CHAPTER IV

THE ARREST OF ROCHEFORT

Rochefort, when he left the Hôtel Dubarry, reached the Rue St. Honoré and walked up it, past the Hôtel de Noailles, and in the direction of the Palais Royal.

The Rue St. Honoré is the old main artery of the business and social world of Paris on the right bank of the Seine. In one direction, it led to the palaces of the Faubourg St. Honoré, in the other to the Bastille. In the eighteenth century it was as bustling and alive with business as it is now, and its side streets led even to more important places. Walking up it from the Faubourg St. Honoré, you had the Place Vendôme opening from it on the left, beyond the Place Vendôme the great door giving entrance to the Jacobins, beyond that, as you advanced, the Rue de l’Échelle, on the right, leading to the Place de Carrousel and the Tuileries; on the left, further along, the Rue de Richelieu, and on the right three streets leading directly to the Louvre. Beyond that the Rue de Poulies leading to St. Germain l’Auxerrois, and much further on, the Halles to the left. The river was much less accessible from the Rue St. Honoré than it is to-day, being barred off by the Tuileries, the buildings on the Quai des Galeries du Louvre, and the Louvre itself. Nothing was more remarkable in this old Paris than the way in which public convenience was sacrificed to the convenience of the King, the nobles and the religious orders. You entered a street and found yourself face to face with a barrier—as in that street where Rochefort encountered and killed de Choiseul’s agent; a way that ought to have led you to the river, brought you to the back door of a monastery; a road that ought to have been a short cut, such as the Court St. Vincent, landed you to the gateway of Le Manége. Streets like the Rue du Brave led you into culs-de-sac like the Foire St. Germain.

The religious orders showed large over the city. One might say that it was a city of churches, monasteries, convents and religious houses, palaces and royal residences. If every religious house had offered sanctuary to the unfortunates pursued by the King or the nobles, then Paris would have been the best city in the world for a man who was trying to escape; this not being so, it was the worst, as Rochefort would have found to his cost had he been on that business. But M. de Rochefort was not making his escape. He was going to breakfast at the Café de Régence, despite Choiseul and the world, or rather because of them.

Anger had worked him up into a mood of absolute recklessness. He had never been famed for carefulness; wine made him mad—reckless; but anger and thwarted desire were to prove themselves even more potent than wine. As he went on his way, he expected arrest at each street corner, or rather attempted arrest; for, in his present temper, he would have resisted all of Choiseul’s agents and all de Sartines’ guards, even had they been led by Choiseul and Sartines in person.

He wanted to hit the Dubarrys, he wanted to strike at Camille Fontrailles; failing them, it would content him to hit Choiseul or his creatures should he come across them, or Sartines—or even his best friend.

Of course, the whole centre of this passionate fury was Camille Fontrailles. She would not see him; very well, he would see what he would not do.

As he walked along the Rue St. Honoré, he glanced from right to left, after the manner of a man who seeks to pick a quarrel even if he has to pick it with a stranger. But at that comparatively early hour, the Rue St. Honoré was not the place for a bully’s business. People were too busy to give cause for offence, and too lowly to take it with a nobleman, and Rochefort, if the matter had been an absolute necessity with him, would have been condemned to skewer a shopboy, a market porter, or a water-carrier.

But at the Café de Régence, when he reached it, he found what he imagined to be the _hors-d’œuvre_ for a regular banquet.

The Café de Régence, at that period, was the meeting-place of the intellectuals, and at the same time the meeting-place of the bloods. Rousseau might have been seen there of an evening, Jean Dubarry took breakfast there sometimes, Rochefort, and many others like him, frequented the place. At this hour, that is to say about ten o’clock, Rochefort found a couple of bald-headed men and several rather seedy ones sipping coffee and discussing the news of the day. They were Philosophers—Intellectuals, and like all Philosophers and Intellectuals of all ages, untidy, shabby, and making a great noise.

Rochefort, drinking the wine he had ordered and talking to the waiter who had served it, spoke in so loud a voice and made such free remarks about things in general, and the habitués of the café in particular, that faces were turned to him from the surrounding tables and then turned away again. No one wished to pick a quarrel with M. de Rochefort, his character was too well known, and his tongue.

