THE SWORD OF HONOR

THE FULL SERIES OF

OR

History of a Proletarian Family
Across the Ages

B y E U G E N E S U E

Consisting of the Following Works:

THE GOLD SICKLE; or, Hena the Virgin of the Isle of Sen.
THE BRASS BELL; or, The Chariot of Death.
THE IRON COLLAR; or, Faustine and Syomara.
THE SILVER CROSS; or, The Carpenter of Nazareth.
THE CASQUE'S LARK; or, Victoria, the Mother of the Camps.
THE PONIARID'S HILT; or, Karadeucq and Ronan.
THE BRANDING NEEDLE; or, The Monastery of Charolles.
THE ABBATIAL CROSIER; or, Bonaik and Septimine.
THE CARLOVINGIAN COINS; or, The Daughters of Charlemagne.
THE IRON ARROW-HEAD; or, The Buckler Maiden.
THE INFANT'S SKULL; or, The End of the World.
THE PILGRIM'S SHELL; or, Fergan the Quarryman.
THE IRON PINCERS; or, Mylio and Karvel.
THE IRON TREVET; or Jocelyn the Champion.
THE EXECUTIONER'S KNIFE; or, Joan of Arc.
THE POCKET BIBLE; or, Christian the Printer.
THE BLACKSMITH'S HAMMER; or, The Peasant Code.
THE SWORD OF HONOR; or, The Foundation of the French Republic.
THE GALLEY SLAVE'S RING; or, The Family Lebrenn.

Published Uniform With This Volume By
THE NEW YORK LABOR NEWS CO.
28 CITY HALL PLACE NEW YORK CITY

THE
SWORD OF HONOR
: : : : OR : : : :
The Foundation of the French Republic

A Tale of The French Revolution

In Two Volumes

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH BY

DANIEL DE LEON

NEW YORK LABOR NEWS COMPANY, 1910

Copyright, 1910, by the
NEW YORK LABOR NEWS CO.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

Most persons know the French Revolution as a tremendous outburst in human affairs. Many know it as one of the race's great steps forward. That, however, it was the revolution which carried into power the then rising bourgeois, now capitalist, class; that this class, while appealing for and using the help of the working class, secretly hated and feared the demands of the latter, and blocked them at every opportunity; that finally the bourgeoisie, having obtained as revolutionists, by the aid of the workers, their end of the revolution, became as violently reactionary as had been the nobility they fought, and ruthlessly shot and guillotined to pieces the then definite proletarian movement for full political equality and collective ownership of the tools of production—that is an insight into the French Revolutionary period hitherto vouchsafed to few. To that insight Eugene Sue's genius has, with the present thrilling novel, made straight the way for all.

This, The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic, is the eighteenth and culminating unit in Sue's great historic-fiction series, The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages. Following close upon the previous volume, The Blacksmith's Hammer; or, The Peasant Code, in which the popular storm was seen gathering head under the atrocities of the gilded age of the Grand Monarch, the present story portrays that storm breaking in all the accumulated vigor of its centuries of postponement, and sweeping away the empty lay figures of an outgrown feudalism. True, one barrier to human liberty was thrown down only to disclose another. To the empire of birth and privilege was to succeed the empire of the shekel; to the rule of do-nothing kings, the rule of do-nothing plutocracy. But it is in the act of drilling itself for the overthrow of that final parasite class—for the final conquering, in other words, of freedom for the race—that Sue portrays the proletariat in the next and closing work of the series, The Galley Slave's Ring; or, The Family of Lebrenn. Though he minimizes none of the difficulties, his message for the future is of hope only.

Nothing is more unanimous among historians of the period than expressions of commiseration for the condition of the French people before the Revolution. Yet nothing, on the other hand, is more unanimous either than the condemnation showered upon this people the moment it seizes the reins and enters upon the task of putting down its age-long tyrannizers. Into this absurd breach of consistency Sue's genius saved him from falling. In his pages Marat, Danton and Robespierre walk to their doom with head erect, clean from the smut slung at them by their bourgeois enemies, for whom they were going too far. Friends of the People once, so they remained to the end; and in that mantle Sue has preserved their memory for all time. For him who would rail at their summary deeds Sue has far from spread a bed of roses. The memory of the royalist massacres in the Vendee and of the triumphant bourgeois massacres during the White Terror, rescued by his pen from the oblivion in which they were sought to be buried, have thrown the Revolutionary Terror into its proper perspective. It is a bagatelle beside the acts committed by its denouncers.

Sue's clear presentation of the maxim, "To the peasant the land, to the workman the tool"; his unflinching delineation of the debauchery of court and ecclesiastical circles of the time; his revelation of the role of the political machine under the guise of religion sending out its arms as willing regicides or agents provocateurs by turn; and his clear depiction of the cowardly, grasping, double-dealing and fraud-perpetrating character of the bourgeois, all of which is presented in the easy reading of a story, make this thrilling work of fiction an unsurpassable epitome of the period in which its action elapses.

Finally, it is the distinctive test of good literature upon any topic, that it does not sate, but incites to further thought and study. Not the least of the values of The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic, is that it performs this reverent duty matchlessly for the momentous period of which it treats.

SOLON DE LEON.

New York, April, 1910.

INDEX
(to both volumes)

INTRODUCTION.

I, John Lebrenn, the son of Ronan, whose father was Alain, the last son of Salaun Lebrenn the mariner, now take up the thread of our family history, by writing the following narrative.

Thanks to God, Oh, sons of Joel! my eyes have seen the beautiful day predicted to our ancestor Scanvoch the soldier by Victoria the Great, now more than fifteen centuries ago, and awaited from age to age by our family. I have witnessed the solemn judgment, the expiatory punishment of Louis Capet, called Louis XVI, the last of that line of Kings of Frankish origin. Rejoice, ye shades of my ancestors—ye martyrs of the Church, of the Nobility, and of Royalty! Rejoice, ye obscure soldiers who fought in the bloody conflicts that you engaged in from age to age, in resolute insurrections of the oppressed against the oppressors of centuries—of the sons of the conquered Gauls against the conqueror Franks! Rejoice! Old Gaul has recovered her ancient republican freedom! She has broken the abhorred yoke of the Kings, and the infamous yoke of the Church of Rome.

I am writing this narrative in the year II of the French Republic, one and indivisible.

My great-grandfather, Salaun Lebrenn, died at Amsterdam in his ninety-first year, on December 20, 1715. His son Alain, born in 1685, was then thirty years of age. He worked in Amsterdam as a printer, one of the most lucrative trades, in that the large number of books, then being written against the Church and royalty, could be published only at Geneva, or in Holland, free countries in which the right of intellectual free research was recognized and protected. My ancestor Alain sold in 1715 the modest patrimony which he inherited from his father Salaun, left Holland, and settled down in France at the beginning of the Regency under Louis XV, the successor of Louis XIV. The freedom then enjoyed was great compared with conditions at the period of Louis XIV. Being exceptionally skilled at his trade, my grandfather secured the position of foreman in the printing house of one of the descendants of the famous Estienne, in whose establishment our ancestor Christian was long employed. Alain married the niece of his employer. Of that marriage was born, in 1727, my father Ronan. He followed my grandfather's trade. The latter died in 1751. My father had two children—my sister Victoria, born in 1760, and myself, John Lebrenn, born in 1766.

My grandfather's life was spent in peace and obscurity. But great misfortunes fell upon our family. As you will read in the course of the following history, Oh, sons of Joel! it was not vouchsafed to my father to witness, as I did, the brilliant victory that crowned fifteen centuries of incessant, painful and bloody endeavor, thanks to which our ancestors—successively slaves, serfs and vassals—conquered, at the price of their lives and of innumerable rebellions, step by step, one by one, the franchises that the French Republic has now confirmed and consecrated in the face of the whole world, by proclaiming, in the name of the Rights of Man, the downfall of Kings and the sovereignty of the People.

PART I.
FALL OF THE BASTILLE.

CHAPTER I.
THE HOUSE IN ST. FRANCOIS STREET.

One night toward the middle of April, 1789, when the moon with its radiance clearly lighted the scene, a man, wrapped in a great-coat, and with his hat pulled far over his countenance, might have been seen carefully surveying the neighborhood of a building located in one of the most deserted streets of Paris, St. Francois Street, in the Swamp. A lofty wall, its black stones weathered with years of exposure, ran nearly the whole length of the thoroughfare, and served as facing to a terrace surmounted with trees that had laughed to scorn the storms of a century. Through their heavy foliage one caught glimpses of the stone front, the peaked roof, and the high brick chimneys of a mansion in the style of Louis XIV. A wall, pierced by several grated openings, formed a deep, semi-circular approach, leading up to a coach gate of massive oak, studded with enormous spikes of iron. To judge from the thick layers of dust and cobwebs which covered the gate, many had been the days since it was opened. A little bastard gate, closed with a wicket, and no less massively built than the principal entrance, gave on its other side onto a narrow and vaulted passage. To the left of this passage stood the door of a lodge the windows of which overlooked a spacious garden, laid out in the fashion of the previous century, and ornamented with vases and statues of stone, stained and broken by time. In the center of the garden rose another dwelling whose doors had been walled up, and whose windows were sealed with plates of lead, soldered into iron frames set in the masonry.

