Part 14

“Has he?” The important man glanced at his companion, who struck his knee softly and cried–

“‘Suspect!’–on the face of it! What did he order–an omelette?”

The other stroked his rough chin and spoke to the woman.

“Ask the citizen-servant how many eggs go to his omelette!”

She stared. “_I_ know, citizen.”

“Certainly, citizeness, but does he? Ask him.”

Condorcet had not heard this conversation which was spoken very low and in the patois of the neighbourhood; he feared, however, that it might be about him, and was therefore relieved to hear the simple question the woman put to him when she returned to his little table by the window.

“How many eggs will you have to your omelette, citizen?”

“A dozen,” answered the Marquis.

He saw instantly by the expression of the woman’s face that he had said the wrong thing.

“A dozen eggs!” she echoed.

“Is not that the right number, citizeness?”

She retreated from him and went to the other two men with amazement and suspicion in her face.

“He said–a dozen eggs,” she repeated.

The official smiled.

“He is clearly of the people, this citizen, since he has been able to be so lavish with his omelettes!”

He rose and crossed over to where the Marquis sat.

“So you want a dozen eggs for your breakfast, eh?” he said.

Condorcet looked at him and hated him; he was furious with himself for the slip that had brought this attention on himself, but he answered calmly.

“I have seen omelettes made with as many, I thought, citizen.”

The other eyed him closely.

“You are a servant looking for a place?”

“Yes, citizen.”

His questioner stood over him in the attitude, of a judge and thrust his thumbs into his tricolour sash; he was noticing the make and look of this haggard, ragged figure, the shape of his hands, the pose of the head, the steady gaze of the eyes unknown in one born in servitude.

“Where have you come from?”

“Paris.”

“You are very tattered, citizen, to have come such a short way.”

Condorcet moved his arms on the table, and put up the right hand to rest his chin in; this attitude, so unconscious, so easy, so coolly reflective and authoritative betrayed him utterly; the fact that he had not risen when spoken to had in itself been almost sufficient to confirm the official’s suspicion.

“I have been out of a place,” said the Marquis, “some time. I have hopes of another at Bourg-la-Reine.”

The other laughed.

“You are a ‘suspect,’” he said. “And you lie very badly.”

Condorcet’s eyes flashed hell-fire for an instant: thereby he further betrayed himself. “Who do you think I am?” he asked.

“An aristocrat.”

“You flatter me, citizen.” Condorcet’s face was dark and violent; he could not keep his tone humble; he could not forget that this man might have been his servant a few years ago–a creature who would never have presumed to address him; all the lessons of the Revolution had not killed his heritage of aristocratic pride.

“Stand up,” said the man from Bourg-la-Reine.

The Marquis kept his seat.

“I stand up when I rise to leave the inn, citizen,” he answered.

The other man was standing watchfully by the door; the woman had summoned others; they might be seen in the passage, a rough hovering group.

Condorcet knew that he was trapped; his nostrils dilated and his thin lips compressed; he eyed his enemy steadily.

“Now I will go on my way,” he said, and rose–a gaunt, ragged figure against the background of sunny chestnut leaves tapping at the thick glass window-panes. He came round the table and he walked easily despite his bleeding feet and the rough boots that galled them. The heavy person of the official barred his way.

“Will you not wait for your dozen eggs?” he sneered and put out a thick hand to seize the Marquis’ shoulder, but Condorcet moved swiftly aside.

“Your insolence—” he breathed. “You have no right to detain me.”

The people round the door began laughing; Condorcet gave them a bitter look, and in that instant when his eyes were directed his opponent seized him and thrust him backwards against the wall, while he plunged a hand into his torn pocket.

Condorcet shuddered and the blood surged up into his hollow face while the official pulled out a small old book with a discoloured calf cover.

“A foreign language!” he cried, fluttering over the leaves. “I smell treason!”

“Is it treason to read Horace?” asked the Marquis fiercely.

“Do you–a servant–_read_ this?” was the triumphant counter question. “Eh, do you _read_ this, then?”

