BOOK TWO: NANTES, DECEMBER, 1793
Nantes is in the grip of the tiger.
Representative Carrier—with powers as of a proconsul—has been sent down to stamp out the lingering remnants of the counter-revolution. La Vendée is temporarily subdued; the army of the royalists driven back across the Loire; but traitors still abound—this the National Convention in Paris hath decreed—there are traitors everywhere. They were not all massacred at Cholet and Savenay. Disbanded, yes! but not exterminated, and wolves must not be allowed to run loose, lest they band again, and try to devour the flocks.
Therefore extermination is the order of the day. Every traitor or would-be traitor—every son and daughter and father and mother of traitors must be destroyed ere they do more mischief. And Carrier—Carrier the coward who turned tail and bolted at Cholet—is sent to Nantes to carry on the work of destruction. Wolves and wolflings all! Let none survive. Give them fair trial, of course. As traitors they have deserved death—have they not taken up arms against the Republic and against the Will and the Reign of the People? But let a court of justice sit in Nantes town; let the whole nation know how traitors are dealt with: let the nation see that her rulers are both wise and just. Let wolves and wolflings be brought up for trial, and set up the guillotine on Place du Bouffay with four executioners appointed to do her work. There would be too much work for two, or even three. Let there be four—and let the work of extermination be complete.
And Carrier—with powers as of a proconsul—arrives in Nantes town and sets to work to organise his household. Civil and military—with pomp and circumstance—for the son of a small farmer, destined originally for the Church and for obscurity is now virtual autocrat in one of the great cities of France. He has power of life and death over thousands of citizens—under the direction of justice, of course! So now he has citizens of the bedchamber, and citizens of the household, he has a guard of honour and a company of citizens of the guard. And above all he has a crowd of spies around him—servants of the Committee of Public Safety so they are called—they style themselves "La Compagnie Marat" in honour of the great patriot who was foully murdered by a female wolfling.
So la Compagnie Marat is formed—they wear red bonnets on their heads—no stockings on their feet—short breeches to display their bare shins: their captain, Fleury, has access at all times to the person of the proconsul, to make report on the raids which his company effect at all hours of the day or night. Their powers are supreme too. In and out of houses—however private—up and down the streets—through shops, taverns and warehouses, along the quays and the yards—everywhere they go. Everywhere they have the right to go! to ferret and to spy, to listen, to search, to interrogate—the red-capped Company is paid for what it can find. Piece-work, what? Work for the guillotine!
And they it is who keep the guillotine busy. Too busy in fact. And the court of justice sitting in the Hôtel du Département is overworked too. Carrier gets impatient. Why waste the time of patriots by so much paraphernalia of justice? Wolves and wolflings can be exterminated so much more quickly, more easily than that. It only needs a stroke of genius, one stroke, and Carrier has it.
He invents the Noyades!
The Drownages we may call them!
They are so simple! An old flat-bottomed barge. The work of two or three ship's carpenters! Portholes below the water-line and made to open at a given moment. All so very, very simple. Then a journey downstream as far as Belle Isle or la Maréchale, and "sentence of deportation" executed without any trouble on a whole crowd of traitors—"vertical deportation" Carrier calls it facetiously and is mightily proud of his invention and of his witticism too.
The first attempt was highly successful. Ninety priests, and not one escaped. Think of the work it would have entailed on the guillotine—and on the friends of Carrier who sit in justice in the Hôtel du Département! Ninety heads! Bah! That old flat-bottomed barge is the most wonderful labour-saving machine.
After that the "Drownages" become the order of the day. The red-capped Company recruits victims for the hecatomb, and over Nantes Town there hangs a pall of unspeakable horror. The prisons are not vast enough to hold all the victims, so the huge entrepôt, the bonded warehouse on the quay, is converted: instead of chests of coffee it is now encumbered with human freight: into it pell-mell are thrown all those who are destined to assuage Carrier's passion for killing: ten thousand of them: men, women, and young children, counter-revolutionists, innocent tradesmen, thieves, aristocrats, criminals and women of evil fame—they are herded together like cattle, without straw whereon to lie, without water, without fire, with barely food enough to keep up the last attenuated thread of a miserable existence.
