XXXVII
The Moniteur does not say much about what happened afterwards. “La foule attendit avec assez de patience,” is all it says, “mais personne ne vint.”
The portals of the Hôtel de Ville which should have been a frame for the entrance of the principal actors in the last act of the drama, showed nothing but the yawning black emptiness beyond. The crowd waited, says the Moniteur, with sufficient patience. They did wait quite happily for ten minutes, agitatedly for twenty. But nobody came. Citizens Pochart and Danou, also citizen Tartine, the butcher, and three or four others, were seen to make their way back across the Place, to run quickly up the steps of the Hôtel de Ville and subsequently disappear inside its portals. Still the crowd waited, very much as a crowd will wait in a theatre when the entr’acte is too long; some of them hilariously, others with impatient yawns, others again with tapping of feet and presently with murmurs of, “La Lan-terne! La Lan-terne!”
The next thing that happened was the reverberating clang of the portals of the Hôtel de Ville being suddenly closed. Then only did the crowd realize that they were being cheated of the spectacle. Murmurs were loud, and there were some hisses and boos and cat’s calls. But on the whole they took the event with extraordinary calm. There was no rioting as indeed might have been expected. A few hotheads tried to create a disturbance by loudly demanding that the executioner be given something to do. Madame la Guillotine should not be cheated of her dinner.
“She’s hungry, give her something to eat,” was the catchword these hotheads used in order to excite the rest of the crowd. Somehow it did not work. There certainly were a few bouts of fisticuffs, one or two broken heads, the soldiers round the guillotine and those on guard at the street corners did use their bayonets with some effect, but on the whole the crowd was strangely subdued, more inclined to whisper than to shout.
For quite a little while after the portals of the Hôtel de Ville had been closed, they still waited, thinking that perhaps something more was being devised for their entertainment. But as time went on and nothing happened, they thought they might as well get home. It was dinner time. The children were hungry, and though there was little enough in the larders these days, one had to get home and give them what there was. The whole thing had been strange. Very strange. As men and women wended their way homeward, their thoughts reverted to that titanic figure with the grimy face and huge bare chest, one sinewy arm encircling the body of the wench Fleurette nommée Armand, which hung limp across his massive shoulder. He was no mere mortal, that was certain. And though the Government up in Paris had abolished le bon Dieu, and declared that it was Citizen Robespierre who was the “Etre Suprême,” something of the old superstitions imbibed at their mothers’ knees, still lingered in these untutored, undisciplined minds. That the Titan with the flashing eyes and grimy face should have vanished with the traitors whom he and his satellites had seized, was but the fitting ending to his meteoric appearance. The Government might forbid belief in God and the Devil, in heaven and in hell, but here was proof positive that the Devil did exist. He was black and he was of abnormal stature, he had a great bare chest and strong muscular arms, and—clearest proof of all—he had before the very eyes of the citizens of Orange seized upon two traitors and carried them away with him to limbo.
Nothing would take that idea out of the people’s mind, and long after these horrible days of the revolution had passed away and men and women had returned to sanity, those who were present on that day in June at the trial of one Fleur Chauvelin nommée Armand, would recount the marvellous story of how the devil had entered the courthouse and spirited the accused away. Only a few knew the true facts of the case, and even so a great deal was left to surmise. Among those who knew was Citizen Tartine, the butcher. And this is what he told his friends when they pressed him with questions. It seems that when the crowd stampeded out of the Hôtel de Ville, he, Tartine, together with Citizens Pochart and Danou who had stepped down from the judges’ bench, and three or four other notabilities of the city among whom was Motus, the chief warder of the Caristie house, put their heads together for a moment or two, wondering if something could not be done towards sending the wench Fleurette and her father by a back way to one or other of the prison houses, with a view to bringing them up for formal trial on the morrow. They did feel, however, that given the present temper of the populace, such a move might prove dangerous to themselves. “The people will demand a victim, two victims, perhaps more,” Danou said with a doubtful nod of the head. “They might vent their wrath on us.”
That was sound logic, and the project was abandoned almost as soon as it was formulated.
Motus, it seems, then turned familiarly to the giant and said:
“Tiens, Rémi, is it thou?”
“Myself, citizen,” the giant replied.
In response to inquiries from the others, Chief Warder Motus then explained that Rémi was a scavenger whom he himself had taken on in the Caristie house for extra work when the regular man fell sick. A splendid patriot, Motus averred. There was, therefore, not the faintest cause for suspicion.
“Come along, all of you,” Pochart now said addressing Rémi and his mates. “Bring along the prisoners. The people are waiting.”
“Give them time to settle down,” Rémi replied with a shrug and laugh. “We are the chief comedians in this play. Do you all go and prepare everything for our entrance.”
“You won’t tarry?” Danou admonished.
“Not we,” Rémi replied. “We’re as eager as you for the spectacle, eh, citizens?” he added, turning to his mates who had the President of the Tribunal still between them.
Rémi then took a pistol out of his ragged breeches and handed it to Citizen Tartine.
“When the executioner is ready,” he said, “and everything prepared for our entrance, just give us the signal by firing the pistol. We’ll be with you a few minutes after that. We’ve yet another surprise for the spectators,” he added with another laugh, “which will delight them and you.”
