CHAPTER XVII
THE SECRET SOCIETY LODGE
THE famous royal special court, the “Bed of Justice,” (which is the French equivalent for the “Star Chamber,”) was held with all the ceremonial which royal pride required on one hand and the intriguers who urged their master to this exercise of royal claims, on the other.
The King pretended to be serene, but he was not at ease: yet his magnificent costume was admired and nothing cloaks a man’s defects like majesty. The Dauphiness wore a plaintive look through all the affair. Lady Dubarry was brave, with the confidence given by youth and beauty. She seemed a ray of lustre from the King whose left-hand queen she was.
Aiguillon walked among the peers firmly, so that none could have guessed that it was across him the King and Parliament were exchanging blows. He was pointed at by the crowd and the Parliamentarists scowled at him; but that was all.
Besides, the multitude, kept at a distance by the soldiers, betrayed its presence only by a humming, not yet a hooting.
The King’s speech began in honey but ended in a dash of vitriol so sharp that the nobles smiled. But Parliament, with the admirable unanimity of constitutional bodies, kept a tranquil and indifferent aspect which highly displeased the King and the aristocratic spectators on the stands.
The Dauphiness turned pale with wrath, from thus for the first time measuring popular resistance, and calculating the weight of its power.
After the King’s speech was read by the Chancellor, the King, to the amazement of everybody made a sign that he was going to speak.
Attention became stupor.
How many ages were in that second!
“You hear what my chancellor informs you of my will,” he said in a firm voice: “Think only to carry it out, for I shall never change.”
The whole assembly was literally thunderstricken. The Dauphiness thanked the speaker with a glance of her fine eyes. Lady Dubarry, electrified, could not refrain from rising, and she would have clapped her hands but for the fear that the mob would stone her to death on going out, or to receive next day satirical songs each worse than the other.
“Do you hear?” she said to the Duke of Richelieu, who had bowed lowly to his triumphing nephew. “The King will never change, he says.”
“They are terrible words, indeed,” he replied, “but those poor Parliamentists did not notice that in saying he would never change, the King had his eyes on you.”
She was a woman and no politician. She only saw a compliment where Aiguillon perceived the epigram and the threat.
The effect of the royal ultimatum was immediately favorable to the royal cause. But often a heavy blow only stuns and the blood circulates the more purely and richly for the shock.
This was the reflection made by three men in the crowd, as they looked on from the corner. Chance had united them here, and they appeared to watch the impression of the throng.
“This ripens the passions,” observed one of them, an old man with brilliant eyes in a soft and honest face. “A Bed of Justice is a great work.”
“Aye, but you may make a bed and not get Justice to go to sleep on it,” sneered a young man.
“I seem to know you – we have met before?” queried the old man.
“The night of the accident through the fireworks; you are not wrong, M. Rousseau.”
“Oh, you are my fellow-countryman, the young surgeon, Marat?”
“Yes, at your service.”
The third man did not speak. He was young and had a noble face; during the ceremony he had done nothing but study the crowd. The surgeon was the first to depart, plunging onto the thick of the mob, which had forgotten him, being less grateful than Rousseau, but he intended to remind them some day.
Waiting till he had gone, the other young man addressed the philosopher, saying:
“Are you not going?”
“I am too old to risk myself in that crush.”
“In that case,” said the young man, lowering his voice, “we shall meet to-night in Plastriere Street – Do not fail, Brother Rousseau!”
The author started as though a phantom had risen in face of him. His usually pale tint became livid. He meant to reply to the other but he had vanished.
After these singular words from the stranger, trembling and unhappy, Rousseau meandered among the groups without remembering that he was old and feared the press. Soon he got out upon Notre Dame Bridge, and he crossed in musing and self-questioning, the Grêve Ward next his own.
“So, the secret which every one initiated is sworn to guard at the peril of his life, is in the grip of the first comer. This is the result of the secret societies being made too popular. A man knows me, that I am his associate – perhaps his accomplice! Such a state of things is absurd and intolerable. I wanted to learn the bottom of the plan for human regeneration framed by those chosen spirits called the Illuminati: I was mad enough to believe that good ideas could come from Germany, that land of mental mist and beer. I have entangled myself with some idiots or knaves who used it as cloak to conceal their folly. But no, this shall not be. A lightning flash has shown me the abyss, and I am not going to throw myself into it with lightness of heart.”
