fear of detection was small, for the girls had now become accustomed to their thick shoes and rough dress; and indeed she thought that it would be safer to go out, for the suspicions of her neighbours might be excited if the girls remained secluded in the house. Harry generally met them soon after they started, and accompanied them in their walk.

One morning he was walking with the two younger girls, while Marie and the old nurse were together a short distance in front of them. They had just reached the flower-market, which was generally the main object of their walks—for the girls, having passed most of their time in the country, were passionately fond of flowers—when a man on horseback wearing a red sash, which showed him to be an official of the republic, came along at a foot-pace. His eyes fell upon Marie's face and rested there, at first with the look of recognition, followed by a start of surprise and satisfaction. He reined in his horse instantly, with the exclamation:

"Mademoiselle de St. Caux!"

For a moment she shrank back, her cheek paler even than before; then recovering herself she said calmly:

"It is myself, Monsieur Lebat."

"Citizen Lebat," he corrected. "You forget, there are no titles now—we have changed all that. It goes to my heart," he went on with a sneer, "to be obliged to do my duty; but however unpleasant it is, it must be done. Citizens," he said, raising his voice, "I want two men well disposed to the state."

As to be ill disposed meant danger if not death, several men within hearing at once came forward.

"This female citizen is an aristocrat in disguise," he went on, pointing to Marie; "in virtue of my office as deputy of Dijon and member of the Committee of Public Safety, I arrest her and give her into your charge. Where is the person who was with her? Seize her also on a charge of harbouring an enemy of the state!"

But Louise was gone. The moment Lebat had looked round in search of assistance Marie had whispered in Louise's ear: "Fly, Louise, for the sake of the children; if you are arrested they are lost!"

Had she herself been alone concerned, the old woman would have stood by Marie and shared her fate; but the words "for the sake of the children" decided her, and she had instantly slipped away among the crowd, whose attention had been called by Lebat's first words, and dived into a small shop, where she at once began to bargain for some eggs.

"Where is the woman?" Lebat repeated angrily.

"What is she like?" one of the bystanders asked.

But Lebat could give no description whatever of her. He had noticed that Marie was speaking to some one when he first caught sight of her face; but he had noticed nothing more, and did not know whether the woman was young or old.

"I can't tell you," he said in a tone of vexation. "Never mind; we shall find her later on. This capture is the most important."

So saying he set out, with Marie walking beside him, with a guard on either hand. In the next street he came on a party of four of the armed soldiers of the Commune, and ordered them to take the place of those he had first charged with the duty, and directed them to proceed with him to the Maine.

Marie was taken at once before the committee sitting en permanence for the discovery and arrest of suspects.

"I charge this young woman with being an aristocrat in disguise. She is the daughter of the ci-devant Marquis de St. Caux, who was executed on the 2d of September at Bicetre."

"Murdered, you mean, sir," Marie said in a clear haughty voice. "Why not call things by their proper name?"

"I am sorry," Lebat went on, not heeding the interruption, "that it should fall to my lot to denounce her, for I acknowledge that in the days before our glorious Revolution commenced I have visited at her father's chateau. But I feel that my duty to the republic stands before any private considerations."

"You have done perfectly right," the president of the committee said. "As I understand that the accused does not deny that she is the daughter of the ci-devant marquis, I will at once sign the order for her committal to La Force. There is room there still, though the prisons are filling up again fast."

"We must have another jail delivery," one of the committee laughed brutally; and a murmur of assent passed through the chamber.