When a Cobbler Ruled a King Part 9

"Don't let anyone see by your words or actions that you know him or have seen him before! And _don't_ let anyone overhear what you tell him!"

Yvonne promised, understanding thoroughly the necessity for the utmost caution. She and her mother packed the clothes in a great basket, hired a carriage for a franc, and were driven to the Temple. At the outer courtyard the carriage was stopped by a sentry on duty, and they were obliged to carry the heavy basket across to the door of the inner courtyard. Yvonne saw Jean standing in the doorway of the tavern, but, with a prudence beyond her years, she refrained from noticing him in any way, as likewise did her mother.

At the inner gate they were again halted. Here Citizeness Clouet must stop, as she was allowed to go no further. Every article of clothes must be taken from the basket and minutely examined to see that they contained no hidden writing or messages from the outer world. This was a long and tiresome process. While it was being completed, Citizen Barelle called to Yvonne:

"Come with me and romp with the little fellow upstairs awhile! You are not afraid, are you?"

"I think not!" she replied, putting her hand in his. And they climbed the gloomy, guarded stairs together. At the door of the room on the second floor Barelle gave a command to the sentry, the clanking bolts and chains were drawn, the door opened, and they stood in the presence of Louis XVII of France! Yvonne could scarcely believe her eyes! Had she not known whom she was going to see, she would never have recognised him. Remembering the beautiful boy in the Tuileries garden, the laughing, dimpled face, the long curls of golden-brown, the round graceful limbs, the sweet trusting blue eyes, she shrank back and drew in her breath with almost a sob.

On a chair in a corner sat the unhappy monarch. His little body, grown thin and wasted by captivity and ill-treatment, was clad in a startling red suit. On his shorn, jagged hair rested a liberty-cap. His cheeks were sunken and pale, and his eyes red with weeping. Over him towered the burly form of the cobbler.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Sing that song about the 'Austrian Wolf,' you wretched little cub, or I'll throttle you!" he threatened.

"I will never sing such a thing about my mother, if you should beat me to death!" answered the child, quietly but firmly. Simon put out his great, hairy hand to grasp the boy's collar.

"There, there, Simon!" interposed Barelle. "Leave off your instructions for a while, and have a game of billiards with me. See, I've brought this little youngster to play with the boy, and give you some freedom!

You don't have much leisure time now." Simon, exceedingly flattered by what he deemed Barelle's thoughtfulness for him, acquiesced at once. The two men went to a billiard-table at the other end of the room, leaving the children together.

"You're right about my time!" grumbled the cobbler as they chalked their cues. "I don't have a moment to myself. I'm tied to that cub every minute of the day, and I'm just as much a prisoner as he is. I tell you I can't stand it very long! It's bad for my health! It's driving me crazy! Why, look you! I could not go to Marat's funeral, and I even missed the great anniversary fete in the Champ de Mars on August tenth!

I'm tired of it!"

But how fared it with Yvonne and the little king? For a moment after Simon left him, the child remained motionless, his head sunk on his breast, sobs only half under control heaving his chest. Then he raised his head and looked at Yvonne. He gave a great start of recognition and delight, and would have uttered a glad cry, had not Yvonne laid her finger on her lips, glanced at the two men, and shaken her head. The boy understood the action. His adversity had taught him only too well, the necessity for caution. Yvonne boldly took the initiative. Stepping up to him, and speaking so that she could be heard by the cobbler, she said:

"Little Capet, don't you want to play a game of tag with me? You shall try to catch me. I do not think you can!" She sprang away from him, and he jumped from his chair with a new and unaccustomed lightness, to chase her round and round the room. Presently she allowed herself to be caught. Under cover of much loud shouting and laughter, she managed to whisper:

"I have something to tell you! Do you remember Moufflet?"

"Yes," he replied. "He is lost,--dead!" Yvonne noticed that the cobbler was eyeing them suspiciously.

