A discussion took place on the subject between the counsel for the prisoners and the prosecution; and at length it was ruled that this trial should not be proceeded with till the following morning.
“We are, however, prepared to go on with the other cases,” said the Procureur, “if the court will permit.”
“Certainly,” said the President.
“In that case,” continued the Procureur, “we shall call on the accused Thomas Burke, lieutenant of the huitieme hussars, now present.”
For some minutes nothing more could be heard, for the crowded galleries, thronged with expectant hundreds, began now to empty. Mine was a name without interest for any; and the thronged masses rose to depart, while their over-excited minds found vent in words which, drowned all else. It was in vain silence and order were proclaimed; the proceedings had lost all interest, and with it all respect, and for full ten minutes the uproar lasted. Meanwhile, M. Baillot, taking his place by my side, produced some most voluminous papers, in which he soon became deeply engaged. I turned one look throughout the now almost deserted seats, but not one face there was known to me. The few who remained seemed to stay rather from indolence than any other motive, as they lounged over the vacant benches and yawned listlessly; and much as I dreaded the gaze of that appalling multitude, I sickened at the miserable isolation of my lot, and felt overwhelmed to think that for me there was not one who should pity or regret my fall.
At last order was established in the court, and the Procureur opened the proceeding by reciting the act of my accusation, in which all the circumstances already mentioned by my advocate were dwelt and commented on with the habitual force and exaggeration of bar oratory. The address was short, however, – scarcely fifteen minutes long; and by the tone of the speaker, and the manner of the judges, I guessed that my case excited little or no interest to the prosecution, either from my own humble and insignificant position, or the certainty they felt of my conviction.
My advocate rose to demand a delay, even a short one, pleading most energetically against the precipitancy of a proceeding in which the indictment was but made known the day previous. The President interrupted him roughly, and with an assurance that no circumstance short of the necessity to produce some important evidence not then forthcoming, would induce him to grant a postponement.
M. Baillot replied at once, “Such, sir, is our case; a witness, whose evidence is of the highest moment, is not to be found; a day or two might enable us to obtain his testimony. It is upon this we ground our hope, our certainty, of an acquittal. The court will not, I am certain, refuse its clemency in such an emergency as this.”
“Where is this same witness to be found? Is he in Paris? Is he in France?”
“We hope in Paris, Monsieur le President.”
“And his name?”
“The Abbé d’Ervan.”
A strange murmur ran along the bench of judges at the words; and I could see that some of them smiled in spite of their efforts to seem grave, while the Procureur-Général did not scruple to laugh outright.
“I believe, sir,” said he, addressing the President, “that I can accommodate my learned brother with this so-much desired testimony perhaps more speedily, I will not say than he wishes, but than he expects.”
“How is this?” said my advocate, in a whisper to me. “They have this Abbé then. Has he turned against his party?”
“I know nothing of him,” said I, recklessly; “falsehood and treachery seem so rife here, that it can well be as you say.”
“The Abbe d’Ervan!” cried a loud voice; and with the words the well-known figure moved rapidly from the crowd and mounted the steps of the platform.
“You are lost!” said Baillot, in a low, solemn voice; “it is Mehée de la Touche himself!”
Had the words of my sentence rung in my ears I had not felt them more, that name, by some secret spell, had such terror in it.
“You know the prisoner before you, sir?” said the President, turning towards the Abbé.
Before he could reply, my advocate broke in: —
“Pardon me, sir; but previous to the examination of this respectable witness, I would ask under what name he is to figure in this process? Is he here the Abbé d’Ervan, the agreeable and gifted frequenter of the Faubourg St. Germain? – is he the Chevalier Maupret, the companion and associate of the house of Bourbon? – or is he the no less celebrated and esteemed citizen Mehé e de la Touche, whose active exertions have been of such value in these eventful times that we should think no recompense sufficient for them had he not been paid by both parties? Yes, sir,” continued he, in an altered tone, “I repeat it: we are prepared to show that this man is unworthy of all credit; that he whose testimony the court now calls is a hired spy and bribed calumniator, – the instigator to the treason he prosecutes, the designer of the schemes for which other men’s blood has paid the penalty. Is this abbé without, and gendarme within, to be at large in the world, ensnaring the unsuspecting youth of France by subtle and insidious doctrines disguised under the semblance of after-dinner gayety? Are we to feel that on such evidence as this, the fame, the honor, the life of every man is to rest? – he, who earns his livelihood by treason, and whose wealth is gathered in the bloody sawdust beneath the guillotine!”