One more little building, snuggled up against the entry-gate and evidently intended for the porter, was occupied only by a Jew and his wife. The couple this evening were chatting in a lower room whose half-open door communicated with the vaulted passage running to the street.

David Samuel was in the neighborhood of thirty, his wife Bathsheba, twenty-five. The lineage of Israel was strongly stamped on their features. Bathsheba, seated before a little table lighted by a copper lamp, was preparing to write at her husband's dictation. The latter, sunk in an arm-chair, his forehead in his hands, was in grave mood, and said to his wife after a silence of several minutes:

"The more I think over the present state of affairs, the more am I convinced that it is the part of prudence and necessity for us to prepare against unfortunate eventualities. In spite of our precautions within and without, what goes on here may one day be uncovered by the creatures of the Lieutenant of Police. We would then both be imprisoned, my dear Bathsheba! Then, if I should die in prison—"

"Ah, my friend, what gloomy forebodings! Think not of such sad chances."

"Everything must be reckoned with. So, then, in case I die, our cousin Levi, on whom I count as on myself—you know him—"

"Your confidence is well placed."

"I am sure of it. I wish to charge him, in that case, to take my place in the sacred mission which my grandfather and father have handed down to me. That is why I wish to hold ready, in advance, the memorandum which will place our relative in possession of the knowledge he will need in order to replace me. Come then, write as I dictate."

At the moment that Samuel uttered these last words, he heard a knocking in a peculiar manner at the little bastard gate. First there were three blows, then two, separated from the others by a pause; and then two again; total, seven, the cabalistic number.

Samuel manifested no surprise at the signal. He left the room, traversed the passage, drew close to the wicket, and asked in an undertone:

"Who knocks?"

"A blind one."

"What does he seek?"

"The light."

"What time is it?"

"The hour of darkness, my brother!"

Immediately upon the last response, Samuel swung back the gate. Two persons wrapped in cloaks hurried through the passage and disappeared in the garden. The Jew secured again the gate, and returned to his wife, who, no more surprised than he by the mysterious entrance of the two newcomers, said:

"Dictate, my friend; I shall write."

"In the year 1660," began Samuel, "Monsieur Marius Rennepont, a rich Protestant shipowner and captain, lay in Lisbon. He had carried from France, on his ship, Monsieur the Duke of San Borromeo, one of Portugal's greatest lords. The very day of his arrival in Lisbon, Monsieur Rennepont saw from his hotel on the Plaza Mayor, the preparations for an auto-da-fé. On inquiry he learned that the next day a Jew named Samuel was to be burnt in the cause of religion. Monsieur Rennepont, being a humane and generous-minded man, and, moreover, having sympathy for the fate of heretics as his own Protestant co-religionists were beginning in France to be persecuted in spite of the Edict of Nantes, resolved to snatch this Jew from the torture, and counted on the support and protection of the Duke of San Borromeo.

"The latter, more than once during the passage, had made tender of his services to the captain. Chance so willed it that he was the elder brother of the Inquisitor of Lisbon. Monsieur Rennepont's hopes were realized. The Duke of San Borromeo by his credit obtained from the tribunal of the Inquisition a commutation of the Jew's sentence from capital punishment to one of perpetual banishment. Monsieur Rennepont, having saved his protegé, made inquiries as to his character, and received the best accounts thereof. He proposed that the Jew accompany him to France, an offer which the latter accepted with gratitude. Later on Monsieur Rennepont entrusted him with the money matters of his trade; and Samuel devoted himself body and soul to his benefactor.

"That Hebrew, my grandfather, was soon able to prove his gratitude to Monsieur Marius Rennepont. The Protestant persecutions increased in fury. Those who refused to be converted were exposed to violence and exactions of every sort. Monsieur Rennepont had a son whom he loved passionately. In order to ensure to this son the enjoyment of his goods by sheltering them from confiscation, he abjured the Protestant faith. Dearly he paid for that moment of weakness. The Jesuit Society, for some hidden reason which my grandfather never could fathom, pursued from age to age with their secret surveillance and hatred a certain Lebrenn family, with which one of Monsieur Rennepont's ancestors had been connected by marriage in the middle of the Sixteenth Century.[1] For reasons to be revealed later, that branch of the Renneponts had broken off its relations with the Lebrenns; it was even ignorant of whether its former allies had left any descendants.

"The Society of Jesus, enveloping in its covert network of espionage all who, either closely or distantly, were connected with the Lebrenn family, learned through its agents that Monsieur Marius Rennepont, in spite of his apparent conversion to Catholicism, was in the habit of attending, along with several of his co-religionists, a certain Protestant church. Denounced by the Jesuits, Monsieur Rennepont incurred the terrible penalties visited upon the fallen from faith—the galleys for life, and the confiscation of his property. At the same time his only son fell a victim to a duel without witnesses. Some time thereafter, the father conceived the hazardous idea of escaping, at his age, from the rigors of the galleys. He fled to a house several hours distant from Paris, called my grandfather Samuel to his side, and entrusted to him his wishes and his last testament. The goods confiscated from him, had, by a royal order, been turned over to his betrayers, the Jesuits, who thus profited by his fortune. But Monsieur Rennepont, having long intended to leave to his son, should the latter survive him, a certain patrimony had laid away in a secret place fifty thousand crowns in gold. That sum he confided to my grandsire, charging him to re-purchase this estate where we now are, then estimated at between seven and eight thousand crowns. Samuel was instructed to carry out certain orders with regard to the main dwelling of the estate, and to live, with his descendants, in the lodge which we occupy.

"The sum thus remaining in my grandfather's hands, amounting to some forty thousand crowns, he was to put out at interest as securely as possible; the sums accruing from this interest were to be capitalized and added to the principal for the space of about a century and a half, that is to say, till the year 1832. Samuel was authorized to draw every year two thousand livres from the profit of these investments, and to pass on this duty, and the salary attached to it, to his own son, or in case of the latter's death, to some relative, or co-religionist, known to him for probity.

"Such is the solidarity which binds us Hebrews together, and which constitutes our strength, that my grandsire, even had he no son, would have found some faithful repository for his trust. But God willed that it should be my father Isaac himself who was to acquit himself of this debt of gratitude towards the protector of our ancestor, and that I, in turn, should fulfil the same duty.

"The object of Monsieur Marius Rennepont in thus bequeathing to us the duty of investing the interests on the sum which he confided to our ancestor, was to leave to the third or fourth generation of his heirs an enormous fortune, the employment of which will only be disclosed upon the opening of his will, which his representatives will perform in forty-three years, on the 13th of February, 1832, in this house, the door of which is to remain sealed and the windows fastened until that date."

At this point of his dictation Samuel was interrupted by a new series of raps, in the pre-arranged fashion, at the little gate. He disappeared for a moment, and almost as soon returned, saying to his wife:

"We shall have to postpone our writing—we can take it up later. You may withdraw now about your household affairs. Prince Franz of Gerolstein has just arrived with a new comrade whom he wishes to entertain here in this chamber, before his initiation."

"We shall continue the dictation again, then, my friend," responded Bathsheba, rising. And she added, with a deep sigh, "O, may you never regret having affiliated yourself with the 'Seeing Ones,' or 'Voyants,' as they call themselves."

"No, my beloved wife, never shall I regret my affiliation with the Voyants. The ideas of which they have made themselves the propagandists must infallibly bring about the reign of fraternity and the emancipation of the human race. Then we, contemned Jews, shall enter into the communion of the great human family. In affiliating myself with the Voyants of Paris, in offering them the subterranean chambers which I place at their disposal for their meetings, I serve our own personal cause and also the cause of the disinherited, the downtrodden ones of the world. I am fulfilling thereby a sacred duty. Whatever may hap, I shall not regret having put my shoulder to the work of emancipation."

"Oh, will that sacred cause, to which you have given yourself, soul and body, ever triumph? What dangers must be run, and for an uncertain end!"

"Everything proclaims the early victory of our cause! Be of good cheer!"

"Illusion, Samuel; the illusion of a generous heart. I fear you are but cruelly deceived."

"It is no illusion, Bathsheba! Must it not be truth, which has so irresistible an attraction? Why else should the offspring of a prince be a Voyant?"

"You mean Prince Franz of Gerolstein?"