"Now I'll catch you!" she called loudly. And Louis Charles obediently broke into a run, she following, till they were both breathless. Then she caught him.

"Moufflet is not dead!" she murmured. "Jean found him in the Tuileries the night you left it." Question after question crowded to the boy's lips, but he dared not satisfy his curiosity at once.

"Have you not some other game we can play?" asked Yvonne. "Ah! here is a checker-board. I'm tired of running so let us play this!" They arranged the board on a chair and commenced to move the pieces, quarrelling loudly with each other every moment or two. Under cover of this noisy talk, Yvonne, in short sc.r.a.ps of sentences told the boy the story of how Jean rescued Moufflet from the Tuileries, how La Souris had wrongfully taken him away, and how he had since returned. She a.s.sured the child that they were keeping the little animal with the hope of some day returning him to his master. She also told him how Jean worked in the tavern in order to be nearby, how her mother did the laundry-work for the royal prisoners, and how she was to be allowed to come and play with him once in a while, through the kindness of Citizen Barelle.

The little, heart-sick boy grew radiant with a delight which he dared not exhibit, lest it be discovered by his watchful tormentor. In the short time he asked many questions about his mother, sister and aunt.

These Yvonne answered by smiling and pointing to the room above to indicate that all was well with them. He inquired after Jean and his beloved dog, and sent many messages to his faithful friend. But the time was all too short.

"Come, we must be going!" warned Barelle.

"A moment!--only a moment, till we finish this game!" implored Louis Charles. The good-natured commissary agreed, and turned once more to engage Simon's attention.

"Yvonne," whispered the boy, "I love you and Jean and your mother. Tell them so for me, and that I thank them!" Yvonne signified that she would, and pressed a little packet into his hand.

"Hide it!" she commanded. "'Tis a curl of Moufflet's hair. I thought you would like to have it, perhaps." He slipped it inside his blouse with a grateful look.

"I'll hide it in my mattress, and I do thank you for it. Good-bye, Yvonne! Oh, come again soon!"

"I will," she promised, "as soon as they will let me. Good-bye, poor little King!" And as Barelle led her away, she called back: "Good-bye, Little Capet!" But the child heard only her last whispered, "poor little King," and he gratefully pressed the packet of Moufflet's hair to his heart.

Four weeks had pa.s.sed in which Marie Antoinette had heard not a word concerning the welfare of her little son,--weeks of fear, uncertainty, and foreboding, terrible in their dragging length. Each day she eagerly questioned the visiting munic.i.p.als, but they answered merely that he was well and studying with a tutor.

At length circ.u.mstances favoured her, and help arrived from an unexpected quarter. This was nothing less than the astonis.h.i.+ng change of disposition in the spy Tison and his wife. Madame Tison fell suddenly very ill, and in her sickness begged the Queen's pardon for all her former meanness and spite. Marie Antoinette forgave her freely, but the poor woman's mind had become so unsettled through remorse, that she had to be moved from the Tower to a hospital. Then Tison himself entreated the Queen's forgiveness:

"I never knew you till you came here. I never dreamed what n.o.ble, true characters you all were, till I was set to act as a spy upon you! Oh, forgive me also!" Tison it was then, who came to the Queen's aid in her hour of need. Making himself acquainted with all that he could gather about her son's welfare, he gave her daily accounts of all that he thought would interest her. More than this, he showed her a loophole in the wall, tiny it is true, but through which she could sometime catch a glimpse of her boy as he pa.s.sed up the stairs daily to take the air on the turret.

She was deeply shocked when she learned in whose care her tender child had been placed, and horrified when she saw his appearance through her loophole, clad in the red suit of the Commune. But once as he pa.s.sed, she heard him humming softly the air of a little cradle-song she used to sing him:

"Sleep, my child, and cease thy weeping!

Sleep, my child! my heart is sad."

By this she knew that his thoughts were still with her, and her heart was a trifle comforted.

