Scaramouche The King-Maker by Rafael Sabatini

Author:Rafael Sabatini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Stratus

Chapter 26

Chabot Triumphant

‘In future, François, you will have faith in me, I think.’ André-Louis stood with Chabot in the hall of the Tuileries, the antechamber of the Convention, at the foot of the great staircase which had run with blood a year ago, the blood which had washed away the sins of despotism from that erstwhile abode of tyranny, and fitted it to become the palace of the national liberators. They stood under the shadow of the statue of Liberty erected there, symbol of the young Republic trampling upon the ignominies of the overpast age of despots.

Chabot had ascended the tribune that morning to demand the repeal of the interdict upon the corsairs. He had prepared his speech with the collaboration of André-Louis: a masterly achievement couched in Chabot’s denunciatory vein. He had denounced everybody denounceable: the reactionaries and foreign agents at home, the foreign powers still under the yoke of tyranny, arming their enslaved multitudes to make war upon the children of Reason and Liberty. It was the sacred duty of all patriots to make war upon the hydra of despotism whenever it reared any of its hideous heads, to attack it at every point where it was vulnerable, to bleed it white, so that its obscene form should no longer sprawl athwart a tortured world, so that its foul breath should no longer poison long-suffering humanity. That was at once a mission – the mission of encompassing a rule of universal brotherhood – and an act of self-defence. It could be opposed only by vile reactionaries and insidious counter-revolutionaries. He would welcome this opposition, for it would disclose to them heads that were ripe for the national scythe.

With that formidable threat he stayed opposition before it was raised.

Then he passed on. He pointed out the vulnerability of their enemies upon the seas. The ships of the Bourbon, who ruled in Spain and Naples, and whose subsidies maintained abroad the French members of that evil brood, plied the Mediterranean. Austrians sailed there, too, a menace to the shores of France. Even more insidious the keels of the papal galleys ploughed those waters, manned by the myrmidons of a pestilential Church, whose poisonous doctrines had for centuries held the souls of men in bondage. To make war upon these, to conduct against them a holy crusade, if he might employ a word of such evil associations in connection with an aim so lofty and pure, a group of enlightened patriots, whose first motive was the service of the Republic One and Indivisible, had equipped, armed, and manned a fleet of vessels. An interdict had been placed upon these ships, upon the ground that their aim was robbery, and that robbery being an act of anti-civism was not to be countenanced by an enlightened Republic. Oh, what a sophistry was here! How the shadow of evil was employed to obscure the substance of the good! How were men, even the best-intentioned, betrayed by narrow views!

You conceive the remainder of this turgid harangue.

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