"He was initiated in Germany, the very cradle of our secret society. He has become one of our most ardent converts. Blessings on the day when it was given me to make acquaintance with the noble young man. Never did the cause of humanity have a more eloquent apostle, a more great-hearted defender. And still withal the society of which he is a member has declared an implacable war upon all privilege of birth or riches, upon all authority, royal or religious. 'Neither Kings nor priests!'—that is our motto. The Prince holds these ideas of equality, of emancipation—he, of a sovereign race! he, one destined to rule! Are not these thrilling signs? The doctrines of the enfranchisement of the working class are spread by the sovereign princes. The Emperor of Austria, Joseph II, brother of Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France, without owning allegiance to the Voyants, without completely accepting their principles, nevertheless travels Europe incognito as a philosopher, nowhere permitting that they pay him the honors due to royal blood, visiting the bourgeois, the lower ranks, mingling with all classes of society, observing for himself the trend of their spirit, sympathizing with their new ideas, submitting himself, perhaps without his own knowledge, to the influence of that regenerating breeze which is sweeping over the old world. The reign of justice and equality is close at hand!"

"In truth—these signs are thrilling," mused Bathsheba pensively.

"Yes, dear wife, the end of persecution and iniquity draws nigh. In a few years, one will find difficulty in persuading himself that there was a time when we Israelites were under the ban of the world; when there was a price upon us; when we were tortured, hanged, burned, all because we were Jews; and when the Protestants, like us, were sent to the galleys or to death, solely because they were Lutherans or Calvinists. Ah, no fear, the descendants of Monsieur Marius Rennepont will be able to enjoy in security the huge fortune which they are to inherit, whether they are Catholics or Protestants—my hope is firm."

Bathsheba reflected a moment and answered:

"My friend, I do not understand you. Monsieur Marius Rennepont left at his death but fifty thousand crowns in gold as his whole heritage. Out of this your ancestor paid the price of this mansion. How, then, will his heirs inherit the colossal fortune of which you speak!"

"In this way, Bathsheba. My grandfather, after the death of Monsieur Rennepont, by means of certain financial operations, succeeded, after some little time, in recouping the eight thousand crowns paid for the estate. In 1683 he had completely restored the fifty thousand crowns. He took the cash; invested it, together with the interest and emoluments, and fifteen years later, in 1696, the sum had already grown to three hundred thousand livres, which, doubled by investment in 1710, made six hundred thousand. Finally, in 1719, when my grandfather died, the sum had reached nearly a million. The doubling of the capital took place in ten, twelve, or fourteen years, depending on the rate of interest, it being in different years seven, six, or five per cent.

"The million which my grandfather Samuel left at his death," continued Samuel, "had, by 1724, become 1,200,000; 1742, two years after my birth, nearly 5,000,000; in 1766, it was 9,600,000 livres; in 1780, 19,600,000 livres; and at this moment the bequest of Marius Rennepont has attained the magnitude of 34,300,000 livres, 8 sous, 11 deniers. That is not all. Just think of what it will be forty years from now, progressing at the same rate: In 1794 it will climb to nearly 38,000,000; in 1808, to 76,000,000; in 1822, to 150,000,000; and in 1832, the time set for the opening of the will of Monsieur Marius Rennepont and for the partition of his fortune among his descendants, the fortune will have capped the enormous figure of 220,000,000 livres!"

"It is certainly prodigious," rejoined Bathsheba. "Even with your explanation, my surprise makes me dizzy. But that dizziness," she added, with great emotion, "shall not keep me from feeling a noble pride in the fact that it was your grandsire, your sire, and you yourself, who have been till now the worthy repositories of such a treasure. Oh, Samuel, you indeed acquit the debt of gratitude contracted by your grandfather toward Monsieur Marius Rennepont."

"We but perform a sacred duty confided to our integrity and our prudence," returned the Jew. "My grandparent, my parent and I have ever been careful not to endanger the smallest part of this sum in risky ventures. Thanks to the financial relations of our co-religionists with all the banks of Europe, we have been able to confine ourselves rigorously to investments of the highest security. Should God give to us a son, my dear wife, he will have, I hope, the prudence and the probity of his fathers. If the joy of having a son is denied us, or if some unforeseen development should prevent me from carrying on this mission of honor, our cousin Levi, whose uprightness I well know, will take my place. Or better still, perhaps the Lord will grant me a green old age, thus enabling me in 1832, with ninety winters on my back, to return in person to the heirs of the house of Rennepont the sacred trust which their ancestor so long ago confided to mine. That will be a day too good to hope for, if I can be present at the opening of Monsieur Rennepont's testament. But God alone knows the future!"

After a pause, Samuel continued:

"To bring his heirs together at the distant time set for the opening of his will, Monsieur Rennepont, a short time before his death, hit upon an ingenious plan. He transmitted to each of his descendants a medal which bore on one side the legend:

VICTIM OF S. J.
PRAY FOR ME
1682.

And on the reverse, the words:

AT PARIS, SAINT FRANCOIS STREET, NO. 3
IN A CENTURY AND A HALF YOU WILL BE
FEBRUARY THE 13TH, 1832.

"It is by means of these medals, handed down from generation to generation, that the Rennepont heirs will one day be reunited here, in this, the house of their ancestor."

"My friend," asked Bathsheba, "in the note you were dictating to me for our friend Levi, you made mention of a Lebrenn family, related to Monsieur Rennepont, which, in spite of its relationship, will probably not partake in the division of the fortune. Whence and why this exclusion?"

"I learned from my father that the grandfather of Monsieur Rennepont, after his abjuration, conceived the greatest aversion for his relatives of the Lebrenn branch, severed all connection with them, and even concealed the fact of their existence from his son, out of dread to submit him some day to the influence of that family, the implacable enemy, as it was, of the Church."

"And did the father of Monsieur Marius Rennepont remain true to the Roman faith?"

"He did, my beloved Bathsheba; but his son, Monsieur Marius himself, reaching the age of reason shortly after his father's death, embraced Protestantism, which still later he feigned to renounce, in order to protect his fortune for his son—a regrettable act of weakness."

"How, then, was the existence of this Lebrenn branch discovered? It all grows more and more mysterious to me, and whets my curiosity."

"Shortly before his death, by suicide, Monsieur Marius Rennepont was looking over some family papers running back to the Sixteenth Century, to the period of the religious wars. There he found to a certainty proof of the connection between the Renneponts and the Lebrenns. But whether the latter had left any descendants he was unable to determine."

"Does that mean, Samuel, that should there be living survivors of the Lebrenn family at the time the Rennepont fortune is partitioned, they will have no share in it?"

"The formal wish of the testator," replied Samuel, "is that only those who in 1832 present themselves here armed with their hereditary medallion shall be admitted to benefice in the inheritance. I shall abide by the instructions which have been handed down to me. According to what my father said, who had his information direct from his father, the confidant of Monsieur Rennepont himself, that clause was dictated by motives which will be revealed in the will."

"Everything in this affair is strange and singular. Probably no one even knows where to find the present descendants of Monsieur Rennepont."

"As to me, Bathsheba, I have not the slightest clue. Still—my father did tell me that twice in his life, Rennepont heirs presented themselves here with their hereditary medals bearing the address of this house, drawn hither by curiosity or vague pecuniary expectations—curiosity and expectations which met only with disappointment."

"What said your father to them?"

"Just what I should say in like case: 'I have nothing to communicate to you. This house belongs to me; it was left me by my father. I know not for what purpose or with what plan in view your ancestor designated this building to his heirs as their rendezvous a century and a half from date.'"

"That is, in fact, the answer commanded by prudence, Samuel. The world must remain in ignorance of the great value of the bequest you are charged with."

"Reasons of the utmost gravity impose upon us an absolute secrecy on the subject. In the first place, according to what my father had from my grandfather, the Society of Jesus, always so well served by its innumerable host of spies, succeeded in finding out that Monsieur Rennepont had saved an important sum from the confiscation which proved so profitable to the reverend fathers; for the informers and the executioners parted the spoils."

"Samuel! If these priests, so powerful, so masterful, and with so many avenues of underground working should ever suspect the truth! I tremble at the mere thought."

"Take heart, my good wife. The danger would be great, but I should know how to escape it. It was even more necessary in my grandfather's and especially in my father's case that they kept in profound secrecy the treasures they possessed; for the governments of Louis XIV, the Regent, and Louis XV, always in want, always at their wits' end for cash, were none too scrupulous in the means they chose to replenish their coffers. We Jews have always been a little beyond the pale of common rights, so that my grandfather or my father, once suspected of being the possessors of a sum amounting to several millions, would have been haled off on lettres de cachet, thrown into the cell of some State prison, and kept there till they had bought off their liberty, or, perhaps, their very lives at the price of the treasure which they were suspected of guarding."

"Ah, Samuel, I shudder to think that in those days every wickedness was possible. They might even have put your father to the torture."

