"The end of oppression. I wish to beat down thrones and altars, privileges of birth and of fortune, all the h.o.a.ry monuments of ignorance, of slavery, and of iniquity, all the monopolies, all the privileges which flourish upon the people."

"What will happen when the level shall have pa.s.sed over the old world, and when the exploiters of the people shall have disappeared?"

"The darkness of ages shall be superseded by the revivifying warmth and the fruitful light of the sun; harvests of abundance will cover with their sheaves the soil tilled by a fecund revolution."

"Is your severance from the old world complete?"

"I have broken with the old world, and rallied to the new."

"Behold this pontifical tiara, this kingly crown; gaze on these symbols of n.o.bility, these sacks of gold and silver. You may demand of kings, of priests, of n.o.bles, of the rich, the enjoyments of life, all by devoting yourself body and soul to these idols and to tyranny."

"It is my wish to overthrow those idols. I vow an implacable hatred to the enemies of the people."

"From this hour," responded the cloaked president, apparently satisfied with the interrogatory, "you shall be ours as we will be yours. Our device so has it--_All for each; each for all._ By this device, co-operation will replace in the future the selfishness of the masters of the old world. Who caused all the evils of which selfishness has been the source? He who first dug a ditch about a piece of common land and said 'This is mine.' The usurpation was consecrated by men simple-minded enough to respect these arbitrary boundaries; the spoliation of several by one gradually became a right; the deed became the law, the exception the rule. The tyranny growing out of this principle, initiated by violence and perpetuated by custom, became rooted in the peoples' mind, till at length they came to own an infant mewling in the cradle for their King, and to kiss the boot of the Pope. What consequences have not come out of these aberrations! Peoples have throttled each other. The earth has its d.a.m.ned ones, more to be pitied than those with whom superst.i.tion peoples h.e.l.l. The d.a.m.ned on earth call themselves va.s.sals, serfs, proletarians, artisans, laborers! It is of these d.a.m.ned ones that we seek the redemption. Think you the overturning of thrones and altars will suffice for the deliverance of these victims? No, alas, no. To the tyranny of King and Church will succeed an exploitation still more tyrannical, that of the tribe of Business. Then the dispenser of work and of wages will exert an empire absolute over his wage-earning workingmen. On the ruins of the thrones and altars will soon grow up the oligarchy of merchants and bourgeois.

"That oligarchy must also in its end be overthrown," continued the initiator. "That is our final aim.[3] Our design is to unite by the bond of a common faith, thousands of initiates in every country of Europe--first in Germany, then in France, in England, and elsewhere; to bring them gradually, by initiation, into the knowledge of the object of our a.s.sociation; to have them swear obedience to its chiefs, visible and invisible, and chosen from all ranks of society, from the highest to the lowest; to recruit our partisans and co-workers in the very councils of the Kings themselves, in the heart of the palace of the Popes. Our enemies will find themselves, without their knowing it, perpetually under our eyes; their plots will be revealed to us; their own creatures, to all appearances the most devoted to them, will obey our orders, and undermine the foundations of their social edifice. Then in the hour of redemption the old world shall crumble and go down under its debris of priests, n.o.bles, and Kings.

"Woman," continued the master of ceremonies, outstretching his hand toward Victoria, "you now know our purposes. Here are our sinews of action. An annual a.s.sessment levied on all our brothers, who number themselves by millions, makes us masters of a mighty treasure. That is the source of the wealth in which revel those of our number whose duty it is to mix with the mighty ones of the day, sharing in their dalliances and dissipations--foxes to deceive, wolves to devour our enemies. Victoria Lebrenn, it is for you, thanks to your remarkable gifts of nature, to become one of our most active auxiliaries. But to serve well our cause, it will be necessary that you abdicate your own will, and that you stand ready, at any hour of the day or night, to follow our orders."

"Command; I obey."

"I must first acquaint our brothers with the particulars of your life, as you have set them down in your own hand, and confided them to your converter."

Picking up a roll of ma.n.u.script, the presiding officer proceeded to read the story of Victoria Lebrenn, as follows:

"In the year 1772, being then eleven years and a half old, I was one day crossing the garden of the Tuileries, carrying dinner to my father, a workman in a printing shop in Bac Street. I paused a moment to watch some little children at play. A woman well dressed and with decent features drew close to me, examined me attentively, and made me some compliments on my good looks. Then noting the porringer with my father's dinner, and learning from me that I was on my way to him, she proposed that I go with her in her carriage. Delighted to have a carriage-ride for the first time in my life, I readily agreed. Near the Draw Bridge a coach was waiting, into which I got with my conductress. She offered me some lozenges from a box, which I accepted. The lozenges contained some species of narcotic, for in a few minutes I had fallen into a deep sleep.

