CHAPTER XXVI
THE BALL OF THE VICTIMS
After taking about a hundred steps Morgan removed his mask. He
ran more risk of being noticed in the streets of Paris as a masked
man than with uncovered face.
When he reached the Rue Taranne he knocked at the door of a small
furnished lodging-house at the corner of that street and the
Rue du Dragon, took a candlestick from a table, a key numbered
12 from a nail, and climbed the stairs without exciting other
attention than a well-known lodger would returning home. The
clock was striking ten as he closed the door of his room. He
listened attentively to the strokes, the light of his candle not
reaching as far as the chimney-piece. He counted ten.
"Good!" he said to himself; "I shall not be too late."
In spite of this probability, Morgan seemed determined to lose
no time. He passed a bit of tinder-paper under the heater on the
hearth, which caught fire instantly. He lighted four wax-candles,
all there were in the room, placed two on the mantel-shelf and two
on a bureau opposite, and spread upon the bed a complete dress of
the Incroyable of the very latest fashion. It consisted of a short
coat, cut square across the front and long behind, of a soft shade
between a pale-green and a pearl-gray; a waistcoat of buff plush,
with eighteen mother-of-pearl buttons; an immense white cravat of
the finest cambric; light trousers of white cashmere, decorated
with a knot of ribbon where they buttoned above the calves, and
pearl-gray silk stockings, striped transversely with the same
green as the coat, and delicate pumps with diamond buckles. The
inevitable eye-glass was not forgotten. As for the hat, it was
precisely the same in which Carle Vernet painted his dandy of
the Directory.
When these things were ready, Morgan waited with seeming impatience.
At the end of five minutes he rang the bell. A waiter appeared.
"Hasn't the wig-maker come?" asked Morgan.
In those days wig-makers were not yet called hair-dressers.
"Yes, citizen," replied the waiter, "he came, but you had not yet
returned, so he left word that he'd come back. Some one knocked
just as you rang; it's probably--"
"Here, here," cried a voice on the stairs.
"Ah! bravo," exclaimed Morgan. "Come in, Master Cadenette; you
must make a sort of Adonis of me."
"That won't be difficult, Monsieur le Baron," replied the wig-maker.
"Look here, look here; do you mean to compromise me, citizen
Cadenette?"
"Monsieur le Baron, I entreat you, call me Cadenette; you'll
honor me by that proof of familiarity; but don't call me citizen.
Fie; that's a revolutionary denomination! Even in the worst of
the Terror I always called my wife Madame Cadenette. Now, excuse
me for not waiting for you; but there's a great ball in the Rue
du Bac this evening, the ball of the Victims (the wig-maker
emphasized this word). I should have thought that M. le Baron
would be there."
"Why," cried Morgan, laughing; "so you are still a royalist,
Cadenette?"
The wig-maker laid his hand tragically on his heart.
"Monsieur le Baron," said he, "it is not only a matter of conscience,
but a matter of state."
"Conscience, I can understand that, Master Cadenette, but state!
What the devil has the honorable guild of wigmakers to do with
politics?"
"What, Monsieur le Baron?" said Cadenette, all the while getting
ready to dress his client's hair; "you ask me that? You, an
aristocrat!"
"Hush, Cadenette!"
"Monsieur le Baron, we _ci-devants_ can say that to each
other."
"So you are a _ci-devant_?"
"To the core! In what style shall I dress M. le Baron's hair?"
"Dog's ears, and tied up behind."
"With a dash of powder?"
"Two, if you like, Cadenette."
"Ah! monsieur, when one thinks that for five years I was the
only man who had an atom of powder '_à la maréchale_.' Why,
Monsieur le Baron, a man was guillotined for owning a box of
powder!"
"I've known people who were guillotined for less than that,
Cadenette. But explain how you happen to be a _ci-devant_.
I like to understand everything."
"It's very simple, Monsieur le Baron. You admit, don't you, that
among the guilds there were some that were more or less
aristocratic."
"Beyond doubt; accordingly as they were nearer to the higher classes
of society."
"That's it, Monsieur le Baron. Well, we had the higher classes
by the hair of their head. I, such as you see me, I have dressed
Madame de Polignac's hair; my father dressed Madame du Barry's;
my grandfather, Madame de Pompadour's. We had our privileges,
Monsieur; we carried swords. It is true, to avoid the accidents
that were liable to crop up among hotheads like ourselves, our
swords were usually of wood; but at any rate, if they were not
the actual thing, they were very good imitations. Yes, Monsieur
le Baron," continued Cadenette with a sigh, "those days were the
good days, not only for the wig-makers, but for all France. We
were in all the secrets, all the intrigues; nothing was hidden
from us. And there is no known instance, Monsieur le Baron, of
a wig-maker betraying a secret. Just look at our poor queen; to
whom did she trust her diamonds? To the great, the illustrious
Leonard, the prince of wig-makers. Well, Monsieur le Baron, two
men alone overthrew the scaffolding of a power that rested on
the wigs of Louis XIV., the puffs of the Regency, the frizettes
of Louis-XV., and the cushions of Marie Antoinette."
