Жюльетта Бенцони - Marianne and the Privateer

At last, Adelaide looked up at Jolival and rubbed her hands together quietly.

'They say America is a wonderful country,' she said placidly and a flicker of the old fire shone for a moment in her grey eyes. 'And I have heard it said that in those southern parts it is never cold. I think that I should like never to be cold. You, Jolival?'

'I too,' the Vicomte returned gravely, 'I believe I too should like—'

The doors were flung wide open.

'Her Serene Highness is served!' Jeremy intoned from the doorway.

Marianne slipped her arms companionably through Jolival's and Adelaide's and smiled with deep gratitude upon them both.

'Indeed I am,' she said, 'I am served far, far better than anything I deserve.'

Day dawned, grey and dirty, a sodden November dawn, soaked through and through with the thin, freezing rain that had been falling on Paris for some days, penetrating everything. Looming through the yellowish fog of early morning, the old hospice of Bicêtre with its soaring roofs, lofty gateway and nicely balanced buildings, recovered some ghost of its former elegance. The mist concealed the cracks in the walls, the chipped gables and the smashed and glassless windows, the dark streaks that mottled the crumbling stonework below gutters cracked by frost and all the unsightly decay of a building which had once been royal, a work dedicated to the loftiest aims of charity, now put to the meanest uses of the law. Ever since 1796, when it had replaced La Tournelle, it had been the last stage before the galleys, the antechamber to hell, whether the road led via the Conciergerie and the scaffold or to penal servitude, which was a death no less certain but more horrible because stripped of the last rags of human dignity.

In the normal way of things, this gloomy edifice, brooding on its hillside with the waste lands all about, stood silent and alone, but on this day, despite the early hour, a swelling, noisy crowd was surging up against the rotting walls, big with a nameless joy, an unwholesome curiosity. It was the crowd which always assembled there, four times a year, to witness the departure of the 'Chain'. The same crowd of milling humanity, alerted by heaven alone knew what mysterious signs, pressed around the scaffold on execution days, no matter how quiet the thing was kept, a gathering of connoisseurs come together to watch a most choice spectacle with undisguised relish. They beat upon the closed doors of the hospice like patrons in a theatre stamping with their feet, impatient for the curtain to go up. Marianne gazed at this grisly mob with loathing.

She was standing, enveloped from head to foot in a great, black, hooded cloak, in the lee of a broken wall which had once belonged to the hovel whose crumbling remains still stood beside the road. She was up to her ankles in mud, her face was wet and her cloak already sodden with rain. Beside her was Arcadius de Jolival, grim-faced, his arms folded on his chest, also waiting, chewing the ends of his moustache.

He had wished to spare Marianne the pitiful sight in store and had tried, right up to the last minute, to dissuade her from coming, but in vain. She clung stubbornly to her pilgrimage of love, determined to follow every step of the cruel journey that lay before the man she loved, only repeating endlessly that some opportunity might occur on the way and that they must not let it slip.

'The chances of an escape while the chain is on the road,' Arcadius had explained tirelessly, 'are non-existent. They are all chained together, in batches of twenty-four at a time, and they are searched at the first halt to make sure that no one has managed to slip them any tool to sever their chains as they set out. After that they are kept under close guard and any man who is fool enough to try and escape is shot down on the spot.'

In the long days which had gone before, Arcadius had acquired minutely detailed information on everything which concerned the penal colony, the life the men led there and the conditions of the journey which took them there. He had penetrated, in ruffianly disguise, into the worst dens of the Cite and the Barrière du Combat, buying many drinks, saying little but listening a great deal, and, as he had told Marianne, his conviction had grown that any escape would need extremely careful preparation down to the minutest details. Nor had he concealed from her his fears regarding her ability to face the brutal facts about what awaited Jason. There had been a time when he had hoped to keep the greater part from her by advising that she should go to Brest and begin to make arrangements there while he followed the convict chain on its journey. But Marianne had refused to hear of any such plan. Nothing would dissuade her from following Jason step by step from the moment of his leaving Bicêtre.

Jolival gazed with a jaundiced eye at the desolate scene about him. Here and there in the waste an occasional chimney was beginning to smoke. On the edge of the crowd a number of dark figures stood in isolated groups of two or three, with the wretched, hopeless air of people in great grief. They were the wives, relatives and friends of those about to be deported. Some were weeping, others simply stood, like Marianne herself, faces strained towards the hospice, eyes wide open, every feature turned to stone by the hard frost of unshed tears.

There came a sudden roar from the crowd. Creaking, grinding, the great gates were swinging open… Two mounted officers appeared, their bodies hunched against the rain which streamed from the angles of their cocked hats, using their horses and the flat of their swords to beat back the crowd, which was already surging forwards. A shudder ran through Marianne. She took a step forward, but instantly Jolival seized her arm and dragged her back.

'Stay where you are!' he said, with unconscious harshness. 'You need not go any closer. They will pass us here.'

The first wagon had already appeared, to be greeted by a horrid outburst of boos, catcalls and abuse. It was a kind of long cart, supported on two enormous iron-shod wheels and divided along the whole of its length by a two-sided wooden bench on which the prisoners sat back-to-back, twelve to a side, their legs dangling, held in place by a crude rail at waist level. Each man was chained by the neck by means of a solid, three-cornered iron collar attached to a length of chain, too short to allow him to jump from the wagon on to the road. This chain was in turn connected to the much heavier chain which ran the length of the bench, its end lying firmly beneath the foot of the armed guard standing at the end of each wagon.