The people at the door began to crowd into the room; the Marquis took a step forward; there was no possible supposing that he would escape the malice and fury fronting him; he did not for an instant hope it; instinctively, his right hand went round to his left hip where his sword should have been.

The unmistakable gesture was instantly noticed and excited murmurs went up from the gathered peasants.

“By God, you are an aristocrat!” cried the man from Bourg-la-Reine, seizing him roughly.

“By God I am!” answered Condorcet, and struck him across the face.…

They fell on him with quick and hideous noises; he felt himself seized, struck, shaken, pushed, dragged, insulted; he kept his head high and was silent.

They found a rope and tied his arms behind him, and with the ends of this rope struck him across the shoulders. The important official, nursing a smarting face, was incoherent in the coarse violence of his abuse.

The woman trembled at the edge of the group, stupidly afraid.

“Who is he?” she asked again and again.

They took the question up.

“Who are you? _Scélérat!_”

“One who has served the Republic,” he replied, white with the pain of his close-bound arms.

They pushed him into the centre of the room while they paused to consider what they should do with their prize, and as he stood there, swaying a little, but upright, the light was full on his face, which had once been so famous in Paris.

The stern outlines, the dark colouring, the fiery expression were the same; unwashed, unshaven, starved as he was, the little timid man, who had lived in Paris, recognised him.

“Deauville! Deauville!” he shrieked to his master, dancing in his excitement, “it is Condorcet! Condorcet!”

The Marquis made no denial; his silence was confirmation and he meant it to be; he knew that he was face to face with the end and he was for no further subterfuge; he had tasted already of the depths of humiliation, he was enduring the extreme of bitterness; there was nothing further to lose or gain in this world for Marie Jean Nicolas de Caritat.

Presently, while some were arguing about his identity, he said in his rough broken voice, with the clear accent that they hated–

“I am Condorcet. Make an end of it.”

They had no more doubts; his face and his voice had betrayed him more completely even than his twelve eggs and his Latin Horace; they were elated at the capture of a man so long unsuccessfully searched for; they drank together, congratulating each other.

Only the woman serving them noticed the prisoner–noticed the cords cutting his wrists, the drop of pain on his brow, the effort he was making to keep upright on his feet.

In a dim, vague way she was aware of the mental torture he was enduring, compared to which the torture of cord and bleeding feet was slight; she felt that this was a proud man enduring the extremity of humiliation and that no more awful bitterness could be imagined in this world.

“He suffers,” she said under her breath, “he suffers.”

Presently they started; four men and the two from Bourg-la-Reine, towards which town’s prison they turned.

Condorcet was in the middle; the four with the prisoner went on foot, the others on horseback.

Strange thoughts came to the Marquis de Condorcet as he walked bound between his four rude guards, as he walked painfully, dragging his fatigued body on bleeding feet along the hot dusty high-road that led to his prison.

Thoughts strange because they were so incongruous to his present situation, and because it was curious that in his misery he should be filled with all the old burning pangs of ambition and desire for power and glory.

And yet he could not even die gloriously; no man could have a more ignominious end than he would have, he knew that. He cursed the body that had failed him, that had broken like any peasant’s body, that was dragging him down–demeaning him, bringing all his philosophy to mockery. His mind flew back over the salient points of his life; yet there was no need for him to consider his past years: one word covered them all–that word was failure.

Failure–had any failure ever been more bitter, more complete?

For he had conceived loftily and dared greatly, and his fall was terrible and his end abject.

Intolerable became the heat of the sun, intolerable the dust on his dry lips, on his hot lids; intolerable the chafing of his feet, caked with blood and dirt; intolerable the deep pain of his elbows and the cutting of the rope round his wrists; intolerable the agony of fatigue in his weak body, already worn to the last endurance.…

He concentrated all his mental powers on self-control; the man whose mind had flown out into the widest realms of thought now brought that same mind to bear on the terrible effort of holding himself upright, so that he might not, before those whom he despised, fall face downwards in the dust.

