CHAPTER II

THE citizen-deputy Chauvinière, representative in the National
Convention of the constituency of Nevers, chose, as became a legislator
of his notorious zeal, to make an inspection of the Archevêché, the
whilom Palace of the Archbishop of Paris, now converted into a hospital
for prisoners.

Baziret, the doctor in charge, conducted him, and was filled with terror
by the deputy’s uncompromising denunciations of the manner in which he
found the place conducted, the abominable overcrowding, the mephitic
atmosphere, the general insalubrity.

‘This is not human,’ he declared, as they turned away from a suffocating
gallery. ‘After all, they are men, not beasts; and although they have
not yet been tried, already, it seems, are they subjected here to
punishment such as the Nation could not desire for her vilest
malefactors. They are flung to lie in straw like swine, men and women
who are ill, some of them already dying! And you pack sixty into a space
that could comfortably contain thirty! It is inhuman, barbarous, almost
beyond anything ever perpetrated by the despots.’

Under those stern light eyes the portly Baziret trembled in body and in
soul.

‘What would you, citizen-deputy? Every day the authorities send me more
of these sick from overcrowded prisons in which they cannot do other
than fall ill. And my resources, then! They are utterly inadequate. The
space at my command here is what you see. I cannot build new wings to
the Archevêché.’

‘But you can keep clean the space you have; and you can avoid being pert
with me, if you please. I dislike pertness. It is the sign of a shallow
mind.’

‘Pert? I?’ The doctor descended to further depths of panic. ‘Oh, but
citizen-deputy, I assure you . . .’

‘Enough!’ His peremptoriness was terrific. ‘Also I dislike servility. It
was well enough in the days of Capet. It will not serve in a glorious
Age of Reason, when all men are free, when all men are equal, when all
men are brothers. There are no masters now. Do you understand?’

‘Oh, but perfectly, citizen-deputy.’

‘I congratulate you. Let us pass on.’ Never was demeanour of Sultan
towards a slave of his household more contemptuous. ‘What have you
above?’

‘Above? Oh, above!’ The doctor had fondly imagined the inspection at an
end. ‘Oh, but nothing that deserves your trouble.’

‘All things deserve trouble at the hands of a zealous servant of the
Nation. Make a note of that, citizen-doctor. It may stimulate your own
zeal.’

The brow-beaten man of medicine bowed in silent awe.

The Apostle of Liberty and Fraternity, continued:

‘Conduct me, if you please.’ And he waved a hand upwards. ‘The state of
things I find here is to be the subject of a report I shall present this
evening to the Convention. This scandal must be brought to an end.’

The doctor, his hand upon the baluster, his foot in its neatly buckled
shoe upon the first step of the staircase, paused and turned. His face
was grey.

‘In justice, citizen-deputy, you cannot lay this . . . this scandal to
my charge. I . . .’

‘You waste my time; and my time belongs to France. It is necessary to
remind you of the most obvious things. You may depend, citizen-doctor,
upon strictest justice. The reign of injustice ended with the abominable
régime of the despots. I shall report as I find.’ He relented a little
from his austerity. ‘So far I have no fault with you, personally. You
have been frank. You have concealed nothing. You have placed no
difficulties in the way of my investigations. All of which is in your
favour. Continue so, and you shall have no cause to fear my report. What
do you hide above-stairs?’

The doctor breathed freely at last. He even ventured a little laugh as
he replied: ‘Hide? Hide, citizen-deputy? But what should I hide?’

‘That is what I am asking you.’

‘Oh, but nothing. Nothing. All is open for your inspection.’ They began
to ascend the broad staircase. ‘Here above are a few persons whom it has
been necessary to segregate, a few unfortunates who have been certified
as demented.’

‘Demented!’ Chauvinière seemed surprised. ‘So that to a hospital in
which already there is not room for the sick, they send also those who
should be in a madhouse! What infamy!’

Baziret agreed as he would have agreed with anything the august deputy
might say. If those upper chambers could be cleared of their tenants, he
might establish there another ward, and thus relieve the congestion
below. ‘The mad,’ he deplored, ‘take up so much room.’

‘I’ve noticed it,’ said Chauvinière. ‘They overcrowd the world.’

On the upper floor the inspection was resumed. Baziret unlocked door
after door of those chambers of solitary confinement, disclosing here an
old man, there an elderly aristocratic woman, and in each chamber the
same simple arrangement of deal chair and deal table and in a corner of
the floor a mattress and blankets.

At last, to end the impatience which Chauvinière had perfectly
dissembled, Baziret unlocked a door to reveal the person who was the
cause of all this zeal on the deputy’s part; the person for whom, or for
his own ends with regard to whom, he burrowed in all that he now did and
was presently to do. And so deep underground and so skilful was his
burrowing that on the surface of things there was nothing to betray his
labours.