"And those two men, those levellers, those two revolutionaries,
who were they, Cadenette? that I may doom them, so far as it
lies in my power, to public execration."
"M. Rousseau and citizen Talma: Monsieur Rousseau who said that
absurdity, 'We must return to Nature,' and citizen Talma, who
invented the Titus head-dress."
"That's true, Cadenette; that's true."
"When the Directory came in there was a moment's hope. M. Barras
never gave up powder, and citizen Moulins stuck to his queue. But,
you see, the 18th Brumaire has knocked it all down; how could
any one friz Bonaparte's hair! Ah! there," continued Cadenette,
puffing out the dog's ears of his client--"there's aristocratic
hair for you, soft and fine as silk, and takes the tongs so well
one would think you wore a wig. See, Monsieur le Baron, you wanted
to be as handsome as Adonis! Ah! if Venus had seen you, it's
not of Adonis that Mars would have been jealous!"
And Cadenette, now at the end of his labors and satisfied with
the result, presented a hand-mirror to Morgan, who examined himself
complacently.
"Come, come!" he said to the wig-maker, "you are certainly an
artist, my dear fellow! Remember this style, for if ever they
cut off my head I shall choose to have it dressed like that,
for there will probably be women at my execution."
"And M. le Baron wants them to regret him," said the wig-maker
gravely.
"Yes, and in the meantime, my dear Cadenette, here is a crown
to reward your labors. Have the goodness to tell them below to
call a carriage for me."
Cadenette sighed.
"Monsieur le Baron," said he, "time was when I should have answered:
'Show yourself at court with your hair dressed like that, and I
shall be paid.' But there is no court now, Monsieur le Baron,
and one must live. You shall have your carriage."
With which Cadenette sighed again, slipped Morgan's crown in his
pocket, made the reverential bow of wig-makers and dancing-masters,
and left the young man to complete his toilet.
The head being now dressed, the rest was soon done; the cravat
alone took time, owing to the many failures that occurred; but
Morgan concluded the difficult task with an experienced hand, and
as eleven o'clock was striking he was ready to start. Cadenette
had not forgotten his errand; a hackney-coach was at the door.
Morgan jumped into it, calling out: "Rue du Bac, No. 60."
The coach turned into the Rue de Grenelle, went up the Rue du
Bac, and stopped at No. 60.
"Here's a double fare, friend," said Morgan, "on condition that
you don't stand before the door."
The driver took the three francs and disappeared around the corner
of the Rue de Varennes. Morgan glanced up the front of the house;
it seemed as though he must be mistaken, so dark and silent was
it. But he did not hesitate; he rapped in a peculiar fashion.
The door opened. At the further end of the courtyard was a building,
brilliantly lighted. The young man went toward it, and, as he
approached, the sound of instruments met his ear. He ascended
a flight of stairs and entered the dressing-room. There he gave
his cloak to the usher whose business it was to attend to the
wraps.
"Here is your number," said the usher. "As for your weapons, you
are to place them in the gallery where you can find them easily."
Morgan put the number in his trousers pocket, and entered the
great gallery transformed into an arsenal. It contained a complete
collection of arms of all kinds, pistols, muskets, carbines,
swords, and daggers. As the ball might at any moment be invaded
by the police, it was necessary that every dancer be prepared to
turn defender at an instant's notice. Laying his weapons aside,
Morgan entered the ballroom.
We doubt if any pen could give the reader an adequate idea of the
scene of that ball. Generally, as the name "Ball of the Victims"
indicated, no one was admitted except by the strange right of
having relatives who had either been sent to the scaffold by the
Convention or the Commune of Paris, blown to pieces by Collot
d'Herbois, or drowned by Carrier. As, however, the victims
guillotined during the three years of the Terror far outnumbered
the others, the dresses of the majority of those who were present
were the clothes of the victims of the scaffold. Thus, most of
the young girls, whose mothers and older sisters had fallen by
the hands of the executioner, wore the same costume their mothers
and sisters had worn for that last lugubrious ceremony; that is
to say, a white gown and red shawl, with their hair cut short
at the nape of the neck. Some added to this costume, already so
characteristic, a detail that was even more significant; they
knotted around their necks a thread of scarlet silk, fine as
the blade of a razor, which, as in Faust's Marguerite, at the
Witches' Sabbath, indicated the cut of the knife between the
throat and the collar bone.