Tartine vowed that not the slightest suspicion entered his head or that of his companions. How could one suspect a patriot vouched for by no less a person than Motus the chief warder? In the end, however, Pochart decided that two men of the gendarmerie, one of whom was a sergeant, who were still standing at attention below the judges’ bench, should remain with Rémi and his mates and escort them when the time came, on to the Place.
After which the group of notabilities followed the rest of the crowd out into the open. When looking back upon what followed, they all agreed that some fifteen minutes must have gone from the time when they finally left the courthouse and took their last look on Rémi and his mates, to that when they returned and found the place empty. They all said that even then, at first glance, no suspicion entered their minds and they stood about for a few minutes talking together, thinking that Rémi was preparing the surprise spectacle which he had promised them. Thinking too that every moment would bring the scavenger back with his mates and the prisoners. Tartine, the butcher, was the first to suspect that there might be something wrong. He crossed the floor of the room, and made his way to the private door which was at the back of the judges’ bench and led to some corridors and private rooms, and also to the back of the premises of the Hôtel de Ville, and to a back door which gave on a narrow street that ran parallel with the façade.
The private door was locked, with no key to be seen. But even then, so remote was suspicion from their minds, that Tartine and the others hammered away on the door and called loudly to Rémi. The door was made of solid oak, but Pochart and Tartine were both of them powerful men. Receiving no answer to their call, they searched amidst the litter left pell-mell by the crowd upon the gradients, and found an axe and a leaded stick. Thus armed they attacked the panels of the door, whilst Danou and one of the others wisely thought of closing the portals of the Hôtel de Ville. The oak panels yielded after awhile. The door battered in, fell under the heavy blows dealt by Tartine the butcher with the axe. He and Pochart and two or three of the others striding over the debris, found themselves in a dark corridor. Some twenty paces down the corridor on the right, they came to another door. It was locked, but behind it came a vigorous sound of banging and the door shook now and again as if under heavy blows. Once more the axe was brought into play, the door was smashed in and as it fell in with a crash, it revealed the two men of the gendarmerie, with arms and legs securely pinioned, and their crimson caps stuffed into their mouths. One of them had succeeded in rolling along the floor, near enough to the door to kick against it with his otherwise helpless feet.
There could no longer be any doubt. The public had been hoaxed either by an impudent impostor, or by a traitor, bribed to aid the prisoners to escape. The words: “English spies,” soon cropped up as did those of Amédé Colombe and Architect Caristie and a host of others. This too, no doubt, was their work. At least this was the opinion of some, whilst others, headed by Danou, shook their heads dubiously. Citizen Chauvelin was known to be the sworn enemy of those English spies—weren’t they called the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel?—and it was Citizen Chauvelin and his daughter Fleur who had been so insolently spirited away.
Having hastily released the men of the gendarmerie, they all ran down the length of the corridor as swiftly as they could, chiefly because one of the soldiers said that this corridor led ultimately to a back entrance of the Hôtel de Ville. But the building itself was something of a maze, the passages were dark and narrow. It took them all some time to find that back door, and when at last they came upon it, they found it locked.
Once more the axe had to come into play, and time had in the meanwhile slipped by to the tune of some twenty minutes. Nor did the narrow back street reveal any of the secrets of this amazing adventure. Impostors, traitors or English spies, Rémi the scavenger and his mates had disappeared with the two prisoners and taken their secret with them. On the other side of the road there was a row of one-storied, tumble-down houses, inhabited by some of the poorest families in the city. Inquiries at each house in succession revealed but little. Nearly all the inmates had spent their morning as usual watching the trials in the Hôtel de Ville and were not yet home; but in one of the houses a sick woman had, it seems, been standing at the window when she saw four or five men come out of the building opposite. One of them, she said, was very tall and was carrying what she thought was a large bundle on his shoulder. The others were hustling a short, thin man who wore a blue coat and had on a tricolour sash round his waist. They turned sharply to their right and she soon lost sight of them. She thought nothing about the incident, one saw so many strange things these days.
In the meanwhile the crowd on the Place had begun to disperse, the first stragglers were wending their way to their homes. Pochart and Danou holding high functions in the administration of justice, did not feel that it was incumbent upon them to go hunting for spies. That was the business of the gendarmerie, and they parted presently from their friends, declaring their intention of sending immediately for the Chief Commissary of Police. The others, feeling that it was not part of their duty either to run after escaped prisoners, found that they had pressing business to see to at home.
As far as Citizen Tartine, the butcher, was concerned, the incident had no further interest for him, save for the pleasure of recounting his share of the adventure to his numerous friends. A couple more traitors escaped from the clutches of justice, a few more English spies when already the country swarmed with them, was nothing to worry one’s head about.
Pochart and Danou did, on the other hand, worry their heads considerably about it all. They had a burning desire to know just what the English spies did ultimately do with their colleague Chauvelin. They hoped—oh! very ardently—that as soon as the much-vaunted Scarlet Pimpernel discovered that it was his inveterate enemy whom he had rescued from the guillotine, he would either hand him back straightway to the tender mercies of justice, or simply murder him in some convenient and out-of-the-way corner of the district. Pochart and Danou would have preferred the former alternative as being more satisfactory to their wounded vanity and their baffled spite.
Unlike Tartine, they seldom spoke of their experiences in connection with the affair. But their hopes did rise to their zenith when a week or so later President Legrange and Public Prosecutor Isnard returned from their fool’s errand to Paris; there could be no doubt that even Robespierre, friend of Chauvelin though he be, would order the punishment of such a consummate liar and traitor.