Chapter 50

JUDGMENT DAY

Germain, left alone in the house, bolted the door, returned with trembling limbs to the room above and threw himself down in his chair blanched and nerveless. They who have experienced the minutes when a well-loved one hangs between life and death can alone know what he suffered. It was now that the fleeting poverty of the ideals he had been following became visible. The elegance, the pride, the historic glamour, the fine breeding of the Old _Régime_, by which he had been fascinated, had they not fallen to pieces like a flower whose petals are scattered in the tempest? Even the burning hope of his heart, the dream of a life of earthly bliss with his love, was showing its insecurity and dropping asunder. His ship was sinking in the ocean of Eternity. How futile his intrigue, how mean his deceptions, how insufficient his excuses. The Everlasting Presence gazed through them, and in its all-illumining blaze they fell and sank away. He saw that that which underlies life and death and all that is, is a living Conscience, to which all must perforce conform. Pride, deception, selfishness, uncontrol of passion, the taking of that which was not his, and the injuring of honourable men--these excrescences he saw upon his soul, and that without their surgery it would never be divine. He remembered the prophetic warning of his father that "Eternal Justice calls us to exact account"; and the pertinacity of Retribution in the matter of the Golden Dog. He saw that the justice of this life and the next are one, and are absolutely complete in their demands. One great conclusion came to him with overwhelming force; he saw that it was the plan of Heaven that _no man must profit by any fruit of his wrong_. He now himself must meet that justice and make that retribution.

At length, leaving the room, he dragged himself up the stair leading to his own chamber, a cramped place in the flat above, bearing small resemblance to his luxurious apartments of former days; yet around it were hung the de Lincy family portraits; his sword of the Bodyguard lay on the mantel; and in the space behind the door were the old Chevalier's iron-bound muniment-chest and his own little portmanteau gilded with his arms.

With fevered face and icy hands he opened the latter and sought out the packet of his proofs of _noblesse_. Then turning to the fireplace beneath the mantel, he threw the papers one by one into it--his falsified birth-certificate, his father's altered marriage-contract, the letter of the gentlemen of Montreal, the apology of Councillor de Léry, the will of the Chevalier de Lincy and the attestation of the Genealogist of France. He took a flint and steel from the mantel and quickly struck spark after spark into them until they sprang into flames. Then he added his great genealogical tree of the de Lincys, whose branches withered and quivered, like his heart, as the fire attacked the broad folds of the parchment. Packet after packet the precious archives of the Lecours de Lincy went upon the pile until he had emptied the muniment-chest; the fire raged and reddened into a solid mass, and they were irrevocably gone. Next he took up de Bailleul's will--sorrowfully and hesitatingly, for it was his title to Eaux Tranquilles--but the following instant he threw it also on the flames. Then he deliberately cast in his Grand Cross of St. Louis and the insignia of the Order of the Holy Ghost. His _Diamond Armorial_ followed, he tore his seal, cut with the pretended coat-of-arms, from his watch-chain, broke up with his foot his little portmanteau, and tearing down the de Lincy portraits one by one watched all blaze up and consume together. At last, on the top of the heap, he mournfully laid his sword of the Bodyguard and saw its golden handle and delicate blade begin to glow and discolour.

"Disappear, old dreams;" he murmured, "Eternal Justice visit me for all! But afflict not _her_; spare thine angel for her own sake. Oh, spare _her_."

One packet remained, which he had intentionally not destroyed. When the fire settled down a little he took a strong paper and cord, wrapped and sealed it, and addressed it for mailing as follows--

+--------------------------------------------+ | RECORD OF PROOFS AGAINST G. LECOUR, | | THE PROPERTY OF MONSIEUR LOUIS R. C. | | DE LÉRY, | | | | _Late Bodyguard of the King of France_, | | | | AT QUEBEC | | IN CANADA. | +--------------------------------------------+

Humbly he descended the stair once more, and placing the package on the table of the sitting-room, sank again feverishly into his chair, prepared to confess all should Cyrène safely return.

A knocking sounded in the lower part of the house. He went to the door; the wicket showed a beggar woman, but on Mademoiselle Richeval mentioning her name he recognised her and let her in. His mind was so absorbed that he felt no surprise. As food was what she wanted he set before her everything in their little larder; and while she was eating like one famished he forgot her presence completely. The two once so sociable persons were for a while dumb to each other.

At length, however, having satisfied her ravenous hunger, she commenced to speak of the changes which the Revolution had brought to them and to wonder at his strange want of interest, when the noise of a mob crowding around the door was heard.

Lecour saw what might happen.

"Fly, Mademoiselle," he said; "in the courtyard there is a door on the left, take it and pass into the next house where are good people who will not abandon you. I must stay here."

He then went to the door at which pikes and gun-stocks were beating.

"Citizens, I am the only person in the house," said he, at an opening they had broken in one of the panels. "What do you wish?"

For answer several pikes were thrown in; he stepped back beyond their reach, calmly fronting the fierce faces.

"Tell me what you want. I am ready to do your will."

There was a short period of indecision outside. A muscular man in a carmagnole swinging a formidable axe pushed forward and the others fell back at his rough order.

"I arrest you, citizen Répentigny," said Hache, for it was he. "We mates of Bec and Caron that you quartered have had it in for you for a long time. I am a commissioner now, and they call this my domiciliary visit. If you will come, I will see, on the faith of a brigand, that you get to prison safely; if not, I will see that you don't. Do you come?"

Germain calculated the seconds he had been able to save for Mademoiselle Richeval. They were ample.

He opened the door and gave himself up.