But a great change was to come. At two o'clock in the morning, on the first of August, 1793, the Queen was awakened and told that she must prepare to leave the Temple Tower. She was transferred to the prison of La Conciergerie where she was kept two months and a half in a small, damp cell. After that she was obliged to undergo a trial that was even more of a flimsy mockery than the one accorded to Louis XVI. "Anything, anything to be rid of her!" was the one idea of this terrible tribunal.

The end, like her husband's, was a foregone conclusion. On the sixteenth of October, she bravely, calmly, proudly gave up her life, happy in being reunited at last with her beloved husband, regretting only that she must leave her children to so uncertain a fate.

In the Tower of the Temple wept and waited poor Madame Elizabeth and Marie-Therese, all in ignorance of the Queen's fate. And on the floor below, also waited the persecuted child, who did not even know that his mother was gone from the room above, where he loved to think of her as watching over him.

THE BLOW FALLS

CHAPTER X

THE BLOW FALLS

On a night toward the end of October, 1793, Jean was walking slowly and thoughtfully home from the tavern to the Rue de Lille. His day's work was over and it was long past ten o'clock. He was in no special hurry, for he had many things to think over and he felt that he could do this better by himself and in the open. None of his thoughts were particularly happy. It was but a week since the Queen had given up her life on the guillotine, and his heart ached with pity and horror for her sorrowful end. The little King, doubtless all in ignorance of his loss, was constantly more and more cruelly treated by the cobbler, whose already evil temper was now thoroughly demoralised by his own enforced imprisonment.

Then too, the condition of Paris was appalling. The Terror was at its height, the prisons were overflowing with "suspects," and the guillotine claimed daily a sickening array of victims. Robespierre ruled the Convention with a hand of iron, and ruthlessly sacrificed to La Guillotine all who stood in his way.

Jean had heard no news from his friend Bonaparte except a brief note some time before, saying that he was in Ma.r.s.eilles with all his family (which had left Corsica forever), and that he was again in the army. And there was yet another problem weighing on the boy's mind. Tison, with whom he had established quite a friends.h.i.+p since the spy's strange conversion, had come to him two days before with a request. It seemed that the Queen, before she was taken to La Conciergerie, had entrusted to Tison a little book of prayers that she wished in some way to be conveyed to her son. Tison had promised faithfully to accomplish this mission if possible, but had as yet been unable to do so, as he was never admitted to Simon's room.

Then he bethought himself of Yvonne, and of how she came occasionally to play there, and he remembered that Jean had once confided to him the tale of her first admittance. Here then was the solution! He came to Jean and begged him to see that the book was in some way delivered, and had only that morning placed the precious parcel in the boy's keeping.

This Jean felt to be a sacred trust, more so than ever now that the Queen was dead. He determined that Yvonne must take it on the morrow when she went with her mother and the laundry. Barelle would be on duty that day, and would very likely gain her entrance.

One more vague fear troubled him. La Souris had never, by word or sign, indicated that he concerned himself in the least about the boy, since the memorable night when the plot of the Baron de Batz had failed. But of late the man was constant in his hovering about the tavern, and the very fact that he seemed to avoid speaking to the boy purposely, made Jean most uneasy. It was as though a sword were suspended above his head, and might fall at any unexpected moment.

All these thoughts served to depress the spirits of this usually lively lad. He walked soberly, his head bent, looking neither to the right nor left, his hands jammed in his trousers pockets. The street he traversed was alive with people and bright with the lights from many shop-windows.

But presently he turned into one that was quite deserted, and almost pitch dark by contrast. He had not proceeded far in this black lane before he became aware of stealthy steps following him. His first impulse was to take to his heels and run at top speed, but he wisely decided to do no such thing. Instead he stopped abruptly and demanded:

"Who is following me? What do you want?" The stealthy footfalls ceased for a moment, then out of the shadow stepped a huge figure.