Leaning on his cane, he stopped in the street for an instant.
“Yet it was a lovely dream,” he meditated. “Liberty in bondage, the future conquered without noise and shocks, and the net mysteriously spun and laid over the tyrants while they slumbered. It was altogether too lovely and I was a dupe to believe it. I do not want any of these fears, doubts and shadows which are unworthy of a free mind and independent body.”
At this, he caught sight of some police officers, and they so frightened the free mind and impelled the independent body, that he hastened to seek the darkest shade under the pillars where he was strolling.
It was not far to his house, where he took refuge from his thoughts and his wife, the spitfire of this modern Socrates.
He now began to think that there might be danger in not keeping the appointment at the secret lodge of which the stranger in the mob had spoken.
“If they have penalties against turncoats, they must have them for the lukewarm and the negligent,” he reasoned. “I have always noticed that black threats and great danger amount to little; one must be on guard against petty stings, paltry revenge; hoaxes and annoyances of small calibre. The application of wild justice by capital sentences is extremely rare. Some day my brother Freemasons will even up matters with me by stretching a rope across my staircase so that I shall break a limb or knock out the half-dozen teeth still my own. Or a brick may stave in my skull as I go under a scaffolding. Better than that, they may have some pamphleteer, living near me, in the league, who will watch what I do. That can be done as the meetings are held in my own street. This quill-driver will publish details of how my wife scolds, which will make me the laughing-stock of all the town. Have I not enemies all around me?”
Then his thoughts changed.
“Pah, where is courage, and where honor?” he said. “Am I afraid of myself? Shall I see a rogue or a poltroon when I look in the glass? No, this shall not be. I will keep the tryst though the entire universe coalesces to work my misery – though the cellars in the street broke down to swallow me up. Pretty reasonings fear lead a man into. Since that man spoke to me, I have been swinging round in a circle of nonsense. I am doubting everything – myself included. This is not logical. I know that I am not an enthusiast and I would not believe this association could work wonders unless it would do so. What says that I am not going to be the regenerator of humanity, – I, who have searched, and whom the mysterious agents of this limitless power sought out on the strength of my writings? Am I to recede from following up my theory and putting it into action?”
He became animated.
“What is finer? Ages on the march – the people issuing from the state of brutes; step following step in the gloom and a hand beckoning out of the darkness. The immense pyramid arising on the tip of which future ages will set the crown – the bust of Rousseau, citizen of Geneva, who risked his life and his liberty to be true to his motto: ‘Truth is more than life.’”
Night came and he passed out of his house.
He peeped around to make sure.
No vehicles were about. The street was full of loungers, who stared at one another, as usual, or halted at the store-windows to ogle the girls. A man the more would not be perceived in the scuffle. Rousseau dived into it, and he had no long road to travel.
Before the door where Rousseau was to meet the brothers, a street singer with a shrill fiddle was stationed. Nothing was more favorable to a jam in the thoroughfare than the crowd caused by the amateurs of this rude music. Everybody had to go one side or another of the group. Rousseau remarked that many of those who chose to take the inside and go along by the houses, became lost on the road as though they fell down some trapdoor. He concluded that they came on the same errand as himself and meant to follow their example.
Passing behind the group round the musician, he watched the first person passing this who went up the alley of the house. He was more timid than him, and his friends, for he waited till ten had disappeared. Then, too, when a cab came along and called all eyes toward the street, he dived into the passage.
It was black, but he soon spied a light ahead, under which was seated a man, placidly reading as a tradesman is in the custom to do after business hours. At Rousseau’s steps, he lifted his head, and plainly laid his finger on his breast, lit up by the lamp. The philosopher replied to the sign by laying a finger on his lips.
Thereupon the guard rose and opening a door so artistically cut in the panelling so as to be unseen, he showed Rousseau a flight of stairs. It went steeply down into the ground.
On the visitor entering, the door closed noiselessly but rapidly.
Groping with his cane, Rousseau went down the steps, thinking it a poor joke for his colleagues to try to break his neck and limbs so soon on the threshold.
