XXXV
There is no doubt that everything would have gone well, had it not been for Fleurette herself. Perhaps “well” is the wrong word: “differently” would be better. Nothing could have gone “well,” because even though Chauvelin had succeeded in obtaining an acquittal, his enemies would have returned immediately to the charge, and forced on the girl’s re-arrest even before she had left the Tribunal. There had been cases during the past few weeks, in Paris, in Lyons and so on, when prisoners were acquitted and re-arrested, retried, acquitted again, and again re-arrested. A regular cat-and-mouse game, at which Chauvelin himself was an adept. Nevertheless with a first acquittal there might have been some hope. And he practically had obtained that acquittal, when Fleurette herself ruined her chance, and caused her own condemnation. Chauvelin could have struck her for her folly. His love for her always pertained to that of a wild beast for its young; the instinct to devour in moments of peril. If she was destined to perish, then it should be by his own hand, not as a spectacle for the rabble to gloat on.
The Moniteur of the 22nd Messidor gives one or two interesting details concerning the trial of a country girl named Fleur Chauvelin, daughter of a Citizen Armand Chauvelin of the Central Committee of Public Safety, and member of the National Convention, and relates at full length the extraordinary incidents which marked its close. Looking back upon that memorable day, and on the solemn hour which saw the girl Fleur Chauvelin nommée Armand called to the bar of the accused, we visualize Chauvelin the father, presiding over that Tribunal of infamy, and having sent within the last half-hour half a dozen fellow-creatures callously to death, now seeing his own daughter, the only being in all the world whom he had ever loved, standing there before him, accused, condemned already in the eyes of the canaille.
There was no time wasted during the proceedings, wherein the accused was allowed neither jury nor advocate. The State as represented by its three nominees who sat as judges, was judge and jury and prosecutor all in one. It was men like Chauvelin who had invented this travesty of justice and eliminated all procedure devised by civilization for the protection of the accused.
The Public Prosecutor opened the proceedings by reading the indictment in mechanical monotone; it was identically the same as that framed against hundreds of others—guilty or innocent alike—the printed formula invented by the odious Foucquier-Tinville in which the words “Traitor,” and “Enemy of the Republic” were alone intelligible. All else was a jumble of words. The crowd was not listening. Their attention was fixed on the accused whose modest bearing and spotless attire seemed to arouse their spite and their derision, more than the rags and filth displayed by a previous prisoner had done.
When the reading of the indictment came to an end, Pochart sitting beside the Presiding Judge asked the usual question:
“Is the prisoner accused publicly or in secret?”
And the Public Prosecutor replied: “Publicly.”
Danou, the third judge then asked: “By whom?”
And again the Public Prosecutor gave reply:
“By one Adèle,” he said, “of unknown parentage, and by Citizen Lieutenant Godet of the revolutionary army.”
“And to what will these persons testify?”
“To the treason committed against the State by the accused and to her connection with the enemies of the Republic.”
After which Adèle was called. Her small ratlike face looked wan and pinched; her hands trembled visibly, and she wiped them continually against the ragged apron which she wore. She was obviously very nervous and never looked once in the direction of the accused, but she spoke clearly enough in a shrill, high-pitched voice. Questioned at first by the Public Prosecutor, she presently embarked more glibly upon her story, relating the events which were intended to condemn Fleurette. Chauvelin already knew the tale by heart. The soldiers on the bridge. The raid on the château. Fleurette’s halt that evening in the cottage of the widow Tronchet. Her assignation, through Adèle, with Amédé Colombe. The casket and wallet underneath her shawl, then transferred into young Colombe’s keeping.
Ofttimes Chauvelin tried to break into the girl’s narrative; he put stern questions to her, tried to intimidate her, to trip her into misstatements of obvious contradictions. But Adèle held her ground. Informer, ingrate, wanton though she was, she was speaking the truth and was not to be shaken. Hisses and boos from the crowd oft greeted the President’s cross-questionings, cries of approbation greeted Adèle’s spirited rejoinders. In the wordy warfare between herself and Chauvelin, she scored nearly every time. Encouraged by the sympathy of the rabble, she lost her nervousness, whilst he gradually lost his self-control. He had so much at stake, and she nothing but the satisfaction of vanity and of spite.
