The Elusive Pimpernel Baroness Orczy (read more books txt) 📖

occasional article in the Gazette de Paris or the Gazette des Tribunaux, brought hither by one or other of the many travellers who crossed the city on their way to the harbour. They were interested in these articles, at times even comfortably horrified at the doings in Paris, the executions and the tumbrils, but on the whole they liked the idea that the country was in future to be governed by duly chosen representatives of the people, rather than be a prey to the despotism of kings, and they were really quite pleased to see the tricolour flag hoisted on the old Beffroi, there where the snow-white standard of the Bourbons had erstwhile flaunted its golden fleur-de-lis in the glare of the midday sun.

The worthy burgesses of Boulogne were ready to shout: “Vive la République!” with the same cheerful and raucous Normandy accent as they had lately shouted “Dieu protège le Roi!”

The first awakening from this happy torpor came when that tent was put up on the landing stage in the harbour. Officials, dressed in shabby uniforms and wearing tricolour cockades and scarves, were now quartered in the Town Hall, and repaired daily to that roughly erected tent, accompanied by so many soldiers from the garrison.

There installed, they busied themselves with examining carefully the passports of all those who desired to leave or enter Boulogne. Fisher-folk who had dwelt in the city⁠—father and son and grandfather and many generations before that⁠—and had come and gone in and out of their own boats as they pleased, were now stopped as they beached their craft and made to give an account of themselves to these officials from Paris.

It was, of a truth, more than ridiculous, that these strangers should ask of Jean-Marie who he was, or of Pierre what was his business, or of Désiré François whither he was going, when Jean-Marie and Pierre and Désiré François had plied their nets in the roads outside Boulogne harbour for more years than they would care to count.

It also caused no small measure of annoyance that fishermen were ordered to wear tricolour cockades on their caps. They had no special ill-feeling against tricolour cockades, but they did not care about them. Jean-Marie flatly refused to have one pinned on, and being admonished somewhat severely by one of the Paris officials, he became obstinate about the whole thing and threw the cockade violently on the ground and spat upon it, not from any sentiment of anti-republicanism, but just from a feeling of Norman doggedness.

He was arrested, shut up in Fort Gayole, tried as a traitor and publicly guillotined.

The consternation in Boulogne was appalling.

The one little spark had found its way to a barrel of blasting powder and caused a terrible explosion. Within twenty-four hours of Jean-Marie’s execution the whole town was in the throes of the Revolution. What the death of King Louis, the arrest of Marie Antoinette, the massacres of September had failed to do, that the arrest and execution of an elderly fisherman accomplished in a trice.

People began to take sides in politics. Some families realized that they came from ancient lineage, and that their ancestors had helped to build up the throne of the Bourbons. Others looked up ancient archives and remembered past oppressions at the hands of the aristocrats.

Thus some burghers of Boulogne became ardent reactionaries, whilst others secretly nursed enthusiastic royalist convictions: some were ready to throw in their lot with the anarchists, to deny the religion of their fathers, to scorn the priests and close the places of worship; others adhered strictly still to the usages and practices of the Church.

Arrest became frequent: the guillotine, erected in the Place de la Sénéchaussée, had plenty of work to do. Soon the cathedral was closed, the priests thrown into prison, whilst scores of families hoped to escape a similar fate by summary flight.

Vague rumours of a band of English adventurers soon reached the little seaport town. The Scarlet Pimpernel⁠—English spy or hero, as he was alternately called⁠—had helped many a family with pronounced royalist tendencies to escape the fury of the bloodthirsty Terrorists.

Thus gradually the anti-revolutionaries had been weeded out of the city: some by death and imprisonment, others by flight. Boulogne became the hotbed of anarchism: the idlers and loafers, inseparable from any town where there is a garrison and a harbour, practically ruled the city now. Denunciations were the order of the day. Everyone who owned any money, or lived with any comfort was accused of being a traitor and suspected of conspiracy. The fisher folk wandered about the city, surly and discontented: their trade was at a standstill, but there was a trifle to be earned by giving information: information which meant the arrest, ofttimes the death of men, women and even children who had tried to seek safety in flight, and to denounce whom⁠—as they were trying to hire a boat anywhere along the coast⁠—meant a good square meal for a starving family.

Then came the awful cataclysm.

A woman⁠—a stranger⁠—had been arrested and imprisoned in the Fort Gayole and the town-crier publicly proclaimed that if she escaped from jail, one member of every family in the town⁠—rich or poor, republican or royalist, Catholic or freethinker⁠—would be summarily guillotined.

That member, the breadwinner!

“Why, then, with the Duvals it would be young François-Auguste. He keeps his old mother with his boot-making⁠ ⁠…”

“And it would be Marie Lebon, she has her blind father dependent on her net-mending.”

“And old Mother Laferrière, whose grandchildren were left penniless⁠ ⁠… she keeps them from starvation by her washtub.”

“But François-Auguste is a real Republican; he belongs to the Jacobin Club.”

“And look at Pierre, who never meets a calotin but he must needs spit on him.”

“Is there no safety anywhere?⁠ ⁠… are we to be butchered like so many cattle?⁠ ⁠…”

Somebody makes the suggestion:

“It is a threat⁠ ⁠… they would not dare!⁠ ⁠…”

“Would not dare?⁠ ⁠…”

’Tis old André Lemoine who has spoken, and he spits vigorously on the ground. André Lemoine has been a soldier; he was