X
A TRIUMPH OF INSTINCT
"Hola above, Barabant."
"Hola below, Goursac."
"Come down."
"What for?"
"Collenot is condemned. We're going to the execution."
"What, at eight o'clock at night?"
"Immediately. I am just back from the trial."
"I'm coming."
The Revolutionary Tribunal, inaugurated two days before, haddeliberated ever since upon the fate of Collenot d'Agremont, seekingto fasten on the King and the Court the onus of the battle of theTuileries. But beyond Barabant's desire to see the execution of thisfirst victim of the anger of the Nation, was his curiosity to witnessthe second installation of that strange machine which had carried thename of Dr. Guillotin beyond the boundaries of France.
"And your Nicole?" Goursac asked when Barabant had joined them. "Whydon't you bring her?"
"She's not in her room."
"You called her?"
"Yes, yes." Barabant, not wishing to discover their estrangement,hastened on: "Did Collenot implicate the Court?"
"He would say nothing. To do him justice, he was very firm."
"And the Tribunal?"
"Impressive. The people were awed. The judge pronounced an eloquentharangue,--they always do." He flung out his arm and repeatedsarcastically: "'Victim of the law, could you but read the heartsof your judges you would find them crushed and saddened. Go to yourdeath courageously. The Nation demands from you nothing but a sincererepentance.'"
"That's well put!"
"Repentance--and your head!" Goursac amended sarcastically. "What anabsurdity!"
"Not at all," retorted Barabant, disciple of Rousseau and thesentimentalists. "The Nation mourning and forgiving its enemies, evenwhen pronouncing sentence, is a spectacle, I say, that is sublime."
"Bah! What good is sentiment when you lack a head? No, no. Thesegrandiloquent harangues of mercy and advice disgust me. They arenothing but self-advertisement. If I were a judge, I'd say:
"'Collenot, my friend, the Nation has proved you guilty; I pronounceupon you sentence of death; for further details consult Monsieur deParis. Bon voyage!'"
"And the guillotine, Citoyen Goursac: do you find it insincere todespatch an enemy with the least pain?"
"Ah, the guillotine! There is a tremendous advance in human thought!"Goursac exclaimed, without deigning to open an argument. "There issomething to be proud of. I foresee great innovations from this simpleinvention. To have learned to suppress human life painlessly is a truesentimental advance. We shall go further."
Barabant, seeing that he was started on his theories, saidgood-humoredly:
"Well, what next?"
"The day will come when society will regard it as a crime to allowchildren to grow up who are hopelessly destined to suffering--such asweaklings, monsters, hunchbacks, and the other deformed. The State willsuppress them."
His companion groaned in horror.
"More than that," Goursac contended, "the day will come when the aged,the infirm, the decrepit, the mortally stricken, will be painlesslyreleased from their suffering. Yes, death, when inevitable, will bemade instantaneous, and society will approve."
"And how soon do you expect this magnificent idea to fructify?"Barabant asked scornfully.
"In about two thousand years," Goursac answered, with a hitch of hishead. "That is the time necessary for an idea to conquer society."
"My dear friend, you are either joking or mad."
"The condition of prophecy is to be scorned," the theorist said dryly."You remember Cassandra."
They entered the Place du Carrousel, where the guillotine, whether byconscious or unconscious irony, was established under the frowningshadows of the abode of kings. The dim square was hidden by a loose,shifting network of variegated colors dominated by the bright flecksof countless liberty-caps, which, in measure, as new groups arrived,contracted into mists of red. Above this bobbing field of heads twothin shafts started upward, nearly lost in the descending dusk.Goursac, extending his hand in the direction of these, said:
"There is the guillotine."
"It does not seem very terrible," answered Barabant. "Let us stay here;it is, perhaps, a false report. In ten minutes it will be too dark."
Others with the same idea lingered on the outskirts of the crowd orturned away. The faces of the throng could no longer be distinguished,when suddenly afar there sprang up a circle of torches, and thescaffold emerged from the night.
The two friends hastily made their way through the crowd until, at theend of twenty minutes' patient endeavor, they reached the foremostranks. A calm spread among the unseen throng, broken by sudden tensionsat each new alarm. The people, who had greeted the first appearance ofthe guillotine with cries of disappointment and demands for the morespectacular gallows, were now impressed by the cloak of mystery thenight drew about the scaffold. The machine was no longer mere wood andiron; it had tasted blood: it was human.
Barabant, from his position of vantage, could distinguish the uprightshafts, where from time to time, as Goursac explained the mechanism,some reflection from a torch falling on the knife above, there appearedthe dull display of steel like the sudden threat of a brutish fang.