Mademoiselle de Montsorbier occupied the room’s only chair, which she
had placed by the barred window. She turned her head as the door opened,
and started a little at sight of Chauvinière, who considered her
judicially, without any sign of recognition. He found her paler than her
wont, her eyes a little strained, her features a trifle drawn. But in
the main less changed perhaps than he had expected after the week that
had passed since her mother’s execution and her own removal from the
Conciergerie; and the change, he observed, with that discriminating eye
of his, was not at all disfiguring. Suffering had heightened her
spiritual, ethereal air. Inwardly he spared a sigh for the philosophic
reflection that suffering is, after all, man’s most refining influence.

‘Who is this?’ he asked coldly.

Baziret informed him, what time Chauvinière continued to regard the
patient.

‘Ha!’ he said at last. ‘My faith, she does not look mad, that one.’

‘Alas! Often is it so with them. Their appearance deceives the
shrewdest.’

‘But if you doctors may be deceived one way, you may also be deceived
another.’ He fixed Baziret with eyes of terrible suspicion. ‘I can even
imagine circumstances in which you might desire to be deceived.’

Baziret shivered. ‘You mean, citizen?’

‘Ah, bah! You understand me well enough. This girl now . . .’ He broke
off, considering her again, chin in hand. Then abruptly, a man who takes
a sudden resolve, he waved the doctor away. ‘I’ll talk to her,’ he said.
‘It is my duty to satisfy myself in every case where . . .’ Again he
broke off. ‘Wait for me at the end of the corridor. Out of earshot.’

The doctor bowed again in his scared obsequiousness, and was gone.
Chauvinière’s eyes followed him. They were sly, mocking, contemptuous.
At last he stepped within the room, and closed the door.

‘That comedy is played,’ he said gently, as if taking her into his
confidence, as if making her a partner in his intentions.

‘You play comedy, monsieur?’

Calm and level came the question in that pleasantly modulated voice. It
startled him. He inclined his head a little.

‘To serve you, _citoyenne_.’

She had risen, and stood now straight and slim in her muslin fichu and
full petticoat, which was in broad stripes of blue on grey. Her back was
to the window and the pale gold of the March sunlight, so that her face,
in shadow, remained indistinct. Her voice, however, assured him of
completest self-possession.

‘But it is not a comedy of manners, I think.’

‘Of manners?’ He was piqued. Her meaning escaped him, and he did not
like meanings to escape him. It did not often happen. ‘And why not of
manners, if you please?’

‘Because for that you have forgotten something.’

‘What have I forgotten?’

‘To remove your hat.’

The audible arresting of his breath betrayed his amazement. Then
laughter broke across his face: broadly, but silently, for he remembered
the doctor at the end of the corridor.

‘They are right to have certified you mad, _citoyenne_,’ he said softly.
‘Decidedly you must leave here for a madhouse.’

She shrank until her shoulders touched the bars of the window.

‘What horror! What infamy! You know, you know that I am not mad. It was
by your contriving that . . .’

‘Sh! Hush! Hush! Name of a name!’ His alarm was real. His eyes swept
uneasily to the door. His head inclined a little, like one who listens.
‘Talk so, _citoyenne_, and you destroy us both.’

She trilled a note or two of laughter, in mockery of him and his sudden
fears.

‘In this land of freedom, monsieur, in this Age of Reason of which you
are one of the priests, surely a woman may destroy herself without
comment if she will. And as for your destruction; can you conceive that
it would concern me?’

He sighed. ‘I have admired your spirit, _citoyenne_. I begin to fear you
have too much of it.’ He approached her by a step or two. ‘You are very
young. Can you already have been so robbed of what we call illusions
that you must count every man your enemy? If so, then it would be idle
to protest that I am your friend; that I labour to give you back the
liberty and the life which at your age should be very dear and precious;
that to this end I have schemed and wrought, and to this end am ready to
continue even at the risk of my own neck. If you are not convinced by
the evidence already afforded you, if you are unwilling to stake upon it
your life, which otherwise is forfeit, then, _citoyenne_, I had better
depart again and leave you to your fate. It would imperil me too deeply
to labour to persuade you; just as it might imperil me to be found
bareheaded here, which is the only reason why I did not remove my hat.’

Conviction of one injustice done may often temper a whole outlook. And
Mademoiselle de Montsorbier, feeling herself convicted now in the
trivial matter of his hat, wondered whether she might not, after all,
have judged him as rashly and by inferences as faulty in those other
graver matters.

She considered him, and found in him now a certain dignity, which was
not without appeal.

‘But why,’ she asked quietly, ‘should you desire to serve me?’

A smile momentarily softened his saturnine countenance. ‘I do not
believe a man has lived since the world began who did not at some time
desire to serve one woman.’

That was plain enough, and the traditions in which she had been reared
rendered it an insult in her eyes. She let him see this clearly in her
sudden stiffening, the uptilting of her chin, the frown above her
blue-green eyes, and the angry flush that stained her delicately tinted
face.

‘You forget your place, sir,’ she told him, speaking as to an
impertinent groom. ‘You presume insufferably.’

If it stung him, he betrayed no hurt. His gentle smile grew even
gentler, sadder. It was within his considerable psychological knowledge
that he who would gain empire over a woman must begin by making himself
her slave.

