I
On this 26th day of April, 1794, which in the newly constituted calendar is the 7th Floreal, year II of the Republic, three women and one man were assembled in a small, closely curtained room on the top floor of a house in the Rue de la Planchette, which is situated in a remote and dreary quarter of Paris. The man sat upon a chair which was raised on a dais. He was neatly, indeed immaculately, dressed, in dark cloth coat and tan breeches, with clean linen at throats and wrists, white stockings and buckled shoes. His own hair was concealed under a mouse-coloured wig. He sat quite still, with one leg crossed over the other, and his thin, bony hands were clasped in front of him.
Behind the dais there was a heavy curtain which stretched right across the room, and in front of it, at opposite corners, two young girls, clad in grey, clinging draperies, sat upon their heels, with the palms of their hands resting flat upon their thighs. Their hair hung loose down their backs, their chins were uplifted, their eyes fixed, their bodies rigid in an attitude of contemplation. In the centre of the room a woman stood, gazing upwards at the ceiling, her arms folded across her breast. Her grey hair, lank and unruly, was partially hidden by an ample floating veil of an indefinite shade of grey, and from her meagre shoulders and arms, her garment—it was hardly a gown—descended in straight, heavy, shapeless folds. In front of her was a small table, on it a large crystal globe, which rested on a stand of black wood, exquisitely carved and inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and beside it a small metal box.
Immediately above the old woman’s head an oil lamp, the flame of which was screened by a piece of crimson silk, shed a feeble and lurid light upon the scene. Against the wall half a dozen chairs, on the floor a threadbare carpet, and in one corner a broken-down chiffonier represented the sum total of the furniture in the stuffy little room. The curtains in front of the window, as well as the portières which masked both the doors, were heavy and thick, excluding all light and most of the outside air.
The old woman, with eyes fixed upon the ceiling, spoke in a dull, even monotone.
“Citizen Robespierre, who is the Chosen of the Most High, hath deigned to enter the humble abode of his servant,” she said. “What is his pleasure today?”
“The shade of Danton pursues me,” Robespierre replied, and his voice too sounded toneless, as if muffled by the heavily weighted atmosphere. “Can you not lay him to rest?”
The woman stretched out her arms. The folds of her woollen draperies hung straight from shoulder to wrist down to the ground, so that she looked like a shapeless bodiless, grey ghost in the dim, red light.
“Blood!” she exclaimed in a weird, cadaverous wail. “Blood around thee and blood at thy feet! But not upon thy head, O Chosen of the Almighty! Thy decrees are those of the Most High! Thy hand wields His avenging Sword! I see thee walking upon a sea of blood, yet thy feet are as white as lilies and thy garments are spotless as the driven snow. Avaunt,” she cried in sepulchral tones, “ye spirits of evil! Avaunt, ye vampires and ghouls! and venture not with your noxious breath to disturb the serenity of our Morning Star!”
The girls in front of the dais raised their arms above their heads and echoed the old soothsayer’s wails.
“Avaunt!” they cried solemnly. “Avaunt!”
Now from a distant corner of the room, a small figure detached itself out of the murky shadows. It was the figure of a young negro, clad in white from head to foot. In the semidarkness the draperies which he wore were alone visible, and the whites of his eyes. Thus he seemed to be walking without any feet, to have eyes without any face, and to be carrying a heavy vessel without using any hands. His appearance indeed was so startling and so unearthly that the man upon the dais could not suppress and exclamation of terror. Whereupon a wide row of dazzlingly white teeth showed somewhere between the folds of the spectral draperies, and further enhanced the spook-like appearance of the blackamoor. He carried a deep bowl fashioned of chased copper, which he placed upon the table in front of the old woman, immediately behind the crystal globe and the small metal box. The seer then opened the box, took out a pinch of something brown and powdery, and holding it between finger and thumb, she said solemnly:
“From out the heart of France rises the incense of faith, of hope, and of love!” and she dropped the powder into the bowl. “May it prove acceptable to him who is her chosen Lord!”