He ordered _déjeuner_ for half-past eleven, and then he sat drinking his wine, his virulence, like a sheathed sword, only waiting to be drawn. But no one came to draw it. People entered and spoke to him, but they were all Amiables. There was M. de Duras, rubicund and portly, with whom one could no more quarrel than with a cask of port; there was M. de Jussieu, the botanist and friend of Rousseau, beautifully dressed and carrying a book, his head full of flowers and roots, long Latin terms and platitudes; there was M. de Champfleuri, eighty years old, yet with all his teeth, dressed like a May morning, and fragile-looking as a Dresden china figure. He would damn your soul for the least trifle, but you could not quarrel with him for fear of breaking him. There was Monsieur Müller, who was finding his way in Paris as an exponent—by means of a translator—of the theories of Mesmer. You could not quarrel with him, as he only knew three words of French. There were others equally impossible. Ah! if only M. d’Estouteville had turned up, or Monpavon; Camus or Coigny!

Rochefort turned to the breakfast that was now served to him, and as he ate continued to grumble. If only some of these people whom he hated would come, that he might insult them; if only one of Choiseul’s agents, or even a dozen of them, would come to arrest him, so that he might fight his way to the door and fight his way out of Paris; but no one came, till—as he was in the middle of his meal—an inconspicuous and quietly-dressed man entered, looked round, saw M. de Rochefort sitting at his breakfast, and came towards him.

It was Lavenne.

Lavenne came up to the table, bowed, and taking an empty chair at the opposite side of the table, sat down.

“Monsieur de Rochefort,” said Lavenne, “I have come to arrest you.”

He spoke with a friendly smile, and in a manner so urbane, and even deferential, that Rochefort was quite disarmed. He broke into a laugh as though someone had told him a good joke, refilled his glass, took a sip, and placed the glass down again.

“Oh, you have come to arrest me, Monsieur Lavenne; good. But where is your sword, and where are your assistants?”

“Monsieur,” said Lavenne, “I never carry a sword, and I always act single-handed.”

“Ah, you always act single-handed—So do I. _Mordieu_! Monsieur Lavenne, it is a coincidence.”

“Call it a happy accident, monsieur.”

“As how?”

“Simply because, monsieur, that as I come to do you a service, and to do it single-handed, your thanks will be all mine and I shall not have to divide it with others.”

“Now, upon my faith,” cried Rochefort, laughing and filling a glass with wine, “you have a way of putting things which is entirely new; and what I have observed in you before does not lose in value at all, I assure you, on further acquaintance. May I offer you this glass of wine? To your health—a strange wish enough, as I believe before many minutes are over—as many minutes, in fact, as I take in finishing my breakfast and rising from this table—I shall have the honour of spitting you on my sword.”

“To your health, monsieur,” replied Lavenne, perfectly unmoved and raising the glass to his lips. “One can only do one’s duty, and as it is my duty to arrest you, I must take the risk of your sword, which I believe, monsieur, not to be sharper than your tongue to those who have offended you; a risk which I reckon as slight, inasmuch as I have no intention of offending you.”

“Eh! no intention of offending me, and yet you talk of arrest!”

“That is the fault of our language, monsieur, which compels us sometimes to use words which carry unpleasant meanings to express our thoughts. Now the word Arrest is not a pleasant word, yet in my mouth and used at this table, it is not unpleasant—It means, in fact, Protection.”

“And how?”

“It is necessary for you to leave Paris immediately, monsieur—is that not so?”

“I am going.”

“No, monsieur, you are not. It is absolutely impossible to leave the walls of Paris, and were you by some miracle to do so, Monsieur de Choiseul would place his hand on you before you left France.”

“I will risk it.”

“You cannot—It is not a question of risk, it is a question of certainty. Now, monsieur, you are young, you have forty years more of good life before you, and you are in great danger of losing them.”

“I do not fear death.”

“Everyone knows that, but it is not death that you have to fear at the hands of Monsieur de Choiseul; it is something much worse.”

“And that?”

“La Bastille, monsieur. She is a terrible person, who rarely lets go what she once lays a hold on. You say to yourself, ‘Bah! I will fight my way from Paris, I will escape somehow.’ Well, I tell you, you will not. I will prove it to you. Last night, you ordered a horse to be kept waiting for you at noon to-day a quarter of a mile beyond the Porte St. Antoine.”

“How do you know that?”

“The Hôtel de Sartines knows everything, monsieur—— Well, Monsieur de Sartines would be very happy not to interfere with this way of escape for you, were it not that he knows Monsieur de Choiseul’s plans as well as yours. In short, monsieur, the Porte St. Antoine is guarded so well by Monsieur de Choiseul’s orders, that no one can leave Paris even in disguise; every other gate is guarded as strictly.”

“_Diable_!” said Rochefort. “It seems, then, that I must convert myself into a bird to fly over the walls.”

“Monsieur de Choiseul would set his falcons on you, monsieur.”

“Into a rat, then, to crawl out through the sewers.”

“The Hôtel de Choiseul contains many cats, monsieur.”