‘Presume? Is it presumption to state an historical truth? Do I ask for
anything? Do I demand wages for the service I proffer? I am at your
command, _citoyenne_, to save your life, because . . .’ He paused, and
made a little gesture of self-deprecation. ‘Because the desire to serve
you, without guerdon or hope of guerdon, is stronger than myself. Is
that to presume?’

‘No, monsieur. It is to be incredible.’

Gravely he considered her, standing there so slim and straight, a figure
almost boyish save for the slight swell under her muslin fichu, her
delicately featured face so supremely composed, and the sunlight behind
her setting a glowing nimbus about her golden head.

‘Incredible, yes,’ he agreed at last. ‘I have often been accounted that.
There is a twist in my nature. My mind was cast in an ironical mould.
The unexpected beckons me. One of these days it may beckon me to my
destruction. But I shall go with a smile, savouring the moment.’ He
waited for no answering comment, but swept on, quickening his tone to a
brisker pace. ‘We waste time, _citoyenne_. Listen, and afterwards
resolve yourself. You will have leisure for thought between this and the
event. Mistrust me, and remain to be presently guillotined; or trust me,
and let me lead you back to life. That shall be as you please. I offer;
but I do not persuade. Listen now.’

Swiftly, briefly he traced for her the course of events to come. He
would procure the removal of the mental cases in the Archevêché to a
madhouse in the rue du Bac, whence evasion would be easy. The removal
would take place in the course of the next day. As soon as it was
effected, he would depart for the Nivernais, being already commissioned
by the Convention to undertake there a tour of inspection. His passports
were ready, and they included a non-existent secretary. That was the
place that she should fill, if she so decided, suitably dressed in man’s
attire for the purpose. Let her take time for thought, and let him know
to-morrow, when he sought the house in the rue du Bac, how she decided.
He hoped that she would choose wisely. In the Nivernais she would be
free to go her ways, and no doubt would know how to find shelter there
in her native province and perhaps procure assistance to enable her to
quit France should she so desire it. ‘We are Nivernais both,’ he ended
by reminding her. ‘Perhaps it is compatriotism that strengthens my
interest in you.’ He flashed a quick glance at the door, then, at last,
swept off his hat, and bowed low. ‘My homage, _citoyenne_. I take my
leave.’

He was gone, abruptly, giving her no time to answer, leaving her there
frowning in perplexity and buffeted between fear of death and mistrust
of her preserver.

That night from the height of the tribune in the hall of the Convention,
Chauvinière inveighed furiously against the prison system, and the state
of things he had found in the overcrowded prison hospital of the
Archevêché. He was superb in his audacity, fulminating in his irony,
which spared none of those responsible, nor hesitated to indict even the
Minister of Justice, Camille Desmoulins. He claimed to speak in the name
of Humanity, consumed by the fire of a just and righteous indignation.

A deputy from the lower Loire ventured to interrupt him with a gibe that
drew some applause from the crowded assembly.

‘Monsieur the President, will you permit this man to continue his
monstrous advocacy of amenities for aristocrats?’

Chauvinière, standing very straight, and looking very tall, his black
head thrown back, his fine hands resting, one on either side of his
plumed hat, on the ledge of the rostrum, stamped out at once the sparks
of that spluttering applause.

‘Aristocrats?’ His voice broke about the heads of the deputies like a
peal of thunder, and again: ‘Aristocrats?’

The silence was instantaneous. His indignant, questioning outcry had
caught their attention. He paused now, and his sardonic, imperious
glance sought out that daring fellow from the Loire, and riveted him. He
knew the value of suspense, and for a long moment he held them in it.
Then he loosed his answer:

‘In a Nation of free men, Justice, citizens, should at once be
inexorable, blind, and undiscriminating. She can admit neither prejudice
nor preconception, for these indeed are the negation of Justice. In her
divine eyes, which the ancients in their wisdom symbolically bandaged,
there are neither aristocrats nor plebeians, but only accused. And lest
Justice err in her findings—a danger revolting to enlightened men in
this Age of Reason—she must presume the accused to be innocent until
her own sifting of the evidence constrains her to convict them.’

Applause rolled in volleys down that long hall.

Chauvinière, who knew so well the power of words and how to wield them,
knew also the value of dramatic poise. He remained now calm, precise,
unmoved: the complete patriot with a duty to perform, who himself was
nothing. No longer did his eyes seek out his erstwhile interrupter, lest
he be suspected of gloating over the man’s discomfiture. He did not even
perceive—at least he did not return—the approving smile of the deputy
for Arras, that notorious humanitarian, the frail and livid Maximilien
Robespierre, who removed one of the two pairs of glasses from his
uptilted nose, to beam upon the vehement tenant of the tribune.

After that the success of his advocacy was no longer in any doubt. His
demand that as a commencement of reform the mental cases should
instantly be removed from the Archevêché, so as to afford the sorely
needed space for other sufferers, was unanimously supported.

As he descended the steps of the tribune, he reflected with cynical
amusement that the blue-green eyes of Mademoiselle de Montsorbier were
becoming responsible for internal politics in France. But there was, he
also reflected, ample precedent in history from the days of one Helen,
the shape of whose nose had brought about the siege of Troy.

[Illustration]