There were five of these conveyances. There was no protection, not even the most rudimentary piece of sacking, to stand between the prisoners and the rain which was already soaking through their clothes. Their prison uniform of black and grey striped canvas overalls had been taken off them for the journey and their own clothes restored to them, but so mutilated that should any man escape no one who saw him could doubt that he was a convict. Coats were lacking their collars, cuffs were shredded to ribbons, and hats, for those that had them, had been shorn of their brims.

Marianne watched them pass, appalled at the pallid, unshaven faces, hate-filled eyes and open mouths that spewed out blasphemies and obscene songs. They were shivering in the icy rain and some, the youngest, had to bite back tears when in a grieving face that loomed up through the grey drizzle they recognized the features of someone they knew.

In the leading wagon, she caught sight of François Vidocq. He sat wrapped in a scornful silence which in the midst of the cursing and groaning all about him had its own kind of greatness. The eyes that rested on the excited mob held such contempt that they seemed not to see at all, yet they saw Marianne and were instantly transformed. She saw the stubbly jaw relax in a brief smile as Vidocq nodded to the wagon next in line. At the same time, Jolival tightened his hold on Marianne's arm.

'There!' he hissed. 'Fourth from the front.'

But Marianne had already seen Jason. He was sitting very upright among the rest, his eyes half-closed, his mouth set in a thin line. He was quite silent, his arms folded on his chest, and seemed wholly insensible to all that was going on around him. His attitude was that of a man refusing either to see or to hear, his being turned inwards the better to conserve his strength and energy. The rags of his torn cambric shirt and the ripped, collarless coat gave little protection to his broad shoulders and the tanned skin showed through in many places, but he did not appear conscious of the cold or the rain. In the midst of this howling mob, with fists raised in impotent menace, mouths distorted by foul invective, he was as remote as a figure carved in stone. Marianne, her lips already parted to call out his name, fell silent when he passed her unseeingly, realizing quite suddenly that it might only have caused him pain to see her there in the crowd.

One cry of horror she could not repress, when the guards, tiring of the racket kept up by their prisoners, took out their long whips and laid about them impartially, flailing at cringing backs and shoulders, and at the heads they tried to shield with their folded arms. The shouting ceased and the cart rolled on.

'Bastards! Stinking bastards, knockin' about a right'un like him!' muttered an angry voice behind her. Marianne knew the voice and, turning, saw Gracchus, whom she and Arcadius had left with the chaise in the square of Gentilly village, standing bareheaded in the rain with clenched fists and great tears rolling down his cheeks, mingling with the rainwater. He must have left the carriage to take care of itself and come himself to see the chain pass by. His eyes followed Jason's cart until it was out of sight. Then, when it had been swallowed up in the mist, and the other carts had come and gone and the kitchen wagon was clattering by with a great clanging of metal pots and pans, Gracchus looked at his mistress, who was sobbing on Jolival's shoulder.

'We're never goin' to leave him like that?' he asked belligerently.

'You know quite well we're not,' Jolival told him. 'We are going after him and we are going to do our best to free him.'

'Then what are we waiting for? Beggin' your pardon, Mademoiselle Marianne, but you'll not get him out of it by crying. We've got work to do! Where's the first stop?'

'Saint-Cyr.' It was Arcadius who answered. 'That's where the last search is made.'

'We'll be there first. Come on!'

The discreet travelling carriage, with no outward signs of wealth beyond a pair of lively-looking post horses, was waiting with lighted lamps under the trees not far from the Pont de la Bièvre. As the morning advanced, the tanneries which bordered this stretch of the river began to come to life, spreading a powerful stench through what was otherwise a pretty scene, dominated by the square church tower. Marianne and Jolival got into the chaise in silence while Gracchus hoisted himself nimbly on to the box. A click of the tongue as the whip curved gracefully through the air to flick the leader's ear, a faint creak from the axles and they were off. The long journey to Brest had begun.

Marianne leaned her cheek against the rough fabric of the squabs and abandoned herself to her tears. She wept quite silently, with no sobbing, and it did her good. It was as if the hideous sights she had just beheld were being washed from her eyes, and at the same time her own natural courage and will to succeed slowly returned to take possession of her mind. Arcadius, sitting beside her, knew her too well to make any attempt to stem the beneficent flow or offer the least word of comfort. What could he have said? It was necessary for Jason to endure this dreadful journey because it led not to his prison alone, but to the sea, from which he had always drawn his strength.

Marianne left Paris without regret, with no expectation of ever going back there, or with no more regret than the slight pang she felt at parting from her few remaining friends there: Talleyrand, the Crawfurds and, most of all, her dearest Fortunée Hamelin. But Fortunée had refused to give way to sentiment. Even as she embraced her friend for the last time, her eyes full of tears, she had insisted, with all the infectious enthusiasm of her sun-loving nature:

'This is not good-bye, Marianne! When you are an American, I shall come and visit you there, and see if the men are as handsome as they say. Judging by your corsair, it must be true!'