Gridou's Pity: In Two Parts. Part Two

BY the abbé’s advice, Marie was to apply to Danton first of all, for he, being Minister of Justice as well as a member of the Commune of Paris, seemed especially qualified to grant a request like hers. The citoyen Picard needed no urging to accompany her; he was only too glad of the chance. Danton was his hero, and at the thought of seeing that great man face to face he was in an ecstasy.

Marie, after awaiting her turn among those who thronged the anterooms at the Ministry of Justice, was ushered into a spacious apartment, the long windows of which, open to the balcony, gave a view of the Place Vendôme in the sultry August morning. At a table in the middle of the room sat the man who could grant or refuse her the one desire of her heart. She saw him as he has so often been described : a powerfully built figure, with an ungainliness about it betraying his peasant birth, a massive head, a face scarred by smallpox, the eyes narrow and deepset, but yet over his whole person an air of indefinable grandeur that marked a leader of men, whether for good or for ill.

What he saw was a slight girl in a gown of printed muslin, a little fichu, and a straw hat with flaring brim. The only distinction about that costume of a simple bourgeoise was the way in which it was worn, and that, perhaps, awakened curiosity ; for though he glanced up carelessly at first, he continued to look as she approached, and half rose from his chair to motion her and her companion to be seated, then awaited in silence what she had to say.

It was said in as few and simple words as she could find. At the name “ Sombreuil ” he was evidently enlightened, but there was nothing in his manner to discourage her ; on the contrary, he had an interested air, and when she had finished his remark was merely, “ A singular petition, mademoiselle. ”

“ I have been my father’s almost constant companion, monsieur,” she answered quietly, “and so far from being singular, nothing could be more natural than that now, when he needs me as never before, I should wish to go to him.”

“ But a prison is no place for you.”

“ Where is a daughter’s place if not beside her father in misfortune ? ”

He shook his head slightly.

“ Ah, think what a little favor ! ” she cried. “ I might have come to beg for his release ; but no ! If his country has any charge against him, he will answer it, and I only ask you to make one prisoner more, — a willing one ! ” The very tone of her sweet voice was touching, and he did not look unmoved. Her hopes rose.

“You have friends in Paris, mademoiselle ? ”

With a slight motion of the hand she said, “ Monsieur Picard, whose wife was once my nurse, has received me hospitably. I had been at my grandmother’s, in the country, for a few days ; very unfortunately, as I now think, for otherwise I should have had myself arrested with my father.”

Leaning back in his chair, the great demagogue contemplated her in silence, almost, one might have thought, with something like amusement. Finally he said, “ Return to your grandmother, mademoiselle. Believe me, it is the only thing for you to do.”

But he had listened too long if he did not mean to comply ; she was not to be put off now so easily. With passionate entreaty she pleaded her father’s age, her fear that the prison life would tell upon him, his need of her care, — anything, everything that she could think of. To it all came over and over the same answer, “Impossible — impossible — impossible.” That was his last word.

It was a bitter disappointment. Citizen Picard dared not speak to her as they went away, she looked in such despair and was so plainly struggling against tears. But though he felt for her, he was really glad she should know her plan was out of the question, and doubtless when she was calmer she would herself see that this was all for the best. She could not complain of the reception she had met with, certainly, for Danton had been very amiable. That great man interesting himself so kindly, and advising her to return to her grandmother! For his own part, citizen Picard felt that he had something to think of for the rest of his life. If, however, he had known what a chapter in his country’s history was then preparing, he might have used some other term than “ amiable ” as applied to Danton ; it would not have seemed too much to say that he had been humane in telling his petitioner that a prison was no place for her.

They walked in silence for a little, until, at a corner, the citoyen was obliged to say, “ We turn here to go home, mademoiselle.” He forgot his republicanism for a moment; but then Danton had said “ mademoiselle,” rather to the good patriot’s surprise. Marie looked as if she did not understand, and he repeated that that was the way back, and offered to call a fiacre, lest she should be tired.

“ But I am not going back ! I am going to the Hôtel de Ville. I mean to see every member of the Commune, if I must; and if they all refuse, I shall go to the prison gate and ask there.” Her voice trembled, but her resolution was as firm as ever.

The good man was dumb before such incomprehensible persistency. Of what use would it be for him to speak, indeed, when Danton had spoken and this was the result? He remembered how Louison was always talking as if the nobility were different from other people, and now, for the first time, he thought perhaps she was right; he even hoped she was, trusting that if he had had a daughter she would have been rather more reasonable than this “ noble “ girl.