A bluish flame shot up from out the depth of the vessel, shed for the space of a second or two its ghostly light upon the gaunt features of the old hag, the squat and grinning face of the negro, and toyed with the will-o’-the-wisp-like fitfulness of the surrounding gloom. A sweet-scented smoke rose upwards to the ceiling. Then the flame died down again, making the crimson darkness around appear by contrast more lurid and more mysterious than before.
Robespierre had not moved. His boundless vanity, his insatiable ambition, blinded him to the effrontery, the ridicule of this mysticism. He accepted the tangible incense, took a deep breath, as if to fill his entire being with its heady fumes, just as he was always ready to accept the fulsome adulation of his devotees and of his sycophants.
The old charlatan then repeated her incantations. Once more she took powder from the box, threw some of it into the vessel, and spoke in a sepulchral voice:
“From out of the heart of those who worship thee rises the incense of their praise!”
A delicate white flame rose immediately out of the vessel. It shed a momentary, unearthly brightness around, then as speedily vanished again. And for the third time the witch spoke the mystic words:
“From out the heart of an entire nation rises the incense of perfect joy in thy triumph over thine enemies!”
This time, however, the magic powder did not act quite so rapidly as it had done on the two previous occasions. For a few seconds the vessel remained dark and unresponsive; nothing came to dispel the surrounding gloom. Even the light of the oil lamp overhead appeared suddenly to grow dim. At any rate, so it seemed to the autocrat who, with nerves on edge, sat upon his throne-like seat, his bony hands, so like the talons of a bird of prey, clutching the arms of his chair, his narrow eyes fixed upon the sybil, who in her turn was gazing on the metal vessel as if she would extort some cabalistic mystery from its depth.
All at once a bright red flame shot out of the bowl. Everything in the room became suffused with a crimson glow. The old witch bending over her cauldron looked as if she were smeared with blood, her eyes appeared bloodshot, her long hooked nose cast a huge black shadow over her mouth, distorting the face into a hideous, cadaverous grin. From her throat issued strange sounds like those of an animal in the throes of pain.
“Red! Red!” she lamented, and gradually as the flame subsided and finally flickered out altogether, her words became more distinct. She raised the crystal globe and gazed fixedly into it. “Always red,” she went on slowly. “Thrice yesterday did I cast the spell in the name of Our Chosen … thrice did the spirits cloak their identity in a bloodred flame … red … always red … not only blood … but danger … danger of death through that which is red …”
Robespierre had risen from his seat, his thin lips were murmuring hasty imprecations. The kneeling figurants looked scared, and strange wailing sounds came from their mouths. The young blackamoor alone looked self-possessed. He stood by, evidently enjoying the scene, his white teeth gleaming in a huge, board grin.
“A truce on riddles, Mother!” Robespierre exclaimed at last impatiently, and descended hastily from the dais. He approached the old necromancer, seized her by the arm, thrust his head in front of hers in an endeavour to see something which apparently was revealed to her in the crystal globe. “What is it you see in there?” he queried harshly.
But she pushed him aside, gazed with rapt intentness into the globe.
“Red!” she murmured. “Scarlet … aye, scarlet! And now it takes shape … Scarlet … and it obscures the Chosen One … the shape becomes more clear … the Chosen One appears more dim …”
Then she gave a piercing shriek.
“Beware! … beware! … that which is Scarlet is shaped like a flower … five petals, I see them distinctly … and the Chosen One I see no more …”
“Malediction!” the man exclaimed. “What foolery is this?”
“No foolery,” the old charlatan resumed in a dull monotone. “Thou didst consult the oracle, oh thou, who art the Chosen of the people of France! and the oracle has spoken. Beware of a scarlet flower! From that which is scarlet comes danger of death for thee!”
Wherat Robespierre tried to laugh.
“Someone has filled thy head, Mother,” he said in a voice which he vainly tried to steady, “with tales of the mysterious Englishman who goes by the name of the Scarlet Pimpernel—”
“Thy mortal enemy, O Messenger of the Most High!” the old blasphemer broke in solemnly. “In far-off fogbound England he hath sworn thy death. Beware—”
“If that is the only danger which threatens me—” the other began, striving to speak carelessly.
“The only one, and the greatest one,” the hag went on insistently. “Despise it not because it seems small and remote.”