"Thanks be to God, all that is out of the question to-day. And still, anticipating ill chances and exactions, we have always stowed our treasure in safe places and safe hands. Should the mansion be ransacked from cellar to eaves, the wealth of which we are the keepers would escape the search—"

Pricking his ear, Samuel checked his speech and listened intently a moment in the direction of the street gate. Then he said aloud to himself:

"Who is knocking there? It is not one of our men."

"The hour is unearthly," answered Bathsheba, uneasily. "It is past midnight. This lonely street has long since been deserted. May it not be our lookout come to warn us of the approach of some peril?"

"No, our lookout would have given the established signal," answered the Jew. "I'll go see what it may be."

And taking the lamp, he passed out of the chamber.

CHAPTER II.
REVOLUTIONARY EFFERVESCENCE.

Lamp in hand, Samuel approached the wicket gate. The light he carried revealed to him standing outside a lackey in a livery of orange and green, trimmed with silver lace. The fellow, swaying unsteadily on his feet, and with the air of one half-seas over with drink, knocked again, violently.

"Ho, friend!" cried Samuel. "Don't knock so hard! Perhaps you mistake the house."

"I—I knock how I please," returned the lackey in a thick voice. "Open the door—right off. I want to come in—gallows-bird!"

"Whom do you wish?"

"You do not want to open; dog of Jewry! Swine! My master will beat you to death with his stick. He said to me: 'Carry—this letter to Samuel the Jew—and above all—rascal—do not tarry at the inn!' So I want to get in to your dog-kennel, you devil of a Jew!"

"May I ask your master's name?"

"My master is Monseigneur the Count of Plouernel, colonel in the Guards. You know him well. You have before now lent him money—triple Arab!—according to what my lord's steward says—and at good interest, too."

"Have you your master's letter?"

"Yes—pig! And so, open. If not—I'll break in the gate."

"Then pass me the letter through the wicket, and hurry about it. Else I shall go in and leave you as you are."

"Mule! Isn't he stubborn, that animal!" grumbled the lackey as he shoved the letter through the grating. "I must have an answer, good and quick, I was told," he added.

"When I have read the letter," replied Samuel.

"To make me wait outside the door—like a dog!" muttered the tipsy servingman. "Me, the first lackey of my lord!"

Samuel, without paying the least attention to the impertinences of the lackey, read the letter of the Count of Plouernel by the light of his lamp, and then answered:

"Say to your master that I shall visit him to-morrow morning at his rooms. Your errand is done. You may leave."

"You won't give me a written answer?"

"No, the reply I have just given you will suffice."

Leaving the valet outside to fume his wrath away, Samuel refastened the wicket and returned to the room where he had left his wife. Bathsheba said to him, with some uneasiness:

"My friend, did I not hear a threatening voice?"

"It was a drunken lackey who brought me a letter from the Count of Plouernel."

"Another demand for a loan, I suppose?"

"Exactly. He has ordered me to undertake to secure for him the sum of 100,000 livres. He did not call on me direct for the loan, because he thought me too poor to be able to furnish it."

"Will you lend him the money, my friend?"

"Surely, on excellent securities of thirty deniers to one. The Count is good for it, and it will please me to squeeze him, along with other great seigneurs, to the profit of the strong-box of the Voyants."

Hardly had Samuel uttered these words when Prince Franz of Gerolstein, accompanied by one single companion, entered the room. Samuel and his wife silently passed upstairs to the floor above, leaving the two alone.

Franz of Gerolstein, then at the age of twenty-five, tall of stature and at once graceful and robust, presented an appearance both noble and impressive. In his face could be read frankness, resolution, and generosity. He was simply dressed. His companion, who was evidently a woman disguised in male habiliments, seemed as young as he, though she was really thirty. In spite of their rare beauty, her features bore the stamp of virility. Her figure was tall and lithe; a brownish down marked strongly her upper lip; everything harmonized with her masculine garments. Yet the beauty of this woman was of a sinister character. The marble-like pallor of her brow, the flashes of her black eyes, the contraction of her pupils, the bitterness of the smile, frequently cruel, which curled on her lips—all seemed to bear witness to the ravages of passion or to some incurable chagrin. She seemed either a superb courtesan, or a repentant Magdalen.

Neither Franz nor his companion broke the silence of the lower room for an instant. The Prince spoke first, in a voice grave and almost solemn:

"Victoria, it is now three months since my visit to the Prison of the Repentant Women. Your beauty, marked with a depth of sadness, seized possession of me at once. I learned why you had been condemned to confinement. Those reasons, once learned, moved me deeply. From that time dates the interest with which you have inspired me. By the intervention of a powerful friend, I am fortunate enough to have secured your release."

"Yes, I owe you my liberty," responded she whom he called Victoria, in a virile voice. "And moreover, you have given me, in my misfortune, many proofs of affection."

"But the interest I have shown you has other springs than in your misfortune—although that has much augmented it."

"What may they be, Franz? Speak—I am listening."

The Prince paused in silence for a second, and then asked:

"Know you who I am?"

"Have you not told me that you were a student in one of the universities of Germany, your native land?"

"I deceived you as to my station, Victoria. I am no student."

"You deceived me! You whom I thought so true?"

"You will soon learn for what cause I hid from you the truth. But first I would make you aware of the nature of the sentiments you inspire in me. I can no longer hold back the confession. Hear me, then, Victoria—"

The young woman shuddered, stopped the Prince, and said in tones of bitterness:

"Unless I greatly mistake, I foresee the end of this speech, Franz. So before you proceed, and in the hope of sparing you a refusal which would be an insult to you, I must declare that I have not changed since I met you. I must repeat what I said to you in our first interview: My heart is dead to love—one single passion rules me, and that is, vengeance. I have hid from you nothing of the past."

"Aye, I know that you have suffered. Victoria, if your heart is dead, mine is no longer mine. I left behind in Germany a young girl, an angel of candor, of virtue, of beauty. She is poor and obscure of birth, but I have sworn before God to make her my wife. I shall remain true to my love and to my oath."

"Oh, thanks, Franz, thanks for your confidence. It has lifted from me a fearsome apprehension," said Victoria, with a sigh of joy. "I love you with the tenderness of a sister, or rather, of a friend. For I am no longer a woman, and it would have been cruelty on my part to inspire in you a sentiment I could not share. But what, then, is the nature of your feeling towards me?"

"I feel for you the tender compassion due to the sorrows of your childhood and early youth—a profound esteem for the qualities which in you have survived, have overcome, all the causes of your degradation;—and finally, Victoria, I am united to you by an indissoluble bond which reaches into the most distant past—that of kinship."

Victoria gazed at the Prince in a sort of stupor as he proceeded: "We are of one blood, Victoria. We are relatives. One cradle, one origin, embraced our two families. Have you ever read the records your fathers have handed down from age to age, for now over sixteen centuries?"

"I learned of those writings during the two years I spent with my mother and brother, subsequent to the event I have related to you. The reading of our annals, added to all the ferments of hate, already planted in my soul, and to the disappearance of my father, now dead or languishing in some pit of the Bastille, all created and matured in me that craving for vengeance, or rather for reprisals, which now possesses me. I long to serve that vengeance, at the cost of my life, if need be. That is why I have consented to this initiation, the hour of which is now approached. Vengeance will be but justice, and I wish it to be implacable."

"The hour is indeed arrived, Victoria, and also the moment to reveal to you what we are to each other. You have in your plebeian annals a princely name, that of Charles of Gerolstein. That prince was a descendant of Gaëlo the Pirate, who in the Tenth Century accompanied old Rolf, chief of the Northman pirates, to the siege of Paris.[2] One of the descendants of Gaëlo, taking his departure from Norway, went, some time in the Tenth Century, to establish himself with one of the independent tribes of Germany. His courage, his military prowess, caused his election as chief of the tribe. His son, equal to his father for wisdom and bravery, succeeded him to the command. The chieftainship from that time forward became hereditary in the family. Later, the tribe of Gerolstein became one of the foremost in the German confederation. Thus did the descendants of Gaëlo found the sovereign house of Gerolstein, to-day represented by my father, who now holds sway in his German principality. Our relationship is beyond doubt, Victoria, and the bonds thereof were again strengthened in the Sixteenth Century, when, in the religious wars, the ancestors of us both fought together under Admiral Coligny."

"So, Franz, you are of the race of sovereigns," Victoria made answer. Then she continued: "It is now three months since you rescued me from prison. Shame, grief, self-contempt have deterred me from returning to my mother and brother. I am penniless. I wished to earn my living as a sempstress, a trade in which my mother instructed me during my stay with her. That would be the wisest thing to do. Why have you opposed my desires?"

"Because I thought you could serve the cause of humanity more fruitfully than by occupying yourself with the needle."