All the same, citizen Picard was a kind-hearted man ; he would have gone with Marie from one end of Paris to the other and made nothing of it, if it could have been, as he thought, to any purpose; but he felt himself rather a victim when they got to the Hôtel de Ville. There, not a soul to give them any information ! Plenty of people rushing hither and thither, but all intent on their own affairs ; and if one of them did stop for a moment to answer a civil question, he never by any chance could tell what they wanted to know, while to apply to the ushers and doorkeepers who were standing about was worse than useless; for one would say scornfully that the Commune was in session and no member could be seen, and if they asked another when the session would be over, he merely shrugged his shoulders to indicate that there was no saying. It was desperate business.

At last, somebody who had met them several times as they wandered to and fro, wasting their steps in those endless halls, accosted them. Marie’s attractive face wore such a pathetic expression of anxiety that he could not help asking her if she were looking for some one.

“ Oh, monsieur, if you could help me, I should be so grateful! I want to speak with some member of the Commune, — with Robespierre, if possible, or Manuel, or Tallien.”

“ The session is just over, and there is Marat. I could introduce you to him.” He looked in the direction where three men were coming towards them, talking eagerly together.

Marat! He was the last to whom she would have chosen to apply, with his furious diatribes against the nobles in L’Ami du Peuple. Would he grant any request of hers? And still, who could tell? To refuse to speak with him might be throwing a chance away.

A moment later, Marie found herself theatrically presented to the meanest looking of the three men as “ a young citoyenne who sought an interview with ‘ the Friend of the People.’ ” The interview proved to be singularly public, for besides those who appeared to listen as a matter of course, Marat’s companions and the person who had introduced her, there presently gathered others around the little group, attracted by the high, harsh voice which they doubtless all knew, and Marie perceived that it was to this chance audience quite as much as to her that Marat’s remarks were directed during the scene which followed.

For herself, she found it hard to plead her cause at this tribunal. The man was repulsive to her ; she could not speak to him from her heart. Her sincere nature felt the charlatan even in the neglected dress in which the self-appointed champion of the people played his part, and she saw nothing from which she could augur well in the unhealthy, livid face, with its retreating forehead and distorted mouth drawn to one side with an expression that was sinister because so unlike a smile. Still, she stated her petition as best she could, and thought here to give only her family name, “ Virot.” But the precaution was in vain.

“Virot, Virot,” repeated Marat, and eyed her sharply. “ Had your father a title ? ”

“ He was the Marquis de Sombreuil.”

And with that the storm burst upon her.

Her father was an enemy of the people ! He was guilty of high treason to the nation ! He was steeped in conspiracies ! He had taken part in the crime of the 10th of August! His hands were imbrued in innocent blood ! All this and much more he hurled at her, and it was with the utmost difficulty that she controlled her indignation and forced herself to calmness for the sake of the end she had in view. When he stopped, his venom exhausted for the moment, she said, with dignity, —

“Monsieur Marat, I do not answer your accusations against my father, for I am not here to plead in his defense ; he will do that himself whenever the opportunity is given him. Nor am I asking anything for him. I beg you simply to grant me the possibility of fulfilling a natural duty in ministering to an old man in declining health. It is a daughter’s petition, Monsieur Marat, — only that! ”

But he did not intend to let his wrath be turned away by a soft answer, and, after visibly casting about to get hold of it again, burst forth afresh, as if she had never spoken.

“ Your father is a traitor ! ”

That was too much. “ Monsieur ! ”

“ I say he is a traitor ! Has he not two sons among the émiyrés ? ”

“ His sons are where they believed that duty called them. He remained in the country.”

“To hand it over to the enemy.”

“ By what right do you say that ? The enemies of France could tell another tale. My father has drawn his sword again and again for his native land.”

“ He fought for Capet.”

“ He fought for his king and his country, like a loyal gentleman ! ”

“ And Capet paid him. I fight for the nation with my pen, and for me it is reward enough to see the people free.”

“ Monsieur,” she answered, with a pride that became her well, “ the idea of any comparison between my father and you was far from my thought.”

His mouth opened, but no words came. He glared at her. It would have needed more than that to make her flinch. Then, on a sudden, his whole expression changed ; he seemed to grow calm.

“ It is your wish to go to your father,” he said, in his shrill key : “ go to him, then ! You are right : your place is there.”

He drew out a notebook and penciled a few words, while Marie watched him, breathless. Was it possible ? “ With the privilege of seeing her father,” she suggested, lest, that should be forgotten.

He wrote precisely what she had dictated, signed himself “ Marat, the Friend of the People,” and handed her the bit of paper without a word. There was something uncanny in his docility, and while he preserved that profound silence it was impossible for Marie to be effusive in her gratitude; the most she could say was, “ I shall remember this favor to my life’s end.”

To citizen Picard, however, as they went home, she declared that Marat had worn an air as if he thought he had played her a good trick. “ He imagines, no doubt, that I shall not like a prison. He is mistaken. The worse it is, the better pleased I shall be to be there.” And indeed she looked as radiant as if the little serap of paper she held so precious were an invitation to a fête.

