The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy (the little red hen read aloud .txt) 📗

are more wretched, more indigent, more abased, than they were in the days of monarchical oppression. II

And so, on these balmy evenings of mid-April, family parties are gathered in the open air, around meagre suppers that are “fraternal” by order of the State. Family parties which make for camaraderie between the honest man and the thief, the sober citizen and the homeless vagabond, and help one to forget awhile the misery, the starvation, the slavery, the daily struggle for bare existence, in anticipation of the belated Millennium.

There is even laughter around the festive boards, fun and frolic. Jokes are cracked, mostly of a grim order. There is intoxication in the air: spring has got into the heads of the young. And there is even kissing under the shadows, lovemaking, sentiment; and here and there perhaps a shred of real happiness.

The provisions are scanty. Every family brings its own. Two or three herrings, sprinkled with shredded onions and wetted with a little vinegar, or else a few boiled prunes or a pottage of lentils and beans.

“Can you spare some of that bread, citizen?”

“Aye! if I can have a bite of your cheese.”

They are fraternal suppers! Do not, in the name of Liberty and Equality, let us forget that. And the whole of it was Robespierre’s idea. He conceived and carried it through, commanded the voices in the Convention that voted the money required for the tables, the benches, the tallow candles. He lives close by, in this very street, humbly, quietly, like a true son of the people, sharing house and board with citizen Duplay, the cabinetmaker, and with his family.

A great man, Robespierre! The only man! Men speak of him with bated breath, young girls with glowing eyes. He is the fetish, the idol, the demigod. No benefactor of mankind, no saint, no hero-martyr was ever worshipped more devotedly than this death-dealing monster by his votaries. Even the shade of Danton is reviled in order to exalt the virtues of his successful rival.

“Danton was gorged with riches: his pockets full, his stomach satisfied! But look at Robespierre!”

“Almost a wraith!⁠—so thin, so white!”

“An ascetic!”

“Consumed by the fire of his own patriotism.”

“His eloquence!”

“His selflessness!”

“You have heard him speak, citizen?”

A girl, still in her ’teens, her elbows resting on the table, her hands supporting her rounded chin, asks the question with bated breath. Her large grey eyes, hollow and glowing, are fixed upon her vis-à-vis, a tall, ungainly creature, who sprawls over the table, vainly trying to dispose of his long limbs in a manner comfortable to himself.

His hair is lank and matted with grease, his face covered in coal-dust; a sennight’s growth of beard, stubbly and dusty, accentuates the squareness of his jaw even whilst it fails to conceal altogether the cruel, sarcastic curves of his mouth. But for the moment, in the rapt eyes of the young enthusiast, he is a prophet, a seer, a human marvel: he has heard Robespierre speak.

“Was it in the Club, citizen Rateau?” another woman asks⁠—a young matron with a poor little starveling at her breast.

The man gives a loud guffaw, displays in the feeble, flickering light of the nearest torch a row of hideous uneven teeth, scored with gaps and stained with tobacco juice.

“In the Club?” he says with a curse, and spits in a convenient direction to show of his contempt for that or any other institution. “I don’t belong to any Club. There’s no money in my pocket. And the Jacobins and the Cordeliers like to see a man with a decent coat on his back.”

His guffaw broke in a rasping cough which seemed to tear his broad chest to ribbons. For a moment speech was denied him; even oaths failed to reach his lips, trembling like an unset jelly in this distressing spasm. His neighbours alongside the table, the young enthusiast opposite, the comely matron, paid no heed to him⁠—waited indifferently until the clumsy lout had regained his breath. This, mark you, was not an era of gentleness or womanly compassion, and an asthmatic mudlark was not like to excite pity. Only when he once more stretched out his long limbs, raised his head and looked about him, panting and blear-eyed, did the girl insist quietly:

“But you have heard Him speak!”

“Aye!” the ruffian replied drily. “I did.”

“When?”

“Night before last. Tenez! He was stepping out of citizen Duplay’s house yonder. He saw me leaning against the wall close by. I was tired, half asleep, what? He spoke to me and asked me where I lived.”

“Where you lived?” the girl echoed, disappointed.

“Was that all?” the matron added with a shrug of her shoulders.

The neighbours laughed. The men enjoyed the discomfiture of the women, who were all craning their necks to hear something great, something palpitating, about their idol.

The young enthusiast sighed, clasped her hands in favour.

“He saw that you were poor, citizen Rateau,” she said with conviction; “and that you were tired. He wished to help and comfort you.”

“And where did you say you lived, citizen?” the young matron went on, in her calm, matter-of-fact tone.

“I live far from here, the other side of the water, not in an aristocratic quarter like this one⁠—what?”

“You told Him you lived there?” the girl still insisted. Any scrap or crumb of information even remotely connected with her idol was manna to her body and balm to her soul.

“Yes, I did,” citizen Rateau assented.

“Then,” the girl resumed earnestly, “solance and comfort will come to you very soon, citizen. He never forgets. His eyes are upon you. He knows your distress and that you are poor and weary. Leave it to him, citizen Rateau. He will know how and when to help.”

“He will know, more like,” here broke in a harsh voice, vibrating with excitement, “how and when to lay his talons on an obscure and helpless citizen whenever his Batches for the guillotine are insufficient to satisfy his lust!”

A dull murmur greeted this tirade. Only those who sat close by the speaker knew which he