“Be not intimidated, citizeness,” Pochart put in forcefully at one moment, “let not powerful influences sway you from your duty.”
“Vas-y Adèle of unknown parentage!” one of the women shouted from above. “ ’Twas some aristo doubtless who betrayed thy mother. Let this aristo at least pay for her kind.”
Amidst thunderous applause Adèle stepped down from the bar. Chauvelin tried in vain to command silence, he was shouted down by the crowd.
“Thou’rt a true patriot, Citizen Chauvelin,” one woman called out lustily. “To have a traitor for a daughter is a curse. Her death will not be for thee a sacrifice.”
He waited in seeming patience, white to the lips, until the tumult had subsided, then calling all his reserves of strength, moral and mental, to his aid, he said in a calm firm voice:
“The witness has lied. The events which she has described could not have taken place in her presence seeing that on that day and at that hour she was in my house, at Lou Mas, half a league away.”
This pronouncement was greeted with mighty uproar. Derisive laughter, cat’s calls, whistling, strident shouts made riotous confusion. Only two persons in the crowded room appeared serene. One was the accused, the other her judge. The Moniteur says that throughout the whole proceedings the attitude of the accused was astonishingly calm: “d’une sérénité étonnante.” She looked straight before her, sometimes at the President, but more often her eyes appeared to be fixed on the tricolour flag draped over the wall above his head, and ornamented with a red cap and the words writ largely: “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité ou la Mort.”
And so too was the President equally serene. Outwardly. He stood upright whilst the turmoil continued, with head erect and hands held behind his back. Insults and jeers flew at him from every side. But he never winced. The rabble called him, “Traitor, Liar, Tyrant!” and various other names impossible to record. But he waited in seeming patience, until the crowd, eager to hear more, fell to comparative stillness once more. Then Pochart’s rasping voice cut through the silence, like the sound of a file against metal.
“You’ll have to substantiate that statement, Citizen President,” he said.
“My statements need no substantiation,” Chauvelin retorted coolly. “The word of a representative of the people is sufficient against any witness.”
And while Pochart was considering a suitable repartee, Danou put in smoothly:
“Should we not hear the next witness, Citizen Lieutenant Godet, before we discuss the matter?”
“Yes, yes!” the crowd yelled in response.
Scenting the unusual, the crowd was more excited than was its wont. Of late these hasty trials, six to the hour, with condemnation as a foregone conclusion, had become monotonous. One condemnation had been very much like another. But here was something novel. The rumour had already spread like wildfire that the accused was no less than the daughter of the President, Citizen Chauvelin, who was well known in the councils of State, a prominent member of many committees, and, some said, a personal friend of the great Robespierre. Here in truth was a test of supreme patriotism; a judge called upon to condemn his own daughter if she be guilty. And of course she was guilty, or she would not be here. There was no sympathy for either of them, only interest in the issue of this amazing trial. The crowd did not like the prisoner’s attitude, what they called her aristocratic airs and disdainful ways; even the children pointed grimy little fingers at her and hurled the poisonous darts of loathsome epithets at the aristo.
Thus was the scene prepared for the entrance of Lieutenant Godet, who stepped up to the witness’ platform with a display of self-assurance and a swagger that charmed the women. He was a man after their own heart, a real sans culotte in grimy rags, unkempt, unshaved, unwashed, the type of which the martyr Jean Paul Marat had been the most perfect exponent.
Conversations, objurgations, murmurs even were stilled; the click-click of knitting needles alone made a soft accompaniment to Citizen Godet’s replies to the Public Prosecutor’s preliminary questions. It was indeed a remarkable, an amazing, an almost unbelievable tale, which he had to tell. And gradually as he unfolded the various details of this extraordinary adventure a hush fell over the crowded room, very like the calm which nature assumes ere she sends forth the thunders of her wrath.
Godet, still with this air of self-assurance, related how he and the soldiers under his command, as well as the whole commune of Laragne had been tricked by a band of English spies whose actions proved them to have been in league with Amédé Colombe and with the accused. He told of the magnificently dressed soldiers. Their raid on the premises of Colombe the grocer of the Rue Haute. Their march through the village. Their captain’s swagger. His orders to himself, Godet, and to the real soldiers of the revolutionary army.