Good citizen Picard hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry that she had gained her end. But he still marveled at her. “ Such audacity ! “ he said to his wife, in private. He had expected nothing less than that she would be arrested on her own account.

“ Ah yes, gentle as she is, she was always courageous,” said Louison approvingly. And he might have known beforehand that she could understand no reflections upon her Mademoiselle Marie.

What follows here is part of a letter begun by Marie at the Abbaye, to her grandmother, on the chance of being able to send it. Before entering the prison she had dispatched an account of all that had happened up to that moment, and she wrote now in order somewhat to relieve, if possible, her grandmother’s anxiety as to her present circumstances.

“ You will want to hear first, dear grandmamma, of the meeting with my father. I can describe it to you, but the joy of it you must imagine for yourself ; I should not know how to tell that. As soon as I arrived, armed with my permission, I asked to be taken directly to him. The turnkey went in before me to say that some one had come. I heard my father start up and cry, ‘ Marie! ’ and I was in his arms. It did not occur to me at that moment to wonder how he knew it was I; I was thinking only of him, and saw only him. He had actually to give me over to some one who stood by, saying, ‘ Embrace her, abbé !' and then. ‘ My daughter, gentlemen,’ before I perceived that we were not alone. Only think ! the Abbé de Saint-Mart occupies the same room with him, and of course had prepared him to expect me. That was another happiness, — meeting the abbé again, I told you how I learned to appreciate him on that journey of ours as I never had before. It is a friend I have made in misfortune. And then, besides the abbé, there are three other gentlemen in the apartment. The prison is so full that they put a number of persons together in some of the larger rooms of this former monastery, and so, instead of finding my father in a little cell, and occupying another myself, as I had assumed would be the case, it turns out that we both have plenty of company. The room I am in belongs by good rights to the family of the concierge, and the Princesse de Tarente, the Marquise de Fausse-Lendry, and Mademoiselle Cazotte, the author’s daughter, share it with me. The princess is the only one who is really a prisoner ; for I was not so singular as you thought, dear grandmamma, in my project. Mademoiselle Cazotte came here with her father, — she is younger than I, and her father older than mine, — and the marquise besieged the Hôtel de Ville for days to get permission to attend on her uncle, the Abbé de Rastignac, who is very infirm, and to whom she is devotedly attached. In some respects the little cell might have been more comfortable than this arrangement, but we make the best of inconveniences and privations, and otherwise enjoy’ the sympathetic society.

“ We are allowed to pass some hours every day with our friends, and my father’s companions are delicately considerate in withdrawing as far as they can, and leaving us such privacy as the circumstances admit of ; but as it does not seem right to separate ourselves entirely, we end by engaging in general conversation ; and I dare say, if you could hear us all talking, at times, quite gayly, you would think this an odd set of prisoners. But it is a point of honor to be cheerful and keep one’s heart up, and our abbé, as you can imagine, greatly assists in this. I never knew him more charming. As for me, if I were a queen — but that is a sad simile ! —if I were in the most brilliant surroundings imaginable, I could not be treated with more consideration.

“ From the outer world rumors of one kind and another reach us now and then, and occasion conflicting emotions ; but on such topics I can say nothing, for I must be able to tell Monsieur Delavacquerie, the keeper of the prison, that my letter contains only personal matters, and invite him to read it if he chooses. I trust, then, that he will have the kindness to send it, for you will be glad to know, at least, that I am well, and that my father’s health is not positively suffering. He is very delicate, however, and at first looked to me changed, which alarmed me : but the abbé says he is brighter and better since I am here, and indeed he seems quite natural to me now. I have not yet told you that he scolded me very sweetly for coming. But little I cared for that! ”

The letter, begun on the 1st of September, broke off at this point, and was never finished.

On Sunday, the 2d of September, a report of the fall of Verdun caused violent agitation in Paris. The national guard was called out, and there was talk of a general levy of the people. At half past two o’clock in the afternoon an alarmgun was fired on the Pont-Neuf, and the tocsin sounded. But the report was false. Verdun had not surrendered, and historians do not hesitate to affirm that the tocsin and the alarm-gun had nothing whatever to do with Verdun, hut were the preconcerted signal for an attack on the prisons ; that the rumor of the surrender was employed simply to create an excitement, after which the national guard was disbanded with the announcement that it had been all a mistake, and the way was left clear for what was to follow. Certain it is that the massacres began at some points immediately.

That terrible Sunday opened for the prisoners with no alarming indication of how it was to end. It was told afterwards, as a proof of the attack at the Abbaye being expected, and consequently premeditated, that the keeper of the prison had sent his family away in the early morning. Of this the ladies who occupied one of his apartments were aware at the time, without attaching importance to the circumstance.