He dare not think how far it was to Bourg-la-Reine; he looked ahead of him and could see nothing–no house, no sign of a town; only the dusty hedges, the dusty road.…

“Let me keep upright,” he muttered to himself, “let me keep upright—”

The sky seemed to be burning–blue it was, but not gentle–he had never understood before that the sky can be both blue and flaming, as bitter and fierce as scarlet.

The grass, too, and the trees, they were not soothing nor peaceful but harsh and glaring.

“How long can I keep upright? How long can I walk?”

He tried to snatch at old mathematical problems, to soothe and calm and distract himself with that; he saw the figures range themselves before him–but they were of fire, gigantic and flaming.

He thought that the trees had caught fire from the unsupportable sky, that the hedgerows were singeing and smoking, that the road was rising up before him in a column of white fire; that all this fiery world was advancing on him; everything was scarlet, and there was a sound in his ears like the beating of many drums.

“He will fall,” said the official on horseback, fanning himself with his hat.

Condorcet heard the words, he saw them written before him in the same acrid scarlet that was colouring the world. He tried to protest, to draw himself erect, for he had heard them laughing; but he felt his strength breaking like brittle dry straws; he fell head first as they had meant him to fall, as he had dreaded to fall, and his mouth filled with dust.

When they saw that he was indeed unconscious and that no blows nor kicks could induce him to rise, they lifted him up and dragged him between them to Bourg-la-Reine. As they entered the town he recovered consciousness enough to know that his martyrdom was complete and that he was the object of all the town idlers’ ridicule as he was drawn along, ragged, bloody, with a distorted face, between two of his peasant guards.

They brought him to the prison, an old building in bad repair; his head hung down on his breast, shaking from side to side. The soldiers and jailers greeted him and his escort with amusement.

“What have we here?”

“A philosopher citizen–an aristocrat citizen. In here, citizen, and consider this same philosophy of yours!”

They thrust him into a cell several feet below the ground; the foul damp of it hung close round walls and roof.

“The citizen is a little weak in the legs–he will have a little business to transact in Paris; supper and a bed for the citizen.”

“Who is he?”

“Condorcet, citizen.”

“Ah, at last–manifestly for the guillotine–without a trial.”

“Without a trial, surely, citizen.”

The heavy door closed on him; the key turned; they went away and drank, and in their drink forgot him.

For a while he lay face downwards on the cold mud floor; the rope had been loosened from his hands; presently he shook them free and sat up.

The cell was half underground and almost entirely dark; the high-placed window was heavily barred across and evidently looked out on some close courtyard, for the light that came from it was pale and uncertain.

Condorcet rose, shuddering strongly; the damp of the place was bitter and insistent, after the heat without the chill was horrible.

He staggered against the door and flung his weight against it.

“You! You!” he whispered. “You think you have me?–No, for I have one friend left.”

He slipped down by the door and lay there, thinking.

Often had he wondered quite how the end might come, and speculated how he would meet it; in these days a man would naturally consider a violent death as possible, especially if he meddled with affairs of government; but he had never considered that he would first be so cruelly broken and humbled.

He regretted that he had fled when Robespierre proscribed him; far better to have died then than like this.… But he closed his mind to the past, over which he wrote that one word–failure.

The hard bright philosophy of Voltaire, scorning mystery, cynical of any future state, was of little comfort now; his own book on the human spirit seemed very shallow in the recollection; these things were for life, not for death. Nothing helped now but courage. Just that one quality that would bring him safely into the unknown, the harbour to which he was now so swiftly bound.

He felt very weak and ill; he shivered continually, yet his blood was burning with fever; he dragged himself into a sitting posture, put his hand inside his miserable shirt and took from a cord round his heart–his one friend. A little package containing a phial–poison, bought in a cold dawn at a little druggist’s in Paris on that day when he had left the city for ever.

“I have suffered enough,” he said. “Enough.”

But he put the package back, for he thought that they meant to bring him food and a bed, and he would rather die on a bed, and he would rather ease the horrible burning of his cracked throat by a draught of water however stale and vile, before he composed himself to death.

But the time crept on and no one came; there was not a sound without; it was obvious that they had forgotten him; the little light began to fade into Condorcet’s endless night.