"When I awoke, it was night. I was lying in a great bed with damask curtains. The ceiling of my chamber was of gold, and the room itself was richly furnished. Beside my pillow was seated the woman by whose agency I had been taken to the place. I asked her where I was. I wept at the anxiety of my parents; she calmed me, promising that they should soon be with me. She added that I was in the house of a person of great quality, who was interested in my youth, wished me much good, and would enrich my family. I knew I was not dreaming, but thought myself the heroine of a fairy tale. Two women entered. They made me rise, and put me in a perfumed bath. Then they dressed my hair, one of them winding a string of pearls through it. They dressed me in silk and lace, and served me with supper on plates of vermilion and gold. I experienced a sort of vertigo; I obeyed mechanically. Still, I kept asking for my father and mother. The woman of the carriage a.s.sured me that they would soon arrive, and be overjoyed to see me so beautiful. A hard-visaged man entered the chamber. I heard the old woman call him Monsieur Lebel, and speak to him with great respect. The man scrutinized me carefully.

'Little one,' he said to me, 'you must go to bed now.' Then he went out.

"Doubtless, in the course of the repast, they had served me with several gla.s.ses of heady wine, for I felt my reason clouding. I allowed myself to be put to bed, though not without again inquiring for my parents.

They promised to take me back to them the next day. The woman and her two companions bade me good night, snuffed the candles in the candelabrum, and left me for light a single alabaster lamp, which threw a pale illumination over the s.p.a.cious room. I was about to succ.u.mb less to sleep than to the leaden lethargy into which I had been plunged, when a start of fright restored to me, for a few moments, all my senses. My bed was set in an alcove. Two of the gilded panels which formed the alcove slid back in their grooves, and I beheld an old man in a dressing gown. I uttered a cry of astonishment--it was the King, Louis XV. I had seen him but a short time before at a public ceremony in Paris. I was stupefied into immobility. Close behind the King, in the secret pa.s.sageway leading into the alcove, stood a beautiful young woman half-clad in a night robe, and holding a candle-stick. She laughed aloud, and said to the King, pushing him by the shoulder--'Go on, France, it is the loving hour!'

"That woman, I afterwards learned, was Countess Du Barry. I fainted with fear. I was the victim of an odious a.s.sault. Five days afterward, another poor child, aged like me, hardly twelve, the daughter of a miller of Trianon, was delivered after the same manner to the l.u.s.t of Louis XV, and gave him the small-pox of which he died. Two days before his death, the woman of whom I have spoken, one of the royal procuresses, made me leave by night the little apartment in the palace of Versailles, and get with her into a carriage, a.s.suring me she was about to restore me to my father, whom I continually called for, in tears. I still was not fully aware of my dishonor. Instead of returning me to my home, the procuress left me in an isolated dwelling not far from Versailles. High walls surrounded the garden; the only entry was by a gate which was kept under careful guard. Flight was impossible.

"In that house I found several young girls, of whom the youngest was barely my age, and the oldest, twenty. The place was the habitual haunt of great lords, prelates, and financiers. They came to sup with us--suppers that ended in shameful orgies. My companions, the immature victims, like myself, of kingly debauchery, gradually made known to me the extent of my disgrace. At first I was overcome by shame; then familiarity with vice, the contagion of example, the influence of the corrupt atmosphere in which I dwelt, stifled my better sentiments and my early training. I would never have dared at this time to return to my family. I reached my sixteenth year without having left that house of ill fame. By that time reflection and chagrin had matured my reason; then there began to grow up beside the sense of my degradation, the implacable hatred of the King and of those who, after him, had plunged me still deeper into the mire of infamy. I a.s.sisted daily in the orgies of the seigneurs of the Court, of the Church and of the Bourse. They never supposed creatures of our sort capable of attaching any importance to what they said in our presence; they expressed without hesitation their disdain and aversion for the people. Just about that time, several disturbances brought on by the dearness of provisions had been quelled at the musket's mouth; our guests regretted that the acts of repression had not been still more pitiless, saying, 'These flames can never be quenched save by rivers of blood.'

"Thus there was created in me, a daughter of the people, a blind thirst for vengeance. Louis XV was dead, but I followed with my hatred both royalty and n.o.bility, clergy and financiers. Our relations with the men of this cla.s.s taught me to see in them our merciless enemies. Still my material comfort and my early degradation engendered in me a cowardly inertia. I felt neither the courage nor the desire to flee the domicile where I was held. I was seized with mortal terror at the bare thought of encountering my father, my mother, my young brother; of soiling our hearth with my presence. And, finally, knowing that their life was poor and laborious, it seemed impossible to me to summon the will to work and to share their privations. Ease and luxury were enervating, were depraving me. Thus pa.s.sed several years. I reached the age of twenty.