And when the warehouse gets over full, to the Loire with them!—a hundred or two at a time! Pestilence, dysentery decimates their numbers. Under pretence of hygienic requirements two hundred are flung into the river on the 14th day of December. Two hundred—many of them women—crowds of children and a batch of parish priests.
Some there are among Carrier's colleagues—those up in Paris—who protest! Such wholesale butchery will not redound to the credit of any revolutionary government—it even savours of treachery—it is unpatriotic! There are the emissaries of the National Convention, deputed from Paris to supervise and control—they protest as much as they dare—but such men are swept off their feet by the torrent of Carrier's gluttony for blood. Carrier's mission is to "purge the political body of every evil that infests it." Vague and yet precise! He reckons that he has full powers and thinks he can flaunt those powers in the face of those sent to control him. He does it too for three whole months ere he in his turn meets his doom. But for the moment he is omnipotent. He has to make report every week to the Committee of Public Safety, and he sends brief, garbled versions of his doings. "He is pacifying La Vendée! he is stamping out the remnants of the rebellion! he is purging the political body of every evil that infests it." Anon he succeeds in getting the emissaries of the National Convention recalled. He is impatient of control. "They are weak, pusillanimous, unpatriotic! He must have freedom to act for the best."
After that he remains virtual dictator, with none but obsequious, terrified myrmidons around him: these are too weak to oppose him in any way. And the municipality dare not protest either—nor the district council—nor the departmental. They are merely sheep who watch others of their flock being sent to the slaughter.
After that from within his lair the man tiger decides that it is a pity to waste good barges on the cattle: "Fling them out!" he cries. "Fling them out! Tie two and two together. Man and woman! criminal and aristo! the thief with the ci-devant duke's daughter! the ci-devant marquis with the slut from the streets! Fling them all out together into the Loire and pour a hail of grape shot above them until the last struggler has disappeared! "Equality!" he cries, "Equality for all! Fraternity! Unity in death!"
His friends call this new invention of his: "Marriage Républicain!" and he is pleased with the mot.
And Republican marriages become the order of the day.
Nantes itself now is akin to a desert—a desert wherein the air is filled with weird sounds of cries and of moans, of furtive footsteps scurrying away into dark and secluded byways, of musketry and confused noises, of sorrow and of lamentations.
Nantes is a city of the dead—a city of sleepers. Only Carrier is awake—thinking and devising and planning shorter ways and swifter, for the extermination of traitors.
In the Hôtel de la Villestreux the tiger has built his lair: at the apex of the island of Feydeau, with the windows of the hotel facing straight down the Loire. From here there is a magnificent view downstream upon the quays which are now deserted and upon the once prosperous port of Nantes.
The staircase of the hotel which leads up to the apartments of the proconsul is crowded every day and all day with suppliants and with petitioners, with the citizens of the household and the members of the Compagnie Marat.
But no one has access to the person of the dictator. He stands aloof, apart, hidden from the eyes of the world, a mysterious personality whose word sends hundreds to their death, whose arbitrary will has reduced a once flourishing city to abject poverty and squalor. No tyrant has ever surrounded himself with a greater paraphernalia of pomp and circumstance—no aristo has ever dwelt in greater luxury: the spoils of churches and chateaux fill the Hôtel de la Villestreux from attic to cellar, gold and silver plate adorn his table, priceless works of art hang upon his walls, he lolls on couches and chairs which have been the resting-place of kings. The wholesale spoliation of the entire country-side has filled the demagogue's abode with all that is most sumptuous in the land.
And he himself is far more inaccessible than was le Roi Soleil in the days of his most towering arrogance, than were the Popes in the glorious days of mediæval Rome. Jean Baptiste Carrier, the son of a small farmer, the obscure deputy for Cantal in the National Convention, dwells in the Hôtel de la Villestreux as in a stronghold. No one is allowed near him save a few—a very few—intimates: his valet, two or three women, Fleury the commander of the Marats, and that strange and abominable youngster, Jacques Lalouët, about whom the chroniclers of that tragic epoch can tell us so little—a cynical young braggart, said to be a cousin of Robespierre and the son of a midwife of Nantes, beardless, handsome and vicious: the only human being—so we are told—who had any influence over the sinister proconsul: mere hanger-on of Carrier or spy of the National Convention, no one can say—a malignant personality which has remained an enigma and a mystery to this hour.