Still the crowd gave no sign of approbation, or disapprobation. Only that ominous, expectant hush which presaged a storm. The accused, always serene, smiled—so the Moniteur avers—as she encountered the President’s glance. Smiled cheerfully and trustfully. But the President’s face was inscrutable, and the colour of wax.
And then Godet went on to relate the long, weary tramp along the mountain roads. The dust. The fatigue. The want of food. He told how ci-devant Frontenac and Amédé Colombe wrested from the hands of justice, were presently taken to some unknown place of safety, while the soldiers of the Republic were left by the wayside, to perish of fatigue or inanition.
He had finished speaking, and still the click-click of the knitting needles was the only sound that broke the silence. The witness, sensing this silence, feeling its menace, had lost something of his arrogance; the hand with which he stroked his shaggy moustache trembled perceptibly. The accused, overcome by the heat, wiped her forehead with the corner of her apron, then she smiled once more across at her father.
And suddenly through the solemn stillness a woman’s shrill voice was raised:
“Those English spies did make a fool of thee, I am thinking, Citizen Godet!”
This suddenly relieved the tension. It was like a dam let loose. In a moment every kind of call and of cry, of laughter and of groan rang from end to end of the room.
“The English have made a fool of thee!”
Within a minute or two this became a general cry, accompanied by the stamping of feet, and loud and prolonged laughter, both malevolent and derisive. Godet, ludicrous in his bewilderment, rolled terror-filled eyes, whilst vainly trying to raise his voice above the din. The Moniteur says definitely that the accused put her hands to her ears. The uproar was in truth deafening.
A few moments of this confusion, and the next, Chauvelin was on his feet clanging his bell. His stentorian voice rose above the tumult, demanded silence, and in the lull that presently ensued, that same voice now subdued to a lower, though no less impressive key, rang clear and calm.
“Is it not an insult, citizen patriots, to ask you to listen to the words of a fool, when the life of a French girl is at stake?”
The passionate earnestness with which he spoke, the burning indignation expressed in that calm, subdued voice, had the effect of awing the screaming rabble. They turned to gaze on him, as he stood there, facing them all, calm, proud, almost majestic, despite his small stature. Seizing this sudden advantage he began to speak. Without a gesture, hardly raising his voice, he began quietly, not choosing his words, or striving after eloquence, but only as a man speaking to his friends. And by one of those inexplicable reactions which will so often change the temper of a crowd, men, women and children ceased to curse and to deride. The innumerable eyes were fixed with more curiosity than malevolence upon him, the mouths, agape, uttered no further groan, and once more the click-click of knitting needles was momentarily stilled.
“Citizens,” he said, “you have heard two witnesses against the accused. One of these, the wench Adèle I myself, representative of the people, have convicted of deliberate falsehood, spoken to the prejudice of a French patriot. The other your own words have condemned for a fool, and an easy tool in the hands of English spies. You called him a fool, citizens, but I call him a traitor. Lieutenant Godet was not a tool in the hands of the English spies, he was their confederate, their help. Can you bring yourselves to believe, citizens, that a loyal soldier of the Republic could be deceived by false uniforms, by French words spoken by alien lips? Can you believe this story of a forced march, of starvation by the wayside in the company of English spies whose every action, every word, every gesture almost, must have betrayed them as the foreigners they actually were. Citizens, I appeal to that reputation for clear thinking and for logic, for which French men and women are famous throughout the world. At this hour when our beloved country is threatened on every side, is this the time, I say, for allowing yourselves to be duped by traitors who would sell you and your land, your dues and your liberty for English gold—?”
“No! no!” came a lusty shout in response. And the crowd took up the cry. “No! We’ll not sell our liberties for English gold.”
“Say on, citizen representative.”
Pochart had jumped to his feet; once or twice he had tried to break in on Chauvelin’s peroration, with cries of: “Thou’rt slandering a soldier of the Republic!” or: “Traitor! thou’rt in league with thy daughter!”
But he was not listened to. There was something about Chauvelin which fascinated the mob. His white, calm face, his pale, piercing eyes, his voice, dull, even monotonous, but penetrating to the most distant corners of the room. And there was also that welcome element of novelty. This pleased the women. Trials and condemnations in incessant routine had begun to pall. Here was something new. Witnesses summoned, then discredited, and finally accused. Such a thing had never been witnessed before in Orange.
