Эжен Сю - The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic

"Yes, the beautiful young woman you seek has entered house No. 17, along with our neighbor John Lebrenn. That is all I can tell you."

"Then the Lebrenn family lives in this street, my dear woman?"

"Certainly. Mother Lebrenn and her family occupy two rooms on the fourth floor of No. 17."

"Thank you for your information, my dear woman," replied the Jesuit, with difficulty concealing the joy that the unexpected discovery caused him. "Many thanks!"

"And so," continued the Abbot, "I recover the traces of that family whom we have lost from sight for over a century. What a lucky chance! Two woodcocks in one springe – Marchioness Aldini and the family of Lebrenn. An enemy spotted, is one-half throttled. Let us train our batteries to suit."

"Dear god-father," put in little Rodin at that moment, with a determined air, "I am not afraid to look at heads mowed off."

"My child," replied the Jesuit with fatherly pride and happiness, "it is not enough to have no fear; one must actually feel his heart grow lightened when he sees the enemies of our holy mother, the Church of Rome, put to death."

"Dear god-father, was Monsieur Flesselles, then, an enemy of our holy mother, the Church?"

"My child, the death of Monsieur Flesselles, innocent or guilty, was useful to the good cause."

Meanwhile, Lehiron's band, just then passing under the windows of Desmarais's home, continued to shriek, "Death to the enemies of the people! Death to the bourgeois! To the lamp-post with Desmarais!"

The cries had not yet reached the ears of the attorney, who had no sooner withdrawn from the balcony than his daughter, throwing herself into his arms, said to him in a voice broken with sobs of joy:

"Thanks, Oh, thanks, father, for what you have just said!"

"What are you thanking me for now?"

"For the noble utterances you have just addressed to Monsieur John Lebrenn," replied Charlotte delighted, not noticing the brusque transformation which came over the face of the advocate at her words.

"How! You have the presumption to abuse the necessity I found myself reduced to, in speaking a few words of good will to that laborer in order to save my house from pillage, and perhaps to protect my own life and that of my wife and daughter – you presume to abuse that necessity to oblige me to give my consent to your union with an ironsmith's apprentice? You are an unworthy daughter!"

"Then – your cordial words, your touching protestations, were but lies!" murmured the young girl, crushed by her father's rough speech. "It was all comedy and imposture!"

"Charlotte," continued Desmarais in a tone of harsh resolve, "cut short this passion which is a disgrace to all of us! I swear you shall never see that man again. To-morrow you leave Paris. It is my will."

"Father, my father – I implore you – revoke that sentence – "

"My dear friend," pursued Desmarais, addressing his wife and not heeding his daughter, "I shall delay for twenty-four hours my return to Versailles. Hasten all your preparations for the trip. We shall leave to-morrow morning. I shall take you along, as well as our daughter."

"Pity, father! Do not drive me to despair – "

"You know my will. Nothing can bend it."

"Cursed be this day," cried the young girl with indignation; "cursed be this day when you force me to forget the respect I owe a father. Helas! it is you, you yourself, father, who just now, this very hour, protested your love for the people, your disdain for the privileges of birth and wealth. And now you declare before me that your protestations were false, that you despise the people, fear them, hate them. The imposture and the lie drive me to rebel."

"Hold your tongue, unworthy minx! Do you not see the window is open, and that your imprudent words can be heard without? Have you resolved to get us all killed?" cried Desmarais, running to the window to close it.

It was just the minute that Lehiron's band was passing the house. At the instant that the lawyer took hold of the casement fastening to draw shut the window, over the rail of the balcony, at the height of his own countenance, there appeared the livid head of Flesselles, impaled on its pike. A cry of fear broke from Desmarais, and he recoiled from the sill, clapping his hands before his eyes to shut out the grisly spectacle. The band halted before the attorney's door. Anew the cries burst loose without:

"Long live the Nation!"

"Death to the enemies of the people!"

"To the lamp-post with the aristocrats! – to the lamp-post with Desmarais!"

The clamors seemed to come so pat upon the words of Charlotte, that Madam Desmarais, stricken with affright, threw herself on her knees in an attitude of prayer, clasped her hands, and stammered out an appeal to God.

"To the lamp-post with Desmarais! Death to the traitor!" shrieked Lehiron's band once more, and passed on its way. The cries of "Death!" faded away in the distance as Lehiron's troop followed in the wake of the conquerors of the Bastille. It was the pack of jackals following the lions.

Desmarais gradually recovered from the state of rigid fright in which he was plunged, and cried out to Charlotte in a voice trembling with repressed rage:

"Unnatural daughter! Parricide! Did you hear the cries of death hurled at your father by those cannibals of Paris, who carry in triumph the head of Flesselles? These men, who perhaps quite soon will have made your father undergo the same torture, are the friends, the brothers of John Lebrenn. Your lover is, like them, an assassin. Horror upon all this revolted plebs!"

While advocate Desmarais was whelming his daughter with reproaches on the score of her love for John Lebrenn, the latter was at his mother's knee in their modest lodgings on the fourth floor of the old house in St. Honoré Street. In the larger of the two rooms composing the family's apartments, were to be seen two beds. One had never been occupied for years, since the day Ronan Lebrenn disappeared without a soul knowing what had become of him. The room also contained a sort of little bookshelf garnished with books printed with his own hand, a portable workbench at which John in the evenings finished up pieces belonging to his ironsmith's trade, tools, some little furniture, and a buffet of walnut-wood in which reposed the relics and legends of the family.

Madam, or Mother, Lebrenn, as she was called in the neighborhood, was nearly sixty years of age. Domestic griefs, rather than years, had enfeebled and ruined her health. Her venerable countenance was of an extreme pallor, and sadly sunken. The poor woman held in her hands the head of her son, kneeling before her. The aged mother stroked it several times, saying in a voice thrilled with emotion:

"Dear boy, you have come back to me at last. I can now reassure myself on the state of your wound. Helas! how great was my anguish during all the time of that frightful combat. The little note you sent me after the taking of the Bastille indeed calmed a little my terrors for you, but without stilling them completely. I feared lest, out of tenderness, you sought to deceive me as to the gravity of your hurt. Now I am coming to myself from my fears, and yet I still must hold you in my arms. Dear and only child whom God has left to a poor widow – how sweet it is for a mother to embrace her son!"

"Come, good mother, I see your spirit is still troubled by the pangs of this morning. But are you quite sure you are a widow? Am I truly your only child?"

"Helas! have not your father and sister both disappeared? Are they not lost forever to your poor mother?"

"But why should they not return to us some day?"

"Dear boy, if they lived, your father and sister whom you love so much, would we not have heard some news of them, even if it were impossible for them to come to us?"