He tried to keep the tumult going; he hoped that Fleurette would faint, so that she might be carried out of court. He prayed that the roof of the gigantic building would come crashing down and bury him and Fleurette and all that swinish multitude in its ruins ere she spoke the words which he saw hovering on her lips.
But none of these things happened. Rather by that perversity which is peculiar to Chance, a sudden lull broke in on the mighty uproar, a lull through which Fleurette’s calm voice rang clear as water poured into a crystal glass.
“Adéle was not lying, nor did she slander me, I did give some valuable articles into the keeping of my beloved M’sieu’ Amédé Colombe, at the hour spoken of by her, and I have no doubt that she did see me, as she says.”
XXXVI
One must of necessity turn once more to the Moniteur of the 22nd Messidor year II of the Republic One and Indivisible. There in the Choix des Rapports XXV 516–17, despite its sobriety of language and paucity of detail, there is ample proof that throughout the proceedings it was the action of one unknown that precipitated the final catastrophe. “Un géant,” we are told, “fût le premier à lancer l’accusation fausse contre le Président du Tribunal, et un tumulte irrépressible s’ensuivit.”
“False,” you observe. But on that 16th day of June 1794, Chauvelin of the National Convention, member of committees and confidant of Robespierre, did, we know, stand in danger of being dragged out into the open and hung on the nearest lamp post. The crowd was in no mood even to wait for the paraphernalia of the guillotine. They wanted to see the arch-traitor, the perjurer, who had sworn false oaths and lied in order to save himself and his brood, hang then and there. The giant spoken of in the Choix des Rapports had, it seems, hardly waited till the words were out of Fleurette’s mouth, before he pushed his way to the forefront of the crowd, with vigorous play of his powerful elbows. Down he was now, in the body of the court. In the struggle, his ragged shirt had been half torn off his shoulders, and his broad chest and sinewy arms could be seen, nude and immense, and coated with grime. Out of one of the pockets of his tattered breeches he had produced another uncooked carrot, and into this he bit lustily, then with a wide sweep of the arm he launched one by one against the President of the Tribunal the damning invectives which the Moniteur has characterized as false. “Traitor!” he cried. “Liar and perjurer! Citizens all, have you in all your lives ever witnessed such infamy?”
The Choix des Rapports describes the tumult as irrepressible. Indeed at that moment it would have been easier to dam a raging torrent with one pair of hands, than to suppress the riotous confusion that ensued. Fleurette of a truth stood there forgotten, so did Adèle and Godet. All eyes were fixed on the President, every menacing gesture tended in his direction, all the strident cries, the insults, the varied and foul epithets were hurled against him. There were but few sober tempers in that crowded room at the moment. A dozen perhaps: no more. Older men, one or two women who watched rather than yelled. And what they saw interested and puzzled them, so much that, when the time came, when everybody else was shouting themselves hoarse to the verge of mania, they still kept cool and silent.
Like everybody else these few were gazing on the President. They saw him standing there on the bench like a figure carved in stone, and, like a stone, his face was of a grey, ashen colour. His eyes looked dim and colourless as if a hand had drawn a film over them; his lips were parted, his nostrils distended. The breath seemed to come with difficulty out of his lungs. A figure, in truth of terror and despair. But calm and still. Motionless as a stone. The giant munching his carrot had waved his huge arms about and yelled himself hoarse until he had lashed all the spectators into a state of frenzy. Finally he strode across the room, and came to a halt close to the judges’ bench facing the President.
The three judges had been watching him all along: Pochart and Danou with undisguised glee, and President Chauvelin with that stony stare out of his colourless eyes. But even as the giant approached, Chauvelin, though apparently motionless, seemed inwardly to sink within himself, to crouch as a hunted beast in face of the menacing enemy. And suddenly like that of an automaton, up went his arm. With finger outstretched he pointed at the giant and one word escaped his trembling, rigid lips.
“You!”
Those who were watching him could not understand the word, for it was spoken in an alien tongue. Nor could they understand what happened afterwards. But what actually did happen was that the grimy giant threw back his head and gave a quaint and altogether pleasant laugh.
“Why yes!” he said in the same alien tongue, which no one present understood. “At your service, my dear M. Chambertin.”
And Chauvelin murmured almost under his breath:
“You have your revenge at last, Sir Percy.”
“Hitting back as you see, my friend.”
It all passed unperceived in the midst of the irrepressible tumult, save by those few who sober-tempered chose to watch rather than to