"You told me that I was to go through a novitiate of several months, during which time I might demand no assistance in my work. I accepted of you the money necessary for my modest needs. You were to me both brother and teacher. I saw you every day for hours. Little by little my eyes were opened to the light. Radiant horizons dazzled my vision. You filled me with your generous aspirations. You fired me with that fever of devotion and resignation, that thirst for sacrifices, from which spring saints and martyrs. You followed with interest my progress in the new path that you opened out to me. Day by day I wished that my initiation might end. I wished to take my part in action, in your projects. But now that you have revealed your birth, your station, I begin to doubt you. Is the object of your society really that which you have taught me it was, the recovery of the rights ravaged from the disinherited classes?"

"The least doubt on your part on that score, Victoria, would be a cruel blow to me. We have taken arms for justice and right."

"Pardon me, Franz. Then the level, that inflexible emblem—the social level—"

"Is our emblem. Equality of rights for man and woman!"

"It is your emblem, my lord? Yours, the son of a sovereign?"

"The aim of my life is the triumph of liberty, the birth of the Republic! Hear me, Victoria. You have borne the hardships, the sufferings, the shame of a prison. Which, you or a person unknown to prison horrors, knows them better? Which would hate them more?"

"I read your thought. Despotism itself has taught you its horror."

"And you will no longer wonder at me—of a sovereign race, but yet as lowly of origin as you, as both our families originated in the same place—when I take the level as my emblem?"

"I shall wonder no more, Franz; but to my wonder succeeds a glow of admiration." With her eyes full of tears, and bowing her knee before the Prince of Gerolstein, Victoria kissed his hand, saying, "May you be blessed and glorified for your generous sentiments."

"Rise, Victoria," answered the Prince with emotion. "My conduct does not merit your admiration. It is but a puny sacrifice for us to make of our privileges, compared with the grandeur of our cause." Then after a pause, he resumed in mild and grave tones: "But now reflect on this solemn moment of your initiation. There is still time for you to retract your allegiance to us."

"Franz, after three months of proof, I shall not weaken at the last moment. I am ready for the ceremony."

"Think of the terrible vows you are about to take."

"Be they what they may, I shall not be found wanting in faith, courage, or devotion."

"I wished to reveal to you our family connection in order that you could accept from me without embarrassment, as should be between relatives, your means of livelihood for the future, should you not care to carry out your plan. Your liberty of action shall remain complete and absolute."

"I shall always accept from you, Franz, a service without blushing. But more than ever before, am I resolved to pledge myself to your cause, to the cause of the expropriated—if you think me worthy to serve it."

"I shall not speak to you of the perils confronting us. You are above all, valiant. But it is necessary to reconcile you to a complete renunciation of self. You will be an instrument; not a blind one, but at once intelligent and passive. The Voyants are obliged to employ, for the deliverance, regeneration and happiness of mankind, some of the very means which the Society of Jesus uses to enslave and brutalize it. The sword, according as it is used, may be the dagger of the assassin or the glaive of the citizen wielded in defense of his country. It was the glaive with which Brutus opposed the Roman aristocracy, and smote Caesar."

"I know the end toward which I shall be guided, the triumph of right and of justice. I shall obey."

"Perhaps you will also have to renounce your hopes of vengeance and reprisals. Will you be equal to that?"

The young woman shook and her features darkened under the stress of the internal struggle which these words caused her. Finally she broke out in an altered voice:

"What, Franz! Shall centuries of oppression not have their day of retribution? Shall the crimes of ages go unpunished? Shall the shades of our martyred fathers not be appeased by vengeance? Shall the example of inexorable justice not be given to the world, in the name of eternal good? What! They would deny us one day, one single day of legitimate reprisals after fifteen centuries of crime? Must the victims be constrained to pardon their executioners?"

"Victoria, those who seek the birth of the reign of fraternity on earth hold blood in abhorrence. They hope to accomplish the freedom, the regeneration of mankind by mercy and pardon, and by educating the working class."

"Then I renounce my vengeance!" said the young woman. "But if the eternal enemies of humanity oppose themselves, by trickery or by violence, to the emancipation of the oppressed; if on their part, the conflict is engaged without either mercy or pity, shall the victims have to kneel, and offer their throats to the knife?"

"In that case, Victoria, may the blood fall on the heads of those who first shed it. Accursed be those who respond by treachery or violence to our words of love, of concord, of justice and of reparation! Then will be fulfilled once more, perhaps for the last time, that law of human progress, which, so many times across the ages, has encrimsoned the conquest of the most equitable reforms. Insurrection will have to impose upon the oppressors concessions the voluntary granting of which would have saved the world from all these woes. Accursed be those who shall then attempt to oppose force to the demands of the times. Then, Victoria, there shall be war, war tremendous, pitiless! It will be the unchaining of popular passions. No bridle can hold them. The justice of God will pass over a terror-stricken world. Then, in the midst of that tempest which shall overturn thrones and altars—then, Victoria, you shall appear, terrible as the Goddess of Vengeance, striking with her broad sword the old world, condemned in the name of the good of the peoples."

"Oh, my life, my whole life for one hour of such vengeance!" cried the young woman, palpitating in wild exaltation. "Aye, let my life be a hundred times more miserable, more abject, more horrible than that which a King put upon me—I shall live it twice over in order to assist in the hour of this vengeance. A day, an hour of reprisals, for my life of misery!"

"Come then, Victoria, you shall be ours as we shall be yours, in life, in death, in triumph, in vengeance!"

So speaking, the Prince of Gerolstein led Victoria Lebrenn out of Samuel's chamber, across the garden, and into a deserted and half-subterranean green-house.

CHAPTER III.
THE VOYANTS.

The half-underground hot-house into which Franz of Gerolstein conducted his new convert was dimly lighted by a lamp placed at the foot of a stairway leading still further beneath the earth. On the first step of this staircase Franz found a package from which he produced two loose robes and two masks. Addressing his companion, he said:

"Put this robe on over your garments, and hide your countenance behind this mask."

They descended the stairs, and arrived in a corridor, lighted by the hanging lamp whose rays had guided them from above. At the extremity of the passage stood a man cloaked in red and with a black mask over his visage. He held a naked sword in his hand, and advanced two steps to meet the newcomers.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"We are of the disinherited," replied Franz. "For father we had enslavement, for mother ignorance; our condition is misery. We are of the poor, the oppressed, the damned here below."

"What do you wish, my brother?"

"Liberty, knowledge, happiness."

"Knock at that door," commanded the masked figure in red, stepping aside to make way for Franz and his companion. "Knock and it shall be opened unto you; seek, and ye shall find."

The door opened, and as soon closed behind the two initiates. For a moment they were blinded by the brilliance which flooded the subterraneous chamber to which they had now penetrated. It was lighted by seventy candelabra, each bearing seven candles—again the mystic number. The walls were covered with red drapery; at the further end a raised platform formed a dais with closed curtains; on the front of the dais was the picture of a carpenter's level. Several steps from the platform, on a draped table, were thrown in confusion a royal crown, a scepter, a pontifical tiara, a bishop's crosier, several collars of chivalric orders, and a few ducal or princely coronets; besides these there lay in the heap some pouches, half open, and full of gold and silver pieces.

Directly behind the table on which thus lay cluttered the emblems of religion, royalty, aristocracy and wealth, stood seven masked men, garbed in long robes, silent and erect, their arms crossed on their chests, seven specters, seven fantastic apparitions. The one whose duty it was to officiate at the reception of initiates stood in the center. Three Voyants were ranged to his right, three to his left. He addressed Victoria, who keenly felt the impression produced on her by the strange spectacle:

"Woman, your age?"

"Fifteen centuries, and more. I was born the first day of the enslavement and misery of my brothers."

"What would you?"

"The end of oppression. I wish to beat down thrones and altars, privileges of birth and of fortune, all the hoary monuments of ignorance, of slavery, and of iniquity, all the monopolies, all the privileges which flourish upon the people."

"What will happen when the level shall have passed over the old world, and when the exploiters of the people shall have disappeared?"

"The darkness of ages shall be superseded by the revivifying warmth and the fruitful light of the sun; harvests of abundance will cover with their sheaves the soil tilled by a fecund revolution."

"Is your severance from the old world complete?"

"I have broken with the old world, and rallied to the new."

"Behold this pontifical tiara, this kingly crown; gaze on these symbols of nobility, these sacks of gold and silver. You may demand of kings, of priests, of nobles, of the rich, the enjoyments of life, all by devoting yourself body and soul to these idols and to tyranny."

"It is my wish to overthrow those idols. I vow an implacable hatred to the enemies of the people."