None but these few are ever allowed now inside the inner sanctuary wherein dwells and schemes the dictator. Even Lamberty, Fouquet and the others of the staff are kept at arm's length. Martin-Roget, Chauvelin and other strangers are only allowed as far as the ante-room. The door of the inner chamber is left open and they hear the proconsul's voice and see his silhouette pass and repass in front of them, but that is all.
Fear of assassination—the inevitable destiny of the tyrant—haunts the man-tiger even within the fastnesses of his lair. Day and night a carriage with four horses stands in readiness on La Petite Hollande, the great, open, tree-bordered Place at the extreme end of the Isle Feydeau and on which give the windows of the Hôtel de la Villestreux. Day and night the carriage is ready—with coachman on the box and postillion in the saddle, who are relieved every two hours lest they get sleepy or slack—with luggage in the boot and provisions always kept fresh inside the coach; everything always ready lest something—a warning from a friend or a threat from an enemy, or merely a sudden access of unreasoning terror, the haunting memory of a bloody act—should decide the tyrant at a moment's notice to fly from the scenes of his brutalities.
Carrier in the small room which he has fitted up for himself as a sumptuous boudoir, paces up and down just like a wild beast in its cage: and he rubs his large bony hands together with the excitement engendered by his own cruelties, by the success of this wholesale butchery which he has invented and carried through.
There never was an uglier man than Carrier, with that long hatchet-face of his, those abnormally high cheekbones, that stiff, lanky hair, that drooping, flaccid mouth and protruding underlip. Nature seemed to have set herself the task of making the face a true mirror of the soul—the dark and hideous soul on which of a surety Satan had already set his stamp. But he is dressed with scrupulous care—not to say elegance—and with a display of jewelry the provenance of which is as unjustifiable as that of the works of art which fill his private sanctum in every nook and cranny.
In front of the tall window, heavy curtains of crimson damask are drawn closely together, in order to shut out the light of day: the room is in all but total darkness: for that is the proconsul's latest caprice: that no one shall see him save in semi-obscurity.
Captain Fleury has stumbled into the room, swearing lustily as he barks his shins against the angle of a priceless Louis XV bureau. He has to make report on the work done by the Compagnie Marat. Fifty-three priests from the department of Anjou who have refused to take the new oath of obedience to the government of the Republic. The red-capped Company who tracked them down and arrested them, vow that all these calotins have precious objects—money, jewelry, gold plate—concealed about their persons. What is to be done about these things? Are the calotins to be allowed to keep them or to dispose of them for their own profit?
Carrier is highly delighted. What a haul!
"Confiscate everything," he cries, "then ship the whole crowd of that pestilential rabble, and don't let me hear another word about them."
Fleury goes. And that same night fifty-three priests are "shipped" in accordance with the orders of the proconsul, and Carrier, still rubbing his large bony hands contentedly together, exclaims with glee:
"What a torrent, eh! What a torrent! What a revolution!"
And he sends a letter to Robespierre. And to the Committee of Public Safety he makes report:
"Public spirit in Nantes," he writes, "is magnificent: it has risen to the most sublime heights of revolutionary ideals.”
After the departure of Fleury, Carrier suddenly turned to a slender youth, who was standing close by the window, gazing out through the folds of the curtain on the fine vista of the Loire and the quays which stretched out before him.
"Introduce citizen Martin-Roget into the ante-room now, Lalouët," he said loftily. "I will hear what he has to say, and citizen Chauvelin may present himself at the same time."
Young Lalouët lolled across the room, smothering a yawn.
"Why should you trouble about all that rabble?" he said roughly, "it is nearly dinner-time and you know that the chef hates the soup to be kept waiting."
"I shall not trouble about them very long," replied Carrier, who had just started picking his teeth with a tiny gold tool. "Open the door, boy, and let the two men come."
Lalouët did as he was told. The door through which he passed he left wide open, he then crossed the ante-room to a further door, threw it open and called in a loud voice:
"Citizen Chauvelin! Citizen Martin-Roget!"
For all the world like the ceremonious audiences at Versailles in the days of the great Louis.
