Thus it was that Citizen Chauvelin had been sent to Orange. The Southern provinces of France had been left far too long to welter in a morass of treason; there were veritable nests of traitors in the châteaux and farms of Provence and Dauphiné. The country had to be purged: the traitors extirpated; the magnificent Law of the Suspect be set in motion to do this cleansing process. Any man who ventured to criticize the government, who complained of taxation or restrictions was a traitor; any man or woman who owned more than they needed for bare subsistence, who refused to pour of their surplus into the lap of patriots, was a traitor; and the country must be purged of them, until the dictatorship of the proletariat was firmly established, until every man, woman and child in the whole of France had been dragged down to the same level of mental and physical wreckage.
There had been a dramatic pause after Chauvelin’s outburst of contemptuous wrath; for a minute or two, while the old clock up on the wall ticked away with slow monotony a strange silence remained hanging over the scene. Whatever the other three men may have known or remembered of the noted Terrorist’s past history, they thought it wiser to say nothing. In these days of universal brotherhood and Liberty, every man in France was frightened of his neighbour. The time had come when the lustful tigers, satiated with the blood of those whom they deemed their enemies, had turned, thirsting, for that of their whilom friends. The makers of the Terror had started digging their fangs into each other’s throats. The victory now was to the most ferocious. After the Girondins, Danton, he, who had ordered the September massacres, two and a half years ago, had had to yield to a more vengeful, more merciless power than his own.
Chauvelin knew that. The victory today was to the most ferocious. He who would sacrifice friends, brother, sister, child, was the true patriot; the man who stayed his hand in face of a revolting crime that would put a wild beast to the blush, was unworthy the name of citizen of France. Therefore death to him. Death to the weakling. To the Moderate. This was the era of the Universal Brotherhood of Death.
What chance then had this unfortunate Lieutenant Godet now? brought to justice—save the mark!—before a man who knew that to show weakness was to court death. No wonder that all the swagger and the arrogance which made him but a day or two ago the terror of a lot of peasants at Sisteron or Laragne, was knocked out of him, by a mere glance from those pale, piercing eyes. And he—a mere notary’s clerk born and bred in the depth of Dauphiné, and thrust into the army, as a mule is thrust into harness—knew nothing of Paris save from hearsay, and nothing of the men whose word had even sent a king and a queen to the scaffold. He knew nothing of Citizen Chauvelin, save that he was a man of power, before whose piercing glance and tricolour sash, every man instinctively cringed and trembled. He knew nothing of Chauvelin’s tussles with those same English spies who had so effectually led him, Godet, by the nose; nothing of Citizen Chauvelin’s past life, very little of the present. He was just a mouse in the power of a cat; allowed a little freedom just now, while he told his tale of failure.
“Continue, citizen lieutenant,” Chauvelin now said more calmly. “We are listening.”
“Let me see,” Godet rejoined vaguely, “where was I?”
“On the bridle-path off the main road,” Chauvelin responded with a sneer; “half a league north of Laragne. The wagon and horses presumably belonging to the State left in a tumble-down cottage by the roadside. A thrilling situation forsooth. An ordinary situation you would have us believe. Pray continue. What happened after that?”
“We marched and we marched and we marched,” the lieutenant resumed sullenly. “We marched until we were ready to drop. We had had three days of marching, and had started in the morning without a bite, hungry! Nom d’un nom! how hungry we were! and weak and faint! The hours sped on; we could see the sun mounting the heavens and then start on its descent. The heat was intense, the dust terrible. It filled our eyes, our nostrils, our mouths. The soles of our feet were bleeding, sweat poured down our faces and obscured our vision. We marched and we marched, through two villages, the names of which I do not know; then over mountain passes, across rocky gorges, stepping over streams, climbing the sides of hills, the banks of rivers. I am a stranger in these parts. And I was tired. Tired! I knew not where we were, whither we were going. March! March! March! Ceaselessly. Even had I dared, I would no longer have had the strength to ask questions or