"From this hour," responded the cloaked president, apparently satisfied with the interrogatory, "you shall be ours as we will be yours. Our device so has it—All for each; each for all. By this device, co-operation will replace in the future the selfishness of the masters of the old world. Who caused all the evils of which selfishness has been the source? He who first dug a ditch about a piece of common land and said 'This is mine.' The usurpation was consecrated by men simple-minded enough to respect these arbitrary boundaries; the spoliation of several by one gradually became a right; the deed became the law, the exception the rule. The tyranny growing out of this principle, initiated by violence and perpetuated by custom, became rooted in the peoples' mind, till at length they came to own an infant mewling in the cradle for their King, and to kiss the boot of the Pope. What consequences have not come out of these aberrations! Peoples have throttled each other. The earth has its damned ones, more to be pitied than those with whom superstition peoples hell. The damned on earth call themselves vassals, serfs, proletarians, artisans, laborers! It is of these damned ones that we seek the redemption. Think you the overturning of thrones and altars will suffice for the deliverance of these victims? No, alas, no. To the tyranny of King and Church will succeed an exploitation still more tyrannical, that of the tribe of Business. Then the dispenser of work and of wages will exert an empire absolute over his wage-earning workingmen. On the ruins of the thrones and altars will soon grow up the oligarchy of merchants and bourgeois.

"That oligarchy must also in its end be overthrown," continued the initiator. "That is our final aim.[3] Our design is to unite by the bond of a common faith, thousands of initiates in every country of Europe—first in Germany, then in France, in England, and elsewhere; to bring them gradually, by initiation, into the knowledge of the object of our association; to have them swear obedience to its chiefs, visible and invisible, and chosen from all ranks of society, from the highest to the lowest; to recruit our partisans and co-workers in the very councils of the Kings themselves, in the heart of the palace of the Popes. Our enemies will find themselves, without their knowing it, perpetually under our eyes; their plots will be revealed to us; their own creatures, to all appearances the most devoted to them, will obey our orders, and undermine the foundations of their social edifice. Then in the hour of redemption the old world shall crumble and go down under its debris of priests, nobles, and Kings.

"Woman," continued the master of ceremonies, outstretching his hand toward Victoria, "you now know our purposes. Here are our sinews of action. An annual assessment levied on all our brothers, who number themselves by millions, makes us masters of a mighty treasure. That is the source of the wealth in which revel those of our number whose duty it is to mix with the mighty ones of the day, sharing in their dalliances and dissipations—foxes to deceive, wolves to devour our enemies. Victoria Lebrenn, it is for you, thanks to your remarkable gifts of nature, to become one of our most active auxiliaries. But to serve well our cause, it will be necessary that you abdicate your own will, and that you stand ready, at any hour of the day or night, to follow our orders."

"Command; I obey."

"I must first acquaint our brothers with the particulars of your life, as you have set them down in your own hand, and confided them to your converter."

Picking up a roll of manuscript, the presiding officer proceeded to read the story of Victoria Lebrenn, as follows:

"In the year 1772, being then eleven years and a half old, I was one day crossing the garden of the Tuileries, carrying dinner to my father, a workman in a printing shop in Bac Street. I paused a moment to watch some little children at play. A woman well dressed and with decent features drew close to me, examined me attentively, and made me some compliments on my good looks. Then noting the porringer with my father's dinner, and learning from me that I was on my way to him, she proposed that I go with her in her carriage. Delighted to have a carriage-ride for the first time in my life, I readily agreed. Near the Draw Bridge a coach was waiting, into which I got with my conductress. She offered me some lozenges from a box, which I accepted. The lozenges contained some species of narcotic, for in a few minutes I had fallen into a deep sleep.

"When I awoke, it was night. I was lying in a great bed with damask curtains. The ceiling of my chamber was of gold, and the room itself was richly furnished. Beside my pillow was seated the woman by whose agency I had been taken to the place. I asked her where I was. I wept at the anxiety of my parents; she calmed me, promising that they should soon be with me. She added that I was in the house of a person of great quality, who was interested in my youth, wished me much good, and would enrich my family. I knew I was not dreaming, but thought myself the heroine of a fairy tale. Two women entered. They made me rise, and put me in a perfumed bath. Then they dressed my hair, one of them winding a string of pearls through it. They dressed me in silk and lace, and served me with supper on plates of vermilion and gold. I experienced a sort of vertigo; I obeyed mechanically. Still, I kept asking for my father and mother. The woman of the carriage assured me that they would soon arrive, and be overjoyed to see me so beautiful. A hard-visaged man entered the chamber. I heard the old woman call him Monsieur Lebel, and speak to him with great respect. The man scrutinized me carefully. 'Little one,' he said to me, 'you must go to bed now.' Then he went out.

"Doubtless, in the course of the repast, they had served me with several glasses of heady wine, for I felt my reason clouding. I allowed myself to be put to bed, though not without again inquiring for my parents. They promised to take me back to them the next day. The woman and her two companions bade me good night, snuffed the candles in the candelabrum, and left me for light a single alabaster lamp, which threw a pale illumination over the spacious room. I was about to succumb less to sleep than to the leaden lethargy into which I had been plunged, when a start of fright restored to me, for a few moments, all my senses. My bed was set in an alcove. Two of the gilded panels which formed the alcove slid back in their grooves, and I beheld an old man in a dressing gown. I uttered a cry of astonishment—it was the King, Louis XV. I had seen him but a short time before at a public ceremony in Paris. I was stupefied into immobility. Close behind the King, in the secret passageway leading into the alcove, stood a beautiful young woman half-clad in a night robe, and holding a candle-stick. She laughed aloud, and said to the King, pushing him by the shoulder—'Go on, France, it is the loving hour!'

"That woman, I afterwards learned, was Countess Du Barry. I fainted with fear. I was the victim of an odious assault. Five days afterward, another poor child, aged like me, hardly twelve, the daughter of a miller of Trianon, was delivered after the same manner to the lust of Louis XV, and gave him the small-pox of which he died. Two days before his death, the woman of whom I have spoken, one of the royal procuresses, made me leave by night the little apartment in the palace of Versailles, and get with her into a carriage, assuring me she was about to restore me to my father, whom I continually called for, in tears. I still was not fully aware of my dishonor. Instead of returning me to my home, the procuress left me in an isolated dwelling not far from Versailles. High walls surrounded the garden; the only entry was by a gate which was kept under careful guard. Flight was impossible.

"In that house I found several young girls, of whom the youngest was barely my age, and the oldest, twenty. The place was the habitual haunt of great lords, prelates, and financiers. They came to sup with us—suppers that ended in shameful orgies. My companions, the immature victims, like myself, of kingly debauchery, gradually made known to me the extent of my disgrace. At first I was overcome by shame; then familiarity with vice, the contagion of example, the influence of the corrupt atmosphere in which I dwelt, stifled my better sentiments and my early training. I would never have dared at this time to return to my family. I reached my sixteenth year without having left that house of ill fame. By that time reflection and chagrin had matured my reason; then there began to grow up beside the sense of my degradation, the implacable hatred of the King and of those who, after him, had plunged me still deeper into the mire of infamy. I assisted daily in the orgies of the seigneurs of the Court, of the Church and of the Bourse. They never supposed creatures of our sort capable of attaching any importance to what they said in our presence; they expressed without hesitation their disdain and aversion for the people. Just about that time, several disturbances brought on by the dearness of provisions had been quelled at the musket's mouth; our guests regretted that the acts of repression had not been still more pitiless, saying, 'These flames can never be quenched save by rivers of blood.'

"Thus there was created in me, a daughter of the people, a blind thirst for vengeance. Louis XV was dead, but I followed with my hatred both royalty and nobility, clergy and financiers. Our relations with the men of this class taught me to see in them our merciless enemies. Still my material comfort and my early degradation engendered in me a cowardly inertia. I felt neither the courage nor the desire to flee the domicile where I was held. I was seized with mortal terror at the bare thought of encountering my father, my mother, my young brother; of soiling our hearth with my presence. And, finally, knowing that their life was poor and laborious, it seemed impossible to me to summon the will to work and to share their privations. Ease and luxury were enervating, were depraving me. Thus passed several years. I reached the age of twenty. The woman who kept the place died, and my companions and I were turned adrift. I was without resources and unable to earn my daily bread, my apprenticeship as a sempstress having been cut short by my kidnapping. The fear of misery, my determination not to continue in that abject life, the uncertainty of the future, and lastly my attachment to my family, overcame my shame and gave me the courage to return home. My parents believed me dead; my appearance overwhelmed them with joy and rendered them merciful. I confessed to them my past. They both covered me with tears and caresses, and withheld every reproach. My father gave me to read the plebeian legends of our family. Then my poor father, exasperated by the deed that marred my childhood, printed and distributed to the public with his own hand an account which he wrote and entitled A Night of Louis XV. A few days after the publication of this article, my father failed to come home at night. Since then we have had no trace of him. Doubtless he now is dead, or languishes in the cell of some State prison.

