The Galley Slave's Ring; or, The Family of Lebrenn

"Either one thing or the other will happen – either the Republic of the bare-footed mob will be anarchy, the dictatorship, emigration, pillage, paper money, the guillotine, and war with all Europe – and then the thing will last six months at the longest, and Henry V will be brought back triumphantly by the Holy Alliance; or, on the contrary, their Republic will be benign, stupid, legal and moderate with universal suffrage for its foundation – "

"And, if so, uncle?"

"If so, it will last longer, but we shall lose nothing by waiting. Wielding our influence as large landed proprietors, and operating through the lower clergy upon the peasants, we shall become masters at the hustings, obtain the majority in the Chamber, and hamper the passage of every measure that might, I will not say cause the Republic to be loved, but even cause such a revolutionary state of things to seem tolerable. We shall sow the seeds of mistrust and fear in all minds. Soon, with its credit destroyed, with universal ruin, with disaster on all sides, a chorus of curses will rise against the infamous Republic that will then die peaceably after a trial that will for all time disgust the people with it. At that psychologic moment we shall step forward. The hungering people, the bourgeois, frightened out of their senses, will throw themselves at our feet, praying to us with clasped hands for Henry V, the savior of France. Finally, the hour for stipulating conditions will arrive. These will be ours: Royalty, at least such as it existed before 1789, that is, no more bourgeois insolent and clamorous Chamber, holding the reins of government as much as the King, seeing it decides upon appropriations and taxes – an ignominious state of things; an end of the present mongrel system —all or nothing, and we want all, to wit, an absolute King resting upon an omnipotent clergy; a strong aristocracy and a merciless army; a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand foreign troops, if needed; the Holy Alliance will lend them to us. Misery will be so frightful, fear so intense, the general lassitude such, that our conditions will be accepted as soon as imposed. Thereupon we shall take prompt and terrible measures – the only effective ones in such emergencies. Our measures will be these: First of all, provost courts; reinstitution of the laws pronouncing sacrilege and lese majesté capital crimes, and making them retroactive, back to 1830; execution to follow verdict within twenty-four hours, in order to smother in their own poison all revolutionists, all people tainted with impiousness; it will be an era of terror – another St. Bartholomew, if necessary. France will not die under the knife; on the contrary, she is suffering of plethora, she needs a bleeding from time to time.[8 - The White Terror, the massacre in the south of France, the executions without appeal which followed the first restoration of Kings by Divine right, are well known to all. It did not stop there.On October 27, 1815, Monsieur Pasquler read in the Chamber a report on the projected law on seditious speeches and writings:"We would pronounce," he declared, "the penalty of hard labor against all seditious slogans, speeches or writings if delivered individually."Death, if they are the result of concerted action."The same penalty as for parricide if they have any noticeable effect."Another, Monsieur C – , rose, and in concert with two of his royalist colleagues proposed with great insistence that the penalty of death be made applicable to all who hoisted the tricolored flag.] The second measure will be to assign public instruction to the Society of Jesus – it alone is able to emasculate the human species. The third measure will be to break the sheaf of centralization; in it lay the strength of the Revolution; our effort must be, on the contrary, to isolate the provinces as much as possible from the small centers, where, unmolested, we shall hold sway through the lower clergy; or, by virtue of our large holdings, restrain, prevent, if at all possible, the intercommunication of one section of the country with another. It is not helpful to us for people to draw together and meet each other with frequency. With the view of dividing and keeping them divided, we shall assiduously rekindle the rivalries, jealousies, and where needed, the old provincial hatreds. To that end an occasional little douse of civil war will be a helpful expedient. It breeds and nurses the germs of implacable animosity."

The Cardinal stopped a moment to take another pinch of snuff, and then concluded with these words:

"People who are divided by hatred never conspire."

The merciless logic of the priest repelled the Count of Plouernel. Despite his own fatuity and caste prejudices, he rather leaned towards modern thought. No doubt he would have preferred a reign of "legitimate Kings." But he did not stop to think that he who wants the end must not object to the means, and that, in order to be lasting in the eyes of its partisans, a complete and absolute restoration could not possibly take place and maintain itself except by the frightful means that the Cardinal had just laid bare with complacent assurance. The colonel replied with a smile:

"But, uncle, think of it! In these days of ours the idea of isolating the population is chimerical. The thing is impossible! What about the strategic highways! The railroads!"

