(1)
“you really wish to do this, madame?” asked suzon tessier, looking at the piece of embroidery she had just laid before the duchesse.
“i must do something, suzon, to pass the time till i start for the temple. i cannot go out; paris hurts me. and, sewing once more in this room, i shall feel i am back in the old days.”
“i only wish you were!” thought suzon as she left the room—a wish valentine would never have echoed. though these days were nothing but linked hours of anguish and suspense, she would not have changed. heaven lay between that time and this.
the day before yesterday she had arrived with her escort in this new, gay, animated paris which hurt her so—the paris which, exhilarated by a slight frost, under a cheerful winter sky, seemed to have drunk in a new lease of life with its revivifying change of government. it was a fresh world to valentine—and a cruel. so when, after one night at a hotel, she had sought out suzon to see how she fared, that faithful soul had refused to let her face again the curious looks of the hostelry. since there was no danger to mme tessier in housing her now—and valentine had learnt long since that the threatened mirabel enquiry had never come to anything—she let herself be persuaded without much difficulty, and she and roland were staying in the rue de seine. m. de brencourt was lodging at an obscure little h?tel garni in the rue du vieux-colombier. mme de trélan had hardly seen him since their arrival; he was too deeply occupied. for the whole weight of royalist influence in paris was at work to procure the release of “m. de kersaint” from the prison of the temple, where he was in close confinement awaiting the first consul’s pleasure. he was still under the sentence of death passed on him at vannes, and all attempts, based on the disgraceful means taken for his capture, to get that sentence removed, or even commuted, had so far been vain, though berthier, the minister of war, was an officer of the ancien régime, and lebrun, the third consul, actually in relations with the royalist party. protests and clamour having proved unavailing, there remained therefore nothing, if the prisoner was to be saved, but to carry him off.
and this was by no means a hopeless enterprise, for in paris there existed a whole subterranean population of chouans and émigrés, of conspirators and dubious characters. the heads of the secret royalist agency, the chevalier de coigny and the baron hyde de neuville, knew well where to put their hands on suitable instruments. plans were in fact already well forward for a very promising scheme, to be put into force the following evening. there would arrive at the prison of the temple a carefully forged order for m. de trélan’s transference to some other place of confinement; it would be brought by an officer, and there would be a carriage and a considerable escort—enough to impose on any jailor in the world. and, once they had the captive out, they would make for the coast, along the road to which relays would be in waiting.
all this valentine knew, and it had, till an hour or so ago, been the one thing which filled her mind. but the arrival of the order to see her husband, which after reiterated attempts had been procured for her, absorbed it now. the order was for three o’clock that afternoon.
there was more colour on mme de trélan’s face to-day than at vannes—more colour and more signs of strain. and the sewing she had asked for was something of a pretence—as much a pretence, really, as was roland’s book, now upside down on his knee where he sat on the window-seat, his chin on his hand, gazing immovably out of the window. she put down her needle and gazed at him in her turn.
how like his profile was to gaston’s—and how unlike! was she sorry that she had told him? it had changed him, between that news and the catastrophe of hennebont he seemed a boy no longer. for a nature so open as his he had said extraordinarily little, but she had divined easily enough the tides of feeling that had met—were meeting still—in his young heart: the shock of knowing that he had no right to the name he bore (though since he had been so carefully recognised by the late m. de céligny the world need never know that) the shock to his thoughts of the mother of whom, perhaps mercifully, he had no memory. on the other hand there was the fervour of his worship for m. de trélan, which lent so much reality and poignancy to his frustrated desire to have died to save him. . . . she did not feel sure that she had not been selfish in the matter; she had even said so, later on, that dark evening at vannes. but when he had cried bewildered, “how can you be so good to me, madame? you ought to hate me!” she had answered that he must know she loved him and was leaning on him then, or she would never have told him. “but i think you ought to know,” she had ended, “in case he . . .”
before she got further roland had come back from the mantelpiece, where his head lay buried in his arms, and was at her feet, kissing the hands which were gripping each other in the effort to finish that sentence. and he said, in a smothered voice, “if it is dishonour . . . i do not feel dishonoured.—but i cannot grasp it yet; it seems too blinding . . .”
valentine remembered all this, looking at him now after six days.
