The Red Cockade

"To the village to gossip," he answered churlishly. "There is not a turnspit now but must hear the news, and take his own leave and time to gather it. The world is turned upside down, I think. It is time his Majesty the King did something."

"Did not M. le Curé leave a message?"

The old servant hesitated. "Well, he did," he said grudgingly. "He said that if M. le Vicomte would stay at home until the afternoon, he should hear from him."

"But he was going to Cahors!" I said. "He is not returning to-day?"

"He went by the little alley to the village," André answered obstinately. "I do not know anything about Cahors."

"Then go to the village now," I said, "and learn whether he took the Cahors road."

The old man went grumbling, and I remained alone on the terrace. An abnormal quietness, as of the afternoon, lay on the house this summer morning. I sat down on a stone seat against the wall, and began to go over the events of the night, recalling with the utmost vividness things to which at the time I had scarcely given a glance, and shuddering at horrors that in the happening had barely moved me. Gradually my thoughts passed from these things which made my pulses beat; and I began to busy myself with Mademoiselle. I saw her again sitting low in the saddle and weeping as she went. The bees hummed in the warm air, the pigeons cooed softly in the dovecot, the trees on the lawn below me shaped themselves into an avenue over her head, and, thinking of her, I fell asleep.

After such a night as I had spent it was not unnatural. But when I awoke, and saw that it was high noon, I was wild with vexation. I sprang up, and darting suspicious glances round me, caught André skulking away under the house wall. I called him back, and asked him why he had let me sleep.

"I thought that you were tired, Monsieur," he muttered, blinking in the sun. "M. le Vicomte is not a peasant that he may not sleep when he pleases."

"And M. le Curé? Has he not returned?"

"No, Monsieur."

"And he went-which way?"

He named a village half a league from us; and then said that my dinner waited.

I was hungry, and for a moment asked no more, but went in and sat down to the meal. When I rose it was nearly two o'clock. Expecting Father Benôit every moment, I bade them saddle the horses that I might be ready to go; and then, too restless to remain still, I went into the village. Here I found all in turmoil. Three-fourths of the inhabitants were away at St. Alais inspecting the ruins, and those who remained thought of nothing so little as doing their ordinary work; but, standing in groups at their doors, or at the cross-roads, or the church gates, were discussing events. One asked me timidly if it was true that the King had given all the land to the peasants; another, if there were to be any more taxes; a third, a question still more simple. Yet with this, I met with no lack of respect; and few failed to express their joy that I had escaped the ruffians là-bas. But as I approached each group a subtle shade of expectation, of shyness and suspicion seemed to flit across faces the most familiar to me. At the moment I did not understand it, and even apprehended it but dimly. Now, after the event, now that it is too late, I know that it was the first symptom of the social poison doing its sure and deadly work.

With all this, I could hear nothing of M. le Curé; one saying that he was here, another there, a third that he had gone to Cahors; and, in the end, I returned to the Château in a state of discomfort and unrest hard to describe. I would not again leave the front of the house lest I should miss him; and for hours I paced the avenue, now listening at the gates or looking up the road, now walking quickly to and fro under the walnuts. In time evening fell, and night; and still I was here awaiting the Curé's coming, chained to the silent house; while my mind tortured me with pictures of what was going forward outside. The restless demon of the time had hold of me; the thought that I lay here idle, while the world heaved, made me miserable, filled me with shame. When André came at last to summon me to supper, I swore at him; and the moment I had done, I went up to the roof of the Château and watched the night, expecting to see again a light in the sky, and the far-off glare of burning houses.

I saw nothing, however, and the Curé did not come; and, after a wakeful night, seven in the morning saw me in the saddle and on the road to Cahors. André complained of illness and I took Gil only. The country round St. Alais seemed to be deserted; but, half a league farther on, over the hill, I came on a score of peasants trudging sturdily forward. I asked them whither they were going, and why they were not in the fields.

"We are going to Cahors, Monseigneur, for arms," they said.

"For arms! Whom are you going to fight?"

"The brigands, Monseigneur. They are burning and murdering on every side. By the mercy of God they have not yet visited us. And to-night we shall be armed."

"Brigands!" I said. "What brigands?"

But they could not answer that; and I left them in wonder at their simplicity and rode on. I had not yet done with these brigands, however. Half a league short of Cahors I passed through a hamlet where the same idea prevailed. Here they had raised a rough barricade at the end of the street towards the country, and I saw a man on the church tower keeping watch. Meanwhile every one in the place who could walk had gone to Cahors.

"Why?" I asked. "For what?"

"To hear the news."