But the stairs were not so long as steep. He had counted seventeen steps when a puff of the warm air from a collection of men smote his face.
It was a cellar, hung with canvas painted with workmen’s tools, more symbolical than accurate. A solitary lamp swung from the ceiling and cast a sinister glimmer on faces honest enough in themselves. The men were whispering to each other on benches. Instead of carpet or even planks, reeds had been strewn to deaden sound.
Nobody appeared to pay any heed to Rousseau. Five minutes before, he had wished for nothing so much as this entrance; now he was sorry that he had slipped in so smoothly.
He saw one place empty on one of the rear benches and he went and sat there modestly. He counted thirty-three heads in the gathering. A desk on a raised stage waited for the chairman of the club.
He remarked that the conversation was very brief and guarded. Many did not move their lips; only three or four couples really chatted.
Those who were silent strove to hide their faces, an easy matter from the lamp throwing masses of shadow. The refuge of these timid folk seemed to be behind the chairman’s stage.
But two or three, to make up for this shrinking, bustled about to identify their colleagues. They went to and fro, spoke together, and often disappeared through a doorway masked by a curtain painted with red flames on a black ground.
Presently a bell rang.
Plainly and simply a man left the bench where he had been mixed up with the others and took his place at the desk. After having made some signs with fingers and hands which the assemblaged repeated, and sealed all with a more explicit gesture, he declared the lodge open.
He was a complete stranger to Rousseau; under the appearance of a superior craftsman, he hid much presence of mind and he spoke with eloquence as fluent as a trained orator. His speech was clear and short, signifying that the lodge was held for the reception of a new member.
“You must not be surprised at the meeting taking place where the usual initiation ceremonies cannot be performed. Such tests are considered useless by the chiefs. The brother to be received is one of the torches of contemporaneous philosophy, a deep spirit devoted to us by conviction, not fear. He who has plumbed all the mysteries of nature and the human heart would not feel the same impression as the ordinary mortal who seeks our assistance in will, strength and means. To win his co-operation it will be ample to be content with the pledge and acquiescence of this distinguished mind and honest and energetic character.”
The orator looked round to see the effect of his plea. It was magical on Rousseau. He knew what were the preliminary proceedings of secret societies; he viewed them with the repugnance natural in superior minds. The absurd concessions but useful ones, required to simulate fear in the novices when there was nothing to fear appeared to him the culmination of puerility and idle superstition.
Moreover, the timid philosopher, the enemy of personal display, reckoned himself unfortunate if compelled to be a sight even though the attacks upon him would be in earnest. To be thus dispensed from the trial was more than satisfaction. He knew the rigor of Equality in the masonic rites; this exception in his favor was therefore a triumph.
“Still,” said the chairman, “as the new brother loves Equality like myself, I will ask him to explain himself on the question which I put solely for form’s sake: ‘What do you seek in our society?’”
Rousseau took two steps forward, and answered, as his dreamy and melancholy eye wandered over the meeting:
“I seek here what I have not found elsewhere. Truths, not sophisms. If I have agreed to come here, after having been entreated – (he emphasized the word) – it is from my belief that I might be useful. It is I who am conferring the obligation. Alas! we all may have passed away before you can supply me with the means of defense, or help me to freedom with your hands if I should be imprisoned, or give me bread and comfort if afflicted – for the light cometh slowly, progress has a halting step, and where the light is quenched, none of us may be able to revive it – ”
“Illustrious brother, you are wrong,” said the soft and penetrative voice of one who charmed the philosopher, “more than you imagine lies in the scope of this society: it is the future of the world. The future is hope – science – heaven, the Chief Architect who hath promised to illuminate His great building, the earth. The Architect does not lie.”
Startled by this lofty language, Rousseau looked and recognized the young man who had reminded him of the meeting at the street corner. It was Baron Balsamo. Clad in black with marked richness and great style, he was leaning on the side rail of the platform, and his face, softly lighted up, shone with all its beauty, grace and natural expressiveness.