"The railroads?" echoed the Cardinal angrily. "A devil's invention, good only to cause the revolutionary fever to circulate from one end of Europe to the other! For that very reason our Holy Father wants no railroads in his states, and right he is. It is incredible that the monarchs of the Holy Alliance could have allowed themselves to yield to such diabolical innovations! They may have to pay dear therefor! What did our forefathers do, at the time of the conquest, with a view to subjugate and keep the yoke riveted to the neck of this perverse Gallic race – our vassals by birth and by kind, that has so often risen in rebellion against us? Our ancestors staked them within their separate domains, forbidding them to step outside under penalty of death. Thus chained to the glebe, thus isolated and brutified, the breed is more easily kept under control – that must be the goal we should aim at returning to."

"But I repeat – what about the railroads? You would not tear up the highways and railroads, would you, uncle?"

"Why not? Did not the Franks, our ancestors, in pursuit of an unerring policy, tear up the highways, the magnificent roads of communication that they found in Gaul, and which those pagans of Romans had constructed? Would it be so difficult a task to hurl against the railroads the mass of brutes whom that infernal invention threw out of their means of earning a livelihood? Anathema – anathema against those proud monuments of haughty Satan! By the blood of my race! If he is not curbed in his sacrilegious career, man will yet end – may God forefend! – by changing this valley of tears into a terrestrial paradise, wholly oblivious of the fact that original sin condemns him to perpetual suffering!"

"Zounds! Dear uncle, not so fast!" interjected the colonel. "I am not inclined to carry out my destiny with quite such scrupulous accuracy."

"You big baby!" replied the Cardinal impatiently, taking a fresh pinch of snuff. "Do you not understand that, in order that the large majority of the race of Adam suffer and be meritoriously conscious of its suffering, it is requisite that there be always in evidence a neat small number of happy people in the world?"

"Oh, I see! As a contrast; is that it, dear uncle?"

"Necessarily. The depth of the valley is not realized but for its contrast with the mountain top. But enough of philosophy. As you know, I have an accurate eye, quick and certain. The situation is such as I have described it to you. I repeat – do as I have done. Realize all your negotiable effects in gold, or in good drafts upon London. Send in your resignation this minute, and let us depart to-morrow at the very latest. Such is the blindness of those people that they apprehend nothing. You said so yourself. There is hardly any military precaution taken. You can, accordingly, without in any way wounding your military honor, quit your regiment this instant."

"Impossible, my dear uncle – that would be an act of cowardice. If the Republic is to be established, the thing will not be done without the firing of some guns. I wish to do my part – I wish to be quits. Politeness for politeness, with good round discharges of muskets! My dragoons will want nothing better than a chance to charge upon the canaille."

"Then you propose to defend the throne of the wretches of Orleans!" exclaimed the Cardinal with a loud outburst of sardonic laughter.

"Dear uncle, you know very well I did not wheel in line in support of the Orleans dynasty. No more than you, do I love them. I simply joined the army, because I have a military turn of mind. The army has but one opinion – discipline. In short, if your foresight is correct – and your trained experience inclines me to the belief that you are not mistaken – then a battle will be fought this very day. Under such circumstances I would be a despicable wretch to hand in my resignation on the eve of an encounter."

"Then you are determined to run the risk of being riddled with bullets or brained by the mob on a barricade – in the interest of the Orleans dynasty?"

"I am a soldier – I am determined to fulfil the duties of my profession."

"But, you devil of a stubborn block! Suppose you are killed, our house would then fall from the lance to the distaff."

"I promised you I would marry at forty – "

"But until then – think of it – these street fights are disgraceful – to die in the mud of the gutters, killed by a lot of beggars!"

"Before it came to that I would have treated myself to the sport of hewing several of them down with my saber," coolly replied the colonel. "In that event it will not be difficult for you to find some sturdy Plouernel bastard of my own making – whom you will then adopt, uncle. He will perpetuate my name. Bastards often have brought good luck to great houses."

"Triple fool! To play with your life in that manner! And that at the very moment when the future smiles upon us as it never smiled before! At the moment when, after having been beaten, kicked and cuffed by the descendants of the men who for fourteen centuries were our vassals and serfs, we are about to wipe out at a single stroke these last fifty years of shame! At the moment when, instructed by experience, and aided by the course of events, we are about to resume our power and become even mightier than we were in 1789! Go to – I pity you! You are right, races degenerate!" exclaimed the intractable old man, rising. "I would despair of our cause if all our people were like you."

The valet, stepping in again after rapping at the door, said to the Count of Plouernel:

"Monsieur Count, the linendraper of St. Denis Street has arrived. He is waiting in the ante-chamber."

"Take him to the salon of the portraits."

The valet left; the colonel said to the Cardinal, whom he saw angrily picking up his hat and moving towards the door:

"For God's sake, uncle, do not go away angry, in that way – "

"I am not going away angry; I am going away ashamed."