He rose to his full thin height and a huge disdain enveloped him; a quiet silence fell on his soul; he knew that he would never speak again; there was nothing left now that he could put into words.

He went to the wall under the window where the damp oozed in a thin trickle and put his lips to it, moistening them.

A little longer he waited, but no one came; his disdain grew; his disdain of all things as they were, as they must be, as they would always be; disdain of the world that had seized him, crushed him, reduced him with all that was fine and noble and far-reaching and splendid in him, to this ugly sordid end.

He stooped and pulled up his stockings, fastening them as neatly as he could under the straps of his breeches; then he moved back and tried to see a star through the window; but darkness of masonry blocked his view; there was no sky visible.

He opened the phial and drank.

“Some one bungled when the world was made,” he thought.

He lay down along the floor and closed his eyes; and presently he spread his arms out in the form of a cross. And presently it grew completely dark in the cell.

* * * * *

In the morning they remembered him and came to take him to Paris.

A terrible figure with a sealed face was lying on the damp prison floor, and the people were spoiled of some sport.

THE BETROTHED OF PEDRO EL JUSTICAR

JEHANNE PLANTAGENET

“Joan, contracted to Pedro the Cruel, but died.”–_History of England._

“Haro! Mettes moi une emplastre Sus le coer, car, quant m’en souvient, Cette souspirer me couvient Tant sui plains de melancolie– Elle mouret jone et jolie, Environ de vingt et deux ans.”

_Jean Froissart._

I, Abbess of the Nunnery of St. Bertha, which lieth quietly among the Surrey holmes, am much given to this art of writing, new to women. Sith in my time I have written of dogs, hawks and forestry and tricked out the same with broad and good emblazons of colour, to the glory of God and England.

Now, on fair new parchments scented with the herbs which grow in the convent garden I will write of Jehanne Plantagenet, who was the daughter of our late Lord, Edward, King of England and France.

This King had eight sons and four daughters–Isabeau, Duchess of Bedford; Mary, Duchess of Bretagne; Margaret, Countess of Pembroke, and Jehanne, who died unmarried and whom I loved exceedingly.

She was even more goodly to look upon than her sisters and of a great debonnair gentleness in her manners, tall with eyen gray as glass and hair of a rippling gold.

She was very learned in her devotions and charitable to the poor, having learnt these virtues from her mother, Philippa.

And she was able with her loom to form noble pictures of hunts and jousts and saints in fair colours of blue and red and green, with flowers on the grass and birds in the trees so that they were the wonder of all who beheld them; and her brother, the Prince Johan, had a saddle-cloth she had woven with his armories, Richmond, Lancastre, Aquitaine and Lincoln, mingled with the Leopards of England, which was the marvel of the Spanish Knights when he went with Edward of Wales and Counciell into Spain to fight the Free Companies under the Sire Du Guesclin for the sake of Don Pedro, called Justicar by his people.

It is about this time I would write; this Don Pedro was cast from his throne by Don Enrique of Trastamare, his half-brother, who was aided by the French Free Companies that were lured out of France, where they did much mischief, by the King of that country, Charles, to plunder and despoil Spain.

Now, Pedro and his two daughters, Constantia and Isabeau, fled to Bordeaux, where our Princes were, and besought their protection, which was given right gladly.

And the English made march through Spain with thirty thousand men, and there was a cruel skirmish at Nafara in the spring season, 1367, and it ended in the discomfiture of Enrique and the French, and a right evil day for them, for the English went a-chasing of them and slew them to a goodly number and set on the throne again Sir Pedro of Burgundy.

This was a well foughten battle, and one that gave great renown to our valiant English Knights, who did acquit themselves with much hardiness and caused the Knights of Spain to recule before them in such wise that there was no getting them to another battle.

* * * * *

And this was the conquest of Spayne; now I will tell you of London and of Jehanne Plantagenet whose dame I was.

When came the news of the victory she was very joyous, and took me out with her on to the ramparts beyond the Chepe and the Church of the blessed Saint Paul, where the hawthorn and the eglantine that hath such a sharp sweet smell was burgeoning.