“Science?” repeated the author, “a bottomless pit. Do you prate to me of science – comfort, future and promise where another tells of material things, rigor and violence – which am I to believe?” And he glanced at Marat whose hideous face did not harmonize with Balsamo’s. “Are there in the lodge meeting wolves just as in the world above – wolf and lamb! Let me tell you what my faith is, if you have not read it in my books.”
“Books,” interrupted Marat, “granted that they are sublime; but they are utopias; you are useful in the sense of the old prosers being useful. You point out the boon, but you make it a bubble, beautiful with the sunshine playing in a rainbow on it, but it bursts and leaves a nasty taste on the lips.”
“Have you seen the great acts of nature accomplished without preparation?” retorted Rousseau. “You want to regenerate the world by deeds? this is not regeneration but revolution.”
“Then,” sharply replied the surgeon, “you do not care for independence, or liberty?”
“Yes, I do,” returned the other, “for independence is my idol – liberty my goddess. But I want the mild and radiant liberty which warms and vivifies. The equality which brings men together by friendship, not fear. I wish the education and instruction of each element of the social body, as the joiner wishes neat joints and the mechanician harmony. I retract what I have written – progress, concord and devotion!”
Marat smiled with disdain.
“Rivers of milk and honey – the dreams of the poets which philosophers want to realise.”
Rousseau replied no more, it was so odd for him to be accused of moderation when all Europe called him an extreme innovator. He sat down in silence after having sought for the approval of the person who had defended him.
“You have heard?” asked the chairman, rising. “Is the brother worthy to enter the society? does he comprehend his duties?”
“Yes,” replied the gathering, but the one of reservation showed no unanimity.
“Take the oath,” said the presiding officer.
“It will be disagreeable to me to displease some of the members,” said the philosopher with pride, “but I think that I shall do more for the world and for you, brothers, apart from you, in my own isolation. Leave me then to my labors. I am not shaped to march with others whom I shun; yet I serve them, because I am one of you, and I try to believe you are better than you are. Now, you have my entire mind.”
“He won’t take the oath!” exclaimed Marat.
“I refuse positively. I do not wish to belong to the society. Too many proofs come up that I shall be useless to it.”
“Brother,” said the member with the conciliating speech, “allow me thus to call you, for we are all brothers apart from all combinations of human minds – do not yield to a movement of spite – sacrifice a little of your proper pride. Do for us what may be repugnant to you. Your counsel, ideas and presence are the Light. Do not plunge us into the double darkness of your refusal and your absence.”
“Nay, I take away nothing,” said the author; “if you wish the name and the spiritual essence of Jean Jacques Rousseau, put my books on your chairman’s table, and when my turn to speak comes round, open one and read as far as you like. That will be my advice – my opinion.”
“Stop a moment,” said Surgeon Marat as the last speaker took a step to go out. “Free will is all very well and the illustrious philosopher’s should be respected like the rest; but it strikes me as far from regular to let an outsider into the sanctuary who – being bound by no clause, even tacit – may, without being a dishonest man, reveal our proceedings.”
Rousseau returned him his pitying smile.
“I am ready for the oath, if one of discretion,” he said.
But the unnamed member who had watched the debate with authority which nobody questioned, though he stood in the crowd, approached the chairman and whispered in his ear.
“Quite so,” replied the Venerable, and he added: “You are a man, not a brother, but one whose honor places you on our level. We here lay aside our position to ask your simple promise to forget what has passed between us.”
“Like a dream in the morning: I swear on my honor,” replied Rousseau with feeling.
He went out upon these words, and many members at his heels.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE INNERMOST CIRCLE
THOSE who went out were brothers of the second and third circles, and left seven who were masters in their lodge. They recognized each other by signs proving they were admitted to the high degrees.
Their first care was to close the doors. The presiding officer, who was now Balsamo, showed his ring. On it were graved the letters L. P. D. They stood for Latin words meaning “Destroy the Lilies!” The Lily is the emblem of the House of Bourbon.
This chief was charged with the universal correspondence of the order. The six other highest leaders dwelt in America, Russia, Sweden, Spain and Italy.
He had brought some of the more important messages received to impart them to his associates placed under him but above the files.