One of the jailer’s children, who had often been in their room with the attendant, and whose heart Marie had won, came that morning and shyly presented her with a bunch of crimson roses, saying that she was going into the country, and should find plenty of flowers for herself, and also bring back many for mademoiselle. To please the child, Marie fastened the bright bouquet in the folds of muslin across her breast. She had put on a white gown because the heat promised to be oppressive, and, with her flowers, she looked so fresh in her simple elegance that when she went, later, to her father, all her little court came about her in admiration to ask, What is the fête ? They did not yet imagine that it: was a fête of martyrs, but the flowers were the color for the day, — red.

The dinner of the prisoners on that 2d of September was served before two instead of at four o’clock, as usual. Naturally, that was an event for them, and the turnkey was assailed with questions on the subject. He was uncommonly taciturn, however ; all he would say was that it had been so ordered ; he had nothing to do with it.

“ And was our appetite ordered also for two o’clock ? ” inquired the abbé.

Deceived by the serious tone, the turnkey answered abstractedly that as to that he could not say. Then, at the little ripple of laughter that went round, he started, and looked at the prisoners with an expression which they found difficult to interpret.

“ What was the matter with Jacques ? ” they asked one another after he was gone. “He looked as if he had seen a ghost.”

It was a day of surprises. The repast was hardly over when an unwonted sound made every one pause and listen. The report of a cannon ? But why ? A moment after, the bell of the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. close at hand, boomed out, and was answered faintly from afar, then nearer, and again and again. The tocsin !

There was no more laughter when Jacques returned to set the table to rights. There were other grave faces than his. then, and he was besieged once more with importunate inquiries: What did it mean ? What had happened ? He told them Verdun had fallen, and that troops were to be sent off at once; but he hurried with his work, and then gathered up all the table-knives, which were usually left in readiness for the next occasion, and carried them off with him. Almost immediately upon that came Delavacquerie, brief and peremptory, to say that the prison was to be visited by a commission, and that the prisoners must be in their own rooms. He took Marie away.

A commission might mean a deputation from the Assembly or the Commune to inquire into their cases, but evidently nothing favorable was to be expected from such a visit at a moment when the city was stirred to its foundations by bad news from the army, and the prisoners passed the next hour in a state of anxious uncertainty. After that, they were only too well aware of the nature of the visitation. At four o’clock there was an ominous trampling of many feet in the little quiet streets around the Abbaye ; then a thundering at the gate and a clamor for admission that could be distinctly heard by those within. A little later, being reinforced by a murderous crew fresh from the slaughter of two hundred and fifty priests at the Carmelite prison, the besiegers of the Abbaye effected an entrance and set up their tribunal.

It would be too much to say of the trials that they were a mere formality, for form they had none. A few trivial questions were asked as to name and age; then, perhaps, where the accused had been on the 10th of August, or, in the case of a priest, if he were ready to take the oath to the Constitution, and that sufficed. Let him be conveyed to La Force!

To prevent possible struggles on the part of the condemned, the sentence of death was not actually pronounced, but the order was that the victim should be removed to some other prison. At the Abbaye, it was generally, “ To La Force ! ” and at the prison of La Force, “ To the Abbaye! ” Then the door was opened and the doomed man was pushed out into a sea of pikes. In spite of precautions, however, the prisoners seem to have known the fate that awaited them : possibly they had heard, long before their turn came, the groans of the dying; in any case, the wretches who butchered them were constantly coming into the little vaulted room where the “ court ” sat, to see who was to be next, and they were all bespattered from the carnage and their weapons were bloody. It was easy to perceive then what going to La Force meant.

The prison register which lay open on the table before Maillard, at the Abbaye, is, or was a few years ago, still preserved in the Archives of the Prefecture of Police : a parchment-bound volume, stained and soiled within and without, the covers perhaps from lying among the wine bottles, for the judges grew thirsty and drank while they pronounced sentence. But once when the book was shown to a person who had been present at the massacres, some peculiar dark spots, of a certain regularity, upon its pages, were explained to be finger-marks : the men who had just dispatched one victim would come in and look over Maillard’s shoulder to help select the next, and where they saw a name they knew would point to it, touching the page : And this one ! And that one !

The narrow street of Sainte-Marguerite soon becoming encumbered with the bodies of the slain, the scene of the massacre was changed to a court, the entrance to which was not far from the prison door. There the men began to systematize their labors: the place was lighted with torches, for the slaughter went on all night; they had tables brought, on which bread and wine were placed, because they, like the “ judges,” required refreshment; they set up benches, too, for the spectators, the men on this side, the women on that, though it is but right to remember that the spectators were comparatively few in number. There was no general uprising of the people, no tumult in the city ; except in the immediate vicinity of the prisons, all was still.

