CHAPTER XXVI. THE BALL OF THE VICTIMS
After taking about a hundred steps Morgan removed his mask. He ran morerisk of being noticed in the streets of Paris as a masked man than withuncovered face.
When he reached the Rue Taranne he knocked at the door of a smallfurnished lodging-house at the corner of that street and the Rue duDragon, took a candlestick from a table, a key numbered 12 from anail, and climbed the stairs without exciting other attention than awell-known lodger would returning home. The clock was striking ten as heclosed the door of his room. He listened attentively to the strokes, thelight of his candle not reaching as far as the chimney-piece. He countedten.
"Good!" he said to himself; "I shall not be too late."
In spite of this probability, Morgan seemed determined to lose no time.He passed a bit of tinder-paper under the heater on the hearth, whichcaught fire instantly. He lighted four wax-candles, all there were inthe room, placed two on the mantel-shelf and two on a bureau opposite,and spread upon the bed a complete dress of the Incroyable of the verylatest fashion. It consisted of a short coat, cut square across thefront and long behind, of a soft shade between a pale-green and apearl-gray; a waistcoat of buff plush, with eighteen mother-of-pearlbuttons; an immense white cravat of the finest cambric; light trousersof white cashmere, decorated with a knot of ribbon where they buttonedabove the calves, and pearl-gray silk stockings, striped transverselywith the same green as the coat, and delicate pumps with diamondbuckles. The inevitable eye-glass was not forgotten. As for the hat, itwas precisely the same in which Carle Vernet painted his dandy of theDirectory.
When these things were ready, Morgan waited with seeming impatience. Atthe end of five minutes he rang the bell. A waiter appeared.
"Hasn't the wig-maker come?" asked Morgan.
In those days wig-makers were not yet called hair-dressers.
"Yes, citizen," replied the waiter, "he came, but you had not yetreturned, so he left word that he'd come back. Some one knocked just asyou rang; it's probably--"
"Here, here," cried a voice on the stairs.
"Ah! bravo," exclaimed Morgan. "Come in, Master Cadenette; you must makea sort of Adonis of me."
"That won't be difficult, Monsieur le Baron," replied the wig-maker.
"Look here, look here; do you mean to compromise me, citizen Cadenette?"
"Monsieur le Baron, I entreat you, call me Cadenette; you'll honor meby that proof of familiarity; but don't call me citizen. Fie; that'sa revolutionary denomination! Even in the worst of the Terror I alwayscalled my wife Madame Cadenette. Now, excuse me for not waiting for you;but there's a great ball in the Rue du Bac this evening, the ball of theVictims (the wig-maker emphasized this word). I should have thought thatM. le Baron would be there."
"Why," cried Morgan, laughing; "so you are still a royalist, Cadenette?"
The wig-maker laid his hand tragically on his heart.
"Monsieur le Baron," said he, "it is not only a matter of conscience,but a matter of state."
"Conscience, I can understand that, Master Cadenette, but state! Whatthe devil has the honorable guild of wigmakers to do with politics?"
"What, Monsieur le Baron?" said Cadenette, all the while getting readyto dress his client's hair; "you ask me that? You, an aristocrat!"
"Hush, Cadenette!"
"Monsieur le Baron, we _ci-devants_ can say that to each other."
"So you are a _ci-devant_?"
"To the core! In what style shall I dress M. le Baron's hair?"
"Dog's ears, and tied up behind."
"With a dash of powder?"
"Two, if you like, Cadenette."
"Ah! monsieur, when one thinks that for five years I was the only manwho had an atom of powder '_a la marechale_.' Why, Monsieur le Baron, aman was guillotined for owning a box of powder!"
"I've known people who were guillotined for less than that, Cadenette.But explain how you happen to be a _ci-devant_. I like to understandeverything."
"It's very simple, Monsieur le Baron. You admit, don't you, that amongthe guilds there were some that were more or less aristocratic."
"Beyond doubt; accordingly as they were nearer to the higher classes ofsociety."
"That's it, Monsieur le Baron. Well, we had the higher classes by thehair of their head. I, such as you see me, I have dressed Madame dePolignac's hair; my father dressed Madame du Barry's; my grandfather,Madame de Pompadour's. We had our privileges, Monsieur; we carriedswords. It is true, to avoid the accidents that were liable to crop upamong hotheads like ourselves, our swords were usually of wood; butat any rate, if they were not the actual thing, they were very goodimitations. Yes, Monsieur le Baron," continued Cadenette with a sigh,"those days were the good days, not only for the wig-makers, but forall France. We were in all the secrets, all the intrigues; nothing washidden from us. And there is no known instance, Monsieur le Baron, of awig-maker betraying a secret. Just look at our poor queen; to whomdid she trust her diamonds? To the great, the illustrious Leonard, theprince of wig-makers. Well, Monsieur le Baron, two men alone overthrewthe scaffolding of a power that rested on the wigs of Louis XIV., thepuffs of the Regency, the frizettes of Louis-XV., and the cushions ofMarie Antoinette."
