The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel

CHAPTER IV - "FLY-BY-NIGHT"

1

They were so enthusiastic! so eager! Perhaps the secrecy and the excitement of it all appealed more to them than the actual ideals which they advocated. For they were all young men of the professional classes and of the lower bourgeoisie: men who, you would have thought, would have nothing to gain by political intrigue or the reëstablishment of the old monarchy, and who were risking their lives to overthrow a system that had not, in very truth, much interfered with the even tenor of their lives.

They held their meetings in the cellar of an old house at the bottom of the Rue de l'Odéon, which was decorated with a white flat that bore the emblem of the royal fleur-de-lys on it in gold, and was hung on the wall immediately behind the seat usually occupied by the chairman. Here the young hotheads would talk politics o'nights and swear allegiance to King Louis XVII, by the grace of God King of France: the poor mite who had been dispossessed of all save his precarious little life, and that too was at the mercy of the inhuman brutes who held him captive. An old wastrel, Servan by name, kept watch at the street door during the sittings and tidied up the place afterward. Strangely enough, no one knew much about Servan. He came and he went. Now and then he disappeared for days on end, when, at his earnest request, sittings would be suspended until his return. Servan was invaluable for ferreting out the plans of the committee of the section; invaluable in his position as watch-dog-in-chief of the Club des Fils du Royaume.

It was one night while Servan was absent that the inevitable catastrophe occurred. He had begged that the sittings of the club should be postponed for a few days. But the next day happened to be the 14th of October, and on that morning had begun the trial of Marie Antoinette---erstwhile Queen of France, now called the Widow Capet---before the Revolutionary Tribunal, at the bar of Fouquier-Tinville, the public prosecutor. What could Les Fils du Royaume do but call a hurried meeting to discuss this portentous event?

Old Servan's warning was forgotten, and at eleven o'clock that same night eighteen or twenty young enthusiasts met to formulate plans for the liberation of their queen.

An hour later the blow had fallen. The ominous command: "Open in the name of the Republic!" came loudly and peremptorily from outside. "The police! Sauve qui peut!" in hurried, hoarse whispers from within. They were trapped like so many rats in a burrow. There was nothing for it but to make a fight for one's life first and make a rush for the open, if possible, when darkness might be of service.

But the revolutionaries were armed with bayonets, and the issue was never for a moment in doubt. The Sons of the Kingdom fought bravely and there were several broken heads among the guard. In the end, some fifteen of the young conspirators were overpowered. Bleeding from several wounds, they were tied together like so much cattle, with cords, and marched up the narrow dank stairs into the street, where the raiding party handed them over to a fresh body of soldiers. They were taken to the chief depôt of the section, whilst five others lay dead upon the floor of the cellar in the Rue de l'Odéon. The chief commissary of the section ordered the bodies to be left there.

"The garbage can be cleared away another time," he remarked spitefully.

Two days later the bodies were removed, but there were only four of them then. And on looking through his list of prisoners and comparing it with that of the dead, the chief commissary found that one name was missing from both. It was that of Félicien Lézennes, chairman of the Club des Fils du Royaume.

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The news of the raid on the Club des Files du Royaume came as a thunderbolt upon the little household at Mon Abris. Little was known at first save the meagre announcement which appeared the following day in the Moniteur. Madame St. Luc, however, was at once filled with the gloomiest forebodings as to her son-in-law's fate. Adrienne Lézennes, always self-contained, didn't say much, but her father appeared distinctly resentful as well as anxious. The plight into which Félicien's hot-headedness had landed them all had a grating effect upon his nerves.