“All things grow sadder to thee, one by one.”
STILL hidden in his humble lodging at Pontoise, Gerard was engaged one evening in the perusal of the last new brochure of the economic school, to which he was now altogether devoted, when his servant entered the room with an intimation that a gentleman from Paris wished to speak with him on particular business. “Let him come in,” said Gerard, with a hope that it might be Prosper, but a fear that it was only his confidential clerk, with whom an explanation on business matters could not be much longer avoided, and must be difficult and even hazardous.
Three men, fully armed, entered the room at once. One took his stand at the window, another near the door, while a third, who seemed of higher rank than the others, advanced towards Gerard, and showed him a paper, bearing a seal in yellow wax, and the signature of the minister of the king’s household, Saint Florentin. It was a lettre de cachet.
“Monsieur will be good enough to come with us quietly, for his own sake,” said the “exempt” of police. “He sees we have the means of compelling him, if necessary.”
Gerard started to his feet.
“Come with you?” he repeated. “Whither?―what do you mean?” Then, as the full horror of his situation broke upon his mind, he grew pale and staggered. “What have I done?” he faltered.
“Monsieur, it is not my business to answer questions,” the exempt replied, not uncourteously. “And the fewer you ask at present the better. But I am obliged to remove your books and papers. Have the goodness to point them out to me.”
Gerard controlled himself, and obeyed mechanically, for he knew that concealment or subterfuge would now be worse than useless. But he could not help repeating, “What have I done? Of what am I accused?”
The exempt only answered by a warning look, and began to examine Gerard’s property with deliberate care. Meantime the captive thought, despairing― “I am doomed. I am to be flung into some dungeon, and left to die there―unknown, unpitied, unheard.” Any tyranny was possible.
His strength, which had left him in the first moment of bewilderment, returned in a full tide, flashing through nerve and sinew. His room was on the “premier étage,” and only one man stood by the window. In an instant he sprang upon him, ―but in another he was struggling desperately with the three, who, watchful as lynxes, almost at his first movement had closed upon him. Against such odds even the strength of despair, of madness, availed not.
He was exhausted at last. One of the archers bound his hands, the other held a pistol to his breast; while the exempt himself, wearied out, entreated him to abandon a useless resistance. “We will not kill, and we dare not loose,” he said to Gerard in a low voice.
But once convinced that his fate was inevitable, Gerard recovered outward composure. “Yes, I will go with you quietly,” he said calmly, and even with dignity. “I suppose I shall be allowed the use of my books and clothing?
“Probably you may. Now monsieur, if you please, we are ready.” Gerard was led forth, and placed securely between the exempt and one of the archers in a carriage which waited at the door. The other archer followed, with as much of his property as it seemed then convenient to remove.
The journey from Pontoise to Paris (about seven leagues) was accomplished rapidly, and almost in silence. Gerard, convinced that words were useless, only opened his lips to refuse an offer of refreshment. At length he saw, close at hand, the lights of the great city “flaring like a dreary dawn.”
When they stopped at the Porte Saint-Denys the exempt gave the necessary password, and then, leaning forward, whispered to the prisoner, “Give your parole, and I loose your bonds;” for he knew that the precautions his violence had rendered necessary would injure him in the eyes of his jailors. Gerard felt this generous considerateness, and the softened emotion it awakened sent a pang through his heart, frozen numb with its misery.
“I thank you, monsieur,” he said, “and I willingly give my parole.” There followed a rapid drive over the rough, uneven streets, a halt―and a low, half-involuntary cry from the captive, “This is the Bastille!”
There was time for Gerard to collect his thoughts while the drawbridge was being lowered, and the proper application for admission made to the officer on guard, who had to bring it to the governor, to return with the keys, and to unlock the massive gate of the first court. Here Gerard was ordered to descend from the carriage, his sword was taken from him, and he was led across the court, over a second drawbridge, and through other gates, which were unlocked and unbarred before him with ominous noise of bolts and clanking of chains. At last he was brought to a large, dreary, unfurnished room, where he was duly delivered up by the officer on guard to a handsomely-dressed personage, whom he supposed to be the governor, or deputy-governor, of the Bastille, and who looked compassionate, but scarcely uttered a word. Two men, wearing the cross of St. Louis, advanced to search the prisoner.
He made neither complaint nor resistance now; not even when his very clothing was taken from him, and he was forced to assume a mean and ragged dress, which had evidently belonged to some former captive. Finally he was led to his cell, in the fifth or highest story of the tower in which he then was, and which bore the inappropriate name of “La Liberté.” It was a polygonal room, fifteen or sixteen feet in breadth, rather more in height; and it contained a tolerable bed, with a coverlet and curtains of green serge, two or three chairs, a table, and a rude fireplace. Two thick, heavy doors were shut and bolted; then Gerard was alone.
He flung himself on the ground, pressed his forehead against the planks that floored his cell, and gave himself up to an agony that knew no bounds, except the power of mind and body to sustain it.
A long, slow, living death, worse a thousand times than any steel or fire could inflict, was his prospect now. Hope of deliverance he had none. How he had awakened suspicion was a mystery to him; but he knew that when his papers came to be examined, one writing would be found amongst them which would compromise him fearfully, the rough sketch of a pamphlet about the sale of corn, which he had intended to forward to some foreign country for publication. The revelations made there were crimes all the more certain to be visited with exemplary vengeance I excuse no tribunal could take cognizance of them. Louis XV., and the noble duke who was his partner in trade, would take good care that a man who had such things to tell should never again find a human ear in which to breathe them.
He felt like a hunted creature brought to bay, knowing that all is over save the death agony. So “the malady for which there is no cure,” the horror that lies in wait for all, had come to him, too soon. How should he endure it?
If Gerard could have prayed, his prayer that hour would have been for a swift and speedy death. He did cry aloud, “O God, let me die!” But he told himself this was only an instinctive cry of pain, meaning nothing, reaching no ear. He had said in his heart that there was no God. And the Humanity he had loved and worshipped could do nothing for him now. He was alone with his despair.