There was sound of eager whisperings, of shuffling of feet, of chairs dragged across the polished floor. Young Lalouët had already and quite unconcernedly turned his back on the two men who, at his call, had entered the room.
Two chairs were placed in front of the door which led to the private sanctuary—still wrapped in religious obscurity—where Carrier sat enthroned. The youth curtly pointed to the two chairs, then went back to the inner room. The two men advanced. The full light of midday fell upon them from the tall window on their right—the pale, grey, colourless light of December. They bowed slightly in the direction of the audience chamber where the vague silhouette of the proconsul was alone visible.
The whole thing was a farce. Martin-Roget held his lips tightly closed together lest a curse or a sneer escaped them. Chauvelin's face was impenetrable—but it is worthy of note that just one year later when the half-demented tyrant was in his turn brought before the bar of the Convention and sentenced to the guillotine, it was citizen Chauvelin's testimony which weighed most heavily against him.
There was silence for a time: Martin-Roget and Chauvelin were waiting for the dictator's word. He sat at his desk with the scanty light, which filtrated between the curtains, immediately behind him, his ungainly form with the high shoulders and mop-like, shaggy hair half swallowed up by the surrounding gloom. He was deliberately keeping the other two men waiting and busied himself with turning over desultorily the papers and writing tools upon his desk, in the intervals of picking at his teeth and muttering to himself all the time as was his wont. Young Lalouët had resumed his post beside the curtained window and he was giving sundry signs of his growing impatience.
At last Carrier spoke:
"And now, citizen Martin-Roget," he said in tones of that lofty condescension which he loved to affect, "I am prepared to hear what you have to tell me with regard to the cattle which you brought into our city the other day. Where are the aristos now? and why have they not been handed over to commandant Fleury?"
"The girl," replied Martin-Roget, who had much ado to keep his vehement temper in check, and who chose for the moment to ignore the second of Carrier's peremptory queries, "the girl is in lodgings in the Carrefour de la Poissonnerie. The house is kept by my sister, whose lover was hanged four years ago by the ci-devant duc de Kernogan for trapping two pigeons. A dozen or so lads from our old village—men who worked with my father and others who were my friends—lodge in my sister's house. They keep a watchful eye over the wench for the sake of the past, for my sake and for the sake of my sister Louise. The ci-devant Kernogan woman is well-guarded. I am satisfied as to that."
"And where is the ci-devant duc?"
"In the house next door—a tavern at the sign of the Rat Mort—a place which is none too reputable, but the landlord—Lemoine—is a good patriot and he is keeping a close eye on the aristo for me."
"And now will you tell me, citizen," rejoined Carrier with that unctuous suavity which always veiled a threat, "will you tell me how it comes that you are keeping a couple of traitors alive all this while at the country's expense?"
"At mine," broke in Martin-Roget curtly.
"At the country's expense," reiterated the proconsul inflexibly. "Bread is scarce in Nantes. What traitors eat is stolen from good patriots. If you can afford to fill two mouths at your expense, I can supply you with some that have never done aught but proclaim their adherence to the Republic. You have had those two aristos inside the city nearly a week and——"
"Only three days," interposed Martin-Roget, "and you must have patience with me, citizen Carrier. Remember I have done well by you, by bringing such high game to your bag——"
"Your high game will be no use to me," retorted the other with a harsh laugh, "if I am not to have the cooking of it. You have talked of disgrace for the rabble and of your own desire for vengeance over them, but——"
"Wait, citizen," broke in Martin-Roget firmly, "let us understand one another. Before I embarked on this business you gave me your promise that no one—not even you—would interfere between me and my booty."
"And no one has done so hitherto to my knowledge, citizen," rejoined Carrier blandly. "The Kernogan rabble has been yours to do with what you like—er—so far," he added significantly. "I said that I would not interfere and I have not done so up to now, even though the pestilential crowd stinks in the nostrils of every good patriot in Nantes. But I don't deny that it was a bargain that you should have a free hand with them ... for a time, and Jean Baptiste Carrier has never yet gone back on a given word.”
Martin-Roget made no comment on this peroration. He shrugged his broad shoulders and suddenly fell to contemplating the distant landscape. He had turned his head away in order to hide the sneer which curled his lips at the recollection of that "bargain" struck with the imperious proconsul. It was a matter of five thousand francs which had passed from one pocket to the other and had bound Carrier down to a definite promise.