And with her were other maidens who had Knights at the wars, either in Spayne or Almaine or with King Wencelaus, and she questioned them of their lovers and spoke of Sir Johan Chandos in pleasant seeming, and of Sir Bertram Du Guesclin, who was made prisoner, and she spoke of her brother’s banners and how all had fallen back before them, and she gave their cry, “St. George, Gayonne!” in a laughing voice, across the fields.

Presently she made wreaths of daisies and cast them down a swift-running stream and watched them go, joyously; and still she spoke of the English and how they had held their Easter in the city of Burgos.

So I had great marvel to find her the day after, pensive in the window, with a sad air, and I asked her ailment, but with no manner of success; she put me by courteously and kept her counsel.

And I who held her in such worship could in no wise pleasure her, even by speaking of the adventures in Spayne and her dear brothers, Edward, Lyon, Edmund and Johan, for she saddened from day to day, and in the night made lamentable sorrows which she would give no reason for, and so from the blithest damosel of the court she was like to become the saddest.

And it fortuned that I discovered the cause, for I heard that our lord the King was to conclude a marriage between this princess and King Don Pedro of Castile, so to make sure the pact between them; certainly I believed this was why she was so downcast, for she would not leave England; yet I had marvel at it, for he of Spayne was a gentle knight and well renouned then, though afterwards dishonoured.

Then the King bid her to him, and in the name of love and lineage commanded her to this match, and she durst not deny him, but afterwards she came to me and drew me into a window above the river and spoke to me.

“Dame,” she said, “I am to wed the King of Spayne.”

And she took her face in her two hands right mournfully.

Then I advised me well and answered–

“He is a very mighty King and companion at war to your two noble brothers.”

“Dame,” she said, “I shall not go to Spayne.” And with great gentleness she sighed.

Now, it was Sunday evening and a great press of clouds about the sun, all red and violet, and in the water also these colours and the bridge white in the glowing brightness, and I looked out on these things as I answered–

“Ye must do your devoir to your father.” And Jehanne Plantagenet made reply–

“Yea, I will do my devoir, please God, but I shall not go to Spayne.”

And she lifted her head to aview the sunset, and we heard the sowning of the trumpets as the companies of the King’s archers came into the yard.

Then she took my hands and said–

“Dame Alys, give me leave and I will this day tell you something–and something heavy withal.”

I had great joy and honour in her amours, and I answered her–

“Behold my heart is as your own.”

Whereat she kissed me and said, “Ye shall hear.” And her eyes were troublous of grief as she spoke.

“Truly,” she said, “when I go to bed right doleful and weary of heart, one comes and parts the curtains and stands looking at me, and it is a lady in a gown of samite with a crown on her hair and rings on her hands, and she looks at me mournfully and as one who would give me warning.”

Then I was amazed, and made reply: “I desire you by the love of God to tell me who this lady is.”

Then said Jehanne Plantagenet–

“I think it is Blaunche of France, who was first wife to this Don Pedro, and is now in Heaven.”

“Surely,” I said, “this cannot be. Wherefor should she give you warning?”

“Sith you ask me,” said Jehanne Plantagenet, “I believe she gives me warning that I am to marry a right dishonourable and ungentle Knight and one that would slay me even as he slew her.”

Thereon I, right affrighted, bade her speak words of good cheer, for this was a grievous thing she said, and one not for credence that the King Don Pedro had slain Queen Blaunche.

But the Princess was sure of it, for she vowed the vision came as a warning.

“And I,” she said, “sith I would rather die in Westminster than live in Spayne, will not have this marriage.”

Then was I blithe to tell her of the great feastings there would be for her wedding, both in this realm and in Spayne, and how she would be a Queen and have her own court; howbeit, she put it all by.

“Dame Alys,” she said, “say no more, for I have such a love for another man that I may not bear to leave the place where he is.” Then a two times she gave a little sigh, and I was sore amazed.

“Dear lady,” I said, “Who is he?”

She answered me. “A man of war, one of the divers captains of the King’s archers, and I have such a puissant affection for him that I could not turn to any other.”