The most important was from Swedenborg the spiritualist, who wrote from Sweden:
“Look out in the South, brothers, where the burning sun hatched a traitor. He will be your ruin, brothers. Watch at Paris, for there the false one dwells: the secrets of the Order are in his hands and a hateful sentiment moves him. I hear the denunciation, made in a low voice. I see a terrible doom, but it may fall too late. In the interim, brothers, keep watchful. One treacherous tongue, however ill-instructed, would be enough to upset all our skillfully contrived plans.”
The conspirators looked at one another in mute surprise. The language of the ferocious Rosicrucian and his foresight, to which many examples gave imposing authority, all contributed no little to cloud the committee presided over by the mesmerist.
“Brothers,” he said, “this inspired prophet is seldom wrong. Watch therefore, as he bids us. Like me, now, you know that the war has begun. Do not let us be baffled by these ridiculous foes whose position we undermine. Do not forget, though, that they have an army of fierce hirelings at their disposal – a powerful argument in the eyes of those who do not see far beyond earthly limits. Brothers, be on your guard against the traitors who are bribed.”
“Such alarm seems puerile to me,” said a voice: “we are gaining in strength daily, and are led by brilliant genius and mighty hands.”
Balsamo bowed at this flattery.
“True, but treachery sneaks in everywhere,” remarked Marat, who had been promoted to a superior rank, spite of his youth, and for the first time sat in the superior council. “Think, brothers, that a great capture may be made by increasing the size of the bait. While Chief of Police Sartines, with a bag of silver, may catch a subordinate, the Prime Minister, with one of gold, may buy one of the superiors.
“In our company the obscure brother knows nothing. He may at the most know the names of a few of those above him, but these names afford no information. Our constitution is admirable, but it is eminently aristocratic. The lower members can know nothing and do nothing. They are only gathered to tell them some nonsense, and yet they contribute to the solidity of the building. They bring the mortar and the bricks as others bring the tools and the plan. But, without bricks and mortar, how can you have a Temple? The workman gets but a poor wage, although I for one regard him as equal to the Architect’s clerk, whose plan creates and gives existence to the work. I regard him as an equal, I say, as he is a man and all men are equal, as the philosophers teach, for he bears his portion of misery and fatality like another, more than others, as he is exposed to the fall of a stone or the breaking down of a scaffold.”
“I interrupt you, brother,” said Balsamo. “You are talking wide of the question bringing us together. Your fault, brother, is in generalizing subjects, and exaggerating zeal. We are not discussing whether the constitution of our society is good or bad, but to maintain its firmness and integrity. If I were wrangling with you I should say, ‘No, the organ which receives the movement is not the equal of the genius of the creator; the workman is not on a level with the architect; arms are not equal to the brains.’”
“If Sartine arrests one of our lowliest brothers he will send him to jail just as sure as you or me,” protested the surgeon.
“Granted; but the person will suffer, not the society. It can endure such things. But if the head is imprisoned, the plot stops – the army loses the victory if the general is slain. Brothers, watch for the safety of the Supreme Chief!”
“Yes, but let them look out for us.”
“It is their duty.”
“And have their faults more severely punished.”
“Again, brother, you overstep the regulations of the Order. Are you ignorant that all the members are alike and under the same penalties?”
“In such cases the great ones elude the chastisement.”
“That is not what the Grand Masters think, brother; but hearken to the end of the letter from the great prophet Swedenborg, one of the greatest among us; here is what he adds:
“The harm will come from one of the great ones – very great – of the Order; or, if not from him directly, the fault will be imputable to him. Remember that Fire and Water may be accomplices: one gives light and the other gives revelations.”
This enigmatical allusion would seem to be to the process of showing the future in the glass of water, which was one of the conjuring experiments of Joseph Balsamo.
“Watch, brothers, (Concluded the seer) over all things and all men!”
“Let us, then, repeat the oath,” said Marat, grasping at his hold in the letter and the chief’s speech, “the oath which binds us and pledges us to carry it out in full rigor in case one of us betrays or is the cause of a treacherous act.”
Balsamo rose and uttered these awful words in a low voice, solemn and terrifying:
“In the name of the Architect of the Universe, I swear to break all carnal bonds attaching me to father and mother, sister and brother, wife, friends, mistress, kings, captains, benefactors, all unto whomsoever I have promised faith, obedience, gratitude or service.
