CHAPTER X
Denunciation.
But what of Juliette?
What of this wild, passionate, romantic creature tortured by a Titanicconflict? She, but a girl, scarcely yet a woman, torn by the greatestantagonistic powers that ever fought for a human soul. On the one sideduty, tradition, her dead brother, her father--above all, her religionand the oath she had sworn before God; on the other justice and honour,a case of right and wrong, honesty and pity.
How she fought with these powers now!
She fought with them, struggled with them on her knees. She tried tocrush memory, tried to forget that awful midnight scene ten years ago,her brother's dead body, her father's avenging hand holding her own, ashe begged her to do that, which he was too feeble, too old toaccomplish.
His words rang in her ears from across that long vista of the past.
"Before the face of Almighty God, who sees and hears me, I swear ..."
And she had repeated those words loudly and of her own free will, withher hand resting on her brother's breast, and God Himself looking downupon her, for she had called upon Him to listen.
"I swear that I will seek out Paul Deroulede, and in any manner whichGod may dictate to me encompass his death, his ruin, or dishonour inrevenge for my brother's death. May my brother's soul remain in tormentuntil the final Judgment Day if I should break my oath, but may it restin eternal peace, the day on which his death is fitly avenged."
Almost it seemed to her as if father and brother were standing by herside, as she knelt and prayed.--Oh! how she prayed!
In many ways she was only a child. All her years had been passed inconfinement, either beside her dying father or, later, between the fourwalls of the Ursuline Convent. And during those years her soul had beenfed on a contemplative, ecstatic religion, a kind of sanctifiedsuperstition, which she would have deemed sacrilege to combat.
Her first step into womanhood was taken with that oath upon her lips;since then, with a stoical sense of duty, she had lashed herself into adaily, hourly remembrance of the great mission imposed upon her.
To have neglected it would have been, to her, equal to denying God.
She had but vague ideas of the doctrinal side of religion. Purgatory wasto her merely a word, but a word representing a real spiritualstate--one of expectancy, of restlessness, of sorrow. And vaguely, yetdeterminedly, she believed that her brother's soul suffered, because shehad been too weak to fulfil her oath.
The Church had not come to her rescue. The ministers of her religionwere scattered to the four corners of besieged, agonising France. Shehad no one to help her, no one to comfort her. That very peaceful,contemplative life she had led in the convent, only served to enhanceher feeling of the solemnity of her mission.
It was true, it was inevitable, because it was so hard.
To the few who, throughout those troublous times, had kept a feeling ofveneration for their religion, this religion had become one ofabnegation and martyrdom.
A spirit of uncompromising Jansenism seemed to call forth sacrifices andrenunciation, whereas the happy-go-lucky Catholicism of the past centuryhad only suggested an easy, flowered path, to a comfortable,well-upholstered heaven.
The harder the task seemed which was set before her, the more real itbecame to Juliette. God, she firmly believed, had at last, after tenyears, shown her the way to wreak vengeance upon her brother's murderer.He had brought her to this house, caused her to see and hear part of theconversation between Blakeney and Deroulede, and this at the moment ofall others, when even the semblance of a conspiracy against the Republicwould bring the one inevitable result in its train: disgrace first, thehasty mock trial, the hall of justice, and the guillotine.
She tried not to hate Deroulede. She wished to judge him coldly andimpartially, or rather to indict him before the throne of God, and topunish him for the crime he had committed ten years ago. Her personalfeelings must remain out of the question.
Had Charlotte Corday considered her own sensibilities, when with her ownhand she put an end to Marat?
Juliette remained on her knees for hours. She heard Anne Mie come home,and Deroulede's voice of welcome on the landing. This was perhaps themost bitter moment of this awful soul conflict, for it brought to hermind the remembrance of those others who would suffer too, and who wereinnocent--Madame Deroulede and poor, crippled Anne Mie. They had done nowrong, and yet how heavily would they be punished!
And then the saner judgment, the human, material code of ethics gainedfor a while the upper hand. Juliette would rise from her knees, dry hereyes, prepare quietly to go to bed, and to forget all about the awful,relentless Fate which dragged her to the fulfilment of its will, andthen sink back, broken-hearted, murmuring impassioned prayers forforgiveness to her father, her brother, her God.
The soul was young and ardent, and it fought for abnegation, martyrdom,and stern duty; the body was childlike, and it fought for peace,contentment, and quiet reason.
The rational body was conquered by the passionate, powerful soul.
Blame not the child, for in herself she was innocent. She was butanother of the many victims of this cruel, mad, hysterical time, thatspirit of relentless tyranny, forcing its doctrines upon the weak.
With the first break of dawn Juliette at last finally rose from herknees, bathed her burning eyes and head, tidied her hair and dress, thenshe sat down at the table, and began to write.
She was a transformed being now, no longer a child, essentially awoman--a Joan of Arc with a mission, a Charlotte Corday going tomartyrdom, a human, suffering, erring soul, committing a great crime forthe sake of an idea.
She wrote out carefully and with a steady hand the denunciation ofCitizen-Deputy Deroulede which has become an historical document, and ispreserved in the chronicles of France.