“roland, my child,” she said suddenly, “i want to consult you about something. if to-morrow night’s scheme should fail——”
the young man turned his head at once. “oh, it will not fail,” he asserted. “but i wish—o, how i wish—that i were in it!”
for, there being secret communication between the royalist agency and the temple, the prisoner had contrived to express a strong desire that the vicomte de céligny should take no active part in the plan of rescue.
“poor boy, i know you do! but, roland, i also have to be inactive. yet i have a scheme of my own, in case the other fails . . . you know the trélan rubies? we had designed them, m. de trélan and i, for marthe on your wedding day. now i have the thought of giving—of offering—them to someone else . . . as a price.”
“to whom?” asked roland, leaning forward as the duchesse unclasped them from under her dress.
“to mme bonaparte.”
roland, a little startled, considered. “would it be of any use?”
“she is said to be rapacious for jewels—and of royalist leanings.”
“but what could she do?”
“use her influence with her husband. what do you think of it, roland?”
the young man on the window seat reflected. “you should consult m. hyde de neuville, madame, not me. i know nothing of mme bonaparte. but——” he stopped and coloured a little.
“what, roland?”
“forgive me, madame, but would the duc approve of such a step?”
her own colour faded a little as she met his eyes. and then with courage, she answered, “no, roland, i am afraid he might not. he is, as you know . . . very proud. but it is not as if he personally would have a hand in it. a wife’s mortal anxiety will excuse anything. i should go as one woman—as one wife—to another . . . an independent step.”
“shall you tell m. de trélan of it this afternoon?” asked roland, with his eyes on the floor.
valentine did not answer for a moment. “but in that case i could not say truthfully that he knew nothing of it—which i should wish to be able to say. advise me, roland!”
“o madame, how can i presume to advise you in a matter that concerns only you and him. you know so much better what he would wish than i do!”
and valentine sat silent, looking at him, her face drawn, the red rivulet of fire across her hands.
“roland, what you really mean is that i know what he would not wish!”
“yes, madame,” answered the boy in a very low voice.
valentine caught her underlip. “you have your father in you, there is no doubt,” she thought to herself, and as she bent over the stones a tear fell on to the possible price of blood. for the worst of it was that she knew roland was right.
she lifted her head again. “then i shall speak of it to him—ask his permission. . . . and i think, roland, that i will go and prepare now. it is very early to start, but it is a long way to the temple, and we could walk part of it. it is so hard to sit still.”
as she came downstairs again, dressed for the street, she was thinking of the man who had put the rubies into her hands that strange day at mirabel. ah, that the abbé chassin were here now! he who had always been at hand in difficulties, and who now, at the most critical time of all, was over the sea. but even he, as she knew, could do no more than was being done.
in the parlour she found m. de brencourt—the first time she had seen him that day.
“you are setting out already, madame?” he asked, bending over her hand. she told him why, thinking how worn and ill he looked, and how possessed (as indeed he was) by a spirit of restless energy.
“i would beg leave to escort you part of the way,” he said, “but having missed hyde de neuville at his lodging, and hearing he had something of importance to say to me and was coming here, i must await him. roland, i suppose, accompanies you?”
“yes—but he will not be able to see m. de trélan, i am afraid. is there any message you wish conveyed about to-morrow night?”
m. de brencourt shook his head. “communications of that kind, madame, go by their own channel. besides, there is nothing fresh to say. the duc knows the attempt is to be made; his part is merely passive.”
she said nothing for a moment. then, flooding up from the depths, came the thing she had not yet allowed to escape her. “o, monsieur de brencourt, if only he had listened to you!”
the comte shook his head. “no, madame, say rather, if only the warning had come from other lips! i was the one man in the world who should not have carried it. . . . duchesse, we cannot put off our past so easily; it clings, like the shirt of fable, and poisons everything. . . . you may tell the duc, if you will, that i accept his apology in the same spirit in which he sent it. i cannot blame him for disbelieving my veracity—however much, being only human, i resent it. but it was inevitable; and that he is where he is now is nemesis—the nemesis i have drawn down on both of us.”
she could find no words before the sadness of his tone. he opened the door for her.