The woman who kept the place died, and my companions and I were turned adrift. I was without resources and unable to earn my daily bread, my apprenticeship as a sempstress having been cut short by my kidnapping.

The fear of misery, my determination not to continue in that abject life, the uncertainty of the future, and lastly my attachment to my family, overcame my shame and gave me the courage to return home. My parents believed me dead; my appearance overwhelmed them with joy and rendered them merciful. I confessed to them my past. They both covered me with tears and caresses, and withheld every reproach. My father gave me to read the plebeian legends of our family. Then my poor father, exasperated by the deed that marred my childhood, printed and distributed to the public with his own hand an account which he wrote and ent.i.tled _A Night of Louis XV_. A few days after the publication of this article, my father failed to come home at night. Since then we have had no trace of him. Doubtless he now is dead, or languishes in the cell of some State prison.

"For a year I remained with my mother and brother. I forced myself to live down my past. I took up again my sempstress's apprenticeship, and soon ceased to be a care to my mother. While my body had been stained, my heart remained pure. I had never felt the pangs of love. I now conceived a violent affection for a young sergeant in the French Guards named Maurice, the son of one of our neighbors. The young fellow did not know through what a slough my youth had been dragged, and thought me entirely worthy of him; so much did I dread his scorn that I had not the heart to disabuse him. He asked my hand of my mother. I begged her to hide from him my past shame; moved by my tears she consented to silence.

We were affianced, Maurice and I. I had attained the summit of my prayers. I felt a secret remorse in deceiving the man who loyally offered me his hand, but I consoled myself with the thought of fulfilling scrupulously my marriage vows and making my husband as happy as possible. Cruelly was my dissimulation punished. One day, while walking between my mother and my betrothed, we met one of my old companions in misery. She knew me and addressed me in terms of a terrible meaning. Terrified at the expression of Maurice's face at this revelation, my heart broke--I collapsed. When I came to myself my mother stood at my side in tears. Commanded by my beloved to tell him all, for he still could not believe in my past indignity, my mother dared no longer hide the truth. Maurice was stricken dumb with grief, for he loved me with all his heart. He returned to the barracks in bewilderment, and chancing to come into the presence of his colonel, the Count of Plouernel, did not think to salute him. The Count, angered at this want of respect, knocked off Maurice's hat with a blow of his cane.

He, half crazed with despair, raised his hand against his colonel. The crime was punishable by death under the scourge. The next day the young sergeant expired under that inhuman torture. The death of the man I loved threw me into a sort of frenzy. Often before, as the record of our family tells, had our fathers, as serfs or va.s.sals, found themselves in arms face to face with the race of Plouernel. This memory redoubled my hatred for the colonel. Disgusted with life by the death of my only love, I resolved to avenge on the Count of Plouernel the decease of Maurice. I repaired to the quarters of the Guards at the hour when I knew I could find the colonel in his rooms. My hope was dashed. My paleness and agitation aroused the suspicions of the two under-officers to whom I addressed myself. They demanded the reason of my desire to see their chief. The brusqueness of my replies, my sinister and wild appearance strengthened their mistrust. They fell upon me, searched me, and found in my pocket--a dagger. Then I told them why I came. They arrested me; they haled me to the Repentant Women. I was subjected in that prison to the most barbarous treatment. One day a stranger visited the place. He questioned me. My answers impressed him. A few days later I was set at liberty, thanks to the efforts of this stranger, Franz, who came in person to fetch me from the Repentant Women."

The chief initiator concluded the reading of the melancholy recital, and replaced the pages of ma.n.u.script on the table before him. "The account of our sister is authenticated throughout," he said.

"To this story of my sad life," declared Victoria, "there is nothing to add. Only to-day did I learn the name of the generous stranger to whom I owe my release from prison; and again I declare myself ready to pledge my devotion and service to the cause of humanity. Let the war upon the oppressors be implacable!"

"From the most obscure to the most ill.u.s.trious, all devotion is equal in the eyes of our great cause, and in the eyes of its most n.o.ble martyr, the immortal crucified master of Nazareth," added the initiator, drawing aside the curtains of the dais and disclosing a Christ on a crucifix, surmounted with the level of equality. Then he continued, speaking to Victoria, "Woman, in the name of the poor carpenter of Nazareth, the friend of the sorrowing and the disinherited, the enemy of the priests and the rulers of his day--woman, do you swear faith, love, and obedience to our cause?"