You have all seen it at the Musee Carnavalet in its glass case, itsyellow paper and faded ink revealing nothing of the soul conflict ofwhich it was the culminating victory. The cramped, somewhatschoolgirlish writing is the mute, pathetic witness of one of thesaddest tragedies, that era of sorrow and crime has ever known:
/*_To the Representatives of the People now sitting in Assembly at the National Convention_
You trust and believe in the Representative of the people:Citizen-Deputy Paul Deroulede. He is false, and a traitor to theRepublic. He is planning, and hopes to effect, the release ofci-devant Marie Antoinette, widow of the traitor Louis Capet. Haste!ye representatives of the people! proofs of his assertion, papersand plans, are still in the house of the Citizen-Deputy Deroulede.This statement is made by one who knows.
_I. The 23rd Fructidor._*/
When her letter was written she read it through carefully, made the oneor two little corrections, which are still visible in the document, thenfolded her missive, hid it within the folds of her kerchief, and,wrapping a dark cloak and hood round her, she slipped noiselessly out ofher room.
The house was all quiet and still. She shuddered a little as the coolmorning air fanned her hot cheeks: it seemed like the breath of ghosts.
She ran quickly down the stairs, and as rapidly as she could, pushedback the heavy bolts of the front door, and slipped out into the street.
Already the city was beginning to stir. There was no time for sleep,when so much had to be done for the safety of the threatened Republic.As Juliette turned her steps towards the river, she met the crowd ofworkmen, whom France was employing for her defence.
Behind her, in the Luxembourg Gardens, and all along the opposite bankof the river, the furnaces were already ablaze, and the smiths at workforging the guns.
At every step now Juliette came across the great placards, pinned to thetall gallows-shaped posts, which proclaim to every passing citizen, thatthe people of France are up and in arms.
Right across the Place de l'Institut a procession of market carts, ladenwith vegetables and a little fruit, wends its way slowly towards thecentre of the town. They each carry tiny tricolour flags, with a Pikeand Cap of Liberty sur
mounting the flagstaff.
They are good patriots the market-gardeners, who come in daily to feedthe starving mob of Paris, with the few handfuls of watery potatoes, andmiserable, vermin-eaten cabbages, which that fraternal Revolution stillallows them to grow without hindrance.
Everyone seems busy with their work this early in the morning: thebusiness of killing does not begin until later in the day.
For the moment Juliette can get along quite unmolested: the women andchildren mostly hurrying on towards the vast encampments in theTuileries, where lint, and bandages, and coats for the soldiers aremanufactured all the day.
The walls of all the houses bear the great patriotic device: "_Liberte,Egalite, Fraternite, sinon La Mort_"; others are more political in theirproclamation: "_La Republique une et indivisible_."
But on the walls of the Louvre, of the great palace of whilom kings,where the Roi Soleil held his Court, and flirted with the prettiestwomen in France, there the new and great Republic has affixed its finalmandate.
A great poster glued to the wall bears the words: "_La Loi concernan lesSuspects_." Below the poster is a huge wooden box with a slit at thetop.
This is the latest invention for securing the safety of this one andindivisible Republic.
Henceforth everyone becomes a traitor at one word of denunciation froman idler or an enemy, and, as in the most tyrannical days of the SpanishInquisition one-half of the nation was set to spy upon the other, thatwooden box, with its slit, is put there ready to receive denunciationsfrom one hand against another.
Had Juliette paused but for the fraction of a second, had she stopped toread the placard setting forth this odious law, had she only reflected,then she would even now have turned back, and fled from that gruesomebox of infamies, as she would from a dangerous and noisome reptile orfrom the pestilence.
But her long vigil, her prayers, her ecstatic visions of heroic martyrshad now completely numbed her faculties. Her vitality, her sensibilitieswere gone: she had become an automaton gliding to her doom, without athought or a tremor.
She drew the letter from her bosom, and with a steady hand dropped itinto the box. The irreclaimable had now occurred. Nothing she couldhenceforth say or do, no prayers or agonised vigils, no miracles even,could undo her action or save Paul Deroulede from trial and guillotine.
One or two groups of people hurrying to their work had seen her drop theletter into the box. A couple of small children paused, finger in mouth,gazing at her with inane curiosity; one woman uttered a coarse jest, allof them shrugged their shoulders, and passed on, on their way. Those whohabitually crossed this spot were used to such sights.
That wooden box, with its mouthlike slit was like an insatiable monsterthat was constantly fed, yet was still gaping for more.
Having done the deed Juliette turned, and as rapidly as she had come, soshe went back to her temporary home.
A home no more now; she must leave it at once, to-day if possible. Thismuch she knew, that she no longer could touch the bread of the man shehad betrayed. She would not appear at breakfast, she could plead aheadache, and in the afternoon Petronelle should pack her things.
She turned into a little shop close by, and asked for a glass of milkand a bit of bread. The woman who served her eyed her with somecuriosity, for Juliette just now looked almost out of her mind.
She had not yet begun to think, and she had ceased to suffer.
Both would come presently, and with them the memory of this lastirretrievable hour and a just estimate of what she had done.