"And those two men, those levellers, those two revolutionaries, who werethey, Cadenette? that I may doom them, so far as it lies in my power, topublic execration."
"M. Rousseau and citizen Talma: Monsieur Rousseau who said thatabsurdity, 'We must return to Nature,' and citizen Talma, who inventedthe Titus head-dress."
"That's true, Cadenette; that's true."
"When the Directory came in there was a moment's hope. M. Barras nevergave up powder, and citizen Moulins stuck to his queue. But, you see,the 18th Brumaire has knocked it all down; how could any one frizBonaparte's hair! Ah! there," continued Cadenette, puffing out the dog'sears of his client--"there's aristocratic hair for you, soft and fine assilk, and takes the tongs so well one would think you wore a wig. See,Monsieur le Baron, you wanted to be as handsome as Adonis! Ah! if Venushad seen you, it's not of Adonis that Mars would have been jealous!"
And Cadenette, now at the end of his labors and satisfied with theresult, presented a hand-mirror to Morgan, who examined himselfcomplacently.
"Come, come!" he said to the wig-maker, "you are certainly an artist,my dear fellow! Remember this style, for if ever they cut off my headI shall choose to have it dressed like that, for there will probably bewomen at my execution."
"And M. le Baron wants them to regret him," said the wig-maker gravely.
"Yes, and in the meantime, my dear Cadenette, here is a crown to rewardyour labors. Have the goodness to tell them below to call a carriage forme."
Cadenette sighed.
"Monsieur le Baron," said he, "time was when I should have answered:'Show yourself at court with your hair dressed like that, and I shall bepaid.' But there is no court now, Monsieur le Baron, and one must live.You shall have your carriage."
With which Cadenette sighed again, slipped Morgan's crown in his pocket,made the reverential bow of wig-makers and dancing-masters, and left theyoung man to complete his toilet.
The head being now dressed, the rest was soon done; the cravat alonetook time, owing to the many failures that occurred; but Morganconcluded the difficult task with an experienced hand, and as eleveno'clock was striking he was ready to start. Cadenette had not forgottenhis errand; a hackney-coach was at the door. Morgan jumped into it,calling out: "Rue du Bac, No. 60."
The coach turned into the Rue de Grenelle, went up the Rue du Bac, andstopped at No. 60.
"Here's a double fare, friend," said Morgan, "on condition that youdon't stand before the door."
The driver took the three francs and disappeared around the corner ofthe Rue de Varennes. Morgan glanced up the front of the house; it seemedas though he must be mistaken, so dark and silent was it. But he did nothesitate; he rapped in a peculiar fashion.
The door opened. At the further end of the courtyard was a building,
brilliantly lighted. The young man went toward it, and, as heapproached, the sound of instruments met his ear. He ascended a flightof stairs and entered the dressing-room. There he gave his cloak to theusher whose business it was to attend to the wraps.
"Here is your number," said the usher. "As for your weapons, you are toplace them in the gallery where you can find them easily."
Morgan put the number in his trousers pocket, and entered the greatgallery transformed into an arsenal. It contained a complete collectionof arms of all kinds, pistols, muskets, carbines, swords, and daggers.As the ball might at any moment be invaded by the police, it wasnecessary that every dancer be prepared to turn defender at an instant'snotice. Laying his weapons aside, Morgan entered the ballroom.
We doubt if any pen could give the reader an adequate idea of the sceneof that ball. Generally, as the name "Ball of the Victims" indicated, noone was admitted except by the strange right of having relatives whohad either been sent to the scaffold by the Convention or the Commune ofParis, blown to pieces by Collot d'Herbois, or drowned by Carrier. As,however, the victims guillotined during the three years of the Terrorfar outnumbered the others, the dresses of the majority of those whowere present were the clothes of the victims of the scaffold. Thus, mostof the young girls, whose mothers and older sisters had fallen bythe hands of the executioner, wore the same costume their mothers andsisters had worn for that last lugubrious ceremony; that is to say, awhite gown and red shawl, with their hair cut short at the nape of theneck. Some added to this costume, already so characteristic, a detailthat was even more significant; they knotted around their necks a threadof scarlet silk, fine as the blade of a razor, which, as in Faust'sMarguerite, at the Witches' Sabbath, indicated the cut of the knifebetween the throat and the collar bone.
