In the meantime, by a blessed chance, I had not ridden three leagues from Strasburg, when the officer of a passing troop of a cavalry regiment, looking at the beast on which I was mounted, was pleased to take a fancy to it, and ordered me, in an authoritative tone, to descend, and to give up my steed for the benefit of the Republic. I represented to him, in vain, that I was a soldier like himself, and the bearer of despatches to Paris. ‘Fool!’ he said; ‘do you think they would send despatches by a man who can ride at best but ten leagues a day?’ And the honest soldier was so wroth at my supposed duplicity, that he not only confiscated my horse, but my saddle, and the little portmanteau which contained the chief part of my worldly goods and treasure. I had nothing for it but to dismount, and take my way on foot back again to Strasburg. I arrived there in the evening, determining the next morning to make my case known to the Citizen St. Just; and though I made my entry without a sou, I don’t know what secret exultation I felt at again being able to return.
The antechamber of such a great man as St. Just was, in those days, too crowded for an unprotected boy to obtain an early audience; two days passed before I could obtain a sight of the friend of Robespierre. On the third day, as I was still waiting for the interview, I heard a great bustle in the courtyard of the house, and looked out with many others at the spectacle.
A number of men and women, singing epithalamiums, and dressed in some absurd imitation of Roman costume, a troop of soldiers and gendarmerie, and an immense crowd of the badauds of Strasburg, were surrounding a carriage which then entered the court of the mayoralty. In this carriage, great God! I saw my dear Mary, and Schneider by her side. The truth instantly came upon me; the reason for Schneider’s keen inquiries and my abrupt dismissal; but I could not believe that Mary was false to me. I had only to look in her face, white and rigid as marble, to see that this proposed marriage was not with her consent.
I fell back in the crowd as the procession entered the great room in which I was, and hid my face in my hands; I could not look upon her as the wife of another—upon her so long loved and truly—the saint of my childhood—the pride and hope of my youth—torn from me for ever, and delivered over to the unholy arms of the murderer who stood before me.
The door of St. Just’s private apartment opened, and he took his seat at the table of mayoralty just as Schneider and his cortége arrived before it.
Schneider then said that he came in before the authorities of the Republic to espouse the Citoyenne Marie Ancel.
‘Is she a minor?’ said St. Just.
‘She is a minor, but her father is here to give her away.’
‘I am here,’ said Uncle Edward, coming eagerly forward and bowing. ‘Edward Ancel, so please you, citizen representative. The worthy Citizen Schneider has done me the honour of marrying into my family.’
‘But my father has not told you the terms of the marriage,’ said Mary, interrupting him, in a loud, clear voice.
Here Schneider seized her hand, and endeavoured to prevent her from speaking. Her father turned pale, and cried, ‘Stop, Mary, stop! For Heaven’s sake, remember your poor old father’s danger!’
‘Sir, may I speak?’
‘Let the young woman speak,’ said St. Just, ‘if she have a desire to talk.’ He did not suspect what would be the purport of her story.
‘Sir,’ she said, ‘two days since the Citizen Schneider entered for the first time our house; and you will fancy that it must be a love of very sudden growth which has brought either him or me before you to-day. He had heard from a person who is now, unhappily, not present, of my name and of the wealth which my family was said to possess; and hence arose this mad design concerning me. He came into our village with supreme power, an executioner at his heels, and the soldiery and authorities of the district entirely under his orders. He threatened my father with death if he refused to give up his daughter; and I, who knew that there was no chance of escape, except here before you, consented to become his wife. My father I know to be innocent, for all his transactions with the State have passed through my hands. Citizen representative, I demand to be freed from this marriage; and I charge Schneider as a traitor to the Republic, as a man who would have murdered an innocent citizen for the sake of private gain.’
During the delivery of this little speech, Uncle Jacob had been sobbing and panting like a broken-winded horse; and when Mary had done, he rushed up to her and kissed her, and held her tight in his arms. ‘Bless thee, my child!’ he cried, ‘for having had the courage to speak the truth, and shame thy old father and me, who dared not say a word.’
‘The girl amazes me,’ said Schneider, with a look of astonishment. ‘I never saw her, it is true, till yesterday; but I used no force: her father gave her to me with his free consent, and she yielded as gladly. Speak, Edward Ancel, was it not so?’
‘It was, indeed, by my free consent,’ said Edward, trembling.
‘For shame, brother!’ cried old Jacob. ‘Sir, it was by Edward’s free consent and my niece’s; but the guillotine was in the courtyard! Question Schneider’s famulus, the man Grégoire, him who reads The Sorrows of Werther.’
Grégoire stepped forward, and looked hesitatingly at Schneider as he said, ‘I know not what took place within doors; but I was ordered to put up the scaffold without; and I was told to get soldiers, and let no one leave the house.’
‘Citizen St. Just,’ cried Schneider, ‘you will not allow the testimony of a ruffian like this, of a foolish girl, and a mad ex-priest, to weigh against the word of one who has done such service to the Republic: it is a base conspiracy to betray me; the whole family is known to favour the interest of the émigrés.’
‘And therefore you would marry a member of the family, and allow the others to escape: you must make a better defence, Citizen Schneider,’ said St. Just, sternly.
Here I came forward, and said that, three days since, I had received an order to quit Strasburg for Paris, immediately after a conversation with Schneider, in which I had asked him his aid in promoting my marriage with my cousin, Mary Ancel; that he had heard from me full accounts regarding her father’s wealth; and that he had abruptly caused my dismissal, in order to carry on his scheme against her.
‘You are in the uniform of a regiment in this town; who sent you from it?’ said St. Just.
I produced the order, signed by himself, and the despatches which Schneider had sent me.
‘The signature is mine, but the despatches did not come from my office. Can you prove in any way your conversation with Schneider?’
‘Why,’ said my sentimental friend Grégoire, ‘for the matter of that, I can answer that the lad was always talking about this young woman: he told me the whole story himself, and many a good laugh I had with Citizen Schneider as we talked about it.’
‘The charge against Edward Ancel must be examined into,’ said St. Just. ‘The marriage cannot take place. But if I had ratified it, Mary Ancel, what would then have been your course?’
Mary felt for a moment in her bosom, and said—‘He would have died to-night—I would have stabbed him with this dagger.’[3]
. … .
The rain was beating down the streets, and yet they were thronged; all the world was hastening to the market-place, where the worthy Grégoire was about to perform some of