“I do not despise it; neither do I magnify it. A gnat is a nuisance, but not a danger.”
“A gnat may wield a poisoned dart. The spirits have spoken. Heed their warning, O Chosen of the People! Destroy the Englishman ere he destroy thee!”
“Pardi!” Robespierre retorted, and despite the stuffiness of the room he gave a shiver as if he felt cold. “Since thou dost commune with the spirits, find out from them how I can accomplish that.”
The woman once more raised the crystal globe to the level of her breast. With her elbows stretched out and her draperies falling straight all around her, she gazed into it for a while in silence. Then she began to murmur.
“I see the Scarlet Flower quite plainly … a small Scarlet Flower … And I see the great Light which is like an aureole, the Light of the Chosen One. It is of dazzling brightness—but over the Scarlet Flower casts a Stygian shadow.”
“Ask them,” Robespierre broke in peremptorily, “ask thy spirits how best I can overcome mine enemy.”
“I see something,” the witch went on in an even monotone, still gazing into the crystal globe “white and rose and tender … is it a woman … ?”
“A woman?”
“She is tall, and she is beautiful … a stranger in the land … with eyes dark as the night and tresses black as the raven’s wing … Yes, it is a woman … She stands between the Light and that bloodred flower. She takes the flower in her hand … she fondles it, raises it to her lips … Ah!” and the old seer gave a loud cry of triumph. “She tosses it mangled and bleeding into the consuming Light … And now it lies faded, torn, crushed, and the Light grows in radiance and in brilliancy, and there is none now to dim its pristine glory—”
“But the woman? Who is she?” the man broke in impatiently. “What is her name?”
“The spirits speak no names,” the seer replied. “Any woman would gladly be thy handmaid, O Elect of France! The spirits have spoken,” she concluded solemnly. “Salvation will come to thee by the hand of a woman.”
“And mine enemy?” he insisted. “Which of us two is in danger of death now—now that I am warned—which of us two?—mine English enemy, or I?”
Nothing loth, the old hag was ready to continue her sortilege. Robespierre hung breathless upon her lips. His whole personality seemed transformed. He appeared eager, fearful, credulous—a different man to the cold, calculating despot who sent thousands to their death with his measured oratory, the mere power of his presence. Indeed, history has sought in vain for the probably motive which drove this cynical tyrant into consulting this pitiable charlatan. That Catherine Théot had certain psychic powers has never been gainsaid, and since the philosophers of the eighteenth century had undermined the religious superstitions of the Middle Ages, it was only to be expected that in the great upheaval of this awful Revolution, men and women should turn to the mystic and the supernatural as to a solace and respite from the fathomless misery of their daily lives.
In this world of ours, the more stupendous the events, the more abysmal the catastrophes, the more do men realise their own impotence and the more eagerly do they look for the Hidden Hand that is powerful enough to bring about such events and to hurl upon them such devastating cataclysms. Indeed, never since the dawn of history had so many theosophies, demonologies, occult arts, spiritualism, exorcism of all sorts, flourished as they did now: the Theists, the Rosicrucians, the Illuminati, Swedenborg, the Count of Saint Germain, Weishaupt, and scores of others, avowed charlatans or earnest believers, had their neophytes, their devotees, and their cults.
Catherine Théot was one of many: for the nonce, one of the most noteworthy in Paris. She believed herself to be endowed with the gift of prophecy, and her fetish was Robespierre. In this at least she was genuine. She believed him now to be a new Messiah, the Elect of God. Nay! she loudly proclaimed him as such, and one of her earliest neophytes, an ex-Carthusian monk named Gerle, who sat in the Convention next to the great man, had whispered in the latter’s ear the insidious flattery which had gradually led his footsteps to the witch’s lair.
Whether his own vanity—which was without limit and probably without parallel—caused him to believe in his own heaven-sent mission, or whether he only desire to strengthen his own popularity by endowing it with supernatural prestige, is a matter of conjecture. Certain it is that he did lend himself to Catherine Théot’s cabalistic practices and that he allowed himself to be flattered and worshipped by the numerous nepohytes who flocked to this new temple of magic, either from mystical fevour or merely to serve their own ends by fawning on the most dreaded man in France.