After taking about a hundred steps Morgan removed his mask. He ran more risk of being noticed in the streets of Paris as a masked man than with uncovered face.
When he reached the Rue1 Taranne he knocked at the door of a small furnished lodging-house at the corner of that street and the Rue du Dragon, took a candlestick from a table, a key numbered 12 from a nail, and climbed the stairs without exciting other attention than a well-known lodger2 would returning home. The clock was striking ten as he closed the door of his room. He listened attentively3 to the strokes, the light of his candle not reaching as far as the chimney-piece. He counted ten.
“Good!” he said to himself; “I shall not be too late.”
In spite of this probability, Morgan seemed determined4 to lose no time. He passed a bit of tinder-paper under the heater on the hearth5, which caught fire instantly. He lighted four wax-candles, all there were in the room, placed two on the mantel-shelf and two on a bureau opposite, and spread upon the bed a complete dress of the Incroyable of the very latest fashion. It consisted of a short coat, cut square across the front and long behind, of a soft shade between a pale-green and a pearl-gray; a waistcoat of buff plush, with eighteen mother-of-pearl buttons; an immense white cravat6 of the finest cambric; light trousers of white cashmere, decorated with a knot of ribbon where they buttoned above the calves7, and pearl-gray silk stockings, striped transversely with the same green as the coat, and delicate pumps with diamond buckles8. The inevitable9 eye-glass was not forgotten. As for the hat, it was precisely10 the same in which Carle Vernet painted his dandy of the Directory.
When these things were ready, Morgan waited with seeming impatience11. At the end of five minutes he rang the bell. A waiter appeared.
“Hasn’t the wig12-maker come?” asked Morgan.
In those days wig-makers were not yet called hair-dressers.
“Yes, citizen,” replied the waiter, “he came, but you had not yet returned, so he left word that he’d come back. Some one knocked just as you rang; it’s probably—”
“Here, here,” cried a voice on the stairs.
“Ah! bravo,” exclaimed Morgan. “Come in, Master Cadenette; you must make a sort of Adonis of me.”
“That won’t be difficult, Monsieur le Baron13,” replied the wig-maker.
“Look here, look here; do you mean to compromise me, citizen Cadenette?”
“Monsieur le Baron, I entreat14 you, call me Cadenette; you’ll honor me by that proof of familiarity; but don’t call me citizen. Fie; that’s a revolutionary denomination15! Even in the worst of the Terror I always called my wife Madame Cadenette. Now, excuse me for not waiting for you; but there’s a great ball in the Rue du Bac this evening, the ball of the Victims (the wig-maker emphasized this word). I should have thought that M. le Baron would be there.”
“Why,” cried Morgan, laughing; “so you are still a royalist, Cadenette?”
The wig-maker laid his hand tragically16 on his heart.
“Monsieur le Baron,” said he, “it is not only a matter of conscience, but a matter of state.”
“Conscience, I can understand that, Master Cadenette, but state! What the devil has the honorable guild17 of wigmakers to do with politics?”
“What, Monsieur le Baron?” said Cadenette, all the while getting ready to dress his client’s hair; “you ask me that? You, an aristocrat18!”
“Hush, Cadenette!”
“Monsieur le Baron, we ci-devants can say that to each other.”
“So you are a ci-devant?”
“To the core! In what style shall I dress M. le Baron’s hair?”
“Dog’s ears, and tied up behind.”
“With a dash of powder?”
“Two, if you like, Cadenette.”
“Ah! monsieur, when one thinks that for five years I was the only man who had an atom of powder ‘à la maréchale.’ Why, Monsieur le Baron, a man was guillotined for owning a box of powder!”
“I’ve known people who were guillotined for less than that, Cadenette. But explain how you happen to be a ci-devant. I like to understand everything.”
“It’s very simple, Monsieur le Baron. You admit, don’t you, that among the guilds19 there were some that were more or less aristocratic.”
“Beyond doubt; accordingly as they were nearer to the higher classes of society.”
“That’s it, Monsieur le Baron. Well, we had the higher classes by the hair of their head. I, such as you see me, I have dressed Madame de Polignac’s hair; my father dressed Madame du Barry’s; my grandfather, Madame de Pompadour’s. We had our privileges, Monsieur; we carried swords. It is true, to avoid the accidents that were liable to crop up among hotheads like ourselves, our swords were usually of wood; but at any rate, if they were not the actual thing, they were very good imitations. Yes, Monsieur le Baron,” continued Cadenette with a sigh, “those days were the good days, not only for the wig-makers, but for all France. We were in all the secrets, all the intrigues20; nothing was hidden from us. And there is no known instance, Monsieur le Baron, of a wig-maker betraying a secret. Just look at our poor queen; to whom did she trust her diamonds? To the great, the illustrious Leonard, the prince of wig-makers. Well, Monsieur le Baron, two men alone overthrew22 the scaffolding of a power that rested on the wigs23 of Louis XIV., the puffs24 of the Regency, the frizettes of Louis-XV., and the cushions of Marie Antoinette.”
