Denunciations were the order of the day. Everyone who owned any money, or lived with any comfort was accused of being a traitor and suspected of conspiracy. The fisher folk wandered about the city, surly and discontented: their trade was at a standstill, but there was a trifle to be earned by giving information: information which meant the arrest, ofttimes the death of men, women and even children who had tried to seek safety in flight, and to denounce whom--as they were trying to hire a boat anywhere along the coast--meant a good square meal for a starving family.
Then came the awful cataclysm.
A woman--a stranger--had been arrested and imprisoned in the Fort Gayole and the town-crier publicly proclaimed that if she escaped from jail, one member of every family in the town--rich or poor, republican or royalist, Catholic or free-thinker--would be summarily guillotined.
That member, the bread-winner!
"Why, then, with the Duvals it would be young Francois-Auguste. He keeps his old mother with his boot-making ..."
"And it would be Marie Lebon, she has her blind father dependent on her net-mending."
"And old Mother Laferriere, whose grandchildren were left penniless ... she keeps them from starvation by her wash-tub."
"But Francois-Auguste is a real Republican; he belongs to the Jacobin Club."
"And look at Pierre, who never meets a calotin but he must needs spit on him."
"Is there no safety anywhere? ... are we to be butchered like so many cattle? ..."
Somebody makes the suggestion:
"It is a threat ... they would not dare! ..."
"Would not dare? ..."
'Tis old Andre Lemoine who has spoken, and he spits vigorously on the ground. Andre Lemoine has been a soldier; he was in La Vendee. He was wounded at Tours ... and he knows!
"Would not dare? ..." he says in a whisper. "I tell you, friends, that there's nothing the present government would not dare. There was the Plaine Saint Mauve ... Did you ever hear about that? ... little children fusilladed by the score ... little ones, I say, and women with babies at their breasts ... weren't they innocent? ... Five hundred innocent people butchered in La Vendee ... until the Headsman sank--worn not ... I could tell worse than that ... for I know. ... There's nothing they would not dare! ..."
Consternation was so great that the matter could not even be discussed.
"We'll go to Gayole and see this woman at any rate."
Angry, sullen crowds assembled in the streets. The proclamation had been read just as the men were leaving the public houses, preparing to go home for the night.
They brought the news to the women, who, at home, were setting the soup and bread on the table for their husbands' supper. There was no thought of going to bed or of sleeping that night. The bread-winner in every family and all those dependent on him for daily sustenance were trembling for their lives.
Resistance to the barbarous order would have been worse than useless, nor did the thought of it enter the heads of these humble and ignorant fisher folk, wearied out with the miserable struggle for existence. There was not sufficient spirit left in this half-starved population of a small provincial city to suggest open rebellion. A regiment of soldiers come up from the South were quartered in the Chateau, and the natives of Boulogne could not have mustered more than a score of disused blunderbusses between them.
Then they remembered tales which Andre Lemoine had told, the fate of Lyons, razed to the ground, of Toulon burnt to ashes, and they did not dare rebel.
But brothers, fathers, sons trooped out towards Gayole, in order to have a good look at the frowning pile, which held the hostage for their safety.
It looked dark and gloomy enough, save for one window which gave on the southern ramparts. This window was wide open and a feeble light flickered from the room beyond, and as the men stood about, gazing at the walls in sulky silence, they suddenly caught the sound of a loud laugh proceeding from within, and of a pleasant voice speaking quite gaily in a language which they did not understand, but which sounded like English.
Against the heavy oaken gateway, leading to the courtyard of the prison, the proclamation written on stout parchment had been pinned up. Beside it hung a tiny lantern, the dim light of which flickered in the evening breeze, and brought at times into sudden relief the bold writing and heavy signature, which stood out, stern and grim, against the yellowish background of the paper, like black signs of approaching death.
