Complete weird tales of.., p.51
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 51
Heavy explosions shook the city to its foundations; the splendid rue Royale was blazing, and the Ministry of Finance, its noble façade dripping with petroleum, caught fire and sent a roaring pillar of flame into the sky. Ruffians from Belleville and the Faubourgs dashed pails of petroleum over museums and palaces, or pumped it out of fire-engines, directing streams of kerosene from the great fire hose, over wall, roof, and spire. The Tuileries vomited flames from every window, the Louvre, the Palais Royale, the Conseil d’État, the Palace of the Legion of Honor, all were burning. An enormous mushroom-shaped cloud hung over Paris, hiding the sun, and through the pall of smoke and dust plunged the shells from Mont-Valérien, whistling, shrieking, bursting, and crashing, among the barricades, drowning the fierce roar of the flames and rattle of musketry. The Palais de Justice sank to the ground, a heap of glowing coals, through which the Sainte-Chapelle showed intact. When the Préfecture of Police began to pour out volumes of thick black smoke, Raoul Rigault sauntered out of it with a sneer on his lips.
A man, standing all alone on the corner opposite, watched the conflagration with satisfaction until the 66th battalion of Federals appeared at the lower end of the street closely pressed by a body of Versailles dragoons. Then the man, who wore the uniform of an insurgent staff-officer, started to run, but his progress was interrupted by a fresh influx of Federals from the opposite end of the street, and he struggled for a moment to disengage himself.
“Where are you going, Citizen?” cried a young girl whom he had jostled. She was dressed in the uniform of a regimental Vivandière, and carried her left hand in a sling.
“Tiens, it’s Isidor Weser!” she added, angrily; “running away too. This won’t do, you know, Citizen Weser!”
“Let me alone!” panted Weser, starting to run again.
“Stop him!” cried the Vivandière, “he is deserting in the face of the enemy!”
“I’ll fix you, Faustine Courtois!” snarled Weser, trembling with fright, and he struck at her savagely with the hilt of his sabre. The blow fell on the interposed barrel of a rifle, and two Federal soldiers seized him by the collar.
“Oh, he strikes at the Commune, does he?” cried a soldier, snatching a revolver from his red sash, “let us settle this gentleman’s affair!”
Before he could fire, however, he was knocked off his feet by a sudden stampede of the insurgents. The Versailles dragoons were among them, sabring, shooting, trampling, but the 66th battalion rallied and threw themselves on the horsemen like wild beasts, howling, bayoneting, tearing tooth and nail until the dragoons wheeled and fled.
There was a barricade on the rue Caumartin, and to that refuge the fragments of the 66th surged, Weser among them, bleeding, dishevelled, and terribly frightened.
Faustine, one hand in a sling, a revolver in the other, marched behind him, her pretty face pale but determined. The Federals threw themselves behind the barricade, thrusting their smoke-stained rifles over the top, glaring furiously toward the distant corner where their comrades’ corpses lay heaped among the stiffening horses of dead dragoons.
Faustine cast a scornful glance at Weser, mounted the barricade, and turned to the soldiers below.
“Brothers,” she said, quietly, “the assassins are here, — the assassins of Versailles! They bring us death or slavery. Choose!”
“Death!” cried the insurgents— “down with the Royalists! Vive la Commune!”
“Vive la Republique!” echoed the girl in a clear voice.
At that moment a staff officer, who walked very unsteadily, entered the barricade from the rear and attempted to pass the sentinels.
“Qui vive!” they demanded.
“Go to h — l!” replied the officer, attempting to draw his sabre.
“Citizen,” cried Faustine, “you can’t pass without the countersign.”
“Hey! Shut up, you hussy!” he shouted, and added a gross insult. Faustine stood silent, the hot flush of shame staining her neck and cheeks.
“Drunken fool,” sneered Rigault, tripping him up, and shot him to death as he sprawled in the gutter. Then he hurried away, saying: “Bayonet that man Weser, I am going to shoot some priests.”