“We shall not hear these observations longer,” said the President, with an accent of severity. “You may comment on the evidence of the witness hereafter, and, if you are able to do so, disprove it. His character is under the protection of the court.”
“No, sir!” said the advocate, with energy; “no court, however high, – no tribunal, beneath that of Heaven itself, whose decrees we dare not question, – can throw a shield over a man like this. There are crimes which stain the nation they occur in; which, happening in our age, make men sorry for their generation, and wish they had lived in other times.”
“Once more, sir, I command you to desist!” interrupted the President.
“If I dare to dictate to the honorable court?” said the so-called Abbé, in an accent of the most honeyed sweetness, and with a smile of the most winning expression, “I would ask permission for the learned gentleman to proceed. These well-arranged paragraphs, this indignation got by heart, must have vent, since they ‘re paid for; and it would save the tribunal the time which must be consumed in listening to them hereafter.”
“If,” said the advocate, “the coolness and indifference to blood which the headsman exhibits, be a proof of guilt in the victim before him, I could congratulate the prosecution on their witness. But,” cried he, in an accent of wild excitement, “great Heavens! are we again fallen on such times as to need atrocity like this? Is the terrible ordeal of blood through which we have passed to be renewed once more? Is the accusation to be hoarded, the calumnious evidence secreted, the charge held back, till the scaffold is ready, – and then the indictment, the slander, the sentence, and the death, to follow on one another like the flash and the thunder? Is the very imputation of having heard from a Bourbon to bear its prestige of sudden death?”
“Silence, sir!” cried the President, to whom the allusion to the Duc d’Enghien was peculiarly offensive, and who saw in the looks of the spectators with what force it told. “You know the prisoner?” said he, turning towards D’Ervan.
“I have that honor, sir,” said he, with a bland smile.
“State to the court the place and the occasion of your first meeting him.”
“If I remember correctly, it was in the Palais Royal, at Beauvilliers’s. There was a meeting of some of the Chouan party arranged for that evening, but from some accident only three or four were present. The sous-lieutenant, however, was one.”
“Repeat, as far as your memory serves you, the conduct and conversation of the prisoner during the evening in question.”
In reply, the Abbé, recapitulated every minute particular of the supper; scarcely an observation the most trivial he did not recall, and apply, by some infernal ingenuity, to the scheme of the conspiracy. Although never, even in the slightest instance, falsifying any speech, he tortured the few words I did say into such a semblance of criminality that I started, as I heard the interpretation which now appeared so naturally to attach to them. (During all this time my advocate never interrupted him once, but occupied himself in writing as rapidly as he could follow the evidence.) The chance expression which concluded the evening, – the hope of meeting soon, – was artfully construed into an arranged and recognized agreement that I had accepted companionship amongst them, and formally joined their ranks.
From this he passed on to the second charge, – respecting the conversation I had overheard at the Tuileries, and which I so unhappily repeated to Beauvais. This the Abbé, dwelt upon with great minuteness, as evidencing my being an accomplice; showing how I had exhibited great zeal in the new cause I had embarked in, and affecting to mark how very highly the service was rated by those in whose power lay the rewards of such an achievement.
Then followed the account of my appointment at Versailles, in which I heard, with a sinking heart, how thoroughly even there the toils were spread around me. It appeared that the reason of the neglect I then experienced was an order from the minister that I should not be noticed in any way; that the object of my being placed there was to test my fidelity, which already was suspected; that it was supposed such neglect might naturally have the effect of throwing me more willingly into the views of the conspirators, and, as I was watched in every minute particular, of establishing my own guilt and leading to the detection of others.
Then came a narrative of his visits to my quarters, in which the omission of all mention of his name in my report was clearly shown as an evidence of my conscious culpability. And, to my horror and confusion, a new witness was produced, – the sentinel, Pierre Dulong, who mounted guard at the gate of the château on the morning when I passed the Abbé, through the park.
With an accuracy beyond my belief, he repeated all out conversations, making the dubious hints and dark suggestions which he himself threw out as much mine as his own; and having at length given a full picture of my treacherous conduct, he introduced my intimacy with Beauvais as the crowning circumstance of my guilt.
“I shall pause here,” said he, with a cool malignity, but ill concealed beneath a look of affected sorrow – “I shall pause here, and, with the permission of the court, allow the accused to make, if he will, a full confession of his criminality; or, if he refuse this, I shall proceed to the disclosure of other circumstances, by which it will be seen that these dark designs met favor and countenance in higher quarters; and among those, too, whose sex, if nothing else, should have removed them beyond the contamination of confederacy with assassination.”