Perhaps the most astonishing feature of those wild days and nights is, that the actors in such a carnival of blood could show themselves human still from time to time; acquitting a prisoner occasionally, sometimes because even they could find no taint of royalism in him, or, it might be, as arbitrarily as they would have sent him to his death. Some word, some generous trait, seems to touch their imagination, and the scene changes as if by magic. Shouts of “ Long live the nation ! “ fill the air ; the executioners, who a moment before were thirsting for the prisoner’s blood, hail him with frantic rejoicing; intoxicated with their own clemency, they embrace him fraternally and pass him from arm to arm ; they bear him in triumph through the streets, or they meet a carriage, and, turning out its occupants, place their charge in it, and so conduct him home, still to the cry of “ Vive la nation ! ” There were instances where their sensibilities were so deeply touched that they asked, as a favor, to be allowed to witness the meeting between the rescued one and his friends, after which they went back to their “ post ” and to the “ work,” as they called it.

The night was passed by Marie and her unfortunate companions in indescribable anguish. When morning dawned, the jailer came at last and told them that their friends were living. But to Marie that was like a mockery, unless she could see her father and convince herself with her own eyes that she had him still, and she was so moving in her entreaties that there was no denying her.

But what a meeting was that! She could not have said now “ the joy of it.” It was rather the agony of it, as they held each other in a long embrace. She was the first to rouse herself, and turned upon the wretched jailer, who, pale and trembling with all the horrors he had witnessed, stood jingling his keys and bidding her, “ Come ! Come ! ”

“ Go you ! ” she cried. “ I stay here.” From that resolve nothing could move her, and even her poor father, who through the night had been trusting that she was safer where she was than she would have been with him, could not bring himself to give her up again so soon. But he solemnly adjured the jailer, when his name should be called, to think of her, to come and take her back among the women, and by all that he held sacred to protect that innocent head, at least.

As the jailer went away, Marie turned to her father’s companions. “ You will bear with me, gentlemen,” she said, “ though I come at an unaccustomed hour? ”

It was not difficult to bear with her. To them she seemed even sweeter in her pallor and desolation, and speaking with that gentle dignity, than she had been in all her radiance of the day before. Her presence there, in the chamber of the dying, was like that of some blessed spirit. Only, as they watched her with her arms around her father’s neck, he stroking back her hair and gazing long and earnestly into her beautiful eyes, as if to impress her image on his heart and take it with him to the unknown land, they thought how hard it would be for De Sombreuil to die while she held him so fast to life.

Marie hardly spoke. Her father, dwelling on the future which he trusted lay before her, longing to have the ordering of it, yet feeling with wretchedness how little he could do, would whisper to her now and then. She must remain in the prison until all was quiet. Her name ought not to be on the record; no one would think of her, and the jailer, he hoped, would care for her. Then, as soon as possible, she must leave the country; now that things were at this pass, he could not bear the thought of her staying longer without him. She might go to such a one of their friends, or to such another, and she must try to see her brothers. So he planned for her. Sad plans I all that she must do this and do that when — they two were parted.

“ We shall not be parted! ” was her only answer. And he would not distress her by insisting. It was hard enough for him to think that he must presently give her a last embrace and leave her to God’s mercy.

The room was very still, for though the abbé seemed a prey to the spirit of unrest, it was quite noiselessly that he wandered to and fro. Passing before Monsieur de Sombreuil and Marie, he would sometimes exchange a glance with them, a mute expression of sympathy. Once he said, “ It is weary waiting !" and Marie was struck by the tired look in his face. The night had been one of ceaseless expectation; at any moment there might come the summons, and now he had reached the time when he longed to confront his fate, whatever it might be, — though indeed he knew that it must be the worst, — to go to meet it rather than wear his heart quite out in the misery of waiting. As he moved away, Marie followed him to the far corner of the room ; and when he turned and saw her, the exclamation fell faintly from his lips, “ Ah, child, child! perhaps but for me you would not be here! ”

“ I should have come, I must have come,” she answered earnestly. “ But if it were really and only through your assistance, I should thank you once more from my very heart. For now I shall never leave my father. I shall go with him where he goes, and shall plead for him, and beg and pray them to spare his life,—a woman can do that. Perhaps they will hear me. If not, I can die with him,” She spoke with such simplicity, to her the sentiment she uttered was so natural, that she never guessed how it touched her listener, nor saw the tears that filled his eyes, but continued : “ You have been very kind to me, and now there is one thing more ; I came to ask it. Give me your blessing. It will help me.”

(She knelt. He was silent for a moment to collect himself, then spoke the solemn words, made the sign of the cross, and laid his hand gently on her head.

As she rose there was a. look of perfect peace on her innocent face, and, with a sudden impulse, he took her hands to stay her.

“ Give me your blessing, child ! ”

“ Oh, may God bless you ! May God bless and keep you ! “ she cried fervently.

“ Amen,” he said.

At that moment there was a sound of heavy steps along the passage; they paused at the door, and unaccustomed hands began to work at the bolts and locks. Some of the wretches from below had come themselves to summon their next victim. Within, the prisoners stood breathless until the door swung back, disclosing two or three grim figures, and an imperious voice called hoarsely, “ SaintMart, priest! ”

The weary waiting was over.