“I vow to reveal to the chief whom I acknowledge according to the rules of the Order, what I have seen, heard, learnt or divined, and moreover to ascertain what happens beyond my knowledge.
“I honor all means to purify the globe of the enemies of truth and freedom.
“I subscribe to the vow of silence; I consent to die as if by the thunderbolt on the day when I deserve punishment and I will wait without remonstrance for the deadly stab to accomplish its work wherever I shall be.”
The seven men repeated the oath, standing up with uncovered heads, a sombre gathering.
“We are pledged to one another,” said Balsamo when the last word was spoken; “let us waste no time in idle arguments. I have a report to make to the Committee on the principal work of the year. France is situated in the center of Europe like its heart, and it makes the other parts of the body live. In its agitations may be sought the cause of the ills of the general organism. Hence I have come out of the East to sound this heart like a physician; I have listened to it, sounded it and experimented with it. A year ago when I began, monarchy was weakening. To-day, vices are destroying it. I have quickened the debauchery and favored what will be deadly.
“One obstacle stood in the way – a man, not merely the First Minister but the foremost man in the realm. It was Choiseul whom I have removed. This important work was undertaken by many intriguers and much hatred during ten years, but I accomplished it in a few months, by means which it is useless to describe. By a secret, which is one of my strong means, the greater as it must remain hidden from all eyes and never be manifested save by its effect, I have overturned and driven away Choiseul. Look at the fruit of the toil: all France is crying for Choiseul and rising to bring him back as orphans appeal to heaven to restore their father. Parliament uses its only right, inertia. But if it does not go on, there will be no work and the wage-earners will earn no money. No money for the workers – no rent, no tax paying – gold, the blood of a realm, will be wanting.
“They will try to make the poor pay – and there will be a struggle. But who will struggle against the masses? not the army, which is recruited from the people, eating the black bread of the farm hand, and drinking the sour wine of the vineyard laborer. The King has his household troops, the foreign regiments, five or six thousand men at the most – what will this squad of pigmies do against an army of giants?”
“Bid them rise!” exclaimed the chiefs.
“Yes, yes, let us set to work,” said Marat.
“Young man, your advice is not asked,” coldly said Balsamo. “Yet you may speak.”
“I will be brief,” said Marat; “mild attempts rock the people to sleep when they do not discourage them. Mere chipping at the stone is the theory of the Rousseaus, who are always bidding us to wait. We have been waiting seven centuries! This poor and feeble opposition has not advanced humanity by a single step. Have we seen one abuse redressed in three hundred years? Enough of these poets and theorists! let us have work and deeds. For three hundred years we have been physicking France and it is high time that the surgeons were called in, with scalpel and lancet. Society is gangrened and we must cut away and apply the redhot iron. A revolt, though it be put down, enlightens slaves more on their power than a thousand years of precepts and examples. It may not be enough, but it is much!”
A flattering murmur rose from several hearers.
“Where are our enemies,” continued the young man; “on the steps of the throne, guarding it as their palladium. We cannot reach royalty but over the bodies of those insolent, gold-coated guards. Well, let us fell them, as we read has been done to the body-guards of tyrants before now. Thus will we get near enough to the gilded idol to hurl it down. Count these privileged heads. Scarce two hundred thousand. Let us walk through the lovely garden, which is France, as Tarquin did in his, and cut off the heads of these flaunting poppies, and all will be done. When dwarfs aim to slay a colossus they attack its feet; when men want to fell the oak they chop at the root. Woodmen, take the ax, let us hack at the base of the tree and it will fall in the dust.”
“And crush you, pigmies,” commented the Supreme Chief in a voice of thunder. “You declaim against poets and you spout fustian. Brother, you have picked up these phrases in some novel you concoct in your garret.”
Marat blushed.
“Do you know what a revolution is?” said the Grand Copt. “I have seen two hundred, and they have tended to nothing because the revolutionists were in too great a haste. You talk of chopping down giant trees. This tree is not an oak but one of those immense redwoods of the far western American forests which I have seen. If they were felled, a horseman starting from the base to avoid the high-up branches would be overtaken and smashed. You cannot wish this. You cannot obtain the warrant from me.”