Turning from the scaffold, Barabant examined the crowd, where, seekingfor Nicole, he perceived Louison worming her way toward them.
Suddenly a whisper ran over the heads and rose to a breeze ofexclamations. The masses tightened. Those in front were swept againstthe guards as those behind surged forward, stretching to tiptoe.Louison, caught in the press, was imprisoned not twenty feet away. Thistime the alarm was not vain. From all sides burst the growl of the mob.
"Hu! hu! hu!"
A long, tedious moment succeeded, then suddenly the scaffold swarmedwith dark figures. The hooting and the screeching gave place to a burstof hand-clapping. Barabant, astonished at the implacable ferocity ofthe crowd, turned to examine it, but his eye encountering Louison,remained there.
The radiance of a neighboring torch redeemed her figure from theobscurity. Her head was strained slightly forward, while one handclutched the kerchief at her throat as though to restrain hereagerness. The lips were parted, the eyes glowed with the intensityof fascinated contemplation, but her whole figure, in contrast to theunbridled passions of the crowd, remained, as during the attack on theTuileries, controlled and insensible.
So unnatural was her attitude that Barabant could not have averted hiseyes had not the hand of Goursac recalled him to the drama before him.He sought in the gloom and the shadows, seeing nothing, until suddenlyout of the darkness came the shoot and the thud of the knife.
A woman, with a cry, caught his arm, burying her head in his sleeve.Another woman, holding a baby, was shouting wildly:
"Bravo! Bravo!"
A tottering veteran, in the costume of the Invalides, questioned himeagerly:
"Is it over? Tell me, citoyen, is it over?"
The woman on his arm continued to gasp hysterically. Himself recoilingat this death out of the darkness, he returned to the contemplation ofLouison.
Her pose had relaxed, while a slight smile of disdain appeared as shewatched the frantic crowd acclaim the head which a _bourreau_ held tothem. On her face was neither horror nor anger, neither disgust norpassion. As calmly as though before her own mirror, she smoothed outher dress and replaced the cockade, torn by the contact of the crowd,with a fresh one from her basket, scenting first its perfume. Sheraised her eyes, and her glance met that of Barabant, overcome withdisgust. She frowned, and turning her shoulder, was lost in the crowdwhich now flowed out in widening circles.
"What is there about her!" Barabant exclaimed, turning to Goursac.
"About whom?"
"Louison," he said impatiently. "You did not see her? She made meshiver!"
"She affects me like a snake," Goursac answered. "She is a creature ofthe night, in her element at such a time. They sa
y she never misses anexecution. Well, citoyen, what of the machine?"
"Horrible!"
"You are wrong," Goursac protested. "It does not take life: itsuppresses it, and that by a process more charitable than naturaldeath. That is the way a nation should avenge itself." He repeatedseveral times in a transport of enthusiasm, "Magnificent!"
"There, look at it now!"
At Barabant's summons they paused at the gate, looking back at thedim circle of lights around the guillotine unseen but divined, whileBarabant continued:
"The first time did not count--it was only a thief. To-night is thetrue beginning of the guillotine--a sinister and ominous beginning."
"Still, what a spectacle!" Goursac exclaimed. "What could be moredramatic?"
"Too much so," Barabant retorted. "I admit I am impressionable, butto-night the blow seemed to fall from above our own heads."
"You are superstitious. You will be telling me next that you had apremonition about your own neck."
"Hardly; but, my friend, yours is so long and the chances of politicsare so many--"
"Don't trouble yourself," replied Goursac, laughing, and with a mockgesture he extended his fist. "As for my neck, Madame Guillotine, Idefy you to take it." He turned to Barabant. "You, my friend, are sogallant that I won't answer for yours."
They passed into the Rue Royale, Goursac slightly in advance. Barabant,rubbing shoulders with the departing crowd, felt a pull on his arm andheard the voice of Nicole saying mischievously:
"Barabant, are you very angry with me?"
Too astonished to make answer, he remained dumbly gazing into theteasing countenance; but at that moment Goursac, perceiving them,called out indulgently:
"That's right, children; we don't live long enough for lovers toquarrel. I'll keep discreetly ahead."
Barabant persisting in his silence, Nicole continued pleadingly:
"Then you are still angry?"
"Yes."
"I am sorry."
She said it in such a gentle tone, sighing slightly, that Barabant'sanger held no longer; still, as a measure of policy, he kept silent.
Goursac, preparing to wheel into a side street, called back, with alaugh of which only Nicole could guess the cost:
"Good-by, my children; I leave you in peace. Love-making isdisconcerting to the older generation. Reconcile yourselves quickly."