“ Here,” the abbé responded steadily. Marie was still close beside him, and he bent to kiss her with tender reverence; then gave his hand right and left as the others pressed around, turned at the door to wave a farewell with his old, pleasant smile upon his lips, and so was gone. But it may be that a pure heart’s benediction was fulfilled upon him then and there, for he had the last blessing that this earth held for him, — his martyrdom was short.

Those whom he left behind knew that. It was but a little while before the steps were heard again ; and now the call was for “Sombreuil.”

He too was ready. When the fatal moment came, the sooner he tore himself away from his sweet child, the better. But on the threshold there was a loving struggle, and the father’s voice cried in anguish, “ Stay here, Marie ! Stay ! Let me go ! ”

But how could she let him go, when she meant that not. even death should part them ? And the men were on her side.

“Sombreuil, father and daughter! “ they said with satisfaction, having found more than they expected.

His imploring explanations were of no avail. That remained to be seen. She must come before the court. They were by no means sure she would not prove to be their lawful prey.

So they all went down the narrow stairway, and into the vaulted, crypt - like chamber where the bloody tribunal sat. Around a table were a dozen men, ghastly from long vigil, their hair and clothes in disarray : some of them wild looking, with bloodshot eyes, others stupid and indifferent, two fast asleep, — one with his head among the bottles on the table, the other sunk in his chair, his chin upon his breast. Maillard, mindful of his dignity as judge, was still alert, dealing out his death sentences like an irresponsible autocrat, his clenched hand on the jailbook, and a frown on his otherwise insignificant face. He turned to the grayhaired soldier and the fair young girl.

“ Sombreuil and his daughter ! ” the men exclaimed, proud of their prize.

And then, for her sake, the unhappy father appealed to the “ justice ” of that hideous “ court,” stating her case, and entreating that she might be given a safe-conduct out of the prison, or else be pronounced free and left in the jailer’s charge until she could get away. That was putting himself out of the question beforehand, but no one noticed it; the court was probably as sure that he was “ guilty ” as he was that he should be condemned. At all events, Maillard acceded to the request so far as to search the record ; and when her name was not found there, he looked around on his associates. But so long as the slightest appearance of a form of justice was preserved the case seemed clear, and he directed that Marie should be taken back to her apartment.

The court ordered, however, and those obeyed who chose. Her safety was of no moment to the bystanders, and when she protested, they let her stay. But Monsieur de Sombreuil was, happily, unaware of that. Two men held him, and being unable to look about him, and hearing nothing of Marie, he believed that she was gone.

Meanwhile, his trial bade fair to be delayed for some little time because of a case just begun when he had been brought down, and which was now resumed. It was that of a tradesman of the quarter, accused of speaking ill of the nation. Some of his neighbors were testifying for him, and as this made the party for his condemnation only the more vehement, the discussion ran high.

Marie had withdrawn as far as possible from observation, biding her time; and as she witnessed the contest over the unfortunate man whose patriotism was called in question, she gained a little encouragement from discovering that the proceedings of the court were irregular in the extreme, that every one appeared to be at liberty to speak, and that interruptions were the rule rather than the exception ; this allowed her to hope that she too might be heard when the moment came. She stood near the door that led to the street, but turned her eyes with shuddering from the men who wandered in and out, their sleeves rolled up to the shoulder and their arms bloodstained. One of them, a gaunt figure with a liberty cap on his head, merely held the door open and glanced around as if he were searching for some one ; then, when he saw Marie, he entered, and went directly to her.

“ Come out with me,” he said. “ I ’ll take you away safely. You ’ve done no harm.”

She gazed at him, bewildered for an instant, and then recoiled with horror. “ You, here ! ”

It was Gridou.

Brute though he was, he felt her abhorrence, and must have had some dim perception that he deserved it; for he could not meet her eyes now as when first he flung his bitter taunts at her, but stood silent, rubbing the handle of his axe and looking down. Words had never come readily to him, or he might have said that he was there because of her; that when he knew they were slaughtering at the Abbaye, he had remembered her and thought to be of use to her once more. Still, his axe was red, and he could not have explained that; he had not the gift to trace within himself the gradual awakening of the wild beast at sight of carnage, until he too had seized a weapon, and cried with the rest, “ Kill! kill! ” All he knew was that he had felt himself paying off old scores at every stroke. His wife was dead, his children were dead, and these had lived in splendor while they starved. They had lived long enough! But now, when the girl who had pitied him and his shrank from him, there arose in his fevered brain some half-formed idea, some recollection of her telling him that he did not care for other people’s miseries. Yet he wished her well ! He looked at her with something like a piteous expression, and when he spoke again it was almost timidly. “ You can trust me. I will get you away. If I go out first and tell them you have done nothing, and then you cry, ‘ Long live the nation ! ’ nobody will touch you.”

