Читать онлайн «The Baker of Rousillon»

The Baker of Rousillon

by Rafael Sabatini

It was in Brumaire of the year 2 of the French Republic, One and Indivisible--November of 1793 by the calendar of slaves--that, whilst on my way to rejoin my regiment--then before Toulon--I was detained in Rousillon by orders of no less a personage than Robespierre himself, and billeted for three days upon a baker and dealer in wines of the name of Bonchatel.

This Bonchatel proved an excellent host. He was a man of whimsical and none too loyal notions concerning the Republic, and to me he expressed those notions with an amusing and dangerous frankness, explaining his indiscretion in so trusting me by the statement that he knew an officer was not a mouchard.

Had not Fate decreed that Bonchatel should have an enemy who gave him some concern, it is likely I had found him a yet pleasanter host--though it is also likely that he had continued a baker to the end of his days. As it was, he would fall ever and anon into fits of abstraction; his brow would be clouded, and his good-humoured mouth screwed with concern. To the dullest it might have been clear that he nursed a secret sorrow.

"Citizen-Captain," said he on the second day of my sojourn at his house, "you have the air of a kind-hearted man, and I will confide in you a matter that vexes me not a little, and fills me at times with the gravest apprehensions. "

And with that he proceeded to relate how a ruffianly cobbler, originally named Coupri, but now calling himself Scævola to advertise his patriotism, who--by one of the ludicrous turns in the machinery of the Revolution--had been elected President of the Committee of Public Safety of Rousillon, had cast the eyes of desire upon Amélie (Bonchatel's only daughter) and sought her to wife. Ugly as the Father of Sin himself, old and misshapen, the girl had turned in loathing from his wooing, whilst old Bonchatel had approved her attitude, and bidden the one-time cobbler take his suit to the devil.

"I saved my child then," my host concluded, "but I am much afraid that it was no more than a postponement.

This Scævola swore that I should bitterly regret it, and since then he has spared no effort to visit trouble upon me. Should he succeed, and should the Committee decree my imprisonment, or my death even, upon some trumped-up charge, I shudder to think of what may befall my poor Amélie. "

I cheered the man as best I might, making light of his fears and endeavouring to prove them idle. Yet idle they were not. I realised it then, knowing the power that such a man as Scævola might wield, and I was to realise it yet more keenly upon the morrow.

I was visited in the afternoon of the next day by a courier, who brought me a letter from "the Incorruptible," wherein he informed me that he would be at Rousillon that night at ten o'clock. He bade me wait upon him at the Mairie, keeping his coming a secret from all without exception.

Now between my receipt of that letter and the advent in Rousillon of the all-powerful Robespierre there was played out in the house of Bonchatel a curious comedy that had tragedy for a setting.