Barabant and Nicole, thus left to themselves, continued arm in armsilently homeward, avoiding the thronged thoroughfares, the noiseand the lights, plunging by preference down quiet ways where only anoccasional window reddened the sides of the night. Barabant struggledto maintain his just anger; Nicole, who had yielded to an impulse inaccosting him, searched for some means to regain the ground which shefelt she had surrendered.
"You don't answer," she said at last, withdrawing her arm half-way."You want me to go?"
He freed himself brusquely and faced her with the angry cry:
"Coquette!"
"No, that I am not!" she cried, and seizing his arm, she said rapidly:"Barabant, it is not true. You have no right to say that!"
"You have a right to be what you wish."
Nicole, checking herself, said sadly:
"You still believe I am playing with you?"
"I do."
She withdrew a step and shook her head.
"No, it is not you I am playing with."
Barabant, who did not fathom the allusion, started to ask her what shemeant; but Nicole, immediately perceiving the danger, retreated fromher serious mood, and slipping her arm through his, said imperiously asthey started on:
"Barabant, have you ever been in love--seriously in love?"
"Oh!"
"But seriously?"
"No."
"I was sure of it."
"And why?" Barabant demanded, nettled at her assumption.
"Because you understand nothing of a woman." She continued rapidly:"Listen to reason, my friend. You assume rights over me and my actions,and yet what right have you? You have never once told me that you loveme. Yet you are angry because I insist upon being wooed, foolish,ignorant fellow!"
Her reproof, which she designed to be heavy, weakened despite herself,until at the end she pronounced it almost caressingly.
"Is that just, Nicole?" Barabant cried, seizing the opening. "Why amI angry? Because you will not give me the opportunity." He drew hercloser to him. "Nicole, listen to me but once."
"No, no," she checked him imperiously, "I do not wish to. You are tooheadlong. Barabant, I tell you, you do not know yourself."
"I--I don't know what I feel?"
She checked him again.
"If you do, then respect my wishes." She added almost pleadingly: "Nottoo fast, Barabant. Be reasonable and I will not avoid you again." Thenperemptorily changing the subject: "Did you see Louison? She is alwaysat an execution."
He accepted the turn reluctantly.
"I saw her."
"How did she affect you?"
"Like a snake," he answered, using Goursac's expression. "There issomething about her that repels me."
"I was afraid she might attract you," she confessed, with a laugh, inwhich showed a little relief.
At No. 38 they groped into the entrance, feeling the walls with theirhands. The crow set up a raucous crying, while la Mere Cornicheappeared at the door, shading her candle to discover their approach.They passed on through the first court to the bottom of the staircase,where a single torch flickered in its bracket. Nicole held out herhand, averting her face.
"Good night, Barabant, and until to-morrow."
The hour, the place, the torch that allowed her body to melt into theshadow and illuminated only the eyes, the lips, and the smile thattempted him with the mystery of what it hid, overcame his resolutions.He caught her by the wrists and drew her toward him. Nicole gave alittle cry, resisting feebly.
"I cannot understand you," he cried fiercely. "What are you? What doyou feel? Do you love me or do you not?"
She answered faintly, struggling against his arms:
"Let me go."
"Nicole, dear Nicole, I love you, I adore you."
"No, no, no!"
He released her, and throwing himself at her feet, he stretched up hishands to her, crying:
"Look, look!"
Nicole, with her hand to her cheek half turned from him, could notbut believe. In his eyes she saw the tears appear, and moved, despiteherself, by his emotion, she took his forehead between her palms,saying softly:
"Calm thyself, Barabant."
"You love me; you do, you do!" he cried. He caught her hand in his andrepeated, as only the lover knows how: "I love you! I love you! I loveyou!"
She pressed her hands to her eyes to steady herself.
"And how long will it last?" she said solemnly, her voice reverberatingin the hollow of the silent hall. "Three months, Barabant? And then--"
"For life--forever!"
Nicole shook her head incredulously, but her breast rose in long,tumultuous breaths, trembling with the memory of the word.
He mounted the stairs, turned and held out his hand to her. She darednot look at him, for victory was in his eyes.
"Nicole, Nicole!"
Then she looked at him, her hands to her throat, fallen back againstthe wall. He smiled to her, waiting confidently. Up the dark ascent waslove, mystery, anguish, jealousy, doubt,--but always love.
She moved a step toward him, fascinated and drawn on, until theirfingers touched. Then suddenly she shrank away, and with a cry,spreading out her hands to screen him from her sight, she fled. Onlythe instinct had survived, but the instinct had conquered.