"I swear!" answered Victoria in a ringing voice, raising her hands toward the crucifix. "I swear faith and obedience to our cause!"

"You are now ours as we are yours," replied the officiant, dropping the curtains. "From to-morrow on you will receive our instructions from our brother Franz. To work! The opening of the States General shall be the signal for the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the people. The thrones shall disappear beneath the scourge of the revolution!"[4]

At that moment the watch posted in the corridor of the Voyant temple of liberty struck thrice precipitately on the door, giving the alarm. The lights which had cast their radiance over the meeting went out as if by magic, and a profound darkness took possession of the underground chamber.

From the obscurity was heard the voice of Anacharsis Clootz, the masked officiant, saying to the other Voyants who had been present at the initiation of Victoria Lebrenn:

"Baboeuf, go with Buonarotti, Danton and Condorcet by the right exit. I shall take the left, together with Franz, Loustalot, and our neophyte."

CHAPTER IV.

LITTLE RODIN.

While Anacharsis Clootz, the rich Dutch banker, later to be known as the "Orator of the Human Race," was thus presiding at the initiation of Victoria Lebrenn into the sect of the Voyants, Samuel, left alone with his wife by the departure of Franz of Gerolstein and his companion, had been just preparing to continue his dictation to Bathsheba, when he heard the street-outlook rapping discreetly at the gate. Samuel, hastening at the call, found the watcher holding by the hand a young boy who cried bitterly.

"The poor little fellow has lost his way," said the lookout, pa.s.sing the boy in to Samuel. "I found him sitting down there by the b.u.t.tress of the gate, sobbing. You would better keep him with you for the night, and to-morrow, in the daylight, he can be taken back to his folks--if you can find out from him where he lives."

Touched by the child's grief, Samuel took him into the lower room and both he and Bathsheba bent all their energies toward quieting him. The boy seemed to be about nine or ten years old. He was poorly clad, and of a wan and ailing appearance. His face presented none of the smiling prettiness usual with children of his age. His peaked features, his sickly and cadaverous pallor, his thin, pale lips, his sly and shifty, yet keen and observing glance--revealing a precocious cleverness--in fine, something low, mean and crafty in the look of the boy would, no doubt, have inspired aversion rather than sympathy in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the couple were it not for the cruel desertion of which he seemed the victim. Hardly had he entered the room when he dropped to his knees, crossed himself, and clasping his hands exclaimed through his tears:

"Blessed be You, Lord G.o.d, for having pitied Your little servant and led him to this good sir and this good lady. Save them a place in Your paradise!"

Dragging himself on his knees toward the Jew and his wife, the urchin kissed their hands effusively and with far too great a flood of grat.i.tude for sincerity. Bathsheba took him on her knees, and said to him as she wiped his tear-stained face, "Don't cry, poor little one.

We'll take care of you to-night, and to-morrow we'll take you home. But where do you live, and what is your name?"

"My name is Claude Rodin," answered the child; and he added, with a monstrous sigh, "The good G.o.d has been merciful to my parents, and took them to His holy paradise."

"Poor dear creature," answered Samuel, "you are, then, an orphan?"

"Alas, yes, good sir! My dear dead father used to be holy water dispenser at the Church of St. Medard. My dear dead mother used to rent out chairs in the same parish. They are now both with the angels; they are walking with the blessed saints."

"And where do you live, my poor child?"

"With Monsieur the Abbot Morlet, my good lady; a holy man of G.o.d, and my kind G.o.d-father."

"But how did it happen, my child, that you went astray at this late hour of the night?" asked Samuel. "You must have left home all alone?"

"Just after benediction," answered little Rodin, crossing himself devoutly, "Monsieur the Abbot, my good G.o.d-father, took me to walk with him in the Place Royale. There were a lot of people gathered around some mountebanks. I sinned!" cried the boy, beating his chest in contrition, "the Lord G.o.d punished me. It is my fault--my fault--my very great fault! Will G.o.d ever forgive me my sin?"

"But what great sin did you commit?" questioned Bathsheba.

"Mountebanks are heretics, fallen, and destined for h.e.l.l," answered little Rodin, pressing his lips together with a wicked air, and striking his breast again. "I sinned, hideously sinned, in watching the games of those reprobates. The Lord G.o.d punished me by separating me from my good G.o.d-father. The swaying of the crowd carried him away from me. No use to look for him! No use to call him! It was impossible to find him. It was my very great fault!"