After a brief while Carrier resumed: "At the same time," he said, "my promise was conditional, remember. I want that cattle out of Nantes—I want the bread they eat—I want the room they occupy. I can't allow you to play fast and loose with them indefinitely—a week is quite long enough——"
"Three days," corrected Martin-Roget once more.
"Well! three days or eight," rejoined the other roughly. "Too long in any case. I must be rid of them out of this city or I shall have all the spies of the Convention about mine ears. I am beset with spies, citizen Martin-Roget, yes, even I—Jean Baptiste Carrier—the most selfless the most devoted patriot the Republic has ever known! Mine enemies up in Paris send spies to dog my footsteps, to watch mine every action. They are ready to pounce upon me at the slightest slip, to denounce me, to drag me to their bar—they have already whetted the knife of the guillotine which is to lay low the head of the finest patriot in France——"
"Hold on! hold on, Jean Baptiste my friend," here broke in young Lalouët with a sneer, "we don't want protestations of your patriotism just now. It is nearly dinner time."
Carrier had been carried away by his own eloquence. At Lalouët's mocking words he pulled himself together: murmured: "You young viper!" in tones of tigerish affection, and then turned back to Martin-Roget and resumed more calmly:
"They'll be saying that I harbour aristos in Nantes if I keep that Kernogan rabble here any longer. So I must be rid of them, citizen Martin-Roget ... say within the next four-and-twenty hours...." He paused for a moment or two, then added drily: "That is my last word, and you must see to it. What is it you do want to do with them enfin?"
"I want their death," replied Martin-Roget with a curse, and he brought his heavy fist crashing down upon the arm of his chair, "but not a martyr's death, understand? I don't want the pathetic figure of Yvonne Kernogan and her father to remain as a picture of patient resignation in the hearts and minds of every other aristo in the land. I don't want it to excite pity or admiration. Death is nothing for such as they! they glory in it! they are proud to die. The guillotine is their final triumph! What I want for them is shame ... degradation ... a sensational trial that will cover them with dishonour.... I want their name dragged in the mire—themselves an object of derision or of loathing. I want articles in the Moniteur giving account of the trial of the ci-devant duc de Kernogan and his daughter for something that is ignominious and base. I want shame and mud slung at them—noise and beating of drums to proclaim their dishonour. Noise! noise! that will reach every corner of the land, aye that will reach Coblentz and Germany and England. It is that which they would resent—the shame of it—the disgrace to their name!"
"Tshaw!" exclaimed Carrier. "Why don't you marry the wench, citizen Martin-Roget? That would be disgrace enough for her, I'll warrant," he added with a loud laugh, enchanted at his witticism.
"I would to-morrow," replied the other, who chose to ignore the coarse insult, "if she would consent. That is why I have kept her at my sister's house these three days."
"Bah! you have no need of a traitor's consent. My consent is sufficient.... I'll give it if you like. The laws of the Republic permit, nay desire every good patriot to ally himself with an aristo, if he have a mind. And the Kernogan wench face to face with the guillotine—or worse—would surely prefer your embraces, citizen, what?"
A deep frown settled between Martin-Roget's glowering eyes, and gave his face a sinister expression.
"I wonder ..." he muttered between his teeth.
"Then cease wondering, citizen," retorted Carrier cynically, "and try our Republican marriage on your Kernogans ... thief linked to aristo, cut-throat to a proud wench ... and then the Loire! Shame? Dishonour? Fal lal I say! Death, swift and sure and unerring. Nothing better has yet been invented for traitors."
Martin-Roget shrugged his shoulders.
"You have never known," he said quietly, "what it is to hate."
Carrier uttered an exclamation of impatience.
"Bah!" he said, "that is all talk and nonsense. Theories, what? Citizen Chauvelin is a living example of the futility of all that rubbish. He too has an enemy it seems whom he hates more thoroughly than any good patriot has ever hated the enemies of the Republic. And hath this deadly hatred availed him, forsooth? He too wanted the disgrace and dishonour of that confounded Englishman whom I would simply have tossed into the Loire long ago, without further process. What is the result? The Englishman is over in England, safe and sound, making long noses at citizen Chauvelin, who has much ado to keep his own head out of the guillotine."
