In The Day Of Adversity Part 32

Moreover, wherever a knot of persons were gathered together in any corner he affected a smiling exterior, so that they should be induced to suppose that St. Georges was an ordinary acquaintance accompanying him.

"Sir," said the latter, observing all this, "you are very good to me.

You make what I have to bear as light as possible."

"It is nothing, nothing," the lieutenant replied. "I only wish it had not fallen to my lot to undertake so unpleasant a duty. By the way, I suppose it is true, as she told the commandant! You have, unfortunately known--been--at the galleys?"

"It is true."

"_Tiens!_ A pity. A thousand pities! Above all, that you should have encountered that she-devil. Well, I am glad you had those hard words with her. _Ma foi!_ she is a tigress! I only hope you may escape from--from other things--as you did from her dagger."

The commandant--who was also the colonel of the Regiment de Grance--was, however, a different style of man from his lieutenant--a man who from long service in the army had become rough and harsh; also, like many men commanding regiments under Louis, he had risen solely by his military qualifications, and owed nothing to birth or influence.

He listened, however, very attentively to all De Mortemart told him of the scene that had taken place, and especially as to how the Baronne de Louvigny--to whom he himself was paying court, as has been told--had evidently had some lover whose existence he had never suspected; and then he sent for St. Georges, who was brought into his presence by De Mortemart himself.

"So," he said, "you are an escaped _galerien_, monsieur. Well! You know what happens to them when retaken!"

"I know."

"What was your crime?"

"Nothing--except serving the king as a soldier."

"As a soldier!" he and De Mortemart exclaimed together, while the former continued, "In what capacity?"

"As lieutenant in the Chevaux-Legers of Nivernois."

"_Mon Dieu!_" exclaimed the commandant. "A picked regiment, and commanded by De Beauvilliers--_n'est-ce pas?_"

"He was my colonel."

"Come," said the other, relaxing his stern method of addressing St.

Georges, and warming toward him, unknowingly to himself by the fact that this man in such dire distress was a comrade and had served in a _corps d'elite_--"come, tell us your history. We cannot help you--there is but one thing to do, namely, to send you to Paris for inquiry; but until you go we can at least make your existence here more endurable."

So St. Georges told them his story.

All through it both his listeners testified their sympathy--De Mortemart especially, by many exclamations against De Roquemaure and his sister, and also against la belle Louvigny--while the colonel spoke approvingly of the manner in which St. Georges had almost avenged himself on his foe in the inn. The description, too, of his existence in the galleys moved both young and old soldier alike; it was only when he arrived at the account of the destruction of Tourville's fleet that they ceased to make any remark and sat listening to him in silence.

It was finished, however, now, and when the colonel spoke his voice was more cold and unsympathetic.

"You have ruined yourself by the last month's work," he said. "I am afraid you can never recover from that. Did you not know that his Majesty has made it a rule that none who have served him shall ever take service under a foreign power and dare to venture into France again?"

"I know it," St. Georges said, "and I must abide by my fate. Yet, my child was here. I was forced to come, and there was no other way but this."

One thing only he had not told them, the story of what he believed to be his birth, the belief he held that he was the Duc de Vannes. Nor, he determined then--had, indeed, long since determined--would he ever publish that belief now. Had he kept his freedom until he had once more regained Dorine, it was his intention to have repa.s.sed to England and never again to have recalled that supposed birthright, or, as the child grew up, to have let her obtain any knowledge on the subject. He would work for her, slave for her, if necessary become tutor, or soldier, or sailor, as Fate might decree; but it must be as an Englishman, and with all connection with France broken forever.

And now, a prisoner, a man who would ere long be tried as an ex-_galerien_, as--if De Mortemart and the colonel did not hold their peace--a Frenchman who had joined England and helped her in administering the most crus.h.i.+ng blow to France which she had suffered for centuries--he would never see his child again; what need, therefore, to publish his belief?

The hope that had sustained him for years was gone; the prayer he had uttered by night and day, that once more he might hold his little child in his arms and cherish and succour her, was gone, too; they would never meet again. Let him go, therefore, to his doom unknown, and, so going, pa.s.s away and be forgotten. And it might be that, with him removed, G.o.d would see fit to temper to his child the adversity that had fallen to his own lot.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

ST. GEORGES'S DOOM

The _cours criminel_ on the banks of the Seine had been crowded all day, and the judges seated on the bench began to exhibit signs of fatigue at their labours. They had sat from ten o'clock in the morning far into the afternoon, and, now that four o'clock was at hand, it appeared as if their sitting would be still further prolonged; and this in spite of the number of cases they had disposed of.