"Come, dear uncle, you will think better of me."

"Will you, yes or no, depart with me for England?"

"Impossible, uncle."

"Then go to the devil!" was the rather uncanonical shout with which the Cardinal furiously took his leave, slamming the door behind him.

CHAPTER VI.

JOEL AND NEROWEG

Marik Lebrenn had been taken by order of the Count of Plouernel into a richly furnished salon. From the walls hung a number of family portraits.

Some wore the cuirass of knights, others the white cross and red cloak of the Templars, others the civilian dress of noblemen, still others the ermine of a peer of France, or the purple of the Princes of the Church.

It was likewise with the women. They wore monastic garbs, and court costumes. But, whether it was that each painter had scrupulously reproduced nature, or that they yielded to the requirements of a family who held it a point of honor to make manifest an uninterrupted racial affiliation in their line of descent, the generic type of the several faces was reproduced in all. Some in beauty, others in ugliness, all by the marked distance between the eyes, together with the pronounced hook of the nose, recalled the bird of prey. Similarly, what by common accord has been called the Bourbon type, which bears some resemblance to the ovine breed, is visibly perpetuated in the house of the Capets. Similarly, also, almost all the descendants of the house of Rohan had, it is said, an erect tuft of hair that was long spoken of as the Rohan crest.

As with almost all ancient family paintings, the Plouernel coat-of-arms and the name of the original represented in the picture were designed in a corner of the canvas. For instance, there were the names of Gonthram V, Sire of Plouernel; Gonthram IX, Count of Plouernel; Hildeberta, Lady of Plouernel; Meroflede, Abbess of Meriadek in Plouernel; and so on, the names of the descendants, men and women, of the Plouernel lineage.

As he contemplated these family portraits Marik Lebrenn experienced a singular mixture of curiosity, bitterness, and sentiments rather sad than wrathful. He moved from one to the other of the portraits as if they awakened a thousand memories within him. His eyes would rest meditatively upon the motionless faces, mute as those of specters. Several of the personages seemed to draw his attention violently. One of them, evidently painted from indications or traditions transmitted subsequent to the date – the year 297 – that the portrait bore, must have been the founder of this old house. The corner of the canvas bore the name Gonthram Neroweg.

This personage was of colossal stature. His copper-red hair, combed back Chinese style and held together on the top of his head with a gold band, fell backward over his shoulders like the plume of a helmet. His cheeks and chin were closely shaven, but a long moustache, as red as his hair, drooped down to his chest, which was tattooed in blue and was partly covered by a species of plaid or mantle barred yellow and red. A more savage and ferocious face than that of this first of the Nerowegs can not be easily imagined.

Undoubtedly, at the sight of this portrait, cruel thoughts agitated the linendraper. After long contemplating it Marik Lebrenn could not refrain from shaking his fist at him. It was an involuntary and childish gesture, that he quickly felt ashamed of.

The second portrait that likewise seemed to impress the linendraper keenly represented a woman clad in monastic garb. The picture bore the date of 729, and the name of Meroflede, Abbess of Meriadek in Plouernel. It seemed a singular detail, but this woman held, in one hand, an abbatial crosier, and, in the other, a naked and bloodstained sword, meant, undoubtedly, to convey the idea that the weapon did not always rest inactive in its sheath. The woman was handsome, but of a haughty and sinister beauty, a beauty that betrayed a violent temperament. Her features bore the stamp of that lassitude that excesses leave in their train. Her head was enveloped in long white and black veils. Her large grey-green eyes sparkled under their thick red brows. Her blood-red lips expressed at once wickedness and sensuousness. Finally, the crosier and the bloody sword in the hands of an abbess imparted to the portrait a weird, almost shocking appearance.

Lebrenn contemplated the image with disgust and horror, and muttered to himself:

"Oh, Meroflede! Noble Abbess, consecrated by Satan! Messalina and Fredegonde were immaculate virgins beside you, Marshal Retz a lamb, and his infamous castle a sanctuary beside your damnable cloister!"

Emitting a sigh of sorrow and raising his eyes to heaven as if invoking its mercy for the victims of Meroflede, he exclaimed:

"Poor Septimine! And you – ill-starred Broute-Saule!"

Lebrenn turned away his head in sadness, and long remained pensive. When he again raised his eyes they fell upon another portrait. That one was dated 1237. It represented a warrior with close-clipped hair, a long red beard, and armed cap-a-pie. From his shoulders hung the red cloak with the white cross of the Crusaders.

"Ah!" came from the linendraper with a fresh gesture of disgust and indignation – "the Red Monk!"