As for the men who were in the same case, they wore the collars of theircoats turned down behind, those of their shirt wide open, their necksbare, and their hair, cut short.
But many had other rights of entrance to this ball besides that ofhaving Victims in their families; some had made victims themselves.These latter were increasing. There were present men of forty orforty-five years of age, who had been trained in the boudoirs of thebeautiful courtesans of the seventeenth century--who had known Madame duBarry in the attics of Versailles, Sophie Arnoult with M. de Lauraguais,La Duthe with the Comte d'Artois--who had borrowed from the courtesiesof vice the polish with which they covered their ferocity. They werestill young and handsome; they entered a salon, tossing their perfumedlocks and their scented handkerchiefs; nor was it a useless precaution,for if the odor of musk or verbena had not masked it they would havesmelled of blood.
There were men there twenty-five or thirty years old, dressed withextreme elegance, members of the association of Avengers, who seemedpossessed with the mania of assassination, the lust of slaughter, thefrenzy of blood, which no blood could quench--men who, when the ordercame to kill, killed all, friends or enemies; men who carried theirbusiness methods into the business of murder, giving their bloody checksfor the heads of such or such Jacobins, and paying on sight.
There were younger men, eighteen and twenty, almost children, butchildren fed, like Achilles, on the marrow of wild beasts, like Pyrrhus,on the flesh of bears; here were the pupil-bandits of Schiller, theapprentice-judges of the Sainte-Vehme--that strange generation thatfollows great political convulsions, like the Titans after chaos, thehydras after the Deluge; as the vultures and crows follow the carnage.
Here was the spectre of iron impassible, implacable, inflexible, whichmen call Retaliation; and this spectre mingled with the guests. Itentered the gilded salons; it signalled with a look, a gesture, a nod,and men followed where it led. It was, as says the author from whom wehave borrowed these hitherto unknown but authentic details, "a merrylust for extermination."
The Terror had affected great cynicism in clothes, a Spartan austerityin its food, the profound contempt of a barbarous people for arts andenjoyments. The Thermidorian reaction was, on the contrary, elegant,opulent, adorned; it exhausted all luxuries, all voluptuous pleasures,as in the days of Louis XV.; with one addition, the luxury of vengeance,the lust of blood.
Freron's name was given to the youth of the day, which was called thejeunesse Freron, or the _jeunesse doree_ (gilded youth). Why Freron? Whyshould he rather than others receive that strange and fatal honor?
I cannot tell you--my researches (those who know me will do me thejustice to admit that when I have an end in view, I do not countthem)--my researches have not discovered an answer. It was a whim ofFashion, and Fashion is the one goddess more capricious than Fortune.
Our readers will hardly know to-day who Freron was. The Freron who wasVoltaire's assailant was better known than he who was the patron ofthese elegant assassins; one was the son of the other. Louis Stanislaswas son of Elie-Catherine. The father died of rage when Miromesnil,Keeper of the Seals, suppressed his journal. The other, irritated bythe injustices of which his father had been the victim, had at firstardently embraced the revolutionary doctrines. Instead of the "AnneeLitteraire," strangled to death in 1775, he created the "Orateur duPeuple," in 1789. He was sent to the Midi on a special mission, andMarseilles and Toulon retain to this day the memory of his cruelty.But all was forgotten when, on the 9th Thermidor, he proclaimed himselfagainst Robespierre, and assisted in casting from the altar the SupremeBeing, the colossus who, being an apostle, had made himself a god.Freron, repudiated by the Mountain, which abandoned him to the heavyjaws of Moise Bayle; Freron, disdainfully repulsed by the Girondins,who delivered him over to the imprecations of Isnard; Freron, as theterrible and picturesque orator of the Var said, "Freron naked andcovered with the leprosy of crime," was accepted, caressed and petted bythe Thermidorians. From them he passed into the camp of the royalists,and without any reason whatever for obtaining that fatal honor, foundhimself suddenly at the head of a powerful party of youth, energy andvengeance, standing between the passions of the day, which led to all,and the impotence of the law, which permitted all.
It was to the midst of this _jeunesse_ Freron, mouthing its words,slurring its r's, giving its "word of honor" about everything, thatMorgan now made his way.