“And those two men, those levellers, those two revolutionaries, who were they, Cadenette? that I may doom25 them, so far as it lies in my power, to public execration26.”
“M. Rousseau and citizen Talma: Monsieur Rousseau who said that absurdity27, ‘We must return to Nature,’ and citizen Talma, who invented the Titus head-dress.”
“That’s true, Cadenette; that’s true.”
“When the Directory came in there was a moment’s hope. M. Barras never gave up powder, and citizen Moulins stuck to his queue. But, you see, the 18th Brumaire has knocked it all down; how could any one friz Bonaparte’s hair! Ah! there,” continued Cadenette, puffing28 out the dog’s ears of his client—“there’s aristocratic hair for you, soft and fine as silk, and takes the tongs29 so well one would think you wore a wig. See, Monsieur le Baron, you wanted to be as handsome as Adonis! Ah! if Venus had seen you, it’s not of Adonis that Mars would have been jealous!”
And Cadenette, now at the end of his labors30 and satisfied with the result, presented a hand-mirror to Morgan, who examined himself complacently31.
“Come, come!” he said to the wig-maker, “you are certainly an artist, my dear fellow! Remember this style, for if ever they cut off my head I shall choose to have it dressed like that, for there will probably be women at my execution.”
“And M. le Baron wants them to regret him,” said the wig-maker gravely.
“Yes, and in the meantime, my dear Cadenette, here is a crown to reward your labors. Have the goodness to tell them below to call a carriage for me.”
Cadenette sighed.
“Monsieur le Baron,” said he, “time was when I should have answered: ‘Show yourself at court with your hair dressed like that, and I shall be paid.’ But there is no court now, Monsieur le Baron, and one must live. You shall have your carriage.”
With which Cadenette sighed again, slipped Morgan’s crown in his pocket, made the reverential bow of wig-makers and dancing-masters, and left the young man to complete his toilet.
The head being now dressed, the rest was soon done; the cravat alone took time, owing to the many failures that occurred; but Morgan concluded the difficult task with an experienced hand, and as eleven o’clock was striking he was ready to start. Cadenette had not forgotten his errand; a hackney-coach was at the door. Morgan jumped into it, calling out: “Rue du Bac, No. 60.”
The coach turned into the Rue de Grenelle, went up the Rue du Bac, and stopped at No. 60.
“Here’s a double fare, friend,” said Morgan, “on condition that you don’t stand before the door.”
The driver took the three francs and disappeared around the corner of the Rue de Varennes. Morgan glanced up the front of the house; it seemed as though he must be mistaken, so dark and silent was it. But he did not hesitate; he rapped in a peculiar32 fashion.
The door opened. At the further end of the courtyard was a building, brilliantly lighted. The young man went toward it, and, as he approached, the sound of instruments met his ear. He ascended33 a flight of stairs and entered the dressing-room. There he gave his cloak to the usher34 whose business it was to attend to the wraps.
“Here is your number,” said the usher. “As for your weapons, you are to place them in the gallery where you can find them easily.”
Morgan put the number in his trousers pocket, and entered the great gallery transformed into an arsenal35. It contained a complete collection of arms of all kinds, pistols, muskets36, carbines, swords, and daggers38. As the ball might at any moment be invaded by the police, it was necessary that every dancer be prepared to turn defender40 at an instant’s notice. Laying his weapons aside, Morgan entered the ballroom41.
We doubt if any pen could give the reader an adequate idea of the scene of that ball. Generally, as the name “Ball of the Victims” indicated, no one was admitted except by the strange right of having relatives who had either been sent to the scaffold by the Convention or the Commune of Paris, blown to pieces by Collot d’Herbois, or drowned by Carrier. As, however, the victims guillotined during the three years of the Terror far outnumbered the others, the dresses of the majority of those who were present were the clothes of the victims of the scaffold. Thus, most of the young girls, whose mothers and older sisters had fallen by the hands of the executioner, wore the same costume their mothers and sisters had worn for that last lugubrious42 ceremony; that is to say, a white gown and red shawl, with their hair cut short at the nape of the neck. Some added to this costume, already so characteristic, a detail that was even more significant; they knotted around their necks a thread of scarlet43 silk, fine as the blade of a razor, which, as in Faust’s Marguerite, at the Witches’ Sabbath, indicated the cut of the knife between the throat and the collar bone.
As for the men who were in the same case, they wore the collars of their coats turned down behind, those of their shirt wide open, their necks bare, and their hair, cut short.
But many had other rights of entrance to this ball besides that of having Victims in their families; some had made victims themselves. These latter were increasing. There were present men of forty or forty-five years of age, who had been trained in the boudoirs of the beautiful courtesans of the seventeenth century—who had known Madame du Barry in the attics44 of Versailles, Sophie Arnoult with M. de Lauraguais, La Duthé with the Comte d’Artois—who had borrowed from the courtesies of vice45 the polish with which they covered their ferocity. They were still young and handsome; they entered a salon46, tossing their perfumed locks and their scented47 handkerchiefs; nor was it a usel............