"For a year I remained with my mother and brother. I forced myself to live down my past. I took up again my sempstress's apprenticeship, and soon ceased to be a care to my mother. While my body had been stained, my heart remained pure. I had never felt the pangs of love. I now conceived a violent affection for a young sergeant in the French Guards named Maurice, the son of one of our neighbors. The young fellow did not know through what a slough my youth had been dragged, and thought me entirely worthy of him; so much did I dread his scorn that I had not the heart to disabuse him. He asked my hand of my mother. I begged her to hide from him my past shame; moved by my tears she consented to silence. We were affianced, Maurice and I. I had attained the summit of my prayers. I felt a secret remorse in deceiving the man who loyally offered me his hand, but I consoled myself with the thought of fulfilling scrupulously my marriage vows and making my husband as happy as possible. Cruelly was my dissimulation punished. One day, while walking between my mother and my betrothed, we met one of my old companions in misery. She knew me and addressed me in terms of a terrible meaning. Terrified at the expression of Maurice's face at this revelation, my heart broke—I collapsed. When I came to myself my mother stood at my side in tears. Commanded by my beloved to tell him all, for he still could not believe in my past indignity, my mother dared no longer hide the truth. Maurice was stricken dumb with grief, for he loved me with all his heart. He returned to the barracks in bewilderment, and chancing to come into the presence of his colonel, the Count of Plouernel, did not think to salute him. The Count, angered at this want of respect, knocked off Maurice's hat with a blow of his cane. He, half crazed with despair, raised his hand against his colonel. The crime was punishable by death under the scourge. The next day the young sergeant expired under that inhuman torture. The death of the man I loved threw me into a sort of frenzy. Often before, as the record of our family tells, had our fathers, as serfs or vassals, found themselves in arms face to face with the race of Plouernel. This memory redoubled my hatred for the colonel. Disgusted with life by the death of my only love, I resolved to avenge on the Count of Plouernel the decease of Maurice. I repaired to the quarters of the Guards at the hour when I knew I could find the colonel in his rooms. My hope was dashed. My paleness and agitation aroused the suspicions of the two under-officers to whom I addressed myself. They demanded the reason of my desire to see their chief. The brusqueness of my replies, my sinister and wild appearance strengthened their mistrust. They fell upon me, searched me, and found in my pocket—a dagger. Then I told them why I came. They arrested me; they haled me to the Repentant Women. I was subjected in that prison to the most barbarous treatment. One day a stranger visited the place. He questioned me. My answers impressed him. A few days later I was set at liberty, thanks to the efforts of this stranger, Franz, who came in person to fetch me from the Repentant Women."

The chief initiator concluded the reading of the melancholy recital, and replaced the pages of manuscript on the table before him. "The account of our sister is authenticated throughout," he said.

"To this story of my sad life," declared Victoria, "there is nothing to add. Only to-day did I learn the name of the generous stranger to whom I owe my release from prison; and again I declare myself ready to pledge my devotion and service to the cause of humanity. Let the war upon the oppressors be implacable!"

"From the most obscure to the most illustrious, all devotion is equal in the eyes of our great cause, and in the eyes of its most noble martyr, the immortal crucified master of Nazareth," added the initiator, drawing aside the curtains of the dais and disclosing a Christ on a crucifix, surmounted with the level of equality. Then he continued, speaking to Victoria, "Woman, in the name of the poor carpenter of Nazareth, the friend of the sorrowing and the disinherited, the enemy of the priests and the rulers of his day—woman, do you swear faith, love, and obedience to our cause?"

"I swear!" answered Victoria in a ringing voice, raising her hands toward the crucifix. "I swear faith and obedience to our cause!"

"You are now ours as we are yours," replied the officiant, dropping the curtains. "From to-morrow on you will receive our instructions from our brother Franz. To work! The opening of the States General shall be the signal for the enfranchisement of the people. The thrones shall disappear beneath the scourge of the revolution!"[4]

At that moment the watch posted in the corridor of the Voyant temple of liberty struck thrice precipitately on the door, giving the alarm. The lights which had cast their radiance over the meeting went out as if by magic, and a profound darkness took possession of the underground chamber.

From the obscurity was heard the voice of Anacharsis Clootz, the masked officiant, saying to the other Voyants who had been present at the initiation of Victoria Lebrenn:

"Baboeuf, go with Buonarotti, Danton and Condorcet by the right exit. I shall take the left, together with Franz, Loustalot, and our neophyte."

CHAPTER IV.
LITTLE RODIN.

While Anacharsis Clootz, the rich Dutch banker, later to be known as the "Orator of the Human Race," was thus presiding at the initiation of Victoria Lebrenn into the sect of the Voyants, Samuel, left alone with his wife by the departure of Franz of Gerolstein and his companion, had been just preparing to continue his dictation to Bathsheba, when he heard the street-outlook rapping discreetly at the gate. Samuel, hastening at the call, found the watcher holding by the hand a young boy who cried bitterly.

"The poor little fellow has lost his way," said the lookout, passing the boy in to Samuel. "I found him sitting down there by the buttress of the gate, sobbing. You would better keep him with you for the night, and to-morrow, in the daylight, he can be taken back to his folks—if you can find out from him where he lives."

Touched by the child's grief, Samuel took him into the lower room and both he and Bathsheba bent all their energies toward quieting him. The boy seemed to be about nine or ten years old. He was poorly clad, and of a wan and ailing appearance. His face presented none of the smiling prettiness usual with children of his age. His peaked features, his sickly and cadaverous pallor, his thin, pale lips, his sly and shifty, yet keen and observing glance—revealing a precocious cleverness—in fine, something low, mean and crafty in the look of the boy would, no doubt, have inspired aversion rather than sympathy in the breasts of the couple were it not for the cruel desertion of which he seemed the victim. Hardly had he entered the room when he dropped to his knees, crossed himself, and clasping his hands exclaimed through his tears:

"Blessed be You, Lord God, for having pitied Your little servant and led him to this good sir and this good lady. Save them a place in Your paradise!"

Dragging himself on his knees toward the Jew and his wife, the urchin kissed their hands effusively and with far too great a flood of gratitude for sincerity. Bathsheba took him on her knees, and said to him as she wiped his tear-stained face, "Don't cry, poor little one. We'll take care of you to-night, and to-morrow we'll take you home. But where do you live, and what is your name?"

"My name is Claude Rodin," answered the child; and he added, with a monstrous sigh, "The good God has been merciful to my parents, and took them to His holy paradise."

"Poor dear creature," answered Samuel, "you are, then, an orphan?"

"Alas, yes, good sir! My dear dead father used to be holy water dispenser at the Church of St. Medard. My dear dead mother used to rent out chairs in the same parish. They are now both with the angels; they are walking with the blessed saints."

"And where do you live, my poor child?"

"With Monsieur the Abbot Morlet, my good lady; a holy man of God, and my kind god-father."

"But how did it happen, my child, that you went astray at this late hour of the night?" asked Samuel. "You must have left home all alone?"

"Just after benediction," answered little Rodin, crossing himself devoutly, "Monsieur the Abbot, my good god-father, took me to walk with him in the Place Royale. There were a lot of people gathered around some mountebanks. I sinned!" cried the boy, beating his chest in contrition, "the Lord God punished me. It is my fault—my fault—my very great fault! Will God ever forgive me my sin?"

"But what great sin did you commit?" questioned Bathsheba.

"Mountebanks are heretics, fallen, and destined for hell," answered little Rodin, pressing his lips together with a wicked air, and striking his breast again. "I sinned, hideously sinned, in watching the games of those reprobates. The Lord God punished me by separating me from my good god-father. The swaying of the crowd carried him away from me. No use to look for him! No use to call him! It was impossible to find him. It was my very great fault!"

"And how did you get here from the Place Royale? The two points are far apart."

"Having said my prayers, both mental and oral, several times, in order to call to my aid the divine pity," replied Rodin emphatically and with an air of beatitude, "I started out to find my way home, away down at the end of the Roule suburb, near the Folie-Beaujon."

"Poor child," interrupted Bathsheba. "More than a league to travel! How I pity the dear child. Go on with your story," she said to him.

"It is a long way, true enough," added Samuel, "but all he had to do was to follow the boulevards. How did you come to lose the road?"

"A worthy gentleman, of whom I inquired the way, told me I would reach home quicker by taking another street. I walked all evening, but all I did was to get lost. The wrath of the Lord pursued me!" After sighing and beating his breast again, little Rodin continued: "Then, at last, passing your house, I felt so tired, so tired, that I fell on your door-step from weariness, and prayed the good God to come to my help. He deigned to hear the prayer of His little servant, and so you came to pity me, my good sir and lady. May God receive you in heaven!"

"You shall spend the night here, dear child, and to-morrow we will take you back to your god-father—so don't weep any more."

"Alas, good sir, the holy man will be so anxious! He will think me lost!"

"It is impossible now to calm his anxiety. But are you hungry or thirsty? Will you have something to eat or drink?"