They hunted high and low for Weser, and finally found him hiding under a gabion. “To the wall! To the wall!” they cried. “Death to cowards!” Weser fought, biting and scratching, to the foot of the blood-spattered wall, but as they jerked him to his feet, a cry arose: “Look out! the Line!” and the lower end of the street was filled with Versailles sharpshooters. In an instant the barricade spurted flame and the field-piece crashed out, hurling a storm of canister over the pavement. Weser lay quite still for a moment, then cautiously dragged himself to the vestibule of the opposite house and curled up in the darkest corner.
The fusilade from the barricade had swept the Versailles infantry off the pavement, but they still fired from the corner of the street and bright jets of flame shot from the closed blinds of the houses on either side of the rue Caumartin. Presently muffled explosions told the Federals that the enemy were blowing their way through the house walls to outflank them.
“Never mind! Courage!” cried Faustine, “the barricade will hold in front. Turn your cannon on that yellow house, citizen Faure!”
“They will try the bayonet soon,” said Genton, who had just entered the barricade with his secretary, Fortin.
“Let them!” smiled Faustine.
“They take no prisoners,” said Sicard; “the six poor fellows whom they captured an hour ago were shoved against the first wall without mercy.”
“Very well,” cried Genton; “we also can shoot. What is Rigault doing with his hundreds of priests and gendarmes? Why don’t he shoot six prisoners also?”
“It’s a good time to settle the Archbishop!” suggested Sicard.
“Then let us settle him!” urged Fortin. “Here, Sicard, come with Genton and me. Take half a dozen volunteers and we’ll find Ferré and get the order.”
Faustine, standing on the barricade, heard Fortin’s threat and protested. “Citizen Fortin, you are doing a shameful thing!”
“You don’t know what you ‘re talking about,” said Sicard, brutally; “shut up and mind your business!”
“I protest!” cried Faustine;— “it is murder! Why should you harm that old man! Fortin, you are my friend—”
Fortin looked at her calmly for a moment and then laughed. “You are very pretty,” he said, “but you can’t teach me! What do you care, anyhow?”
“Have you no shame?” cried Faustine, angrily. “Have you no courage except to murder priests? Is this then the Commune? Is this the cause for which we fight?” There were tears in her eyes and she brushed them away.
“Get down from that barricade,” said Fortin, “they are firing at you.” She paid no attention to the warning, but began to plead earnestly for the life of the Archbishop.
“He is so old,” she said, “so helpless and gentle. Has he ever harmed anyone? I trusted you, Fortin.”
“Let him die anyway,” growled Sicard; “we want six, and he’s no better than any of the others.”
“He must die,” said Fortin, coldly, “but I’m not particular who the other five are.”
“I am,” shouted a soldier standing behind him. “My name is Martin, and I demand the death of the American, Landes.”
“Martin! Martin!” cried Faustine, trying to make a diversion—” and who cares if your name is Martin?”
“That’s all very well,” said the soldier, doggedly, “but I demand the death of the American, Landes.”
“Well, it’s as easy to shoot a Yankee as a Frenchman — we’ll finish him along with the priest,” said Genton; “come along, Fortin.”
“Come down from the barricade,” cried Fortin, as a bullet struck the stone at Faustine’s feet.
“Not until you promise me to spare the Archbishop and — the American.”
“Come down, you fool.”
Faustine looked him steadily in the eyes. “Emile,” she said, “do you hear? I forbid you to shoot the American.” A volley from the Versailles troops drowned her voice, but she went on as soon as she could be heard: “I demand the protection of the Commune for the American, Landes.” A second volley cut her short, and a whistling shower of bullets spattered the barricade. Fortin caught Faustine by the wrist and tried to pull her down. —
“You’re in the way! They are coming! We must fire!”
“Let me go!” she panted, struggling and clinging to the wall.
“Get down, you little idiot; can’t you see you ‘re obstructing our cannon?”
“Fire your cannon!” she screamed, wringing herself free.
“Will you get down?”
“No!”
“Fire, then!” yelled Martin, jerking the lanyard.
