Rafael Sabatini - The Baker of Rousillon

"What manner of men are they?"

"The very flower of the gutter--the very scum of Rousillon, else would they never have elected Scævola their president."

"Are they men who would easily be tempted to a meal?"

"Aye are they--famished as rats, hungry as they are unclean."

"And thirsty?"

"Thirsty as the desert, and as drunken as France herself--poor, poor France!"

"Bonchatel," said I, "attend to what I am about to say." And in as few words as I could, I gave him sounder advice than ever a man purchased in the shop of an attorney. He listened to me with brightening eye; he chuckled when I had done, and softly rubbed his palms together; and when he turned to go below he had regained his composure, and walked with the elastic gait of a young man.

I followed him down, and in his shop I found the committee of ten--a dirty company that would have put to the blush even those wild, ragged brigands that marched from Marseilles to Paris in the summer of '92.

They greeted Bonchatel with sullen, unfriendly glances, that boded ill. Then, seeing me, Scævola stood forward, and hailed me in the name of the Republic as choicely sent to witness how the Committee of Public Safety of Rousillon dealt with a traitor. He was, I think, the foulest-looking creature to which ever the name of man was applied. Certainly no pride of office had inspired in him a desire for cleanliness. He wore a blouse, greasy, patch-relieved breeches, wooden sabots, and the eternal red cap of the patriot. His waist was untidily cinctured by the tricolor sash of office, which acted as belt for a rusty hanger and receptacle for a brace of horse-pistols. His brow was low, his eyes small and cunning, and the rest of his face enveloped in a coarse, straggling, iron-grey beard.

Clearly he set the fashions for his companions, who differed from him only in slight details; the general air was the same.

"Citizen Bonchatel," he began, in a voice of thunder, "know you the object of this visit?"

"You are not come, I take it, to buy bread?" Bonchatel inquired meekly.

"We do not buy bread--the children of France do not buy bread from traitors."

"Traitors?" echoed my host. "This to me? Citizens, you are come hither to make merry."

A sardonic grin spread on Scævola's face. "We are come hither to do justice," he amended viciously. "Answer me, citizen: did you an hour ago refuse to accept, in payment for the loaf which he came here to purchase, the assignat tendered you by a citizen of the French Republic?"

"I--refuse an assignat?" gasped Bonchatel like an actor born.

"Did you, or did you not?"

"But what a question? If there is a form of money that takes my fancy, it is this paper-money of the Republic. It is so--so convenient, Citizen-President, so light, so--so eminently portable. Why, I have converted all my poor savings into assignats. I--"

"Enough lies!" burst out Scævola, showing his fangs.

"Lies? Oh, citizen, what lie is it has been carried to you?--for I see now that you are in earnest. Assuredly some malicious, ill-disposed person would do poor Bonchatel an injury. And I mind me now that I lack not enemies in Rousillon, concerning whom it has for some time been my intention to appeal to our enlightened Committee, so that justice may be done me. I take this opportunity of your presence here, citizens, upon the investigation of a charge that is utterly unfounded, to lay before you my very serious complaint."

"Of what does he talk?" broke in the president, with a snarl of contempt. "What charge do you call unfounded? Tremble, fool, for the vengeance of the Nation is upon you. The man who came to you for bread was not the workman he seemed, but a spy sent out by this Committee. We heard of your refusal yesterday to accept an assignat, and mistrusting our informant--for how believe one whom was accounted a true patriot capable of so vile a conduct?--we sent an emissary of our own to-day to put you to the test."

Bonchatel smiled suavely, and suavely waved his hand, as if to put aside a trivial matter that vexed him not at all. "The falseness of the accusation you appear to have received against me is a matter which I shall have, I trust, no difficulty in making clear."

"Do so, then," bellowed Scævola.

"A moment, citizen. I would first have you appreciate the magnitude of the injustice whereof I am a victim, and I beseech you hear my complaint. Certain malevolent and slanderous persons of Rousillon have spread it abroad that the bread I sell is coarse, and my wines green and undrinkable. You may conceive, citizens, how distressing to me is this complaint, and how damaging to my trade, since my customers, having given ear to that slander, have conveyed their patronage elsewhere, and my trade is rapidly diminishing."

"How does this concern the assignat ?" demanded Scævola impatiently.

"It does not; but it concerns me. It concerns a citizen of Rousillon, whom it is your sacred duty--as the trustees of the public safety and welfare--to protect. Now were I to have the voices of judges so impartial and honest as are you, and of so weighty an influence as is yours, citizens, to proclaim false those slanders, I should of a certainty confound my enemies and win back my customers."

"But the assignat?" roared Scævola.

"Patience, Citizen President," returned Bonchatel calmly; and the president, shrugging his shoulders in his despair, resigned himself to the baker's irrepressible address.

"Now, citizens," pursued Bonchatel, "ere you can do me the justice I crave at your hands, you must satisfy yourselves that my complaint is not without grounds, and that my detractors have lied. For this there could be, citizens, no better occasion than the present, now that you are all here assembled. And to the end that you may pronounce judgment I invite you ail to sit down and taste my bread and my wine."

There was amongst that body of half-starved tatterdemalions a stir as of a breeze through a forest, and on more faces than one satisfaction was writ large. But Scævola had that vengeance of his too prominently in his mind to permit himself to be so readily allured--for all that his throat grew dry, no doubt, at the very name of wine.

"This, citizen Bonchatel," he announced with great firmness, "is a matter that we may pass on to discuss after we have settled the question of the assignat."

"Why, as for that trivial business," rejoined the baker brazenly, "I had thought we might discuss it at table. Have no care, citizens; it is a slander I shall easily confute."

"But yes: at table," cried one.

"Assuredly these are things that may be best discussed over a meal," protested another. And in the wake of these came other equally avid assents, born of their ill-fed condition and natural drought.

Scævola swung round to face them with a snarl. "Name of a name, citizens," he fumed, "are we to observe no rules of procedure? No, no--" (he waved his hands frantically in his search for the word), "no natural sequence?"

"What need of it?" demanded one.

"Why, yes," put in another; "are we free men, or are we bound by the rules that bore the late tyrants to their destruction? The citizen desires our judgment upon his bread and wine; to refuse would be culpably to neglect our sacred duty to the Nation--it would be criminal, my friends. Why then delay it for the sake of a matter of twenty francs?"

Bonchatel watched the struggle with eager eyes. A happy thought occurred to him to heighten the attractions of his board. "Amélie," he called from the door leading to the interior, "bring that fine smoked ham from the kitchen, and the cold roast capon that was for our supper. Thus, citizens," he said, turning to them again, "you will be better able to judge how my bread tastes and how my wine drinks when taken with proper viands."

For Scævola to rule them after that was an impossibility. He made the attempt, but at last tossed his arms to heaven in a gesture of helplessness and despair, as his committee tumbled pêle-mêle into the inner room, where a table was spread, bearing a dozen flasks of stout red wine, a basket of newly-baked bread, and an array of platters laden with pieces of capon and slices of succulent ham. Like a pack of famished wolves the Committee of Public Safety of Rousillon fell upon the fare provided, with never another thought for the business of the Republic and the rejected assignat which had been the cause of their coming.