“The court,” said the President, sternly, “will enter into no compromise of this kind. You are here to give such evidence as you possess, fully, frankly, and without reserve; nor can we permit you to hold out any promises to the prisoner that his confession of guilt can afford a screen to the culpability of others.”
“I demand,” cried the Procureur-Général, “a full disclosure from the witness of everything he knows concerning this conspiracy.”
“In that case I shall speak,” said the Abbé.
At this instant a noise was heard in the hall without; a half murmur ran through the court; and suddenly the heavy curtain was drawn aside, and a loud voice called out, —
“In the name of the Republic, one and indivisible, an order of council.”
The messenger, splashed and covered with mud, advanced through the court, and delivered a packet into the hands of the President, who, having broken the large seals, proceeded leisurely to read it over.
At the same moment I felt my arm gently touched, and a small pencil note was slipped into my hand. It ran thus: —
Dear Sir, – Burke is safe. An order for his transmission before a military tribunal has just been signed by the First Consul. Stop all the evidence at once, as he is no longer before the court
The court-martial will be but a formality, and in a few days he will be at liberty.
Yours, D’AUVERGNE, Lieut, – Général.
Before I could recover from the shock of such glad tidings, the President rose, and said, —
“In the matter of the accused Burke, this court has no longer cognizance, as he is summoned before the tribunal of the army. Let him withdraw, and call on the next case, – Auguste Leconisset.”
D’Ervan stooped down and whispered a few words to the Procureur-Général, who immediately demanded to peruse the order of council. To this my advocate at once objected, and a short and animated discussion on the legal question followed. The President, however, ruled in favor of my defender; and at the same instant a corporal’s guard appeared, into whose charge I was formally handed over, and marched from the court.
Such was the excited state of my mind, in such a confused whirl were all my faculties, that I knew nothing of what was passing around me; and save that I was ordered to mount into a carriage, and driven along at a rapid pace, I remembered no more. At length we reached the quay Voltaire, and entered the large square of the barrack. The tears burst out and ran down my cheeks, as I looked once more on the emblems of the career I loved. We stopped at the door of a large stone building, where two sentries were posted; and the moment after I found myself the occupant of a small barrack-room, in which, though under arrest, no feature of harsh confinement appeared, and from whose windows I could survey the movement of the troops in the court, and hear the sounds which for so many a day had been the most welcome to my existence.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE CUIRASSIER
Although my arrest was continued with all its strictness, I never heard one word of my transmission before the military tribunal; and a fortnight elapsed, during which I passed through every stage of expectancy, doubt, and at last indifference, no tidings having ever reached me as to what fortune lay in store for me.
The gruff old invalid that carried my daily rations seemed but ill-disposed to afford me any information, even as to the common events without, and seldom made any other reply to my questioning than an erect position as if on parade, a military salute, and “Connais pas, mon lieutenant,” – a phrase which I actually began to abhor from its repetition. Still, his daily visits showed I was not utterly forgotten; while from my window I had a view of all that went on in the barrack-yard. There – for I had neither books nor newspapers – I spent my day watching the evolutions of the soldiers: the parade at daybreak, the relieving guards, the drill, the exercise, the very labors of the barrack-square, – all had their interest for me; and at length I began to know the very faces of the soldiers, and could recognize the bronzed and weather-beaten features of the veterans of the republican armies.
It was a cuirassier regiment, and one that had seen much service; most of the sous-officiers and many of the men were decorated, and their helmets bore the haughty device of “Dix centre un!” in memory of some battle against the Austrians, where they repulsed and overthrew a force of ten times their own number.
At first their heavy equipments and huge unwieldy horses seemed strange and uncouth to my eyes, accustomed to the more elegant and trim style of a hussar corps; but gradually I fancied there was something almost more soldierlike about them. Their dark faces harmonized too with the great black cuirass; and the large massive boot mounting to the middle of the thigh, the long horsehaired helmet, the straight sword, and peculiar, heavy, plodding step, reminded me of what I used to read of the Roman centurion; while the horses, covered with weighty and massive trappings, moved with a warlike bearing and a tramp as stately as their riders.