His words suggested a sudden thought to Marie. To go first and speak to the men out there, to tell them that her father was innocent, — was not that what she ought to do ? Was it not necessary to win his executioners in case she failed to persuade his judges?

“Yes, let me go! I must speak to them ! ” she cried; then saw her opportunity at that very instant, and darted, like a flash of light, in her white robe, past a man who was blundering in. He turned and struck at her with a club he carried, but the blow fell short; Gridou hurled him backwards into the room, and rushed after Marie, waving his cap on his axe and crying, “ Vive la nation ! ”

Perhaps it was this that saved her, but no doubt it was also her own complete indifference to danger that gave her a free pass through it, her absolute fearlessness when the slaughterers swarmed around her, as well as Gridou’s statement that she had done nothing and was not to be touched. Instead of killing her, they questioned, Who was she ? Why was she there ? She was required to explain her sudden appearance, unheralded ; for it was the office of those who stood within to take possession of the victims, and to announce from the door the name and quality of each when he was launched out to death.

She answered them. And horrible though the grisly figures were, she shuddered at them no longer. Her one idea now was, if perhaps they were still human ; if in spite of all they had hearts, and she could reach them. But they looked at her stonily and turned away. If they were not to kill her, they had no further interest in her. And what should they care for her father ?

Still she followed them. She went into the court. There everywhere in the uneven pavement were pools of a dreadful red. She heeded nothing; it was as if she had seen it all before; corpses were lying here and there waiting to be carried away; she would not look. The dead, — God rest them ! but her whole heart was with the living, with one who lived still, and should live yet! So she flitted about in that horrible place like a white dove, appealing to one after another. “Oh, if you have a daughter, think if you were there, and she here begging for your life! ” — she pointed to the prison, and laid her little hand upon her breast. And to the next it was, “ What would you feel to see an axe raised against your father’s gray head ? ” But they neither thought nor felt any more! Or she told them he loved the nation as they did; she said he was no “ aristocrat,” and she had a right to say it, for he was not the haughty, heartless, grasping courtier that the word meant to them; he was not one to let loose a foreign army on his native land only to preserve his own power and place and wealth, as they believed. But they would not listen.

Suddenly she heard women’s voices, and thought if there were women there, they would help her; they would plead, too. And just then one of them called her. “ Come here, my little demoiselle,”she said amiably. “ Come and stand up on this bench with us ; you can see everything then ; and we shall have a famous aristocrat presently, a marquis ! ”

“Woman !” burst from her lips when she could speak, “ it is my father! ”

“ Lord ! she ’s an aristocrat herself ! ” they said. And what was she doing there, then ? Had she been tried ? Had she been acquitted ?

“ I know what she ’s doing!” cried one of them indignantly. “ She ’s trying to get her father’s release. I’ve seen her going about among the men.”

But Marie was already gone. Sick at heart, she went straight back now to the prison door, Gridou following her like a dog; indeed, he had done that all the while.

“ It is no use,” he said. “ I would help you, but I’m only one. Come away.”

” Open the door ! ” was all her answer; and he did her bidding.

The other case had been decided, favorably as it seemed, for the tradesman had disappeared, and to see her father before his judges made Marie feel almost as if she were too late. What he felt, whether there was more of rapture or of horror in his cry as she entered, coming safe out of the very jaws of death, it would be hard to tell. She lay for a moment in his arms; but when a murmur rose, as if the court were growing impatient, she placed herself beside him, and said calmly, “ I will not disturb you, messieurs.”

The trial of Monsieur de Sombreuil was the longest that took place at the Abbaye. One can well imagine it, with the advocate he had. But for her it must have been very short. He could not deny the king; he could only say that all he had done had been his bounden duty as a soldier and a man of honor. That was a language his judges did not understand. But Marie knew no pride then, and everything that was not false was lawful to her. She could refute them and argue with them. And if, seeing themselves no match for her, they thought to cut the matter short, if the faces all around darkened, and Maillard seemed on the point of uttering the fatal sentence, she would stop it for yet a little longer by some sudden, passionate appeal. She would plead and pray. A woman could do that, and she made it her glory in such a cause.

Finally, however, Maillard exclaimed that it was not enough for her to assert her father’s innocence ; she must prove it. It was easy to declare that he was a Frenchman before all things, in spite of having two sons in the Prussian army, or that he loved the nation, though he had served Capet. “Proofs! Witnesses!” he cried, and looked at her triumphantly.

“ My father has thirty-five witnesses to speak for him,” she answered on the instant.

He gazed in wonder. “ And where are they ? ”

“ Here ! all here ! The thirty-five wounds that he has received for his country.”