It must be admitted that this _jeunesse_, in spite of the clothes itwore, in spite of the memories these clothes evoked, was wildly gay.This seems incomprehensible, but it is true. Explain if you can thatDance of Death at the beginning of the fifteenth century, which, withall the fury of a modern galop, led by Musard, whirled its chain throughthe very Cemetery of the Innocents, and left amid its tombs fiftythousand of its votaries.
Morgan was evidently seeking some one.
A young dandy, who was dipping into the silver-gilt comfit-box ofa charming victim, with an ensanguined finger, the only part of hisdelicate hand that had escaped the almond paste, tried to stop him, torelate the particulars of the expedition from which he had brought backthis bloody trophy. But Morgan smiled, pressed his other hand whichwas gloved, and contented himself with replying: "I am looking for someone."
"Important?"
"Company of Jehu."
The young man with the bloody finger let him pass. An adorable Fury, asCorneille would have called her, whose hair was held up by a dagger witha blade as sharp as a needle, barred his way, saying: "Morgan, you arethe handsomest, the bravest, the most deserving of love of all the menpresent. What have you to say to the woman who tells you that?"
"I answer that I love," replied Morgan, "and that my heart is too narrowto hold one hatred and two loves." And he continued on his search.
Two young men who were arguing, one saying, "He was English," the other,"He was German," stopped him.
"The deuce," cried one; "here is the man who can settle it for us."
"No," replied Morgan, trying to push past them; "I'm in a hurry."
"There's only a word to say," said the other. "We have made a bet,Saint-Amand and I, that the man who was tried and executed at theChartreuse du Seillon, was, according to him, a German, and, accor
dingto me, an Englishman."
"I don't know," replied Morgan; "I wasn't there. Ask Hector; he presidedthat night."
"Tell us where Hector is?"
"Tell me rather where Tiffauges is; I am looking for him."
"Over there, at the end of the room," said the young man, pointing to apart of the room where the dance was more than usually gay and animated."You will recognize him by his waistcoat; and his trousers are not to bedespised. I shall have a pair like them made with the skin of the veryfirst hound I meet."
Morgan did not take time to ask in what way Tiffauges' waistcoat wasremarkable, or by what queer cut or precious material his trousers hadwon the approbation of a man as expert in such matters as he who hadspoken to him. He went straight to the point indicated by the youngman, saw the person he was seeking dancing an ete, which seemed, by theintricacy of its weaving, if I may be pardoned for this technical term,to have issued from the salons of Vestris himself.
Morgan made a sign to the dancer. Tiffauges stopped instantly, bowedto his partner, led her to her seat, excused himself on the plea ofthe urgency of the matter which called him away, and returned to takeMorgan's arm.
"Did you see him," Tiffauges asked Morgan.
"I have just left him," replied the latter.
"Did you deliver the King's letter?"
"To himself."
"Did he read it?"
"At once."
"Has he sent an answer?"
"Two; one verbal, one written; the second dispenses with the first."
"You have it?"
"Here it is."
"Do you know the contents?"
"A refusal."
"Positive?"
"Nothing could be more positive."
"Does he know that from the moment he takes all hope away from us weshall treat him as an enemy?"
"I told him so."
"What did he answer?"
"He didn't answer; he shrugged his shoulders."
"What do you think his intentions are?"
"It's not difficult to guess."
"Does he mean to keep the power himself?"
"It looks like it."
"The power, but not the throne?"
"Why not the throne?"
"He would never dare to make himself king."
"Oh! I can't say he means to be absolutely king, but I'll answer for itthat he means to be something."
"But he is nothing but a soldier of fortune!"
"My dear fellow, better in these days to be the son of his deeds, thanthe grandson of a king."
The young man thought a moment.
"I shall report it all to Cadoudal," he said.
"And add that the First Consul said these very words: 'I hold the Vendeein the hollow of my hand, and if I choose in three months not anothershot will be fired.'"
"It's a good thing to know."
"You know it; let Cadoudal know it, and take measures."
Just then the music ceased; the hum of the dancers died away; completesilence prevailed; and, in the midst of this silence, four names werepronounced in a sonorous and emphatic voice.
These four names were Morgan, Montbar, Adler and d'Assas.
"Pardon me," Morgan said to Tiffauges, "they are probably arranging someexpedition in which I am to take part. I am forced, therefore, to mygreat regret, to bid you farewell. Only before I leave you let me lookcloser at your waistcoat and trousers, of which I have heard--curiosityof an amateur; I trust you will excuse it."
"Surely!" exclaimed the young Vendean, "most willingly."