As for the men who were in the same case, they wore the collars
of their coats turned down behind, those of their shirt wide
open, their necks bare, and their hair, cut short.
But many had other rights of entrance to this ball besides that
of having Victims in their families; some had made victims
themselves. These latter were increasing. There were present
men of forty or forty-five years of age, who had been trained
in the boudoirs of the beautiful courtesans of the seventeenth
century--who had known Madame du Barry in the attics of Versailles,
Sophie Arnoult with M. de Lauraguais, La Duthé with the Comte
d'Artois--who had borrowed from the courtesies of vice the polish
with which they covered their ferocity. They were still young
and handsome; they entered a salon, tossing their perfumed locks
and their scented handkerchiefs; nor was it a useless precaution,
for if the odor of musk or verbena had not masked it they would
have smelled of blood.
There were men there twenty-five or thirty years old, dressed
with extreme elegance, members of the association of Avengers,
who seemed possessed with the mania of assassination, the lust of
slaughter, the frenzy of blood, which no blood could quench--men
who, when the order came to kill, killed all, friends or enemies;
men who carried their business methods into the business of murder,
giving their bloody checks for the heads of such or such Jacobins,
and paying on sight.
There were younger men, eighteen and twenty, almost children,
but children fed, like Achilles, on the marrow of wild beasts,
like Pyrrhus, on the flesh of bears; here were the pupil-bandits
of Schiller, the apprentice-judges of the Sainte-Vehme--that
strange generation that follows great political convulsions,
like the Titans after chaos, the hydras after the Deluge; as the
vultures and crows follow the carnage.
Here was the spectre of iron impassible, implacable, inflexible,
which men call Retaliation; and this spectre mingled with the
guests. It entered the gilded salons; it signalled with a look,
a gesture, a nod, and men followed where it led. It was, as says
the author from whom we have borrowed these hitherto unknown
but authentic details, "a merry lust for extermination."
The Terror had affected great cynicism in clothes, a Spartan
austerity in its food, the profound contempt of a barbarous people
for arts and enjoyments. The Thermidorian reaction was, on the
contrary, elegant, opulent, adorned; it exhausted all luxuries,
all voluptuous pleasures, as in the days of Louis XV.; with one
addition, the luxury of vengeance, the lust of blood.
Fréron's name was given to the youth of the day, which was called
the jeunesse Fréron, or the _jéunesse dorée_ (gilded youth).
Why Fréron? Why should he rather than others receive that strange
and fatal honor?
I cannot tell you--my researches (those who know me will do me
the justice to admit that when I have an end in view, I do not
count them)--my researches have not discovered an answer. It was
a whim of Fashion, and Fashion is the one goddess more capricious
than Fortune.
Our readers will hardly know to-day who Fréron was. The Fréron
who was Voltaire's assailant was better known than he who was
the patron of these elegant assassins; one was the son of the
other. Louis Stanislas was son of Elie-Catherine. The father
died of rage when Miromesnil, Keeper of the Seals, suppressed
his journal. The other, irritated by the injustices of which
his father had been the victim, had at first ardently embraced
the revolutionary doctrines. Instead of the "Année Littéraire,"
strangled to death in 1775, he created the "Orateur du Peuple," in
1789. He was sent to the Midi on a special mission, and Marseilles
and Toulon retain to this day the memory of his cruelty. But all
was forgotten when, on the 9th Thermidor, he proclaimed himself
against Robespierre, and assisted in casting from the altar the
Supreme Being, the colossus who, being an apostle, had made himself
a god. Fréron, repudiated by the Mountain, which abandoned him
to the heavy jaws of Moise Bayle; Fréron, disdainfully repulsed
by the Girondins, who delivered him over to the imprecations of
Isnard; Fréron, as the terrible and picturesque orator of the
Var said, "Fréron naked and covered with the leprosy of crime,"
was accepted, caressed and petted by the Thermidorians. From
them he passed into the camp of the royalists, and without any
reason whatever for obtaining that fatal honor, found himself
suddenly at the head of a powerful party of youth, energy and
vengeance, standing between the passions of the day, which led
to all, and the impotence of the law, which permitted all.
It was to the midst of this _jeunesse_ Fréron, mouthing
its words, slurring its r's, giving its "word of honor" about
everything, that Morgan now made his way.