Martin-Roget once more was silent: a look of sullen obstinacy had settled upon his face.
"You may be right, citizen Carrier," he muttered after awhile.
"I am always right," broke in Carrier curtly.
"Exactly ... but I have your promise."
"And I'll keep it, as I have said, for another four and twenty hours. Curse you for a mulish fool," added the proconsul with a snarl, "what in the d——l's name do you want to do? You have talked a vast deal of rubbish but you have told me nothing of your plans. Have you any ... that are worthy of my attention?”
Martin-Roget rose from his seat and began pacing up and down the narrow room. His nerves were obviously on edge. It was difficult for any man—let alone one of his temperament and half-tutored disposition—to remain calm and deferential in face of the overbearance of this brutal Jack-in-office. Martin-Roget—himself an upstart—loathed the offensive self-assertion of that uneducated and bestial parvenu, who had become all-powerful through the sole might of his savagery, and it cost him a mighty effort to keep a violent retort from escaping his lips—a retort which probably would have cost him his head.
Chauvelin, on the other hand, appeared perfectly unconcerned. He possessed the art of outward placidity to a masterly degree. Throughout all this while he had taken no part in the discussion. He sat silent and all but motionless, facing the darkened room in front of him, as if he had done nothing else in all his life but interview great dictators who chose to keep their sacred persons in the dark. Only from time to time did his slender fingers drum a tattoo on the arm of his chair.
Carrier had resumed his interesting occupation of picking his teeth: his long, thin legs were stretched out before him; from beneath his flaccid lids he shot swift glances upwards, whenever Martin-Roget in his restless pacing crossed and recrossed in front of the open door. But anon, when the latter came to a halt under the lintel and with his foot almost across the threshold, young Lalouët was upon him in an instant, barring the way to the inner sanctum.
"Keep your distance, citizen," he said drily, "no one is allowed to enter here."
Instinctively Martin-Roget had drawn back—suddenly awed despite himself by the air of mystery which hung over that darkened room, and by the dim silhouette of the sinister tyrant who at his approach had with equal suddenness cowered in his lair, drawing his limbs together and thrusting his head forward, low down over the desk, like a leopard crouching for a spring. But this spell of awe only lasted a few seconds, during which Martin-Roget's unsteady gaze encountered the half-mocking, wholly supercilious glance of young Lalouët.
The next, he had recovered his presence of mind. But this crowning act of audacious insolence broke the barrier of his self-restraint. An angry oath escaped him.
"Are we," he exclaimed roughly, "back in the days of Capet, the tyrant, and of Versailles, that patriots and citizens are treated like menials and obtrusive slaves? Pardieu, citizen Carrier, let me tell you this...."
"Pardieu, citizen Martin-Roget," retorted Carrier with a growl like that of a savage dog, "let me tell you that for less than two pins I'll throw you into the next barge that will float with open portholes down the Loire. Get out of my presence, you swine, ere I call Fleury to throw you out."
Martin-Roget at the insult and the threat had become as pale as the linen at his throat: a cold sweat broke out upon his forehead and he passed his hand two or three times across his brow like a man dazed with a sudden and violent blow. His nerves, already overstrained and very much on edge, gave way completely. He staggered and would have measured his length across the floor, but that his hand encountered the back of his chair and he just contrived to sink into it, sick and faint, horror-struck and pallid.
A low cackle—something like a laugh—broke from Chauvelin's thin lips. As usual he had witnessed the scene quite unmoved.
"My friend Martin-Roget forgot himself for the moment, citizen Carrier," he said suavely, "already he is ready to make amends."
Jacques Lalouët looked down for a moment with infinite scorn expressed in his fine eyes, on the presumptuous creature who had dared to defy the omnipotent representative of the People. Then he turned on his heel, but he did not go far this time: he remained standing close beside the door—the terrier guarding his master.
Carrier laughed loud and long. It was a hideous, strident laugh which had not a tone of merriment in it.
"Wake up, friend Martin-Roget," he said harshly, "I bear no malice: I am a good dog when I am treated the right way. But if anyone pulls my tail or treads on my paws, why! I snarl and growl of course. If the offence is repeated ... I bite ... remember that; and now let us resume our discourse, though I confess I am getting tired