When evening came, and set the soldiers free from duty, I used to watch them for hours long, as they sat in little groups and knots about the barrack-yard, smoking and chatting, – occasionally singing too. Even then, however, their distinctive character was preserved: unlike the noisy, boisterous merriment of the hussar, the staid cuirassier deemed such levity unbecoming the dignity of his arm of the service, and there reigned a half-solemn feature over all their intercourse, which struck me forcibly. I knew not then – as I have learned full well since – how every department of the French army had its distinctive characteristic, and that Napoleon studied and even encouraged the growth of these singular manners to a great extent; doubtless, too, feeling a pride in his own thorough intimacy with their most minute traits, and that facility with which, by a single word, he could address himself to the cherished feeling of a particular corps. And the tact by which the monarch wins over and fascinates the nobles of his court was here exercised in the great world of a camp, – and with far more success too; a phrase, a name, some well-known battle, the date of a victory, would fall from his lips as he rode along the line, and be caught up with enthusiasm by thousands, who felt in the one word a recognition of past services. “Thou” – he always addressed the soldiers in the second person – “thou wert with me at Cairo,” “I remember thee at Arcole,” were enough to reward wounds, suffering, mutilation itself; and he to whom such was addressed became an object of veneration among his fellows.
Certain corps preserved more studiously than others the memories of past achievements, – the heirlooms of their glory; and to these Bonaparte always spoke with a feel ing of friendship most captivating to the soldier’s heart, and from them he selected the various regiments that composed his “Guard.” The cuirassiers belonged to this proud force; and even an unmilitary eye could mark, in their haughty bearing and assured look, that they were a favored corps.
Among those with whose faces I had now grown familiar there was one whom I regarded with unusual interest; he seemed to me the very type of his class. He was a man of gigantic size, towering by half a head above the very tallest of his fellows, while his enormous breadth of chest and shoulder actually seemed to detract from his great height. The lower part of his face was entirely concealed by a beard of bright red hair that fell in a huge mass over the breast of his cuirass, and seemed by its trim and fashion to be an object of no common pride to the wearer; his nose was marked by a sabre-cut that extended across one entire cheek, leaving a deep blue welt in its track. But saving these traits, wild and savage enough, the countenance was singularly mild and pleasing. He had large and liquid blue eyes, soft and lustrous as any girl’s, – the lashes, too, were long and falling; and his forehead, which was high and open, was white as snow. I was not long in remarking the strange influence this man seemed to possess over the rest, – an ascendency not in any way attributable to the mark on his sleeve which proclaimed him a corporal. It seemed as though his slightest word, his least gesture, was attended to; and though evidently taciturn and quiet, when he spoke I could detect in his manner an air of promptitude and command that marked him as one born to be above his fellows. If he seemed such in the idle hours, on parade he was the beau ideal of a cuirassier. His great warhorse, seemingly small for the immense proportions of the heavy rider, bounded with each movement of his wrist, as if instinct with the horseman’s wishes.
I waited with some impatience for the invalid’s arrival, to ask who this remarkable soldier was, certain that I should hear of no common man. He came soon after, and as I pointed out the object of my curiosity, the old fellow drew himself up with pride, and while a grim effort at a smile crossed his features, replied, —
“That ‘s Pioche, – le gros Pioche!”
“Pioche!” said I, repeating the name aloud, and endeavoring to remember why it seemed well known to me.
“Yes, – Pioche,” rejoined he, gruffly. “If monsieur had ever been in Egypt, the name would scarcely sound so strange in his ears.” And with this sarcasm he hobbled from the room and closed the door, while I could hear him grumbling along the entire corridor, in evident anger at the ignorance that did not know “Pioche!”
Twenty times did I repeat the name aloud, before it flashed across me as the same Madame Lefebvre mentioned at the soiree in the Palace. It was Pioche who shouldered the brass fieldpiece, and passed before the general on parade. The gigantic size, the powerful strength, the strange name, – all could belong to no other; and I felt as though at once I had found an old acquaintance in the great cuirassier of the Guard.
If the prisoner in his lonely cell has few incidents to charm his solitary hours, in return he is enabled by some happy gift to make these the sources of many thoughts. The gleam of light that falls upon the floor, broken by the iron gratings of his window, comes laden with storied fancies of other lands, – of far distant countries where men are dwelling in their native mountains free and happy. Forgetful of his prison, the captive wanders in his fancy through valleys he has seen in boyhood, and with friends to be met no more. He turns gladly to the past, of whose pleasures no adverse fortune can deprive him, and lives over again the happy hours of his youth; and thinks, with a melancholy not devoid of its own pleasure, of what they would feel who loved him could they but see him now. He pictures their sympathy and their sorrow, and his heart feels lighter, though his eyes drop tears.
In this way the great cuirassier became an object for my thoughts by day and my dreams by night. I fancied a hundred stories of which he was the hero; and these imaginings served to while away many a tedious hour, and gave me an interest in watching the little spot of earth that was visible from my barred window.