It must be admitted that this _jeunesse_, in spite of the
clothes it wore, in spite of the memories these clothes evoked,
was wildly gay. This seems incomprehensible, but it is true.
Explain if you can that Dance of Death at the beginning of the
fifteenth century, which, with all the fury of a modern galop,
led by Musard, whirled its chain through the very Cemetery of
the Innocents, and left amid its tombs fifty thousand of its
votaries.
Morgan was evidently seeking some one.
A young dandy, who was dipping into the silver-gilt comfit-box
of a charming victim, with an ensanguined finger, the only part
of his delicate hand that had escaped the almond paste, tried
to stop him, to relate the particulars of the expedition from
which he had brought back this bloody trophy. But Morgan smiled,
pressed his other hand which was gloved, and contented himself
with replying: "I am looking for some one."
"Important?"
"Company of Jehu."
The young man with the bloody finger let him pass. An adorable
Fury, as Corneille would have called her, whose hair was held
up by a dagger with a blade as sharp as a needle, barred his
way, saying: "Morgan, you are the handsomest, the bravest, the
most deserving of love of all the men present. What have you
to say to the woman who tells you that?"
"I answer that I love," replied Morgan, "and that my heart is
too narrow to hold one hatred and two loves." And he continued
on his search.
Two young men who were arguing, one saying, "He was English,"
the other, "He was German," stopped him.
"The deuce," cried one; "here is the man who can settle it for
us."
"No," replied Morgan, trying to push past them; "I'm in a hurry."
"There's only a word to say," said the other. "We have made a
bet, Saint-Amand and I, that the man who was tried and executed
at the Chartreuse du Seillon, was, according to him, a German,
and, according to me, an Englishman."
"I don't know," replied Morgan; "I wasn't there. Ask Hector; he
presided that night."
"Tell us where Hector is?"
"Tell me rather where Tiffauges is; I am looking for him."
"Over there, at the end of the room," said the young man, pointing
to a part of the room where the dance was more than usually gay
and animated. "You will recognize him by his waistcoat; and his
trousers are not to be despised. I shall have a pair like them
made with the skin of the very first hound I meet."
Morgan did not take time to ask in what way Tiffauges' waistcoat was
remarkable, or by what queer cut or precious material his trousers
had won the approbation of a man as expert in such matters as he
who had spoken to him. He went straight to the point indicated by
the young man, saw the person he was seeking dancing an été, which
seemed, by the intricacy of its weaving, if I may be pardoned for
this technical term, to have issued from the salons of Vestris
himself.
Morgan made a sign to the dancer. Tiffauges stopped instantly,
bowed to his partner, led her to her seat, excused himself on
the plea of the urgency of the matter which called him away,
and returned to take Morgan's arm.
"Did you see him," Tiffauges asked Morgan.
"I have just left him," replied the latter.
"Did you deliver the King's letter?"
"To himself."
"Did he read it?"
"At once."
"Has he sent an answer?"
"Two; one verbal, one written; the second dispenses with the first."
"You have it?"
"Here it is."
"Do you know the contents?"
"A refusal."
"Positive?"
"Nothing could be more positive."
"Does he know that from the moment he takes all hope away from
us we shall treat him as an enemy?"
"I told him so."
"What did he answer?"
"He didn't answer; he shrugged his shoulders."
"What do you think his intentions are?"
"It's not difficult to guess."
"Does he mean to keep the power himself?"
"It looks like it."
"The power, but not the throne?"
"Why not the throne?"
"He would never dare to make himself king."
"Oh! I can't say he means to be absolutely king, but I'll answer
for it that he means to be something."
"But he is nothing but a soldier of fortune!"
"My dear fellow, better in these days to be the son of his deeds,
than the grandson of a king."
The young man thought a moment.
"I shall report it all to Cadoudal," he said.
"And add that the First Consul said these very words: 'I hold
the Vendée in the hollow of my hand, and if I choose in three
months not another shot will be fired.'"
"It's a good thing to know."
"You know it; let Cadoudal know it, and take measures."
Just then the music ceased; the hum of the dancers died away;
complete silence prevailed; and, in the midst of this silence,
four names were pronounced in a sonorous and emphatic voice.
These four names were Morgan, Montbar, Adler and d'Assas.
"Pardon me," Morgan said to Tiffauges, "they are probably arranging
some expedition in which I am to take part. I am forced, therefore,
to my great regret, to bid you farewell. Only before I leave you
let me look closer at your waistcoat and trousers, of which I
have heard--curiosity of an amateur; I trust you will excuse
it."
"Surely!" exclaimed the young Vendéan, "most willingly."
