Rafael Sabatini - The Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

“Your name, madame?” he had asked brusquely. A rude fellow of the most advanced republican type, he had not even risen out of deference to the ladies when they entered. He was there, he would have told you, to perform the duties of his office, not to give dancing-lessons.

“Plougastel,” he repeated after her, without title, as if it had been the name of a butcher or baker. He took down a heavy volume from a shelf on his right, opened it and turned the pages. It was a sort of directory of his section. Presently he found what he sought. “Comte de Plougastel, Hotel Plougastel, Rue du Paradis. Is that it?”

“That is correct, monsieur,” she answered, with what civility she could muster before the fellow’s affronting rudeness.

There was a long moment of silence, during which he studied certain pencilled entries against the name. The sections had been working in the last few weeks much more systematically than was generally suspected.

“Your husband is with you, madame?” he asked curtly, his eyes still conning that page.

“M. le Comte is not with me,” she answered, stressing the title.

“Not with you?” He looked up suddenly, and directed upon her a glance in which suspicion seemed to blend with derision. “Where is he?”

“He is not in Paris, monsieur.

“Ah! Is he at Coblenz, do you think?”

Madame felt herself turning cold. There was something ominous in all this. To what end had the sections informed themselves so thoroughly of the comings and goings of their inhabitants? What was preparing? She had a sense of being trapped, of being taken in a net that had been cast unseen.

“I do not know, monsieur,” she said, her voice unsteady.

“Of course not.” He seemed to sneer. “No matter. And you wish to leave Paris also? Where do you desire to go?”

“To Meudon.”

“Your business there?”

The blood leapt to her face. His insolence was unbearable to a woman who in all her life had never known anything but the utmost deference from inferiors and equals alike. Nevertheless, realizing that she was face to face with forces entirely new, she controlled herself, stifled her resentment, and answered steadily.

“I wish to conduct this lady, Mlle. de Kercadiou, back to her uncle who resides there.”

“Is that all? Another day will do for that, madame. The matter is not pressing.”

“Pardon, monsieur, to us the matter is very pressing.”

“You have not convinced me of it, and the barriers are closed to all who cannot prove the most urgent and satisfactory reasons for wishing to pass. You will wait, madame, until the restriction is removed. Good-evening.”

“But, monsieur . . . ”

“Good-evening, madame,” he repeated significantly, a dismissal more contemptuous and despotic than any royal “You have leave to go.”

Madame went out with Aline. Both were quivering with the anger that prudence had urged them to suppress. They climbed into the coach again, desiring to be driven home.

Rougane’s astonishment turned into dismay when they told him what had taken place. “Why not try the Hotel de Ville, madame?” he suggested.

“After that? It would be useless. We must resign ourselves to remaining in Paris until the barriers are opened again.”

“Perhaps it will not matter to us either way by then, madame,” said Aline.

“Aline!” she exclaimed in horror.

“Mademoiselle!” cried Rougane on the same note. And then, because he perceived that people detained in this fashion must be in some danger not yet discernible, but on that account more dreadful, he set his wits to work. As they were approaching the Hotel Plougastel once more, he announced that he had solved the problem.

“A passport from without would do equally well,” he announced. “Listen, now, and trust to me. I will go back to Meudon at once. My father shall give me two permits — one for myself alone, and another for three persons — from Meudon to Paris and back to Meudon. I reenter Paris with my own permit, which I then proceed to destroy, and we leave together, we three, on the strength of the other one, representing ourselves as having come from Meudon in the course of the day. It is quite simple, after all. If I go at once, I shall be back to-night.”

“But how will you leave?” asked Aline.

“I? Pooh! As to that, have no anxiety. My father is Mayor of Meudon. There are plenty who know him. I will go to the Hotel de Ville, and tell them what is, after all, true — that I am caught in Paris by the closing of the barriers, and that my father is expecting me home this evening. They will pass me through. It is quite simple.”

His confidence uplifted them again. The thing seemed as easy as he represented it.

“Then let your passport be for four, my friend,” madame begged him. “There is Jacques,” she explained, indicating the footman who had just assisted them to alight.

Rougane departed confident of soon returning, leaving them to await him with the same confidence. But the hours succeeded one another, the night closed in, bedtime came, and still there was no sign of his return.

They waited until midnight, each pretending for the other’s sake to a confidence fully sustained, each invaded by vague premonitions of evil, yet beguiling the time by playing tric-trac in the great salon, as if they had not a single anxious thought between them.

At last on the stroke of midnight, madame sighed and rose.

“It will be for to-morrow morning,” she said, not believing it.

“Of course,” Aline agreed. “It would really have been impossible for him to have returned to-night. And it will be much better to travel to-morrow. The journey at so late an hour would tire you so much, dear madame.”

Thus they made pretence.

Early in the morning they were awakened by a din of bells — the tocsins of the sections ringing the alarm. To their startled ears came later the rolling of drums, and at one time they heard the sounds of a multitude on the march. Paris was rising. Later still came the rattle of small-arms in the distance and the deeper boom of cannon. Battle was joined between the men of the sections and the men of the Court. The people in arms had attacked the Tuileries. Wildest rumours flew in all directions, and some of them found their way through the servants to the Hotel Plougastel, of that terrible fight for the palace which was to end in the purposeless massacre of all those whom the invertebrate monarch abandoned there, whilst placing himself and his family under the protection of the Assembly. Purposeless to the end, ever adopting the course pointed out to him by evil counsellors, he prepared for resistance only until the need for resistance really arose, whereupon he ordered a surrender which left those who had stood by him to the last at the mercy of a frenzied mob.

And while this was happening in the Tuileries, the two women at the Hotel Plougastel still waited for the return of Rougane, though now with ever-lessening hope. And Rougane did not return. The affair did not appear so simple to the father as to the son. Rougane the elder was rightly afraid to lend himself to such a piece of deception.

He went with his son to inform M. de Kercadiou of what had happened, and told him frankly of the thing his son suggested, but which he dared not do.

M. de Kercadiou sought to move him by intercessions and even by the offer of bribes. But Rougane remained firm.

“Monsieur,” he said, “if it were discovered against me, as it inevitably would be, I should hang for it. Apart from that, and in spite of my anxiety to do all in my power to serve you, it would be a breach of trust such as I could not contemplate. You must not ask me, monsieur.”

“But what do you conceive is going to happen?” asked the half-demented gentleman.