“My God!” shouted Fortin, “the girl was in front!” He sprang on Martin, and they rolled over and over, till Fortin could draw his sabre. A moment later he picked himself up, streaming with blood.
“Now for the Archbishop,” he cried in a voice like nothing human. Followed by Sicard, Genton, and six more grimy insurgents, he left the barricade.
CHAPTER XXVII. “THE PRISON OF THE CONDEMNED.”
THE LIGHT WAS growing dim in the long corridor of the “Prison of the Condemned,” and François, the Governor, rubbed his eyes, and bent lower over the file of papers on the table before him.
“I can’t see, — here, Romain, get me a lamp,” he said, yawning and scratching his head. The Brigadier Romain departed, and returned in a few moments with a lighted lamp. The Governor blinked and yawned again.
“It makes me sick,” he said, “to have that whining priest on my hands. Why doesn’t Rigault shoot him. He’s always miauling and praying and pretending he’s sick.”
“He says he can’t sleep on the board in his cell,” observed the Brigadier Romain.
“Why not?”
“He says he’s old and sick.”
“And an Archbishop; that’s the trouble, he thinks he’s an Archbishop still! I’ll correct that impression. I wish I’d left him in No. I. Cell 23 is the best cell in La Grande Roquette, and he’d better be satisfied. And you tell him to stop writing on the wall. I won’t have it. What did he write just now?”
“Oh, some Jesuit foolishness— ‘the cross is the strength of life and the salvation of the soul.’”
“In French?”
“No, Latin.”
“Then,” growled François, “it’s some cipher signal and I won’t have it, — you understand? These Jesuits are devils at treachery. Did you change all the prisoners on this tier?”
“All,” said Romain, with his misleading pleasant smile. François turned and looked along the dark passage. The central corridor was lined on either side by massive doors, each pierced by a small “judas” with iron crossbars. In the centre of this corridor were half a dozen wash-stands, through the basins of which water ran continually.
There was no furniture in cell or corridor except the iron benches let into the solid masonry, and the single chair and table, which was only for the Governor’s use. A grating at the farther end of the corridor looked out on the grassy prison court, and just beyond one could see the chapel, and a section of the wall surrounding the circular road or “ronde.”
François peered into the prison twilight, then shuffled to his feet and passed along the rows of cell doors, touching each lightly with the roll of paper in his hand, followed by Romain.
“Who’s there, — what’s the number?”
“Twenty-two, — it’s the Jesuit, Guerin.”
“What! And the Archbishop in the next cell! You ‘re asleep. Put that American, Landes, in there after the roll-call, and shove the Jesuit into the American’s cell. Whom did you put in twenty-four?”
“That baby-faced friend of the American who proved to be a woman.”
“Let the slut stay there then, but don’t lock any more Jesuits next to the Archbishop, or by God—”
“Now, now,” urged Romain, “you must remember that he isn’t an Archbishop!”
“Slip of the tongue.”
“And you forget that God is out of date; you’ve sworn by Him twice.”
“Did I,” sneered François; “well we all make fools of ourselves at times, and nursery rhymes are not easily forgotten. You don’t suspect me, do you?”
“Oh, no,” said Romain.
“You’d better not!” blustered François.
“Of course not,” repeated Romain, in his soft, pleasant voice.
The Governor turned and looked at him. “You ‘re the damnedest, scoundrelly hypocrite unhung!” he said; “you can spy about and fool the prisoners with your sympathetic ways, but you’d better not try any treachery on me!”
“You wrong me,” said Romain with a sincere manner that would have misled anybody but the Governor.
“Oh, I know I do,” said François; “what did you worm out of the Jesuit, Guérin, this morning?”
“Not very much. He says the Archbishop relies on Thiers, implicitly.”
“Then he’s the biggest fool in Paris. What time is it?”—’ “Six.”
“It’s too late to turn the prisoners out. I suppose they can stand it; if they can’t, I can, and it’s all the same.”
“Will you call the roll?” asked Romain.
“Yes, give me that lamp and unlock the doors.”