And so the crowd would not listen to Pochart or Danou, they wanted to hear Chauvelin; they did not particularly wish to see Fleurette nommée Armand acquitted, but they did relish the prospect of the two witnesses being sent to the bench of the accused. That was novelty for them, and it was what they wanted for the moment. Moreover they did think that the citizen lieutenant with all his swagger had been such a consummate fool, if no worse, that it would be distinctly amusing to see that stupid head of his roll down into the basket of the guillotine.
Neither Pochart nor Danou, however, were men to give up the struggle quite so easily. In the fight against the representative on special mission, who had threatened them and lorded it over them for so long, they only contemplated one issue: victory. Victory! which would mean satisfaction of pride and of revenge. They had set out to win and did not consider themselves beaten. Not yet. Already Pochart was on his feet, and his rasping voice rose booming above the tumult. As soon as a slight lull gave him an opportunity he seized it, and cried in thunderous accents:
“Citizens! Frenchmen! French women! All of you!” And then again: “Citizens all! Let me put the same question to you, that the President asked you just now: will you allow yourselves to be duped? Will you go like sheep whithersoever traitors may lead you?”
The crowd murmured and shrugged shoulders, would have shouted Pochart down only that that rasping voice of his rose above the cry of: “A la lanterne, all traitors and fools!”
Pointing an accusing finger at Chauvelin, Pochart took up the cry.
“So say I,” he roared in a terrific straining of his powerful lungs: “A la lanterne all the traitors who try to throw dust in your eyes. Have you forgotten that the citizen President is the father of the accused? And that he knows well enough that if the child be guilty, then is the parent guilty too? To save himself he is trying to shield a traitor. Do not allow yourselves to be duped by him. Look on the Citizen President, my friends, and ask him how it comes about that he lavished all the treasures of his eloquence upon this one traitor, when yesterday and the day before that, he sent to the guillotine every man, woman and child who came before the Tribunal, and on a mere suspicion of treason.”
A dull murmur greeted this peroration. There had been something in Pochart’s eloquence which caused the crowd not to veer round just yet, but at any rate to look on the President of the Tribunal with rather less awe, and something approaching suspicion.
“That is true,” a woman said loudly. “The President showed no mercy to traitors yesterday. And it is treason now to be as much as suspected of treason, we’ve been told.”
“It is my duty to protect the innocent,” Chauvelin retorted firmly, “as well as to punish the guilty.”
“Methinks,” Danou now broke in, and his slow, and suave tones came in strange contrast to the clamorous eloquence of his colleagues: “methinks that the traitor Danton made some such remark too, ere justice put her hand on him.”
“Danton was a traitor, and thou too, Citizen Danou, art a traitor for speaking his name in this hall of justice.”
“Justice!” Pochart cried, pallid with rage, for he had felt that the word “traitor” hurled at Danou was meant to strike him also. “Justice! hark at the traitor, who should be standing in the dock beside his brood.”
“Vas-y, Citizen President,” the women cried excitedly. “It is thy turn now.”
They had cast aside their knitting, so palpitating had this duel become between these three men. Insensate, doltish as they were, they scented the tragedy that underlay this wordy warfare; they guessed that the man who presided over this infamous tribunal and who with a casual stroke of the pen had sent hundreds indiscriminately to death, had one soft corner in his callous heart, and that his colleagues, consumed with envy and hatred were hitting at that vulnerable spot and had already succeeded in making him writhe in agony.
At the same time, such is the psychology of a multitude as against that of individuals, there was still a wave of sympathy tending in the direction of this father fighting so desperately for the life of his child. Strictly speaking it was not sympathy, rather was it mere instinctive understanding of family ties. Five years of this awful revolution, during which every cruel lust in man or woman had been sedulously fostered, every softer mood repressed, had not yet succeeded in crushing altogether that feeling for family solidarity which is the most distinctive characteristic of the French nation. And this spectacle of a father sitting in judgment over his own child, and actually expected to pronounce the death-sentence over her, did undoubtedly for the time being sway the crowd in his favour. He was given a more respectful hearing than either of his colleagues or either of the witnesses, and when Godet’s name recurred on the tapis, it was greeted with derisive cries of “Cet imbécile!” and when Adèle was mentioned, most of the women shouted spitefully: “Liar!”