Then I began to see that my imagination had not led me astray. All the world was heaving, all the world was astir. Every one was hurrying to hear and to learn and to tell; to take arms if he had never used arms before, to advise if all his life he had obeyed orders, to do anything and everything but his daily work. After this, that I should find Cahors humming like a hive of bees about to swarm, and the Valandré bridge so crowded that I could scarcely force my way through its three gates, and the queue of people waiting for rations longer, and the rations shorter than ever before-after this, I say, all these things seemed only natural.

Nor was I much surprised to find that as I rode through the streets, wearing the tricolour, I was hailed here and there with cheers. On the other hand, I noticed that wearers of white cockades were not lacking. They kept the wall in twos and threes, and walked with raised chins, and hands on sword-knots, and were watched askance by the commonalty. A few of them were known to me, more were strangers; and while I blushed under the scornful looks of the former, knowing that I must seem to them a renegade, I wondered who the latter were. Finally I was glad to escape from both by alighting at Doury's, over whose door a huge tricolour flag hung limp in the sunshine.

M. le Curé de Saux? Yes, he was even then sitting with the Committee upstairs. Would M. le Vicomte walk up?

I did so, through a press of noisy people, who thronged the stairs and passages and lobbies, and talked, and gesticulated, and seemed to be settled there for the day. I worked my way through these at last, the door was opened, a fresh gust of noise came out to meet me, and I entered the room. In it, seated round a long table, I found a score of men, of whom some rose to meet me, while more kept their seats; three or four were speaking at once and did not stop on my entrance. I recognised at the farther end Father Benôit and Buton, who came to meet me, and Capitaine Hugues, who rose, but continued to speak. Besides these there were two of the smaller noblesse, who left their chairs, and came to me in an ecstasy, and Doury, who rose and sat down half a dozen times; and one or two Curés and others of that rank, known to me by sight. The uproar was great, the confusion equal to it. Still, somehow, and after a moment of tumult, I found myself received and welcomed and placed in a chair at the end of the table, with M. le Capitaine on one side of me and a notary of Cahors on the other. Then, under cover of the noise, I stole a few words with Father Benôit, who lingered a moment beside me.

"You could not join us yesterday?" he muttered, with a pathetic look that only I understood.

"But you left a message, bidding me wait for you!" I answered.

"I did?" he said. "No; I left a message asking you to follow us-if it pleased you."

"Then I never got it," I replied. "André told me-"

"Ah! André," he answered softly. And he shook his head.

"The rascal!" I said; "then he lied to me! And-"

But some one called the Curé to his place, and we had to part. At the same instant most of the talkers ceased; a moment, and only two were left speaking, who, without paying the least regard to one another, continued to hold forth to their neighbours, haranguing, one on the social contract; the other on the brigands-the brigands who were everywhere burning the corn and killing the people!

At last M. le Capitaine, after long waiting to speak, attacked the former speaker. "Tut, Monsieur!" he said. "This is not the time for theory. A halfpennyworth of fact-

"Is worth a pound of theory!" the man of the brigands-he was a grocer, I believe-cried eagerly; and he brought his fist down on the table.

"But now is the time! – the God-sent time, to frame the facts to the theory!" the other combatant screamed. "To form a perfect system! To regenerate the world, I say! To-"

"To regenerate the fiddlestick!" his opponent answered, with equal heat. "When brigands are at our very doors! when our crops are being burned and our houses plundered! when-"

"Monsieur," the Captain said harshly, commanding silence by the gravity of his tone-"if you please!"

"Yes."

"Then, to be plain, I do not believe any more in your brigands than in M. l'Avoué's theories."

This time it was the grocer's turn to scream. "What?" he cried. "When they have been seen at Figeac, and Cajarc, and Rodez, and-

"By whom?" the soldier asked sharply, interrupting him.

"By hundreds."

"Name one."

"But it is notorious!"

"Yes, Monsieur-it is a notorious lie!" M. le Capitaine answered bluntly. "Believe me, the brigands with whom we have to deal are nearer home. Allow us to arrange with them first, and do not deafen M. le Vicomte with your chattering."

"Hear! hear!" the lawyer cried.

But this insult proved too much for the man of the brigands. He began again, and others joined in, for him and against him; to my despair, it seemed as if the quarrel were only beginning-as if peace would have to be made afresh.

How all this noise, tumult, and disputation, this absence of the politeness to which I had been accustomed all my life, this vulgar jostling and brawling depressed me I need not say. I sat deafened, lost in the scramble; of no more account, for the moment, than Buton. Nay of less; for while I gazed about me and listened, sunk in wonder at my position at a table with people of a class with whom I had never sat down before-save at the chance table of an inn, where my presence kept all within bounds-it was Buton who, by coming to the officer's aid, finally gained silence.