"No, good mistress; only I'm terribly sleepy, and wish I could lie down."

"I can well believe it," said Bathsheba, addressing her spouse; "after such fatigue and worry, the little fellow must be worn out. It is only natural that he should be dying to go to sleep."

"But where shall we put him? We are in a tight fix. We have but one bed."

"Oh, good sir," eagerly broke in little Rodin, "don't put yourself out for me. I shall sleep very well right there, if you will let me;" and the boy indicated a re-enforced and brass-bound chest which his keen eye had spied, and which formed a seat at the further end of the room. "That will do me, very well."

"I never thought of the chest," remarked Samuel. "The boy is right. At his age one sleeps anywhere. With plenty of warm covering he will pass the night there almost as comfortably as in his own bed. It all comes out for the best."

"I'll go fetch a cushion and a cloak, and fix him up as well as possible," added Bathsheba, leaving the room.

The boy sat down and huddled himself together as if unable to resist the lassitude and sleep which weighed upon him. His head sank upon his chest, and his eyes closed. But immediately peeping under his lids he saw on the table close beside him pens, ink, and several sheets of freshly written paper. It was Samuel's unfinished letter to Levi.

"I surely was inspired in asking to sleep here," murmured the boy, aside; "let me recall without forgetting anything the orders of my good god-father," he thought, as the Jew's wife returned with the makeshift bedding she had gone in search of.

"Here, dear boy," she said, "I'll put you to bed and tuck you in well from the cold."

Simulating a heavy sleep, the urchin did not stir.

"Poor creature—asleep already," said Bathsheba. "I'll have to carry him." Lifting little Rodin in her arms she placed him on the chest, while Samuel arranged the cushion under his head and covered him up with the cloak. These cares completed, Samuel and his wife turned again to the completion of the note to their cousin Levi; but his thoughts having been disarranged by the frequent interruptions, Samuel asked his wife to re-read the letter from the beginning, after which he finished it, while the young boy was seemingly sound asleep.

Bathsheba had just taken down the last of her husband's dictation when suddenly another rap resounded at the gate.

"Samuel," cried the Jewess, pale and trembling, "that time the watcher gave the alarm signal."

Samuel went to the gate, opened the wicket and asked the lookout:

"What is up?"

"For nearly quarter of an hour I have remarked two men, closely wrapped in their cloaks, who came in from St. Gervais Street, and halted at the corner of the garden wall. They examined the house minutely. Immediately I fell on one of the stone benches in the dark passageway and pretended to be asleep. Two or three times they passed by without noticing me; they kept walking up and down, now examining the exterior of the building, now conversing in low tones. Finally they saw me, and said aloud—'There is a wine-bibber sleeping himself sober.' They walked once more to some distance; then returning towards me, I heard them utter these words: 'And now, let us report to the sergeant.' They quickened their steps and vanished around the corner of St. Francois Street. Now you are warned, Master Samuel."

"When you first observed them, was anyone within?" asked Samuel. "Are you sure of that, lookout?"

"No one—except the child I brought to you, and whom you took in yourself."

"These two men must be attached to the police, since they intended to go straight to the sergeant; could their suspicions as to what went on here have been awakened by their observations to-night?"

"There was no one in the street while our brothers were arriving. I am sure of it; I kept good and sure guard."

"The suspicions of these fellows must, then, date from further back than this evening. But, in that case, at the first suspicion of one of his agents, the Lieutenant of Police would have had the house turned topsy-turvy by his searchers. There is something inexplicable in the conduct of these men. However, if they guessed that you were not really asleep, but could hear, I believe they would have enjoyed giving you a false scare. But then, to what purpose? No matter, forewarned is forearmed. Maintain your watch, and the instant you get sight or sound of the police sergeant, notify me with the usual signal."

Samuel thereupon ran to the green-house and gave the alarm, which, repeated by the Voyant on guard at the door of the temple, was the signal for the dispersal of the meeting. Then the Jew returned to the room where his wife awaited him.

"Well, my friend," asked Bathsheba hurriedly in an undertone, and unable to control her anxiety, "what is going on?"

"The danger is not imminent. Nevertheless, I have just warned our brothers to leave the temple by the two secret issues. The flag-stone which masks the descent under the hot-house will be replaced, for the police spies were watching the house. They will cause it to be searched, they must be able to discover nothing, and our friends must have time to escape. Reassure yourself, my dear wife; we run not the slightest danger."

"Lower, my friend, lower, lest you wake the child," cautioned Bathsheba, indicating little Rodin, who seemed to be still sound asleep, although his eyelids were imperceptibly winking. "Oh, may the alarms of this night be vain, and may all danger escape you!"

"Dear wife, let us trust to Providence. It inspired me to write that letter to our cousin Levi, and now, whatever may come, I am prepared. The sacred mission bequeathed to us by my grandfather will be fulfilled, and I shall have saved the heritage of Monsieur Marius Rennepont."

"First—a movable flag conceals the descent under the green-house. Second—this renegade of a Jew is going to safeguard the fortune of a certain Marius Rennepont," recited little Rodin to himself, not having lost a word of the conversation between Samuel and his wife. "Oh, now, I mustn't forget that name, nor the two secret exits of the temple, nor the movable flag-stone of the green-house—nor a lot of other things!"

The alarm given by the lookout proved premature, for neither the sergeant of police nor his men appeared on the scene that night to ransack the house in St. Francois Street.

CHAPTER V.
COUNT AND JESUIT.

More than four months had elapsed since the night on which Victoria Lebrenn was received into the society of the Illuminati, and on which little Rodin, with froward slyness, had penetrated the secrets of the Jew Samuel, the guardian of the Rennepont fortune. In short, it was the night of July 13, 1789.

The Plouernel mansion, in the suburb of St. Germain, had been built, in the beginning of the Seventeenth Century, by the order of Raoul of Plouernel, peer and Marshal of France, and ambassador to Spain. This seigneur, residing habitually at Versailles or at Paris, left to his stewards and bailiffs the administration of his domains in Auvergne, Beauvoisis, and Brittany. He never visited his country seat of Plouernel, devastated at the time of the Breton uprising.[5] Marshal Plouernel had had transported to his establishment in Paris all his family portraits, the oldest of which represented Neroweg, the leude of Clovis and count of the country of Auvergne. These portraits now adorned one of the halls of the Plouernel mansion; among them was one draped in black crepe, in token of mourning. The effigy hidden beneath the veil of black was that of Colonel Plouernel, traitor, according to the traditions of the monarchy, to his faith and to his King.

The first lackey of the Count of Plouernel, named Lorrain, the same who some months previously had carried the missive to Samuel the Jew, was showing into the Hall of the Portraits Abbot Morlet, of the Society of Jesus, a holy man of God and god-father to little Rodin, who, in fact, resembled him so closely as to be taken with reason for his son rather than his god-son. The Abbot was about forty years of age, clad in black, of middle height, weazened and nervous, with a fleshless, almost bald forehead over which fell a few straggling hairs of tawny yellow. His physiognomy, evil, insidious or beaming in turn, was above all remarkable for its caustic smile and its half-veiled glance, resembling that of a serpent. The Abbot was agitated, uneasy; he said to the lackey who introduced him:

"Announce me to your master without delay."

"Monsieur Abbot," respectfully answered Lorrain, "my lord will not keep you waiting an instant. His valets are just completing his toilet."

"His toilet!" exploded the Abbot. "To be thinking of such trifles—he must be out of his head!"

Then pausing a moment and recalling the air of preparation and the brilliant lighting of the parlors he had passed through on the ground floor, he added:

"The Count seems to be expecting a large company?"

"My lord is giving a grand supper."

"How is it that the agitation prevailing in Paris since day before yesterday and up to this very night does not compel the Count to be at the head of his regiment of the Guards?"

"Monsieur the Abbot is unaware that my lord journeyed this morning to Versailles to hand in his resignation, and to surrender the command of his regiment."

"To surrender the command of his regiment!" echoed the Jesuit, stupefied, and as if he could not believe what he heard. "What—"

At that moment Lorrain left the hall, walking backward as his master entered.

Count Gaston of Plouernel had reached at this time his thirtieth year. The facial traits of his Germanic ancestry were reproduced in him. The whole effect of his person was one of audacity, haughtiness and arrogance. He presented the accepted type of the great seigneur of his time, and wore with grace his costume of plain blue cloth of Tours, spangled with silver and embroidered in gold. His taffeta vest was half lost to view under the billows of Alençon point lace which formed his shirt frill and rivalled for costly workmanship the flowing ruffles of his cuffs. His red-heeled shoes were fastened with diamond buckles. Diamonds also glittered in the hilt of his small-sword, which he wore ostentatiously slung under one of the tails of his coat.

At the sight of Abbot Morlet the Count seemed greatly surprised. He cordially extended to him his hand, however, saying: