The Hero of the People: A Historical Romance of Love, Liberty and Loyalty

CHAPTER XXVII
THE FRIEND OF THE FALLEN

AT eight that same evening, a workingman, holding his hand to his waistcoat pocket as though it contained money in larger quantity than usual, staggered out of the Tuileries Palace and meandered along the road to the Soapworks Wharfside. It was there a strolling ground with drinking resorts along the line. On Sundays and holidays, it was thronged; on other days lonesome.

This man passed the wine-stores with much difficulty but for a period temperance triumphed; but when it came to the twentieth saloon on the route, it was too much, and he entered the next one for – only one glass.

The demon of drink, against whom he had valiantly struggled, seemed embodied in a stranger who followed him closely and even went into the saloon with him, sitting opposite and apparently watching him succumb with glee.

Five seconds after the workman had resumed his road, this watcher was on his track.

But how can the drinkingman stop going downhill when he has taken a whet, and perceives with the amazement of the toper that nothing makes one so thirsty as taking a drink? Scarcely had he tottered a hundred paces before his thirst was so sharp that he had to slack it once more.

The result of these lapses from the path he had previously trod was that he reached deviously the highway beyond the Passy bars, where he felicitated himself on the road being tolerably free from temples of the God of Wine.

In his gladness he set up singing. Unfortunately the delight was ephemeral and the song of short duration.

He fell to muttering and then talking to himself, and the soliloquy was in the form of imprecations on unknown persecutors of whom the unsteady sot complained.

“Oh, the scoundrel! to give an old friend, a master, doctored wine – ugh! So, just let him send again for me to fix his locks, let him send his traitor of a workmate who gives me the go-by and I will tell him: ‘It won’t work this trip! let your Majesty fix up your own locks.’ We shall see then if a lock is to be turned out as sleek as a decree. Oh, I’ll give you all you want of locks, with three wards, confound the villain! the wine was salted, peppered – by heaven, it was poisoned! Hope I may be saved, but the wine was poisoned!”

So howling, overcome by the force of the poison, of course, the unfortunate victim laid himself at full length, not for the first time, on the road, mercifully carpetted thickly with mud.

On other occasions the drunkard had scrambled up alone; difficult to do but he had got through the difficulty with honor; but this third time, after desperate efforts, he had to confess that the task was beyond him. With a sigh, much resembling a groan, he seemed decided to sleep for this night on the bosom of our common Mother Earth.

No doubt the follower had waited for this period of doubt, disheartenment and weakness, for he approached him warily, went all round fallen greatness, and calling a hack, said to the driver:

“Old man, here’s my friend who has shipped too heavy a cargo. Take this piece for yourself, help me to put the poor fellow in the straw of your coach where he will not soil the elegant cushions, and take him to your wine saloon at Sevres Bridge. I will get up beside you.”

There was nothing surprising that the customer should sit up with the driver, as he appeared to be one of his sort. So, with the touching confidence men of the lower classes have for one another, the jarvey said:

“All right, but let us have a look at the silver, see!”

“Here you are, old brother,” ventured the man without being in the least offended and handing over a six-livre crownpiece.

“But will there be a little bit beyond the fare for myself, my master?” inquired the coachman, mollified by the money.

“That depends how we get along. Let us get the poor chap in; shut the blinds, try to keep your pair of skeletons on their hoofs, and we will see when we get to Sevres, how you conducted us!”

“Now, I call this speaking to the purpose,” returned the knight of the whip. “Take it easy, master! A nod is as good as a wink. Get upon the box and keep my Arabian steeds from bolting up the road; no jokes, they feel the want of a supper and are chafing to race home to the stables. I will manage the rest.”

The generous stranger did as he was bid; the driver, with all the delicacy of which he was susceptible, dragged the sot up by the arms, jabbed him down between the seats, slammed the door, drew down the blinds, mounted the box again, and whipped up the barbs. With the funeral gait of night hack-horses they stumbled through the village of Point-du-Jour and reached the Sevres Saloon in an hour.

The house was shut up for the night, but the new-comer jumped down and applied such blows of the fist to the door that the inhabitants, however fond of slumber, could not enjoy it long under so much racket. The host, who was alone, finally got up in his night dress, to see the rioter and promised to pack him off smartly if the game were not worth the candle.

Apparently though the value of the game was clear, for, at the first whisper by the irreverent arouser to the landlord, he plucked off his cotton nightcap and made bows which his scanty costume rendered singularly grotesque. He hastened to pilot the coachman, lugging Gamain, into the little taproom where he had once filled himself with his favorite burgundy.

As the driver and his steeds had done their best, the stranger gave the former a piece of money as extra.

Then seeing that Master Gamain was stuck up in a chair, with his head on the table before him, he hastened to have the host bring him two bottles of wine and a decanter of water, and opened the windows and blinds to change the mephitic air which the common people like to breathe in such resorts.

After bringing the wine, with alacrity, and the water, with reluctance, the host respectfully retired and left the stranger with the drunkard.

Having renewed the air, as stated, the former clapped smelling salts to Gamain’s nose which ceased to snore and gave a sneeze. This awakened him a little from that disgusting sleep of drunkards the sight of which would cure them – if by a miracle, they could see what they look like at such periods.

Gamain opened his eyes widely, and muttered some words, unintelligible for anybody but the philologist who distinguished by his profound attention these words:

“The scoundrel – he – poisoned – poisoned wine – “

The good Samaritan seemed to see with satisfaction that his ward was under the same impression: he gave him another sniff of the hartstorn which permitted the son of Noah to complete the sense of his phrase in an accusation pointing to an abuse of trust and wanton heartlessness.

“To poison a friend – an old friend!”

“That’s so – it is horrible,” observed the other.

“Infamous,” faltered Gamain.

“What a good thing I was handy to give you an antidote,” suggested the hearer.

“It was lucky,” said the locksmith.

“But as one dose is not enough, have another,” said the stranger, putting a few drops from the smelling bottle in a glass of water; it was ammonia and the man had hardly swallowed the compound than he opened his eyes immeasurably and gurgled between two sneezes:

“Ah, monster, what are you giving us there? augh, augh!”

“My dear fellow, I am giving you stuff that will save your life,” returned the kind friend.

“If it is physic, that is all right,” said Gamain: “but it is a beastly failure if you call it a drink.”

The stranger profited by his sneezing again and twitching his features, shut the blinds though not the windows.

Looking round him the master locksmith recognized with the profound gratitude of drinking men for old haunts, the saloon where he had feasted before. In his frequent trip to town from Versailles, he had not seldom halted here. It might be thought necessary, as the house was halfway.

This gratitude produced its effect: it gave him a great confidence to find himself on friendly ground.

“Hurrah, it looks as though I were halfway home anyway,” he exclaimed.

“Yes, thanks to me,” said the stranger.

“Thanks to you? why, who are you?” stammered Gamain, looking from still life to animated things.

“My dear Gamain, your question shows that you have a poor memory.”

“Hold on,” said the smith, giving him more attention: “it strikes me that I have seen you before.”

“You don’t say so? that is a blessed thing.”

“Ay, but where – that is the rub.”

“Look around you, then; something may remind you; or had you better have some more of the counterbane to refresh you?”

“No, thank ’ee, I have had enough of that remedy,” said Gamain, stretching his arms out. “I am so nearly brought round that I will do without it. Where did I see you? why, in this very spot, of course. And when? the day I was coming back from doing a special job at Paris – I seem to be in for this sort of thing,” added he, chuckling.

“Very well: but who am I?”

“A jolly honest mate who paid for the liquor. Shake hands!”

“Good, good, you remember now.”

“With all the more pleasure as it is but a step from Master locksmith to master gunsmith,” said the other.

“Ah, good, good, I remember now. Yes, it was the sixth of October, when the King went to Paris: we talked about him.”

“And I found your conversation interesting, Master Gamain; so that, as your memory comes home and I want to enjoy it again, I should like to know, if I am not too inquisitive, what the deuse you were doing across the road where a vehicle might have cut you in two? Have you sorrows, old blade, and had you screwed up your mind to suicide?”

“Faith, no! What was I doing flat across the road, eh? Was I in the road?”

“Look at your clothes.”

“Whew!” whistled Gamain after the inspection. “Mother Gamain will kick up a hullabaloo for she said yesterday: ‘Don’t put on your new coat; any old thing will do for the Tuileries.'”

“Hello? been to the Tuileries? were you coming from the Tuileries when I picked you up?” asked the kind soul.

“Why, yes, that’s about the size of it,” responded Gamain, scratching his head and trying to collect his entangled ideas; “certainly I was coming home from the Tuileries. Why not? It is no mystery that I am master locksmith to Master Veto.”

“Who is he?”

“Why, have you come from China? not to know old Veto?”

“What do you want? I am obliged to stick to my trade, and that is not politics.”

“You are blamed lucky! I have to mix up with these high folk – more’s the pity! or rather, they force me to mix with them. It will be my ruin.” He sighed as he looked up to heaven.

“Pshaw! were you called to Paris again to do another piece of work in the style of that other one?” asked the friend.

“But this time I was not blindfolded but taken with my eyes open.”

“So that you knew it was the Tuileries this time?”

“The Tuileries? who said anything about the Tuileries?”

“Why, you, of course, just now. How would I know where you had been carousing had you not told me?”

“That is true,” muttered Gamain to himself; “how should he, unless I told him? Perhaps,” he said aloud, “I was wrong to let you know; but you are not like the rest. Besides I am not going to deny that I was at the Tuileries.”

“And you did some work for the King, for which he gave you twenty five louis,” went on the other.

“Indeed, I had twenty-five shiners in my pouch,” said Gamain.

“Then, you have got them now, my friend.”

The smith quickly plunged his hand into his pocket and pulled it out full of gold mixed with small change in silver and bronze.

“To think that I had forgot it! twenty-five is a good bit, too – and it is right to the ‘broken’ louis – one does not pick up such a lot under the horse’s foot. Thank God the account is correct.” And he breathed more freely.

“My dear Master Gamain, I told you I found you on the King’s highway, not twenty paces from a heavy wagon which would have cut you in twain. I shouted for the carrier to pull up; I called a passing cab; I unhooked one of the lamps and as I looked at you by its light, I caught sight of a gold piece on the ground; as they were near your pocket, I judged that you had dropped them. I put my finger in the pocket and as there were a score of their brothers in bed there I guessed that these were of the same brood. Thereupon the hack driver shook his head. ‘I ain’t going to take this fare,’ said he: ‘he is too rich for his dress. Twenty louis in gold in a cotton waistcoat suggests that the gallows will be his end.’ ‘What,’ says I, ‘do you take him for a thief?’ The word struck you, for you says. ‘Thief? you are another!’ says you. ‘So you must be a prig,’ returned the coachman, ‘or how would the likes of you have a pocket gold-lined, say?’

“'I have money because my pupil the King of France gave it me,’ said you. By these words I thought I recognized you, and clasping the lamp to your nose, I cried: ‘Bless us and save us: all is clear; this is Master Gamain, master locksmith at Versailles. He has been working in the royal forge and the King has given him twenty-five mint-drops for his trouble. All right: I will answer for him.’ From the moment that I answered for you, the driver raised no objections. I replaced the coins in your pocket; we laid you snugly in the hack; and we set you down in this retreat so that you have nothing to complain of except that your ‘prentice left you in the lurch.”

“Did I speak of my ’prentice? that he left me in the lurch?” questioned Gamain, more and more astonished.

“Why, hang it all, are you going back on what you said? Did you not growl that it was all the fault of – of – dash me if I can remember the name you used.”

“Louis Lecomte?”

“I guess that was it. Did you not say: ‘Louis Lecomte is in fault! for he promised to see me safe home and at the last moment he dropped me like a hot roll?'”

“I daresay I did so, for it is the blessed truth.”

“Then, why do you deny the truth? let me tell you, that with another than me, such chatter would be dangerous?”

“But with you, one is safe, eh? with a regular friend,” said the smith, coaxingly.

“Lord, you have lots of trust in your friend. You say yes and you say no; you wiggle and waver so that none knows how to have you. It is like your fable t’other day about the secret door that a nobleman had you fit on the strict quiet.”

“Then you will not believe this tale either, for it also hangs upon a door.”

“In the palace?”

“In the King’s palace. Only instead of its being a clothes-press door, or rather that of a safe in the wall, it is a cupboard door this time.”

“Are you gaming me that the King, while he certainly dabbles in locksmithery, sent for you to do up a door?”

“He did, though. Poor fellow, he thought he was smart enough to get on without me, and began to make a lock. ‘What good is Gamain anyhow?’ but he got mixed up with the works in the lock and had to fall back on Gamain after all.”

“So you were hunted up by one of his trusty flunkeys, Hue, or Durey or Weber, eh?”

“That is just where you make a mistake. He has taken a green hand on to help him, who is as much of an amateur as himself; a young sprig who popped in upon me one morning at Versailles, and says he: ‘Look here, Daddy Gamain, the King and me tried to make a lock, and by Jove we have made a muddle of it. The old thing won’t work! ‘What have I to do with it?’ I wanted to know. ‘You are wanted to set it right,’ says he, and as I said that it was a plant and he did not come from the King, he slaps some gold on the bench and says: ‘Is not this earnest enough? here are twenty-five louis which the King sends you to remove any doubts.’ He gave me them, too.”

“So these are what you are sporting round with you?”

“No: these are another lot. These were for traveling expenses and a sort of a payment on account!”

“Fifty louis for filing up an old lock? there is a snake in the grass, Friend Gamain.”

“Just what I said to myself: particularly as the ’prentice does not seem a regular craftsman but dodged my question about work and where you stop when you are on tramp in France, as well as who is Mother Marianne.”

“But you are not the man to be taken in when you see a boy at work.”

“I do not say so much as that. The lad plied the file and the chisel handily. I have seen him cut a rod of iron through velean at a blow, and put a hole in a band with a rattail file as if using a gimlet on a lath. But there is more theory than practice about his style: he no sooner finishes the job than he washed his hands, and what hands? so white that never did a locksmith boast the like. You don’t see me scrubbing my hands till they are white!”

With pride he showed his grubby, black and callous hands which indeed seemed to defy all the cosmetics and skin-bleaches in the world.

“But in short what did you do when you got to the King’s?” asked the other, bringing the man to the point most interesting to him.

“It looked as though we were expected: in the forge the King showed me a lock commenced not badly, but he had got in a corner. It was one with three wards, d’ye see, which few locksmiths can grapple with and royal ones least of all. I looked at it and saw where the key caught. ‘All right,’ I says; ‘let me alone with it for an hour and it will work as if greased,’ ‘Go ahead,’ said the King, ‘consider yourself at home; call for anything you like while we get the cupboard ready on which the lock goes.’ On which he went out with the imp of a ’prentice.”

“By the main stairs?” queried the gunsmith carelessly.

“No: by a secret one leading to his study. When I got through, I had done something, too; I said to myself: ‘It is all bosh about this here cupboard; they are laying their heads together for some mischief.’ So I crept down softly and opening the study door, I got a glimpse of what they were up to.”

“And what were they up to?” inquired the gunsmith.

“Well, I did not catch them in the act, for they must have heard me coming, for I have not the light step of a dancer. They pretended to be up and coming to me, and the King said, ‘Oh this is you, and you have finished? Come along for I have something else for you to do.’ So he hurried me through the study, but not so fast that I did not spy spread out on a table a big map which I believe to be France on account of a lily-flower printed in one corner. From the midst three rows of pins ran out to the edges like files of soldiers, for they were stuck in at regular spaces.”

“Really, you are wonderfully sharp,” said the stranger in affected admiration: “So you believe that instead of bothering about their cupboard, they were busy with this map?”

“I am sure of it: the pins had wax heads of different colors, black, blue and red; and the King was using a red one to pick his teeth with, without thinking what he was about.”

“Gamain, if I discovered some new kind of gun, hang me if I would let you come into my workshop, even to pass through it, or I would bandage your eyes as on the day you were taken to the great nobleman’s house though you did perceive that the house had ten steps to the stoop and that it fronted on the main avenue.”

“Wait a bit,” said the smith, enchanted at the eulogies; “you have not heard all – there is really a safe in the wall.”

“What wall?”

“Of the inner corridor running from the royal alcove to the young prince’s room.”

“What you say is very queer. And was this safe open?”

“Is it likely? I squinted round in all ways but it was no use my asking myself: ‘Where on earth is this secret press?’ Then the King gave me a look and says he: ‘Gamain, I have always had trust in you. So I would not let anybody but you know the secret.’ While speaking, the King lifted a panel, while the boy held a light, for the corridor has no windows, and showed me a two foot round hole. Seeing my astonishment, he winked to our companion and said: ‘Do you see that hole, my friend; I made it to keep money in; this young fellow helped me during the four or five days he has been staying in the palace. Now we want the lock put on the panel so that it will be hidden and not interfere with its sliding. Do you want an aid, in which case this young man will help you? or can you do without? if so I will set him to work elsewhere. ‘Tut,’ I said, ‘you know that I like to go alone when I am the job. It is four hour’s work for a good hand but I am a master and will be through in three. Go and attend to your work, young fellow; and your Majesty may stick to his. And in three hours fetch along anything you want kept in this meat-safe.’

“We may believe the young chap had other fish to fry, for I saw nothing more of him: but when the time was up, the King came back. ‘U. P., it is all UP!’ said I, and I made him see that the door slid without the lock being in the way as neat as the Automatons of Vaucanson. ‘Good,’ said he; ‘just help me count the cash I am going to bestow here.’ A valet brought four fine bags of coin and we reckoned a million a-piece; there were twenty-and-five over. ‘There you are, Gamain,’ said the King, ‘Take them for your trouble!’ as though it was not disgraceful to give an old mate a beggarly twenty-five – a man with five children, and he has been handling two millions! What do you think of that?”

“The truth is that this is mean,” said the other, shrugging his shoulders.

“Wait, this is not all. I put the coin in my pocket and said. ‘I thank your Majesty: but Lord love you, I have not had sup or bite since morning and I am ready to burst!’ I had barely finished before the Queen walked in by a secret door, so that she was on the top of us without saying Lookout! She had a platter in her hand with a cake and a glass on it.

“'My dear Gamain, as you are hungry and thirsty, try our wine and cake!’ ‘Sorry to trouble you, Royal Madam,’ I said, but just think of a drop like that and a mouthful of wine like that fancy cake for a man. What do you expect sensible in that line from a Queen, though? it is plain that such folks are never really hungry and athirst. A glass of wine – oh, dear!”

“So you refused it?”

“It would have been better if I had; but I drank. As for the cake I rolled it up in my handkerchief, saying ‘What is no good for the father will do for the children.’ Then I thanked his Majesty, as though it were worth thanks, and I started off, saying that they will not catch me in their old palace in a hurry again.”

“And why do you say you had better have refused the drink?”

“Because they had put poison in it! Hardly had I got over the bridge before I was seized by thirst, such a raging thirst that between the liquor saloons and the river, I balanced myself. I could tell it was queer stuff they gave me for the more I took the thirstier I was. This kept on with my trying to correct that dose till I lost my senses. They may be easy on this score: if ever they come to me for a good character, I will say they gave me twenty-five louis for four hours’ work and counting a million, and for fear I should tell where they keep their treasure, they poisoned me like a dog!”

“And I, my dear Gamain,” said the hearer, rising as though he had all the information he wanted: “I will support your evidence by swearing that I saved you with the antidote.”

“That is why we are sworn comrades till death do us part,” exclaimed the smith, grasping the speaker’s hands.

Refusing with Spartan sobriety the wine which his friend offered him for the third or fourth time – for the amoniacal dose had sobered him as well as disgusted him with drink for a time, Gamain took the road for Versailles where he arrived safely at two in the morning with the King’s coin in his pocket and the Queen’s cake in another.

Left behind in the saloon, the pretended gunsmith drew out a set of tablets mounted in diamonds and gold, and wrote with fluid-ink pencil these two notes:

“An iron safe behind the King’s alcove, in the unlighted passage leading to the prince’s rooms. Make sure whether Louis Lecomte, locksmith’s boy, is not really Count Louis, son of Marquis Bouille, arrived eleven days ago from Metz.”