(2)
when he had shut the door behind mme de trélan the comte turned and threw himself down in a chair, his chin on his breast, staring into the fire. his brain was weary, for he had been up most of the night. he could not forget (even if valentine did, as he sometimes suspected) that the duc de trélan was not only a prisoner but a condemned prisoner—not a man awaiting trial, but one already under sentence of death—and that his position was very precarious. any hour might conceivably bring the tidings that the sentence had been carried out on him; for his own part he wished the rescue had been fixed for that evening, but it had not proved possible to have every thread in place so soon.
m. de brencourt’s whole soul was so set on getting gaston de trélan out of the mortal peril in which he stood, that he did not analyse his motives over closely. he had entered on the attempt for valentine’s sake—and a little, too, for the sake of his own self-respect. and the duc had sent a message of regret; from him of all men that was no empty form of words. yet artus de brencourt was under the impression that he cared very little about de trélan’s fate in itself. but it is hard to know one’s own heart.
he went on staring into the coals. he wished he did not keep seeing that figure by the dolmen in the forest waiting with folded arms to receive his fire. it was so very possible . . . he shivered. “how much better it would be if i could take his place!”
a knock, and the expected visitor was shown in, and the comte roused himself. hyde de neuville, the newcomer, was surprisingly young for the position he occupied—only three and twenty in fact—good-looking, alert, intelligent, well-dressed, a man of good family accustomed to the best society, and, in some of his activities, to the worst. he had some astonishingly audacious exploits to his name. when he wrote letters—as to m. chassin—he signed himself “paul berry.”
“i had gone to see bertin,” explained the young man, coming over to the fire. “i was fearing a hitch about the escort. but it is all right. the two dozen men he had laid his hand on are perfectly reliable, and i am now quite satisfied. uniforms, indeed, are more difficult to procure than bodies to put them on. but we shall manage.”
“you have no doubts about the forged order?”
“not the slightest. and none of the temple officials will be surprised, i think, if m. de trélan is transferred, the circumstances of his capture having been so exceptional.”
“so damnable!” interpolated the comte.
“but i really wanted to speak to you about something quite different,” went on the young conspirator. “late last night i had a communication from my compatriot bourgoing, who is in relations with talleyrand. it appears talleyrand thinks that, partly owing to the outcry which has been made about this abominable violation of m. de trélan’s safe-conduct, bonaparte would, after all, be rather glad to get out of going to the extremity to which he most undoubtedly meant to go when he sent those infamous orders to brune.”
de brencourt stared at him rather incredulously. “i can hardly believe that of the first consul. he is entirely without scruples, and very unlikely to be frightened into turning back once he has started on a course, however black that course may be. he cannot be magnanimous now; it is too late. it would only look like weakness.”
“i know that. but bonaparte, besides getting rid of the odium this affair is raising in certain quarters in paris, would demand some kind of quid pro quo—that the duc should personally ask for his life, and, i suppose, give an undertaking never to conspire against him. talleyrand is almost convinced that in such a case he would be merciful—in fact that he would secretly be relieved. he could make at any rate some pretence of magnanimity; it might affect wavering supporters. but he has gone too far to set the duc de trélan free of his own motion; it would look too much like weakness, as you say. on the other hand if it were publicly known that the duc had asked for mercy——”
“i fear, in that case, that the first consul will not obtain the relief which he desires,” observed m. de brencourt drily. “who that had had any acquaintance with him could imagine that the duc de trélan would, for any consideration, stoop to sue from bonaparte—and by so doing serve bonaparte’s purpose too! . . . i should scarcely like even to propose such an idea to him.—but of course it would be only proper to inform him—as i expect you have already done?”
hyde de neuville looked thoughtful. he nodded. “my note must have reached him, by the usual channel, three or four hours ago.—by the way, has the duchesse started for the temple? i think her interview was for three o’clock, was it not? i was wondering whether the ease with which, in the end, the order was obtained, was due to the idea that she might work on her husband if she knew.”
“then i am thankful that she does not know,” replied the comte rather hoarsely.
“you mean that it would be of no use? well, we must then stake everything on to-morrow night’s affair, which promises excellently.” he brought out a paper. “now, who of these do you think had best drive the carriage, and who play the officer commanding the escort? and i have not yet quite arranged about all the further relays.”