A variety of malefactors, or so-called malefactors, had on that day received their sentences: some for professing the "reformed religion,"

as they blasphemously--in the judges' eyes--termed it; some for being bullies and cutthroats; a student aged sixteen had been sentenced to imprisonment in the Bastille for writing on the walls a distich on Louis, stating that he had displaced G.o.d in the minds of the French;[9] and a marchioness had been condemned to a fine of twenty pistoles and to remain out of Paris for a year for having poisoned her husband; also a spy, a Dutchman, supposed to be in the service of the accursed Stadtholder and English king, had been condemned to death by burning, his entrails to be first cut out and flung in his face; and several petty malefactors--a drunken priest who had read a portion of Rabelais to his flock instead of a sermon; a lampoonist who had written a joke on the De Maintenon; an actor who had struck a gentleman in defence of his own daughter; and a courtesan who had induced a young n.o.bleman to spend too much money on her--were all sentenced to the Bastille, to Vincennes, and Bicetre for various periods.

[Footnote 9: The distich ran:

"La croix fait place au lis, et Jesus Christ au Roi Louis, oh! race impie, est le seul Dieu chez toi."

For writing it the student remained in prison _thirty-one years_.]

"Now," said Monsieur de Rennie, who presided to-day, when the last of these wretches had been finished off--"now, is the list cleared? We have sat six hours." And the other judges, one on either side of him, repeated his words and murmured, "Six hours!"

"Your lords.h.i.+ps have still some other cases," the _procureur du roi_ said, addressing them, "which you will probably be willing to dispose of to-day. There is one of a man who is thought to have abandoned his s.h.i.+p in the recent disaster at La Hogue, and to have escaped to Paris, where he was captured in hiding; and another of three Jansenists who have blasphemed the faith; also there is a man, an escaped _galerien_, brought hither from Rambouillet by an officer of the Regiment de Grance for trial."

"Are the facts clear," asked the presiding judge, "against this man?

If so, the case will not occupy us long, and we will take it to-night."

"Quite clear," the _procureur_ replied, "so far as I gather."

"Bring him in."

A moment later St. Georges stood in the dock set apart for the criminals, his hands tied in front of him. And in the court many eyes were cast toward him as he took his stand. All knew that, for those who successfully escaped the galleys, there was but one ending if ever caught again.

"Who gives evidence against this prisoner?" De Rennie asked, looking at St. Georges under his bushy white eyebrows. "And what is his name?--Prisoner, what is your name? Answer truly to the court."

"I have no name," St. Georges replied; "I refuse to answer to any."

The judge's eyebrows were lifted into his forehead and down again; then he observed to his brother judge on his right, with a shrug of his shoulders, "Contumacious!" and then, because he was a man who disliked to be thwarted, he exclaimed: "So much the worse for you.

Well, _M. le procureur_, who prosecutes--who is there as witness?"

"The officer who arrested him and afterward brought him to Paris. He can give your lords.h.i.+ps the facts."

"Very well. Why does he not do so? Let him stand forward."

The officer stood forward, in so far that he stood up in the well of the crowd--his gold-laced, c.o.c.kaded hat still upon his head, since as an officer of the king he was ent.i.tled to wear it in all other places but church--and briefly he answered the presiding judge's questions.

Yes, he was a lieutenant of the Regiment de Grance, quartered at Rambouillet--in his opinion, a miserable hole. His opinion on Rambouillet, the judge said, frowning, was not required; he would be good enough to give his name. His name was De Mortemart. De Mortemart!

Perhaps, said the judge, he might be a relative of the Duc de Mortemart? Yes, the officer replied, he might be; in effect he was a son of that personage. The judge was pleased to hear it; the duke was universally known and respected, and--the acoustic qualities of the court were bad--would M. de Mortemart take a seat on the bench, where he and his brother judges could better hear him? The officer did not mind, though he was not inconvenienced where he was, but, of course, if their lords.h.i.+ps desired. And so forth.

"Now," the judge said with great sweetness, when he had reached the exalted elevation, "would M. de Mortemart give himself the trouble to state how the fellow before them had fallen into his hands?" M. de Mortemart did give himself the trouble--telling, however, exactly what he thought fit, and also omitting many facts which he did not feel disposed to mention--to wit, he contented himself by saying that the "gentleman" in the dock had been betrayed by a woman into their hands--a "treacherous reptile" he termed her--but he said nothing about St. Georges having acknowledged that he had been a soldier of France once, and had afterward fought on the English side against France. To his young and chivalrous mind it was, indeed, a terrible thing that any Frenchman should join with England against his own country, but--he did not say so to the judge trying that man. The case was bad enough against him without that.

In answer to further questions put with great politeness and an evident desire on the judge's part not to bore the son of the Duc de Mortemart too much, he stated that according to orders, he had escorted the gentleman in trouble to Paris, and that he had ridden by that gentleman's side all the way, treating him as well as possible.