“My faith, that’s true,” cried Rochefort, with a laugh, “since it contains Madame de Choiseul and her friend, Madame la Princesse de Guemenée. Well, then, I must stay in Paris. I will go and live with Monsieur Rousseau and help him to write poetry—or is it music that he writes?”

“Neither, monsieur—but time is passing, and my business is urgent. I am here to arrest you, and I call on you, monsieur, to follow me.”

“And where?—to the Bastille?”

“No, monsieur, to Vincennes, where we will hide you away from Monsieur de Choiseul till this business has blown over, and where you will be treated as a prisoner, but as a gentleman.”

“But were I to fall in with this mad plan of yours, Monsieur Lavenne, I would simply be running down Choiseul’s throat, it seems to me. As the first Minister of France, he will easily find me in Vincennes.”

“No, monsieur, he will not hunt in the prisons for a man whom he fancies to be running on the roads. Monsieur de Sartines, even, will have no official knowledge of your arrest. I am not arresting you under your own name. I have, in fact, mistaken you for one Justin La Porte, a gentleman under suspicion of conspiracy and of being a frequenter of certain political clubs. Should Monsieur de Choiseul, by some ill chance, find you at Vincennes, the whole blame would fall on me. I would be dismissed the service for my ‘mistake.’”

Rochefort, as he listened to all this, began to take counsel with himself. His madness and anger against the world had received a check under the hand of Lavenne. Lavenne was perhaps the only person in the world who had ever called him to order, thwarted his will without raising his anger, and made him think. Lavenne himself, in his person, his manner and his life was a criticism on Rochefort. This man who never drank—or only sipped half a glass of wine as a matter of ceremony—who belonged to the people, who dressed soberly, and whose life was very evidently one of hard work and devotion to duty, commanded respect just as he commanded confidence. But there was more than that. Lavenne had about him something of Fate, and an Authority beyond even that of the Hôtel de Sartines. One could never imagine this man reasoning wildly or acting foolishly, nor could one very well imagine him allowing a personal motive to rule his line of action. There was something disturbing in his calmness, as though one discerned beneath everything a mechanism moving with the unswerving aim of a mechanism towards the goal appointed by its constructor.

“Even now, monsieur,” continued Lavenne, “you would have Monsieur de Choiseul’s hand upon your shoulder had you not, urged by some good fairy, taken refuge in the very last place where his agents and spies would look for you; they are ransacking the streets, they are posted at the gates, they are all hunting for a man who is running away, and you have outwitted them simply by not running away, but coming to breakfast at the Café de Régence.”

“And yet you found me,” said Rochefort.

“Because, monsieur, I belong to the Hôtel de Sartines, not to the Hôtel de Choiseul.”

“Let us be perfectly clear,” said Rochefort. “The agents of Choiseul are hunting for me, the agents of Sartines are trying to hide me.”

“Not quite so, monsieur: the agents of Choiseul are hunting for you, and all the agents of the Hôtel de Sartines must assist the agents of Choiseul if they are called upon by them to arrest Monsieur de Rochefort. But _one_ agent of the Hôtel de Sartines, that is to say I, myself, is trying to hide Monsieur de Rochefort, and he is doing so at the instigation of Monsieur de Sartines.”

“I see,” said Rochefort. “The matter is of such a delicate nature, that Sartines dare not give a general order to his police to thwart Choiseul’s men and to hide me, so he entrusts it to one man, and that man is Monsieur Lavenne.”

“Precisely, monsieur. You have put the whole thing in a nutshell.”

“Well, Monsieur Lavenne, the last time I played chess, it was with Monsieur de Gondy. I was stalemated by the move of a bishop. To-day, playing chess with Monsieur de Sartines, I am stalemated by the move of a knight. You are the knight, Monsieur Lavenne. You have closed in on me and shown me my position, and I do not kick the board over in a temper, simply because you have come to me as a gentleman comes to a gentleman, and spoken to me as a gentleman speaks to a gentleman. I cannot move, it seems, without being taken by either you or Choiseul. I prefer you to Choiseul, not so much because you offer me Vincennes in exchange for La Bastille, but because you are the better gentleman. Monsieur Lavenne, I place myself and my sword in your hands. Arrest me.”

He rose from the table, flung a louis on the cloth to pay his score. Then, taking his hat, he left the café with his captor.

In this fashion did de Sartines rope in and tame without resistance a man whose capture, by Choiseul, might have involved his—Sartines’—destruction. For Rochefort, angry with the Dubarrys and incensed against Camille Fontrailles, was now the danger spot in the surroundings of the Minister of Police, Rochefort and Ferminard—who was already in the safe custody of Captain Pierre Cousin, the governor of Vincennes.