Chauvelin, sensitive of course to the slightest wavering in the temper of the populace, felt his advantage and strained every nerve to press it home. The whole situation was of course terribly precarious. At any moment a look, a word, a false move on his part, might cause the crowd to veer right over against him. Even after an acquittal sometimes, the populace would suddenly demand that the accused be re-arrested: a second trial, more of a mockery and a travesty of justice than the first, would be insisted on, after which condemnation was a foregone conclusion. All this Chauvelin knew, none better, and there were moments when he felt as if madness or death were preferable to this terrible fight that in the end could have but one issue. And yet fight he must, fight for every inch of ground, fight with the last breath in his body, and with it silence the vituperations of those fiends who had raised their noisome voices against his Fleurette.
Even now Pochart was on his feet again, shouting, gesticulating, banging his fist upon the table.
“Citizens,” he reiterated for the third time, “do not let yourselves be duped by men who are ruining your country by pandering to traitors. Look at the accused! I say she is nothing but a wanton, who should be tied to the whipping-post ere she be sent to the guillotine. Look at the aristocrat, I say, with the demure airs and the folded kerchief; she, forsooth, goes forth o’ nights to meet her lover under the almond trees, there to concoct treason with her lover against the Republic. She was seen, remember, seen, I say, in spite of what interested parties may aver. You have heard the witness, a humble, simple girl, the victim of aristocratic lust and of tyranny. That witness spoke the truth. She saw the accused and her lover at dead of night whispering and embracing. I ask you, does a clean-minded, respectable woman, citizen of our glorious Republic, spend her nights in the company of her lover? Rather is it not the wanton, the traitor, who shuns the light of day and seeks the darkness, for the hatching of treasonable plots against the State? Look at the witness, citizens. Humbly and simply did she speak the truth—”
“She lied as well you know it, Citizen Pochart,” Chauvelin broke in forcefully. “Liar, forger and thief, I decree her accused and command that she stand her trial for these offences against the Republic. Look at her, my friends, citizens all,” he went on, and pointed an accusing finger at Adèle whose pinched little face had become the colour of lead, and who sat in a corner of the witness’ bench, cowering within herself, her trembling hands, now and then, lifting a handkerchief to wipe the sweat of terror that had risen to her brow. “Look at her,” Chauvelin continued, appealing to the sea of faces before him: “And now look at the accused. She is serene, because she is innocent, whilst the guilty trembles because she knows her treachery has come to light at last. Look at those two women, citizens, and yourselves pronounce which is the traitor and which is the stainless.”
Of a truth all would have been well after that. Chauvelin passed a quivering hand across his brow. It was streaming with moisture. The strain had been immense. Mentally he felt broken by the effort. But he also felt that for the moment at least he had won the day. The Moniteur states definitely that: “il y eût tout lieu de croire qu’un acquittement eût été applaudi.” At any rate the applause at the moment was deafening, and if Chauvelin could have obtained a hearing for another sixty seconds he would have put the acquittal to the populace vote, and, as the Moniteur says, it would have been carried.
What would have happened afterwards nobody can say. The most fickle entity in the world is a multitude, and of all the multitudes, an audience watching the suffering of a fellow-creature is the most fickle and the most callous. For the next two or three minutes at any rate, Chauvelin held the sympathy of the crowd. Fleurette did not count either way. For the spectators of this heartrending pageant she was just a thing, an insentient object placed there for their entertainment, the pivot round which circled their excitement. But Chauvelin, the father pleading for his daughter’s life, had won their sympathy—the sympathy of tiger-cats, satiated for the moment and licking their chops in the intervals of snarling.
All then would have been well but for the action of one of the sympathizers who stood leaning up against the wall in the crowd; a giant he was, coated with grime—coal heaver or scavenger probably, only half clad in ragged shirt and torn breeches, with dirty feet thrust stockingless into sabots, a red worsted cap over his unkempt hair, his face streaked with sweat and coal-dust. In one hand he held a large raw carrot which he was munching with loud snapping of the jaws and smacking of the lips. He was one of the noisiest in his approval of the President’s peroration.
“Vas-y, Président,” he shouted. “A la lanterne, the fools and traitors. Where is that trollop? Let her stand up. We want to look at her, eh, citizens?”
“Yes! Yes! we want to see her! Stand up, Adèle of unknown parentage! Let’s look at you.”