Romain unhooked a heavy bunch of keys from his belt and rapidly unlocked the cell doors, passing from one to the other with a light swiftness which a?gued practice and devotion to his profession.
“Cell number one! Caubert!” cried the Governor, holding the long sheet of paper close to the lamp in his hand. The cell door at the end of the corridor opened from within and a pleasantfaced priest walked out and stood facing the Governor. François raised the lamp in his hand and eyed the priest. “Caubert!” he repeated.
“I am here,” said the priest.
“Then go back again,” said the Governor, brutally. Père Caubert turned back to his cell with a touch of irony in his quiet smile, and the Governor locked him in.
“Number two! Ducoudray!” cried François.
“I am here,” said Father Ducoudray. He was locked in without comment.
“Number three! Olivaint!”
“Here.”
“Number four! Allard!”
“Here!”
“Yes, here now, but probably under ground before long,” sneered the Governor.
“If God wills,” said Father Allard.
“If Raoul Rigault wills,” mimicked François, slamming the cell door. Presently he came to cell twenty-two.
“Twenty-two! Guérin!”
“Here!”
“Where’s that American,” asked François, turning to Romain. “Oh, you’ve got him with you, eh? Then run this Jesuit into his cell and put him next to the Arch — to the old fox, Darboy, — so. Landes, I hope you won’t mind the smell of a Jesuit. We’ll air your cell in the morning;” and he closed the door on Philip’s heels.
“Twenty-three! Darboy!”
“You’ll have to open the door and go in. He’s too sick to get up,” observed Romain.
“He’s got to get up!” cried the Governor, and at the same moment the Archbishop appeared on the threshold of his cell. His hair was white as snow, and his long white beard which had grown in prison fell untrimmed on his breast.
“I am here,” said the Archbishop in a voice weak with pain.
“Glad to see you. Exercise will do you good,” said François; “do you sleep well?”
“No,” said the old man.
“Evil conscience!” commented the Governor, and slammed the door in his face. “Twenty-four! Citoyenne!”
“I am here,” said Jeanne de Brassac, stepping from her cell.
“Ah, you little devil of a spy, I’d like to ring your neck,” observed François, leering at her.
Jeanne, still clothed in the faded uniform of the Subsistence Department, leaned wearily against the cell door. It was not the first threat she had received from the Governor of La Grande Roquette.
“Faugh! Get in there, you hussy!” growled François, and pushed the door back. Then he moved on with his roll of paper and his little lamp, and presently the great gate in the court clanged and the corridor was silent, save for the measured tread of the first night watch and the tinkling of the water in the iron wash-basins.
Philip, sitting in his cell, heard the gate slam, and knew that the Governor had gone. He sat thinking for a moment, then rose and walked to the grating which formed a section of the partition which separated his cell from the cell of the Archbishop. Through this grating he could see across a portion of the Archbishop’s cell, and catch a glimpse of the grating in the partition of the cell beyond, but the light was growing so dim that the grating was merely an indistinct blot in the twilight. He looked at the Archbishop, lying silently on the wretched board which projected from the wall.
“Monseigneur,” he said, softly.
“My son,” replied the old man, painfully rising on his elbow and looking up.
“It is I — Philip Landes, the American, Monseigneur.”
The Archbishop smiled. In the hours of recreation in the court-yard he had become very fond of Philip.
“So you are there now,” he said; “what has become of the Abbé Guérin?”
“They put him into my old cell, Monseigneur. Can I be of any use to you? I have not yet eaten my supper.”
“Eat it, my son; — I thank you, but they give me much mope than I am able to eat.”
“Are you suffering very much to-night, Monseigneur?”
“Not more than I can bear,” said the old man. “Do you know that Mademoiselle Jeanne is in the cell beside mine?”
“No. Will it disturb you, Monseigneur, if I speak with her?”
“I will call her myself,” said the Archbishop; “Jeanne! Jeanne!” Then Philip heard a timid voice from the darkness; “Je suis la, Monseigneur.”
“Jeanne,” called Philip, softly.
“Philip! Oh, are you there, my darling?”