It was in one of these reveries I sat one evening, when I heard the sounds of feet approaching along the corridor that led to my room; the clank of a sabre and the jingle of spurs sounded not like my gruff visitor. My door was opened before I had time for much conjecture, and Greneral d’Auvergne stood before me.
“Ah! mon lieutenant,” cried he, gayly, “you have been thinking very hardly of me since we met last, I ‘m sure; charging me with forgetfulness, and accusing me of great neglect.”
“Pardon me, General,” said I, hurriedly; “your former kindness, for which I never can be grateful enough, has been always before my mind. I have not yet forgotten that you saved my life; more still, – you rescued my name from dishonor.”
“Well, well; that’s all past and gone now. Your reputation stands clear at last. De Beauvais has surrendered himself to the authorities at Rouen, and made a full confession of everything, exculpating you completely in every particular; save the indiscretion of your intercourse with Mehée de la Touche, or, as you know him better, the Abbé, d’Ervan.”
“And poor De Beauvais, what is to become of him?” said I, eagerly.
“Have no fears on his account,” said he, with something like confusion in his manner. “She (that is, Madame Bonaparte) has kindly interested herself in his behalf, and he is to sail for Guadaloupe in a few days, – his own proposition and wish.”
“And does General Bonaparte know now that I was guiltless?” cried I, with enthusiasm.
“My dear young man,” said he, with a bland smile, “I very much fear that the general has little time at this moment to give the matter much of his attention. Great events have happened, – are happening while we speak. War is threatening on the side of Austria. Yes, it is true: the camp of Boulogne has received orders to break up; troops are once more on their march to the Rhine; all France is arming.”
“Oh, when shall I be free?”
“You are free!” cried he, clapping me gayly on the shoulder. “An amnesty against all untried prisoners for state of offences has been proclaimed. At such a moment of national joy – ”
“What do you mean?”
“What! and have I not told you my great news? The Senate have presented to Bonaparte an address, praying his acceptance of the throne of France; or, in their very words, to make his authority eternal.”
“And he?” said I, breathless with impatience to know the result.
“He,” continued the general, “has replied as became him, desiring them to state clearly their views, – by what steps they propose to consolidate the acquired liberties of the nation. And while avowing that no higher honor or dignity can await him than such as he has already received at the hands of the people, ‘Yet,’ added he, ‘when the hour arrives that I can see such to be the will of France, – when one voice proclaims it from Alsace to the Ocean, from Lisle to the Pyrenees, – then shall I be ready to accept the throne of France.’”
The general entered minutely into all the circumstances of the great political change, and detailed the effect which the late conspiracy had had on the minds of the people, and with what terror they contemplated the social disorders that must accrue from the death of their great ruler; how nothing short of a Government based on a Monarchy, with the right of succession established, could withstand such a terrific crisis. As he spoke, the words I had heard in the Temple crossed my mind, and I remembered that such was the anticipation of the prisoners, as they said among themselves, “When the guillotine has done its work, they ‘ll patch up the timbers into a throne.”
“And George Cadoudal, and the others?” said I.
“They are no more. Betrayed by their own party, they met death like brave men, and as worthy of a better cause. But let us not turn to so sad a theme. The order for your liberation will be here to-morrow; and as I am appointed to a brigade on active service, I have come to offer you the post of aide-de-camp.”
I could not speak; my heart was too full for words. I knew how great the risk of showing any favor to one who stood in such a position as I did; and I could but look my gratitude, while the tears ran down my cheeks.
“Well,” cried he, as he took my hand in his, “so much is settled. Now to another point, and one in which my frankness must cause you no offence. You are not rich, – neither am I; but Bonaparte always gives us opportunities to gather our epaulettes, – ay, and find the bullion to make them, too. Meanwhile, you may want money – ”
“No, Général,” cried I, eagerly; “here are three thousand francs some kind friend sent me. I know not whence they came; and even if I wanted, did not dare to spend them. But now – ”
The old man paused, and appeared confused, while he leaned his finger on his forehead, and seemed endeavoring to recall some passing thought.
“Did they come from you, sir?” said I, timidly.
“No, not from me,” repeated he, slowly. “You say you never found out the donor?”
“Never,” said I, while a sense of shame prevented my adding what rose to my mind, – Could they not be from Mademoiselle de Meudon?
“Well, well,” said he, at length, “be it so. And now till to-morrow: I shall be here at noon, and bring the minister’s order with me. And so, good-by.”
“Good-by,” said I, as I stood overcome with happiness. “Let what will come of it, this is a moment worth living for.”