The women, of course, were the loudest in their demand for the unfortunate Adèle. Bred by misery, often out of degradation, trained by five years of an execrable revolution, the women of France were not féministes these days. The spectacle of one of their own sex on the guillotine gave them more satisfaction than that of a man. Now they wanted to see Adèle of the pinched, ratlike face, Adèle with the trembling hands and the shrinking shoulders, they wanted to see her squirm before their wrath, they wanted to see her wriggle like a worm prodded with a pin. Incidentally they had almost forgotten Fleurette.
Louder and even louder they clamoured for Adèle, and at an order from the President, two soldiers of the National guard did presently drag Adèle from the corner of the witness’ bench where she was cowering like a frightened rodent, and dragged her—or rather carried her—to the bar of the accused. The crowd seeing that its dictates were being obeyed, restrained its frenzy for an instant and, through the comparative stillness that ensued, a piercing shriek rang out from the unfortunate Adèle.
“Mercy! Mercy!” she cried, and struggled fiercely to free herself from the men’s grasp. “I am innocent! I spoke the truth.”
A thunderous shout of derisive laughter greeted her cry. The women, with their hands on their knees, were literally rocking with laughter. They thought that Adèle with a face like a rat, wisps of lank hair poking out from underneath her cap which sat all awry, with mouth wide open uttering shrieks which no one could hear through the deafening tumult, was supremely funny.
The President made no attempt to quell the disturbance. It was all to the good. The greater the hatred against Adèle, the greater his chance, not only of forcing an acquittal now for Fleurette, but also of keeping the wave of sympathy for himself at full-tide, until he had the opportunity of getting Fleurette out of Orange. He was striving with all his might to catch his darling’s eye. But Fleurette’s glance was fixed on Adèle. She seemed to him to be fascinated with horror, mute and paralysed. She was looking on Adèle, and her dear little hand was fidgeting the corner of her kerchief.
Through the earsplitting uproar led by the women, Pochart and Danou, their sympathizers, men of their own choosing, vainly tried to get a hearing. As well try to shout down a tempestuous sea as these hundreds of women gloating over the spectacle of one of their own sex writhing in an agony of terror.
“Hein!” came in a stentorian shout from the grimy giant in the rear of the crowd; “thou wouldst slander the innocent girl with lies. Take that for thy pains.”
And he hurled the remnant of his raw carrot over the head of the intervening crowd at the unfortunate Adèle. It missed her by a hairbreadth, but the action delighted the crowd. They took up the cry: “Take that for thy pains!” and sent various missiles flying at the girl, who, crouching down on her knees, lay there like a bundle of goods just below the bar of the accused where Fleurette stood, gazing down at her, fascinated with horror.
Looking back later on that terrible moment, Chauvelin felt that it was the action of the grimy coal-heaver—or scavenger, whatever he was—that precipitated the catastrophe. He it was who egged on the rabble to virulent hatred against Adèle. It was he who by hurling that first missile at the girl brought in a further, more immense element of cruelty and horror into the situation. Certain it is that up to that moment Fleurette had appeared more dazed than horrified. She must even in her own gentle heart have felt a burning indignation against Adèle for the treacherous part which she had played, and if the girl’s arrest had been effected outside the Tribunal, she would perhaps never have actually realized what had brought it about. But with that shout of “Thou wouldst slander the innocent girl with thy lies,” full consciousness returned to her, and with it the recollection of everything that had gone before. Chauvelin, who watched her with the devouring gaze of his love, saw as in a flash, through the quick glance which swept from Adèle to himself and thence over the sea of perspiring faces, the full workings of her mind.
He tried to keep the tumult going; he hoped that Fleurette would faint, so that she might be carried out of court. He prayed that the roof of the gigantic building would come crashing down and bury him and Fleurette and all that swinish multitude in its ruins ere she spoke the words which he saw hovering on her lips.
But none of these things happened. Rather by that perversity which is peculiar to Chance, a sudden lull broke in on the mighty uproar, a lull through which Fleurette’s calm voice rang clear as water poured into a crystal glass.
“Adéle was not lying, nor did she slander me, I did give some valuable articles into the keeping of my beloved M’sieu’ Amédé Colombe, at the hour spoken of by her, and I have no doubt that she did see me, as she says.”