(3)
at that very moment valentine, on roland’s arm, had just emerged from the rue du roule into the rue saint-honoré, whence they intended to take a fiacre to the temple. in that animated and busy street roland was looking round for a carriage when he suddenly exclaimed,
“see, madame, what is coming. is it—it must be the first consul himself!”
valentine followed his eyes. from the direction of the tuileries was approaching, at a fast trot, a carriage with an escort of mounted grenadiers. it came onwards in a clatter of hoofs, and on its passage a roar of cheers went up and hats were waved. valentine felt a momentary dizziness, and held roland’s arm tightly. she was about to see the master of france, the great general, the great administrator, the genius with a marvellous brain, an indomitable will, and a petty soul—the man who had her husband’s life in his hand, to keep or to throw away. but when the carriage was almost abreast she involuntarily dropped roland’s arm and drew herself up, the pride of a long line firing her blood.
and she saw, passing quickly, not, as she had expected, a young hero in uniform, but, in a grey civilian overcoat, the wide revers crossed closely over his chest, a little man whose hollow temples and cheeks, and pallid yellowish complexion, made him look at least ten years older than his thirty years. sombre and preoccupied, his head sunk on his breast, he appeared almost indifferent to the plaudits of the crowd, but chance, or something in her attitude, drew his eyes in valentine’s direction, and for one brief second the duchesse de trélan sustained—and returned—the singular and burning gaze of napoleon bonaparte. then he was gone.
trembling a little, mme de trélan took the young man’s arm again. she could not shake off the feeling that the first consul knew who she was, and that it was the question of the duc de trélan’s fate which was absorbing his thoughts just then. and he did not look as if he could be turned from his purpose by any woman. . . .
“let us get a carriage and go quickly, roland,” she said in a faint voice.
the slow horse clanked dully along the interminable rue du temple, till at last valentine and roland found themselves standing before the columned entrance to the palace of the temple, once the habitation of the comte d’artois and, before him, of other princes of the blood, such as conti of amorous memory. and soon, formalities over, they were walking, with a soldier as guide, across the great courtyard with its encircling row of leafless trees, towards the low fa?ade. except that this was day, and not night, they saw just what the royal family had seen when they were brought there captives on the 13th of august, 1792, for the palace itself had not changed its external aspect since, and the prison itself, the great tower, stood at some distance behind. following their guide they went through the building, emerging finally on the flight of steps which led down from what had been the great salon to the palace garden, and saw then, at the end of the deserted pleasances, the great wall built round the tower to isolate the royal captives, and over its bleak masonry the upper storeys and the pointed roof of the massive donjon of the temple which was their goal.
valentine had heard of this wall of palloy’s at the time of its construction. it had served its purpose only too well then; it looked—god help her!—as if it would serve it well now. yet m. de brencourt had escaped—but that was by bribery, and he had not been in solitary confinement. . . . now they were at the guardhouse in the wall, were passed civilly and quietly through, and found themselves facing the fortress itself, grey, massive, foursquare, with its small satellite round tower at each angle. every window in the main building, except those at the very top, was blinded by a sloping board-work, a tabatière. and round it the encircling wall, supported on many buttresses, formed a complete square of desolation. in this were listlessly promenading a few prisoners.
“that is the entrance, madame,” said their guide, pointing to the left-hand of the two smaller towers on that side. “the stairway runs up that tourelle; they will take you up from the greffe there. i see old bernard awaiting you, in fact.”
and indeed, on the small semi-circular perron at the foot of the little tower was already standing an old gaoler with a bunch of keys.
“madame de trélan?” said this old man when they got there. “we were expecting you. if you will show me the pass there is no need to go into the greffe. thank you, monsieur . . . madame will be obliged to mount a good many steps, since m. de trélan, as she probably knows, is in solitary confinement, and therefore at the top of the tower. i will go first; there are wickets to unfasten.”
the winding stairway of the turret was too narrow for roland to give the duchesse his arm. light and gloom alternated with each other as they passed the slit-like windows in the six-foot masonry. and every step they mounted seemed to drive the blood further from valentine’s heart. how could gaston ever be rescued, even by guile, from a place like this? and she, who had been twice in prison herself, and thought she knew all its bitterness, now found that she was tasting a cup incomparably sharper.
she was so pale when they got to the top that roland put his arm about her for a moment.
“trying, the ascent, madame,” observed the melancholy gaoler. “one hundred and twenty-two steps.”
a couple of sentries with fixed bayonets stood before the thick, nail-studded door. the “marquis de kersaint” was well guarded indeed.
“the young gentleman will stay outside,” observed bernard. “my orders, as you know, are only for the family. there is a bench yonder, monsieur.”
roland, his heart beating furiously, bent his head in acquiescence, and when the gaoler had unlocked the door and the sentries had stood aside valentine passed in alone.