There was a sudden silence through the room, a stillness as when one says an angel passes. Marie herself might have been the angel, as she stood with her arm extended towards her father, her eyes fixed on his blood-stained accusers. It was as if no one breathed, until Maillard, with visible emotion, rose and said, “ Innocent or guilty, I believe it would be unworthy of the people to shed the blood of this old man.”

The cause was won ! But no ! Those whose hearts she had touched at last might raise the saving cry of “ Vive la nation ! ” which betokened an acquittal, but there was no answer from without. The men out there were not minded to lose the prey they had waited for so long, the “ aristocrat,” the “ marquis.” There was a deafening roar when he and Marie appeared. Those with them waved their caps and pikes, trying vainly to be heard ; their voices were drowned in shouts of “ Take the girl away ! ” “ Strike him down ! ” Traitor ! ” “ Aristocrat; ! ” “ Take her away ! ”

Rude hands seized her. Her father himself was striving to put her from him, lest his murderers should lose patience and she be harmed ; but she clung with a strength that no one could have suspected in that slight frame, and together they were pushed and dragged into the court, while ever and anon her voice, shrill with agony, rose above the tumult: “ Have pity ! My father ! Spare him ! ” Or again, “ Kill me too, then ! Kill me too ! ” And she covered him so with her body that it seemed indeed as if they must have killed her too had they struck him. How long the unequal contest lasted it is impossible to say, but doubtless it was an eternity of anguish for that faithful heart. Her voice grew fainter, though it could still be heard answering the cries with which the men urged each other on. “ He is no aristocrat! He loves his country ! We are not aristocrats ! ”

In a chance lull which followed upon those words, a man pushed his way to her, stooped down, and dipped a cup in a pool on the pavement. “ If you are not aristocrats, drink that! Drink it to the nation, and your father will be saved! ”

Then took place one of those changes to which a furious crowd is subject. The clamor died away as if by magic, only that here and there a taunting voice was heard : “ Yes, drink it! ” “ If you are not an aristocrat, it will taste good to you ! It’s aristocrats’ blood ! ”

It was the culmination of the horrors she had passed through; if nature had shrunk back then, they would have been all in vain. Her love was stronger than nature. The will, at least, was there. She raised the cup, but in that instant she saw lying at her feet a darkly clad body, the arm thrown up — a delicate, small hand — a pool of blood. The cup shook, some of that terrible wine splashed up on her pure lip, and it was enough. The man beside her raised the cry, “ She drinks ! ” and the air was rent by a mighty shout, —“ She drinks! She drinks! And long live the nation ! ”

Her work was done. She had saved her father.

Strong arms bore them apart, Marie resistless now. They were carried in triumph. The very men who a moment before had howled “ Kill him ! ” adopted the “ aristocrat ” for their own, in a passion of fraternity. Some of them mounted a carriage with him and rolled through the astonished streets, brandishing their pikes with joy, and calling wildly to the passers that it was “ an old man who loved his country, and a daughter of the nation.”

Marie was tenderly supported by her father, but she could not yet feel her happiness nor rejoice. The lips that had been so eloquent were mute, her eyes gazing straight before her, with an expression of mental suffering terrible to see on a young face; but she was strong still to endure, and the way was short. They were going to the humble shelter which she had chosen for herself.

As the carriage stopped, she was lifted down, and a voice said, “You gave me wine. I gave you blood. It was to save your father.”

And then, like the phantasmagoria of an awful dream, the crowd swept away, they were gone, and in the blessed stillness those two turned to each other : he, with a heart-bursting sob, to clasp her in his arms, — his child, his gentle daughter who had dared so much for him !

Grace Howard Peirce.

NOTE. For those who may be unacquainted with the facts, there will possibly be some interest in a few details with regard to the after-life of Mademoiselle de tSombreuil. She had saved her father but for a time; eighteen months later, he, with the younger of his two sons, died on the scaffold. She was imprisoned with, them, but escaped their fate. In the folIowing year she lost her remaining brother, Charles de Sombreuil, who, after distinguishing himself in the Prussian army, went to England, and was put in charge of an expedition which landed at. Quiberon, on the west coast of France. The enterprise failed, and he, taken prisoner by General Hoche, was carried to Vannes and condemned to be shot. In order to arrange his affairs, he asked permission to go back on board the English ship which had brought him, and three days were granted him for that purpose. He returned at the time appointed for his execution, himself gave the order to fire, and fell lamented by those who took his life. After the 9th Thermidor, Mademoiselle de ISombreuil, released from prison, left the country, and married an émigré, the Count de Villelume. Her father had been governor of the Invalides in Paris, and her husband, under the Restoration, held the same office at Avignon, where she died in 1823. Her heart was placed in the military chapel there, and on the suppression of that branch of the Invalides was deposited in the church in Paris, — “ the heart,” as one historian says, “ that beat so bravely in those terrible September days.’’